BOWES, John

The family of Bowes had been established at Costock in south Nottinghamshire since at least the late twelfth century, when they made several minor grants in favour of the Cistercian abbey of Garendon in Leicestershire, but in the centuries that followed, although they appear to have augmented their lands at Costock, they failed to add significantly to their estates and remained among the lesser gentry.2 R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 54-55; J. Nichols, Leics. iii (2), 807, 825; Feudal Aids, iv. 102. Our MP was the first of the family to enjoy a career of any distinction.3 For an account of this career, based on published sources: J.S. Roskell, Parl. and Politics, iii. 331-42. The earliest reference to him occurs in some interesting letters of attorney, dated at Nottingham on 16 Feb. 1404: Mabel, widow of John Woodford of Brentingby in Leicestershire, commissioned Sir Thomas Rempston†, her son, Robert, and others to seize our MP, whom she claimed as her ward. The answer of the attorneys implies that Bowes had left Costock for the attractions of London – perhaps to begin a legal training – for it was there that he was found. His seizure, however, proved only a formality, for he was able to excuse himself on the grounds that he was already of age. On performing homage to Robert, he was awarded livery of his lands at Costock and Rempstone.4 Cott. Claudius A XIII, ff. 100v-101. The involvement here of Sir Thomas Rempston, his near neighbour and an influential figure at Court, together with his later close association with the Rempstons, suggests that he may have owed his legal education to Sir Thomas’s patronage. If this was the case, then the latter’s death in 1406 must have been a blow to his prospects and may explain why so little is known of him until the 1420s.

Only two references to Bowes in the 1410s have been traced. A jury, sitting before the justices of assize at Nottingham on 24 July 1413, found that John Gervays and Margaret, his wife, had disseised him vi et armis of his manor of Costock, and awarded him damages of four marks.5 JUST1/1524, rot. 13. The most likely explanation for this disseisin is that Gervays was his stepfather, although there is no direct evidence to support this supposition. The first reference to him acting as a lawyer comes in December 1417 when he was nominated as an attorney to deliver seisin of land in Frisby-on-the-Wreak to one of the lesser gentry of north Leicestershire, Richard Friseby, whose sister had either already or was about to become his wife.6 Bodl. Wood empt. 7, f. 169 (new nos.). His career did not begin in earnest until his appointment in 1422, when nearing the age of 40, to the quorum of the peace in his native shire. In November 1423 he acted as one of five arbiters in a dispute between Sir John Blaket† and Sir Richard Hastings* over the ownership of the manor of Newton Harcourt in Leicestershire.7 HMC Hastings, i. 294. At about the same time he is found for the first time standing as surety for those answering indictment. For example, on 30 July 1423 at a session of gaol delivery at Nottingham, he gave mainprise on behalf of Thomas Curson, younger brother of the prominent Derbyshire esquire, John Curson*, and in the following Easter he repeated the favour in the court of King’s bench when Thomas appeared to answer an appeal of accessory to murder.8 JUST3/56/20; KB27/652, rot. 36d. But his professional activities remained focused for the most part on his native shire, where he established firm connexions with the county’s leading gentry. In November 1423 he was one of those named by Sir Thomas Chaworth*, whose election to Parliament he had attested shortly before, in a comprehensive feoffment of his extensive estates. In September 1424, at Stamford, he acted with Roger Flore* to return an award in a dispute over the ownership of a park at Dunsby in Lincolnshire. Here he was representing the interest of the wealthy Nottinghamshire esquire, Hugh Willoughby*, to whom, on certain conditions, the arbiters awarded the park.9 Nottingham Univ. Lib. Middleton mss, Mi D 3473; C219/13/2; CCR, 1422-9, p. 315; CP25(1)/291/65/18.

