Oxfordshire

Unspectacular in landscape, Oxfordshire was both fertile and relatively wealthy in comparison to most other shires. The county town of Oxford was by far the biggest and most important urban settlement in the middle Thames valley, even if the later medieval period witnessed a decline in its population and a shift in its economy from traditional manufacturing and commerce to the provision of goods and services to the university of which it was the seat.2 VCH Oxon. iii. 16-17; iv. 15, 45, 47; Hist. Univ. Oxford, iii. ed. McConica, 71, 73.

The Crown possessed extensive interests in Oxfordshire, including the honour of Wallingford, the manor of Woodstock, estates belonging to the duchy of Lancaster and large royal forests. Over the centuries, the existence of these forests ensured the frequent residence of successive monarchs in the county, although Henry VI’s preference was for Windsor.3 N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Oxon. 346; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 561; VCH Oxon. i. 444; ii. 293; xii. 431-2. For most of Henry’s reign, the practical exercise of royal authority in Oxfordshire and the wider Thames valley lay with the influential Thomas Chaucer and his son-in-law, William de la Pole, earl (afterwards marquess and then duke) of Suffolk. For 35 years from the accession of Henry IV, Chaucer was constable of Wallingford castle (occasionally used as a residence by the infant Henry VI and his mother in the 1420s), steward of the honours of Wallingford and St. Valery and steward of the four-and-a-half hundreds of Chiltern. In the last few months before he died in 1434 he shared these offices with de la Pole, who subsequently held them jointly with Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, from 1437 to 1440, with his wife Alice Chaucer and Phelip from 1440 until the latter’s death in the following year and afterwards with Alice and their son and heir, John. After Suffolk’s murder in May 1450, the Crown granted them to William, Lord Lovell, only for them to return soon afterwards to Alice and John de la Pole. Although Sir Robert Harcourt, by then an adherent of Richard, duke of York, was briefly constable of Wallingford in 1460-1, the offices otherwise remained in the hands of the de la Pole family until the early 1480s.4 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 524; J.S. Roskell, Parl. and Politics. iii. 191; CPR, 1429-36, p. 346; 1436-41, pp. 44, 366; 1441-6, p. 74; 1446-52, p. 333; 1461-7, p. 42; SC6/1097/1,4, 5, 7, 8; 1302/1. For a time, Chaucer was also the lessee of Woodstock, since the King did not retain immediate possession of that manor in the period under review, even though it featured reasonably regularly on his itinerary. Part of the dower of Queen Joan, Henry IV’s widow, she had leased it out to Chaucer in 1411. In the two decades following her death in 1437, it passed through the hands of successive grantees of the Crown: Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, William de la Pole, and Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley. From 1457 to the end of the reign, however, Sudeley held it jointly with John Talbot, 2nd earl of Shrewsbury.5 B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 361-2, 364-6, 369-71; VCH Oxon. xii. 432; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 525.

While never titled, Chaucer was a lord in all but name and he and his son-in-law were an immediate presence in a county lacking a resident noble family with large-scale landholdings within its boundaries.6 VCH Oxon. i. 431-2. Given his importance at both a national and local level, the estates that he and his wife Maud held there, lands that their daughter and heir brought in marriage to the de la Poles, were not especially extensive,7 CIPM, xxiv. 354, 687; C139/139/25. but he adopted Ewelme in south Oxfordshire, where Maud had inherited a couple of manors, as his home. Ewelme was also one of the chief residences of William and Alice de la Pole. They founded its almshouses, which survive to this day, and the Tudor antiquary, John Leland, noted that, ‘for love of her [Alice] and the commodite of her landes’, William ‘fell much to dwell yn Oxfordshir and Barkshir wher his wifes landes lay’. It was as ‘late of Ewelme’ that de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk, faced charges of treason in the Parliament of 1449-50, the assembly that impeached him, and it was at Ewelme that Alice spent much of her widowhood and died.8 H.A. Napier, Swyncombe and Ewelme, 54, 63, 67; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 112; PROME, xii. 94.

