Wilton

Wilton, founded in the sixth century and for a time the capital of the kingdom of Wessex, was a natural centre of communications, linking the settlements of the valleys of the Wylye, Nadder and Avon, and standing on the main highway from Exeter to London. Until the mid thirteenth century travellers coming from the west to the new city of Salisbury had to make the river crossings at Wilton, but the building of Harnham Bridge enabled traffic by road to bypass the older borough, which gradually declined, while Salisbury, having grown in size and prosperity, developed a thriving wool and cloth trade. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the previously busy Market Place in Wilton had fallen into decay, houses and bridges were ruinous, market stalls neglected and no more than three of the eight parish churches were still in use. The population had declined considerably. The royal grant of an annual fair in 1414 did little to improve Wilton’s economic position, which continued to deteriorate during the remainder of the century.1 VCH Wilts. vi. 2-3, 15-17; CChR, v. 468, 483; CPR, 1413-16, p. 163. A stark contrast with Salisbury may be seen in the size of the loans which borough and city separately made to the Crown during Henry VI’s reign. In 1426 the men of Wilton made a loan of £10 and in 1430 another of £13 6s. 8d., but after that they advanced no more than £5 (in 1453).2 E401/713, m. 17; 724, m. 1; 831, m. 1. This bears no comparison with the loans made by the prosperous citizens of Salisbury in the years 1426-52, which amounted to at least £500. Nevertheless, although no longer the seat of the bishop and site of a mint, throughout our period Wilton remained the ‘hedde town of Wilteschir’, in that the county court continued to meet there, so that the shire elections to Parliament were invariably conducted at Wilton even though the assizes now habitually convened at Salisbury.

A borough in the Crown’s lordship, in 1336 Wilton had been granted in tail-male to William Fitzwaryn†, in whose family it remained until the death without male issue of Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn† in 1414. The borough was then granted to John, duke of Bedford, who held it until his death in 1435. It formed part of the dower of the duke’s widow Jacquetta, but in May 1439 Wilton and certain other castles and lordships formerly held by Bedford were sold by the Crown to Cardinal Beaufort. The cardinal, then engaged in the reform of the hospital of St. Cross at Winchester, included the revenues from Wilton in the endowment of an almshouse within the foundation in a conveyance of 1446, but died before his plans were fulfilled and the hospital subsequently relinquished the assigned properties to his heir. The Act of Resumption passed in Edward IV’s first Parliament in 1461 invalidated Henry VI’s grants, and accordingly in the same year Wilton was granted back to the dowager duchess Jacquetta for her lifetime.3 VCH Wilts. vi. 8-9; C143/450/24; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 311, 479; 1461-7, pp. 169-70.

By a charter of Henry I the burgesses of Wilton had been granted all such liberties of toll, passage and custom as were enjoyed by the citizens of London and Winchester, and this charter was inspected and confirmed by successive monarchs, including each of the Lancastrian kings.4 VCH Wilts. vi. 9-10; Wilts. Hist. Centre, Wilton deeds G25/1/220; CPR, 1399-1401, p. 290; 1413-16, p. 135. Curiously, however, Henry VI’s council of the minority did not issue a confirmation until July 1433, nearly 11 years after the beginning of the reign.5 CPR, 1429-36, p. 284. The part played by Wilton’s MPs (John Whithorne and Forster) in the Parl. then in progress is not known, but it may be significant that Whithorne was retained by the duke of Bedford, who presided over the Parl. By the period under review the borough was ruled by a mayor and a council of 12 senior burgesses, the former being selected every year by the whole community from one of the two candidates put forward by the retiring mayor and the council. This election, accompanied by a feast, took place on the Thursday after Michaelmas, and on the same day were chosen the steward of the guild merchant (who, since he was responsible for the town’s finances, was held next in esteem to the mayor), the portreeve (who collected rents due to the borough’s lord), two coroners, four auditors (always including the outgoing mayor and his successor), and lesser officers. Three bailiffs, called the borough bailiff, the mayor’s bailiff and the King’s bailiff, were also appointed every year. Continuity in membership of the council of 12 suggests that nomination to this body was for life.6 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21 passim. VCH Wilts. vi. 10 fixes the date of the election as the feast of the Translation of St. Edward the Confessor (13 Oct.), although in our period it can never have occurred later than 6 Oct. Records of the elections were kept consistently from 1464 (Wilton gen. entry bk. f. 21), although a few details of earlier elections do survive, e.g. for that in 1454: ibid. f. 590. The burgesses were prepared to spend lavishly on the election-day feast: often costing more than 25s. and even as much as 27s. 4d. in the 1430s, the sum to be spent was capped at 20s. in Edward IV’s reign. The mayor received a fee of 26s. 8d. for a year’s term.7 Wilton stewards’ accts. G25/1/88, 89. The original qualification for admission as a burgess, namely ownership of a burgage tenement, seems to have still applied in this period, although the amount paid for entry to the ranks varied depending on the identity of the applicant. It was presumably by virtue of their ownership of burgages that William, Lord Stourton* and leading men of law such as Thomas Tropenell* and Thomas Welles* were listed among the burgesses of Wilton.8 E.g. Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 22. John Pole paid one mark for admission: f. 26. For Stourton as a burgess see ff. 591-8.

