BRYDGES, Giles (1396-1467), of Coberley, Glos. and Eldersfield, Worcs.

Styled ‘notabilis armiger’ when returned to his second Parliament in 1455, Giles owed his standing to his mother, from whom he succeeded to estates which greatly augmented his paternal inheritance. His father, Thomas Brydges, is of uncertain antecedents but was probably related to John Brugge† of Staunton-on-Wye, Herefordshire. One of Thomas’s executors, John was possibly the son of either Sir Baldwin Brugge of Bridge Solers or Sir Edmund Brugge† of that county. PCC 16 Marche (PROB11/2A, f. 124); The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 394. Whatever his exact relationship to John, it is likely that Thomas was a younger son. There is no evidence that he inherited any land, and he purchased his manors of Haresfield, where Giles was born and baptised, and Pendock in Worcestershire. VCH Glos. viii. 98; x. 193; VCH Worcs. iii. 480. Thomas advanced himself in the service of Richard II’s adherent Thomas, Lord Despenser, for whom he was a receiver, CPR, 1391-6, pp. 507; CIMisc. vii. 54. and through marriage. His first wife Elizabeth was the only child of Nicholas Apperley (d.c.1407), lord of the Gloucestershire manors of Apperley in Deerhurst and Tirley, VCH Glos. viii. 38, 98. but Giles was the eldest of his children by his much more advantageous second marriage to Alice, the younger of the two daughters and coheirs of the well-connected Thomas Berkeley of Coberley. Following Berkeley’s death in April 1405, she succeeded to a share of her father’s estates, receiving moieties of the manors of Coberley in Gloucestershire and Salford in Oxfordshire and the manor of Eldersfield, Worcestershire, while her elder sister Margaret, the wife of Nicholas Mattesdon of Kingsholm near Gloucester, received the other moieties of Coberley and Salford and the manors of Stoke Orchard in Gloucestershire and Chilcote in Derbyshire. On the basis of contemporary valuations (probably underestimates because they are taken from inquisitions post mortem, which commonly undervalued property) the sisters each received estates worth over £50 p.a., although they did not come completely into their own until after the death of their mother in April 1406. While she lived, the latter, another Margaret, possessed a dower interest in all of these manors, save for that of Eldersfield, from which she received a rent of 20 marks p.a. in lieu of dower. CIPM, xviii. 1020-2; xix. 42-5; xx. 148.

As it happened, Thomas Brydges did not have long to enjoy the lands that Alice brought to their marriage. He died in early April 1408, having made his last will on the previous 4 Jan. PCC 16 Marche; CIPM, xix. 393. Evidently he was residing in Worcestershire at the end of his life, for he styled himself as ‘of Eldersfield’ and asked to be buried at Little Malvern. He bequeathed a horse and various household items, including plate, to his wife, and a black horse and silver cup called ‘le Bolle’, perhaps a family heirloom, to Giles. The will also features four other offspring: two sons, Baldwin and Robert, and a daughter Anne, presumably his other children by his second marriage, and a bastard son and namesake, to whom he left 100s. Perhaps not anticipating that he would die just three months after making the will, he named Giles as one of his executors, a role which the boy, just 11 years of age when Thomas died, cannot actually have performed. Presumably, the other executors, who included Thomas’s widow and John Brugge of Staunton, performed the real work. To supervise his executors, Thomas appointed Hugh Mortimer†, another former Despenser retainer and an associate of John Brugge, and Robert Whittington†, also once connected to the Despensers. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 391, 394. Thomas’s heir was Edmund Brydges, his eldest son by his first marriage, but Edmund, who had succeeded to the Apperley inheritance, survived him by just a matter of months, dying in late October 1408. Edmund’s heir was an infant son of three months of age. CIPM, xix. 394. The latter must have died without issue before attaining his majority, for his uncle Edward was the head of the family by the beginning of Henry VI’s reign. Edward Brydges survived until 1436. His successor was his daughter Isabel, then a girl of 13 years of age. Ibid. xxiv. 632-5. John Throckmorton I* purchased her wardship from the Crown and married her to his younger son John II*. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 608; CCR, 1435-41, p. 145. VCH Glos. viii. 38,

