BOEF, William

The Boefs owed their rise to political prominence to the profits of their legal practice. John Boef, William’s putative father, maintained a wide-ranging practice across the south-west, being variously described as ‘of Cornwall’, ‘of Devon’ and ‘of Somerset’.11 CCR, 1396-9, pp. 94, 97; 1402-5, pp. 118, 473; 1405-9, p. 95; CPR, 1416-22, p. 388; 1422-9, pp. 172, 462; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 353, 356, 358. By 1418 he had established himself as recorder of Bridport, an office which he still held in 1454, and by the early 1420s he was also serving as steward of the chapter of Wells cathedral.12 Bridport bor. recs., ‘Domesday Bk.’, DC/BTB/M11, ff. 91, 99, 107; register, DC/BTB/D2, f. 283; HMC Wells, ii. 60-61, 69. He had been superseded as recorder by John Newburgh II* by Mich. 1456: Bridport ‘Red Bk.’, DC/BTB/H1, f. 13. William himself trained at Lincoln’s Inn, at which he undertook to keep his first Christmas in 1428. He went on to appear as autumn reader in 1434, and gave the Lent reading in 1441. Around the time of his first reading he was elected one of the governors of the inn, an office which he was to hold for four terms in all.13 Readings and Moots, i (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xii.

While maintaining his contacts at Lincoln’s Inn, Boef also established a wide-ranging legal practice in his native south-west. Among the first and most prominent of his clients was Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, a connexion which he owed to his father, who served as receiver both to the earl during his minority and to his mother, the dowager countess.14 Add. Roll 64804. William for his part acted as the young earl’s legal representative in the royal courts during his minority, and after coming of age Courtenay retained him first as a feoffee and soon afterwards as his steward, granting him a life interest in a fourth part of the Somerset manor of King’s Brimpton as a reward.15 KB27/694, rot. 41d; Cherry, 377; CPR, 1429-36, p. 602; 1441-6, p. 54; 1452-61, p. 229; CFR, xvii. 208, 211; CP40/755, rot. 307; 773, rot. 117; C140/22/48, m. 1; C1/43/134. Employment by other leading south-western landowners followed, including men as influential as Sir John Dynham of Nutwell, and even Thomas Courtenay’s great local rival, Sir William Bonville*,16 CP40/720, rot. 312; CP25(1)/46/84/128, 150, 85/154, 164; CCR, 1429-35, p. 351; 1435-41, pp. 41-42, 48-49. as well as a variety of lesser men. The urban communities of the region also called upon his services. John Boef was probably instrumental in securing for William his first return for the Dorset borough of Bridport, while the younger man’s growing reputation, or indeed his connexions with men like Courtenay and Bonville, may have been sufficient to secure re-election for neighbouring Lyme Regis in 1437.

Boef’s business dealings saw him frequently associated with the most prominent of his own contemporaries such as Thomas Wyse*, William Hyndeston*, Nicholas Radford* and John Fortescue*.17 Boef may have had a particularly close association with Hyndeston which dated back to at least 1435: CCR, 1435-41, pp. 41-42, 48-49. By the early 1440s he had established a significant reputation: in 1440 he was appointed principal arbiter between the abbot of Sherborne and one William Tanner, and in the following years he received a number of royal commissions.18 CCR, 1435-41, p. 388. By 1443-4 he had also established a professional connexion with the civic authorities at Exeter, which was to continue for the rest of his life. He was first employed by the city that year in a dispute with the powerful local knight Sir John Dynham, and granted an annual pension of 20s., which he was to draw until his death.19 Devon RO, Exeter city recs., receivers’ accts. 22 Hen. VI-1 Edw. IV. Elected to Parliament for Devon in February 1445 alongside his friend William Hyndeston, he returned from Westminster to represent Exeter in its long-drawn dispute with Bishop Lacy over the privileges of the latter’s cathedral fee. The citizens were claiming jurisdiction within the bishop’s liberty, whereas the cathedral authorities were defending their privileges. This issue had been in dispute for some time, but in 1445 the arrest of a servant of the cathedral’s chancellor within the bishop’s palace had brought it into the open. Both parties were anxious to secure the services of the more able lawyers of the south-west, and while Boef’s colleague Hyndeston was snapped up by Lacy’s side, Boef was that December granted the freedom of Exeter in return for his good counsel to the civic authorities.20 Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 50. As the citizens already had the renowned Nicholas Radford, their recorder, available to fight their cause alongside the mayor, John Shillingford*, Boef for some time played only a minor role, yet when two years later both sides actively sought a settlement, he served to strengthen the city’s legal team in the face of formidable opposition from the bishop’s lawyers.21 Letters and Pprs. Shillingford (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, ii), pp. xiv-xviii, 25-26, 46. Although the eventual settlement reached in 1448 favoured the bishop, Boef continued to be employed by the city in the following years.22 B. Wilkinson, Med. Council of Exeter (Hist. Exeter Research Group Mono. iv), 38.

