Northumberland

Northumberland, at nearly 1,300,000 acres, is the fifth largest of England’s ancient counties, stretching some 70 miles at its greatest length and 50 miles at its greatest width. Its borders are largely defined by natural frontiers with the North Sea to the east, the Cheviot Hills to the north, and the northern end of the Pennine Chain and the river Tyne to the west and south.4 S.R. Haselhurst, Northumb. 6-7. Its great distance from Westminster (some 270 miles from the county town, Newcastle-upon-Tyne), and the presence of the palatinate of the bishops of Durham over the Tyne on its southern border may have added a layer of political isolation to this geographical one. Economic backwardness is to be accounted another of the county’s disadvantages. Its agricultural economy was by no means robust at the best of times. William Camden (d.1623), described Northumberland as ‘mostly rough and barren’, an observation that applies particularly to the high ground of its western part. This weakness was compounded both by Scottish raids and the general depression that afflicted the north throughout the first half of the fifteenth century.5 A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern Eng. 30-52. A petition in the Parliament of May 1421, submitted to the Commons by the ‘poor commons’ of Northumberland and its neighbours, Cumberland and Westmorland, presented a picture of local desolation occasioned by plague and Scottish incursions.6 PROME, ix. 296-7. The Crown had already recognized these difficulties by exempting the three counties from the parlty. fifteenth and tenth. Between 1401 and 1415 they had secured exemptions from individual grants of these taxes: CPR, 1399-1401, p. 453; 1413-16, p. 371. Thereafter, comms. were not issued to tax collectors in these shires, but exemptions are not recorded on the patent roll.

Against this economic background, it is not surprising that, despite the county’s size, its gentry were not numerous. The list drawn up in 1434 of those who were to take the parliamentary oath not to maintain peace-breakers, a rough index of the number of gentry in a county, contains only 42 names; and the tax assessments of 1435-6 identify only 35 landholders with annual incomes of £5 p.a. or more. Both these figures significantly underestimate the size of the gentry community. Not only are only 17 names common to both lists, but as many as 83 men are recorded as attesting the county’s six documented parliamentary elections between 1419 and 1437.7 CPR, 1429-36, p. 396; E179/158/38; J. Garrett, ‘Aspects of Crown Admin. and Soc. in Northumb.’ (Teeside Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2013), 62; C219/14/1-15/1. None the less, comparative figures for other counties probably have the same limitations, and it is revealing that, of the 15 other shires for which figures are available for these tax assessments, only the small county of Huntingdonshire has fewer than 35, and even Cumberland and Westmorland both have over 50.8 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 17. Yet, although Northumberland’s gentry community was small, its wealth was concentrated to an unusual degree in the hands of the greater county families. Of the 35 listed, as many as seven were said to have been assessed on annual incomes of £60 or more, and there were at least 14 non-baronial knights resident in the county in the late 1430s.9 Fourteen knights are identified in a combination of the 1434 oath list, the tax assessments and the 1437 parlty. election indenture: CPR, 1429-36, p. 396; E179/158/38; C219/15/1.

One notable feature of Northumberland’s political geography was the extent of liberties within its borders, in other words of areas exempt from the jurisdiction of the county sheriff. There were five of these: Redesdale, which passed from the Umfravilles to the Lincolnshire family of Tailboys in 1437; Tynedale, part of the duchy of York; Hexhamshire, a liberty of the archbishops of York (all three lying in the west of the county); Islandshire and Norhamshire, pertaining to the bishops of Durham, in the north; and Tynemouth, to the prior of Tynemouth, in the south.10 Garrett, 33-36. Territorially, however, the dominant local lords were the only resident peers, the Percy earls of Northumberland, who lived at the castle of Alnwick in the north of the county. Along with the lordship of Alnwick, they held the neighbouring lordship of Warkworth and, in the south, those of Langley and (after its restoration in 1435) Prudhoe. Unlike in other northern counties, the Percys’ landed dominance was not challenged by the Nevilles of Middleham.11 Pollard, 95-96. Indeed, and for most of the period under review here, just as the power of the Nevilles was enhanced in Cumberland and Westmorland by their tenure of the royal office of warden of the west march, so too was that of the Percys in Northumberland by theirs of the wardenship of the east march.12 R.L. Storey, ‘Wardens of the Marches’, EHR, lxxii. 613-14. Second in influence in the county came the only one of the lords of the county’s liberties to play a significant part in its affairs, namely successive bishops of Durham. In Henry VI’s reign, the three bishops were all men of more than merely ecclesiastical and local significance. At the beginning of the period, the long-serving bishop, Thomas Langley, was chancellor of England (until 1424); he was succeeded in 1438 by Robert Neville, younger brother of Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, head of the younger branch of the Nevilles; and, in 1457, Neville was in turn succeeded by Laurence Booth, chancellor of Queen Margaret and keeper of the privy seal.

