TERRY, John

In spite of possessing a link with Northamptonshire, it is unclear whether Terry was a relative of Robert Terry of Rothwell in that county, or of the John Terry who held land at nearby Desborough in the late 1420s.3 CCR, 1409-13, p. 212; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 169; Feudal Aids, iv. 32. He was certainly active at Bedford by the late 1440s, when he attested the return of Bedford’s MPs to the Parliament of 1449-50, and it was as a ‘yeoman’ resident in the borough that he gained election to the succeeding assembly, his only known Parliament.4 John Sperry of Bedford, with whom HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 845, erroneously conflates the MP, was among those who attested Terry’s election in 1453. In June 1455, he entered three recognizances (one of £9 and the others of £7 each) to Thomas Kirkeby, rector of Sandy, Bedfordshire, but for what reason is unknown.5 CCR, 1454-61, p. 69. These securities likewise identified him as a ‘yeoman’ although contemporaries also sometimes recognised him as a ‘gentleman’ and even as a mere ‘husbandman’.6 C67/45, m. 38. It may well be, therefore, that he was a minor landowner rather than a tradesman. By the later 1450s, he was of sufficient prominence at Bedford to hold two terms in quick succession as one of its bailiffs.

The second of these terms coincided with particularly crisis-ridden times at a national level. As bailiff, he must have put his name to his borough’s now no longer extant return to the anti-Yorkist Parliament of 1459, and a series of indictments taken against him and others from Bedford and the wider county of Bedfordshire early in Edward IV’s reign might suggest that he shared the sentiments of that controversial assembly. The mayor and bailiffs of Bedford took several of these indictments in late April 1461. The presenting jurors found that on the four days of the previous 8-11 Mar., Terry and other yeomen and tradesmen from Bedford and elsewhere in the county had violently seized goods and livestock from various men of the town and broken into several houses there at night. More dramatically, he and over 20 associates had risen in force against Edward IV in the market-place on 11 Mar. There they had declared that the earl of Warwick and other Yorkist lords were traitors and attacked and robbed several of the King’s lieges, killing one of them. Terry was still at large in the following autumn, when justices of oyer and terminer sitting in the town took further indictments against the alleged miscreants, detailing further assaults and robberies at Bedford and Ampthill that same March, but he gave himself up to the Marshalsea in late October. Having gained release on bail pending a trial, he was able to secure a royal pardon (naming him as ‘of Easton Maudit’ as well as of Bedford) which he produced at a subsequent appearance in the court of King’s bench in the spring of 1462. As a result, there was no trial and he regained his liberty sine die.7 KB9/296/8d; KB27/801, rex rot. 6d; 802, rex rot. 6d; C67/45, m. 38.

It is impossible to discern the true circumstances leading to the indictments although evidently Terry and others had become embroiled in disputes with fellow burgesses. Whether, as the indictments would suggest, these dissensions had a political aspect and there was opposition to Edward IV at Bedford, is debatable, since the accusations of rising against the new King may smack more of attempts to blacken reputations rather than reflect the reality. Whatever the case, the appointment of Terry to two subsidy commissions in 1463 indicates that if the Yorkist Crown had any suspicions about his loyalty they were short-lived.

Terry was still alive in April 1477, when he mortgaged ‘Chapman’s Place’, a collection of tenements in St. Paul’s parish, Bedford, to the London grocer, William Sandes, for £13.8 CCR, 1476-85, no. 196.