York

At the beginning of the fifteenth century York was the second city in the kingdom.2 For the fullest account of the history of York in the late Middle Ages: VCH Yorks. (City of York). It was a major administrative, ecclesiastical and economic centre, and in 1377 its tax-paying population of 7,248 was larger than that of any other city apart from London. It was well connected by both road and, more importantly, by river. The river Ouse emptied into the Humber at Ousefleet allowing direct access to the port of Kingston-upon-Hull. From there York’s merchants traded with destinations from Iceland to the Low Countries. These geographical considerations had clearly been important in the city’s foundation in A.D. 71 as one of the two capitals of Roman Britain, as well as in its establishment as the capital of the northern province of the English church in the eighth century. In 886 it was captured by the Vikings, who also made it their capital. Despite its initial resistance to the Norman conquerors, York was flourishing by the beginning of the twelfth century, and in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it continued to prosper as a major logistical and administrative centre during the wars against the Scots. As such, it served as the venue for 11 Parliaments between 1301 and 1335.

York’s prosperity in the late Middle Ages was built upon the textile trade, both overseas and domestic, and the profits to be had in provisioning royal armies and administrations as they passed through or based themselves in the city. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the nature of its commerce had diversified, although wool, cloth and foodstuffs remained the most important exports of its mercantile elite. Such basic economic strength notwithstanding, however, the fifteenth century was one of inexorable decline for the city’s merchants and its wealth more generally. In part, this was a result of the contraction of overseas trade through Hull and the greater proportion of that diminishing trade taken by the Hansards; in part, it was a function of changes in the domestic textiles industry and the movement of much of the manufacture of cloth from urban to rural workshops. The decline in York’s fortunes is evident in the fall in numbers of men admitted annually to the freedom of the city. Between 1375 and 1400 this stood at an annual average of 123; between 1400 and 1450 at 100; and between 1475 and 1500 at only 57. Similarly, it has been estimated that York’s total population declined from around 13,000 in 1400 to only 7,000 by the end of the century, with the plague-ridden 1430s the crucial decade in this decline.3 Cambridge Urban Hist. ed. Palliser, i. 758; J.I. Kermode, ‘Merchants, Overseas Trade and Urban Decline’, Northern Hist. xxiii. 51-73; J.N. Bartlett, ‘Expansion and Decline of York’, Econ. HR, xii. 17-33. The shift in the Crown’s military efforts to France and a prolonged period of truce with the Scots also adversely affected the city. Although it played host to the Anglo-Scots peace negotiations of 1424, the occasional demands for ships for the Lancastrians’ wars in France and the victualling of Northumbrian castles did not generate anywhere near the wealth that the royal campaigns of the previous century had brought to York.

Despite an obvious decline in its economic prosperity, York remained, for most of Henry VI’s reign, an apparently harmonious community. There was certainly none of the conflict between members of the ruling class that had characterized the city’s politics in the 1370s and 1380s. Further, the civic authorities in the period under review here appear to have been free from the troublesome disputes with ecclesiastical and other franchises within the city that had broken out in the preceding centuries. The most persistent of these in the later Middle Ages was with the abbey of St. Mary. This had led to violence in the mid-fourteenth, but in Henry VI’s reign peaceful relations were disturbed only by a relatively minor disagreement over the fish-garths placed in the river Ouse by the abbey. Not until the 1480s was there any serious trouble, on this occasion over common rights outside York’s walls, and this was part of a more general deterioration in the city’s relationships with its ecclesiastical neighbours occasioned by continued economic decline.4 J. Kermode, Med. Merchants, 62, 125.