The Crown did not have landed interests in the county, and its local influence was largely mediated through the Percys as wardens. Its possessions were limited to the castles of Bamburgh and Dunstanborough on the northern coast. John, duke of Bedford, held the lordship of Prudhoe, forfeited by the Percys in the reign of Henry IV, until his death in 1435 but it was then restored to the earls of Northumberland.13 Pollard, 100.

The names of Northumberland MPs are unknown for as many as four of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign.14 The county’s exemption from the fifteenth and tenth means the MPs for the Parls. of 1439 and 1445 cannot be identified, as they can for other shires, from the tax comms. The 36 known seats were filled by 20 individuals, none of whom are known to have represented another constituency, an indication of the county’s insularity. There was a low level of representative continuity, both in comparison with national figures and that prevailing in the county in the period 1386-1421. In the earlier period two-thirds of the county’s seats were filled by experienced MPs compared with only a little over half in the period under review here. With such a low level of continuity, it is not surprising to find that as many as eight of the 20 MPs are recorded as representing the county only once, and none had more than the six recorded elections of Sir Robert Ogle I. Between them the 20 MPs filled only 43 seats, an unusually low average of Parliaments per MP.

A decline in representative continuity was one contrast between the two periods, another was the decline in the proportion of the county’s seats taken by knights. Between 1386 and 1421 as many as 30 of the 53 known seats were filled by men of that rank, and of the 21 MPs only four did not take up knighthood at some point in their careers. By very marked contrast, only ten of the 36 known seats of Henry VI’s reign were filled by knights, with none known to have been elected after Sir Robert Ogle II in 1442; and of the 20 MPs as many as 12 never became knights.15 Five of the MPs were elected as knights and three others – Fenwick, Gray and Heron – took up the rank after the end of their recorded parliamentary careers. In part, this decline reflects a national one in knighthood, but Northumberland society was partly insulated from that decline by its militarized nature. The fall in the number of seats taken by knights is thus to be partly explained by the declining enthusiasm of the leaders of county society for parliamentary representation. Of the 14 non-baronial knights resident in the county in 1437, seven are not recorded as representing it in Parliament (although one of these, Sir William Euer*, sat for Yorkshire). This left vacancies for lawyers. In the earlier period, only three of the county’s 21 MPs – the long-serving coroner, Nicholas Turpin†, and John Mitford† and his son William† – can be identified as men of law (although, because of John’s exceptional parliamentary career, they took as many as 15 of the 53 known seats). In the period under review here, the number of lawyers elected rose to five – Cartington, Holden, Lambton, another Mitford (William’s son Robert), and Strother – filling ten seats between them.

If the decline in representative continuity and in the number of seats taken by knights represented change, in another respect there was remarkable long-term continuity in the county’s representation. A combination of Northumberland’s insularity, the robustness of male lines in the northern shires and the consequent lack of social mobility ensured that its representation remained largely in the hands of a group of long-established families; as many as 16 of the 20 MPs came from families that had provided the county with an MP or MPs in earlier generations. Most notable in this regard were the Widdringtons, who from 1336 to 1414 represented the county on at least eight occasions and the borough of Newcastle at least once. Three of the four families who did not provide an earlier MP – Cartington, Lambton and Middleton – were from families long enough established in Northumberland to have done so, and if the records of representation were more complete might have been found to have done. Only Thomas Holden, from a minor Lancashire family who owed his election to his place in the service of the bishops of Durham, stands as an exception.

None the less, the MPs were not as closely related as a group as might have been expected in the case of an insular community of long-established families. There was one well-defined kinship group among them: two of the MPs were brothers, Sir Robert Ogle I and Sir John Bertram (who took the surname of his heiress grandmother), and three MPs, Sir Robert Ogle II, John Ogle and William Bertram, were their sons. Between them these five men took as many as 12 of the 36 known seats of this period, and in respect of the Parliaments of 1435 and 1450 they provided both the county’s MPs. Two others, Manners and Heron, married a daughter and grand-daughter of Sir Robert Ogle I respectively. Yet there were few other connexions between the MPs by marriage, at least in the generations they represented. Of their 18 wives who can be identified by family, only eight came from Northumberland itself (of the other ten, all but one came from other northern shires).

