Lyme Regis

The natural catastrophes of the late fourteenth century, which left the Cobb battered and swept away by gales, ships destroyed and dwellings standing empty and derelict, had resulted in Lyme’s depopulation and economic decline, both of which were exacerbated by attacks from the French. Of necessity, the fee farm payable to the Crown and set in the 1330s at over £21 p.a. had to be severely reduced. In 1405 an official investigation showed there were then only 26 habitable burgages left in the town, and the townspeople were accordingly permitted to pay only £2 instead of the required £8 10s. as a contribution to each of the two subsidies granted by the Coventry Parliament of the previous autumn. Petitions to the Parliaments of 1407 and 1410 asked that the men of Lyme might hold the borough at a fee farm of just £5 a year, and pay no more than 13s. 4d. towards each parliamentary tenth. Although these requests achieved royal assent in 1410, and confirmation in 1413,2 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 371-2; CIMisc. iv. 44, 107; vii. 165; CPR, 1401-5, pp. 482, 510; 1408-13, p. 202; 1413-16, p. 140; PROME, viii. 440-1, 493-4. the burgesses subsequently surrendered their liberties to Henry V, who in 1415 granted custody of the town to Sir Thomas Brooke† of Holditch and his wife for term of their lives, in return for payment of the same reduced farm and tenths. Brooke died in 1418 and his widow in 1437.3 Dorset Hist. Centre, Lyme Regis bor. recs. DC/LR/I/6; CPR, 1413-16, p. 325; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 377-9.

In the period of the Brookes’ custodianship the number of householders in Lyme fell from 15 to just two, or so it was said. Yet these survivors plucked up courage to ask Henry VI to return the borough’s liberties to them, and for the right to farm their town at the reduced rate. Otherwise, they asserted, they had no option but to depart from a place which was ‘never so febyll as it is at this tyme’. There is no evidence that the burgesses petitioned the Parliaments of 1439 and 1442 for support in achieving their aim, but even if they did so it was not until 30 Jan. 1444 that they, headed by John Tynham† (probably then mayor), were granted the town and its liberties for 60 years, on the same terms as the Brookes had held them. Despite their success in asserting their independence, the burgesses were still impoverished and incapable of paying their heavy burden of debt. At that date the arrears of the farm amounted to 800 marks, and for parliamentary subsidies nearly £58 more was overdue. To their undoubted relief, nine months later Henry VI pardoned them these sums.4 E28/71/33; CPR, 1441-6, pp. 230, 323. The farm of Lyme (£5) was among the revenues assigned to the Household in the Parl. of 1449 (Nov.), though was incorrectly stated to be still paid by the Brookes: PROME, xii. 88. Edward IV showed similar generosity. In 1461 he reduced the amount required every year for the farm of Lyme from £5 to five marks (£3 6s. 8d.), and again pardoned all arrears. Although the burgesses were then granted the town for a further 50 years, well before that term elapsed King Edward twice confirmed the grant: for 20 years in 1477, and for 65 more in 1483.5 CPR, 1461-7, p. 87; 1476-85, pp. 39, 338; Lyme Regis recs. DC/LR/I/8-10. Why it was thought necessary to do so is not explained. Lyme was to remain under-populated and economically disabled until the seventeenth century.

Few local records survive for the period. Those that do, including some court rolls, reveal something about Lyme’s internal government and suggest that the population was larger than petitioners claimed. Officials were elected regularly at meetings of the court held each year in the last week of August, on the Monday after St. Bartholomew’s Day. The practice (at least in 1436, 1440, 1451 and 1478) was that a group of 12 or so townsmen elected a mayor, coroner, two constables, two reeves and two bailiffs.6 Lyme Regis ct. rolls, DC/LR/B/1/2. In this respect, Lyme would seem to have had a more sophisticated governing body than the nearby borough of Bridport, which did not elect a mayor until the nineteenth century, yet nothing is revealed about the responsibilities undertaken by these officials, and none of their financial accounts are now extant.

