BONHERRY, John

Very little is known about Bonherry, but he was a townsman of the borough he represented and he may also have been a lawyer in very minor way of business. This is at least the implication of his first appearance in the records. On 26 Mar. 1407, described as ‘of Warwick’, he was named by John Pavy, rector of a third part of the church of St. Nicholas in the town, as his attorney to deliver seisin of some woodland in Baddesley Clinton to Robert Hugford†. No more is known of him until November 1425 when, with other men of Warwick, he was involved in a serious confrontation at Snitterfield, a few miles to the south of the town, between the servants of Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, and a force led by Sir Hugh Cokesey*. Our MP, described as a yeoman, accompanied the latter, and it is probable that he and his fellow townsmen were acting at the behest of the town’s lord, Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick.1 Shakespeare Centre Archs., Ferrers mss, DR3/158-9; CPR, 1422-9, p. 423; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 378-80. A connexion with the earl would explain why he was elected to represent the borough in the Parliament of 1426.2 C219/13/4. Later, on 25 July 1427, he served on a jury before the justices of gaol delivery at Warwick. He died intestate before 1437 when the administrators of his goods, two local chaplains, John Sperman and Richard Baret, and a yeoman, William Underwood, were defending an action of debt of £10 against Sir William Peyto‡.3 JUST3/68/9, rot. 6; CP40/703, rot. 503. Sperman and Baret had been among the feoffees to whom Bonherry had conveyed his property in Warwick and neighbouring Myton in May 1430: Warws. RO, Warwick bor. recs. CR1618/WA17/17.