Norfolk

Represented by at least 23 men in the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, Norfolk was one of the most populated and developed counties of late medieval England. Arable farming was the pre-eminent agricultural activity in its eastern and most heavily settled part, while in the west sheep rearing was at least as important as grain production. Landownership in west Norfolk was less widely based than in the east, where the existence of large areas of heavily divided lordship and a substantial population of free and semi-free men made seigneurial control harder to exercise.4 B.M.S. Campbell, ‘English Field Systems’, Agric. Hist. Review, xxix. 18-19, 23-24; idem, ‘Agricultural Progress in Med. Eng.’, Econ. HR, xxxvi. 27-28; Historical Atlas Norf. ed. Wade-Martins, 48-49, 52-53. Within the county but outside its jurisdiction were three important urban centres, all parliamentary boroughs. Norwich, a centre for regional commerce and the local cloth industry, was one of the greatest cities of later medieval England, while Great Yarmouth and Bishop’s Lynn were major sea ports. A shire-incorporate in its own right since 1404, Norwich was the seat of an episcopal see, an administrative base for the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk and the venue for the elections of Norfolk’s knights of the shire.

By virtue of his duchy of Lancaster estates, concentrated in the north and north-west of Norfolk, the King was one of the largest landowners in the county and, following Henry IV’s seizure of the throne, those gentry who were duchy officials or annuitants provided the Crown with a loyal regional following.5 H.R. Castor, King, Crown and Duchy of Lancaster, 55-56; T. John, ‘Sir Thomas Erpingham’, Norf. Archaeology, xxxv. 99. During Henry VI’s reign, however, members of this ‘Lancastrian connexion’ – most notably Sir Thomas Tuddenham and John Heydon – exploited their positions in the duchy’s administration and links with the royal court for their own personal gain. Such behaviour had significant consequences, since it created divisions among the gentry of East Anglia as a whole – sometimes reflected at parliamentary elections – and encouraged the ‘bastard feudalism’ that troubled the region in this period.

Apart from the Crown, several great lay magnates possessed significant landed interests in Norfolk. Foremost among them were the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, although they wielded little regional influence in the first decade of Henry VI’s reign. Between 1415 and 1425, the second duke, John Mowbray (d.1432), spent much of his time in France and for most of his life a majority of his East Anglian manors were in the hands of dowager relatives.6 John, 100; R.E. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1984), 149; Castor, 104-5. The argument of Archer and Castor, that the 2nd duke played little part in East Anglian affairs, is followed here, in preference to the claim in R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 109, that he was the dominant figure in East Anglia in the later 1420s. It is therefore likely that the King’s great-uncle, Thomas Beaufort, duke of Exeter, a natural source of authority for local supporters of the house of Lancaster, was a more influential figure in the region than the Mowbrays during the first few years of the reign. Awarded the west Norfolk estates that the rebel Thomas, Lord Bardolf, forfeited to Henry IV, Beaufort had augmented his interests in East Anglia by acquiring the wardships of John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford, and Richard, duke of York, both heirs to estates in the region. Following his death in 1426, several of his more important East Anglian retainers transferred their allegiance to William de la Pole, earl and afterwards marquess and then duke of Suffolk. De la Pole owned several valuable manors in Norfolk, but his East Anglian estates, which were concentrated in central and north-east Suffolk, were not especially extensive. It was his rise to prominence at Court, and his assumption of the leadership of the ‘Lancastrian connexion’ formerly headed by Beaufort, rather than his lands, that made him the most influential magnate in the region between the late 1430s and his downfall and death in 1450.7 Castor, 68-70, 74, 83-85; William Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 355; Collection All Wills ed. Nichols, 250-63. After the fall of Suffolk, the resilient de la Pole affinity in East Anglia was able to rally around his widowed duchess and to remain active in regional affairs during the last troubled decade of the reign. John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, the second duke’s inept son and successor, headed a far less stable following. Although de la Pole retainers frequently rode roughshod over the law, Mowbray’s affinity included several especially disreputable figures who he was unwilling or unable to control. In spite of all his shortcomings, the volatile politics of the later years of Henry VI’s reign gave Norfolk the opportunity to ally himself with Richard, duke of York, the leader of the opposition to the Court, so bolstering his position in regional affairs and giving him the opportunity to intervene in parliamentary elections.8 Castor, 112-13, 116, 157-8; Egerton Roll 8779; Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 54-56, 120-1. As for Norfolk’s great ecclesiastical lords, notably the bishop and prior of Norwich and the abbots of St. Benet of Hulme and Wymondham, they appear to have played a less active role in the affairs of the county as a whole than their secular counterparts. The bishop did however hold particular sway at Bishop’s Lynn (of which he was feudal lord) and the prior was an important figure at Norwich.