The only clear guide to the income of the MPs is provided by the county’s tax returns of 1435-6. Seven of the 20 appear in these returns together with the fathers of three others. Sir Robert Ogle I and Sir John Bertram were assessed on annual incomes of £80 and £60 respectively, and Sir Ralph Gray, father of Ralph Gray II, also at £80. The Widdringtons, on these figures, were richer still: Sir John and Roger, grandfather and father respectively of Gerard, were said to have had a combined annual income of as much as £140. To this wealthy group is to be added Fenwick, who was assessed, in his adopted county of Cumberland, on an annual income of £60. The accuracy of these figures is open to question. Bertram’s assessment seems to take inadequate account of the extensive estates he held in right of his second wife, the widow of Sir John Swillington. None the less, it is clear that, among the 20 MPs, there was a small elite with the wealth to compare with that of other families of the far north. Yet the general poverty of Northumberland ensured that a significant proportion of its MPs were of comparatively modest means. The assessment of two knights, Sir John Middleton at £23 and Sir John Manners, father of Robert, at £20, are perhaps to be accounted as very marked underestimates of their true incomes, yet there is much less reason to doubt the reasonable accuracy of the incomes of £20 attributed to each of Cartington, Lilburn and Strother, and the even more modest £13 assigned to Ilderton.16 E179/158/38. Two possible conclusions present themselves: either the MPs were frequently drawn from beneath the leading gentry families, or that many of these families were of relatively small means. The latter is undoubtedly to be preferred.

The southern half of the county was wealthier and more-densely settled than the north, and this is reflected in the geographical distribution of the seats of its MPs. On only one occasion were both MPs drawn from the north: to the Parliament of February 1449 Gray, resident on the Scottish border at Wark-on-Tweed, was returned with Heron, who lived nine miles to the east at Ford. In eight other Parliaments both MPs were from the south of the county and it is not surprising that sometimes they were near neighbours. In 1426 Sir John Middleton of Belsay was elected with Strother, who lived only six miles from him at Kirkharle; and in the Parliament of 1435 Sir Robert Ogle I of Ogle was elected with William Bertram of Bothal, only ten miles away. With so uneven a distribution of wealth within the county there could be no concept of consciously choosing the two MPs from different parts of it, although, on occasion, this was unconsciously achieved, most notably in 1460 when one MP, Thomas Weltden of Welton in the extreme south of Northumberland was elected with Robert Manners of Etal in the extreme north.

There was, as in other shires, a close relationship between the personnel of representation and that of the major offices of county administration. Among the 20 MPs of Henry VI’s reign only two – Ilderton and Lilburn – were not appointed to at least one of these major offices, either as sheriff, escheator or j.p. Of the others, 13 were appointed to the shrievalty. Most of them served just one term, although Sir John Bertram held the office six times and Heron three. Seven had been sheriff before they were elected as MPs, and it was thus common for the county to be represented by a former sheriff (taking 16 of the 36 seats). On no occasion was the statute forbidding the election of the serving sheriff breached nor was a serving MP ever pricked as sheriff. There was a similar overlap between the county’s MPs and its j.p.s.: 12 of the 20 held that office. In contrast to the shrievalty, however, a first election to Parliament generally came before nomination to the bench. Only three of the 12 were j.p.s in Northumberland before they were MPs, and it is significant that two of these – Mitford and Strother – were lawyers. Even so, as the MPs tended to serve lengthy terms on the bench, the county was often represented by its serving j.p.s.: they took 15 of the 36 seats (and filled both seats in the successive Parliaments of November 1449 and 1450). Fewer of the MPs held the least of the three major offices of local government, that of escheator. Only seven of the 20 served in that office, although two others – Holden and Lambton – were appointed but did not act. 17 This assumes that the Heron appointed escheator in 1439-40 was the MP, although it is possible that it was a namesake. Of these nine, five had been appointed escheator before their first elections to Parliament, although, in all five cases, only shortly before. In Strother’s case, the two came almost at the same time. He was appointed escheator on 24 Jan. 1426 and a week later, perhaps before he even knew of his appointment, he was elected as MP. He was thus the serving escheator when sitting in the 1426 Parliament as he was to be again in that of 1427. Similarly, John Ogle was named as escheator on 11 Dec. 1449 and was returned to Parliament on the following 1 Oct. and still escheator when the Parliament assembled five weeks later. In addition to the three seats taken by serving escheators, a further 14 were taken by men who had been appointed to the office. It was rare for the MPs to hold major offices of county administration outside Northumberland by appointment of the Crown. Fenwick was sheriff, escheator and j.p. in Cumberland, although not until after he had sat as an MP, and Middleton was briefly a j.p. in Westmorland before representing Northumberland for a third time.

