BRUYN, Henry

Bruyn came from a family established in Hampshire by the late thirteenth century, and was a direct descendant of Sir Maurice Bruyn (d.1355), who received personal summonses to the Parliaments assembled between 1313 and 1322.8 CP, ii. 355-8. But none of his descendants were called to the Lords. The family estates, notably the manors of Fordingbridge and Rowner in this county, Ranston in Dorset, South Ockendon in Essex and Beckenham in Kent, all passed down to Henry’s father, another Sir Maurice.9 CIPM, xix. 192-6, 343. Sir Maurice’s estates were estimated to be worth £148 p.a. in 1436: EHR, xlix. 633. By his first marriage the latter had a son named Ingram, whom he married to the daughter and heiress of William Croyser† (d.1415) of Stoke Dabernon, Surrey, the child of his own second wife, Edith (d.1418), Crosyer’s widow.10 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 704-6. But Ingram died young, leaving Henry, the son of Sir Maurice’s third wife (a daughter of the former Speaker, Sir Henry Retford), as heir apparent to the Bruyn estates. His parents usually resided in Essex, and chose his bride from that county – she was one of the six daughters of the wealthy local landowner and lawyer, Robert Darcy. Probably as part of the marriage settlement the couple were given the Bruyn manor of Ranston, which, however (with the approval of Sir Maurice and of Henry’s maternal uncle Sir Henry Retford) they were to sell in 1452 to Richard Chokke, the future judge.11 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 373; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 344, 347, 349. According to the juries at his inquisitions post mortem, Henry also held the family manors in Hampshire (which had been valued at £40 p.a. in 1412) and in Kent, although his aged father hastened to deny this, claiming that Henry had been merely his receiver at Rowner and Fordingbrige. He swore an oath that ‘I suffred my seid sone to reseive the strines, rents and other revenuez therof to my use and nevere I made ony astat of the premisses ner of ony part therof to my seid son so helpe me god and all seyntes’.12 VCH Hants, iii. 218-19; iv. 568; C140/2/27; Feudal Aids, vi. 451; C54/314, m. 22d. Whether or not this was in fact the case (and it clearly suited Sir Maurice at that time to keep his patrimony out of the reach of his young grand-daughters and their husbands), Henry certainly lived at Rowner, and was doing so at the time of his election to Parliament for the nearby borough of Portsmouth.

Sir Maurice was well connected, being known personally to Philippa, duchess of York, and her nephew, Duke Richard,13 C140/37/27; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 141-2; CFR, xv. 286. and on one occasion he stood surety at the Exchequer for Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.14 CFR, xvi. 230. His military career culminated in service as lieutenant of Rysbank Tower by Calais in 1440-1, at about the same time as his son Henry also served across the Channel. Henry was mustered at Portsdown on 26 Mar. 1441 in the retinue of the duke of York’s brother-in-law Henry Bourgchier, count of Eu, joining the army enlisted by the duke as lieutenant-general of France.15 E101/53/33. On his return home Henry entered the royal household, where he received livery as one of the esquires of the hall and chamber until at least Michaelmas 1452.16 E101/409/9, 11, 16, 410/1, 3, 6, 9. During this period, too, he became involved in the royal administration of Hampshire, commencing with his appointment in 1446 first as a j.p. and then as sheriff. His earlier service in France coupled with his father’s links with the duke of York led to his promotion by the duke in about the spring of 1449 as lieutenant and steward of the Isle of Wight, in the place of John Newport I*, whose misgovernance of the island had brought about his dismissal.

Not long afterwards Bruyn was chosen bailiff of Portsmouth (presumably by the burgesses), and as such he responded to the sheriff’s precept requiring the election of borough representatives to the Parliament of November that year. Perhaps he took the formal certificate to the shire court at Winchester in person, for he also attested the county election held there on that occasion.17 C219/15/7. He may have been reluctant to carry out the more mundane tasks of the bailiffship; he was replaced before the end of his term by John Versy*, one of the townsmen, and it was Versy who accounted for the fee farm at the Exchequer: E368/223, rot. 3d. While the Parliament was in progress, probably in the spring of 1450 in the course of the second or third session, petitions were presented from inhabitants of the Isle of Wight voicing their deep concerns regarding the lack of defensive preparations for the island in the aftermath of the fall of Normandy and in response to news of French readiness to launch an invasion. Pestilence, war and the extortions of John Newport in the previous summer had seriously reduced the island’s able-bodied population, and, what was worse, there were no prominent islanders left, with the exception of Bruyn, competent enough to organize its defence. The petitioners asserted that Bruyn’s rule as steward ‘hath be honourable ther, both to God the Lord and the peple of the Ile, as lawe and ryth at al times hath required’, and that he ‘wel yrulyd in his litil time the contray, and were like to bring hit into his furst astate, if he were like to contynew and abide within the Ile, for he hath bistowed a greet good of his own both in Gonnys and in Arcerie, lyyng within himsilf within the said Ile, the whiche is at this day a gret strenthe, riches, socour and comfort to al the Ile’. They asked that as Bruyn was ‘the Kings houshold man, and borne to gret reputacion and wel anherited’, and ‘at no time corrupte, but egalli rulith the said Ilond aftur Justice withoute complaynt’, he might be allowed to continue in office, and pleaded that Newport (whose influence at Court was viewed with considerable disquiet) should not be given the stewardship back if, as seemed inevitable, the lordship of the island were to be removed from the duke of York under the terms of the forthcoming Act of Resumption, and taken into the King’s hands. Disappointingly, Henry VI’s formal response to the petitions was evasive, and on 7 June he authorized one of his intimates, John, Lord Beauchamp of Powick, to take charge of the island as a virtual royal lieutenant.18 RP, v. 204-5; CPR, 1446-52, p. 333.

