Rutland

Enveloped by the much larger counties of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, Rutland, at some 97,000 acres, was comfortably the smallest of England’s ancient counties, with Middlesex, the next smallest, not far from twice its size. It was also distinctive for another reason: no other county in England was so dominated territorially by the lands of the greater baronage. This is graphically illustrated by the tax returns of 1412. Edward, duke of York, was assessed on an annual landed income within the county of 286 marks; Joan Fitzalan, the elderly widow of Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford (d.1373), at 140 marks; and Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, at 95 marks. These were large incomes to derive from so small a county and are especially striking when compared with the incomes drawn from it by its leading gentry. The most valuable gentry estate, that of Henry Pleasington, then a minor, was said to be worth a mere £25 p.a.1 E179/387/21. Of total assessments of £781, the peerage accounted for £404.

Ten years later, at the beginning of the period here under review, this territorial dominance had become concentrated in the hands of the Stafford family. In 1414 the dowager-countess of Stafford, Anne, daughter and heiress of Thomas, duke of Gloucester, by Joan’s daughter Eleanor, recovered the valuable lordship of Oakham against the duke of York, and five years later, on the death of her grandmother the countess of Hereford she added to this the neighbouring and valuable manor of Langham. On her death in 1438 these lands came into the hands of her son, Humphrey, earl of Stafford and from 1444 duke of Buckingham.2 VCH Rutland, ii. 12, 49. Had he been resident at Oakham the political complexion of Rutland and hence its parliamentary representation might have been very different.

Stafford’s entry into his Rutland inheritance coincided with the development of another significant baronial estate in the county. In 1438 Ralph, Lord Cromwell, acquired manors in Ketton and South Luffenham from Thomas Greenham, and soon after added three others in Tixover, Manton and Ketton before purchasing the manor of Great Hambleton from Richard, duke of York, in 1449. His influence in the county was further augmented by the acquisition, in about 1440, of the valuable manor of Collyweston, just on the Northamptonshire side of the county border, and his building of a residence there.3 Ibid. 78, 228, 256; CP25(1)/192/9/10; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., East Bridgford deeds, 6; VCH Northants. ii. 552.

Given the extensive estates of the nobility within the boundaries of so small a county, it is not surprising that there were few local gentry. Rutland’s subsidy returns for 1435-6 and 1450-1 are lost, but those for 1412 identify only ten gentry with land in the county worth £20 p.a. or more, including two knights, Sir John Basynges and Sir Thomas Burton.4 E179/387/21. The list of those sworn in 1434 to eschew the maintenance of peace-breakers names three knights, nine esquires, four merchants and 13 gentlemen.5 This includes the two MPs, both esquires, before whom the oaths were to be sworn: CPR, 1429-36, p. 370. Some of the resident gentry have been omitted from the list of oath-takers, including Hugh Boyville, and Sir Thomas Burton was not named because he was then absent in Bayonne.

The identity of Rutland’s MPs is known for 21 of Henry VI’s 22 Parliaments: indentures survive for 19 and the names of the MPs in the Parliaments of 1439 and 1445 are provided by tax commissions.6 CFR, xvii. 140, 144, 325, 332. The 20 known MPs between them represented the county in a total of 62 Parliaments. With so few of the county’s gentry of sufficient rank to merit a place in the Commons and with those that were having significant interests beyond its boundaries, it is surprising that only three of the 20 MPs are recorded as having sat for other constituencies, compared, for example, with seven out of 21 in neighbouring Northamptonshire. Thomas Palmer and John Boyville represented Leicestershire on as many as 11 occasions between them, and Everard Digby sat for both Leicestershire and Huntingdonshire. All three had represented Leicestershire, and, in Digby’s case, Huntingdonshire as well, before being elected for Rutland.

This exclusion of outsiders, defined in the limited sense of those who did not have their main residence in the county, could only be achieved if representation ran strongly in families. Two members of each of those of Beaufo, Boyville, Browe and Flore sat for the county in Henry VI’s reign. All four of these families had provided the county with MPs before 1422, and Sir Thomas Burton, Sir Henry Pleasington, Thomas Greenham and John Oudeby were also descendants of men who had sat for Rutland in an earlier period. Indeed, Greenhams, Beaufos, Burtons and Boyvilles are to found representing the county before 1330, a testimony not only to the continuity of parliamentary representation but also to the longevity of several of the shire’s leading gentry families.

