BRYDDE, John

Brydde hailed from a lesser gentry family, established since the early fourteenth century at Locko, just outside Derby. He was not the first of the Bryddes to represent the borough in Parliament: his namesake sat for it on three occasions between 1368 and 1377. It is a reasonable speculation that our MP was the son and heir of yet another John Byrdde who made a grant of property in Derby in 1413 and who, in the following year, acted as one of the mainpernors for the attendance at Parliament of his neighbour, Ralph Mackerell* of Breaston.5 I.S.W. Blanchard, ‘Economic Change in Derbys.’(London Univ. Ph. D. thesis, 1967), 442; E326/1250; C219/11/5. It is also likely that our MP was closely related to the Bryddes of Skegby in east Nottinghamshire, one of whom, another John Brydde, was archdeacon of Derby from 1431 to 1473.6 Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 2554; Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, x. 16.

Brydde’s landed inheritance can only have been modest. Although in the Derbyshire subsidy returns of 1450-1 he was assessed on a respectable annual income of £11, the greater part was probably derived from fees rather than land.7 E179/91/73. He was the first of his family to make a noticeable impact on county affairs and this he owed to a legal training. In 1435 he succeeded John Manchester*, to whose career his own bore a very close parallel, as clerk of the peace in Nottinghamshire. Since this is his first appearance in the records he must then have been a young man, and he may have owed his appointment to Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p., whose home at Chilwell lay only a few miles from Locko. Although there is no direct evidence for a connexion between the two men at this date, there is abundant evidence at a slightly later one. In 1439 he acted as attorney for Babington’s son, William*, in an important case in the court of common pleas; and, more significantly, in 1446 he sued out a general pardon as ‘of Chilwell’.8 CP40/714, rot. 329; C67/39, m. 42.

In 1440 Brydde added to his responsibilities as clerk of the peace that of under sheriff, an office he was to hold on at least two annual terms in that decade. He also added to his local importance in other ways. On 10 Oct. 1444 he extended his holdings in Locko by leasing nearly 300 acres of land at an annual rent of six marks (for a term of 12 years) from the master of the leper house of Burton Lazars. In May 1445, described as ‘of Locko, gentleman’, he acted as a mainpernor in Chancery when a minor grant was made to William Foljambe, a scion of a prominent Derbyshire family. In the following month he himself was the beneficiary of a similarly small scrap of royal patronage: he was awarded the keeping of property at Stapleford near Locko until Easter 1455 at an annual rent of 17s. 4d. It was also at about this time that his local position was strengthened by appointment as the duchy of Lancaster bailiff at Spondon.9 CP40/789, rot. 433d; CFR, xvii. 319, 321; DL29/402/6461.

Even though Brydde’s local administrative duties must have kept him very busy, he still found time to employ his legal skills at Westminster. In Trinity term 1453, for example, he acted as attorney in the court of common pleas for Robert Nundy*, the wealthy merchant of Derby, and he occasionally prosecuted his own pleas in the central courts in person.10 KB27/769, rot. 48d; CP40/770, rots. 239, 366; 790, rot. 363. He also acted as a point of contact between Westminster and his home county: in May 1453 he delivered into the Exchequer money raised in Derbyshire as a loan to the Crown, a loan to which he contributed £40.11 E403/793, mm. 5, 9, 13. In the following November he was again the beneficiary of royal patronage when appointed alnager of cloths for sale in Derbyshire. Such posts were quite profitable and often appear to have been used by the Crown to award clerks of the peace, generally towards the end of their term of office.12 CFR, xix. 61. His appointment may have been the origin of his own interest in the cloth trade. Later, between 1469 and 1474, he paid alnage on at least 31 cloths: E101/343/21; 347/2. Brydde had either recently surrendered the clerkship or was soon to do so, for he was succeeded in office by Thomas Bingham between August 1452 and January 1455.13 Payling, 313.

Brydde’s parliamentary career began as his long term as the servant of the bench ended. On 16 July 1455 he was returned to represent Derby, his election justified by the property he held in the town; and he was returned again for that borough to the Parliament of October 1460. On the latter occasion he is described in the return as ‘senior’ to distinguish him from his son who had served as one of the town’s bailiffs in 1460-1.14 C219/16/3, 5, 6; E13/149, rot. 14d. John the son was of age by 1453, when, as ‘of Derby the younger, yeoman’, he was appointed as a Derbys. tax collector: CFR, xix. 50. Both the assemblies to which he was returned were Yorkist in sympathy, the second of them emphatically so, and, if one may judge from the flourishing of his career under Edward IV, he identified himself with the Yorkists. Those sympathies may have been mediated through his near neighbour, Walter Blount*, the leading Yorkist in Derbyshire and MP for that county in 1460. Clearly the two men were well known to each other, and Brydde may have owed to Blount the grants that came to him early in the new reign. In July 1461 he was reappointed as alnager and, more importantly, in the following February he was named as receiver of the Crown lands in Derbyshire and nearby counties and shared with John Leynton*, an Exchequer official, the custodianship of Horston castle near Derby.15 CPR, 1461-7, p. 387; CFR, xx. 24, 63; E404/72/4/33. These appointments suggest that he strengthened his connexion with the Exchequer in the wake of the change of regime. Indeed, in the summer of 1464, Brian Roucliffe, one of the barons of the Exchequer, chose him as both attorney and feoffee to act on his behalf in the arrangements contingent on the marriage of his son to the grand-daughter and heiress of Sir William Plumpton*. Early in 1465 he was shown a further mark of royal favour when appointed as collector of customs in Kingston-upon-Hull, no doubt a reward for the service he had rendered the Crown as a local receiver.16 Plumpton Letters (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, viii), 259-60; CFR, xx. 129-31.

Brydde’s financial expertise did not bring him employment from the Crown alone. At some point between January 1456 and November 1466 he served as receiver of the executors of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and three neighbouring counties. It may have been an appointment the executors lived to regret. In their accounts of November 1466 he is recorded as owing the estate £205 and this sum was still outstanding in April 1469 when the accounts fail.17 Magdalen Coll. Oxf. Cromwell pprs. Misc. 355, mm. 3, 5d; 127/31, m. 2; 127/34, m. 3. On 25 Apr. 1470 Brydde was commissioned to seize the lands in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire of the duke of Clarence, the earl of Warwick and others who had recently risen in rebellion, but thereafter it becomes difficult to distinguish his career from that of his son and heir. The older man was certainly dead by Hilary term 1477, when one Thomas Suthous was litigating as his executor, so it is certain that it was his son who represented Derby in the Parliament of 1478.18 CPR, 1467-77, p. 218; CP40/861, rot. 232; C219/17/3. The probability is also that it was the son who, on 3 July 1471, had been appointed to office in the central administration of the duchy of Lancaster at Westminster, namely that of messenger and usher of the council. An elderly lawyer was an unlikely nominee for such an office, and, if it was the son who was the usher, then it is likely that it was the son who was named, on 4 Feb. 1474, as approver of the subsidy and alnage of cloths for sale in London. Both offices he may have owed to the patronage of the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Richard Fowler†, in whose household he appears to have been living in 1473.19 R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 459; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1077; CFR, xxi. 178, 396. In short, although our MP may have lived until as late as 1476, his son was the more important man after Edward IV’s restoration.

The family continued their record of service to the duchy of Lancaster into the sixteenth century. Henry Brydde held two duchy bailiwicks in Derbyshire in the 1520s and 1530s and also found a place in the royal household.20 Somerville, i. 555, 556, 558.