Wallingford

Despite Wallingford’s economic decline and dramatic depopulation in the late fourteenth century, which accelerated in the years that followed, it remained a focus of royal power in the Thames valley as the caput of the honour of Wallingford and St. Valery and the site of a castle which continued to be a royal residence, if only on occasion. From 1423 the castle formed part of the dower of Henry VI’s mother, Katherine de Valois, who held it until her death in 1437. Repairs were undertaken in 1424, and four years later it was deemed suitable as a summer home for the young King. Although Henry only visited Wallingford infrequently after he attained his majority,1 B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 364-6, 369. the castle was not neglected: a new gaol was constructed there in the late 1430s at the cost of over £142,2 Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 851-2; CPR, 1422-9, p. 193; 1436-41, p. 132. and the building was generally kept in good order, with between £50 and £60 p.a. spent on its maintenance in the years 1449 to 1456.3 SC6/1096/20; 1097/1, 3. Outside the south gate of the town there were royal mills, which were farmed out at the Exchequer – in our period to John Warfield the MP until his death in 1443, and then to Peter Idle, the bailiff of the honour.4 CFR, xiv. 363; xvi. 319; xvii. 257; xviii. 101.

There can be little doubt that in the first half of the fifteenth century successive constables of the castle exerted considerable influence over the life of the town and its parliamentary representation, an influence which was most likely exerted in person, since these constables had their own preferred residence just outside Wallingford, at Ewelme. During this period the post was hereditary in all but name: Thomas Chaucer*, who had inherited the estate at Ewelme, held the constableship for 35 years from the accession of Henry IV in 1399, and five months before he died in November 1434 he secured from Henry VI a renewed grant of the post and that of steward of the honour for himself and his son-in-law William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, for term of their lives. De la Pole, afterwards marquess and finally duke of Suffolk, held it jointly with Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, from 1437 to 1441, with his wife Alice (Chaucer’s daughter) from 1440 to 1445, and then together with Alice and their son and heir, John. Although after Suffolk was murdered in May 1450 the offices were granted to William, Lord Lovell, for life, this proved to be a temporary measure, for they soon returned to the dowager Duchess Alice and her son, Duke John, who in the accounting year 1450-1 received the constable’s accustomed annual fee of £40 with an additional £10 p.a. assigned for paying their lieutenant. In the disturbed time of civil war ten years later, following the battle of Northampton in 1460, the Yorkist Sir Robert Harcourt* held the constableship or the lieutenancy,5 CPR, 1429-36, p. 346; 1436-41, pp. 44, 366; 1441-6, p. 74; 1446-52, p. 333; SC6/1097/1,4. although Duke John and his duchess Elizabeth, Edward IV’s sister, formally occupied the post from August 1461 until 1482.6 CPR, 1461-7, p. 42; SC6/1097/5, 7, 8; 1302/1.

With the help of these constables, each one possessing considerable influence at the centre of government, the townspeople of Wallingford were able to win concessions from the Crown, such as confirmation of the borough charters in February 1425, granted by assent of the first Parliament of Henry VI’s reign.7 CPR, 1422-9, p. 285. But the town’s decay continued, especially after the Thames was bridged at Abingdon in 1416 and trade was diverted elsewhere. By 1429 Wallingford’s own bridge had become so ruinous as to cause accidents to people, horses and carts crossing over. In July that year the bailiffs and townsmen were granted pontage for two years, to be taken by oversight of Thomas Haseley†, a close associate of the then constable, Thomas Chaucer. A further grant of pontage made in December 1433 was to extend for five years, this time under the supervision of Chaucer himself, assisted by Haseley and another of their circle, John Warfield.8 CPR, 1422-9, p. 542; 1429-36, p. 330.

