Southampton

By Henry VI’s reign Southampton, favoured with a long sheltered harbour, double tides and easy communications inland, had become one of the busiest ports of later medieval England. Its international trade – born of cross-Channel traffic with Normandy, the import of wine from Gascony and the export of wool and cloth to the Low Countries and the Italian markets – flourished. By the mid fifteenth century Southampton and Sandwich were the principal places for luxury goods from the Mediterranean to be unloaded. Raw materials such as alum and woad were carted from the quays at Southampton along a radial pattern of roads to supply the cloth manufacturing centres at Winchester, Salisbury, the Midlands and the West Country. Yet the general assumption that Southampton prospered in this period may be contested. Less populous than Winchester and probably smaller by half than Salisbury, its inhabitants mainly derived their income from servicing Southampton’s import and export trade rather than from their own direct involvement in commerce. To a notable extent Southampton was merely an outport for London; few of its merchants were of equal standing with their counterparts of the capital and Bristol. There was little local industry, and the intense activity and constant traffic arising from the construction of part of Henry V’s fleet on Southampton Water, and the embarkation there of his great military expeditions, did not lead to personal profit for the majority of the townsmen.

Control over Southampton’s trade was divided between the local burgesses, a few of the leading merchants of Salisbury and a small colony of resident Italian factors. The lucrative Mediterranean trade was almost entirely in the hands of the Italians, who sold in the local market some of the agricultural produce and materials for English industries brought in by Genoese carracks, but sent off the spices and luxury materials carried on Florentine and Catalan galleys to London, for profitable sale to wealthy customers. In the 1450s, following Cade’s rebellion and the anti-alien riots in London, Venetian fleets made Southampton their chief port in England. This resulted in a great increase in the volume of merchandise shipped by citizens of London in Italian vessels frequenting the Channel port, so that by end of the decade Londoners outnumbered Southampton’s own merchants in respect of the value and size of their cargoes. Increased activity in Southampton in Edward IV’s reign is demonstrated by the doubling of the sums collected there in royal customs and subsidies, but in the same period amounts collected for local levies fell, mainly because freemen of London were exempt from tolls levied in Southampton. This had a deleterious effect on the borough’s finances.1 Econ. Hist. Rev. ser. 2, ii. 137-51.

Such economic factors formed the background to increasing political tensions in the town, beginning in the late 1440s and continuing for 15 years or more, and contributed to a change in the attitude of the townspeople towards aliens living there. Previously, there had been a tradition of friendly relations with foreigners, and intermarriage was not uncommon. For instance, William Overey’s wife, an Englishwoman, was the widow of a Florentine. But in the 1450s anti-alien feelings spread from London, encouraged by John Payn I, whose wide interests as a member of the Grocers’ Company and his determination to take a larger share in the overseas trade dominated by the Italians led him vigorously to pursue in the law courts native and foreign competitors alike. Not all of Payn’s fellow burgesses took the same stance as him, and it is unclear whether Southampton’s MPs in the Parliament of 1455 (Walter Clerk and John William), actively supported the Commons’ petition which complained about the unfair competition posed to English traders by certain Italians who had long been resident in England. These foreigners were, they said, taking advantage of local knowledge to ride about the country buying wool, cloth and tin direct from the producers and at low prices, thus under-cutting native merchants. The Commons asked that after 21 Feb. 1456 aliens should be allowed to purchase these commodities only at the staple in Westminster and in the ports of London, Southampton and Sandwich, where the galleys and carracks put in.2 PROME, xii. 444 (given in fuller detail in RP, v. 334-5; C49/30/16). The petition met with no success. Although Clerk and William later fell to feuding with Payn, both of them had mercantile interests at stake, so it is quite likely that they played a part in framing the petition.