For Giles Brydges, the heir of his mother but not his father, the death of Alice Brydges on 12 May 1414 was an event of much greater significance than that of Thomas. At her death she was the wife of John Browning†, an esquire with estates in Dorset and Gloucestershire and another former retainer of Thomas, Lord Despenser. CIPM, xx. 148-50; CPR, 1405-8, p. 447. Just a day after she died, Browning secured the wardship of the 17-year-old Giles from the Crown and, two months later, he reached an agreement with the treasurer. That is, he was to have the young man’s marriage for no more than 100 marks although he had also to pay the King £33 6s. 8d. p.a. while the wardship remained in his hands. CFR, xiv. 68, 72. In the event, Browning did not long survive Alice since he died in February 1416, CIPM, xx. 290-1. before his ward had come of age. Giles attained his majority at the end of the following year, Ibid. xxi. 148. but whether the King had retained the wardship after Browning’s death or re-granted it to another in the meantime is unknown. The young man took possession of his inheritance after formally proving his age in June 1418. CCR, 1413-19, p. 465.

Apart from his mother’s share of the Berkeley estates, Giles succeeded to two of the manors his father had purchased, Haresfield and Pendock. VCH Glos. x. 193; VCH Worcs. iii. 480. He also had the good fortune to inherit further lands in the late 1420s and again three decades later. At the end of 1428 his maternal great-uncle, the Herefordshire knight Sir John Chandos†, died without surviving children. Chandos’s nearest relatives were the descendants of his long dead sister Margaret, the second wife of Thomas Berkeley and the grandmother of Giles, and an inquisition post mortem found that the knight’s heirs were his grand-daughter, Margaret Mattesdon, and Giles, his great-nephew. CIPM, xxiii. 253. As a result of settlements made by Chandos, however, Margaret and Giles succeeded to no more than a small part of his extensive estates, namely the manors of Lugwardine and ‘Lymbury’ in Herefordshire. CP, iii. 150; CCR, 1429-35, p. 1. Margaret did not survive Chandos by many years, for she predeceased her husband Nicholas Mattesdon who died in October 1435. The heir of Margaret and Nicholas was their son Robert Mattesdon, who succeeded to her shares of the Berkeley and Chandos inheritances as well as to Nicholas’s property at Kingsholm. CIPM, xxiv. 460; CP, iii. 150. Following the death of Robert without any surviving issue in February 1458, the next heir to the Mattesdon shares of the Berkeley and Chandos inheritances was Giles. C139/168/23; CFR, xix. 226. As it happened, the latter was never to enjoy possession of all of these lands, for Robert’s widow, Katherine, retained a moiety of the manor of Lugwardine in dower until her death in 1504. CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 753.

Through his own marriage, Giles also came temporarily to hold the manor of Aspley Guise, Bedfordshire. The property was in his hands by 1428, indicating that at that date he was already married to Katherine, the widow of Reynold Guise, its former lord. Evidently, she possessed a jointure interest in the property, which subsequently passed to John Guise, her son by her previous marriage. Feudal Aids, i. 43; VCH Beds. iii. 339. The Guises also had landed interests in Gloucestershire, and Katherine herself was probably a native of that county since she was a daughter of the notorious James Clifford of Frampton-on-Severn, who in the course of his lawless and violent career had quarrelled with Giles’s former guardian Browning. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 589. There is no evidence that Giles had any dealings with his father-in-law, although he was certainly associated with the latter’s younger son, William. In about 1439 he brought a bill in Chancery against Thomas Poyntz (brother of Nicholas*), in connexion with a mortgage which Poyntz had given William. In return for a loan of £200, Poyntz had taken possession of the Clifford manor of Stowell in Gloucestershire, by means of a conveyance from Giles, evidently acting on behalf of his brother-in-law. According to the bill, Giles had settled the debt in William’s name on 7 Apr. 1439, the day assigned for the repayment of the loan, but Poyntz had refused to relinquish the manor. C1/39/53. Presumably, Giles succeeded in his suit for Stowell was again in William’s hands in 1457 and afterwards passed to his daughter Elizabeth. VCH Glos. ix. 210.