Yet the poor state of the bridge naturally had its effect on the commerce of the inhabitants, who continued to face insuperable difficulties with regard to the payment of the borough’s fee farm, which had been set in more prosperous times at as much as £42 p.a. In response to their petitions, Richard II had granted in 1396 that the burgesses might be quit of payment of a moiety of the farm for a period of 20 years, and in November 1416 Henry V extended this concession for a similar length of time. Following the expiry of this second term, a royal commission was set up on 17 Feb. 1438 to inquire generally into the state and value of the lands belonging to the honour of Wallingford in the hamlets and lordships pertaining to it as well as in the town, and a further commission, dated 16 May, sought more specifically to discover the true condition and worth of the borough itself. The commissioners were headed by the then constable, the earl of Suffolk, who in June conducted inquiries first at Crowmarsh Giffard in Oxfordshire and then at Wallingford itself. The detailed findings of the commission showed that at the time Henry II had granted the burgesses their charter and permitted them to hold the borough at farm, Wallingford had contained 11 parishes, all containing well-built and fully inhabited houses. Since then many of the buildings had fallen into disrepair and the town had been largely deserted. Even though for a 40-year period the townspeople had been required to pay only half the farm, depopulation had continued because of pestilences and epidemics, causing merchants to flee the town with their families, and artificers and workmen who might have taken their places feared to do so on account of the poverty of the town and the burden of the farm. Now only four parishes were inhabited, and just 44 householders remained. The names of the latter, headed by John Warfield, included two other former MPs and the widows of two more. It was an elderly population: ten of the householders were said to be over 60 years old or otherwise unable to trade, and five were widows or spinsters. Their occupations, as listed by the jurors, provide evidence of such limited economic activity as still continued. Nine of the 44 adults were involved in the production or sale of cloth, several others were involved in victualling trades (numbering among them brewers, bakers, a miller and a butcher), some made a living from the land, as husbandmen or yeomen, and besides this there was a chandler, two ‘corveysers’ (leather-workers), a tinker, a cooper and an ostler. The jurors declared that the people remaining could raise no more than £10 a year for the farm. Drastic measures were called for; the mayor and commonalty were prepared to forgo their privileges to be released from their burden, and asked the King to take the town back into the Crown’s possession and discharge them from the farm. Thus, nearly a year later on 20 May 1439, Suffolk and John Cottesmore j.c.p. were authorized to put this measure into effect, and then to enter negotiations for the commonalty to receive the borough back again at a more appropriate farm, or else for all the lands, tenements and rents in the locality to be leased out to the King’s best advantage. The mayor and burgesses duly surrendered their liberties on 8 June, and were discharged payment of the farm as from November 1437. Whether economic circumstances then altered for the better is unclear, but on 17 Dec. 1439 an agreement was made for the burgesses to regain their charter in return for the payment of £21 p.a. for the next two years, and a reduced farm of £15 p.a. for a further 38 years.9 CPR, 1416-22, p. 60; 1436-41, pp. 148, 200, 317-18, 360-1; CIMisc. viii. 98. This arrangement was honoured by Edward IV.10 SC6/1097/5, 7, 9; 1302/9.

Wallingford most likely owed its success in gaining a reduction of the farm to the intervention of the earl of Suffolk, who had the young King’s ear. After presiding over the inquiry which established the town’s decay, in the King’s chamber at Kennington he personally elicited the royal consent for what followed.11 E28/60, 20 May 17 Hen. VI. De la Pole evidently regarded Wallingford as a place of refuge. On 26 Jan. 1450, during the second session of the Parliament of November 1449, when he was facing intense criticism from the Commons of his past conduct of national affairs, he asked for and received Henry VI’s permission to withdraw from London to Wallingford, with the protection of a substantial armed escort ‘for his suretee and defence’. Suffolk’s leaving was however forestalled by the first petition from the Commons for his arrest, which was presented to the chancellor that same day. The Speaker successfully requested that the duke be committed to the Tower after the Commons alleged that he had fortified Wallingford castle, stuffing it with guns, gunpowder and other habiliments of war as well as sufficient victuals so that if the French invaded England they might find there a stronghold until they achieved their purpose of taking over the realm.12 Six Town Chrons. ed. Flenley, 127; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany xxiv), 196-7; PROME, xii. 92-95.

Wallingford’s parliamentary representation therefore needs to be viewed both against the background of its economic circumstances, and the changing political fortunes of the constables of its castle. In the 19 Parliaments for which returns survive for the period 1422-60, the borough was represented by 23 or 24 different men (doubt remains as to whether John Stokes or Andrew Grygges took one of the seats in 1442). Of this total only a quarter (six) are known for certain to have resided in the town, and all six (Bodyngton, Denby, Hawman, Jones, Mercham and Warfield), were elected before the royal inquiry of 1438 revealed the extent of Wallingford’s decline. Indeed, as that date marked a watershed in the representation of the borough, it makes sense to examine the period in two parts, the first dealing with the 11 Parliaments which met between 1422 and 1437, and the second the eight Parliaments for which returns survive from 1442 to 1460.