By the late 1420s Bowes had also acquired important connexions outside his native county. In November 1427, with Sir Richard Hastings, Bartholomew Brokesby* and the Derbyshire lawyer, Gerard Meynell*, he received a royal grant of the keeping of the dower lands of Elizabeth, widow of Henry, Lord Beaumont, during the minority of her son, John. In the following May this grant was extended to cover the dower lands of John’s paternal grandmother, Katherine, and there can be little doubt that the farmers were acting as agents of the Beaumonts. One of the mainpernors to the grants of May 1428 was Sir William Phelip†, who was either already or was soon to be the ward’s father-in-law.10 CFR, xv. 203-4, 208, 211-12, 228-9. It is a fair speculation, given what is known of Brokesby’s later association with Lord Beaumont – in 1438 he was named godfather to Beaumont’s second son – and the fact that both he and Bowes held land at Frisby-on-the-Wreak, that the latter owed his place among the farmers to Brokesby’s recommendation.

Just as Bowes was building a range of valuable connexions during the 1420s he was also extending his involvement in local administration. In his first short period of service on the quorum of the Nottinghamshire bench he rarely sat – perhaps because he was working as a lawyer in London – but from his reappointment in July 1424 to July 1430 he was present on as many as 47 of the 61 sittings, a better record of attendance than that of any of his colleagues. The death in May 1428 of Thomas Hunte, previously the most active member of the quorum, partly explains this greatly increased activity. His administrative burden reached its peak when he was appointed escheator in November 1428, and it was while in office that he was returned to represent his home county on the following 19 Sept.11 S.J. Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 310-11; C219/14/1. If it was more than coincidence that his three fellow farmers of the Beaumont lands, Hastings, Brokesby and Meynell, sat in the same assembly, the reason cannot be discerned.

Bowes’s career followed much the same pattern in the 1430s. He remained very active on the Nottinghamshire bench until the end of the decade. Between September 1430 and July 1439 he attended approximately two out of every three sessions, only absenting himself when sittings were held in the north of the county. He also served briefly on the quorum of the Leicestershire bench, sitting twice between October 1431 and July 1432.12 Payling, 306-7, 311; E101/590/34. This, together with his appointment to the same county’s subsidy commission in 1431, suggests he was beginning to take an interest in the administration of a shire in which he held a small landed estate in right of his wife (by this date his joint farm of several Beaumont manors had probably been terminated by Lord Beaumont’s coming of age). He had already played a part in the affairs of the borough of Leicester: in June 1428, when Sir William Babington, c.j.c.p., returned an award over a right of way in the borough, Bowes was one of those nominated to set the metes and bounds, and from 1427 to 1443 he held property there as a feoffee of one William Glover.13 Leicester Bor. Recs. ed. Bateson, 237, 418, 421. Further, in 1428 our MP’s brother, Henry, made a conveyance of property there as a co-feoffee of the abbot of St. Mary de Pratis: ibid. 418. Not surprisingly, he also found employment in the transactions of the county’s leading gentry: in March 1431 he twice witnessed deeds for his friend and neighbour Brokesby, in 1433 he returned an award in a dispute between Sir Laurence Berkeley*, for whom he was acting, and Thomas Erdington†; and at about the same time he was named as one of the administrators of the will of Sir Laurence’s mother, Isabel.14 Bodl. Wood empt 7, ff.105-6; Huntington Lib. San Marino, California, Hastings mss, HAD 23/399 (printed in Quorndon Recs. ed. Farnham, 24); CP40/702, rot. 392d. Nevertheless, Nottinghamshire remained the centre of his interest, and he had again been elected to represent the county in Parliament on 24 Mar. 1432. In 1434 he was one of the feoffees of Sir Henry Pierrepont* in the manor of Rolleston and other lands, prior to the purchase of the manor by another wealthy landowner, Thomas Neville of Rolleston.15 C219/14/3; CP40/696, cart. rot.; Leics. RO, Neville of Holt mss, MTD/50. A further election followed on 12 Sept. 1435, and on 13 Oct., three days after Parliament had assembled, the Commons presented him as their Speaker.16 C219/14/5; PROME, xi. 166.

