Dorset

Dorset, on the south coast, was not defined by notable geographical features, save for the English Channel itself. Primarily an agricultural and pastoral county, in this period it had few large towns (the most highly populated being Bridport), and no ports comparable in either size or the volume of their trade to Exeter and Dartmouth to the west (in Devon), and Southampton to the east (in Hampshire). Poole, which took over from Melcombe Regis as a ‘head port’ for the collection of customs and subsidies in the 1430s, could not rival them in these particular respects, although its impressive natural harbour made it invaluable as a place for the assembly and embarkation of armed men deployed for the defence of the Channel Islands and military action in Normandy. In 1436 Dorset was found incapable of bearing its normal share of the burden of parliamentary taxation, and a schedule was drawn up of ‘desolated, wasted, destructed and depopulated’ boroughs and vills to which rebate of tax was to be allowed. Five ‘boroughs’ were included on the list: Dorchester, Bridport, Shaftesbury, Wareham and the ‘Isle of Portland’ (presumably Weymouth and Melcombe Regis combined); the remaining parliamentary borough, Lyme Regis, had already declined to such an extent that it was classified as a mere ‘vill’.2 E179/103/79. Dorset was not famous for the quality of its wool, and the high cost of exporting produce to the staple at Calais led to a marked increase in smuggling as the century progressed.3 Or perhaps to the successful discovery of contraband: e.g. E143/24/1, 7. The only industries worthy of note were the quarrying of Purbeck marble, which was shipped from Poole, and the manufacture of ropes from hemp grown in the west of the county around Bridport.4 VCH Dorset, ii. 240-1, 336, 344-6. In terms of taxable wealth, for the subsidy of 1450-1 Dorset ranked eighteenth out of the 29 counties for which returns survive. By contrast, all four of the shires that bordered it – Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire – ranked among the wealthiest eight in England.5 S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258.

The tax returns of 1412 identify the major landowners in Dorset in the first decade of the century.6 Feudal Aids, vi. 420-3. Estates pertaining to the duchy of Lancaster there were worth £200 p.a.; and other crown lands, worth 100 marks, were then held in dower by Henry IV’s queen, Joan of Navarre (d.1437). Comparable landholdings pertaining to Edmund, earl of March, and valued at £265 p.a., passed after the earl’s death in 1425 to his nephew Richard, duke of York.7 Ibid. 428; CIPM, xxii. 486, 488, 490; PROME, xi. 406; xii. 536. The Dorset estates of the Lords Mautravers – earls of Arundel in the period here under review – were worth nearly £200 a year; while those formerly held by Guy, Lord Bryan (and in the possession of his widow in 1412), passed initially to the shire knight Robert Lovell, in right of his wife Elizabeth, and later in Henry VI’s reign to Sir James Butler (earl of Wiltshire from 1449 and of Ormond from 1452), through his marriage to Elizabeth’s grand-daughter and heiress Avice Stafford. Butler’s marriage also enriched him with the very substantial estates that Avice inherited from her paternal grandfather Sir Humphrey Stafford of Hooke. Until his death in 1442 the latter, with lands in Dorset alone valued at £237 p.a., took third place to the Crown and the duke of York among the leading landowners of the shire.

Stafford, the wealthiest of the gentry resident in Dorset, was the only knight listed there in 1434 to take the oath prescribed in Parliament against maintaining malefactors, although another knight, Sir John Chideock, was one of the MPs who undertook to administer it. Only 60 men, all of lesser rank (including six of the county’s MPs of this period) were then listed as living in Dorset and required to swear the oath, and several of these 60 were townsmen rather than gentry.8 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 382-3.

