Kingston-upon-Hull

Kingston-upon-Hull was the second largest town north of the river Trent, with a population of some 2,300 in 1377, and remained an important centre for overseas trade and for the distribution of produce and goods throughout the fifteenth century. A town had existed on the site since the late twelfth century when it had been developed as a ‘new town’ by Meaux abbey for the growing local trade in wool, cloth and wine. Wyke-upon-Hull, as it was initially known, was so successful that it was acquired by Edward I in 1293 and later given the name of Kingston-upon-Hull. Edward was keen to secure a port to supply his campaigns in Scotland and it was a sign of Hull’s importance that, six years later, it was incorporated as a borough by royal charter. The borough was initially under the control of a royal keeper, who in turn appointed a bailiff to keep the town court. The keeper also acted as collector of customs in the port and the burgesses were empowered to elect a coroner and to hold an annual 30-day fair and two weekly markets. The town’s importance in supplying the Scottish campaigns of the early fourteenth century (and from the 1330s the French wars) ensured that the burgesses enjoyed royal protection against the claims of successive archbishops of York to privileges in the town.2 VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 1-21, 50-51.

Hull’s prosperity in the late Middle Ages depended, above all, on overseas trade. The port lay in a natural haven at the confluence of the river Humber and its tributary the Hull, some 20 miles from the North Sea. Wool and cloth from the north of England was exported in return for wine and various other imports, mainly from the Low Countries. Ships from Hull also went to fish in the waters off Norway and Iceland. Admissions to the freedom were dominated by men engaged in maritime trade, with 133 merchants and 162 mariners and shipmen being admitted between 1370 and 1499. Aside from Calais and the Low Countries, the most important destination for merchants in early fifteenth-century Hull was Iceland. Put off by restrictive dues placed by the Hanseatic merchants at Bergen in Norway, English merchants traded directly with Iceland from the first decade of the century and by the beginning of Henry VI’s reign Hull had surpassed Bishop’s Lynn as the most important port for the Icelandic trade. In 1425, however, the Danes complained of the misdemeanors committed by English merchants in Iceland and the Crown ordered them to resort once more to Bergen. Hull’s merchants seem to have largely ignored the prohibition, and from the 1440s licences were frequently issued to individual merchants to carry on the prosperous trade directly to Iceland. Similarly, Hull merchants also traded directly with the Baltic, in a move that often brought them into direct and violent confrontation with merchants of the Hanseatic League. The wine trade, which had been another mainstay of Hull merchants in the previous century, also continued in importance into the fifteenth. In the first half of the century average annual imports came to around 1,000 tuns, a figure exceeded only by London and occasionally Bristol and Southampton. Inevitably, however, the defeat in the Hundred Years’ War and the loss of Gascony in 1453 had an adverse effect on the wine trade through Hull, and by 1460 the total of imports had halved.3 Ibid. 54-70.

It was, nevertheless, the wool trade that provided the mainstay for Hull’s wealthiest merchants in both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most prominent of these had been William de la Pole, one of the most important financial supporters of Edward III’s wars, who shipped no fewer than 2,377 sacks of wool in 1339 alone. By the 1370s the wool trade was in the hands of the merchants of the Calais staple and staplers continued to be prominent among Hull’s leading men. In the early part of the fifteenth century the trade was considerable, with some 23,090 sacks being shipped through the port between 1420 and 1424, but the value of Hull’s wool exports declined in the latter half of the century as the trade came to be increasingly dominated by London merchants. A similar picture emerges with regard to the export of cloth, where Hull merchants were gradually eclipsed by Londoners, particularly after the loss of the Baltic markets from the 1460s. Despite these problems, Hull merchants continued to prosper in overseas trade throughout the reign of Henry VI, giving the town a wealth and independence which directly affected its relations with the Crown and its aristocratic neighbours.4 Ibid. 66-68.