Several of the MPs, however, assisted successive bishops of Durham in the administration of their palatinate. Holden was Bishop Langley’s steward when he was elected to Parliament in 1423. As one of the leading members of the episcopal household, his situation was unique among the Northumberland MPs, and it is probably not coincidental that his master was chancellor at the time of his election. More commonly the MPs served the bishops of Durham in their liberty of Norhamshire and Islandshire. Many county families had long-standing ties to this region and members of those of Middleton, Manners, Ogle and Strother served on many commissions there throughout the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. More importantly, the two Sir Robert Ogles successively held the strategically vital castle of Norham for the bishop from 1403 until 1469. Sir Robert II was also appointed sheriff of county Durham and the liberty of Sadbergh during the vacancy following Langley’s death; and during the episcopate of Robert Neville he emerged as one of the leading figures in the palatinate, serving as a j.p. as well as sheriff and escheator of Norhamshire and Islandshire.

There can be little doubt that the most important service rendered by the Northumberland gentry to the bishops of Durham was military. The role of the Ogles and Manners in Norhamshire was reflected in the service of other MPs elsewhere on the east and middle marches. Many were appointed to the various commissions designed to redress breaches of the Anglo-Scottish truce, while others travelled north on diplomatic missions to the Scottish king. Several also held strategically important commands throughout the Lancastrian period. Sir John Bertram held Roxburgh castle from 1415 until 1421; as well as his command at Norham, Sir Robert Ogle I also held Wark, Berwick-upon-Tweed and Roxburgh at various times between 1419 and 1436; Sir William Elmden served as constable of Bamburgh from 1419 until 1438; Sir Robert Ogle II served alongside Ralph Gray II at Roxburgh, having between 1438 and 1440 joined Gray’s father as joint warden of the east march; while John Heron served as deputy to the earl of Northumberland in Redesdale and joint constable of Bamburgh castle from 1459. These offices were certainly no sinecures and several of the MPs were involved in defending their castles against Scottish assaults. Moreover, the upkeep of the border castles frequently involved considerable personal expense for those men charged with defending them. Sir John Bertram, Sir Robert Ogle I, Sir William Elmden and Ralph Gray II all incurred large losses as constables of castles. Warfare against the Scots could also prove costly in other ways. While the devastation to local estates caused by Scottish raids must have been a recurrent hazard, Sir Robert Ogle II suffered the ignominy of capture and ransom, when he was taken by William Dougles, earl of Angus, following the English defeat at Piperdean in 1435. Warfare could, however, entail benefits. Successful raids against the Scots (such as that led by Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, and Sir Robert Ogle II in May 1448 involving the burning of Dunbar) could provide profit in terms of plunder and ransoms, and military service could provide a means of both social and political advancement. Fenwick, for example, appears to have been knighted at the successful raising of James I’s siege of Roxburgh in August 1436 by an army led by the earl of Northumberland. Later, in July 1455 both Heron and Manners earned royal thanks for their efforts in the defence of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

The demands of defending the border meant that few of the MPs took an active role in the French wars. None had military careers in France to compare with their counterparts, such as Sir Christopher Curwen* and Sir John Pennington*, across the border in Cumberland. Northumberland men, notably those in the service of Sir Gilbert Umfraville (killed fighting alongside the duke of Clarence at the battle of Baugé in 1421), had played an important role in the conquest of Normandy, and Sir John Bertram and Elmden both distinguished themselves in this campaign. Nevertheless, none appear to have been engaged in the military campaigns of Henry VI’s reign, nor in garrisoning the English-held castles in Normandy and elsewhere in France. Fenwick, along with the veteran solider Thomas Burgh, took an extremely large retinue of 78 men-at-arms and 600 archers to France for the coronation expedition in 1430. Yet, besides these examples, the Northumberland MPs were conspicuous by their absence from the French wars. Indeed, the only military service carried out by a Northumberland MP outside of the context of Anglo-Scottish warfare during Henry VI’s reign occurred in 1442 when John Heron was chosen, with unhappy financial consequences for himself, as one of the four men appointed to keep the seas at the Commons’ request.

