Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire was in the lower middle rank of counties both in respect of size and wealth. With about 540,000 acres it ranked 26th of the 39 English counties, somewhat smaller than its neighbour Derbyshire, with which it was twinned for administrative purposes by the Crown. Without, however, the extensive tracts of high ground that characterized its neighbour, it was richer. In the subsidy returns of 1451, it ranked, in total assessment, 16th of the 29 counties for which returns survive, against Derbyshire’s 24th.2 S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258. There is nothing particularly remarkable about the county’s physical geography. The river Trent divides it into two unequal parts, the larger one lying to the north and west of the river, but that division does not delineate distinct geographical areas. In the north-west of the county lies the sandy infertile soil of Sherwood forest, said in the sixteenth century to be the most barren land in England.3 Agrarian Hist. of Eng. and Wales, 1500-1750 ed. Thirsk, iv. 95. But by far the greater part of the county is fertile. An expanse of clay soil runs north to south, on both sides of the Trent, and with the valleys of the Trent and the Soar (in the south-west of the county) and the vale of Belvoir (in the south-east), provides good agricultural land.4 For a more detailed description of the county’s physical divisions: R. Lowe, General View of Agriculture of Notts. 8-40; S. Aley, ‘Notts. Landowners and their Estates, c.1660-c.1840’ (Nottingham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 36-40.

Of much greater relevance to the county’s parliamentary representation than these physical characteristics was its distinctive tenurial geography. The higher lay nobility was almost landless in the county in the fifteenth century (in marked contrast to later periods); and although the archbishops of York held the lordship of Southwell and Archbishop John Kemp rebuilt the archiepiscopal palace there in this period, there is no evidence that the archbishops sought to influence Nottinghamshire’s representation. The same can be said in respect of the bishops of Lincoln, who had a castle at Newark. Further, no baronial family had their principal seat in the county.5 S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 12, 16.

This, however, is not to say that it was not subject, potentially at least, to baronial interest. Three noble families lived near enough the county, and had landholdings there significant enough to justify them exerting more than a cursory influence in its affairs. The Greys lived at Codnor in south-east Derbyshire, 12 miles from Nottingham and near their principal Nottinghamshire manor at Toton; the Roos family were resident at Belvoir on the county’s south-eastern edge near their Nottinghamshire manor of Orston; and the Cromwells, who lived (more distantly) at Tattershall in Lincolnshire, had a former Nottinghamshire residence at Lambley.

Yet, for the period under review here, two of these families were largely in abeyance. The Greys had been at the height of their power and influence during the career of Richard, Lord Grey of Codnor, chamberlain to Henry IV. After his death in 1418, however, the family went into decline, in part because of the survival of his widow, Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Richard, Lord Basset of Sapcote, until as late as 1451, and, in part, due to the incompetence of her son, Henry, who succeeded to the family lands on the death of his brother, John, lieutenant of Ireland, in 1430. Although Henry added to the family’s Nottinghamshire lands by his marriage to one of the coheiresses of Sir Henry Percy of Atholl in 1432, he also diminished them by surrendering his manor of Toton to Ralph, Lord Cromwell, in 1441 as part of a punitive settlement imposed upon him in a dispute between the two lords. On his death in 1444 he left a son and heir, another Henry, who did not come of age until the mid-1450s.6 Ibid. 90-93, 198; CP, vi. 127-32; CIPM, xxvi. 229-38. The story of the Roos family in this period was similar. After the death in 1414 of William, Lord Roos, who served briefly as treasurer of England, the family were compromised by a series of short-lived lords and long-lived dowagers. On the death of William’s son, Thomas, Lord Roos, fighting in France in 1430, a lengthy minority followed. His son, another Thomas, came of age in the late 1440s, but he brought crisis in the family by so energetically supporting the house of Lancaster that he was attainted by the Yorkists in 1461.7 CP, xi. 102-6; Payling, Political Society, 93-95.

The difficulties of these two families served to increase the local influence of Lord Cromwell, treasurer of England from 1433 to 1443. The Nottinghamshire manors of Lambley and Cromwell were part of his ancient inheritance, and from the early 1420s he began to extend his landholdings in the county. In 1423 his wife, one of the coheiresses of the baronial family of Deincourt, brought him a moiety of the manor of Granby, and in 1429 he acquired, as a contested inheritance, the manors of Gonalston, Widmerpool and Bunny to the disinheritance of Sir Henry Pierrepont. Further acquisitions followed, and by the early 1440s his lands in Nottinghamshire, concentrated in the Trent valley and the far south-west of the county, were worth some £300 p.a. The local influence this brought him was supplemented by royal office: in 1433 he was granted the keeping of the royal manors of Mansfield, Linby and Clipstone, and in June 1434 he became constable of Nottingham castle and steward of Sherwood forest. Further, from the mid-1440s he had a major residence at South Wingfield, only 15 miles to the north-west of Nottingham.8 Payling, Political Society, 89, 95-97; idem, ‘Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and the Heriz Inheritance’, Nottingham Med. Studies, xxx. 71-86. None the less, although there can be no doubt that Cromwell was the dominant lord in the county, his lands there were at their greatest extent for only a brief period, namely from his acquisition of Toton in 1441 until his death in 1456. His Nottinghamshire estate was then broken up, with only the manors of Lambley and Cromwell passing to his common-law heirs, his two nieces, the one the wife of Sir Thomas Neville, a younger son of Richard, earl of Salisbury, and the other of Humphrey Bourgchier*.9 S.J. Payling, ‘Execution of the Will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIII ed. Clark, 10-11. Thus, apart from a brief period in the second half of Henry VI’s reign, baronial influence in the county was relatively weak.

