Ludgershall

Situated on the eastern edge of Salisbury Plain on Wiltshire’s border with Hampshire, Ludgershall was scarcely more than a village. It depended for its survival upon trade, but was far from prosperous: in 1379 only two men (one a merchant and the other the royal parker of Ludgershall) had paid more than 6d. towards the poll tax. There were then only 135 tax-payers, and these included inhabitants of nearby Biddesden.1 VCH Wilts. iv. 306-11; E179/196/42a. Although Ludgershall hosted a weekly market and a three day fair, held annually every July, the cartloads of oil and iron recorded as being sent there from Southampton in the mid fifteenth century belonged to just one merchant, William Kymber (who is not known to have ever sat in Parliament). Substantial quantities of imported wine were also delivered on behalf of William Ludlow (the keeper and parker of Ludgershall), yet this wine was probably intended for consumption by Ludlow’s household rather than for sale in the local market.2 VCH Wilts. xv. 119, 121, 128; Brokage Bk. 1443-4, i (Soton. Rec. Soc. iv), 30, 131; 1447-8 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xlii), 103, 155; Port and Brokage Bks. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxxvi), 102, 132, 142, 111, 116, 178, 193.

Ludgershall had formed part of the royal demesne since the eleventh century, and its castle was built before 1103. Thereafter it had become the custom for the manor to be granted together with other crown estates in Wiltshire to successive queens of England as part of their dowers. Thus, in 1403 Ludgershall was settled on Joan of Navarre,3 CPR, 1401-5, p. 235. who leased it out for an annual fee farm of £12 6s. 8d. This practice of leasing was continued by the Exchequer after Ludgershall returned into Henry V’s possession when his stepmother was accused of witchcraft. The farmers, invariably members of the queen’s household, frequently held in addition the office of parker of the royal park. Among their number were Sir William Sturmy*, the chief steward of Queen Joan’s estates (who leased Ludgershall from before 1411 until his death in 1427), and William Ludlow, designated parker and farmer from 1429 and royally-appointed keeper from 1438 (after the queen’s death). In a break with tradition, Ludgershall was not given in dower to Margaret of Anjou,4 CFR, xiv. 321-2; xvii. 50; SC6/1051/17, 1054/25, 1062/25-27; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 266-7; 1436-41, p. 193. for in 1440, before Henry VI married, he gave the manor and town to Ludlow for term of his life – a grant which was converted into one in tail-male in February 1449. The latter grant notwithstanding, in April 1453 the King settled the manor and town on his half-brother the earl of Richmond,5 CPR, 1436-41, p. 401; 1446-52, p. 247; 1452-61, p. 79; VCH Wilts. xv. 125. and although Ludlow may have briefly recovered them after the earl’s death in 1458 he finally lost both when Edward IV took the throne. After more than 30 years in office as parker, Ludlow was replaced by William Collingbourne, who also obtained, as of Michaelmas 1461, a lease of the manor and town for 21 years and at a reduced annual farm of £10.6 CFR, xx. 53-54; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 15, 78, 387-8; C1/59/90, 91.

A popular royal residence in the reign of Henry III and during the fourteenth century, the castle at Ludgershall appears to have been little used as such in the fifteenth century, although repairs were carried out from time to time during Queen Joan’s tenure and it looks as if Ludlow usually lived there. By the early sixteenth century it had fallen into ruin.7 VCH Wilts. xv. 124-5; Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 729-31; J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, v. 6. As a borough for parliamentary and tax purposes only, Ludgershall’s burghal status rested solely on prescription. As far as is known, it never possessed a charter, a guild merchant or a corporation, and in the period under review it was ruled by a bailiff chosen annually at the court leet of the lord of the manor (presumably supervised by royal officials). The bailiff presided over the view of frankpledge held twice a year, and this view of frankpledge was included in the grant of the manor to Ludlow in 1449.8 VCH Wilts. xv. 129; CPR, 1446-52, p. 247.

Before 1422 Ludgershall had been represented in Parliament only intermittently. It made returns to nine of the Parliaments between 1295 and 1330, but then there was a long interval before returns were made to nine of the 11 Parliaments summoned from 1378 to 1385. Thereafter representation lapsed until Henry V’s reign, and even then Members for Ludgershall sat only in Henry’s first Parliament, in May 1413, and his last, in December 1421. During the period under review Ludgershall’s representation became much more regular, yet even so returns were not necessarily made for all of Henry VI’s Parliaments. It is unlikely, for example, that any MPs were sent to Westminster from Ludgershall in 1429, for returns to that Parliament are also missing for Chippenham, Cricklade and Old Sarum, and the parchment at the bottom of the schedule sent into Chancery with the Wiltshire indenture, where the names of these eight MPs should have been written, was left blank.9 C219/13/5; 14/1. Ludgershall lacks returns for six of the 22 Parliaments of the reign, and although the schedule for the Parliament of 1427 survives, it is too badly damaged to reveal any more than the first name of one of the MPs. That of the other was still legible in the seventeenth century, when William Prynne† recorded it as William Tailor. So far as we can tell 26 individuals filled the 32 recorded seats.

