Cambridgeshire

Administratively bound to neighbouring Huntingdonshire, with which it shared its sheriff and escheator, that part of Cambridgeshire which came under the King’s immediate jurisdiction during the Middle Ages was relatively small. It consisted only of the southern half of the county, or county proper, since the thinly populated fens in the northern hundreds of Wisbech and Witchford made up the bishop of Ely’s liberty of the Isle of Ely, which was not part of the administrative county of Cambridge. Mainly flat or gently rolling save for its consistently hilly south-east corner and its northern fen and fen-edge parishes running along the river Ouse, the county proper was densely populated and prosperous in comparison with most other parts of the realm, and much of its agriculture ran on similar lines to elsewhere. The river Ouse formed a dividing line between it and the geographically distinct and much more thinly populated and far less prosperous fenland of the Isle, where agriculture included specialized activities like the keeping of fisheries, the digging of peat-turves for fuel and the growing of rushes. The administrative centre of the county proper, Cambridge, stood out from those of most other counties, since it was an important centre of learning as well as a market town. Just outside Cambridge was the site of Stourbridge Fair, a major place of trade for both foreign and domestic commodities and one of the most important of all medieval English fairs.5 M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities (2nd edn.), 3-6, 10; VCH Cambs. ii. 62, 69, 70, 87; H.M. Cam, Liberties and Communities, 242.

As a liberty, the Isle of Ely enjoyed considerable immunity from royal officials and courts but it fell short of being a county palatine. While it enjoyed administrative, judicial and fiscal privileges, it did fall within the ambit of royal commissions of sewers and was not exempt from paying taxes to the Crown. Furthermore, its inhabitants were expected to contribute to the wages of the Cambridgeshire knights of the shire. In the early fifteenth century these wages were a cause of controversy because the Isle’s inhabitants frequently refused to pay their share of the bill. Disputes between the liberty and the rest of the shire were finally brought to an end in 1430 by the then bishop of Ely, Philip Morgan, and John, Lord Tiptoft†. They agreed that the Isle’s inhabitants should pay the rest of the shire a flat sum of £200, to be invested in land capable of yielding an income sufficient to exonerate the liberty from having to contribute to the wages in the future. This arrangement, the subject of a Commons petition in 1431, received final authorization in a later Parliament (probably that of February 1449), after the five feoffees responsible for investing the money had purchased a manor in Madingley from Sir Nicholas Styuecle* in 1448. The manor, which became known as the ‘Shire’ manor, remained with successive groups of feoffees for the county, and they usually leased it to local men.6 VCH Cambs. iv. 1, 6-15; ix. 167; A.F. Bottomley, ‘Admin. Cambs.’ (London M.A. thesis, 1952), 31-32; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 286; PROME, x. 478-9; xii. 69.

Although the Isle of Ely was easily the most significant independent jurisdiction in the county, the parliamentary borough of Cambridge also possessed considerable privileges, since it had the return of nearly all royal writs and was a self-governing corporation which elected its own MPs. The abbot of Ramsey’s franchise, on the other hand, was not of much significance, since it was centred on Huntingdonshire and its Cambridgeshire lands were almost entirely restricted to the western fenland. Of the lay franchises, the possessions of the honour of Richmond were quite extensive, but the duchy of Lancaster’s presence in Cambridgeshire was very peripheral, consisting of a single manor at Soham.7 Bottomley, 34-37; VCH Cambs. x. 501. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 285, mistakenly refers to the manors of Babraham and Bassingbourn as duchy of Lancaster properties. They were in fact held of the honour of Richmond, while Bassingbourn, although held by John of Gaunt for two and a half decades, did not become part of the duchy until 1558: VCH Cambs. vi. 21; viii. 14; CFR, xvii. 4. While it was in his hands, the honour of Richmond (which reverted to the Crown after the duke of Bedford’s death in 1435),8 VCH Yorks. (N. Riding), i. 12. gave the King more extensive seigneurial interests in Cambridgeshire than did the duchy. In general, the Crown’s estates in the county were not especially significant. The King retained the lordship of most, if not all, of the hundreds in the county proper, but there were no great royal castles there. By the later Middle Ages, Cambridge castle was an administrative centre of no defensive significance, as demonstrated by Henry VI’s authorizing the taking of stone from its great hall for the building of his foundation of King’s College. The college did, however, give Henry a reason to come to the town, ensuring his occasional presence there and elsewhere in the county. He laid its foundation stone in person on 2 Apr. 1441 and he made fairly frequent return visits to the town during the mid and later 1440s. He was, for example, in Cambridge within a week of the dissolution of the Parliament of 1447; this had met at Bury St. Edmunds, only some 30 miles away. Later in the reign, he also visited the town in November 1452 and March 1460.9 VCH Cambs. iii. 118; R. Willis, Archit. Hist. Cambridge ed. Clark, i. 321–2; B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 363, 365, 367, 368, 370, 371.

