BETTISCOMBE, John

The Bettiscombe family took its name from the hamlet in Marshwood Vale in west Dorset, situated mid way between the two boroughs which John represented in Parliament. He was probably related to William Bettiscombe, who held land in Eliston and Up Sydling, near Cerne Abbas,3 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 196-7. and served as a coroner in Dorset from 1401 until 1411, by which date he was ‘sick and aged’.4 CPR, 1401-5, p. 486; CCR, 1409-13, p. 163. It is likely that the future MP was the John ‘Batecombe alias Clerk’, a ‘yeoman’ who was outlawed in the court of common pleas for failing to answer the suit for a debt of £10 brought by the abbot of Cerne, but was pardoned his outlawry on 4 Nov. 1419.5 CPR, 1416-22, p. 228. Although this was when the Parl. of 1419 was in progress, there is no evidence that he was the John Clerk† then sitting for Shaftesbury: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 584. This hypothesis takes weight from the financial dealings which Bettiscombe later had with the abbot.

Bettiscombe, ‘a lerned man of the temporal law’, was sometimes called upon to be a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in Dorset.6 Tropenell Cart. i. 272, 283; C138/7/17, 48/65; C139/52/58. However, he was described as ‘of Devon’ when he stood surety in the Exchequer in December 1422 for the widow of Sir Thomas Marney,7 CFR, xv. 26. and he also appeared as an attorney in the common pleas for litigants from Wiltshire.8 CP40/649, 653 att. rots. A connexion of consequence and longstanding was one he formed with the wealthy family of Brooke, leading landowners of the region, and this no doubt lay behind his election to Parliament in 1425 for Lyme Regis, where the Brookes are known to have exerted influence over the borough’s representation. While up at Westminster for the Parliament he acted as attorney for Joan, widow of Sir Thomas Brooke†, who together with her late husband held custody of the borough for life by grant of Henry V.9 CPR, 1413-16, p. 325; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 372; CP40/657, rot. 314; 659, att. rot. At that time the head of the family was Joan’s son Sir Thomas Brooke*, afterwards Lord Cobham, who was to refer to Bettiscombe in his will as one of his ‘trew servandys’.10 Fifty Earliest English Wills (EETS, lxxviii), 130.

It may have been Bettiscombe’s tenancy of land pertaining to the earl of March’s manor of Marshwood,11 CIPM, xxii. 488. that led to his obtaining in February 1427 (and in association with John Alysaundre*) a lease at the Exchequer of holdings in nearby ‘Hoghurst’ during the minority of the heir, himself a tenant of the earl’s heir the young duke of York. Two years later, described as a ‘gentleman’ he stood surety for Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells and Robert Hillary* when they obtained keeping of the manor of Gussage ‘Bohun’, another part of York’s inheritance.12 CFR, xv. 163-4, 258. Later in 1429 Bettiscombe was returned to the first of four consecutive Parliaments as a Member for Bridport. His will shows that he held property in the town, and he occasionally witnessed deeds there,13 Dorset Hist. Centre, Bridport bor. recs., register, DC/BTB/D2, f. 274; deeds, BTB/S158 for his property in West Street. so it is likely that he fulfilled the residential qualifications. Even so, he does not seem to have been a burgess-proper; rather he appears to have been engaged as a legal adviser, and from 1426 onwards regularly received an annual fee of 13s. 4d. from the borough authorities.14 Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’, DC/BTB/M11.

In the 1430s, during his parliamentary career, Bettiscombe was frequently employed by men in the circle of the Brookes, such as Edmund Pyne† (as a feoffee of the manor of Westrop in Wiltshire),15 CPR, 1429-36, p. 118; 1446-52, p. 52; The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 152-3; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 315-16. and by the Brookes themselves. In this respect he was party to landed transactions completed on the successive marriages of Sir Thomas Brooke’s daughter Joan to William, son of Ralph Bush*, and to John Carent*, and as these involved the maternal inheritance of Sir John Chideock* he was also brought into contact with the latter, who accompanied him to the Parliament of 1433 as shire-knight for Dorset.16 Dorset Feet of Fines, 308-9, 318-20, 357-8; CPR, 1441-6, p. 34. When Brooke made a quitclaim to John Stork† of certain landed holdings, Bettiscombe formally acknowledged the deed at Brooke’s home, Weycroft, on 1 Apr. 1438, in accordance with a writ of dedimus potestatem. From that year, too, Bettiscombe served as a feoffee of various of the Brooke estates, and in return for his counsel Lord and Lady Cobham granted him for life two closes called ‘Monkwood’ in the parish of Stoke Abbott, a few miles to the north of Bridport.17 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 178, 190-1, 397-8; Dorset Feet of Fines, 317-18. In his will of 12 Feb. 1439 Lord Cobham expressed his fears that his children might ‘trouble, disese or pursew’ his trusted servants, in particular Bettiscombe and William Taverner†, and he instructed his wife to protect them from their ‘malice’ by securing lordship and friendship to withstand their ‘ivyll wyll’.18 Fifty Earliest English Wills, 130. Bettiscombe’s service to Cobham continued long after the latter’s death.19 As Cobham’s feoffee he was one of the patrons of Lucton church in Som.: Reg. Stafford, ii (Som. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 270.

