Plympton Erle

In common with many of their south Devon neighbours, the townsmen of Plympton claimed an illustrious ancestry: according to a legend current by the second half of the fifteenth century, when it was recorded by the antiquary John Rous, it had been at Plympton that a group of Trojan refugees led by Brutus had first landed in the islands that came to be called after him, and had encountered the indigenous race of giants. Most of these had been exterminated by a hail of arrows, but their leader, Gogmagog, had been challenged to single combat by one of the refugees, named Corineus. After a prolonged bout of wrestling, this hero had lifted the giant onto his shoulders, had carried him to the sea shore and had hurled him off a cliff in a place even in Rous’s day still known as ‘Gogmagog’s leppe’, where images of the combatants had been etched into the ground.1 J. Rous, Historia Regum ed. Hearne, 15-16.

More prosaically, Plympton owed its early economic prosperity, and by inference its inclusion among the boroughs invited to send representatives to Parliament under Edward I, to its situation at the head of the river Plym, then still navigable, providing easy access to the estuary and the Channel, but sufficiently far inland to afford some protection from enemy raids. However, even by the early fourteenth century, Plympton had been superseded by the as yet unincorporated settlements around Sutton Prior nearer the mouth of the open estuary out of which the incorporated borough of Plymouth would be formed in the reign of Henry VI. In 1334 Plympton was assessed to pay just £4 6s. 8d. towards every parliamentary tenth and fifteenth (a fraction of what the men of Sutton paid), ranking Plympton tenth of the county’s 19 boroughs. In spite of this ostensible decline, in 1328 the town was of sufficient importance as a centre of commerce to be chosen as the head of one of the four Devon stannaries.2 Lay Subsidy 1334 ed. Glasscock, 65-66.

Plympton had acquired borough status from its lord, William de Reviers, earl of Devon, in 1194, and in spite of later grants of liberties by Earl William’s heirs both they and their successors in the earldom, the Courtenays, retained control over the town, which continued to pay them a substantial annual fee farm of £24 2s. 2d. down to the reign of William IV. The men of Plympton had first secured royal confirmation of the grants of privileges by Earl Baldwin and his daughter, Countess Isabella, from Richard II in 1386, and Richard’s letters were in turn confirmed by Henry IV in 1401 and Henry V in 1413. No similar confirmation was sued out at the accession of Henry VI and it was only in 1439, in face of the efforts towards the incorporation of neighbouring Plymouth that the townsmen sought to protect their rights by procuring fresh royal letters which were, in the event, not issued until February 1441.3 CPR, 1385-9, p. 104; 1399-1401, p. 481; 1413-16, p. 50; 1436-41, p. 498.

The death of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon, on 16 June 1422 left his son and heir Thomas a boy of eight.4 CP, iv. 326. The young earl was taken into the Crown’s wardship, and in February 1423 Nicholas Radford* joined John Copplestone* (appointed in July 1422) as steward of the estates of the earldom.5 CPR, 1422-9, p. 46; CFR, xv. 27. The following November, custody of the estates was committed to the dowager countess, Anne, and her brother, John Talbot, Lord Furnival, during the earl’s minority.6 CFR, xv. 62-63, 77-78. It is possible that it was the absence of an adult earl that was to some extent to blame for the violent clashes between the men of Plympton and inhabitants of the surrounding countryside. In July 1423 the Crown had to appoint commissioners of oyer and terminer to investigate a complaint by the burgesses that a group of armed malefactors had broken into ‘le yeld halle’ and rescued one William Crese from the stocks.7 CPR, 1422-9, p. 123. Four years later, in December 1427, another band of local men headed by the former MP Peter Rose were said to have been guilty of robbing a local tucker of grain, cloth and pewter vessels at nearby Plympton Prior, and in 1444 Richard Fortescue sued John Downing and John Cornish among others for allowing their cattle to graze in his close.8 CP40/670, rot. 271; 734, rot. 200d.

Equally obscure are the details of the borough’s internal governance. The existence by the early fifteenth century of a guildhall and town clerk may point to some degree of administrative autonomy, but there can be little doubt that ultimate authority was exercised by the lord’s bailiffs and stewards, and the constable of the increasingly derelict castle.9 Constables were still being appointed in the 16th century: The Commons 1509-58, i. 73. Nor is anything known for certain of the conduct of Plympton’s parliamentary elections in the period. It seems clear that as in other Devon boroughs elections were held, probably locally, in response to a precept issued by the sheriff of the county to the borough’s officers, and the practice of successive sheriffs not to issue their precepts until just before or even after the county elections meant that they did not invariably precede the choice of the knights of the shire. On at least one occasion during this period there is some suggestion of irregularities in the choice of the Plympton Members. The sheriff of Devon routinely compiled the names of the men elected by the urban constituencies in his county into a schedule which he sent to Westminster along with the formal election indenture. In 1455, this document saw the name of one of the Plympton MPs, Richard Hals junior, son of the synonymous sheriff, inserted over an erasure, although the circumstances and timing of this alteration are unknown.10 C219/16/3/12.

