Hertfordshire

There were few natural boundaries between Hertfordshire, a small county well suited to arable farming, and neighbouring Essex, Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. Its proximity to London and Westminster ensured that it attracted a steady stream of immigrants, among them servants of the royal household, bureaucrats of central government departments and lawyers. The Crown possessed important interests in Hertfordshire, including the castle, manor and honour of Berkhampstead and the manor of King’s Langley in the west of the county, the castle, honour and manor of Hertford in the east and other manors belonging to the duchy of Lancaster. At various stages in the period under review, successive Lancastrian queens, Joan of Navarre, Katherine of Valois and Margaret of Anjou held one or more of these lordships in dower or dowry. Apart from the Crown, the other chief influence in Hertfordshire was the great Benedictine abbey of St. Albans. In general, the lay aristocracy were relatively unimportant, holding less sway there than they did in Essex, with which the county shared its sheriff and escheator.3 A. Wade, ‘Parlty. Repn. Essex and Herts. 1377-1422’ (Manchester Univ. M.A. thesis, 1967), 2, 4, 6-7, 17-18; VCH Herts. ii. 166, 236; iii. 59, 82, 228, 319, 339-40, 502; PROME, xi. 479; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 443-4.

Unavoidably, any analysis of the parliamentary representation of Hertfordshire in Henry VI’s reign rests on incomplete evidence. Four of the election returns, those to the Parliaments of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460, are now lost, although the fine rolls provide the names of those elected as its knights of the shire in 1439 and 1445. This leaves us with the names of 29 men known to have sat for Hertfordshire in the years 1422-61, a total, although incomplete, which is significantly higher than that for neighbouring Essex, which returned no more than 17 or 18 men to the Commons in the same period.4 The name of just one of Essex’s knights of the shire, the associate of John Green III* in the Parl. of 1460, is unknown: either this unidentified MP was one of the 17 or an 18th man sitting in the Commons for the first time.

The proximity of Hertfordshire to London and Westminster prompted a significant number of outsiders to invest in land there and it quickly absorbed newcomers. Just 13 of the MPs were either certainly natives of Hertfordshire or born into families with estates in the county.5 Bardolf, John and Henry Barley, Baud, Butler, Chyvall, Cressy, Gray, Hotoft, Robert Leventhorpe, Newport, Poultney and Thornbury. But it is possible that Hotoft was also an outsider and that Kirkby and Paule should be included among those who were native to the county. While John Tyrell came from Essex and Robert Whittingham from London, others came from much further away: Ralph Astley from Warwickshire, William Flete from Lincolnshire, Sir William Oldhall from Norfolk, Sir Robert Wingfield from Suffolk and Sir John Montgomery from Wales. John Troutbeck and perhaps Nicholas Morley were from the north-west, John Leventhorpe was the son of a Yorkshire landowner and spent his early life in that county, and it is possible that Thomas Brocket and John Clay were likewise of northern stock. The family backgrounds of John Say and Bartholomew Halley (perhaps from Bedfordshire and the east Midlands respectively) are obscure. Both owed their rise to their association with the Crown, and Halley, who acknowledged that it had ‘liked’ the King ‘to make him Squier’, was probably of lowly origin. In landed terms, Wingfield’s connexions with Hertfordshire were the most tenuous, since his only known interest there was a relatively brief tenancy of the duke of Norfolk’s manor at Weston by Baldock, which he no longer held when returned to Parliament in 1449. The Wingfield estates were concentrated in Suffolk, and most, if not all, of his fellow MPs held at least some real property outside Hertfordshire, mainly in south-east England and East Anglia.6 Possibly only Bardolf did not hold any lands outside the county. Paule, another of the lesser figures among the 29, probably owned some property in neighbouring Beds., even if the rest of his estates lay in Herts. Two obvious exceptions are Troutbeck and Philip Butler. The former owned lands in Cheshire and other counties bordering Wales, the Welsh marches and south-west England, while the latter’s estates included holdings in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Wiltshire and several Midlands counties.

