BEWLEY, Richard

Given the 26 years that elapsed between the Parliaments of 1433 and 1459, it is possible that Carlisle was represented by two Richard Bewleys. The modern historian of the family has assumed that they were father and son, the father identified as the younger brother of William Bewley† of Thistlethwaite, who sat for Cumberland in the Parliaments of 1404 (Oct.) and 1413 (May).3 E.T. Bewley, Bewleys of Cumb. 59. Although the MP was certainly a close kinsman of William Bewley (probably even his nephew), no evidence has been found to substantiate the surmise that there were two Richards. Indeed, given the presence of a Richard Bewley on the Cumberland bench in the 1430s and the 1470s, it is more likely that the MP of 1433 was then a young man and so survived into the 1470s. The following biography is based on this assumption.

Bewley first appears in the records in 1426 when he offered surety in the King’s bench for his lesser namesake, a yeoman of Sowerby Wood (in Dalston, a few miles to the south of Carlisle), and for Richard Salkeld of Corby, both of whom had been appealed of murder. This offence was an episode in a quarrel that ranged two of Cumberland’s leading gentry, Sir William Leigh* (d.1439) and his brother-in-law, William Lowther†, against a large group, headed by William Bewley and his kinsmen the Skeltons, who were also implicated in the murder. Later, in 1432, when William Bewley was sued on a bond to abide arbitration in this dispute, Richard, described as ‘of Brayton’, stood mainprise for him.4 KB27/657, rot. 96; CP40/685, rot. 123. These early appearances as a surety suggest that Bewley was a lawyer, and this is confirmed by his later career. Indeed, his ties with the Westminster courts may explain his willingness to either accept or seek election for Carlisle in 1433, when he was returned in company with another lawyer, Richard Bristowe*, whose interests, like his own, appear to have lain outside the city.5 C219/14/4.

Soon after this Parliament Bewley’s putative uncle, William, died, leaving three daughters as heiresses to an insubstantial estate.6 The date of William’s death is largely illegible in his inq. post mortem, but it occurred on the 11th of a month falling between Sept. 1433 and Jan. 1434 inclusive. Since the writ for the inq. was issued on 6 Feb. 1434, the most likely date is Jan. 1434: CIPM, xxiv. 141; CFR, xvi. 166. Our MP may have hoped that something might come to him as the probable heir-male. This, at least, is a plausible interpretation of an action he sued in person in the court of common pleas in Easter term 1434, alleging that William’s widow was illegally detaining two chests of charters.7 CP40/693, rots. 231, 400d. Whether he was successful in any claim to William’s lands does not appear in the record, but some augmentation in his resources in the 1430s is implied by his addition to the bench in 1437. His local standing as a lawyer is also made evident in an interesting document drawn up on 14 Feb. 1441: this named him as one of four men entrusted with the task of dividing the lands of the elderly John Eaglesfield† of Eaglesfield between widow and son in the likely event of John predeceasing them.8 Cumbria RO, Senhouse mss, DSen2/Box 4.

Curiously, however, at just the moment that Bewley’s career appeared to be gathering pace, his appearances in the records become sporadic. Until the late 1450s they are confined to occasional suits in the central courts. In 1449, for example, he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to sue a cobbler of Appleby for detinue of goods worth £5, and in 1456 he had a plea of trespass pending against his neighbour, (Sir) William Martindale*.9 CP40/752, rot. 253d; KB27/779, rot. 46. Against this background, Bewley’s next appearance in the records is, at first sight, surprising: in 1459 he was elected for Carlisle to the Parliament summoned to Coventry to attaint the Yorkist lords. This suggests that he was identified as a supporter of Lancaster, and this is confirmed, during the course of the Parliament, by his reappointment, after an absence of seven years, to the quorum of the peace, and, much more strikingly, by his nomination on the day after the dissolution to the Lancastrian commission of array.10 C219/16/5. So relatively insignificant a figure as Bewley can only have been identified as a Lancastrian through a master, and there can be no doubt that that master was Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland (d.1461). A few years earlier he had been acting as clerk of the former earl’s courts in Westward forest, and while this may betoken no more than a relationship between lawyer and client, it may be that the lawyer’s connexion with the Percys was closer than revealed in the surviving records.11 Booth, 87.

This apparent attachment to Percy did not prevent Bewley’s career from returning to its unspectacular course under Edward IV. The new government removed him from the local bench, but he was soon restored. In Easter term 1463 he brought an action, again in person, that gives a clue to his landholdings, suing several yeomen for breaking his closes at Newlands (in Sebergham), ‘Blakhall’ and Blayton (in Aspatria) and depasturing grass and crops worth £10. It was at Blayton, some miles to the south-west of Carlisle, that he made his home, if one may judge by the fact that he is described as of that place in two early records.12 CP40/808, rot. 290. This raises the question of his connexion with the constituency he represented in Parliament. Two references suggest that he may have some interests in the city or its immediate environs. In 1436 he sued in King’s bench for the restoration of livestock unjustly seized by the prior of Carlisle, and, more revealingly, by the end of the 1460s he was in office as steward of the bishop of Carlisle’s lordship of Linstock, succeeding Robert Carlisle II*.13 KB27/700, rot. 42d; Diocesan recs. DRC2/12.

Bewley’s appointment to the Readeption commission of the peace shows that earlier associations had not been forgotten. By the time of the next enrolled commission in the summer of 1473 he was dead, his place on the bench taken by William Bewley, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn who was probably his son. This William, like his putative father before him, served the Percys as clerk in their Westward forest courts.14 L. Inn Adm. i. 14; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 32; E371/238, rot. 51; Booth, 179.