Rochester

Situated on a bend of the Medway where Watling Street crossed that river, Rochester dated back to the time of the Romans who built the first bridge across the river between it and Strood. It was also one of the earliest English cathedral cities: shortly after his conversion to Christianity, King Ethelbert of Kent built a church there and it was one of the first episcopal sees created by St. Augustine in 604. While Rochester was the second largest urban settlement in Kent, its population, estimated at 855 in 1377, was less than a quarter of that of Canterbury at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Apparently not a wealthy city in the later Middle Ages, what prosperity Rochester enjoyed derived mainly from the trade and traffic passing through it as a major thoroughfare between London on the one hand and Canterbury and the Channel coast on the other. As such, it played host to important visitors like the unfortunate French ambassadors who stayed there in 1445. Their sojourn, by order of the Crown, which instructed them to wait at Rochester until the King was ready to receive them at Westminster, was an unpleasant one. They found the city infected with pestilence and lacking in clean water for themselves and their horses, and a local ostler and his wife robbed them of some of their belongings.1 F.F. Smith, Rochester, 9-25; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, i. 93-95; KB9/252/1, m. 82.

Thanks to its location, Rochester possessed a strategic importance and was the site of a Norman castle. Although Edward III extensively rebuilt the castle in the late 1360s, gunpowder had rendered it largely obsolete for military purposes by the first decades of the fifteenth century, and the Lancastrian Kings, while ensuring its upkeep, did not attempt to modernise its defences.2 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 462; R. Allen Brown, Rochester Castle; CPR, 1446-52, p. 570. More significantly, Rochester bridge dominated the economic, and to some extent political, life of the city. It was also of wider importance during the Hundred Years’ War, given that it lay on a major route for the transport of men and materials to France. In Richard II’s reign, following the collapse of the previous wooden structure, the citizens built a new stone bridge. This, however, required constant maintenance. During the fifteenth century, there were several occasions when parts of the bridge threatened to collapse or indeed gave way. In 1445, for example, a section failed completely, rendering the bridge unusable for several months. The administration of the bridge on a day-to-day basis devolved upon its two wardens. They oversaw revenue and expenditure, organized the teams of workmen constantly employed on its upkeep, and supervised a small body of permanent staff, including a clerk of the bridge, three chaplains serving its chapel, a master of the boats and a collector of rents from the bridge’s properties in London. While the day-to-day administrators of the bridge, who included several of Rochester’s MPs, were typically men of non-armigerous rank, its governors or ‘commonalty’ were a more amorphous body. This was especially the case in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries when leading members of Kentish society took the lead in the building and funding of the new structure, the oversight of the wardens’ activities and the promotion of the bridge’s interests to the King. Successive archbishops of Canterbury also often played a leading role in its administration, particularly in the second half of the fifteenth century.3 Traffic and Politics ed. Yates and Gibson, 43-73, 75, 92-106; CPR, 1408-13, pp. 173, 276, 293-4.

Traditionally, the cost of the bridge’s upkeep had fallen upon those ‘persons, towns, places and districts’ with an ancient obligation to maintain it. Following the construction of the new bridge, however, customary payments from these sources quickly proved inadequate. From the late fourteenth century until the mid 1440s, the commonalty of the bridge acquired grants of land in mortmain to supplement its income, and proving that these acquisitions were not to the prejudice of the Crown was a constant task assigned to the bridge’s legal counsel. In 1438-9, for example, Henry Hickes obtained a favourable verdict in an inquisition ad quod damnum relating to the bridge’s property in Rochester, Grain, Walshes (in Frindsbury) and Little Delce. The steady accumulation of property in the first decades of the fifteenth century ensured a rise in the bridge’s annual income, from an average of below £50 in the 1390s to over £200 in the 1440s. By the 1460s, however, declining rents had seen it fall to an average of just over £100.4 Traffic and Politics, 43, 51-52, 76; CPR, 1391-6, p. 550; 1396-9, pp. 454, 488; 1399-1401, pp. 127, 257, 277-8; 1401-5, pp. 22, 398; 1408-13, pp. 293-4, 1436-41, p. 570; Rochester Bridge Trust, wardens’ accts. 1438-9, F 1/41.

