BURGESS, John II

The career of John Burgess was focused on his home town of Bridport, where, having been admitted as a burgess in 1422-3,5 ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 96. he held office as a borough official for 13 of the 18 years between 1428 and 1446. On numerous occasions he stood surety for the cofferers elected at Michaelmas.6 Ibid. ff. 119, 121, 127, 131, 147, 149. He also occasionally served as a juror at escheators’ inquests held there, for instance doing so for the inquisition post mortem of (Sir) Edmund Cheyne* in 1430.7 C139/49/42. No fewer than four annual terms as a bailiff followed, as well as at least six elections to Parliament. He first entered the Commons two years after his initial service as bailiff, and in 1445 he was returned while holding this office. The surviving accounts of the cofferers and bailiffs do not as a matter of course provide details about payments of parliamentary wages. However, in 1445 Burgess was assigned 7s. ‘fore the retourne of the burgeis of the parlement’, but in the event the cofferers paid the sum due and Burgess himself ‘payyt bot 12d.’. For each of the Parliaments of 1449 (Nov.) and 1450 he received a ‘reward’ of 6s. 8d., but it seems very unlikely that this was the full total of the payment for his parliamentary service over the course of six sessions.8 ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 146, and unfoliated.

Burgess held a number of properties in Bridport. In 1423 he and his wife Agnes received from John Palmer† and William Tracy possession of a messuage in East Street and some land on the outskirts of the town;9 CAD, vi. C5822; Bridport reg. f. 270. and they and their son William obtained from Thomas Stikelane* in 1431 a tenement and curtilege in ‘Stakelane’, for an annual rent of 3s. payable for their lifetimes. The latter lease was confirmed by the town authorities five years later and again in 1445.10 CAD, i. C14, 1744; vi. C4605. Meanwhile, in 1433 John had brought a plea against John Gower of Bridport for refusing to give him seisin of a house in the town which he had purchased. He and his wife had acquired more property in East Street in 1435, when they also acquired another building in ‘Stakelane’. Burgess alone took possession of property in the same lane in 1448, so it is possible that his wife was dead by that date.11 CP40/689, rot. 57d; CAD, i. C1383; ii. C1820; iii. C3150-1. The two of them were members of the fraternities of St. Nicholas’s light and St. Katherine in the parish church of St. Mary, and Burgess sometimes provided pledges for in-coming wardens of these fraternities, before taking up the post himself in 1436.12 Bridport fraternities, DC/BTB/CD14, 22.

Although on one occasion Burgess was described as a husbandman, it is clear that he engaged in trade in diverse commodities, for at other times he was called ‘chapman’, ‘grocer’ and ‘mercer’. To judge from the number of indentures of apprentices taken on by him and his wife which survive, his business flourished. John Deweboys and John Pynart were contracted to them for two years and seven years, respectively, in 1428; William Hore of Purbeck was apprenticed to them for five years in 1439 (being then promised 33s. 4d. as his salary), while John Befe, taken on at the same time, was bound to them for as long as 13 years, at the end of which term they promised him £2, a bed worth £1, a brass pot of three pottles and a two-gallon pan. Even so, they contracted another apprentice, Thomas Beryman of Bridgwater, the following year.13 CAD, i. C1132, 1260, 1494; vi. C3879, 5045. There is evidence of Burgess’s commercial dealings with men of Lyme Regis and Bridport (such as William Mountfort*), and with the prior of Loders, a nearby Benedictine house, but perhaps of greater importance were his trading links with grocers, clothiers and salters of London.14 CAD, i. C1276, 1580; ii. C1886; C146/10182, 10296, 10313, 10725. Naturally, sometimes such dealings led to actions at law, as happened when he fell out with Mountfort’s widow and with John Heliar, the rector of St. Mary’s church, although these disputes appear to have been resolved amicably.15 C146/10258; CAD, ii. C1839. At the elections to the Parliaments of 1442 and 1449 (Feb.) another prominent townsman, John Hore* alias But, stood surety for Burgess’s attendance in the Commons.16 C219/15/2, 6.

After his return home from the Parliament of 1450-1, Burgess never held office in Bridport again. He is last recorded in January 1452, conveying his house in East Street to William Oliver I* of Bridport and a London grocer named Richard Whitby.17 Bridport reg. f. 284.