The civil war of 1459-61 proved another focus for the military energies of the county’s MPs. The conflation of the regional rivalry between the great baronial houses of Neville and Percy with the national struggle for the control of royal government in the mid 1450s drew many of them into the fray. Yet, right up until the outbreak of open conflict on a national level in 1459 servants of both Neville and Percy co-operated in the defence of the Anglo-Scottish borders, with Percy retainers, like Fenwick, serving alongside the earl of Salisbury, and Percy servants, like Heron, co-operating with Neville servants such as Sir Robert Ogle II. Indeed, men from the same family could choose different baronial patrons: while John Ogle entered the service of the earl of Northumberland, his elder brother, Sir Robert II, was retained by Bishop Neville. None the less, when civil war did break out late in 1459, several of Northumberland’s MPs proved to be committed partisans. Of the 11 who were alive for at least a part of the civil war of 1459-61, five fall into this category.18 Fenwick died at the very beginning of the period, and five others – Ilderton, Mitford, John Ogle, Weltden and Widdrington – are not known to have taken any part in the campaigns of 1459-61. Due to the limitations of the evidence, this is not, of course, to say that they certainly did not. William Bertram, a long-time servant of the Percys, was knighted by the earl of Northumberland at the battle of Wakefield on 30 Dec. 1460, probably went on to fight under the earl at the second battle of St. Albans and was killed with him at Towton. Heron was similarly active in the Percy interest. He fought at Wakefield and the second St. Albans, and in the aftermath of the latter battle he was one of the three Lancastrian knights sent to negotiate, unsuccessfully as it transpired, with the mayor and aldermen of London for access to the city. He seems, like Bertram, to have fallen at Towton and was then, unlike Bertram, attained in the first Parliament of the new reign. Ralph Gray was another Lancastrian: there is no certain evidence that he fought at any of the battles of 1459-61, but, given his military pedigree, it is almost certain that he did. Further, his name mistakenly appears in two lists of those killed on the Lancastrian side at Towton. Two other MPs took up arms on the Yorkist side. Sir Robert Ogle II, as a zealous follower of the Nevilles, had been one of the leading captains in their ranks at the first battle of St. Albans and went on to fight at Towton (and almost certainly other battles of the 1459-61 campaigns). His brother-in-law, Robert Manners, although earlier associated with the Percys, seems to have followed the lead of his kinsman by marriage; he appears to have been committed to that cause by 23 Sept. 1460 when elected to represent Northumberland in the Parliament called by the Yorkists. Manners was a man of considerable military experience, and it is very probable that he was with Ogle at Towton.

Notwithstanding the civil war of 1459-61 and the long-running feud between the houses of Percy and Neville, both of which took place against the high level of violence generally prevailing in the far north, there is little evidence of personal quarrels among the Northumberland gentry. No doubt their common obligation to defend their county against Scottish raids acted as a restraint. The dispute between the sons of Sir Robert Ogle (1353-1409), Sir Robert Ogle I and Sir John Bertram, belongs to the earlier period, and the two branches of the family existed on easy terms in Henry VI’s reign. The most notorious incident of conflict under Henry VI was the so-called Causa de Heron in 1428 when William Heron (father of John Heron) was murdered by John Manners (father of Robert Manners). The threat this violent dispute posed to the stability of the border region is demonstrated by the swift response of both the Crown and the local gentry in reaching an acceptable settlement. No fewer than six of the MPs – Sir John Bertram, Sir Robert Ogle I, Elmden, Ilderton, Lilburn and Strother – played a part in bringing the parties to terms. The sons of victim and perpetrator co-operated frequently throughout the 1440s and 1450s in the defence of the marches. There are few other recorded instances of disputes between our MPs. In June 1425 Elmden and Sir Robert Ogle I, then sitting as an MP, entered recognizances of £200 each to settle their own dispute, but the subject of their quarrel is unknown.

