BROKESBY, Bartholomew

More can be added to the earlier biography.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 371-3.

On 18 Aug. 1429 Brokesby was returned to represent his native county for the fifth time. On this occasion his return may have been the result of a disputed election. The indenture names as many as 70 attestors, comfortably the largest number appearing in any surviving fifteenth-century Leicestershire return. The other successful candidate was Everard Digby*, and this gives an indication as to what might lie behind this apparent contest. Digby was a follower of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk (d.1432); and our MP was also connected with the duke through Joan Beauchamp, Lady of Abergavenny, who was the duke’s aunt. He had acted as an arbiter on his behalf in the previous December, and the connexion between them may have been closer than this evidence implies; some years later, he was steward of the Leicestershire estates of the duke’s son, and it is not impossible that he served the father in a similar capacity. In any event, it is clear that the presence in the Commons of both MPs would have been welcome to the duke, particularly as he was then involved in a serious dispute with the belligerent John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. This dispute certainly gave rise to the aborted Huntingdonshire election held only two days after that in Leicestershire, where, if we may draw an inference from the return, the same pressures were operative.6 C219/14/1; J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 25; PPC, iii. 302; J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 17-18n.

Brokesby’s skills attracted the interest of other powerful patrons, the most important of whom was the King’s mother, Katherine of Valois. She had extensive landed interests in Leicestershire, and it is thus not surprising that she should have employed one of the county’s leading lawyers. In the account of her receiver of the honour of Leicester for Michaelmas 1433-4, he is described as ‘de consilio Regine’.7 DL29/212/3252. His service to another widow, Lady Beauchamp of Abergavenny, led him, after her death in 1435, into that of her grandson, Sir James Butler (later earl of Wiltshire). Butler was, like his grandmother, of combative temperament. His pretensions in Cambridgeshire engaged the hostility of that county’s leading magnate, John, Lord Tiptoft†, and this soon came to involve our MP and his younger kinsmen. On 22 Feb. 1441 Brokesby was indicted before Sir Nicholas Styuecle* and other Huntingdonshire j.p.s. as accessory to a murder allegedly committed by his nephew, Henry Brokesby, and the alleged victim’s wife sued an appeal against him and others. Henry, however, was soon acquitted before justices of gaol delivery, and there is every reason to believe his later claim that he and his uncle were the victims of a conspiracy. Indeed, after Lord Tiptoft’s death early in 1443, the younger Brokesby won substantial damages against Styuecle and other of Tiptoft’s servants, including Digby, with whom our MP had sat in 1429.8 CP40/727, rot. 600; 728, rot. 134; KB27/720, rot. 79; Year Bks. Hil. 21 Hen. VI, pl. 12, Mich. 22 Hen. VI, pl. 5 (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679).

If the Leicestershire subsidy returns are to be taken at face value, Brokesby was comfortably the richest member of that county’s gentry. Since he appears to have inherited little or no land, it is remarkable that he should have been assessed on an income of as much as £230 when no other assessee was taxed on a sum greater than £100.9 E179/192/59. No doubt his great income was derived in part from generous fees from his lordly patrons, but he also built up a considerable landed estate by purchase. These acquisitions are recorded in a cartulary which he commissioned in 1445 and they fell within a remarkably confined area, nearly all within a few miles of his home at Frisby-on-the-Wreak. So concentrated an expansion could not be achieved without some controversy. It was alleged in Chancery that he had converted to his use property in Melton Mowbray and Burton Lazars, conveyed to him to hold to the use of another, and then withheld the lands from the rightful heirs ‘wyth his grete myght’. Such claims, however, were commonplace, and it is just as likely that our MP was, as he claimed, the legitimate purchaser. He also made at least one sale. Very shortly before his death he sold Le George in Grantham to Richard, duke of York.10 C1/1489/20-23; DL29/212/3276; DL37/38/27.

Brokesby’s influence declined in the 1440s as age caught up with him. Shortly before 31 Jan. 1448, he granted his estate in the office of supervisor of the Mowbray lands in Leicestershire to another of his patrons, the duke’s stepfather, John, Viscount Beaumont. On 2 Apr. 1448 he was indicted before royal commissioners of inquiry at Leicester for illegally giving livery to a townsman.11 Harl. Ch. 54 A 2; C145/313/13.

There was something curious about the descent of Brokesby’s estate after his death in the following August. At his inquisition post mortem the jurors returned his heir as his brother, Edmund, said to be over 80 years old, but, on 24 May 1453, John Brokesby was contracted in marriage as our MP’s son and heir to Joan, daughter of one of the leading Leicestershire gentry, Sir Leonard Hastings*.12 Huntington Lib. San Marino, California, Hastings mss, HAD, Box 2/30. Strangely, however, the groom was still a minor, and he must have been born when our MP was well advanced in years.13 In the contract of 1453 his guardians undertook to deliver to him, within a month of his 20th birthday, everything bequeathed to him by his father. Not until 4 Jan. 1458 did John acknowledge the receipt from them of 500 marks with a large quantity of plate and goods: CCR, 1454-61, p. 289. John may, therefore, have been born as late as 1437. The false inquisition return may have been intended to conceal rights of wardship. However this may be, our MP’s feoffees were very slow to release their rights in the Brokesby lands. The marriage contract had provided that, on the groom reaching his majority, they were to convey all his father’s lands to John and his issue (on certain unspecified conditions contained in Bartholomew’s will); a jointure worth 40 marks p.a. was then to be settled on the couple, and only then was the portion of 300 marks to be paid. None the less, the surviving feoffees remained seised as late as 1472, when they belatedly settled our MP’s lands on John Brokesby and his issue with successive remainders in tail general to our MP’s bastard son, William, the issue of his late nephew, Henry, and his niece, Agnes Fraunceys.14 C141/5/13.

At least two later members of the family sat in the Commons, but they were descendants of our MP’s elder brother, William. One of them, Thomas†, was a lawyer of Inner Temple and recorder of Leicester.15 The Commons 1509-58 , i. 507-8.