BRUNYNG, Robert (d.1468), of Winterbourne Steepleton, Dorset and Chisenbury, Wilts.

The Brunyngs of Winterbourne Steepleton in Dorset were not related to the wealthy gentry family of Browning, seated at Melbury, and their origin is obscure. Whether or not Robert was the son of a Nicholas Brunyng, Genealogist, n.s. xi. 253 (a very muddled acct. of the fam.). the manor of Winterbourne Steepleton came to him not as part of his patrimony but rather through his fortuitous marriage to Clemence Bayford. Clemence was coheir to her mother’s manors of Chisenbury de la Folly in Netheravon in Wiltshire, and Cridlestyle in Fordingbridge in Hampshire, besides several other properties which she and her sister Joan, wife of Thomas Ringwood, obtained in 1415 on the death of their stepfather Thomas Chapleyn. VCH Wilts. xi. 173; CFR, xiv. 140; CIPM, xx. 462-3. In the subsequent partition of the inheritance Chisenbury was allotted to Clemence, who in this way brought the manor to her second husband, Brunyng, and eventually passed it on to their son, CP25(1)/292/67/115; Feudal Aids, v. 233. while her sister’s portion was the manor in Fordingbridge. VCH Hants, iv. 571.

Winterbourne Steepleton, which became the Brunyngs’ home, came by the same route, except that it was not part of Clemence’s inheritance. The manor, held by Sir John Devereux, the father of her first husband, had formed a principal part of the settlement when she married Sir John’s son and heir, Richard Devereux, in 1412. First Richard then Sir John had died, leaving Clemence in possession of the estate for her lifetime. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 782-3; Dorset Feet of Fines, 270. Following his marriage to Clemence, Brunyng secured in 1420 a new settlement whereby the manor was to be held by them both for life, with remainder to Clemence’s issue by her former husband Devereux, and if there was no such issue to pass to her sister-in-law, Joan Devereux, wife of John Chisbrok. Dorset Feet of Fines, 295-6. It would appear that Brunyng subsequently bought out Joan’s interest, for in quitclaims made in 1427 and 1428 it was stated that his own heirs were to have the property after he died. Ibid. 338-9.

Nevertheless, there are signs that Brunyng’s tenure of Winterbourne Steepleton remained insecure, for in Hilary term 1431 he brought a plea against five local husbandmen for breaking his closes and taking crops worth £10, and ten years later he sued a butcher from Dorchester and a ‘woolmonger’ of Ilminster in Somerset for theft of goods there worth £20. CP40/680, rot. 433; 720, rot. 145. This insecurity prompted him to place the manor in the hands of feoffees. During his first Parliament, in 1435, he and his wife arranged that during their lifetimes they would lease Winterbourne Steepleton from the chancellor, Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells, and others including the lawyers John Hody* (then sitting for Somerset) and John Stork†, to whom they would pay £10 p.a. Dorset Feet of Fines, 338-9, 346. This may have been simply a device to protect the couple’s interests at law. Brunyng had evidently been encountering difficulties over possession of his wife’s maternal inheritance, too, for earlier that year he had brought a plea against her brother-in-law Thomas Ringwood for the considerable sum of £200, under an obligation entered in 1431, and had gone to the court of common pleas in person to do so. The suit continued in the Michaelmas term while Brunyng was up at Westminster to attend the Commons. CP40/696, rot. 244; 699, rots. 58, 652d. He was distrained for refusing to take up knighthood in 1439, so it may be assumed that his property was then deemed to be worth more than £40 p.a.

Brunyng appears to have trained as a lawyer, and it was perhaps through his work that before he first entered Parliament he came to be an associate of the influential family of Stourton. He was among those who in March 1430 were enfeoffed by (Sir) John Stourton II* (afterwards Lord Stourton) of some of his landed holdings, and who in October following were pardoned for acquiring from him without royal licence the bailiwick of West Perott, Somerset. C140/63/55; CPR, 1429-36, p. 112. Linked with Brunyng in these transactions was John Hody, the future chief justice (with whom, as we have seen, he was associated on other occasions), and another lawyer, Stourton’s brother-in-law William Carent*. He and Hody both stood surety for Carent at the Exchequer in 1432. Although Brunyng was then described as ‘of Somerset, gentleman’, CFR, xvi. 92. it was for four boroughs in the neighbouring county of Dorset that he secured election to Parliament, being returned to the Commons five times in 20 years. Perhaps his success at the elections was due to his connexions among the gentry, for there is no evidence that he held property in any of the places he represented, or of any close dealings between him and the burgesses. Brunyng’s keen interest in parliamentary affairs is confirmed by his appearance at the county court to attest the shire elections on five occasions, most notably in 1447, when he himself was returned for Lyme Regis, and in 1453 and 1455 when he was one of those elected by Dorchester.

Given the extent of his parliamentary service and his association with the likes of Hody, Carent and Stourton, it is curious that Brunyng was never appointed to any royal commissions. He remained a feoffee of Lord Stourton’s property until the latter died in 1462. A few months earlier he had been listed among potential jurors at sessions of oyer and terminer conducted by Stourton at Dorchester on 31 May. C140/63/55; KB9/21/18. Brunyng himself died before 16 May 1468, when a writ de diem clausit extremum was sent to the escheator of Wiltshire to investigate his landed holdings there. CFR, xx. 215. No inq. post mortem survives. He left a son, Richard, who had attested the Dorset elections in the previous year.