John de Bourchier, 2nd Baron Bourchier

John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Bourchier (d. 21 May 1400), was a soldier and diplomat in the service of the crown.

John was the eldest son of Robert Bourchier, 1st Baron Bourchier and his wife Margaret Prayers. He inherited the title when his father died in 1349, along with estates and property focused around Essex.

John followed his father in pursuing a military career, serving with Edward, the Black Prince in Germany in 1355 and was at the Battle of Auray in 1364. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Auray

Other known engagements include being one of the Council to the King's Lieutenant in France in 1370 and being part of the 1379 fleet that was unsuccessful in its attempt to support the Breton Army. In 1384, he was sent as Governor in Chief to Flanders, remaining for 18 months in Ghent.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bourchier,_2nd_Baron_Bourchier

He was summoned to Parliament regularly between 1381 and 1399 before being excused due to age and infirmities. He was made Knight of the Garter in 1392. He died 21 May 1400.

The Bourchier Monuments in St Andrew’s Church, Halstead (Essex)

http://www.churchmonumentssociety.org/Monument%20of%20the%20Month%2...

St Andrew’s chapel in the south aisle of the church contains the freestone effigies of a knight and lady installed beneath a tall, heraldic canopy with matching ‘tomb-chest’ panels. The canopy, described by Pevsner as ‘of a chaste, rather frigid design’, has a row of seven pendant shields above the arch, an upper register of small shields around the cornice, and singles set in the arch spandrels. The canopy and ‘tomb-chest’ are executed in chalk (commonly called clunch), a relatively soft stone, and the heraldic content is lost except for the single, large shields on the east and west sides of the canopy. Both display a cross engrailed between four water-bouchets (buckets), for Bourchier. The north-east ‘tomb-chest’ panel contains an angel and shell, the latter thought to be a rebus for the Coggeshall family. In the absence of an epitaph and further heraldry, the juxtaposition of the shell and Bourchier arms is the basis of the traditional identification of the effigies as those of John Bourchier, second Lord Bourchier (d. 1400), and his wife, Elizabeth Coggeshall.

John Bourchier was the son of Robert, Lord Bourchier (d. 1349), a confidant of Edward III who fought at Crécy (1346) and was the first lay Lord Chancellor of England (1340-1). John served in France during the 1350s and 60s, was captive from 1372 to1378, and later made governor of Flanders (1384) and Knight of the Garter (1399). In 1341 Robert received a licence to found a college in the town of Halstead of eight chaplains, and to secure land and rent worth 20 marks p.a. ‘out of the abundance of the king’s affections’. In 1412 a licence was granted to Robert de Clifford, bishop of London and several local landowners to found a college of five chaplains in Halstead church to pray for the souls of Robert and John Bourchier and their wives, called ‘Bourghchiereschantrie’. The college was to be endowed with 702 acres of land, 71 acres of pasture, 57 acres of wood, 29 acres of meadow, rental income of £5 13s. 6d. a year, and the living of the nearby church of Sible Hedingham in the manor of the first lord’s wife, Margaret Preyers.