Reigate

The borough of Reigate owed its existence to the construction of a castle in the eleventh century by William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, on its strategically important site on the road through the Holmesdale valley. By 1276 the earls were holding a weekly market at Reigate, and within a few years the Crown also recognized their right to three annual fairs. Assessments for the subsidy of 1334 show the borough placed well above neighbouring Bletchingley in terms of wealth, but far inferior to the more prosperous Surrey towns of Guildford, Southwark and Kingston.1 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 636; Lay Subsidy 1334 ed. Glasscock, 298. Reigate remained a small and relatively poor settlement throughout the fifteenth century, and its economic fortunes during this period were characterized by stagnation, if not actual decline. The income generated for its lords the Mowbrays fell by almost £6 p.a. between 1447 and 1473, and the portreeve’s account for 1446-7 indicates that many rents had been reduced and a number of plots of land remained unlet in comparison with earlier times. Moreover, the farm of the market had been reduced to just 5s. 6d. ‘for want of stranger merchants coming to the town’.2 W. Hooper, Reigate, 37. Other evidence, however, points to a modest recovery towards the end of the century, and archaeological finds reveal the steady progress of building work from that period. Reigate’s population grew in the late Middle Ages: while in the 1330s taxes had been paid by just 37 residents of the town and 68 others living elsewhere on the manor, by 1524 these figures had almost doubled to 68 and 110 respectively.3 J.D. Sheail, ‘Distribution of Wealth in Eng.’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968), 383; M. O’Connell, Historic Towns in Surr. (Research vol. Surr. Arch. Soc. v), 45. Evidence of economic vitality may perhaps be found in the work carried out on Reigate’s parish church, resulting in its becoming one of the largest in the county by the early sixteenth century, and in this John Skinner†, the son of John II, took a leading role. Yet no similar munificence appears to have been extended to the local priory, which remained the smallest and least wealthy of the monastic houses of Surrey.4 Hooper, 51, 69-70; VCH Surr. iii. 241-2.

The principal trades and industries of the townsmen are not readily apparent from the surviving sources, but tile-making seems to have been of some importance,5 J. Greenwood, Essays towards a Hist. of Reigate, 205. and more substantial evidence relates to the quarrying of ‘Reigate stone’, the generic name for a type of firestone which had become popular both as a building material and as a medium for sculpture and carving. Quarries at Reigate and at nearby Redhill and Merstham, on the southern slopes of the North Downs, provided employment in the area. Output reached a peak in the late fourteenth century, primarily because of continued heavy demand for stone for Windsor castle, and by 1400 it was being used in practically all royal buildings in London, as well as in churches of the region, including Canterbury cathedral.6 Ibid. 169-70; RCHM Mdx. p. xxviii; RCHM London, iv. p. xxiv. It continued to be used for a number of projects, including repairs to London Bridge, but as early as 1447 Henry VI forbade the use of ‘Reygate stone otherwise called Mestham stone’ at Eton College because of its relatively poor weathering properties when compared with stone from Caen, and by 1500 the quarrying of firestone had mostly ceased in the Reigate area.7 Greenwood, 179; London Bridge Accts. (London Rec. Soc. xxxi), 126-7.

On the failure of the male line of the Warenne earls of Surrey, Reigate had passed first to the Fitzalan earls of Arundel, and subsequently to the heirs general of Thomas, the 5th earl – his three surviving sisters, Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk, Joan, Lady Abergavenny, and Margaret, wife of Sir Roland Lenthall, and after their deaths to their descendants. Initially, from 1415 Reigate and the surrounding lordship remained in the hands of Earl Thomas’s widow, the dowager countess Beatrice, who survived until 1439. In the following year two of the then co-heirs, John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth, Lady Abergavenny, were allowed to enter their pourparties, and Reigate was apportioned to Mowbray, although the other heirs also retained a claim to certain properties.8 L.E. Moye, ‘Estates and Finances of the Mowbray Fam.’ (Duke Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 49-51; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 635-8; VCH Surr. iii. 234-5; SC6/1120/1-2. The manor of Reigate thus formed part of the vast Mowbray holdings extending across much of England. The change of ownership brought about a shift in the personnel of the borough and manor’s administration away from the Fitzalans’ Sussex retainers, such as those employed by Earl Thomas and Countess Beatrice (who in 1433 married John Holand, earl of Huntingdon).9 E163/7/31, pt. 2. Moreover, many of the heartlands of the Mowbray estate in East Anglia and the south-east were increasingly used both to generate income for the Mowbrays and to reward retainers with fees and annuities. Revenues from his estate at Reigate made a respectable contribution to duke’s coffers: in 1447-8 the net rents and farms amounted to £48 0s. 3d., from which a year earlier as much as £36 had been paid out in fees and wages to his servants.10 Moye, 125; Hooper, 37-38; Arundel Castle ms A509; VCH Surr. iii. 231.

