BATE, John

Although there were several men of the same name active in the period, one of whom served as clerk of the Parliaments from 1437 to 1438, there can be little doubt that the Member for Dunheved in the Parliaments of 1426 and 1435 was in fact a local man. He is first recorded as reeve of the duchy of Cornwall manor of Helston in 1411,4 It was probably the future clerk of the Parliaments who in December 1435 occurred among a group of distinguished south-western lawyers and gentry as a feoffee of John Chymbeham (E159/212, commissiones rot. 1), and who regularly served as an attorney in the court of Chancery for a variety of litigants (C254/138/63; 140/47, 52; 141/ 11; 142/21). and it is probable that it was the same John Bate who later served the duchy receiver, Robert Whittingham. Bate almost certainly owed his return for Dunheved (the duchy borough of Launceston) to his role within the duchy administration, although he was no stranger to the town. Thus, in 1432 he was named among the King’s officers in the town who were ordered to take into custody Richard Yurle, one of the canons of the local priory, and John Lovell alias Leche, a medical practitioner, who were accused of having engineered the death of the prior, John Honyland.5 KB145/6/9.

In spite of Bate’s apparent local credentials, it may be significant that he and his colleague in the 1426 Parliament, William Boturnell*, were the first complete novices to represent the borough since Simon’s Yurle*’s election in 1420, and it had been even longer since in March 1416 both of the borough’s representatives had seemingly possessed no previous parliamentary experience.6 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 776. Equally, it is interesting that on the occasion of Bate’s second election in 1435 there may have been some interference with the Dunheved election: that year, his name was recorded, not only on the sheriff’s indenture but also on the accompanying schedule, over an erasure, perhaps replacing a different one.7 C219/14/5.