Cumberland

The county of Cumberland, at nearly a million acres the eleventh largest county, was both geographically and politically isolated. Distant from Westminster, it was bounded on the north by a narrow border with Scotland, to the north and west by the Solway Firth and the Irish Sea, and to the east by the Pennines. To geographical isolation was added economic backwardness. Heavily dependent on pastoral farming, the economy suffered both from Scottish raids and the general depression that afflicted the north throughout the first half of the fifteenth century.3 P. Booth, ‘Landed Soc. in Cumb. and Westmld.’ (Leicester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1997), 7-9. A petition in the Parliament of May 1421, submitted to the Commons by the ‘poor commons’ of the county and its neighbours, Westmorland and Northumberland, presented a picture of local desolation occasioned by plague and Scottish incursions.4 PROME, ix. 296-7. The Crown had already recognized these difficulties by exempting the three counties from the parliamentary fifteenth and tenth.5 Between 1401 and 1415 the three counties secured exemptions from individual grants of fifteenths and tenths: CPR, 1399-1401, p. 453; 1413-16, p. 371. Thereafter commissions were not issued to tax collectors in these shires, but exemptions are not recorded on the patent roll. Against this background, it is not surprising that the gentry of Cumberland were neither numerous nor wealthy. According to the tax assessments of 1435-6 there were only 55 landholders there with incomes in excess of ten marks, and only 21 with incomes of £20 p.a. or over.6 E179/90/26. But economic weakness was not the only reason for the relative paucity and poverty of the local gentry. Territorially the county was dominated by the landholdings of the great northern baronial families of Percy and Neville. The great Percy honour of Cockermouth in the west of the county and the Neville lordship of Penrith in the east were the principal local estates. Further, the local influence of the Nevilles was extended by royal office: for the bulk of the period under review here, Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, was warden of the west march, with whom lay the principal responsibility for the region’s defence against the Scots. In short, Cumberland was an area of strong magnate lordship, but it was also one of largely absentee lordship. The earl of Northumberland did not live at Cockermouth and the earl of Salisbury did not live at Penrith or, as warden, at Carlisle. The only resident peer in the period under review here was a lesser one, Thomas, Lord Dacre (d.1458), whose main residence lay at Naworth in the north of the county.7 Booth, 10-12; R.L. Storey, ‘Warden of the Marches’, EHR, lxxii. 604-7.

Returns survive for 19 of the 22 Parliaments of the period, and the identity of one of the MPs for that of 1445 is known from a parliamentary petition. Twenty-three men were returned, five of whom also represented other constituencies: three sat for neighbouring Westmorland, one for that county’s borough of Appleby and another for both Carlisle and Warwick. Between them the 23 MPs sat for the county on 54 occasions and for other constituencies on eight, giving an average of less than three returns per Member. This points to a lower level of representative continuity than had prevailed in the preceding period, 1386-1421, when the average number of Parliaments per MP was over three. Multiple returns were thus not common. The two MPs elected most frequently – Sir Peter Tilliol elected on at least 13 occasions, and Sir Christopher Curwen elected six times (excluding his election for Appleby) – had both begun their parliamentary careers long before 1422. Of those elected for the first time during the period under discussion here, Sir Christopher’s son, Thomas Curwen, was the most often returned, and he could boast only four returns (excluding his single election for Westmorland), and only Hugh Lowther was elected three times.

Instances of immediate re-election are correspondingly infrequent: Tilliol twice served in successive Parliaments in the 1420s, and Sir Christopher Curwen represented the county in the assemblies of 1423 and 1425 and those of 1431 and 1432, but there are no further instances in the reign of Henry VI. Strikingly, of the 18 elected for the first time between 1422 and 1460, 13 are recorded as representing Cumberland on only one occasion (although two of these, Colt and Crackenthorpe, had further returns for other constituencies). The prevalence of MPs returned but once is particularly apparent after 1432. While, over the period as a whole, experienced MPs filled nearly two-thirds of the known seats (a very similar proportion to that prevailing between 1386 and 1421), only about two-fifths of the known seats from 1432 to 1459 were taken by those with parliamentary experience. Significantly, all four Parliaments – 1435, 1437, 1447 and 1449 (Nov.) – in which the county was represented by two novices fell during this latter period. Similarly, each of the MPs elected between 1422 and 1431 was returned more than once, yet, from 1432 to 1459, 13 of the 25 known seats were taken by men recorded as representing the county only on a single occasion.