Most of the 23 were natives of East Anglia and those who were not acquired lands and residences in Norfolk. Two of them, Sir John Radcliffe and Henry Gray, were younger sons from the north of England. The former, originally from Lancashire, came into lands in East Anglia in the right of his wives. Gray, a relative of the Mowbrays, was from Northumberland and seems likewise to have obtained his manor at Ketteringham through marriage. Another newcomer, Sir Andrew Ogard, was Danish by birth but he had fought for the English in France and had become a naturalised Englishman. He married the daughter of one of his comrades in arms, Sir John Clifton, a distant cousin of another of the 23, Sir Robert Clifton. Sir John was a prominent Norfolk landowner and, immediately before his death, he sold the bulk of his lands in the county to his son-in-law Ogard for 3,000 marks. A fourth MP, Thomas Hoo, was less of a newcomer, since his mother, like his first wife, was from Norfolk, and he took up residence at Mulbarton, a few miles south of Norwich. Unlike the recent arrivals to the county, William Calthorpe, Sir John Carbonel, Edmund Clere, Sir Robert Clifton, John Howard, Sir Henry Inglose, Sir Thomas Kerdiston, Miles Stapleton and Sir Thomas Tuddenham came from families that were either long established in East Anglia or had occupied a prominent position among the gentry of the region for several decades. Yet not all of these native East Anglians were always primarily residents of Norfolk: Tuddenham, for example, lived in west Suffolk before moving to Oxborough, while John Howard’s landed interests lay mainly in Suffolk when he stood for election in 1455. Indeed, Howard’s candidacy initially provoked resistance on the part of the Norfolk electorate, which deemed him to possess an insufficient stake in the county.

Like several of the other MPs, Howard was from a family with prior links with Parliament since his paternal grandfather, Sir John Howard*, had sat as a knight of the shire for Essex, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, most recently for the latter county in 1422. Carbonel and Gray were also the sons of MPs although neither of their fathers represented Norfolk, and several others among the 23 possessed family ties with Parliament prior to first entering the Commons, whether through their fathers-in-law or otherwise. In spite of the development of such connexions, no single family attained pre-eminence in the representation of Norfolk, just as had been the case in the period 1386-1421.9 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 508. In short, there was sufficient interest in gaining a seat in the Commons among the established gentry of the shire to ensure a reasonably widespread sharing of the county’s parliamentary representation. There are not many obvious ties of kinship between the MPs although John Heydon and John Wymondham were respectively the sons-in-law of Edmund Wynter and Clifton.

A minority of the 23 were knights proper, with ten of them (including Stapleton who first represented Norfolk as an esquire) gaining election as such in this period. Earlier, the belted knights only just comprised a majority of the MPs known to have sat for the county in 1386-1421. Later, eight of the 12 men who certainly gained election in the years 1461-1504 were actual knights although this is scarcely a valid figure for the purposes of comparison given the many gaps in the evidence for the representation of the county in that period. Yet a diminution in knightly numbers was a general phenomenon throughout the Lancastrian period and the shortage of knights among the 23 does not reflect a lack of social standing. Apart from the ten who sat in the Commons as knights proper, three more of the 23 received knighthoods later in their careers and at least a further four suffered distraints for the honour, which they never accepted.

