Carlisle

Although not formally incorporated until 1637, the city of Carlisle long held privileges of self-government. These were codified in a charter of 1352, which amplified and confirmed the rights the citizens held under charters dating back to the reign of Henry II. Their right of election of the principal city officials – a mayor and two bailiffs – was acknowledged, as was their exemption from the jurisdiction of the county sheriff.2 CPR, 1350-4, pp. 232-3; H. Summerson, Med. Carlisle, i. 296-8; ii. 428. In return for these and other privileges they owed annually at the Exchequer a fee farm, fixed at £80 in 1316, which was raised principally from various tolls, two mills on the river Caldew and a fishery in the river Eden.3 Summerson, i. 147-8, 219, 331-5. To the burden of the fee farm was added the recurrent costs of maintaining the city’s defences against the ever-present threat of Scottish invasion. Yet, economically, Carlisle’s centrality to the defence of a troubled region meant that this was a benefit as well as burden. The Crown could not afford to let the city’s physical defences decline and was thus prepared, on occasion, to remit payment of the fee farm (as it did between 1429 and 1435) so that the city could devote its own resources to their maintenance. Further, in the substantial payments made to the garrison of Carlisle castle the Crown consistently invested in the city.4 Ibid. ii. 402, 417; CPR, 1422-9, p. 538; E404/47/179.

This investment also took the form of patronage. Beyond the remission of the fee farm, the citizens won other marks of royal favour. In May 1435 their charters were confirmed, and at the end of the same year, in response to a petition presented by the citizens in Parliament, Carlisle was confirmed as the established venue for the holding of sessions of assize and gaol delivery.5 R. Chs. Carlisle ed. Ferguson, 44-52; CPR, 1429-36, p. 465; PROME, xi. 183; Summerson, ii. 416. In November 1441 they were given 40 oaks from Inglewood, the royal forest lying just to the south of the city, to repair their bridges; and in November 1449, after, at least in the testimony of one chronicler, the city’s suburbs had been burnt by the Scots, they were licensed to export 20 sacks of wool a year free of customs, to aid in the payment of the fee farm. This last grant, increased to 25 sacks in 1454, was a very valuable one, for the profit of this trade in wool would have been sufficient to discharge the entire farm.6 E28/69/37; CFR, xiv. 136-7; xix. 6; CPR, 1452-61, p. 217; Summerson, ii. 429, 435, 445.

The loss of most of Carlisle’s records obscures the form of the city’s government. The mayor and two bailiffs, elected annually, appear to have been assisted by a council of 12 senior burgesses. The evidence for the existence of this council is poor before 1445, but the survival of an ordinance passed in that year, the aim of which appears to have been to limit the power of the mayor, lifts the obscurity. On 26 Oct. the ‘commons’, presumably a broad gathering of the citizenry, ‘for the wele and gude Reule’ of Carlisle, ordained that the mayor was to do nothing ‘of his singuler auctoritee’ but to act only with the assent of a council of 12 (of which he was to be one). No doubt those who had held the office in the previous few years – among whom were two of the MPs, Robert Carlisle I and John Blennerhasset – were felt to have acted ultra vires, and it appears also that their elections had been contentious. This, at least, is implied by the ordinance’s introduction of a new method of mayoral election: to avoid the dissensions, ‘whilk war lykly to fall among vs in oure eleccion’, the council of 12 were to choose 24 ‘habill’ persons and these 36 were then to choose the mayor each year. The 36 were to be self-perpetuating, co-opting new members when necessary, a provision that implies that, aside from constraining the power of the senior official, the ordinance’s aim was to confine involvement in the city’s administration to a relatively small elite, although perhaps, with the addition of the 24, a broader one than had previously held sway.7 Cumbria RO, Carlisle, Carlisle city recs. Ca2/15; Summerson, ii. 420-3.

