Bletchingley

Bletchingley was, aside from Gatton, the smallest of Surrey’s six parliamentary boroughs. Its status as a seigneurial borough restrained both its economic and constitutional development. Geographical expansion was hampered by the two large deer parks created by its early lords, the Clares, and the burgesses gained few of the trappings of self-government. In 1343 the ownership of the manor and borough passed into the hands of Ralph, Lord (and, from 1351, earl of) Stafford, jure uxoris through a settlement made by his father-in-law, Hugh Audley, earl of Gloucester, the husband of one of the Clare coheiresses. Throughout Henry VI’s reign they were in the hands of Ralph’s great-grandson, Humphrey, earl of Stafford, who in 1444 was created duke of Buckingham. The administration of the borough was undertaken by his local officials who reported to his receiver in Surrey and Kent.1 VCH Surr. iv. 255-6; C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 8-10, 192; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 629.

This change meant that Bletchingley’s representation came to be related to that of other constituencies in a way that it had not been before. None of 17 MPs who represented the borough in the earlier period (1386-1421) are recorded as sitting for another constituency, and of the ten MPs returned from 1422 to 1429 only Hamme, who sat for the Sussex boroughs of East Grinstead and New Shoreham, is known to have done so. Strikingly, however, no fewer than 18 of the 25 MPs returned from 1431 to 1460 represented at least one other constituency, with four of them – Nicholas Gaynesford, William Hextall, Janyn and Redstone – representing as many as three others. By the later part of the period those MPs who had or were to go on to represent another constituency had a near monopoly of representation, with 15 of the 17 who sat for the borough between 1442 and 1460 falling into this category.2 Significantly, neither of the two exceptions – Wilcotes and Wychecotes – were Bletchingley men. It is thus not surprising that, even taking the 34 MPs as a whole, they had a greater number of returns for other constituencies than they did for Bletchingley, namely 51 against 42. Equally striking is the number and range of constituencies that they represented. These totalled 19, namely three counties (Kent, Shropshire and Surrey), three other Surrey boroughs (Guildford, Reigate and Southwark), five Sussex ones (Arundel, East Grinstead, Horsham, Midhurst and New Shoreham), three in Kent (Canterbury, Dover and Rochester), two in Staffordshire (Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stafford), one in Dorset (Lyme Regis), one in Gloucestershire (Gloucester), and one in Warwickshire (Warwick).

Since several of these constituencies were more prestigious than Bletchingley, it might be expected that most of these 19 MPs began their parliamentary careers in this borough. This, however, is not the case, for ten of them were first elected for another constituency, although all six of the MPs who sat for county seats (the three Gaynesfords and Ellingbridge for Surrey, Hextall for Kent and Acton for Shropshire) represented Bletchingley first.

The lack of a pattern here suggests that Bletchingley was a seat known to have been available to those, whatever the stage of their parliamentary career, either disappointed in respect of their first choice or late to put themselves forward. This can be no more than speculation, but four returns are suggestive. The lawyer, John Corve, was elected to five successive Parliaments from 1431 to 1437; on four of these he was MP for Reigate but, in 1435, he was elected for Bletchingley. Similarly, Ashbury served in three successive Parliaments between 1433 and 1437, twice for Reigate and then for Bletchingley. Presumably both would have taken a Reigate seat had it been available to them. A similar argument applies to Andrew, who, elected for Bletchingley to the Parliament of November 1449, had already represented his native Gloucester twice and was to go on to do so twice more; and to Say, who sat for the borough in 1450, having twice sat for Canterbury. It is also suggestive that, of the 19 MPs who represented both Bletchingley and another constituency, 17 sat for the borough only once.3 The exceptions were Barton, elected twice, and John Roger, three times. This invites the conclusion that, when the borough returned outsiders, it often turned to men who had not formed and did not go on to form strong connexions there. The parliamentary careers of Janyn and Redstone are relevant in this regard: both secured elections to several successive Parliaments for four different constituencies. Clearly they and others like them were candidates anxious to secure seats where they may.

