BERE, Thomas

The identification of the man who represented Truro in two Parliaments in the 1430s presents some problems, for in the fifteenth century several branches of the Bere family were established in Cornwall, and a number of their scions bore the same Christian name.16 A tax assessment made in 1451 recorded a Thomas Bere ‘of Bodmin’ with an annual income of £3, and it is probable that it was this man, rather than the MP, who served as mayor of Bodmin in 1447-8 and 1450-1, and played a prominent part in the townsmen’s violent quarrel with Bodmin priory. To add to the confusion, the Bodmin man, like the MP, seems to have been a lawyer and was on occasion described as ‘attorney’: E179/87/92; CP40/779, rot. 90; Maclean, i. 235; CPR, 1452-61, p. 308; CCR, 1441-7, p. 459; KB27/752, rex rot. 6. It was probably this man who in 1429 had found surety for the Bodmin MPs: C219/14/1. However, it appears most likely that the MP was the lawyer Thomas Bere of Brynn, who in the 1430s was known as ‘junior’, to distinguish him from his father or another namesake.17 CPR, 1429-36, p. 497. No definite evidence of Bere’s place in the family pedigree has been discovered, but he may have been the eldest, or eldest surviving son, for in 1451 his landed income was assessed at £20 p.a., four times that of his brother William, and ten times that of their kinsman John Bere, probably another younger brother, suggesting that it was Thomas who had succeeded to the bulk of the family estates.18 E179/87/92. In the absence of an extent of the Bere lands before the 1490s it is difficult to be certain about the descent of any individual part of the estate, but it seems that before his death Thomas held property in Tregabrowne, Tredudwell and Trethake (in Lanteglos-by-Fowey), Boswallow (in St. Enoder), Mill and Pengelly which he settled on his eldest son and heir during his lifetime.19 E306/9/4.

Thomas may have owed his advancement less to his professional renown than to his family’s connexions with the most important of the Cornish gentry, the ‘Great Arundells’ of Lanherne. The head of the family, Sir John I*, formerly Henry V’s steward of his duchy of Cornwall, died in 1435, leaving his grandson and heir a minor. The mantle to regional leadership thus fell upon the shoulders of Arundell’s two surviving sons, Sir Thomas* and Renfrew*, and it was in their service that the Beres came to prominence. Thomas had forged a link with the Arundells by the autumn of 1432, when he served Sir Thomas, then sheriff of Cornwall, as a bailiff or similar official. This employment proved a dangerous one: in the course of his duties Bere came into conflict with one Thomas Tregorra (or Tregorrek), a kinsman of the notorious Richard Tregoose*, and as a result of their confrontation on 22 Oct. 1433 Tregoose and Tregorra waylaid Bere on the way back to his house. By a hair’s breadth the lawyer escaped the hail of more than 200 arrows with which they showered him, and only – as he claimed later – because ‘the grace of god [hadde] ben that the cuntrey hadde resyn’.20 C1/10/41.

