BARRE, Sir John

Barre’s career is notable in an important respect. He was one of the few retainers of Richard, duke of York, to abandon their lord in the 1450s as the duke became increasingly alienated from the Lancastrian court. Given the strength of support for the duke in Barre’s native county of Herefordshire, his decision was an apparently bold one, contradicting his long association not only with the duke but also with such former friends as (Sir) Walter Devereux I*. If bold, however, it is also readily explicable as a response to the pressure of other relationships, which could not be reconciled with the duke’s growing militancy. Barre had strong family connexions with the Lancastrian hierarchy: John Talbot, 2nd earl of Shrewsbury, treasurer in the late 1450s, was his first cousin; his brother-in-law, (Sir) William Catesby*, was a knight for Henry VI’s body in the 1450s, and his nephew, Thomas Cornwall of Burford, had a place in the royal household and was to show himself to be a committed Lancastrian in the civil war of 1459-61.

The Barres, in origin citizens of Hereford resident at Barr’s Court, grew rich in the first part of the fourteenth century. Walter de la Barre (d.1302/3) and his son, Thomas, added to the family’s considerable holdings in the city by acquiring small parcels of land in 13 of the surrounding vills, most notably at Rotherwas in Dinedor, and slightly further afield at Little Marcle, where their social advance was marked by the acquisition of the advowson. Thomas acted decisively to preserve the family’s wealth in its male line after his eldest son, Walter† (MP for Hereford in the Parliament of March 1336), died leaving only a daughter. By final concords in 1339 he provided for his six surviving sons by dividing his lands between them, ensuring, by limiting a series of successive tail male estates to them in an order varying from share to share, both that his family would have the best possible chance of perpetuating itself in the male line and that the lands would tend to reunite in the hands of any line that survived.8 J. Duncumb, Hist. Herefs. (contd. by Cooke), iv. 97-98; CP25(1)/82/40/98-99; C.G.S. Foljambe and C. Reade, House of Cornewall, 192-3. On the negative side the settlement also ensured that his sons would be much less wealthy than he had been. Fortunately, however, for the family’s future standing, reunification was quickly achieved and, even more fortunately, the Barres were advanced to the ranks of the leading local gentry by the unforeseen consequences of the marriage of Thomas’s son, another Thomas† (our MP’s great-grandfather), to Hawise, sister of Sir Richard Pembridge†. When this marriage was made in the 1340s her prospects of inheritance were slight, but, on the childless death of her fraternal nephew, Henry, in the autumn of 1375, her son, Sir Thomas de la Barre†, divided the Pembridge inheritance with her sister’s son, the famous soldier, Sir Richard Burley (d.1387) of Birley (Herefordshire). The moiety apportioned to the Barres comprised, in Herefordshire, the manors of Clehonger, a few miles to the west of Hereford, Snogsash (in Foy) and Mere Court, at the former of which the family made their principal residence; a moiety of the manor of Mathern in Monmouthshire, and manors much further afield at Ayot St. Lawrence in Hertfordshire and Burgate, with the hundred of Fordingbridge, in Hampshire.9 CIPM, xiv. 191-2; CP25(1)/289/53/86. Soon after, in 1378, de la Barre alienated his interest in the manor of Burgate to Burley in return for an annual rent of £20 6s. 8d. and an undertaking that this rent would eventually be replaced by property of equal value in the Welsh Marches. Before, however, suitable lands were settled, the rent was effectively lost with the attainder of Burley’s uncle, Sir Simon Burley, and any prospects that it would be restored were more or less extinguished when the Crown granted the manor, for a consideration, to claimants under an entail predating Pembridge’s title.10 CCR, 1377-81, p. 215; CPR, 1377-81, p. 345; CIMisc. v. 270; CCR, 1389-92, pp. 136-7; CPR, 1388-92, pp. 287, 370. Our MP’s attempt to recover it in the late 1460s came to nothing.

Armed with these extensive properties, Sir Thomas was a considerable figure. A household knight under Richard II, he adapted easily to the Lancastrian usurpation of 1399 and enjoyed a long career in local administration. He sat in at least six Parliaments between 1386 and 1416, three each for Herefordshire and Hertfordshire, and served four terms as sheriff. He also contracted a very favourable match for his son, another Sir Thomas, to one of the sisters of Gilbert, Lord Talbot (d.1418). Our MP was born to this couple in his grandfather’s lifetime. On 31 Jan. 1412 he was baptised in the church of St. Mary at Rotherwas, his bright prospects made apparent to those assembled there in the identities of the priest at whose hands he received the sacrament, Robert Mascall, bishop of Hereford, and of his godparents, his uncle, John Talbot, Lord Furnival (afterwards earl of Shrewsbury), and Agnes Crophill, widow of Sir Walter Devereux† of Weobley.11 CIPM, xxiv. 125. Shortly thereafter, however, the family suffered a minor reverse. In 1420 both Sir Thomases died, leaving our MP as heir to the family inheritance when only a boy.12 The elder Sir Thomas died in Dec. 1420, not in Dec. 1419 as in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 134: CIPM, xxi. 498-9. The younger Thomas was alive in May 1420, but he died (probably on campaign in France) before his father: E101/49/36; Hants. RO, Bulkeley and Coventry mss, 1M53/378. None the less, his upbringing was kept out of the hands of strangers. In February 1421 his mother and her brother, his Talbot godfather, agreed to pay the King as much as 600 marks for his marriage and wardship; and it was presumably they who were responsible for his excellent marriage to the daughter and heiress-presumptive of another Hertfordshire landowner, John Hotoft.13 CPR, 1416-22, p. 315. The date of the marriage is unknown. It had certainly taken place by Dec. 1438: Herts. RO, Lytton mss, DE/K/21916. Since, however, the bride’s parents were married by 1412, it probably took place several years before. In contracting it our MP’s guardians were exploiting existing connexions. The Barre manor of Ayot St. Lawrence lay only a few miles from Hotoft’s home at Knebworth, and the elder Sir Thomas and Hotoft had been elected together to represent Hertfordshire in the Parliament of March 1416. The marriage was hence a natural one, and it was to prove very profitable for our MP. Not only did it bring him an influential father-in-law – Hotoft was treasurer of the royal household in the 1420s and one of the chamberlains of the Exchequer in the 1430s – it also brought him the prospect of further extending the family estate. The bride was, at her marriage, her father’s heiress-presumptive, and, as it transpired, she fell heir to the Hotoft inheritance on her father’s death in 1443.