The names of Plympton’s representatives are known for 19 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Only one name is known for the Parliament of 1445; no names have been discovered for the assemblies of 1439, 1459 and 1460. In the absence of any borough records from the period, little is known about the local standing of the town’s MPs, but perhaps the most striking feature of Plympton’s representation in the reign of Henry VI was the high level of continuity extending from the early years of Henry V to the end of the 1440s. Just 19 men shared between them the 37 seats for which the incumbents’ names are known, and, of these, 12 were only returned for the borough a single time. By contrast, William Selman represented Plympton in five Parliaments between 1420 and 1429, his kinsman John Selman no fewer than 11 times between November 1414 and 1445, and John Serle alias Silverlock equaled John Selman’s record between November 1414 and February 1449.11 The Commons 1386-1421 believed Serle and Silverlock to be two different men. In addition, several of the men who only represented Plympton once nevertheless built for themselves impressive parliamentary careers, albeit in the services of one or more other constituencies: John Julkin and Robert Clay, who each sat in five Parliaments all told, respectively also represented Tavistock, and Helston, Liskeard and Truro, while Thomas Gale was chosen by the burgesses of Dartmouth three times after serving Plympton on his first election. Perhaps the greatest variety of constituencies were served by John Fortescue, who sat in a total of nine Parliaments for Tavistock, Totnes, Bath and Wiltshire, as well as for Plympton, before being summoned to the Lords as a member of the judiciary from 1442 to the end of the reign.

Moreover, if the borough’s choice of representatives reflected the electorate’s conscious predilections, the inhabitants of Plympton may have set great store by their MPs’ previous parliamentary experience. Just under a third of the 37 seats for which the Members’ names are known in this period were taken by men who, as far as can be told, had never sat in the Commons before. The other two thirds had in their majority previously sat for Plympton; just three men had gathered their first parliamentary experience in the service of other constituencies: Julkin had represented Tavistock, John Fortescue Tavistock and Totnes, and Clay the Cornish boroughs of Helston and Liskeard. This meant that Plympton was able to return two men with prior experience in the Commons to no fewer than eight of Henry VI’s Parliaments, and on a further nine occasions sent at least one man who was so qualified. Not least as a consequence of the exceptional parliamentary careers of Serle alias Silverlock and John Selman, the borough’s Members frequently secured direct re-election: Selman served continuously in four successive Parliaments from 1431 to 1435, and Serle alias Silverlock added a further re-election in 1437. Serle had previously been directly re-elected in 1423, and in 1450 both Plympton MPs from the turbulent Parliament of 1449 (Nov.) were returned again. Between them, Serle alias Silverlock and members of the Selman family dominated the parliamentary representation of Plympton under successive Kings to such an extent that over a period of almost 60 years from 1390 to 1449 at least 15 Parliaments included one of their number, and in a further nine assemblies they were able to claim both borough seats: in view of the loss of a high proportion of the returns from the reigns of Richard II and the first two Lancastrians, the actual figures were probably rather higher.

Family traditions of parliamentary service aside, the willingness of these men to travel to Westminster may be explained by other business requiring their presence at the centre of government. They formed the core of a body of lawyers who made up by far the largest professional grouping among Plympton’s MPs. While Serle alias Silverlock, the Selmans and John Julkin all practiced as attorneys in the royal courts, several other MPs assumed greater importance in the profession. Robert Clay was closely linked to the judge Nicholas Aysshton* and served alongside him as an associate justice of assize; Thomas Dowrich I was a filacer of the court of King’s bench; and John Fortescue, already of some standing in the legal community of London when returned for Plympton, would later rise to the lofty heights of the office of chief justice in the same court. John’s kinsman Richard Fortescue may be thought to have followed the family tradition and trained in the law, but little is known of his professional activities. The men of law apart, Plympton’s MPs were generally of lower social standing. Tyres served as town clerk in Henry V’s reign, Rose was a tailor, Cornish a baker, Sturt a carpenter and Downing a local tradesman, while Hilling began his career as a mere yeoman farmer.

