Family and Education

b. by 1478. m. prob. s.p.2

Offices Held

Alderman, Cambridge 1509-d.; j.p. 1509-?d.; mayor 1510-11, 1517-19; commr. gaol delivery 1512, 1514, 1520, subsidy 1512, 1514, 1515.3

Biography

John Bury was admitted to the freedom of Cambridge in 1499 and appears to have passed the rest of his life there, settling in St. Sepulchre’s parish, where he had a house. Elected with John Erlich to the Parliament of 1512, he was probably returned again with him to that of 1515 in deference to the King’s wish to that effect.4

His public career apart, almost all the information gathered about Bury comes from his will, made on 15 Nov. 1522 and proved on 16 Apr. 1523. A widower and apparently without children, Bury made many charitable bequests, the most important of them being a gift of booths in Cambridge worth £10 a year to St. Sepulchre’s church, Cambridge, for an annual obit on the anniversary of his death. He owned land in Barnwell and Hinton worth 40s. a year which after his death was the subject of litigation in Chancery. The churchwardens of St. Sepulchre’s sued the proving executor of Bury’s will, Edward Slegge, who, with his sons, was also a beneficiary. The churchwardens claimed of Slegge 16 acres which, they alleged, he had bought ‘for little or nought’ from Bury’s heir, a distant relative for whom Slegge ‘made search and seeking in divers parts of the realm’; they added that Slegge had enriched himself to the extent of 500 marks by fraudulent execution of Bury’s will, an assertion which he denied and which cannot be verified. More than 12 years after Bury’s death Slegge faced another allegation, that as Bury’s executor he had sued for payment of a debt to Bury which had been paid in his lifetime.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

• 1. Cambridge Bor. Docs. ed. Palmer, i. 48.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from admission as freeman. PCC 5 Bodfelde; C1/615/47-48.
• 3. PCC 5 Bodfelde; LP Hen. VIII, i-iii; Statutes, iii. 81, 114, 170; Cambridge Bor. Docs. i. 100; F. Blomefield, Coll. Cant. 224.
• 4. Cambridge Bor. Docs. i. 148.
• 5. PCC 5 Bodfelde; C1/615/47-48, 819/32.