Aside from its castle at Nottingham, the Crown held the manors at Mansfield, Linby and Clipstone, the last serving as a hunting lodge for Sherwood forest. After the accession of Henry IV in 1399, these holdings were supplemented by the lands and overlordships of the duchy of Lancaster. While the duchy’s demesne lands were confined to the manors of Wheatley and Gringley-on-the-Hill in the north-east of the county, it was a considerable overlord, principally through its honour of Tickhill in south Yorkshire. Few of the county’s leading families were unconnected to it by tenure. Not surprisingly, they actively supported the revolution of 1399, and several of Nottinghamshire’s principal gentry were rewarded with annuities by the new King. Three annuitants were prominent among the county’s MPs under the first two Lancastrian Kings, particularly between 1399 and 1406 when they filled 11 of the 12 available seats.10 Payling, Political Society, 120; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 552.

A gentry elite of mostly long-established families was dominant among the county’s gentry landholders. In the period under review here, 11 families all had annual incomes over £100,11 Those of Babington, Chaworth, Clifton, Markham, Neville of Rolleston, Pierrepont, Rempston, Stanhope, Strelley, Willoughby and Zouche of Kirklington. and formed an elite that was both larger and more clearly defined than equivalent groups in other counties. Their pre-eminence under Henry VI was augmented by their good fortune in avoiding, for the most part, the worst effects of dowagers and minorities.12 Payling, Political Society, 14-18. To these 11 should be added the Leeks of Cotham, who provided four MPs in the 1386-1421 period, but they failed in the main male line in about 1434, when their lands were divided between four daughters, two of whom married into the other elite families of Willoughby and Markham: S.J. Payling, ‘Political Society in Notts.’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1987), 75-77. The distribution of their residences largely reflected that of the county’s natural wealth. Only two of the 11 had their principal residences in the north, namely the Stanhopes of Rampton and the Markhams of East Markham. By contrast, as many as five of them lived in the near vicinity of the county town in the south-west of the county, namely the Babingtons at Chilwell, the Cliftons at Clifton, the Pierreponts at Holme Pierrepont, the Strelleys at Strelley and the Willoughbys at Wollaton. Only a little further afield lay the home of the Chaworths at Wiverton and the Rempstons at Bingham. Below this elite were a group of about 45 families, some of whom were substantial enough occasionally to secure election to Parliament. They were more evenly distributed within the county with some 15 coming from the northernmost and largest of the county’s six wapentakes, that of Bassetlaw.13 Payling, Political Society, 244-5.

Below these leading and middling gentry was a much larger group whose active interest in parliamentary affairs extended to the right to vote, namely the 40s. freeholders, to whom the franchise was restricted by the famous statute of 1429. Nottinghamshire’s returns for the subsidy of 1450-1 list 279 laymen with incomes of that sum or more, but the surviving electoral indentures show that this was a marked underestimate (at least on the assumption that all those named were qualified to vote). The election of October 1449 was attested by 223 electors, but only 89 of these appear in the subsidy returns. This implies that those assessed in 1450-1 represented only about 40% of the electorate, and, making some allowance for the widows and the unspecified number of copyholders included among them, it is probably fair to conclude that the franchise extended to some 600 men. The other long election indentures, namely those of 1455, 1460 and 1467, suggest that even this high figure may be an underestimate. Together with the indenture of October 1449, they list 648 different attestors, only a small number of whom appear to have belonged to different generations of the same family. Unless one assumes that nearly the whole electorate turned out to one or other of these elections, then the franchise extended beyond 600, in other words, taking the adult male population of the county to number some 15,000, more than 4% of that population were enfranchised.14 S.J. Payling, ‘Widening Franchise’, Eng. in 15th Cent. ed. Williams, 174, 177-8.