The manor and borough continued to be governed through the institutions of the view of frankpledge and the court leet, held in the lord’s name by his steward. Answerable to the steward were a bailiff and three constables, two of whom were responsible for the borough itself while the third was concerned with the administration of the manor.11 VCH Surr. iii. 234. Also to be reckoned with was the constable of Reigate castle, whose office was granted in October 1446 along with the stewardship of the lordship of Reigate jointly to the duke of Norfolk’s prominent retainer John Timperley I and his son John II.12 Moye, 437-8; Arundel Castle ms A509; VCH Surr. iii.198, 237.

Little is known of the conduct of the borough’s parliamentary elections in the period. Until the 1450s successive sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex compiled the names of the men returned for the urban constituencies in the double bailiwick into a schedule which they sent to Westminster along with the indentures recording the choice of the knights of the two shires. Only in 1453 and 1460 did Sir Richard and Robert Fiennes* seal separate indentures with the inhabitants of the boroughs in their counties, and only one such document, that for 1453, survives for Reigate. It was counter-sealed by the two constables, John Skinner II and John Jurdan, alone. Whether other burgesses played their part is not recorded, although they did so a century later, when indentures were regularly witnessed by more than a dozen electors.13 C219/16/2; The Commons 1509-58, i. 197.

Reigate had sent burgesses to the Commons in 1295, and by the mid fourteenth century had come to be represented on a regular basis. The names of the MPs are known for 19 of the 22 Parliaments summoned in the period from 1422 to 1460; no returns survive for the assemblies of 1439, 1445 and 1455. Thirty-three individuals shared these 38 seats between them, of whom as many as 28 were only ever returned by Reigate to just one Parliament, although three were elected twice and Chaunce and Corve were respectively returned on three and four occasions. Nevertheless, several of them did build up impressive parliamentary careers, albeit in the service of multiple constituencies. Taking that service into account, Lematon, Rous and Stodeley each sat twice, Ashbury, Rauff, the two John Timperleys and Waleys three times, and Cager and Russell four times. Corve and Urry were returned to five Parliaments each, while Janyn and Godelok stood out for their respective six and seven seats. For the most part the Reigate Members found their other seats in different seigneurial boroughs of Surrey and Sussex. Thus, of the boroughs pertaining to the dukes of Norfolk, Rauff and Waleys also represented New Shoreham; Rous and Urry, Horsham; Stodeley and John Timperley II, Gatton; and Cager not only New Shoreham and Gatton but Bramber as well. In addition, Russell and Waleys had been returned in Henry V’s reign for Sir John Bohun’s borough of Midhurst; and Ashbury, Corve and Janyn for Bletchingley, which belonged to the earl of Stafford. Russell and Janyn also sat for East Grinstead, held by the Crown in the right of the duchy of Lancaster. Further afield, the two Timperleys were returned in the Mowbrays’ East Anglian heartlands at Ipswich and Great Yarmouth, and the carpet-bagger Godelok represented the distant constituencies of Ludgershall (in Wiltshire) and Wells (in Somerset), as well as the Kentish Cinque Port of New Romney. Finally, John Timperley I began his parliamentary career as a shire knight for Suffolk, while two more of Reigate’s MPs (Urry and Lematon) eventually went on to sit respectively for Sussex and Middlesex. It was thus their electoral success elsewhere, rather than any local factors, which ensured that on at least 11 occasions Reigate returned one man who had already served in the Commons beforehand, while on two occasions, in 1432 and 1437, both Members were certainly so qualified. Continuity in Reigate’s representation is most evident in the 1430s, when Corve was elected by this constituency to four of the five consecutive Parliaments between 1431 and 1437 (and to the one in the middle by Bletchingley); and Ashbury was directly re-elected in 1435.