Not surprisingly this change in the borough’s representation was reflected in the geographical distribution of its MPs. Of the ten returned between 1422 and 1429 all were Bletchingley men, with the exceptions of the lawyers, Hamme, probably from Withyham (Sussex) some 16 miles away, and Kirkesby, seemingly from London. Of the ten elected in the 1430s, only the obscure Kendale appears to have been from Bletchingley, but the ties of locality still retained some strength as a determinant of representation, for six of the others all had interests, although not necessarily their principal ones, in the borough’s near-neighbourhood. Corve, although originally from Ludlow in Shropshire, lived at Mertsham, only three miles away, when elected in 1435; and the two Gaynesfords were from Crowhurst, nearly as close. The two coming from furthest away were two Household men: Godwin, from Ditton in Kent, some 25 miles to the east of the borough, and Goodyer, from Hadley in Middlesex, about the same distance to the north. In the second half of the period, however, there was a much more significant erosion of the ties of locality. As many as eight of the 15 MPs returned from 1442 to 1460 had their principal interests far away from Bletchingley: Acton, like Corve, was from Shropshire; Andrew, from Gloucester; Barton and Wychecotes, from Lincolnshire; Gynnour, from West Firle in Sussex, some 40 miles from the borough; Halton, from Warwickshire; Roger, from Headcorn in Kent; and Wilcotes, from Dean in Oxfordshire. Even though two of these had secondary interests nearer to Bletchingley – Acton as a lawyer in London and Barton as keeper of the royal park of Sheen in Surrey – there can be no doubt that by the 1440s a Bletchingley seat was available to men who must have been entirely unknown within the confines of the borough.

The widespread geographical interests of the MPs are also evidenced by their appearance as attestors to county elections. As many as 15 are recorded as county attestors at some point in their careers, but only five of these witnessed Surrey elections. In respect of neighbouring counties, five witnessed elections in Kent, two in Middlesex and one in Sussex. Three, however, witnessed elections much further afield: before they represented Bletchingley, Wychecotes attested a Nottinghamshire election and William Hextall a Staffordshire one; after they had sat for the borough, Acton appeared at two Shropshire elections and Wychecotes at one in Lincolnshire. 4 Barton may, like Godwin, have been connected with Stafford, but the evidence is equivocal. In several of these elections, the influence of the county sheriff must be suspected. When two household servants were elected in 1437, the sheriff was the controller of the Household, John Feriby*; John Penycoke*, an esquire for the King’s body, was in the office when Say was returned in 1450; and Barton was elected during the shrievalties of two other Household men, Sir Richard Fiennes and Thomas Tresham*.

These striking changes ensured that there was little continuity in the borough’s representation. Of the 34 men who sat for Bletchingley in the 18 of Henry VI’s 22 Parliaments for which the identity of the MPs is known, as many as 29 did so on only one occasion, and none was returned more than the four times achieved by Modys between 1402 and 1429. Modys’ parliamentary career harked back to the very different representative pattern that had prevailed when it began. Of the 17 Bletchingley MPs known for the 1386-1421 period, only six sat just once and three sat five times or more.5 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 630. The same point is made by another statistic: of the 32 known seats in the earlier period, 19 were taken by men who had already represented the borough; of the 36 known seats of Henry VI’s reign, only four were so filled. If the MPs’ many elections for other constituencies are included, the number of seats taken by men who had previously sat in the Commons rises from four to 14, but this still represents quite a low level of representative continuity. In only three Parliaments – those of 1435, 1450 and 1459 – was the borough represented by two experienced MPs compared with seven to which two apparent novices were elected.6 Those of 1422, 1426, 1431, 1432, 1442, 1447 and 1460. There were no instances of re-election for Bletchingley to consecutive Parls., yet it is worthy of note that in five Parls. the borough was represented by men who had sat in the immediately preceding assembly, albeit for different constituencies: Corve and Janyn in 1435, Ashbury in 1437, Andrew in 1449 (Nov.), Redstone in 1450 and Barton in 1453.

