Shaftesbury

The number of parish churches in Shaftesbury had fallen by at least half since the early Middle Ages, and there are other signs of depopulation and relative impoverishment in the period here under review. In 1436 Shaftesbury was one of the Dorset ‘vills’ and boroughs which, owing to poverty, were unable to pay the full amount towards the fifteenth and tenth granted in the Parliament of the previous year. It was granted a remission of £3 – more than any other borough in the county.2 E179/103/79; VCH Dorset, ii. 246. Nevertheless, the amount that the abbess of Shaftesbury paid to the Crown as the borough’s fee farm remained unchanged throughout the fifteenth century, and the accounts of the King’s bailiff of the manor of Shaftesbury after 1456 show receipts of between £15 6s. 10d. and £22 6s. 2d. a year.3 Shaftesbury Recs. ed. Mayo, 26-27. This may have been just half of the annual revenues of the manor, since it had long been divided between the Crown and Shaftesbury abbey, the largest and perhaps best-endowed nunnery in England. The rolls of Shaftesbury’s court leet were dated in accordance with both the regnal year and the year of the abbess’s rule, and the perquisites of the court were divided between the King (or a royal grantee) and the abbess. During the period under review the Crown’s part was mostly in the keeping of Sir John Berkeley† (d.1428), from whom it passed to his son Sir Maurice Berkeley II*, who received half the net profits of the manor, the other half being paid to the abbess. Thus, for example, in 1447 the confiscated goods of a felon were divided equally between Sir Maurice and the abbess, and in 1456-7 they each contributed half the stipend due to the steward of the estate (33s. 4d.).4 CIPM, xxiii. 108; C139/179/57; J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 11-12.

Edward I had granted the abbey all rents, tolls and court perquisites collected from the inhabitants of Shaftesbury which were normally payable to the Crown, in return for an annual payment of £12, and the abbey continued to hold the town at farm in this way until the Reformation.5 CChR, v. 301, 334; SC6/1089/3; PROME, xii. 88. Hen. V had granted this income from Shaftesbury to his father’s widow, Joan of Navarre, and in 1436 there was a plea before the King in Chancery between the queen’s representatives and the abbess with regard to payment: CPR, 1413-16, pp. 164-6; C44/27/12. The annual payment of £12 was granted to the earl of Devon in 1438 and to Queen Elizabeth by Edward IV: CPR, 1436-41, p. 222; 1461-7, p. 480. Under Richard II the burgesses had tried to secure the farm of the borough for themselves, offering to pay an increment of two marks a year, but their bid proved unsuccessful. Their charter of 1252 (granting that the justices in eyre should come to Shaftesbury to try all causes there concerning them, and that they might choose two coroners), was confirmed by Richard II in 1381 and by the council of Henry VI in June 1423,6 CPR, 1422-9, p. 106. yet in reality the townspeople enjoyed little autonomy in their affairs. The principal official in Shaftesbury continued to be the steward of the manor, who was appointed by the abbess and convent. The steward’s identity during the early part of Henry VI’s reign is not known, but the post may have been held throughout our period by the lawyer William Carent*, on the nomination of his wife’s aunt, Margaret Stourton (abbess from 1423 to 1441), and Carent certainly served as steward in the years 1453-76.7 Recs. Shaftesbury, 19-20, 24, 26-28. Officers of the borough itself were chosen by a jury of 12 townsmen empaneled at the court leet held at Michaelmas. It is unclear from the surviving court rolls whether as a matter of routine there would be a number of candidates for the mayoralty, although certainly on one occasion the panel had to decide between two nominees, the successful candidate being then sworn in to perform the office well and faithfully. The entry for the court leet of 1487 contained a clause stating that the jury chose the mayor with the assent of the whole community of the town, and this had probably been the case earlier in the century. The body of 12 also chose two coroners and two constables to serve for the forthcoming year. A surviving account of 1473 shows that two wardens or chamberlains were responsible for collecting rents and the sums raised for a fifteenth and tenth, and for making disbursements on behalf of the community. A bailiff, answerable to the Crown, was also named at the court leet; a ‘King’s bailiff’ is recorded in the years 1456-8, 1471-2 and 1493-4.8 Ibid. 19-20, 26-27; Hutchins, iii. 15.

Returns have survived for 18 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, and although that for 1433 is no longer extant its contents were recorded in the seventeenth century by William Prynne†. A total of 28 individuals are known to have represented Shaftesbury in this period, although there remains uncertainty as to whether it was Thomas Hat or John Newburgh II who entered the Commons in 1425, for although Hat’s name was recorded on the indenture it was replaced by Newburgh’s on the schedule which accompanied the indenture to Chancery.9 Since the schedule was presumably completed after the indenture it is more likely that Newburgh went to Westminster (accompanying his father, who was one of the shire knights), but proof is lacking. Two of the MPs, Thomas Hurst (1432) and Robert Talbot (1447), have not been satisfactorily identified.