Long before the collapse of the Gascon wine trade in 1453 and the encroachments of the Londoners, there were signs that all was not well with Southampton’s finances. Not infrequently, the townsmen found it difficult to raise the huge annual fee farm of 340 marks. In 1414 Henry V had released the town from 140 marks of the farm for the next ten years, and granted it licence to acquire in mortmain lands worth £100 annually to help support local costs.3 PROME, ix. 107-8. Preambles to the charters of the period refer to the burden of the fee farm, as well as to costs of defence – such that some inhabitants were impoverished and therefore forced to move elsewhere. The burgesses were occasionally put to straits in raising the farm, as a letter from the mayor to the auditors in the late 1450s makes clear; and in the Hilary term of 1457 the authorities were obliged to resort to loans and gifts from wealthy individuals to meet the demands of the Exchequer. Seventeen separate sums were thus advanced towards the farm, but they made a total of just £42 6s. 8d. In 1461 the former mayor, Richard Gryme, was thrown into the Fleet for the ‘rerage’ of the farm, and £20 had to be found for his deliverance.4 J.S. Davies, Hist. Southampton, 35-37; Southampton City Archs., Soton. recs., SC5/1/8, f. 6; 1/10, f. 26; Letters of 15th and 16th Cents. (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1921), 16-19. This state of affairs also affected the payment of parliamentary wages. Southampton usually adhered to the prescribed daily rate of 2s., and payment often had to be made by instalments. Certain MPs may even have agreed to take less when a Parliament ran to more than one session: John Fleming does not appear to have been paid in full for the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.), and at some point after the steward recorded the payment of £5 19s. to Walter Clerk, in part satisfaction of his parliamentary wages for the assembly of 1455-6, the entry was crossed through and a note added ‘takyng but half wages accordyng to his promys’.5 Soton. recs., SC5/1/7, ff. 7, 11v, 18; 1/9, f. 34. The claim in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 420, that William Chamberlain was paid as much as 3s. 6d. per day of the Parl. of 1439-40 is based on a misreading of an entry in the town’s Port Book for Apr. 1430: Port Bk. 1427-30 (Soton Rec. Soc. 1913), 116.

Besides the confirmation of Southampton’s earlier charters, authorized by Henry VI’s council in October 1426,6 Chs. Southampton, i (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1909), 40-53. the town obtained three new charters in this period: in 1445, 1447 and 1451. The first, dated 29 July during the recess of the Parliament (for which the names of Southampton’s representatives are not known), granted that the town be incorporated with a mayor, two bailiffs and the burgesses, capable of purchasing and owning land in perpetuity. The mayor, who henceforth was to be elected on the Friday before St. Matthew’s day (21 Sept.), was to serve as royal escheator in the town, and Southampton was to house a staple, with its own mayor and two constables, elected on the same day.7 Ibid. 54-69. This was superseded by the charter granted on 9 Mar. 1447, just after the dissolution of the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, in which Southampton had been represented by two men currently in the Crown’s service (respectively as controller and collector of customs and subsidies in the port), and at a time when the mayor was, most unusually, a lawyer. He, John Fleming, is known to have been a determined proponent of Southampton’s liberties. The charter noted the complaint by the mayor, bailiffs and burgesses of harassment by the sheriffs of Hampshire, and granted that the town and ‘port’ (which covered a wide area, stretching from Hurst to Langstone, and even including Portsmouth) should be a county incorporate, distinct and separate from Hampshire. All writs from henceforth were to be directed to the sheriff of Southampton (elected like the mayor by the body of burgesses), who was to hold county courts once a month on a Monday. Henceforth no inhabitant was to be made a tax collector or assessor for the county of Hampshire, nor to be taxed there.8 Ibid. 70-81. The charter of 1451 merely reiterated the clauses of the two previous ones.9 Ibid. 82-97 (wrongly dated 1452).