Only one reference survives to the payment of parliamentary wages. In Easter term 1429 the two MPs from the Parliament of 1427, Elmden and Strother, sued the sheriff, Fenwick, in the Exchequer for unpaid dues of £58 16s., representing their wages for 147 days each spent at and travelling to and from Parliament (the sessions lasted from 13 Oct. until 8 Dec. 1427 and from 27 Jan. until 25 Mar. 1428). Fenwick allegedly refused to pay the sums due; both men thus claimed £20 damages. The outcome of the case is not known.19 Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 368-9.

Given the territorial dominance of the Percys within Northumberland, it was natural that their clients should have been prominent among its MPs. As many as seven of the MPs – William Bertram, Cartington, Fenwick, Heron, Lambton, John Ogle and Widdrington – can be firmly identified as in their service at the time they were returned for the county. Between them they filled as many as 15 of Northumberland’s 24 seats between 1429 and 1453. Most of them had standing enough in the locality to be strong candidates for election even without the patronage of the earl of Northumberland, but it is a reasonable speculation that that patronage was a significant factor in several of these returns. Lambton’s main interests lay in county Durham, and it is hard to see what he had to recommend himself as a Northumberland MP in the successive Parliaments of 1431 and 1432 save for his Percy connexion. At this date the earl was anxious to secure the payment of assignments due to him as warden of the east march, and it is relevant in this context that at the end of the Parliament of 1432 Lambton was appointed as one of the collectors of customs in Newcastle, the obvious source of income for the discharge of these assignments.20 It may be significant that Lambton’s son, Robert*, represented Appleby in this Parl. Two other of these particular MPs, although from the county’s leading families, were not obvious parliamentary candidates: John Ogle was a younger son and William Bertram, when elected to his first two Parliaments, had yet to inherit the family estates. Similarly, even though Cartington was a lawyer from an established local family, it is hard to see how he could have been elected to four Parliaments without the support of the Percys. There can, in short, be no doubt that that great family exercised a considerable influence over the county’s representation.

Other external influences were seemingly of little significance. Holden owed his election in 1423 to his master, Bishop Langley of Durham, and it is probable, given the political circumstances then prevailing, that Weltden was returned in 1460 because of his family’s connexion with Richard, earl of Salisbury.

It is, however, one thing to delineate the possible influences on individual elections, quite another to describe the mechanisms by which such influence was exercised. The election indentures are, in direct terms, unrevealing, although they do allow the outlines of the election process to be described. Elections were generally convened in the royal castle at Newcastle on the county court day, a Thursday. There were, however, some curious variations as to both day and venue at the start of this period and before it began. The first dated election – that of 29 Sept. 1407 – had duly convened at Newcastle on a Thursday, but the next two of known date, those of 26 Apr. 1413 and 29 Oct. 1414, had been held on a Wednesday and Monday respectively. Variation then extended to venue. Of the seven elections between 1417 and 1423 three convened at Newcastle (all three on a Thursday), three at Morpeth, 16 miles to the north (two on a Wednesday and one on a Saturday), and one at Alnwick, a further 18 miles to the north of Morpeth (on a Tuesday). No obvious explanation presents itself. It may be that the change in venue reflects an earlier pattern where the county court was generally held at Newcastle but occasionally moved to other important towns, but it is hard to find any suitable explanation from departures from the established county day of Thursday. However this may be, the period of experimentation ended after the election of Saturday 25 Sept. 1423. Henceforth every known election, until the failure of the indentures in 1478, was convened on a Thursday at Newcastle, with one exception, that of 28 Jan. 1449 which was held there on a Tuesday.21 Later elections were again held at Morpeth and Alnwick. The statute of 2 and 3 Edw. VI, ch. 25, established Alnwick as the location of the county court, but this did not prevent elections being held at Morpeth in the 1550s: The Commons 1509-58, i. 160-1. This deviation from the norm was clearly necessitated by the late arrival of the writ, issued on 2 Jan., which presumably had not reached the sheriff in time to hold an election at the county court of 9 Jan. As Parliament was to assemble on 12 Feb., eight days before the next scheduled court on 20 Feb., the sheriff had to convene a special electoral assembly on 28 Jan. to allow the MPs time to make their way to Westminster. Comparable circumstances had probably also prevailed in 1429, when the sheriff held his election on 11 Aug., the exact half-way point between his two shire courts of 21 July and 1 Sept., although an election held on the latter date would easily have allowed the Members time to reach Westminster for the opening three weeks later.

