BASTARD, William (d.1462), of Shrewsbury, Salop and Little Munden, Herts.

Bastard hailed from a family established in Shrewsbury by the end of the fourteenth century. His father, who probably came from Much Wenlock, was admitted to the Shrewbury guild merchant in 1397 and was alive at least as late as 1416. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 3), iii. 379; CP40/622, rot. 263. In 1450 our MP brought an action for waste in a messuage in Much Wenlock leased out by his father: CP40/756, rots. 19d, 435. Our MP greatly exceeded his father’s achievements. Like his neighbour, Thomas Luyt*, he made his career in the law. He was active as an attorney in the court of King’s bench by 1431, when he represented the prominent Shropshire knight, Sir Richard Lacon*, and by the middle of the decade he numbered the abbeys of Shrewsbury and Haughmond among his clients. KB27/681, att. rot.; 699, att. rot. 1; 700, rot. 2d. He remained close to Lacon, and it may be that he began his legal education with the knight’s son, William I*, who became a serjeant-at-law in 1453: KB27/704, att. rot.d; CCR, 1441-7, p. 437. His later service as principal of New Inn, an inn of Chancery, shows that he either acquired his legal education there or was admitted as a mark of practical expertise already won. In contrast to Luyt, who began his career at about the same time, his practice did not lead him to withdraw from the affairs of his home town, at least not until his final years. His commitment to Shrewsbury is illustrated by his willingness to represent it in Parliament for significantly less than the standard rate of 2s. a day for a borough MP. In 1442, sitting for the borough in an assembly lasting two months, he took only two marks in wages (his fellow MP, Robert Whitcombe*, was paid three marks). Between this assembly and that of 1453 inclusive he sat for Shrewsbury in five of seven Parliaments, no doubt at a similar discount until his last Parliament when he demanded his wages in full. Salop Archs., Shrewsbury recs., bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 1d; CP40/778, rot. 274. He may also have sat in the Parliament of 1439, for which the names of the borough MPs are unknown.

Nor was it only as an MP that Bastard gave his time to his fellow townsmen. In the autumn of 1445 he was elected as one of the town’s bailiffs, and, when, soon afterwards, the borough successfully petitioned Parliament for a new and complex constitution, the bailiffs and commonalty included him among a body of 12 ‘worthi Burgeys receantz housholders, most sufficient and discrete’ who they wanted to serve as aldermen. Further, on 11 May 1446, while serving as bailiff, he went from Shrewsbury to London to pay ‘pro scriptura’ of the new articles under the royal seal together with their enrolment. This proved to be a drawn out process. He remained in London into, and perhaps through, the following legal term, as he received later payments from the borough ‘pro scriptura et sigillocione’ of the articles. RP, v. 121 (cf. PROME, xi. 508); Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 5. On this occasion his own interests as an attorney conveniently overlapped with those of the town, but this was not always the case. His readiness to serve his town in Parliament extended beyond those assemblies that met within easy reach of the central courts. He also accepted election to the Parliament of February 1447, which, originally summoned to Cambridge, eventually met at Bury St. Edmunds. Interestingly, while sitting, he sent his servant back to Shrewsbury with letters, presumably concerning the controversial business of the assembly. The borough authorities allowed the servant 6d. for his trouble and allowed Bastard wages of 40s. for his service in this short Parliament, on this occasion not far short of the standard borough rate. C219/15/4; Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/377, m. 6.

During the course of Hilary term 1448 Bastard’s legal career was advanced when he succeeded John Prudde as filacer in the court of King’s bench for Northamptonshire and neighbouring counties. Prudde probably died during the term, for Bastard succeeded him towards its end: KB27/748, rot. 62. He probably owed his nomination to Luyt, who had been a filacer since 1441. If these new responsibilities left him less time to devote to the concerns of his native town, this is not immediately apparent in the surviving records of his career. He was again elected to represent Shrewsbury in the Parliament which met at Westminster on 12 Feb. 1449. C219/15/6. How filacers sitting as MPs reconciled their duties in the Commons with those in the law courts is not clear. When Parliament sat at Westminster the two responsibilities could, no doubt, be conveniently combined, but when sessions were not held there they must have been absent from either law court or Commons. Such was the case with Bastard in the summer of 1449: the last session of Parliament met at Winchester between 16 June and 16 July, in other words, for the entire period of Trinity term.