The bishop of Ely, who held estates in the southern half of the county as well as in his liberty, was potentially the most important magnate in Cambridgeshire, but the holders of the see in this period appear not to have taken much interest in the politics of the county outside the Isle.10 Bottomley, map between 51-52, 57. As for lay magnates, the county was not a base for any especially great lord, apparently because of the particularly fragmented pattern of manorial lordship there after the Conquest.11 Spufford, 28. The most influential peer in the county during the first half of Henry VI’s reign was Lord Tiptoft, partly by default because, like the bishops, the majority of lay magnates with a landed interest there appear not to have involved themselves much in its affairs. It was apparently for the same reason that Tiptoft, a senior and highly influential member of the King’s Council, was also the most prominent peer in Huntingdonshire. In his later years, however, Tiptoft did face a challenge in Cambridgeshire from the young and ambitious Sir James Butler (or Ormond), the later earl of Wiltshire, a relative parvenu whose possessions in the county amounted to no more than property at Fulbourn and a manor at Swavesey.12 Bottomley, 61. Yet the Tiptoft-Butler rivalry was less serious and of shorter duration than the divisions in neighbouring Bedfordshire, where the activities of an incomer, John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, threatened the traditional dominance of the Greys of Ruthin. It is unclear how much political influence Tiptoft’s son and heir, created earl of Worcester in 1449, exercised in Cambridgeshire in the early years of his career. Two other magnates with a landed interest in the county, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, and the duke of Bedford (the latter as holder of the honour of Richmond between 1425 and his death ten years later), both died childless early in the reign. A third, the earl of Oxford, possessed estates in the extreme south-east of Cambridgeshire where he had a castle at Camps, but there is no evidence that he involved himself in the county’s affairs. Richard, duke of York, and Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, also held property in the county, where they were both j.p.s but otherwise not particularly active.13 Ibid. 60-61; CP, ii. 72; v. 203-4. York did, nevertheless, enjoy some political support in Cambridgeshire during the crisis years of the mid fifteenth century.

The names of 21 of Cambridgeshire’s knights of the shire of this period survive, although those of its representatives in the final two Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign are lost, meaning that up to 25 different men could have sat for the county if none of the unknown Members had sat before. All of the 21 appear to have resided there at the time of their elections although probably only on a short-term basis in the case of John Say, a royal servant who had acquired an interest in Cambridgeshire through his marriage a little over two years before his election in 1449. A fellow royal servant, Henry Somer, was another newcomer, although he was a less recent arrival than Say, having accumulated a large estate centred on Grantchester just outside Cambridge between 1419 and 1427. Evidently, residency (a qualification reinforced by statute in 1445) was an important consideration for the electorate, as it was for that of neighbouring Huntingdonshire, where it featured as a central issue in that county’s election dispute of 1429.

Laurence Cheyne and his son John were the only Cambridgeshire MPs of this period who were certainly from a family resident in the county for several centuries, although Ansty’s was well established and others were from families with traditions of sitting in Parliament, whether for Cambridgeshire or other constituencies. While those of Richard Forster, John Morys and Thomas Lokton may also have resided in the county for a considerable time, they were lesser men whose obscure ancestry makes it impossible to trace their origins. As in the later fourteenth century and during the reigns of the first two Lancastrian Kings, Cambridgeshire readily absorbed outsiders, a hardly surprising capacity for a county surrounded by so many others. While all of the 21 appear to have held lands in Cambridgeshire (whether through inheritance, purchase or marriage) at the time of their election, more than half of them were immigrants or the sons of immigrants.

Almost all of the MPs held lands in other counties, although for the majority their interests in Cambridgeshire were their primary concern. The father of William Allington I was probably a Cornish wine merchant who established himself in the county in the late 1390s; and Fynderne’s father, William*, was a successful lawyer from Derbyshire who had acquired lands in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere in southern England; Cotton was the son of a wealthy London mercer who invested in land in the county. The origins of some of the other MPs are far more uncertain. It is possible that John Hore was from Warwickshire and that John Ansty’s father was also from the Midlands. The very obscure John Skelton was settled at Steeple Morden prior to his election in 1427 but his roots may have lain in Cumberland. Somer was perhaps a native of Kent and Say may have hailed from Bedfordshire but Sir William Asenhill, who owed his position in Cambridgeshire to his wife’s landed interests there, is of unknown origin. The antecedents of Nicholas Caldecote are also unknown although his surname might suggest that he was a native of the county.