The restricted number of qualified candidates ensured that repeated elections were common. Four of the 20 MPs sat for the county on five or more occasions, with Roger Flore doing so no fewer than 12 times (11 of these fell before 1422). Equally significantly, only five of the 20 are recorded as having represented Rutland only once, and it is probably not coincidental that four of those five, namely Fenne, Palmer, Leek and Ralph Beaufo, were elected during the disturbed political conditions of the late 1440s and 1450s. The limited pool of suitable candidates is also reflected in the comparative frequency of immediate re-election: Robert Browe was returned successively in 1429 and 1431; Thomas Greenham in 1432 and 1433; William Beaufo in 1433 and 1435; and, most notably, Everard Digby on four successive occasions between 1447 and 1450. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that for 11 out of 21 Parliaments both of those returned had previously sat in the Commons, and only once, in 1453, were two parliamentary novices elected. Nevertheless, this representative continuity should not be overstressed. The figure of 20 different MPs in the period is comparable with the number returned for much larger counties with a far greater pool of candidates (both Leicestershire and Northamptonshire had 21 MPs), and considerably exceeds that of the 12 men who sat for another small county, Huntingdonshire.

In common with other shires Rutland experienced a sharp decline in the number of knights among its MPs in the fifteenth century. Of the 20 MPs of Henry VI’s reign, only four took up the rank, and of these three had sat in Parliament before 1422 and the other, John Brauncepath, assumed knighthood only after the close of his parliamentary career. Although knights were never as prominent among the county’s MPs as they were in larger counties, they were not infrequently returned during the second half of the fourteenth century, particularly during the 1390s when six of those elected held the rank.7 An even higher figure is suggested in the earlier volume because Hugh Greenham, John Elme and Walter Scarle are wrongly accorded the rank on the flawed authority of the OR: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 569. Thereafter, however, they virtually disappeared from among its representatives. Not a single knight sat for the county between 1399 and 1419;8 In the earlier volume Thomas Oudeby†, MP in 1402 and 1404 (Oct.), is mistakenly described as a knight. and then, after a brief recovery with knights taking seven of the 20 seats from 1420 to 1431, there followed an even longer break between 1432 and 1529 without recorded knightly representation, although allowance needs to be made for many lacunae in the returns. Knights took only five of the 42 seats in Henry VI’s reign. Yet, although this was low, it is worth noting that it matches or exceeds the proportion of seats taken by knights in the larger neighbouring counties of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.

As in other counties, the decline in knightly representation was a function of the general decline in knighthood rather than in the social status of the county’s representatives. Several of the MPs remained esquires even though they were comfortably wealthy enough to support knighthood. At least six of them – Brauncepath, John Boyville, John Browe, Digby, Greenham and Palmer – were distrained to become knights on at least one occasion, and others are known from other sources to have incomes sufficient to qualify them for distraint.

A decline in the number of knights elected was matched by one in military experience among the MPs as a body. The worsening fortunes of English arms in France meant that fewer MPs had military experience than was the case earlier in the Lancastrian period. Four are known to have been present at the battle of Agincourt, namely Burton, John Boyville, Robert Browe and Oudeby.9 Earlier Browe had fought at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403, and Burton against the Glendower rebels. Two others saw service in Henry V’s later campaigns: Pleasington is recorded as about to depart for France in June 1421, and in the following year Digby was in the military retinue of John, duke of Bedford. Later, rather incongruously, the lawyer Palmer is recorded among the same duke’s retinue in 1428; in 1441 John Browe was among those who crossed over to France with the duke of York and went on to serve in the company that brought Margaret of Anjou to England; and in 1443 Digby participated in the ill-fated expedition of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Only Burton, however, had what might be termed a military career, ending it as mayor of Bayonne in the 1430s.

The descent into civil war in the 1450s provided the opportunity for military service at home rather than abroad, yet only two of our MPs are known to have taken up arms in the civil war of 1459-61. Palmer was present on the Yorkist side at Ludford Bridge in October 1459. His friend Digby was one of the leading gentry captains on the Lancastrian side: active throughout the campaigns of 1459-61, he died at the battle of Towton. John Browe is not known to have fought openly for the Yorkist cause, but he was closely associated with the duke of York and his only son Thomas was one of the select band who followed the duke into exile after Ludford Bridge. The eight other MPs who were alive in 1459 appear to have maintained neutrality, although one, Thomas Flore, seems to have supported the Readeption 11 years later.

