BEKE, Thomas

Beke’s father, John, a ‘servant’ of Henry V, had been granted in 1414 the wardenship of the leper hospital of St. Mary Magdalen near Reading, and probably also benefited from his association with Thomas Chaucer*, the cousin of the then chancellor, Bishop Beaufort. He provided securities for Chaucer at the Exchequer, and was a feoffee of certain of his Oxfordshire manors.5 CPR, 1413-16, p. 236; 1429-36, p. 448; CFR, xv. 47. John may have lived at Earley, just outside Reading, on the manor of Whiteknights which belonged jure uxoris to his father-in-law, Thomas Overy. The manor, held of the King in chief, had formed part of the settlement made in reversion at the time of his marriage to Agnes Overy in 1413, although he never actually took possession as he predeceased her father, who died in 1431. By then, Agnes was married to William Bysshoppeston, perhaps a kinsman of the Warwickshire knight of the same name.6 VCH Berks. iii. 214; CPR, 1408-13, p. 464; C139/52/65. Some of Overy’s holdings passed to his wife’s other gds., Beke’s cousin Walter Waryng: VCH Berks. iii. 216. Thomas, the future MP, came of age by May 1443, when the manor together with the advowson of its chapel and 510 acres of land in Sonning, Earley, Reading and elsewhere, was transferred to him by his mother and stepfather in return for an annuity of 20 marks payable for the rest of their lives. If he had no issue, the estate was to revert to a group of distinguished feoffees, including Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*, William Brocas*, William Warbleton*, John Norris* and Edward Langford*, all of them sometime representatives in Parliament for Berkshire or neighbouring Hampshire.7 CP25(1)/13/84/20. Further settlements of the property were made by royal licence of November 1446, probably at the time of Thomas’s marriage, for it was then given to his wife Isabel in jointure. The reversion, should their issue fail, now devolved on William Baron* esquire, the Exchequer official, and Thomas Brewer, but three years later these two conveyed it to Norris, a prominent figure in the royal household who had embarked on an ambitious programme of purchasing estates in Berkshire. Norris’s interest was confirmed by a fine made in 1458.8 CPR, 1446-52, p. 24; CCR, 1454-61, p. 209; CP25(1)/13/86/20. It is difficult to discerne the purpose of the collusive suit brought by Norris against Beke in the court of common pleas in the summer of 1463, but the end result, recorded in a final concord a year later, was that thenceforth Beke held Whiteknights with Norris as overlord. The intention may have been to defeat the direct interest of the Crown;9 CP40/809, rot. 346d; CP25(1)13/87/4. when Overy died Whiteknights had been said to be held in chief by service of one knight’s fee, but the tenure of Beke’s widow was by just one-seventeenth of a fee. Beke’s manor was said in his post mortem to be worth £20 p.a. and he also then held five messuages in Reading, worth an additional £10 p.a., as a tenant of Reading abbey.10 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 711; ii. 474. One of the Reading properties was opposite the corn market: Berks. RO, Reading deeds, R/AT 1/144, 164.

Despite his status as a member of the gentry and a landowner apparently in receipt of a substantial income (at least by the end of his life), Beke took an interest in the cloth trade in Reading,11 He was assessed for alnage on cloth sold in the town in the early 1470s: E101/343/26. and for an uncertain period he officiated as the abbot’s bailiff in the town. In the Trinity term of 1449 he was sued by Thomas Lavyngton* on a plea alleging breach of the statute of York after he traded in wine while serving in that capacity.12 CP40/754, rot. 287. It is likely that he was still bailiff that autumn, for it is otherwise difficult to account for his appearance among the burgesses of Reading who attested the parliamentary electoral indenture dated 24 Oct. as he was not yet a member of the guild merchant.13 C219/15/7. It was probably in order to comply with the statutory requirements for borough representatives that he was formally admitted a year later, on 16 Oct. 1450, for on the very same day he was elected by his fellows to represent Reading in the Commons. He paid 8s. 4d. to the guild, 8s. 4d. to the abbot, and the usual sum of 3s. 4d. for the celebratory breakfast marking his admission. Robert Morys* and Thomas Clerk II*, who offered pledges for him, both attested the parliamentary indenture drawn up on the 23rd.14 Reading Recs. i. 35; Berks. RO, Reading cofferers’ accts. R/FA/2, no. 33; C219/16/1. While the Parliament was in progress, in the Hilary term of 1451, Beke, described as ‘of Reading, gentleman’, stood surety in the King’s bench for Thomas Brown IV*, undertaking under pain of £40 that he would keep the peace towards Nicholas Carew*; and together with John Norris, then representing the county, he brought a suit in the court of common pleas against two local butchers for a debt of ten marks. Simon Porter*, his colleague as MP for Reading, was to entrust him with his goods and chattels at Easter 1452.15 KB27/759, rex rot. 2d; CP40/760, rot. 89d; CCR, 1447-54, p. 469.