Notwithstanding that some of the MPs’ links with Cambridgeshire were either relatively or very recent, the fathers of at least half a dozen of them had previously represented the county in the Commons, in some instances within the period under review.14 The six are William Allington II, Thomas Burgoyne, John Cheyne, Gilbert Hore, John Morys and Sir Walter de la Pole. It would appear, therefore, that being the son of a parliamentarian held some significance, whether in prompting a candidate to emulate his father by standing for election or, perhaps, in influencing the county court to elect them. It is also likely that marital relationships facilitated the election of at least three of the MPs. First, the initial return of Asenhill to the Commons in 1406 followed his marriage, through which he had become a substantial landholder in Cambridgeshire. Secondly, John Hore’s first two marriages had likewise greatly enhanced his standing as a landowner in Cambridgeshire and elsewhere before his first election for the county in 1415. Finally, John Say’s marriage to a daughter of Laurence Cheyne was of crucial significance, since it gave him a connexion with the county shortly before he represented it in Parliament. The social standing of their representatives was another important consideration for the electorate, since at every election for which the MPs’ names are known at least one of the knights of the shire returned was a member of the upper gentry of the county.

Especially notable are the family connexions of Sir Walter de la Pole and his grandson, Edmund Ingoldisthorpe, although the Cheynes and Allingtons in particular also stand out as figures of substance. Sir Walter was a cousin of the de la Pole earls of Suffolk, while Ingoldisthorpe was the son-in-law of John, Lord Tiptoft. As a knight, de la Pole, who received the honour long before beginning his parliamentary career, was in a distinct minority, since in the period under review only he, Asenhill, Ingoldisthorpe and Fynderne were returned for the county while belted knights, of whom Ingoldisthorpe sat in his first Parliament as an esquire.

Two others among the 21, John Say and John Cheyne, also received knighthoods but not until Edward IV’s reign, long after they had represented Cambridgeshire in the Commons. The belted knights had also been in a minority in the years 1386-1421, although they made up a third of the MPs of that period. The diminution in knightly numbers that was a general phenomenon throughout the Lancastrian period was much more pronounced in the associated county of Huntingdonshire. There the knights proper comprised less than one third of the Members of the earlier period and just two of the dozen men known to have sat for that county in Henry VI’s reign.

The decline in the number of belted knights did not, however, reflect a decline in relative social standing. At least eight of the MPs who never received a knighthood were perfectly able to support the status, since they were all distrained for the honour at least once.15 Both Allingtons, Thomas Burgoyne, Caldecote, Laurence Cheyne, the two Hores and Somer. While knighthood still retained its military connotations, it is impossible to prove that any of the MPs who gained the status earned it in the field. It is nevertheless likely that Asenhill received his on the Agincourt campaign and that Fynderne, who was knighted before first entering the Commons, was also dubbed while serving in France. The circumstances in which de la Pole (who saw military service in Ireland and France and was knighted before attaining the age of 18) and Ingoldisthorpe were knighted are unknown but there is no evidence that the latter saw military service. Two of those distrained but never knighted, William Allington II and Gilbert Hore, also served as soldiers across the English Channel, both of them prior to their parliamentary careers. While the majority of those who did not receive the honour were ‘esquires’, at least five of the MPs, Ansty, Thomas Burgoyne, Cotton, Forster and Say, were sometimes referred to as ‘gentlemen’, of whom Ansty, Burgoyne and Forster were lawyers, as were John Burgoyne and Caldecote. It is also possible that Lokton and Cotton had received a legal training, meaning that lawyers may have comprised a third of Cambridgeshire’s known Members in this period and that at least one of its MPs was a member of that profession in as many as 11 of Henry VI’s Parliaments. The previous reign presents a similar picture, for in Henry V’s reign lawyers occupied ten of the 22 seats available. There are, however, no known instances in the period under review in which both Members were certainly lawyers, as had been the case in the Parliaments of 1419 and December 1421.16 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 284. Lawyers were also important in the representation of Huntingdonshire: although only two of that county’s known Members (Roger Hunt* and Walter Taylard*) were certainly men of law, they sat in ten Parliaments between them. If another of its MPs (John Styuecle*) was also a lawyer, then that county was represented by a lawyer in 13 Parliaments of the reign.