It is difficult to understand why such a comparatively obscure figure should have been nominated to this illustrious office. As Roskell has remarked, his ‘aristocratic connexions are for the most part elusive and, even where demonstrable, somewhat casual’. Indeed, what is known of his connexions with the baronage suggest that of lawyer and client rather than that of lord and intimate follower. In April 1430 he was one of those to whom Thomas, Lord Roos, conveyed two manors on the eve of his departure for France, from whence he did not return, and by the mid 1430s he was in receipt of an annual rent of 40s., presumably as retained counsel, from another baron of the Midlands, Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor.17 Roskell, Speakers, 214; CCR, 1429-35, p. 77; E163/7/31/1. Clearly neither of these associations provide an adequate explanation for his election, although it is worth noting in passing that his role as a Roos feoffee may have brought him to the attention of both John, Lord Tiptoft†, who held the wardship of the Roos estates by royal grant, and Edmund Beaufort, later earl of Dorset, who married Lord Roos’s widow. Nor can his earlier connexion with the Beaumonts be cited as of much significance here, for there is no further evidence to connect him with John, Lord Beaumont, until 1444. And while his legal training was a qualification for an office which was increasingly becoming the preserve of lawyers, the shire knights of 1435 included several men of law seemingly of greater distinction than our MP, men such as William Burley I*, John Hody* and Nicholas Radford*.18 Roskell, Speakers, 213-14. There is, however, another explanation that cannot be so readily dismissed. Bowes’s appointment to the office may be a rare example of the successful operation of a purely private interest. This Parliament saw the presentation of two petitions on behalf of one of the leading English commanders of the last stage of the Hundred Years War, Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1458), who had long been a captive in France struggling to raise a punitive ransom.19 PROME, xi. 179-80. The connexion between our MP and the Rempstons was of long standing. In November 1432, with the captive’s mother, Margaret, and others, he had been involved in unsuccessful arrangements to secure her son’s release, and, at an unknown date probably several years before July 1441, he acted for Margaret in her acquisition of the manor of Arnold in Nottinghamshire.20 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 228-9; CPR, 1436-41, p. 551. It is thus not improbable that Bowes was elected to the Speakership through the influence of Rempston’s powerful friends, numbered among whom was William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, to forward petitions, the acceptance of which was his best hope of release.21 By a final concord levied during the course of this Parliament, Sir John Zouche* made a conveyance to a distinguished group of feoffees, including both Bowes and the captive Rempston: CP25(1)/292/68/177. This surely suggests that the acceptance of the petitions was seen as likely to secure Rempston’s quick release. Although direct evidence is meagre, there can be little doubt that, by this date, the Speaker was already in a position to speed the passage of private bills addressed to the Commons. And yet if these petitions explain his appointment, his work as Speaker also found favour with the King: on 16 Dec. 1435, a week before the dissolution, he was paid £13 13s. 4d., ‘de regardo speciali pro labore et diligentia per ipsum habita in diversis materiis specialibus tunc temporis ibidem expediendis per cuius labores multum domino Regi prevalebat’. This is the earliest known example of a royal payment to the Speaker specifically for his service in the office, for no payment similar to that received by Bowes was made to any of his successors until the accession of Edward IV when such payments became common practice. Roskell believed that the services for which Bowes was rewarded were of a political nature, but if they were his reward did not extend beyond this modest payment, a far smaller sum than was customarily granted to the Speakers from 1461.22 Roskell, Speakers, 108-10.