Despite its compactness, Rutland had a sheriff of its own, an administrative peculiarity when far larger counties were twinned for shrieval purposes. This explains why as many as 15 of the 20 MPs held the office at some time in their careers and accounts for the frequency with which several were appointed.10 In the period 1386-1421 there was a far lower correlation between the personnel of the county’s MPs and its sheriffs with only 12 of the 27 holding the office. This is in part explained by the fact that the shrievalty was in the hands of Edward, earl of Rutland, from 1390 to 1397. Thomas Flore served on as many as six occasions, and four of the MPs – William Beaufo, Burton, Fenne and Pleasington – served at least three times each. Culpepper, the only MP to hold the shrievalty in another county, served twice in Rutland and once in Northamptonshire. The shrievalty like parliamentary representation was kept firmly in the hands of the county’s resident elite. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that as many as 19 of the 42 seats should have been taken by the county’s former sheriffs.

The overlap between the personnel of representation and that of the county bench was nearly as notable. Fourteen of the MPs served on the Rutland bench at some point during their careers, and another, William Heton, was a j.p. in Leicestershire but not Rutland. He was not the only one of the MPs to serve on the bench of another county: John Boyville and Palmer also sat as j.p.s in Leicestershire, while Digby was appointed in Huntingdonshire and Palmer in Northamptonshire. In addition, there is the exceptional case of Roger Flore, nominated to the bench in ten counties ex officio as steward of the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster. Of the 42 seats, 14 were taken by men then in receipt of the commission in the county and a further nine by men who had formerly been.11 Heton was a j.p. in Leics. when elected for Rutland in 1442. In five Parliaments, those of 1422, 1437, 1447, 1449 (Nov.) and 1450, the county was represented by two of its serving j.p.s.; none the less, as in the period 1386-1421, membership of the bench was not an important qualification for election.

While most of Rutland’s MPs served as both sheriff and j.p., only five held the office of escheator in the county.12 Of these five, Palmer also held the office in the paired counties of Warws. and Leics. In addition, Heton, who was not escheator in Rutland, served in the paired counties of Notts and Derbys. before he represented Rutland in Parliament. There were two reasons for this: first, the escheatorship was shared with Northamptonshire and hence there was a larger pool of potential appointees; and second, it was a post beneath the dignity of the leading gentry. Those MPs who did serve as escheator, in Rutland as in other counties, were either lawyer-administrators, like Palmer, appointed early in their careers before going on to better things, or else lesser gentry, like William Leek, exceptionally returned as MPs in the absence of better qualified candidates. Only four of the 42 seats were taken by former escheators, and in addition the serving escheator, Brauncepath, was returned to the Parliament of 1437.

Despite the singularity of the county, the relationship between a first election to Parliament and appointment to one of these three major offices of shire administration was the same as that in more typical counties: namely that a first return to Parliament generally stood at the beginning of the cursus honorem of local office. Of the 17 Rutland MPs who held one of these posts in the county, as many as 12 had already sat in Parliament before their first nomination to office. Recognition by the county electors appears often to have served to introduce a landowner to the Crown as a potential holder of major office. Four Rutland MPs, William Beaufo, Burton, Fenne and Oudeby were first appointed to the shrievalty either during or immediately after their first Parliaments; and Culpepper was first named to the bench shortly after his.13 Digby was first nominated to the Hunts. bench while sitting as MP for that county for the first time, although he had already represented Leics.

Although a first election to Parliament stood for most at the beginning of the cursus of local office, repeated elections ensured that most of county’s seats were taken by men with administrative experience: 31 of the 42 seats were filled by men who had held office as sheriff, j.p. or escheator. Only in 1433 were two men returned who had not held one of these local offices.

All but two of the 20 MPs are known to have held property in Rutland. The exceptions were the wealthy lawyer Palmer, a considerable landholder in Leicestershire, and the professional administrator William Heton: the first owed his election to the exceptional political circumstances of the autumn of 1450, and the second to his place in the service of Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and Ralph, Lord Cromwell. As in respect of the MPs for the period 1386-1421, several owned their property in Rutland exclusively in right of their wives. Digby, Brauncepath and Fenne fall into this category, and in the case of the latter two it was property their spouses held as dower or jointure rather than inheritance.14 Similarly, in the period 1386-1421, two of the county’s MPs, Sir John Calveley† and Sir Oliver Mauleverer†, were returned by virtue of their wife’s life tenancies. The other 15 all inherited their land in the county. Nevertheless, although nearly all the MPs can unequivocally be described as Rutland men, the county’s lack of acres and the preponderance of great baronial estates meant that most of them derived much of their income from land elsewhere. Measuring their landholdings at their greatest extent during their parliamentary careers, as many as ten held inherited property in neighbouring Leicestershire, and of these three, Digby, Palmer and John Boyville (all of whom sat for that county in Parliament), had their principal residences there. A further three acquired property there in right of their wives. The link between Rutland and Northamptonshire was less close: no one sat for both counties in the reign of Henry VI and of the eight Rutland MPs known to have held land there, three did so only jure uxoris. Lincolnshire presents a similar picture: nine Rutland MPs are known to have held land there but none of these holdings was extensive. While it is inevitable that the lands of the county’s MPs should have spread into its larger neighbours, and not surprising that several should have held property in nearby Warwickshire and Huntingdonshire, it is striking to find its representatives with holdings, either through inheritance or in right of their wives, in at least 15 other counties, from Hampshire in the south to Yorkshire in the north.