Given that most of the MPs had their principal interests elsewhere, it is not surprising that most of them, if they had any administrative experience at all when first elected, had gained that experience outside the borough. Nor is it surprising, given the inflation in the MPs’ social and economic status over the period, that some of them had held or currently occupied offices of some importance. In respect of county administration, Corve had long been a j.p. of the quorum in Surrey when elected in 1435; three others had previously served more than one term as under sheriff, namely William Hextall in his native Staffordshire, Gynnour in Surrey and Sussex, and Roger in Kent; and the latter had also served in Kent as a coroner.7 Although only Corve was a serving j.p. when elected for Bletchingley, it is worth noting, as a general indication of the status of the borough’s MPs, that seven others – Ellingbridge, the three Gaynesfords, Acton, William Hextall and Wychecotes – were later appointed to the office either in Surr. or elsewhere. Others had experience in customs administration. Barton was in office as customs collector in the Cinque Port of Sandwich when twice returned in the 1450s, and Wychecotes was deputy-butler in Kingston-upon-Hull when MP in 1460. Two others had relinquished office shortly before their elections, namely Nicholas Gaynesford as collector of the petty customs in London, and Say as collector, like Barton, in Sandwich. Yet, in defining the MPs as a group, it is their places in the royal household and in baronial or episcopal administration that best distinguishes them. Seven MPs – Ashbury, Barton, Godwin, Goodyer, Say, Roger and Walter – either held offices in the Household or were very soon to do so when they represented the borough, most notably Say who was one of the ushers of the Chamber when returned in 1450. A further six, not surprisingly, served in the Stafford administration. They may be divided into two categories: initially, in the 1420s, minor local officials of the family (namely Eylove, John Hart and Randolf) were elected for the borough; but later much more important men, drawn from the Stafford administration more broadly, took the seats, notably Andrew, the duke’s attorney-general, from Gloucester, and the Hextall brothers from Staffordshire. Four others, however, had places in the service of other lords: Acton was probably still bailiff of the bishop of London’s liberty in London and Middlesex; Corve was steward of the priory of St. John of Jerusalem; Janyn had recently relinquished office as bailiff of the bishop of Chichester; and, most impressively of all, Roger was receiver-general of the estates of the King’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor, earl of Pembroke.

Little is known of the conduct of Bletchingley’s parliamentary elections in the period. The electoral process, common, in theory if not in practice, to other boroughs, is described in a later case in the Exchequer of pleas. On 1 Mar. 1467 the writ of electoral summons, dated only the day before and summoning Parliament to meet on 3 June, was delivered to the sheriff, Thomas Vaughan*, at Guildford, and he sent a precept to the bailiff and burgesses of Bletchingley to make an election. This was delivered to the bailiff, Thomas Belgrave, on 13 Apr., and he convened an election on 12 May. On the same day an indenture was drawn up by the sheriff, on the one part, and the bailiff and burgesses, on the other, witnessing the result.8 E13/153, rot. 24. The whole process was a leisurely one on this occasion, no doubt because of the unusually long period between summons and assembly, and it was no doubt carried out more expeditiously on other occasions when that period was shorter. Unfortunately, however, the indentures witnessing the elections were not generally returned into Chancery. It is not surprising that this should have been so before the passing of the statute in the Parliament of 1445-6 which specifically required sheriffs to return such indentures, but even thereafter successive sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex continued the former practice of returning the names of the borough MPs merely in a schedule attached to indentures witnessing the elections of the shire knights. Only in respect of the election for Bletchingley to the Parliament of 1453 did the sheriff, in this case Sir Richard Fiennes, comply with the statute, but the indenture he returned is unrevealing: it names no attestors nor does it identify by name the constables, who, rather than the bailiff and burgesses, were the other parties.9 C219/16/2.