What recommended a number of the non-lawyers for election to the Commons were their undeniable credentials as local men. Cornish, Downing, Rose, Sturt and Tyres were all, like Hilling, resident in Plympton, as were Serle and the Selmans. By contrast, at least two of the more substantial figures returned resided outside the town, albeit nearby (Strode at Loughtor and Richard Fortescue at Ermington), while others of their number came from further afield: Julkin from Tavistock, Hals from Keynedon in the far south of the county, and Gale from Dartmouth. John Fortescue and Dowrich (who hailed from the parish of Sandford to the north-west of Exeter) divided their time between their native county and the royal courts at Westminster.

In the absence of any borough records from our period it is impossible to tell what part, if any, Plympton’s parliamentary representatives played in the life of the town. Only the town clerk Tyres is known to have held office locally. Nor does prior tenure of office under the Crown appear to have played much of a part in the considerations of the Plympton electorate. Just five of the MPs had served on a royal commission before their election, while John Fortescue had been one of the under sheriffs of London. Dowrich was holding office both as south-western feodary and bailiff of the duchy of Lancaster and filacer of the King’s bench when returned to Parliament in 1427; Serle alias Silverlock was serving as a customs collector in the ports of the Plym estuary at the time of his election in 1431 (although had relinquished that office when next returned); while Clay was an associate justice of assize when elected for Plympton to consecutive Parliaments in 1449 and 1450. One of the MPs, Gale, was appointed searcher at Exeter and Dartmouth during the summer recess of the Parliament of 1455.

In view of the borough’s dependence on its lord, the earl of Devon, the Courtenays’ electoral patronage might have been more pronounced than was ostensibly the case. A factor in this was unquestionably the lengthy hiatus between the death of Earl Hugh in 1422 and his son’s coming of age in the mid 1430s. Arguably, though, the local men elected by the borough were all to a greater or lesser extent Courtenay clients, and the high degree of continuity in the town’s representation during the minority of Earl Thomas may in itself be an indicator of the strength of Courtenay influence, rather than of the waning of comital power.12 M. Cherry, ‘Courtenay Earls of Devon’, Southern History, i. 76, 86. Indeed, the links of many of Plympton’s MPs with the comital house dated back to the days of Earl Hugh: Rose, John Selman and Serle had all accompanied the earl to France in 1420, and William Selman may have been involved in the administration of his estates. Tyres and the Fortescues came from families which had served earlier generations of Courtenays. From 1437 Earl Thomas seems to have made his personal influence felt in Plympton’s parliamentary elections. That year saw the return of Richard Strode, who in the 1450s would become prominent in Courtenay’s martial exploits, and Strode was followed by others with close ties to the young earl. Both Robert Wyse and Richard Fortescue are likely to have owed their returns to their respective families’ connexion with the Courtenays, while in Clay’s case it may have been his master, the royal justice Nicholas Aysshton, who recommended him for service to the earl. Clay’s ties with Earl Thomas may have been closer than is readily apparent, for it was during the crisis of 1449-50, when the earl seems to have been most active in promoting his retainers to the Commons, that he was twice returned alongside Robert Hilling, a member of the comital household at Tiverton.

The earl of Devon’s campaign in Somerset and Wiltshire in the autumn of 1451 against his old rival, William, Lord Bonville*, and the earl of Wiltshire, and his participation in the duke of York’s ill-judged adventure that culminated in the armed encounter at Dartford in early 1452 brought about his temporary removal from the political stage. It is not clear that he played any part in the return of the obscure Downing and Cornish to the Reading Parliament of 1453. By this date he had, it seems, decided to settle his quarrels by other means, and his possible lack of interest in the elections to the Parliament summoned in 1455 in the aftermath of the battle of St. Albans left the way open for others to promote their candidates. Thus the sheriff, Richard Hals, a member of a Devon family with long-standing ties to the Courtenays (but himself precluded from serving in the Commons on account of his office), may have returned his inexperienced son in the comital interest. The apparent alteration of the election return points either to the absence of a more suitable nominee, or the deliberate exclusion of someone deemed undesirable. Alongside his son the sheriff returned Thomas Gale, who may have owed his return to his master, Sir Robert de Vere*, elected at the same time as one of the knights of the shire for Devon. Although a distant kinsman of the earl, Sir Robert seems to have secured his own election through the good offices of his lord, Henry Holand, duke of Exeter.

In view of their links with the unruly earl it is surprising that only a small number of the Plympton MPs of Henry VI’s reign are recorded as participating in the troubles and violence which characterized the second half of the reign. Only Strode is known for certain to have joined the Plympton contingent in the force which the earl took to Dartford; the involvement of Hilling in this enterprise is less sure, although he took the precaution of suing for a royal pardon following the earl’s arrest.