It looks very likely that Bruyn himself had been behind the petitions, and that he sought election to the next Parliament, summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1450, in an attempt to regain his lost office. Returned by Portsmouth, where he had briefly served as bailiff the previous autumn, he nevertheless once more attended the shire elections at Winchester. Furthermore, and contrary to the statutes requiring those who attested elections to be resident in the constituency concerned, he was also listed among the witnesses to the Essex indenture drawn up at Stratford Langthorne in that county.19 C219/16/1. His brother-in-law Robert Darcy II* was one of those elected. There is insufficient evidence to show whether he actively supported the Yorkist group in the Commons, led by the Speaker Sir William Oldhall*, but in any case it is clear that despite his continued membership of the Household he lacked influence with those who counted most in the government. He proved unable to prevent the issue on 12 Dec. (towards the end of the first session), of a royal commission of oyer and terminer naming him as the owner of a vessel which, contrary to the truce with Burgundy, had been party to the capture of Le Saint George of Bruges, taken off Portsmouth by a flotilla led by the duke of Exeter’s ship Le Nicholas del Tour. The commissioners were instructed to commit to prison all those found guilty.20 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 434-5. The findings of this commission have not come to light, but those of another, presented to Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and his colleagues at Winchester in July 1451 (after Parliament had been dissolved) listed Bruyn among the men involved in a different attack at sea which had occurred at roughly the same time (in September 1450). This assault focused on the Gentile, sailing under safe conducts granted to certain Genoese merchants. The others indicted with him were for the most part shipmen from Portsmouth, who were alleged to have wounded the merchants, taken their crew captive and seized the cargo.21 KB9/109/11. Further allegations made against Bruyn accused him of acts of piracy committed four years earlier (when he apparently stole a cargo of wine, bowstaves and fruit from a Portuguese vessel), and of having illegally granted livery to 14 yeomen at his home at Rowner on 20 Jan. 1451 (the day that the second session of his Parliament began).22 KB9/265/84-86, 88.

It is tempting to view these indictments as arising directly from the feud between the dukes of York and Somerset, with the latter intentionally singling out Bruyn as one of the followers of his adversary. Yet the records of Bruyn’s subsequent actions fail to present such a convincing picture of committed partisanship. The story was much more complex. Bruyn’s sale of the family manor in Dorset early in the following year is indicative of strain in his personal finances. These difficulties, perhaps a consequence of his investment in armaments for the defence of the Isle of Wight, also arose from an undertaking he and his father had made at the staple of Westminster in 1448. Having received a loan of as much as £240 from John Payn I*, a leading merchant of Southampton, and Richard Lee* the London grocer, they failed to pay the money back on the agreed date, so that, also in July 1451 (at the same time that Henry was indicted for piracy), the sheriff of Hampshire was ordered to take action against him and his father under the statute staple. Probably in order to escape further prosecution, Henry sued out royal pardons on 7 Apr. and 3 Nov. 1452.23 C131/233/16; C67/40, m. 34; KB27/771, rex rot. 2d. While up at Westminster for the Parl. of 1450, Bruyn had brought suits in the ct. of c.p. against two of his own debtors, for sums amounting to £100: CP40/759, rot. 220d.

The timing of these pardons leads to the suspicion that Bruyn had taken up arms under York’s command at the confrontation between his forces and those of the duke of Somerset at Dartford earlier that year. If so, he must have taken steps to be reconciled with the King, for at some point in the next few months he was knighted in the Crown’s service. Most likely this service involved participation in the final defence of English interests in Acquitaine, for in November 1452 Bruyn was in Bordeaux. It was there that he commissioned the master and purser of the Marie of Southampton to deliver 40 tuns of wine ‘save and sounde’ into haven in Southampton Water on his behalf, and they agreed to acquit him for freight charges against Thomas Payn, the owner of the vessel (and a kinsman of one of his creditors). But Payn subsequently confiscated the wine, and the two men refused to honour the contract. Bruyn petitioned Cardinal Kemp, the chancellor, for redress.24 C1/15/320, 22/182. In June 1456 the master, John Sotoner, was pardoned his outlawry for failing to answer Bruyn in the law-courts: CPR, 1452-61, p. 271. Whether Bruyn remained in France in the months before the battle of Castillon in July 1453 is not known, but that autumn he, now a knight, took up a new role as treasurer of Ireland and constable of Dublin castle. These appointments were not owed to his former lord the duke of York, who had been deprived of the lieutenancy of Ireland in the spring, but rather to York’s successor James Butler, earl of Wiltshire. Sir Henry did not remain in the lordship long, for he was back in England in Hilary term 1454 to defend himself in the King’s bench under the indictments of 1451, or rather by pleading his pardon of November 1452 to obtain his dismissal from the court sine die. Bruyn’s next military post brought him back home: on 16 Mar. 1455 he was granted for life the keeping of the castle, town, forest and warren of Portchester, replacing Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, who had held the constableship for barely three months.25 KB27/771, rex rot. 2d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 217. To whose patronage Bruyn owed this particular appointment is unclear, but his experience as a soldier clearly recommended him to the government, whatever its political complexion, when the restoration of order in the south of England was at issue. On 5 Dec. following he was listed among the 14 knights and three esquires ‘of gode birth and havour’ instructed to attend on the duke of York, now Protector for the second time, to support him and the lords assigned to put down serious uprisings in the West Country.26 PPC, vi. 270.

