BEERE, Ralph

In seeking to identify the MP for Weymouth of 1447 we have very little information to go on. No local man of this name has been discovered. However, given that the name Ralph Beere or Bere was quite unusual, it may well be the case that he was the person who lived in London at the end of his life but had originally come from Motcombe near Shaftesbury in Dorset, for it was in the parish church there that he wished his parents to be commemorated. Yet even if so, no record of that Ralph has been found until 14 years after the Parliament of 1447 met at Bury St. Edmunds. Then, in association with Master John Pemberton* of the Chancery and William Nottingham II*, the King’s attorney, he was named as an executor of Master Richard Ewen, the archdeacon of Lincoln, in the will Ewen made in London in 1461, three years before his death. Their fellow executors, the bishop of London and the treasurer of St. Paul’s, evidently declined to take on the will’s administration: these three alone received from a London skinner a release of all personal actions arising from Ewen’s will in November 1465; in February following they obtained royal pardons of all debts due to the King before the previous 20 Dec.; and three years later a Lincolnshire notary public was pardoned outlawry for failing to answer them in court.4 PCC 7 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 56); CCR, 1461-8, p. 332; CPR, 1461-7, p. 449; 1467-77, p. 81.

In a pardon granted him on 7 Dec. 1468, Beere was described as ‘of London, gentleman, formerly of Boston, Lincolnshire, and of Havant, Hampshire’,5 C67/46, m. 19. but how he had come to move from Dorset to Lincolnshire and Hampshire and then on to the capital is not explained. Nor is it clear how he had come to Archdeacon Ewen’s notice. A few days after obtaining the pardon, he was appointed collector of customs and subsidies in Poole, where he served initially for a year and then again in 1471-2.6 E122/119/11, 13. Both appointments were made in the name of Edward IV; Beere was removed from office during the Readeption. His official duties led to a summons to the court of the Exchequer in the Michaelmas term of 1472 to answer a plea brought by the prior of Tynemouth against him and John Nanby his fellow collector for refusing to honour a tally for £10. On 28 Nov. the barons decided the prior should recover the money, with damages amounting to a further 20s.7 E13/158, m. 42d.

Meanwhile, Beere had established connexions in London. On 8 Feb. 1469 he lent his support to William Kerver, a fishmonger, in a bond in 100 marks for delivery into the City’s chamber of the sum of 40 marks and certain jewels, to be held for one of the city orphans.8 Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 82. Although he had been called ‘gentleman’ in his pardon of a few weeks earlier, he appears to have become a member of the Fishmongers Company, and also to have begun to trade in wool, for a few years later he petitioned the chancellor to complain that John Stanhope*, the Nottinghamshire esquire, had defrauded him over the sale of a considerable quantity of this commodity. He alleged that on 9 Nov. 1475 Stanhope had undertaken to deliver to him more than 23 sacks of good Nottinghamshire wool, but that when he failed to collect it on the agreed day (on account of bad weather) Stanhope had not only demanded from him a pipe of red wine worth four marks as a penalty but had instituted an action of common law demanding over £117 against him on the bond into which he had entered on agreeing to buy the wool. Furthermore, after he had sold the wool on to John Tate, a London merchant, it was discovered that more than four sacks of dross were mixed with the good material.9 C1/54/392.

In the late 1470s Beere married a London widow, Margaret, relict of the affluent cutler John Dey, who had died in the autumn of 1475 leaving five of his six children still under age. In July 1476, while still single, she entered into a bond in £143 5s. 8d. for payment into the city chamber of a like sum to be held for two of these children, Robert and Isabel Dey, until they came of age or married; and the same sum was provided for their brothers Richard and John. Margaret’s former husband had left her for life his property in the parish of St. Lawrence Old Jewry, together with that in his native town of Watford and elsewhere in Hertfordshire, which provided Beere with an income for the few years their marriage lasted.10 PCC 21 Wattys; Cal. Letter Bk. London, L, 142-3. Margaret died before Beere made his will, which he wrote in his own hand on 21 Oct. 1483. He asked to be buried in the church closest to where he died, leaving £2 to its fabric, half a mark to the parson, and £2 to the churchwardens, although if his resting-place turned out to be St. Lawrence’s the last sum was to be increased to five marks. A priest was to be paid ten marks a year for three or four years to pray for the souls of the testator and his first wife, those of John Dey and his first wife, and for Master Richard Ewen (whom he had served as executor long before). A trental of masses was to be sung the day after Beere’s death, and every day for ten days three masses and a placebo and dirige were to be said in their cells by all the monks in the Charterhouse, at a cost of 4d. per mass, and anyone assisting them by saying ‘our Lady Sauter’ was to have 1d. Every friary in London was to receive 10s. Beere provided bread worth 30s. for poor folk to eat on the day after his death, and 2s. 6d. each to 13 poor maidens for their marriages. In return for prayers for his parents, Motcombe church near Shaftesbury was left vestments worth five marks. His wife Joan was to be executrix and to have disposition of his goods, according to the custom of the city of London; while Master John Chapman, the parson of All Hallows Honey Lane, was to oversee the will’s administration. Beere left no sons of his own, but made bequests to his first wife’s children, notably £4 p.a. for two years for his stepson William Dey to complete his education at Oxford, and ten marks to ‘Sir’ John Dey to pray for him and Dey’s father; while two other stepsons had five marks and £2 respectively. A third part of his goods was to be divided between his daughters Eleanor and Cecily after the custom of the city. Probate was granted on 31 May 1485.11 PCC 20 Logge.