BURYS, William

Burys’s origins are obscure, but he was perhaps a descendant of the William de Bures who held land in Bromley in north Kent by knight service from the bishop of Rochester in the 1340s.3 Archaeologia Cantiana, x. 154. In February 1414, described as ‘of Halstead’, near Bromley, William was one of those who acted as a surety for lessees of the royal manor of Eltham.4 CFR, xiv. 57. Having risen to the status of ‘esquire’, in August 1419 he was given the important task of delivering Arthur of Brittany, brother of the duke of Brittany (one of the prisoners taken captive by Henry V’s forces at Harfleur and Agincourt) into the custody of Sir Thomas Burton*, the keeper of Fotheringay castle.5 CCR, 1419-22, p. 16. These activities suggest an early career in royal service, and it is perhaps this connexion that explains his marriage to the widow of Richard Felde, a Herefordshire man with property in Suffolk who was the nephew of John Prophet, then keeper of the privy seal.6 C1/16/188. Felde farmed the alien priory of Stratfield Saye with his uncle, John Prophet, but was said to be dead in July 1414: CFR, xii. 27; xiii. 110; xiv. 46, 73.

Probably during the reign of Henry V, Burys entered the service of Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury. He and Thomas Marshall were both described as esquires of the archbishop in an undated petition sent to the chancellor by Margaret Sarnesfield, the widow of Richard II’s standard-bearer Sir Nicholas Sarnesfield. Margaret claimed that after she had mortgaged the manor of Woolwich to the two men, for £100, they had colluded to prevent her from redeeming the property, by asserting that a payment to be made at Eltham churchyard on Michaelmas Day in the fifth year of the reign of the then King (so, either 1417 or 1426), was invalid because it was not presented before sundown.7 C1/69/173. Burys was a close servant of the archbishop. In August 1426 he witnessed Chichele’s deed granting Mersea priory, Essex, to his college at Higham Ferrers; towards the end of Chichele’s life, in 1443, he was active as one of his feoffees in Kent, and, of even greater significance, he was named among the archbishop’s executors.8 CPR, 1422-9, p. 474; 1441-6, p. 305; Cat. Archs. All Souls Coll. ed. Martin, 49. Burys’s prominence in Chichele’s service probably explains the potentially lucrative farm of the temporalities of the diocese of Chichester which was granted to him and others in July 1429 and which they held until February 1431.9 CFR, xv. 273, 323. Other patronage that arose from his position in Chichele’s service included a grant for life of the office of bailiff of Hythe, including all the profits of the court (although, as the grant rehearsed, these did not exceed £6 p.a.). He appears to have exercised this office in person: the jurats of Hythe employed the Romney lawyer, James Lowys*, to ensure that he was admitted according to custom, and proffered a gift of wine to welcome him.10 Hythe recs., H 1077; jurats’ bk. 1441-56, H 1055, f. 17.

It is tempting to explain Burys’s election as knight of the shire for Kent in 1423 to the influence of his archiepiscopal patron. He established links with the archbishop’s other servants in Kent, but not all of these were amicable: in Michaelmas term 1422 John Darell* sued him in the court of common pleas for a debt of £20. More positively, in 1428 he was one of a group of feoffees, including Darell and headed by Chichele himself, dealing with the manors of Kemsing and Sele which pertained to the inheritance of John Arundel, de jure earl of Arundel.11 CP40/647, rot. 187; CP25(1)/114/302/206. His fellow knight of the shire was John Rickhill*, a man with no known connexions with Chichele, but who (along with Darell who as sheriff presided over the election) was closely connected with the administration of Rochester bridge. Thus it would seem that the Kent elections of 1423, as they were on more than one occasion during the 1420s, were not only dominated by the interests of the great episcopal landowners in the county but also by those concerned with the bridge. That Burys was also involved in the affairs of the bridge is suggested by his attendance at the parliamentary election of 1427 in which Darell was returned as knight of the shire alongside John Bamburgh*. Among his 12 fellow attestors on this occasion were at least three members of the bridge council.12 C219/13/5.