More significant to the citizens than the form of their internal government was their relationship with the principal royal official in the locality, the warden of the west march. The warden was responsible for the payment of the garrison of Carlisle castle, where he periodically resided, and was a natural patron for the city. For most of the period under review here that office was in the hands of a powerful local lord, Richard Neville, from 1428 earl of Salisbury. First appointed in 1420, he served until his attainder in 1459, with the exception of the period between 1436 and 1443, when the office was entrusted to another periodic resident of the city, Marmaduke Lumley, bishop of Carlisle.8 R.L. Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’, EHR, lxxii. 613-14. Both men took an interest in Carlisle’s affairs. In the autumn of 1430, for example, Salisbury mediated an agreement between the citizens and the prior of Carlisle, who was reluctant to provide his share of watchmen for the city’s walls; and in January 1439 the Crown granted him the city’s fee farm. 9 Carlisle city recs. Ca5/1/20; CPR, 1436-41, p. 289. In these circumstances, it was to be expected that he should make his influence felt on the city’s parliamentary representation, particularly in the crisis decade of the 1450s. Lumley’s influence is harder to demonstrate, but it may be significant that he was treasurer of England when the citizens were first given the right to export wool free of customs. He, too, had some influence on representation.

In the later part of Henry VI’s reign the association of the local rivalry of the Nevilles and the Percys with the dynastic rivalry between York and Lancaster, together with the readiness of the Scots to exploit these divisions, brought a time of acute insecurity for Carlisle. The citizens must have found their loyalties divided. On the one hand, they had their relationship with the earl of Salisbury as the long-serving warden. Against this was to be balanced the growing influence in the city of the Percys: in July 1452 the fee farm was committed to the earl of Northumberland’s eldest son, Henry, Lord Poynings, and in the following month Poynings’s brother, William, was consecrated as bishop of Carlisle. To be further thrown into the balance was the appointment, in succession to the attainted Salisbury, of the militant Lancastrian, John, Lord Clifford, as warden in April 1460.10 J.P. Marsh, ‘Landed Soc. in Far N.W. of Eng. c.1332-1461’ (Lancaster Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2000), 34-35, 177-8. No doubt the Neville influence was the strongest – as is suggested by the pattern of the city’s representation in the 1450s – but this alone was insufficient to turn the citizens into partisans of York. Their alienation from Lancaster was only completed by the terrible events of the early summer of 1461, when, after the Lancastrians had been defeated at the battle of Towton, they joined with the Scots in besieging the city. On the verge of falling, it was relieved by a Yorkist force commanded by one of Salisbury’s younger sons, John, Lord Montagu, and a Neville retainer, Richard Salkeld†. The new King showed himself ready to acknowledge Carlisle’s sufferings: by letters patent, dated on 19 Dec. 1461, he permanently reduced the fee farm from £80 to £40 p.a. and remitted the city’s debts to the Crown.11 Summerson, ii. 446-8; CPR, 1461-7, p. 82.

The Carlisle MPs are known for 19 of the 22 Parliaments that met in Henry VI’s reign. Thirty-one individuals were elected, of whom just four – Thomas Colt, by far the most important of the 31, and the lawyers, Bristowe, Pety and Helton – are recorded as representing other constituencies. The latter three sat for the Westmorland borough of Appleby, and Colt, as a Neville retainer, was elected for Warwick and Cumberland. As many as 24 of the 31 are recorded as sitting for the city just once. Only Robert Carlisle I, returned for the seventh recorded time in 1422, had what might be termed a parliamentary career.

The level of representative continuity was, therefore, very low. Between them the 31 MPs were elected for the city on a total of 48 occasions, a strikingly low average of Parliaments per Member, and one that rises little if elections for other constituencies are included. Only two cases of immediate re-election – Alanson to the Parliament of 1453 and Derwent to that of 1455 – are known, and it was only in these two Parliaments that the city was represented by two experienced MPs. In total just 12 of the 38 known seats were taken by those with previous parliamentary experience, and even this low figure gives an exaggerated picture of continuity in the first part of the period. Between the Parliaments of 1422 and 1449 (Nov.) just six of 30 known seats were taken by experienced MPs, and only one of 20 from 1429 to November 1449. Curiously, it was only when political factors came to determine elections in the 1450s that any degree of representative continuity was achieved.

This striking lack of continuity in the 1430s and 1440s contrasts with what had come before. Between 1386 and 1427 as many as 23 of 51 seats had been taken by experienced MPs, and this suggests that, from the late 1420s, there was an accelerated decline in the enthusiasm of the leading citizens for parliamentary service. This process of decline had probably been going on for some time. Even in the 1386-1421 period as many as 16 of the 27 MPs are recorded as sitting only once and the average number of returns for the city per MP was under two. Only in the first half of the fourteenth century can it be said that the leading Carlisle citizens were enthusiastic parliamentarians. Then a Grinesdale filled as many as 14 seats from 1295 to 1344, and short intense parliamentary careers were not uncommon, such as those of Adam Crofton†, who sat in five Parliaments from 1332 to 1348, and John Fleming† in the same number from 1327 to 1341.