Five days after this Parliament ended, Bastard acquired another potentially conflicting responsibility. At the county court held in Shrewsbury on 21 July 1449, he was elected to replace Richard Masfen as one of the county coroners. As one absent from the county for law terms – some four months of the year – he was hardly an ideal choice. His election with Luyt for Shrewsbury to the Parliament of November 1450 added another reason for absence from the county. C242/11/10; C219/16/2. But if these duties threatened to diminish his efficiency as coroner, another must have made it difficult for him to function as a filacer. Soon after the end of this Parliament he was again chosen as bailiff by his fellow townsmen. The office fell to him at a period of mounting tension in national politics as Richard, duke of York, became dangerously alienated from the royal court. The duke was a great power in Shropshire and he sought to involve the men of Shrewsbury in his quarrel. On 3 Feb. 1452, from his nearby castle at Ludlow, he wrote to his ‘right worshipful friends, the bailiffs, burgesses and commons of the good town of Shrewsbury’, outlining his grievances against the duke of Somerset and asking the townsmen ‘to come to me with all diligence ... with as many goodly and likely men as ye may’. Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 97-98. His appeal was partially successful and some of the townsmen followed him to Dartford or made demonstrations in his favour locally. As a result they were indicted for treason when royal commissioners came to the town in the following August. As bailiff our MP, whatever his own attitude to the duke’s pretensions, could not avoid involvement. There is no evidence that he himself was implicated, but he did take the precaution of suing out a general pardon on 8 July (as ‘of Shrewsbury, gentleman, alias of Wenlock’). C67/40, m. 25. More interestingly, in the wake of the indictments of the following month he and another of the town’s aldermen, Richard Stury*, rode to the King and chancellor to secure pardons for the indicted. The town rewarded them for their diligence with payments of five marks each. Bastard also took responsibility for delivering ten marks to Sir John Talbot, who had assisted in securing the pardons. Shrewsbury bailiffs’ accts. 3365/380, m. 2.

The townsmen soon required another service from Bastard. On 22 Feb. 1453 he was again returned to Parliament in company with Luyt, with whom he had sat in 1450. After this long assembly they demanded from the borough’s bailiffs the payment of their wages in full, an indication that they had both come to the view that the roles of leading burgess and London lawyer could no longer be combined. E13/145B, rot. 36; CP40/778, rot. 274. In Bastard’s case one reason may lie in his growing engagement with New Inn. On 29 Sept. 1457 Joan, widow of John Gedney*, leased to him at will ‘the Newe Inne’ at an annual rent of £6, and he was presumably acting here as the Inn’s principal. CP40/823, rot. 127. It was probably a role he had already exercised for some years. On 20 Aug. 1450 he had purchased as many as 26 barrels of ale for 78s. from John Love, a London brewer. As a later Chancery petition shows that, as principal, he was involved in buying bread for the Inn, it is probable that this purchase was also for the Inn’s use. CP40/779, rot. 326d; C1/45/11.

Another reason for Bastard’s disengagement from Shrewsbury affairs was probably his fateful second marriage. Nothing is known of his first wife beyond her Christian name, but she was probably a native of Shrewsbury. The only evidence for her existence is a lost memorial, formerly in the church of St. Julian, Shrewsbury, to Bastard and his two wives: Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. x. 224. His successful career allowed him to look further afield for a second wife. He had married into a prominent gentry family of Hertfordshire by 18 Apr. 1450, when Robert Arneburgh wrote that, since ‘he hath weddyd Sir Phillip Thornbury nese’ [i.e. grand-daughter], Bastard had hopes of securing an interest in the estates of Arneburgh’s late wife. C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 176-7. It was not, however, this disputed inheritance that was to have fatal consequences for our MP. About a year before his death, by a final concord levied on the morrow of Purification 1457, Sir Philip made a resettlement of his estates. He took a life interest, settling the contingent parts after his death by various remainders. His daughter, Margaret, her husband, Nicholas Appleyard, and her son, John, were to have the manor and advowson of Bygrave to them and her male issue; the family’s other manor, that of Little Munden, was settled upon her daughter by Nicholas, Elizabeth, and our MP as her husband, to hold to them and her male issue. This division was itself curious, and is hardly likely to have met with the approval of John Appleyard, but there were others who had, or felt they had, stronger reasons to disapprove. Sir Philip’s daughter was not his common-law heir, and the main purpose of the 1457 resettlement was to disinherit his eldest son, Richard*, who himself had two sons. Richard was justifiably resentful that he and his sons were given only contingent remainders in the event of the failure of the male issue of Margaret or of her daughter Elizabeth. CP25(1)/91/117/181. They seemed to have blamed Bastard for their perceived loss. Perhaps our MP had unduly influenced the elderly Sir Philip. Richard was soon given further cause for resentment: on the following 17 Aug. his elderly father demised the manor of Little Munden to Bastard and Elizabeth for £19 p.a. E211/310, m. 4. In this contemporary roll of copied deeds, the copy of the indenture is dated 17 Aug. ‘36 Hen. VI’ (that is, 1458), but this must be a mistake for 35 Hen. VI, as Sir Philip was dead by the later date. The disappointed son responded quickly: three months later, shortly before Sir Philip’s death, he assaulted and threatened Bastard and his servants at Little Munden, allegedly broke his closes and houses there and took horses and goods worth £50. Soon after, Thornbury found himself detained in the Marshalsea, perhaps to find surety of the peace to Bastard, and the latter responded by bringing five bills against him, claiming damages of as much as 1,400 marks. KB146/6/36/1, unnumbered; KB27/786, rot. 111d. He also, if a later petition is to be believed, sued an assize of novel disseisin which, in turn, prompted Richard to accept the arbitration of the two chief justices, (Sir) John Fortescue* and (Sir) John Prysot*. They, it was said, duly decreed that the Bastard couple had the right to the manor according to the final concord. SC8/92/4571. However this may be, Richard did not live long enough to pursue his claim further. He survived his father by only a few months, dying ‘ex morbo pestilenciali’ in London on 15 Dec. 1458. KB29/88, rot. 11d. Would, for our MP, that that had been the end of the matter.