By virtue of their charter of 1227, confirmed in 1266, 1331, 1378, 1410 and 1414, the citizens of Rochester held the city from the Crown at a fee farm of £12 p.a. Their charters gave them the right to have a guild merchant and freedom from intervention from the sheriff of Kent, meaning that the city’s principal officer, the bailiff, could make returns of writs. The city received two further royal charters during the period under review. The first, dated 14 July 1438, simply recited and confirmed the two charters of Henry III, but the second, of 1 June 1446, was an entirely new grant. As well as confirming existing liberties, it redefined the boundaries of the city to include parts of the Medway, and set the Monday after Michaelmas as the date for the annual election of the bailiff. It also ruled that prospective bailiffs should come from the ‘discreet’ freemen of the city while not excluding innkeepers or victuallers from the office, notwithstanding any statutes or ordinances to the contrary, a good illustration of the importance of occupations providing services for the city’s economy. With the assent of the commonalty, the bailiff was to appoint the principal civic officials, including a coroner, and no Crown officers in the county were to have any jurisdiction within the city. The bailiff was to preside over a view of frankpledge twice a year, and to have the power to conduct an admiralty court with jurisdiction over the ‘water of the Medway’ from Sheerness to Hawkwood. The citizens also received the right to host an annual fair, beginning on 18 May and lasting for three days, and to hold a court of pie-powder.5 P.H. Bartlett, City of Rochester Chs. 27-30; CChR, vi. 2-4, 61-64. Owing to the loss of records, little evidence survives to illuminate the exercise of these privileges and the internal government of the city, but a council must have assisted the bailiff in his duties. Shortly after the period under review, Edward IV’s charter to the city (dated 14 Dec. 1461) changed his title to that of mayor.6 Bartlett, 31-33; CChR, vi. 176-80.

Like other urban communities, later medieval Rochester witnessed its share of jurisdictional disputes between its lay inhabitants and a leading local religious house, in this case the cathedral priory of St. Andrew. The charter of 1446 must have strengthened the city’s position vis-à-vis the priory and probably led directly to a settlement promulgated two years later. On 7 Dec. 1448, in the presence of Bishop Low of Rochester, John Nicoll, the bailiff of the city, and John Clyf, the prior of St. Andrew’s, were party to an indenture that promised to bring harmony. The agreement confirmed the bailiff’s right to collect fines in the city, with the exception of the ecclesiastical manor of Borstall. It also extended his jurisdiction to all tenants and servants of the priory living within the city, although he was not to exercise it inside the cathedral precincts. For his part, the bishop agreed to allow the civic authorities to collect fines levied on citizens by his own courts, in return for an annual payment of 40s., and to share equally with it all forfeitures of goods in the city valued at more than 40s.7 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Rochester Diocese, bishops’ registers, Langdon DRb/Ar 1/8, ff. 10v-12v; Reg. Roffense ed. Thorpe, 575-7.