On 1 May 1433 Barre’s proof of age was taken at Hereford, and he had seisin of the lands of his paternal grandfather.14 C139/61/49; CCR, 1429-35, p. 207. These were worth some 100 marks p.a., if the values given in his grandfather’s inquisition post mortem are reliable, and, on his mother’s death in 1436, he also inherited whatever had been settled on her at marriage (of which there is, unfortunately, no record).15 CIPM, xxi. 498-9; xxiv. 670; CFR, xvi. 297. His resources were further augmented in another way. On 25 Apr., a few days before his proof of age, he was granted a considerable annuity of £20, assigned on the Herefordshire lordship of Marden, by Richard, duke of York, another who had but lately come of age.16 SC11/818; CPR, 1452-61, p. 548. So generous a grant was a striking endorsement of the high standing of the Barres in their native county, but it probably also owed something to a personal recommendation. The ubiquitous local lawyer, John Russell I*, had been retained by our MP’s grandfather, and, as one of the feoffees of Edward, duke of York, had shared the custody of Duke Richard’s lands during his minority. He may have been responsible for introducing our MP to the new duke, a consideration made the more probable by Russell’s own readiness to trust our MP with the task of establishing a chantry for him in Hereford cathedral.17 CIPM, xxi. 498; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 247; Herefs. RO, LC deeds 9132, no. 136.

Barre’s relationship with the young duke was to determine the course of his early career. He was soon active in his service. On 3 May 1436, on the latter’s appointment as King’s lieutenant in Normandy, he sued out letters of protection as departing there in his retinue, and he was probably in the army which landed at Honfleur on the following 7 June. If so, he was absent from home when his mother died two months later, and is likely to have remained in France until the duke’s return in November 1437.18 DKR, xlviii. 310; C76/118, m. 12; CIPM, xxiv. 670; CFR, xvi. 297. There is, at all events, nothing to suggest that he was back in England until June 1438, when, in company with other leading Herefordshire gentry, he witnessed a family settlement made by Thomas de la Hay*, once the husband of his long-dead paternal aunt, Margaret.19 Herefs. RO, Urishay Estate mss, W85/4.

Barre was a very surprising omission from those distrained to take up knighthood in Herefordshire in 1439.20 It is possible that he was not distrained in 1439 because he was already a knight. He is described as such in royal letters of 3 Dec. 1439: E159/216, brevia Hil. rot 16d. Yet he is not designated a knight in York’s muster roll of Mar. 1441 nor when nominated as a feoffee by Devereux in the following June: E101/53/33; Raymond Richards mss, DV 20. That knighthood, however, was not to be long delayed. He resumed his military career when the duke of York was reappointed as lieutenant-general of France. On 26 Mar. 1441 he mustered in the duke’s army at Portsdown, but, due to the problems the Exchequer had in raising the army’s wages, departure was delayed. Not until June did the army land in Normandy.21 E101/53/33. He was knighted soon afterwards, perhaps at the relief of the siege of Pontoise in the following month and in company with Walter Devereux. None the less, despite his new military rank, this was to be his last period of service abroad, and he soon abandoned a military for an administrative career. In November 1442 he was named on the pricked list for the shrievalty of his native county, and, although passed over, three months later he was appointed to the Herefordshire bench. Indeed, a new commission was issued with the sole aim of adding him to the bench: he was not named to the commission issued on 12 Feb. and he is the only change to that issued four days later.22 C47/34/2/4; CPR, 1441-6, p. 471.

Soon after, Barre was given greater reason to stay at home. The death of his father-in-law, Hotoft, at Easter 1443 significantly augmented his lands. His wife now inherited the manor of Knebworth with holdings in neighbouring vills (together valued at £36 in the inquisition post mortem of his daughter in 1489), a manor at Heston in Middlesex and lands in Stoughton and Burton in Leicestershire, with the office of bailiff of the fee of Winchester in Leicestershire and Warwickshire.23 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 512; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2724. These new holdings, which made Barre a major landholder in Hertfordshire, did not lead him to realign his geographical interests. He was, for the second consecutive year, on the Herefordshire shrieval pricked list in 1443, but again he was passed over. If, however, he was not considered of sufficient seniority for the shrievalty (or, perhaps, he had successfully lobbied against appointment), other responsibilities soon came his way. Two years later he was elected to represent his native county in Parliament, and, on 30 Mar. 1445, during the first recess of this long Parliament, Bishop Spofford named him as his steward in the marches.24 C47/34/2/2; CFR, xvii. 324, 329; Reg. Spofford, 260; Hereford Cathedral Archs. no. 1159. Not surprisingly, given his high standing, he was one of 21 of the county’s gentry who not long afterwards were granted annuities charged on the Beauchamp lordship of Abergavenny, when that lordship was in the hands of royal custodians. He was paid £10, the second highest individual sum behind that to be paid to Devereux. The purpose of these grants was the protection of the lordship against Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, a rival claimant (in right of his wife), but it is not known whether they were made by the young Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, recently-entered into his inheritance, or by the keepers. If the latter were the grantors then the annuity represented for Barre another benefit of his service to the duke of York, who headed the keepers; if the grant was made by Duke Henry then the annuity marked a new, and potentially significant, lordly association, which was cut short by Warwick’s premature death on 11 June 1446.25 E368/220, rot. 122d; M.A. Hicks, Warwick, 33-35.

