Bridgwater

The borough of Bridgwater had been granted its earliest charter by King John in 1200, but the community was not formally incorporated until 1468. In 1318 and 1371 the burgesses had sued out letters of confirmation from Edward II and Edward III, but they saw no need to procure similar letters from Richard II or the first two Lancastrians. It may thus have been a sign of the political uncertainty arising from Henry VI’s minority that early in the new reign, just weeks into the first session of the Parliament of 1423, the burgesses acquired a confirmation of Edward III’s grant.1 Brit. Bor. Chs. 1307-1660 ed. Weinbaum, 102; CPR, 1422-9, p. 140. Bridgwater had prospered in the fourteenth century. In 1334 it was assessed for taxation as the wealthiest of the Somerset boroughs, and in the wider region it came second only to the cathedral city of Exeter in Devon. The sources of this wealth lay in the local manufacture of a type of broadcloth known as ‘Bridgwater’, but above all from its strategic position on the navigable river Parrett, which allowed the townsmen to trade to France and Ireland. Bridgwater’s importance as a commercial centre was accentuated by its four annual fairs. Yet the wider economic decline of Henry VI’s reign took its toll. In November 1452 Richard, duke of York, ordered an inquiry into the decline of his rental income from the town, and in July 1454 his commissioners (William Browning I* and Robert Halsewell) informed him that as a result of the ‘importable charges’ laid on the inhabitants many of them had withdrawn from their tenancies. By the early years of Edward IV’s reign the situation had worsened: the burgesses petitioned the King’s mother Cecily, dowager duchess of York, for a further reduction of their fee farm by 10s., in addition to the 25s. by which the ducal rents had fallen before 1454.2 Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68 (Som. Rec. Soc. lx), 773, 819.

In Henry VI’s reign the feudal overlords of Bridgwater were Richard, duke of York, who inherited one third of the borough from his uncle Edmund, earl of March (d.1425), after the death of the latter’s widow in 1432, and William, Lord Zouche of Harringworth (d.1462), who held the other two thirds.3 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 592; CIPM, xxii. 487. These lords took little direct interest in the town’s affairs (although Bridgwater’s castle served as the administrative headquarters of York’s estates in Somerset), and while they continued to appoint a steward who presided over their courts, the steward played no other part in Bridgwater’s administration. Over the course of the fourteenth century the burgesses had asserted their independence, and the officers of the merchant guild increasingly conducted the affairs of the community. Along with a portreeve, charged with collecting the lords’ rents, every year the burgesses chose two stewards of the guild (otherwise also known as ‘stewards of the community’) and a common bailiff (or bailiff of the guild) who administered the community’s funds, which were disbursed at the discretion of the stewards. Lesser officers included a common clerk, two other bailiffs, a receiver, constables and wardens of the peace and of assize.4 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 593. It was not until Edward IV’s incorporation of the borough in 1468 that a mayor was introduced as Bridgwater’s chief officer.

As an important commercial centre as well as a strategic crossing point over the Parret on the road from Taunton and the west to Glastonbury and Wells, Bridgwater experienced its share of the disorder that dogged England in Henry VI’s reign. In April 1436 there were disturbances in the town (possibly connected with a disagreement between the future chief justice John Hody* and Sir William Bonville*) during sessions of the peace conducted by William, Lord Botreaux, when Alexander Hody and his servants clashed with the retainers of Guy Bittellesgate, a local gentleman from Whitelackington. Later on the same day the rioters broke open the town gaol to which Botreaux had committed one of their number, threatened the borough officers and freed the prisoner.5 KB9/229/1, nos. 46, 47; KB27/706, rot. 52d, rex rot. 24d; CPR, 1429-36, p. 609; M. Cherry, ‘Crown and Political Community, Devon’ (Univ. of Wales, Swansea Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 244-5. In September 1451 Bridgwater became one of the recruiting grounds of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, and his ally, Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, as their followers marched east to confront the earl of Wiltshire and his protégé Bonville with armed might. Here (as previously at Taunton), Courtenay and Cobham issued a statement, declaring their intentions to be merely ‘to further the common good’, before moving on towards Bath and Lackham.6 R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 89-90. The intervention of the duke of York eventually persuaded the two lords to withdraw their troops, but early in the following year they were once more up in arms, this time with York’s connivance. From mid February to early March 1452 risings were staged in a number of towns throughout Devon, Somerset and Dorset, and at the same time the retainers of Courtenay and Cobham once again marched east to join forces with the army that York had himself raised. Interestingly enough, Bridgwater, unlike a number of other towns of which the duke was lord, apparently did not witness any disturbances beyond the passage of this force, although its castle provided the setting for the subsequent judicial inquiries after York’s submission at Dartford.7 Ibid. 96-99; KB9/105/1.