Given York’s importance, it is not surprising that it should have had a sophisticated system of government, developed through the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and codified by Richard II’s charters of 1393 and 1396.5 Fuller discussions of York’s govt. are to be found in VCH Yorks. (City of York) and Govt. of Med. York (Borthwick Studies in Hist. iii). The government of the city rested in a mayor and aldermen, also known as the council of 12, with a second tier of 24 probi homines, the council of 24. A third group of 48 members of the communitas, representing the interests of the craft guilds, met only rarely. The charter of 1393 allowed the mayor and aldermen to act ex officio as j.p.s,; and that of 1396 elevated the city to the status of a county, only the third urban community to be accorded that honour. The two bailiffs were thereby replaced with two sheriffs elected annually on 21 Sept. by the mayor, aldermen and councillors. The election of the mayor took place on a different cycle, annually on 3 Feb. with the outgoing mayor nominating two or three aldermen, one of whom was then elected mayor by the ‘lez comunes’ assembled in the guildhall.6 York Memoranda Bk. ii (Surtees Soc. cxxv), 255. The office placed a considerable financial burden upon the incumbent. Despite receiving an annual fee of £50, most mayors found themselves in debt at the end of their year in office, and this may have prompted the regulation, dating from 1372 or before, that no one should hold the office more than once in any period of eight years. This safeguard aside, the financial burdens of the office bred a general reluctance to serve as mayor, highlighted in a parliamentary petition of 1450. Indeed, several members of the mercantile elite, including at least two of our MPs, purchased letters patent exempting them from civic office during this period, although on neither occasion do these MPs appear to have enforced the provisions of the grant.

At the same time as the mayoral election, the councillors also elected three chamberlains. This was the most junior of the major civic offices and its incumbents fell into two categories: first, young members of elite merchant families, for whom the office was the first in the cursus honorum of civic service, and, second, members of the craft guilds and other occupations. The latter provided the bulk of chamberlains (50 out of 78 for the period 1410 to 1499), but, unlike for the merchants, it did not guarantee them promotion to the ranks of the council of 24. As with other civic offices, the chamberlains’ office was a potentially costly one. The limited evidence of their accounts show that York’s finances were in decline during the period, although only in the second half of the century did this reach a point of crisis. In 1442-3 the chamberlains’ payments exceeded their receipts by a modest £7, but the deficit was as much as £88 in 1486. This reflected the accelerating decline in the main sources of civic income (entries to the freedom, the surpluses of the masters of the bridges of Ouse and Foss, the dues from the common crane, and the surplus of the murage accounts).

York’s size and strategic importance ensured that in the 1450s it became embroiled in the dispute between the two leading magnate families of northern England, the Nevilles and the Percys. While the Percy earls of Northumberland owned property in the city and, during the 1440s, the citizens lavished gifts on local lords, including both Nevilles and Percys, there is little evidence that either family then wielded any strong influence in York, and none that magnate interference was felt in either civic or parliamentary elections. Nevertheless, the citizens were drawn into the escalating local violence as Lancastrian government broke down. On 24 Aug. 1453, as a Neville wedding party made its way from Tattershall in Lincolnshire to the family’s castle at Sheriff Hutton (ten miles north of York), it was attacked at Heworth, just outside the city by Thomas, Lord Egremont, and his brother, Sir Richard Percy. Some 710 individuals were indicted for the assault, of whom about 15 per cent were apparently from York and included at least 30 freemen, among them William Snawsell†, a future MP. Worse followed a few months later. On 14 May 1454 Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, and Egremont, fomenting rebellion in the north, organized illicit meetings of the citizens and urged them to join their host. The mayor, Thomas Nelson, and the recorder, Guy Roucliffe, resisted the rebel lords’ demands and were assaulted by their followers. Alarmed by the news of events in York, the duke of York, then Protector, himself rode north, arriving in the city on 19 May. Exeter and Egremont fled to raise rebellion in the wider county, but Duke Richard remained at York until 20 June, by which time Nelson and the aldermen were once again in control of the city.7 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 334-52; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 130-2; KB9/148/1/15.

