BLIKE, Richard

Blike’s father was the founder of the family’s fortunes. A lawyer in a small way of local business, just as our MP was later to be, he was active from 1387 when he was assaulted at Shrewsbury in attempting to claim for the Crown the office of ‘wodewardwyke’ of the alien priory of Wenlock. In the same year he offered surety in a royal grant to Giles Fililode, whose sister was his wife, or was soon to be.2 CPR, 1385-9, p. 388; CFR, x. 203. The marriage proved to be an excellent one. When Giles died without issue in 1420 Katherine inherited a moiety of the manor of Shrewley in Warwickshire and some small parcels of lands at Astley Abbots, Nordley and Alveley, all in the environs of Bridgnorth, in Shropshire. Together these lands were worth no more than between £5 and £10 p.a., and yet they were a handsome addition to the undocumented property of the Blikes themselves.3 CIPM, xxi. 526; xxii. 263. Our MP’s father did not, however, live to enjoy them. He was still active in the second decade of the fifteenth century, attesting four Shropshire parliamentary elections between 1410 and 1417 and serving a term as tax collector, but he does not appear in the records after Easter 1418.4 C219/10/5, 6, 11/5, 12/2; CFR, xiv. 152; KB27/628, rex rot. 8d.

By this date Richard Blike had already begun his career. He was married by 13 Dec. 1418: by a deed of that date, he and his wife, Margaret, were granted all the lands and goods of a London glover, John Phelip. Phelip’s wife, Joan, sister and heiress of Richard Horton of Dothill, was from Shropshire, and it may be that our MP’s wife was her kinswoman. This is strongly implied by a quitclaim of 1429 from Joan, then a widow, to the Blikes of her brother’s lands in that county, although, if Margaret was also Joan’s heiress, the records provide no indication of the lands she brought to our MP.5 C146/5552; Salop Archs., Marcy Hemingway mss, 3950/24. When their marriage took place Blike was probably studying at an inn of court, a conclusion consistent with his appearance as an attorney and mainpernor in the central courts in 1420 and 1421 and with his later description as an apprentice-at-law in 1427.6 KB27/636, fines rot.; 642, rex rot. 19; CP40/638, att. rot. 2; C219/13/5.

In 1421 Blike was still described as ‘of Church Stretton’, the address of his father, but he soon acquired a new one. His mother’s death in 1424 brought him her share of the Fililode lands, and he moved to Astley Abbots, just to the north of Bridgnorth.7 CIPM, xxii. 536; CFR, xv. 121-2; Feudal Aids, iv. 266. He is occasionally described as ‘of Church Stretton’ in the 1430s: e.g. KB27/678, rex rot. 20; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 298-9. More commonly, however, he is ‘of Astley Abbots’, most revealingly in the royal pardon he sued out in 1437: C67/38, m. 15. From this point he began to take an interest in parliamentary affairs. In the early autumn of 1427 he delivered the Shropshire parliamentary indenture into Chancery, probably as he was coming to Westminster for the beginning of the Michaelmas law term.8 The indenture is dated 21 Aug. for a Parl. beginning on 13 Oct. It is as the deliverer that he is described as apprentice-at-law: C219/13/5. To the next Parliament he himself was returned for Bridgnorth, a seat he virtually monopolized for the next 30 years. There can be little doubt that the frequency of his elections was a function of his attachment to another apprentice-at-law, the well-connected Shropshire lawyer, William Burley I*. The first reference directly suggestive of their association dates from 27 Sept. 1427, when Blike witnessed a quitclaim to him. Since Burley was then MP-elect for Shropshire, it may be that Blike was acting for him in delivering the election indenture.