For want of significant great lay estates, the bishop of Lincoln was one of the greatest landowners in Oxfordshire after the Crown. He possessed extensive lands and liberties there, particularly in the hundreds of Dorchester and Thame in the south of the county and Banbury in the north-east.9 VCH Oxon. vii. 2, 3, 42, 115, 161; x. 1-3, 6, 42, 71. As for religious houses, Oxfordshire lacked any to match the great religious houses of neighbouring shires in landed wealth or as centres of learning, although the colleges of Oxford university, themselves land-owning religious institutions, more than fulfilled the second function.10 Ibid. ii. 64.

While most of Oxfordshire’s election returns from Henry VI’s reign have survived, those for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445 and 1455 are no longer extant. As it happens, only the MPs of 1455 are completely unknown since the fine rolls record the names of those who sat in 1439 and 1445. Between them, the extant returns and the fine rolls supply 23 names. Assuming that neither of those elected in 1455 had already sat for the county at an earlier date, no more than 25 men can have represented Oxfordshire in this period.

None of the 23 was a complete outsider at the time of his election and Drew Barantyn, the Harcourts, Stonors and Richard Quatermayns were from families long established in Oxfordshire. John and Robert Danvers, Richard Drayton, Edmund Rede and William Wykeham were also natives of the county although the Rede and Wykeham families were relative newcomers. Others were recent arrivals. In spite of his impressive record of service as a knight of the shire, Thomas Chaucer was originally from London, while the Fettiplaces and John Norris were from Berkshire, Sir Thomas Wykeham from Hampshire, Stephen Haytfeld from Yorkshire and John Stokes probably from Northamptonshire. John Pury was of particularly obscure background: his mother was from Berkshire but his paternal antecedents are unclear. As for William Lovell and Richard Restwold, both inherited lands in Oxfordshire but neither was primarily a member of the county’s gentry at the beginning of his career. Their landed interests were wider than most of their fellow MPs since they were from prominent landowning families with extensive estates spread over a number of English counties as well as Oxfordshire. Restwold’s roots lay in northern England, although he himself spent much of his life as a member of the affluent and politically active society of the Thames valley. The substantial involvement of men not indigenous to Oxfordshire in the county’s parliamentary representation was not a recent development, for it continued a trend that had begun well before 1422.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 560. Whatever their origins, all of the 23 counted other parliamentarians among their relatives, whether through blood or marriage. As a result, many of them are likely already to have possessed a reasonable knowledge of Parliament and its workings when they entered the Commons for the first time. Six of them were the sons of MPs,12 Chaucer, Robert Danvers, Hampden, Restwold, Thomas Stonor II and William Wykeham. and five the sons-in-law of parliamentarians.13 Chaucer, Hampden, Haytfeld, Pury and Sir Thomas Wykeham. The Harcourts are the only known siblings among the 23, although the Fettiplaces were certainly relatives, if not brothers, and Robert Danvers and Edmund Hampden had brothers who sat for other constituencies in the period under review.

Reflecting the general late-medieval decline in knighthood, only Hampden, Sir Robert Harcourt, Sir William Lisle and Sir Thomas Wykeham sat as belted knights, of whom Hampden did not bear the status when elected to the Commons for the first time. The re-elections of Hampden, Harcourt and Wykeham did however ensure that in at least eight of the 22 Parliaments of this period one of the county’s MPs was an actual knight. Berkshire, with which Oxfordshire shared its sheriff and escheator, presents a similar picture, since only four of its known MPs of Henry VI’s reign held the rank. Most of the 23 were nevertheless well able to support the honour. The Crown distrained no fewer than 18 of them for knighthood, in some cases on several occasions. Three of the distrainees, Robert Danvers, Richard Harcourt and Rede, would later accept knighthoods after 1461, all of them on the eve of Elizabeth Wydeville’s coronation in May 1465. One of the belted knights, Lisle, was the illegitimate son of a peer, and it is possible that Lovell was the William Lovell who would become Lord Morley in the right of his wife in Edward IV’s reign. While Lisle’s fellow knight of the shire in 1426, Thomas Chaucer, was never a knight or member of the peerage, he wielded greater power and influence than many noblemen as one of the leading figures in early Lancastrian England.