This reluctance to serve had two solutions. Either Carlisle’s authorities could insist that all of the leading citizens should take their turn (as was the case in another county town, Northampton), or else they could embrace the election of outsiders. The latter happened in numerous small boroughs, but it is surprising to find that a place as important as Carlisle should fall into the same group.

The 31 MPs can easily be divided into two distinct categories. The first are the residents. On the assumption that those MPs who cannot be identified were citizens, these numbered only 15, all of whom, save Robert Carlisle I and Richard Muncaster, were elected only once, although it may be that both Colt and Alanson were born in the city even though they played no recorded part in its affairs beyond election to Parliament. Between them these filled just 15 of the 38 known seats in Henry VI’s reign, or, if Colt and Alanson are to be added, then the ‘residents’ filled 19 of 38. The reluctance of the citizens to serve is also apparent in the fact that, with the exception of Blennerhasset, the two Carlisles and Muncaster, the MPs were not drawn from the leading citizens. Of the mayor’s council of 12, listed in the 1445 indenture, only three, Blennerhasset, Robert Carlisle II and William Cardoile† (who sat twice when a young man in the earlier period), are recorded among the city’s MPs, and of the further council of 24 none are recorded as sitting.12 These are listed in Carlisle city recs. Ca2/15. Another of the 12, John Muncaster, was son of an MP.

Outsiders filled the resulting vacancies. Their infiltration came in two phases. In the earlier part of Henry VI’s reign (and in the later part of the period 1386-1421) the seats that the city could not fill fell to local lawyers. Pety, of Lincoln’s Inn, and Helton were active as attorneys in the central courts for Cumberland and Westmorland cases. Bristowe, judging by his appointment to the quorum of the Cumberland peace commission in the late 1430s and 1440s, was a lawyer of slightly higher status. His family had a long-standing connexion with Carlisle – Robert Bristowe† represented it in five Parliaments between 1386 and 1401 – but he himself lived at Middlesceugh, some miles to the south of the city (although, curiously, lying in the Carlisle parish of St. Mary). Of similar stamp were two MPs from slightly further afield, namely Bewley of Brayton, who sat with Bristowe in the Parliament of 1433 and also served on the quorum (although not until after first representing the city), and Whiteheved of Bolton-in-Allerdale, who was closely connected with the Skeltons, one the county’s leading gentry families.

These five lawyers, as men with interests local to Carlisle, were obvious candidates for return, but more interesting connexions explain the election of Drax and, if he is to be identified as the Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, Marshall. Here the determining factor was not locality but ties of friendship within Lincoln’s Inn. Neither had any interests in Cumberland – both were Yorkshiremen who later settled in the south – and their only link with Carlisle and its locality was through their fellow lawyers of Lincoln’s Inn, Pety and Robert Carlisle I. In 1422 Drax, a recent entrant to the Inn, was returned with the latter, who was almost certainly responsible for his return, just as he had been for that of another Yorkshireman, Thomas Manningham†, with whom he had sat for the city in 1419.13 In the indenture of 1419 Manningham’s name has been added in a blank left in the original draft, and it is likely that he was Carlisle’s nominee: C219/12/3. Marshall’s election in 1437 is to be explained in similar terms. Counting Robert Carlisle I, the only lawyer resident in the city to be returned, these eight lawyers filled nine of the 22 known seats between 1422 and 1442, the city being represented by two lawyers in the Parliaments of 1422, 1423 and 1433.

In the second part of the period three further lawyers were elected, but in the case of two of them, Colt and Mauleverer, it was their political connexions rather than their legal qualifications that explain their elections, and the same can be said, albeit less emphatically, in respect of the third, Robert Carlisle II. This reflects a change in the sort of outsider returned by Carlisle. No longer did the citizens have to search for minor local lawyers to discharge their representative burden, but, as central politics became progressively more highly-charged and unstable, local lords, principally the great northern families of Neville and Percy, began to take a closer interest in placing their own men in the Commons. Their political nominees replaced the lawyers, and it was the Nevilles who exerted the strongest influence. That influence had been apparent even early in the period. The election of Derwent in 1429 (discussed below) and Berwick in 1431, both outsiders, is probably to be ascribed to the earl of Salisbury. Later, however, the earl sought more fully to exploit his electoral patronage in the city. Two of his men, Colt and Bere, were returned to the Parliament of November 1449. Colt may have been born in Carlisle (although he is almost equally likely to have come from Bamburgh in Nothumberland), but Bere, from Berwick-upon-Tweed, was a complete outsider. Both seats again went to Neville servants – Derwent and Bere – in the Parliament of 1455, which met in the aftermath of the Yorkist and Neville victory at the first battle of St. Albans, and Derwent had also served in 1453. No doubt, if the MPs for the Yorkist Parliament of 1460 were known, they would be revealed as two further Neville nominees, perhaps Derwent and Bere again, if the latter did not fall at the battle of Wakefield.