These disturbances were, however, as nothing compared to the great conflict of the winter of 1460-1. In the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460, Lancastrian forces rallied in the north. In the following October the Yorkist government, clearly fearing these forces would take over the city, ordered the York authorities, ‘to be prudent in receiving strangers lest by greater strength they assume the governance of the city’. As it transpired, whatever the political sympathies of the citizens, their city became a centre of resistance for the Lancastrian lords, most notably the earl of Northumberland, who convened a council there in November. When the duke of York and Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, marched north to meet the growing Lancastrian threat, they were defeated and killed at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. Their heads, together with that of the duke’s young son, the earl of Rutland, were then impaled on York’s Micklegate Bar.8 CPR, 1452-61, p. 650; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 774-5. The city briefly became the centre of a Lancastrian government: Queen Margaret convened a council there on 20 Jan. 1461 before her army departed south to victory at the second battle of St. Albans on 17 Feb. and then returned north after being turned away from London. On 29 Mar. it was decisively defeated by Edward IV at Towton, some 12 miles south-west of York. The new King then entered the city where he was received ‘with gret solempnyte and processyons’.9 VCH Yorks. (City of York), 59-60; M.A. Hicks, ‘Lancastrian Council at York’, Northern Hist. xxxv. 214-21; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 267.

There can be little doubt that, through these momentous events, York maintained its adherence to the house of Lancaster, and, given the presence of the Lancastrian army in the city and its environs, it probably had little choice in the matter. Significantly, in this regard, according to a contemporary letter, after the battle of Towton the city was received into the new King’s grace only after seeking the intervention of two Yorkist lords, John Neville, Lord Montagu, the earl of Warwick’s brother, and John Bourgchier, Lord Berners.10 Paston Letters, iii. 267. Further, later evidence suggests that sizeable contingents from the city fought at the battles of Wakefield, the second St. Albans and Towton. The citizens claimed in a petition addressed to Henry VII that ‘to other grete charges and costes [they had] not oonely sent unto the battell of Wakefeld CCCC armed and well arrayed men to do hyme [Henry VI] service, conveing afterward the quene grace then being and the famous prince Edward ther sunne unto the batell of Saint Albones with othre CCCC of like men to thassistence of ther said souverian lord’, but at ‘the lamentable batell of Tolton [Towton], called Palmeston feld . . . ther were of your said citie at ther owne costes about a Ml men defensible araied, of the which many was slayne and put in exile’. No doubt this was, in part, hyperbole designed to secure a reduction in York’s fee farm, but the presence of a contingent from the city at all three battles is consistent with other evidence.11 York House Bks. ed. Attreed, i. 390-1.

The names are known of 34 men who represented York in the Commons during Henry VI’s reign, none of whom are recorded as representing any other constituency (as in the case of the city’s MPs in the period 1386-1421). Between them, they sat for the city on a total of only 49 occasions, a strikingly low average of Parliaments per Member. Multiple returns were unsurprisingly rare. The principal exceptions were William Bowes I, who sat on five occasions between 1416 and 1431, and John Thirsk, returned four times between 1445 and 1467.

These statistics reflect a marked change in the level of continuity in York’s representation. Of the 14 seats between the Parliaments of 1422 and 1431 inclusive, as many as ten were filled by men with previous parliamentary experience, a return to the high level of continuity that had prevailed in the 1390s. Thereafter, however, continuity declined markedly. Of the 28 seats in the Parliaments from 1432 to 1460, only two (both accounted for by Thirsk) were taken by an experienced MP. Two explanations for this change suggest themselves. It has been argued that the fifteenth century witnessed a growing reluctance on the part of York’s ruling elite to hold office, and it may be that this reluctance extended to parliamentary representation.12 For the argument that there was a general retreat from office in York: J. Kermode, ‘Urban Decline?’, Econ. HR, xxxv. 179-98. Yet that reluctance seems to have descended too suddenly for this argument to apply. That suddenness suggests a very different explanation, namely an unrecorded and perhaps informal decision by the civic authorities to spread representation more widely, either to divide a burden or to provide a greater number of the leading citizens with the opportunity of sitting in Parliament. In the second half of the fourteenth century the city’s parliamentary representation, like the mayoralty, had been concentrated in the hands of a small clique within the mercantile elite. William Graa†, for example, had sat on no fewer than 14 occasions, while his son, Thomas†, did so 12 times. In the early fifteenth century, however, the MPs came to be drawn more widely from the aldermanic class, and the pattern of single returns from the early 1430s is perhaps to be interpreted as a further expression of this development.

