Hampshire

In terms of size Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight, was the eighth largest English county. Its irregular and deeply indented coastline on the Channel formed a number of sheltered harbours ideal both for merchant shipping and vessels requisitioned by the Crown. Inland the county was well watered by several rivers and, although vast tracts of land were given over to the New Forest and lesser woodlands at Woolmer and Alice Holt, Hampshire was primarily an agricultural county. Most important among its many fairs and markets, the annual St. Giles’s fair at Winchester attracted merchants from all over England. Two ranges of chalk hills stretched across the county from west to east providing pasture for sheep and allowing the production of good medium-quality wool. The early development of the clothing industry at Winchester met with fluctuating fortunes over the centuries, leading to a noticeable decline in the period here under review, yet despite the depopulation of the city cloth production remained a mainstay of its inhabitants.3 VCH Hants, v. 409, 476-8, 482-4. Southampton’s trade in dyestuffs, madder, alum, oil and soap, all essential for the manufacture of cloth, flourished whether such imports were destined for Winchester and other towns in Hampshire or, more often, to be carted north to Salisbury and the Midlands.4 J. Hare, ‘Production, Specialisation and Consumption’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIV, ed. Clark, 190-3. The busy port attracted Genoese carracks and Venetian galleys, bringing wine and luxury goods from the Mediterranean for wealthy customers in London, who made regular use of the easy communications by road between the two places. According to the subsidy returns of 1451, Hampshire ranked seventh in wealth among the 29 counties for which evidence survives.5 S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258.

In preparation for Henry V’s ambitious military undertakings, great ships for his navy were built in the Hamble, under the supervision of William Soper*, and the army that fought at Agincourt in 1415 sailed from Southampton and Portsmouth. A year later preparations for the relief of Harfleur saw the massing of troops in Hampshire, and the embarkation of the duke of Bedford’s force from its ports, and the county and its trained soldiers played a vital role in the King’s major invasion of Normandy in 1417.6 Navy of Lancastrian Kings (Navy Recs. Soc. cxxiii), 36-40; A. Curry, ‘After Agincourt’, in The Fifteenth Cent. VII, ed. Clark, 37. Commissions of array issued by the government of Henry VI emphasized the importance of safeguarding the Isle of Wight from sea-borne assaults, especially when, in the summer of 1449, the duchy of Normandy came under attack from the armies of Charles VIII and English rule in northern France began catastrophically to collapse. As the crisis unfolded, it was at Winchester that the third session of the Parliament of February 1449 met, between 16 June and 16 July. Defeated soldiers returning home from the surrendered garrisons of the duchy reported that the French intended to launch an attack on the south coast of England, and at Portsmouth in January 1450 mutinous crews murdered the keeper of the privy seal, Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester. In the following spring, during the second or third session of the Parliament then in being, the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight addressed an appeal for help to the Commons. The misgovernance of the island by John Newport, whom its lord the duke of York had appointed as steward in 1447, had rendered it increasingly iimpossible to defend. Newport’s tyrannical rule and piratical acts had left the island, previously safe-guarded (or so it was claimed) by 10,000 armed men led by 30 knights and esquires, with a bare 700 capable of fighting, and his much more worthy replacement, Henry Bruyn, sorely needed reinforcements.7 RP, v. 204-5. Valid and serious concerns for the defence of Hampshire’s coasts continued to be expressed through the 1450s and beyond.

The subsidy returns of 1412 listed the most substantial lay landowners in the county as the Crown, with estates worth £290 p.a. (mostly in the hands of Henry IV’s queen, Joan of Navarre, as part of her dower), Edward, duke of York, receiving £261 p.a., Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, with £235, and Edmund, earl of March, then a minor, with £124. Of the lesser nobility, Thomas, Lord West (also a minor) stood to inherit land valued at £110. Hampshire then contained nearly 100 members of the gentry possessed of land worth more than £20 p.a., yet very few of them derived incomes exceeding £100 from this county alone.8 Feudal Aids, vi. 448-58. During Henry VI’s reign the estates of both York and March fell by inheritance to a single lord, Richard, duke of York, and the Montagu earl of Salisbury’s passed to Richard Neville, through marriage to the earl’s daughter, but although Neville maintained a castle at Christchurch he never chose to reside regularly in the south of England, and York’s interests, too, were nearly always focused elsewhere, in the north and in the marches of Wales. More often resident in Hampshire were the Lords West, usually summoned in the period under review as Lords de la Warre.9 CP, iv. 150-5; xii (2), 521-2.

