BURGH, John V

There was undoubtedly something irregular about the election of the obscure John Burgh. In the Derby election return of 8 Nov. 1459 the last five letters of his surname together with the name of his fellow Member, Henry Swerd*, have been added over an erasure. It is a reasonable speculation that the ‘John B’ to which ‘urgh’ has been added was originally ‘John Brydde’, the leading townsman of his day; that Brydde* and whoever was elected with him refused to serve because of the controversial nature of the forthcoming assembly, and that the electors or the bailiffs, of whom either Brydde or his son was one, substituted the names of two others, the one, in Swerd, a townsman of middle rank, and the other, in Burgh, a lesser one.1 C219/16/5. Indeed, Burgh’s only appearance in the records is this election to Parliament, unless he is to be identified with his namesake, one of the 73 attestors to Derbyshire county election held on 14 May 1467.2 C219/17/1.