There was a striking difference between the two periods with regard to continuity of representation. Apart from Jones, the MPs who lived in Wallingford were all elected more than once: taking account of their service under Henry V, Denby and Mercham each served in two Parliaments, Bodyngton in three and Hawman in four; while Warfield’s parliamentary service was outstanding, as he sat in nine of the 12 Parliaments which met between December 1421 and 1437, seven of them running consecutively. On at least seven occasions before 1442 the borough elected two men with previous parliamentary experience, and on the other four an experienced man accompanied a novice. Nor was it unusual for the same pair of MPs to be chosen repeatedly: Warfield was accompanied by Hawman in 1422 and 1429, by Bodyngton in 1421 (Dec.), 1432 and 1433, and by William Borde in 1427, 1435 and 1437. Re-election to consecutive Parliaments happened ten times in this period, with both Members of the Parliaments of 1432 and 1435 being chosen for the subsequent assemblies. Then too, the men elected before 1442 were likely to have been actively engaged in the administration of the town. Certainly, five of the nine MPs under consideration here held office locally. Bodyngton, who had been town clerk when returned in 1421, may have still been occupying the post when re-elected in 1432 and 1433; Denby had twice served as bailiff before he was elected to Parliament; Bodyngton, Hawman, Mercham and Warfield were all sometime aldermen (Hawman having that status at the time of his elections in 1422 and 1423); and Bodyngton, Hawman and Warfield all officiated as mayor at some stage in their careers. Although none of the mayors had served a term before their earliest elections to Parliament, Warfield was returned during his mayoralties of 1431 and 1437. Few of the group of residents were ever employed in an official capacity by the Crown: the exceptions were Hawman and Mercham, who were appointed tax collectors in Berkshire (it may be significant that Hawman was due to account at the Exchequer for a portion of a fifteenth and tenth when returned to the Parliament of 1422), and Warfield, who was serving as a county coroner when returned to four of his nine Parliaments.

Even so, their occupations and private concerns divided the nine MPs sitting between 1422 and 1437 into two quite distinct groups. The resident townsmen included a husbandman (Mercham), a yeoman (Bodyngton, whose post as town clerk also presumes a degree of literacy), and a general-purpose tradesman – Denby, who dealt in various commodities, such as fish, salt and grocery. The others, John Warfield, William Borde and Thomas Ramsey, were linked together by their common connexion with the constable of Wallingford castle (Chaucer), to whom all three offered their services as feoffees and advisers in his private transactions. Warfield, exceptional among this group of Wallingford MPs in being a lawyer, spent many years as a manager of the estates of Chaucer’s ward and close associate, Thomas Stonor I*, and became indispensable to Chaucer himself in various aspects of his business affairs. To four of his Parliaments he was accompanied by other of Chaucer’s servants. Borde had previously been, and perhaps in 1427 still was, deputy to Chaucer as constable of Taunton castle in Somerset, and he was certainly still Chaucer’s deputy as chief butler in the west-country ports of Topsham and Bridgwater. He had undoubtedly owed his two previous elections to Parliament, as a representative for Taunton, to his superior, and the fact that Ewelme might be given as his place of residence on occasion strongly implies that he was a member of Chaucer’s household. As a feoffee of the estates which descended to Chaucer’s daughter Alice, the countess of Suffolk, he naturally progressed after his patron’s death into the service of Alice’s husband, by whom he was later employed as deputy justiciar in Wales. In the Parliament of 1431 Warfield was joined by Thomas Ramsey, whose stepson was Chaucer’s ward and whose wife was the half-sister of Chaucer’s friend Stonor. Ramsey’s marriage brought him estates providing a net income of £53 p.a., to which he added later the lands of his own inheritance in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Yet while he and Borde may, to a large extent, have owed their elections to Parliament for Wallingford to their links with Chaucer and de la Pole, and were not resident in the town (Borde usually lived at Wantage, and Ramsey came from Hitcham in Buckinghamshire), they were by no means strangers to the local community, for Ramsey’s principal family estates were held of the honour of Wallingford, of which Borde at some stage served as feodary.

