BRIDGES, Richard II

The earliest known evidence for Bridges is the Huntingdon return to the Parliament of 1427, in which he features as one of the attestors. His own election to the Commons in 1432 and his subsequent service as a bailiff of the borough show that he was of some local importance. During his first term as bailiff, he joined the gentry of Huntingdonshire in swearing the oath to keep the peace widely administered throughout the country in 1434.2 CPR, 1429-36, p. 376. His second term in that office was far from trouble free, for Thomas Webley sued him and two other residents of Huntingdon, John Bailly (his fellow bailiff) and Thomas Couper, in the court of common pleas in 1441. Webley accused them of assault and unjust imprisonment although it is likely that they had arrested him upon suspicion of committing an offence within the borough’s jurisdiction.3 CP40/721, rots. 221, 366; 772, rot. 371d.

There is some evidence for Bridges’ property interests. In 1433 he received a conveyance of 13 acres in the fields of Huntingdon from a fellow burgess, Robert Peck*, and he later possessed an inn on the town’s high street called The Hert on the Hope that Peck appears previously to have held. At some stage in the 1440s, he made over a vacant plot of land next to the inn to the new royal foundation, King’s College, Cambridge, and he conveyed the inn itself to the Crown in March 1449, again for the college’s benefit. The vacant plot features in a petition relating to endowments that the college submitted to the Parliament then in progress, and the same petition reveals Charwalton’s trade, since it refers to him as a ‘mercer’. As for the inn, the deed for its conveyance to King’s is preserved in the college’s archives: Bridges’ seal, featuring a hedgehog motif, is still attached to it. Later, in April 1453, Bridges conveyed nine acres in the fields of Huntingdon to King’s, which immediately leased them back to him. Conceivably, a lack of surviving children explains his willingness to be a benefactor (however minor) to the college. Bridges may also have possessed land beyond Huntingdon, in the nearby village of Hartford, for in 1440 he was taking legal action against a blacksmith who had allegedly killed a horse of his there.4 King’s Coll., Cambridge, deeds, HUN/2, 6, 7, 8, 13; RP, v. 162 (cf. PROME, xii. 70); CP40/718, rot. 201d. Bridges also witnessed property transactions in the borough in 1435 and 1437, and in February 1440 he conveyed lands which William Holte, a London mercer, had once held there, to Sir Nicholas Styuecle* and others, although for what purpose is not clear.5 Add. Chs. 33541-2, 33544, 33550.

There is no evidence for Bridges’ activities after October 1450 when he attested the return of Huntingdon’s burgesses to the Parliament of 1450-1. John ‘Brigges’, a ‘yeoman alias chapman’ from the borough, was a prisoner in Huntingdon castle in mid 1455, but his connexion, if any, with the MP is unknown.6 CPR, 1452-61, p. 254.