Cumberland’s representation was dominated, to a greater degree than in most shires, by established county families, although that dominance declined in the second part of the period under review here. As many as 11 of the 23 came from families who had provided the county with an MP or MPs in a previous generation or generations, another came from an ancient Cumberland baronial family, and a further five came from well-established gentry families (although not always of the first rank). One consequence of this dominance was the paucity of lawyers among the MPs: only Crackenthorpe and Colt fall into this category 8 Stapleton and de la More were named to the quorum of the peace, but nothing else marks them out as lawyers. Further, while the multiple return of an individual was not common, there are two notable examples of the multiple returns of successive heads of leading families: Sir Christopher Curwen and his son, Thomas, filled ten of the Cumberland seats between 1414 and 1459, and Sir Robert Lowther† and his son, Hugh, the same number between 1391 and 1449.

The dominance of the leading families is further exemplified by the frequent election of their heirs-apparent: Sir William Leigh in 1423, Hugh Lowther in 1426, Thomas Curwen in 1435, 1442 and 1449 (Feb.), Ralph Dacre (a younger son) in 1442, and John Pennington in 1447 were all elected for the county while their fathers lived. When an MP was elected from outside this group, the reason sometimes lay in marriage to the heiress or widow of such a family. Sir Nicholas Radcliffe, the younger son of a Lancashire knightly family, came into the county through marriage to the heiress of Sir John Derwentwater†, who had represented Cumberland in the Parliaments of 1379 and 1388 (Feb.); another from Lancashire, John Broughton, also acquired land in the county by marriage; and Thomas Crackenthorpe, younger son of a Westmorland family, married one of the two coheiresses of Sir Peter Tilliol and the widow of another significant landholder in Cumberland, Sir Christopher Moresby†. When an MP was returned who had few interests in the county, some special factor was probably involved. The elections of Thomas Parr in 1429 and 1445, Richard Bellingham in 1449 (Nov.) and Thomas Colt in 1455 all fall into this category and are discussed below.

A sudden diminution in the proportion of knights among the MPs suggests, as does the parallel decline in representative continuity, that there was a change in the pattern of Cumberland’s representation in the early 1430s. In view of the high level of involvement in military activity on the part of Cumberland gentry, one might expect the county to be slower to experience the decline in the number of knights that was a general phenomenon in the fifteenth century. Indeed, between 1386 and 1421 belted knights had come to play an increasingly prominent part in the county’s representation. For the first seven Parliaments of that period knights filled only five of the 14 seats; but in the seven assemblies for which returns survive between 1414 (Nov.) and 1421 they filled nine. The increase was maintained into the period under review here. From 1422 to 1433 knights took as many as 13 of the 18 county seats. Thereafter, however, there was a steep decline. Of the 21 known seats between 1435 and 1459, only two were taken by knights. No doubt a factor in this change was, as elsewhere in England, a general decline in the number of knights overall: for example, two sons of knights, Hugh Lowther and John Skelton, who, between them, sat five times from 1426 to 1453, did not take up the rank, as men of their standing would certainly have done in an earlier generation. However, a more important explanatory factor was a fall in the social status of those elected. Several of those returned after 1432 – Laton, Dykes, Martindale, Bellingham, Crackenthorpe and Colt – were not drawn from the elite of county families.

Cumberland was home to few wealthy gentry. Of those assessed to the subsidy of 1435-6, only two were assessed at £100 or over: Sir John Skelton at £118 6s. 8d. (a significant part of which was derived from royal annuities), and Sir Richard Huddleston (father of Sir John†, MP for Cumberland in 1467) at £100. Below them was a small group of four with incomes of between £60 and £90: three, Sir Christopher Curwen (£90), Sir John Pennington (£85) and Sir Nicholas Radcliffe (£66), represented the county, and the other, Henry Fenwick*, assessed at £60, sat for Northumberland. Other of Cumberland’s MPs had incomes comparable with this group. Although Lowther was assessed at only 40 marks, he stood heir to the jointure and dower lands of his mother, who was assessed on an income of £40; Sir William Leigh, also assessed at 40 marks, had lands worth £60 p.a. according to his inquisition post mortem taken only three years later; and Thomas Parr appeared personally in the Exchequer to declare his income of £67. In the absence of any evidence from tax returns, there can be little doubt that Tilliol, with his own extensive estate in Cumberland and his wife’s inheritance in county Durham, had an income at the very least sufficient to compare with the richest of the county’s MPs. On the other hand, however, there were several MPs, particularly among those elected after the early 1430s, with seemingly very small incomes. This was partly because men like John Skelton, Stapleton and de la More could count themselves among the county elite even though each of them was assessed at only £20 p.a. in 1436, and partly because of the occasional return of younger sons with no documented means of financial support, like Dacre and Bellingham. It is, however, hard to believe that any of the MPs had as little as the ten marks p.a. at which Vaux was assessed.9 E179/90/26.