Beke attested the Reading indenture for the Parliament of 1453, summoned to meet in the town itself.16 C219/16/2. He was pledge for the admission of another man to the guild in September 1456, and two years later he was elected mayor. Although unsuccessfully nominated for the same office in 1460, 1468 and 1479, he did serve as mayor for two further terms, and twice more represented the borough in Parliament. During his mayoralty of 1462-3, the town raised money for soldiers for Edward IV’s campaigns in the north, and he and five other burgesses undertook to treat regarding certain matters of contention with their lord the abbot. At the end of his term he was one of six former mayors who lent their authority to his successor for the promulgation of new ordinances for the town’s governance. Finally, in November 1480, he agreed to the ordinance that the ‘chepyngavell’ payable to the abbot by certain burgesses should henceforth be paid out of the common chest.17 Reading Recs. i. 46, 49, 53-55, 61, 77, 78.

Over the years Beke was party to several suits in Chancery. One concerned the property in High Street, Reading, belonging to William Brussele* (d.1448), who in his will had bequeathed it to his widow, Margaret, and her son Thomas Cowper. After Margaret’s death Cowper enfeoffed the property to Beke’s use, but Brussele’s nephew and heir claimed he had been wrongfully disinherited and petitioned the chancellor for a sub poena to be sent to Beke to appear in Chancery to answer him. Another case was probably heard during or shortly after Beke’s mayoralty of 1476-7. A widow named Isabel Richards alleged that she had been evicted from two tenements in Reading which her husband had left her for life, because she would not agree to marry ‘suche a persone’ as Beke, the mayor, proposed. ‘Of his malice’ Beke refused to let her have any of her household stuff, ‘only the clothes that she went in when she was putte forthe’.18 C1/33/8, 54/55. A third suit was bought by Beke himself. In a petition to the chancellor he said that he had been seised in fee-simple of three closes containing some 100 acres of land and a further parcel of 16 acres at Foxham, in the hundred of Chippenham in Wiltshire, and had placed these in the hands of three local esquires, John Mompeson*, Walter Sambourne and John Cricklade*, with the intention that they should re-enfeoff him when required to do so. However, Cricklade contrived to obtain sole possession, took eight years’ profits which amounted to £16, cut down and sold all the trees growing on the land, and threatened Beke with death if he set foot there. Beke asked that he should be brought from the Fleet prison, where he was at the chancellor’s command, to accept judgement, but when this happened he gave his assent to Cricklade’s acquittal, after the lawyer John Whittocksmead* had provided pertinent information.19 C1/32/126. Even so, this was not the end of the matter: C1/48/366.

Other suits in Chancery concerned the inheritance of Beke’s wife, Isabel Mitchell, and in particular her claim to the Wiltshire manor of Huish. Ownership of the manor had been disputed following the death of Sir William Sturmy*, until John Bird* of Marlborough established a superior claim: he held it until he died in about 1445, whereupon it passed to his widow Isabel until her own death in 1476. The reversion of the manor was successfully claimed in Chancery in about 1471 by Beke’s father-in-law, John Mitchell of Marlborough, against the assertions of yet another Isabel, the widow of Sturmy’s grandson and coheir (Sir) John Seymour I*, that his interest was merely as a feoffee. However, Mitchell never actually enjoyed possession as he died in 1473, before Isabel Bird. At an inquisition post mortem held four years later his heirs were found to be his three daughters: Isabel Beke and her sisters Christine and Elizabeth.20 VCH Wilts. x. 78. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 98-99, 156-8, 160-72, provides full details of the suits (C1/42/32-35, 50/133-4). Isabel Bird, probably their kinswoman, named the Bekes as patrons of the chantry which she founded in St. Peter’s church, Marlborough, in statutes made in April 1474 and confirmed by the diocesan a year later, and Beke exercised his right at the vacancies of 1476 and 1479.21 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvi. 560, 565; T. Phillipps, Wilts. Institutions, ii. 164, 165, 167. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1477 he and his wife petitioned the chancellor alleging that Isabel Seymour, ‘with grete force and myght’ and in contempt of the earlier decree in Mitchell’s favour, had unlawfully entered their manor of Huish. In April she was acquitted of the charge, but the post mortem on Mitchell, ordered by writ dated 8 May and conducted on 6 Nov., supported the Bekes’ contention that they were entitled to hold the manor following a partition of the estate between the three Mitchell sisters.22 C1/50/133-4; C140/60/15; CFR, xxi. no. 438. Beke presented to the church at Huish in the 1470s but did not do so when there was a voidance in 1488.23 Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 160-72.

Beke made a brief will on 14 Mar. 1491, requesting burial in the church of the friars minor in Reading, and leaving ten marks to the parish church at Quainton for a memorial window. He confirmed his wife’s jointure in Whiteknights and its appurtenant lands, and made her his sole executor.24 PCC 1 Dogett (PROB11/9, f. 4). He died on 6 May following,25 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 711. Curiously, the writ ‘de diem clausit extremum’ was dated 13 Apr. and the will was proved on 29 Oct. His son and heir, Marmaduke, then aged 32, evidently took possession of the Wiltshire estate at Huish and Ogbourne St. George, although after his death just six years later the Seymours renewed their claims, and eventually bought out the interest of his son and heir, Thomas (c.1486-1546).26 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 507; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 160-72. Following the death of his great-grandfather’s widow, Alice Mitchell, on 31 Jan. 1501, young Thomas inherited the Mitchell property in Marlborough, Elcot and Everley, which had been settled on her with remainder to our MP and his issue, and later that same year, when his grandmother Isabel Beke died he also inherited our MP’s Berkshire estate.27 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 474, 498. Beke’s elderly widow had married one Edward Lancastre, but nothing has been discovered about him.