Boef’s counsel continued to be widely sought in the south-west, and he was regularly employed by both laymen and clerics to assist in land transactions or with the execution of wills. Like the Exeter authorities, other towns also employed his professional services, and he can be found receiving gifts of wine from the mayor and aldermen of Launceston in 1459-60. By comparison, his role on the national stage remained a limited one.23 CP25(1)/46/87/224, 88/234, 90/297; 293/71/302; C1/17/337; KB27/735, rex rot. 5; Reg. Lacy, iv (Canterbury and York Soc. lxiii), 61; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 219, 340, 494; CPR, 1452-61, p. 205; CAD, vi. C5614; Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/143, m. 1d. His attendance in the Parliament of 1445 proved his last, and he attended only one election, the Devon shire election of 1450, when his close associates Wyse and Hyndeston were returned.24 C219/16/1. Royal commissions also remained relatively few and far between, and although he was appointed a serjeant-at-law in 1453 in recognition of his prominence and experience, there was no significant increase in his work for the government.25 CCR, 1447-54, p. 381; Order of Serjs. at Law (Selden Soc. supp. ser. v), 163, 261-2. At least in part this may have been a consequence of his continued employment by the earl of Devon, whose violent quarrel with William, Lord Bonville, shook Devon and Somerset in the 1450s. Boef remained close to the earl, raising loans on his master’s behalf during the crisis of the mid 1450s, and at Earl Thomas’s death in February 1458 he became one of his executors. The other executors included William Booth, archbishop of York, William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, John, earl of Shrewsbury, and the chief justice, (Sir) John Fortescue, men now closely associated with Queen Margaret.26 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 357-9; C1/43/133-5. The earl’s heir was himself married to the queen’s cousin, and Boef’s sudden burst of activity in local government in the following two years may have owed something to his connexions with the court. In June 1458 he was added to the Devon bench, as a member of the quorum, and subsequently received a series of mostly judicial commissions in the south-west.

Boef’s property seems to have been limited. His stake in King’s Brimpton aside, he is known to have owned lands at Staple Fitzpaine and Bickenhall in southern Somerset, while he apparently acquired a life interest in other holdings at Yeovil from John Botreaux.27 CP40/780, rot. 52; 781, rots. 52, 427; Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 377. It may have been with a view to expanding his landed holdings that at some point in the 1450s he married Elizabeth, probably the widow of Richard Waleys, esquire, who came from the prominent family seated at Glynde in Sussex, and appears to have been the younger son of Sir John Waleys† (d.1376) bearing this name. For many years the family estates had been in contention between Sir John’s great-grandchildren – the four sisters of John Waleys (d.c.1423), and their nearest male relation, William Waleys, who was held to be an idiot. Boef’s associate Chief Justice Fortescue, setting his sights on the four valuable Sussex manors central to the dispute, obtained custody of them from the Crown in 1446, along with wardship of William Waleys, and in November 1451, probably on his nomination, they were transferred to the keeping of Boef and six others, headed by Boef’s putative father.28 CPR, 1441-6, p. 454; 1446-52, p. 498. After mediation, in 1455 Glynde was formally settled in tail-male on Fortescue’s ward with remainder to his next male heir, John Waleys ‘of Devon’, the son of Richard,29 CP25(1)/241/91/4; CP40/780, cart. rot. 1; Peds. Plea Rolls, 393. to whom the judge, seeking to retain permanent control over the estate, had married his own daughter. At what stage Boef himself married the heir’s mother is not known, but by a final concord in 1457 he and Elizabeth formally gave up any title she had in the other three manors to the sisters and their representatives, while protecting John’s interests in tail.30 CP25(1)/241/91/17. What Boef gained in material terms from the match remains obscure. The advantage may have come from promotion in his chosen career (perhaps even his rise to serjeant) secured through a close association with the chief justice.

The exact date and circumstances of Boef’s death have not been established, but it probably occurred in the first half of 1461, for it was in that year that the receiver of Exeter last accounted for his annual pension, and in July his name was omitted from the Devon commission of the peace. It is possible that he met his death in one of the battles of the civil war of 1460-1, perhaps, indeed, in the company of the earl of Devon at Towton, but there is no definite evidence to this effect: certainly he died suddenly, and intestate. The administration of Boef’s affairs was entrusted to his former clerk Henry Faux, John Garlond and John Blancombe.31 CP40/808, rot. 395; 810, rots. 194d, 296, att. 2; C1/31/37, 43/133-5. The complex business connexions the lawyer left took time to unravel and the three men were engaged in litigation over his debts for several years.32 Serjs. at Law, 500; CP40/809, rot. 248; C1/43/133-5.