BAMBURGH, Robert

Bamburgh’s service as the clerk of the Scarborough borough court was not mentioned in the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 108-9. The office suggests that he combined legal interests with his commercial ones, but most of what is known of him relates to the latter. On 21 Aug. 1430, before a commission of inquiry into concealments held at Kingston-upon-Hull, a jury indicted him for having, a year earlier, exported fells and wool worth £42 from Scarborough to Dordrecht in Holland without the payment of customs. A jury at Scarborough acquitted him of the charge on 4 Sept. 1433. Later, on 26 Dec. 1440, he was outlawed in the Yorkshire county court for offences against the statutes of liveries, but no details of his offence have been found. E159/207, recorda Mich. rots. 11d, 22; KB29/72, rot. 22d. He was dead by 15 July 1443 when the will of William Forster I* refers to property near Black Friars’ Gate formerly in his hands. Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 74. A Chancery petition of the late 1460s suggests that he died in debt. His grandson and heir, Robert, son and heir of William Paulyn*, claimed that our MP, ‘hauyng grete need of money’ had mortgaged all his property in the town, valued at five marks p.a., to another Scarborough merchant, John Lambert, on condition that the capital sum borrowed be discharged from the issues of the lands. Lambert, or so it was claimed, refused to surrender the property to the complainant even though no more was owed. C1/33/114.