BERE, William

William Bere was born into an old established Cornish family which by the mid fifteenth century had provided several MPs for south-western constituencies.6 Bere must be distinguished from the Calais merchant stapler and Crown creditor of the 1440s and 50s: E159/227, brevia Mich. rot. 33d; E401/820, m. 10; E403/747, m. 6; 781, m. 6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 316; 1452-61, p. 210. While he appears to have been a younger son, he may have benefited from provision made for him by his parents, for by a fine of early 1466 he was able to settle the remainder of at least one manor which had previously belonged to his putative mother’s family, that of Cergeaux, on feoffees.7 Vivian, 29; CP25(1)/34/44. Other landholdings in Tregabrowne and Tredudwell (in Lanteglos-by-Fowey) were acquired by purchase, and it is likely that the assessment of Bere’s total landholdings in Cornwall at just £5 p.a. in 1451 represented a substantial undervaluation.8 C1/62/307; E179/87/92.

William probably trained in the law and although the details of his education are obscure he seems to have attracted the attention of the Westminster authorities, who from the autumn of 1439 appointed him to a string of commissions to combat the piracy rife in the south-west. In 1445 he was entrusted with the collection of a parliamentary subsidy in his native county, and around this time he became increasingly active as an attorney and surety in the royal courts as well as in the locality. At least in part, this increased activity resulted from the web of litigation surrounding the unlawful activities of the notorious Richard Tregoose* into which he had been drawn. Alongside other leading members of the Cornish gentry, including Sir John Arundell II* of Trerice, John* and Richard Tresithney* and his putative brother Thomas, Bere had apparently entered the fray on the side of Tregoose’s opponent Robert Borlase, and he and his associates were accused of seeking to secure Tregoose’s conviction on trumped up charges of cattle rustling, a conspiracy for which Tregoose sought damages of no less than £3,000.9 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 459, 495; KB27/739, rot. 38; 742, rots. 44d, 112d; 743, rots. 13d, 16d; 749, rot. 67d; 750, rot. 6; 751, rot. 48d; 752, rot. 48d; 758, rots. 11, 14d; CP40/732, rot. 117. This was not the only accusation of this kind facing Bere: in early 1445 the justices of common pleas heard that he had been among a group of Cornishmen headed by John Nanfan*, a leading retainer of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, and which also included the prior of Bodmin, John Nicoll I*, James Nanfan* and Thomas Lanhergy* (three leading Bodmin burgesses), Oliver Tregasowe*, William Trethewy* and Thomas Tregodek*, who had conspired to have the tanner William Clerk indicted and imprisoned on charges of having unlawfully taken two chests of deeds and muniments (valued at a staggering £1,000) said to belong to Henry, duke of Warwick, and a group of associates which included Henry Bodrugan†, but probably relating to the young Bodrugan’s inheritance.10 CP40/736, rot. 338. Other accusations against Bere included charges of mayhem brought against him in association with the steward of the duchy of Cornwall, Sir William Bonville*, by one Richard Dawne, which were quashed by royal letters of privy seal in January 1443.11 KB145/6/21.

If there was any truth in any of these accusations, they do not seem to have affected Bere’s standing in his community. In 1447 when one of the Cornish coroners, Robert Pyne of Ham (who had held this office since 1435), procured writs for his release from office on the multiple grounds of illness and preoccupation, Bere was chosen by the shire court to replace him.12 C242/11/4; CCR, 1441-7, p. 417. He may have enjoyed his official duties, for unlike many of his peers he does not seem actively to have sought to be dismissed. Indeed, he was re-appointed after Edward IV’s accession,13 C242/12/2. and appears to have continued as coroner until his death, with the probable exception of the months during which he held the mutually exclusive office of sheriff. Even before assuming the coronership he had attended the parliamentary elections for the shire, held at Launceston in January 1447, and attested the sheriff’s indenture, but although he was to do so on three further occasions, his attendance was too irregular to suggest that he either regarded it as part of his official duties or took any exceptional interest in parliamentary affairs.14 C219/15/4, 15/7, 16/2, 17/1.

