A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



Huxley. This is the last appearance of the name of Harper in these records. These entries can- 

 not refer to Sir William Harper, who was seventy-seven in 1573, and therefore only born in 1496. 

 It may be inferred that it was his father who was thus a suitor in the local courts from 1508 to 



1513- 



The first recorded incident in Harper's own life is his admission as a freeman of the Merchant 



Taylors' Company of London in 1533.^^ 



In 1552,^' having been with William Browne, a mercer, selected from seven candidates for 

 election as sheriflF, he begged oflF saying that ' his substance and goods were out of his hands,' but 

 promised to serve next time the choice fell on him. It is probable that his approaching election to 

 office as master of the Merchant Taylors' Company, which he held in 1552-3, when Sir Thomas 

 White, a member of the company, was Lord Mayor, may have been the meaning of his ' substance 

 and goods being out of his hands,' for the mastership was a very expensive office. Harper's wealth 

 is, however, attested by the fact that about 1534^ 'the largest and stateliest house of this citie ' which 

 had been devised to the company by Sir John Percival, the first Lord Mayor from its ranks, was let 

 to Harper 'and Alice then his wife duringe their lives' at the large rent of ;^io a year. The 

 importance of the house may be gauged by the fact that in 1564 the corporation wanted to buy it 

 from the company for a royal exchange," * a Burse to be more fair and costly buylded in all points 

 than is the Burse at Antwerp.' On 15 June, 1556,^' 'was the Grosers fest and then dynyd the 

 mayre and 8 aldermen and my lord cheyff justice . . . and Master Harper, altharman, marchand- 

 tayller was chosyn sheryfF for the king.' As sheriff he has been attacked by two local Bedford 

 historians^ of his charities as having burnt 13 Protestants, including two women, and behaved in 

 an insidious way to them by dividing them into two lots and endeavouring to make each lot recant 

 by telling them untruly that the other lot had recanted and been spared. Even if the tale 

 had been true of him, it is obvious that it would have been with a desire to save the victims, not to 

 burn them, that the device was adopted. Harper of course had conformed in the reaction under 

 Mary, as he afterwards did to the reform under Elizabeth. Probably he would have burnt the 

 victims had he been required to. But in fact he was not required to, and did not burn them. The 

 burning took place on 27 June, 1556, ten days after Harper's nomination as sheriff. The sheriff 

 did not come into office till Michaelmas Day.*' So that the sheriff in question was not Harper, but 

 one of the sheriffs elected in 1555, Thomas Leigh or John Machell. 



In 1 56 1 Harper was elected Lord Mayor. 



The 29 October" the new Marc toke y' barge toward Westmynster my new lord mare Master Harper 

 with the aldermen in ther skarlett and all the craftes of London in ther leverey and ther barges . . . 

 and at 1 2 of the cloke . . . landed at Powlles warfFe and so to PowIIes chyrche-yarde, and ther met 

 ym a pagantt gorgeously mad with chylderyn with dyvers instruments playing and syngyng. 



In this pageant or Lord Mayor's show, Harper punned outrageously on his own name.'" The 

 pageant presented celebrated harpers of history and legend. ' In the myddest David with his story 

 aboute him, on the right side Orpheus with his story before.' Amphion, Arion, and lopas ' the 

 Trojan knight ' who ' did delight with sounde of harp all night.' 



The ' speeches ' delivered closed with this utterance from David : — 



For why your gentle Harper may 



With myldenes bringe aboute 

 As moche touchinge good government 



As they that be right stoute. 

 Wherefore rejoice ye Londoners, 



And hope well of your mayre, 

 For never did a milder man 



Sit in your chiefest chair. 



On 13 February, 1562, Harper was knighted. He could not, by the way, have been much 

 of a Papist, as the Bedford writers " seem anxious to prove, since one of the chief incidents of his 

 mayoralty was his attendance as the principal guest at a ' goodly ' wedding at which three masques 



" C. M. Clode, Ear/y Hist, of the Merchant Taylors' Company, ii, 240. 



" Wriothesley, Diary, 73-4. " Clode, op. cit. ii, 257 ; i, 258. 



" Ibid, i, 397. 2« Ibid, ii, 242, from Machyn's Diary. 



" The Bedford Schools and Charities of Sir Will. Harper, dedicated to the trustees of the Charities, by James 

 Wyatt (Bedford), 1856 ; The Hist, of Bedford hy Thomas Allen Blythe, Ph.D. Gott. Assistant master Bedford 

 Commercial School (1868). 



''J. Gough Nichols, 'Biography of Sir William Harper,' in Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. iv, 73. 



" Clode, op. cit. ii, 244. "" Ibid. 262. 



" Wyatt, op. cit. and Blythe, op. cit. 121, 126. 



158 