The estates of the bishopric of Winchester did not, of course, figure in the lay subsidy returns, but the see was one of the wealthiest in England, producing annual revenues in the order of £3,700,10 G.L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, 411-12. and the influence of the successive bishops of our period, Henry Beaufort (d.1447) and William Waynflete (d.1486), counted for much in national affairs. Their periodic presence at Wolvesey palace and their exercise of patronage in their liberties inevitably had an effect on the political society of Hampshire.

The names of Hampshire’s MPs are recorded for all but the last two of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, and numbered at least 29 individuals (the number would rise to 33 if all those returned to the undocumented Parliaments were not also elected on another occasion). The majority of them (19) sat for the county just once, and four more only did so twice. Moreover, of the remaining six shire knights only three are worthy of attention for their parliamentary service: Sir Stephen Popham and William Warbleton, who each represented Hampshire in five Parliaments, and John Uvedale who was elected six times in the course of his career (albeit only once in the period here under review). Taken overall, the average number of Parliaments per Member came to less than two, but whether this strikingly low figure is indicative of a general lack of interest in central government on the part of the local gentry, or, conversely, suggests that several men, all willing to serve, agreed to share out the seats between them, is a question which is impossible to answer. Yet that certain of this group were anxious to secure a place in the Commons is implied by their successful candidacy for other constituencies besides this one. In addition to his five Parliaments for Hampshire, Warbleton also represented Berkshire (in 1431), and his earlier eagerness to join the body of MPs at Leicester in 1426 is surely demonstrated by his election at the shire courts of both these counties in the space of five days.11 C219/13/4: elections held on 30 Jan. in Berks., 4 Feb. in Hants. It is not recorded which of the two shires paid Warbleton’s expenses, or if one of them sent a replacement after the discovery of the double return. In between his two Parliaments for Hampshire (1453 and 1472), Maurice Berkeley was returned for Gloucestershire; and interspersed between Thomas Uvedale’s three returns for this county camehis election in 1450 for neighbouring Sussex. Before they represented Hampshire in 1426 and 1453, respectively, Sir John Boys had already sat for Middlesex and John Roger I for Berkshire. Alone among the 29, Thomas Welles also appeared as a parliamentary burgess, for prior to his election for Hampshire in 1455 he had served in four Parliaments as a representative for one or other of the small Wiltshire boroughs of Great Bedwyn and Downton. Among the Hampshire MPs of this period, one made a strong enough impression on his fellows in the Lower House as to be chosen Speaker at the start of a Parliament, namely that summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1449. This was the war veteran and diplomat Sir John Popham, who, however, by pleading old wounds and infirmity, got himself excused from what would undoubtedly have proved a thankless task in a predictably turbulent assembly, as first the news arrived of the fall to the French of Rouen, the capital of English-occupied Normandy, and then the King’s chief minister the duke of Suffolk faced impeachment.

On the whole, the electorate in Hampshire does not seem to have set much store on the value of accumulated experience of the workings of the Commons. In no more than six Parliaments of the period were both of the men elected already tried and tested, and although on another seven occasions an experienced individual accompanied a novice, both shire knights in the Parliaments of 1427, 1432, 1433, 1435, 1437, 1439 and 1447 were apparent newcomers. To emphasize the point further, it should be noted that five of these seven Parliaments (all of them assembled in the 1430s), ran consecutively, and that between 1431 and 1442 only one of the 13 different Members (Sir Stephen Popham) could boast any familiarity with parliamentary procedure whatsoever. Significantly, too, it happened just three times in the reign that a Member of the immediately preceding Parliament was re-elected, and all of these re-elections occurred early in the period – in 1422, 1425 and 1426. Taken altogether, these statistics point not only to a general lack of continuity in the representation of the shire, but also imply that as the reign progressed past experience of Parliaments carried an ever diminishing importance in the minds of those gathered in the shire court.