Realizing the need for allies in a battle with an opponent as unscrupulous as Tregoose, Bere and his kinsmen made common cause with an influential group of his assailant’s enemies, headed by Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice. Between them, they secured Tregoose’s indictment before the Cornish bench, headed by none other than Bere’s patron Sir Thomas Arundell, for the rape of a 15-year-old virgin, a charge which led to Tregoose’s commitment to the Marshalsea prison until he was able to clear himself of the accusation.21 CP40/734, rot. 311d; KB27/742, rot. 112d. This left Tregoose with no option but to challenge his opponents in the royal courts, and in early 1435 Bere found himself in the Marshalsea, and was bound over to keep the peace towards Tregoose in the sum of £20, while his two mainpernors, John Polruddon* and Thomas Tregedek*, each had to find sureties of £10. Yet, in June Bere jumped his bail and the royal authorities ordered the £40 to be levied.22 KB27/696, rex rot. 17d; 697, fines rot. 1. He had good reasons not to appear at Westminster, for Tregoose had taken the precaution of bribing the jurors who were to decide the issue between them with 40s. each, as well as paying for their horses’ fodder.23 KB27/699, rot. 64d. Nor did Bere have much cause for concern, for around the same time he and his putative brother John procured royal letters of protection, having joined the retinue which accompanied Cardinal Beaufort to the Congress of Arras. It is probable that it was their connexion with the Arundells which recommended the Beres for the mission, for Renfrew Arundell was another member of the cardinal’s entourage.24 DKR, xlviii. 305. The conference, intended to safeguard the settlement of Troyes, proved a dismal failure when it became apparent that no amount of persuasion on the part of the English would dissuade Duke Philip of Burgundy from defecting to the French. Although the cardinal’s retinue left Arras several days before the fresh blow of the duke of Bedford’s death, their mood must have mirrored the weather as they rode towards Lille in a rain storm, the sleeves of their vermillion liveries embroidered with the almost ironic reminder, ‘honour’.25 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 251.

Bere’s first recorded return to Parliament was evidently engineered by his friends in his absence, for his election by the burgesses of Truro took place within days of Cardinal Beaufort’s departure from Arras, and the confusion of the documents recording the election result, as to whether Bere or the prominent lawyer Nicholas Aysshton* had respectively been elected by the boroughs of Helston or Truro, may point to some degree of irregularity. In any case, it is likely that Bere’s election owed something to the dispute with Tregoose, for the latter had secured one of the Bodmin seats, while his brother-in-law, Richard Penpons*, was chosen a Member for Lostwithiel. It seems likely that once again the Arundells had played a part, for Bere’s old patron Sir Thomas Arundell headed the Cornish delegation as the senior shire knight, and among those present in the county court when the election indenture was drawn up were Sir John Arundell of Trerice, Bere’s distant kinsman John Bere of Trecarne, and Thomas Udy, a relation of his wife.26 C219/14/5.

The struggle with Richard Tregoose aside, the Arundells had additional reasons for seeking the return of both Bere and Aysshton, for while Parliament was in session, the two men (together with Walter, Lord Hungerford†, and John Copplestone*) received a grant of the wardship of the heir to the main line of the family in return for the princely sum of 1,000 marks.27 CPR, 1429-36, p. 497. Yet, Bere’s defence against Tregoose also continued to require further attention, and he thus sought (and achieved) re-election by the men of Truro the following autumn. Although Parliament was originally summoned to meet at Cambridge in October 1436, in December fresh writs were issued, moving the assembly to Westminster. When the Cornish shire court met at Lostwithiel on 31 Dec., Bere himself was present and set his seal to the indenture attesting the shire elections.28 C219/15/1.

Bere’s legal training, coupled with his prior connexion with (Sir) Renfrew Arundell, may have made him a natural choice as under sheriff when Arundell was pricked sheriff of Cornwall in November 1437. There is no reason to suspect that his conduct in office was unusually cavalier: complaints such as that brought by the local husbandman John Dawkyn in June 1439 in the Exchequer of pleas, maintaining that Bere had abused his office to deprive him of all his portable property, were of a kind faced by most royal officials of the period at one time or another.29 E5/513. Consequently, the Westminster authorities did not consider them sufficient cause to cease to employ Bere in the administration of his shire, and later that year included him in several local commissions.