The character of the parliamentary representation of Wallingford changed markedly after 1437. In contrast with the earlier period there was now very little continuity of parliamentary service, and no instances of re-election; in perhaps five out of the eight Parliaments for which returns survive between 1442 and 1460 the borough was represented entirely by novices. None of those who had sat before 1442 were chosen again, and of the 15 men elected in this period as many as 13 represented Wallingford just once in the course of their careers.13 Only Spencer was elected twice in this period, and Hopton sat again later on, in 1467. Out of the 15 only William Bedston could offer any experience of the workings of the Commons when he was returned for Wallingford, and that experience had been acquired as an MP for Bodmin five years earlier. Furthermore, none of the 15 are known to have been resident in the town at the time of their elections; indeed, few of them even lived in the county. The exceptions were Thomas Brown IV, a landowner whose home at South Moreton was just a few miles from Wallingford, and John Stokes I, who, although he came from Northamptonshire and lived mainly at Bicester in Oxfordshire, possessed in right of his wife manorial holdings in Berkshire as a tenant of the honour of Wallingford. The social standing of the latter, a j.p. in Oxfordshire, former sheriff of that county and Berkshire, and esquire whose income of over £40 p.a. made him eligible for knighthood, further set him apart from the other MPs. All of the rest (apart from the three who have not been identified),14 John Bydon, Thomas Carlisle and Robert Dalby. were engaged in the service of the duke or dowager duchess of Suffolk or else were relatively undistinguished servants of the Crown.

At least three of those elected in the 1440s were retainers of William de la Pole: Andrew Grygges, who may have taken a seat in 1442, was employed in the administration of his estates and later served his widow as her receiver-general; Henry Herleton (elected in February 1449) had served de la Pole in France and since 1441 had been acting as his clerk in his office of justiciar of Cheshire, Flint and North Wales; and to the next Parliament, that of November 1449, when de la Pole was in grave need of supporters in the Commons, Wallingford returned another of his followers, Robert Hopton, who after the duke’s murder in the following spring continued to serve the dowager duchess. Hopton was also a member of the royal Household, of which Suffolk was steward. Indeed, in the 1440s the interests of the Crown and this powerful nobleman were at times so in harmony as to be synonymous, and it is not surprising to find royal servants being elected for Wallingford in this period as well as after Suffolk’s death. None were particularly prominent figures, but their relatively lowly status was perhaps more likely to guarantee loyalty and subservience to the current regime. John Bridgwater, a groom of Henry VI’s chamber returned in 1442, had been promoted from being a page and spent the rest of the reign in attendance on the King. One of those elected to the Bury St. Edmunds Parliament of 1447 may have been Richard Dalby (perhaps wrongly recorded as ‘Robert’ on the indenture), a member of the Household and ‘yeoman porter of the gate’, who had been part of the royal entourage on the coronation expedition to France, and received various grants and offices from the King, including one of land and the ferry at Bablock Hythe (on the Isis to the south-west of Oxford). Henry Spencer (returned in 1450 and 1459), who received a daily wage of 6d. as a yeoman of the Crown throughout the 1450s, had accompanied Suffolk on his ill-fated voyage to Calais in May 1450. His devotion to Henry VI, which earned him the stewardship of Hampstead Marshall, led to his attainder after the battle of Towton, and then to years of poverty and obscurity until Henry VII came to the throne. Richard Bulstrode was almost certainly chosen as Spencer’s companion in 1450 because of his kinship to the courtier John Norris*, which had led to his employment in the household of the queen, Margaret of Anjou. Likewise, both of those returned to the next Parliament, the strongly loyalist assembly at Reading in 1453, were similarly engaged in royal service, either directly or indirectly. John Burgh IV, another yeoman of the Crown earning 6d. per day, was made joint porter of Wallingford castle while the Parliament was in recess. His companion, Thomas Preston II, seemingly a well-educated man, belonged to the close circle of Thomas Thorpe*, one of the barons of the Exchequer, who, sitting for Essex, was to be elected Speaker. Finally, Richard Houghton (elected to the Coventry Parliament of 1459 along with Spencer), was yet another yeoman of the Crown, who received a regular stipend from the Crown from 1446 to 1460. Thus, all six of Wallingford’s known representatives from the duke of Suffolk’s death until the Lancastrian defeat at the battle of Northampton, were royal retainers.

By contrast, to the Parliament of 1460, which assembled in the aftermath of that defeat, Wallingford returned William Bedston, a member of the household of the dowager duchess of Suffolk, and resident either at her seat at Wingfield in Suffolk or else at his wife’s property in Oxfordshire, but there is no evidence on which to base an assumption that Bedston was expected to support the Yorkist faction in the Commons. What stands out from this examination of the representation of Wallingford from 1442 onwards is that outsiders predominated, with those elected often having their main place of residence at some distance from the town – in the case of Grygges and Bedston as far away as East Anglia, and in those of the royal servants perhaps no nearer than Windsor.

