BUGGE, Baldwin

Baldwin shared with the prominent Nottinghamshire families, Willoughby of Willoughby and Bingham of Bingham, a common descent from Ralph Bugge, a wealthy Nottingham wool merchant of the early thirteenth century.1 A descent reflected in the similar arms these families bore: or, on a fesse gules, three water bougets argent (Bingham), or, on two bars gules, three water bougets argent (Willoughby), and or, on a fesse sable, three water bougets argent (Bugge). The only line of Ralph’s descendants to retain the name of Bugge, Baldwin’s ancestors were settled at West Leake in south Nottinghamshire until the marriage of our MP’s grandfather, Geoffrey Bugge, to Margaret, daughter of Robert Foucher of Osmaston (Derbyshire) by Margaret, daughter of Robert de Campania (d.1343), unexpectedly, and very significantly, extended their estates. At the time of the marriage Geoffrey’s bride was not an heiress nor likely to become one, but the death of her first cousin once removed, Margaret Sulney, in 1381, brought her a share of the valuable Campania lands. Through her the Bugges acquired holdings at Thurlaston, Wigston Magna, Stoke Golding, Croft and Normanton Turville in Leicestershire, and at Great Doddington and Collingtree in Northamptonshire.2 R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 46-47; VCH Northants. iv. 113-14; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xiv. 211-12; J. Nichols, Leics. iv (2), 1006. In the absence of contemporary valuations the significance of this acquisition is best judged from an inquisition post mortem of 1506: there the Campania inheritance was valued at £64 p.a. compared with the modest valuation of £6 p.a. ascribed to the Bugges’ ancient estates in Nottinghamshire.3 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 199, 339-40.

This new inheritance occasioned a change of residence: the family settled at the manor of Newhall in Thurlaston. Importantly, it also brought the Bugges into closer touch with the duchy of Lancaster. Although they had long been tenants of the honour of Tutbury in respect of their manor of West Leake, the acquisition of the Campania lands, the greater part of which were held of the duchy honour of Leicester, elevated them to the ranks of the more substantial gentry tenants of the duchy. Our MP’s father was in the service of Henry of Bolingbroke from 1390, and fled into exile with him in 1398. He was rewarded after Henry’s accession to the throne with the office of master forester of the honour of Leicester, a place in the Household and a large annuity. Given these strong Lancastrian connexions it is not surprising that Baldwin too should have found a place in royal household, although he never achieved his father’s prominence. On 29 Apr. 1415, as one of Henry V’s familia, he contracted to serve in France for one year with three mounted archers in an indenture by which his maternal uncle, William Brokesby†, also agreed to serve. His commitment was well rewarded: on 23 Feb. 1416, as a King’s serjeant, he was granted an annuity of 20 marks assigned upon the issues of the joint shrievalty of Leicestershire and Warwickshire.4 E101/407/10, 69/5/442. On at least one occasion he had difficulty collecting his due. In May 1428 he sued Sir Richard Hastings*, as a former sheriff, for failure to pay the moiety of the annuity which had fallen due at Mich. 1427: E13/138, rot. 14. The family’s attachment to the house of Lancaster suggest that John Bugge, treasurer and receiver-general of Queen Joan in the early 1430s, and Hugh Bugge, a yeoman and later esquire of the Household, who served on the Agincourt campaign and the coronation expedition of 1430, are to be numbered among our MP’s relatives.5 CAD, i. B531; Add. Ch. 7586; E404/31/322, 46/187; E101/70/692. John is to be identified with the founder of the family of Bugge of Harlow in Essex (which also bore three water bougets on their arms) and the benefactor of the London church of St. Dionis Backchurch: C1/15/62; P. Morant, Essex, ii. 484; J. Stow, Surv. London ed. Kingsford, i. 201. If he was related to our MP the two were, at the closest, first cousins.