Whether knights or not, a minority of the 23 bore arms in the King’s wars, whether across the Channel or elsewhere. Haytfeld, Lisle and William Wykeham saw military service in France before becoming MPs, as probably did Drayton and Sir Robert Harcourt. Edmund Hampden is the only man among the MPs who certainly participated in the civil wars at home although there is no evidence that he did so before his parliamentary career was over. In due course, he met his end at the battle of Tewkesbury, fighting for the Lancastrian cause of which he was such a committed adherent.14 Although it is conceivable that Haytfeld, who died in 1460, likewise met a violent end in the civil wars at home. Evidently most of the MPs were not prepared to risk their lives and properties through active involvement in these struggles, whatever their political sympathies.

As in the three and half decades before 1422,15 Chaucer, Hampden, Haytfeld, Pury and Sir Thomas Wykeham. the belted knights among the MPs outnumbered the lawyers since only Robert Danvers was definitely a man of law. It is nevertheless likely that Peter Fettiplace was another lawyer and possible that Restwold and Barantyn had also received some sort of legal training. Danvers was a particularly distinguished member of the profession. He became a serjeant-at-law within five years of sitting for Oxfordshire in 1437 and a justice of the common pleas in 1450. Having joined the judiciary, he received summonses to attend the Lords in the last five Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. In spite of his prominent legal career, Danvers also became heavily involved in the wool trade. Quatermayns, who pursued parallel careers as a London fishmonger and a member of the Oxfordshire gentry, provides an even more obvious example of a man with mercantile interests, while Chaucer supplied wine to the early Lancastrian Household. At the beginning of his career, Barantyn possessed property interests in London but it is unclear whether he himself ever engaged in trade.

With estates in several counties, Barantyn was one of the more substantial landowners among the 23, thanks to his inheritance and the holdings in southern England that came to him through his marriages, but figures relating to the MPs’ landed wealth are at best approximate. The Stonors’ estates were probably worth about £250 p.a., and it is possible that Sir Thomas Wykeham, one of the wealthiest gentry in Oxfordshire, enjoyed an annual landed income of as much as £400. According to assessments for the subsidy of 1436, Lisle possessed holdings in Cambridgeshire and Kent worth £100 a year and Pury lands in Berkshire, Middlesex, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire and Oxfordshire from which he derived a much lesser annual income of £27. Over 50 years later, the inquisitions post mortem for Rede valued his estates at £68 12s. p.a., but he must have held lands of far greater value, since such inquiries often produced considerable underestimates. In any case, several of his manors do not feature in the inquisitions for him, even though they were still among his properties when he died. Similarly, Quatermayns, who unexpectedly succeeded to his family’s estates after beginning his mercantile career, must have died holding lands worth considerably more than the mere £30 p.a. that his inquisitions post mortem suggest, while a like inquisition following Barantyn’s death valued his Oxfordshire manors at over £50 p.a., almost certainly an underestimate. Some years after Quatermayns’s death, his great-nephew, William Danvers†, claimed that the Quatermayns estates were worth as much as 400 marks p.a. when he entered that MP’s service in the mid fifteenth century. Chaucer, John Danvers and Norris also died possessed of estates of some significance although it is now impossible to put a figure on how much these were worth. In spite of its limitations, all the evidence suggests that Oxfordshire tended to return substantial gentry landowners to the Commons.

Without exception, all of the 23 held lands outside Oxfordshire, whether through inheritance, marriage or purchase. While nearly all of these lands were located in southern England or the Midlands, Restwold’s extensive holdings included property in Cumberland and Westmorland. As a second son, Richard Harcourt had inherited little, if anything of his family’s estates, but he acquired interests in at least nine other English counties besides Oxfordshire through both his marriages, although he did not contract his second match until after the period under review. The powerful and influential Chaucer was also of very modest beginnings, since his patrimony in London and Westminster was extremely small. He owed his initial power base in the Thames valley to his wife’s estates in Oxfordshire, which he augmented by purchasing other holdings in that county and Berkshire. She also brought to their marriage manors and other lands in Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Lincolnshire.