Despite their varying incomes, all of the MPs, with the exception of Bellingham and Dacre, are known to have held (or stood heir to) property in Cumberland, 18 in their own right and three in right of their wives. As a group their holdings outside the county were not extensive. Eight of the 23 either inherited or stood heir to property in Westmorland, five to property in Lancashire, two to property in Yorkshire, and, rather anomalously, the two Leighs inherited a manor in Norfolk. If one adds land acquired by marriage and purchase, the group’s holdings can be extended into county Durham, where Tilliol’s wife inherited a significant estate, and Essex, Hertfordshire and Middlesex, where Colt built up a considerable estate by purchase (although not until after he had sat for Cumberland).

Despite the decline in the social status of the MPs as a body after the early 1430s, Cumberland’s representatives were overwhelmingly drawn from the same group of men who filled the major offices of the county’s administration. Only three of the MPs – Dykes, Martindale and the younger Pennington – did not serve, at some point in their careers, as sheriff, escheator or j.p. in Cumberland, and it is significant that all three of them were elected after 1432. By contrast, no fewer than eight of the MPs held all three of these major offices.10 Broughton, Thomas Curwen, Lowther, de la More, Sir John Skelton, Stapleton, Tilliol and Vaux. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that many of the county’s seats were filled by men who had already had experience of at least one of these offices. Twenty of the 39 known seats were taken by men who had already served as sheriff of Cumberland and two others by men who had held shrieval office elsewhere.11 Colt and Parr had served as deputies to the hereditary sheriffs in Worcs. and Westmld. respectively. They were the only two of the county MPs who, at any point in their careers, held shrieval office outside Cumb. A similar pattern is apparent in the case of the lesser office of escheator: 19 of the 39 seats fell to men who had previously served as the county’s escheator (an office for which Cumberland was paired with Westmorland). By contrast, only 11 of the seats were filled by men who had experience on the Cumberland bench and two others by men who had been j.p.s in other counties.12 Broughton in Lancs. and Parr in Westmld.

Interestingly, of the 15 MPs who were j.p.s in Cumberland at some point in their careers, only two, namely Colt and Stapleton, had held the office before their first elections to Parliament. This implies that, in the hierarchy of office in the county, the bench was very much the pinnacle. Some MPs, even though men of wealth, had long to wait for their first appointments as magistrates; indeed, six of them waited more than 15 years after their first election.13 The two Curwens, Dacre, de la More, Sir John Skelton and Vaux. Consequently, it was comparatively rare for a serving j.p. to be returned for the county. Only in 1455 were both seats taken by a serving j.p., and just nine of the 39 known seats were filled by such members of the bench.

Occasionally there was a close correlation between parliamentary service and appointment to one of the three major offices of local administration. Most notable in this respect is Sir Christopher Curwen, who was named as sheriff when he was serving as MP in the Parliaments of 1423 and 1427.14 In addition, his son, Thomas, was named to the same office during the first prorogation of the Parl. of 1449 (Nov.), although for Westmld. rather than Cumb.; de la More was pricked as sheriff during the last session of the Parl. of 1429-30; and John Skelton was named to the office soon after sitting in the Parl. of 1449-50. Similar instances can be cited in the case of the escheatorship and county bench. During the last session of the Parliament of 1429-30 the Crown chose from the Cumberland MPs not only the county sheriff but also the escheator, in the person of Parr. Sir John Skelton in 1423 and Laton in 1434 were both chosen as escheators at the next appointments after the end of their service in the preceding Parliament. As regards to the bench, such correlation as there was came only during contentious Parliaments: both Thomas Curwen and William Leigh, the MPs in 1459, were appointed for the first time while so sitting. Such instances are, however, not frequent enough to have arisen out of general royal policy with the Crown consistently looking to the Commons to fill administrative local offices. On occasion it may have done – the nomination of Leigh and Curwen to the bench in 1459 may well have arisen from their presence in Parliament – but generally it was probably simple coincidence.