The identity of Nottinghamshire’s MPs is known for all 22 Parliaments that met during the reign of Henry VI.15 Twenty returns survive and the names of the MPs for the Parls. of 1439 and 1445 are known from tax comms.: CFR, xvii. 140, 145, 324. The 23 men returned sat for the county in a total of 64 assemblies. Only two of them are recorded as sitting for other constituencies: the wealthy knight, Sir Thomas Chaworth, represented Derbyshire in 1413, and the lawyer, John Bowes, anomalously in the context of the county’s representation, sat for London in 1442 while serving as the city’s recorder. Indeed, over a much longer period than this, it was rare for Nottinghamshire to return someone who had represented, or was to go on and represent, another constituency. Of the 33 men who sat for the county between 1386 and 1421, only one was elected elsewhere, namely Sir William Plumpton’s father, Sir Robert†, MP for Yorkshire;16 Henry Sutton† is wrongly cited as another example in The Commons 1386-1421, i. 550; iv. 535-6, but he was not the same man who represented Warws. To the 32 MPs cited there as representing the county between 1386 and 1421, Hugh Willoughby, MP in the Parliament of 1416 (Oct.), is to be added: Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 242-5. and of the 14 returned between 1509 and 1558, only Robert Whalley†, MP for Scarborough and East Grinstead, falls into this category.17 The Commons 1509-58, i. 166. This might be cited as further evidence of the dominance of the county’s affairs by its leading gentry families.

As many as ten of the 23 are noted as sitting only once (compared with 16 of 33 in the 1386-1421 period), but a few had what might be termed parliamentary careers. Sir Richard Stanhope was returned on nine known occasions within the space of 31 years; his grandson, John, was recorded as an MP for the county six times between 1449 and 1472; and Chaworth sat in at least eight Parliaments (seven of them for Nottinghamshire), over a period of nearly 40 years. Shorter and more intense were the parliamentary careers of the only two prominent lawyers to represent the county in this period: Bowes sat in five of the eight Parliaments which met between 1429 and 1442, and Richard Illingworth in four of the six from 1447 to 1455.

Although long parliamentary careers were infrequent, this was not the product of low life-expectancy. Indeed, one of the more remarkable features of the county’s 23 MPs is their general longevity. Only one of them died before the age of 50 – Henry Boson was dead at the age of 39 – and it seems that as many as eight of them lived to see their 70th birthdays. Three of these (John Stanhope, John Strelley and Chaworth) lived to 80 and beyond. The county’s representation was thus dominated by men of mature years. Only one of its MPs was under 30 when elected (Hugh Hercy in 1432), six sat when aged about 60 or over, and the remarkable Chaworth was about 70 years old when he sat for the last time in 1445.

Notwithstanding the fact that many of the county’s MPs represented it only once, multiple returns were frequent enough to ensure that Nottinghamshire was generally represented by men with previous parliamentary experience. To nine of the 22 assemblies of Henry VI’s reign the county returned two MPs who had sat before, and on only three occasions were two novices elected (significantly, two of these fell in the late 1440s when the county’s representation was undergoing a period of transition). Although this represents a slightly higher level of continuity than in the earlier period, with about 64% as against 55% of the seats being filled by experienced MPs, instances of immediate re-election were less common. Here the moment of change was 1406. After that date there is nothing to compare with the five successive elections of Sir John Annesley† between 1384 and 1388, or the four successive returns of Sir Richard Stanhope between 1402 and 1406.18 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 551. In Henry VI’s reign no MP was returned to more than two consecutive assemblies, and there were only five re-elections in total.19 This excludes Bowes who sat for the county and London in successive Parls. These statistics present no obvious conclusion. The restraint upon successive elections may have lain in a reluctance on the part of the greatest gentry to devote themselves consistently to parliamentary affairs or, perhaps more probably, in competition for seats.

For most of this period representation was dominated, not surprisingly given Nottinghamshire’s tenurial geography, by an elite of gentry families. It was comparatively rare for the head of one of these families not to appear as one of the MPs. Of the 11 families cited above, only the Nevilles of Rolleston are unrepresented among the county’s fifteenth-century MPs, and eight of the 11 provided at least one MP during the reign of Henry VI. It was thus natural that the bulk of Nottinghamshire’s MPs should have been drawn from families long established there, generally, although not always, from the principal dynasties. The families of Babington, Boson, Bowes, Chaworth, Clifton, Hercy, Meryng, Pierrepont, Strelley and Willoughby could all trace their landholdings there at least back to the thirteenth century, and six of them had provided MPs in earlier generations. Between them they accounted for 14 of the 23 MPs during Henry VI’s reign. Three of the other MPs, the two Stanhopes and Wastnes, came from families which established themselves in the county in the fourteenth century. When someone from outside this established group was elected, some special factor was operative in the election, as in the cases of Fitzwilliam, Illingworth and Roos discussed below.

