Thomas Graa

Thomas Graa was a member of one of the richest and most prominent families in 14th-century York. His father, William, represented York in no less than 14 Parliaments between 1343 and 1372. Thomas also enjoyed considerable influence throughout the county of Yorkshire as well, where his success was clearly due to talent rather than personal connections.

Thomas was a property owner of some consequence, he rented two tenements in York from the civic authorities at a cost of over 16s. a year, owned a modest estate in Sand Hutton, another in Skelton in the royal forest of Galtres, and was involved in the conveyance of land in Brandsby, which evidently belonged to his wife Agnes. She also who possessed a reversionary title to the manor of Woodhall and half the advowson of Darfield church, Yorkshire. His holdings were even bigger after he married his second wife, Maude, a daughter of a Lincolnshire landowner named John Multon. Following the death of his second wife in 1391 he remarried to a wealthy widow, Alice Colthorpe.

Much of the Thomas’s income derived from the wool trade, and although it is now impossible to estimate the scale of his exports, he clearly ranked among the leading York merchants of his day. He was also involved in lending money to the Crown, such as in 1377 when he and his associates were promised repayment in the form of a license to ship 640 sacks of wool overseas free of duty. Graa also stands out because of his interest in diplomacy, at least so far as it affected his own and his fellow merchants’ commercial interests. In 1388 he was in Prussia to negotiate with Conrad Zolver, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, over the redress of grievances arising from conflict between the English and the Hanse in the Baltic, where a group of York men alone had reputedly lost merchandise worth £1,600.

Thomas Graa also had rich civic career, he was Mayor of York in 1375 and 1398. He was Member of Parliament for 12 times between 1377 and 1397, and had carried out a number of other civic appointments.