Thereafter, over a period of some 30 years, Blike and Burley acted together in several different contexts. For example, on 21 Feb. 1430, two days before the end of the Parliament in which they were both sitting, our MP stood mainprise when a manor in the liberty of Shrewsbury was granted to Burley and others. More revealingly, on 24 Feb. 1440, the last day of another Parliament in which they served together, Blike received, on his master’s behalf, 100s. at the Exchequer as reward for Burley’s labours on the royal matters in the session just passed; and he himself received a further mark for his own labours in the same regard.9 CCR, 1422-9, p. 396; CFR, xv. 322; E403/737, m. 17. In 1448 he acted as an attorney for delivery of seisin when Burley purchased the manor of Cressage from Richard, duke of York; and, on 26 Apr. 1452, he witnessed an important feoffment made by Burley.10 Birmingham Archs., Lyttleton of Hagley Hall mss, 25/351403; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 13, 63; CCR, 1447-54, p. 482. Their long association gives added significance to the fact that they were returned together to at least nine Parliaments between 1429 and 1450.11 The real figure may be ten as the Bridgnorth MPs are unknown for the Parliament of 1445, when Burley was Speaker. Burley, while he lived, was the Shropshire MP in every Parliament for which Blike sat for Bridgnorth, save for that of 1453, and it almost appears that the lesser man was elected to assist the greater, as a busy man of affairs, in Parliament, an interpretation supported by the payments made to both men for their work in the Parliament of 1439-40. The readiness of Bridgnorth to surrender one of its seats to Blike can be explained in the same context. No doubt the burgesses saw advantage in obliging the influential Burley, and Blike probably had the additional recommendation of a willingness to serve without wages. Further, in electing him, they were not returning an outsider; he not only had property near the town but by 1443 he numbered among the town’s burgesses. His connexions there explain the marriage of his daughter, Elena, to another burgess, Humphrey Gatacre.12 Salop Archs., Bridgnorth bor. recs., ct. leet bk. BB/F//1/1/1, f. 4; Genealogist, n.s. xxv. 89.

Beyond his attachment to Burley, little else of significance can be discovered about Blike’s career. He appeared occasionally in King’s bench as attorney and surety, acting, for example, for the abbot of Shrewsbury in 1436, but his practice seems to have been a small one. Nor can he be attached to the service of any other patron, although, in November 1443, he offered mainprise for John Sutton, Lord Dudley, in a royal grant of a marriage.13 KB27/699, att. rot. 1; CFR, xvii. 283 Blike seems to have added nothing to the reasonable competence that he inherited from his parents, and he held only one local office. He was serving as one of the Shropshire coroners before 30 Nov. 1448, when a royal writ sought his removal on the grounds that he lived ‘in extremis finibus’ of the county. This writ was evidently not acted upon because as late as Hilary term 1455 he was fined one mark for defaults in his conduct of the office.14 C242/11/11; KB27/775, fines. rot. d. It is possible that the coroner was our MP’s son and namesake, born in the 1420s, but the older man is much the more likely candidate.

Blike was returned to represent Bridgnorth in the controversial Parliament of 1459, on this occasion without Burley, who had died in the previous year. This may not have been his last election – the borough’s MPs for the next three Parliaments are unknown (save that Humphrey Blount† was one of those elected in 1461) – but, to judge by the obscurity of his last years, it probably was. He makes only two appearances in the records of the early 1460s: on 1 Nov. 1463 he witnessed a deed at Alveley in company with his son-in-law, Humphrey Gatacre, and on the following 4 Apr. he quitclaimed three tenements in Shrewsbury to Nicholas Stafford, a leading figure in that town. He died on 30 Sept. 1465. Inquisitions post mortem held in Shropshire and Warwickshire detailed only the property he had inherited from his mother, undervaluing it, although not dramatically so, at 76s. 8d p.a.15 C219/16/5; Marcy Hemingway mss, 3950/9; Salop Archs., deeds 6000/3900; C140/16/6. His grandson, Humphrey Blike†, a lawyer of Furnival’s Inn, represented Bridgnorth in the Parliaments of 1491 and 1497.16 J.H. Baker, Men of Ct. (Selden Soc. supp. ser. xviii), 327-8. For later Shropshire Blikes as MPs: The Commons 1509-58, i. 444; 1558-1603, i. 443-4.