BEAULEY, John

Despite his unusual name, nothing is known about this MP’s background, although it is not impossible that he belonged to the Bewley family of Cumberland, and was related to two other Members, William Bewley† (d.1433/4) and Richard Bewley*.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 225-6. But he is not mentioned by the family’s historian: E.T. Bewley, Bewleys of Cumb. If so, he would not have been the only northerner selected to represent the Sussex borough of Midhurst in the mid fifteenth century, for Thomas Molyneux* and Thomas Urswyk II* both came from Lancashire, and Thomas Bellingham* from Westmorland. It is worthy of remark that whenever he appeared in the records he was usually described as a ‘gentleman’, which strongly suggests that like Molyneux and Urswyk he trained to be a lawyer, and indeed in the 1480s he was styled ‘legis peritus’, and ‘bokes of lawe’ were among his effects when he died.3 In J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), i. 287, he is confused with his son, another John, who was a member of New Inn in the 1490s. The confusion arises from the date of John senior’s will, as recorded in DRb/PWr 6, ff. 44v-46, for although the regnal year is there given as 6 Hen. VII (1491-2) the ‘yere of our lord’ is given as mcccclxxx.

As ‘gentleman’, Beauley was named in August 1458 as a recipient of the goods and chattels of a London vintner, Robert Dodyngton, and some ten years later he acted similarly on behalf of a cutler called John Broke.4 CCR, 1454-61, p. 303; 1468-76, no. 117. The implication is that he was resident in or near the capital, and probably practiced in the central courts. Even so, he never attained much distinction in his chosen profession, and there is no ready explanation for his election to the Parliament of 1460. He is not known to have held any land in the vicinity of Midhurst, or to have been acquainted with any of the townsmen. However, he was associated with at least one prominent Sussex landowner, Sir Thomas Etchingham, who, significantly, was a kinsman of the sheriff who made the return, Robert Fiennes*. Together with Etchingham, Beauley acted as a feoffee of property in the London parish of St. Olave by the Tower from December 1463, and he was subsequently recorded in the same capacity with regard to a newly-built house in that of St. Peter Westcheap.5 Corp. London RO, hr 193/26, 27; 200/2.

At an unknown date Beauley settled in Kent, where before the end of 1473 he acquired by marriage a manor in Woldham which had belonged to the family of Seller or Celar since Edward III’s reign. It was perhaps during his lifetime that this manor gained the new appellation of ‘Beauley’s Court’.6 Hasted, iv. 405. The move led to his participation in transactions regarding land in the county. Since February 1471 he had been a feoffee of the manor of ‘Seyntmaryhalle’ in the parish of Hoo St. Mary, apparently on behalf of Richard Forde, the remembrancer of the Exchequer, and subsequent conveyances of the same property brought him into contact with John, Lord Cobham, and two other Exchequer officials: John Clerk, the secondary baron, and Nicholas Lathell, the clerk of the pipe.7 CAD, i. C875, 881; ii. C2696, 2792, 2796, 2873, 2875; iii. C3551; vi. C6096. He had also made the acquaintance of John Worsop*, the London draper who sat in the same Parliament of 1460 (as a representative for a different Sussex borough). Worsop asked him to be a feoffee of manors in Kent and Essex to be settled in jointure on his daughter when she married Thomas Rickhill (d.1477), and such was his trust in Beauley’s probity that he named him as an executor in 1474.8 C140/57/61; PCC 16 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 120v).

There are a few records of Beauley’s private lawsuits. At an unknown date he petitioned the chancellor, the archbishop of York, regarding an alleged fraud by the vendor of a house within the liberty of Rochester, for which he had already paid part of the purchase price.9 C1/33/178. In the court of common pleas he joined a London tailor, Henry Clough, in suing Stephen Hodges of Frittenden for a debt of £40. Hodges was outlawed after repeatedly failing to appear in court to answer them, but eventually obtained a royal pardon of outlawry in 1482.10 CPR, 1476-85, p. 292.

In his later years Beauley acquired lands and tenements in a number of parishes near Woldham and in the Medway valley, the focus of his acquisitions being the city of Rochester where he dwelt in a house leased from the cathedral priory. In his will, made on 12 Feb. 1491, he instructed his feoffees (who included a serjeant-at-law named John Rede and a future justice of common pleas, John Butler of Lincoln’s Inn), to settle on his widow Felicia all his property in Rochester and some woodland at nearby Chatham for term of her life. After her death they were to pass to his son John, with the exception of three tenements in St. Margaret’s parish, which were to go to his daughter Jane and her heirs. After the deaths of Felicia and the younger John the remainder of testator’s lease from Rochester cathedral priory was bequeathed to the prior and convent, so that the monks would pray for his soul. The rest of Beauley’s property was to fall directly to John and his issue, failing which Woldham Hall was to remain in tail to his daughters Agnes Sybill and Elizabeth Hodsole. At every feast of St. John ‘ante portam latinam’ (6 May) John was to ensure that a special obit would be kept for his father and others in the parish church at Snodland. In his final testament, made on the same day, Beauley requested interment in St. Andrew’s cathedral, between the Rood altar and that dedicated to St. Ursula, and left to each altar a cow or two quarters of malt to pay for lights. Immediately after his death 100 masses were to be sung at St. Ursula’s altar, and a priest was to be paid ten marks to pray for him there throughout the following year. Beauley left his unwed daughters, Felicia and Jane, £10 and £20 respectively for their marriages, and gold rings as tokens to remind them to keep him in their prayers. He named as executors his wife and son-in-law Thomas Sybill.11 Rochester consist. ct. wills, DRb/DWr 6, ff. 44v-46. The date of Beauley’s death is not recorded, but his widow was granted letters of administration on 1 Oct. 1492, and the will was proved on 26 Oct.12 Ibid.; DRb/DWr 5, f. 26.

Later in the 1490s Beauley’s son John and daughter Felicia had a serious falling out. Felicia claimed in the court of requests that their father had leased the manor of Seller at Woldham to John on a rolling annual lease, for 20 marks p.a. payable to our MP and his heirs, and that in his will he had bequeathed to her the ‘store’ there, along with other of his moveable goods. Nevertheless, John and their mother had colluded together to forge another will, and that in her capacity as executrix the latter had sold this store to John. John denied any wrongdoing, said that the terms of the lease, contained in an indenture, specified a fixed term, and that his mother as the administrator of the (only) will – which had been proved before the bishop of Rochester – had the authority to sell him the store.13 REQ2/3/17. John, who had received a bequest of his father’s law-books, followed his profession by joining New Inn. The manor at Woldham continued in the possession of the Beauley family until the late seventeenth century.14 Baker, i. 287; Hasted, iv. 405.