Family and Education

m. bef. 1380, Agnes, 1da.

Offices Held

Alnager, Wilts. 1 June 1377-80.1

Mayor, Salisbury 1 Nov. 1393-5.2

Biography

Burford is first mentioned in June 1377 when, with John Bitterley* as his surety, he obtained at the Exchequer the farm of the office of collector of the subsidy and alnage of cloth for sale in Wiltshire; he was to pay 100 marks a year and have the right to retain half of any forfeited cloth. Three years later he enfeoffed Bitterley of a mill and other property at Milford, on the outskirts of Salisbury, which he held in reversion in right of his wife. In June 1383 he took out on Exchequer lease of three cottages in Minster Street, Salisbury. Along with John Levesham* and others, Burford appeared in July 1385 before the bailiff’s court of Salisbury as defendant in an action of novel disseisin concerning a tenement in the city, brought by William Warmwell*, in whose favour the court found, so that Burford and his associates had to restore the property and also pay a (nominal) 3s.4d. damages. In 1387 Burford was himself suing one John Lecche of Blunsdon, Wiltshire, for a trespass.3

When Burford was returned to Parliament for the eighth and last time in 1394, it was while serving his first term of office as mayor. He was still alive in September 1398, when he and his wife sold a building called ‘Canvasserscorner’ near St. Thomas’s church in Salisbury, but he died before 1406. His heir was his daughter Joan, wife of William Tule, who in her will made on 23 July 1407 requested burial next to her father in St. Edmund’s church.4

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: Charles Kightly

Notes

• 1. CPR, 1377-81, p. 17; CCR, 1377-81, p. 81. Though Burford was granted the office for five years, he in fact only held it until 1380, when it was acquired by William Warmwell and others.
• 2. CAD, i. B1465; R. Benson and H. Hatcher, Old and New Sarum, 695; Salisbury RO, ‘Domesday bk.’ 2, f. 41.
• 3. Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), 23; CFR, ix. 367; C260/97/6; CCR, 1385-9, p. 460.
• 4. CCR, 1405-9, p. 87; Reg. John Chandler (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxxix), 499.