A far more direct and immediate crisis for Rochester than quarrels with the priory was triggered by Cade’s rebellion. Held in the third week of May 1450, the city’s annual fair may have provided a natural rallying point for the rebels. In the same week the passage through Rochester of the body of the murdered former chief minister of the King, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, on its way from Dover to London, offered further incitement to would-be troublemakers. On 8 June Cade’s host assembled outside Canterbury, where it was refused entry, but the authorities at Rochester were unable, or unwilling, to provide such stout resistance to the rebels, who presumably passed through or close to the city on their way to Blackheath. On 7 July, following a pitched battle with the Londoners on London Bridge, Cade and his followers began to return to Kent having received the offer of a royal pardon.8 I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 73-101. They entered Rochester on the way back, and on 10 July there was a large demonstration of support for the rebels there, for which at least one individual was later to suffer the penalties of treason.9 KB27/759, rex rot. 5. Cade left Rochester shortly afterwards, before royal commissioners arrived to take possession of his goods on 12 July. While the full dynamics of the rebellion within Rochester and the reaction to it of the city’s governing body are unclear, there was evidently some looting. Richard Bruyn*, for example, would afterwards receive a grant of £50 from Cade’s goods in recompense for belongings that the rebels had stolen from him there.10 E159/231, recorda, Mich. rot. 19d. It is not apparent whether the cancellation in the following year of the citizens’ right to hold an annual fair was a punishment for its actions during the rebellion or merely a prudent measure to prevent the outbreak of further trouble.11 E101/330/7; Harvey, 74. Most likely, it was the latter, given that the Crown did not impose any lasting sanctions on the city, that not many of its leading citizens felt it necessary to secure the pardon offered in the wake of the rebellion and that the King granted some of Cade’s possessions to the citizens for the repair of the Eastgate.12 Harvey, 100-1.

The names of 27 men who sat for Rochester in Henry VI’s Parliaments have survived although its representatives in those of 1439, 1445 and 1459, for which there are no extant returns, are completely unknown. As in the three and a half decades immediately before 1422,13 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 463. a clear majority of the MPs resided at Rochester or had some other local connexion when elected, but six of them (William Banbery, John Chester, James Hopwode, Stephen Knight, William Scott and Thomas Wigmore) appear never to have served in the administration of the city or the bridge. Outsiders or semi-outsiders played a greater role in the parliamentary representation of the city in the second half of Henry VI’s reign than in the first. It is possible that the increase in the return of such men arose from a reluctance to stand for Parliament on the part of established members of the civic elite, perhaps fearful of involvement in increasingly volatile national politics, especially after the shock of Cade’s rebellion, an episode that had so directly affected their city. Rochester’s comparative lack of wealth could provide another explanation, since outsiders or semi-outsiders with their own reasons for entering Parliament might have been prepared to forgo their expenses. John Chester, for example, is likely to have approached the civic authorities in search of a seat, given that he used the Parliament of 1449-50 to present a private petition of his own.

Whatever the origins and background of the 27, few came from families with a tradition of service in Parliament. Of those resident in the city, only John Gillingham came from an old Rochester family with a long parliamentary pedigree, although John Everard and John Nicoll were the sons-in-law of MPs. Of those who did not fall into that category, Scott was the son of a knight of the shire for Kent and the grandson of an MP for Hythe, one of the county’s Cinque Ports. Gillingham was perhaps the son of the William Gillingham† who had represented the city in the Commons of 1391 and grandson of William’s namesake who had done so in four previous Parliaments, while another probable ancestor, Thomas Gillingham†, had sat for Rochester in two Parliaments and as a knight of the shire for Kent in that of 1346.

By occupation, John Gillingham was an ‘ostler’ with an interest in one of the city’s inns, as also was Henry Hunt. Robert Doget, a brewer, was another who made his living in providing services to the constant stream of merchants, soldiers, pilgrims and other travellers passing through Rochester. At least four other MPs dealt in cloth: Nicoll was a mercer, as was John Potager at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign, and Thomas Cotyng and Richard Thornbury were drapers. Thornbury, who pursued a career in London after sitting in Parliament, would come to join the Drapers’ Company in the City. Potager later changed trades, for he was a chandler by the 1440s, and John Hochon was another who did not engage in a single occupation since although a ‘hackneyman’ he dealt in wool as well. Indeed, ‘hackneyman’ belies the extent of Hochon’s commercial interests, for he had business dealings in London and appears to have been a merchant of the Calais staple. Nor was Thornbury the only MP to become a member of a livery company in the capital, since William Beaufitz likewise followed a career in London, where he gained admission to that of the Fishmongers. As with that of ‘hackneyman’, the term ‘ostler’ might suggest a relatively humble figure; in reality, Gillingham and Henry Hunt were men of considerable local substance. Hunt’s elaborate will, for example, bears testimony to the prosperity he had achieved by the end of his life.

