Bridport

In the sixteenth century the antiquary John Leland described Bridport, in west Dorset, as a ‘fair large town’.2 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 245. Earlier, in the reign of Henry VI, its size and population are difficult to assess, although a muster roll of September 1457 listed 188 men between the ages of 16 and 60 who were obliged to bear arms, and this figure might suggest an overall population of some 1,500.3 Bridport muster roll, DC/BTB/FG3. The size of the population is worked out according to the formula suggested by C. Pythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 199-201, 222. In its single parish church numerous fraternities had been established in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, each with their own ordinances and regularly-appointed wardens.4 Bridport fraternities, DC/BTB/CD11, 14-16, 22, 50, 56. This reflects a period of prosperity, resting on the manufacture of ropes and other products of the high-quality hemp and flax grown in the vicinity of the town. A flourishing trade in cables, sailcloth, webbing, horse-girths and nets was fuelled by the demands of fishermen and boat-builders not only in the immediate locality and along the coasts of Dorset, Devon and Somerset, but more importantly from the major ports further away at Southampton and London. Yet although the late Middle Ages witnessed the first of three prosperous periods in the history of the Bridport rope-making industry, production noticeably declined towards the end of the fifteenth century, when a great quantity of rope began to be imported from Normandy and Genoa.5 Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxxxii. 143-4; VCH Dorset, ii. 325, 344-6. One factor in this temporary decline was Bridport’s lack of a functioning port of its own. The townsmen had constructed their own harbour in the late fourteenth century, but by 1446 its moles had collapsed and they lacked the financial means to restore them. To raise the necessary funds they persuaded the two archbishops and 13 bishops of England to grant indulgences that could be sold to pay for the repairs. This scheme does not, however, seem to have been an unqualified success.6 VCH Dorset, ii. 189, 192; HMC 6th Rep. 495 (citing Bridport harbour recs., DC/BTB/N4-10).

The burgesses of Bridport occasionally made claims of poverty, although these may have been exaggerated. In 1436 the county of Dorset was found incapable of bearing its normal share of the burden of taxation as granted in the Parliament of the previous year, and a schedule was drawn up of ‘desolated, wasted, destructed and depopulated’ vills and boroughs to which rebate of tax was to be allowed. The list of ailing townships included Bridport, and the government decided that £1 0s. 5d. should be remitted to its inhabitants. Even so, Bridport was better placed than the county town of Dorchester and other of Dorset’s parliamentary boroughs.7 E179/103/79. During Henry VI’s reign the borough continued to attract migrants from elsewhere, who were all willing to pay as much as 26s. 8d. for the privilege of admission to the freedom.8 ‘Domesday Bk.’, e.g. ff. 10, 96. Nor is there any sign that Bridport had difficulty paying its fee farm to the Crown. This remained set at £16 p.a., a sum which the bailiffs regularly delivered to the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset for him to take to the Exchequer.9 CPR, 1446-52, p. 25; 1452-61, p. 296; PROME, xv. 159; Bridport accts. DC/BTB/M22. Note also the regular records of payments to the sheriff in Bridport’s ‘Domesday Bk.’ and ‘Red Bk.’, and the exemplification of the pipe roll of 1333 made at the request of William Oliver, bailiff in 1455: Bridport financial recs., DC/BTB/M22; J. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 7.

There is no indication that the burgesses sought to expand their liberties in the fifteenth century; no charters or additional privileges were granted to them, and, perhaps through inertia, between 1379 and the accession of Henry VII they did not trouble to obtain formal confirmation of their charter of 1253.10 Bridport chs., DC/BTB/K3, 4. If they addressed petitions to Parliament or the King none are still extant. The internal government of the town continued to operate as before, and its structure remained virtually unchanged for centuries to come: Bridport was not to have its own mayor until 1835. At Michaelmas each year, after the out-going officials had presented their accounts, elections were held to choose two bailiffs to collect and account for the fee farm, two cofferers to take responsibility for the leasing-out of communally–owned property, two constables, two under bailiffs, and, sometimes, four searchers to supervise the production of hemp and flax. The responsibilities of office were shared among a very small number of burgesses – so small in fact that no more than 61 different individuals filled the posts of bailiff or cofferer in the years 1400-75. While it seems that no-one was obliged to act as bailiff for two annual terms running, there appears to have been no limit to the number of consecutive terms that a cofferer or constable might serve. The more senior office of bailiff usually followed after duty as a cofferer, and although leases of the town’s property were negotiated by the cofferers the arrangements had to be approved by the bailiffs, who thus provided a check on the cofferers’ powers.11 Hutchins, ii. 8; Bridport ‘Domesday Bk.’; ‘Red Bk.’. Little is recorded about the advisory body of 12 jurats, which assumed a role of some importance later in the century, although occasionally the local records noted that when new burgesses were enrolled a dinner was provided for the ‘xii’.12 ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 10.