Returns for Southampton have not survived for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460. Just 17 individuals occupied the 36 recorded seats. Seven of them only sat for this borough once, but some of the rest were returned frequently. Indeed, there was a high level of continuity of representation through the early fifteenth century until the 1440s. This was mainly due to the outstanding service of three men: Thomas Marlborough, Southampton’s Member in 11 Parliaments between 1395 and 1426; William Soper, who sat in 13 between 1413 and 1449; and William Chamberlain, returned ten times between 1417 and 1442. The borough often returned Soper and Chamberlain as a tried and tested duo: they served together in seven Parliaments, four of which, from 1429 to 1433, were consecutive assemblies. Continuity was strengthened too by other cases of repeated election, so that Chamberlain sat in six Parliaments running, and William Stone was returned to three in a row from 1447 to November 1449. It was most unusual for the burgesses to pick two novices to represent them in the Commons, although they seem to have done so in 1437 and perhaps also in 1455 (although on the latter occasion one or other of the MPs may have sat previously, in 1439 or 1445).

Southampton’s population in the Middle Ages was noted for its mobility, and although without exception all the MPs were resident in the town at the time of their elections, few came from second or later generations of their families settled there. John Mascall, possibly the son of the former MP Roger Mascall†, and Andrew James, perhaps the son of Peter James, were out of the ordinary in being inhabitants of Southampton all their lives, and John Fleming was even more unusual in that his family had first settled in the town as far back as the eleventh century, and was to remain prominent there long after his death. All the rest were more recent newcomers, and the first of their line to move to Southampton. Overy, a native of Ireland, came from furthest away, but the Chamberlain family, who included Thomas as well as William, had migrated from Cornwall at the turn of the century – indeed, William sat for Truro before his impressive parliamentary service for Southampton began.10 However, Thomas Chamberlain’s representation of the Wilts. borough of Ludgershall previous to his election for Southampton is more a reflection of his connexions with the royal court than of any further change of residence. William Stone began his career in Bristol and had been living in Southampton scarcely six years before his earliest election as its MP; Nicholas Holmehegge may have been a Londoner; Peter James probably belonged to a Weymouth family; and John Payn perhaps came from Salisbury. Besides the Mascalls and Peter and Andrew James, certain other MPs were related to each other: the two Chamberlains (who were cousins, or else uncle and nephew), were linked by marriage to William Soper; Andrew James was successively son-in-law to John Fleming and John Payn; and Fleming numbered Walter Clerk among his kinsmen. Holmehegge married William Marche’s widow. Such connexions indicate a closely-knit community, and one unlikely to accept strangers as its representatives in Parliament.

Not surprisingly, the majority (13 out of 17) of Southampton’s MPs were merchants, many of them ranked among the most important traders in the port, with interests extending from Iceland to the Mediterranean. For the most part they traded on a large scale in wine from Gascony and produce from the Iberian peninsula, and their principal export was woollen cloth. Outstanding among them were William Soper, Peter James and John Payn, the last becoming a member of the Grocers’ Company of London and money-lender to several members of the nobility, whom he also served as an agent. Peter James and John William were both ship-owners, the latter transporting pilgrims to the shrine of St. James at Compostela and profiting from a busy carrying trade in small vessels which plied between the quayside and the larger ships anchored off-shore. Yet three of this group of merchants (Soper, Stone and Richard Thornes), combined a pursuit of their own mercantile interests with employment as royal officials. Thornes, initially engaged in the administration of the estates of Bishop Beaufort of Winchester, was also deputy to the King’s chief butler (Beaufort’s cousin Thomas Chaucer*) when returned to his second Parliament for Southampton in 1425, and received a daily wage of 6d. as a yeoman of the Crown. Similarly, Stone, although a merchant by background and continuing to pursue his commercial concerns, entered royal service and was controller of the customs in Southampton when elected to his three consecutive Parliaments in 1447-9. Furthermore, after his first Parliament he was appointed constable of the castle at Southampton (a post he occupied for ten years), and in an entirely unprecedented mark of the King’s favour he was granted the office of controller of customs for term of his life. Stone, who attained armigerous rank, enjoyed a royal annuity of as much as £26 13s. 4d., which was confirmed to him while a Member of both Parliaments summoned in 1449, and exempted from the Acts of Resumption. Similarly, Soper stood apart from his fellow merchants of Southampton. Appointed by Henry V as surveyor of the King’s ships, he was retained as keeper or controller of the same over a period of 34 years altogether, served for nearly as long (from 1413 to 1446) as collector of customs in Southampton, and was returned to all 13 of his Parliaments while so engaged. For most of this time he was in receipt of a salary of £40 p.a. from the Crown.

