Sir Ralph de Berners Knight

  Noted events in his life were:

• Background Information. ¹²⁷⁹
In 1336 Berwick Berners was conveyed by John son of Edmund de Berners to John son of Ralph de Berners. [Feet of F. Essex, iii, 39] In 1381-2 it was being administered by the bailiff of Sir John de Gildesburgh. The net value of the manor was then £1 10s. 11d. It had been granted to Gildesburgh for life by Sir John de Berners. [Cal. Pat. 1388-92, 150] Sir John's son Sir James de Berners, a knight of the king's chamber, was executed in 1388 as an evil counsellor of Richard II. [A. Steel, Richard II, 143, 157, 161] In 1389 Anne widow of James was granted the manor for 500 marks. [Cal. Pat. 1388-92, 150] Like West Horsley it passed with Anne to her second husband John Bryan and subsequently to her son Richard de Berners. [Feet of F. Essex, iii, 238; cf. V.C.H. Surrey, iii, 354] Richard died in 1417 and was succeeded by his daughter Margery, who married as her first husband John Fereby. John and Margery were holding manor courts at Berwick Berners in 1427-40. After John's death Margery married John Bourchier, who was later summoned to Parliament as a peer and is thus held to have become Lord Berners. Berwick Berners passed to Bourchier's grandson and heir , Lord Berners, who was holding it in 1508.

~A History of the County of Essex, Volume IV, pp. 190-193

• Background Information. ¹²³⁷
The manor of Barnesbury, earlier called Bernersbury of Iseldon Berners, originated in 5 hides held by Hugh de Berners from the bishop of London in 1086, which before 1066 had been equally divided between Sired, canon of St. Paul's, and the canons as demesne. [V.C.H. Mdx. i. 120] Although the 5 hides were said to be in the vill of Stepney, they were clearly in Islington, where lords called Ralph de Berners made grants before 1176 and 1253 [E.A. Webb, Rec. of St. Barts., Smithfield (1921), i.342] and where tenants were suitors of the Stepney view of frankpledge in the 14th century. Sir William Berners held lands in Islington before 1220, when his widow Beatrice claimed from William's son Sir Ralph Berners, of Berners Roding (Essex), a third of her husband's free lands in Islington, and Sir Ralph was summoned to acquit the service which William had owed the bishop for a free tenement there. [Cur. Reg. R. viii. 299] It was probably his son Sir Ralph who held 1/2 knight's fee in Islington in 1242-3. [Bk. of Fees, ii. 899] The latter's son, also Sir Ralph de Berners (d. 1297), of West Horsley (Surr.), custodian of the Tower of London, held at his death the manor of Iseldon of the bishop for 1/2 knight's fee, rent, and suit at the bishop's three-weekly court at Bishop's Stortford Castle. The manor descended to Sir Ralph's son Sir Edmund and in 1303 was settled on him and his wife Amice. [Cal. Pat. 1388-92, 443.] Edmund still held the 1/2 knight's fee in 1316; on the death of Amice it descended to Edmund's son John (d. c. 1341). [Cal. Pat. 1388-92, 443].

~A History of the County of Middlesex, Volume VIII, pp. 51-57