Two of the belted knights, Sir Walter de la Pole and his grandson, Edmund Ingoldisthorpe, were among the wealthiest landowners of the 21. For the purposes of taxation, the annual landed income of the former was assessed at £165 in 1412 and the latter’s at £200 in 1451. Of the others, Asenhill was possessed of lands worth at least £95 p.a. towards the end of his life and Fynderne’s estates were valued at 100 marks per year in 1451. Wealthier than any of them was Henry Somer. By the mid 1430s, just a few years after sitting for Cambridgeshire for the last time, he held estates worth at least £266 p.a. although his total annual income, including various annuities and the perquisites of his offices in the Mint and Exchequer, probably exceeded two or three times that sum. He could afford to advance very considerable sums to the Crown, which also sought loans (albeit on a far lesser scale) from William Allington I and Asenhill. Laurence Cheyne and William Allington II were other substantial landowners: both were found to hold estates worth just over £100 p.a. when assessed for the subsidy of 1436 and £130 per year for the purposes of that of 1451. Presumably the landed inheritance of John Cheyne, Laurence’s son, was worth somewhere in the region of the latter sum. In 1451 Cotton was found to hold estates worth 200 marks p.a. and to enjoy a further 200 marks per year in fees. It is impossible to estimate the landed income of his fellow royal servant, John Say, who likewise derived much of his considerable wealth from fees, annuities and other rewards he received from the Crown. As had been the case in the years 1386-1421, however, the wealthier landowners by no means dominated the representation of the shire, for the electorate were also willing to return middling or even lesser gentry to the Commons. According to tax assessments of 1436, at that date Caldecote and Gilbert Hore held estates worth £50 p.a. and Morys and Forster possessed lands with an annual value of £35 and £33 respectively. In the early 1450s Ansty was assessed at £40 in lands and fees and Lokton at a mere £11 6s. 8d. p.a. in lands; however, the latter was also found to enjoy an additional annual income of £12 in fees. While several of these assessments, notably Lokton’s, fell below the £40 in lands required of knights of the shire, most were probably underestimates.

Almost all of the 21 held lands in other counties, no doubt partly because the Cambridgeshire ties of so many of them were relatively recent. In most cases these holdings lay in the neighbouring counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdonshire, Northamptonshire, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Essex. Although Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire were administratively attached, the evidence of property links between the MPs and the latter county is surprisingly slight. The Cheynes certainly held estates in Huntingdonshire, as apparently did Caldecote, while Cotton was a member of that county’s commission of the peace (suggesting a possible but otherwise unknown landed interest there) during his final Parliament. Some of the MPs – mainly the wealthier landowners – also possessed more far flung properties. For example, Sir Walter de la Pole held lands in other parts of the kingdom, as did his grandson, Ingoldisthorpe, whose estates included holdings as far south as Hampshire and as far north as Yorkshire.

Save for Skelton, all of the 21 held local government office in Cambridgeshire, the great majority of them before they first entered Parliament, indicating that at least some administrative experience in the county was usually felt desirable, and a majority of them were already men of mature years at the beginning of their parliamentary careers. Only three of them, John Cheyne, William Cotton and Edmund Ingoldisthorpe, were certainly under 30 years of age when first elected, of whom just Ingoldisthorpe had yet to play a part in local government. Given his youth and lack of administrative experience when returned to his first Parliament, Ingoldisthorpe must have owed much to his social status and family connexions for his election. Asenhill was already serving as a j.p. for Cambridgeshire when returned to his first Parliament in 1406, and he likewise occupied that office when elected to all his subsequent Parliaments, save those of 1425 and 1426. Sir Walter de la Pole’s service as a j.p. was not continuous: he was on the bench when returned in 1422 and 1427 but not when elected in 1423. Caldecote was also serving on the commission of the peace (although for the borough of Cambridge rather than the county) when he took up his seat in his third Parliament, that of 1431. John Burgoyne was a j.p. for the borough when elected as a knight of the shire for the first time in 1413 but a member of the county’s bench while sitting in his last two Parliaments. His son Thomas was already a j.p. for Cambridgeshire when he gained election in 1442, as were Cotton, Morys, Say, Ansty, Lokton and Forster when returned to the Commons for the first (or only) time. Forster was also serving as a coroner for the county when elected in 1435. As one might expect, he and the other known lawyers – Ansty and the two Burgoynes – saw service on the quorum as j.p.s, as did Cotton, a putative member of that profession. While lacking administrative experience prior to his first Parliament, Ingoldisthorpe was a j.p. when elected to his second and third, as was the elder William Allington at the time of his final election to the Commons in 1429. Both Allington and his son and namesake were elected to their second Parliaments while in office as escheator of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and John Hore was simultaneously escheator and MP in 1425. Nine of the MPs held the significantly more important office of sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, although only Laurence Cheyne served as such prior to entering the Commons. There were no instances of a sheriff returning himself, although Sir Walter de la Pole was pricked for his first term as sheriff between his election to the Parliament of 1417 and the opening of that assembly, and for his second while sitting in his penultimate Parliament.

Reflecting the duchy of Lancaster’s local insignificance, only the royal servant Cotton is known to have held office for it in Cambridgeshire, although it is unclear whether his appointments predated his first Parliament.17 None of the MPs features in the lists of those known to have held the office of steward of the duchy lands in Norf., Suff. and Cambs. or that of steward of Soham, although one of their pre-1422 predecessors, John Tiptoft, did hold the latter stewardship by virtue of a grant for life made to him in 1404: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 594, 601. It was also by appointment of the Crown that Cotton held the stewardship of two of the honour of Richmond’s manors in the county in the last five years of his life. Lokton likewise held office in the honour, as bailiff of its Cambridgeshire estates in the late 1430s and early 1440s, but probably he owed that appointment to Lord Tiptoft, to whom the Crown had granted part of the honour the previous year. None of the MPs is known to have held office on those lands in the county assigned to any of the Lancastrian queens, whether in dower or otherwise, although Cotton was receiver-general of all of Queen Margaret’s estates in the realm when returned to his final two Parliaments.