As befitted their local status and wealth, almost all of the 23 served in local government at some stage in their careers, Lovell providing the sole exception. Several of them had yet to do so when they first entered Parliament, and extensive administrative experience was by no means a sine qua non for prospective knights of the shire for Oxfordshire. Indeed, some of the MPs were too young to have gained such experience when they began their parliamentary careers, even if most were of mature years when they took up their seats. Thomas Stonor I was only 21 when elected to his first Parliament in 1416, and his son and namesake had yet to reach his 23rd birthday when returned in 1447. Lovell may have sat in the Commons at a particularly early age. It is also clear that Restwold was still a very young man when he began his parliamentary career, although he did not sit for Oxfordshire until his third Parliament. It is nevertheless worth noting that all four of these men were of good birth, whose local status must have counted for more than administrative experience.

All but seven of the MPs served at least one term as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and the Crown pricked Sir Thomas Wykeham for the office on no fewer than four occasions. A majority, including Sir Thomas, did not begin serving as sheriff until after sitting in their first or only Parliaments as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire, although Haytfeld took up the office while a Member of that of 1433 and Rede began his second term as such while attending that of 1450. Chaucer had similarly combined the two responsibilities in the past, for he had been sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire when elected – in breach of statute – to his first Parliament in 1401. Of those who were never sheriff of those counties, Hampden held the position in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire before beginning his parliamentary career and (likewise in breach of statute) he was sheriff of Merioneth when elected to his first three Parliaments as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire. Nine of the 23 served in the less prestigious position of escheator of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, the majority of them doing so after they had sat for this county in the Commons. Three others held the office elsewhere, in each instance before sitting for Oxfordshire. Hampden entered his first Parliament as a knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire in 1439 while escheator of that county and Bedfordshire, and Haytfeld and Norris were respectively escheators of Gloucestershire and Anglesey. Fourteen of the MPs were j.p.s. for Oxfordshire in Henry VI’s reign, of whom ten represented the county in one or more Parliaments while a member of its commission of the peace, although just three of them, Barantyn, Sir Robert Harcourt and Stokes, were already j.p.s at the outset of their parliamentary careers. It is possible that membership of the bench was a significant factor in parliamentary elections during the years 1386-1421. J.p.s sat in at least two thirds of the 32 Parliaments of that period, and both MPs in eight of them were on the bench.16 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 562. There was a similar proportion of j.p.s in the period under review, since members of the commission of the peace sat in at least 14 of Henry VI’s 22 Parliaments although in just three of them were both knights of the shire on the commission of the peace when elected. Several of those MPs who were never j.p.s in Oxfordshire were members of the bench in other counties. They included Norris, Pury and Restwold, each of whom was returned for Oxfordshire while a j.p. in Berkshire. Save for Lovell, all the MPs served on ad hoc commissions in the county, mainly after representing it in their first or only Parliaments. Reflecting their interests elsewhere, the great majority of them also served on like commissions outside Oxfordshire.

Apart from the usual local government offices, several of the MPs received other Crown appointments in Oxfordshire during the period under review. Throughout his time in Parliament, Hampden was surveyor and keeper of the royal manor of Woodstock and parker of Beckley, positions he exercised jointly with John Golafre* for four years spanning the late 1430s and early 1440s. Rede was another royal keeper, in his case of the King’s forests of Bernwood, Stowood and Shotover in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, when he gained election to his only known Parliament. Quatermayns, by contrast, appears not to have become verderer of Stowood and Shotover until some years after embarking on his parliamentary career. Late in the reign, during his second Parliament as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire, Richard Harcourt received the prestigious position of parker of Cornbury although this was a reward for committing himself to the cause of the by then ascendant Yorkists.

