PARLOUR, Richard

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 19.

For nearly 30 years Parlour was one of the most important men in Bridgnorth, his status supported by landholdings outside the borough. It is easier to recite these than to determine why they came to him. By two final concords, levied in February 1411, three messuages, three virgates of land, 20 acres of meadow and 200 acres of wood in ‘Colyngwyche’ and Alton in Rock (Worcestershire) were settled upon him and his wife, Margery, for their lives, with remainder to no less a man than Sir John Cheyne† of Beckford (Gloucestershire) and Cheyne’s son, Edward, and the son’s issue, with a final remainder to Sir John’s right heirs. It is fair to infer that the life interest came to Parlour through his wife, but it is difficult to believe that she was a Cheyne daughter or widow.5 CP25(1)/260/26/25, 27.

Similarly difficult to explain on the available evidence is Parlour’s acquisition of a quarter of a carucate of land in Worfield, with its more important appurtenance, a moiety of the forestership of Morfe (a royal forest lying near Bridgnorth). On 3 Jan. 1404, as a reward for his good service, he had a grant of the same for life from John Darras†, keeper of the forest by royal grant, and Roger Willey. Later, in the autumn of 1420, Willey, who was then himself keeper of the forest, made a further settlement of the land and office. Having quitclaimed them to Parlour in perpetuity, he then re-granted them to him for life, with remainders to Thomas Forster of Bridgnorth in tail-male and his own right heirs. Despite this settlement, however, our MP acquired an inheritable interest in the land and office. Many years later, in 1500, his descendant, Roger Parlour of Bridgnorth, sold them to Sir Gilbert Talbot for 20 marks.6 Add. Chs. 73191-3; Salop Archs. Childe mss, 3320/33C/1; CPR, 1405-8, p. 271.

Little other flesh can be added to the bones of the earlier biography. On 3 Apr. 1426, in the Shrewsbury borough court, several Bridgnorth men, including William Wolrich, entered into a bond in £40 to him. In Trinity term 1437 he was sued, with three local gentlemen, for debts of £20 each by the important Herefordshire esquire, John Merbury*. In this action he was described as ‘gentleman’, but when, on the last day of that term, he secured a general pardon, he was more modestly described as ‘of Bridgnorth, yeoman’.7 Salop Archs. Shrewsbury recs., assembly bk. 3365/67, f. 54; CP40/706, rot. 216; C67/38, m. 19. More interesting is his earlier clash with the lawless Shrewsbury esquire, Roger Corbet I*, as described in an indictment taken before the Shropshire j.p.s on 22 Apr. 1422. Corbet had been summoned to appear before the royal council by letters of privy seal and writ of attachment to answer Richard Caudray, prebendary in the King’s free chapel of Bridgnorth, for various offences, and Parlour was commissioned by the sheriff to execute these orders. Thus, on 29 Nov. 1421 (incidentally a few days before he was due at Westminster to represent Bridgnorth in Parliament) he dutifully went to Shrewsbury to find Corbet, only to be assaulted by the summoned man, who, dagger-drawn, had to be restrained from killing him.8 KB27/646, rex rot. 28.

Although Parlour’s career was dominated by his involvement in the business of his native Bridgnorth, he also played a modest part in county affairs. He attested three county parliamentary elections in the 1420s, and he acted as a juror in several important Shropshire inquisitions post mortem. On 12 Jan. 1422 he was at Shrewsbury to offer testimony on the death of Ankaret, daughter and heiress of Gilbert, Lord Talbot, and on 31 Jan. 1436 he was at Much Wenlock to do the same in respect of another aristocratic woman, Joan, widow of William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny. More revealing was his appearance at the proof of age at the same place six days later: he offered the extraordinary recollection that he remembered the birth of John Fouleshurst at Cressage, midway between Bridgnorth and Shrewsbury, on 20 June 1414 because, ‘Margery his wife cried like an owl and broke her right shin’ on the journey to Cressage church to see John baptized.9 CIPM, xxi. 786; xxiv. 514, 565.