Returns for Dorset survive for only 18 of the 22 Parliaments assembled from 1422 to 1460, but the names of the knights of the shire elected in 1433, 1439 and 1445 are supplied by the records of tax commissions on the fine rolls,9 CFR, xvi. 187; xvii. 140; xviii. 32. so that only one gap – for the Coventry Parliament of 1459 – remains. Twenty-three individuals filled the 42 recorded seats. While half of them (12) only ever sat for this constituency once, and another six did so just twice, others were more active. Browning and William Carent represented Dorset in three Parliaments each; and John Newburgh II did so in as many as six between 1429 and 1460 and Filoll in seven between 1437 and 1467. Furthermore, even the impressive records of Newburgh and Filoll were out-classed by that of Sir Humphrey Stafford, returned by the Dorset electorate on no fewer than ten occasions between 1414 and 1432 (and this achievement followed after his earliest experience of the Commons as an MP for Staffordshire). Besides Sir Humphrey, seven other shire knights also represented other constituencies in the course of their careers: William Carent and Hody also sat for Somerset and John Stourton for Wiltshire (such service bringing Carent’s total up to six Parliaments, spread over a 30-year period), while Fitton, Hody, Hussey, Tourges, and probably also John Newburgh II, had all represented boroughs before they were returned for Dorset.10 All save Fitton sat for boroughs in Dorset. This reflects something of a change in attitude on the part of the gentry in comparison with the decades before 1422, for in the period 1386 to 1421 although as many as nine of the 25 recorded MPs for Dorset also represented other counties, only three ever sat as burgesses.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 361-4. Hody’s five returns for Shaftesbury, when added to his service for Dorset and Somerset, brought his total up to nine Parliaments in the 16 years from 1421 to 1437, before he received a summons to the Lords in 1439, as a serjeant-at-law, and another to the Parliament of 1442 as chief justice of the King’s bench (although he died before the latter Parliament assembled). Nor was Hody the only one of this group of 23 MPs to be summoned to the Lords: after sitting in the Commons three times for Wiltshire and once for Dorset, John Stourton was created Baron Stourton in 1448; and in Edward IV’s reign he passed this title on to his eldest son, William, who had twice represented Dorset during John’s lifetime.12 There is a possibility (but no proof, as no writ of summons survives), that William Stafford was the ‘Lord Southwick’ listed as attending the Lords in the Parl. of 1449 (Feb.) – and his son Humphrey Stafford IV* was later summoned as Lord Stafford of Southwick.

Before 1422 the Dorset electorate would appear to have displayed a predeliction for representation by men already experienced in the workings of the Commons, and this seeming preference continued to prevail until much later in the century. Whereas in the earlier period (1386-1421), Dorset had returned two such experienced men to 13 out of 27 recorded Parliaments, in Henry VI’s reign the figure was slightly higher: 12 out of 21. In addition, at seven of the elections held during this reign (those for the Parliaments of 1425, 1427, 1431, 1437, 1445 and 1450), Dorset chose one of the Members of the immediately preceding Parliament; indeed, Sir Humphrey Stafford and William Carent were elected together to consecutive Parliaments (those of 1426 and 1427). Another tried and tested duo was Filoll and Browning, who sat together in the Commons of 1450 and 1455. Yet despite the implication that continuity of representation mattered to the political community of Dorset, in three of the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign (those of 1433, 1439 and 1453), it would seem that both of the county’s MPs were newcomers to the Commons.

With the exception of Fitton, all the shire knights held substantial landed holdings in the county, and most of them chiefly resided there. Fitton, who came from Cheshire and first sat in Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, was the only true outsider: he moved to Dorset in the service of the bishops of Salisbury, and took up residence at Sherborne, where the bishop had a castle. Although they possessed lands in Dorset, two of the MPs usually lived outside the bounds of the shire: William Carent’s home was at Toomer in Somerset, and the seat of his brother-in-law John Stourton was at Stourton in Wiltshire. Until the mid 1430s the dominance of the Stafford family over Dorset’s representation swung its geographical balance to the west of the county, while thereafter the places of residence of Filoll and Newburgh placed it predominantly in the east. But Dorset is a relatively small county and there is nothing to show that geography alone influenced its representation.