However this may be, there can be no doubt that election to Parliament was, for individual MPs, an important stage in an increasingly structured cursus honorem of civic office. All 34 MPs of Henry VI’s Parliaments had served as chamberlain and sheriff before securing election. Election was thus an important validation of a man’s standing, coming only after he had established himself firmly within the office-holding elite. It is thus not surprising that every seat was filled by men who had already attained the rank of alderman, nor that all but four of the 34 (the exceptions were the two Louths, John Marton and Nicholas Wispington) served as mayor.13 Only eight of the 30 served more than one term as mayor, and only Holbeck served more than twice. Revealingly, however, 17 of the 30 who served as mayor did so only after they had been elected as a MP, suggesting that the mayoralty stood higher than election to Parliament in the hierarchy of office. As a result, former mayors filled only a little more than half of the known seats (24 out of 42).

None the less, whichever honour came first, they came together, whether as a first election or not, more often than can be explained by coincidence. On as many as eleven occasions, an outgoing mayor was elected to the next Parliament to meet after the end of his mayoralty. Indeed, in three of these instances, all in the late 1440s, the mayor had not yet surrendered his office when elected to Parliament (although all three of these Parliaments were scheduled to meet after the end of their terms).14 The three are Bukden (1445), Stocton (1447) and Karr (Feb. 1449). Since the date of the York election is unknown for 1445, Bukden is a slightly doubtful case. Parliament was summoned on 13 Jan. to meet on 25 Feb.; his mayoralty ended on 3 Feb. On two other occasions the relationship was almost as immediate: Ormshead ended his mayoralty on 3 Feb. 1426 and was elected to Parliament on the following day; and Danby was elected 23 days after the end of his mayoralty in 1453.15 The other six three examples are the elections of Russell (1422), Usflete (1439), Girlington (1442), Crathorne (1447), Holbeck (1450) and Holgate (1460). Significantly, nine of the 11 examples of this practice date from after the early 1430s when it became unusual for an MP to be returned more than once, and one likely explanation presents itself. If the monopoly of the aldermen over representation was to be maintained and those aldermen who had been MPs were not to be re-elected, then the outgoing or previous mayor, if he had not already been an MP, was a strong candidate for election. The reverse practice, that of electing as mayor one who had just relinquished his parliamentary seat, was less common, occurring on only three occasions, namely Bolton in 1431, Warter in 1435 and Beverley in 1460. Twice, however, the city resorted to the inconvenient practice of electing as mayor one who was a current MP: Barton was elected mayor during the second session of the Parliament of 1450-1, and Nelson during the second prorogation of that of 1453-4.

Although the city’s MP were drawn from a relatively narrow elite, it was not a long-established or self-perpetuating one. Only three – Bolton, Bowes II and Gare – were from families that had provided the city with MPs in the previous generation, and in each case that representative history went back only to their fathers. As many as 13 of the MPs were imports into the city, and it is noteworthy how quickly they established themselves among the elite. Aldstaynmore was admitted to the freedom in 1411 and was chamberlain only seven years later, an advance aided by his marriage to the daughter of the York mercer, Richard Thoresby. Northby, admitted to the freedom in 1402 and chamberlain in 1408, rose to prominence after becoming an apprentice to the wealthy merchant, William Vescy (d.1407), whose daughter he married; and Thirsk, also chamberlain six years after admission to the freedom, seems to have owed his early advance in the city hierarchy to his marriage to a sister of the wealthy stapler, Richard Russell I. Usflete, although his rise was slower, with 15 years passing between freedom and chamberlainship, was promoted by his marriage to Northby’s daughter.

