BURY, William I

Within a few weeks of his election to the Commons, Bury and his fellow MP, John Bernard*, stood bail at Westminster for John Deken*, a fellow burgess charged with robbery.3 KB27/650, rex rot. 21d. Thanks to the existence of namesakes, the MP is otherwise impossible to identify with certainty, although the chances are that he was the William Bury serving as coroner of Ipswich when the borough returned its representatives to the Parliament of 1423.

Of those of that name (or its variants) who had Ipswich connexions in the fiffteenth century, one of the more likely candidates for the MP is the William Bury who gained admission to the freedom of Ipswich as a resident burgess on 31 July 1421.4 Add. 30158, f. 3v. The record of his admission shows that he had four children, including a namesake, at that date, but does not refer to their mother, although in about the same period William Bury and Gundreda his wife were defendants in a Chancery suit. The plaintiffs, John Shelford of Ipswich and his wife Joan, claimed that Joan’s father had granted her 40 marks’ worth of goods and chattels, which they had entrusted for safekeeping to the Burys, who were now refusing to return them.5 C1/6/114.

Among other William Burys associated with Ipswich were a lawyer of the Inner Temple, a burgess who became a freeman of Ipswich in 1446,6 Add. 30158, f. 9v. The William Bury licensed to ship barley from Great Yarmouth to Colchester without paying customs was probably the Norwich merchant of that name: CPR, 1429-36, p. 438; 1436-41, p. 351. and a spicer who was active in the town in the 1460s. (It would appear that these were three distinct individuals, although it is possible that the spicer gained the freedom in 1446.) The lawyer filed a Chancery bill against Gilbert Debenham I* in the 1430s, alleging that the latter was pursuing a malicious action of debt against him in the borough court because he was giving counsel to ‘divers poor men’ whom Debenham claimed were his villeins.7 C1/11/516. It therefore seems likely that the Inner Temple man was the William Bury, ‘gentleman’, whom Debenham allegedly attacked at Ipswich with a sword and dagger in September 1440.8 KB27/722, rex rot. 5d. The lawyer served on very many commissions in East Anglia, including some at Ipswich, between Feb. 1441 and Dec. 1459, frequently as one of the quorum for gaol deliveries. He usually resided in Essex (where he was a j.p.q.), and died on 20 Dec. 1471 in possession of ‘Gobions’ in Great Leighs and Nether Hall in West Bergholt, besides a number of properties in Colchester: C140/41/34. Although he left a three-year-old son, Robert, the estate centred on Nether Hall came before too long into the possession of Sir Thomas Montgomery† (d.1495): CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1040. Later, in 1459, William Bury, possibly the lawyer, was associated with Debenham in a conveyance of property in the borough.9 CAD, ii. A3474, 3717. As for the spicer, he was also a plaintiff in Chancery, where he sued Robert Overton some time in the first half of the 1460s, following previous litigation in the borough court. The quarrel arose out of a commercial transaction, with Bury claiming that Overton had knowingly sold him two pipes of oil that were half full of sand.10 C1/27/484.