Hull’s independence in the early fifteenth century was guaranteed by its several charters. Following its incorporation in 1299, a further grant of 1331 allowed the burgesses to elect a mayor and two bailiffs annually at Michaelmas, upon payment of an annual fee farm of £70. The other major municipal office, that of chamberlain, predated the charter of 1331, for two chamberlains had accounted for municipal receipts, mainly in the form of fines for admission to the freedom, rents and local tolls, from at least 1322. This office was usually the first step on the cursus honorum of the local elite. By the end of the fourteenth century the chamberlains’ accounts were audited by a group of senior townsmen, usually four in number. In 1334, in recognition of their services during the Scottish wars, another charter granted the mayor and burgesses the right to establish a statute merchant, and in 1382 the town’s jurisdiction was extended to cover the mouth of the Humber.5 Ibid. 26-31.

The most important of Hull’s charters, however, was that granted on 10 May 1440. The securing of this charter was a long and extremely expensive process, lasting some three years and in its final phase led by the two MPs in the Parliament of 1439, Richard Scoles and Richard Anson. In 1439-40 the chamberlains asked for allowance of £112 0s. 5d. spent in the acquisition of the charter, and the two parliamentary burgesses presented a separate account of the additional expenses they had incurred (including gifts to the earl of Suffolk, the King’s attorney John Vampage*, the treasurer of England Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and several members of Suffolk’s household) at London and Windsor, totaling a further £238 7s. 4d. The charter’s provisions were far-reaching. From the following 22 May the townsmen were incorporated as ‘the county of the town of Kingston-upon-Hull’, separate from the jurisdiction of the county of Yorkshire. The charter provided for the election of a mayor, who was to act as both escheator and j.p., a sheriff to replace the four bailiffs, and 13 aldermen, who were to act with the mayor as j.p.s. On 2 July the burgesses secured a second grant, increasing the dignity of the mayor by allowing him to have a sword carried before him and providing for the aldermen to wear robes similar to those worn by the mayor and aldermen of London. A supplementary charter of 25 June 1443 clarified the mode by which the officers were to be elected. At each Michaelmas the aldermen, chosen by the burgesses to serve for life, were to nominate two of their number, from whom the burgesses were to choose the mayor; two burgesses, from whom the other burgesses were to choose the sheriff; and four burgesses, from whom the other burgesses were to choose two chamberlains. Vacancies in the aldermanic bench were to be filled as occasion required by the aldermen nominating two burgesses with one to be selected by the other burgesses.6 Ibid. 29; Hull Charters and Letters Patent ed. Boyle, 34-49, 50-53; CPR, 1436-41, p. 430; 1441-6, pp. 180-1.

The charter of 1443 also gave the townsmen a more tangible benefit, for it licensed the corporation to acquire lands worth £100 a year for the defence and repair of the port, and further concessions followed. In October 1445 another grant allowed the mayor and burgesses to acquire lands in mortmain to establish the chantry of the former mayor, John Gregg. On this latter occasion one of the town’s retained lawyers, John Killingholme, incurred expenses of £7 0s. 6d. in London and Westminster securing the new grant.7 Hull Charters and Letters Patent, 50-53; chamberlains’ accts. BRF 2/361. On 10 Mar. 1447 another charter significantly enlarged the area under the jurisdiction of the county of Kingston-upon-Hull to include the villages and hamlets of Hessle, North Ferriby, Swanland, West Ella, Kirk Ella, Tranby, Willerby, Wolfreton and Anlaby. This charter also included another significant concession: on the deaths of the admiral of England, John Holand, duke of Exeter, and his son and heir, Henry, the mayor and alderman were to have the power to elect, from among themselves, one to act as admiral in the town and the waters of the river Humber, taking the profits of the office for the maintenance of the port. Later, in 1452, Duke Henry, who had succeeded his father soon after the charter had been granted, agreed to appoint the mayor and aldermen as his deputies in the admiralty court, and that spring Hugh Clitheroe was selected from among his fellow aldermen as the first commissioner of the admiralty court held in the town. The burgesses undertook to hold the office at an annual farm of £5 6s. 8d. for the next four years, but Exeter soon reneged, appointing John Gower as his deputy. In 1454 Gower agreed to lease the office to the mayor and aldermen for seven years at an annual farm of £4, but, a few years later, possibly in 1459, the increasingly unstable Exeter appointed as his deputy John, Lord Neville (d.1461).8 Bench bk. 3, BRE 2, ff. 24v-26v; Hull corporation letters BRL 4; Hull Charters and Letters Patent, 54-60; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 43-44; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 53-54.