Rich, well connected and active, Barre made his profitable second marriage in this period. It is not known when his first wife died, only that she was dead by the autumn of 1447 when he was already the husband of Joan Rugge, a very wealthy heiress and widow.26 SC2/176/101. Her paternal inheritance comprised the manors of Charlcombe (near Bath) and Norton Malreward (near Bristol) and a moiety of Shurton (north-west of Bridgwater) in Somerset, the manors of Hanham and Upton Cheyney in Gloucestershire, and that of Cricklade in Wiltshire. She also brought dower and jointure from her first marriage to the Gloucestershire esquire, Robert Greyndore, that is, in dower, lands and rent in Mitcheldean and other vills in the Forest of Dean, ten burgages in both Monmouth and Chepstow; and, in a jointure settled in 1419, the manors of Clearwell (in the Forest of Dean), and Noxton and Nass (in Lydney). Judging from her inquisitions post mortem, the total value of the lands Joan had from her father and first husband was £109 p.a., but the real figure must have been significantly higher as her Wiltshire and Somerset lands are not included in these inquisitions.27 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 246; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 116. Incomplete rentals of her dower and jointure lands in Glos. value them at c. £47 p.a. in 1462 and c. £54 p.a. in 1478: Glos. Archs. Gage mss, 1677/1224-5. Oddly, however, Barre was assessed on an income of only £80 p.a. in the Herefs. subsidy returns of 1451: E179/117/64. Although, however, the marriage brought Barre wealth, it had an important disadvantage. He did not have a son (at least, there is no record that he had one and he died leaving only a daughter), and his new wife was coming to the end of her child-bearing years.

The marriage had probably already taken place when Barre, on 21 Jan. 1447, was again elected to represent Herefordshire in Parliament in company with Devereux. Not improbably the two knights travelled in the duke of York’s retinue to the assembly’s unusual venue of Bury St. Edmunds, and both were among the witnesses to a charter sealed by the duke there on 28 Feb., 18 days after the Parliament had begun. Their attitude and that of their master to the dangerously contentious business of the Parliament – the court’s attack on the duke of Gloucester – is uncertain, but it was clearly not one of obvious hostility.28 C219/15/4; CPR, 1446-52, p. 231; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 66. A year after this Parliament Barre was added to the Gloucestershire bench, a reflection of his second wife’s lands there, and thereafter he took a part in the administrative affairs of that county. He also sought to establish connexions among its gentry. On 19 Feb. 1450, at his home at Clehonger, he entered into a contract for the marriage of his daughter, Joan, to a Gloucestershire esquire, William Yate of Arlingham (just over the Severn from the Forest of Dean). The terms of the contract were extremely favourable to him as the bride’s father: in return for a large jointure of 40 marks p.a., which must have represented all or nearly all of the groom’s estate, Barre modestly undertook to pay a portion of 40 marks, to array his daughter on the day of the marriage and provide for her for a year thereafter. It is tempting to assume that these seemingly unequal terms were predicated on the bride’s status as the coheiress of her late mother and as coheiress-presumptive to her father, but later evidence shows she was illegitimate. This might explain why Yate soon repudiated the bargain. In Michaelmas term 1452 Barre sued him on the bond of £100 the prospective groom had entered into for performance, and Yate unsuccessfully pleaded in bar that the marriage was refused by the putative bride not him.29 CP40/767, rot. 626. Several years later Joan married one of Barre’s new Gloucestershire neighbours, John Ashurst, constable of the castle of St. Briavels. Her illegitimacy is indicated by the fact that her daughter by Ashurst, Anne, wife of William Wyrall of Bicknor Court, did not inherit any of Sir John’s lands.30 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. i. 88. Another indication of her illegitimacy is her exclusion from the lengthy bede roll of the chantry Barre founded in 1475: CPR, 1467-77, p. 425.