The borough regularly paid fees to three legal officers. At the beginning of the century, John Tracy† received an annual fee of 20s. as ‘steward’ of Bridport, but by 1408 the ‘steward’ had assumed the title of ‘recorder’, one that was maintained throughout our period.13 This was Thomas Grey until 1416 (‘Domesday Bk.’, ff. 34, 57, 73, 75, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 89); and John Boef is recorded holding the office intermittently from 1418 to 1451: ibid. ff. 91,99, 107, and unfol. The name of the recorder is not noted thereafter until 1456, when John Newburgh II was in office. He held it until 1480: ‘Red Bk.’, ff. 30-65. A more junior legal advisor, paid 13s. 4d., a year, occupied an unspecified office which John Stampe† filled from at least 1410 to 1418, and John Bettiscombe from 1426 perhaps continuously until his death in 1469.14 ‘Domesday Bk.’, ff. 75, 79, 83, 85, 87, 91. The town clerk received a fee of 6s. 8d., and early in this period (from 1414 to 1423) this post was held by Walter Tracy*, who represented Bridport in the Parliament of 1419 while so engaged. In the 1450s, the number of legal advisors increased, with two more lawyers each receiving half a mark. They were Thomas Cross* and William Huddesfield†, who probably accepted these meagre stipends for occasionally acting for Bridport in the central courts, in Cross’s case as the borough’s attorney in the Exchequer.15 ‘Red Bk.’, ff. 13, 14, 17, 19, 27, 30, 32, 34, 37, 42, 46, 48, et seq.

Comparatively little is recorded about payments to Bridport’s parliamentary representatives, for the cofferers’ accounts were entered in the borough’s registers only in an abbreviated form, and rarely specified such disbursements. It may be the case that Bridport favoured a lump sum payment to its Members for the whole term of a Parliament, whatever its duration, rather than paying them on a daily basis. Thus, in the accounting year 1423-4 Simon atte Ford received two payments ‘pro parliamento’, one being of £2 the other of two marks, and his fellow MP, Thomas Newton, was paid 20s. while staying in London for the parliamentary sessions. Yet, given that the accounts are incomplete, we cannot be certain that this was the total amount they received for their service.16 ‘Domesday Bk.’, f. 99 – a much more detailed acct. than was usually entered. The account for 1449-50 refers merely to a ‘reward’ of 6s. 8d. given to John Burgess ‘pro parliamento’, and that for 1450-1 notes the same sum paid to him and another half a mark given to his fellow MP William Ward.17 Ibid., unfol. If this was all they received it was paltry recompense for attendance in Parliaments which ran to several sessions.

Electoral returns for Bridport survive for 18 of the 22 Parliaments assembled between 1422 and 1460, although the name of one of the MPs at that of 1453 is now partly illegible. Although the return for the Parliament of 1433 is now lost, it was still extant in the seventeenth century, when the names of those elected were recorded by William Prynne†, and in addition, the borough’s own records supply the name of one of the Members of the Parliament of 1445, where there would otherwise be a gap. Thus, we know who occupied 38 out of the 44 available seats in Henry VI’s reign: they numbered 23 different individuals.

