BERWICK, Averard

Averard Berwick was from a minor gentry family with lands either side of the border between Westmorland and Lancashire, at Stainton and Burton-in-Kendal in the former and Borwick in the latter. He was the representative of a junior branch as the son of William Berwick, who was probably the younger brother of the head of the family, John Berwick, who died in 1438.2 VCH Lancs. viii. 170; CIPM, xxv. 353. Averard must have been a young man when elected for Carlisle in 1431, and a context for his election can only be found in later evidence. By 1439 he was serving in the retinue of William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, at Verneuil. Since Fauconberg’s elder brother, Richard, earl of Salisbury, exercised an occasional influence over Carlisle’s representation as warden of the west march, it is probable that Averard was elected as a Neville servant.3 C219/14/2; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. mss, 25775/1387. For want of a better explanation, it must also be assumed that he owed to the patronage of that great family his excellent marriage to Margaret, daughter and heiress-presumptive of Thomas Curson of Bulcote. The date of the marriage is unknown, but it probably took place at about the same time as our MP was acknowledged as heir to the Berwick estates. On 22 Mar. 1446 the manor of Borwick was settled on John Berwick, the son of the John Berwick who died in 1438, with remainder to our MP and his male issue; and the family’s lands in Stainton were settled in the same way save that John’s illegitimate sons were to have life interests after their father’s death.4 PL17/6, no. 28; PL15/9, rot. 12. Perhaps it was this enhancement of Averard’s prospects that facilitated the marriage. It had, at all events, been made by 1447-8 when the manor of Bulcote was settled on his wife’s parents for their lives with remainder to him and his wife and her issue.5 The foot of this fine does not survive, but it is known from later litigation: C1/186/65; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, iii. 25.

This marriage came towards the end of Berwick’s military career. He and his cousins, John and Laurence Berwick, had continued to serve with Fauconberg into the 1440s. On 26 Aug. 1440 Averard and John mustered at Bernay before joining in the successful siege of Harfleur; and at the end of 1442 all three Berwicks were under Fauconberg in the garrison at Neubourg.6 Archives Nationales, Paris, Monuments Historiques, K66/1/35; A. Marshall, ‘English War Captains in Eng. and Normandy’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1975), 178; Egerton Ch. 186. Soon after, Fauconberg exchanged one theatre of war for another, moving from France to the Scottish march when he was appointed keeper of Roxburgh castle in 1444, and it may be that the Berwicks went with him. By the spring of 1447, however, Averard was back in France, serving as Fauconberg’s lieutenant in the captaincy of Rugles, and he probably remained there until the castle’s fall in the autumn of 1449.7 Add. Ch. 12323; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 623.

After his return from France, Berwick’s appearances in the records are fitful. On 11 Dec. 1450, described as ‘of Borwick, esquire’, he entered into a bond, dated in the London parish of St. Mary Aldermary, in £14 7s. 5d. to the wealthy London skinner and money-lender, Christopher Warter. Later, in 1458, two London tailors, the executors of the one-time alderman Ralph Holland, sued him for a debt of £11 10s.8 E13/154, Mich. rot. 4; CP40/789, rot. 206d. Perhaps his military career had left him short of funds, but there is no more direct evidence of indebtedness.

Much more interesting are two references indicative of Berwick’s Yorkist sympathies in the late 1450s. On 12 Jan. 1458 he and his father-in-law, Thomas Curson, were among those indicted for forcibly entering the Nottinghamshire manors of Gonalston, Widmerpool and Bunny, which Humphrey Bourgchier* claimed, in right of his wife, against the feoffees and executors of Ralph, Lord Cromwell. It may be that Berwick was here acting as an agent of the Nevilles for Fauconberg’s nephew, Sir Thomas Neville, Bourgchier’s brother-in-law, had the same claim to make in the right of his wife.9 S.J. Payling, ‘Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the Heriz Inheritance’, Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 87-89; KB9/289/78; KB27/792, rex rot. 37. In Hil. term 1460 Berwick made a fine of one mark to purge the indictment: KB27/795, fines rot. Equally revealing is our MP’s appearance on 10 Dec. 1459, during the course of the Coventry Parliament in which the Nevilles and other Yorkists were attainted, as surety for his kinsman and former colleague in arms, Laurence Berwick, who had, on that day, received a pardon for treason. It is an obvious inference that Laurence had been in arms with the Nevilles in the failed Yorkist rising of the previous autumn, and it is not unlikely that Averard was also.10 C237/40/68.

In any event, whether his support for the Yorkist cause was active or passive, Averard was chosen as escheator of his adopted county of Nottinghamshire two days after Edward IV assumed the throne. It might have been imagined that this would herald a new period of prominence for him and his family, particularly as the change of regime coincided with the death of his father-in-law. The intimacy of their association with the Nevilles was soon made apparent: on the death of William Neville, who had been promoted to the earldom of Kent, on 9 Jan. 1463, our MP’s cousin, John Berwick, married his widow, Joan, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Fauconberg. This marriage was discreditable for three reasons: it took place with indecent haste – the couple were pardoned for their marriage without licence only two months after the earl’s death; the widows of earls were not suitable spouses for minor gentry; and Joan was being taken advantage of for a second time for she appears to have been an idiot from birth.11 CP, v. 285; CPR, 1461-7, p. 283. Perhaps the notoriety of this match explains why the affairs of the Berwicks did not flourish as might have been expected in the 1460s, although, in Averard’s case, the explanation may lie in advanced age. Only one further reference to him has been traced after his term as escheator. In 1467 Warter’s executors recovered debt and damages of £13 14s. 1d. in the Exchequer of pleas on the bond of 1450.12 E13/154, Mich. rot. 4.

Berwick’s widow survived him. In the 1490s his grandson and heir, another Averard, complained to the chancellor that her feoffees, headed by her kinsman, Robert Sutton of Averham (her mother’s first husband had been Henry Sutton†), had refused to make estate of the manor of Bulcote to him and encouraged his kinsmen, John Berwick and Cuthbert Berwick, to claim the enfeoffed manor. His suit appears to have been successful for our MP’s male descendants remained settled at Bulcote until 1569, when the manor was divided between the two daughters of his great-grandson, Gabriel Berwick.13 C1/186/65; Thoroton, iii. 25.