The most interesting manifestation of predominance of an established elite among the MPs is the frequency with which either the son and heir or a junior member of their families was elected. Sir Henry Pierrepont in 1423 and 1425 (as well as in 1417 and December 1421), Richard Willoughby in 1435, William Babington in 1439 and 1445, and Robert Clifton in 1453 were all elected before they had come into their inheritances; Norman Babington, elected on three occasions, was the younger brother of the family head; and John Strelley was first cousin of Sir Robert Strelley.

Yet, although the bulk of the MPs were drawn from Nottinghamshire’s leading families, this is not to say that most of them were knights. The well-documented mid fifteenth-century decline in knighthood is very apparent in the list of MPs. For the 28 Parliaments between 1386 and 1421 for which the identity of both MPs is known, on only two occasions (1399 and 1411) was neither of them a knight, and on as many as 11 occasions both held the rank. This pattern, albeit with a slightly lower number of knights, continued for the first part of Henry VI’s reign: to the 14 Parliaments which met between 1422 and 1445, two knights were elected on five occasions and one knight on the same number. Thereafter, however, the situation was radically different. No knight was elected between Chaworth in 1445 and Sir Robert Strelley in 1460.

Part of the explanation for this decline, in Nottinghamshire as in other counties, lies in the reversal of English military fortunes in France and the increasing disengagement of the county gentry from the war. The knighted tended to be veterans of Henry V’s campaigns, namely Chaworth, Sir Gervase Clifton, Meryng and Pierrepont. None of them continued to serve militarily after 1422. Only Boson, Fitzwilliam and Plumpton are known to have fought in France after that date, although Roos, John Strelley and Wastnes may have done. None, in any event, had a notable military career. But the reluctance of the leading gentry to assume knighthood was probably more than simply a lack of foreign military experience. Notable in this respect are John Stanhope, Richard Willoughby, Robert Clifton and William Babington, all sons and heirs of knights, who filled eight of the seats from 1435 to 1460. Only Clifton eventually took the rank, but not until after his sole recorded election.

Notwithstanding the lack of knights among Nottinghamshire’s MPs, particularly in the second half of Henry VI’s reign, the elite’s dominance meant that relatively few of the seats were taken by men of law. Aside from the professional lawyers, Bowes and Illingworth, only three other MPs seem to have received a legal training. Two of these, namely Richard Willoughby and William Babington, were themselves from the county’s leading families; the other was Nicholas Fitzwilliam, who was at Lincoln’s Inn in the late 1420s. These five lawyers were returned on a total of 11 occasions between 1429 and 1455, but, taking the fifteenth century as a whole, lawyers were not prominent among the county’s MPs. Indeed, the parliamentary careers of Bowes and Illingworth were exceptional not just for the period under review here but over a much longer period.

All but three of Nottinghamshire’s MPs inherited property in the county (if we include Illingworth whose inheritance must have been minimal), and these three acquired it by marriage. John Roos and Sir John Zouche both married heiresses and settled at their wives’ manors of Laxton and Kirklington respectively; and Nicholas Fitzwilliam married a widow and fraudulently secured a hereditary interest in her dower and jointure lands to the disinheritance of the issue of Ralph Mackerell. With the probable exception of Fitzwilliam (whose only known residence was in south Yorkshire), all the MPs were qualified for election under the statutes in that they were resident in the county at the date of the writ of summons for the Parliaments in which they sat. But, although nearly all the shire knights had their principal interests there, they also had extensive holdings elsewhere. Many of them inherited property in the surrounding counties, particularly in Yorkshire (the focus of the concerns of Plumpton and Fitzwilliam) and Derbyshire, but some of the wealthier MPs held lands much further away. Zouche’s hereditary interests were particularly dispersed. His baronial father settled on him manors in Wiltshire, Kent, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Hampshire, and it is not surprising that he preferred to live on his wife’s more concentrated estate in Nottinghamshire and south Yorkshire. Taking into account the lands that came to them by marriage, the landholdings of the MPs were even more extensive. Particularly notable in this respect was Chaworth, who by his second marriage acquired property in seven other shires as well as in London.

The extent of the MPs’ lands was also reflected in their wealth. The survival of Nottinghamshire returns for the subsidies of 1435-6 and 1450-1 allow an estimate to be made of the income of most of them. The assessments must be taken as minima – the second subsidy, in particular, was characterized by undervaluation – but they do provide a guide to the relative, if not the absolute, incomes of those assessed.20 E179/240/266; 159/84. There can be no doubt that three of the MPs enjoyed clear annual revenues in excess of £200 (at least at the time their landholdings were at their most extensive). Chaworth probably inherited lands worth about that sum and his second marriage to the Aylesbury heiress elevated him to the ranks of the wealthiest gentry in England. Next to him in wealth were Plumpton, who inherited lands worth about £300 p.a., and Hugh Willoughby, who after his marriage to the Freville heiress enjoyed a similar income, boosted by the revenues of the coal mines at Wollaton. Zouche, again after marriage to an heiress, was probably worth in the region of £200 p.a., and the two Cliftons received about the same amount (although Robert had yet to enter his patrimony when he sat in his only recorded Parliament). Several other MPs had incomes of over £100 p.a., enough to place them among the ranks of the greater gentry: Pierrepont, William Babington (although not while an MP), the partially disinherited Richard Willoughby (with the same proviso), the two Stanhopes (although for part of John’s parliamentary career the interests of his brothers and stepmother diminished his income), and Sir Robert Strelley. To this group is to be added Mackerell, whose income was inflated by his wife’s interest in the Cressy of Hodsock lands, the inheritance of his stepson, Sir Gervase Clifton.