Knighthood retained its military connotations and several of the MPs earned the status while on campaign. Radcliffe, one of the leading captains of his day, gained his at the outset of the Agincourt campaign in 1415 and Ogard won the honour on the field of Verneuil in 1424. Inglose also became a knight in France, as probably did Carbonel, Sir Roger Chamberlain, Clifton, Sir Robert Conyers, Hoo and, perhaps, Kerdiston and Tuddenham. Radcliffe, Hoo and Howard won the ultimate chivalric accolade of admission to the Order of the Garter although not until after (long after in the case of Howard) leaving the Commons for the last time, while Ogard received a nomination to the Order on more than occasion. Another of the MPs, Stapleton, served the Lancastrian Crown at sea, a few months after first sitting for Norfolk in Parliament. He was a knight by mid 1445, although there is no evidence to connect his knighthood with the naval expedition (in any event a failure) in which he had participated. The Hundred Years’ War must have held particularly fresh memories for Howard when he attended the Parliament of 1455, since he had fought at Castillon, the final defeat for the English in France, in July 1453. According to one account, he suffered severe wounds in the battle and the French took him prisoner. In the event, he would receive his knighthood at home, fighting for Edward IV at Towton in 1461. Calthorpe received the honour in much more peaceful circumstances, two decades after his only known Parliament, at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville in 1465. Of those of the MPs who were never knights, John Lancaster campaigned in the marches of northern England and Calais in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, while Clere probably served in France early in his career, as perhaps did Gray.

The soldiers among the MPs far outnumbered the lawyers. Even though East Anglia was a region full of men of law (prompting calls to restrict their number in the Parliament of 1455), only Heydon and John Roys were definitely members of that profession, although it is possible that Wynter also received a legal training.10 Blake was admitted to L. Inn in 1455, but probably only as an honorary member of that inn of court. Similarly, just two of Suffolk’s MPs of this period, Thomas Cornwallis* and William Jenney*, were definitely lawyers. Roys was a far less distinguished practitioner of the law than Heydon, who in 1442 obtained an exemption from the prestigious but potentially burdensome office of serjeant-at-law. Henry VI’s reign provides a contrast to the period 1386-1421, when as many as eight lawyers sat for Norfolk in Parliament.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 508. The increasing interest in securing a seat in the Commons among the established gentry of the shire may explain why fewer members of the legal profession (commonly new men of obscure origin) gained election in Henry VI’s reign. By the mid sixteenth century, the county’s parliamentary seats were very much the preserve of members of the upper gentry although several of them were also lawyers,12 Of the 15 men known to have sat for Norf. in the period 1529-58, Sir Roger Townshend†, Richard Southwell† and Sir John Shelton† certainly received a legal training, as probably did Sir James Boleyn† and Sir Nicholas Lestrange†: The Commons 1509-1558, i. 456; ii. 522-3; iii. 470-1, 352-4, 312. indicating that, just like a seat in Parliament, a legal education had become increasingly attractive for the local elite.

In terms of participation, trade was a much more significant activity for the MPs of 1422-61 than the law, although none of them pursued a career as a merchant like one of their predecessors, Hugh Fastolf†, a knight of the shire in the Parliament of November 1390. Howard’s business interests were probably already extensive at the time of his election in 1455. By the 1460s, he was an important ship-owner and possessed houses on the coast at Ipswich, Harwich and Colchester and on the Thames estuary at Stepney to the east of London. Heydon, Inglose, Ogard and Stapleton also engaged in trade to a greater or lesser extent, as perhaps did several others of the MPs. Like Howard, Inglose was a ship-owner and he possessed property interests at Great Yarmouth, as did Stapleton. Both he and Stapleton imported goods through Yarmouth, and the latter had a particularly close connexion with that port, sharing a stake in its fishing industry. Heydon exported grain to the Low Countries and Ogard was associated with Richard, duke of York, in shipping grain and wine from France to England.

