SPERLYNG, Andrew

More may be added to the earlier biography.4 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 421-4.

In the spring of 1423 Thomas Kempston* of Bedford gave Sperlyng a recognizance as a security for a debt of £10 he owed the MP, but the circumstances in which the debt was contracted are not known.5 E159/199, recogniciones Easter rot. 2d.

Sperlyng was more closely associated with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, than previously realized, since he was steward of two of the duke’s lordships in Berkshire. Furthermore, his stewardship of certain lordships belonging to Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in Buckinghamshire, was not the only such office he held under that lord, whose steward at Spelsbury in Oxfordshire he was when he died.

At the controversial Buckinghamshire election of 1429, 126 men attested the return of Sperlyng and John Hampden II* as knights of the shire for that county,6 The previous biography mistakenly states that there were 129 attestors, while the constituency survey for Bucks. in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 277, gives another incorrect total, 128. and the £8 afterwards assigned to Sperlyng and Hampden, for their costs in collecting the fine imposed on Sir Thomas Waweton* for his behaviour as sheriff in 1429, was awarded in February 1432.7 E403/700, m. 12; Issues of the Exchequer ed. Devon, 416. The previous biography wrongly dates the assignment of this sum to Feb. 1433.

An account roll from the late 1450s shows that Sperlyng’s holdings in Wycombe had included a water mill, for which he had paid the manor of Bassetsbury an annual rent of 30s.8 DL29/654/10577, m. 7.