Of those MPs not primarily engaged in trade, lawyers were prominent in the representation of Rochester. Edmund Chertsey, John Deeping, Hickes, Hopwode, Thomas More and John Soneman were certainly lawyers, as perhaps also was Roland Sapurton, meaning that at least one lawyer sat for the city in no fewer than ten of the 19 Parliaments for which the names of the Members are known. The three and a half decades prior to the accession of Henry VI appear to present a very different picture, since Deeping (who first entered the Commons in Henry V’s reign) was the only one of the known MPs of that period who was certainly a lawyer.14 Ibid. Yet this stark contrast is possibly more apparent than real, since the lack of biographical information for many of these earlier Members may obscure the presence of other men of law among them.

Like others of that profession, the lawyers among the MPs enjoyed recognition as ‘gentlemen’. Furthermore, Chertsey was also sometimes styled ‘esquire’, Hickes further advanced his status by marrying well, since his wife was from a Kentish baronial family and the heir to a share of its inheritance, and Hopwode, the son of a Lancashire landowner, was of gentle birth. Others, not members of the legal profession, also enjoyed gentry status: Beaufitz and Knight were born into landed families from north Kent, Scott was a Kentish esquire and Chester a royal herald. What is more, at least one of the resident citizens among the 27, Gillingham, appears as a ‘gentleman’ in a lawsuit that coincided with his third known Parliament, that of 1433.

Whatever their occupations, the lack of evidence makes it impossible to estimate the MPs’ incomes, whether derived from land, the law or commerce. There is no doubt that Scott, who died possessed of estates in Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex, but not Kent, was the most substantial landowner among them. Where known, the holdings of others of the 27 lay predominantly in Kent or elsewhere in south-east England, although Hopwode did inherit some land in his native Lancashire. Two others, John Bere and Beaufitz, benefited from the annuities, grants and fees that came their way as royal servants (although the latter’s connexion with the Household appears to have post-dated his time in Parliament by quite some years), while Chester would have enjoyed an income from the fees he received as a herald.

One might assume that those MPs who were primarily resident citizens were more engaged in the administration of Rochester than some of their fellows. Owing to the loss of the city’s medieval archives, however, it is impossible to determine the composition of its elite or compile a list of office-holders, and only chance references identify those who attained the position of bailiff. By contrast, evidence for involvement in the administration of the bridge is more plentiful. As a result, it is unclear where parliamentary service usually ranked in the cursus honorum of those citizens who served in both the government of the city and Parliament. Six of the MPs, Chertsey, Cotyng, Doget, Hochon, Nicoll and Potager, certainly became bailiff, but it is very likely that others among the 27 did so as well. Of the known bailiffs, Cotyng, Chertsey and Nicoll attained the office before sitting the Commons, and it was during a subsequent term as bailiff that Nicoll gained election to his second known Parliament. Two of the bailiffs, Chertsey and Doget, would also later serve as mayor following the change in title of the city’s chief officer shortly after the period under review, as would Hunt. At a lowlier level, Geoffrey Langley was a constable in Rochester in 1418-19.

It is thanks to the survival of financial accounts for the bridge that it is possible to detect an apparent link between involvement in its affairs and parliamentary service. In at least ten of the 19 Parliaments for which the names of the MPs are known, one or both Members certainly had a connexion with the running of the bridge at the time of their election. Most important were the lawyers, whether they gave their counsel as attorneys formally retained by the bridge or on a more ad hoc basis. Deeping was certainly clerk of the bridge when he sat in the Parliaments of 1429, 1432 and 1433, and he probably already held the office at his return to that of 1423. Chertsey, Soneman and the putative man of law, Sapurton, had already become involved in the administration of the bridge when they first entered Parliament, as perhaps had Hickes and More, two other lawyers who played a part in its affairs. Of the non-lawyers, Hochon and Hunt were wardens of the bridge when returned in 1435 and 1450 respectively, while Beaufitz’s election in 1425 was probably also in its interests. Both Beaufitz’s father and brother were members of the bridge’s council and Thomas Langley, bishop of Durham, one of the bridge’s most important patrons, may have intervened in Rochester’s parliamentary election of that year.

