BOSWORTH, John

Nothing is known of Bosworth’s origins and there is no evidence, beyond a common surname, to connect him with Richard Bosworth of Market Harborough, who served on the Leicestershire bench in the early fifteenth century. His career was a short one and it seems he died while still relatively young. This would explain why he is not recorded as holding borough office, although he was clearly a man of standing in Northampton. Indeed, in the 1420s he married the widow of a prominent ironmonger, who had been mayor of the town in 1413-14.1 CP40/666, rot. 284d. Gregory was alive as late as 1421 when he was one of the town’s coroners: KB27/641, rex rot. 1. After our MP’s death she claimed to own lands and rents in the town worth as much as £11 p.a., and it may be that the couple also had farmland outside the borough. When defendant in an action of debt in 1433, Bosworth claimed to be resident at nearby Shutlanger.2 SC8/295/14734; CP40/688, rot. 467; 689 rot. 277. He is probably to be distinguished from John Bosworth alias Smyth, a yeoman of Kislingbury, a few miles to the west of the town: CP40/654, rot. 310; 658, rot. 440d.

Despite its shortness, Bosworth’s career was an eventful one. If a florid indictment taken before the county j.p.s. at Daventry on 24 Apr. 1428 is to be taken at face value, he had been involved in a serious assault four days before. A Leicestershire esquire, Thomas Kynnesman of Knaptoft, a near relation of Stephen Kynnesman† (MP for Northampton in the Parliament of December 1421), had been peacefully enjoying a drink in the Le Swan alias Le Darbyes Inne when a gang of 40, headed by one of the leading men of the town, John Spriggy†, and including our MP, violently attacked him. Only when the town’s mayor and bailiffs arrived was Kynnesman’s ordeal ended.3 KB29/669, rex rot. 18. This matter was still pending in the court of King’s bench when Bosworth was elected to represent Northampton in the Parliament of 1429. Whether it had any bearing on his willingness to stand can only be a matter of speculation, but, in other respects, he put his election to good use. On 18 Nov., while the Parliament was in session, he secured a royal grant of the alnage of cloths for sale in his native county and neighbouring Rutland (for a term of 12 years from Michaelmas 1431).4 C219/14/1; CFR, xv. 284. Less happily, six months after the end of his parliamentary service he was appointed to the burdensome office of tax collector, which, as a member of the assembly which had granted the tax, he should have been able to avoid.

When indicted for the attack on Kynnesman Bosworth was described as ‘yeoman’, but he was more frequently styled either ‘draper’ or, more interestingly, ‘drover’ (as, for example, when he was distrained in 1431 to answer Thomas Brake, parson of Oundle, for a debt of £30). The latter description raises the possibility that he is to be identified with his namesake, appointed to buy beef and mutton for the royal household for a six-month period from May 1424, but there is no other evidence to support such an identification.5 CP40/682, rot. 352; CPR, 1422-9, p. 138.

In Hilary term 1433 Bosworth was again involved with Spriggy when they, together with two lesser men of the town, were defendants in an action of debt sued by Richard Quatermayns* and Robert Doyle. There can be no doubt that this suit was related to a bond in £200 to the plaintiffs into which our MP and Spriggy had entered on 4 July 1429, although there is nothing to show what lay behind this hefty obligation.6 CP40/688, rot. 430; CCR, 1422-9, p. 467. Bosworth was also closely associated with another leading townsman, John Bray*. At an unknown date he joined Bray in a bond in £53 to a Coventry dyer, Thomas Swayn, as payment for Bray’s purchase of 22 ‘clothes of violet’.7 C1/12/66. He was still alive in early 1434, on his appointment as a tax collector for the third time, but he was dead by the following Michaelmas term, when his widow, as his administratrix, was sued for a debt of over £24 by Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p.8 Her failure to answer led to her waiver, of which she was pardoned in Oct. 1437: CP40/695, rot. 220d; CPR, 1436-41, p. 102.

Bosworth’s widow was an active litigant, both on her own account and as her late husband’s administratrix.9 It is not clear whether he left a will. In two actions of debt she and the town clerk, John Launden (or Lanney), are described as responsible for the administration of our MP’s goods: CP40/702, rot. 163; 710, rot. 19d. Yet, in another action pending at the same time, Thomas Acton is described as his executor: CP40/706, rot. 19d. In the late 1430s she presented two petitions to the chancellor. In the first, describing herself as ‘a pouere wedowe late despoyled [who has] litell helpe’, she alleged that on 7 Aug. 1437 a yeoman and plumber of Northampton had entered her house and taken two chests and a bag containing her muniments. In the second, she complained of vexatious common-law actions sued against her by one of her tenants.10 C1/9/289, 12/200. Very much more important, however, was a petition she presented directly to the King against a formidable local figure, William Tresham*. She complained that Tresham, by his ‘greet puissance’ in the town and surrounding county, had deprived of her landed property worth £11 p.a., and it may be that those who had allegedly taken her muniments had been acting as his agents (although she herself did not make such a claim).11 SC8/295/14734. This petition cannot be dated accurately. It was presented when William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, was chamberlain (and so dates from before his death in June 1441) and reached the King at Kennington on 4 May. Unfortunately the King is known to have been there at that date in every year between 1437 and 1440 inclusive: B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 361-2. Whether she gained redress does not appear, but it is likely that her lands were part of the large accumulation of property in Northampton that Tresham left at his murder in 1450.