Many of Shaftesbury’s representatives of Henry VI’s reign lacked experience of the workings of Parliament. In only four or five Parliaments of the period was the borough represented by two men who had both sat before, and in eight more a previously tried individual was accompanied by a novice. Of greater significance, in perhaps as many as six Parliaments both of Shaftesbury’s MPs were newcomers to the Commons. The tendency to elect untried men was accentuated as time went by, the pattern of representation indicating that the burgesses placed a higher value on continuity in the first three decades of the century than they did subsequently. Thus, the same two men, John Hody and Robert Squibbe, were elected to the consecutive Parliaments of 1421 (Dec.), 1422 and 1423; indeed, Squibbe sat in six Parliaments in a row in the four years from 1419 to 1423, and Hody in five out of the six Parliaments assembled from 1421 to 1427. In the 1430s William Lovell I sat in five consecutive Parliaments, from 1431 to 1437, and he was joined in 1437 by his companion of the previous assembly, William Morton. After that date, however, the representation of Shaftesbury lacked any continuity. On all of the five occasions after 1439 when the borough returned an experienced man this experience had been gained not by sitting for Shaftesbury itself, but by representing other constituencies. Leyot and Hardgill had been returned previously for other Dorset boroughs, Walrond and Pole for boroughs in Wiltshire, and Haytfeld had even sat in the Commons as a knight of the shire (for both Oxfordshire and Berkshire).

It is nevertheless worthy of remark that while many of Shaftesbury’s MPs lacked experience of the Commons when returned for this borough, about half of them – at least 13 of the 28 – went on to sit for other constituencies subsequently. For 11 of them their service for Shaftesbury came at the very beginning of their parliamentary careers. Brown, Cross, Dacre, Alexander Hody, Kayleway, Pole and Twyneho were to be elected later for other boroughs in Dorset or Wiltshire; Danvers was to sit for the Sussex borough of Horsham; and as many as six of Shaftesbury’s MPs were to stand successfully for election as knights of the shire: Walrond twice for Berkshire, Tourges twice and Newburgh six times for Dorset, Alexander Hody seven or eight times for Somerset, and Byconnell and John Hody for both Dorset and Somerset. The last, John Hody, was ultimately to receive a personal summons to the House of Lords as chief justice of the King’s bench. Taken altogether, therefore, this group built up considerable experience of the Commons, sitting on average in three Parliaments each, and the Hody brothers totted up an impressive 20 seats between them.

The electoral statute of 1413 required that borough MPs should be resident in their constituencies, but in the case of Shaftesbury only six or seven of those returned in this period (Catte, Fore, Hat, if he did indeed sit, Morton, Percy, Squibbe and Wilkins) may be shown to have lived there on anything like a permanent basis, indicating that less than a quarter of the 28 may have been burgesses-proper. Members of this small group are known to have performed other services for their home town too: Catte, Fore and Hat all attested the indentures of return on occasion (Catte and Fore each doing so three times, and Hat twice); and at least four of the group held local office.10 Few local records have survived, so it is impossible to compile anywhere near complete lists of borough officers. Hat is recorded as twice constable and twice mayor; Morton was deputy to the King’s bailiff and mayor at least twice, on each occasion being elected to Parliament immediately after the end of his term; similarly, Wilkins had officiated as mayor before his election as MP, and Percy was one of the constables when elected in 1450.

John Pole, who served as mayor for at least two terms after he sat in the Commons for Shaftesbury, may be less readily placed in the category of a burgess, for he seems to have usually lived in Wiltshire, at Chalke or Wilton. He was one of another group, of six MPs, who, since they held property in Shaftesbury, complied to some extent with the statutory qualification, yet normally resided elsewhere. The other five in this group were John Hody and William Twyneho, who lived in Somerset at Stowell and Frome, respectively; Newburgh and Rempston, who lived in south-east Dorset at East Lulworth and Godlingstone; and Hardgill, who, at least when he first represented Shaftesbury, lived in Wiltshire, at Stourton. None of these six individuals were burgesses in the strict sense. Even further removed from that category were the rest of the MPs who have been identified. Eleven of them did at least come from the region, being drawn from Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire, and some lived within a 13-mile radius of the borough.11 Dacre at Dinton, Haytfeld at Stourton, Kayleway at Sherborne, Leyot at Manston, Lovell at Wincanton, and Petyr at Sturminster. Yet a number lived a considerable distance away,12 Brown at East Lulworth, Byconnell at South Perrott, Alexander Hody at West Bower, Tourges at Melcombe Bingham, and Wood at Hampreston. and three were complete outsiders.

