BURY, William II

No information definitely relating to this William Bury has been found. Bury’s fellow MP for New Shoreham in 1449 was John Gloucester II*, one of the clerks in the Exchequer, and it might be supposed that he was a royal servant too. A man of this name was currently a minor official in the King’s household,1 E101/410/3, 6, 9. employed among the staff of the poultry, and regularly commissioned to purvey victuals from July 1449 onwards. Having risen to be serjeant of the poultry by June 1457,2 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 228, 324; 1452-61, pp. 22, 141, 194, 272, 387. In Oct. 1457 he received a payment at the Exchequer on behalf of John Brecknock*, the treasurer of the Household: E403/812, m. 2. two years later, in consideration of his good service, he was given the office of ranger of the forests of Woolmer and Alice Holt in Hampshire, with wages of 2d. a day. That William Bury continued in his household post until July 1460 or later.3 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 365, 388, 461, 462, 507, 524, 595, 599; E159/236, brevia Hil. rot. 2d. The ranger may have settled in Whitchurch, Hampshire, and have been the ‘gentleman’ of that place who took out royal pardons in Feb. 1462 and May 1484: C67/45, m. 43; 51, m. 32.

Yet it seems unlikely that this man, of relatively low status, would be promoted for a seat in Parliament, even if he was expected to do no more than voice support for the King’s ministers at a time of political crisis. Furthermore, New Shoreham was rarely represented by royal servants in this period (Gloucester and William Say* being the only known examples). Much more often the borough’s MPs were connected in some way with its lord, the Mowbray duke of Norfolk. So it may be the case that William Bury the MP was he who nearly ten years later, in May 1459, was associated with John Howard*, the kinsman and retainer of the third duke, in a deed whereby Edith Moleyns, niece and heir of Adam Moleyns, the former bishop of Chichester, granted the two men her reversionary interest in land at Sidlesham in west Sussex, a few miles along the coast from Shoreham.4 CCR, 1454-61, p. 383.