There seems to have been no notion that different parts of the county should be represented in each Parliament. Indeed, when the representation of the county became factionalized in the later part of the period under review here, it was likely that the two MPs would be relatively near neighbours, from the west of the county when the Percys were in the ascendant and from the east when the Nevilles prevailed. To the Coventry Parliament of 1459 the two MPs came from Workington and Isel, about nine miles apart in the vicinity of the Percy castle of Cockermouth. Yet, even when such pressures did not apply, it was not uncommon for the two MPs to be drawn from the same locality. The MPs of 1423, for example, were also from Workington and Isel, and those in that of 1422 were from Scaleby and Whitrigg in the north of the county.

Recurrent bouts of Anglo-Scottish border warfare meant that the Cumberland gentry, as a class, had a greater enthusiasm for military service than did their counterparts in more peaceful shires. The MPs found military experience on three fronts, on the border, in France, and in civil war. At least six were actively involved in border warfare, and better records would no doubt reveal further examples: Tilliol took part in the campaigns of the late 1380s; Sir John Skelton fought with distinction at the battle of Humbleton Hill in 1402; de la More was, in the first decade of the century, involved in illicit raids into Scotland in time of truce; and Sir John Pennington, Thomas Curwen and John Skelton fought under Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, at the English defeat on the river Sark in 1448. Another form of involvement came in the shape of offices related to the defence of the march: Tilliol was keeper of the west march by 1380; Sir John Skelton acted as warden for Edward, duke of Aûmale, in 1398; and Laton, otherwise a fairly insignificant figure, was constable of Carlisle castle between about 1420 and 1435, and in 1436 served briefly as one of the keepers of the west march.

The necessity for defence may, on three occasions at least, have had an impact on the county’s representation. After his shrievalty of 1435-6, Broughton claimed to have been unable to come to the Exchequer to account because of Scottish raids, and it may be that he missed the Parliament of 1437 because of the continued Scottish threat. Ten years later, on 24 Jan. 1447, John Pennington was elected to represent the county in the Parliament due to assemble at Bury St. Edmunds on the following 10 Feb., but there is strong reason to suppose that, at both dates, he was serving in the garrison at Calais. Perhaps the contentious nature of the assembly’s business, easily anticipated in advance, deterred candidature and he was elected because rather than in spite of his absence. In respect of the next assembly, summoned to meet in February 1449, disturbed conditions on the border, in the wake of the battle on the Sark, prompted the Crown to exempt the northern nobility from attendance, and it is likely that at least one of the Cumberland MPs, Thomas Curwen, did not see all three sessions of that Parliament through.

This familiarity with war explains why the Cumberland gentry made a longer commitment to campaigning in France than their counterparts in most other shires. Three of the MPs had significant military careers. Sir Christopher Curwen, who fought in the lists against the Scots at Carlisle in about 1416, served in France almost continuously between at least 1417, when he was made captain of the castle of Danville in Normandy, and 1422;15 The only other MP known to have held office in France was Sir John Skelton, who acted as controller of Bordeaux in c.1400, when his lord, Edward, earl of Rutland (previously duke of Aûmale), was lt. in Aquitaine. Sir John Pennington fought at Agincourt under John, Lord Harington, and during the campaign of 1421 led his own large retinue of 13 men-at-arms and 42 archers; and his son, another John, became a professional soldier and was captain of Pont Audemer in the early 1440s. Three others fought at Agincourt – Lowther, John Skelton and Radcliffe – and Sir William Leigh took part in the campaign of 1417. In addition, Parr may have been in Salisbury’s retinue during the coronation expedition of 1430-2.

The conflation of the dispute between Percy and Neville for regional hegemony in the north and that between York and Lancaster for control of central government had profound consequences of another sort for the Cumberland MPs as a group.16 One of the MPs had experience of an earlier period of civil war: Sir John Skelton fought for Hen. IV against the Percys at the battle of Shrewsbury. Their local ties with the two great baronial houses meant that they were inevitably drawn into the national conflict. Nearly all of the MPs can be identified as followers of the one or the other of these great local families: Bellingham, Broughton, Crackenthorpe, Thomas Curwen, Dykes, the two Leighs, Martindale and the two Penningtons with Percy; Colt, Laton, Lowther, de la More, Parr, Stapleton and Vaux with Neville. Two of the MPs met their deaths, both on the Lancastrian side, at the battle of Towton, namely Crackenthorpe, brought to the field by his allegiance to the Percys, and Ralph Dacre, who, involved in a dispute over his father’s baronial estate, had his own reason for opposing York. Others had more positive experiences of the conflict. Colt made his career in the service of the Nevilles and the duke of York: he was in the Yorkist army at Ludford Bridge, followed the duke into exile in Ireland, was attainted in the Coventry Parliament, and then fought at Wakefield and probably at Towton. Few men of his rank benefited more than he did from the accession of Edward IV. Another active Yorkist was Parr, who was at Blore Heath, Ludford Bridge and Wakefield in the retinue of the earl of Salisbury. Like Colt, he was attainted in the Coventry Parliament, and although he did not live to benefit from the change of regime, his sons did.

