The city rarely elected its recorder and the choice of Palmes may have been influenced by his recent despatch to London with two aldermen, one of them his fellow-Member William Nelson, on unspecified business.

Unlike Nelson, he was not to be re-elected, perhaps because he was made a sergeant in 1510, but his continued standing in the city and shire is reflected in his appointment to nine subsidy commissions between 1512 and 1515.

In 1515 he presented his son George (later Wolsey’s confessor and a canon of York) to the living of Sutton-upon-Derwent, Yorkshire, and in the following year he was named executor by his brother.

He made numerous bequests of lands and goods to his family, and named as executors and residuary legatees his wife, Sir William Bulmer and Sir Guy Dawny, Thomas Langton and James Duffelde, gentlemen, Richard Ellis, clerk, and William Marshall.

At his death Palmes held the manors of Naburn and Gate Fulford, and lands, some of them acquired recently, scattered over a wide area of Yorkshire.