The King’s bailiff of Wilton was the person empowered to respond to royal writs concerning the borough, and he consequently acted as returning officer at parliamentary elections in the fourteenth century,9 C219/8/4. although there is no evidence that he did so later. Parliamentary elections, held in the borough court, were only intermittently recorded in its general entry book. From these notices it appears that the franchise was restricted, but not simply to the council of 12. In 1455 the mayor and 11 named burgesses made the election, in 1472 and 1477 the mayor and 18 named burgesses did so, and in 1482 the number of burgesses listed was 15, while on other occasions the electors were simply referred to as the mayor’s ‘fellow burgesses’, without their names or number being recorded.10 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, ff. 1, 6, 45, 600. The outcome of the elections was reported to the sheriff of Wiltshire in the county court at Wilton, and in the years 1417 to 1453 his clerk listed the names of those chosen together with those of the citizens and burgesses from Salisbury and the other boroughs of Wiltshire in a single schedule, which was sent to the Chancery along with the electoral indenture for the shire knights. Thus, for those years we know only the names of Wilton’s MPs and their sureties. A little more may be gleaned from the returns of 1453 and 1455, when separate indentures are extant for some of the Wiltshire boroughs, including Wilton, and in 1460 when Wilton is unique among the constituencies in this county for the survival of its return. In 1453 and 1460 these indentures were drawn up between the sheriff on one part and the mayor and un-named and un-numbered burgesses on the other.11 C219/16/2, 6. The indenture dated 20 June 1455 is now largely illegible, but was again made by the sheriff and mayor. What arouses curiosity is that the record of the election itself, which had been conducted at Wilton four days earlier, gave the names of the elected representatives as Robert atte Fenne and John Makk, whereas in the indenture returned to Chancery Makk’s name was replaced by that of Giles Dacre.12 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 1; C219/16/3. The political circumstances which may have prompted the alteration to be made are discussed below.

Returns for Wilton are missing only for the Parliaments of 1439 and 1445, and the identities of those elected on the former occasion have been traced in the borough records. We therefore know the names of 21 individuals who occupied 42 seats in the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Nine of the 21 only ever sat for Wilton once, four twice, and three three times. Yet others were more active. William Forster clocked up four Parliaments and John Uffenham five, while Robert atte Fenne, John Harleston and John Whithorne had outstanding records of parliamentary service. Atte Fenne represented Wilton in at least nine Parliaments between 1450 and 1491, having meanwhile been elected to another (in June 1483) which never met; and Harleston and Whithorne each sat in 11 Parliaments for this borough (respectively between 1410 and 1423 and between 1414 and 1433). In addition, Harleston represented Old Sarum on another occasion, in 1422. Besides Harleston, in the course of their careers five more of Wilton’s MPs also sat for other constituencies, either in Wiltshire or Dorset: Dacre for Shaftesbury, Wareham and Old Sarum (bringing up his total number of Parliaments to five); Dykeman once for Chippenham; Giles for Old Sarum, Marlborough, Calne and Devizes (bringing his total to nine); Howton for Marlborough, Cricklade and Calne (five in all); and Uffenham for Old Sarum and Devizes (making seven altogether). When such service for other constituencies is taken into account the average number of Parliaments per Member amounted to four.

Thus, in our period Wilton was represented by a comparatively small number of individuals, several of whom could boast considerable experience of the workings of the Commons. It rarely happened that the borough was represented by two novices – only perhaps in 1437, 1453 and 1459. An experienced Member accompanied an apparent novice to nine Parliaments, but in another nine neither Member was a newcomer. Continuity in representation was also provided by re-elections to consecutive Parliaments: John Whithorne’s repeated elections meant that he sat in all ten of the Parliaments for which returns survive from 1414 to 1425; Pak was re-elected in 1427 and Botreaux in 1431; while Forster sat in three Parliaments running from 1432 to 1435 and Uffenham in all five of the Parliaments for which there are returns from 1442 to 1450. There can be little doubt that the burgesses set some store by continuity and valued long-lasting personal relationships with their representatives.