By this date Bere had not only established an increasingly extensive practice as an attorney at Westminster and a feoffee in the south-west,30 KB27/735, rot. 49, att. rot. 2; 754, rot. 56; Cornw. Feet of Fines, ii (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), 1045; Cornw. RO, Edgcombe mss, ME678; CAD, iv. A9854. he was also connected with some of the most important men in Cornwall. Chief among these continued to be the Arundells of Lanherne: he and his brother William served as feoffees of Sir Thomas Arundell,31 C1/62/306-8; KB27/876, rot. 45d. and although his wardship of the Arundell heir came to an end when it was granted to the earl of Suffolk in 1442, relations with young John Arundell remained close after he had attained his majority, causing him to chose Bere as one of the arbiters in a dispute with Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc in 1452.32 The Commons 1386-1421, ii.62; KB27/752, rot. 33; C1/57/347-9; Cornw. RO, Arundell mss. AR1/300. Around the same time Bere’s quarrel with Richard Tregoose, which had continued in the Westminster courts throughout the 1440s, was also finally brought to an end by Tregoose’s murder.33 E159/213, recorda Mich rots. 7-7d; KB27/742, rots. 44, 112d; 743, rots. 13d, 16d; 751, rot. 48d; 758, rots. 11, 14d.

It would appear that Bere’s professional activity recommended him to the central authorities, for he now became a mainstay of government in the south-west. Throughout the 1450s he was regularly appointed to royal commissions, and in the troubled years after 1455 he was credited with sufficient impartiality both to be appointed a commissioner of array in the wake of Queen Margaret’s triumph in the autumn of 1459, and to be ordered in the final months of the duke of York’s ascendancy in December 1460 to inquire into any treasons and other crimes committed in the West Country.34 CPR, 1452-61, p. 654. Having been appointed to the Cornish bench in November 1451, he attended and attested the shire elections of 1455 in his judicial capacity, and was confirmed in office after Edward IV’s accession. King Edward briefly also extended Bere’s authority to the neighbouring county of Devon, but this arrangement was not to last, perhaps on account of Bere’s preoccupation with affairs in his native Cornwall. There, Sir Renfrew Arundell†, son of his old patron of the same name, having been appointed sheriff in 1461, had continued in office for a period of two years, before he was replaced by Bere himself.35 It may have been Thomas Bere of Bodmin who served as under sheriff to the MP’s brother William in 1465-6, for in early 1466 he was found guilty of having empannelled biased juries in favour of various Bodmin artisans: KB27/819, rex rot. 6. In spite of his prominent role in local government, Bere’s principal loyalties seem to have remained with the Arundells, and he may have been following their lead in adopting the cause of the restored Henry VI in the crisis of 1470-1. In October 1470 the Readeption government appointed him a commissioner of array alongside some of its prominent partisans, men like Sir Hugh Courtenay and the lawyer William Menwenick*. Although the commission was abandoned, Bere’s conduct during the crisis years rendered him suspect in Yorkist eyes, and on King Edward’s return in the spring of 1471 he was summarily dismissed from the Cornish bench.

Although he was restored to his judicial role in 1475, his official career was effectively at an end, and he seems to have devoted the remaining years of his life to his private practice and the management of his estates, while maintaining ties among the greater gentry families of the region who had formerly been adherents of the cause of Lancaster, like the Courtenays of Bocconoc among whose feoffees he was included in 1475.36 E326/1201. Bere is last recorded in the late spring of 1477, but was probably dead by the following summer when his name was again omitted from the Cornish commission of the peace. He was succeeded by his son and heir, John, who married Anne, daughter of Edmund Beket, and died in the closing years of the fifteenth century. His son and heir, another John, died in 1517, having been predeceased by his only son. As a result, on his demise the family estates passed to his daughter, who had married Piers Beville, the under receiver of the duchy of Cornwall, and their descendants.37 C1/62/306-8; 118/29-32; 191/65; 257/26; 279/61-3; 281/9-12; 284/1; 286/86; 384/40; 469/3-12; C142/34/3. In addition, Thomas appears to have had a younger son, named Thomas after himself. This Thomas settled at Liskeard, the borough represented by his putative uncle John in 1433, was present at the Cornish shire elections of June 1483, and died in September 1492, in turn leaving a seven-year-old son called Thomas.38 Trevelyan Pprs. i (Cam. Soc. lxvii), 87-88; E306/9/4.