In the three and a half decades before 1422 it had rarely happened that Bridport elected to Parliament someone who was not resident in the town and had never participated in its government. Indeed, only one of those elected in that period was an outsider, and he, Thomas Lovell† (who lived at Clevedon in Somerset), evidently owed his return in 1410 to his father-in-law and former guardian John Roger†, the wealthy Bridport merchant.18 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 366-7. The state of affairs whereby preference was given to resident burgesses prevailed for several years into the period under review, effectively until elections were held for the Parliament of 1447. Before that date the borough always returned at least one local man, and in eight of the 12 Parliaments between 1422 and 1445 for which we know the names of both Members they both lived in the town. This group of resident burgesses numbered nine all told: Bettiscombe, Boweley, Burgess, atte Ford, Hore alias But, Mountfort, Newton, Oliver and Pyrys. Not all of the nine were natives of Bridport, for Hore had been born in Wales, and Mountfort and his kinsman Oliver both came from Devon (from Dartmouth and Kingsbridge respectively), yet all three chose to make Bridport their home, and to take an active part in the town’s government. Hore took the opportunity of his third election to Parliament in 1437 to ask his fellow Members of the Commons to support his petition that he and his heirs be granted letters of denization, as although he had been born in Carmarthen he had resided for many years at Bridport and wished to stay there for the rest of his life.19 SC8/93/4630. The chancellor passed the bill on to the Lords on 8 Feb., and Hore’s petition was considered and passed by the Council in June: CPR, 1436-41, p. 62. While Newton, Oliver and Pyrys only sat in one Parliament each, so far as is recorded, the others gained more experience of the Commons, with Hore and Mountfort sitting for Bridport three times, Boweley four, Bettiscombe four (after he had sat once for Lyme Regis), and Burgess as many as six. Their record was comfortably exceeded by that of atte Ford who sat in at least 11 Parliaments between 1402 and 1426, always as a representative for his home town.

This group of nine local men provided continuity in the borough’s representation in our period, with atte Ford sitting in seven Parliaments in a row from 1420 to 1426, Boweley in three from 1427 to 1431, and Bettiscombe in four from 1429 to 1433. Furthermore, Burgess was elected to at least six of the nine Parliaments summoned between 1435 and 1450. Continuity was further strengthened by the election of Boweley and Bettiscombe together in the consecutive Parliaments of 1429 and 1431. All nine were closely involved in the government of the town, and fully cognizant of its affairs; they were well qualified to represent the interests of their neighbours. Indeed, their record of local service was impressive. Boweley served as cofferer for four annual terms, Burgess for six and atte Ford for eight; while atte Ford occupied the bailiffship for six terms, Mountfort for seven, Boweley for eight and Oliver for as many as 18. Although the Welshman Hore apparently entered the Commons before he ever held an office in the locality, this was out of the ordinary as the rest had all served as cofferer or bailiff before their earliest elections to Parliament, and it would appear that competence in borough office was normally a prerequisite for selection as an MP. It sometimes happened that serving officials were sent to the Commons: current bailiffs were returned in 1423 (Newton), 1431 (Boweley), 1437 (Boweley and Hore together), 1442 (Oliver) and 1445 (Burgess); a cofferer (Boweley) was elected in 1427 and 1429; and one of the constables (Burgess) was sent to Westminster in 1435. Members of this group are also notable for being regular attestors of the indentures recording the borough’s choice of MPs. Boweley, atte Ford, Hore, Mountfort and Newton all verified the elections (indeed, Mountfort’s name appeared on as many as 14 electoral indentures), and Oliver twice stood surety for those returned. Bettiscombe stands apart from the rest of the group of nine local men, as he never held one of the borough offices or attested its parliamentary elections. Yet by providing the burgesses with legal counsel over many years he too became intimately involved in the affairs of Bridport.

Bettiscombe apart, the local men who dominated the representation of Bridport until 1447 all made a living through trade. Sometimes this was on a large scale. For instance, Hore traded in wine through Southampton, and Mountfort, who specialized in the rope-trade and had been the principal supplier of cordage to Henry V’s navy, established wide mercantile connexions. Burgess, styled variously as a husbandman, chapman, grocer and mercer, is known to have employed several apprentices, and as a consequence may been seen as a likely supporter of a bill in the Commons of 1445-6 which resulted in a new Statute of Labourers. Following his attendance at the Parliament the town clerk copied the Act into Bridport’s ‘Red Book’. The statute of weights and measures confirmed in the Parliament of 1429-30 had also been copied into the book. For the merchants of Bridport its importance lay in the stipulation that a common balance should be maintained in every town, with a set national scale of weighing charges, for the prevention of fraud.20 ‘Red Bk.’, ff. 5, 7-9; PROME, x. 403-4; xi. 492-4. Perhaps in the latter instance the merchant Boweley had played a part in promoting the legislation.