Several of the MPs had connexions with the royal court, whether as members of the King’s household or on a less formal basis through their strong adherence to the Lancastrian cause. Asenhill, Cotton, Fynderne, Ingoldisthorpe, Say, Somer and, perhaps, Gilbert Hore were already associated with the Crown prior to representing Cambridgeshire in Parliament. While it is impossible to prove that such links lay behind their election in every case, it is worth noting that Cotton held the offices of receiver-general of the King’s feoffees, receiver-general (and ex officio attorney-general) of the duchy of Lancaster and receiver-general (and ex officio treasurer of the household) of Queen Margaret, when returned to the particularly ‘royalist’ assemblies of 1447 and 1453. He also held office in the King’s wardrobe, as did Somer and Say. All three of them must have enjoyed privileged access to the person of Henry VI by virtue of their household offices. As a result they were well placed to secure royal grants and annuities from the Crown. It is hard not to view Say’s return to the Parliament of February 1449 in light of his membership of the Court, given how recent his connexion with Cambridgeshire was at that date. It was probably an initial solidarity among the Household element in the Commons that ensured his election as Speaker, even though he was a parliamentary novice. There is no doubt where his primary loyalties lay, since he was in attendance on the King just three days after his formal presentation to the office, and he received further rewards from Henry VI while Speaker. Somer was of course an important figure in his own right, and those of the other MPs who were his associates had a potential connexion through him with the Court and government. To reiterate, while it is impossible to prove that links with the Court were instrumental in securing election to the Commons, they must have added to the prestige of those of the MPs who possessed them in the eyes of the electorate. The same must hold true for neighbouring Huntingdonshire, where nearly half of the known MPs had some sort of connexion with the royal household.

Just two of the 21 held positions in the main administration of the duchy of Lancaster and in central government while representing Cambridgeshire. As already noted, Cotton was receiver-general of the duchy when returned in 1447 and 1453, while Somer was chancellor of the Exchequer, a department in which he had already served over three decades, when elected in 1432. While there is no evidence to link these positions with the events of the Parliaments in question, the electorate must have appreciated the advantages of having men of considerable administrative experience representing the county. A few of the MPs were also linked with the government and Court in their role of ambassadors on behalf of the Crown. Sir Walter de la Pole’s extensive diplomatic and parliamentary careers ran in tandem, and he was elected to the first Parliament of the reign shortly after returning from a mission to Germany. The elder William Allington participated in negotiations with France and Brittany on several occasions in Henry V’s reign, while Say was part of the delegation sent to France to negotiate the King’s marriage in 1444, just under five years prior to entering the Commons in 1449. Finally, both de la Pole and Allington had also served in the government of Ireland during Henry IV’s reign.

Nearly all of the MPs had connexions with one or more lords, although in the majority of cases it is impossible to prove that these links had a direct bearing on their parliamentary careers. As already remarked, the bishops of Ely of this period were potentially the most important local magnates but appear to have taken little interest in county politics. It is unclear how much involvement the MPs in general had with the Isle of Ely, and their principal estates lay outside the liberty. It is nevertheless worth noting that Ansty, who enjoyed a long career in the bishops’ service, was returned to his first two Parliaments (those of 1445 and 1450) while Thomas Bourgchier, a royal councillor and a member of one of the most prominent and influential families in the realm, was bishop of Ely. At least eight of the MPs were either retainers of John, Lord Tiptoft, or had some other connexion with him or his son, the earl of Worcester.18 Asenhill, Caldecote, Cotton, Forster, the Hores, Ingoldisthorpe and Lokton. Of those linked with the Tiptofts, Asenhill, Caldecote, Forster and the Hores sat in the Commons before Lord Tiptoft’s death in 1443, while the earl of Worcester almost certainly helped to secure the election of Lokton (as a landowner perhaps the least significant man to serve as a knight of the shire in this period) in 1455. Earlier, as treasurer of England, he had appointed Lokton, already one of his estate officials, to the office of clerk of the estreats at the Exchequer.

