BULSTRODE, Richard

The pedigrees of the Buckinghamshire family of Bulstrode are exceptionally confused, in part because our MP had many brothers and sons, several of whom left issue.3 Ibid.; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 12-13; E. Ashmole, Antiqs. Berks. iii. 310. It would appear, however, that although the main line of the family ended early in the fifteenth century with an heiress, Agnes, daughter and heir of Robert Bulstrode, Agnes’s second husband, John Shobingdon or Chopingdon, assumed his wife’s name, which he passed on to his descendants. Our MP was John and Agnes’s grandson. The heiress had previously been married to William Brudenell, and it was through her that the Brudenells came to inherit the manor of Bulstrodes in Chalfont St. Peter.4 G.W.J. Gyll, Hist. Wraysbury and Horton, 205-6, 217; VCH Bucks. iii. 195. Richard Bulstrode did not enter his inheritance until late in his career, as both his parents lived on into the 1470s. Yet he benefited in other ways from his family connexions, most notably from his kinship to the influential courtier John Norris* (probably his uncle or cousin). When Norris became treasurer of the chamber and keeper of the jewels of Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou, Bulstrode entered her service too. In 1446-7 he received from the queen a gift of a brooch of the same value as the one she gave to Edward Ellesmere, the clerk of the jewels, and although surviving accounts do not assign to him any particular office in the queen’s household it is clear that he held a position of some responsibility.5 E101/409/17. He received an assignment at the Exchequer on the queen’s behalf in Jan. 1449: E403/773, m. 10.

Described as a gentleman, and in association with another of his Norris kinsfolk, in March 1447 Bulstrode received from a London skinner custody of his goods and chattels. It seems likely that he was attached to Norris’s retinue and at this stage of his career lived with him at Cookham or Bray. He was called ‘of Cookham’ when he stood surety at the Exchequer in March 1449 for John and three other members of the Norris family then granted a 20-year lease of the valuable lordships of Cookham and Bray, and ‘of Bray’ when he again offered mainprise for them in July 1451 upon their recovery of the lease following the Act of Resumption of the previous year.6 CCR, 1447-54, p. 44; CFR, xviii. 110, 229. In the meantime, Bulstrode had been returned as a representative for Wallingford to the Parliament which met on 6 Nov. 1450 and was dissolved in May 1451. He is not known to have held any property in the town or as yet nearby (although he did claim to do so later), and there can be no doubt that he owed this early election to the influence of his kinsman John Norris, who himself sat in the Commons as an experienced knight of the shire for Berkshire. In May 1452 Bulstrode and two others secured at the Exchequer keeping of lands in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, taken into the King’s hands owing to the idiocy of John Broughton, and in the same month he was made collector of tunnage and poundage in the port of London, where, significantly, Norris had just relinquished the post of tronager and pesager. It may not have been coincidental that he made the Crown a loan of £50 a few days later. As ‘of London’ he took out a royal pardon in the autumn.7 CFR, xviii. 256; C67/40, m. 8; E401/827, m. 7; E403/788, m. 3. Notwithstanding his duties as a collector, he continued to be of service to Queen Margaret. In 1451-2 he had received from her a gift of a harness for a sword, worth 28s.4d., and in January 1453 he was paid £25 9s. for materials and wages for a ‘disgisynge’ at the royal manor of Pleasaunce. Evidently, he had been responsible for organizing the revels at Twelfth Night. He paid a Venetian merchant more than £73 for silks and cloth of gold purchased for the queen in the same month.8 E101/410/8; A.R. Myers, Crown, Household and Parl. 144, 200, 201, 218. Myers calls him ‘master of the revels’, but no such description was used by Bulstrode’s contemporaries.

Bulstrode first took part in local administration, as escheator in Oxfordshire and Berkshire, in 1454. Throughout the 1450s he continued to be close to Norris, who asked him to assist in transactions relating to his acquisition of property in Berkshire from Thomas Brown IV*, and to be his co-feoffee of property in London. When Norris installed stained glass in the windows of his new manor-house at Ockwells in Bray, the armorial bearings of this one of his kinsmen (Bulstrode quartered with Chopingdon) were among those incorporated in the design. Furthermore, in the will Norris made in 1465, Bulstrode was named as an executor.9 CP25(1)/13/86/10; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 475-6; Corp. London RO, hr 185/24, 25; VCH Berks. iii. 95; Archaeologia, lvi. 336; PCC 19 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 147v-148v). Although Norris was clearly the most important of Bulstrode’s associates, he is also recorded acting for Thomas Babham of Cookham, as a feoffee of property in London in 1455,10 Corp. London RO, hr 183/21. and as executor of another kinsman, Edmund Brudenell of Amersham (his father’s half-brother), in 1457.11 Test. Vetusta ed. Nicolas, i. 284.

