BONHAM, John

It may be confidently assumed that the MP belonged to the family seated at Bonham in Somerset, which had at its head in the second half of the fourteenth century Nicholas Bonham† (d.1386), a Member in eight Parliaments for the adjacent county of Wiltshire. Nicholas left three sons: John (d.1411), another Nicholas and Thomas† (d.1420), of whom the last distinguished himself as three-times sheriff of Wiltshire and the shire’s representative in three Parliaments in the first two decades of the fifteenth century, and served as both regional steward of the duchy of Lancaster and steward of the estates of the bishop of Salisbury. The eldest son, John, inherited the manor of Bonham and lands in Berwick St. James, although he gave up all title to the manor of Great Wishford in Wiltshire to his father’s widow Edith, and this particular property later passed to his brother Thomas, who kept it as his seat. Because John left no legitimate male issue his substantial share of the family estates was also to fall in due course to Thomas’s branch of the family.1 CCR, 1385-9, p. 292; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 280-1; G.J. Kidston, Bonhams of Wilts. and Essex, chart II (between pp. 8 and 9), 18-20. By October 1435 the principal Bonham estates had all passed to Thomas’s son, another Thomas,2 CCR, 1435-41, p. 36. At Thomas senior’s death in 1420 his heir had been his son, William, aged 19, who had presumably since then died s.p.: CIPM, xxi. 508. Thomas died in 1473, leaving his son Walter (1449-77) to inherit all the principal Bonham estates: C140/45/41, 58/69. who became a prominent esquire in Wiltshire, and attested the shire elections five times, the first occasion being in 1433 when a John Bonham was returned for Old Sarum.

The identity of this MP is something of a mystery. It might be thought that he was John, the illegitimate son of the John Bonham who died in 1411, born to a woman called Margaret Rous.3 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 268; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 221-2, 223-5. By his father’s will that John inherited tenements in Salisbury together with the profits of some land at Little Horningsham.4 Kidston, 25-28 (from PCC 23 Marche); Add. Ch. 15301. John senior left four legitimate daughters, one of whom, Joan, was to inherit his property at Wilton, while another, Edith, was probably the woman who became abbess of Shaftesbury abbey in 1441. The chief beneficiary of his goods and livestock at Bonham and Berwick St. James was his widow Elizabeth, da. of Ralph Bush: Kidston 30; CPR, 1441-6, p. 27. So, since he lived near Old Sarum he might well have represented the borough in the Commons. However, this John has to be discounted, for having made a will on 27 Sept. 1430 he died before the following 2 Nov.5 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Salisbury Domesday bk. 2, G23/1/214, f. 121. He asked to be buried in the graveyard of the church of St. Peter and St. Paul at ‘Deverellangebrigge’ in Salisbury, and left to his wid. Alice and her heirs the Salisbury property and all the lands in Woodminton, ‘Burchalke’ and Compton Chamberlayne which his father had bequeathed to him. He left a da. named Elizabeth. Our attention needs to be focused instead on the John Bonham ‘of Wishford, esquire’, who in 1431 held a quarter of a knight’s fee in Fifehead Neville, Dorset, and was almost certainly the ancestor of the Hazelbury branch of the Bonham family.6 Feudal Aids, ii. 123; Kidston 36, 43. Perhaps he was the fa. of John Bonham of Plumber in the parish of Fifehead Neville, who married in 1475 Anne, da. and coh. of John Croke (d.1482) of Hazelbury and Wick: G.J. Kidston, Hist. Hazelbury, 82-83, 91-92. Significantly, Wishford is only about three miles from Old Sarum. Given this John’s status it may well have been he who had stood as mainpernor for John Fruysthorp*, elected for Old Sarum to the Parliament of December 1421,7 C219/12/6. and who attested the Wiltshire election of 1429.

Even so, the other references to someone of this name do not go far towards building a rounded picture of the MP’s life. He was perhaps the man who mustered in the retinue of Henry Bourgchier, count of Eu, at Portsdown in 1441 prior to their embarkation in the expedition led by Bourgchier’s brother-in-law the duke of York,8 E101/53/33, m. 3. and the ‘esquire’ who attested the Wiltshire elections of 1447. In November that year a man of this name served as a juror at the inquisition post mortem held in the county regarding Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. A John Bonham of comparatively modest means was assessed to the tax of 1450 on land in Wiltshire worth just £2 p.a., and was later a juror at inquisitions post mortem on Richard Milborne* at Heytesbury in November 1451 and Sir William Fitzhugh at Warminster in January 1453.9 E179/196/118; C139/127/26, 142/19, 151/43. Together with his kinsman Thomas Bonham, the head of the main line of the family, he was pricked for a jury at Salisbury in May 1462, to make presentments to commissioners of oyer and terminer.10 KB9/135, mm. 28, 51, 56. Yet the existence of several John Bonhams later in the century makes it difficult to be certain that these records relate to the former MP.