Winchester

The middle years of the fifteenth century were a period of economic decline in Winchester, marked by a severe contraction in the size of the population, of which the symptoms were falling rents, the demolition of houses and the closure of parish churches. It has been estimated that the population shrank by about a third between the early fifteenth and mid sixteenth centuries. In spite of the prosperity which the city had undoubtedly enjoyed at the end of the fourteenth century by virtue of a thriving clothing industry, the citizens found the costs of the fee farm and the repair of the walls increasingly burdensome. Traditional revenues proved inadequate, and rent rather than tolls or subscriptions to the guild merchant came to be seen as the most reliable base for the city’s corporate wealth. Reassessment of tarrage rents in 1417 increased the proportion of the fee farm received from property, but did not solve the city’s difficulties in the long term. In February 1440 the mayor and citizens obtained a royal licence to acquire in mortmain lands to the value of £40 p.a. so that they would be able to bear their customary charges of the fee farm of 100 marks a year, the £3 due annually to the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, and divers rents payable to the Crown.1 CPR, 1436-41, p. 400.

The grant was made in response to a carefully argued petition, in which the citizens emphasized the former royal associations of Winchester as a place for the coronations and burials of kings, and asserted that through pestilence and the loss of trade 17 parish churches, 11 streets and 987 messuages had fallen into ruin in the course of the previous 50 years. The same statistics were repeated in preliminaries to further royal confirmations and grants, and again in 1452 in a more detailed version of the earlier petition, which noted that 81 more houses ‘ben fallen’ in the short time since Parliament had been held in the city (in the summer of 1449). In addition to the other charges imposed on the citizens, this petition also referred to the ‘expens of Burges of the said citee comyng to your parlements’, at the accustomed rate of 2s. a day each.2 Archaeologia, i. 91-95. It is clear from earlier evidence, too, that the payment of wages for parliamentary service was indeed causing difficulty. A special levy had to be made in the city in 1446 to pay the Members of the Parliament which had opened in February 1445 and eventually ran to four sessions and a total of 190 days. The subsidy raised a little over £17, but this was insufficient to cover the full debt.3 Winchester recs., W/E4/4.

There is no doubt that the citizens were correct in their overall impression of economic decline at this time. The population of Winchester had been substantially reduced by plague, and now the city’s trade and manufactures were ceasing to thrive. Even so, although the list of 17 ruined churches is remarkably accurate, the number of houses alleged to have become ruinous seems much too large, and is considerably greater than the total of 839 dwellings recorded as still standing in Winchester in 1417. Likewise, the figure of 81 houses said to have collapsed in the three years from 1449 to 1452 was very likely an overestimate. The contents of the 1452 petition are unhelpful in determining the chronology of the devastation, and in separating the effects of the fourteenth-century pestilences from more recent crises in Winchester’s economic affairs.4 D.J. Keene, Surv. Winchester (Winchester Studies 2), i. 88, 92, 96-98.

That the response from the Crown to the citizens’ plight proved sympathetic, perhaps owed much to Henry VI’s personal associations with Winchester, which he visited six times in the 1440s.5 Notably for the celebration of his marriage to Margaret of Anjou, and for the installation of William Waynflete as bp. of Winchester: J. Milner, Hist. Winchester, i. 230-3. In February 1441 the mayor and commonalty were granted the sum of 40 marks p.a. out of the subsidy of alnage collected in the county of Hampshire and the city itself for the next 50 years, this being a revenue which having been assigned to one of Henry IV’s confessors had only recently reverted to the Crown.6 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 507, 531. Owing to the Act of Resumption of 1450, the civic authorities were temporarily deprived of this income, but it was re-granted to them in 1452 (with effect from Michaelmas 1449), and the concession was confirmed by Edward IV in 1462.7 CPR, 1446-52, p. 512; 1461-7, p. 156. Indeed, relations between city and Crown appear to have remained satisfactory throughout the period, partly because of the need to maintain Winchester as a centre for royal administration. The castle was kept in reasonably good repair following instructions to the bailiffs in 1424 to spend £20 10s. a year on its maintenance for the next seven years, even though in the event they accounted for only five years’ work and spent just £90 10s. In 1451 a further £80 was deducted from the farm of the city to pay for renovations.8 Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 864; CPR, 1422-9, p. 199.

