BISHOP, William

Bishop was born in the final years of the fourteenth century as son to a minor Devon gentleman. His father, Gilbert, never became prominent in the Crown’s service, but nevertheless played his part in public life as a member of local juries and attended the parliamentary county elections at Exeter on at least five separate occasions between 1413 and 1429.8 C139/24/34; 33/32; 37/7; 49/41; 61/45; E199/9/11, m. 2; C219/11/1; 12/5, 6; 13/3; 14/1. The extent of the family property is uncertain, but it apparently included holdings in Bondleigh and Spreyton.9 JUST1/199/10; C142/26/64. In the light of what is known of his later career, William may have trained in the law, and to have established a practice in the city of Exeter, where by 1425 he owned a house in the parish of St. George.10 Devon RO, Mallock mss, 48/13/10/1; Exeter mayor’s ct. roll 4-5 Hen. VI, rot. 19. He was admitted to the freedom of the city in September 1423 on payment of the customary fine of £1,11 Exeter Freemen ed. Rowe and Jackson, 44. but his elevation to the ranks of the freemen evidently owed something to his professional skills, for within a few days he was elected one of the city’s stewards, and he went on to serve in city government for several subsequent years. Nevertheless, Bishop’s life was always more that of a country gentleman than an urban merchant. In 1434 he ranked among the Devon gentry obliged to take the general oath against maintenance, and like his father, who may be thought to have been dead by that date, he regularly served on local juries.12 CPR, 1439-36, p. 399; C139/5/42; 15/21; 20/37; 22/23; 48/17 (2), 30; 51/49; 74/26; 88/55; 92/40; 101/73; 111/47; 122/37; 123/42; CP40/696, rot. 132; E199/9/11, m. 7. He was well connected both among his Exeter neighbours and among the south-western gentry, several of whom he served as a feoffee.13 CP40/782, rot. 530d; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Yonge mss, 107/38. His relations with local gentlemen are illustrated by his account of a dinner at Colcombe in the company of Roger Champernowne* in the spring of 1438, after which the two men rode together to Exeter, and spent the evening drinking at the house of the merchant Richard Orenge.14 C4/49/31. Among his more important contacts was the powerful Sir William Bonville* of Shute, whom he served as an official during the latter’s shrievalty in 1423. While serving in this capacity he was said to have unlawfully packed a jury at the Exeter assizes in favour of the disreputable Sir John Dynham of Nutwell, but if there was any truth in this, Bishop probably acted on his master’s instructions, for on the same occasion the assize justices heard similar accusations against Bonville, who was said to be related to Dynham by ties of blood.15 CP40/632, rot. 316. Indeed, Bishop probably denied any suggestion of wrongdoing with the same vehemence with which he told the chancellor’s commissioners in an inquest in 1439 that he was ‘nought corrupt by prayer ne price’.16 C4/49/31.

At some point in the early to mid 1430s, Bishop entered the service of the young earl of Devon, Thomas Courtenay. Although Courtenay had had formal livery of his lands in 1423 at the age of only nine, it was not until he reached full age in 1435 that he began to play a prominent part in local government. When he did, his household and estate administration naturally expanded, and Bishop probably joined its ranks in the course of this expansion. By July 1439 he was serving as under steward of the earl’s estates, but he may have fulfilled a similar function some years earlier, for even by the summer of 1436 he was named among the feoffees of the Courtenay estates.17 CPR, 1429-36, p. 602; Devon RO, Petre (Bonville) mss, 123M/TB498. There can be little doubt that Bishop, who is not otherwise known to have maintained connexions in the Cornish boroughs, owed his two returns to Parliament to his comital master. On both occasions one of the Cornish shire knights was the earl’s cousin and close associate, Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc, and at the same time several other south-western boroughs also elected members of the Courtenay circle.

There is no evidence to suggest that Bishop allowed himself to be drawn into the earl’s violent activities in the first half of the 1450s. He is not named in the indictments of the earl’s followers, nor did he sue out a royal pardon following the collapse of the earl’s bid for power. Indeed, it seems that by the autumn of 1449 he had returned to his life in the city of Exeter, where he was serving as one of the city stewards even when he was returned for Bodmin. In subsequent years he regularly participated in the annual civic elections; in 1450-1 he followed up his term as steward with a year as city receiver, and he served as a member of the council of 24. Between 1454 and 1456 he held office as one of the constables of the Exeter staple, before rounding off his public career with a two-year stint as one of the wardens of the bridge over the river Exe.18 C241/237/11; 242/26; 243/22; C67/25; CPR, 1446-52, p. 448. He may have been the man who in 1451 owned the Margaret of Hoke. In an official capacity he was frequently associated with John Cutler alias Carwithan*, together with whom he was accused in the summer of 1456 of having earlier in the year liberated Thomas Lanoy I* from the sheriff of Devon’s custody, a charge which Bishop and Cutler denied.19 KB27/781, rex rot. 33d.

The date of Bishop’s death is uncertain. He disappears from the Exeter records after the civic elections of 1461, and it was probably a younger man who held office as the earl of Douglas’s bailiff of the manor of Shebbear in October 1471.20 KB9/332/12; 387/30; KB27/855, rex rot. 4. It was probably this second William Bishop who was frequently called upon in the 1470s to swear to the property and heirs of some of the most prominent landowners in Devon, including Humphrey Stafford IV*, earl of Devon, and Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk,21 C140/32/30, m. 2; 44/31, m. 5; 51/17, m. 2; 52/30, m. 8; 55/27; 63/55, m. 2. and it may also have been he (then styled a mere yeoman), who served Joan, one of the coheiresses of Thomas Carminowe* and by then wife of Halnath Mauleverer, at some point before 1465.22 C244/99/38. It is not clear whether the two William Bishops were related, or indeed whether the MP had any offspring, although his decision to sell his title to at least some of his property in Exeter to Thomas Calwodlegh* may suggest that he remained childless. Nicholas Bishop, who by the turn of the century had succeeded to the family property in Bondleigh, was probably a more distant kinsman.23 C1/33/16; CP40/786, rot. 253; C142/26/64.