What is clear is that by Henry VI’s reign certain gentry families had established a long tradition of service in Parliament. No fewer than ten of the 23 MPs followed their grandfathers or other forebears into the Commons; and as many as 13 were the sons of former Members. Most outstanding for its parliamentary service for Dorset in the first half of the fifteenth century was the family of Stafford. Sir Humphrey Stafford† (d.1413), himself the son and grandson of earlier shire knights, represented Dorset in 12 Parliaments and other counties in three more; while his son, our Sir Humphrey, was followed into the Commons by his sons, Sir Richard and William Stafford, and his grandson Humphrey Stafford II. Staffords filled 19 Dorset seats between 1401 and 1449, and a member of this family sat in every one of the five consecutive Parliaments from 1422 to 1427. Another clan notable for its prominence in this respect was that of Stourton. John Stourton II was the son and heir of the former Speaker William Stourton†, brother-in-law of William Carent, uncle of John Carent, and father of William Stourton, the MP of 1447 and 1460. Another of William Carent’s brothers-in-law, Tourges, also sat for Dorset in this period, while Sir Richard Stafford was the son-in-law of Robert Lovell, and William Stafford and William Stourton were both sons-in-law of Sir John Chideock. In their turn, at least 11 of the shire knights of Henry VI’s reign fathered other MPs, thus continuing the well-established tradition.

At the time of their elections for Dorset the majority of the 23 (at least 14), already occupied landed estates in the county which they had acquired through inheritance,13 Browning, William Carent, Sir John Chideock, Filoll, Hussey, John Latimer, Martin, John Newburgh I, John Newburgh II (when elected from 1445 onwards), Humphrey Stafford II, Sir Humphrey Stafford, John Stourton II, Tourges and Turberville. while others (a further six) possessed property which they owed to opportune marriages.14 Bush, John Carent, Hody, Lovell, John Newburgh II, William Stourton (in 1460). More out of the ordinary was the election of certain relatively young men who had not yet come into their inheritances, or whose wealthy fathers-in-law still lived. These men (John Carent, Hody, Nicholas Latimer, John Newburgh II, Sir Richard Stafford, William Stafford,15 Stafford’s wife inherited her Chideok estates after he sat in Parl. and William Stourton), in their twenties or thirties, were returned in the lifetimes of their fathers. In this regard, the election of Sir Richard Stafford and John Stourton together in 1423 also deserves special mention, for although both Stafford and his wife stood to inherit estates comparable to those held by members of the lesser baronage he died before they came into their possession; and Stourton, who had already entered his inheritance, was still aged only 23.

Stourton’s wealth may well have been a decisive factor in his successful candidacy, for his patrimony in Dorset and three other counties was worth at least £200 p.a. Even so, at this stage in his career he was not nearly as rich as some of the other MPs. Sir Humphrey Stafford enjoyed an income of some £570 p.a. derived from estates in Dorset and ten other counties. Ralph Bush shared with his wife her inheritance from her father, Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn†, and her dower as widow of Sir John Chideock† (d.1415), together worth perhaps as much as £441 a year, and this estate passed (although not in its entirety) to his stepson, our Sir John Chideok, before the latter’s election to Parliament in 1433. The inheritance of Lovell’s wife, the Bryan heiress, which was scattered through six English shires and into Wales, provided her with an annual income of 500 marks in her widowhood, although severe pressure on his finances had forced Lovell to mortgage much of it during his lifetime. When he first sat in Parliament the lands of John Newburgh II probably produced revenues of some £100 a year, but these more than doubled in his later years. Filoll’s patrimony gave him at least £124 p.a., John Latimer’s £103 or more, and Turberville’s about £90. When he was returned to Parliament in 1449 Humphrey Stafford II had recently inherited estates worth about £84 a year, although these were mainly situated in Staffordshire and Worcestershire. William Stourton, elected in 1447 during his father’s lifetime, received an annual income probably in excess of £40 from manors settled on him at the time of his marriage, and before he was elected again, in 1460, his wife had entered her substantial Chideock inheritance, which more than quadrupled their revenues. The remaining shire knights also enjoyed annual incomes of at least £40, although in several cases there is insufficient evidence to provide a firm figure. For example, the income of the future judge Hody, who purchased property in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire and acquired more by marriage, is undocumented. The least affluent among the 23 was probably Fitton: the extent of his landed holdings remains obscure. In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries members of the gentry with the highest incomes had dominated the representation of Dorset. One or other of the wealthiest of all, the two Sir Humphrey Staffords, was returned to 18 of the 27 Parliaments for which returns are extant between 1386 and 1421. In the period here under review, however, the relationship between wealth and election to Parliament is less clear-cut.