In the late 1430s Bowes continued to play a part in the transactions of the leading Nottinghamshire gentry. In 1438 he acted in a settlement by Sir Gervase Clifton* on his son Robert*. He was also very closely associated with Richard Willoughby*, who sat with him in the Parliament of 1435, and was much later to include the then long-dead Bowes on the bede roll of his chantry in the church of Wollaton.23 CP25(1)/145/158/36; Middleton mss, Mi 1/4/3. Given the range of our MP’s connexions, it is not surprising that he was returned in 1439 to represent his native county in Parliament for the fourth time in ten years. On 9 Mar. 1440, soon after this Parliament was dissolved, he witnessed a controversial conveyance of the disputed manor of Broxtowe Hall from John Brokstowe to Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor. Since Grey, who had unwisely incurred the enmity of the powerful Ralph, Lord Cromwell, was involved in the violent maintenance of the feoffor, our MP, long associated with Grey, may have found himself on the wrong side of a serious dispute had he remained in the locality.24 Middleton mss, Mi D 204, 1659; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 206. However, by September 1440, when Grey and his followers were indicted of a large number of offences before commissioners of oyer and terminer, Bowes had departed to take up the important legal office of recorder of London.25 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 247. He succeeded Thomas Cokayn*. For his role as an arbiter during his brief term of office: Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, pp. 39-40, 48. Unfortunately, he appears to have been afflicted with a sudden illness just at the point when his modestly successful career was about, rather belatedly, to bring him greater rewards. Although he represented London in the Parliament which met between 25 Jan. and 27 Mar. 1442, he made his will in the following June and, in July, was replaced as recorder by Robert Danvers*. Infirmity was specified as the reason for his replacement and he was compensated by the London authorities with a pension of 20 marks.26 Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 273n. A further indication of his ill-health is his failure to resume his activities on the Nottinghamshire bench now no longer burdened by the recordership.27 He sat once between Sept. 1440 and Apr. 1442, but did not sit thereafter. Very little is known of the last two years of his life. On 11 Dec. 1442, in company with his wife, he granted his land in Frisby to Richard Samon†, a wealthy Nottingham merchant, Richard Bingham, a local lawyer who was soon to be promoted to the judicial bench, and John Goudeby, chaplain.28 Bodl. Wood empt. 7, ff. 169-169v (a marginal note here is the only evidence to identify our MP’s wife as Margaret Frisby). Bingham was an obvious choice as a feoffee for the two men had long been colleagues on the Nottinghamshire quorum, and, in 1440, our MP had acted for him in the purchase of the manor of Watnowe Chaworth. The last reference to Bowes in an active role dates from 26 July 1444 when he witnessed an important deed, by which the legal remainder of the manor of Barrow upon Soar, expectant on the death of Sir Thomas Erdington* and his wife, was settled on John, Viscount (formerly Lord) Beaumont.29 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 29, 91-92; Quorndon Recs. 25.

It is disappointing that Bowes’s will is so unrevealing, not even specifying an appointed place of burial. He instructed his feoffees to make estate of his lands to his wife to hold for her life. On her death his patrimony in Costock and Rempston was to pass to his brother William in tail – with remainder in tail to his other brother Henry, who was to have the property he had purchased in the same vills in fee – while the nearby property once belonging to the Derbyshire family of Fynderne was to pass, on Margaret’s death, to Nicholas Fynderne. As his executors, he named his wife and his friends, Richard Willoughby and Richard Bingham.30 Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Abps. Reg. 19, f. 208v. The will certainly does not give the impression that Bowes had profited substantially from his work as a lawyer, perhaps because significant promotion only came very late in a career that had been slow to develop. In the income tax returns of 1436 he was assessed on an annual income of £26, and, given the meagerness of his patrimony and of his wife’s inheritance and the want of evidence of any major purchases, it is likely that a significant part of this income was derived from legal fees.31 E179/240/266. His brother William was assessed at only £5 in 1450-1: E179/159/84. Although there is nothing to connect our MP with Lord Cromwell, in the late 1440s William was in receipt of an annuity of five marks assigned upon that lord’s fee as constable of Newark castle: SC11/822, m. 1. Bowes’s widow did not long survive him for she was dead by 8 Sept. 1445, when their feoffees sold her lands in Frisby-on-the-Wreak to our MP’s friend, Bartholomew Brokesby, already a substantial landholder in that vill.32 Bodl. Wood empt. 7, f. 169v. Thereafter, the Bowes family disappeared into the obscurity from which John had briefly raised it.