The defence of these privileges, secured at considerable cost, frequently occupied the burgesses of Kingston-upon-Hull during the 1440s and 1450s. The townsmen took the trouble to have their charters enrolled among the records of the King’s bench and in the Exchequer and a steady stream of gifts to lords, including the duke of Buckingham, the earls of Suffolk, Northumberland and Salisbury and the Lords Poynings, Egremont, Clifford and Latimer, aimed to secure the support of influential patrons.

Such support was the more necessary in the difficult national and local political climate of the 1450s. In May 1454 the duke of Exeter, Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, and Richard Percy came to Hull and attempted to rouse the townsmen against their Neville opponents and the government of Richard, duke of York. The King’s council accused them of ‘straunge and unfittyng demeanyng’ and thanked the mayor and burgesses for their ‘sadde discrecion wisedom and manhode’ in resisting them, for organizing an effective watch and ward within the town, and for welcoming the Protector, York, at the end of the month.9 Hull corporation letters BRL 9; PPC, vi. 195-7; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 23-25. On this occasion national political rivalries among the great lords may have interacted with jurisdictional disputes with the town itself. This was certainly the case in 1460 when Lord Egremont attempted to assert his right to hold the admiralty court. Shortly after naming John, Lord Neville as his deputy, the duke of Exeter appears, in typical fashion, to have appointed Egremont to hold the admiralty court in his name. In April the mayor and burgesses approached the King’s chamberlain, the Yorkshire knight Sir Richard Tunstall†, and complained how Egremont attempted to enter the town ‘with a greet multitude of peuple ... at that tyme havyng right Rigorouse langage’ in order to hold the admiralty court. Other lords of the council, including the duke of Buckingham, and John, Viscount Beaumont, were also approached with similar complaints, but on 2 May the King wrote to the burgesses expressing his surprise that they had prevented Egremont from entering the town and exercising the office. He ordered them to show any reason why Egremont should not do so to the council and demanded ‘that ye demeane you in suche wise to the said Lord Egremount as ye aught to do to oure kynnesman and a Lord of this oure Realme’. Twelve days later the townsmen and Egremont reached a compromise: they agreed to let him into Hull with a retinue of 60 men, but that he would not be allowed to sit there as admiral. Moreover, 200 townsmen were to attend upon Egremont and his retinue as long as they remained within the walls. On 15 May Egremont entered Hull and demanded to see the evidence pertaining to the town’s right to hold the admiralty court. He was told that most of the evidence was in London and so ‘the ambyguete & the doute of the mater can nott be determend here’. The dispute was only resolved in the townsmen’s favour by Egremont’s death at the battle of Northampton in July, and the mayor and aldermen continued to appoint a commissioner to hold the court throughout the remainder of the fifteenth century.10 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 70-72; corporation letters BRL 8; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 24, 553-4.

The King’s decision to side with one of his most important magnate supporters may have compromised Hull’s loyalty to the Crown during the civil war of 1460-1. None the less, on 5 July 1460 the mayor and aldermen agreed to send a contingent of 13 men to serve the King, and they were presumably present at the battle of Northampton five days later. In the autumn measures were taken by the local authorities to improve the town’s defences and preserve its independence from invasion by either the Yorkist lords or Queen Margaret’s northern army. The election of a committed Yorkist (Richard Anson) as mayor in September suggests the presence of a Yorkist faction in the town, but, on his death at the battle of Wakefield, the supporters of Lancaster re-asserted themselves. Gifts and wine were given to the earl of Northumberland, a horse presented to Queen Margaret and 7s. 3d. paid to the men who rode with the queen to the second battle of St. Albans in February 1461. The news of the Yorkist victory at Towton on Palm Sunday, however, forced a rapid volte-face on the part of the townsmen. Ralph, Lord Greystoke, and William Neville, Lord Fauconberg, were welcomed into Hull shortly after Towton and gifts presented to other Yorkist lords, including the earl of Warwick and William Fiennes, Lord Saye. On 2 Apr. Edward IV wrote to the burgesses that whereas he understood that they ‘be destitude of a mayr by occacion whereof our lawes and administracion of justice hath not his coursse’, they were to choose a new mayor from the leading townsmen. Accordingly, two days later John Spencer I was chosen, and he immediately set about reconciling his fellows to the new regime. On 1 May Lancastrian sympathizers were expelled and four days later a delegation of aldermen rode to York to submit to the new King.11 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 67v, 74, 74v, 76v, 77, 78, 79; chamberlains’ accts. BRF 2/371. Thereafter, Edward IV made some concessions to the townsmen. On 1 July 1462 they secured an inspeximus and confirmation of all their charters, and, of much greater material benefit, on 26 Oct. 1463 they had licence to ship, free of customs, goods with a customable value of £40 each year for a period of ten years, ‘on account of the despoiling of their goods by the rebels’.12 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 237, 289. In return, the town had meanwhile offered military support to the new regime. In April 1463 it had provided a contingent of 20 men to serve with the warden of the east march, John Neville, Lord Montagu, against the Lancastrian rebels in northern England.13 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 81v, 82, 87, 92; chamberlains’ accts. BRF 2/373.