All but one of the 29 MPs lived permanently in Hampshire, or, at least, regularly stayed in a manor-house located within the county’s borders, and thus fulfilled the statutory requirements for election. The exception was Robert Fiennes, who came from a family seated in east Sussex and is not known to have held any property in this county either at the time of his election in 1447 or subsequently. Yet the possibility should not be ruled out that when he stood for election he was quartered at Portchester castle, of which his father Sir Roger Fiennes* was the constable, for he himself held that office in reversion and may well have been currently acting as Sir Roger’s lieutenant. Of the rest, most (20) had inherited their lands in Hampshire, and two more (Boys, originally from Middlesex, and Thomas Tame, born to a Northamptonshire family), had acquired manorial holdings there through marriage to local heiresses. Those few who purchased their property in the region included two northerners – Thomas Haydock, a lawyer from Lancashire, and Thomas Pound, an Exchequer official from Kingston-upon-Hull – as well as John Roger, of the Dorset family, who continued his father’s enterprising investments in real estate both here and elsewhere, and another lawyer, Welles, whose origins are obscure. How Nicholas Bernard and John Newport came by their modest properties remains unknown, but both did belong to local families. The homes of the MPs were spread around the county, with no one region predominating, for although ten came from the north of the shire, seven lived in the south-west, near Christchurch, six in the south-east, near Portsmouth, three centrally, close to Winchester, and two on the Isle of Wight.

A strong tradition of service in Parliament may be readily discerned, with several of Hampshire’s MPs coming from gentry families established there for a number of generations. As many as 13 of the 29 were sons or grandsons of men who had previously sat in the Commons for the shire or one of its boroughs. Most outstanding in this respect were the Berkeleys (Sir Maurice was the son of Sir John† (d.1428) and father of Maurice and Edward†), the Lisles (John I, the son of Sir John† (d.1408) and father of John II), the Pophams (Sir John, the son of another Sir John†, nephew of Henry†, and first cousin of Sir Stephen), and the prolific Uvedales, whose members, although mainly serving Hampshire, also represented other constituencies in the fifteenth century. John Uvedale, the son of an earlier John†, was the brother of William I* (who sat for Surrey in our period) and father of Thomas and William II, while Thomas himself fathered Henry* (returned for Portsmouth), Reynold† and Sir William†, and William II fathered another Thomas†. Relative newcomers to the county also came from families which had produced MPs in the past, albeit as representatives for other constituencies. Richard Dallingridge was the nephew of Sir Edward Dallingridge† and cousin of Sir John†, who had both been returned Sussex; Robert Fiennes, the son of the Sussex MP Sir Roger, was the nephew of James*, who represented Kent and was created Lord Saye and Sele in 1447; John Roger, a younger son of a former representative for Dorset, was the son-in-law of the Berkshire MP John Shotesbrooke†; and Thomas Pound was in all probability the son of William Pound†, the former MP for Hull. The tradition passed on to the next generation: in addition to the record of the Berkeleys and Uvedales already noted, there was Pound’s son John†, who represented Hampshire later in the century, while two of John Roger’s sons sat in Parliament in our period – Thomas* for Berkshire and John II* for Ludgershall. Nevertheless, none of these families came anywhere near monopolizing the representation of Hampshire in Henry VI’s reign, for the Pophams filled no more than six of the 40 recorded seats, the Uvedales five, the Lisles three, and the Berkeleys just two.