The influence of the Percys also made itself felt on the city’s representation from the late 1440s, although to a lesser degree. Stanlawe, later clerk of the Percy mines in Cumberland, was elected to the 1447 Parliament when the Percys seem to have exercised a particular influence over elections in Cumberland, for two of their men – William Martindale* and John Pennington* – took the county’s seats. Robert Carlisle II was probably, when elected to the first Parliament of 1449, a clerk in the courts of their forest of Westward. One of the MPs of 1450, Mauleverer, stands in the tradition of Lincoln’s Inn lawyers who took seats for the city, but he was also a Percy man who fell in the earl’s retinue at the first battle of St. Albans.

A third influence over the city’s representation in the late 1440s and 1450s was the bishops of Carlisle, an influence which, with the consecration of William Percy in 1452, overlapped with the Percys’. This is seen particularly in the case of Alanson, who began his career in the service of the most notable of the city’s fifteenth-century bishops, Marmaduke Lumley. As treasurer, Lumley found him a place in the Exchequer and soon after he was elected for the city in company with another of the bishop’s servants, Robert Carlisle II, who, additionally to his probable office in Westward forest, was also steward of the episcopal lands at Dalston and Linstock. After Lumley’s translation to Lincoln, Alanson moved into the service of his two successors, Nicholas Close, one of the King’s chaplains, and William Percy, and no doubt these associations explain his elections in 1450 and 1453.

Although the influence of the Crown in Carlisle’s representation was only felt indirectly, it is worth noting that Alanson and Derwent, returned together in 1453 when an unusually high percentage of MPs were royal servants, had, aside from their connexions with the earl of Salisbury and Bishop Percy respectively, places in the royal service.

In the context of external influence one earlier election is relevant. In the Parliament of 1415 the citizens had sought redress against Thomas, Lord Dacre, for destroying one of their fisheries, but this enmity later faded, and the city may have accepted one of his nominees, Heveryngton, as MP in the Parliament of 1429. If Heveryngton was a Dacre man (and other members of his family certainly were) then it is possible to suggest, very speculatively, a context for his election. It came at a time of acute tension between Dacre and the earl of Salisbury. On 15 Sept. 1429, two days after the date of the indenture returning the Cumberland and Carlisle MPs, the two lords entered into mutual bonds in £2,000 to keep the peace one to the other. Perhaps significantly, Heveryngton’s fellow MP was Derwent so perhaps their election reflects a compromise between Dacre and Neville.

The prominence of outsiders among Carlisle’s MPs and the considerable lacunae in the list of the city’s office-holders means that, as far as the surviving evidence goes, there was little overlap between the city’s representation and its office-holders. Only two of the MPs – Blennerhasset and Robert Carlisle I – are recorded as serving as mayor, and only Blennerhasset as bailiff. The latter held both offices before representing the city in the Parliament of 1442, but Carlisle is not known to have been mayor until some years after his last Parliament. If the records were complete, they would probably reveal other MPs who held these offices, although, as remarked earlier, other evidence suggests that when the city returned citizens it generally did so from those below the class of city office-holders.

As a group, the MPs were more notable for the offices they held elsewhere. It is a curious irony of Carlisle’s representation in this period that more of its MPs are known to have served as governor of Lincoln’s Inn – Drax, Marshall (if he is the lawyer) and Mauleverer – than as mayor of the city. Four of the MPs – Bewley, Bristowe, Carlisle I and Colt – served as j.p.s in Cumberland. Both Bristowe and Carlisle I were appointed only after the end of their parliamentary careers, but Colt was a serving j.p. when elected to the Parliament of November 1449 and Bewley was reappointed to the bench while sitting in the 1459 Parliament. Helton too was a j.p. when elected in 1427, but in Westmorland rather than Cumberland.14 In addition, both Drax and Marshall, long after they had represented the city, were j.p.s, the first in Surr. and the second in Kent. Three of the MPs served as escheator, although only Colt held the office in the joint bailiwick of Cumberland and Westmorland, doing so shortly before his election for the city. Bere had also been escheator before representing Carlisle, in his case in Northumberland, but the third escheator, Berwick, did not hold the office (in the joint bailiwick of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) until long after sitting for the city.

