Guildford

The town of Guildford owed its prosperity, and arguably even its very existence, to its strategic position on the ‘Great Way’, the principal thoroughfare from London to the south coast. No details of its foundation have come to light, but even a century before the Norman Conquest it was of sufficient commercial importance to possess a royal mint. Nevertheless, the markets of the city of London left little room for the development of trading centres of any significance in its hinterland, and throughout the Middle Ages Guildford remained of, at best, modest size, outstripped even in its own county by the prosperous suburb of Southwark at the foot of London Bridge and Kingston at the site of a Thames crossing further upstream, both of which recorded larger numbers of taxpayers than Guildford’s 105 in 1332, and made larger contributions to parliamentary taxes. Indeed, as late as 1524-5 Guildford’s taxable population of 160, out of a total population of perhaps 2,000, represented only a small increase on the number present two centuries earlier.1 J.D. Sheail, ‘Distribution of Wealth in England’ (London Ph.D. thesis, 1968), i. 324; ii. 383 et seq.; E.M. Dance, Bor. Guildford, p. xiv; Lay Subsidy 1334 ed. Glasscock, 298.

Central to the town’s later medieval economy was the manufacture of cloth, with fulling mills on the banks of the Wey continuing to finish the cloth produced by local weavers. ‘Guildford cloth’, a variety by then produced in several counties in the south of England, continued to be a popular and relatively cheap commodity which was particularly in demand among visiting Italian merchants. An inventory of 1428, compiled by the Sancasciano firm of Pisa, reveals that 65 per cent of the value of its stock of cloth was made up of fabric from Essex and Guildford, and two years later a Florentine fleet which called at Southampton took on board a total of 1,300 lengths of cloth, of which 670 were cloths ‘of Guildford’ worth about £1 each.2 VCH Surr. iii. 554; M. Alexander, Guildford, a Short Hist. 19-21; E.B. Fryde, Studies in Med. Trade and Finance, (pt. 16), 351. The flourishing of the cloth industry in Guildford probably owed much to the continued presence of Flemish weavers in the area.3 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 538-9, 566.

Guildford’s boundaries remained roughly the same throughout the fifteenth century, and the population continued to be served by just three churches, Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s at the core, and St. Nicholas’s with its parish lying mostly outside the town. By the mid thirteenth century its castle had been sufficiently developed as to serve as a regular residence for Henry III. Subsequent monarchs visited less often, and by the second half of the fourteenth century the castle had fallen into some degree of disrepair. Henry VI paid only fleeting visits (in September 1439, May 1446, January 1447, October 1450 and June 1452), and he may on these occasions have enjoyed the hospitality of one or other of the leading townsmen, as Edward IV was to do on his visit in 1467, when he stayed at the house of Geoffrey Fraunceys, the keeper of the royal gaol.4 B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 362, 365, 368, 369; E101/412/2, f. 34v. Guildford castle had continued to house the county gaol for Surrey, even if its dilapidated state allowed for periodic escapes of prisoners. The town had been the venue of the county court since the twelfth century at least, and its status as the county town had been confirmed by Henry III in 1257, the year that marked the granting of Guildford’s first charter. In 1341 Edward III conceded to the burgesses freedom from tolls throughout the realm, and an annual fair lasting five days, but it took another 25 years for the ancient customs of the guild merchant and the judicial powers of the borough officers to be enshrined in a further royal grant. The borough’s charters were subsequently exemplified by Richard II in 1383 (the originals having been destroyed during the Peasants’ Revolt) and confirmed a year later, but thereafter the burgesses sought no further royal sanction until the Parliament of 1423, when a fresh confirmation was issued to the ‘approved men’ of the town.5 PROME, vi. 357; CPR, 1422-9, pp. 158-9. By then Guildford’s principal officers were the mayor (who presided over the court held every three weeks), the bailiff (responsible for collecting and paying the annual fee farm of £10), and the town clerk, all elected every year on the Monday after Michaelmas. The fragmentary surviving records (most of them early modern copies of lost medieval originals) indicate that the mayoralty was held by a large number of men in this period, all of whom, presumably, had risen from the ranks of the burgesses to become members of the guild merchant. The office was evidently not the preserve of a few prominent families, although given the small size of the borough, family connexions inevitably informed urban politics. Thus, the kinsmen John and Bernard Janyn, and Thomas† and Peter Stoughton were all elected to the mayoralty in this period, and ties of marriage, such as that of the widow of Thomas Catteslond to John Shenfeld, provided further connexions among the ruling elite. The bailiffs and clerks in this period seem to have been dedicated professionals and, with a few notable exceptions (such as William Thirsk), they rarely went on to occupy the mayoralty, an office which was more likely to be filled from the ranks of the bridge-wardens or hall-wardens. The post of clerk was, however, a crucial one, which demanded experience and a certain continuity of tenure, and so it is perhaps not surprising that between 1428 and 1459 only two individuals, one of whom was Thirsk, occupied it. Perhaps because of the demands of the office, this 31-year-period saw Thirsk and Walter Broke serving alternate terms, lasting between one and five years each, with Broke recording a total of 17 years’ service to Thirsk’s 14.6 Add. 6167, ff. 197v-198; Surr. Arch. Collns. ix. 318; VCH Surr. iii. 560.

