Family and Education

m. Alice.1 ?1s. Richard*.

Offices Held

Tax collector, Dorset Nov. 1383, Dec. 1385, Mar. 1401, Nov. 1404.

Biography

Byle was one of seven burgesses of Wareham who, from August 1382, shared with the mayor a royal grant of the custody of the tolls collected in the town and the profits of two weirs and a local fishery, which in normal times pertained to the earl of March as lord of the borough. During the minority of the heir to the earldom (Roger Mortimer), the burgesses were to pay 11 marks a year (£7 13s.4d.) to the royal receiver of the estate. Byle was among those who did so in 1392-3. Meanwhile, he had witnessed deeds at Wareham in the 1380s, one of them being a conveyance of the manor of Winterbourne Anderstone to Sir Robert Turberville, who was to sit as a knight of the shire for Dorset in the Merciless Parliament of 1388, to which Byle was re-elected for Wareham. Byle was appointed to collect parliamentary subsidies in Dorset on four occasions. He also petitioned to be put on a royal commission in connexion with an incident involving the seizure of a barge at Wareham, but there is no record of his appointment to such a body. Walter is last heard of in October 1407 attending a meeting of the shire court at Dorchester in order to report the results of the parliamentary elections held at Wareham.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

• 1. E179/103/48.
• 2. CFR, ix. 313; SC6/834/5; Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 104; SC8/186/9283; C219/10/4.