BOWELEY, William (d.1443), of Bridport, Dorset.

Boweley’s putative father, Adam, was a churchwarden of St. Mary’s church in Bridport in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and he and his wife Christine became members of the fraternity in St. Andrew’s chapel there. Although he played an active role in the government of the town, appearing as a pledge for new burgesses and for the cofferers elected in 1407, he never held an office of much importance. Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’, ff. 10, 11, 13, 19, 44, 53; Bridport fraternities, DC/BTB/CD56. By contrast, William Boweley’s public service for Bridport was remarkable. Although condensed into a period of just 19 years, that period witnessed almost continuous activity in the affairs of his home town. It began soon after his admission as a burgess in 1422-3, on payment of a ‘fine’ of 26s. 8d., Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 96. with a term as cofferer from Michaelmas 1424 and election to Parliament just three years after that. Following his return home from this first of four Parliaments he was chosen bailiff, an office he went on to fill for as many as eight annual terms. Boweley’s election to his second Parliament, which met on 22 Sept. 1429, may have been prompted by the need for one of the out-going bailiffs to account for Bridport’s fee farm at the Exchequer that Michaelmas. He was again occupying the office of bailiff when returned for the third time, in 1431, and for the fourth in 1437. In the meantime he had attested two other parliamentary elections. C219/14/3, 5. On occasion, he stood surety for newly-elected sub bailiffs. Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’, ff. 113, 124. A measure of his standing in Dorset was his appearance as a juror at the inquisition post mortem on (Sir) Edmund Cheyne*, which was held at Bridport in October 1430, and at the assessments for the tax on landed incomes conducted at Cerne a year later. C139/49/42; Feudal Aids, ii. 102. Furthermore, he was included on the list of those of the county required to take the generally-administered oath against maintenance in 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 383.

A merchant, Boweley actively pursued his debtors in the court of common pleas at Westminster. For instance, he appeared in person in 1432 to sue four men of Bridport and Toller Porcorum who each owed him £2, and by attorney in 1439 to bring pleas against a shipman from Exmouth and chapmen from Bridport and Ilchester for sums amounting to £30. More revealing of the scale and compass of his trading activities is a suit over the carriage of a cartload of ropes from Bridport to London, CP40/686, rot. 402d; 715, rots. 511d, 574d; 720, rot. 254. and his purchase of a licence to export wool fells in 1442. DKR, xlviii. 354. Yet he was not always the creditor: in Hilary term 1443 he was sued by John Roger esquire for the sum of £19 6s. 8d. CP40/728, rot. 71. Boweley was on good terms with some of his neighbours, and the lawyer John Bettiscombe* (his colleague in the Parliaments of 1429 and 1431), named him as a feoffee. C146/9080; CAD, i. C298. However, he did not share Bettiscombe’s warm regard for another local merchant, William Oliver I*, about whom he made complaint to the chancellor after Oliver refused to return to his possession 14 messuages and ten acres of land in Bridport which he had given him in trust. C1/40/298. The precise location of these many properties has not been ascertained, although they included houses in South Street, West Street and East Street, a substantial building near the bridge for which Boweley paid an annual rent of 30s., and land in ‘Morteshay’. Bridport register, ff. 266-7, 284; Bridport rental, DC/BTB/Q1; Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. cix. 23.

Throughout the 1420s and 1430s Boweley was actively involved in the affairs of three of the fraternities in St. Mary’s church, of which he and his wife were members, and when not chosen warden himself he frequently provided pledges for those who were. Bridport fraternities, DC/BTB/CD14, 16, 22. He died intestate at an unknown date after Michaelmas 1443 and before Trinity term 1444, when the administrators of his estate, Master John River and Nicholas Boweley, were suing his debtors in the common pleas. CP40/734, rot. 387. Curiously, at the same time River and John Boweley, described as William’s executors, were suing other of his debtors. Nicholas may have been his son. His widow encountered other difficulties. She was sued for chattels worth ten marks by William Skenock* of Launceston in 1446, and three years later another creditor, Robert Church, a London haberdasher, alleged that she owed him £75 on a bond. Nicholas Boweley came to her assistance, but in 1451 Church had her arrested and imprisoned. Owing to illness she was unable to be brought to court, and the case was still pending at Michaelmas 1454. Church also pursued her in Chancery, for failing to return to him a messuage and 40 acres of land in Bridport of which he had enfeoffed her. CP40/740, rot. 217; 773, rot. 322d; 755, rots. 509, 600; C1/30/15. Nevertheless, Christine carried on her late husband’s business, and in partnership with Nicholas she purchased wool in Middleburgh in Zeeland in 1456. In the same year she conveyed a house in South Street, Bridport, to their business associate Thomas Clerk of Pymore. CAD, i. C1065; vi. C3916.

The precise relationship of our MP to another William Boweley†, who, the son of John Boweley, was born in Bridport, has not been discovered, although this younger namesake (who was to represent Weymouth in 1478) may well have been his grandson. C1/41/201; PCC 19 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 143v-144).