Connexions outside the city are reflected in the other offices held by the MPs at the time they were elected. Derwent, a serjeant-of-arms in the royal household, was a forester in Inglewood when he represented Carlisle in the 1450s. Two of the MPs served as customs officials: Alanson, an Exchequer official, was in office as controller of customs in Kingston-upon-Hull when he represented the city in his first two Parliaments, and Bere was controller in Berwick-upon-Tweed when first MP for the city, having previously served as a customs collector in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Several of the MPs were involved in the civil war of 1459-61. This, of course, reflects not the militancy of the citizens but rather that of the Percy and Neville men elected in the 1440s and 1450s. One is known to have lost his life in the conflict – Mauleverer at the first battle of St. Albans – and another, Bere, appears to have died in the Neville cause either at Wakefield or Towton. Two others – Colt and Derwent – were active Yorkists, both fighting in one or more of the battles of these years, and both were attainted in the Parliament of 1459. The final combatant among the MPs was a follower of Percy: Stanlawe was attainted by the Yorkists in the Parliament of 1461 for fighting against them at Towton. The significant point here, as far as the representation of Carlisle is concerned, is that when the Nevilles and Percys moved to secure the election of their own men, to contentious Parliaments, they did so in favour of their most committed adherents.

The indentures are not openly informative about the electoral process in Carlisle. The first of the surviving indentures – that for the Parliament of 1413 (May) – took the form of a combined return, which, after the list of the witnesses to the county election, has a distinct list of 12 attestors to the city election, headed by the mayor and two bailiffs. This remained the form until and including the election of 1427, the only variant being the number of attestors listed: as few as seven, including the mayor and bailiffs, were named in 1417 and 1427, and as many as 18 in 1416.

From 1429 the returns are generally less revealing. Least helpful are those that do not name the city’s MPs in the indenture, simply identifying them on the dorse of the electoral writ. Other indentures name both county and city without making any distinction between county and city attestors. Yet, in most cases, these undifferentiated lists of attestors include citizens of Carlisle. Much the most interesting of them is the indenture for the Parliament of 1453 which lists as many as 154 attestors, a significant number of whom were citizens. Indeed, a comparison with the councils of 12 and 24 established by the city ordinance of 1445 show that most of the leading citizens were present. Remarkably, nine of the 12 are named together with 14 of the 24, their names distributed among the 154 although the last seven named on the indenture are all citizens, headed by one of the 12, who is designated ‘of Carlisle’.

Clearly then a large number of citizens attended the elections of 1453, but the question arises in what capacity. The answer to this question depends on the answer to another: were the county and city elections held together in the county court? If the evidence of the indentures of 1442 and 1455 is taken at face value, they were. In the first of these the sheriff, after listing 73 attestors (several of whom were citizens but were not designated as such) to the county election held in Carlisle on 13 Jan., appended the statement that, on the same day and place, he caused to be elected two MPs for the city.15 C219/15/2 (misfiled between Oxon./Berks. and Rutland). The second (1455) is the first surviving separate city indenture, drawn up between the sheriff, on one part, and the mayor, Blennerhasset, bailiffs and unnamed citizens on the other, and bears the date on which the county election was held.16 C219/16/3.

All this points to the conclusion that the city and county elections were held on the same occasion and that this explains why so many citizens appear among the county attestors after the sheriffs abandoned the practice in 1427 of listing the city electors separately. There are, however, grounds for doubting this conclusion. Such was not the normal practice even in county towns, and there is other evidence to suggest that the Carlisle elections were held independently of those for the county. It could be argued that when the sheriff recorded the city MPs only in an endorsement to the electoral writ he did so because he had not yet been informed of the identity of the city’s MPs when he caused the county indenture to be drafted. Interesting in this regard is the endorsement of the writ of 1432, where Carlisle’s MPs appear in a different hand from the rest of the endorsement, implying that the city MPs were unknown even when the endorsement was first drafted.17 C219/14/3. More importantly, the second surviving city indenture – that for the Parliament of 1467 – provides direct evidence that the two elections were not always held together, for it is dated two weeks after the county indenture.18 C219/17/1.