Dorset’s MPs came from a wide range of social backgrounds. A few were related to the lesser baronage: Lovell, a younger son of Lord Lovell, married a grand daughter of Lord Bryan; John Newburgh I was a grandson of Lord Poyntz, and Humphrey Stafford II a descendant of the Lords Botreaux and Beaumont. As already noted, others entered the parliamentary peerage themselves later in their careers: John Stourton sat in the Lords as the newly-created Baron Stourton, and his son William succeeded him there in Edward IV’s reign. Just three of the 23 men elected for Dorset between 1422 and 1460 attained knighthood before their earliest returns to the Commons – Chideock (privileged to be knighted alongside the young King Henry VI at Leicester in 1426), and Sir Humphrey and Sir Richard Stafford – although four more were knighted subsequently: John Stourton while overseas with the King on his coronation expedition in 1430, Hody on his promotion as chief justice, William Stourton at the time of Cade’s rebellion, and Nicholas Latimer when armed at Wakefield at the end of 1460. For whatever reason, 12 of the rest opted to pay fines at the Exchequer rather than take up the honour of knighthood,16 Browning, Bush, John Carent, William Carent, Filoll, Hussey, John Latimer, Lovell, Martin, John Newburgh I, John Newburgh II and Turberville. and two more, Fitton and Tourges, although not known to have been penalized in this way, also remained esquires by rank. In fact, in this period whether a man was knighted or not seems to have mattered little when it came to parliamentary elections. Only eight of the 42 Dorset seats recorded in Henry VI’s reign were taken by belted knights, and these seats were concentrated in the early years of the period, with a knight being returned to each of the Parliaments of 1422, 1423, 1425, 1426, 1427, 1432 and 1433. After 1433 it did not happen again that a knight was elected until 1460. The period between 1435 and 1460 thus presents a striking contrast with earlier decades, for the ratios of knights to esquires were 15:9 in 1386-99, 16:14 in 1401-21, and 7:11 in 1422-33. The steady decline which these figures reveal ended in 1435 with the election of two men who had previously only sat in the Commons as representatives of boroughs.

The change in the social standing of Dorset’s representatives did not come about because the MPs of Henry VI’s reign had shown an aversion to military activities. At least nine of the 23 took up arms for the Crown. Sir Humphrey Stafford, nicknamed ‘of the Silver Hand’, had presumably lost a limb in a bellicose engagement during Henry IV’s wars in Scotland or Wales; Lovell joined Henry V’s major expedition to France in 1415 and later served there again under the duke of Bedford; William Carent crossed to Normandy with royal forces in 1417; Sir Richard Stafford saw extensive and distinguished service in France in the early years of Henry VI; Chideock, John Stourton and Turberville all enlisted with the King’s army for the coronation expedition of 1430-2; William Stafford, who led his own retinue of 180 men across the Channel, was formally retained by the Regent Bedford with an annuity of £40; and Browning fought overseas under the command of the duke of York. Yet it will be noted that only four of the nine were ever knighted. Some of those trained in the profession of arms were inevitably drawn into the civil conflicts which scarred England in the final decade of Henry VI’s reign. William Stafford was killed by Cade’s rebels in 1450; William Stourton may have been at the battle of St. Albans in 1455; Humphrey Stafford II was actively engaged in the military campaigns of 1458-61, probably in the service of Margaret of Anjou; and (Sir) Nicholas Latimer fought not only at Wakefield and Towton but probably also at Barnet and Tewkesbury.