Given Ludgershall’s sporadic history of representation, it is not surprising that there was little continuity in Membership from the earlier part of the century. In fact, only one MP, John Denby, had sat for the borough before 1422. In perhaps as many as six Parliaments it would appear that Ludgershall was represented entirely by novices, and that both MPs had previous experience of the Commons only in 1433 and 1437. It should also be noted that in the cases of five of the six MPs who did have some experience of the workings of the Commons they had all gained that experience by representing other constituencies: Bridges, Combe, Spicer and Stronge had all sat before for other boroughs in Wiltshire, and Thorpe had entered the House as a shire knight (for Northamptonshire). The exception was Ludlow, the parker and keeper of Ludgershall, who represented the borough in four Parliaments running from 1432 to 1437 and (after sitting in the meantime for Salisbury, in 1439), did so again in two more, 1453 and 1455. In stark contrast to Ludlow’s outstanding record, 23 of the 26 MPs only ever sat for Ludgershall once.10 Bridges and Denby did so twice.

It might be thought that this indicates a general reluctance on the part of these particular men ever to attend the Commons again, having once done so, yet this was clearly not the case, since for several of them their initial experience of representing Ludgershall served as the starting-point for notable parliamentary careers: as many as nine went on to represent other constituencies. If such service is taken into account then Bridges, Combe, Gloucester, Seymour and Thorpe each sat in four Parliaments all told (Seymour doing so three times as a shire knight for Wiltshire, and Thorpe representing Northamptonshire and Essex), and Godelok was elected to seven (on other occasions representing the far-flung boroughs of Wells, New Romney and Reigate). The most distinguished parliamentarian among them was Thorpe, who when a knight of the shire for Essex in 1453 was to be chosen as Speaker of the Commons, but Thorpe’s prominence clearly owed nothing to the inhabitants of Ludgershall and everything to his career in the Exchequer and at the centre of government.

Returns for the Wiltshire boroughs were recorded on schedules sent to Chancery by the county’s sheriffs along with the endorsed writs and the indentures for their shire. These schedules simply listed the names of the MPs and their sureties and reveal nothing of the electoral processes. If indentures were regularly drawn up in the boroughs, they must have been discarded, for they only survive for the Parliaments of 1453 and 1455. Neither of those for Ludgershall are particularly informative. That dated 26 Feb. 1453 (the day before the shire court met) simply stated that the ‘burgesses of the borough of Ludgershall’ had elected Dingley and Ludlow, both of whose names were written over erasures. That of 2 July 1455 (two weeks after the shire election had been held), listed three of the burgesses as party, but only one of their names is now legible.11 C219/16/2, 3.

As might be expected, given Ludgershall’s size and lack of development as an urban centre, few of those who represented this borough actually lived there, although it may be that some who remain unidentified were obscure local men.12 E.g. Denby, Pystor and Henry —. The most important resident was Ludlow (elected by the borough to six Parliaments), while Skilling and Sotewell (both elected in 1426) lived only a short distance away. At least 11 MPs resided elsewhere in Wiltshire, or at least held landed interests within the county’s boundaries. These included John Erneley (who although his family chiefly lived in Sussex, acquired land in Wiltshire both by inheritance and marriage), and John Roger, whose home was at Freefolk in Hampshire, although he owned land in the north of this county. Five of them (Combe, Erneley, Haukessok, Sotewell and Sturmy) appeared on electoral indentures for Wiltshire as attesting the returns of the shire knights, but only Combe and Erneley did so before they represented Ludgershall. Combe alone had any experience of serving on royal commissions in the county (as a tax collector) before sitting for this borough in the Commons. All of these outsiders came from the county’s landowning families, making a living from agriculture and sheep farming. Most belonged to the lesser gentry, although Erneley, Haukessok (who possessed land worth £7 p.a.), Roger and Seymour were all ranked as esquires at the time of their elections for Ludgershall, and Seymour was knighted not long afterwards. Skilling, who saw military service in France, was the son of a man with an estimated income of £65 a year, but undoubtedly the wealthiest among the MPs was the young Seymour, who when elected in 1422 was on the verge of entering a valuable patrimony in two other counties and eventually held estates worth £180 p.a. or more. Seymour’s status was to be later reflected in his seven appointments as a sheriff in various bailiwicks.

