Bedford

The only parliamentary borough in medieval Bedfordshire, Bedford was the most important urban settlement and administrative centre in the county. Principally a market town for the produce of local agriculture, it was also a regular venue for the county’s shire courts, assizes and sessions of the peace. Its burgesses enjoyed commercial ties with London and it lay sufficiently far from the capital for them to exist as an independent trading community in their own right. In spite of its links with the City, Bedford appears never to have recovered fully from the economic and demographic crises of the fourteenth century, even if the loss of almost all its medieval records renders a detailed analysis of its fortunes impossible.1 For a fuller summary of Bedford’s development in previous centuries, and the detrimental effects of recession and plague in the 1300s, see The Commons 1386-1421, i. 257-8. From the late fourteenth century onwards, the burgesses made several appeals to the Crown for a reduction in their comparatively high fee farm of £46 p.a., but they were still liable for that amount when they petitioned Henry VI in the mid 1440s. In their petition, they complained that a newly-built bridge over the Ouse at Great Barford had diverted trade elsewhere, that 100 messuages in Bedford had fallen completely into decay, that another 180 lay empty and that the profits arising from the town’s courts, tolls and customs of markets and fairs were now worth only 20s. 4d. As a result, the borough lacked the revenues to continue paying the farm as it then stood, and most of its inhabitants would leave if there were no remedy. A royal commission, appointed in December 1446 to investigate the burgesses’ complaints, upheld the petition, and in the following February the King reduced the farm to £22 p.a. for the next 60 years. Shortly after Edward IV came to the throne, the burgesses secured a confirmation of Henry VI’s grant, and in 1504, following further appeals to the Crown, Henry VII made the remission (then stated to be £26, rather than £22) permanent.2 Ibid. 258; J. Godber, Hist. Beds. 155-6; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 36, 40; 1461-7, p. 248; 1494-1509, pp. 368-9.

Whatever their economic woes, the partition of the barony of Bedford in the thirteenth century had left the burgesses largely free of outside interference. By Henry VI’s reign, several co-parceners, none of whom wielded any real practical authority in the town, shared this lordship. A third of it, including the site of Bedford castle, belonged to the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, another third to the Neville Lords Latimer and the remaining third was shared by Sir Thomas Tuddenham* and the Gascoigne family. In practice, the landowner with the most influence in Bedford in this period was Newnham priory, a local house of Augustinian canons, which had pursued a long-term policy of piecemeal acquisition of lands and rights within the town. The priory was certainly a far more immediate presence there than the Lords Grey of Ruthin, the most important landowners in Bedfordshire in the later Middle Ages,3 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 258; VCH Beds. iii. 12-15; Beds. Historical Rec. Soc. xxv. 18-80. even if both Reynold, Lord Grey, and his rival, John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, sought the support of some of the more prominent townsmen in the 1430s. At least ten burgesses, six on Fanhope’s side and four on Grey’s, were drawn into their dispute,4 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 246-7. Fanhope’s supporters also included John Ferrour ‘of Silsoe’, possibly the John Ferrour who sat for Bedford in the Parl. of 1422. which culminated in a violent fracas at the shire-house in Bedford in January 1439, but neither peer, nor any other lord, is known to have intervened in the borough’s affairs. The situation had changed by the mid Tudor period, when Bedford’s poverty was such as to make it susceptible to the influence of landowners from outside and fewer than half of its known MPs were townsmen.5 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 260; Godber, 155; The Commons 1509-58, i. 30.

