BERNARD, John, of Bishop’s Lynn, Norf.

Bernard is very difficult to identify but it is possible he was the son of a namesake from Akenham who represented Ipswich in four earlier Parliaments. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 204. It is worth noting, however, that he is not included among the senior John’s children in the ped. of the Bernards of Akenham: Add. 19118, ff. 126v-127, 134v, 135. The elder John lived until 1421, so it was probably he, rather than the MP of 1423, who helped to arbitrate in a dispute between two residents of the borough in late 1418. Add. 30158, f. 2. The only definite information about him relates to his time as an MP. On 25 Nov. 1423, following his election to Parliament, he and William Bury I*, the borough’s other representative, stood bail for John Deken*, an Ipswich man charged with robbery in the court of King’s bench. KB27/650, rex rot. 21d. It is likely that Deken chose them to act as his mainpernors because they were already in London to attend Parliament and could conveniently appear in that court.

Everything else about Bernard is uncertain, although it is possible that he was the ‘John Barnard’ who accompanied the East Anglian knight, Sir William Phelip†, on the Agincourt campaign, given that ‘John Bernard of Ipswich’ had acted for Phelip’s father and others in a conveyance of 1400. De Antiquis Legibus Liber (Cam. Soc. xxxiv), p. clvii; W.A. Copinger, Suff. Manors, vi. 152-3; Harl. Ch. 54 H. 2. A John Bernard who was under sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in the 1420s and 1430s features in a trespass suit which Sir Thomas Kerdiston* brought against Sir John Howard* and his wife and the Essex esquire, Robert Tey†, in King’s bench. The case was referred to a jury in mid 1425, but this was disbanded after the defendants alleged that Kerdiston and his council had directed the under sheriff to choose a jury panel favourable to him. KB27/658, rots. 17d, 65. Even if not the man who campaigned with Phelip in 1415, it is still possible that the MP was the John Bernard who acted as a mainpernor for the knight in the late 1420s. CFR, xv. 281. In September 1440, Robert Cuddon* released certain Suffolk properties to Phelip (by then Lord Bardolf) and others, including John Bernard of Long Stratton, Norfolk. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 148-9. The Long Stratton man might have been the same person as the under sheriff, for he was the subject of several writs of exigent in the mid 1440s for failing to secure the appearance in the court of King’s bench of Thomas Southgate, a husbandman from Bulchamp in north-east Suffolk, suggesting that he held a position of local responsibility, KB27/730, rex rot. 13d; 742, rot. 16d. and it is very likely that the under sheriff was the man who served as clerk of the peace in Suffolk in the mid fifteenth century. It is also possible that the John Bernard who attended the Suffolk county elections for the Parliaments of 1449 (Feb.), 1453, 1459 and 1467 was the MP, although he would have been of advanced years at the last of these dates. If the MP was a member of the Akenham family, it was probably he who was implicated in the abduction of a young heir, Thomas Fastolf*, by (Sir) Philip Wentworth* in the mid fifteenth century. KB27/786, rots. 66, 82; 794, rot. 66d.