Bridgwater had first returned MPs to the Commons in 1295, and was represented regularly thereafter. During Henry VI’s minority, the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset normally recorded the names of the MPs elected by the four boroughs in Somerset in a composite indenture counter-sealed by four representatives from each community. In addition, he listed the names of the knights of the shire and of the citizens and burgesses in a separate schedule, which also recorded the names of the Members’ sureties. After 1437 the separate indenture for Somerset’s urban constituencies was abandoned, and the names of the citizens and burgesses were certified only by the schedule until 1455, from when they were added to the end of the indenture recording the election of the knights, albeit apparently in a second procedural stage. The individual boroughs were nevertheless required to signify their choice, made locally, as is apparent from the wording of the precept issued to the Wells authorities by the sheriff in June 1455, which explicitly instructed them to do so.8 Som. Archs., Wells recs., convocation act bk. 1450-1553, p. 15. Only in the reign of Edward IV do separate indentures between the sheriff of Somerset and the individual boroughs in his bailiwick begin to survive.9 Bridgwater indentures survive for 1472 and 1478: C219/17/2, 3.

The names of Bridgwater’s representatives are recorded for 19 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign; no Members are known for the assemblies of 1439, 1445 and 1459. Twenty-five men shared these 38 seats between them. In the case of 36 of the seats, the names of the MPs have been established beyond reasonable doubt, but the remaining two present some problems. In 1425, the sheriff’s indenture named John Gonne, who had previously represented Bridgwater in 1422, as the junior Member for the borough, but by the time that the indenture and its accompanying schedule had been placed on the Chancery files, Gonne’s name had been erased on the schedule and replaced with that of the seasoned parliamentarian John Pitt. The interpretation of these documents is further complicated by Pitt’s attestation of the indenture. By custom, here as elsewhere, the men elected did not witness the returns, and in the reign of Henry VI Pitt is recorded as doing so only three times, in 1422, 1425 and 1437, in every instance on the occasion of one of Gonne’s elections. The alteration of the schedule nevertheless appears to indicate that Pitt replaced Gonne as an MP, probably at a late stage in the electoral process, and that it was he who took the seat. Even more ambiguous is the return for 1455. In that year, the sheriff’s indenture named the Sussex esquire Thomas Lewknor, a man with no discernible ties with the borough or its feudal lords, as Bridgwater’s senior MP, while the accompanying schedule named in his stead Robert Cotys the younger, then one of the Somerset county coroners. Unlike in 1425, indenture and schedule show no evidence of open tampering which might shed light on the identity of the man who actually took the seat.

Bridgwater’s parliamentary representation in this period fell into two distinct phases. During the King’s minority, much as in the earlier years of the century, the burgesses evidently set considerable store on the candidates’ prior experience of the Commons. Nineteen of the 22 seats available between 1422 and 1437 were taken by men who had sat in Parliament before; on four occasions (allowing for Pitt’s return in 1425) one of the MPs was directly re-elected; and in 1429 the burgesses returned both of their representatives from the previous Parliament. By contrast, in the years of Henry VI’s majority the inhabitants of Bridgwater showed themselves rather less concerned about their representatives’ parliamentary credentials. On account of the loss of the returns for 1439, 1445 and 1459 the evidence is incomplete, but as far as it is possible to tell only six of the 16 seats for which the Members’ names have been discovered were taken by men who had previously served in the Commons, and in 1442, 1449 (Feb.) and 1450 Bridgwater returned two apparent novices. In is also worthy of remark that from the 1430s onwards several of Bridgwater’s MPs with prior parliamentary experience had gained this in the service of other boroughs, mostly in Dorset (Hody had previously sat for Shaftesbury, Cullyford and Halsewell for Lyme Regis, Dryffeld for Wareham and Ward for Bridport), but also in Wiltshire (Mone had represented Cricklade), or Somerset (Plush had been returned for Taunton). Thomas Burgoyne clearly had strong motives for wishing to sit in the Commons of 1447, since he accepted a Bridgwater seat after previously serving as a knight for Cambridgeshire and a citizen for London. The exact nature of his interests can only be guessed, for as a busy lawyer he served a number of important clients at any one time, and was indeed named as the abbot of Croyland’s proxy in that same Parliament, but it is plausible that connexions with the joint lord of Bridgwater, the duke of York (for whom he was officiating as bailiff in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire by that autumn), allowed for his return for the Somerset borough.