Returns for Lyme survive for 18 out of the 22 Parliaments which met between 1422 and 1460, and the names of its Members in one more, that of 1433, are supplied by the transcripts of William Prynne† of another return, still extant in the seventeenth century but since lost. No fewer than 34 different individuals represented Lyme in Henry VI’s reign, but of these as many as 28 sat for this borough just once, and four twice. Furthermore, although Thomas Stikelane and John Wyke II represented Lyme more often, they only did so three times each. Evidently, the electorate, such as it was, set little store by the candidates’ parliamentary experience, or more likely could not afford to do so. To perhaps as many as nine Parliaments of the period the borough returned two novices, and only in the Parliaments of 1431 and 1437 was it represented by two men already versed in the workings of the Commons. Another striking statistic is that on seven of the 12 occasions that an experienced parliamentarian was elected, this experience had been acquired not by sitting for Lyme but by representing another borough in Dorset or Somerset.

It was inevitable that the state of Lyme’s economy would affect its parliamentary representation, and the election of novices is a reflection of the town’s impoverishment As the fifteenth century wore on, it became increasingly the norm for Lyme to send to the Commons men who had little or no personal interest in the town, or even in the county, but who were eager enough to gain entry to Parliament to be prepared to pay their own expenses. The progression of this change may be charted. Whereas in 13 out of the 14 Parliaments for which returns have survived between 1386 and 1407 Lyme had been represented by men who lived in Lyme itself or were actively concerned with local affairs, from 1410 onwards outsiders predominated.7 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 372-4. Only three of the 34 men elected between 1422 and 1460 are known to have held property in Lyme and apparently resided there at least some of the time: Henry Coupland, Thomas Dorset (probably a relation of John Dorset†, who had sat for Lyme previously) and Thomas Stikelane. To them might be added John Stikelane, who came from a local family but normally lived elsewhere in the county, and perhaps also Parker and Sharp, who both remain unidentified.8 The possibility that he was the same person as John Sharp III* of Bristol cannot be excluded. Even so, it is clear that local men were allotted only a small proportion of the available seats. A little is known about two of them: Coupland and Thomas Stikelane. Both were merchants and Coupland, who traded through the harbour at Lyme in cloth and pells, may have sought election to the Parliament of 1433 because he was then subject to judicial proceedings at the Exchequer for allegedly defrauding the Crown of its customs dues. Both attested the indentures recording Lyme’s parliamentary elections, Coupland doing so three times, and Stikelane as many as 11; and Coupland’s place in the administration of the town is further confirmed by the record of his appearance as an elector of borough officials and his own service as portreeve and constable.

Of the rest of Lyme’s MPs, nine lived elsewhere in Dorset: Alysaundre at Charmouth, Bettiscombe at Bridport and Symondsbury, Brunyng at Winterbourne Steepleton, Ford and Leweston in Dorchester, Hardgill at Shaftesbury, Spencer at Frampton, John Stikelane at Stratton, and Guy Phillip at an unknown place. The homes of some of the others, although located in counties neighbouring Dorset, were still only a relatively short ride away. Four MPs lived in Somerset: Balsham mainly at Ilchester (although his office as a controller of customs required him to be regularly on the quayside at Melcombe and a frequent visitor to the other Dorset ports); Halsewell at ‘Eston’; Selwood at Wells and Welweton at Moreton. Boef and Wyke both came from Devon, the latter from nearby Axmouth. Yet, by contrast, at least ten of the rest dwelled many miles away from Lyme. Among them were Barton and Pedwardine, who came from Lincolnshire, Kebell and Moyle from Kent, Montgomery and Umfray from Essex and Norris from Berkshire. Barton, Kebell, Moyle and Umfray all had close links with London, which was where Veysy, Winslow and Keighley (if he has been correctly identified), lived for the greater part of their careers. Winslow, indeed, was holding office as auditor of the city of London when elected to Parliament for Lyme in 1455. In effect his election for this borough provided the citizens with a fifth representative to further their interests in the Commons.