The names of Hull’s MPs are known for all 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, and numbered only 18 individuals. Between them these 18, none of whom sat for any other constituency, are recorded as representing the borough on 64 occasions.14 This includes Eland’s elections to the aborted Parls. of 1469 and Nov. 1483, but not the elections of Hugh Clitheroe and John Spencer to the postponed Parl. of Feb. 1463, for their elections were set aside in favour of Eland and John Day†. This represented an unusually high number of Parliaments per MP. In part this reflects the fact that the town’s representation is especially well documented: its MPs are known for every Parliament from 1419 to 1497 inclusive. None the less, there can be no doubt that there was a high degree of continuity in its representation. Two of the 18 had exceptional records of service: John Fitling sat on 11 occasions between 1406 and 1431 and William Eland on 12 from 1450 to 1483. Conversely, those MPs who sat only once were in a minority, with only six of the 18 – Auncell, Burton, Killingholme, Scoles, Steton and Titelote – falling into this category. Continuity of service was particularly marked in the first part of the period under review here. Of the 22 seats from the Parliaments of 1422 to 1437 inclusive, only four were filled by novices. In no Parliament was the town represented by two novices, and re-election from assembly to assembly was common, with seven seats taken by an MP from the previous Parliament. Thereafter, however, continuity declined: ten of the 22 seats from 1439 to 1460 inclusive were taken by novices, and in three Parliaments – those of 1439, November 1449 and 1453 – neither of the MPs had any previous experience of the workings of the Commons. Furthermore, there were only four cases of re-election, all falling in the 1440s.

Representation over the whole period was dominated by merchants engaged in overseas trade. On only three occasions (Killingholme in February 1449 and Eland twice, in 1450 and 1459) did the men elected not make their livings primarily from commercial activities: both were lawyers, although Eland combined a legal career with an active involvement in the port’s trade. The wool trade predominated, with at least six MPs being members of the company of the Calais staple, while a smaller number of them were engaged in trade with the Baltic and imported wine from Gascony. The poor survival of detailed customs records from Hull for the early fifteenth century precludes an analysis of the full extent of their mercantile activities, but only two individuals, John Titelote (a draper by trade) and the lawyer Killingholme, show no sign of involvement in overseas trade.

Even though Hull’s MPs were almost exclusively drawn from its leading merchants, its representation was not, as it was in some other large boroughs, dominated by an established elite resident in the town over several generations. Only two of the MPs, Clitheroe and Grimsby, came from families who had provided Hull with an MP in a previous generation, and only six others – Aldwick, Burton, Eland, Killingholme, Scales and Scoles – from families already settled there. Others had migrated to the town from its hinterland: Auncell came from Grimsby, Spencer and probably also Gregg from Beverley, and Titlote probably from Hornsea. Such immigration no doubt reflects Hull’s success as a port, whatever its difficulties in this period, and was accepted readily by those already established among the town’s leaders. It is noticeable how quickly some of those apparently new to the town rose to prominence in its administration. Anson was admitted to the freedom in 1437-8 upon payment of the customary fine, and was almost immediately elected as chamberlain and MP before being named to the body of aldermen created by the charter of 1440. Similarly, Auncell was included among the first aldermen, even though he had been a freeman for the same short time as Anson.