The greatest challenge to Tiptoft dominance came from Sir James Butler, at odds with the first Lord Tiptoft by the later 1430s. It appears that the origins of their quarrel, apparently personal rather than political, lay in a pre-existing disagreement between Tiptoft and William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf. At issue in the latter dispute were the estates in Cambridgeshire belonging to the honour of Richmond. Bardolf had received a royal grant of the custody of these lands in November 1437 but, to his great resentment, Tiptoft secured a new grant of the same holdings just weeks later. Butler took Bardolf’s side in this quarrel, possibly because Bardolf had appointed him steward of the Richmond lands or had leased them to him, and this led him to oppose the Tiptoft interest in the shire election of 1439 with the support of Laurence Cheyne, William Allington II and William Cotton. The Tiptoft-Butler dispute continued for some time after 1439 and was not confined to Cambridgeshire. Early in the following year, a large band of Lord Tiptoft’s followers, led by Thomas Lokton, confronted a small group of Butler’s men, headed by Henry Filongley* and William Tyrell I*, in Cambridge. Fearing imminent violence, both the town and university authorities intervened and persuaded the rival followings to withdraw in peace. Afterwards, in February 1441, a group of j.p.s. in Huntingdonshire, headed by Tiptoft’s friend, Sir Nicholas Styuecle, took an indictment against Henry Brokesby, a tenant of Butler’s manor at Fulbourn, alleging that he had committed a murder in that county. Brokesby immediately claimed that the indictment had arisen from a conspiracy at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, among Tipftoft and his adherents. Duly acquitted before a special commission of gaol delivery in April 1441, Brokesby subsequently sued Tiptoft and his ‘coterie’ in the common pleas. Yet Tiptoft’s death in January 1443 undermined the chance of a successful defence and it is unlikely that the plaintiff ever received the damages and judgement he sought. While untimely for Brokesby, the peer’s demise must have taken much of the heat out of local politics in Cambridgeshire, as no doubt did the apparent subsequent decision by Butler to turn most of his attention to his west-country estates.19 R. Virgoe, ‘Cambs. Election of 1439’, Bull. IHR, xlvi. 97n, 100; Egerton Roll 8791; CP40/727, rot. 600; Year Bks. Hil. 21 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 12; Mich. 22 Hen. VI (ibid.), pl. 5.

Not surprisingly, those of the MPs with the most wide-ranging careers tended to have links with magnates whose ties with Cambridgeshire were not as close as the Tiptofts’. Both Thomas Burgoyne and Sir Thomas Fynderne, for example, were retained by the duke of Buckingham but there is no evidence that he tried to exert his influence in the county’s parliamentary elections. Fynderne’s association with Stafford was, however, subsequently of great importance, since he accompanied the duke and the King to the first battle of St. Albans in 1455, acting as one of the duke’s messengers just before the fighting broke out. A diehard Lancastrian executed by the Yorkists in 1464, Fynderne was in a distinct minority. While another of the MPs closely associated with the Lancastrian cause, William Cotton, also met his end violently, in his case at St. Albans in 1455, a majority of the 21 appear to have stayed clear of the civil wars (although William Allington II’s son and heir was a partisan for the duke of York). Factional politics at a national level do, however, appear to have influenced the outcome of Cambridgeshire’s elections to the Parliaments from 1447 to 1453, when all bar one (John Morys) of the seven returned were Household men. It is nevertheless worth noting that Thomas Lokton’s election to the Parliament that met in the wake of the first battle of St. Albans probably had political connotations, given that the earl of Worcester, the patron to whose influence he is likely to have owed his seat, was by then an ally of Richard, duke of York. Moreover, had the county’s returns for the Parliaments of 1459 and 1460 survived, the names of the men elected might have indicated that they owed their seats to the bitter factionalism by then dividing the realm.

It would appear that previous parliamentary experience was an important consideration in the elections of the knights of the shire for Cambridgeshire, even if the county did not enjoy quite as an impressive continuity of representation as Huntingdonshire. At every election of the reign prior to 1445, at least one of those chosen had sat before, and it was not until 1435 that neither of the MPs had represented the county before 1422. The election to the Parliament of November 1449 is the only recorded occasion after 1445 when Cambridgeshire returned two newcomers to the Commons in Henry VI’s reign. Yet, as already observed, it is possible that none of the unknown Members of the Parliaments of 1459 and 1460 had sat before. There is a reasonably strong chance that both MPs of 1459 in particular were parliamentary novices, since the notoriously partisan assembly of 1459 contained its fair share of knights of the shire who were little qualified to represent their counties and who owed their seats to their connexion with the Household rather than their local status. In the first six Parliaments of the reign Sir Walter de la Pole and William Asenhill, already experienced parliamentarians and knights of good standing in the county dominated its parliamentary representation. Following his election in 1422, Asenhill was re-elected to the following three Parliaments, and there is no evidence that either he or de la Pole represented any other constituency. Neither left any surviving male issue although among de la Pole’s successors as knights of the shire was his grandson and heir, Edmund Ingoldisthorpe. As the father and son examples of the Allingtons, Burgoynes, Cheynes and Hores show, the electorate fairly consistently looked to several other families to represent the constituency as well.