By assent of the Lords in the Parliament of 1422, the civic authorities obtained ratification of earlier charters granted to Winchester, although this was not formally enrolled until 1439. In June 1442 Henry VI granted the mayor and citizens various minor privileges, including the right to the confiscated chattels of felons, fugitives and outlaws taken within the city, and to fines imposed in the city courts for trespasses and other crimes which had hitherto pertained to the King. He further granted that they might elect four aldermen who with the mayor were empowered to act as j.p.s within the city’s bounds. All citizens were to be exempt from serving as jurors at the county assizes.9 CPR, 1436-41, p. 258; 1441-6, p. 84. Henry VI’s liking for Winchester no doubt played a part in its selection as the new venue for Parliament in June 1449, when the Parliament first summoned to meet at Westminster on 12 Feb. was prorogued on 30 May after the King had been credibly informed ‘de airis corrupcione ac pestilencia adtunc in diversis locis infra civitatem suam Londoniensis ac eciam in Villa Westmonasteriensis’. The Winchester session lasted from 16 June to 16 July.10 PROME, xii. 46. The day before the dissolution, on the feast of the translation of St. Swithun (the city’s patron saint), King Henry granted the citizens a charter allowing them to hold weekly markets every Saturday, and an annual fair on St. Swithun’s day and the eight days following.11 CChR, vi. 113-14.

It may be that the citizens hoped that their new fair might rival the centuries-old St. Giles fair, held every September, for while the St. Giles fair was in progress the mayor and his fellow officers had to abdicate their power for a full 16 days, all legal business being transferred to the bishop of Winchester’s court, known as the ‘Pavilion’. This enforced subjection to episcopal authority had caused tension between the citizens and the bishop’s officers in the past, and serious disturbances occurred at the fair held in September 1450. Nor was the matter resolved in the city’s favour. Ten months elapsed before Bishop Waynflete pardoned the mayor and commonalty for their misdemeanors, and in a formal agreement the citizens covenanted that such disturbances would not recur, and that they would never challenge the franchises and customs enjoyed by the bishop again.12 Copies of this capitulation survive in Hants RO, Reg. Waynflete, 1, f. 3*, and among the city archives, Winchester recs., W/A2/9. Relations with Waynflete continued to be uneasy, especially when, in 1467, the bishop’s officers obstructed the channel whereby water was supplied to the city’s fulling mill at Coytebury.13 Black Bk. Winchester ed. Bird, 89. Not surprisingly, no-one connected with the episcopal administration was returned to Parliament by the city in this period.

The name of one of the MPs for Winchester has been torn off the electoral return for the Parliament of 1425, and returns are no longer extant for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460. However, as the Members of 1445 are recorded on the roll of the subsidy collected in the city to pay their wages, gaps remain for only seven of the 44 seats. Twenty-four individuals are known to have represented the city in Henry VI’s reign. Just over half of them, as many as 13, apparently only ever sat in Parliament once, but John Parys and Robert Colpays were each returned four times, Richard Turnaunt sat five times, and William Wood I served the city in eight Parliaments in the course of just ten years (1413 to 1423). John Wryther was unique among the 24 Members, in that before he was chosen to represent Winchester in three Parliaments he had already sat for the Sussex borough of New Shoreham; none of the rest ever represented another constituency. It appears that the citizens making the elections favoured a balance between candidates with previous parliamentary experience and those who were newcomers, for in 12 out of 18 Parliaments one of each sort was returned. Furthermore, while in three Parliaments (those of 1426, 1432 and 1437) both MPs had some experience of parliamentary procedure, in three others (1431, 1445 and February 1449) both appear to have been novices.

In refusing to accept outsiders and members of the non-urban gentry as its representatives throughout the fifteenth century,14 The Commons 1386-1422, i. 423-7; HP Reg. ed. Wedgwood, Winchester can be classed with larger, more prosperous and more independent urban centres, rather than with smaller and less wealthy towns. Without exception, all of Winchester’s MPs between 1422 and 1461 lived in the city and held property there at the time of their elections,15 Only one (Bolt) is known to have been the son of an earlier MP for the city, although two others, Smart and Turnaunt, married the widows of former Members. even though a few of them were not life-long residents. William Fromond, who belonged to a Hampshire family, nevertheless started his career as a citizen of London; Thomas Tremayne II, probably of Cornish extraction, moved to the city from the village of St. Mary Bourne only shortly before his election in 1449; and Wryther had previously lived in New Shoreham, and was again to make Sussex his home shortly after his final return for Winchester in 1437.