Guildford had first returned Members to Parliament in 1295, and made returns regularly thereafter. Few details of the conduct of the borough’s elections in the medieval period have come to light. For most of Henry VI’s reign, successive sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex recorded the names of the representatives of the urban constituencies in their counties in schedules which were returned to Westminster along with the indentures recording the names of the knights of the two shires. It is nevertheless likely that, as in other counties, the elections were held locally in response to a precept from the sheriff, and the results communicated to the shire house for compilation into the collective schedule. Just twice in this period (in 1453 and 1460) did the sheriffs of Surrey (respectively Sir Richard Fiennes and his brother Robert Fiennes*) seal separate indentures with each of the boroughs in the county. On the first occasion, it was the mayor of Guildford, Thirsk, and the two town constables, Richard Lee and Thomas Perkyn, who counter-sealed the document on behalf of the townsmen; seven years later five named burgesses, headed by John Shenfeld and Thomas Palshude, and many other burgesses ‘infra burgum illum commorantes et residentes’, were said to have made the election. Although on that occasion the Guildford indenture was said to have been sealed in the county court held in the town on the same day, the election itself was presumably held in a separate assembly, as had happened in 1453. Then, the borough election was not certified until 12 days after the electoral meeting of the shire court. The extent of the franchise is unclear, but if the electoral assembly that chose the town officers also picked the borough’s parliamentary representatives, it may have encompassed the whole membership of the guild merchant before being reduced to just 30 men by Henry VII’s charter of 1488.7 C219/16/2, 6; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 634.

Returns survive for 19 out of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign; those for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445 and 1455 are lacking. A total of 26 men shared these 38 seats between them. Of the 26, and taking into account the Parliaments assembled under Henry V, 14 were returned just once for the borough, while nine others sat twice and one three times. Only Thirsk and William Weston exceeded this total, each being returned for Guildford on four occasions. In addition, however, John Frampton and Henry Fraunceys both sat for New Windsor (the latter twice), while Weston ended his documented parliamentary career as one of the Surrey knights of the shire in the Parliament of 1447 at Bury St. Edmunds.

The parliamentary representation of Guildford in Henry VI’s reign fell into two discernible periods. The first spanned the King’s minority and continued into the first half of the 1440s. During that period, the men of Guildford clearly set some store by the prior parliamentary experience of their representatives: half of the 24 seats for which the Members’ names are known between 1422 and 1442 were taken by men had previously sat in the Commons, and twice (in 1427 and 1435) both MPs were qualified in this way. Moreover (albeit mostly as an outcome of the remarkable parliamentary career of the town clerk Thirsk who sat in four Parliaments in a row), one of the MPs was directly re-elected in 1426, 1427, 1429 and 1435. Conversely, only twice during this part of the reign (in 1425 and 1432) did Guildford seemingly return two complete newcomers. Along with this apparent predilection for experienced representatives, the men of Guildford set considerable store by their Members’ local credentials. As many as 19 of the 24 seats were taken by local men, and in 1425, 1427, 1429, and – as far as it is possible to tell – consistently from 1432 to 1442, both Members came from the locality. The relative obscurity of some of the men who took the remaining five seats suggests that these figures may be conservative ones, and in addition William Weston, who lived a few miles away at Ockham, was, as a cororner of Surrey, a familiar figure in the county town. Yet if local credentials were of some concern to the Guildford electors, the same was not, apparently, true of the prior tenure of borough office. Of the MPs in this period, only John Janyn and Bridges had held the mayoralty before first being returned to the Commons (although five others – Consell, Bernard Janyn, Palshude, Thirsk and Robert Wintershall – all did so later in their careers), while Thirsk began his career as town clerk in the middle of his four-Parliament stint. It is nevertheless noteworthy that as mayor Janyn appears to have presided over his own return in 1433, although he relinquished the mayoralty before the second session of the Parliament, and took up office only after his election to that of 1435. Altogether, just six of the 24 seats between 1422 and 1442 were taken by former town officers. More significance may be attached to the preference shown by the electorate for men trained in the law, for no fewer than 12 of the seats in this period were assigned to those so qualified.

From 1447 the pattern of Guildford’s representation began to change. Some local men were still returned, but increasingly outsiders began to occupy the borough’s seats. The names of the Members are known for just 14 of the 18 seats contested between 1447 and 1460, and of these just five were taken by men with unquestionable local credentials (although one more to an Ockham man, William Weston’s son and heir), and only three were filled by anyone with prior parliamentary experience, even if David Lloyd, who represented the town in the Coventry Parliament of 1459 was – unusually – re-elected a year later in the wake of the Yorkist victory at Northampton. (His colleague of 1459 –Frampton – found a seat at New Windsor that year.) Of those returned for Guildford after 1445, Bridges alone had held the mayoralty. Instead, connexions with the royal household now assumed some importance. This was not an entirely new development for seats in two of the Parliaments of the 1430s had been filled by John Janyn, who, first appointed keeper of the royal park at Guildford by Henry V in 1413, continued to serve as keeper until his death. In 1447 John’s kinsman Bernard Janyn, who held the office of ‘knokkepynner’ in the park and was also a yeoman of the King’s hart hounds, was elected, while Fraunceys, returned to the Parliament of February 1449, was then serving as clerk of the royal castle of Windsor, and Frampton, his successor in that office, was returned to his second Parliament (in 1459) while filling not only that post but also the position of usher responsible for the preparation of the chambers required for Parliaments and great councils. Frampton’s personal links with the constable of Windsor castle, John Bourgchier, Lord Berners, may have also served to recommend him to the electorate. Lloyd, who had formerly been employed as master cook of the households of the King and queen, was serving at the time of his returns in 1459 and 1460 as one of the keepers of the county gaol at Guildford. Returned alongside these royal servants in 1449 were two lawyers from elsewhere: Halsall from Lancashire and Bylte from London.