These marriages between new and established families show that there were ties of kinship among MPs, even though many of them were only recently established in York. The most extensive kinship group was based on the important family of Blackburn, who came to the city from Richmond in north Yorkshire in the last years of the fourteenth century. John Blackburn† (d.1426/7) and his brother Nicholas were both MPs, as was William Ormshead, who both married their aunt, Margaret, and was the brother of their mother, another Margaret, and John Bolton, the husband of their sister, Alice. Further, John Blackburn’s wife, Joan, was almost certainly the daughter of William Bowes I, and went on to marry another MP, Nicholas Wispington.

By the mid-sixteenth century it had become common practice for the civic authorities to entrust the MPs with a list of specific matters to pursue in Parliament, and while there is no evidence that so formal a system existed a century earlier, there is no doubt that the MPs already used their time in the Commons to forward their city’s extensive interests. During the Parliament of 1422 the mayor and community of York petitioned the King, asking that Henry Bowet, archbishop of York, be compelled to assume the traditional responsibility of the archbishops for the repair of a section of the city wall. The petition was not presented to the Commons, but the timing implies that the city’s MPs were intended to forward it, unsuccessfully as it transpired.16 SC8/153/7623. The MPs of 1445, Thirsk and Bukden, were more successful, using the occasion of Parliament to pursue the city’s attempts to settle a long-running dispute with the abbey of St. Mary over the latter’s placement of fish-garths in the Ouse. They played a part in the efforts to secure favourable judgements in the King’s courts in this matter, as well as over the parties’ respective rights to sell victuals in the city. Later, on 10 July 1449, six days before the end of a Parliament that had begun five months earlier, the mayor and citizens secured, without the payment of a fine, a royal licence to hold a six-day Whitsuntide fair every year, and it is probable that the MPs played a part in winning the grant. Finally, in the Parliament of 1453 Danby and Nelson worked with various lawyers to draft and present bills relating to the removal of obstructions in the Ouse and confirmation of the city’s rights over Ainsty wapentake.17 York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 34, 55, 96; CPR, 1441-6, p. 395; CChR, vi. 102.

In these instances, there is no difficulty in conceiving the MPs as the promoters of their city’s interest during their time in Parliament, whether that interest was pursued within the parliament chamber or outside. A petition presented in the name of the mayor and citizens to the Commons of 1450, suggests a slightly different picture. It successfully asked for an end to the practice by which leading citizens secured royal letters patent of exemption from municipal office and the annulment of such letters already granted. It is, however, difficult to see how Thirsk, one of York’s MPs, can have lent his support to it: on 11 Nov. 1445, while sitting in his first Parliament, he had sued out such letters himself.18 RP, v. 225; CPR, 1441-6, p. 395.

On other occasions the MPs were the representatives of a commercial rather than a civic interest. As in the fourteenth century, they were often merchants of national significance for whom Parliament provided an opportunity to act as a regional or national mercantile lobby. It is unlikely to be coincidental that in the Parliament of 1429 (at which the government of the Company of the Calais Staple was discussed and the so-called Partition and Ordinance of the Staple enacted), York’s MPs were both prominent wool merchants. Similarly, to the assemblies of 1435, February 1449 and 1450, when the affairs of Calais were once again high on the parliamentary agenda, York returned Staplers to the Commons.

Indeed, the parliamentary representation of York continued to be dominated by merchants throughout the reign of Henry VI. Members of the Mercers’ Company of York were most prominent, with 18 of the 34 MPs known to have been active in the mercery trade. Five of them – Bedale, Beverley, Catterick, Crathorne and Richard Louth – served as master of the company, and four others – Catterick, Crathorne, Stocton and Usflete – as its constable. Seventeen of the MPs are known to have exported wool to Calais at some stage in their careers, and two (Thirsk and Russell) served as mayor of the Staple. Almost all the merchants were engaged in overseas trade, but the scale of this involvement may have declined as the fifteenth century progressed and more of the merchants became involved in the redistribution of goods locally. None of the early fifteenth-century merchants could match the scale of exports of the greatest of their fourteenth-century predecessors (such as John Gisburn† who exported over £1,000-worth of wool in 1378-9 alone),19 Kermode, Med. Merchants, 262. although men like John Bolton and William Bedale in the 1430s, or Thomas Beverley, John Karr, Thomas Nelson and John Thirsk in the 1460s and 1470s, were among the wealthiest northern merchants of their age. Only two of the MPs (William Girlington, a draper, and Thomas Snawden, a pewterer), were not apparently involved in either overseas trade or redistribution.

