BERTRAM, Edward

Edward was the illegitimate son of Sir John Bertram, one of the leading figures in the north-east and a long-serving representative of both the Crown and the bishop of Durham. When witness at proofs of age in 1444 and 1446, he gave his age as 52, but his father was too young to have had a child in the early 1390s, and it is probable that he was born some ten years later.3 CIPM, xxvi. 155, 465. This is consistent with the dating of his first appearances in the records. On 25 Sept. 1423 he attested the Northumberland county election; and in July 1427 he was among the jurors who reported to the vicar-general of the archdeaconry of Northumberland that the new appointee to the living at the parish church of Alwinton (some miles to the north-west of Newcastle-upon-Tyne) was a man of learning and good standing. A year later he was both married and living in Newcastle: in August 1428 Bishop Langley of Durham granted him and his wife licence to have an oratory in their house there.4 C219/13/2; Reg. Langley, iii. (Surtees Soc. clxix), 746; vi. (ibid. clxxxii), 1553.

In the early 1430s Bertram was intensively active in the administrative affairs of both the county and the town. In February 1431 he was appointed to a commission with sweeping powers to inquire into concealments throughout the north of England; in the following April he was named as an assessor of the parliamentary subsidy in Newcastle; and in April 1432 he attested the parliamentary elections for both town and county. In respect of the latter he witnessed, in company with his half-brother William, the election of their father.5 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 131-2, 139; C219/14/3. His family connexions were clearly strong, and in the following September he appeared alongside his father in the Durham chancery to receive pardons of their outlawry for a trespass committed against another Durham landowner, Sir William Hilton.6 DURH3/36, m. 6. No doubt his own local standing was a reflection of that of his family, although his election as sheriff of Newcastle in September 1432 suggests that he had significant interests of his own there, perhaps acquired by marriage. No sooner had he finished his term in that office than he was named by the Crown as the escheator of the county. In September 1435 he again attested the county election, when his half-brother was returned by his father as sheriff, and he was himself elected as one of the burgesses for Newcastle; and at the next hustings, to the Parliament of 1437, he attested both the county and borough elections.7 Welford, i. 292; CFR, xvi. 173; C219/14/5; 15/1.

This remarkable period of activity in the early 1430s was not to be repeated. Thereafter Bertram remained active in the affairs of Newcastle, attesting the town’s parliamentary elections in 1442 and 1453 (when he again also attested the county election), but little else is known of him.8 C219/15/2; 16/2. His apparent obscurity makes surprising his re-appointment in 1452, two years after his father’s death, as escheator, and it may be that the appointment reflects his legitimate brother William’s increasingly-close connexion with the Percys. William, from as early as 1440, had had a fee of as much as 20 marks from that great northern family, and he repaid this generosity by fighting and dying in the ranks of the Percy earl at the battle of Towton on 29 Mar. 1461. According to family legend, our MP was also present on the Lancastrian side and died of his wounds three weeks after the battle. As no references to him have been traced after this date, it is probable that the legend is correct, for although there is no evidence to connect him directly with the Percys there is nothing unlikely about him coming to the battle in William’s company. He left as his heir a daughter, Joan, who married Thomas Bates of Prudhoe (Northumberland).9 CFR, xix. 17; J.M.W. Bean, Estates Percy Fam. 92; Ogle, 45. The records provide contradictory dates for Joan’s birth. At a proof of age held in the guildhall at Newcastle on 23 June 1444 Bertram claimed to have been present in Newcastle’s church of All Saints to witness the baptism not only of Robert Gabefore, whose age was being proved, but also that of his own daughter; at another proof held on 28 Apr. 1446 he gave the contradictory testimony that Joan was baptised in the town’s church of St. John the Baptist on 11 Nov. 1423: CIPM, xxvi. 155, 465. Given the unreliability of such testimonies, neither statement is to be relied upon.