Whatever the geographical origin of the MPs, their individual administrative careers within Hull reflected the very clear hierarchy of office there. Eight of the 18 MPs served as chamberlain, the most junior of its offices, and all were elected as such before their elections to Parliament. Two, Anson in 1439 and Ellis in 1442, were returned to Parliament while in office. The next rung on the administrative ladder was the office of bailiff (replaced with that of sheriff under the terms of the charter of 1440). As many as 16 served as either bailiff or sheriff: only Killingholme and Gregg did not do so. As with the chamberlainship, all served just single terms, generally doing do before their first elections to Parliament. Of the 16, only four – Aldwick, Anson, Eland and Ellis – were MPs first, and Kirkton was returned while in office as bailiff in 1420. Not surprisingly, the pattern is different in respect of the most senior office, that of mayor. Fourteen of the 18 MPs served at least one term in the office, with, in contrast to the junior offices, multiple appointments being the rule.15 The four who were not mayors were the two lawyers, Eland and Killingholme, together with Scoles and Titelote. Ten served at least two terms, with Anson, Clitheroe and Fitling serving four. Significantly, a first election to Parliament came first in a man’s career, with Gregg the only apparent exception (and it is probable that he was returned, before serving as mayor, to one of the five Parliaments of the 1410s for which the identity of the town’s MPs is unknown). Indeed, it may be that election to Parliament was seen as a qualification for the mayoralty.16 Although it should be noted that in the earlier period two of the 12 MPs who were both mayor and MP are recorded as serving as mayor first, and neither case is likely to be explained by the loss of returns: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 738. Auncell, Burton and Grimsby were all elected as mayor soon after their first Parliaments. None the less, although first election to Parliament preceded promotion to the mayoralty, repeated elections meant that as many as 18 of the 44 seats in the Commons were filled by former mayors. On four occasions the serving mayor was elected: namely, Fitling in 1422, Clitheroe in both 1447 and February 1449 and Anson in 1450. Oddly, on three other occasions the mayoral elections resulted in the appointment of a serving MP or an MP-elect: in 1437 Grimsby was chosen as mayor during a parliamentary recess, as was Ellis in 1455, and in 1460 Anson was chosen having been elected to Parliament just a few days before.

The prominence of former mayors among the town’s MPs shows, as does other evidence, that Hull’s representation was dominated by a small group of leading burgesses, and this is further confirmed by the relationship between representation and the aldermanic bench, from which, after its institution in 1440, the mayors were drawn. Serving aldermen filled as many as 16 of the 20 seats in the Parliaments from 1442 to 1460.17 One of these is slightly doubtful, for although Eland was an alderman, by May 1461, it is not certain that he was so when an MP in 1459. Two of the exceptions – Killingholme in the Parliament of February 1449 and Eland in that of 1450 – relate to the two lawyers returned in this period, and the two others – Ellis in 1442 and Titelote in 1453 – involved men who later assumed aldermanic rank.

In respect of appointments to office by the Crown, only two of the MPs served as j.p.s outside Hull: the lawyer, Eland, the most important man to represent the town in this period, was named to the quorum in the East Riding from 1454, and the Yorkist Anson served on the same bench after the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. More routine for the MPs, not surprisingly, were nominations to posts in the Crown’s customs service. Nine of the 18 served, at some point in their careers, as collector or controller of customs or searcher of ships

(with Ellis holding all three offices). For large parts of Henry VI’s reign the administration of the port’s customs was entirely in the hands of local men, and in the 1440s and 1450s three of them (Anson, Ellis and Steton) predominated. All three used their position in the royal administration to assist their fellow merchants and townsmen: seizures of ships and cargoes were frequently valued at less than their true worth and sold to local traders, while commercial advantage was sometimes given to Hull merchants over their rivals from other northern ports, such as York. The appointment of sympathetic customs officials may also have been the concern of the MPs as they travelled to Parliament. As new collectors were named on the grant of each trade subsidy in Parliament, securing the reappointment of local officials was probably a priority. Indeed, Anson, Steton and Fitling were first appointed as customs officials either during or soon after Parliaments in which they themselves sat.