For a few years Bastard’s career resumed its course. In the spring of 1458 Robert Reymond alias Fuller of Ware in Hertfordshire granted him all his goods, an indication of his new interests in that county. Early in the following year the Shropshire peer, Richard, Lord Grey of Powis, named him among his feoffees; and, in May 1460, he joined his friend Luyt in taking a bond of 68 marks from the sheriff of Shropshire, Sir Robert Corbet. Despite the settlement made in favour of himself and his wife, he was reluctant to lose his ties in his native shire. Late in 1460 he purchased six messuages, six tofts, 40 acres of farmland and a moiety of two shops in Wellington, a few miles to the east of Shrewsbury, and other purchases have probably gone undocumented. CCR, 1454-61, p. 276; CPR, 1452-61, p. 475; E13/147, rot. 13; CP25(1)/195/22/48. Nothing is known of his political loyalties during the civil war of 1459-61, but they, in common with those displayed by the town of Shrewsbury and Lord Grey of Powis, probably lay with York. His addition to the county bench in Hertfordshire certainly suggests that he was viewed positively by the new regime under Edward IV, and he looked set to establish himself among the gentry of that county.

The Thornburys, however, had different ideas. A firm sign of continued trouble had come before the change of regime. On 29 Aug. 1460 a gang of 32 armed men, acting under the direction of Richard Thornbury’s son, Thomas, had forcibly entered the manor of Little Munden, assaulted and wounded Bastard and his wife, imprisoned them for a day and expelled them from the manor. The raiders were duly indicted of both forcible entry and felonious theft before the Hertfordshire j.p.s on the following 3 Oct., but much worse was soon to follow. At about 4 p.m. on 9 Jan. 1462, our MP was murdered, together with his son by Elizabeth, Philip (who may have been little more than a boy), and his clerk, John Hadington, at Sacombe, a few miles from Little Munden, by Thomas and other lesser men. Intriguingly, among the accessories to the crime was another lawyer, John Newburgh II* of East Lulworth in Dorset. Bastard’s widow both appealed his assailants in the court in which her husband had served and petitioned the Commons in the Parliament of 1463, seeking expeditious process against them. KB27/799, rex rot. 4; 808, rot. 84; SC8/92/4571. Thomas and five others she appealed as principals in the murders were outlawed on 29 Sept. 1463, but Thomas, at least, was able to recover his fortunes, dying seised some years later of the manor of Whitelackington in Somerset. KB29/94, rot. 1; C1/61/102. He did not, however, succeed in depriving the widow of her manor of Little Munden. She retained it until 1481, when she sold it to her wealthy neighbour, William Say†, whose father, John II*, had been party to the final concord of 1457. CAD, iii. A5236; CP40/885, cart. rot.d; J. Biancalana, Fee Tail and Common Recovery, 360. In 1486 Thomas Thornbury’s son, John, who had an interest in remainder by the fine, released to Say: CAD, iii. D439, D795.

Bastard’s widow faced other troubles aside from attempts to bring Thomas Thornbury to justice. Our MP’s role as principal of New Inn led to actions against her. A London baker sued her in Chancery, claiming that Bastard had contracted him to provide the Inn with bread. When Bastard was, in the petition’s words, ‘myschevously slayne’, he owed the baker the large sum of £9 10s., and his widow, as his administratrix, now refused to discharge the debt even though she had lands worth £40 p.a. together with goods, once of our MP, worth £100. In another action, sued in 1467 in the court of common pleas, the executors of Joan Gedney claimed £12 against her as arrears of the rent due for the Inn. C1/45/11; CP40/823, rot. 127.

Although the baker may have overestimated the wealth of Bastard’s widow, she was clearly a woman of standing. Her status explains the marriage of her husband’s son and namesake (he may also have been her son but was more probably her stepson) to Elizabeth, daughter of a Hertfordshire esquire, Robert Knolles of North Mimms. On her father’s death in the late 1480s this Elizabeth fell coheiress to his lands, but the younger William Bastard was then dead without issue by her. CCR, 1485-1500, no. 460; Biancalana, 405. Very little is known of the younger William’s career. In 1476 he was one of 25 nominated to choose the Shrewsbury officers, and, at about the same time, he was accused of wrongfully detaining evidences delivered to his father for safe keeping: Shrewsbury assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 24v; C1/53/318.