As already noted, Bettiscombe, Boweley’s companion in 1429 and 1431, was a man of law, and his returns to four consecutive Parliaments from 1429 to 1433 probably reflect a conscious change of policy on the part of the burgesses with regard to their representation in the Commons. In the earlier years of the century, lawyers in receipt of fees from Bridport had only represented the borough in Parliament on a very few occasions: thus, John Stampe had done so in April 1414 and 1420, and Walter Tracy, the town clerk, in 1419. By contrast, the 1420s and 1430s saw not only the regular return of the borough’s feed legal counsellor Bettiscombe, but also, for the first time, the election of lawyers who were outsiders to the community. Thus, in 1427 and 1433 the burgesses returned Robert Hillary, one of the leading lawyers of the region and by 1433 a member of the quorum on the county bench; in 1432 they paired Bettiscombe with Philip Leweston, a filacer of the court of common pleas; and in 1435 they elected William Boef, who had recently been a governor of Lincoln’s Inn and later rose to the rank of serjeant-at-law. This means that in every Parliament from 1427 to 1435 inclusive (six in all) Bridport was represented by a man of law, and in 1432 both MPs were members of this profession. The reason for this change in representation is obscure, for no pressing business of the borough requiring the presence in the Commons of lawyers rather than merchants has been identified. There is a strong possibility that the lawyers who were not formally retained by the town were at least known to the townspeople who elected them. Hillary and Leweston lived not far away, at Sherborne and Dorchester, respectively, and although Boef resided in Devon his kinship to the borough’s long-serving recorder, John Boef, suggests that he too was personally acquainted with the burgesses.

In the period 1422 to 1445 it nearly always happened that Bridport was represented by at least one person with previous parliamentary experience; and in seven of the 12 Parliaments for which complete returns survive both men had sat in the Commons before. Such experience might have been obtained in the service of other boroughs rather than for Bridport itself (Hillary had previously represented Weymouth, Bettiscombe Lyme and Leweston Melcombe), but this is a further indication of the premium placed by the electorate on knowledge of the workings of the Commons. Only in the Parliament of 1435 does it seem that two novices were elected together.

By contrast, from 1447 onwards the pattern of Bridport’s representation changed significantly. In the seven Parliaments for which returns survive from that date until 1460 only one townsman, John Burgess, was returned (although he did sit on three consecutive occasions). With that exception, the borough was represented entirely by outsiders. The reasons for this change are uncertain. Perhaps the burgesses, seeking to avoid expense, welcomed the approaches of outsiders who, keen to have a seat in the Commons for their own personal reasons, offered to serve the borough at little or no cost. Alternatively, external influence, brought to bear by the Crown or by powerful local landowners may have been a factor. The group of ten individuals under consideration here differed from each other with regard to their backgrounds and origins. Only one of them, John Calowe, came from Dorset, albeit from the east of the county, not from anywhere near Bridport. Of the rest, two lived in neighbouring Somerset (John Jewe at Ilchester; Ward at Bridgwater), John Pury came from Berkshire, John Ingram from Buckinghamshire, George Heton from Lincolnshire and Andrew Kebell from Kent; while three of the MPs (Thomas Skargill, a Yorkshireman, Robert Spencer and John Torell), all lived in Essex. Clearly, none of these ten men fulfilled the statutory qualification of residence in the constituency which returned them to Parliament. Indeed, these breaches of statute are emphasized by the facts that Pury had received a royal licence to crenellate his mansion at Chamberhouse in Berkshire only shortly before his return for Bridport to the Parliament of 1447, and that Skargill was stated to be living in Essex when he attested the elections for that shire to the same Parliament of February 1449 to which he was elected by the Dorset borough. Although a few of the ten outsiders had sat in the Commons before their elections for Bridport (Kebell had served other Dorset boroughs – Lyme Regis and Melcombe Regis – and Skargill had previously represented Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire), in this second part of the period under review it happened more often than previously that Bridport was represented by novices. Perhaps two such newcomers sat in the Parliaments of 1447, 1453 and 1460, and of the 14 recorded seats between 1447 and 1460 only five are known to have been filled by men with previous parliamentary experience.