What almost exclusively determined Reigate’s representation in the reign of Henry VI were its status as a seigneurial mesne borough and the interests of its successive lords. Thus, in the years around 1422 retainers of the dowager countess Beatrice took a number of the borough’s seats: Urry was the countess’s steward of the lordship of Reigate, Waleys served her as an attorney and Okehurst as an auditor, while Short and Corve are also thought to have had links within her circle. More tenuously, Nelond, who lived at East Grinstead in Sussex, had married the widow of Thomas St. Cler†, a retainer of the late Earl Thomas, and maintained an association with former Fitzalan servants. From the mid 1430s those in the service of the duke of Norfolk began to take some of the seats. Ashbury was clerk-marshal of the marshalsea of the Household by the duke’s appointment when returned in 1433 and 1435, and a successor in that office, Langton, sat for Reigate in 1449. The MPs of 1442 were Lematon, already well established as a member of the duke’s inner circle after serving him in the north of England, and Becket was known to him as another member of the Household linked with officers of the marshalsea. Rauff and Rous, also returned in 1449, are thought to have belonged to the same group. In 1450 Reigate returned Stodeley, the London scrivener who had earlier been auditor on the duke’s estates in Surrey and became well-known to posterity for the ‘newsletter’ he sent to the duke in 1454 to keep him abreast of political events; in 1453 Reigate was represented by Timperley, its steward and constable of the castle, and Yerman who later gave the ducal castle at Framlingham as his address; in 1459 it was the turn of Baker, perhaps still in office as Mowbray Herald; and in 1460 John Timperley II, his father’s joint steward. Altogether Mowbray servants took perhaps ten of the 16 recorded seats between 1442 and 1460.

In parallel, and across the period, Reigate regularly returned members of the King’s household and central administration. Those like Ashbury and Langton, successive clerks-marshal of the marshalsea of the Household, fell within the purview of the duke of Norfolk as Marshal of England. His marshalsea office aside, Langton was also a yeoman of the Crown and a yeoman-usher of the Chamber, while Becket and Shirley were respectively a page and yeoman within the same department. A further group of men held office within the Chancery: Godelok occupied the post of spigurnel, and Rous was clerk of the Crown. During the crisis years from 1447 to 1449 four out of six Reigate seats were taken by household men, although in 1450, when the dukes of York and Norfolk colluded to seek the return of their retainers, Mowbray evidently ensured the election of at least one of his own supporters.

Conversely, there is no clear evidence that the prior tenure of other offices under the Crown had any bearing on the return of Reigate’s Members, unless it were in the case of Janyn, who had been the King’s bailiff itinerant in Surrey, or perhaps Skinner and Cager who at the time of their elections had recently completed spells as under sheriff of the county. There is no reason to suspect that Nelond’s and Corve’s membership of the county bench or Chaunce’s service as a tax collector had any more bearing on their returns than the offices held by Waleys, Urry and Yerman in Sussex, and by Becket, Lematon and John Timperley I even further afield. In Becket’s case alone was there a possible connexion between his Membership of the Parliament of 1442 and his appointment that autumn as escheator of Surrey and Sussex, a double bailiwick with which he had no other connexion.

It is hard to be certain to what extent the burgesses of Reigate themselves were allowed any say in the choice of their representatives, but members of local families like the Chaunces and Skinners who had been prominent among Reigate’s MPs in earlier decades continued to be returned and were now joined by others who had perhaps come to the town in the service of its lords and made their homes there. Counting the two Timperleys, whose offices surely necessitated their regular presence, at least ten of Reigate’s MPs in the period could claim to meet the statutory requirement for residency, while four others (Corve, Ashbury, Cager and Tingleden) were at least Surrey landowners of some consequence.