For administrative and fiscal purposes, Bedford was divided into 12 wards, each headed by a constable who answered to the mayor and two bailiffs. Elected annually, the latter three officers presided over the town’s courts, ran its markets and collected its fee farm. The mayor served from Michaelmas to Michaelmas (as probably did the bailiffs); if he died in office, there was an election for a replacement to complete the remainder of his term. Invariably, the mayor and bailiffs came from the ranks of the wealthier burgesses. In a later period, burgesses as a body owed their status to inheritance or acquired it through purchase and this was probably the case in the fifteenth century. Non-burgesses could trade within the town, provided they were members of the local guild merchant, but only burgesses could participate in parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, it fell upon the community as a whole to pay the wages of the borough’s MPs, a financial burden that provoked particular resentment when John Leighton and Thomas Bole submitted an unusually heavy claim of over £11 for their expenses in the Parliament of 1423. The non-burgesses refused to contribute towards this sum, arguing that they should not have to support the costs of those whom they had played no part in electing. The dispute proved too divisive for the townsmen to resolve among themselves, and following the mediation of the prior of Newnham, it was settled by William Babington, c.j.c.p., and his puisne justice, John Cockayne. In an award of February 1425, made in London in the presence of representatives from both sides, the two judges ruled that all townsmen, whether burgesses or not, should contribute to MPs’ expenses but gave the non-burgesses a role in raising the money required. To this effect, they ordered that the mayor, bailiffs and burgesses should choose four representatives and the non-burgesses another two, and that these six should assess each resident according to his financial standing in the town. After the making of the assessments, the mayor and bailiffs were to collect the money, depositing any surplus revenues in a common chest. The hope was that, in time, the chest would provide the basis of a permanent fund towards the costs of sending men to Parliament, so reducing the need for ad hoc levies. In spite of lacking the franchise, at least some of the non-burgesses were evidently men of some standing. One of their leaders, Robert Belasys, must subsequently have become a burgess, since he attested the return of Bedford’s MPs to the Parliament of 1431.6 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 259; Beds. and Luton Archs., Bedford bor. recs., award of Babington and Cockayne, 1425, BorBG1/1; C219/14/2. Godber, 155, incorrectly states that the non-burgesses were to elect six representatives by virtue of the award of 1425.

Owing to the loss of Bedford’s returns to the Parliaments of 1439, 1445, 1455, 1459 and 1460, the evidence for its parliamentary representation in this period is incomplete. The names of 18 men who represented it in Henry VI’s reign have survived, of whom only John Toller appears to have been a complete outsider, indicating that the borough preserved a long tradition of returning local men in this period. The borough’s ability to maintain its independence could not, however, last. By Tudor times, its economic difficulties had made it susceptible to the influence of the same handful of landed families as controlled the shire elections and only five of its 14 known Members of 1509-58 were townsmen.7 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 260; The Commons 1509-58, i. 30.

Several of the 18 came from families who supplied the borough with more than one representative in the Commons, although evidence of any real family traditions in sitting in Parliament is lacking. Thomas Kempston’s relative, Roger Kempston†, had sat for Bedford in Richard’s II reign and Thomas and Ralph Bole were evidently from the same family. William Hunt was almost certainly a kinsman, possibly the brother, of Thomas Hunt†, his fellow burgess in the Commons of 1420, and John Ferrour was perhaps the brother of Thomas Ferrour†, who sat for the borough in the Parliament of May 1421.

The evidence for the MPs’ occupations is somewhat patchy, but Hunt was a draper, John Frepurs a mercer, William Bette a ‘wolman’, William Chichele a spicer and yeoman, James Moston a yeoman and Hugh John a yeoman or husbandman. Others were less typical burgesses. Kempston was a lawyer, William Pekke was probably another member of that profession, as apparently was John Feroun, and Toller had become an attorney and clerk of the Chancery by the late 1440s. Kempston, Pekke and Toller enjoyed the style of ‘gentlemen’, as sometimes did John Terry, referred to as ‘yeoman, alias gentleman, alias husbandman’ in a royal pardon of 1462.

Partly or largely thanks to his legal earnings, Kempston was one of the richest burgesses of Bedford in the first half of the fifteenth century. Pekke was also wealthy in local terms, as probably were most of their fellow MPs, judging from the extant records relating to subsidies that the borough imposed on its inhabitants, but there is no precise evidence for the wealth, landed or otherwise, of any of the 18. Kempston and Pekke owned lands outside Bedford, as did Thomas Bole and Terry and, perhaps, Ralph Bole, Henry Boner, Feroun and Ferrour, and it is likely that the outsider, Toller, possessed lands elsewhere. Owing to the lack of municipal records, there is little evidence for the MPs’ holdings within the borough itself, although an early sixteenth-century rental and terrier for Newnham priory includes holdings that had once belonged to several of the MPs but were now in the hands of the canons.8 Beds. Historical Rec. Soc. xxv. 18-60.

