Bath

Although technically accorded city status by virtue of Bishop John de Villula’s transfer of his episcopal see from Wells in 1090, Bath was at best middle-ranking among the urban communities of its region. Its estimated population of 855 in 1377 was smaller by a third than that of its sister cathedral city of Wells and comparable to that of Bridgwater, although substantially greater than that of Taunton, the fourth parliamentary borough in Somerset. Bath, first granted a charter by Richard I in 1189, had acquired the right to return royal writs from Henry III in 1256, and from 1341 enjoyed the privilege of appointing its own tax officials. Bath’s merchant guild predated its earliest charters, but the process by which the guild evolved into the city’s later administrative structures is obscure, as is the chronology of this development. By the fifteenth century, the civic hierarchy was headed by a mayor, chosen annually on Midsummer Day, and also included bailiffs, a cofferer, constables, aldermen and proctors.1 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 590 erroneously gives the date of the annual elections as ‘the end of August or beginning of September’. The revised date is based on an analysis of the available evidence for the mayoral year of office. The size of the aldermanic body in the period under review is uncertain, but when the city was formally incorporated in 1590 the number of aldermen was fixed at a minimum of four and a maximum of ten, eight being the norm. They and the mayor were to be assisted by a common council of 20.2 The Commons 1509-58, i. 181.

Although Bath continued to be one of the two cathedral cities of the bishops of Bath and Wells, there is no suggestion that its episcopal overlords interfered in its internal affairs: although the bishop’s steward continued to hold his lord’s court in the city, the oath administered to new freemen was made to the mayor alone.3 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 590. Nor was there apparently any open hostility between bishop and citizens over their respective jurisdiction: by contrast with the experience of some other towns and cities, such as Salisbury or Exeter, relations between Bath and its episcopal lords appear to have been largely harmonious. Nevertheless, the early years of Henry VI’s reign saw the settlement of a serious quarrel between the citizens and the cathedral priory, ostensibly over the privilege of ringing the first and last bells of the day. Several attempts to mediate failed, and only in 1423 did Bishop Bubwith produce a compromise which did, however, somewhat favour the citizens.4 Ibid. 591; CIMisc. vii. 582; SC8/176/8781.

Bath had first returned representatives to Parliament in 1295, and had continued to do so regularly ever since. The city’s parliamentary elections during the reign of Henry VI were probably conducted locally in response to a precept from the sheriff of Somerset, but no details of the franchise or electoral procedure have been discovered. By the mid sixteenth century the franchise was vested in the mayor, aldermen and council, and in spite of the terminology of the formal returns (which claimed that the city’s MPs had been chosen ‘de assensu totius communitatis civitatis’) it is possible that it was restricted even by the reign of Henry VI. From the introduction of the statutory requirement for election returns in the form of indentures in 1407 the sheriffs of Somerset recorded the names of Bath’s MPs along with those of the men elected by the other urban constituencies in his bailiwick in a document counter-sealed by four delegates of each city or borough. In addition, the names of the knights of the shire and all the citizens and burgesses were listed in a separate schedule, which also named their sureties. For reasons which remain obscure, this practice was abandoned after 1437, and the sheriff subsequently only recorded the names of the urban MPs in the schedule, until 1455 when, perhaps on account of the uncertain political situation, they were included in the shire indenture. The individual boroughs were nevertheless still required to signify their choice to the county court, as is apparent from the wording of the sheriff’s precept to the city of Wells issued on 20 June 1455, which explicitly instructed the city authorities to do so.5 Som. Archs., Wells recs., convocation act bk. 1450-1553, p. 15. Only in the reign of Edward IV did the sheriffs of Somerset and Dorset begin to seal separate indentures with each individual borough.6 No election returns are known to survive for the Parls. of 1461, 1463, 1469 or 1470, and no borough indentures are extant for 1467, but there are separate Bath indentures for 1472 and 1478: C219/17/2, 3.

The names of Bath’s MPs are known for 38 out of the 44 seats available during Henry VI’s reign: none have been discovered for the assemblies of 1439, 1445 and 1459. Just 18 men shared these seats, resulting in the return of a high number of Members with prior parliamentary experience. In nine of Henry VI’s 22 Parliaments both of Bath’s MPs had previously served in the Commons, and in a further seven at least one of them was so qualified. Five of these Parliaments saw the direct re-election of one of Bath’s representatives in the previous assembly. Conversely, only in 1447 and 1460 did the city apparently return complete novices to the Commons, and in view of the returns lost both for Bath and for other constituencies it is impossible to be sure that none of these men had sat previously. Several of Bath’s MPs built up impressive parliamentary careers: while Champneys, Cotys, Drayton and Steer each apparently only sat in the Commons once, Burreley, Philipps, Tropenell (once for Bath and once for Great Bedwyn), Westhope and William Hayne alias Stanburgh were returned twice, William’s father Roger three times and John Hayne and Hunt on four occasions each. Hodgkins represented Bath five times, and Hall (five times MP for Wells and only once for Bath) and Rich sat in the Commons on six occasions, but the most eminent parliamentarians to serve the citizens of Bath were Widcombe, who represented the city in nine Parliaments between 1413 and 1431, Whittocksmead, who secured a total of 12 returns (only four of them for Bath) between 1427 and 1472, and Fortescue, who sat in the Commons nine times (albeit only once for Bath), before receiving his personal summons to the Lords as chief justice. This pattern of returns, perhaps indicative of a preference on the part of the electorate for MPs of experience, dated only from the reign of Henry V: previously, under Richard II and Henry IV, Bath had frequently elected apparent novices, and it was above all the appearance on the political scene of men like Walter Rich and Richard Widcombe who became dominant in local, as well as parliamentary politics, that this changed.