Although he involved himself in trade, Stapleton was a significant landowner. A majority of the MPs inherited lands from their parents or other relatives, and some, particularly Stapleon and Tuddenham, succeeded to extensive family estates. Only Radcliffe, Edmund Blake and Gray (all younger sons) and Roys, Wymondham and John Blakeney (all of obscure origin) either inherited no real property at all or none of any significance. Ogard and Kerdiston stand out among those with a landed inheritance, in so far as Ogard’s lay in Denmark and Kerdiston lost his because of the illegitimacy of his grandfather, Sir William Kerdiston†, a bastard son of William, Lord Kerdiston (d.1361). Given the insecurity of Kerdiston’s hold on his inheritance, it is scarcely surprising that he entered the land market in order to purchase property he could certainly call his own. He and Ogard were not the only MPs to buy land. The lawyer Heydon, the parvenu Wymondham and the younger son Blake purchased most or all of their estates, and Inglose and Roys entered the land market as well. Roys met with mixed fortunes in doing so, since a fellow lawyer, William Paston, forestalled (probably unfairly) his attempt to buy a manor at North Walsham. Roys did however obtain other property through marriage, as did a majority of his fellow MPs. Not all of these acquisitions by marriage were permanent, since some of the wives in question held them for life only, in dower from previous husbands. Marriage had brought Radcliffe, Ogard (and probably Gray) to East Anglia in the first place, and the Norfolk properties that Conyers came into through his third wife were what enabled him to represent the county in Parliament. Ogard’s second wife possessed a life interest in some 20 manors in the Midlands, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and the south-east of England, while the estates he held in his own right were not confined to Norfolk. He also invested heavily in land in Hertfordshire and retained his French possessions until the very last years of the English occupation. Ogard was not alone in holding lands outside East Anglia, since several of his fellow MPs for Norfolk inherited or purchased properties in other counties or held estates elsewhere in the rights of their wives.

For most of the MPs, it is difficult to make accurate assessments of landed wealth. The inquisitions post mortem held after Tuddenham’s death calculated that his estates in Norfolk and Suffolk, just two of the counties where he held lands, were worth some £170 p.a., yet such inquisitions frequently produced considerable underestimates. According to assessments for taxation in 1451, both Inglose and Wymondham owned lands worth £66 p.a. but it is likely that these assessments fell short of the true value of their holdings. By the time he gained election to the Parliament of 1453, Ogard was a very substantial landowner. While it is impossible to ascertain his total income from his English lands, it is worth noting the 3,000 marks he paid for his father-in-law’s Norfolk estates: assuming a rate of 20 years’ purchase, he may have derived as much as £150 p.a. from these holdings alone. For much of his career, he also enjoyed a very considerable income from his interests across the Channel, and he received 1,500 silver saluts from his lands in Normandy as late as 1448.

Like their known predecessors of 1386-1421,13 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 509. and the known knights of the shire for Suffolk of the period under review, all of the 23 served the Crown at a county level to a greater or lesser extent. A majority of those who served as sheriffs, escheators, j.p.s and ad hoc commissioners received their first or only appointments as such before entering Parliament for the first time. Heydon was the only j.p. to become a member of the quorum, and there is no ready explanation for why his fellow lawyer, Roys, never joined the commission of the peace. Just one of the 23, Clere, never held any of the offices of sheriff, escheator, commissioner or j.p., but he still acted for the King locally before embarking on his parliamentary career, as a collector of customs at Great Yarmouth and as feodary of the duchy of Lancaster in Norfolk. Service in the local government of the county was not a sine qua non for those who wished to stand for Parliament, as Blakeney, Conyers, Hoo, Kerdiston and Wymondham had yet to exercise office there when first entering the Commons as one of its MPs. Yet Blakeney was already a bureaucrat of considerable experience and Hoo had served as an ad hoc commissioner and sheriff elsewhere. In spite of the duchy of Lancaster’s importance in Norfolk, only Tuddenham, Heydon and Clere appear to have found employment on its estates in the county, all of them holding duchy office there at the time of their first (or only) election as one its knights of the shire. As already noted, Tuddenham and Heydon in particular derived great advantage from their duchy of Lancaster offices which, combined with the patronage of William de la Pole, gave them considerable influence in East Anglia.14 Castor, 181. Whatever their administrative experience, a majority of the MPs were of mature years when they first entered Parliament, and Blake, Carbonel, Clifton, Gray and Ogard all did so near the end of their lives. In most cases, ages are difficult or impossible to establish with any degree of certainty. Carbonel was about 41 when returned to the Parliament of 1423; Clifton was not far short of 50 when elected ten years later; and Calthorpe, Howard, Stapleton and Tuddenham were all in their early thirties at their first (or only) election to Parliament for Norfolk.