Below this elite there was a group of lesser knights and wealthy esquires whose annual income lay in the region of £40-£100: Boson, Hercy, Meryng, Roos, Wastnes and Fitzwilliam (although a significant part of his income was derived from his wife’s lands). With respect to the remaining four, John Strelley and Norman Babington received incomes of less than £40, the former owing his return to the exceptional circumstances of 1459 and the latter to his family connexions. The lawyer, Bowes, also had landholdings insufficient to qualify him for election but his income was considerably augmented by the profits of his profession. The same applies to Illingworth, who was landless, or nearly so, by birth.

The pre-eminence of the greater gentry among the county’s MPs also found expression in the overlap between them and the holders of the two major offices of shire administration, those of sheriff and j.p. As many as 14 of the 23 held the former office, serving no fewer than 28 terms between them, impressive figures considering that the bailiwick also included Derbyshire.21 In addition, three of these 14 sheriffs also held the office in other counties: Chaworth and Hugh Willoughby in Lincs. and Plumpton in Yorks. As many as 18 of the 44 seats were taken by men who had already served as sheriff, and to four Parliaments, those of 1431, 1433, 1442 and 1460, two former sheriffs were elected. Fifteen of the MPs were named to the county bench at some point in their careers.22 Of these 15, Bowes was also appointed in Leics. and both Chaworth and Pierrepont in Derbys. Of those not named to the comm. in Notts., Illingworth was appointed in Surr. and Yorks, and Plumpton and Fitzwilliam in the W. Riding. Fourteen of the county’s seats were taken by serving j.p.s., and a further six by former ones.23 In addition, Fitzwilliam was elected in 1447 as a serving j.p. in the W. Riding, and Pierrepont in 1423 as a former j.p. in Derbys. These instances were not, however, evenly distributed over the period. To every Parliament between 1420 and 1445 inclusive, with the single exception of 1426, at least one of those elected was a serving member of the bench, and on two occasions, in 1429 and 1445, both were. Before 1420, however, the return of j.p.s. had been uncommon (largely because the bench was smaller), and, for a different reason, was to be so again after 1445. To the eight Parliaments from 1447 and 1453, only in 1453 was a j.p. elected. This difference reflects the change in the pattern of the county’s representation in the late 1440s. Predictably, there was a much lower level of overlap between the MPs and the holders of the lesser office of escheator. Eight of the 23 served as escheator at some point in their careers, although one of these, Fitzwilliam, served in Yorkshire rather than Nottinghamshire. Nine of the county’s 44 seats were taken by its former escheators, and, in addition, Fitzwilliam was returned in 1447 having officiated in Yorkshire. In 1429 Bowes was returned as the serving escheator, but this was a unique instance.

Not uncommonly there was an intimate connexion between parliamentary service and appointment to one of the major offices of county government. Twice the pricked sheriff was a serving MP, namely Chaworth in 1423 and Norman Babington in 1433.24 There were three such instances in the earlier period, and in 1417 Chaworth was named as sheriff while MP-elect: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 551. To these instances are to be added two others on which an MP was named to the office soon after a Parliament in which he had served, namely John Stanhope in 1454 and Wastnes in 1456. There was a similar correspondence in the case of the escheatorship. Wastnes was appointed to the office while sitting in the Parliament of 1450, and both Norman Babington and Boson were named to it within a few months of the end of their first Parliaments. It is more difficult to discern a similar correlation between parliamentary service and elevation to the county bench. John Stanhope was first appointed a j.p. on 20 Apr. 1454 at the end of his long service in the Parliament of 1453; and during the prorogation of the Parliament of 1460 Sir Robert Strelley was reappointed to the bench after an absence of two years. These correspondences between service in the Commons and appointment to administrative office may be no more than fortuitous, but it is probable, at least in some instances, that the MPs took advantage of their position to lobby for appointment.25 Payling, Political Society, 114-15.