The wealth of the city’s mercantile elite is difficult to reconstruct. There are two main guides, their wills and the tax assessments of 1436 and 1451. Eleven of the MPs were assessed to the first of these taxes on annual incomes from the minimum taxable sum of £5, assigned to both Warter and Thirsk, to Bolton’s assessment of a remarkable £62. Only six of the MPs appear in the returns for the later tax, with incomes ranging from two assessments of £3, attributed to Barton and Beverley, to Thirsk’s which was now put at 56 marks. Yet these assessments, whatever their accuracy, are a poor guide to the real wealth of the MPs for they relate only to landed income. Although Beverley was assessed at only £3, he was a considerable exporter of wool. Similarly, there is a stark contrast between Warter’s assessments of £5 and £8 in the two tax returns and the cash bequests in his will of 1458 amounting to as much as £755. Nor was his the only will suggestive of great wealth: Russell left cash bequests of over £600, Northby over £400 and Aldstaynmore over £300. This contrast between the generally modest tax assessments of the MPs (saving those of Bolton in 1436 and Thirsk in 1451) and the evident wealth of many of them in moveable goods and cash implies that investment in land, either within the city or in its hinterland, was not a high priority for the city’s merchants. Although Bolton, Thirsk and Nelson acquired property in the Yorkshire countryside, they were the exceptions.

Not surprisingly, very few of York’s MPs became involved in royal government beyond the city walls. Two – Stocton and Thirsk – served on diplomatic missions to Burgundy, with Thirsk doing so on several occasions. As mayor of the Staple during the 1460s, Thirsk was also unusual among the city’s mercantile elite in being named to commissions outside the city, and in holding royal office as ex officio treasurer and victualler of Calais after 1466. Over all, royal grants of office to York’s merchants were in fact very rare. Among our MPs, only Thirsk and Richard Lematon, who served as a collector of customs in Kingston-upon-Hull (and then only briefly, to collect sums owing to his late brother, John Lematon*, for the victualling of Berwick-upon-Tweed), received such a grant in this period.

Despite the decline in civic income, York continued to pay its MPs at the customary rate of 4s. a day. The expenses of parliamentary wages could be considerable. The longest parliament of the reign, that of 1445-6, lasted 190 days over four sessions, and thus the total wages, without any allowance for travelling time, would have amounted to £76. Indeed, it may be that this was the cost to the city, for the two MPs, Thirsk and Bukden, were assiduous in their attendance over the first three sessions, although the loss of the relevant chamberlains’ account makes it impossible to know how long they spent at the last (beyond the fact they were present for at least its first few days). On other occasions, however, the MPs were not rigorous in their attendance. For the short Parliament of 1442, which lasted a modest 62 days, Girlington and Ridley, were paid for only 50. If that figure includes travelling time, they were probably absent from the assembly for three weeks. On other occasions, the reason for an MP’s absence is known. On 7 June 1425, a week after the beginning of the second session of a Parliament of which he was a Member, Aldstaynmore was still in York participating in the Corpus Christi pageant. Later, during the second and third sessions of the Parliament of February 1449, the city was represented by Carr alone because Thirsk ‘languidus fuit’; and, although the two MPs were paid for attending every day of the first two sessions of the Parliament of 1453-4, Nelson’s election as mayor just before the last session meant that Danby attended it alone. Although proof is lacking, Barton, elected mayor while sitting in the Parliament of 1449-50, was probably absent from most of the second and all the last session of that assembly.20 York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 25, 34, 67-68, 84, 96; York City Archs. chamberlains’ accts. 1449-50, CC1a, f. 12v.