Of the 21 known MPs, one, Prat, remains unidentified, so we cannot be sure whether he was an obscure local man whose career was curtailed shortly after his return in 1453, or a complete outsider, although if the latter there is no sign that he was a member of the royal household (something which might be suspected given the large numbers of courtiers elected to the Commons on that occasion). Sixteen MPs may confidently be given the address ‘of Wilton’, as being regularly resident in the town, even though some of the 16 also had alternative homes elsewhere in the county: Dacre at Dinton, Dykeman at Great Wishford and Uffenham at Heytesbury. John Whithorne, born in the Isle of Wight, held substantial lands in southern Wiltshire. Even so, there are few signs of the emergence of a family tradition of parliamentary service among the burgesses: only in the cases of John and Robert atte Fenne and John and Richard Whithorne may it be posited that sons followed fathers into the Lower House. Of the four MPs who are not thought to have resided in Wilton, the whereabouts of Botreaux’s home is not known (although he was active as a juror in Wilton and the county at large); Giles, who began his career in Hampshire, acquired property at Ugford near Wilton as well as further away at All Cannings; and Mompeson lived at Bathampton, a few miles up-river from the town. Only Howton, a native of Herefordshire who first took up residence in London and only later moved to Wiltshire, may be considered to be a real outsider. It is worth noting too that in this period Wilton always preserved its identity and independence from its burgeoning neighbour Salisbury. Probably as a deliberate policy on the part of the burgesses, they elected none of the city’s merchants to represent their town throughout the century.13 As noted above, Wedgwood is wrong in identifying the MP of 1439 as John Wylly of Salisbury rather than John Giles.

Not all of the occupations of Wilton’s MPs are known, although the resident burgesses among them included a chandler (Brown) and a mercer (Mundy), and it seems that Harleston also made a living from the cloth trade. Two were engaged in forest administration: Bright as ranger of Clarendon park and Dykeman as a ‘forester’ – an occupation he owed to his wife’s hereditary rights in the north bailiwick of Grovely forest. John atte Fenne was vaguely described as a ‘gentleman’; while Botreaux and Dacre, both given the elevated status of ‘esquire’, were military men who had served with the English forces in France. Mompeson, an owner of land worth more than £40 p.a., which he had acquired by inheritance and marriage, was fined for failing to take up knighthood, but he, rather than being a soldier, had trained in the law. Five others are also known to have entered the legal profession: Robert atte Fenne, Giles, Uffenham and John Whithorne all acted as attorneys at the assizes and in the central courts; indeed, Giles took up the permanent post of filacer in the court of common pleas (which he was holding when returned in 1439). Howton was later admitted to Lincoln’s Inn. More than a third of the available seats (16 out of 42) were taken by lawyers, and in the Parliaments of 1425, 1447 and 1450 both MPs were men of law. The training they received advanced their careers in other respects. Three of them were appointed coroners in Wiltshire, and it should be noted that John Whithorne was holding this position when elected in 1425 and possibly on other occasions, Uffenham was returned in November 1449 and 1450 when a coroner in the county, and Robert atte Fenne was to sit in five Parliaments after 1461 while occupying the same post.

Lacunae in the borough’s records for the first half of the fifteenth century makes it difficult to discover who among Wilton’s parliamentary burgesses participated in the town’s administration, although it is likely that many of them did so at one time or another. For the same reason it is hard to judge whether local office generally preceded election to Parliament or more often post-dated service in the Commons. Nine of the 21 MPs are known to have been mayor, for the most part (although this may simply reflect the chance survival of records) only after they sat in Parliament. Robert atte Fenne was elected mayor for at least nine terms. Although John Whithorne was mayor when elected MP in 1421 (May), and Pak was occupying the office when elected in 1422, no other instances of the return of serving mayors have been found. So too with the post of steward of the guild merchant, for while at least six MPs were sometime stewards, only Robert atte Fenne is recorded as steward when elected to Parliament (in 1455). In addition to the nine mayors, who would, of course, have served as auditors in their mayoral year and the year that followed, Uffenham also did duty as an auditor, albeit never apparently as mayor. Although it is likely that the MPs resident in Wilton belonged to the council of 12, evidence is extant only for the membership of five of them. John Cole alone is known to have been appointed King’s bailiff in the town, and he may still have been in office when elected to the Parliament of 1459, summoned to Coventry.