At least nine of Ludgershall’s MPs were outsiders to the county as well as to the borough, and they filled half of the 14 recorded seats between 1442 and 1455. In all probability, five of them – Gloucester (1431) an Exchequer official, Godelok (1432) a Chancery official, de la Pylle (1442) a member of the Household, Clement (February 1449) surveyor of the search in the port of London, and Thorpe (1450) the treasurer’s remembrancer at the Exchequer – lived in London or Westminster, where their employment had taken them. Another, Chamberlain (1442), came from Southampton, and Spicer (February 1449) and Dingley (1453) hailed from elsewhere in Hampshire, while Bartelot (1447) was a native of Sussex (and owed his connexion with Wiltshire to his association with the Erneleys).

The choice of several of Ludgershall’s MPs, whether they came from Wiltshire or elsewhere, may be readily explained by their close links with the successive farmers of the manor and town, Sir William Sturmy and William Ludlow. Thus, in 1422 the borough was not only represented by John Seymour, Sturmy’s grandson and coheir-apparent (a young man who can have only just attained his majority), but also by the knight’s illegitimate son, John. Sir William himself accompanied his two kinsmen to the Commons, sitting for the county in what proved to be the last of his 12 Parliaments. No doubt as a practiced parliamentarian and former Speaker he could offer the younger men sound advice about the workings of the Commons. Ludgershall sent to the next Parliament (1423), William Gatcombe, one of Sir William’s servants and the recipient of an annuity of £2 by his gift – a man whom the knight was to remember in his will. Less well documented are the links between Sir William and Skilling (1426), but the latter seems to have been attached to the household of one of the knight’s daughters, and his companion Sotewell had earlier been nominated by Sturmy as a feoffee. Besides personally representing Ludgershall himself, Ludlow, the next farmer of the manorial estate, was no doubt instrumental in arranging the return of two of his sons-in-law: Erle in 1450, and Dingley (as his own companion) in 1453. Less obviously, personal contacts formed in the royal household, where Ludlow was a yeoman of the King’s cellar for at least 40 years, may have led to others who wore the Lancastrian livery gaining seats for Ludgershall. Thomas Chamberlain (1442) shared with his father a pension from the Crown of 6d. a day, and, currently attached to the service of the King’s secretary, Master Thomas Bekyngton, in later years he became a groom and yeoman of the chamber. His fellow MP in the Commons of 1442, Thomas de la Pylle, was perhaps already a member of the Household and was shortly to become joint coroner in the court of the marshalsea; while William Clement (February 1449), had formerly been a groom of the chamber, and his companion, Robert Spicer, seems to have been a royal servant too.

Yet Ludlow might not have played any part in the election of three of the MPs, who were crown servants of a different sort, employed in the great departments of government at Westminster. Two of them were at the start of their careers: Gloucester (1431) went on to serve under the clerk of the pipe at the Exchequer before gaining promotion to this same office, and Godelok (1432) later became spigurnel of the Chancery. The third, Thorpe (1450), was of much more exalted stature: treasurer’s remembrancer at the time of his return, he rose to be second baron of the Exchequer. He and Gloucester may have been the only ones among Ludgershall’s MPs who were lawyers by training, and they practiced as such in the Exchequer rather than in the common law courts of King’s bench and common pleas. In this respect, Ludgershall stood out from a number of other small boroughs of the period (and other boroughs in Wiltshire), whose representation was becoming increasingly dominated by men of law.

The process whereby outsiders gained their seats for Ludgershall remains largely obscure, although some suggestions may be made to put beside the inference that personal contact with the farmer of Ludgershall carried weight in this regard. The introduction of Thorpe as MP for Ludgershall in 1450 clearly owed much to the remembrancer’s own ambitions. The recent change in the political climate, the fall of the duke of Suffolk, the loss of Normandy and Cade’s rebellion all meant that he had no chance of repeating his recent electoral success in Northamptonshire (where the duke of York actively intervened to ensure the return of those friendly to his cause), and his hopes of securing an Essex seat ended with that county’s election on 27 Oct., only ten days before Parliament was due to meet. When the sheriff of Wiltshire had drawn up a schedule of those returned for the many parliamentary boroughs of the county (probably on or soon after 13 Oct.), he named John Yelverton*, the eldest son of Judge William Yelverton*, as MP for Ludgershall alongside the keeper Ludlow’s son-in-law John Erle. Yet subsequently Yelverton’s name was erased and Thorpe’s inserted in its place. It might be plausibly suggested that this amendment occurred after the schedule had reached the Chancery, and that Thorpe used his influence at the centre of government to have the Ludgershall return changed. To add weight to this argument it should be noted that Yelverton’s name was re-inserted on the schedule, as a Member for the deserted borough of Old Sarum.13 C219/16/1. In this case the political temperature at the centre governed the identity of Ludgershall’s representatives.