When it came to the tenure of land, more than half the shire knights (16) owned real estate beyond the borders of Hampshire, for the most part in one or other of the five neighbouring shires, while in addition the Berkeleys held substantial estates in Gloucestershire, Boys property in Middlesex, Pound likewise in London and Hull, Sir John Popham, John Roger and Tame in the Midlands, and Warbleton in Oxfordshire and Kent. The surviving tax assessments of 1436 provide a comparison between them. All four of the members of the gentry of Hampshire recorded as holding estates there and elsewhere valued at more than £100 p.a. sat for the shire: John Lisle II (£100), Warbleton (£110), Brocas (£120) and John Uvedale (£173), while the widow of Sir Walter Sandys†, a former shire knight, received as much as £252. Added to Sir John Popham’s landed income (assessed at £40), was £82 from fees and annuities granted to him by Henry V and the late duke of York. Thomas Uvedale, assessed at £50 in 1436 (just before his first return to Parliament), is known to have received at least three times that amount when he sat on later occasions. Although not named in the assessment, others who sat for Hampshire should also be included in this group of wealthy landowners, most notably Sir Maurice Berkeley (whose estates spread over eight counties had been estimated to be worth 500 marks a year in his father’s lifetime), and his son and heir Maurice. John Lisle I’s income exceeded £126 p.a. even though a third part of his inheritance remained in his mother’s possession; and Sir Stephen Popham’s holdings were worth about £150 p.a. Thus ten or more of the 29 enjoyed incomes in excess of £100. A smaller group, whose holdings were estimated to be worth between £50 and £100 a year, included Richard Holt with £67, Boys with £59 and possibly also William Ringbourne, whose father had possessed lands worth £60 (some of which, however, were kept by the MP’s mother and her second husband). Cowdray, Haydock, Richard Newport and Veer would seem to have been less affluent, receiving between £20 and £50 a year. Least well off were seven MPs with land seemingly worth less than £20 p.a. at the time of their elections: Bernard, Berewe, Dallingridge (who, however, was to die a wealthy man after inheriting his family’s principal estates), Fiennes, Hampton, John Newport and William Uvedale II. No precise details survive about the financial circumstances of the rest.12 John Roger, Pound, Tame, Trenchard and Welles. Taking these figures as an inevitably rough guide, it is clear that Hampshire’s wealthier gentry predominated when it came to election to the Commons. Someone from the wealthiest category sat in 14 of the 20 Parliaments for which returns are extant, and in four of these (1422, 1425, 1429 and 1445) both men elected belonged to this group. Only in the Parliaments of 1435 and 1447 was the county represented entirely by the least affluent of the 29, and, significantly, these four men also lacked any previous experience of parliamentary affairs. It should also be noted that although the Parliament of 1445 enacted a statute restricting election as a shire representative to those of sufficient income and standing to be knights, to the Parliament immediately following (that of 1447) the Hampshire electorate disregarded the injunction and elected John Newport and Robert Fiennes, both of them younger sons lacking any documented revenues, save for their fees as members of the King’s household. Not long afterwards Newport was expressly stated to have ‘no lyvelode to mentayne his gret countenaunce’.

Wealth did not necessarily step hand in hand with status. No more than four of the 29 were knights by rank when they first sat in Parliament, although John Lisle II was to be knighted before his second election (in 1449), and Maurice Berkeley before his third (1472), while John Newport and Thomas Uvedale both accepted the honour after their parliamentary careers had ended. This continued a trend begun under the previous Lancastrian kings. The last time that two belted knights had been returned together had been in 1406, and to eight of the ten recorded Parliaments of Henry V’s reign Hampshire returned two esquires.13 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 410-14. In Henry VI’s reign a knight accompanied an esquire or lawyer to nine Parliaments, but slightly more often the county was entirely represented by men of that lower rank. Their status may have been a matter of personal choice: seven of the MPs are known to have been fined for refusing to take up the knighthood warranted by their incomes of over £40 p.a. Whether knights or not, more than a third of the 29 had experienced warfare across the Channel before their elections to Parliament; indeed, four of them (Sir Maurice Berkeley, Warbleton and the cousins Sir John and Sir Stephen Popham) were veterans of Agincourt. Outstanding for their military exploits were John Lisle II (for his service as a war captain in 1443), and the two Pophams. Sir John achieved distinction in the administration of territories under English occupation: as bailli of Caen and captain of Bayeux for Henry V, and as chancellor first of Normandy then of Anjou and Maine and lieutenant of Rouen castle for the Regent, John, duke of Bedford, whom he also served for a while as chamberlain of the ducal household. His cousin, Sir Stephen, excelled as a sea-captain and a leading exponent of the scheme for naval defence devised by the Commons of 1442, of which he was a Member. Experienced in combatting piracy in the Channel, he then whole-heartedly endorsed the proposal for more systematic naval patrols, and was appointed chief commander of a force over 560 strong to police the narrow seas. Altogether 18 of Hampshire’s 40 recorded seats were taken by those with a military background, who had first-hand experience of conditions in France and were well able to contribute to debates about the conduct of the war and how it ought to be financed. It was hardly coincidental that to the Parliament of November 1449, when Hampshire faced the threat of an imminent invasion from France, it returned Sir John Popham, whose participation in the administration of Normandy stretched back nearly 35 years, along with Henry Trenchard, who as constable of Carisbrooke castle on the Isle of Wight now stood on the front line of defence.