Winchester continued to be an important regional market, especially for cloth, grain and fish, so it is not surprising that merchants and tradesmen predominated in the parliamentary representation of the city, with 19 out of the 24 MPs having interests in trade. In the late fourteenth century Winchester had been one of the great clothing towns of England, and wide varieties of cloth were made, bought and sold there. Although the general decline in exports in the second decade of the fifteenth century had a serious effect locally, those engaged in the cloth trade continued to be prominent in civic affairs for some time longer, and the principal trading concern of at least ten of our MPs appears to have been cloth. The most prominent members of this group were Richard Bolt, the son of a dyer who had acquired the business interests of two artisan fulling families, and Turnaunt, a leading fuller and entrepreneur with mercantile contacts in the capital. John Parker IV was also a fuller, and Parys may have been a dyer. However, the election to Parliament of John Hambury, a member of the weaver’s guild, was more out of the ordinary, as the weavers of Winchester occupied a relatively subordinate position in the cloth-manufacturing hierarchy, and very few of them came to prominence in civic affairs. By the 1430s the fullers were experiencing economic difficulties, and in the following decades the local fulling mills gradually ceased to function. Perhaps this change is reflected in the city’s parliamentary representation, with the gradual introduction of merchants with more diverse interests, such as grocers, who dealt in a wide variety of goods besides spices, including dyestuffs, cloth and iron. General traders of this sort included William Mathew (returned in 1425), who was a chandler, James Solas (1435) a fishmonger, Tremayne (1449) a chapman, and Thomas Sylvester (1455), who traded in foodstuffs and wine. Some of the MPs extended their interests overseas. For instance, Thomas Dunster and Thomas Gardener imported wine and hides and exported grain through Southampton; Fromond helped to victual the English forces and garrisons in France; and Wryther regularly shipped goods along the Sussex coast, using both Shoreham and Southampton as ports of call. Exporters of cloth not infrequently became involved in the reciprocal trade in wine, and were numbered among the wealthiest members of the community, although most of the wine sold in Winchester was probably purchased at the quaysides of Southampton from the alien merchants who had imported it rather than directly from the producers in France.16 Keene, 262-3, 269, 297-308.

The five MPs (John Bye, Robert Colpays, John Moule, Henry Smart and William Wood) who were not engaged in trade were probably all lawyers by training, and were employed by the civic authorities for their legal counsel. Wood was recorder of Winchester when returned to five Parliaments from 1413 to 1420, and Bye most likely succeeded him in office before his election, as Wood’s companion, in 1422.17 Winchester again returned its recorder, John Hammond†, to the Parls. of Edw. IV and Hen. VII. Colpays, who had been educated at Winchester College, practised as an attorney in the local and central courts, being retained not only by his old school but also by the borough of Southampton and a number of the religious houses of Hampshire. Yet whatever their evident capabilities, the lawyers by no means dominated the representation of the city. On only one occasion, in 1422, were both of Winchester’s MPs members of this profession, and in no more than seven other Parliaments did a lawyer accompany a merchant or other tradesman to the Commons.18 This continued the practice of earlier times, although in seven of the 11 Parls. between 1413 and 1422 one seat was taken by a member of the legal profession: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 427. The most usual combination, elected to perhaps ten Parliaments, was two merchants.

Winchester’s MPs were drawn from the more prosperous inhabitants of the city. This is clear from the list of contributors to a parliamentary subsidy collected in Winchester in 1430, which includes the names of 15 of them and the widow of another.19 Keene, 406, 408-9. The highest amount paid (by two individuals, one of whom was Turnaunt) was 50s., while Wryther contributed 40s., three other men 20s. each, and two including Bolt 16s. 8d. Of the 463 people taxed on this occasion only 68 paid 5s. or more, and all save two of the MPs (Moule and John Veel) were among that group. Turnaunt and Wryther evidently also accumulated substantial resources outside Winchester, and the former died leaving cash bequests amounting to more than £456. Wryther held land in Hampshire valued at £5 p.a. in the tax assessments of 1436, while the lawyer Smart, who had not figured in the Winchester list of 1430, was similarly assessed in the county on an annual income of £7.