Besides the three county coroners already mentioned, several of Wilton’s representatives took part in the administration of the county at large. The lawyers Giles and Uffenham (both of them sometime coroners) were successive clerks of the peace in Wiltshire: the former was returned for Wilton in 1425 and 1439 and the latter to four Parliaments between 1447 and 1450 while so employed. Harleston served as alnager of the county (and had been returned to two earlier Parliaments during his term of office). John Whithorne was a sometime escheator in Wiltshire and Hampshire; and he and Robert atte Fenne both served terms as under sheriffs. Mompeson attained an even more prominent place in public office by being appointed sheriff and as a j.p. for a period of 26 years, although this did not happen until after his parliamentary service was over. Probably because the parliamentary elections for the county took place in Wilton, many of the borough’s MPs (at least 13 of the 21) attested the shire indentures on occasion: Bright did so five times, Botreaux six and Giles seven. It is also worthy of note that they sometimes attended the shire court within days of their own elections to the Parliaments in question: John Whithorne doing so in 1421, Pak in 1422 and 1427, Bright in 1427 and 1431, Botreaux in 1431 and 1432 and Forster in 1433.

During the period here under review Wilton’s feudal lords demonstrated little direct concern with the town’s internal affairs, and there are no signs that they took any interest in its parliamentary elections. Conversely, during the minority of Henry VI the burgesses of Wilton may have hoped that by electing as MPs men who were linked in some way to one of the King’s uncles, the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester, might prove to their advantage. In the later years of his career, at least, John Whithorne, a prominent townsman and Member of 11 Parliaments, held the highly responsible position of receiver of Bedford’s estates in the south-west; and while Gloucester was Protector of England Wilton elected Bright, the ranger of the duke’s park at Clarendon (in 1427 and 1431), and Dykeman, his forester at Grovely (in 1429). Although proof is lacking, influence may have been brought to bear on Wilton’s elections by aristocratic landowners in the county. William Botreaux, returned to three consecutive Parliaments, was probably related to the Lords Botreaux. The Hungerfords, powerful figures in Wiltshire and prominent at the royal court, extended their patronage to at least three of the MPs: Howton, elected to the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, was a retainer of Sir Edmund Hungerford*, one of the King’s carvers and intimates; Mompeson (1453), who had received a personal bequest in the will of Walter, Lord Hungerford† (d.1449), acted as a feoffee for his son and heir Lord Robert; and Uffenham (returned to all five of the Parliaments between 1442 and 1450 for which Wilton’s returns survive) not only belonged to the Hungerford circle but sometimes gave their seat at Heytesbury as his place of residence. Nor should we overlook the political concerns of John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, probably himself a ‘burgess’ of Wilton (as his son and heir was later to become). To the Parliaments of 1455 and 1460 Wilton returned Giles Dacre, an esquire who had worn the livery of a member of the King’s household when Stourton had been its treasurer, and was so intimately attached to the baron as to be later selected as one of his executors. Irregularities in Dacre’s election in 1455 have already been noted. The substitution of his name on the electoral indenture for that of a local man chosen in the borough court by the assembled burgesses points to external interference in Wilton’s choice of representatives.14 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 1; C219/16/3. While precisely what happened in 1455 remains unclear, 22 years later a blatant instance of interference in the electoral process was put on record. At the election held at Wilton on 4 Dec. 1477 for the Parliament summoned to meet on the following 16 Jan., John Cheyne†, one of the esquires for Edward IV’s body, who himself had been returned as a shire-knight just two days earlier, nominated John Pole* as one of Wilton’s MPs, while the other, William Baker†, was expressly chosen from among three candidates nominated by the mayor and burgesses.15 Wilton gen. entry bk. G25/1/21, f. 600; C219/17/3. Pole was another retainer of the Lords Stourton.

Isolated references in the accounts of the stewards of the borough provide some indication of what the authorities at Wilton were prepared to pay their parliamentary representatives. Dykeman received £2 (in instalments of 26s. 8d. and 13s. 4d.) for attending the Parliament of 1429; and the same amount was paid to Bright for his services in the Parliament of 1431, although the latter’s companion Botreaux received just £1 13s. 4d. For one of his Parliaments Forster took 26s. 8d. as wages; but for his services in 1437 Brown received only 20s., the same amount that Giles and Richard Whithorne, the MPs of 1439, were each paid.16 Wilton stewards’ accts. G25/1/88, 89. Not all of the stewards’ accounts survive, so it remains uncertain whether these payments record the remuneration of the MPs in their totality. Even so, it would appear that the practice at Wilton was to pay the representatives a fixed sum, rather than to reward them on a daily basis.