BYLE, Richard

More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 460.

The Byles took a prominent part in the affairs of Wareham, their home town, and besides Richard, who attested the borough elections on no fewer than seven occasions, other members of the family were also called upon to put their names to the parliamentary indentures in the first half of the fifteenth century. Richard’s putative father, Walter, did so in 1407, and the name of their kinsman John Byle appeared among the four Wareham men listed in 1422 and 1427, and as a mainpernor for those elected by the borough in the autumn of 1449.2 C219/10/4, 13/1, 5, 15/7. While up at Westminster to attend the Commons, Richard sometimes took the opportunity to pursue his own interests in the law-courts in Westminster Hall. Thus, while his fourth Parliament was in progress in Hilary term 1431 he appeared in person in the court of common pleas to bring a suit against Alice Payn or Ewen, a widow from Wareham, for unlawfully keeping a pyx containing muniments. In Trinity term 1432 he went to the court again (although he is not known to have been a Member of the Parliament then in session), this time accusing a shipman from Poole of stealing two nesting swans, worth six marks, from his property at Wareham.3 CP40/680, rots. 30, 168; 686, rot. 381.

Byle’s unexpected feoffeeship of lands in Somerset belonging to the family of Wothe or Othe may be explained by the fact that the Wothes also owned the manor of Westport in Wareham; presumably he had made their acquaintance there.4 C139/85/16; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 255; see also the biography of Walter Wothe*. His mercantile activities sometimes took him to Southampton: in February 1440 he shipped wine from that port (presumably after transferring it to his own boat from a larger vessel on which it had arrived from France). At the same time other members of his family were engaged in the herring trade between Southampton and Poole.5 Port Bk. 1439-40 (Soton. Rec. Soc. v), 24, 32. This is the last certain reference to our MP. As noted in the earlier biography, there was a younger Richard Byle of Wareham. It was probably the latter who together with Simon Talbot petitioned the bishop of Bath and Wells as chancellor with regard to their eviction from lands and tenements in Corfe, which they held as feoffees of Thomas Lotor,6 C1/38/231. and who brought pleas for debt in the central courts in 1447.7 CP40/745, rot. 199. In 1457 he contracted at the staple of Westminster to pay Eleanor, dowager duchess of Somerset, £40 for merchandise purchased from her, but failed to do so. Four years later he conveyed to John Priour of Sturminster Marshall a toft in St. Martin’s parish, Wareham, that had once belonged to his older kinsman and namesake, our MP.8 C241/241/3; Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 105.