Elections of the county’s knights of the shire took place in the county court sitting at Cambridge castle, normally on a Thursday, although that of 1427 occurred on a Saturday. Just under a decade later, the Parliament of 1437 was summoned to meet at Cambridge on 21 Jan. that year, by virtue of writs of summons of 29 Oct. 1436, only for the Crown to change the venue to Westminster by means of a subsequent writ of the following 10 Dec. By then the county had already formally chosen Gilbert Hore and William Allington II as its knights of the shire on 20 Nov., a result that was allowed to stand, since the extant return bears the same November date and Hore and Allington duly took up their seats in the Commons. There was another countermanding of the original writs of summons ten years later. Cambridge was again the initially intended venue for the Parliament of 1447 and, in response to a writ of 14 Dec. 1446 directing the sheriff to hold an election for a Parliament that would open there on the following 10 Feb., the county court returned William Cotton and John Morys on 5 Jan. On 20 Jan., however, the Chancery issued fresh writs changing the venue to Bury St. Edmunds. Again, there is no evidence of a fresh election, and Cotton and Morys remained the county’s representatives. The return for Cambridge, by contrast, was dated 3 Feb. 1447 (a Friday), although it is unclear whether it arose from the holding of a fresh election in the borough following the cancellation of the original writ of summons. Except for those of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460, all the Cambridgeshire election returns for the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign have survived, although royal commissions relating to tax allowances reveal the names of the men elected (or eventually elected) to the assemblies of 1439 and 1445. The returns name a varying number of attestors, from as few as seven in that for the November Parliament of 1449, to as many as 31 in that for 1455. Those named did not, however, necessarily comprise all those who participated in elections, because the returns for the Parliaments of February 1449 and 1450 refer to other, unnamed witnesses, while a ‘grete multitude’ totalling 2,000 people were said to have been present at the first, abortive attempt to hold an election in 1439.20 Virgoe, 101. The majority of attestors named in the indentures were obscure figures of the rank of lesser gentry or below and Sir Walter de la Pole is the only knight known to have attested an election between 1422 and 1447. The substantial gentry of the shire feature far more prominently in the returns from the second half of the reign, possibly because the leading men of the locality were particularly anxious to see that their interests were represented as the country slid into crisis. Yet one cannot assume that they had little interest in earlier elections, for the simple reason that the men chosen as MPs normally came from their ranks.

Cambridgeshire’s only known election dispute of this period was that of 1439. Linked with the quarrel between Lord Tiptoft and Sir James Butler, it saw William Allington II, Laurence Cheyne and William Cotton take Butler’s side against the Tiptoft interest. On the day of the election, the sheriff, Gilbert Hore, acting at Tiptoft’s behest, aborted proceedings and the county was left unrepresented when the Parliament opened at Westminster on 12 Nov. As the parliament roll reveals, the King and Lords were informed four days later of a return (now no longer extant) in which Hore explained his reasons (not recorded on the roll) for cancelling the election. With the advice of the Lords, the King commanded Hore to hold a fresh election at the next shire court. Furthermore, he was to proclaim beforehand that everyone coming to the county court was to be unarmed and statutorily entitled to attend, an admonition hinting at disorder during the earlier aborted proceedings. The King also warranted the sending of letters to the chancellor of Cambridge University and the mayor of Cambridge, directing them to ensure that no student or townsman disrupted the fresh election and referring to Hore’s inability to return the knights of the shire because of the threat of a riot. Of course, this alleged danger reflects the Tiptoft interest’s version of events and not necessarily the reality, as does a highly partisan report sent to Cardinal Beaufort, the King’s leading councillor. The report alleged that Butler and his allies had arrived in Cambridge with 50 armed men on the eve of election. It went on to recount that on election day Tiptoft had advised Hore that Butler and one of his supporters, Sir Robert Cromwell, a young cousin of the treasurer of England, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, were not resident in the shire when the Parliament was called and were therefore ineligible to attend. Butler had refused to withdraw, whereupon Hore himself had departed Cambridge castle without proceeding with the election. The allegations of disorder, the presence of unqualified men and Hore’s departure are far from unparalleled since they were mirrored in two subsequent East Anglian election disputes. At the Suffolk election of 1453 the under sheriff likewise left the county court in similar alleged circumstances, as did the sheriff of Norfolk in that county’s election dispute of 1461. Notwithstanding the bias of the report, there is no reason to doubt its claim that Butler and his allies had engaged in large-scale canvassing in the three weeks before the county court met. The complaints of Tiptoft and his supporters came to nothing. At the next meeting of the county court on 19 Nov., presided over by Hore’s successor as sheriff, Henry Langley, Allington and Cotton were returned, an outcome demonstrating that Tiptoft was by no means totally dominant in the county.21 Ibid. 95-101. It is possible that Allington, Cotton and Laurence Cheyne, leading members of the county gentry in their own right, were no more than temporary allies of the youthful Butler, with personal ambitions of their own and using their support to express their dissatisfaction with aspects of Lord Tiptoft’s involvement in local affairs. All three of them may have remained at odds with Tiptoft until his death, although Cotton became an estate steward of the peer’s widow soon afterwards. During the early 1440s Allington and Cheyne pursued a lawsuit at Westminster over a bond against Richard Forster, then one of Tiptoft’s estate officers, while in turn Tiptoft sued them for debt.22 CP40/724, rots. 206, 410; 726, rot. 379d; 728, rot. 284d; 729, rot. 358d; 730, rot. 210.