Separate returns for Wallingford survive for 28 of the Parliaments summoned from the beginning of Henry V’s reign in 1413 until 1478. Throughout that period elections were always held in the borough’s guildhall, but, to judge from the differences in the terminology employed on different occasions, the electoral process and the number and identity of the participants varied from time to time. Before 1449 the documents returned to Chancery were often stated to be ‘indentures’ (and that of 1422 took the distinctive chirograph form), yet in reality and with only one exception (in 1431) they were not drawn up between separate parties as indentures should have been, but were rather in the nature of declarations. Each declared that, on sight of the King’s writ, named borough officials, occasionally in association with named burgesses, had made the election. In nine of the returns (to the Parliaments of 1413 (May), 1414 (Apr.), 1419, 1420, 1422, 1423, 1425, 1426 and 1427), the mayor and two or three aldermen took responsibility, and in 1420, 1426 and 1427 they were joined by the two bailiffs.15 C219/11/2, 3; 12/3, 4; 13/1-5. The mayor and bailiffs were named without any aldermen in 1421 (May), 1432 and 1437;16 C219/12/5; 14/3; 15/1. and the mayor and named burgesses (none accorded an office) in 1421 (Dec.) and 1442.17 C219/12/6; 15/2. The mayor took no part in the elections of 1429, 1431, 1433 and 1435. In the case of 1431 this was probably because he, Warfield, was one of those chosen as an MP, but otherwise the reason for the mayor’s absence is not known. On the 12 occasions that burgesses of Wallingford were named in the returns, their numbers varied from as few as three (in 1420) to as many as 14 (in 1431). A formula regularly employed noted that the election had been made ‘by the assent and consent of all their fellow burgesses’, or occasionally (as in 1420 and 1422) of only ‘certain’ of their fellow burgesses, while the return of 1429 referred to the ‘whole community’ of the borough ‘congregated together’ and making the election of their ‘common council and advice’.18 C219/14/1. Between them the 12 returns from 1422 to 1442 provide the names of a total of 29 participants, all of whom were residents of Wallingford (indeed, 17 of them, or their widows, were listed as householders at the official inquiries conducted in the town in 1438). Clearly the electorate was very small.

After the King came of age the records of the elections at Wallingford underwent change. There are no signs of any irregularities in the returns until 1442, when the names of the Members-elect (John Bridgwater and John Stokes) were written in a different ink from that used on the rest of the document, and in the list of MPs noted on the dorse of the writ returned to Chancery by the sheriff Stokes’ name was replaced by that of Andrew Grygges. The six surviving returns for the Parliaments between 1449 and 1460 all diverged from those which had gone before. All were proper indentures, drawn up between the sheriff of Berkshire on the one part and the mayor, or the mayor and two aldermen or bailiffs ‘with the assent and consent of the community’, on the other. No other burgesses were named. There were further irregularities: the names of the MPs for the Parliament of February 1449 were written in a different ink and barely fitted into the space left for them on the indenture. (Significantly, one of them, Herleton, was a servant of the duke of Suffolk, the other, Carlisle, has not been identified.) The return to the Parliament of 1453 shows obvious signs of tampering: the name of the man elected with John Burgh has been erased and that of Thomas Preston written in its place, although the original description ‘armiger’ remains unaltered.19 C219/15/6, 7; 16/1, 2, 5, 6. The identity of the displaced esquire is now impossible to discover. Nor can we know by whose instructions the indenture was altered, although Preston’s links with Thomas Thorpe may lead us to suspect that the tampering occurred only after the return for Wallingford had been delivered at the start of the Parliament at Reading.

Occasionally the returns were formally addressed to the sheriff of Berkshire, and annotated to the effect that they were conveyed to him by the bailiff or bailiffs of Wallingford. On a very few occasions the elections at Wallingford pre-dated those held at the county court for the knights of the shire – by just one day in September 1429 and September 1460, but by as many as 23 days in 1423. In 1435, when the shire elections were conducted (uniquely) at Wallingford itself, the borough elections preceded them by five days. Much more usually the borough elections were held at Wallingford sometime after the county court had met – after an interval of just two days (1442 and November 1449), or as long as three weeks (1427).