Only three of the MPs served in the administration of the duchy of Lancaster, and two of these did so because of their interests beyond the county’s boundaries. Sir William Plumpton owed his appointment to the stewardship of the honour of Knaresborough in Yorkshire (in 1439, two years after he represented Nottinghamshire in Parliament) to his place in the service of the earl of Northumberland. The other two were in office when they sat for the county: when MP in 1425, Pierrepont was master forester of Duffield chase in Derbyshire – at a point in his career when his main interests lay in that county; and while an MP in the Parliament of 1450 Illingworth was appointed as deputy steward of the north parts of the duchy as a servant of Lord Cromwell. In view of the fact that the county was one of traditional Lancastrian allegiance with many of its principal families tenants of the duchy, it is perhaps surprising that so few of the MPs were duchy officers. The reason probably lies, in part at least, in one of the clear narrative strands in the county’s history during Henry VI’s reign, namely the declining political credit of the house of Lancaster. In 1399 the local gentry had given active support to Henry of Bolingbroke’s cause, and several subsequently benefited from the grant of royal annuities (among them two of the MPs under discussion here, Chaworth and Sir Richard Stanhope). These annuitants dominated the county’s representation during the reign of Henry IV. Later the county’s connexion with the ruling house found expression in the absorption of some of its prominent men into the royal household. As a group they were, as remarked below, conspicuous among the county’s MPs during the late 1440s and the 1450s.

Yet the conduct of the ten MPs who were alive during the civil war of 1459-61 demonstrates that this patronage did not win the house of Lancaster any continuing loyalty. Four of those who were or had been household esquires were alive in 1459 (William Babington, Robert Clifton, John Stanhope and Robert Strelley), and, excepting Babington, they were sympathetic to the Yorkist cause in the early 1460s. Two of the other MPs alive in 1459-61 proved themselves committed Yorkists: Illingworth won rapid advancement in the first years of Yorkist rule, winning appointment as chief baron of the Exchequer; and it is possible that Fitzwilliam, from a family of traditional Yorkist allegiance, was among those who fell on the Yorkist side at Northampton. Perhaps Roos is to be added to their number for he may have been present on the Yorkist side at Ludford Bridge. Of the remaining four, John Strelley and William Babington seem to have had some difficulty in adapting to the new political situation after 1461, but only Plumpton, a retainer of the Lancastrian Percys, suffered for his committed support to the deposed monarch.

The final matter for discussion here is the geographical distribution of the MPs. As remarked above, most of them had their residences in the south of the county. Both MPs were from the south in six Parliaments from 1423 to 1445 inclusive, and on no occasion were they both from the north. None the less, the prominence of the two Stanhopes, from their base at Rampton, ensured that the balance was not so far in favour of the south as it had been in the period 1386-1421.26 For a map of the MP’s residences in the earlier period: G. Dodd, ‘Crown, Magnates and Gentry: the English Parliament, 1369-1421’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1998), 333. Indeed, it might be speculatively suggested that one reason for the Stanhopes’ success was a perception on the part of the electors that, where possible, the county should be broadly represented. Such a conclusion is consistent with the return of one MP from the south of the county and another from the north. This occurred on no fewer than 16 out of 22 occasions in the period under review, and the same perception also appears to have informed the county’s representation after 1460. To three of the four Parliaments for which Nottinghamshire’s MPs are known in the late fifteenth century, one from the north was elected with one from the south, and the same is true of six of the next ten Parliaments for which the MPs are known, namely the assemblies between 1529 and 1558.

It is possible that a dispute over this informal principle informed the contested election of 1467. Then the sheriff, the Derbyshire esquire Nicholas Kniveton, returned two MPs from the north, John Stanhope and Robert Markham†. This was a most unusual occurrence, indeed, it had not happened since 1411 and was not to occur again until the Parliament of 1554 (Nov.). Further, some irregularity is implied by the listing of over 360 attestors, and that irregularity is confirmed by an action brought in the Exchequer of pleas by Sir Henry Pierrepont’s grandson, Henry†, of Holme Pierrepont in the south of the county. He claimed that he had been elected with Stanhope, but that Kniveton had fraudulently returned Markham. One possible explanation is that Markham failed to secure election because the electors baulked at returning two MPs from the north of the county, but that he then persuaded Kniveton to return him.27 E13/153, Trin. rots. 15-16; C219/17/1.

Election indentures survive for 20 of the 22 elections held in Henry VI’s reign. Of the 23 MPs only three are not recorded as attesting elections in the county, and in each case the explanation lies in their interests elsewhere. Plumpton and Fitzwilliam, who had their principal residences in Yorkshire, both attested elections there, and Illingworth spent the bulk of his career in south-east England. Some of the MPs were regular attestors: William Babington, Chaworth, Sir Gervase Clifton, Wastnes and Hugh Willoughby all appear seven times in the role, while Pierrepont attested five elections in Nottinghamshire and three in Derbyshire.

