BERFORD, William, of Cambridge.

Berford was perhaps a relative of Robert Berford of Ely, one of those commissioned in June 1445 to collect a subsidy in Cambridgeshire. CFR, xvii. 328. During his first term as bailiff of Cambridge, he and his co-bailiffs were involved in a dispute in the Exchequer with King’s College, which claimed that the townsmen had failed to pay it part of a fee farm rent. King’s Coll., Cambridge, archs., CAM/85. Berford was dead by 1486, when a couple of tenements in Cambridge that he had purchased were the subject of a Chancery suit brought by Thomas Tower of Harleston, Norfolk. Tower, who had married Agnes, the MP’s widow and executrix, alleged that Berford’s feoffees, John Cook II*, John Hasewell and Richard Ade, had refused to release the properties to him and his new wife. Responding to his bill, the defendants, evidently reluctant to act upon the request without appropriate advice, declared themselves willing to do as the court directed. C1/82/75-76. Berford had also held at least one other property in Cambridge, a messuage in St. Edward’s parish that was in the hands of Simon Bentybowe by August 1493. A. Gray, Priory of St. Radegund, 114.