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Roger de Beler


Roger Beler was a Baron of the Exchequer and right-hand man of the despised Hugh le Despencer and ineffective King Edward II who was killed by the Folville Gang in 1326.

He was son of William Beler, and grandson of Roger Beler, sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1256. His mother's name was Amicia. That the family was settled in Leicestershire we know from a licence obtained by the judge in 1316 to grant a lay fee in Kirkby-by-Melton, on the Wrethek in that county, to the warden and chaplains of St. Peter, on condition of their performing religious services for the benefit of the souls of himself and his wife Alicia, his father and mother, and ancestry generally.

In the civil dissensions of the period, in which Piers Gaveston lost his life, Beler was of the Earl of Lancaster's party, and in October 1318 was included in the amnesty then granted to the earl and his adherents. Shortly afterwards he received a grant of land in Leicestershire as the reward of undefined 'laudable services' rendered by him to the king. In the same year the offices of bailiff and steward of Stapleford, in Leicestershire, of which apparently he was already tenant, were entailed upon him. In December 1318 he was one of a commission for the trial of sheriffs and other officers accused of oppression in the counties of Buckingham, Bedford, and Northampton.

In 1322 he was created baron of the exchequer in the room of John de Foxle, and placed on a special commission to try certain 'malefactors and disturbers of the peace' who had allegedly broken into and pillaged certain manors belonging to Hugh le Despenser (amongst whom were Ralph and Roger la Zouch and William Trussell who was to later become Speaker of the House of Commons and inform Edward II that he must abdicate), and upon another commission for the same purpose in the following year. In July 1323 he was one of the Justices appointed to investigate the conduct of Sheriffs, Collectors and Bailiffs in Northamptonshire and Rutland. In 1324 he sat on a commission for the trial of persons charged with complicity in a riot at Rochester.


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