The number of counties in which an MP possessed landed interests provides a rough indication of his wealth, but subsidy assessments and estate accounts are a more reliable guide. Although Rutland returns do not survive for the income taxes of 1435-6 and 1450-1, several of the county’s representatives appear in the Leicestershire return of 1435-6 and one was assessed in the Exchequer. Of these only two were assessed at £100 p.a. or above: Sir Henry Pleasington at £160 and John Boyville at £100. Other evidence, however, shows that they were not alone among the county’s MPs for enjoying an income of this order. (Sir) John Culpepper, Sir Thomas Burton and Palmer all appear to have had incomes over £100 p.a. when they represented Rutland. Judging from the lists of those distrained for knighthood and other evidence of landholding, one can safely assume most of the rest of the MPs had incomes of between £40 and £100 and were thus qualified for election under the terms of the statute of 1445, but three – Ralph Beaufo, Hugh Boyville and William Leek – had, as far as the evidence goes, incomes below that level. The return of two of them can be explained in terms of family connexions, for they were junior members of leading local families with a tradition of parliamentary service. Hugh Boyville, assessed on a respectable income of £20 in the Leicestershire tax returns of 1435-6, was the younger brother of John Boyville, and Ralph Beaufo, whose landholdings appear to have been almost negligible, was a close relative of William Beaufo. Ralph’s sole return must also be attributed to the tense political circumstances of 1459 when candidates willing to accompany the Lancastrian partisan, Digby, may have been in short supply. Only Leek’s return in 1453 defies explanation in social terms. Curiously, all three of these men were elected after the passing of the defining statute of 1445, and this serves to emphasize further the impact the tense political climate of the late 1440s and 1450s had on the normal pattern of representation.

Of the 20 MPs seven can be categorised as lawyers. Three are known to have attended an inn of court or Chancery, namely Ralph Beaufo, Chiselden and Thomas Flore, although nothing else in their careers singles them out as men of law. Four others, Roger Flore, Fenne, Heton and Palmer, are firmly identified as lawyers by the functions they discharged. Between them these filled only eight of the 42 seats, a low proportion compared with neighbouring Leicestershire and Northamptonshire.

All the recorded elections during this period were held at Oakham save for that of 30 Oct. 1449, which was held at Uppingham, six miles away. The returns took the standard form of an indenture drawn up between the sheriff and named attestors, although the returns of 1422 and 1423 were so worded as to imply that the sheriff was himself one of the electors. The same applies to the four returns made immediately before 1419 and in 1421, and probably reflects a variation in diplomatic rather than practice. The number of attestors named varied from six in October 1449 to 26 in 1460, with an average of 15. Most of the returns, in tacking onto the list of attestors the words ‘et alios probos homines’ or a variation thereof, indicate that others than those named took part in the election. As in respect of other constituencies one is left to wonder whether the omission of these words shows that the electors were confined to those named, and it may or may not be significant that the three longest lists of attestors do not have the ‘and others’ addition.

There was a far higher overlap between the electorate and the county gentry in Rutland than there was in other counties, a consequence of its attenuated gentry class. Of the 29 gentry listed as resident in the county in 1434, as many as 26 attested at least one parliamentary election; of the 20 MPs as many as 16 did so, and of the four who did not, three – Palmer, Digby and John Boyville – had their principal residences outside the county (and are to be found as attestors elsewhere).15 Most notably, on 14 Jan. 1447 Digby attested the Hunts. election 12 days before his election for Rutland. Two of the MPs were particularly assiduous in their attendance: Thomas Flore is recorded as present at 11 elections, and Robert Browe at eight. The electorate was not, however, confined to this gentry group. The four elections held between 1450 and 1460, all of which were well attended, were witnessed by no fewer than 69 electors, most of whom were below gentry rank. These four returns provide a better guide to the size of the franchise than the military survey of 1522 which names only 44 freeholders with a landed income of 40s. or more.16 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. xxxvii. 11. Taking all the surviving returns from 1422 to 1460, they name a total of 134 attestors drawn from 103 families.

