BROKE, John

It is possible that Broke was originally from Herefordshire, for a deed of March 1457 shows that a John Broke of Snodhill in that county married Agnes, the daughter and heir of John Clifford of Worcester. The deed in question is a quitclaim by which, for some unknown purpose, the couple released all the lands and tenements that Clifford had held at Worcester to John Campion and Richard Horston. A John Broke (probably, but not definitely the same man) also features in another deed of the following January, as the lessor of a tenement in the city’s ‘Bargatte’ to Joan, wife of Henry Forthey.3 Collectanea, 33; Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Historical Soc. 1909), 22.

If originally an outsider, the subject of this biography was sufficiently associated with Worcester to represent it in the last Parliament of Henry VI’s reign and subsequently to serve several terms as a bailiff there. During the first of these terms he and his co-bailiff Thomas Pachet*, with whom he had sat in the Parliament of 1460, were sued in the Chancery by Henry Lambe, a Worcester draper. Lambe stated that he had won a trespass suit heard in the city before their predecessors as bailiffs, Thomas Long and Robert Langton. The court had awarded him costs and damages of £11 13s. 4d. and placed the defendants, William Tovy and others, into custody until this sum was paid. His complaint was that he had yet to receive the money when Broke and Pachet, upon succeeding Long and Langton, had allowed Tovy and his associates to go free. The purpose of the bill was to call Broke and Pachet, whom Lambe claimed had acted out of partiality towards the prisoners, to account for their actions but, for whatever reason, the court decided that there was no case to answer and dismissed the suit.4 C1/29/82.

During the later 1470s, Broke was involved in another Chancery suit, this time as the plaintiff. In his bill, he stated that he had agreed to purchase a tenement and garden in Worcester from the late Joan Cristofre for ten marks, and had given her and her trustees, Walter and Thomas Boydon, a bond as a security for payment. In return, they had assured him that they would surrender the obligation upon proof that her title to the property was not good. Subsequently, ‘my lord Pryncys counseill’ (presumably the council of the young Edward, prince of Wales) had declared Joan’s title invalid, but the Boydons had refused to return the obligation, or the 40s. Broke had paid to her in hand at the time of the agreement. To make matters worse for Broke, he had found himself in legal jeopardy because of the bond, over which the Boydons had sued him at Worcester. He therefore asked that they should appear in the Chancery to explain their actions. Whatever the outcome of the suit, it is evident that he had taken a gamble in buying property from a vendor with an uncertain title. At the foot of Broke’s bill are recorded the names of those who stood surety for him as plaintiff, John Broke ‘junior’ and John Wyke, both ‘gentlemen’ from Worcester. In all probability, his namesake was a close family relative, if not his son. Perhaps another relative was Thomas Broke, a tailor active in the city in this period. At the beginning of 1478, he featured in an appeal brought in the court of King’s bench by one Thomas Radnore, who accused him of having played the principal part in the murder of his father, Roger Radnore.5 C1/59/292; KB27/866, rot. 55.

The existence of at least two John Brokes of Worcester in the later fifteenth century raises the possibility that the cursus honorum above conflates more than one individual. Quite conceivably, the John who was an MP for the city in the Parliament of 1491-2 was a younger namesake of the man who sat for it three decades earlier. For instance, the identity of the John Broke who features in an indictment taken at sessions of the peace held in the city on 15 Dec. 1477 is far from clear. According to the indictment, on the previous 3 Nov. Stephen Calowe, a local shoemaker, had attacked and wounded John Broke of Worcester, ‘yeoman’, just outside the city.6 B.H. Putnam, Procs. J.P.s, 430. Furthermore, there are similar problems of identification regarding the man who became a member of the guild of the Holy Cross at Stratford-upon-Avon, an institution that various men and women from Worcester joined throughout the fifteenth century. The guild’s records show that it in 1481-2 John Broke, a ‘grazier’ from Worcester, and Joan his wife paid it an entry fine of 6s. 8d. Finally, it is equally open to question whether the John Broke of Worcester who conveyed a tenement in Eport Street in the city to Richard Petur and Alice his wife at the beginning of 1484 was the MP.7 BRT1/3/93; Worcester Chs. 45.