None the less, despite his new concerns in Gloucestershire, Barre’s career remained focused on his native Herefordshire. Although, in August 1450, he was commissioned to assess contributions to the parliamentary subsidy in the former county, the other ad hoc commissions to which he was appointed on either side of 1450 were in the latter. Further, in November 1448 he was again on the shrieval pricked list for Herefordshire, and he headed the attestors to both the county’s parliamentary elections in 1449. At about the same time – during the brief bishopric of Richard Beauchamp at Hereford -- he acted with the bishop’s chaplain in a dispute over the patronage of the church of Goodrich in the county.31 CFR, xviii. 172; C47/34/2/5; C219/15/6, 7; Reg. Myllyng (Canterbury and York Soc. xxvi), 126. His apparent concentration on Herefordshire affairs makes rather surprising his return to the Parliament of 6 Nov. 1450 for Gloucestershire. The elections to this assembly are to be seen in the context of the duke of York’s return from Ireland two months before. This ensured that the elections were conducted in an atmosphere of heightened political tension, with the duke actively canvassing to ensure that he would have several of his leading supporters in the Commons. At the Herefordshire election on 24 Oct. Devereux was elected, and three days later Barre was elected for the neighbouring county. Some interesting bargaining must have lain behind these two elections. One might have expected that, as Barre did not take the other Herefordshire seat, he stood aside to make way for the return of another of York’s men, secure in the knowledge that he would be elected for Gloucestershire. Yet the other shire knight was not a Yorkist but rather an influential local lawyer, Thomas Fitzharry*, who was later to show himself a committed Lancastrian. Perhaps Fitzharry was well connected enough to deter opposition – he had represented the county in the two previous Parliaments when, incidentally, Barre had headed the attestors – and Gloucestershire represented for Barre the line of least resistance. However this may be, he used his time at Westminster to forward his own affairs as well as those of his master. On 28 Nov. he joined Devereux in securing writs of supersedeas in respect of their failure to act on the royal commission issued to them in 1445 to inquire into the Herefordshire lands of Lord Fanhope. A few days later, with Parliament still in its first session, he was finally pricked as sheriff of Herefordshire, one of only two sheriffs with strong connexions with the duke of York (the other was Thomas Herbert† in Shropshire).32 C219/16/1; CPR, 1441-6, p. 465; E159/227, brevia Mich. rot. 27d; Johnson, 92.

On 26 May 1451, as sheriff, Barre sat on a commission to inquire into the value of the earldom of Pembroke, which had come back into royal hands on the death of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Other of the commissioners, notably Devereux, were servants of the duke of York, and this has led to the speculation that the inquiry was preparatory to a proposed grant of the earldom to the duke. If so, the hope was disappointed.33 Johnson, 97; CPR, 1446-52, p. 445; CCR, 1447-54, p. 223.

It was also as sheriff that, on the following 2 Aug., Barre troubled to attend the installation of the courtier cleric, Reynold Boulers, as bishop of Hereford. Boulers had been among the courtiers for whom, in the first session of the Parliament of 1450, the Commons had demanded banishment, and it may be that his appointment was unwelcome to York. It would, however, be premature to see Barre’s attendance as a sign of tension in his relationship with the duke, not least because at least one other of York’s leading local servants, Thomas Bromwich*, was also present.34 Reg. Boulers (Canterbury and York Soc. xxv), 11.

Two important personal matters engaged Barre’s attention in the early 1450s. The childlessness of his second wife Joan posed a threat to his tenure of her inheritance should she predecease him. Yet any effort to insure him against that risk would be to the disinheritance, albeit only potential and temporary, of her daughter, Elizabeth, wife of John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. It is surely more than coincidence that Elizabeth’s death in childbirth on 1 Sept. 1452 was the prelude to a settlement in our MP’s favour. By a final concord levied in the following November part of Joan’s patrimony – the manors of East Hanham and Upton Cheyney – was settled on Barre for life, with remainder to Joan and her heirs.35 CP25(1)/79/91/119. This settlement did not offend the interests of Elizabeth’s powerful widower, then treasurer of England, for a widower’s right to hold his late wife’s estates by the courtesy was limited to lands she held in possession. At the time this fine was levied Sir John was also engaged in the arrangements for the marriage of his sister Joan. She had been widowed in 1445 on the death of Kynard de la Bere*, with whom he had served in the duke of York’s retinue in 1436. An esquire for the King’s body, William Catesby, had become a suitor for her hand, and, according to a letter written by Catesby to a friend on 15 Sept. 1452, Barre was concerned that the marriage should only take place after a formal contract had been drawn up and, to this end, he had approached ‘my lady of Shrewsbury’ (that is, Margaret Beauchamp, second wife of the earl of Shrewsbury) for assistance. This potential disagreement was quickly resolved, and the marriage took place in the following June.36 SC1/51/147. In a way that could only be vaguely predicted at the time, this marriage was to have consequences for Barre’s political allegiances in the increasingly troubled years that followed. It is likely that one factor in his defection from the duke of York was friendship with Catesby, who, in the late 1450s, was a significant figure in Henry VI’s household.

The chronology of that defection can only be tentatively reconstructed. Unlike Devereux and other of the duke’s men in Herefordshire, he stood aside from the Dartford rising in February 1452, and, on the following 27 Sept., he headed the county jury before royal justices sent to investigate the disturbances in the county.37 KB9/34/1, m. 3. Yet this was not the jury that had laid indictments against Devereux and his adherents some six weeks before, and the heat had already gone out of the affair as process against Devereux had been discontinued. Further, on 12 Aug., three days after these indictments, Barre had been named in royal letters of dedimus potestatem as one of ten men ready to offer surety for Devereux’s good behaviour. As it transpired he did not do so, but he did join Devereux in offering surety for Henry ap Griffith, a Welsh esquire implicated in the rising who had campaigned with him and Devereux under the duke of York in France.38 KB9/34/2, mm. 46, 49. Other evidence also implies that Barre remained in the Yorkist camp after 1452. On 19 Apr. 1453 he joined his old associate, Devereux, in witnessing a jointure settlement of land at Taddington (Gloucestershire) on Anne, daughter of another retainer of the duke of York, Sir Leonard Hastings*, and her husband, Thomas, son of Thomas Ferrers of Tamworth (Staffordshire). More significantly, on 4 Nov. 1454, during the duke’s first protectorate, he was pricked as sheriff of Herefordshire for the second time, and, as late as Hilary term 1456, he was joint-plaintiff with the duke’s receiver-general, John Milewater, in an action of debt.39 Herefs. RO, Sir Thomas Phillipps mss, AH81/18; CP40/780, rot. 357d; 782, rot. 54; CPR, 1452-61, p. 384.