Participation in one of the battles of these years is generally revealed only by death (although an appeal sued by the earl of Salisbury’s widow shows that Bellingham was present at Wakefield). Better records would probably show that several other of the MPs were militarily active, not least because several of them – Thomas Curwen, William Leigh, William Martindale and Sir John Pennington – were, like Bellingham, committed supporters of the Percys. If Thomas Curwen himself was not at the first battle of St. Albans, his younger brother, William, certainly was, for he fell alongside the Percy earl. Indictments show that Bellingham, Leigh, Martindale and Pennington were in the Percy retinue in the clash between Percy and Neville at Heworth in 1453, and it is hard to imagine that they did not turn out for Percy in the greater battles that came later. There is also a curious family tradition that Pennington played host to the defeated Henry VI in the Lancastrian retreat to Scotland after the decisive battle of Towton. Had the Yorkists behaved with the same vindictiveness after Towton as the Lancastrians had acted after Ludford Bridge, their involvement in the battles of 1460-1 would probably have been revealed in acts of attainder (the alternative explanation is less likely, namely that the Percy retinue from Cumberland did not turn out). Edward IV, seemingly as a matter of policy, allowed that retinue in the county to survive his accession. At least one member of it, Thomas Curwen, fought for him in the campaign of the winter of 1462-3 to reduce the northern strongholds of the Lancastrians.

It may be that the impact of the civil war of the 1450s on the personal relationships of the Cumberland gentry, despite their apparent division into two baronial factions, was tempered by ties of kinship and friendship. Among the MPs, for example, Lowther, although accounted a follower of the earl of Salisbury, was the brother-in-law of a Percy man, Thomas Curwen, and the uncle of another, William Leigh; and Parr, a committed Neville man, was married to the sister of the wife of the equally-committed Percy follower, Sir John Pennington.

The Cumberland hustings served as a meeting place for the shire’s leading gentry to a far greater degree than elections in most, if not all, other shires. Several of the county’s MPs were remarkably frequent in their attendance. Lowther came to at least 18 of the county’s elections between 1420 and 1467 (in addition to five elections in neighbouring Westmorland); Stapleton was almost as prolific, appearing at 14 elections between 1416 and 1453; and the two Skeltons are named as attestors on 18 occasions from 1413 to 1455. Some of the hustings were particularly well attended by the county elite: the presence of six knights is recorded at the elections of both 1426 and 1442, and five at that of 1426. Sixteen of the 23 MPs are found attesting elections in the county, appearing on as many as 107 occasions between them, a record of frequency probably unmatched in any other county.17 Only Colt, Crackenthorpe, Dacre and the younger Pennington are not found as attestors; Parr (Westmld. 1453) Broughton (Lancs. 1437) and Bellingham (Lincs. 1478) attested in other shires but not Cumb. Of those MPs who attested in Cumb., only Lowther and Radcliffe also attested in another shire, both in Westmld. Strangely, there was a short period in which it became the practice to name among the attestors one or both of the elected men. Both MPs attested their own returns to the Parliaments of 1419, 1422, 1423, 1426 and 1427, and one of the two to the assemblies of 1421 (May), 1421 (Dec.) and 1425. Thereafter, however, the practice was gradually abandoned. Lowther, Thomas Curwen and John Skelton attested their own returns to the Parliaments of 1431, 1442 and 1453 respectively, but there is no further instance.

As notable as the quality of the attestors is their number. Sometimes the sheriff went much further than simply listing the most important of those present: 73 witnesses are named to the election of 1442 and as many as 154 to that of 1453. Further, there was a tendency for the number of attestors named to increase over time. From the first surviving indenture for the county, that of April 1413, until 1432, all the indentures name between 12 and 29 attestors at an average of just over 17; between 1433 and 1478 the indentures name between 14 and 154 attestors at an average of 41 (or 32 if the indenture of 1453 is excluded as unrepresentative).

