BRICE, Henry

Brice is one of the more obscure men to have represented Sandwich in Parliament in Henry VI’s reign. It seems likely that he was a merchant, probably trading in cloth. In June 1428 and again in the following year, along with his putative kinsman, the Faversham mercer William Brice, he was among a group of men to whom John Taylor of Salisbury made a release of all personal actions.3 CCR, 1422-9, pp. 393, 456; CPR, 1429-36, p. 314.

He was probably already one of the Port’s leading barons when he was returned to his only Parliament which assembled at Westminster on 12 Jan. 1431, although he is not known to have been serving as a jurat at the time of his election. No details of his parliamentary service survive. In December 1432 he was chosen as a jurat, an office he had almost certainly held before, but he was not among those men elected the following December and it is possible that he died during the course of the year. By this date his son, Roger, was already one of the constables of the town’s fifth ward.4 ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 3.

As one of the leading Portsmen of Sandwich Brice had served as a feoffee and executor to Henry Cacherell, a wealthy local man. In December 1432, with his co-executors, John Green I* and David Mareys of Canterbury, he entered into a recognizance that he should not attempt to recover any debts owed to them as executors by Robert Wilde*, who had married Cacherell’s widow.5 Ibid. f. 8. After Brice’s death his son was involved in litigation concerning enfeoffments made by Cacherell and the performance of his will. Cacherell’s son and heir, Henry (d.1435), presented a petition in Chancery alleging that the executors had been required, according to the terms of the will, to pay him £300 when he reached the age of 15, but while Brice had paid him £80 during his lifetime, Green and Mareys had refused to pay the remainder.6 C1/10/319. Around the same time the Cacherell heir also petitioned against Roger Brice, claiming he had enjoyed the profits of certain property in Sandwich in which his father had enfeoffed our MP. Roger had allegedly withheld the property as well as profits amounting to 200 marks.7 C1/12/136; ‘Old Black Bk.’, f. 25v.