In the longer term, a number of Bridgwater’s representatives built distinguished parliamentary careers. Although perhaps as many as nine of the MPs sat in the Commons only once, a further five (Cullyford, Gosse, Mauncell, Mone and Ward) were elected twice, and seven (Burgoyne, Cave, Dryffeld, William Gascoigne II, Jacob, Plush and possibly Gonne) sat three times. More notable were Halsewell and Lewknor, who respectively sat four and five times (provided that the latter took his Bridgwater seat), while Pitt (allowing for his return in 1425) was returned on eight occasions between 1421 and 1435 (being directly re-elected on up to four of them), Hody sat at least 11 times between 1429 and 1459, and William Gascoigne I had the distinction of representing his borough on at least 12 occasions between 1406 and 1422, and probably even more frequently, as he was directly re-elected on every documented occasion and no Bridgwater returns survive for a further five of Henry IV’s and Henry V’s Parliaments.

Burgoyne’s return in 1447 was not the only instance in which high politics ostensibly affected Bridgwater’s representation. Although the borough’s lords did not normally interfere in its internal affairs and choice of parliamentary representatives, it seems clear that the return to the Parliament of November 1449 of Reynold Sowdeley, a Shropshire man with no known ties in the south-west, and probably also of his colleague, Thomas Dryffeld, who may have hailed from Yorkshire, was the result of the direct intervention of the duke of York, who was then emerging as the government’s principal critic. Equally, there may have been a political background to an amendment of the schedule of 1453, which had originally named a Thomas Ward* (probably the royal household official of that name) as one of the Members for Bridgwater. At some stage, the Member’s Christian name was struck out and ‘William’ inserted in its stead: certainly, it was William who was later paid for his services by the borough.10 C219/16/2; Bridgwater Bor. Archs. 1445-68, no. 774.

Crucially, such returns of outsiders and political nominees remained the exception rather than the rule. No fewer than 12 of the 26 MPs lived in the town, while nine others came from elsewhere in Somerset: Cullyford from Hinton St. George, Dodesham and Plush from Cannington, Jacob and Mauncell from North Petherton and Mone from Corscombe; William Gascoigne II divided his time between his principal residence at Brockley and the cathedral city of Wells, while the precise addresses of Halsewell and Andrew within the county have not been identified. In at least six of Henry VI’s Parliaments (those of 1422, 1426, 1432, 1435, 1450 and 1460) Bridgwater thus returned two local men, while in a further eight (1423, 1425, 1427, 1429, 1437, 1447, 1449 (Feb.) and 1453),11 Nine, if Cotys rather than Lewknor sat in 1455. at least one of the borough’s representatives fulfilled the statutory requirement for residence.

Among those of the MPs whose trade or profession can be established, lawyers predominated. Of particular prominence in the profession were Burgoyne, who was currently serving as one of the under sheriffs of London, and Hody, a fellow of the Middle Temple whose expertise was periodically called upon in the drafting of acts of Parliament; but Mone was educated in canon law and Robert Cotys II and Cullyford, who officiated as county coroners, and Dodesham, Halsewell, Jacob and the two Gascoignes had all also received some legal training. Yet even in the 1450s and 1460s Bridgwater continued to return men with mercantile interests: Baker, Hill and Ward were general merchants, Croppe was a skinner and Gonne a mercer, while Pitt may have had interests in shipping.