Another unusual aspect of the county’s elections is the occasional appearance at the hustings of men from local baronial families. The witnesses to the election of 1433 were headed by Thomas, Lord Dacre, and two of his sons, Sir Thomas and John; Lord Dacre was again present to attest the return of another of his sons, Ralph, in 1442; and in 1453 the attestors were headed by Sir Thomas Neville, younger son of the earl of Salisbury.18 The attestors to the election of 18 Nov. 1421 had been headed by Ralph Neville, a younger son of Ralph, earl of Westmorland: C219/12/6. The returns also reveal something of the clannishness of an isolated county. Between 1413 and 1478, the first and the last of the surviving election returns of the fifteenth century, no fewer than 14 Lowthers appeared as attestors, as do 11 Skeltons and 11 Hotons, seven of whom are named witnessing the indenture of 1453.

Other evidence and inference sometimes allows one to add flesh to the bones provided by the indentures. The election of 1429, for example, gave rise to a dispute. On 13 Sept., nine days before Parliament was due to assemble at Westminster, the sheriff of Cumberland, Sir Christopher Moresby, presided over hustings at Carlisle at which Thomas Parr and Thomas de la More were returned. The attestors to their return were an impressive group, headed by four knights, and there is nothing in the indenture to suggest any irregularity. None the less, the return was challenged. On 28 Sept., six days after the beginning of the assembly, the Crown issued a commission to investigate the assertion that Sir William Leigh and de la More had been elected at the county court held on 30 Aug. in response to the writ of summons issued on 12 July. This election, so it was claimed, had then been confirmed ‘on another occasion’ in response to further writs issued on 3 Aug. advancing the date of the Parliament’s meeting from 13 Oct. to 22 Sept.; but, even though no county court was held after the receipt of the second writ ‘and no day for holding such court intervened’ before Parliament met, Moresby had set aside Leigh’s election in favour of that of Parr.19 C219/14/1; CPR, 1429-36, p. 40.

The most likely chain of events is that Leigh and de la More were elected at the county court held on 30 Aug., the due date of the court, but that Moresby, in response to the arrival of the second writ, then held another election at an emergency meeting, at which the electors favoured Parr over Leigh. Whatever the truth of the matter, Parr’s election was not invalidated, and it is interesting to note that in the last session of the Parliament the government appointed him escheator of Cumberland and Westmorland. The commissioners named on 28 Sept. appear not to have acted, and it was not until 10 July 1430, nearly five months after the dissolution, that the justices of assize were commissioned to hold their own inquiry. Their findings, if any, are lost.20 CPR, 1429-36, p. 41. The setting aside of the election of Leigh, a Percy man, has been interpreted as a manifestation of the rivalry between that great family and the Nevilles of Middleham.21 H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, ii. 409. This must remain very doubtful. There is no evidence to suggest rivalry at the hustings between the two families at this date, and there is no unequivocal evidence connecting Sir William’s supplanter Parr with the junior branch of the Nevilles until later.

Controversy also appears to have lain behind the election of 13 Jan. 1442, although here we have only the evidence of the indenture itself. Seventy-three attestors witnessed the election of one of Lord Dacre’s younger sons, Ralph, and Thomas Curwen. If one may judge from the identity of the attestors, the Dacres and Curwens were anxious to secure election: the two MPs were themselves named together with their fathers and two of their brothers, John Dacre and Edward Curwen. The fount of their anxiety can only be a matter for speculation, but it may be that the return is to be seen in the context of Lord Dacre’s dispute with Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle, over the wardenship of the west march. The earl of Salisbury’s resignation of the office in 1435 had brought the two men into competition, despite Lord Dacre’s offer to hold the wardenship on terms favourable to the Crown, and in November 1436 the bishop had been appointed for a term of seven years. Ralph Dacre’s election in 1442 may thus have been part of an effort by his father to secure the office on the expiry of this term, although, if this was the case, the earl’s more powerful claims ensured that the effort was wasted.22 C219/15/2.