The campaigns in France did not elicit from the gentry of Dorset an entirely positive attitude. In 1442 their MPs joined with representatives from Hampshire, Sussex and Kent in enlisting the support of the Commons for a petition complaining that the inhabitants of those counties had been subjected to countless injuries, oppressions and extortions at the hands of soldiers enlisted for royal armies which mustered on the coast before crossing the Channel. They cited many cases of homicide, battery, rape and theft, and, reporting fears that such crimes would lead to the desolation of coastal areas, asked for the stricter imposition of discipline on the troops.17 PROME, xi. 378. Neither of the Dorset MPs who took on the responsibility for presenting this petition were military men themselves: both Filoll and John Newburgh II were trained in the law, the former having no doubt been encouraged to join the profession by his stepfather Chief Justice Sir William Cheyne, and the latter proving to be an able practitioner and aggressive litigant on his own account. A third MP was clearly outstanding in regard to his expertise in the law: after sitting in Parliament for Dorset, Hody went on to be recorder of Bristol, a serjeant-at-law, and eventually chief justice of King’s bench. In all probability, two other shire knights, William Carent (for many years steward of the estates of Shaftesbury abbey), and Thomas Hussey, also received a legal education. This small group of five lawyers filled a disproportionate number of county seats (17 out of the 42 recorded), spaced out evenly at intervals over the period, though with Newburgh and Filoll dominating the returns by taking 12 seats between them. As well as in 1442, when, as we have seen, two such practitioners represented Dorset, the county returned two lawyers in 1431. This points to another contrast with the reigns of the first two Lancastrian kings, during which, save in the cases of William Stourton the Speaker and perhaps William Carent, men of war had been preferred to men of law.

As might be expected, the knights of the shire took a prominent part in the royal administration of their county. As Dorset shared a sheriff and an escheator with Somerset, opportunities to fill these posts were limited, and the majority of the sheriffs of the joint bailiwick appointed in Henry VI’s reign came from the larger and wealthier county. Even so, ten of Dorset’s MPs were pricked as sheriffs of the joint bailiwick in the course of their careers;18 Browning, John and William Carent, Chideock, Nicholas Latimer, John Newburgh I, Sir Humphrey, Sir Richard and William Stafford and John Stourton. In addition, William Stafford also served a term as sheriff in both Glos. and Wilts., and John Stourton, as well as his single term in Som. and Dorset, was pricked three times in Wilts. and twice in Glos. and certain of them filled the office more than once – William Carent for five terms and William Stafford for two. Curiously, in all but two cases (those of John Newburgh I and William Stafford) election to the Commons for Dorset preceded such an appointment, and on more than one occasion the government pricked a sitting MP to take over the office. Thus, Sir Richard Stafford, William Carent and Nicholas Latimer were all nominated to the shrievalty while actually sitting as shire knights (in 1423, 1427 and 1453 respectively). Hussey, although never made sheriff, had taken on the tasks of under sheriff before he sat for Dorset, and was appointed to the lesser office of escheator of the joint bailiwick while a Member of the Commons of 1435. Three others were also sometime escheators: William Carent had been holding that office when elected to Parliament for the first time in 1420; Browning had served in this capacity in Gloucestershire before his elections for Dorset, and Hody was appointed escheator shortly after he represented the county in 1431.

Roughly two-thirds of those elected (15 out of 23) were appointed j.p.s in Dorset, three of them (the lawyers Filoll, Hussey and John Newburgh II) as members of the quorum. That membership of the bench may have carried weight when it came to choosing parliamentary representatives is suggested by the statistic that to 13 of the 21 Parliaments where the names of the shire knights are known Dorset returned one of its current j.p.s, and that in 1422 and 1455 two serving members of the bench were elected. In addition, members of the Somerset bench were returned for Dorset in 1431 (Hody) and 1439 (William Stafford). It should be noted, however, that when it came to service on ad hoc commissions of local government, the record of four of the shire knights (Martin, Humphrey Stafford II, Sir Richard Stafford and Turberville) was noticeably limited. For as many as a third of the MPs their first appointments to royal commissions (in the cases of Humphrey Stafford II and Turberville their only such appointments) arose directly out of their role as shire knights, they being automatically nominated to distribute allowances on taxes they and their fellow MPs had granted. Yet 11 of the shire knights did have experience of such commissions before they first sat for Dorset, and the Crown frequently called upon many of them to act in this way.

