BENNETT, Simon, of Warwick.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Jan. 1404

Family and Education

Offices Held

Clerk of the accounts of the earl of Warwick’s estates by Mich. 1401-aft. Mich. 1402; receiver-general by Mich. 1407-aft. Mich. 1409.

Biography

Simon may have been related to Thomas Bennett, who was living in Warwick in 1368. Certainly, his career was spent in the service of the lords of that borough — Thomas and Richard Beauchamp, earls of Warwick. By the autumn of 1396 he was employed in the administration of the Beauchamp estates, engaged in such activities as transferring money from the tenantry to the receiver-general, supervising works on the salt-pans at Droitwich and delivering letters and muniments to the earl’s officers in London. On one occasion, probably in 1399, he rode from Painscastle with £100 destined for Earl Thomas’s household in London; and in January following he raised Beauchamp followers in Northamptonshire to combat the insurrection of the earl of Kent. He had perhaps by then become the ‘clerk of the accounts’, or ‘clerk to the receiver’ as he was to be officially described in the accounts of 1401-2. Then, serving under Robert Hugford*, the new receiver-general, Bennett is known to have made several journeys to Earl Richard’s properties in Worcestershire, Wales, Essex and London, for which he was rewarded over and above his annual fee of £3 0s.8d. By 1404, in which year he was returned to his only known Parliament, he may already have been promoted to the office of receiver-general itself, which warranted a stipend of £6 13s.4d. Certainly, he was holding that post three years later, and as such in 1408-9 he rode on a circuit of the earl’s estates, visited Lord Berkeley on his behalf, and made at least three journeys to London, one of the latter being to purchase the earl’s Christmas apparel and another (in February 1409) being to investigate rumours about the King’s illness and death.1

In 1410-11 Bennett paid £8 to St. Mary’s college, Warwick, for the farm of property at Compton Murdack. He is not mentioned in the next surviving Beauchamp accounts, those of 1417-18, and he may have died in the meantime.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

  • 1. CPR, 1364-8, p. 473; Egerton Rolls 8473, 8769, 8770, 8772; Birmingham Ref. Lib. ms 168234 m. 1d.
  • 2. Miscellany (Dugdale Soc. xxxi), 144; Egerton Roll 8773. It is possible that he was the Simon Bennett who in 1412 had entered into a recognizance with Robert Waterton, chief steward of the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster; but he is less likely to have been the Simon Bennett who in 1425 was to acquire a life interest in the manor of Tessall in King’s Norton, Worcs., from Edmund, earl of March (CCR, 1409-13, p. 399; CPR, 1422-9, p. 319).