The most likely supposition is that Barre’s defection came soon afterwards, a product of the dramatic local events that followed the end of the duke’s second protectorate. There was a major Yorkist rising in Herefordshire and the marches, culminating in August 1456 with a raid on Carmarthen castle and the brief imprisonment of its keeper, the King’s half-brother, Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond. Against this background, Barre’s pricking as sheriff of Gloucestershire in November (despite the fact that he had ended his Herefordshire shrievalty only a year before) is a clear sign that he was no longer identifed with the Yorkist faction in the marches. His abandonment of earlier loyalties is an interesting indication of the pressures operating on leading gentry in the febrile atmosphere of the late 1450s. He, like others, had strong connexions within both the Yorkist and Lancastrian camps, and, as these camps drifted apart, he was faced with some very difficult choices. His service to the duke of York was balanced, and eventually outweighed, by other long associations. Chief among these was with the Talbots. His godfather, John, the first earl of Shrewsbury, had been killed at the battle of Castillon in 1453, but the association was maintained: in 1458 Barre was named as a feoffee for the marriage settlement of the second earl’s son, another John Talbot, and Katherine, daughter of Humphrey, duke of Buckingham.40 C140/46/51; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 803. He was also connected with three lesser men who were prominent at the Lancastrian court in the late 1450s, namely his brother-in-law, Catesby, his nephew, Thomas Cornwall of Burford, and the King’s confessor, John Stanbury, bishop of Hereford. In these circumstances it is not surprising that, once the second earl of Shrewsbury had committed himself to Queen Margaret’s regime, Barre, notwithstanding his annuity from York, should have found merit in doing the same.

Whatever the reason, in the late 1450s Barre quickly became one of the leading figures in the local Lancastrian faction. On 16 July 1457, with James, Lord Audley, he was commissioned to summon the county posse for the suppression of unlawful gatherings in Herefordshire.41 CPR, 1452-61, p. 371. More interestingly, on the following 8 Feb. he joined Audley, Thomas Cornwall and Thomas Fitzharry in a bond in £1,000 to abide the arbitration of two men liable to be favourable to their cause, Stanbury and the earl of Shrewsbury, in a dispute with the leading Yorkists in the county, Sir William Herbert*, the two Devereuxs and Thomas Bromwich. Significantly, the point at issue was said to be indictments taken at Hereford in April 1457, when, before royal commissioners including the earl of Shrewsbury, the Devereuxs, Herbert and their adherents were accused of a whole series of offences, including the raid on Carmarthen castle. Contemporary rumour suggested that some of these indictments were false – one of John Paston*’s correspondents reported ‘Manye be endyted, som causelese’ – and Barre was, in Hilary term 1459, among those accused by the Yorkists of conspiracy to contrive indictments.42 Longleat House, Wilts., Devereux pprs. DE/Box I/15; Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, iii. 118; KB27/791, rot. 19d. Of his co-defendants in this action, Barre seems to have become particularly closely associated with the influential Fitzharry. Significantly, he supported him in the dispute over the manor of Sutton Overcourt, claimed by Fitzharry’s stepson, John Lyngen, an adherent of Devereux: on 23 July 1457 he made a deposition in Fitzharry’s favour in an action pending before the chancellor, and, on 8 Jan. 1459, he and Fitzharry were both on the bench when Richard Lyngen was indicted for felonious theft from Sutton.43 C1/26/528a; KB9/292/5; KB27/804, rex rot. 27.

Yet, even as Barre was being drawn into the county’s Lancastrian faction, he was forming a connexion of another kind. At some date shortly before 20 Jan. 1457, his daughter, Isabel, his heiress-presumptive and already the heir of her late mother, married Humphrey Stafford IV*.44 On 20 Jan. 1457 Barre, acting to protect the interests of his second wife, settled all his lands in Herefs. and Glos. on himself and her and any issue they might improbably have, with successive remainders to himself and his issue and Isabel, as Stafford’s wife, and her issue: C140/84/39; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1050. Stafford was a young man, probably about 18, and his political sympathies were perhaps not fully formed, but he was later to become an important supporter of the house of York. Regrettably the context of the marriage is far from clear – there was certainly no close geographical connexion between Barre and his new son-in-law, destined to be a leading landholder in Dorset and Somerset – but the fact that it was made implies that there is much about Barre’s connexions not revealed in the surviving sources. One speculative suggestion can be advanced, namely that the marriage owed something to William, Lord Bonville*, one of the groom’s guardians. If so, it is probably to be seen in the same political terms as the marriage, also in the late 1450s, of Bonville’s grandson, another William, to Katherine, daughter of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, in other words, as part of Bonville’s efforts to secure the political patronage of the duke of York. If this is indeed the case, then the match must date from before Barre’s final defection from his erstwhile master.45 CFR, xviii. 159-60; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 287.

Proof is lacking, but there seems every reason to suppose that Sir John was a member of the royal army that outfaced the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge on the night of 12 Oct. 1459. The following day the Herefordshire sheriff, his brother-in-law Catesby, convened a parliamentary election at Hereford, in response to writs of summons issued only four days before when the King had been at Leominster. The gathering was a surprising one in that several of those who had confronted each other in arms on the previous day now found themselves as representatives of rival factions in the county court. Remarkably, given the events of the night before, several Yorkists were present, most notably the duke’s receiver-general, John Milewater, and their purpose was probably to prevent the election of Lancastrian partisans. If so, they, unsurprisingly, failed. Barre was elected in company with his new friend, Fitzharry.46 C219/16/5.