Besides the offices and commissions related to regional government, there were also royal appointments for the collection of customs and subsidies in the ports along Dorset’s coast. Thus, it is likely that the elections of Tourges to the Parliament of 1435 and Martin to that of November 1449, owed something to their current employment as collectors of customs at Melcombe Regis and Poole, especially as neither man ranked high in the social scale.

Strikingly, to nine of the 21 Parliaments for which the names of Dorset’s MPs are known, the county returned someone who had no experience whatsoever of the tasks of local administration, and in two of them (the Parliaments of 1433 and 1453) neither of those elected had been already tried in public office. So although two-thirds of the seats (31 out of 42), were filled by men experienced in office or as a commissioner, it should be noted that maturity was not always a prerequisite for election. Youth and inexperience might sometimes hold sway. Seven MPs were only in their twenties when first returned for Dorset,19 Filoll, Nicholas Latimer, John Newburgh II, Humphrey Stafford II, Sir Richard Stafford, John and William Stourton. and one of these, Humphrey Stafford II, was aged just 21 when he entered the Commons. The other end of the spectrum was represented by John Newburgh I and Fitton, respectively about 53 and 56 when elected in 1425 and 1432, both of them for the first and only time for this constituency. John Newburgh II, aged about 26 when he first sat for Dorset in 1429, was 57 when he last did so in 1460. The youngest duo was Sir Richard Stafford and John Stourton in 1423, and the oldest Fitton and Sir Humphrey Stafford in 1432.

Personal links between candidates for election to Parliament and the Crown seemingly had little or no part to play in Dorset’s representation in Henry VI’s reign. This is surprising, given that earlier in the century an association with the duchy of Lancaster had favourably affected the careers or circumstances of at least some of the shire knights.20 It may be, however, that MPs numbered among the stewards of the duchy in Dorset, whose names are not known before 1462: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 628. Only three of the 23 MPs of our period were formally retained by the house of Lancaster. Sir Humphrey Stafford received an annuity of £40 from Henry of Monmouth as prince of Wales and as a ‘King’s knight’ later attended the coronation of Henry’s queen. Lovell occupied an important if undefined position in Henry’s household as prince and King, yet when the monarch died in 1422 he owed his servant as much as £2,230; Lovell’s probable motive for seeking election to Henry VI’s first Parliament was to seek recompense from the late King’s executors. The wife of Sir John Chideock was among the ladies in attendance on Katherine de Valois, from whom she received a generous annuity, and, as already observed, Chideock was knighted at the young Henry VI’s side. It is clear, however, that none of these three – Stafford, Lovell and Chideock – owed their elections to Parliament to their personal contacts with the royal family.

Greater significance might be attached to connexions between the MPs and magnates influential in the locality or at the centre of government. An association with John Stafford (bishop of Bath and Wells, 1424-43, and then archbishop of Canterbury until his death in 1452), treasurer (1422-6) and chancellor (1432-50), may well have carried weight with the Dorset electorate. Sir Humphrey Stafford was his half-brother and Sir Richard and William his nephews, while the latter, William, to whom the bishop paid a fee of £20 p.a., was acting as his steward when returned in 1439. Hody’s career was undoubtedly furthered by his friendship with the Staffords (and it is of interest to note that on the only occasion that he was returned for this county Sir Humphrey Stafford set his seal to the electoral indenture). The outsider Fitton may have owed his election in 1432 to his close links with Bishop Robert Neville of Salisbury, whom he served as an official on the episcopal estates.21 The bp. of Salisbury held the Dorset hundreds of Sherborne, Yetminster and Beaminster: VCH Dorset, ii. 229. After his own time in the Commons was over, (Sir) John Stourton, later Lord Stourton, may well have brought his influence to bear on the elections for Dorset, such as in the return of one of his associates, Hussey, in 1437, and more importantly in the choice of the Members of 1447 and 1453, in Parliaments summoned when he himself was treasurer of the King’s household. To the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, Stourton’s own son, William (still a young man and untried in local administration), was elected for Dorset, at a shire court convened as sheriff by the treasurer’s brother-in-law William Carent. The return to the Parliament of 1453 of the similarly inexperienced John Carent, Lord Stourton’s nephew, probably also owed something to his influence, and it cannot have been merely a coincidence that on this occasion the sheriff making the return was Stourton’s son-in-law Richard Warre*.