It is possible that Rede owed his office in the King’s forests to his membership of the royal household, of which he was certainly an esquire by 1441, but it is far from clear that this somewhat apolitical figure enjoyed the backing of the Crown when he stood for the Parliament of 1450. Hampden, by contrast, was a committed supporter of the last Lancastrian King who certainly joined Henry VI’s household before embarking on his parliamentary career. They were not the only Household men among the 23. Reflecting the strong royal interests in the county, a majority of the MPs either joined the Household or enjoyed close links with the Lancastrian regime. Not all of them possessed such ties before they first entered the Commons although, like Hampden and Rede, at least four of them, Sir Robert Harcourt, Lisle, Norris and Pury, were certainly Household men at their first or only elections as knights of the shire for Oxfordshire. Norris was long a prominent courtier of Henry VI but, unlike the diehard Hampden, he did not resist Edward IV and kept his estates following the accession of the first Yorkist King. Harcourt, by contrast, jettisoned his attachment to the Lancastrian Court and joined the Yorkist cause within a decade of sitting for Oxfordshire in the Parliament of 1450-1. Chaucer, a servant of the house of Lancaster throughout his career if never formally a member of the Household, is the only man among the 23 who certainly held office under the Crown at a national or central government level while sitting as an MP. It is no surprise to find him combining such roles, given his local importance and his place at the centre of English political life.

The influential Chaucer, a figure of national as well as local importance, could count several of the other MPs among his protégés but it is impossible to show that any of them owed their seats to his support. On the other hand, a connexion with such a powerful figure cannot have proved detrimental to those seeking election, an observation that must likewise apply to those linked with William de la Pole while that lord was one of the leading men in the land. Whatever bearing they may have had on parliamentary careers, ties with the lay nobility were the norm for the 23 as a group since almost all of them were associated with one or more lords.17 No such link has been found for Peter Fettiplace and John Danvers. The first Thomas Stonor’s only known patron was Chaucer, whom one might view as a lord in all but title. For example, six of the MPs (Robert Danvers, Hampden, Sir Robert Harcourt, Norris, Restwold and Thomas Stonor II) certainly or probably had links with the de la Poles, who succeeded to Chaucer’s lands and influence in the Thames valley, when entering Parliament for the first (or only) time. It is far from clear that Richard Harcourt was already a member of the de la Pole affinity at the time of his election in 1445 but he was certainly a follower of Richard, duke of York, when he sat in the Parliament of 1460, as was Stokes, his fellow MP in that assembly. York also acquired a loyal follower in the person of Quatermayns but not until after the latter had sat in his two known Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Earlier in his career, Quatermayns had served Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, a magnate with whom Barantyn, Lisle and Norris each had a connexion predating his first or only election as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire. Among other connexions with the peerage, Thomas Fettiplace and Richard Harcourt served the Talbot family and the latter’s brother, Sir Robert Harcourt, formed an attachment with Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, shortly after sitting in the Parliament of 1450-1, if not earlier. The association with the powerful Neville, a leading ally of Richard, duke of York, must have played an important part in the Harcourts’ switch of political allegiance to the Yorkists late in Henry VI’s reign, in turn significant for the election of Richard Harcourt to the Parliament summoned by a Yorkist-controlled government in 1460.

Apart from the lay aristocracy, several of the MPs had links with leading churchmen. While it is impossible to prove that they enjoyed the direct support of these ecclesiastical patrons when standing for the Commons, such connexions were significant for their general advancement and thereby for their chances of winning a seat. While important in his own right, Chaucer benefited from the patronage of his cousin, Bishop Henry Beaufort, and Robert Danvers from that of Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, and Sir Thomas Wykeham owed his rise into the upper gentry to the support of his great-uncle, William of Wykeham, Beaufort’s predecessor as bishop of Winchester. Fewer of them than one might expect possessed links with the bishop of Lincoln. While Chaucer’s patron, Henry Beaufort, briefly held that see, he did so for six years spanning the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth. Chaucer subsequently served Beaufort’s successor at Lincoln, Philip Repingdon, as steward of Banbury, but in the second decade of the fifteenth century and not apparently thereafter. John Danvers also had dealings with the see of Lincoln, for he procured a 20-year lease of the episcopal manor of Easington in Banbury in the autumn of 1435, a transaction finalized on 10 Oct. that year, the opening day of his last Parliament.18 CAD, i. C1184. Finally, Norris became a relative by marriage of Bishop John Chedworth through his third wife, but not until well over a decade after sitting for Oxfordshire.