If later evidence can be read backwards the franchise was limited to the holders of burgages in the town. An indenture for a by-election in 1610 named as electors 19 of them, one of whom voted in right of his wife. During an election dispute in 1624 an attempt was made to extend the franchise to all inhabitants of the borough, but local witnesses before the privileges committee of the Commons confirmed that the franchise had been exercised by the burgage-holders at all elections ‘holden within the memory of man now living’.10 The Commons 1604-29, i. 392-3.

Whatever the franchise, however, it is doubtful that elections were always convened in the period under review here. The MPs of the 1420s, generally local men, are probably best characterized as volunteers; and those after 1430 as the nominees of external interests. The surviving lists of the MPs for the Surrey boroughs provide some indirect evidence of nomination. That for the Parliament of 1433 has the two Bletchingley MPs, John Gaynesford and William Kirkesby, written over erasures, as does that for 1449 (Nov.) in respect of Andrew and Wilcotes. The same might, with less certainty, be said of Say’s name in the list for the next Parliament.11 C219/14/4; 15/7; 16/1.

Say’s election raises the wider question of the influence of national political factors in determining the borough’s representation during the troubled 1450s. Before that date the operation of such factors cannot be discerned, but there can be little doubt they explain the election of Say. He had been one of the Household men who had attempted to impede the landing of the duke of York, returning from Ireland, at Beaumaris in early September 1450; and he no doubt saw election to the Parliament which met on the following 6 Nov. as a means of protecting his vulnerable position. Perhaps disappointed in securing election for Canterbury, which he had represented twice in the 1440s, it was natural that he should turn to the sheriff of Surrey, Penycoke, who also found himself threatened by the duke’s return, in finding a borough seat in that county. The same Lancastrian influences explain the election of another Household man, Barton, to the Parliaments of 1453 and 1459, the first notable for the high percentage of Household servants returned and the second called to attaint the Yorkist lords. Similarly, Gynnour, returned as Barton’s companion in 1459, owed his election to his connexions with the Lancastrian earl of Northumberland and Thomas Tresham, who conducted the Surrey election. The next Parliament met in 1460 in very different circumstances. The Yorkists were then in control of government and the duke of Buckingham had fallen on the Lancastrian side at the battle of Northampton. His widow, Duchess Anne, as a sister of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, had Yorkist connexions, and she seems to have used her influence to promote the election of John Roger, who combined long service in the royal household with a more recent association with the Staffords. Wychecotes, a Lincolnshire esquire, may also have owed his return to her, although their connexion was an indirect one. His Lincolnshire neighbour, Thomas Burgh† of Gainsborough, making his mark as a supporter of York, had been a member of the late duke’s household, and he may have nominated Wychecotes to the duchess as an unlikely Bletchingley MP.

The transformation in Bletchingley’s representation in Parliament during the period 1422-60 is striking. In part, the change reflects the new interest of the borough’s lords, the Staffords, in the identity of the town’s MPs. Yet it was also a function of the decline of localism that applied to nearly all small boroughs in the country. Not all of Bletchingley’s MPs had connexions with Humphrey Stafford, and those who did not owed their return to the general process by which royal servants and lawyers came to secure election for constituencies with which they had only a tenuous connexion. Further, this process was also reflected in the type of Stafford servant elected. In the early part of the period the Stafford men elected were resident in Bletchingley and served in the administration of the earl’s property there. From the 1440s, however, the borough was used to provide parliamentary seats for his more prominent retainers, several of whom had also attained positions within the royal household and none of whom were Bletchingley men. The representation of nearby Reigate underwent a similar transformation in the same period, falling into the hands of a combination of servants of the borough’s lord, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and members of the royal household and administration with the two categories only partly overlapping.