BRUYN, John

As noted in the earlier biography, Bruyn was from a Chester family, and he maintained his interests there throughout his eventful life. In 1413, for example, he was one of the keepers of the fraternity of St. Anne in the church of St. John there. But it was at Bridgnorth that he made his career. He was a young man when elected to represent that borough in the Parliament of 1402 and when first named as bailiff in the following year. He held that office for most of the reign of Henry IV; and his dominance of the borough’s affairs, together with his extortionate exploitation of his influence, made him local enemies, headed by another prominent burgess, Richard Horde*.5 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 400-1.

This local dispute became subsumed within a wider one, arising from the challenge made by John Talbot, Lord Furnival, to the local hegemony of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel. Bruyn was active in Talbot’s service: in May 1413 he led his lord’s men in the defence of ‘Powkesmoor’ near Ditton Prior in Corvedale, leased by Talbot from the prior of Wenlock, against Arundel’s supporters.6 E. Powell, ‘Settlement by Arbitration’, Law and Hist. Rev. ii. 31-33; idem, Kingship, Law and Society, 220. In doing so, he incurred the earl’s enmity with seriously damaging consequences for himself. As MPs in the Parliament of May 1413, two of Arundel’s retinue, Richard Lacon* and Robert Corbet†, sitting for Shropshire, nominated him and other of Talbot’s adherents for the unpopular and burdensome office of tax collector, and thereafter, at least according to the complaint Bruyn himself made in the next Parliament, Arundel’s affinity violently opposed his efforts to collect the tax. More alarmingly still for Bruyn, at a session of the peace, presided over by Arundel himself at Shrewsbury on 6 Mar. 1414, a Bridgnorth jury laid 15 indictments against him, 14 of which concerned a series of extortions and assaults allegedly committed by him as bailiff between 1408 and 1413.7 Powell, ‘Procs. before j.p.s’, 542-50. As a modern commentator has remarked, this was a clear case of the earl abusing his power by ‘employing the peace sessions as a weapon of faction’.8 Ibid. 537. Yet, there can be little doubt that there was some substance to the charges against Bruyn, for, as the earlier biography shows, these indictments are not the only evidence against him, and further allegations were made when the court of King’s bench came to Shropshire on the following 19 June.

These indictments, both those before Arundel and those before King’s bench, were the beginning of troublesome legal difficulties for Bruyn. The precautions he had already taken against the consequences of his illegalities – in June 1413 he conveyed his property in Bridgnorth to two local chaplains and, five months later, he sued out a general pardon – proved insufficient, and so, like others indicted before the itinerant King’s bench in the summer of 1414, he sought rehabilitation in service to the Crown abroad. He departed for Ireland in company with Talbot, who, in the midst of the disorders in Shropshire, had been appointed as the King’s lieutenant there, and he was thus absent from the county when, on 29 Nov., he was outlawed on the indictments against him.9 Pitchford Hall mss, 553; C67/36, m. 7; KB27/634, rex rots. 6, 14. He was able to sue out a general pardon on 21 Sept. 1415, but it was several years before he troubled to plead in court against his outlawry.10 C67/37, m. 29; Pitchford Hall mss, 2430.

In the intervening period Bruyn sought to make peace with his local enemies. On 30 July 1417 an award was made between him and men of Bridgnorth, headed by Horde, by Thomas Prestbury, abbot of Shrewsbury, the prior of Wenlock, and two local lawyers, George Hawkstone* and William Burley I*. This shows that, guilty as he was of some and perhaps much of what had been laid against him, all the wrong had not been on his side. Horde and others were to pay him 20 marks to purge their offences against him, the principal of which was conspiracy to have him falsely indicted of felony (presumably a reference to the indictments of 1414). For his part, Bruyn was to pay 13s. 4d. to one of Horde’s servants, and his own servant, John Cardmaker, was to pay eight marks to two of Horde’s servants for an assault.11 Pitchford Hall mss, 2492. No doubt the heat had gone out of the quarrel by the time the award was made. A few months later an arbitrated settlement was made in another dispute in which Bruyn was involved. On 17 June 1418 the archdeacon of Chester, Henry Halsall, returned an award between him and William Venables, constable of Chester castle. This, in similar fashion to the Bridgnorth award, reveals nothing of the underlying issue between the parties, simply fixing payments of compensation for harm done in the course of the dispute, and again one must assume that the quarrel had lost its impetus.12 Powell, Kingship, 243-4; Pitchford Hall mss, 2441, 2483.

These awards suggest that the later claim by Talbot, that Bruyn had remained in his service in Ireland from 1414 to Easter 1419 was not true, at least if continuous service is implied. However this may be, it was not until soon after this supposed return that Bruyn began the process of reversing his outlawry. On 20 May 1419 he sued out the writ of non molestetis necessary for the successful pleading of his pardon of 1415, and on 29 May, the last day of Easter term, he secured a writ of error on his outlawry on the grounds that, when outlawed, he had already been with Talbot in Ireland. The process thus instigated was brought to a conclusion in Trinity term 1420, when the outlawry was revoked and Bruyn restored to his lands and goods.13 KB27/634, rex rot. 6, 14d.