Whether they were natives of Hertfordshire or newcomers, most of the MPs were very much members of the county’s political elite. Just over half of them were related to other parliamentarians, whether representatives for Hertfordshire or other constituencies. The Leventhorpes and the Barleys are not the only examples of successive generations from the same family sitting for the county, for the fathers of William Newport and Thomas Poultney represented it in the early fifteenth century. Even though recently settled in Hertfordshire, the Leventhorpes also provided one of the county’s knights of the shire in 1467, in the person of Thomas Leventhorpe†. Among those MPs from well-established local families, Thomas Baud was a grandson of William Baud†, Morley married a grand-daughter of Sir Robert Turk† and both John Barley and Newport were maternal grandsons of Sir Walter Lee†, who sat for Hertfordshire in no fewer than 11 Parliaments. There were plenty of other parliamentary links among the 29. Robert Whittingham married a daughter of Richard Buckland*, a knight of the shire for Northamptonshire in 1425 and 1431, and was himself the father of Robert Whittingham II* who sat for Buckinghamshire in the Parliament of 1453. Tyrell had connexions through blood and marriage to several other MPs, including two of his brothers and three of his sons, although none of the latter five sat for Hertfordshire. Wingfield, the maternal grandson of Sir John Russell†, was in turn the father of three other MPs and the father-in-law of a fourth.. Montgomery’s wife was the daughter of a knight of the shire for Gloucestershire and the widow of both William Heron†, Lord Say, and John Norbury†, the latter of whom sat for Hertfordshire in 1391. Montgomery himself was the father of two MPs, John* and Sir Thomas†, and the stepfather of Sir Henry Norbury* who owned a residence at Cheshunt. Butler was the ward of (Sir) Hugh Willoughby*, the stepson of Laurence Cheyne* and the brother-in-law of John Say. Say’s first wife, Elizabeth, was the daughter of Laurence Cheyne and the sister of John Cheyne II*, and she bore him a son and heir, William Say†, who twice sat for Hertfordshire in Henry VII’s reign. His second, Agnes, was at one time married to John Fray†, who represented the county in the Parliaments of 1419 and 1420. Sir William Oldhall was the son of a knight of the shire for Norfolk and Clay married a grand-daughter of Sir Thomas Gresley†, a match through which he became the brother-in-law of Thomas Astley*.

A career soldier, Clay entered Parliament as a veteran of the Hundred Years’ War, as did Sir John Cressy, Montgomery and Oldhall, and disgust with the government’s failures in France probably played a part in the choice of Oldhall as Speaker in 1450, even though he was a newcomer to the Commons. Montgomery and Oldhall had acquired substantial estates across the Channel through their participation in the war, and the loss of Oldhall’s French lands had important ramifications for his political career, since it strengthened his allegiance to Richard, duke of York, the leading critic of the way the war had been handled. At least seven of the other MPs also served in France before representing Hertfordshire in Parliament.7 Chyvall, Kirkby, Robert Leventhorpe, Morley, Poultney, Thornbury and Wingfield. Two others, Tyrell and Whittingham, appear not to have campaigned there until after they had sat for Herts., and it is possible that both Hotoft (who certainly campaigned in Wales in the early 15th century) and Baud likewise saw service in France. As the dubbings gained by several of the soldiers indicate, knighthood retained its military connotations. Yet only five of the MPs sat for Hertfordshire as belted knights, a continuation of the decline in knightly numbers among the county’s parliamentary representatives that had set in over a decade before 1422.8 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 439-40. It is very likely that Oldhall won his knighthood on the field of Cravant, the Anglo-Burgundian victory of July 1423. Wingfield received his at Leicester, where Parliament was then sitting, in May 1426, not long after participating in his first known French campaign.