Only Ralph Bole, Ferrour and Toller appear never to have held office in the borough, but at least 14 of the MPs served one or more terms as bailiff and at least seven became mayor. Just one of them, Robert Plomer, certainly served as a constable although it is likely that several of his fellow Members also held the office at some stage in their public careers. Kempston and Frepurs each completed no fewer than six terms as mayor – Kempston died during his seventh – but this was exceptional. Yet it was by no means a sine qua non for prospective MPs to have held senior office in municipal government. Nine of the bailiffs among the 18 entered the Commons for the first (or only) time before attaining that office, of whom William Underwood began his initial term as such while a Member of the Parliament of 1433, and all of those who became mayor did not take up that office until after beginning their parliamentary careers. On just one occasion, in 1435, an officiating bailiff (Bette) was elected to Parliament. Kempston, Pekke and Terry are the only men among the MPs who certainly served in the administration of Bedfordshire.9 Assuming that the John Ferrour who served as a tax collector in Beds. in the early 1390s was not the MP of that name. Kempston, under sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the early 1420s, and Pekke, some 40 years a j.p. and ad hoc commissioner in the former county, began doing so before entering Parliament. By contrast, Terry’s membership of a couple of ad hoc commissions came in Edward IV’s reign, a decade after he had sat in his only known Parliament. None of the MPs appears to have held office on any of the Crown’s estates in Bedfordshire or to have possessed a connexion with the Court. Only Toller served in the central government but quite probably did not begin doing so until a few years after sitting for Bedford.

During the late 1430s, Pekke was prominent in supporting Lord Fanhope in his quarrel with Lord Grey, and he was involved in the fracas at the shire-house in 1439. Two of his fellow MPs, Moston and Chichele, were also present on this occasion, Moston as a supporter of Fanhope and Chichele, who would afterwards sit with Moston in the Parliament of 1447, as one of Grey’s followers. Kempston was also associated with Fanhope, as perhaps were Ferrour and Ralph Bole, while Toller had a connexion with the Holand family, of whom John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, was Fanhope’s stepfather. Except in the case of Toller, none of these links appears to have been of particular significance for their returns as MPs for Bedford. Even if Pekke probably enjoyed Fanhope’s support when elected a knight of the shire for Bedfordshire in 1439, both that lord and Grey were dead when he, Moston and Chichele each gained election for the borough. There are good reasons for believing that Toller owed his brief parliamentary career to his Holand patrons, since it is otherwise hard to understand how he came to represent Bedford. While there is no evidence that the Holands intervened in elections in the borough, they did enjoy some influence in the wider county, and Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, secured the return of two of his retainers as Bedfordshire’s knights of the shire in 1453.10 S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 895.

During the late fourteenth century, it was unusual for Bedford to return two complete newcomers to the Commons to the same Parliament. By marked contrast, only a couple of the known MPs returned between 1402 and the end of Henry V’s reign appears to have sat before.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 260. The change was perhaps born out of the particular circumstances pertaining to the two decades in question, since in Henry VI’s reign the borough was largely able to return at least one Member with previous experience of Parliament. In only two of the elections of the period under review for which returns have survived (those of 1426 and 1447) were both MPs newcomers to the Commons, and in the Parliaments of 1422, 1431, 1432, 1433, 1435, 1437 and November 1449 one of the Members had sat for Bedford in the Parliament immediately preceding. Kempston alone provided the borough with considerable continuity in its parliamentary representation, for he sat in at least 11 Parliaments, including the last of Henry V’s reign, the first of Henry VI’s and six consecutive assemblies from 1429 to 1437. Four of his fellow MPs, Thomas Bole, Frepurs, Hunt and Leighton, also first entered Parliament before 1422 but none of the 18 appears to have sat after Henry VI’s reign and only Pekke certainly represented another constituency.

Parliamentary elections for the borough took place in the county court for Bedfordshire, although it is possible that such occasions were no more than formal declarations of a prior election conducted among the burgesses themselves. Eight of the extant indentures of return for the borough bear the same dates as those for the county, but there was generally little overlapping of attestors. Only two burgesses are known to have attested both elections to the same Parliament: Thomas Bedford† to that of 1423 and John Clerk to that of 1432. Kempston, a lawyer like Thomas Bedford, also attended the shire election in 1425, when he himself gained election for the borough, having previously witnessed the return of Bedfordshire’s knights in 1423. At least two other burgesses attested elections for the county: Pekke in 1442 and Hunt in 1447, of whom Pekke probably also participated in the election of the knights of the shire for Hertfordshire in 1437. The attestors named in the extant indentures for Bedford range in number from as many as 23 in that for the Parliament of 1431 (when both the borough and shire elections were held on Christmas Day 1430) to as few as 11 in that for 1447. Yet those named did not necessarily constitute everyone present in the shire court, as demonstrated by the election of 1427, which was attested by 13 named burgesses ‘and others’.