Locally, Baldwin was closely associated with one of the richest and most influential of the Leicestershire gentry, Bartholomew Brokesby. His mother was Bartholomew’s sister, and, although she was dead by Trinity 1423,6 CP40/650, rot. 430. the two families remained on intimate terms. In June 1423, together with John Bugge (either a younger brother who predeceased him or Queen Joan’s future receiver-general), he assisted Brokesby in his acquisition of property in Melton Mowbray, and thereafter he was associated with his maternal uncle in his many other land purchases.7 Bodl. Wood. empt. 7, ff. 46, 65-66, 100-100v, 105-6. No doubt it was through Brokesby that he was drawn, albeit peripherally, into the affairs of Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny. He figures in several conveyances of the mid 1420s designed to establish Joan’s title to some of the manors she had acquired, in controversial circumstances, from her friend, Hugh, Lord Burnell, and to the reversion of the manors of Bidford and Brome in Warwickshire which she purchased from her servant, Thomas Harewell.8 CPR, 1422-9, p. 486, 1429-36, p. 506; 1436-41, p. 435; 1441-6, p. 241; CCR, 1435-41, p. 322; Ancestor, viii. 178-9.

With such connexions went an active role in local affairs. Bugge attested six of the nine parliamentary elections held in Leicestershire between 1422 and 1433 and was himself elected on two, successive returns that reflect his standing as a retainer of the duchy of Lancaster. In the meantime he witnessed, on 16 June 1428, an important arbitration award at Leicester, served a term as escheator, and, in April 1431, was appointed to his only ad hoc commission of local government. No doubt had his career not been prematurely curtailed he would have gone on to hold other offices.9 C219/13/1-5, 14/1, 2, 4; Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, ii. 244.

In the midst of this activity Bugge added modestly to his landholdings by marriage. Among those who attested his first return to Parliament in 1425 was Reynold Lathbury, who lived at Cadeby, a few miles to the west of Thurlaston. His wife was soon after to become Baldwin’s. Reynold was still alive in November 1426, when he conveyed his lands to feoffees including Bartholomew Brokesby, but he died shortly afterwards. His widow brought her new husband a dower interest in the manor of Cadeby and in lands at Oakthorpe in Derbyshire.10 Leics. Village Notes ed. Farnham, vi. 275.

The last part of Bugge’s career was much concerned with his efforts to extend his holdings further by making good a claim to the manor in Wigston Magna near Thurlaston. This had once been the property of the Campanias but had come into the hands of the wealthy Swillington family. The Swillingtons failed in the male line on the death of Sir John in 1418, and our MP asserted his claim against his widow, Joan, who had a jointure interest in the manor, and her second husband, Sir John Bertram*.11 CCR, 1413-19, p. 492. According to a petition presented to the King and council by Bertram, on 20 Dec. 1430, while he was away serving as sheriff of his native Northumberland, Bugge, with 28 malefactors, disseised him and his wife of the manor, and then ‘per mediacion de sez amys en cel partie ad fait aliaunce et confiderasie perentre luy et touz lez jurors del dit counte de Leycestre queux luy aiderount sustenderount et rienz ne serrount ne trouerount encontre luy en le dit mater’. The petition resulted, in November 1431, in the issue of a writ for Baldwin’s appearance before the royal council, but, despite this order and an assize of novel disseisin sued against him by the Bertrams in 1433, he retained the disputed manor. His inquisition post mortem refers to his tenure of Wigston Magna, although it adds that he owed his tenure to disseisin and that right lay with the Bertrams.12 SC8/31/1543; C66/434, m. 16d; CIPM, xxiv. 449.

By this date, however, another more powerful claimant had emerged in Ralph, Lord Cromwell. On the death without issue of Sir John Swillington’s sister, Margaret, wife of Sir John Gra*, in 1429, Cromwell had determined to make good his tenuous claims to the Swillington lands in the East Midlands, and hence must have viewed Bugge’s actions with hostility. As part of an agreement he made with Gra in 1434, he bound him to tell him ‘in such plase and fourme as shall be demanded howe that nowe late he delyvered to Baudewyn Bug’ certein dedes, evidences or relesses of the maner of Wygeston’.13 E149/158/12; C139/74/19; S.J. Payling, ‘Ralph, Lord Cromwell and the Heriz Inheritance’, Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 71-72; CCR, 1429-35, p. 304. Clearly Bugge had sought Gra’s aid in making good his own claim to Wigston, probably by purchasing relevant Swillington deeds remaining in Gra’s hands after his wife’s death, and Cromwell was now anxious to discover the content of these deeds. More direct evidence of a dispute between the two men is provided by an action sued by Cromwell in Hilary term 1435, claiming that Bugge had broken his close at Widmerpool in south Nottinghamshire, one of the former Swillington properties to which he had recently made good his claim.14 CP40/696, rot. 282d.