It should also be noted that in the course of their careers at least 16 of these outsiders also represented other constituencies. Ten of them sat for different Dorset boroughs;9 Alysaundre, Balsham, Bettiscombe, Boef, Bishop, Brunyng, Hardgill, Kebell, Leweston and Veysy. two for boroughs in Somerset – Halsewell for Bridgwater and Taunton, and Selwood for Wells – while Boef, who also represented Bridport, was later elected as a knight of the shire for Devon. Further afield, Umfray was returned by the Wiltshire borough of Great Bedwyn; Barton appeared twice for Bletchingley in Surrey; Winslow went on to represent London and, most impressively, Norris was elected to seven Parliaments for Berkshire and one for Oxfordshire. A number of them became very experienced parliamentarians, with Balsham sitting in eight Parliaments all told between 1422 and 1442, and Norris in nine between 1422 and 1453. Yet it is clear that for all 16 their service for Lyme was nothing more than a minor episode in their careers. What mattered to them was gaining a seat in the Commons; the interests of the constituency they were representing were of little concern.

The outsiders returned for Lyme in Henry VI’s reign may be placed in certain categories, although these were not mutually exclusive. At least ten were lawyers,10 Bettiscombe, Boef, Brunyng, Halsewell, Kebell (though primarily an Exchequer official), Keighley, Moyle, Umfray, Welweton and Wyke. including William Boef, who went on to become a serjeant-at-law, William Moyle, who was related to Walter Moyle* the future judge, and John Welweton, who was afterwards a long-serving coroner of Somerset. The loss of the records of several of the inns of court makes it impossible to identify where most of these lawyers studied, although five are known to have been members of Lincoln’s Inn, among them Boef, who had already served as a governor of the Inn when he was elected for Lyme in 1437, and Umfray who was a pensioner there at the time of his returns in 1449 and 1450. Two more of the outsiders were merchants: Selwood had set up business in Wells as a brewer and chapman, and his trading concerns often took him to the capital; while Winslow was a member of the prestigious Drapers Company of London, and traded overseas on ships which he himself owned. The elections of lawyers and the two merchants may have come about entirely as a consequence of personal ambition, as those in question sought seats in the Lower House in order to pursue their own, or their clients’ interests.

Yet Lyme’s representation in the Parliaments of the late 1440s and the 1450s would appear to have owed much to external influence, exercised in response to political crises at the centre of government. A number of those elected in that period were members of the royal household. William Veysy (February 1449) was the royal brick-maker, responsible for supplying bricks to build Eton College, Henry VI’s beloved project, and a personal friend of the King’s physician, Master John Somerset*; John Montgomery (November 1449), was an esquire of the King’s chamber whose devoted loyalty to Henry VI was such that he was eventually to be executed by the Yorkist regime; and Thomas Barton (1450) was a yeoman of the Household. More tangentially, two of those returned for Lyme in this period were associates of the treasurer of the Household, John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton, taking their seats in 1447 (Brunyng) and 1453 (Hardgill). Brunyng’s associate in 1447, the obscure Thomas Parye, had perhaps served as yeoman of the catery. In this regard it may well be pertinent to note that the sheriff who made the return in 1447 was Stourton’s brother-in-law William Carent* and in 1453 the task was undertaken by his son-in-law Richard Warre*.

Another path to gaining election for Lyme would seem to have been employment at the Exchequer. Andrew Kebell, returned with Veysy to the Parliament of February 1449, was comptroller of the pipe at the Exchequer, an appointment he owed to the patronage of Master John Somerset, the chancellor of that department. There can be little doubt that Somerset was using his influence to secure the presence in the Commons of men who could be trusted to defend the government’s increasingly vulnerable financial position, and could personally brief Veysy and Kebell to do so. Similarly, Thomas Umfray, returned by Lyme to the Parliaments of November 1449 and 1450, was closely linked to Thomas Thorpe*, another one of the senior officials of the Exchequer, who himself sat in the Commons in both Parliaments. Finally, it should be noted that the London draper Thomas Winslow (1455) had earlier served as clerk to the under treasurer, and could bring his own experience of the workings of the Exchequer to the House.