Whatever the extent of their involvement in the administration of the city and bridge, several of the MPs held local government office outside Rochester by direct appointment of the Crown. Just a few years before his election in 1453, Knight served a particularly difficult term as escheator of Kent and Middlesex, since it coincided with Cade’s rebellion. Earlier, the lawyer Deeping was one of the coroners of Kent throughout that part of his parliamentary career that fell within the period under review, while Hickes, William Kenotte and Potager all served as tax collectors in the county, although not until after they had sat in Parliament. Just two of the MPs, Chertsey and Scott, served on ad hoc commissions in Kent during Henry VI’s reign, of whom only the latter did so before his election to the Commons. Chertsey may have owed his membership of the commission of inquiry in question to the fact that he was then bailiff of Rochester. Alone among the 27, Chertsey joined the commission of the peace in Kent, although not until over a decade after Edward IV had seized the throne. His fellow lawyer, Hopwode, also became a j.p., but in Derbyshire and, again, not until the reign of the first Yorkist King.

At least three of the MPs, Beaufitz, Bere and Knight, sat in the Commons as members of the royal household, and Chester, a servant of the Henry VI’s chamber in the later 1430s and earlier 1440s, was one of the King’s heralds when returned in 1449. Another, Scott, was a ‘King’s servant’ by 1440 but there is no evidence that he was ever formally part of the Household. While Beaufitz, Bere and Knight already had existing links with Rochester, their association with the Crown must have helped them to secure their seats. Shortly after his first known Parliament, Bere received the office of porter of Rochester castle during pleasure from the Crown, a grant replaced not long afterwards by a new one awarding it to him for life. By contrast, it is unclear what, if any, association Chester had with the city prior to his election to his only known Parliament. Given that he presented a private petition to that assembly, he may well have exploited his connexion with the Crown to engineer his return to the Commons. One of the Household men, Beaufitz, served the Crown at a national level, as did the lawyer, Hopwode, his fellow MP in the Parliament of 1425. Yet he did not become a deputy of the chief butler of England and then, later still, the joint chirographer of the court of common pleas, until long after his parliamentary career had ended. Similarly, while Hopwode may already have begun serving in the admiralty of England by 1425, there is no evidence that his tenure of that position had any bearing on his election. Rather, the patronage of his powerful uncle, Bishop Langley of Durham, was of most importance for the advancement of his career.

As far as the evidence goes, as many as 19 of the 27 attended just one Parliament, and both of Rochester’s MPs were newcomers to the Commons in at least eight of Henry VI’s Parliaments (those of 1422, 1425, 1427, 1437, 1447, 1449 (Nov.), 1450 and 1460). Only in the three consecutive assemblies of 1431, 1432 and 1433 did both Members certainly have previous parliamentary experience, and that of 1433 is the only known Parliament of the reign in which both MPs had certainly sat in the preceding assembly, although Nicoll also gained immediate re-election in 1449. It therefore appears that, as in the years 1386-1421 (for which the evidence is also incomplete),15 Ibid. the electorate at Rochester did not set a premium on previous experience. Just two of the 27 had significant parliamentary careers: Deeping, a Member of at least seven Parliaments in the 20 years from 1413 to 1433, and Everard, who sat in four of the period 1407-31. Only Deeping, Everard and Potager certainly first entered the Commons before 1422, none of the MPs appears to have sat after 1460 (although the evidence for the city’s representation in later fifteenth-century Parliaments is very patchy), and none of them represented other constituencies.