Bettiscombe’s other clients included the prior of Taunton, for whom he stood surety at the Exchequer in July 1438. A year later it was his turn again to have an Exchequer lease, this one being of a messuage and land at Okeford in Marshwood Vale, to last for seven years, and when the term was up he was able to renew it for a further 20.20 CFR, xvii. 46, 92; xviii. 53. Despite his election to five Parliaments, Bettiscombe was never appointed to crown office under Henry VI, and his professional life seems to have stagnated after his patron Lord Cobham died. However, the cofferers’ accounts of Bridport show he continued to receive an annual retainer as legal counsel until his death, working alongside the recorder, John Newburgh II*, to whom he was to refer in his will as his ‘master’.21 Bridport ‘Red Bk.’, DC/BTB/H1, ff. 13, 14, 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 42. Hutchins, ii. 241, assumed that he was the town clerk, but another man filled this office, receiving a lower fee than Bettiscombe’s. Otherwise, little is heard of Bettiscombe until Edward IV’s reign. He was then appointed to his one and only royal commission. Although there is no overt sign that Lord Cobham’s son and heir, Sir Edward Brooke*, had caused him any trouble, as feared by his father, in the mid 1460s Lord Edward’s widow Joan, then the wife of Christopher Worsley, made a complaint against him in Chancery, alleging that he had sought to defraud her of her jointure in the Somerset manor of Lucton. By that date Bettiscombe was the only surviving feoffee from the body named by Lord Thomas, and he told the court that the latter’s will had been that the manor should be entailed successively on his seven younger sons in tail-male, so that Edward should inherit it only if all his brothers died without male issue. He had been subjected to legal proceedings by the fourth son, Reynold Brooke, but remained determined to carry out his late patron’s will ‘in peyne of peryll of his sowle’. The Worsleys demanded that he be committed to the Fleet prison until he made estate of the manor to them.22 Procs. Chancery Eliz. ed. Caley and Bayley, ii. pp. xlv-viii.

Over the years Bettiscombe had steadily extended his landed holdings in west Dorset, and in 1435 he had agreed to purchase from Walter Veer* the manor of Brimpton, just across the border with Somerset. Veer was then planning a journey overseas and left a box of evidences in the possession of a cousin, instructing her to deliver them to Bettiscombe if and when he handed over to her £20 in gold in a ‘good purse’. Bettiscombe also acquired from Veer his manor of ‘Vere’s Wotton’ in Symondsbury near Bridport, but less directly, for Veer had initially conveyed it to the wealthy Bridport merchant, William Mountfort*, who only later passed it on to our MP.23 Hutchins, ii. 240-1. To the land he held in Marshwood he added more at Woodmill in the 1430s, of which he enfeoffed not only William Boweley* (who twice accompanied him to Parliament), but also, by July 1441, men of higher distinction, including the bishop of Bath and Wells and the prominent lawyers (Sir) John Hody*, John Fortescue*, John Stork and John Wydeslade*.24 C146/9080, 10656; CAD, i. C298. In his later years Bettiscombe grew close to William Oliver I*, the Bridport merchant who was Mountfort’s heir, and in 1463 he was one of those to whom Oliver granted his goods and chattels. Two years later he sold Oliver and his son John a reversionary interest in his lands in Woodmill, which he and his wife kept for life. The financial arrangements apparently meant that Oliver paid him £32 and an additional £20 to the abbot of Cerne, to whom Bettiscombe had earlier mortgaged the property.25 CAD, ii. C1979; vi. C4383, 6015; C1/61/326.

Bettiscombe was making preparations for death. On 3 Apr. 1469 he enfeoffed his ‘right tristy mayster’ John Newburgh, and ‘friends’ who included William Montagu*, in Vere’s Wootton, so that after his death this manor would pass to his widow, Christine, and his executors to pay his debts. Being infirm and ‘languid’ he declared his will on the following 30 Nov., asking to be buried in Symondsbury church, to which he made bequests for windows and works on the aisle of St. Stephen. The beneficiaries of his will were to maintain religious services at Symondsbury according to the use of Sarum. He was a member of the fraternity of All Saints there, and, more surprisingly, also of that of St. Augustine at Bristol. To the poor and infirm in ‘Bedredhous’ in Bridport he left a toft and well, although the bulk of his property in the town was to be held by his widow for life, with successive remainders in tail to his son Robert and William Oliver, and in default to Cerne abbey. Bettiscombe’s daughter Lucy, a nun at Tarrant abbey, received a bequest of a silver cup with a cover (which he had bought from the former sheriff Robert Cappes for 53s. 4d.), and six silver saucers. After his widow’s death specific pieces of plate were to pass to his grandchildren. The widow was to receive an annuity of 26s. 8d. from the Woodmill estate, £2 p.a. from other holdings and annual rents of four marks, as well as all his other tenements, mansions, gardens, apple orchards and ‘le Hempehayes’ in Bridport, and his property at Vere’s Wotton. She and Robert were named as executors, with the testator’s ‘special and faithful friend’ William Oliver providing counsel. The will was proved in the court of the archdeacon of Dorset on 9 Mar. 1470.26 C146/8166, 9540. Christine surrendered to Oliver her life interest in the Woodmill lands, and in return he gave her the annuity as arranged, together with two cartloads of firewood a year. But after Oliver himself died his daughters had difficulty obtaining the estate from Bettiscombe’s son Robert (who secured it in 1479). It would appear that plans for one of the girls to marry a kinsman of our MP had fallen through.27 CAD, i. C175; vi. C6356; C1/61/326. Vere’s Wotton descended in the Bettiscombe family at least to 1865.28 Hutchins, ii. 241.