The notion of a connexion between the civic hierarchy and the pattern of Bath’s parliamentary representation gains further support by an examination of individual Members’ experience of local government. If earlier in the century civic office holders had rarely been returned to Parliament, the same was not true of the reign of Henry VI. Drayton, Hunt, Philipps, Rich and Widcombe had all held the mayoralty prior to their first return in this period, and, moreover, Rich (1425), Philipps (1433) and Hodgkins (1435 and 1450) all presided over their own elections, although Philipps had left office before the Commons assembled and Rich’s term ended a few weeks before the dissolution. Lower down the civic ladder, William Hayne alias Stanburgh and Westhope had been cofferers before first sitting in the Commons, while Drayton and Roger Hayne alias Stanburgh had been constables, Hunt and Rich had served as wardens of the parish church of St. Michael, and Steer was elected a city proctor while his Parliament of 1453 was in progress. Steer and William Hayne alias Stanburgh both rose to be mayor later in life, the latter while serving in the drawn-out Parliament of 1472, and Roger Hayne alias Stanburgh, Hodgkins, Hunt, Rich, Steer and Widcombe all became aldermen later in their careers. Only Burreley, Champneys, Cotys, Fortescue, Hall, John Hayne and Tropenell (all of them except for Cotys and Hayne outsiders to the city) are not known ever to have held civic office. In total, 24 of the 38 seats for which names are known were taken by former or actively serving city officers, 16 of them by men who had filled or were currently occupying the mayoralty.

While the local men in their majority created for themselves careers of office-holding in their city, the few outsiders, several of whom were important lawyers, gained considerable administrative experience further afield. Champneys had served on the staff of the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset prior to his election, and went on to hold office as a county alnager, verderer of Selwood forest and a royal commissioner, as well as serving two terms as escheator of Somerset and Dorset and taking his place on the quorum of the Somerset bench during the last decade of Henry VI’s reign. The extensive official careers of Whittocksmead, Fortescue and Tropenell were focused outside Somerset, as was Burreley’s service in the royal household. Of the local men, a few also held office under the Crown: Drayton and Hodgkins had both acted as tax collectors in their city prior to sitting in the Commons, and John Hayne and Rich respectively went on to serve as a county coroner and a justice of gaol delivery.

As under Richard II and the first two Lancastrians, men engaged in the locally dominant industry, the manufacture of cloth, were of some importance among Bath’s parliamentary representatives. Whereas no fewer than 11 of the city’s 28 MPs known for the period from 1386 to 1421 were engaged in the cloth trade, the same was true of at least eight of the 18 men who sat between 1422 and 1460: Roger and William Hayne alias Stanburgh and Hunt were merchants, Hodgkins a mercer and Cotys a chapman. John Hayne and Rich were variously described as weavers and clothmakers, while the former was also occasionally styled a chapman or merchant, and the latter doubled up as a tailor. Philipps was employed in the finishing of cloth as a tucker. Between them the men connected with the manufacture and sale of cloth accounted for nearly half of the available seats, and in the Parliaments of 1422, 1423, 1435 and 1447 both of the city’s representatives had interests in this business. By comparison, other trades and occupations were of rather less importance. Westhope was a baker and Widcombe a smith, while the four legal practitioners – Champneys, Fortescue, Tropenell and Whittocksmead – would have paled into insignificance in the parliamentary representation of Bath, had it not been for Whittocksmead’s four returns. Notably, however, all four were lawyers of some prominence either regionally, or (in the case of Fortescue, the later chief justice) throughout England, pointing to the exceptional nature of their return for Bath: here, the merchant class retained a firm grip on their parliamentary seats (taking by far the majority of the 38), and could only be pushed aside by lawyers of exceptional standing.

It would seem from all of this that Bath’s parliamentary representatives were largely motivated by an obligation to their community to seek election to the Commons, and this view is supported by the failure of most of them to sit for other constituencies. The exceptions to this rule were, once again, the few outsiders among their number. Thus, Burreley and Tropenell respectively found seats at Chippenham and Great Bedwyn prior to gaining election at Bath, Fortescue at one time or another represented Tavistock, Totnes, Plympton Erle and Wiltshire, while Whittocksmead outbalanced his four returns at Bath with appearances in the Commons as a Member for Calne, Cricklade, Devizes, Downton, Salisbury, Wilton and Wiltshire.

The limited information available about most of Bath’s MPs makes it difficult to arrive at any meaningful judgement what personal factors might have motivated them to seek election to the Commons. A few Members might look to family traditions of parliamentary service: Hall and Whittocksmead followed their fathers into the Commons, while Fortescue joined his brother Henry† there. Roger and William Hayne alias Stanburgh were father and son, and Cotys may have been related to the Bridgwater MPs Robert Cotys I* and II*. Conversely, there is little suggestion that even the outsiders returned for Bath owed their seats to influence of a powerful patron. This is all the more remarkable, since the city’s lords, successive bishops of Bath and Wells, held high office in the King’s administration: John Stafford was chancellor from 1432, and his successor, Thomas Bekynton, who had been Henry VI’s secretary, took office as keeper of the privy seal about the time of his consecration in 1443. Of Bath’s MPs in the period, only Hall, who normally resided at Wells (and had represented that city in five Parliaments), and Burreley, a member of the King’s household, perhaps owed their seats to the patronage of Bishop Bekynton. The circumstances of Tropenell’s return in early 1449 remain obscure, but may have resulted from his employment by Walter, Lord Hungerford†, rather than his residence at nearby Neston, for his name was clearly added into the sheriff’s schedule over an erasure and into an insufficient space.7 C219/15/6.