BERE, John I

The man who represented Liskeard in the 1433 Parliament cannot be identified beyond reasonable doubt, for there were at least two men of this name active in Cornwall at the time. On balance, it seems most likely that it was John Bere of Brynn, a member of a family which was to provide two other MPs in the reign of Henry VI, rather than his more obscure, if wealthier, namesake from Tregarne near Helston in the far south-west, who sat in the Commons.1 John Bere of Tregarne, who attested the Cornish shire elections of May 1413, was dead by 1431, and it was his synonymous son by his wife Alice who was present at the shire elections of 1431 and 1435. The younger John of Tregarne was alive in 1451, when he was said to hold estates in the county worth £3 p.a.: C219/11/1, 14/2, 5; Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), ii. 985, 995; E179/87/92; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/353-6.

It has not been possible to establish John’s position in the Bere family of Brynn conclusively, but it seems likely that he was a brother of Thomas and William Bere, his near contemporaries in the Commons, and his relative obscurity suggests that he was a younger son. John’s return to Parliament stands isolated in his early career. It is possible that it owed something to the influence of the sheriff of Cornwall, Sir Thomas Arundell*, for there is a suggestion that the Beres were connected with the greatest of the Cornish gentry, the Arundell family of Lanherne. If John deliberately sought election, he may have made this decision on account of the violent dispute between the tin merchant Robert Borlase of Borlasevath (in St. Columb Major) and the brutal local esquire Richard Tregoose* into which he and his putative brothers had been drawn. Tregoose was later to accuse the three Beres of having been among a group of local gentry headed by Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice who in September 1433 had conspired to have him indicted on trumped-up charges of raping a 15-year-old virgin, and he claimed the huge sum of £1,000 in damages.2 KB27/742, rot. 112d; CP40/734, rot. 311d. If there was any truth in this accusation, the conspiracy had been hatched during the summer recess of the Parliament, and Bere may have subsequently returned to Westminster for the final session, which took place in mid October.

Perhaps while sitting in the Commons, Bere was able to develop connexions of the highest importance, for he is next recorded, with his putative brother Thomas, in the retinue accompanying Cardinal Beaufort to the Congress of Arras in the summer of 1435. John may have been introduced to Beaufort through the good services of the influential Renfrew Arundell*, who had sat in Parliament with him as one of the Cornish shire knights, and who likewise sailed across the Channel in Beaufort’s retinue.3 DKR, xlviii. 305. Despite the splendid ceremonial which accompanied the deliberations at Arras, the conference ultimately ended in failure on account of the duke of Burgundy’s desertion of the English cause.4 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 251. It is not clear whether Bere maintained his connexion with Beaufort after their return to England. In the first instance, he appears to have settled down to the quiet life of a west-country gentleman. Although the extent of his landholdings is uncertain, he probably benefited from a small settlement made by one of his kinsmen, for in 1451 he was said to have an annual landed income of 40s.5 E179/87/92. Like many of his neighbours he may have had tin mining interests, for in the summer of 1438 he was pursuing a group of miners from the St. Austell region for a supposed trespass.6 KB27/709, rot. 66d. Throughout the 1440s Richard Tregoose’s legal battle with the Beres continued, but John appears to have escaped direct conflict.7 KB27/739, rot. 38; 742, rots. 44, 112d; 743, rots. 13d, 16d; 749, rot. 67d; 750, rot. 6; 751, rot. 48d; 758, rots. 11, 14d. In the end, the dispute was settled by Tregoose’s murder in the summer of 1452.

Yet, barely a year later Bere found himself in rather more serious trouble. He and his neighbour Richard Trenans of Withiel had quarrelled with John Lamanva, a Cornishman in the service of William Normanton, one of the clerks of Chancery. Lamanva had used his connexions at Westminster to procure a writ of attachias against his opponents, and the sheriff of Cornwall, the influential Thomas Buttockshide†, took Bere into custody.8 C253/34/461. The outcome of the matter is not known, and in view of his limited landholdings it is unlikely that the MP was the John Bere ‘esquire’ who was granted a general pardon in March 1460.9 CPR, 1452-61, p. 568.

The later years of John’s life are obscure. He is last recorded for certain in the spring of 1466, when (alongside his namesake John Bere of Bodmin),10 This was probably John Bere of Bodmin and Bodrugan, the son of Richard Bere: C67/49, m. 18; KB9/303/19, 20. he found bail in the court of King’s bench for a group of the lesser burgesses of Bodmin. The defendants’ cause was clearly much favoured by the Beres, for John Wydeslade junior, son of the chief prothonotary of common pleas, appeared on behalf of the Crown to challenge the composition of the jury, claiming that it had been empanelled by Thomas Bere, then his brother William’s under sheriff, in favour of the Bodmin men.11 KB27/819, rex rot. 6.