With this restoration, Bruyn quickly attained a greater degree of prominence than he had ever previously enjoyed, playing his part not on the Bridgnorth stage, where he never held office again (his old rival Horde took his place as the dominant influence there), but on the wider stage of the county. From his appointment as sheriff in November 1420, he was remarkably active in shire administration into the early 1430s. None the less, his involvement in disorder was not over either as victim or perpetrator. Late in Henry V’s reign a local gentleman, John Gatacre of Gatacre, had been required to find surety of the peace to him, and on 18 Jan. 1425, while sitting as a j.p. at Ludlow, he was allegedly assaulted by a hosier of Shrewsbury.14 C258/43/11; KB27/658, rex rot. 5d. Much more seriously, his dispute with Gatacre escalated soon after. In Hilary term 1427 he headed a large group appealed as accessories to murder by Isabel, widow of Roger Lockwood. Lockwood’s death appears to have occurred in the course of a clash with Gatacre’s men, and the appeal was the prelude to an arbitrated settlement, perhaps because a man’s death was considered as a deterrent to further violence. On the following 16 Apr. Abbot John of Shrewsbury, Hugh Burgh* and two of the arbiters of 1417, the prior of Wenlock and Hawkstone, awarded that the two principals should each pay £4 to the prior to provide prayers for the dead man and that the appeal should be brought collusively to an end. They also decreed that Bruyn should do all he could to ensure that William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, would be a ‘good lord’ to his rival. Presumably Ferrers had become Bruyn’s lord, and it may be that the real quarrel was between Gatacre and Ferrers, who, even after the award, had an action of trespass pending against the former and his men.15 Powell, Kingship, 101-2; Pitchford Hall mss, 2482; KB27/663, rot. 55; 665, rot. 4d.

Bruyn survived the loss of his keepership of the forest of Morfe in 1437. He was alive as late as 8 Oct. 1441, when his kinswoman, the widow of John Shakill of Oxford and niece of Edmund Bruyn, granted him her lands at Easington in Oxfordshire; but he was dead by 26 Mar. 1443, when his widow, Agnes, remised and quitclaimed to their son, John, her dower lands, save for the small manor of ‘Le Haye’ near Bridgnorth.16 CPR, 1436-41, p. 190; Pitchford Hall mss, 346, 596. Bruyn had purchased this manor for £100 in 1419: Pitchford Hall mss, 200, 1117. Other of his property was in the hands of feoffees. On 10 May 1446 the principal of them, his old lord John Talbot, now earl of Shrewsbury, conveyed various shops, crofts and small parcels of land in and around Bridgnorth to Richard Bruyn, probably the MP’s younger son, to hold for life with remainder to the main Bruyn line.17 Pitchford Hall mss, 74.

Curiously, Bruyn died without leaving a will. Administration of his goods was granted to Nicholas Gaunt of Cheshire, who clearly took his responsibilities seriously. In 1450 he sued on a bond in £40 he had found among the MP’s papers. This throws a further light on the offences of the early part of Bruyn’s career: the defendant, Nicholas Crouke, a yeoman of Bridgnorth, pleaded that on the day of the bond, that is, 11 Oct. 1412, he had been imprisoned by Bruyn and thus that the bond was extorted from him. Such pleas were often made, but in this particular case there is a strong possibility that it was more than simply a convenient plea. When King’s bench was at Shrewsbury in 1414, a Bridgnorth jury had indicted Bruyn for imprisoning Crouke and forcing him to enter into a bond in £40 that he would enfeoff him in all his lands in Bridgnorth and not marry without his licence.18 CP40/757, rot. 56; 765, rot. 114; 768, rot. 106; JUST1/753, m. 15.

Bruyn’s eldest son had already had an eventful career by his father’s death. Of age by 1420, when he attested the Shropshire parliamentary election with his father, in 1428 he indented to serve in France, with a man-at-arms and ten archers, in the retinue of the famous soldier, Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, and he may have been captured at the siege of Orléans later in that year. He was, at all events, in captivity there in 1431, when he was ransomed for either a total or final payment of 120 saluz d’or. His military career was not, however, all loss. In 1433 he had a prisoner of war of his own, and in 1435 he claimed damages of £200 against a wealthy citizen of Lincoln, John Ratheby*, and three merchants of Boston for abducting that prisoner from Bridgnorth. Later he served in the defence of the northern border: on 12 July 1447 he sued out a protection as in the retinue of William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, captain of Roxburgh castle.19 C219/12/4; E101/71/3/858; Pitchford Hall mss, 2501; KB27/698, rot. 3d; 701, rot. 48.

The family failed in the main male line in 1473 with the death of this younger John’s son, another John, leaving two infant daughters as his heiresses.20 C140/46/55; Pitchford Hall mss, 315, 541, 1323.