On 20 Dec., at the end of the Coventry Parliament, which attainted the Yorkist lords, Barre was named in company with Catesby on a commission of Lancastrian loyalists who were to hold revenues from the duke of York’s estates to the use of his duchess and her children. Thereafter Barre benefited from Lancastrian patronage. On 13 Feb. 1460 the Crown re-granted him the annuity of £20 that he had enjoyed from York’s now forfeited manor of Marden since 1433; and on the following 21 May he was awarded, for good service against the Yorkists, a further 20 marks p.a., assigned upon Richard, earl of Salisbury’s forfeited lordship of Ware (Hertfordshire). He was expected to earn these rewards: in April he had been commissioned to seize into royal hands the Welsh and marcher lordships belonging to York and Warwick, and, more significantly, he was one of the few of non-baronial rank charged with organizing resistance to the threatened Yorkist invasion.47 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 542-3, 548, 586, 602-3.

The Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton on 10 July 1460 transformed both the military situation and the political climate, very much to Barre’s disadvantage. A month later, on 13 Aug., a commission was issued for his arrest (along with that of Fitzharry, John Chippenham and Thomas Breinton*, all three of whom were among his fellow defendants in the conspiracy action) for spreading false news contrary to statute.48 CPR, 1452-61, p. 612. Yet he faced no further recorded punishment beyond removal from the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire benches. There are two possible explanations for this restraint on the part of the Yorkists. Perhaps, constrained by a consciousness of earlier friendships, he had not actively opposed them. Alternatively, it may be that, just as his Lancastrian associations had drawn him away from York, family connexions within the Yorkist establishment may have preserved him from the worst consequences of his desertion. His late stepdaughter, Elizabeth, had been the wife of the earl of Worcester, who, absent abroad during the civil war of 1459-61, returned to England early in the new reign and quickly won a prominent place. His niece, Eleanor Cornwall, widow of Sir Hugh Mortimer of Kyre Wyard (Worcestershire), married, at about the time of Edward IV’s accession, Richard Croft† of Croft, who had been brought up with the young Edward.49 C.S.L. Davies, ‘The Crofts’, Historical Research, lxviii. 244-5. A later source describes Eleanor herself as ‘Lady governesse unto the yonge princes at Ludlow’, but there is no contemporary evidence for this attribution: C. Ross, Edw. IV, 436. In 1449 our MP had numbered among the young Croft’s feoffees: Reg. Beauchamp (Canterbury and York Soc. xxv), 15. Much more immediate, however, was Barre’s relationship with his young son-in-law, Stafford, now Lord Stafford of Southwick, who was to prosper mightily in the early years of Yorkist rule and eventually be created earl of Devon. Since Barre’s daughter was still his heiress-presumptive, his attainder would have threatened her husband’s future interests, and this may explain why, if Barre’s attainder was ever actively mooted, it never took effect. Indeed, in February 1462, two months after the Act of Attainder, he and his wife were allowed to sue out a general pardon.50 C67/45, m. 33.

Although, however, Sir John’s Yorkist connexions may have brought him a pardon, they did not bring him a quick rehabilitation. His defection might have been understandable, but it was not easily forgiven. He was excluded from public affairs during the first reign of Edward IV, and had a series of difficulties to overcome. He continued to be disturbed by the action of conspiracy sued by the Yorkists indicted in 1457, and the several actions of close-breaking he himself had pending in the mid 1460s may indicate that his lesser neighbours had taken advantage of his weakened position.51 KB27/808, rot. 77; 810, rot. 50d; CP40/812, rot. 229; 813, rot. 6; 815, rot. 362. Nor can his rehabilitation have been aided by the fact that his brother-in-law, John Hanmer, was among those who held Harlech castle against the new King.52 J. Hanmer, Mem. Hanmer Fam. 39; PROME, xiii. 61-62; Paston Letters, iv. 96. In 1439 Barre had contracted his sister Ankaret, wid. of Thomas Corbet II*, to Hanmer: H. Owen and J.B. Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, ii. 537. Not until 19 May 1467, when he attested the Gloucestershire parliamentary election, is he recorded as playing any part in public affairs in the new reign. His continuing sense of insecurity may explain why he twice took advantage of the pardon issued by Edward IV in the summer of 1468, first, in September 1468, in the name of himself and his wife, and, five months later, in his name alone.53 C67/46, mm. 14, 30.

None the less, although excluded from public affairs, Barre was free to pursue his private affairs, and in 1467 he entered into arrangements contingent on the marriage of his illegitimate daughter to John Ashurst, agreeing to give the couple 50 marks for the purchase of land.54 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. i. 88. He also, at this rather unpropitious point in his career, attempted to reclaim the rent of nearly £20 p.a. that had long lapsed from the manor of Nether Burgate in Hampshire. His claim was a speculative one. The rent had been paid since shortly after the attainder of Sir Simon Burley, and, although this attainder had been reversed, the manor had not come back into the hands of those who, as his heirs, had any obligation to pay the rent. In 1391 the Crown restored it to claimants under an entail of 1286, that is long prior to the title of our MP’s ancestor, Sir Richard Pembridge, and the manor was now in the hands of the heir under this entail, Charles Bulkeley, who, not surprisingly, was not ready to resume payment. In Easter term 1468 our MP brought a writ of scire facias against Bulkeley on the final concord of 1383 that had settled the rent and other Pembridge property on his grandparents. The matter was still pending in the following November, when Bulkeley, in the Bell Tavern in Fleet Street, laid various evidences before Sir Richard Chokke, j.c.p., and Maurice Berkeley*, an esquire of the royal body who was also one of his feoffees in the manor (and whose election to Parliament Barre had witnessed the previous year). No verdict is recorded, but the subsequent omission of the rent from the list of Barre’s properties shows he lost.55 CP40/826, rot. 319; 827, rot. 137; Bulkeley and Coventry mss, 1M53/377, 382.

