BRUGGE, Richard

Richard Brugge was from a minor gentry family settled at Ivington, near Leominster. His father’s most notable appearance in the records was as a juror at the inquisition post mortem of Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, held at Leominster in June 1425.2 CIPM, xxii. 510. Nothing is known of our MP before his elections to represent Leominster in 1433 and 1435, implying that he was then a young man.3 C219/14/4, 5. By a fine levied in 1439 his parents acknowledged his right in a messuage, a carucate of land, 16 acres of meadow, six acres of pasture and 8s. rent in Leominster, Ivington and Stoke Prior. This was probably provision for a younger son, for our MP had an elder brother or half-brother named Hugh, who, by a final concord of 1443, followed their parents in acknowledging his right to the property.4 CP25(1)/83/56/52, 62. Hugh was a juror at the inq. post mortem of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, held at Hereford on 4 Nov. 1439: CIPM, xxv. 281. The most interesting reference to Richard dates from Hilary term 1443, when he had an action pending in the court of common pleas against two Leominster men, a glover, John Tyler, and a ‘scholar’, Richard Tyler, for assaulting and wounding his servant, Richard Tomkyns, at Westminster, an attack that may have taken place while he was an MP in the Parliament of the previous year.5 CP40/728, rot. 90d; C219/15/2. In the subsidy returns of 1451 he was assessed in the hundred of Leominster on an annual income of £3 and his brother, Hugh, at £2. Later, in 1456, he and his wife, Ellen, claimed damages of £20 against seven local men for assaulting her at Monkland, near Leominster, on the previous 29 July.6 E179/117/64; KB27/782, rot. 39; 783, rot. 18d. He is almost certainly to be identified with the attestor of the 1460 Leominster parliamentary election, and less certainly with the attestor of 1472.7 C219/16/6, 17/2.