By contrast, and continuing a trend noticeable in the earlier years of the century, Hampshire chose to return men of law only on rare occasions.14 Ibid. 414. Sir Thomas Skelton†, a leading apprentice-at-law, had been elected in 1399 and 1406, and lesser practitioners of the law in three Parliaments of Hen. V’s reign. Just four of the seats in our period were taken by lawyers: Bernard, Haydock, Holt and Welles. All four were well respected members of their profession, yet none of them were elected more than once. By the time of his single election to Parliament in 1431 Holt had served at least four times as justiciar of the bishop of Winchester’s court of the Pavilion; Bernard (1435) was currently employed as bailiff on several manors pertaining to the diocese; Haydock (1442) held office as steward of the estates of Winchester College, the royal lordship of Odiham and the Hampshire properties of the earl of Stafford; and Welles (1455), a fellow of the Inner Temple who succeeded Haydock at Winchester College, long occupied the post of deputy steward of the estates of the bishop of Winchester. Even so, such proven ability carried little weight with the electorate.

A factor in the choice of three of these lawyers may have been their places on the quorum of the Hampshire bench, for participation in local administration appears to have been a qualification for election which those assembled in the shire court took into account. The majority of the 29 had at least some experience of public affairs prior to their elections. Fifteen held office as sheriffs of Hampshire,15 Ten of these 15 also officiated as sheriffs elsewhere: Maurice Berkeley in Glos. and Wilts., Cowdray in Oxon. and Berks., Dallingridge, Fiennes, John Uvedale, Thomas Uvedale and Warbleton in Surr. and Suss., John Lisle II and Sir Stephen Popham in Wilts., and Tame in Som. and Dorset. Two others served only in other counties: Sir Maurice Berkeley in Glos. and John Roger in Oxon. and Berks. of whom seven had done so before their earliest or only election to Parliament, and in the course of the period, 11 of the 40 seats were taken by former sheriffs of this or some other county. Boys, whose term of office as sheriff ended on 15 Jan. 1426, was returned to the Parliament at Leicester by his successor just three weeks later. No sheriff of Hampshire actually returned himself, but John Roger was sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire when elected for this county in 1453, in breach of the ordinance which prohibited the return of such officials; and Warbleton was appointed sheriff of Hampshire while sitting as an MP in December 1450, and must, therefore, have been absent either from Parliament or from his bailiwick during the two later sessions – a situation which the ordinance had endeavoured to prevent. Half of the ten shire knights who filled the less important post of escheator of Hampshire and Wiltshire did so prior to their elections, and John Newport was the incumbent escheator when elected to Parliament in 1447. It may have been the presence in the Lower House of Veer in 1427 and Berewe in 1433 which brought them to the notice of the government, for they were both appointed escheator while their Parliaments were in progress. At the same time Berewe was assigned the offices of tronager, pesager and searcher in the port of Southampton. Pound, the only other Hampshire MP to be appointed to the customs service, acted for more than 22 years all told as a collector of customs in either Southampton or London, and although he was not in office as a customer when returned to his only Parliament in 1450, his long experience of dealing with the Crown’s revenues as a teller in the Exchequer must have been a factor in his election. Sixteen of the 29 served as j.p.s in the county,16 Maurice Berkeley also served in Glos. and Wilts., Sir Maurice Berkeley in Glos., Dallingridge in Suss., John Roger in Berks., and Thomas Uvedale in Suss. and Surr. Boys only served in Mdx., and Fiennes only in Suff. and those currently on the bench filled 15 of the 40 recorded seats. With the exception of John Newport all of the 29 shire knights were named on ad hoc commissions in the locality, although only 17 had been so appointed before they first entered the Commons.