If, however, there were distinct electoral assemblies for county and city, why are so many citizens to be found among the county attestors? One possibility is that the result of the city election was communicated to the sheriff in the form of an indenture between the mayor and bailiffs, on the one part, and a handful of electors on the other. Then, when the county return was drafted, perhaps many days after the election had been held in the county court, the names of some or all of these electors was appended to it, either in a separate list or scattered among those named as present at the county election. The indenture of 12 Jan. 1478 gives some support to this conclusion, in that it can be read as just such a conflation: the attestors are named headed by the only knight noted as present, (Sir) Christopher Moresby†, with Henry Denton†, described as mayor of Carlisle, named second and scattered thereafter a further 56 names including those of several citizens.19 C219/17/3. Another possibility is that the citizens named represent a deputation sent to the county court to communicate the result of the city election, but this is unlikely: not only does it appear an unduly cumbersome method of communication but it depends on the city election being held before the county election. The third possibility is that the citizens were present in the county court as participants in the county election, but again there is a difficulty with accepting this. It is contradicted by the separate list of city attestors in the early returns and, even though a handful of the leading citizens, such as Blennerhasset and Robert Carlisle I, might have been entitled to participate in county elections by their interests outside the city, this was not the case for lesser citizens.

The indentures, not surprisingly, provide no direct evidence of the interventions that brought about the election of so many outsiders, but they suggest that some at least of these elections involved the subversion of the normal electoral process. In the indenture for the Parliament of 1423, the city’s MPs have been added in a blank left in the indenture, with Bristowe’s name written over an erasure, and precisely the same irregularity appears on the dorse of the electoral writ, although here their names are in the same hand (albeit in a lighter ink) as the rest of the endorsement. It thus seems that their names were added before the return left the sheriff’s office, but after the drafting of the indenture. Either the city election was delayed or no election was made and the names of two local lawyers were added at the sheriff’s initiative. More puzzling still is the 1437 return. Here Carlisle’s MPs, Mabson and Marshall, are recorded only on the endorsement of the electoral writ, and it appears that, when the endorsement was first drafted, only the surnames of the two MPs were written, their Christian names being added later in a much darker ink. Mabson cannot be identified, but Marshall was either a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer or a minor servant of the Percy family. Again some form of shrieval intervention is to be suspected, and, if Marshall is to be identified as a Percy servant, then it is significant that the sheriff, (Sir) Henry Fenwick*, was a senior member of the Percy affinity.20 C219/15/1.

Irregularity of a different sort occurs in the 1450 return. In the indenture the names of the city’s MPs appear over an erasure save for the final ‘r’ of ‘Mauleverer’. Further, the document is untidy, giving the impression of having been hurriedly compiled, and on the dorse of the writ although Alanson’s name appears in the same hand and ink as that of the county members Mauleverer’s has been added later in a much darker ink. One can only assume that Mauleverer was returned at the last moment, that neither he nor his colleague were those originally returned and that the surname of the second of the supplanted MPs ended in ‘r’. These emendations raise the question of whether, when a name was erased from an indenture or endorsement, it betokens the removal of an elected MP in favour of a nominee or simply the refusal of the elected MP to serve. Given the other evidence of the reluctance of the leading citizens to serve, the latter explanation is to be preferred.

In the absence of city accounts, the only evidence of parliamentary wages comes from the legal records. In respect of his service in the Parliament of 1455, Bere brought an action against the mayor, Blennerhasset, in the court of King’s bench for £13 2s., that is, for service of 131 days in the Commons at a daily rate of 2s., but with what result is unknown. Perhaps, as an outsider, he had agreed, or was thought to have agreed, to serve without wages, but subsequently claimed them. It is possible that the city followed a policy, as many boroughs are known later to have done, of only paying wages to residents.

Carlisle provides an early example of a substantial borough that was prepared to surrender its representation to outsiders. This appears to have been done willingly, for the significant infiltration of outsiders began even before the 1450s, when the desire of the local peers, principally the Nevilles and the Percys, to secure the election of their own men might have proved difficult to resist even in a borough keen to maintain electoral independence. Interestingly, the process does not seem to have gone further in the sixteenth century, when representation was divided, more or less equally, between the citizens and the nominees of the warden of the west march.21 The Commons 1509-58, i. 63; 1558-1603, i. 140.