The formal venue for Rochester’s parliamentary elections was the shire court for Kent. Until 1460, a single indenture recorded the return of the knights of the shire and the citizens for Canterbury and Rochester in terms suggesting a common election held in that court, although in reality both cities had already decided upon their representatives at previous assemblies of their own.16 Ibid. 459, 463. In 1460, however, each city made its own indenture with the sheriff, in the shire court but a day after the election of the knights of the shire, and there are separate indentures for both among the extant returns of Edward IV’s reign. More often than not, the shire court met at Rochester: ten of the 19 elections of this period for which there are extant returns did so, while six took place at Canterbury, two at Penenden Heath near Maidstone and one at the unidentified location of ‘Chesteners’. Citizens of Rochester feature among the attestors listed in the extant indentures of return, and they and men associated with the bridge were prominent as such in those to the Parliaments of 1422, 1423, 1426, 1427 and 1431, among those held in the city. Rochester’s prominence as a venue may reflect the influence of the bridge’s councillors, including as they did members of the county’s elite.17 Traffic and Politics, 43-106. At least eight of the 27 attested proceedings in the shire court on one or more occasions, and not just those at which the city was the venue for the returns of Kent’s knights of the shire. They included Wigmore, who witnessed those to the Parliament of February 1449, the assembly to which he himself gained election.18 The others were Hugh Barber, Chertsey, Deeping, Doget, Gillingham, Hickes and Potager.

Ecclesiastical patronage probably explains the return of Wigmore, a servant of Bishop Low, and it is likely that Low and other bishops of Rochester enjoyed some influence at other parliamentary elections for the city in this period. Also worth noting are the elections of Deeping and Banbery. Deeping had provided legal services to one of Low’s predecessors, Bishop Langdon, and he sat in the Parliament of 1429, to which Low supported the return of his servant, John Bonnington*, as an MP for Canterbury. Similarly, Banbery’s return in 1437 could have arisen from an association with the diocese of Rochester. It is also possible that Hopwode owed much to another ecclesiastic, his powerful uncle, Bishop Langley of Durham, for his election in 1425. Yet the citizens need not necessarily have resented or contested episcopal canvassing, especially on the part of the bishop of Rochester, given the important part he played in the affairs of the city and bridge. It is also likely that outside influences featured in the city’s elections to the Parliaments of 1453 and 1455. First, Knight, a Household man – if one linked with Rochester by the 1450s – was one of those returned to that of 1453, an assembly summoned in propitious circumstances for the Court. Secondly, politics at a county or national level could well explain the return of Scott, an outsider with apparently no previous or subsequent connexions with the city, to the Parliament of 1455, an assembly for which his stepfather, (Sir) Gervase Clifton*, gained one of the seats for Kent at a contested election.

There is no evidence relating to expenses paid to Rochester’s MPs of the period under review, although in the past the city had resorted to alternative arrangements to paying the customary amount of 2s. a day. Following the summoning of the Parliament of 1410, for example, John Alcote†, a ‘stranger’ to the city, promised to serve in the Commons at his own expense in return for admission to the freedom, while his fellow, Thomas Chertsey†, agreed to wages at a flat rate of just 4s.for each week Parliament was in session. The arrangement for Alcote was in accordance with long-established practice but it is impossible to say whether any of the non-natives among the 27 agreed similar terms in Henry VI’s reign. One might speculate that such a custom sometimes obviated the need for an election altogether.19 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 463.

In common with most medieval MPs, evidence for the activities of the 27 while they were attending Parliament is scant and indeed non-existent as far as official business is concerned. As already noted, Chester used his time in the Parliament of 1449-50 to pursue private affairs. The same is true for Hickes in 1422, indicating that he likewise had personal reasons for seeking election to that assembly. In a similar vein, Bere may have petitioned for further royal grants while a Member of the Commons of 1442. As for official business, it is possible that Chertsey lobbied for a new charter during the Parliament of 1460, although in the event Rochester did not receive its next charter until just after Henry VI had lost his throne.20 Bartlett, 31-34.