BERTRAM, William (c.1409-61), of Bothal, Northumb.

William was the eldest legitimate son of Sir John Bertram, who had a long career in the affairs of Northumberland and county Durham. He is not to be confused with a namesake, William Bertram of Grafton, Northants., a servant of Queen Margaret and steward of Richard Wydeville, Lord Rivers, from the 1450s. That William, appointed in Nov. 1448 as warden and governor of the Channel Islands by the duke of Suffolk during the minority of Anne Beauchamp, countess of Warwick, was still alive in 1467 when he was acting on behalf of Rivers, then treasurer of England, receiving payments at the Exchequer: CPR, 1446-52, p. 202; CFR, xvii. 321, xviii. 153, 158; C1/49/59; E405/46, rot. 2d; 47, rot. 3; Letters Margaret of Anjou (Cam. Soc. lxxxvi), 68 According to his father’s inquisition post mortem, he was born in about 1409, and such a date of birth is consistent with his first appearance in the records. On 21 Dec. 1430 he witnessed the Northumberland parliamentary election at Newcastle-upon-Tyne presided over by his father as sheriff, and on 22 Mar. 1432 he was again present at the election to see the return of his father to the Commons. Although young and untried, he was himself elected as knight of the shire for Northumberland in September 1435, and there can be no doubt that family patronage explains his election: the hustings were presided over by his father as sheriff and his fellow MP was his paternal uncle, Sir Robert Ogle I*. C139/139/27; C219/14/2, 3, 5. The election together of a Bertram and an Ogle marked a further stage in the reconciliation of the dispute between the two branches of the family over the castle of Bothal, of which Sir Robert had been disinherited in favour of his younger brother in the reign of Henry IV. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 211-12.

Later, like many of his fellow Northumberland gentry, Bertram gravitated towards the service of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, who on 6 Nov. 1440 retained him with an annual fee of as much as 20 marks. Further grants made by the earl during the 1440s reveals him to have been one of the earl’s leading servants in Northumberland: between September 1441 and April 1448 he received leases for life of the demesne lands of the Percy manors of Prudhoe, Harlow and Birtley. J.M.W. Bean, Estates Percy Fam. 92; C139/160/37. These leases were of particular importance to Bertram, for it was not until his father’s death in 1450 that he inherited the family patrimony. They, together with the Percy connexion they betokened, enabled him to take a significant part in local affairs, beyond his early election to Parliament, even before he became lord of Bothal. In November 1447 he was named to the commission of the peace in Northumberland, a position his father had relinquished five years before. CPR, 1446-52, p. 592. He was also active in the defence of the marches. On 3 Apr. 1449 the King wrote to him, Sir Ralph Percy and his cousins, Sir Robert Ogle II* and John Ogle*, thanking them for their recent report on the defence of the borders and assuring them that ‘the purveance and saufgarde of the saide countrees and marches ... hath ben righte sadly communed of by the lordes of this oure parlement’, and that Parliament would attend to the matter once more after the Easter vacation. Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ed. Stevenson, i. 491. On the following 30 Oct. he was present at the Northumberland parliamentary election to secure his own election. If, on his first return 14 years before, he had been elected as the representative of his father, he was now important enough to secure election in his own right. C219/15/7.

During the course of this Parliament Bertram’s career was further advanced. On 22 Dec., five days after the end of the first session, he secured appointment as collector of customs in Newcastle, probably to ensure payment of assignments made on the customs in favour of the earl’s eldest son, Lord Poynings, for the defence of the east march; and on 24 Apr. 1450, five days before the Parliament assembled for its last session, his elderly father died and he finally became lord of Bothal. Matters arising from his father’s death may have prompted him to seek election to the next Parliament. On 1 Oct 1450, at an election at which he was again present, he was returned with his cousin, John Ogle. On the following 24 Mar., towards the end of the second session, the two MPs acted together, with Bertram offering surety when the Crown committed to Ogle a valuable fishery in the river Tweed. C219/16/1; CFR, xviii. 170, 189-90.

In the 1450s Bertram continued to serve the Percys, although this did not prevent him falling into dispute with another important member of the retinue, namely Thomas Ilderton, constable of Alnwick castle. The cause of the quarrel is unknown, but it was serious enough to prompt royal intervention. At some point before May 1455 the King wrote to the Percy earl urging him to move swiftly to arbitrate in the matter ‘for thease and welfare especially’ of ‘oure welbeloved Thomas Ilderton’, suggesting perhaps that it was Ilderton who had sought royal intercession. Letters Margaret of Anjou, 68. It was probably soon after this quarrel that, on 5 May 1455, Bertram lost the customer-ship of Newcastle, but there is no reason to suppose this was anything more than a routine change of officer. Whether 17 days later he was present in the Percy retinue at the first battle of St. Albans, where the earl met his death, can only be a matter of speculation, but he actively supported Lord Poynings, now the earl, in the civil war of 1459-61. His appointment as sheriff of Northumberland in November 1458 clearly reflects the ascendancy of the Lancastrian faction to which the Percys were allied, and thereafter there can be no doubt of his commitment to that cause. On 30 Dec. 1460 he was present alongside the earl at the battle of Wakefield, and his faithful service to the Percys was rewarded when he was among the eight men, including his former adversary Ilderton upon whom the earl bestowed the honour of knighthood after the battle. CFR, xix. 221; Shaw, ii. 12. The probability is that he went on the fight under the earl at the second battle of St. Albans in the following February, and he was certainly in the Lancastrian ranks at the decisive battle of Towton on 29 Mar. 1461. There both he and the new earl met their deaths. Bertram’s death date is given as 29 Mar. 1461 in his inq. post mortem: C140/18/33.

The writ of diem clausit extremum for Sir William was not issued to the escheator of Northumberland until 13 Mar. 1465. The delay may have resulted from the confused and dangerous state of Northumberland during the early 1460s. The writ was issued only after John Neville, Lord Montagu, had been granted the earldom of Northumberland and custody of the Percy estates in August 1464, and may represent a return to the normal course of royal administration in the far north. In the inquisition held at Alnwick, Bertram was recorded as having dying seised of the manor of Bothal (except those lands held in dower by his stepmother), the manor of Whitworth, a moiety of the manor of Benwell, and further property in Benwell and Capheaton held of the Percy lordship of Prudhoe. His heir was named as his eldest son, William, then aged 16. The Crown soon acted on these findings. On 14 July the keeping of the Bertram lands was committed to two northern lawyers in royal service, Thomas Colt* and Henry Sotehill, to hold during the heir’s minority at a farm to be agreed with the treasurer. This exercise of royal patronage, however, did not meet with the approval of our MP’s cousin, Sir Robert Ogle II, now Lord Ogle, who entered the castle and manor of Bothal on 2 Aug. This proved the prelude for the return of the castle to the main line of the Ogles, for, at an uncertain date, our MP’s grandson and heir, Robert, died young and childless. C140/18/33; CPR, 1461-7, p. 466; E159/242, recorda Mich. rot. 31d; J. Hodgson, Hist. Northumb. ii (1), 384-5.

Bertram’s wife, Elizabeth, survived him and by Hilary term 1466 she had married the prominent Newcastle merchant, Alan Bird*. CP40/818, rot. 277d. Ogle’s seizure of the castle of Bothal may have left her without a competence, although the records are silent on this point.