Reflecting the relative insignificance of those institutions, none of the MPs held office on the estates of the county’s religious houses although Drayton possessed a family connexion with Dorchester abbey, the burial place of him and several of his forebears. Rede and Stokes also had a connexion with the abbey, since they came together in the late 1430s to secure the daily prayers of its canons for themselves and their wives as well as Rede’s maternal grandparents and great-grandparents. Evidence of links between the MPs and Oxford university within the period under review is also sparse although Sir Thomas Wykeham studied civil law at New College, the foundation of his powerful great-uncle, for a few years in the 1390s. More notably, Robert Danvers played a leading role in assisting Archbishop Chichele to found All Souls’ College in 1438, and he remained deeply involved in the affairs of the college long after the death of his patron, for whom he was an executor, in 1443.

As in the previous three and a half decades,19 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 560. the electorate in Oxfordshire generally preferred to return Members with previous parliamentary experience. A clear majority of the 23 attended more than one Parliament, whether for the county or other constituencies, and it is possible that up to two of them also sat for Oxfordshire in 1455. At least nine of the MPs represented other constituencies, in some cases before their election for Oxfordshire.20 Robert Danvers, Hampden, both Harcourts, Haytfeld, Norris, Pury, Restwold and Stokes. In short, the county did not lack for experienced parliamentarians and there was considerable continuity in its representation in the Commons. So far as is known, in only three Parliaments of this period, those of 1432, 1445 and 1447, were both of its knights of the shire novice MPs.

Experienced Members monopolized the county’s seats in the first seven Parliaments of the reign. All six of the men in question, of whom Chaucer and Thomas Stonor I were especially prominent, had already sat for Oxfordshire before 1422, as early as Henry IV’s reign in the cases of Chaucer and Sir Thomas Wykeham.

Chaucer enjoyed a career spanning 30 years, during which he sat in at least 14 Parliaments, each time as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire, including the consecutive assemblies of 1426, 1427, 1429 and 1431. He was also Speaker of the Commons on no fewer than five occasions – a record not equalled until the eighteenth century – although not during Henry VI’s reign. In his last three Parliaments Chaucer’s fellow MP was his former ward, Thomas Stonor I, who first sat for the county in 1416 and represented it on at least half a dozen occasions. Norris was the next most experienced MP after Chaucer: he was definitely a Member of nine Parliaments, if only as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire in one of them.

Continuity of representation was not as pronounced in the second half of the period under review, during which only Edmund Hampden certainly sat for the county in consecutive Parliaments. While taking into account that several of the experienced MPs among the 23 died during or soon after the first two decades of Henry VI’s reign (Chaucer, Peter Fettiplace, Lisle, Thomas Stonor I and Sir Thomas Wykeham), one might speculate that the increasing volatility of national politics thereafter deterred suitable candidates from standing at some elections. At the same time, the instability provided opportunities for others whose political commitment or factional ties outweighed lack of previous experience. Four of those MPs who lived beyond the period under review also sat as knights of the shire, for Oxfordshire or other constituencies, in one or more of Edward IV’s Parliaments. Richard Harcourt, Quatermayns and Stokes had all entered the service or come out in support of the house of York before 1461, while the fourth, Pury, had quickly adapted to the overthrow of Henry VI, notwithstanding his previous membership of the Lancastrian Court.