The nomination of customs officials was not the only matter that concerned Hull’s MPs. In the Parliament of 1426 they sponsored a petition presented to the Commons in the name of Richard Reedbarrow, a hermit who lived at Ravenspur. Its aim was to secure financial assistance from the Crown, through the imposition of a levy on each ship entering the Humber, for the maintenance of a beacon to guide seafarers through the treacherous waters at that river’s mouth. The petition received royal assent but nothing was done and it was presented again in the following Parliament. On that occasion, in 1427, the necessary royal letters patent were granted, providing that the fund should be administered by certain named merchants of Hull, including Fitling and Holme, who were then the town’s parliamentary representatives. Both men had also been nominated in the 1426 petition as suitable overseers of the fund, and it is likely that they, rather than the hermit, were the originators of the petition. It is a reasonable surmise that it was the evident need to present the petition again that prompted their candidature in 1427.18 RP, iv. 364-5; SC8/25/1232; CPR, 1422-9, p. 457. Later, in the Parliament of 1433, Hull’s MPs successfully presented a petition for the confirmation of their charters in respect of the bequeathing of lands and the determination by the mayor and bailiffs of assizes of fresh force.19 SC8/26/1294; RP, iv. 468; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 294-5.

The chamberlains’ accounts provide further evidence of the activities of the MPs, for they record payments made to them for miscellaneous expenses incurred while sitting in Parliament. In 1425, for example, the MPs Fitling and Gregg were reimbursed for 3s. 4d. they had paid to ‘ministris domus parliamenti’ and given a further 12d. for copying certain unspecified Acts. On other occasions the MPs spent greater sums on less routine matters. In the Parliament of 1431 one of them, Robert Holme, spent 29s. 5d. in taking counsel, ‘pro materia de Iseland’, no doubt as part of Hull’s efforts to escape royal restrictions on direct trade with Iceland. Of more interest, in 1442 the two MPs, Anson and Ellis, paid as much as £3 to the lawyer, Thomas Young II*, then sitting for Bristol, for his labour, ‘circa pundagium panni depositi ne amplius soluatur Regi’, in the successful effort on the part of the Commons to secure the continuance of the exemption of cloth exports from poundage.20 Chamberlains’ accts. BRF 2/348, 352, 358; PROME, xi. 331-2.

The chamberlains’ accounts also record the payment of wages to the MPs. While the chamberlains frequently ended their official year in debt and the municipal finances were in gradual decline throughout the course of the century, Hull was wealthy enough to ensure its representatives a proper remuneration throughout the period. For the most part, the wages were paid in full within a year of the end of the parliamentary session. None the less, the daily rate was reduced in the late 1420s. At the beginning of the period under review here, the authorities paid wages above the customary daily rate of 2s. for borough MPs. For the Parliament of 1422, which lasted 40 days over a single session, the MPs, Fitling and Holme, were paid for 53 days, allowing ample time for travel, at the daily rate of 3s. 4d. This generosity was, however, not to last, no doubt because of the increasing length of Parliaments. Although the MPs, again Fitling and Holme, in the Parliament of 1427, which lasted 116 days over two sessions, were paid at the higher rate, thereafter the town authorities adopted the customary rate of 2s. In the Parliament of 1429 Kirketon and Steton were remunerated at that lower rate for 131 days in respect of an assembly that lasted 129 over two sessions. Thereafter, until the end of the period and beyond, the MPs were paid 2s. a day with varying allowances, generally more generous than the two days allowed to Kirketon and Steton, for travelling time.21 Chamberlains’ accts. BRF2/346-7, 350-1.