For want of evidence, it is impossible accurately to value Giles’s estates although they were probably worth comfortably over £75 p.a. He did not retain all of his inheritance, for he alienated Pendock – or at least a share of it – to his elder half-brother Edward in the first half of the 1430s. Tax records show that Giles still held the manor in 1431, but Edward’s inquisitions post mortem record that he died holding a moiety of the same property and, in due course, this passed, along with the rest of his estates, to the Throckmortons. VCH Worcs. iii. 480; Feudal Aids, v. 332; CIPM, xxiv. 632-5. Giles also relinquished control over a small part of his estates in the early 1450s, when his eldest son Thomas married Florence, the daughter of the recently-deceased William Darell*, for in February 1453 he undertook to settle lands worth 100s. p.a. on the couple. CAD, i. C744. In the following May he acknowledged having received 200 marks from Darell’s widow Elizabeth, presumably for Florence’s dowry. SP46/45, f. 65.

There is no evidence of Giles’s activities between mid 1418, when he proved his age, and May 1423. At the latter date he was associated with John Brugge of Staunton and John Dygas in entering a recognizance for 200 marks to Sir Nicholas Montgomery† and his son-in-law John Curson*, both of Derbyshire, although in what circumstances is not known. Nearly 14 years later, Montgomery’s widow and Curson acknowledged receiving the last instalment of this sum from Brugge’s widow, Dygas and Giles. CCR, 1422-9, p. 65; 1435-41, p. 116. Although Eldersfield was probably his single most valuable manor, Valued at £30 p.a. after the death of Thomas Berkeley in 1405, at £40 after that of Margaret Berkeley in 1406 and at £20 3s. 8d. after Alice Browning died in 1414: CIPM, xviii. 1020; xix. 42-5; xx. 149. he chose to remain a resident of his native county. Referred to as ‘of Gloucestershire’ at the beginning of his adult career, it was ‘of Coberley’ that he swore the oath to keep the peace administered to the more important men of the kingdom in 1434. CCR, 1422-9, p. 65; CPR, 1429-36, p. 373.

It was in Gloucestershire that Brydges was primarily involved in local administration, although he exercised a brief part in the affairs of Bedfordshire, no doubt thanks to his wife’s interests there. The first of his recorded offices was that of sheriff of Gloucestershire, in which he began an abbreviated term of nine months in February 1430, and which he held again over 20 years later. Shortly after this first term as sheriff ended, he was elected as one of the county’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1431, but he did not become a j.p. until later in the decade and was not appointed to his first ad hoc commission until 1440. On at least one occasion, Brydges may have exploited or abused his position as a local administrator to his own advantage. During the early 1450s, he quarrelled with Thomas* and Richard Hasard*, Nicholas Jones*, John Cricklade* and others from Wiltshire. Brydges, his son Thomas and their friends claimed that in February 1452 the Hasards, Jones, Cricklade and their associates had broken into the close belonging to the franklin Thomas Felpottys at Minety, a Gloucestershire parish situated on that county’s boundary with north Wiltshire, and stolen a sheep. Several months later, a jury indicted the Hasards and the others for the alleged theft at sessions of oyer and terminer in Gloucester, at which Brydges himself was one of the justices. In the wake of the sessions, the indicted men endured nearly four months of imprisonment in Gloucester castle, before securing their acquittal at sessions of gaol delivery in late March 1453. Soon afterwards, Thomas Hasard took legal action against Brydges and his supporters at Westminster, alleging that they had conspired to have him and his own associates arrested and imprisoned. Yet it appears that Brydges ignored the resulting summonses against him and that he never had to answer for his actions. KB27/768, rots. 53d, 55d; 769, rots. 7, 47, 63; 770, rot. 27d; 771, rot 58; 772, rot. 16; 773, rots. 17, 54; 774, rots. 73, 73d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 62. It is very unlikely that the quarrel had begun with the alleged theft of a single sheep but the plea rolls do not reveal any wider background. The Hasards and several of the prisoners at Gloucester were associated with John Nanfan*, KB27/765, rot. 22d; CP40/768, rot. 207d. one of the leading gentry of south-west England, although there is no evidence that Brydges had any dealings with that esquire, let alone quarrelled with him. Most intriguingly, Thomas and Richard Hasard and Jones gained election to the Parliament of 1453 while still prisoners at Gloucester, as MPs for Malmesbury, Wootton Bassett and Cricklade respectively. Why the electors of these Wiltshire boroughs should have returned men not at liberty is hard to explain. Their action certainly has the appearance of a deliberate statement, whether as an expression of opposition to the activities of Brydges and his associates in Wiltshire in particular, or of regional political divisions in general.