A quarter of the 40 Hampshire seats were filled by men who had a recorded connexion with the court of Henry VI, although in only a few cases did this connexion bear any political significance. In 1427 the shire returned Veer, then riding-forester of the New Forest by royal appointment, and in 1433 Berewe, an official in the duchy of Cornwall and probably already a member of the Household. Yet even though Berewe later became a privileged esquire of the King’s chamber and beneficiary of royal patronage, neither he nor Veer ever sat in the Commons after the King attained his majority. Of greater interest is the election in the autumn of 1439 of Sir John Popham, the long-serving constable of Southampton castle, whose considerable experience as a diplomat, especially at the recent peace conference at Calais, along with his two-year term as treasurer of the Household, which had only ended in the previous spring, must have signalled to the electorate that he attuned to matters of national concern. Although little weight should be attached to the election in 1445 of one household esquire, Warbleton (since he benefited from no additional royal patronage at this time), rather more should be given to the return to the Parliament summoned at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447 of two such esquires together – Fiennes and John Newport – for Fiennes was the son of the recent treasurer of the Household and nephew of the King’s favourite (Sir) James Fiennes, who in the course of the Parliament was to be created Lord Saye and Sele. Henry VI had already extended his personal favour to Newport, when the esquire had needed help to pay a ransom, and three years later Newport was to be included on the list of prominent individuals whose malign influence on the King prompted the Commons to demand their exclusion from his presence. In November 1449 the Members were once more Popham, still in receipt of substantial royal annuities, together with a parliamentary newcomer, Trenchard, the riding-forester of the New Forest and constable of Carisbrooke castle, who was not only a household esquire but also a business associate of the King’s chief minister, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. In 1450 Warbleton was joined by Pound, who, employed since 1433 as a teller at the Exchequer, had been kept busy implementing the government’s financial policies in a period of crisis.17 Pound’s continuation in office after Hen. VI’s deposition shows that he successfully kept apart from the factions which divided the country later in the decade.

As had been the case in the three decades or more before 1422,18 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 413. significance should undoubtedly be attached to the election of men connected with the successive bishops of Winchester, William of Wykeham, Henry Beaufort and William Waynflete, whose substantial estates in the county enabled them both to dispense patronage and to offer employment on a large scale. Ten of the 23 shire knights elected between 1422 and 1447 were closely linked to Beaufort: Cowdray, a former bailiff and esquire of the bishop when returned in 1423; Warbleton, another of his esquires, elected three times in the 1420s and again in 1445; Boys (1426) the constable of Beaufort’s castle at Farnham in Surrey; Bernard and Hampton bailiffs on the episcopal estates; the lawyers Holt (1431) and Haydock (1442) both engaged as justiciars at the bishop’s court of Pavilion; and Richard Newport (1439), a member of Beaufort’s household whose faithfulness, industry and diligence won his lord’s commendation. Loyalty to the cardinal even ran in families, to be passed on by a long-term member of his affinity, John Uvedale (returned to six Parliaments during Beaufort’s episcopacy), to his son Thomas (1437 and 1445), appointed by their lord as master of the hunt and keeper of parks on the episcopal estates for term of life, with a fee of £10. Altogether this group of ten filled nearly half (14) of the 30 Hampshire seats available between 1422 and the cardinal’s death. Furthermore, the county’s representation in the Parliaments of 1426, 1429 and 1445 was dominated by those well-known to Beaufort, and this holds particular significance for the ‘Parliament of Bats’ in 1426 when he, the chancellor of England, felt urgently in need of support in his serious dispute with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. On that occasion, moreover, one of Beaufort’s esquires, Warbleton, sought and obtained election in Berkshire as well, which points to his determination to gain a place in the Lower House. Only when the cardinal lay dying in 1447 were two members of the royal household elected to represent Hampshire in preference to established local gentry attached to his circle. In the political vacuum the seats were won by Fiennes and Newport, both of them young men lacking any prior experience of county administration or of the Commons, but both enjoying access to the King and his favourites.

