Family and Education

b. by 1454, ?s. of John Benever.2

Offices Held

Bailiff, Hastings 1481-2, 1492-3, 1503-4, 1517-18, jurat 1502-20; bailiff to Yarmouth 1486, 1489, 1496, 1502, 1507, 1517.3

Biography

Henry Benever’s origins have not been discovered but in 1478, three years after his own first appearance at the Brotherhood of the Cinque Ports, he was joined as a representative of Hastings by John Benever, junior, perhaps his brother. In April 1479 Henry Benever was one of those appointed by the Brotherhood to meet at Winchelsea because of the arrest of John Benever by the lieutenant of Dover castle, and to sue to the lord warden ‘to see that wrong reformed’. Five years later John Benever, described as a barber and waxchandler of Hastings, received a pardon; his daughter Agnes married Edmund Franke. In 1492 Henry Benever was commissioned by the crown to oversee the work of Richard Berkeley and James Rawson, who had been appointed to protect the ships and fishermen of the Cinque Ports, and to levy contributions for their expenses. In 1510 Benever and John Westcliff claimed £5 18s.8d. from the Brotherhood for their costs in consulting learned counsel in a suit with Thomas Fiennes, 8th Lord Dacre. Nothing is known of the circumstances of Benever’s return to Henry VIII’s second Parliament or of his role in the Commons, but he was probably re-elected in 1515 in 5 in deference to the King’s request that the previous Members should be returned. He made his last appearance at the Brotherhood in April 1520.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Patricia Hyde

Notes

• 1. Add. 34150, f. 136 (Henry Bynyber).
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 77.
• 3. Ibid. 69, 96, 103, 120, 128-17 passim.
• 4. Ibid. 77, 78, 146, 173; C67/51, m. 26; Vis. Suss. Harl. Soc. liii), 116; CPR, 1485-94, p. 415.