Significantly, these three Members for Shaftesbury sat in the three consecutive Parliaments of 1449 and 1450, which assembled at a time of political and financial crisis. Richard Danvers (February 1449) hailed from an Oxfordshire family and practiced as a lawyer in London; Thomas Cross (November 1449) came from as far away as Huntingdonshire and worked at the Exchequer; and Thomas Walrond, who possessed land in Wiltshire and attested the elections for that county in 1450 (when he himself was elected for Shaftesbury), lived mainly at Childrey across the border with Berkshire. Generally speaking, local residents were favoured at the beginning of the period, with all the representatives of the first four Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign having close links with the town, and in the six Parliaments assembled between 1429 and 1442 at least one of the MPs was a burgess or else lived quite close to Shaftesbury. But as the period progressed a tendency to elect men who came from a distance or even (as in the three Parliaments of 1449 and 1450), were outsiders to the region as well as the locality, became more pronounced.

The occupations of only a few of the burgesses among the MPs have been discovered, but it is likely that for the most part they were engaged in trade. Catte, for example, was a baker. Two of those who lived elsewhere developed an interest in overseas trade, although neither was exclusively a merchant. Thus, the ‘esquire’ Hardgill shipped wool through the Dorset ports, and the lawyer Danvers, prompted by his family’s interests in the wool trade, became a merchant of the Calais staple. In the reigns of Richard II and the first two Lancastrian kings the townsmen of Shaftesbury had shown a distinct preference to be represented by lawyers, men who must often have been absent engaged in business in the central courts or at the assizes, but who through their ability and training might effectively promote the borough’s interests. In the Parliaments of 1386-1421 a third of Shaftesbury’s recorded MPs were members of the legal profession, and, significantly, in 19 out of the 23 Parliaments for which returns have survived at least one of those returned was a lawyer. This preference became even more marked in Henry VI’s reign, when probably 16 of the 28 MPs (that is, over half) belonged to this profession. Clearly, lawyers continued to dominate the borough’s representation. Furthermore, they included men of outstanding calibre in their field, such as Byconnell, Alexander Hody and Newburgh (among the most skilled lawyers of their generation, whose advice was sought by the leading landowners of the region), Richard Danvers of the Inner Temple, who came from a family of lawyers and was brother of the judges Robert* and William†, and John Hody, an apprentice-at-law whose rise to be chief justice of King’s bench was unusually rapid. Others, notably Rempston and the attorney Lovell (who became a filacer in King’s bench), were successful practitioners, and Walrond’s expertise in the law is attested by his later employment by St. George’s college, Windsor. Lawyers occupied at least 22 of the 38 recorded seats in Henry VI’s reign, and in six Parliaments both of Shaftesbury’s representatives belonged to this profession. Of particular note are the times when John Hody and Squibbe were returned together, and combined their practices in the law courts at Westminster with service in the Commons. In only three of the 19 Parliaments was Shaftesbury seemingly not represented by a man of law.

For the most part the lawyer MPs were styled ‘gentlemen’ (as also were Percy and Petyr, whose principal occupations have not been discovered), and they were evidently more at home among the landed gentry than the townsmen. Indeed, some of them became landowners of substance in the region, and three rose to knightly status, although not until long after their parliamentary service for Shaftesbury had ended: John Hody was knighted when he became chief justice in 1440, his brother Alexander at the battle of Wakefield in 1460, and Byconnell at or soon after Bosworth field in 1485. Other of Shaftesbury’s MPs (Dacre, Hardgill, Haytfeld and Tourges), were of armigerous rank. Dacre and Haytfeld owed their status to their military service in France (the latter as captain of the Norman garrison of Exmes and a member of the retinue of the duke of Bedford), and their adoption of the King’s livery as esquires in his Household, and they shared with Hardgill an attachment to John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton.

Stourton seemingly exerted some influence over the parliamentary representation of Shaftesbury. As a powerful local landowner with property in the town,13 Hutchins, iii. 94. nephew of the abbess of 1423-41, and brother-in-law of the steward William Carent, he was well placed to persuade the burgesses to favour his associates. In the 1420s these included Squibbe, Shaftesbury’s representative in six Parliaments, and John Hody, its representative in five, who were both feoffees of Stourton’s estates, as well as Robert Tourges, another of Carent’s brothers-in-law. During the period of Stourton’s treasurership of the royal household (from 1446 to 1453), others linked to him were elected to the Commons. In 1447, to the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds notable for the presence of a large number of MPs associated with the royal court, Shaftesbury returned William Twyneho, Stourton’s agent, feoffee and future executor; and in 1453, when the Commons was again dominated by those linked with the Court, the borough was represented by Dacre, another of Stourton’s retainers and future executors, accompanied by Pole, who entered the service of Stourton’s son and heir, William*. Other close associates of Lord Stourton were returned in 1455 (Haytfeld), and 1460 (Hardgill).