In the late 1450s Bruyn was one of those on whom the King’s Council relied most to keep the peace in Hampshire, and to defend the coastline threatened with invasion from France: he and (Sir) John Lisle II* were the sole commissioners appointed in September 1457 to array the able-bodied men of Portchester and the Isle of Wight. Following his second term as sheriff, ending at a time of escalation in the civil war, Sir Henry was placed on royal commissions in December 1459 and January 1460 designed to resist the rebelliousYorkists, even though his uncle, Sir Henry Retford, had been among those attainted for treason in the Parliament at Coventry for siding with York at Ludford Bridge.27 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 405, 551, 587. Bruyn took advantage of the widespread confusion over the next few months to promote his own interests on the Isle of Wight and regain his former ascendancy there, only to find himself the subject of proscription by the regime put in place by the Yorkist victors of the battle of Northampton. On 15 Oct. 1460 they instructed the keepers of the peace and the sheriff of Hampshire to arrest him and commit him to prison along with several others (mainly yeomen and gentlemen), who had allegedly entered the royal forest on the island, assaulted the foresters, poached deer and cut down trees – charges repeated in a suit for trespass brought in the court of common pleas by Henry Trenchard*, the constable of Carisbrooke castle. The quarrel between Bruyn and Trenchard had escalated in the course of the year. Back in April, so Bruyn alleged in a counter-suit brought in the same Michaelmas term, Trenchard had assaulted two of his servants at Newport, and imprisoned and maltreated them at Carisbrooke. He claimed damages of £20, and at the same time sued several of the islanders, presumably Trenchard’s followers, for trespass. In response, Trenchard alleged that Sir Henry and his men had broken into his property on the mainland at Purewell, near Christchurch, and wounded him so badly that he nearly lost his life.28 CPR, 1452-61, p.651; 1461-7, p. 504; CP40/799, rots. 163d, 270; C88/157/28. Whatever the true facts of the case, it was Trenchard who found favour with the Yorkist regime, whereas Bruyn did not. On 13 June 1461 the constableship of Portchester was taken away from him and given by the new King Edward IV to William Fiennes, Lord Saye.29 CPR, 1461-7, p. 25.

Bruyn did not have long to live. He died on the following 30 Nov., leaving as his coheirs his two daughters: Alice (c.1443-1475), whom he had married to John Berners, esquire, and Elizabeth (c.1444-1494), by then the wife of Thomas, a younger son of the prominent Essex landowner (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*.30 CFR, xx. 78; C140/2/27. The jury testifying at his inquisition post mortem in Hampshire not only claimed that he had held the family manors of Rowner and Fordingbridge, but failed to mention that the descent of these properties was restricted by an entail to the male line. Sir Henry’s octogenarian father quickly sought to put matters straight, by making a declaration in Chancery on 18 May following, under oath, that his son had merely been his receiver, and that the manors still belonged to him. At the same time Sir Maurice sensibly placed the family holdings in Essex in the hands of feoffees to the use of himself and his wife.31 C54/314, m. 22d (not given in full in CCR, 1461-8, pp. 141-2). Sir Maurice himself died on 8 Nov. 1466, whereupon the heir to the Hampshire manors was found to be Sir Henry’s younger brother, Thomas.32 C140/28/24. Our MP’s two daughters came into their inheritance of South Ockendon on the death of their grandmother in May 1471, and also inherited through her the former Retford estates in Lincolnshire.33 C140/37/27. Sir Henry’s mother did not mention him or his daughters in the will she made on 4 Feb. 1471: PCC 2 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 13). By then the elder da. Alice was the wife of Robert Harleston†, who died at the battle of Barnet, and before her death in 1473 she married Sir John Heveningham: C140/47/59; 52/25. Her sister married (2) William Brandon esquire (who forfeited his estates to Ric. III in 1484 and as Sir William died bearing Henry Tudor’s standard at Bosworth), and (3) William Mallory esquire (CIPM Hen. VII, i. 883-5; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 21).