BRICE, John II

Although the Brices of Dorset were prolific, no concrete evidence of the Taunton MP’s connexion with them has come to light. Indeed, there was a man of this name (on chronological grounds probably an older namesake of the MP) who hailed from Ilchester, served as a tax collector in Somerset in 1416, and set his seal to the Somerset election indentures in 1414, 1417 and March 1421.1 CFR, xiv. 152; C219/11/5, 12/2, 5. By the later 1430s Brice is found holding lands from Bishop Beaufort of Winchester in Taunton and its neighbourhood,2 Hants RO, bp. of Winchester’s piperolls 11M59/B1/180, 182 (formerly 159435, 159437). a connexion to which he probably owed his return to the Commons. Few other details of his career have been discovered. He evidently survived into the 1460s and in 1462 was named among the witnesses to a settlement of some of the property of John Roche of Exton.3 CCR, 1461-8, pp. 146-7. Two years later he availed himself of the general pardon offered by Edward IV, perhaps in connexion with the same litigation which saw him procure a special pardon for outlawry in 1468. On the latter occasion, Brice was called ‘of Holcombe Rogus, Devon, and Wincanton, Somerset’.4 C67/45, m. 8; CPR, 1467-77, p. 78. It is just possible that it was the MP who in 1463 was included among the gentry of Cornw. and Som. charged with the arrest of Thomas Bodulgate*, John Trevelyan* and others, but there was also a Cornishman of this name: CPR, 1461-7, p. 278; KB27/739, rot. 42.