Some years before his election to the Commons, Calthorpe became an esquire of Henry VI’s household, of which Blake, Blakeney, Clere and Howard were also certainly already members when returned as knights of the shire for Norfolk. For Blake, Blakeney and Clere at least, their links with the Lancastrian establishment are likely to have played a part in their elections, and it was almost certainly as a placeman of the Court that Blakeney later sat for East Grinstead, a borough belonging to the duchy of Lancaster, in the consecutive Parliaments of 1449 and 1449-50. Given the political circumstances of 1455, however, it is probable that Howard’s association with the dukes of Norfolk and York was of more significance than his Household links for his return to the Commons that year. Thomas Sharneburne and Ogard also enjoyed connexions with the Lancastrian Court when they stood for the Parliaments of 1449-50 and 1453 respectively. Sharneburne had married a lady-in-waiting of the queen and joined Margaret of Anjou’s household, while Ogard was one of Margaret’s knight-carvers and councillors. Another two of the MPs, Hoo and Tuddenham, would become ‘King’s knights’ after first entering Parliament and Tuddenham later came to hold the offices of keeper of the great wardrobe and treasurer of the Household. Most of the Household men also served the Crown in a significant capacity away from Court, whether as ambassadors, officers in government departments or the duchy of Lancaster or holders of military or administrative positions at home and abroad. Clifton, one of those MPs not known to have joined the royal establishment, also fulfilled especially important responsibilities on behalf of the Crown, which he served on an embassy to the German emperor in the mid 1430s and as constable of Bordeaux, although not until his parliamentary career was over. Proximity to the King could bring rich rewards, for Hoo became a peer in 1448, as would John Howard in the reign of Edward IV. On the other hand, the numerous royal grants Radcliffe received were poor compensation for the huge losses he incurred serving the Crown in France, and the government owed him no less than £7,015 when he died.

As already indicated, Howard’s connexion with John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, is likely to have helped him to gain entry into the Commons. Most of Howard’s fellow MPs had links with one or more magnates and an affiliation to either Mowbray or de la Pole in particular had in several cases a bearing on their election. Thanks to the preserved correspondence of the Paston family, Tuddenham and Heydon have earned especial notoriety as de la Pole men, but they had other patrons as well, among them Thomas, Lord Scales, who played an important role in protecting them from their enemies after Suffolk’s death. Inglose, Clere and Ogard were also associated with de la Pole at one stage or another. Inglose served him in France in the early 1420s and was possibly one of his councillors in England in the following decade. Clere was a member of the retinue with which de la Pole escorted Henry VI’s bride, Margaret of Anjou, to England in 1444-5 and he subsequently joined her household. As for Ogard, previously a servant of the dukes of Bedford and York, he had become part of the de la Pole circle by the late 1440s. Inglose’s association with de la Pole did not last, because he chose to support his friend Sir John Fastolf after the latter fell out with the peer in the later 1430s. Suffolk was just one of the great lords with whom Inglose possessed a tie, since Sir Henry also served the royal dukes of Clarence, Bedford and Gloucester in France and was a feoffee for John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham. Having several masters proved a useful insurance policy in such an unsettled period. As Chamberlain’s narrow escape in 1447 shows, too close an association with any one lord was potentially dangerous. Arrested and condemned to death for treason following the downfall of his then master, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, in February that year, he was actually hanging on the scaffold at Tyburn and awaiting drawing and quartering when he received a last-minute pardon. In spite of his near death experience, the advantages of having a noble patron were sufficiently attractive for him subsequently to attach himself to Richard, duke of York, who had assumed Gloucester’s role as the leading opponent of the Court.