Not until the hustings of 28 Oct. 1449 is there evidence that the elections were influenced by the rivalry of Percy and Neville. That election, conducted by Percy’s man, Crackenthorpe, may have seen a compromise between the two families, with John Skelton representing Neville, and Bellingham, Percy; and the next election, held in the aftermath of the duke of York’s contentious return from Ireland and again conducted by a Percy man, (Sir) Thomas Curwen, almost certainly saw such a compromise in that the two MPs, de la More for Neville and Crackenthorpe for Percy, were strongly committed retainers of the two families. At this date the interest of the two families may have coincided, at least as far as national politics was concerned, in that both favoured the duke of York’s demonstration against the supposed corruption of the court party headed by the duke of Somerset.23 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 247; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 707. By the election of March 1453, however, a very different situation appears to have prevailed.24 This election was not held until 13 Mar., a week after Parl. had begun, but there is no reason to suppose there was any deliberation in this delay. It was rather the result of the six-week cycle of the Cumb. county court and the unusually short period between summons and assembly. Two Neville men, John Skelton and Roland Vaux, were returned at hustings conducted by another Neville man, Thomas de la More, who named no fewer than 154 attestors. Further, these attestors were headed by the earl of Salisbury’s son, Sir Thomas Neville, and included many Neville supporters, among whom was one of the elected MPs, Skelton. This looks like a demonstration of local strength by the Nevilles, deliberately designed to exclude supporters of the Percys.25 The Yorks. election of 1453, however, provides an interesting contrast. It was conducted by a Neville sheriff, Sir James Strangways*, but two Percy men were elected, namely Sir Brian Stapleton* and Sir William Gascoigne*: Pollard, 248.

Thereafter, the conflict between the two families intensified: their rivalry for local hegemony was changed from active to passive by the Nevilles’ commitment to York and the Percys’ to Lancaster. This had a determining effect on Cumberland’s representation. In 1455, after the victory of York and the Nevilles, two of their supporters were elected at hustings conducted by John Huddleston, who was later to fight for the Nevilles at the battle of Blore Heath. Colt’s return is particularly interesting: he would not have been returned for the county in any but these exceptional circumstances. Although seemingly born in Carlisle, which he had represented in the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.), his local interests were minimal, and he certainly did not hold enough property in the county to justify his return. He was elected simply because he was a capable lawyer in the service of both York and Neville. The next election, held on 13 Nov. 1459, in the wake of the flight of the Yorkist lords from Ludford Bridge a month earlier, saw a very different result: two Percy men, (Sir) Thomas Curwen and William Leigh, were returned by attestors dominated by connexions of the Percys. No doubt the next election saw the reassertion of the Neville interest, but, unfortunately, the returns are lost.

Clearly, in the 1450s, political factors were of major importance in determining Cumberland’s parliamentary representation. Earlier, however, there is evidence of the operation in elections of more limited personal motives. The sheriff appears to have been able to use his influence to gratify the claims of friends and family. In 1423, for example, Sir William Leigh was elected at hustings conducted by his own father. More interestingly, in 1437 (Sir) Henry Fenwick was the sheriff responsible for the return of his brother-in-law, Stapleton, at the height of Stapleton’s long-running dispute with Thomas Bethom*. Two other of Stapleton’s brothers-in-law, Hugh Lowther and Thomas Salkeld, headed the attestors, among whom, unusually, there were no knights, and this is additional evidence that Stapleton, who sat only in this Parliament, was motivated to secure election by his desire to forward his dispute.26 C219/13/2; 15/1.

Three other MPs, Sir John Skelton, Tilliol and Lowther, took advantage of election to Parliament to present or forward petitions concerning their private affairs: in 1406, Skelton successfully petitioned for substantial compensation for the Crown’s refusal to allow him to ransom the valuable prisoners he had taken at Humbleton Hill; and in 1426 Tilliol, as one of the executors of Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, and Lowther, the son of another, presumably took a part in promoting a petition presented by the executors for financial redress from the Crown. In the absence of petitions, one is reduced, as in the case of Stapleton in 1437, to inference in constructing motive, but some of these inferences are compelling. John Skelton’s election to the second Parliament of 1449 is one such. This was his first Parliament even though he was approaching the age of 60, and there is little reason to doubt that he could have secured election earlier, had he so desired. When he did finally put himself up for election, his motive probably lay in the need to protect his valuable royal annuities from the threatened Act of Resumption. Such an act, as a remedy for royal financial ills and as protection against the necessity for further grants of parliamentary taxation, had been actively mooted in the Commons in the first Parliament of 1449, and little foresight was required to predict that it would arise again in the next assembly.27 According to one chronicler, the King’s resistance to the demand of the Commons for resumption led to the dissolution of this assembly in July 1449: Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 125-6. The matter came to a head in the third and last session of the 1449-50 Parl.: Griffiths, 387-9. Consequently, when the clamour for resumption came to a head in the third session of this assembly, Skelton was well placed to protect his interests. His petition to the Lords is probably to be dated to this session. He found a sponsor in Lord Cromwell but met with only partial success, preserving one of his annuities (£20) intact, but losing 30 out of 40 marks of the other.28 SC8/86/4261.