As four of the ten outsiders were servants of the Crown, the possibility of interference in Bridport’s choice of representatives from the centre should not be discounted. Most significant in this respect was the election of Heton and Pury to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, for this Parliament was notable for the large number of courtiers in the Commons – men who might have been expected to lend their support to the King’s ministers. Heton, an official in the Household, was also currently employed as receiver of the estates of the late duke of Bedford; while Pury, the royal avener who enjoyed personal access to the King, moved in the circle of the powerful duke of Suffolk. Other royal servants emulated them by securing election for Bridport on later occasions. When returned to the first Parliament of 1449, Skargill was a yeoman of the royal chamber of at least 14 years standing, and by Henry VI’s grant currently occupied the posts of keeper of the park at Havering, rider in Waltham forest and troner and pesager in Ipswich. Spencer, elected in 1453, had served for more than 20 years as a yeoman of the King’s hall and was currently bailiff of Havering.

The other six do not fit into quite the same category of royal servants, although one of them, Kebell (elected in 1455) had only recently left his office as comptroller of the pipe at the Exchequer which he had occupied for 14 years. No convincing explanation has been found for the election in the autumn of 1449 of John Torell, a young man who had inherited estates in Essex worth £150 a year, although his close kinship with the MPs for that county, (Sir) Thomas Tyrell* and his brother William Tyrell II*, gave him influential contacts at the centre of government. William Ward (elected in 1450), later a customs official at Bridgwater and Poole, may have been a merchant, although the evidence is lacking. The remaining three were all trained in the law: when returned in 1455 John Ingram of Aylesbury, then under sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was clerk of the essoins in the court of common pleas; Jewe (elected in 1460) had similarly been a sheriff’s officer, in his case in Somerset and Dorset; and Calowe (Jewe’s companion in 1460), was later appointed to the Dorset bench as one of the quorum.

Yet while there is always a possibility that the outsiders returned for Bridport in Henry VI’s reign owed their elections to external influences, this can only be a matter for speculation. There are hints that members of leading gentry families of Dorset, such as the wealthy Staffords of Hooke or the Newburghs of Lulworth, took an interest in the borough’s representation. The lawyer Hillary was long an associate of John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells (chancellor when Hillary was returned in 1433); and Jewe was a servant of Humphrey Stafford IV*, MP for Somerset in the same Parliament of 1460 in which he represented Bridport. It is also intriguing to note that Calowe was one of several of the representatives of Dorset boroughs in this particular Parliament who were linked with one of the knights of the shire, John Newburgh II*, a prominent lawyer and leading landowner of the county who was currently retained by Bridport as its recorder.

The returns for Bridport were listed on the schedule sent to Chancery by the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. In addition, for 30 years from 1407 to 1437 the sheriff returned for each Parliament a composite indenture testifying the outcome of the elections for the seven Dorset boroughs. Nineteen such indentures survive, although some are in too damaged a state to be fully legible. Each indenture was drawn up as between the sheriff and four men from each of the seven towns, and dated on the same day and at the same place (Dorchester) as the shire elections were held. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Bridport elections were held locally and independently from the shire elections, for three precepts, sent by the sheriff to the bailiffs in 1305, 1422 and 1553, yet survive in the borough records. In each case the sheriff informed the bailiffs of the forthcoming Parliament and directed them to conduct elections in their town. Thus, on 12 Oct. 1422 the sheriff, Robert Hill†, wrote to advise the bailiffs about the writ of summons to Henry VI’s first Parliament, instructing them to hold elections of two burgesses of the better sort, who were to be indifferently and freely chosen, and to inform him of the names of those picked within 16 days. Strangely enough, the county court met on the very same day the sheriff dispatched this precept, and the indenture of return for the boroughs, including Bridport, bore the identical date.21 Bridport sheriffs’ precepts, DC/BTB/EF1; C219/13/1. The explanation may be that after he had received the results of the borough elections the sheriff backdated the indenture to coincide with that for the county. It is not known why the practice of returning a composite indenture apparently ceased after 1437; no other indentures relating to Bridport survive until 1472. In the meantime elections certainly continued to be held in the town and were merely reported to the sheriff. Thus in 1455 William Oliver, as bailiff of Bridport, ran up costs of 2s. 6d. at Dorchester when he went there ‘to returne ye Burgeis of perlement’.22 Bridport bailiffs’ acct. DC/BTB/M1.