This, however, is not to say that the indentures were generally witnessed by a large group of the county’s leading gentry. It was rare for more than two or three of them to attest any one indenture. Equally, it was unusual for none to attest, and when this did occur some irregularity in the conduct of the hustings might be suspected.28 Payling, Political Society, 248-9. Independent evidence shows that the election of 25 Aug. 1427, attested by only 12 lesser gentry and townsmen, was held without the statutory summons to the county suitors.29 On 12 Feb. 1428, three months after the Parl. had assembled and little over a month before its prorogation, the King ordered an inquiry into the conduct of the election. At the assize session of the following 27 Feb. a jury presented that the sheriff, Sir Thomas Gresley†, had held the election before receiving the writ of summons and without summoning the suitors of the county court; and that he had made the return under his own seal alone, omitting those of the attestors: Parliamentarians at Law, 116-31; J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 15-16. On the other hand, at some elections the shire elite was strongly represented. Particularly notable in this respect were the elections held on 27 Sept. 1423, 10 Feb. 1426 and 13 Jan. 1449. The first was attested by five knights, including Zouche and Sir Gervase Clifton, and the heads of two other of the county’s leading families; the second by six knights, two of whom (Sir Ralph Shirley† and Sir John Gra*) had their principal interests outside the shire; and the third by three knights together with William Babington, Robert Clifton and Robert Strelley, and other prominent men.30 Payling, Political Society, 160; C219/13/4. By far the most interesting of the county’s returns, however, is the poll list of 6 Oct. 1460, the only known such list for a late-medieval county parliamentary election anywhere in the country. This reveals something of the mechanism of election and suggests that the lesser freeholders could sometimes have a say in who was returned. There were four candidates: Sir Robert Strelley polled 160 votes; John Stanhope 150; Richard Sutton‡ 56; and William Babington 44. Since no fewer than 139 of Stanhope’s supporters also voted for Strelley, there can be no doubt that they stood as a joint ‘ticket’, and it is equally clear that Stanhope was responsible for mobilizing the bulk of their support. The election was decided by the large number of small freeholders who travelled down to Nottingham from the northern wapentake of Bassetlaw. Of the 57 attestors who voted for both men and whose place of residence can be identified, no fewer than 45 came from Bassetlaw, and many of these were Stanhope’s neighbours and tenants.31 Payling, Political Society, 161-5.

Another of the indentures also named an unusually large number of attestors. That of 20 Oct. 1449 listed as many as 223, including the two successful candidates. Further, in a departure from custom the election was held not at Nottingham but at Newark.32 C219/15/7. No other election is known to have been held outside the county town until 1545, when the election was held at Southwell: The Commons 1509-58, i. 165. These are sure signs of either contest or irregularity, and it is significant in this context that both those elected, John Stanhope and Henry Boson, were esquires of the royal household. From the point of view of the embattled government, Household representation was at a premium in the forthcoming Parliament, and it may be that the Nottinghamshire election witnessed a conflict between supporters and opponents of the government. Its resolution in favour of the former is noteworthy in view of the number of the latter who were returned to this Parliament. The result of the Nottinghamshire election departed from the national norm for two reasons: the returning sheriff was the prominent Household official, Thomas Staunton*, and, more importantly, Stanhope wielded the same electoral influence that he was to do in the very different circumstances of 1460. Of the 109 attestors whose place of residence can be identified, as many as 62 came from the wapentake of Bassetlaw and 35 from Bassetlaw’s South Clay division, where the bulk of the Stanhope estates lay.33 Payling, Political Society, 163. Predictably, therefore, there was a significant overlap between the attestors of the two elections: 68 names are common to both. Many small freeholders from the north of the county are to be found as attestors in only these two returns. Obviously the Stanhopes wielded a considerable amount of electoral influence, the mobilization of which was liable to ensure that the head of the family would prevail in a contest.

One further indenture, made on 30 June 1455 in respect of the Parliament summoned to meet in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans, provides some indication of the considerations that informed the election. It too names a comparatively large number of attestors, namely 61, but it is their identity rather than their number that is revealing. Most unusually, two of the principal electors came from out of the county, namely two Derbyshire esquires, Robert Eyre* and John Statham. The first was a servant of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, the second of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and there can be no doubt that their presence there was dictated by that service. Both lords had played an equivocal role in the confrontation at St. Albans in the previous month, and Cromwell, in particular, needed men in the Commons to bolster his political position.34 S.J. Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 904-7. Eyre also attested the Derbys. hustings held three days later, when the Talbot servant, Robert Barley*, was elected: C219/16/3. It is not therefore strange that the two MPs, Illingworth and Wastnes, were the same two men as were returned in 1450. The first owed his place in the county almost entirely to Cromwell, and Wastnes was a Talbot tenant (in respect of his Yorkshire manor of Todwick) and had his own connexions with Cromwell.35 Wastnes may also have been returned as a supporter of the duke of York. He can be identified, albeit only tentatively, with ‘one Wastnesse’ who in 1450 had allegedly threatened the King to his face that York ‘schuld be fechid home with many thousandis’ to assume control of government: R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 283, 301.