The record of payments in the chamberlains’ accounts show that, on occasion, the two MPs were paid for a different number of days, implying that one or both absented themselves for part of the Parliament. For the long assembly of 1427, Fitling was paid for 136 days, presumably relating to attendance every day with allowance, at five days per journey, for four journeys between Hull and Westminster, but Holme was paid for only 115. Either the latter had received no allowance for travelling, perhaps because he had been at Westminster before Parliament opened and remained there until the dissolution, or else he missed many days of the sessions. Later, in respect of the Parliament of 1455, one of the MPs, Anson, seems to have been particularly remiss in his attendance. He and his companion, Ellis, were present for the entirety of the first session, lasting from 9 to 31 July, and received wages for 28 days’ service. During the recess, Ellis was elected to the mayoralty, but he attended the greater part of the Parliament’s next two sessions, receiving wages for 95 days (it is not known what, if any, allowance he was allowed for travelling) in respect of the 96 days those two sessions lasted. Although Anson returned to Westminster on 13 Nov., the day after the opening of the Parliament’s second session, and remained there until its end, he seems to have absented himself from the long last session, from January to March 1456, leaving the representative duties in Ellis’s hands.22 Ibid. BRF2/350, 367-8.

Little evidence survives of the manner of parliamentary elections in Hull before it was incorporated in 1440, and before that date the names of the borough’s MPs were simply endorsed on the writ returned by the sheriff of Yorkshire. In practice, the election seems to have been presided over by the mayor and bailiffs (whose names appeared on the endorsement alongside those of the MPs and their mainpernors). From the Parliament of 1442 onwards, however, separate writs were sent out to the sheriff of Hull. An incidental reference shows that the town authorities gave a reward of 6s. 8d. to the royal servant who delivered to them the writ for the Parliament of 1453.23 Ibid. BRF 2/366. Once the election had been held, an indenture was drawn up between the sheriff and various attestors. The first of these indentures, witnessing an election held on 8 Jan. 1442, was made between the sheriff, Robert Auncell, and 36 ‘burgenses’, but later indentures generally name fewer attestors, with the aldermen dominant amongst them. The indenture for the Parliament of 1447 names only seven attestors, all described as aldermen, who are said to have made the election with the assent of ‘aliorum fidedignorum’. On occasion, the mayor headed the attestors: the indenture dated 7 July 1455 was witnessed by Auncell, as mayor, seven other aldermen, and 12 burgesses.24 C219/15/2, 4; 16/3.

These indentures show that, although the elections may have been dominated by the aldermen, the electors were drawn from a wider group of burgesses, and entries in one of the bench books both confirm this and provide further insights into the electoral process. These entries show that the method of parliamentary election, at least in the period after the charter of 1440, was similar to that employed for the annual election of the two chamberlains. In respect of those officers, the mayor and aldermen nominated four burgesses, from whom the rest of the burgesses selected two. The difference in respect of the MPs was that the four nominees (described as ‘lites’) were predominantly drawn from the ranks of the aldermen. Thus, on 27 Jan. 1449 the aldermen chose the mayor (Clitheroe), two other of their number (Auncell and Burton), together with the lawyer Killingholme. On the same day an indenture was drawn up between the sheriff, on the one part, and eight attestors, described as ‘aldermanni et nonnulli alii Burgenses’, witnessing the election of the lawyer and the mayor. Interestingly, the two unsuccessful candidates were among the attestors, perhaps implying that they were not disappointed at being passed over, and this was also the case on other occasions.25 Bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, f. 4; C219/15/6. The bench book shows that the same method was employed in respect of the later elections of the period and beyond. What is not clear is how broad a body of the burgesses participated in reducing the four ‘lites’ to two MPs. No surviving indenture of the fifteenth century names more than 36 attestors, although in 1442 there were some 356 freemen.26 VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), i. 37. Clearly, as the indentures themselves imply, electoral participation extended beyond the named attestors, but the system of nomination, although it ensured that no election went uncontested, probably deterred a mass participation.

There is some indirect evidence in respect of the way in which the electors cast their votes, but, if a parallel can be drawn with the annual election of the town’s officers, the ballot was a secret one rather than a public demonstration by hands or voices. In 1434 the votes for the election of the municipal officers had been collected by two ‘worthy burgesses’ chosen by the commons and the common clerk; only these men were to know how each freeman had voted. In 1458 it was laid down that the candidates in elections were to choose the men who were to go among the burgesses and write down their choices.27 Ibid. 36-37; bench bk. 3a, BRB 1, ff. 45, 55v.

The representation of Kingston-upon-Hull was dominated by its resident merchant elite, as it had been since it first returned MPs in 1305. Notwithstanding significant fluctuations in the town’s economic fortunes, this remained the case throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.