HARDENE, Richard (d.c.1434), of Harden and Great Bedwyn, Wilts.

Resident in Bedwyn, CP40/664, att. rot. 2d. the borough he represented in Parliament, this MP belonged to an old established local family. His putative father, Robert Hardene, was recorded as a parishioner of the church at Great Bedwyn in 1412, and had earlier witnessed deeds on behalf of the leading landowner of the neighbourhood, Sir William Sturmy* of Wolf Hall, Wilts. Hist. Centre, Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/32; Reg. John Chandler (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxxix), no. 354. distinguished for his role in national government as a diplomat and Member of 12 Parliaments, including that of 1404 (Oct.) in which he served as Speaker. Richard continued this association with the knight. For instance, he was asked to attest transactions for Sturmy’s nephew and future executor Robert Erle* regarding property in Burbage and elsewhere near Bedwyn (in 1414 and 1417). Wilts. Hist. Centre, Savernake mss, 9/6/56-58. He himself acquired lands nearby at Wilton near Wexcombe in 1416, and together with John Bird* (for whom he appears to have been acting), more at Knook in 1419. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton in Great Bedwyn mss, 9/27/2; Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), no. 371.

A lawyer and ‘gentleman’, Hardene took briefs as an attorney at the assizes at Salisbury in Henry V’s reign and again in 1423, JUST1/1527, rot. 24; 1536, rots. 36, 37. and is known to have served as clerk of the peace in his home county for at least three years. There is no ready explanation for his appearance at the Exchequer in November 1419 as a mainpernor for Henry Kays, the archdeacon of Norwich, and Nicholas Thorley, then granted pensions pertaining to the alien priory of Panfield in Essex. CFR, xiv. 319-20. Hardene was party to conveyances of land near Hungerford on behalf of the Hoppegras family in the summer of 1423, CCR, 1422-9, p. 75; E159/200, commissiones Mich. rot. 1. not long before his first election to Parliament for his home town.

By the time of Hardene’s second election to the Parliament which assembled at Leicester between February and June 1426, Sir William Sturmy had come to rely on his assistance to a considerable extent. Wilts. Hist. Centre, Collingbourne Brunton or Valence mss, 9/12/7-10. In August that year he named our MP as a co-feoffee with his friend Thomas Polton, bishop of Worcester, and John Benger† junior, of lands and tenements he had purchased in Aldbourne, Wiltshire, and at an unknown date (said in his inquisition post mortem to have been ‘long before’ he died in March 1427), he also entrusted Hardene with his manor of Knowle and certain lands and rents as a member of one group of feoffees, and of manors in Hampshire with another. E326/10711; CIPM, xxii. 716-17. Just six weeks after Sir William’s death Hardene and his co-feoffees conveyed the Aldbourne property to the knight’s nephew Robert Erle. Together with Bishop Polton he was also a feoffee of the manor of Burbage, which along with the bailiwick of the stewardship of Savernake forest they transferred shortly afterwards to John Seymour I*, Sturmy’s grandson and coheir. Then, in November, they and Seymour obtained royal pardons for illicit transactions regarding a moiety of the manor of Stapleford (held of the Crown in chief), and for entering it without royal licence. E326/8244, 8248, 8251; Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/43; CPR, 1422-9, p. 449.

In 1427 Hardene was engaged in lawsuits in the common pleas, one concerning allegations by the prior of Ivychurch that he owed £3 6s. on a bond (which he denied was of his making), and another with a merchant called John Claymond of Corton. He may have hoped to resolve his differences with the latter by entering an agreement in July 1429 at the statute staple at Salisbury, along with William Ludlow II*, to pay Claymond £15 for merchandise they had purchased from him, but he and Ludlow failed to pay on the appointed day in October, and a writ was sent to the sheriff for their arrest. CP40/664, att. rot. 2d; 666, rot. 309d; C241/223/4. Despite this, two months later Hardene was given the responsible position of collector of parliamentary subsidies. By Hilary term 1432 he had fallen out with Henry Chancy* (his fellow MP of 1423), who claimed that he owed him £14. CP40/684, rot. 143; 688, rot. 204d. Hardene was listed in the spring of 1434 among the men of Wiltshire required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain malefactors, CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. but by then he may have already died. In May that year Richard Sotewell* was included among the persons the keeper of Savernake forest was ordered to arrest, in his case ‘for the relief of Richard Hardene’. E146/2/35. His relationship to Sotewell, with whom he had sat in the Leicester Parliament, is not recorded, but both belonged to the circle of Sir William Sturmy, and had they still been alive in 1451 they would almost certainly have been called upon to give testimony on (Sir) John Seymour’s behalf in the disputes over the former Sturmy estates, when the timing of transactions allegedly authorized by Sir William on his deathbed was called into question. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 554-6.