BIRD, Alan

Although Bird rose to be one of the leading burgesses of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his origins are obscure. His family may have moved to Newcastle from Kingston-upon-Hull in the fourteenth century; and his father was perhaps the John Bird with whom he obtained a royal pardon in 1452.7 Test. Ebor. ii. (Surtees Soc. xxx), 236n.; C67/40, m. 20. He began his career while his putative father still lived. In 1440, described as a mercer, he was one of several townsmen of Newcastle sued for debt (in his case for £24) by the executors of Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham.8 CP40/717, rot. 94. Soon afterwards he was trading in wool. In March 1446 his consignment of wool was among those lost by a group of Newcastle merchants when a local ship, Le Petre, foundered in storms. Three years later he lost another cargo when Le Mariknight of Dordrecht was taken by pirates operating out of Dieppe. On 18 Dec. 1450 he secured relief from the customs due on these cargoes by a royal writ directed to the barons of the Exchequer.9 Welford, i. 322-3; E159/227, brevia Hil. rot. 27. By this time Bird was holding his first borough office, to which he had been elected two months before, and in the summer of 1452 he was appointed in what proved to be a brief term as one of the port’s collectors of customs.10 Welford, i. 322; CFR, xviii. 214; xix. 4.

Soon after the loss of his customs office, Bird was accused by his fellow collector, John Baxter, of avoiding the payment of the customs due on a shipment of wool. Baxter appeared before the barons of the Exchequer in June 1453 and claimed that Bird had, on the previous 11 May, unlawfully removed his wool worth £20 from the weigh-house before it could be cocketted and then taken it, in the middle of the night, to North Shields before smuggling it overseas. Bird denied the accusation, but was summoned to appear before the barons in his own person to answer the charges. The case dragged on, and Bird’s desire to bring it to an end may have prompted him to seek and secure election to the Parliament on 2 July 1455. On the following 4 Nov., during the Parliament’s first prorogation, he secured a royal pardon, and on 20 Nov., after Parliament had reassembled, he successfully pleaded the pardon before the barons of the Exchequer.11 E159/229, recorda Trin. rot. 47; C219/16/3; C67/41, m. 13.

This was not to be the only occasion when Bird’s activities brought him to the attention of the Crown. In April 1459, along with his fellow merchants, John Penrith* (with whom he had represented Newcastle in the 1455 Parliament) and John Richardson*, he was accused of assaulting John Broun, keeper of the fishery called ‘le pryk fysshe’ on the river Tyne. In the previous October Bird had negotiated with the Crown a 24-year lease of the ‘King’s Meadow’ on the Tyne. Coupled with his reappointment as one of the collectors of customs, this gave him a vested interest in the affairs of the river and port. In February 1459 the lease of the ‘King’s Meadow’ was taken over by Penrith, his fellow collector, and it was doubtless this that brought them into conflict with Broun. At first, the writ ordering their arrest was returned ‘non sunt inventi’, but in Hilary term 1460 they appeared in the Exchequer and were committed to the Fleet prison. Subsequently released on surety, they put themselves upon a jury. This, called to meet at Newcastle on the following 16 Apr., found them guilty and they were ordered to appear again before the barons to make fine. However, national events overtook them and by Michaelmas term 1461 the case had still not been settled.12 E159/235, recorda Easter rot. 34; CFR, xix. 222, 229. In Oct. 1458 Bird had also taken on the farm of the alnage for 20 years, a farm also surrendered in the following Feb. in favour of Penrith: CFR, xix. 218-19.

Nothing certain is known of Bird’s political sympathies during the civil war of 1459-61 but it may be that he was identified with the Yorkists. Removed from the office of customs collector during the Lancastrian Parliament of 1459, he was reappointed early in 1462 and given additional responsibility as the port’s deputy butler. Further, from Michaelmas 1462, he was elected as the town’s mayor and went on to hold the office for three of the four following years, an indication perhaps that his fellow townsmen considered that he enjoyed the favour of the new monarch.13 CFR, xx. 5; CPR, 1461-7, p. 129; Welford, i. 345-6, 354.. His importance in their eyes may also have been supplemented by his second marriage, to the widow of one of leading county gentry. Her first husband, (Sir) William Bertram, had served with Bird as a Newcastle customs collector before, as a retainer of Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, dying in the Lancastrian cause at the battle of Towton. She had certainly married our MP by Hilary term 1466, when they were sued for debt by the widow of Nicholas Girlington*, but it is likely they had already been married for a few years.14 CP40/818, rot. 277d.

On 31 Oct. 1466, soon after the end of Bird’s final term as mayor, Thomas Porter, the searcher in the port of Newcastle, appeared before the barons of the Exchequer and alleged that on 17 Sept. Bird and another local merchant, William Heysand, had stolen eight lengths of woollen cloth which the searcher had seized from a Dutch merchant. The two men, he claimed, had broken into his house and assaulted his servants. They were ordered to appear in the Exchequer, but the outcome of the case is not recorded.15 E159/243, recorda Mich. rot. 39. This incident, alongside the actions of Bird’s eldest son detailed below, may, however, account for his removal as customer on 24 Feb. 1467 and as deputy to the chief butler two days later. Little more is known of him. On 5 Jan. 1471 he purchased a royal pardon from the government of the Readeption, and he attested the Newcastle election to the Parliament of 1472.16 C67/44, m. 11; C219/17/2. He probably died soon afterwards.

Bird had at least two sons, Alan and William.17 George Bird†, who was MP for Newcastle in 1491, may have been another of our MP’s sons, but he is more likely to have been his gds.: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 78. They, and particularly the former, had troubled careers. In January 1466 a high-powered commission was ordered to arrest them for riots in Newcastle. The nature of these disturbances was not spelt out, but another commission on 29 Oct. again ordered their arrest along with a ship, Le Valentine of Ipswich. The younger Alan was probably tried and found guilty of these offences, for on 18 Apr. 1467 the mayor of Newcastle, John Nelson, entered into an indenture for the delivery of his forfeited goods and chattels to John Neville, earl of Northumberland, the warden of the east march.18 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 450, 553; E154/6/27. Indeed, despite his father’s apparent sympathy for the Yorkists, it seems that Alan’s crime had been treason and that the riots in Newcastle may have been in support of the Lancastrian cause and linked to treasonable dealings with the Scots. A petition subsequently presented to the chancellor by John Colt, one of those commissioned to seize Bird’s goods and arrest his adherents, described him as ‘the kynges Traitour and rebell’.19 C1/38/1. What befell him thereafter is unknown.

Along with at least two sons, Bird also had a daughter, whom he married to one John Goldsmith. In two petitions presented to the chancellor in the late 1470s, Goldsmith complained that Roger Hardyng had refused to settle upon him and his wife two messuages and a garden in Newcastle, leased by Bird from Roger’s father, William Hardyng*. Further, Roger had taken advantage of Goldsmith’s status as a stranger to the town to bring vexatious actions against him before the mayor and sheriff. 20 C1/60/166; 64/466.