The representation of Dorset also appears to have been affected by personal links between the shire knights and the duke of York. Filoll was lessee of York’s estate at Gussage Bohun at the time of his returns to six Parliaments of the reign, and, more significantly, he was accompanied to two of those Parliaments (in 1450 and 1455) by Browning, who had not only served in France under the duke’s command but was currently employed by him as surveyor and receiver of his estates in Somerset and Dorset and as a member of his council. Given the crises in national government which followed on the collapse of English rule across the Channel and rebellion at home, there can be no doubt that the duke would have welcomed the support of both men (especially that of Browning) in the Commons. From another of his annuitants and estate officials he might have expected support in the Upper House, at least in 1450. Four years earlier he had granted Sir James Butler, now elevated as earl of Wiltshire, the farm of certain of his estates in the county to hold for life, along with the office of steward.22 SC6/1113/11. This had the effect of further increasing Butler’s power in the locality, now that his wife the heiress Avice Stafford had come into her own. In the mid 1440s a major quarrel over this valuable inheritance had erupted between Butler and his wife’s uncle William Stafford, causing several of the Dorset gentry to side with one or the other in armed confrontations leading to bloodshed and loss of life. In the aftermath of their clash, Dorset returned to the Parliament of February 1449 two allies of Stafford (his youthful nephew Humphrey Stafford II and the lawyer John Newburgh II, who had his own quarrel with Butler and his wife, over title to a manor and a hundred in the county); and to that of November 1449 of one of his closest associates, Thomas Martin, who had, like him, been appealed for the murder of one of Butler’s followers. Butler’s influence over the Membership in those two Parliaments may be discerned in the representation of certain of Dorset’s boroughs (Weymouth in particular), but it was not until after William Stafford’s death in June 1450 that the new earl successfully made his presence felt at the shire elections. His instrument was his principal man of affairs, the Warwickshire esquire Henry Filongley* (who had been returned for Weymouth in 1449). Even though he held no property in Dorset, Filongley headed the lists of attestors to the indentures sealed at the shire court on both 2 Nov. 1450 and 19 Feb. 1453, and on the first occasion William Browning, who had stood by Butler in his confrontations with Stafford, secured election, and on the second the sheriff returned John Carent, who while the Parliament was in progress was party to final concords on the earl’s behalf. In the 1450s the growing estrangement between the duke of York and his former councillor the earl of Wiltshire eventually led to their alignment on opposing sides as factions hardened into civil war. It is, therefore, unfortunate that the Dorset returns to the notorious Coventry Parliament of 1459 have not survived, especially as in the months which preceded it the earl is known to have been actively recruiting retainers from among the landowners of the county.23 Notable among them John Audley*: Cam. Miscellany, xxxii. 163. Assembled when the earl was treasurer of England, the Parliament passed an Act of Attainder against York and his principal allies.