A third factor linking some of the disparate individuals who represented Lyme in this period, was a shared experience of the customs service. Balsham, who held office as controller of customs and subsidies in ports along the south coast for 30 years and more, was occupying that post at Melcombe when returned for Lyme in 1431; and Barton was controller at Sandwich when returned in 1450. Kebell had served as a searcher of vessels at Gravesend before his election, Winslow had been a collector of customs in London prior to his, and Wyke, regularly engaged in the customs service between 1442 and 1473, was reappointed collector at Poole when sitting for Lyme in the Parliament of 1455. All five were cognisant of the state of the nation’s finances and how decisions made in the Commons might affect them.

Connexions with the leading landowners of west Dorset may also have played an important part in deciding who should represent Lyme. Men associated with the Brooke family, which held the borough at farm until 1437 or later, might use such links to secure election to Parliament, and while at Westminster they could promote the Brookes’ interests. This had been the case with three Parliaments of Henry V’s reign, most notably that of 1417 to which Lyme elected Thomas Est† and William Taverner†, both feoffees of the Brooke estates.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 372. Bettiscombe (elected in 1425), was legal counsellor to Sir Thomas Brooke* (d.1439), who regarded him warmly as one of his ‘true servants’; Frampton and Bishop, who joined Brooke in the Commons in 1427, were both then acting as feoffees for his mother; Guy Phillip (1432) was among the Brookes’ close associates; and Moyle (1435) was on sufficiently good terms with the family to be able to arrange the marriage of his daughter to one of Sir Thomas’s sons. Among the clients of the lawyer William Boef (1437) were Sir William Bonville*, who owned property at Lyme,12 Lyme Regis ct. rolls, DC/LR/B/1/2. and the young Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, whom he served as steward. Nor should the influence of the wealthy Staffords of Hooke be overlooked. John Alysaundre is known to have been on friendly terms with Sir Humphrey Stafford* and his half-brother the chancellor, Bishop John Stafford of Bath and Wells, while the Parliament of 1432 in which he represented Lyme was in progress, and John Spencer (1460) established ties with a younger generation of the family.

As might be readily deduced, the outsiders who represented Lyme in Henry VI’s reign often enjoyed a much higher status than that of mere townsmen. The lawyers among them were generally styled ‘gentlemen’, and Brunyng, Halsewell, Hardgill, Montgomery, Norris, Spencer and Veysy were all called ‘esquire’ at some point in their careers. Montgomery, indeed, came from a family with substantial landholdings in Essex, and, the son of a knight, he was also the nephew of Ralph, Lord Sudeley. Bettiscombe, Brunyng and Wyke all became landowners of consequence in Dorset. Yet the extent to which they were later engaged in the administration of the localities had nothing to do with the success of their candidacy at elections for Lyme.

Lyme’s surviving electoral returns offer no clues as to the circumstances surrounding the acceptance of outsiders to fill its seats in the Commons. Throughout the fifteenth century the names of the MPs elected to represent the Dorset boroughs were recorded on schedules which accompanied the county’s returns into Chancery. In addition, from 1407 to 1437 along with his indentures testifying to the elections of the knights of the shire the sheriff also returned composite indentures for the boroughs. Composite indentures of this kind are extant for 19 of the Parliaments summoned in that period. On every occasion four men from each of the seven boroughs were recorded as party to the returns. Some of the indentures are now damaged, but the names may be discerned of 25 different individuals who verified Lyme’s choice of representatives in that 30-year period. Apparently belonging to Lyme’s governing body, the 25 included six men who themselves represented the borough in Parliament on other occasions. After 1437 Lyme does not figure on electoral indentures until 1472. Then, and again in 1478, the only participant recorded was the mayor.13 C219/17/2, 3.