Eleven (possibly a dozen) of the MPs certainly sat in more than one Parliament, whether for Norfolk or another constituency, although Blakeney was the only Member to find a seat outside East Anglia.15 It is likely but not certain that Heydon sat in the Parl. of 1459 as a burgess for Gt. Yarmouth. Several of them also sat outside the period under review, whether before 1422 or after 1460, while Hoo and Howard enjoyed parliamentary careers that extended beyond the Commons. Both received summons to the Lords after attaining the peerage, although Howard did not begin sitting in the Upper House until nearly a decade after the end of Henry VI’s reign. In a majority of the Parliaments in the period under review, at least one of the knights of the shire for Norfolk had sat in the Commons previously, meaning that there was a considerable degree of continuity in the representation of the county. The most experienced parliamentarians were Wynter, Lancaster, Inglose and Tuddenham, of whom all but the first began their careers in the Commons as knights of the shire for Suffolk. Lancaster and Wynter, the men elected in 1422, had sat for Norfolk in Henry V’s last Parliament, and in each of the assemblies of 1425, 1429, 1437, 1439 and 1442 one of the MPs had likewise represented the county in the Parliament immediately preceding. In 1425 the man re-elected, Kerdiston, gained election alongside Inglose, who had also sat in 1423, although as one of the MPs for Suffolk. Similarly, Tuddenham represented Norfolk in 1432 having sat for Suffolk in the previous Parliament, and was elected to four Parliaments in a row from 1435 to 1442. The county returned two newcomers to at least five Parliaments, those of 1423, 1433, 1445, 1447 and November 1449. As far as the elections to the latter three assemblies are concerned, however, it is likely that the politics of the time counted for most in the choice of men elected.

The usual venue for elections of Norfolk’s knights of the shire, presided over by the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, was the shire-house in Norwich. Like the nearby royal castle, it was part of the county of Norfolk and exempt from the jurisdiction of the city. Frequently in a poor state of repair, it was not always able to accommodate particularly well-attended elections, for which the castle yard provided an alternative venue.16 E.L.T. John, ‘Parlty. Repn. Norf. and Suff.’ (Nottingham Univ. M.A. thesis, 1959), 124; E101/575/34-36, 38; 603/16. When making his return to a writ of summons, the sheriff usually entered the names of the knights of the shire on a separate schedule stitched to the writ, rather than on the dorse of the writ itself.17 The dorse was used for the elections of 1450 and 1455. Along with the writ and schedule, he returned an indenture (drawn up between him on the one hand and the county’s coroners and a group of attestors on the other) into Chancery. The returns for the Parliaments of 1426, 1439 and 1460 have not survived, but a commission for the distribution of a tax allowance reveals the names of the MPs of 1439. All but four of the election indentures (those for the Parliaments of 1426, 1437, 1439 and 1460), are still extant. As the returns show, every election for which there is an extant indenture with a legible date occurred on a Monday sitting of the county court. None of the indentures predating 1435 features more than 25 attestors but no fewer than 120 witnessed the election of that year. Such a large number may indicate a contested election, but this is impossible to prove.