Three of the Members elected subsequently formed attachments to Bishop Waynflete: William Uvedale, appointed for life as keeper of Bishops Waltham park; his elder brother, Thomas, who retained his position as master of the hunt on the episcopal estates and introduced two of his sons to Waynflete’s service; and Welles, deputy steward of the estates of the bishopric from 1449 to 1478 and steward thereafter, who had already represented Downton, one of the bishop’s boroughs. William Uvedale was elected to the first Parliament of 1449 and Thomas Uvedale and Welles together in 1455. The unfortunate loss of the returns for 1459 and 1460 means that we do not know who represented the shire in these politically crucial Parliaments – the first, opened by Waynflete as chancellor, which passed an Act of Attainder against the duke of York and his allies; the other summoned after the Yorkist victory at Northampton. Those proscribed at Coventry included John Roger, returned by Hampshire to the Parliament of 1453, who had served under the duke’s command in France and had been appointed by him as steward of his lordships in the county. A fugitive from the law, John seemingly died a violent death early in 1460 at the hands of the Lancastrians, but his son and heir, Thomas Roger, emerged from prison to secure election to the Parliament of 1460 for Berkshire.

Links between the MPs and other members of the parliamentary peerage may well have enhanced their standing in Hampshire, but are unlikely to have directly affected the outcome of the county elections. Most notable among them were Sir Maurice Berkeley and his son and heir Maurice, kinsmen of the Lords Berkeley and respectively uncle and cousin to earls of Arundel. Furthermore, Maurice was the son-in-law of Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, with whom Haydock and the Uvedales were on particularly close terms.

There is nothing in the surviving returns to prove that any of the Hampshire elections were subject to interference from the Crown, the diocesan or members of the nobility. Elections were always held in the shire court at Winchester castle and recorded in indentures sent to the Chancery. With one exception witnesses to the indentures varied in number from between 13 (as in 1429 and November 1449) and 39 (as in 1435). Unusually, 57 names were written on the indenture for the Parliament of 1437. This hints at the possibility of a contested election. Intriguingly, the sheriff on that occasion, (Sir) John Seymour I*, returned as one of Hampshire’s representatives his young cousin William Ringbourne, with whom he was expected to share out the sizeable estates of their late grandfather Sir William Sturmy*. In respect of the partition of this valuable inheritance Seymour always had the advantage, because of his superior age, his personal association with the late Sturmy’s friends in their home county of Wiltshire, and the fact that the survival of Ringbourne’s stepfather prevented Ringbourne from entering his mother’s portion in its entirety. Yet even if Seymour did engineer Ringbourne’s election, his motivations are unclear. Another election where the identity of the sheriff may have been a decisive factor fell in October 1450, when Richard Dallingridge returned his friend Thomas Pound of the Exchequer, a man who was destined to benefit from generous settlements of Dallingridge’s lands, and may, indeed, have been married to his illegitimate daughter.

The 17 indentures between 1422 and 1455 which are still legible name some 170 different attestors, for the most part below the status of esquire. They were, however, generally headed by someone of knightly rank – Sir Stephen Popham and Sir Walter Sandys early on in the period, (Sir) John Lisle II later – and often included men who themselves had sat in Parliament, most frequently Hampton and the lawyers Bernard, Holt and Haydock.