BURGH, John II

Burgh poses problems of identification. In all likelihood he is to be identified with the filacer responsible for cases from the far northern counties in the 1420s and 1430s and who may have held that office from as early as 1410. A Burgh was certainly the filacer for this whole period, but John does not appear in the records until the mid 1420s. Before that date a Gilbert Burgh occasionally acted as an attorney in northern cases, and it may be that John succeeded him as the filacer.1 CP40/597, att. rot. 3. Gilbert was still alive in 1422: CP40/646, att. rot. 1. However this may be, it was certainly John who was the filacer by 1426 when he began to be regularly recorded as a plaintiff suing for small sums of what were probably unpaid legal fees.2 CP40/660, rot. 418d; 661, rot. 179; 667, rot. 526; 686, rot. 386; 688, rot. 37. His geographical origins are probably to be sought in Westmorland. He may have been a kinsman, perhaps even the son, of Robert Burgh, younger brother of Richard Burgh (d.1407/8) of Cowthorpe in Yorkshire. Robert was a tenant of Sir William Parr in Kendal and a juror for Sir William’s inquisition post mortem in 1404.3 Recs. Kendale ed. Farrer and Curwen, i. 34. If these speculations are correct then the MP was the first cousin of Richard’s son, John Burgh of Cowthorpe, who married Isabel, sis. and coh. of Ralph Monboucher (d.1416) of Gamston, Notts.: Test. Ebor. i (Surtees Soc. iv), 347-8; CIPM, xx. 589-90. This John also had property in Kendal: CP25(1)/249/8/29. He is thus a candidate for identification as the MP. But he is not known to have played any part in Westmld. affairs and he spent much of his life fighting in France. The filacer is much the more likely candidate as the MP for Appleby, particularly in view of the frequency with which that borough returned lawyers, and there is no reason to suppose that the Appleby and Westmld. MPs, elected only four years apart, were separate individuals. Our MP himself is known to have had property at Middleton, a few miles from Kendal, for in 1428 and 1429 he brought actions of trespass for offences against his property there.4 CP40/669, rot. 359d; 673, rot. 358.

Burgh’s presence in Westminster during law terms made him an attractive candidate for a borough seeking a representative ready to serve without wages, and this helps to explain his election for Appleby in the Parliament summoned to meet on 12 Jan. 1431, a few days before the beginning of Hilary term. The return witnessing his election presents an irregular feature. When the county indenture was drawn up and the writ of summons endorsed, gaps were left for the later insertion of the names of the Appleby burgesses. The indenture is dated 21 Dec. 1430, and it was presumably after that date that Burgh and William Osmundlaw* undertook to represent the borough, a suggestion perhaps that willing candidates had been hard to find. There is no other direct evidence of Burgh’s connexion with Appleby, but in May 1432 he offered surety when another local lawyer, Thomas Pety*, took the farm of the town. He also appears to have acquired or inherited property at Kirkby Thore, just to the north of Appleby: in 1435 he sued an action of account against his bailiff there.5 C219/14/2; CFR, xvi. 88; CP40/698, rot. 345.

Although lawyers of so relatively a modest rank as filacers could not generally aspire to a county seat, the difficulty of finding MPs for the impoverished county of Westmorland provided a vacancy, late in his career, for Burgh. On 22 Sept. 1435 he was elected for the county in the company of one of the leading men of the shire, (Sir) Thomas Parr*, of whom he may have been a tenant. This marked both the pinnacle and culmination of his career. He last appears as a filacer in the following Trinity term, when he was acting as attorney for such prominent local figures as Sir John Pennington* and John Blennerhasset*. By the following term he had been succeeded by Richard Shipley, almost certainly because he was dead. In any event he died before Easter term 1439. His executors, John Crackenthorpe* of Lincoln’s Inn and Elizabeth Burgh (who was probably his widow), were then pursuing his creditors in the common pleas.6 CP40/702, rot. 213; 713, rot. 49.