| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| Worcester | 1429 |
Attestor, parlty. elections, Worcs. 1410, 1421 (May), 1425, 1429,1 Combined returns for Worcs. and Worcester. Worcester 1442.
Bailiff, Worcester Mich. 1426–7, 1431 – 32; alderman by 1433.2 Worcester Chs. (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1909), 162, 194; W.R. Williams, Parlty. Hist. Worcs. 88.
An obscure figure, Miles served at least one term as bailiff of Worcester before entering the Commons. His only known Parliament was the first of Henry VI’s reign to grant a lay subsidy to the Crown, which was just as much in need of money when the following Parliament met. The Commons of 1431 were generous in their grants of taxation, which included a subsidy on lands. When the commissioners responsible for levying the subsidy in Worcestershire held an inquisition at Worcester in November that year, Miles was one of the jurors who provided them with the information they needed.3 PROME, x. 442; Lay Taxes ed. Jurkowski et al. 88-89; Feudal Aids, v. 32.
In 1433, Miles, by then an alderman, was party to a covenant between the commonalty of Worcester and the local cathedral priory. It was through this agreement, intended to improve the priory’s supply, that the citizens licensed the monks to pipe water along the city’s ditches and under its walls to their house, in return for a nominal annual rent of a rose.4 Worcester Chs. 162.
In February 1435, Miles witnessed a conveyance of property in Worcester, but there is next to no evidence for his own holdings in the city. It is only thanks to a deed of December 1442 that we know he possessed a tenement in Baker Street. The deed relates to a lease Richard Pole and his wife made to Thomas Mannyng of another tenement in the same street, lying between that of John Perkes on the one side and that of Miles on the other.5 Ibid. 20, 42. Presumably, Miles was still alive at this date.