Nearly every election (from 1407 to 1478) was held in timely fashion, leaving the MPs more than ample time to travel to Parliament. The exceptions were the Parliaments of November 1449 and 1453, the first held only a week and the second five days before the Parliament was due to assemble. It is possible that the shortness of notice may have had an impact on the status of those returned. All four of the MPs were, in one way or another, below the general rank of the county’s representatives: William Bertram had yet to inherit the family estates when elected to the first of these Parliaments; his fellow MP, the lawyer Robert Mitford, was a younger son; as too was John Ogle, elected in 1453 with the young and inexperienced Gerard Widdrington. The implication is that willing candidates were difficult to find, although, as suggested below, it may be that the Percy interest determined the 1453 election.

Although only two of the MPs, Holden and Lambton, both of whom had their principal interests in county Durham, are not recorded among the attestors, as a group the MPs were not frequent attenders at the hustings, certainly not on the scale of their counterparts across the border in Cumberland. The most frequent attenders were Lilburn and Ilderton, who appeared on seven and six occasions respectively, while Middelton and Mitford both appeared on five. In total, the 18 MPs attested at least 59 elections between them, compared with the 107 attestations recorded by the Cumberland MPs. They were often present to see their friends and kinsmen elected, but surprisingly and most unusually, on occasion those returned attested the indentures which confirmed their own elections to the Commons. There is one isolated instance of this irregular practice in the first part of the period – namely Ilderton in 1425 – but later, for a brief period, it became the rule. Heron attested his own election to the Parliament of February 1449, and then both MPs did so in respect of their elections to the next two Parliaments.

There was a noticeable increase in the number of attestors named in the indentures as the period progressed. The first seven surviving indentures – for the Parliaments of 1407 to December 1421 – list an average of about 16 attestors, and this pattern continued in the first part of Henry VI’s reign with the nine indentures from 1422 to 1433 naming about the same average. None of these 17 indentures name more than 24 (in 1429) or fewer than ten (in 1433). The later indentures of the reign, the nine surviving from 1435 to 1460, show a general increase with an average of about 28, a maximum of 37 (for the Parliament of February1449) and a minimum of 20 (in 1460). This average was maintained in the three remaining indentures of the fifteenth century, those for the Parliaments of 1467, 1472 and 1478.

Two factors may explain this rise in the number of attestors. The first is the establishment of Newcastle as the fixed venue for parliamentary elections during Henry VI’s reign. While the size and remoteness of the county may have prevented some members of the gentry from travelling to Newcastle, the county elections appear to have been attended by local townsmen in greater numbers. Indeed, Newcastle burgesses frequently attested the county elections. Of the borough’s 20 MPs of the period, nine attested at least one county election, with Simon Weltden* (father of Thomas) attesting either eight or nine and Edward Bertram* (illegitimate brother of William) five. Second, increased attendance at the parliamentary elections may have been related to the concerns of the wider county community and, in particular, the situation on the Anglo-Scottish border. In the Parliament of February 1449, for example, there were pressing concerns over the defence of the borders and fears of a Scottish invasion. Indeed, on 3 Feb., a week before Parliament opened and a few days after the county election had been held, the bishop of Durham, the earl of Westmorland, six northern peers and four others (none of them MPs) were instructed to remain in the north rather than travel to Westminster for the forthcoming assembly, and it is probably no coincidence that it was this election that saw the greatest attendance of any in Henry VI’s reign.22 PPC, vi. 65-66; C219/15/6.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the Northumberland indentures do not reveal traces of any contests. This is, perhaps, because however much the choice of MPs was influenced by the Percys that influence was exerted before, rather than on, the day of the hustings. Nevertheless, in the later part of the period there may have been greater tensions. Significantly, the indentures for the Parliaments of 1450 and 1453 were headed by Sir Ralph Percy, a younger son of the earl of Northumberland, perhaps suggesting an uncertainty on the part of the Percys that their clients would be returned. If that was the motive for Sir Ralph’s appearance then that uncertainty was overcome. The loss of the returns for the Parliaments of 1455 and 1459 makes it impossible to judge whether the Percy influence, in respect of those assemblies, was diminished by the escalating tensions in local and national politics, but there can be no doubt that the election to the Yorkist Parliament of 1460 was dominated by men closely connected to the Nevilles. The list of attestors was headed by Sir Robert Ogle II, a feed retainer of the earl of Salisbury, and included his son, another Robert, and it is not therefore surprising that the two MPs should have been favourable to the Nevilles. Although little is known of Thomas Weltden, his putative uncle, Richard, had been an important figure in the administration of the Neville estates and Richard’s son, another Richard*, had followed his father into the same service. The other MP was a more important man, Ogle II’s brother-in-law, Robert Manners, who, although earlier connected with the Percys, had now been drawn into the orbit of the Nevilles by his wife’s brother.