Only two of the known MPs for Hertfordshire in the years 1386-1421 were certainly lawyers but it is possible that a couple more, John Leventhorpe and John Hotoft, both of whom also sat for the county during the period under review, were likewise members of the legal profession. Among the 29, Ralph Gray and Astley are the only definite lawyers although, like Hotoft and Leventhorpe, it may well be that Brocket, John Kirkby and Tyrell had received some sort of legal training. It is therefore conceivable that Henry VI’s reign witnessed an increase in the proportion of lawyers representing the county in comparison with the decades immediately preceding 1422. Of course, those MPs not formally educated in the law must have acquired a considerable working knowledge of it through their service on the commission of the peace and other county commissions. Two of the 29, Flete and Whittingham, were of mercantile background and had risen into landed society through their success in business. None of the other MPs was as closely involved in trade, even if Poultney was descended from a prominent fourteenth-century merchant and Oldhall took part in trading ventures when the opportunity arose.

Whatever their backgrounds or sources of their wealth, most of the MPs were substantial landowners. For the purposes of the income tax of 1436, Tyrell was assessed at no less than £396 p.a. in lands and fees (making him the wealthiest non-baronial proprietor in his home county of Essex), Montgomery at £310, Oldhall at £215 3s. 4d., Baud at £90, Whittingham at £67 and Kirkby and Brocket at £40 each, probably all underestimates. According to his assessment for the subsidy of 1450-1, Oldhall’s landed income had by then risen to £369 p.a., again probably another underestimate. For lack of similar assessments, the landed wealth of others of the MPs is harder to estimate, although Flete was certainly a very wealthy landowner and John Barley (whose holdings descended to his son Henry), Butler, Hotoft, Poultney and Sir Philip Thornbury enjoyed incomes well in excess of £100 p.a. from their real property. Newport’s inheritance brought in at least £82 p.a. (and perhaps far more) and Clay may have died in possession of lands worth some £200 p.a. There is also no doubt that Astley, Cressy, the Leventhorpes, Morley, Troutbeck and Wingfield possessed substantial estates. While it is impossible to calculate the income that Say derived from his lands when representing Hertfordshire in the Parliaments of 1453 and 1455, it is worth noting that he possessed the resources to lend no less than £200 to the Crown soon after the second of these assemblies opened. Edmund Bardolf, John Chyvall (assessed at a mere £20 p.a. in lands for the purposes of the subsidy of 1436), Gray, Halley and Peter Paule were less important landowners, although Halley enjoyed a considerable income from his grants and fees from the King and Gray supplemented his landed revenue with his earnings as a lawyer. Of course, those MPs who inherited lands did not necessarily come immediately into their own upon succeeding their fathers. Butler, for example, predeceased his mother, who retained three of his manors by right of jointure and another in dower. It is also possible that their mothers’ longevity meant that Newport and Henry Barley did not possess all their family estates until well after succeeding their respective fathers.

Administrative experience was not a sine qua non for prospective knights of the shire for Hertfordshire, although there is no evidence that any of the 29 sat at a particularly tender age. Poultney and Robert Leventhorpe appear not to have served in local government at all, and a majority of the MPs had yet to hold office under the Crown in Hertfordshire when elected to their first or only Parliaments as its knights of the shire, even if a few of them had already exercised such responsibilities in other counties. Most of those who became sheriff or escheator of Essex and Hertfordshire did not do so until after sitting in at least one Parliament, but ten of the 29 gained election to one or more Parliaments while serving on the commission of the peace for Hertfordshire, and another three became j.p.s for the county while representing it in the Commons. Of particular interest is Tyrell’s status as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk when he stood for the Parliament of 1427, since his return breached the prohibition against electing sheriffs to the Commons, even though he was exercising his shrievalty elsewhere. It is also worth noting the pricking of Butler as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in 1450, even though he was then a knight of the shire for the latter county.

Just one of the MPs, John Leventhorpe, certainly gained election to the Commons while holding office on Crown lands in Hertfordshire. From shortly before the accession of Henry VI until his death in 1435, he was steward of the duchy of Lancaster’s holdings in the county and neighbouring Essex. It is nevertheless very likely that Halley was still keeper, controller and under parker of the royal park at King’s Langley, positions to which he had received an appointment in 1437, when he sat for Hertfordshire in 1449 and 1453. Like some of their fellow MPs, he and Leventhorpe also held other offices under the Crown at a local level, whether in the administration of the duchy of Lancaster or otherwise, before entering the Commons for the first (or only) time.

