BUSH, Richard

Probably one of the wealthiest Cambridge townsmen of the first half of the fifteenth century, Bush enjoyed an income of £10 p.a. according to a tax assessment of 1436.6 E179/240/268. By this date, he held a tenement near the market place and a house and garden in ‘le feyre yerd lane’, which he rented from the borough, and he owned a messuage in the parish of All Saints in the Jewry by the end of the 1430s. He had taken part in at least two property transactions in the previous two decades. In 1415, or perhaps early the following year, he had granted a messuage in the Cambridge parish of St. Andrew to William Mast and others. Later, in November 1421, he had acquired eight acres in the town from William Warde and his wife. Associated with him in the conveyance were John Burgoyne*, Henry Topcliffe* and Richard Andrew alias Spicer*.7 CP25(1)/1/30/95/24. It is very likely that Richard was related to William Bush, a cutler who served as one of the Cambridge bailiffs in Henry IV’s reign, and to John Bush*, an MP for the town in 1411 and 1426, but there is insufficient evidence to connect any of them with another John Bush who lived at Steeple Morden.8 Cambridge Antiq. Soc. Procs. xxxi. no. 223; Cambs. Archs., Cambridge bor. recs., treasurers’ accts. 1431-2, 1433-4, City/PB Box X/70/7, 8; CPR, 1446-52, p. 257; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 447. In Henry IV’s reign John Hyham of Newmarket filed a bill in Chancery by which he sought relief after having been arrested and condemned on account of a £40 bond he gave Richard Bush in July 1405. According to Hyham, he and two sureties had given the bond as security that he would repay a loan of £20 to the future MP, then one of the serjeants of the mayor of Cambridge.9 C1/5/110.

Bush was elected to his only known Parliament while serving his first term as one of the bailiffs of Cambridge. He appears to have attended the Commons of 1422 assiduously, for he spent 45 days away from Cambridge for a session lasting just 40. The borough paid him and his associate, Simon Rankyn*, a daily wage of 2s., so they each received £4 10s. in total. In addition, the two MPs received 10s. for the expenses they had incurred while they and several members of Cambridge’s ruling common council were negotiating in London with Bishop Wakeryng of Norwich about a dispute between the town and the bishop.10 Cambridge treasurers’ acct. 1422-3, City/PB Box X/70/1. It was probably in about 1423, not long after he had served as an MP, that Bush took part as a member of the common council or ‘24’ in a ‘great congregation’ between the town and Cambridge university.11 Cambridge ‘Cross Bk.’, City/PB Box I/4, f. 13. He was also involved in the reorganization of the method of election to the council in April 1426. The old council resigned and there was a new election of the 24: the mayor and his assessors elected one burgess, John Knapton*, and the commonalty another, Bush, which two then chose a mayor and eight of the 24 councillors. These eight elected another eight (among them Knapton and Bush), which 16 nominated the final eight. Some six years later, the town authorities paid Bush 53s. 4d., to help him defend a case against a Norwich man that touched upon the liberties of the borough of Cambridge.12 Cooper, i. 175; Cambridge treasurers’ acct. 1433-4, City/PB Box X/70/8.

Not long before he himself attained the mayoralty, Bush may have become caught up in quarrels arising from the rivalry in Cambridgeshire between John, Lord Tiptoft†, the established magnate in the county, and the young Sir James Butler, afterwards earl of Wiltshire and Ormond. When Henry Brokesby, one of Butler’s tenants at Fulbourn just outside Cambridge, clashed with the Tiptoft following during the early 1440s, he counted among his own supporters Richard Bush of Cambridge. In records relating to that dispute, however, this Richard features as an ‘ostler’, a seemingly unlikely occupation for a burgess of his status.13 CP40/727, rot. 600; KB27/730, rot. 141.

In November 1445 Bush was associated with his successor as mayor, Richard Wright*, in obtaining various plots of ground from the university, to provide for a common highway.14 Cambridge bor. recs., indenture, 1445, City/PB Box X/80. He had earlier acted as a pledge when the same or another Richard Wright had filed a bill in Chancery.15 C1/41/197. In August 1453 the pope mandated the bishop of Ely to permit the marriage contracted by Edith Bush (possibly the MP’s daughter) and Richard Andrew (first associated with Bush over 30 years earlier) to stand. A papal dispensation was required because of an impediment of spiritual relationship: Andrew’s first wife had been the godmother of Edith’s daughter by a previous husband.16 CPL, x. 651-2. Perhaps already dead by this stage, Bush left a widow, Idonea, who continued to live at Cambridge and died in the late 1450s or early 1460s.17 C1/28/114.