There is in general little correspondence between the identity of the sheriff as returning officer and those he returned, although in 1447 John Boyville conducted the election of his brother Hugh.

Not until it acquired the Stafford estates in 1521 did the Crown have a significant landed estate in Rutland, and it is thus not surprising that there were few direct links between the Crown and the county’s MPs. Just two, John Browe and William Leek, are recorded holding places as Household esquires. Only one of Browe’s four returns came when he was in receipt of royal livery, but it is likely that Leek’s place in the Household was a significant factor in his election in 1453. Fenne was a Chancery clerk when he sat in the Parliament of November 1449, but later abandoned royal for baronial service. The only MP with very strong links with the Crown was Roger Flore, and although he sat in the Parliament of 1422 his parliamentary career belongs to the earlier period. Palmer only developed his royal links after the deposition of Henry VI and long after he had sat for Rutland in Parliament.

Given the extent of baronial landholdings in Rutland, it might be expected that magnate influence would have been strongly apparent in the county’s representation. While, however, that influence was not negligible, the consideration that no peer lived in the county militated against its exercise. Only in respect of the election of Heton in 1442 can it be unequivocally said that an MP would not have been returned but for his baronial connexions. He was a professional administrator who at the time of his election was serving as both the earl of Stafford’s steward in the county and Lord Cromwell’s in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire. Earlier, in 1429 John Boyville had been elected when in office as the earl of Warwick’s steward in Rutland, but, in marked contrast to Heton, he was among the wealthiest men to represent the county in this period and it may be that his stewardship was incidental to his election. The same can probably be said about the parkership of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin’s lordship of Yardley Hastings (Northamptonshire) which Fenne held when he was returned to the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.).

Of greater interest were three elections influenced by an MP’s connexions with magnates without significant interests in the county. Culpepper’s election to the Parliament of 1431 may be an aspect of his service to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, then custos Anglie in the King’s absence; and there can be little doubt that John Browe was elected to the Yorkist Parliament of 1460 because he was a retainer of Richard, duke of York. York’s influence is more revealingly apparent in the election held ten years earlier in the atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion attendant upon his sudden return from Ireland. Here there is indirect evidence that the Rutland election was co-ordinated with that of its neighbour, Leicestershire. The hustings in the latter county were not held until 12 Nov., six days after Parliament had assembled, even though the writs of summons, issued on 5 Sept., had given plenty of notice. The delay implies that it was deliberately held over, and there is reason to suppose that the delay was related to the election of Palmer for Rutland on 29 Oct. Palmer, as the duke’s steward in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, was an obvious candidate for election in the prevailing political circumstances, but for his home county of Leicestershire, which he had already represented four times, not for Rutland. This raises the possibility that the Leicestershire election was postponed because Palmer, to avoid a politically divisive contest in his home county, had agreed to withdraw if he could secure a seat in Rutland.

A desire to serve the interests of a master in Parliament sometimes existed alongside more personal motives. Browe’s determination to secure a seat in 1460 was probably prompted not only by his place in York’s service but also by his desperate need to protect himself against actions sued by Robert Danvers*, j.c.p., in their dispute over the valuable manor of Pickworth. Another dispute had a more extended influence on Rutland’s representation, namely that between Chiselden and Digby over the parkership of Ridlington. While Digby was representing the county in the Parliament of November 1449, Chiselden took advantage of his absence to raid his property at Stoke Dry. Digby, in turn, used his position as an MP to present a petition to the Commons complaining of this and other alleged offences. The Crown sanctioned summary process against Chiselden, who was later condemned in heavy damages, and, unable to pay, he sought and secured election to the Parliament of 1453 to avail himself of the parliamentary privilege of freedom of arrest. Moreover, while sitting in Parliament, he exacted a measure of revenge, securing his enemy’s nomination to the burdensome and socially demeaning office of tax collector.

There can have been little competition for seats among the resident gentry, yet this did not result in the infiltration of outsiders to Rutland’s representation. Although some of its leading gentry are not recorded as representing it in Parliament (most notably, in this period, Sir John Basynges), the remainder shared the responsibility of representation between them. Admittedly the MPs were occasionally drawn from the ranks of those but recently established in the county – Digby, Brauncepath, Culpepper and Fenne were all elected for the first time very shortly after acquiring lands there – but the overall impression is of representation impressively dominated by a resident elite of a type that it is surprising to find in so small a shire.