Soon afterwards Barre was drawn into litigation of a different but probably equally hopeless sort. On 17 Aug. 1469 his son-in-law, Stafford, whose reputation for extortion had won him great unpopularity, was killed by the men of Bridgwater. Three days later, according to an action sued by Barre in the following Trinity term, a large group of men, headed by a gentleman, Walter Trevet of Chilton Trevet, near Bridgwater, and a merchant of Bristol, John Compton, forcibly entered four of the dead man’s manors, then in the tenure of Barre, his brother-in-law, Catesby, and his servant, Henry Quarell. The probability is that they were feoffees to the use of Stafford’s wife, enfeoffed at the time of the marriage in the late 1450s.56 Year Bk. 10 Edw. IV (Selden Soc. xlvii), 100-4. Stafford’s death meant the loss of a connexion with Edward IV’s government; none the less, there were signs that Barre’s rehabilitation had made progress. In March and June 1470 he was named to commissions of array in Gloucestershire to resist the rebellion of the duke of Clarence and the earl of Warwick. Either Edward IV had learned to trust him or he was running short of reliable allies.57 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 219-20.

It is not known what part Barre played during the Readeption. His restoration to the Herefordshire bench in December 1470 suggests that he was identified as a supporter, but the fact that Edward IV’s return did not damage him implies that that he was not an active one. His brother-in-law, Catesby, behaved with similar circumspection, and his kinsman, the young earl of Shrewsbury, soon moderated early support.58 Barre’s relationship with the earl has left few traces in the records, but, in May 1472, he was one of the feoffees who settled a manor in Staffs. on him and his wife, Katherine Stafford: C140/46/51. Their stance probably informed that of Sir John, as also might his daughter’s second marriage, a political one made within the Yorkist establishment. At some date between August 1469 and September 1472 she married Sir Thomas Bourgchier, one of the younger sons of Henry, earl of Essex. If this marriage had taken place before the Readeption, as it may just have done, then he had further cause for moderation.59 C1/41/217. In any event, the 1470s were a much better decade for our MP than the 1460s. Although he was not among those named to the Herefordshire bench in February 1473, the first commission to be enrolled after the Readeption, he again became a routine appointee from the following December. Another measure of his completed rehabilitation is his appearance at the head of a remarkable jury that assembled on three occasions at Hereford before Anthony, Earl Rivers, and Walter Devereux II*, Lord Ferrers, to lay a long series of indictments in the spring of 1473: among his fellow jurors were such prominent local Yorkists as Ferrers’s brother, Sir John, Sir James Baskerville† and Sir Richard Croft.60 KB9/334/85, 86.

A major project of Barre’s last years was the foundation of a chantry in the church of St. Mary at Clehonger. His ancestor, Sir Richard Pembridge (d.1375), had built a chantry chapel there; Barre’s own plans represented either a refoundation, or an extension, of this chantry, for Sir Richard and his wife, Petronilla, were among those named in the lengthy bede roll of the new project.61 CPR, 1340-3, p. 410. The first step was taken on 15 Feb. 1474, when, for the payment of £11 11s. to the Crown, he secured a licence to alienate lands with a yearly value of £8 to support a perpetual chantry of one chaplain at the altar of St. Anne, that is, the altar in Pembridge’s chapel. On the following 4 July a commission ad quod damnum, headed by Sir John’s nephew, Richard de la Bere, was issued in respect of the proposed alienation to this chantry; and on 6 Mar. 1475 our MP was duly licensed to alienate property in Lyde, Clehonger and Hungerston, valued by the commissioners at eight marks p.a. to the first chaplain of his chantry, Richard Boole.62 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 425, 450, 463-4, 505; C143/453/19. The long list of names for whom Boole was entrusted to pray might be taken to illustrate Barre’s broad conception of his family; of the living were his wife, daughter Isabel, son-in-law Sir Thomas Bourgchier, sister Ankaret, and nephew, Richard de la Bere; of the dead, aside from Sir Richard and Petronilla Pembridge, were his paternal grandparents, parents, first wife Idonea, sister Elizabeth and her husband Sir Edmund Cornwall, sister Joan, and half-brother and sisters Thomas, Margaret and Anne (his mother’s children by her second husband, Richard de la Mare*). Perhaps this broad conception of family was encouraged by the fact that his own legitimate descendants were confined to a childless daughter. There may also be a political significance to the bede roll for it included Edward IV and his queen. This can either be taken as a mere homage to convention, or as further evidence of Barre’s rapprochement with York.