It is possible that Bugge’s designs on the Swillington inheritance in the East Midlands extended beyond Wigston Magna, but it is more likely that his actions were defensive rather than aggressive. A suit begun after his death demonstrates that Cromwell, as well as seeking to establish himself at Wigston Magna, also claimed an interest in the Bugges’ manor of Newhall in Thurlaston. Again, as with Wigston, the descent of the manor is not entirely certain. The evidence appears to show that it passed, undivided and together with the advowson of Thurlaston church, from the Campanias to the Bugges, but there is evidence to contradict this. In January 1386 the rector of Eckington in Derbyshire granted a moiety of the manor of Newhall and a moiety of the advowson of Thurlaston to Sir Robert Swillington (d.1391), whose son, Sir Roger (d.1417), presented to the church in 1395. This was the basis of the writ Cromwell sued out, soon after our MP’s death, against Reynold Moton, the husband of Bugge’s sister and heir, Margaret, for the next presentation to the church, claiming as purchaser from John Hopton, the adopted heir of the Swillingtons. Fortunately, however, for our MP’s heirs, the claim was not pursued beyond an initial verdict in Cromwell’s favour. There is no evidence that he attempted to claim the moiety of the manor granted to Sir Robert Swillington, and, after his death in 1456, our MP’s sister successfully recovered the right of presentation to Thurlaston. Moreover, despite the finding of Baldwin’s inquisition post mortem with respect to the manor in Wigston Magna, she also succeeded in holding onto that property, for although Bertram and Joan were vainly suing her for it as late as 1446, after her death it passed to her Turville descendants.15 CP40/782, rot. 517; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 394; Leics. Village Notes, v. 299. The most likely explanation for these events is that Sir Roger Swillington, as a leading retainer of the duchy of Lancaster, had acquired part of the Campania lands in Wigston Magna and Thurlaston, probably from our MP’s grandfather, Geoffrey Bugge, and that the disseisin of 1430 signals our MP’s troubled but successful attempt to regain his inheritance.

Baldwin died, while probably little over 40 years of age, in August 1435.16 CIPM, xxiv. 449. No record of his will survives, but he is known to have appointed his wife, Elizabeth, John Burgh I* and William Spencer, warden of the college of Sapcote, as his executors. He was commemorated in the church of Thurlaston by a stained glass window, where he was portrayed in a mantle with the arms or, fretty sable (a posthumous reference to his descent from the illustrious family of Campania) and an altar tomb with an incised slab. Both window and tomb are now lost.17 CP40/699, rot. 419d; 700, rot. 7; Nichols, iv (2), 999; F.A. Greenhill, Incised Slabs of Leics. and Rutland, 181, pl. 10a. At his death the bulk, if not all, of his property was in the hands of feoffees. On 1 Mar. 1433 he had quitclaimed his manor of Newhall and other Leicestershire lands to three clerics, and the jurors in his inquisition post mortem made no reference to any property other than the manor of Wigston Magna.18 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 296, 341-2; E179/192/59. Formal settlement for his widow, assessed on a modest income of £13 p.a. in the subsidy returns of 1436, was made in 1437: Bugge’s sister and heiress, Margaret, and her husband, Reynold Moton, settled on her for life various former Campania lands in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire with the Bugges’ ancient lands in Nottinghamshire. On 10 Dec. 1439 she conveyed these lands, together with her Lathbury property in Oakthorpe in Derbyshire and Cadeby, which she held as a result of her first marriage, to a distinguished body of feoffees, headed by John, Lord Beaumont, to hold for term of her life. This feoffment was probably an immediate preliminary to her marriage to Reynold’s father, Sir Robert Moton*. She died in 1468. Our MP was the only one of her three husbands by whom she had no issue.19 CP25(1)/292/69/205; Leics. Village Notes, vi. 275; CPR, 1467-77, p. 104.

By the time of Baldwin’s death, his sister and heiress was already a widow. Her first husband, Richard Turville of Normanton Turville, an immediate neighbour of the Bugges, predeceased her brother.20 CIPM, xxiv. 449. In our MP’s inquisition post mortem Richard Turville is erroneously named William. He was buried in the church of Thurlaston: Greenhall, 179, pl. 10b. In 1474, after she had outlived two further husbands, Reynold Moton and Thomas Everingham*, the Bugge estates passed to his grandson, John Turville (d.1506).21 C140/49/21; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 199, 323, 339-40.