It is perhaps surprising to discover that four of Southampton’s MPs were not merchants. Thomas Chamberlain had entered royal service, becoming a yeoman of the King’s chamber after proving his worth in the employment of Thomas Bekynton, Henry VI’s secretary. The King appointed him receiver of the Isle of Wight, and he probably retained the office at the time of his election to the Parliament of 1453, when he was still in receipt of an annuity of £5 charged on the wool customs collected in Southampton. The other three were lawyers: Marlborough, engaged first as deputy clerk then clerk of the statute merchant in Southampton, and as town clerk for an indeterminate period, may have been holding the latter office when elected to three of the Parliaments of the 1420s; William Chamberlain was the borough’s recorder when returned to at least six of his many Parliaments; and Fleming, a member of Lincoln’s Inn who was employed for nigh on 40 years as clerk of the statute merchant, and successively during the same period as borough attorney, town clerk and recorder, was returned to the Parliament of November 1449 in the last capacity.

Despite their numerical superiority, the merchant MPs did not completely dominate Southampton’s representation. In the earlier part of the fifteenth century the merchant elite which governed Southampton did not choose to monopolize seats in the Commons, and this attitude continued to prevail in the period under review.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 421-2. Fifteen merchants served as mayor in the years 1422-60, but seven of them never sat in Parliament, so far as the records show. Rather, the borough authorities often preferred to send as their representatives men of law. At least one member of the legal profession sat for the borough in every Parliament from 1411 to May 1421, and in four of those assemblies it appears that both MPs were of this calling. Similarly, in 11 of the 18 Parliaments for which returns survive in the period under review a lawyer accompanied a merchant to the Lower House – the most usual combination being William Chamberlain, the recorder, and William Soper, the merchant and royal official. On only six occasions (in 1425, 1437, 1447, 1449 (Feb.), 1450 and 1455), were both of the MPs primarily engaged in trade. Significance should also be attached to Southampton’s preference for returning royal officials, for in 12 of the Parliaments of this period the borough was represented by someone currently in the employment of the Crown and as such in receipt of a regular salary or annuity. (This reckoning includes, besides those already mentioned, John Payn, who was collector of customs in 1447 when elected to his second Parliament.) So, in the Parliament of 1425 Southampton was represented by the deputy butler and one of the customers, in 1447 by both the controller and one of the collectors of customs, and in the next Parliament by the controller of customs again in company with the controller of the King’s ships. Perhaps the merchant community felt its interests would be best served by individuals such as these with potential access to those of influence at Court or in the Exchequer.

It is difficult to ascertain quite how affluent Southampton’s MPs were, for their chief assets were often their merchandise rather than land. Only seven of the 17 are recorded owning land outside the town. Thomas Chamberlain’s property was situated on the Isle of Wight and on the west side of Southampton Water; according to the tax assessments of 1436 Marche owned an estate worth £7 p.a. while Peter James’s was valued at £10 and John Fleming’s at £20. The last, Fleming the lawyer, was styled ‘gentleman’, but the royal retainer Stone ranked as an ‘esquire’, as did also William Soper the merchant, who owned a residence in London as well as a house on the edge of the New Forest which attracted the admiration of visiting Italians, and received at least £50 p.a. from his lands; and another lawyer, William Chamberlain, who acquired land through marriage and purchase worth £64 p.a. and was fined for failing to take up knighthood. Although John Payn’s income is nowhere recorded, he was evidently wealthier than most of his fellow Southampton merchants, for he owned a number of properties in London and Salisbury as well as in this town, and died in possession of goods reputedly valued at 2,000 marks.