Elections were invariably held in the county court at Dorchester, which met every four weeks on a Monday. For the majority of the Parliaments of the reign the sheriff of the joint shrievalty of Somerset and Dorset chose to conduct the Somerset elections first, at Ilchester, before travelling to Dorchester precisely one week later to complete his task. Exceptionally, for the Parliaments of 1422, 1435 and 1437, the Dorset elections were held first, and on those occasions three weeks elapsed before the sheriff presided over those for Somerset. Whereas in 1435 and 1437 ample time remained before the Parliaments were scheduled to assemble, in 1422 the delay in holding the elections left the MPs for Somerset with just seven days to make their way to Westminster for the start of the session. In returning writs of summons up to and including the Parliament of 1437, the sheriffs normally made out separate indentures with those attesting the elections of the knights of the two shires and with representatives of their cities and boroughs. After 1437, however, no separate indentures for the urban constituencies are to be found until Edward IV’s reign (although in 1455 they were included with the shires in two composite indentures).

As required by statute, the indentures for the counties were counter-sealed by a number of named attestors, but the lists of men so recorded for Dorset and Somerset provide only a rough guide to the size and composition of the county electorates, for in both shires the indentures were nearly always witnessed by just two dozen men. Thus in 11 out of the 16 undamaged indentures for Dorset in Henry VI’s reign 24 men were named as party to the election, while the exceptions list 19 attestors each in 1423 and 1450; 22 in 1425; 25 in 1442 and 27 in 1460. Overall, the number of known participants was relatively small; not many more than 182 individuals put their names to the Dorset returns in this period. Those recorded were nearly all gentry of middling rank. Those of knightly status rarely made an appearance, although Sir John Moigne† did so in 1423 (probably to support the election of his grandson John Stourton), and Sir Humphrey Stafford headed the attestors in 1431.

While, as we have seen, rarely more than two dozen men attested an electoral indenture at Dorchester, 16 of the 23 MPs were recorded doing so on occasion, and indeed some of them attended the county court for the parliamentary elections several times. Hussey and John Newburgh I were both present at nine elections, Martin and Tourges at eight, and John Newburgh II at seven. This interest in parliamentary representation was also expressed by attendance at elections held in other counties, notably in Somerset.24 Browning, John and William Carent, Sir Humphrey Stafford and Tourges. In 1423 and 1425 Tourges attested the returns for both Somerset and Dorset, so being in breach of the statutes which required electors and elected to be resident in the constituency concerned. A similar breach occurred when William Stourton won election to the Parliament of 1447 within a few days of attesting the return for Wiltshire.

The means whereby the outcome of an election might be influenced in favour of the interest of a particular magnate have been discussed above, with regard to the prominent attendance of the earl of Wiltshire’s retainer Henry Filongley at the elections of 1450 and 1453. Similarly, the question of whether individual sheriffs played a decisive role in the choice of Dorset’s MPs has also already been raised. Most notably, in 1435 the sheriff William Carent returned one of his close associates, Hussey, and his brother-in-law Tourges; and in 1447 he returned his nephew William Stourton. In 1453 Richard Warre, primarily a Somerset man, returned his wife’s cousin John Carent, and in 1460 the latter returned another cousin, William Stourton, in company with his own brother-in-law Newburgh. There is nothing to suggest, however, that any of these returns ran counter to the wishes of the electorate.

Patterns may be discerned in the representation of the eight boroughs in Dorset which made returns to Parliament in this period. One reveals that in the Parliaments from February 1449 to 1455 at least 12 borough seats were taken by outsiders, not only strangers to the boroughs themselves but also to the county, who were all busy about the Exchequer in official or unofficial capacities. Their presence in the Commons no doubt proved useful for a government facing financial crises of major proportions, but how their elections were arranged has yet to be discovered. The influence of the Stafford family, well-established in the county’s representation, is also evident in that of its boroughs, for which over a dozen of their close associates were returned. Friends and retainers of the Stourtons proved even more successful, for they took at least 21 seats for Dorset boroughs in Henry VI’s reign, most notably in the Parliaments from 1447 onwards as John Stourton II took up an important role in central government. Yet to be explained is how John Newburgh II came to be joined in the Commons of 1460 by at least five of his intimate circle, who all took borough seats, but to what political purpose remains unclear.