Haytfeld’s fellow MP of 1455, the lawyer John Byconnell, had been helped in the early stages of his career by the steward of Shaftesbury abbey, William Carent, and this same patron may have advanced his successful candidacy. Besides Carent, other members of the legal profession may have had a say in Shaftesbury’s representation. For instance, mere coincidence would not seem to account for the elections of Sampson Brown and Christopher Wood to the Parliaments of February 1449 and 1460, respectively, when their mentor John Newburgh II was elected as a knight of the shire.

On a negative point, none of the abbesses of the period, Cecily Fovent (1398-1423), Margaret Stourton (1423-41), and Edith Bonham (1441-60),14 VCH Dorset, ii. 79. are known to have taken a direct interest in Shaftesbury’s parliamentary representation; and, more surprisingly perhaps, neither did the Berkeleys, despite their territorial involvement in the borough’s affairs. Nor is there any sign of overt interference from the Crown. Only one of the MPs was holding an office at Westminster when elected to Parliament for Shaftesbury. He, Thomas Cross, returned to the Parliament of November 1449, was a clerk at the Exchequer, serving directly under Thomas Thorpe*, the treasurer’s remembrancer. This was a time of crisis for the government at home and overseas and when the Crown’s financial policies came under attack in the Commons it would have been useful for Thorpe, sitting as one of the knights of the shire for Northamptonshire, to have subordinates close at hand to support him in the House.

For the most part appointment to posts in the administration of the shires came to the MPs for Shaftesbury only after their parliamentary service for the borough had ended.15 Tourges was appointed collector of customs at Melcombe while attending the Parliament of 1427; Byconnell, the two Hodys and Leyot were all made escheators of the joint bailiwick of Somerset and Dorset; Byconnell became sheriff of the same; and Lovell, long a sheriff’s officer, officiated as under sheriff for at least four terms and as clerk of the peace in Somerset. The principal exceptions to this rule were Squibbe, who was bailiff in Somerset and Dorset for the dowager Queen Joan in 1423 when elected to Parliament for the last time, and Haytfeld, who had once held substantial estates in right of his wife, the thrice-widowed Isabel Russell, Lady Scrope, and had served as sheriff, escheator and j.p. in counties where they lay. Similarly, nomination to ad hoc royal commissions rarely preceded election to Parliament. Leaving Haytfeld aside, only in the cases of Rempston and Leyot, returned together in 1442, did Shaftesbury’s MPs have any such experience of local administration before their elections, although ten of the 27 served on commissions after their initial parliamentary service for Shaftesbury, some of them, such as Byconnell, the Hodys, Kayleway and Newburgh, being frequently employed in this way in Somerset and Dorset.16 Byconnell, Kayleway and Newburgh were j.p.s in Dorset, Byconnell, the Hodys and Twyneho in Som., Danvers in Oxon., and Walrond in Oxford and Berks. Of these, the Hodys, Kayleway, Newburgh and Walrond were all appointed to the quorum. It is a measure of their standing in the region that five of Shaftesbury’s MPs attested the shire elections in Dorset (Rempston and Tourges doing so 11 and eight times respectively, and Newburgh seven), Tourges also figured on the parliamentary indentures in Somerset, as did John Hody, Lovell and Twyneho; and Hat, Pole, Twyneho and Walrond attested those in Wiltshire.

It is unclear precisely how Shaftesbury’s MPs were selected, although the evidence regarding the returns to the Parliament of April 1384 establishes beyond doubt that the borough elections were held locally and the results merely reported in the shire court at Dorchester. Also implied in that record is that the franchise extended to all burgesses of Shaftesbury, and that they sought the approval of other inhabitants of the town for their choice, since that particular election was said to have been made by the mayor, constables, bailiff and ‘touz les burgeys ... ovec consente de touz les communes de le aunciene burwe de Sheftesbury’.17 C219/8/10; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 379. In the fifteenth century the procedure followed for recording elections was the same as for the other Dorset boroughs. The electoral returns for the county between 1413 and 1437 often included indentures listing the Members returned by all seven of its boroughs. These composite indentures were drawn up in the shire court between the sheriff and four delegates from each borough and on the same day as the sheriff ratified the election of the knights of the shire. There is no evidence that the election of the burgesses actually took place in that court; the procedure adopted was one of convenience, in order that the sheriff could be notified simultaneously of the results of the several borough elections, which had been conducted in the towns concerned. No separate indentures for the boroughs are now extant from 1442 for the next 30 years. With two exceptions, in that period the names of the elected burgesses are known to us only from the schedules which accompanied the shire indentures to Chancery, these merely containing lists of the MPs along with the names of guarantors for their attendance. The sheriffs’ returns to the Parliaments of 1455 and 1460, however, were comprised of composite indentures for the shire and its boroughs (excluding Poole), those attesting them bearing witness to the election of the burgesses as well as the shire knights.18 C219/16/3, 6.