Indentures survive for all the elections to Henry VI’s Parliaments, except for those of 1439, 1445 and 1455. The elections were conducted in the guildhall, presided over by the sheriffs on the county court day of Monday. All save one were held in timely fashion, leaving the MPs adequate time to travel to Parliament.21 The shortest interval between election and Parl. was eight days in 1453, but generally a much longer period was involved. The election of 1459, however, did not take place until six days after the Parliament had met. The explanation may lie in a difficulty of finding suitable candidates for what promised to be a contentious assembly, or else there was a delay in delivering the writ. Ostensibly, elections were made by the whole commonalty. In practice, as is clear from an account of that for the Parliament of 1419, the MPs were chosen by a meeting of the mayor, aldermen and council of 24. This meeting was followed by a formal ‘election’ at which various members of the council were present.22 York Memoranda. Bk. ii. 87.

In the early years of the indentures there was a remarkable uniformity in the number of attestors named: every indenture between 1407 and 1433 named between 11 and 18 attestors, drawn exclusively from the ranks of the councillors. The indentures dating from between 1435 and 1460, however, generally named significantly more attestors, with an average of nearly 30. The rise in number reached its peak in the early 1450s: the election of 12 Oct. 1450 listed 48 attestors and, although only 38 names are now legible in the torn indenture of 26 Feb. 1453, the total then was probably about 50.23 C219/16/1, 2. Clearly men from the council of 48, drawn from the craft guilds, were coming to play a part in the electoral process. There was also another more minor change taking 1435 as the divide. All the indentures before that date, save that of 1432, had the mayor at the head of the attestors (although sometimes he was not designated as such); from 1435 to 1460 the mayor was not an attestor in the indentures for the Parliaments of 1435, 1447, 1449 (Feb.) and 1450. Whether these changes betoken any meaningful change in the manner of election is hard to say. It may be that the apparent expansion of the electorate is related to the famous statute of the Parliament of 1429-30 establishing the 40s. freehold and the majority rule for county elections. The first indenture naming an inflated number of attestors, that of 5 Sept. 1435, is unique, both before and after that date, in describing the 38 it lists as having lands to that value and stating that the election had been made ‘per voces’.24 C219/14/5. Another or related explanation for the expansion in numbers may be that the system of nomination broke down in the early 1430s, but if it did the MPs continued to be drawn exclusively from the city’s mercantile and administrative elite. It is, however, worth noting the coincidence in timing between the increase in the number of attestors in the indentures and the marked decline in representative continuity.

Given that the MPs and the attestors were drawn from the same group, exclusively so until 1435 and largely so thereafter, it is not surprising that all 34 MPs appear as attestors in the surviving indentures. Indeed, each appears on an average of just over five times and none appears only once. Least frequent in their appearance were Crathorne, Girlington and Marton, who each are named only twice, but others were remarkably regular in their attendance. Four attested ten or more elections, with William Bowes I attesting as many as 15 between 1413 and 1437. On a few occasions the MPs attested their own elections. The two indentures of 1449 were both attested by the two MPs returned, and that of 1426 by one of them, William Bowes I.

The men chosen to represent York in the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign were a remarkably homogenous group: all were aldermen with broadly similar career patterns and commercial interests, were connected through ties of kinship, and represented the interests of a mercantile elite for whom the city was the centre of both their public and private lives. While the long-term decline of York as the second city in the kingdom was already under way in the first half of the fifteenth century, this seems to have had little impact on its representation save perhaps in one respect. The period under review here saw the continuation of the process by which the city’s MPs came to be drawn from the whole aldermanic class, in contrast to the pattern prevailing in the second half of the fourteenth century when the city’s affairs, parliamentary representation included, had been dominated by a narrower and wealthier clique. The single returns characteristic of York’s MPs from the early 1430s suggests an informal decision on the part of the civic authorities to spread representation more broadly, albeit while containing it within the aldermen.