By the early 1450s Bere had established a close link with the Reskymer family which he was to maintain for more than a decade. He served the head of the family, Ralph Reskymer, as a surety and feoffee and attested his deeds.15 Cornw. RO, Arundell mss, AR1/266; C253/32/223; CAD, iv. A10320, v. A12428; CCR, 1461-8, p. 148. As a reward, in July 1453 Reskymer granted Bere life-tenure of his holdings in the manor of ‘Trefoward’,16 Probably Trevowah in Crantock. at an annual rent of 7s., and this grant may have supplemented a settlement of lands in Rayle (in Illogan) made by Ralph’s kinsman William Reskymer the elder two years previously.17 CAD, iv. A10304, A10176. Other clients included the influential Sir Thomas Arundell* of Tolverne,18 C1/57/348. but neither this connexion nor joint litigation against Richard Tregoose was able to prevent conflict with Sir Thomas’s kinsmen, the Arundells of Trerice. Bere’s dispute with this family may have related to pasture rights, for in late 1446 he was forced to sue out a writ of replevin to try and recover livestock which Sir John Arundell II* and his son Nicholas* were said to have seized.19 C244/53/99.

Bere’s election to Parliament as a knight of the shire in the summer of 1455 was a curious choice. His colleague was the royal esquire and experienced parliamentarian Thomas Bodulgate*, and Bere was by far the most insubstantial landowner to have been returned by the shire for some years. It is possible that he had established a reputation for his conscientious conduct as coroner and was regarded as a safe pair of hands in the evident political crisis which had not been resolved by the battle of St. Albans a few weeks earlier. Certainly, he was not short of supporters in the shire court. The sheriff, John Petit, had two years earlier witnessed the grant of lands by Ralph Reskymer to Bere, and the men who subsequently put their seals to the election indenture included, apart from Bere’s brother Thomas and his patron William Reskymer, a group of important men from Bere’s home town of Bodmin, led by James Flamank*, the mayor, and including other former mayors and leading burgesses like Thomas Luccomb* the elder, his son Thomas the younger, and John Pentyre.20 C219/16/3; CAD, iv. A10176.

Nothing is known of Bere’s activities in Parliament, but it is possible that he was among those members of the Commons who came out strongly in support of the renewed appointment of Richard, duke of York, as Protector during the King’s incapacity, for after York had been appointed and before the Commons rose for Christmas he was added to the Cornish bench. It seems likely that Bere was identified with the duke’s cause, for in 1459, as the conflict between the adherents of the queen, Margaret of Anjou, and those of Duke Richard grew increasingly acrimonious and the country drifted towards open civil war, he was dismissed from the bench. If his association with the Yorkist cause had proved deterimental to his career in the first instance, within two years it proved an asset when York’s son Edward, earl of March, ascended the throne as Edward IV in the spring of 1461. Bere became one of the new regime’s early supporters and was entrusted with the array of forces to secure the south-west for the young King. Further office followed four years later, when he was pricked sheriff of Cornwall, his brother Thomas serving as his under sheriff.21 KB27/819, rex rot. 6. On relinquishing the shrievalty, Bere was rewarded by reappointment to the bench, this time, in recognition of his years of service, as a member of the quorum. It was probably around this time that the burgesses of Liskeard called upon his help in the defence of their freedoms, entrusting him with the general pardon granted to the town in 1425, as well as the charters of confirmation of Henry VI and Edward IV.22 Cornw. RO, Liskeard bor. recs., B/Lis/7. He was not to live to enjoy such prominence for long. By the summer of 1468 the dissatisfaction of George, duke of Clarence, and Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, with King Edward’s rule once more threatened to throw the realm into turmoil. In July Bere was once more appointed to a commission of array, but he did not live to see King Henry return to the throne of England, for he died before the end of September 1469, only months after serving on a final commission of inquiry.23 C140/24/20; C261/1/44-45; CFR, xx. 246. As he left no offspring of his own, his brother Thomas became his heir.24 C1/57/348.