On 5 Nov. 1432 Burys was pricked as sheriff of Kent. As such, in the following May he presided over the parliamentary election at Rochester, although on this occasion the interests of neither Rochester bridge nor the archbishop appear to have dominated the choice of MPs.13 C219/14/4. On 8 Dec. 1433 he was allowed £65 when rendering his account at the Exchequer to meet his costs incurred while in office.14 E 159/210, brevia Mich. rot. 45. After his shrievalty Burys does not appear to have been prominent in the public affairs of the county, although in May 1434 he was among those who took the oath not to maintain lawbreakers in Kent and in February 1441 he was one of the commissioners named to treat for an advance of the final quarter of the fifteenth and tenth granted in 1439.15 CPR, 1436-41, p. 536. The following year he was named on a commission of sewers in Sussex.

Little evidence survives of Burys’s private affairs. His first wife died at an unknown date and the identity of his second wife, Alice, is obscure. It is also unclear which marriage produced his four children. Burys’s property dealings are no less mysterious. It is not known at what date or by what means he obtained the manor of Halstead, but, situated in north Kent, it was close to his putative family’s other property in Addington and Bromley. Other transactions in which he was involved show that his interests were concentrated in this same area. In 1417 he had been among a group of feoffees who demised property in Bromley, Farnborough and Chelsfield, while in 1438 he acted likewise regarding land at Bexley.16 CP25(1)/ /113/287/214, 115/312/467. Burys appeared only rarely as a litigant in the Westminster courts. In Trinity term 1424 he sued a group of local men who had broken his close at Ockmere in north Kent and stolen underwood to the value of 40s.,17 CP40/654, rot. 172. and ten years later he brought a number of debt suits in the court of common pleas against local men. At least two of these were against those who had acted as surety for his receiver, Walter Chartman, and had bound themselves to pay a moiety of any arrears on Chartman’s account.18 CP40/693, rots. 293, 373, 401, 402d; 694, rots. 401d, 449, 450d.

Burys did not long outlive Archbishop Chichele. He made his will on 1 Sept. 1444, asking to be buried in the parish church of Halstead in front of the rood. Besides conventional bequests to the parish priest and the church fabric, he made the more unusual request for 1,000 masses to be said for his soul and those of his parents. His plate and jewels were divided among his widow, Alice, and children, while the remainder of his goods and chattels were to be sold by his executors for his soul’s benefit. In disposing of his property Burys made provision for the marriages of his daughters, Joan and Florence, by instructing that timber from his land in Kent should be sold to provide them with 40 marks each, on condition that they submitted to the will of his executors in their choice of husbands. His feoffees were to deliver seisin of his principal manor of Halstead, along with the smaller manor of Hewet, a mill at Shoreham and other property at Chelsfield and Otford, to his widow with remainder to his son and heir, Thomas. This was on the condition that she endowed a rector for the parish church of Halstead within a month of his death. Alice was also to provide for Thomas’s education until he reached his majority, along with an annuity of ten marks. The lands in Suffolk which Burys had acquired through his first marriage he arranged to be settled on his widow until his second son, Richard, came of age. He appointed his widow, the local lawyer and Exchequer official William Norton and Robert Berde* as his executors.19 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 124-5. Burys died shortly after making his will: a writ of diem clausit extremum was sent to the sheriff of Kent on 15 Oct., while probate was granted on the following 4 Nov.20 CFR, xvii. 299. No inquisition post mortem has surived. Burys was buried in Halstead church as he had requested, where a brass with his effigy in armour still survives.21 W.D. Belcher, Kentish Brasses, ii. 64.

Burys’s settlement of the lands in Suffolk on his younger son, Richard, led to litigation in Chancery. During his lifetime he had unsuccessfully petitioned against Roger Dencourt and John Felde, the survivors of Richard Felde’s group of feoffees, who had continued to occupy the manor of ‘Rokeley’ after Felde’s death and to enjoy the profits thereof.22 C1/16/188. On his father’s death, and assisted by Berde, Richard Burys presented a similar petition against the two men, claiming that the manor had been settled on his father and that other feoffees had released all their rights in the property. This Dencourt and Felde denied, arguing that they held it according to Richard Felde’s will, in which he had ordered them to use the profits for the benefit of his soul until they could sell it. There is no evidence that the unfortunate Richard Burys ever gained possession of the disputed manor.23 C1/13/167-71; 15/91.