Leventhorpe was a stalwart supporter of the Lancastrian regime, and Chyvall, Hotoft, Montgomery, Morley, Say, Troutbeck, Tyrell and Wingfield also sat for Hertfordshire in one or more Parliaments while enjoying close associations with the Court, if not in all cases actual membership of the Household. Two other MPs, Thornbury and Whittingham, may likewise have already possessed close links with the Lancastrian regime when elected to the Commons. An association with the Court could play a significant part at elections, as demonstrated by the returns in 1449 of Halley and Chyvall, two Household servants who were not of the first rank of Hertfordshire gentry, and of Say in 1453. There was nothing new about such connexions, since a high proportion of Crown servants and annuitants had represented the county in the three and half decades before 1422, a phenomenon arising from its proximity to the Court and the central government at Westminster. These connexions also reflected a long local tradition of loyalty to the house of Lancaster,9 Ibid. 440-1. as did the election of John Leventhorpe and Hotoft to the first Parliament following the accession of the infant Henry VI.

A nationally important figure, Leventhorpe began his career in the service of Henry Bolingbroke, earl of Derby. He attained high office in the duchy of Lancaster at a national level after his patron seized the throne in 1399, and both Henry IV and Henry V named him as one of their executors. Hotoft enjoyed similarly close associations with the Lancastrian monarchy, for he was previously controller of the household of Henry, prince of Wales, the future Henry V, and would subsequently serve Henry VI as treasurer of the Household and a chamberlain of the Exchequer. Tyrell was another who held the former office under Henry VI, and later in his career he served as chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster north of the Trent and as a member of Henry’s council in France. Shortly after sitting in the Parliament of 1432, Whittingham received an appointment as receiver-general of another important royal institution, the duchy of Cornwall, while Say was chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster when elected to the Parliaments of 1453 and 1455. He was also keeper of the privy palace at Westminster, and a royal councillor by the time of his return to the latter assembly, if not earlier, and had served as a member of the delegation sent to France in the previous decade to negotiate the King’s marriage. Montgomery, Oldhall and Whittingham also served on diplomatic missions abroad but only Oldhall did so before entering Parliament, about a decade before he formed his attachment with York.

Of course, prominence at a national level could have its dangers in times of political crisis. Pronounced as traitors by those who rose in support of Jack Cade in the summer of 1450, Halley and Say were among the King’s servants denounced in the Parliament that opened later that year. Their ties with the Crown exposed them to other physical risks, since Say was probably with Henry VI at the first battle of St. Albans in 1455 and Halley is likely to have accompanied the King to the battle of Northampton five years later. On the other side of the political divide, Oldhall enjoyed considerable public prominence through his association with the duke of York. It gave him an influence over national events possessed by few of his contemporaries among the gentry, including those who enjoyed much more extensive parliamentary careers, but it also ensured that he twice suffered attainder in the latter stages of his career as well as a spell of imprisonment shortly before he died.

There is no doubt that Oldhall’s association with York played a major part in his return to the Parliament of 1450, and his election as the Commons’ Speaker. Another of York’s followers, Clay, who would suffer attainder with that lord in 1459, must have owed much to the duke for his election in 1455. Similarly, it is likely that Tyrell’s association with Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle and Protector of England, allowed his irregular return to the Parliament of 1427 and his subsequent appointment as Speaker. As already noted, however, Hertfordshire was not a county where great magnates held particular sway, and, after the Crown, the great abbey of St. Albans was one of the more dominant influences. Hotoft, Halley and Chyvall had particularly close links with the monks of St. Albans, but the relationship between the abbey and such men was not always simply that of patron and client. Sometimes the abbot looked to the local gentry for help in advancing the interests of the monastery, and Abbot John Whethamstede made a point of cultivating the friendship of the influential Hotoft. The monks admitted him to the fraternity of the chapter of St. Albans and, in return, he proved a generous benefactor and useful adviser to them. Halley was another of the monks’ good friends, and he helped to secure an amendment to a bill inimical to their interests during the Parliament of 1453. In the case of Chyvall, the relationship was probably more one-sided. A feudal tenant of the abbey, he was from a family with a long tradition of service to the abbots, and he may have owed his earliest advancement to Whethamstede. Flete, Cressy and Troutbeck also had dealings with St. Albans before sitting for Hertfordshire in the Commons, but it is impossible to prove that any of them enjoyed the abbey’s support while standing for Parliament. In any case, relations between the irascible Flete and the monks were often extremely bad.