Only a few of Bridgwater’s MPs established or continued family traditions of parliamentary service. Burgoyne, Robert Cotys II, Gosse and Lewknor all followed their fathers into the Commons, and William Gascoigne II was the nephew of the distinguished parliamentarian William Gascoigne I. Apparently more of a concern than family traditions in informing the burgesses’ choice of MPs was affordability. It is not clear when Bridgwater last paid its MPs at the customary rate of 2s. per day (always supposing the borough ever did so), but by Henry VI’s reign the practice had clearly been abandoned in favour of a token lump-sum payment negotiated on an individual basis. Thus, in 1431 Hody and Cullyford each received just one mark for their services over almost ten weeks, and even for the far longer Parliaments of 1449 (Nov.) and 1453 the borough’s representatives were each paid no more than 20s.12 H. Kleineke, ‘Payment’, Parlty. Hist. xxvi. 290.

It is not possible to demonstrate a direct link between the prior tenure of borough office and election to Parliament, although several of the MPs were drawn from the same pool of local leaders who participated in the town’s administration. This meant that eight or nine of the 22 seats available during Henry VI’s minority went to men who had previously held office in Bridgwater,13 The seats taken by Cave, William Gascoigne I and Pitt. while a further four were taken by those currently in post. Thus, William Gascoigne I, who had been one of the stewards of the guild at Bridgwater at the time of eight of his returns to Parliament before the King’s accession, was still in office when elected again to the first Parliament of the reign in 1422. Furthermore, his fellow steward, Gonne, accompanied him to Westminster. Pitt, who was constable at the time of his election in 1423, was returned while steward in1432. The correlation became less clear-cut after the King came of age, for of the 14 MPs returned in and after 1442 only two, Hill and Croppe, are known to have held borough office prior to their single elections to Parliament (in 1450 and 1460, respectively), and none of the 14 were currently in post when returned.14 Croppe had served two years as a churchwarden of St. Mary’s; Hill had held office as portreeve, common bailiff and a collector of tallages. Baker, Hill and Howell were chosen stewards of the guild later in their careers. On at least one occasion Baker had been among the men who attested Bridgwater’s parliamentary election return. The more prominent parliamentarian Pitt did the same on no fewer than six separate occasions, while Cave and Gonne each witnessed a total of nine elections.

If office-holding under the Crown held any sway with the Bridgwater electorate, the posts concerned with the collection of the King’s revenue in the port apparently carried particular weight. To five of the Parliaments of Henry VI’s minority the borough returned officials currently engaged in the customs service: Gonne was collector of customs and subsidies at Bridgwater when he was elected for the borough in 1422;15 He surrendered the post not long before his second election, in 1425, but it is not certain whether there was a link between his dismissal from office and his apparent failure to take up his seat at this time. Pitt was controller of the same when elected in 1427, 1429 and 1432, and collector in 1435; and Cullyford was serving as controller of the tronage and pesage at Bridgwater at the time of his return in 1431. The previous experience of William Gascoigne I and Pitt in these offices in Bridgwater and Halsewell’s as controller in the port of Southampton meant that altogether an impressive 12 out of the 22 Bridgwater seats available during the minority were taken by past or serving customs officials. As with borough offices, after the King came of age Bridgwater’s representatives underwent change. Although Ward was appointed to the controllership while sitting in the Commons of 1453, and Hill took up office as a collector at Bridgwater some years after his spell in Parliament, none of the MPs of 1442-60 could offer experience in the customs service to support their candidature.

With regard to other Crown offices in the locality, it should be noted that when returned in 1431 Cullyford was not only controller of tronage and pesage in Bridgwater, but also both coroner and clerk of the peace in the wider county of Somerset, and experienced as a former under sheriff in that county and Dorset. Similarly, if he did take a seat in 1455, Robert Cotys II was then serving as a coroner of Somerset. Otherwise, only Hody and Baker had any experience of Crown office in the region at the time of their elections for Bridgwater, in 1433 and 1435, respectively – Hody as a royal commissioner and Baker as a collector of taxes.16 The experience of the outsider Burgoyne (1447) had been gained elsewhere – in London and Cambs. Several MPs also found employment in the service of the Church and the greater nobility, but, significantly, not until after they had represented Bridgwater in Parliament. Thus, William Gascoigne II became bailiff of Bishop Bekynton’s liberty in Somerset; Hody held office as steward to Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, at Somerton, and deputy constable of Bishop Waynflete’s castle at Taunton; Jacob served as bailiff of the abbot of Glastonbury’s liberty; and Mone was appointed apparitor-general to Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells.