BEDFORD, Richard

Richard Bedford was probably the son of a namesake who was the convicted defendant in an assize of novel disseisin heard in 1401, in respect of property in Warwick, and a near kinsman of a family prominent in Coventry in the early fifteenth century.4 JUST1/1514, rot. 39d; Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2459, 2548. Local connexions enabled him to embark on a long and successful career in the Exchequer; a career which had begun by January 1424 when he was working as the deputy of Roger Appleton, the royal auditor in South Wales.5 SC6/1160/12, m. 3; R.A. Griffiths, ‘Public and Private Bureaucracies’, TRHS, ser. 5, xxx. 126. Although there is no evidence to place him in the service of the lord of the borough of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who was one of the hereditary chamberlains of the Exchequer, it must be more than coincidence that he found a place in that great department of state when the earl’s principal man of business, John Throckmorton I*, was acting as Warwick chamberlain. Significantly, in July 1428 he joined another Beauchamp servant and Warwick townsman, Nicholas Rody*, in offering mainprise when Throckmorton was granted the keeping of a Warwickshire manor. His election to Parliament for the borough in 1427, in company with John Brome I*, provides further evidence of his involvement with the Beauchamp retinue.6 CFR, xv. 225; CPR, 1422-9, p. 480; C219/13/5.

Bedford seems to have advanced himself in his first Parliament: in its last days he was named to two commissions concerned with readying a force to depart for Ireland under the command of Sir John Sutton, newly-appointed as the lieutenant there. A year later he secured a more significant recognition of his talents when he was appointed as one of the five auditors of the Exchequer at the generous annual fee of £10.7 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 469, 493; PRO List ‘Exchequer Offs.’, 117. It was at about this time that he established a close relationship with John Brome II*, the son of his fellow Warwick MP of 1427 and another who was to enjoy a long career in the Exchequer. On 5 June 1429 the two men, both described as ‘of Warwick, gentleman’, joined in offering mainprise in the royal grant of a valuable wardship; two months later, they were together elected to represent their native borough in Parliament; and, in December 1432, Bedford stood surety when the Crown entrusted Brome with the custody of the manor of Nuthurst (Warwickshire).8 CFR, xv. 269; xvi. 134; C219/14/1. Thereafter their careers ran in parallel into the 1450s, although Brome, a wealthier man by birth, rose higher.

Bedford was elected to Parliament for the third time early in 1431 – on this occasion with the elder Brome – but this marked the end of his parliamentary career, perhaps because of the increasing demands made upon him by his Exchequer employment.9 C219/14/2. In March 1432 he was named as one of two royal auditors in North Wales and Cheshire, a demanding role that involved spending long periods in that locality. It also brought responsibilities beyond mere auditing. In March 1436, for example, he was one of those who negotiated with the men of Cheshire for a subsidy of 1,000 marks.10 CPR, 1429-36, p. 189; CHES2/103, m. 3; D.J. Clayton, Admin. County Palatine of Chester, 53-54. Additional tasks also came his way. In February 1435 he and his friend, Brome, were commissioned to audit the accounts of the bishopric of Worcester.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 452. Such service should perhaps have brought reward beyond his annuity and wages. In this regard, however, Bedford was far less fortunate than Brome. Indeed, in one instance, he was badly treated by his superiors in the Exchequer. In Michaelmas term 1435, described as ‘of Warwick, gentleman’, he was attached to answer before the Exchequer barons concerning a recognizance of £100 he had offered for John Harpesford’s performance of the office of customer at the wool-beam of Calais. The barons awarded that he forfeit his bond despite the fact that Harpesford, although he had failed to account in the Exchequer, had rendered account before the treasurer of Calais. The unfortunate Bedford had to wait some time for compensation. On 17 July 1439, in reply to his petition, the King granted him an annuity of £10 charged on the manor of Godington (Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire) and payable until he had received back the sum forfeited.12 E159/212, recorda Mich. rot. 7; CPR, 1436-41, p. 305.

In the meantime Bedford continued to act as auditor in North Wales and Cheshire, first in company with Robert Frampton, one of the barons of the Exchequer, and then with Brome.13 CHES2/106, m. 5; 107, m. 5; 109, m. 3; 110, m. 3d. He also added to his area of responsibility: in 1437 he was named as auditor of South Wales, and in 1439 he spent as many as 43 days discharging this role.14 CPR, 1436-41, p. 76; SC6/1167/7, m. 9. With Brome he was also involved in negotiating another subsidy: on 20 July 1439, three days after he had been compensated, they were paid their expenses for treating with the men of Anglesey and Flint for a gift of £1,121 13s. 4d. to the King’s use.15 E403/734, m. 12. Two years later he was among those commissioned to raise a further gift there, and he continued to receive other ad hoc assignments. The most interesting of these came in 1445 when he and William Fallon, a baron of the Exchequer, audited the accounts for the bringing of Queen Margaret to England.16 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, i. 443. Bedford also acted in the Exchequer for Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, receiving assignments on his behalf in 1442 and 1444, and audited the accounts of the honour of Richmond in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.17 E403/747, m. 8; 753, m. 3; CPR, 1441-6, p. 50.

In the mid 1440s Bedford’s responsibilities were reordered. He had lost his position in South Wales in 1440, and in 1446 he was not reappointed in North Wales. Instead, on 21 Sept. 1445, described as a ‘King’s serjeant’, he was named to act as auditor for the duchy of Cornwall in Devon and Cornwall.18 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 427, 432; 1441-6, p. 374; CHES2/118, m. 6d. It may be that this was a less onerous task than the Welsh auditor-ships, and it seems that our MP was at the height of his career in this period. He was certainly well connected in the royal household. In February 1447 he offered mainprise on behalf of two senior Household men, John Norris* and Edward Grimston, and on the following 15 Aug. Edmund Hampden*, usher of the chamber, joined him in his grant of £10 p.a. assigned upon the manor of Godington. As he must almost have been repaid the £100 owed him and this new grant was in survivorship rather than simply until the discharge of the debt, this represented a mark of royal favour.19 CFR, xviii. 72; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 84-85. Much less is known of him in the 1450s. He remained active as an auditor in the duchy of Cornwall, being nominated to a few local commissions in Devon and Cornwall in connexion with his duties, and in 1453 he extended the Crown a modest loan of £5.20 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 19, 255, 257, 305; E403/793, m. 1. More interestingly, his financial skills and perhaps also his earlier links with the duke of Gloucester (tenuous though these appear to have been) were recognized in a petition submitted to the Commons in 1455: this asked that, since no-one would take upon themselves the administration of the duke’s goods, the task be entrusted to the archbishop of Canterbury and a panel including our MP.21 RP, v. 339 (cf. PROME, xii. 445); K.H. Vickers, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 442-3. By this date he had served for over 30 years in the Exchequer, and old age rather than disfavour explains his replacement as one of the Exchequer auditors in May 1459. There is no record of his removal as one of the duchy of Cornwall auditors until July 1461, although this may only be because of a failure of enrolment.22 PRO List ‘Exchequer Offs.’, 117; CPR, 1461-7, p. 129.

Beyond his three elections to Parliament, almost nothing is known of the part Bedford played in local affairs. Nor is much known of his local connexions and landholdings. He did, however, hold property in Warwickshire. By a fine levied in Michaelmas term 1435 he and his wife, Margery, granted five messuages, 40 acres of land and ten acres of meadow in Warwick and nearby at Coten End, Kites Hardwick and Myton to William Hopkins of Warwick and others, presumably as feoffees to their use, but there is nothing to show how these lands came to our MP. In the following term he and his wife acquired an estate for their lives and for one year beyond in over 200 acres of land either side of the border between Warwickshire and Leicestershire at Coton near Churchover, Hinckley and Wykin. Since the grantee was John Harpesford, for whom Bedford had suffered in offering surety, it is likely that this grant was intended to discharge a debt. Later, in 1450, he acquired some 100 acres of land and meadow in the south of the county at Shotteswell and Halford.23 Warws. Feet of Fines, 2586, 2589, 2641. To match his landholdings in Warwickshire he had some ties with the county’s leading landholders, most notably with the financially-pressed Sir William Peyto‡, for whom he was a creditor and feoffee by 1451,24 Ibid. 2652; CPR, 1446-52, p. 501; 1452-61, p. 159; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 456-7. and with Sir William Ferrers of Chartley. By 1436 the latter had granted him a life annuity of 40s., and on 30 June 1438 he was given, either additionally or alternatively, £4 p.a. for life assigned on the Oxfordshire manor of Chinnor.25 E163/7/31/1; E159/228, recorda Easter rot. 2d (a confirmation of the Chinnor annuity by the Crown in June 1451, when the Ferrers lands were in its hands during the minority of Sir William’s daughter, Anne).

For Bedford Chinnor was more than the source of an annuity. Even before Ferrers made the grant of 1438, our MP seems to have lived there. When, on the previous 22 Apr., he took a statute staple at Coventry in £100 from Ferrers’s stepfather, Sir Philip Chetwynd, he was described as ‘of Chinnor, gentleman’, as he was to be again in 1447 when mainpernor in the grant to Norris and Grimston. Further, there is good evidence that he was buried in the church there. In the early seventeenth century there survived a stone to his memory and that of his wife.26 C241/231/31; VCH Oxon. viii. 59; CFR, xviii. 72; Vis. Oxon. (Harl. Soc. v), 113. This stone gave his arms as gules, three helmets argent, probably of our MP’s own adoption. This new residence explains many of the later references to him. In 1455 he was a feoffee for William Tracy* in the manor of Worminghall in Buckinghamshire, and, more interestingly, in 1456 he was one of those to whom John Brecknock*, treasurer of the royal household, conveyed the manor of Ellesborough, only a few miles from Chinnor.27 CP25(1)/22/124/12; E210/4389. Later, on 18 Aug. 1462, he witnessed a deed on Brecknock’s behalf at Horsenden, near Chinnor, and there may be significance in the fact that Brecknock headed the commission of arrest of two months earlier to which our MP had been anomalously named.28 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 204-5; 1467-77, pp. 471-2. His residence at Chinnor also explains how he came to be drawn into the affairs of Thomas Stonor II*. In 1465 he was a feoffee when Stonor purchased the manor of Rotherfield Peppard, and he was a feoffee of Thomas’s mother at her death in 1468.29 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser 3, xxix), p. xxii; ii. (ibid. xxx), 174. This is the penultimate reference to Bedford as living: the last occurs in July 1471 when he was a named as a trustee of goods by Thomas Snell, with whom he had served as an auditor 30 years before.30 CCR, 1468-76, no. 737; CPR, 1436-41, p. 490.