The majority of Southampton’s MPs (15 out of 17) held borough offices at some point in their careers: four of them served as steward, seven as bailiff, four as sheriff (after the charter of 1447) and 11 as mayor. Of the exceptions, John Kirkby III was most unusual in that he was never involved in local administration, so far as the records show, and, as already noted, Stone owed his constableship of the castle to Crown appointment rather than election by the burgesses. For the rest, service as steward or bailiff nearly always preceded election to Parliament; only in the case of Payn was this sequence reversed. Furthermore, six MPs had been mayor before their earliest returns. It seems, therefore, that service of some kind in the borough was nearly always a prerequisite of successful candidacy for a seat in the Commons. Although it was not usual for a current holder of office to be elected to Parliament, the mayor himself was returned in 1425 (Soper), 1450 (Payn) and 1453 (Andrew James), and in 1455 the Members of the Parliament then in recess (Clerk and William) were chosen mayor and sheriff respectively, presumably with the consequence that both officials were absent from their posts in Southampton for several weeks during two further parliamentary sessions.12 It is worthy of note that in 1431 Southampton’s mayor, Thomas Belle alias Rygold*, gained election for Portsmouth, thus joining his own borough’s usual representatives, Soper and Chamberlain, in the Commons. It should also be noted that possibly as many as ten seats were filled by men currently occupying the posts reserved for those trained in the law – either the town clerk or the recorder. Nine MPs are known to have been aldermen, and thus ex officio j.p.s in the town; and aldermen were returned in 1422 (Mascall), 1431, 1432 and 1433 (Soper). Thirteen out of the 17 MPs were singled out to serve on ad hoc commissions appointed by the Crown, eight of them doing so before they sat in Parliament for Southampton, and William Chamberlain was a member of the quorum of the Hampshire bench when returned to his final Parliament in 1442.

The constitutional changes in Southampton’s government are reflected in the electoral returns of the period. For the seven Parliaments from 1422 to 1431 inclusive the returns for Southampton were made on the indenture for Hampshire, along with those of the city of Winchester and borough of Portsmouth. In 1432, 1433, 1435, 1437 and 1442 the required information was given on a separate schedule, which sometimes noted that the bailiffs of Southampton had responded to the sheriff’s precept with the names of the two men elected, together with those of their mainpernors. Naturally, following the creation of Southampton as an urban county, separate writs were sent to the sheriff of the town, and from 1449 (Feb.) indentures survive relating solely to this constituency. The indentures were drawn up in the full county court of Southampton, as between the sheriff on the one part and a number of named burgesses on the other, this number being 13 in 1449 (Nov.) and 1455, 16 in 1453, and 20 (including the mayor) in 1449 (Feb.). In 1450 instead of an indenture Southampton returned merely a ‘response’ from the ‘bailiffs of the liberty’, who did no more than list the Members chosen and their sureties.13 C219/16/1.

The electoral returns reveal nothing about the political dissension which violently split the men of Southampton in the late 1450s. Daggars were drawn at the disputed mayoral elections of September 1460, and the triumph of the faction led by John Payn prompted his opponent Walter Clerk to seek election to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 7 Oct. for the Wiltshire borough of Chippenham, instead of for his home town. Clerk’s arrest at Payn’s suit delayed the proceedings of the Parliament, but his release from prison until the dissolution confirmed the privilege of freedom from arrest accorded to MPs. Unfortunately, Southampton’s returns for this and the preceding Parliament have not survived, thus precluding an examination of how the in-fighting among the burgesses affected the borough’s representation. Those named on the four earlier indentures as attestors to the elections for Southampton were a select group totalling 35 burgesses, of whom eight were themselves sometime MPs, but there is no sign that any particular faction dominated those particular hustings.