Apart from the Crown, Brydges served at least two great magnates, Richard, duke of York, and John Talbot, 1st earl of Shrewsbury. He became an annuitant of York in the mid 1450s, SC6/850/28. but he was probably long associated with that lord by then. He was an executor of the duke’s retainer, Richard Dixton of Usk, who died in the autumn of 1438, Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. xi. 155-60; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 231. and his stepbrother William Browning I* was another of York’s servants. Geography might explain Giles’s connexion with Shrewsbury, whose manor at Painswick lay just a few miles east of the Brydges estate at Haresfield. He was a councillor, feoffee and witness for Talbot, who in 1443 conveyed Cheswardine castle and other estates in Shropshire to him and two other retainers, John Langley II* and Geoffrey Holford, to hold in trust. A.J. Pollard, ‘The Talbots’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 236; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 150-2. Brydges was well acquainted with Holford by that date, suggesting that he had entered the earl’s service some years earlier. In July 1433, he and Geoffrey had received a statute staple from Thomas Wick of Bristol, as a guarantee that he would pay them just over £43 by August 1436. In the event, Wick had failed to honour his commitment and the two men had taken legal action against him. C241/228/143. Furthermore, Giles and Holford had acted together in 1440, as parties to a conveyance of lands at Frampton-on-Severn and elsewhere in Gloucestershire. CP25(1)/79/90/82. It is also possible that Giles inherited his father’s Despenser connexion. In the mid 1440s, he entered into a bond for £50 with Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, grandson of Thomas Brydges’s one-time patron, Thomas, Lord Despenser. The reason for this security is unknown, although following the duke’s death in June 1446 Giles sued the abbot of Gloucester, who had the bond in his safekeeping, for failing to surrender it. Giles also witnessed a charter that the feoffees of the duke’s late mother, Isabel, countess of Warwick and Lady Despenser, made in November 1446. CP40/748, rot. 272; CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 99-102.

It is conceivable that the association with York was significant for Giles’s parliamentary career. The circumstances of his election to his first Parliament, when he was a relatively young man with no administrative experience, are unknown, but his connexion with the duke might have helped him to gain a seat in 1455. Although he was easily of sufficient substance to win election to the Commons in his own right, the Parliament of 1455 met when York dominated national politics, following the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans. It was just days after the battle that Giles received his annuity from York, comprising £10 p.a. from the ducal manor of Bisley near Stroud. A couple of days before the final session of the Parliament began, the duke likewise granted an annuity of ten marks to Thomas Brydges, Giles’s eldest son and heir. Johnson, 160, 229; SC6/850/28.

As one might expect of someone previously associated with York, Giles continued to serve as a j.p. and ad hoc commissioner after Edward IV seized the throne, and within months of Edward’s accession, he was placed on a commission of array intended to meet the threat posed by Lancastrian rebels in Gloucestershire. By now well into his sixties, he was not appointed to any more such commissions after the middle of 1463, although he was to remain on the commission of the peace until his death on 13 Apr. 1467. Giles’s will, in which he appointed his son Thomas as his executor, is no longer extant. The record of his inquisition post mortem in Gloucestershire, held on 6 May 1467, has survived. The jury found that he had died in possession of the manors of Coberley and Haresfield and a moiety of that of Stoke Orchard. His heir, Thomas, was then aged at least 40. C67/49, m. 16; C140/23/15.