Skelton’s parliamentary career is also interesting from another viewpoint. Direct evidence of the part played by any individual MP in a medieval Parliament is very rare, but the chronicle of John Whethamstede, abbot of St. Albans, provides an account of Skelton’s conduct in the Parliament of 1453. The abbot tells us that Skelton, at the behest of a friend of the abbey, Bartholomew Halley*, a royal esquire sitting for Hertfordshire, so energetically championed the abbey’s interest in the Lower House that the alien priory of St. Nicholas of Pembroke, given to the abbey by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, was exempted from the grant of the earldom of Pembroke to the King’s half-brother, Jasper Tudor. Skelton, once in Gloucester’s service, was here acting in what appears to have been a disinterested concern to protect the soul of his late master, who had made the gift of the priory in return for prayers. It might also be argued that he was acting at a slight risk to his own material interests. Halley, it seems, had been reluctant to take up the abbot’s cause publicly for fear of giving offence to the King; the Cumberland MP, however, although himself a royal annuitant, was not similarly deterred.29 Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 92-94.

Parliamentary activity of a very different sort is revealed by the experiences of (Sir) Thomas Parr when sitting for the county in the long Parliament of 1445-6. According to his own petition, on 14 Mar. 1446, during the fourth and final session, when he was making his way from his lodgings to take a boat to Parliament, Henry Bellingham’s brothers, Thomas* and Robert, assaulted him and his servants at ‘Cornewalesse grounde, besyde the Crane in the Warde of the Vyntrye’. His motive for attending this Parliament may have been to forward his dispute with the Bellinghams, and their rash act gave him an opportunity. He successfully petitioned the King for special process against the assailants of the type often requested in such petitions, threatening them with attainder for felony without the benefit of royal protection or pardon if they failed to appear to answer him. The Commons added their voice by asking, albeit unsuccessfully, that this process be given the endorsement of statute as a general remedy for members of Lords and Commons who suffered assault. Predictably the assailants failed to appear – as they later claimed ‘for feir and drede of the seyd Acte and proces therupon dependyng’ – and there is no further reference to the dispute until the Parliament of February 1449. Then, with Thomas Bellingham, despite his attainder for felony, sitting as a burgess, his family secured the partial revocation of the act on the grounds that they were now reconciled with the Parrs (although later litigation shows that there were still outstanding issues).30 The reversal of the attainder contained a saving to any chief lords or royal grantees who had benefited from the forfeiture. A desire to secure further leniency may explain Richard Bellingham’s readiness to sit in the following assembly, to which, significantly, his brother Thomas was again returned.

Another Cumberland matter may have come before the Parliament of 1425. In London, on the day after the dissolution, William Bewley† entered into a bond in 200 marks to abide arbitration in a dispute which ranged him and his kinsman, Richard Bewley*, against Sir William Leigh and others. It is a reasonable surmise both that this arbitration was arranged in Parliament (a supposition supported by the nomination of Richard Restwold*, MP for Berkshire, among the arbiters), and that the dispute had been discussed at the Cumberland hustings of 17 Apr., at which both Leigh and Bewley were present. Along the same lines, it might also be surmised that the petition presented to the Commons of 1435, in the name of the knights and esquires of the county and the mayor and citizens of Carlisle and asking that the county assizes and gaol delivery should be held only in the county town, was drawn up, or at least discussed, at the county hustings. More difficult to understand, however, is the method of compilation of two other petitions presented in the name of the county during the period under review, the one concerning the mint at York and the other the export of local wool by merchants of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Both were presented jointly by groups of northern shires, and one can only suppose that there was a measure of discussion of and co-operation over local grievances between their respective MPs once they had gathered in Parliament.

There was very little overlap between the personnel of Cumberland’s representation and that of Carlisle, its only parliamentary borough, either in this period or the preceding one. Of those who represented Cumberland between 1386 and 1421, only William Osmundlaw†, MP for Carlisle in the Parliament of February 1383, sat for Carlisle; and the only example for Henry VI’s reign is the Neville servant, Thomas Colt. In one regard, however, representation of county and borough shared one thing in common. From the late 1440s both were heavily influenced by the intervention of the great families of Neville and Percy.