Looking at the MPs as individuals rather than as the adherents of lords, their personal motives for seeking and securing election are occasionally discernible. The defence of the borders, or rather the costs incurred in it, provided a motive for several individuals to seek election to the Commons. As MP in 1427, Elmden presented a petition to the Commons outlining his inability to secure allowance from the Exchequer for the repairs he had made to Bamburgh castle since his appointment as its constable in 1419 and for the reinforcements he had made to the garrison. The Commons supported the petition, asking the King to direct the barons to allow the expenses in Elmden’s account, and this they eventually did.23 SC8/109/5423; E159/206, brevia Mich. rot. 16. The financial difficulties for which Sir Robert Ogle II sought relief as an MP in the Parliament of 1437 were even more pressing. He petitioned his fellow Members, seeking relief from his father’s debts (said to be over £2,000) accumulated while keeper of Roxburgh, pleading that the ransom he himself had recently forfeited to the Scots left him unable to satisfy his father’s creditors and facing outlawry. His petition must have met with a positive response, and twice in March 1437 he received cash payments totalling almost £1,200 at the Exchequer for his father’s debts.24 SC8/132/6584; E403/725, m. 17; Cal. Scots. Docs. iv. 1098. Debts arising from the keeping and repair of Roxburgh were the subject of another petition in the Parliament of 1459, on this occasion presented by (Sir) Ralph Gray II, joint keeper of Roxburgh through the 1450s. As Northumberland’s MPs are unknown for this assembly, it can only be a speculation, albeit a likely one, that, like Elmden and Ogle before him, he presented the petition as a Member. In this case, however, the petition was addressed to the King directly rather than through the mediation of the Commons. It took the form of draft letters patent setting out a list of revenue sources that Gray wished to be assigned for the payment of the money due to him from the Crown.25 SC8/113/5622D.

It was, however, not matters of purely personal or lordly self-interest that the MPs actively promoted. In the Parliaments of 1423 and 1431 they no doubt sponsored two petitions presented in the names of the ‘commons’ of the northern shires for the re-establishment of the royal mint at York and the renewal of special licences to the merchants of Newcastle concerning the export of the region’s low-quality wool. In between time, one of the MPs in the Parliament of 1425, Sir Robert Ogle I, may have had mixed feelings about a petition from his county, asking for an end to the practice by which sheriffs charged the inhabitants with an obscure levy called ‘Hedepenes’, for he himself had been sheriff a few years before. More interesting is a petition presented to the Commons in the Parliament of 1437 in the names of the ‘Inhabitantz of the Est and West Marchez’. It described the sufferings of the region at the hands of the Scots, who had besieged Roxburgh in the previous summer, and asked for the appointment as warden of the east march of ‘a grete and myghty lord’ capable of commanding local loyalties. No doubt the petitioners were seeking the re-appointment of the earl of Northumberland, who had resigned the office in 1434 due to mounting arrears of his salary; instead, four days after the end of the Parliament, the King appointed John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, a great lord but one who, although related to the Ogles, had no roots in the region.26 SC8/128/6373; Storey, 605.

Compared to their fourteenth-century forebears, the Northumberland MPs of the early fifteenth century left little trace on the landscape of the north-east. None of our MPs appear to have had the means to indulge in major private building projects, either of domestic residences or fortified border strongholds. None of the most important gentry-owned castles in Northumberland (Belsay, Bothal, Chipchase, Chillingham, Etal, Ford and Widdrington) underwent rebuilding in this period. Indeed, the only private castle to witness any significant improvement in the first half of the century was Cartington where around 1442 the lawyer, John Cartington, added a new range alongside the older tower, while Holden built a peel tower at Ludworth in county Durham.27 A. Pettifer, English Castles, 170-92; A. Emery, Greater Med. Houses, i. 48-50, 54-55, 63-70, 88-92, 94-95, 139n., 153-4, 159. This adds weight to the picture of Northumberland gentry society sketched here: one of an increasingly poor group, beset by agrarian poverty and the threat of war, yet largely united behind the leadership of the region’s leading magnate families in the defence of their community. That unity was only temporarily disturbed by the political tensions of the 1450s.