A crucial feature of the initial abortive attempt to hold an election in 1439 was the behaviour of the sheriff, Gilbert Hore, whose evident intention to secure the election of candidates supported by Tiptoft did not accord with the wishes of the electorate. On other occasions the sheriff made returns that were apparently in line with political circumstances and were agreeable to the government of the day. When William Cotton was returned to the Parliament of 1447 the sheriff was a fellow member of the Household, Sir John Chalers*. In Huntingdonshire, the other county within Chalers’s bailiwick, one of the seats went to another royal servant, Robert Stonham*. The political affiliations of Thomas Peyton, the sheriff at the time of the election of 1453, another assembly called in advantageous circumstances for the Court, are unknown, although the successful candidates were Cotton and Sir Edmund Ingoldisthorpe, a former esquire of the Household. Henry Parys, the sheriff who presided over the election to the Parliament of 1455, summoned in the wake of the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, is also a relatively obscure figure but, as already noted, Thomas Lokton probably owed his return to it to his patron’s association with the duke of York. One of the MPs, Sir Thomas Fynderne, was sheriff at the time of the election to the Parliament of 1460 but it is almost certain that he did not preside over the proceedings in person. The Parliament was summoned following the Yorkists’ victory at Northampton, where Sir Thomas had fought against them, and it is quite possible that he was never able to return to his estates in Cambridgeshire between that battle and his execution in northern England in 1464.

The sheriffs’ conduct of parliamentary elections was not the only potential cause of conflict, as sometimes there were disputes over the wages of the county’s MPs, both of whom were allowed the customary rate of 4s. per day. It fell upon the sheriff to see that the knights of the shire received their wages from the issues of his bailiwick, but at least three of the 21 took legal action in the Exchequer against holders or former holders of the shrievalty for non-payment. First, in October 1426 Asenhill began a successful suit for his wages as a knight of the shire in the Parliament of that year against the then sheriff, John Hore, with whom, as it happened, he had sat in the previous Parliament of 1425. Secondly, in 1433, Laurence Cheyne sued John Clopton, who had taken over briefly as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in the autumn of 1432, following the death in office of (Sir) John Shardelowe*. He sought his wages for the Parliament of 1432, claiming that neither Shardelowe nor Clopton had paid any the £14 4s. due to him for the 71 days he had spent attending and travelling to and from that assembly. Thirdly, in 1437 William Allington II sued the former sheriff, Roger Hunt, for non-payment of his wages as one of the MPs of 1433.23 E13/137, rot. 3; 140, rot. 41; E5/3/10.

With the exception of John Say, three times Speaker of the Commons (once under Henry VI and twice under Edward IV), very little is known of the activities of the MPs while they were actually in Parliament, even those of the prominent William Allington I (Speaker in 1429), Sir Walter de la Pole and Henry Somer. In 1423, however, the Commons sent de la Pole and four other knights of the shire to the duke of Gloucester and the rest of the Lords to thank them for keeping them informed about affairs concerning Scotland. Both Sir Walter and Somer are likely to have played influential roles in Parliament, since both were important enough to receive summonses to the great council of April 1434.24 The only other Cambs. MP known to have attended a gt. council in Hen. VI’s reign was Ingoldisthorpe, summoned in 1455. It would be unwise, however, to assume that their fellow MPs were mere bystanders in Parliament. Thomas Burgoyne, for example, took part in petitioning the assembly of 1442 of which he himself was a Member, in his capacity as an executor of the immensely wealthy London alderman, John Brockley†. Later, during the Parliament of 1447, in which he sat for the borough of Bridgwater, he acted as a proxy for the abbot of Croyland. It is also likely that Cambridgeshire’s knights of the shire in the earlier Parliaments of 1429 (Asenhill and the elder Allington) and 1431 (Caldecote and Laurence Cheyne) played a role in preparing or promoting the petitions listed at the head of this survey. Two of the 21, Henry Somer and Gilbert Hore, had dealings with Parliaments of which they were not themselves part. In 1413 Somer faced short-lived proceedings in the Commons for misuse of public funds, and 31 years later, over a decade after last sitting in the Commons, he agreed to serve on a parliamentary committee for the endowment and foundation of King’s College, Cambridge. As for Hore, he was among the soldiers who petitioned Parliament for wages due to them for their service in France shortly after the death of the duke of Bedford in 1435.