Elections of Oxfordshire’s knights of the shire occurred at Thursday meetings of the county court. The regular venue was the royal castle at Oxford, the administrative centre for the county, and all but one of those of Henry VI’s reign for which there are surviving indentures of return took place there. The exception was the election to the controversial anti-Yorkist Parliament of 1459, held at Bicester, but it is unclear if there was a political reason for the change of venue. Exactly what happened there is a matter for speculation. The indenture returned into Chancery named 23 attestors, 16 of whom do not feature in any of the other extant returns of the reign. To add to the suspicion of irregular proceedings, the name of the sheriff, Thomas de la Mare†, is inserted into a space too small for it, evidently some time after the drawing up of the indenture. It is possible that he was not even present at its making, since it bears the date of 8 Nov., just a day after his formal appointment as sheriff.

Whatever the composition of the electorate and the circumstances of the election of 1459, there was nothing unusual about the number of attestors. As in the associated county of Berkshire, the four coroners usually headed the list of attestors, particularly in the first half of the fifteenth century. The average number of witnesses in the extant indentures was just under 17, although there were as many as 33 in 1437 but only seven in 1447. Like that of 1459, the election of 1447 was for another ‘political’ Parliament, called by the opponents of the duke of Gloucester, but it is not clear if this might explain such a low number. There were only 11 attestors in Berkshire that year but no fewer than 202 in Buckinghamshire, suggesting that a contested election could have occurred in the latter county. Buckinghamshire’s electoral politics were apparently far more rumbustious than in the other two shires. It certainly witnessed a contested election in 1429 and perhaps again in 1432. There was also a particularly well attended parliamentary election in another neighbouring county, Bedfordshire. One hundred and thirteen men attested the return of its knights of the shire in 1453, when Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, used his influence to secure the return of two of his followers. By contrast, only 11 attestors feature in the Oxfordshire return of that year.

It does not automatically follow that the Household men among the MPs were royal placemen in the Parliaments in which they sat and direct evidence for the Crown’s active intervention in Oxfordshire’s parliamentary elections is lacking. On the other hand, it was surely no coincidence that all of those returned in 1447 and 1459, and in 1453 (to another Parliament called in favourable circumstances for the Court) possessed links, some of them very strong, with the Lancastrian establishment.

It is also worth noting that the sheriff in 1447 was the courtier, Edward Langford*, and his successor of 1459, Thomas de la Mare, was a supporter of the Lancastrian cause. Ironically, de la Mare was still sheriff (at least in name) at the time of the election of 1460. The final Parliament of Henry VI’s reign was another controversial assembly. Summoned after the Yorkists had regained control of the government and person of the King, it witnessed the duke of York make a formal claim to the throne, and both of the men returned for Oxfordshire, Richard Harcourt and Stokes, were Yorkists.

Similarly, the political sympathies of John Roger I*, the sheriff in 1453, may have inclined towards Richard, duke of York, rather than the Court-controlled government that summoned it. On other occasions, personal relationships may have played a part in the making of returns. For example, the then sheriff, Robert James*, returned his friend Chaucer in 1429, and during his first shrievalty in the following decade Richard Quatermayns returned Robert Danvers, a stepson of his niece, Joan Bruley, to the Parliament of 1437.

Generally, the knights of the shire for Oxfordshire did not themselves regularly attest parliamentary elections for the county, either in the period under review or the decades immediately preceding or following it. Yet the surviving indentures show that Peter Fettiplace witnessed as many as 12, that John Danvers attested four, that both Thomas Fettiplace and Thomas Stonor II witnessed two and Barantyn, Chaucer, Sir Robert Harcourt, Lisle, Quatermayns, Rede, Thomas Stonor I and Sir Thomas Wykeham one each. Peter Fettiplace’s office as a coroner of the county explains his regular attendance at elections although he also attested the return of the knights of the shire for Berkshire in 1410. Several others likewise attested elections elsewhere, perhaps suggesting a particular engagement with parliamentary affairs on their part. Chaucer had witnessed the return of the knights of the shire for Somerset in 1407, Quatermayns and Thomas Stonor I were among the attestors for Buckinghamshire in 1427 and the long-lived Rede would attend the election for the latter county to the Parliament of 1478.