It is uncertain at what stage in his career Bulstrode married, although pedigrees composed much later give the date as 1455. His wife, Alice, was the heiress of the Knyfe family, and through her he acquired the manor of Chalvey adjacent to the Bulstrode holdings at Upton. Perhaps more important were Alice’s claims to be heiress of a number of properties which had once been held by Richard Wyot* of Wyrardisbury, whose sister Elizabeth was her great-grandmother. In a petition sent by Bulstrode and his wife to the chancellor at some point between 1460 and 1465, they asserted Alice’s title to an estate on the Thames to the south of Wallingford, at Goring and Streatley, in which Wyot had enjoyed an interest by the terms of a final concord made many years before, in 1407.12 VCH Bucks. iii. 315; Gyll, 215; C1/28/386. Although they were not apparently successful in this particular claim,13 Goring Chs. ii (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xiv), 219-20, 225. they did acquire other holdings of Wyot’s, notably a fourth part of the manor of Horton and land elsewhere in Buckinghamshire and Middlesex. Undoubtedly, Bulstrode’s marriage brought him the major part of his landed holdings in the Thames valley, which by the time of his death provided him with an income in excess of £54 10s. p.a. from Buckinghamshire alone. Other of his holdings were acquired by purchase, although these acquisitions are poorly documented.14 VCH Bucks. iii. 283; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 16; ii. 627; CCR, 1461-8, p. 367; 1468-76, no. 973.

It was perhaps when he became a landowner of more consequence that Bulstrode left the service of Margaret of Anjou; certainly, he appears to have done so by the late 1450s. In May 1458 he took out another royal pardon, this time as former escheator and collector of tunnage and poundage, and not long afterwards he lost his Exchequer lease of the Broughton property.15 C67/42, m. 17; CCR, 1454-61, p. 418. Little is recorded about him in the period of early Yorkist rule, and it must be assumed that he lacked connexions with those in favour with the new regime. His patron John Norris died in 1466, and in any case had lost influence following Henry VI’s deposition. Surviving notices of various of Richard’s seven brothers reveal that they were a close-knit family, maintaining intimate links with their relations the Norrises. Roger Bulstrode appeared as mainpernor for one of their Norris kinsmen in 1470 during the Readeption,16 CFR, xx. 279. and William Bulstrode, who established a successful business as a draper in London, involved several members of their family in his property transactions. He named Richard and their father as supervisors of his will in December 1478, and Richard was a feoffee of his property in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.17 PCC 35 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 271v-272); C140/71/48. The Bulstrodes took on a more prominent role in the administration of their region, too: Robert Bulstrode, who attested the Buckinghamshire election to the Parliament of 1467, served three terms as escheator of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the 1470s and 1480s,18 C219/17/1. and Richard’s own election to Parliament as a knight of the shire in 1472 is further indication of their standing among the local squirarchy. In the following year he was appointed to the bench and during the third session of the Parliament he was made sheriff of the joint bailiwick of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Although he was fined £4 for failing to act on a writ to distrain the jurors in a plea of trespass, at the end of his term he successfully obtained a royal warrant to the Exchequer authorizing assignments of £70 to be levied on the bailiwick to help offset the substantial costs and losses he had sustained.19 E404/75/3/33; E405/57, rot. 2d; 58, rot. 5d. Richard and his brother Robert both attested the Buckinghamshire electoral indenture at Aylesbury on 31 Dec. 1477.20 C219/17/3.

Although Bulstrode’s career had begun as early as 1446, it continued well into the reign of Henry VII. Shortly after Henry’s accession, Bulstrode was reappointed as a j.p. after an absence of ten years, and he succeeded his brother Robert as escheator in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. He was returned to Parliament again in 1495, by which date he must have been very old. In July 1496 he and his wife made enfeoffments of their holdings in Buckinghamshire to the use of divers covenants made with Henry VII’s minister Richard Empson† on the marriage of their son and heir, Edward (c.1474-1517) to Mary, one of Empson’s daughters. Bulstrode died on 19 May 1502.21 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 627.