There is only one significant reference to Barre from the last years of his long career. At an unknown date between 1 Jan. 1478 and 1 Dec. 1480, Barre, acting as steward of the Talbot lordship of Archenfield, rescued William Abrahall from the manor of Gillow, where he was being detained by a rival claimant to the property, John ap Guillium.63 STAC2/20/305; C140/84/39. It is not known how long Barre had held this office. In the late 1470s the Talbot lands were in royal wardship during the minority of George Talbot, and, given our MP’s kinship with the Talbots, it is likely that he was an appointee of George’s father, the earl of Shrewsbury who had died in June 1473. He was probably still in office when he himself died on 14 Jan. 1483, some two weeks before his 71st birthday. Barre was buried in the chapel he had re-endowed in the church of Clehonger (his brass is extant).64 N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Herefs., 101. His will does not survive, but other sources show that his widow and a chaplain, John Mountfort, were his executors. His heiress was his daughter Isabel, the child of first wife, and by a fine levied in the following Michaelmas term the lands of her mother were entailed upon her and Bourgchier. Most of Barre’s other lands remained in the hands of his widow under the jointure settlement of 1457, and not until her death in 1485 did they descend to her stepdaughter.65 C1/132/31; Warws. Feet of Fines, 2724; CCR, 1476-85, no. 1050.

On 3 Feb. 1485 Barre’s widow made a will remarkable for the length and detail of its charitable bequests.66 PCC 16 Logge (PROB11/7, ff. 119-21). The care she had lavished on the foundation of the chantry and school at Newland, the place of her first husband’s burial, indicates that she was a woman of strong personal piety.67 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 388, 446-7; Reg. Stanbury (Canterbury and York Soc. xxv), 21-33, 105-10. Significant sums were set aside for prayers for her soul and those of her husbands and kin, and careful provision was made for the deposition of her extensive collection of vestments and religious plate. Most of this she bequeathed to her burial place, the chapel of St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas in Newland church, where her first husband already lay and where she was to lie. This bequest included what was clearly the pride of her collection, a cross of silver and gilt which was, on high days, to stand on the chantry altar. She also remembered Barre’s chantry of Clehonger, which was to have a pair of vestments of blue velvet embroidered with his arms and hers; and the place of her christening more than 70 years before, the parish church of Charlecombe, which was to have a cross of copper and gilt. This attention to detail is also apparent in her personal bequests. The largest was reserved for her first husband’s great-niece and common-law heir, Alice, wife of the Gloucestershire esquire, Thomas Baynham, to whom were left the contents of the Greyndore manor-house and chapel at Clearwall. But she also remembered Barre’s kin, making bequests of jewels and household goods to Elizabeth Cornwall,68 She was the wid. of our MP’s nephew, Thomas Cornwall, and da. and coh. of Sir Roland Lenthall of Hampton Court, Herefs.: C1/14/17. and Barre’s niece, Elizabeth de la Bere. The former was particularly generously treated, and it may be that the two women had been close friends. Included in her bequest were two items – a gold necklace hung with holy relics and a gold ring set with a large ruby – that may have formed part of the testator’s personal adornment. Equally striking is the care Joan took to remember all those lesser men and women in her service, not only her personal attendants, but those much more remote from her, such as her slaughterman, who was to have one mark, and baker, who was bequeathed £1.69 Interestingly, she makes no mention of her own common-law heirs, her distant cousins, William, son of Richard Strode*, Robert Basset and others: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 7; Some Som. Manors (Som. Rec. Soc. extra ser. 1931), 349; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. vi. 148.

Joan died in the last months of Richard III’s reign,70 C141/5/10. The date of her death is given in error as 10 Aug. 1484 in two inqs. early in Henry VII’s reign: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 7, 116. and her stepdaughter Isabel survived her by only a few years. She died without issue in March 1489, and the Barre estates (subject to the life interest of Isabel’s widower, Bourgchier) descended to the issue of our MP’s three sisters, namely Sir Richard de la Bere (d.1514), Sir Edmund Cornwall and William Hanmer.71 Isabel and Bourgchier were both buried in the church of Ware, Herts.: Mon. Brasses ed. Mill Stephenson, 198. In her inq. post mortem, she is said to have had a da. who predeceased her, but this may have been a fiction to allow Bourgchier to hold her lands by the courtesy: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 472. They seem to have anticipated some difficulty about securing their due: very soon after Isabel’s death, de la Bere and Hanmer, with Thomas Cornwall†, who succeeded his father, Sir Edmund, late in 1489, sued a petition in Chancery against the executors of Barre’s own executor, Mountfort, for deeds concerning Sir John’s lands.72 C1/132/31. In any event, they did not have to wait long for Bourgchier’s interest to be extinguished, for he died on 25 Oct. 1491. On 28 Mar. 1492 the Crown ordered the Herefordshire escheator to partition Barre’s lands into three, retaining Cornwall’s third because he was a minor; and a week later this third was entrusted by the Crown to George, earl of Shrewsbury, during the minority.73 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 682-4; CFR, xxii. nos. 435-7; CPR, 1485-94, p. 376.

The prosperity of Barre’s chantry foundation and the title of the descendants of his sisters had been potentially threatened in 1489. An elderly Herefordshire esquire, Roger Bodenham, sued Richard Boole, the first chaplain of that foundation, for part of the ancient Barre lands – a small property in Lyde ‘Muchegros’ – that had been settled by the fines of 150 years before. Bodenham claimed as the grandson of Walter de la Barre’s daughter, Isabel, who had been disinherited by these fines in favour of her uncles. With the death of our MP all the descendants of these uncles in the male line were extinct, and Bodenham could claim under the final remainder limited in these fines to the right heirs of Walter’s father. No verdict is recorded, but his action is unlikely to have been successful.74 CP40/908, rot. 76.