The later years of Henry VI’s reign saw a combination of local rivalries and national political divisions frequently influence the elections of Norfolk’s knights of the shire. Between the end of the 1430s and the late 1440s, most of the county’s MPs had associations with William de la Pole, either as his retainers or as members of the royal household. In 1445 de la Pole, the recently created marquess of Suffolk, dominated the government and Court and those elected were his servant, Heydon, and Calthorpe, who was also linked with him at this date. He was still very much in control of affairs in 1447, and Norfolk’s representatives in the Commons were Clere and Blakeney. Clere was a Household man and Blakeney a government functionary who, if he had not already done so, was soon to join the Household himself, while the sheriff making the return was a fellow member of the royal establishment, Thomas Daniell*. Towards the close of the 1440s, however, the government’s failings had provoked a reaction against de la Pole and the Court. Like that of 1447, the Norfolk election to the Parliament of 1449-50, the assembly that impeached the duke of Suffolk, reflected the politics of the day, with the electorate trying to achieve a balance by returning Conyers and Sharneburne, respectively linked with either side of the divide between the Court and its opponents. A veteran of the French wars, Conyers had ties with the latter, the dukes of York and Norfolk, who were now beginning their alliance of convenience, while Sharneburne, previously a follower of the duke of Norfolk, was a courtier and a member of the duke of Suffolk’s circle by 1449. After the summoning of the next Parliament in the autumn of 1450, York actively canvassed for the election of his supporters in East Anglia and elsewhere. A few days before the shire election in Norfolk, he and Mowbray met at Bury St. Edmunds to discuss suitable candidates, and they settled upon Sir William Chamberlain and Henry Gray.18 Paston Letters, ii. 54-55. In the event, the electors elected Gray but rejected Chamberlain, choosing Sir Miles Stapleton instead. Although Stapleton was a relative of the late duke of Suffolk, murdered on his way into exile a few months earlier, it appears that he was not closely associated with the de la Pole affinity at this date and he waited upon York at Norwich around the time of the election. Like some of his recent predecessors, the then sheriff, John Say II*, had close links with de la Pole and the Lancastrian establishment but he was in no position to disregard the wishes of the dukes or the electorate. By the time of the elections of 1453, however, the Court had regained the political initiative and the presiding sheriff at those held in Norfolk and Suffolk was the courtier Thomas Sharneburne. The men elected as the county’s knights of the shire were the courtier and de la Pole retainer, Tuddenham, and Ogard, formerly a follower of the duke of York but now firmly identified with the Court. In Suffolk Sharneburne returned (Sir) Philip Wentworth*, a de la Pole man and courtier, and Gilbert Debenham I*, who at that date had fallen out with Mowbray and was associating with members of the de la Pole affinity, in defiance of the attempts of the duke of Norfolk to impose his own candidates. By 1455, the political situation had changed yet again, since the Parliament of that year met in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans. Following St. Albans, the duke of Norfolk was once more in a position to exert his influence. A few weeks before the election of Norfolk’s knights of the shire, his duchess wrote to John Paston* (who was hoping to gain one of the county’s seats for himself) to urge that he and others should give their ‘voices’ to the Mowbray retainers, John Howard and Sir Roger Chamberlain. The Mowbray servant John Jenney* canvassed the county’s electors on behalf of Howard and Chamberlain, but he was informed that the former, who at that date had no livelihood or ‘conversement’ in the shire (although he was a j.p. there), was not an acceptable candidate. In the end, both Howard and Chamberlain were returned (it is significant that the first three attestors, Sir John Fastolf, Sir William Chamberlain and Sir Robert Conyers, were associated with Mowbray and York, and that the sheriff was the Mowbray retainer, John Wingfield†), but it is clear that the duke of Norfolk could not take the electorate for granted.19 Ibid. 51, 53, 117, 119-20; Virgoe, 53-54; M. Keen, Eng. in the Later Middle Ages, 439; K.B. McFarlane, Eng. in the 15th Cent. 5-6. None of the other extant indentures features as many knights, save that of 1431 which lists five. The county’s election to the Parliament of 1459 is the last of Henry VI’s reign for which any evidence has survived. This partisan assembly attainted the duke of York and his leading associates (although not his erstwhile ally Mowbray) and supporters of the Court packed the Commons, and the men returned for Norfolk were Blake, a member of the royal household, and the de la Pole retainer John Wymondham.