In spite of the relatively high number of men who sat for Hertfordshire in Henry VI’s reign, the county enjoyed considerable continuity in its parliamentary representation. In only three Parliaments, those of 1431, 1435 and 1439, were both MPs apparently newcomers to the Commons, although it is of course possible that none of the unknown Members of 1459 and 1460 had sat previously. Tyrell was easily the most experienced of the 29. During a parliamentary career spanning just over a quarter of a century, he sat in no fewer than 13 Parliaments, but he was a knight of the shire for Essex in all but one of these assemblies. Hotoft, Morley and Say all gained election to the Commons on at least seven occasions, although only Hotoft sat exclusively for Hertfordshire.10 Morley sat for Bramber in 1453, New Shoreham in 1460 and East Grinstead in 1467, and Say for Cambs. in Feb. 1449 and Tavistock in 1472. Wingfield was five times a knight of the shire, once for Hertfordshire and on every other occasion for his native Suffolk. Both Flete and Troutbeck sat in at least four Parliaments: Hertfordshire was the only constituency Flete certainly represented but Troutbeck also sat for the boroughs of Hindon and Weymouth. Of the other MPs who were returned to more than one Parliament, Halley, Kirkby, John Leventhorpe and Thornbury sat in three and Butler, Newport and Whittingham in two, although Halley began his parliamentary career as a burgess for Chipping Wycombe and Whittingham as a Member for the city of London. Whittingham sat for London some considerable time before gaining election for Hertfordshire, since he was one of its MPs in the autumn of 1416, and John Barley, Flete, Hotoft, Kirkby, John Leventhorpe, Thornbury and Tyrell also began their parliamentary careers before 1422. Only Morley and Say were certainly MPs after the period under review, although the evidence for Hertfordshire’s elections to the Parliaments of Edward IV’s reign is particularly scanty. Like Tyrell and Oldhall, Say served as Speaker of the Commons, an office he had already held (while a knight of the shire for Cambridgeshire) when first elected for Hertfordshire in 1453. Afterwards, he was twice Speaker while sitting for the latter county in Edward IV’s reign.

Elections for Hertfordshire took place at the county court, normally on a Thursday.11 But the election to the Parl. of 1433 occurred on a Friday. Hertford was the usual venue, although the return of the knights of the shire to the Parliaments of 1422, 1432, November 1449 and 1450 occurred at Cheshunt. The number of attestors varied quite widely, from as few as 13 in 1453 to as many as 62 in 1435 and 100 in 1437. The low turn-out for 1453 suggests an election that was little more than a rubber-stamping exercise. At the summoning of that Parliament the King and his principal adviser, the duke of Somerset, enjoyed the political ascendancy and the fortunes of Richard, duke of York, the main opponent of the Court, were in decline. A considerable number of Household men, including Halley and Say, sat in the Commons, and afterwards there were complaints that the authorities had not allowed free elections of the knights of the shire.12 J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 136-7; Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 139-40. The unusually high numbers of attestors in 1435 and 1437 is not so easy to explain. If they signify contested elections, the contests in question probably related to internal rivalries among the gentry of the county rather than to national politics. None of the three men who sat for Hertfordshire in 1435 and 1437, Astley, Brocket and Morley (the last of whom was returned to both Parliaments), was associated with either of the then dominant – and rival – figures at the centre of power, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Cardinal Beaufort. Morley did acquire a degree of prominence as a member of the Household during his career, although it is far from certain that he became one of the King’s men before first entering Parliament. As already noted, Clay probably owed his election in 1455 to his connexion with the duke of York. The Parliament of that year met when the duke was in the political ascendancy although, as illustrated by the return of the Household man, Say, alongside Clay, Yorkist dominance was far from total.