BULMAN, William

Bulman’s origins are obscure, and there is no evidence of any close connexion between him and the impoverished Dorset borough of Melcombe Regis which he represented in Parliament in 1450. It seems very likely that he owed his election to his place in the service of Sir James Butler (created earl of Wiltshire in the previous year), who had become one of the wealthiest landowners in the county through acquiring the inheritance of his first wife, Avice Stafford. Significantly, Bulman’s only recorded places of residence were Hooke and Rampisham, both of them manors brought to Butler by this marriage, so it looks as if he was a member of Butler’s household when he was in Dorset, or else one of his estate staff. Indeed, he had been among the 50 followers of Sir James who were accused with him of abetting in the murder of Robert Fayrechild at Toller Porcorum on 22 Aug. 1444, the earliest incident in a series of violent clashes between the knight’s retainers and the followers of his wife’s uncle William Stafford*. Brought to answer in the King’s bench on the appeal of Fayrechild’s widow in Michaelmas term 1445, Butler, Bulman and the rest, who included William Browning I* (as a principal in the affair) and the Warwickshire esquire Henry Filongley*, were eventually able to escape penalty by producing royal pardons dated 11 May 1446.1 KB27/738, rots. 25-26. Stafford and his men secured pardons on the same day: CPR, 1441-6, p. 438.

On 17 Apr. 1451, during the third session of his Parliament, and with the help of Henry Filongley, Bulman obtained at the Exchequer a lease for 12 years of the manor of Seavington Denis in Somerset.2 CFR, xviii. 188; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 282. Filongley himself had sat for the borough of Weymouth, neighbouring Melcombe, two years earlier, and had played an important role in the administration of Earl James’s estates in Dorset. Bulman remained closely associated with him. For instance, in 1455, acting on behalf of the earl and his brother, John Ormond, the two men were enfeoffed of lands in Somerset and Dorset belonging to the Horsey family.3 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 331; CCR, 1454-61, pp. 69-70. Bulman had lost the custody of Seavington to Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, in the previous year, but he recovered it in May 1457, with Filongley once more appearing as his surety at the Exchequer.4 CFR, xix. 112, 190. It is worthy of note that when, in April 1458, the earl of Wiltshire made enfeoffments of extremely dubious legality regarding 11 manors in Somerset and Dorset, with a view to settling the inheritance of his first wife in jointure on his second wife, Eleanor Beaufort, he selected Filongley and Bulman, together with a chaplain, as the sole trustees.5 E326/5414. However, Bulman was not party to the settlements made subsequently, which involved only Filongley and the chaplain: E326/5415, 5416. They were undoubtedly men in whom the earl placed his complete trust.

As a staunch supporter of the Lancastrian court, Earl James held office as treasurer of England from October 1458 until the royal forces were defeated at Northampton in July 1460. It is not surprising that after the latter event his servant Bulman lost the lease of Seavington once again.6 CFR, xix. 288. The earl, one of the Yorkist lords’ three ‘mortalle and extreme enemyes’,7 English Chron. 1377-1461 ed. Marx, 84. was executed by Edward IV after the battle of Towton, and posthumously attainted in the first Parliament of the new reign in 1461. Thereafter, only a few glimpses of his erstwhile follower remain. There is no evidence that Bulman found another master. He was listed as a potential juror when sessions of oyer and terminer were held in Dorchester in May 1462 (although not pricked in the event), and appeared on the jury at the inquisition post mortem conducted there three years later on Robert Frampton esquire.8 KB9/21/18; C140/14/35. Described as ‘formerly of Hooke and Rampisham’, he purchased a royal pardon on 5 Oct. 1472.9 C67/49, m. 20. When last recorded, in May 1478, Bulman might not have been still alive. It was then that the King made a grant for life to the earl of Wiltshire’s widow, Countess Eleanor, of four of the manors of which Bulman had been enfeoffed 20 years earlier. The countess claimed that the feoffees had settled them on her husband the earl and herself to fulfil part of their marriage contract, but that she had been wrongfully deprived of them following Earl James’s attainder.10 CPR, 1476-85, p. 106.