Parliamentary representatives were generally selected from the body of the ‘Twenty-four’, the elected and sworn advisers of the mayor, who were often described as his peers. This body seems to have played little part in the day-to-day workings of city government, but formed a distinct group of citizens who weilded authority. Citizens who enjoyed the franchise but were not of the 24 formed a much larger group known as the ‘commons’. The two bodies shared in the election of the mayor and the two bailiffs (one being drawn from each group).20 Ibid. 75. Seventeen of the MPs belonged to the ‘Twenty-four’ when they were returned to Parliament; the remaining seven, who included the lawyers Colpays and Smart, belonged to the ‘commons’. It may have happened once (in 1431) that two members of the ‘commons’ were elected together, but in ten Parliaments both MPs came from the 24, and in the rest (seven Parliaments) the two bodies were equally represented. With two exceptions, the MPs for Winchester all held local office in the city, and participated in its administration in some way before they were elected to the Commons. The exceptions were John Grenefeld I, who had purchased an exemption from office a few years before his return in 1445, and Hambury the weaver, who appears, however, to have filled a now undocumented position in city government before his election in 1447. Of the rest, eight are known to have occupied such posts as alderman, bagman, sergeant or chamberlain, and of these only two (Dunster and Moule) failed to progress to the more honorofic offices of bailiff of the commons, bailiff of the 24 and mayor (in Moule’s case because he was given an exemption on the understanding that he would serve instead as warden of the local fraternity of St. John the Baptist). Ten MPs officiated as bailiff of the commons, of whom five went on to occupy the higher bailiffship; and five others passed over the lower rungs of the ladder of office to appear only as bailiffs of the 24. Three MPs gained exemption from lesser offices but nevertheless accepted election to the mayoralty.

Altogether ten of the 24 MPs were chosen mayor at some stage in their careers, and seven of them served more than one term. (Indeed, Parys was unique among Winchester’s mayors in the fifteenth century for holding office for two consecutive years). Even so, it is clear that as only five MPs had been elected mayor before their first returns to Parliament, parliamentary service ranked lower in importance in the natural progression up the civic heirarchy. Furthermore, the citizens were reluctant to spare officials from their duties at home to attend Parliaments, and only occasionally were men currently holding civic posts returned: the recorder (Bye) in 1422, the bailiff of the commons (Mathew) in 1425, the mayor (Wryther) in 1432 and the warden of St. John’s (Moule) in February 1449.

Sometimes the citizens chose to represent them men currently occupying the royal office of alnager in the city and the wider county of Hampshire, doing so in 1422 (Wood), 1423 (Wood and his joint alnager Veel), 1435 and 1437 (Wryther on both occasions). This in itself reflects on the importance of the clothing industry to the local economy. Alnagers apart, only a very few of the MPs ever served the Crown in an official capacity. Wood was placed on ad hoc commissions in Hampshire only after his parliamentary career had ended, and similarly it was only at the close of his career that Bye was made a tax collector. Exceptionally, Smart’s appointment to a commission of inquiry (into responsibility for the upkeep of Winchester gaol) predated his appearance in the Commons.

Winchester’s ‘Black Book’ records that the city’s election to the final Parliament of Henry IV’s reign (that of February 1413) was held (on 7 Jan.) in the ‘burghmote’ and ‘per maiorem et ballivos necnon per totam communitatem eiusdem civitatis’.21 Black Bk. Winchester, 17. If this is taken to mean that only freemen of the city elected MPs the franchise can have numbered no more than 200. It might be presumed that elections were always conducted as described in 1413, but the returns sent to Chancery in the fifteenth century do nothing to illuminate the electoral process further. For the most part Winchester’s MPs and their sureties were merely recorded in endorsements to the writs of summons directed to the sheriff of Hampshire, or else on schedules accompanying the indentures for the knights of the shire (drawn up at the county court held in Winchester castle). In 1415 and from 1420 to 1431 the sheriff included the names of the representatives of the three parliamentary boroughs in his bailiwick on the same document as the shire indenture, in terms suggesting that both shire and borough elections had taken place in the county court.22 C219/11/7; 12/4-6; 13/1-5; 14/1. Yet this was clearly not the case, for on 12 occasions between 1395 and 1455 the sheriff expressly noted that he had sent a precept to the bailiffs of Winchester to hold elections in the city, and the actual responses of the bailiffs were sent to Chancery. In Henry VI’s reign, responses of this kind survive for the Parliaments of 1432, 1442, 1449 (Nov.), 1450 and 1455,23 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 426; C219/14/3; 15/2, 7; 16/1, 3. but they are uninformative, recording no additional facts other than the names of the bailiffs.

Few of the MPs for Winchester were ever named among the attestors to the indentures for the knights of the shire, but it is worthy of remark that Bolt, Bye and Wood were so listed in 1419, 1422 and 1423 on the occasions of their respective returns for the city.