This return raises the more important question of baronial influence on Nottinghamshire’s elections. In general, it is fair to say that the comparative lack of baronial acres in the county meant that peers for the most part exercised little influence over its parliamentary representation. This is not to say that the MPs had no connexions with greater men, only that these connexions did not determine their parliamentary careers. Zouche, for example, was steward of the archbishop of York’s lordship of Southwell, of which he was a tenant, when elected in 1422; and Chaworth was steward of the Leicestershire and Rutland estates of Henry Beauchamp, duke of Warwick, when elected in 1445. For both these men, however, their offices were a manifestation of their local importance not the occasion for it, and they could command election on their own account. In the late 1440s and early 1450s, however, baronial influence made itself strongly felt in the person of Lord Cromwell. After his resignation as treasurer in 1443 his influence in central politics had waned, and in the early 1450s he faced a series of threats to his position in national affairs, arising largely out of his great quarrel with Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, over the valuable Bedfordshire lordship of Ampthill. This, together with the general political contentiousness of the Parliaments of these years, explains his evident desire to have his own men in the Commons, and, perhaps because of the lack of rival peers, it was in Nottinghamshire that he was most successful in this aim. In 1447 both the county’s MPs numbered among his affinity. Fitzwilliam, a Yorkshireman whose only lands in Nottinghamshire were held in right of his wife, was his kinsman and had been in his service since the late 1420s; and Illingworth, of obscure family, had won a place in his service through his legal skills. The latter’s returns to the next assembly and to those of 1450 and 1455 can also be explained only in terms of Cromwell’s patronage, and there is also evidence, although less strong, to link his fellow Nottinghamshire MPs in these three Parliaments, Roos and Wastnes, to the same service. Cromwell’s men thus seem to have filled eight of the county’s 12 seats between 1447 and 1455 before his influence was terminated by death.

It would, however, be wrong to suppose that so profound an effect on the county’s representation could be produced at will. Cromwell was undoubtedly a powerful man on good terms with several of Nottinghamshire’s leading gentry, including William Babington (who was his deputy as constable of the bishop of Lincoln’s castle at Newark) and Chaworth, but his success at the hustings owed something to the fortuitous. It was not simply his influence that produced so clear a break in the county’s representation in 1447. No one elected before that date was returned then or thereafter, largely because a series of deaths among the leading gentry meant that this was the point at which one generation of county leaders gave way to another.36 Payling, Political Society, 142-3.

The pattern of representation also changed for another reason, namely the reconstruction of the royal affinity in the county. The affinity quickly built up by Henry IV, the members of which were so prominent among the county’s MPs in the early years of Lancastrian rule, had not been replenished; and when Henry VI took over the reins of government in the late 1430s only Chaworth, among the leading men of Nottinghamshire, survived from Henry IV’s annuitants in the county. The King’s coming of age, however, brought a general and very substantial increase in his household establishment, and, not surprisingly, several Nottinghamshire men were recruited. Five of these numbered among the county’s MPs: William Babington (in the Household from 1441 or earlier), Boson, John Stanhope and Robert Clifton (all recruited in the 1440s) and Robert Strelley (from 1451). Between 1439, when Babington was elected, and 1460, these men filled nine of the county’s 22 seats.37 To these instances might be added from these years the election of Chaworth in 1445, but by this date his royal connexion does not appear to have extended beyond the receipt of his long-held annuity. Thus, at first sight, it appears that in the second part of this period the Crown exerted a strong influence over the county’s representation. This, however, is a misleading impression. In respect of only five of the nine seats – Babington in 1445, Stanhope and Boson in 1449 (Nov.), and Clifton and Stanhope in 1453 – is it certain that the MP was in receipt of Household robes when elected. Further, four of the five Household MPs were from the county’s leading families, and their Household service need not have been a factor in their election. Only in the case of Boson can it be confidently asserted that he would not have been elected but for his connexion with the Crown.38 Payling, Political Society, 147-56.

None the less, these caveats aside, the influence of Cromwell and, to a lesser extent, that of the Crown, meant that the county’s representation presented a different aspect in the second part of the period. These new influences reflect the fact that, from the late 1440s, elections, in Nottinghamshire as elsewhere, became subject, in a way they had not been before, to national political allegiances.

Earlier, the most important influence upon the county’s representation had been the private interests of the local gentry. In the absence of correspondence, their detailed operation is concealed from the historian, but on occasions circumstantial evidence leaves little doubt that these interests explain why a particular individual was returned to a specific Parliament. The elections of 1425 and 1427 provide two such instances. At the time of his return to the assembly of 1425 Pierrepont was embroiled in a dispute with Sir John Gresley* over the wardenship of the duchy of Lancaster chace of Duffield Frith, and he no doubt spoke against the petition Gresley presented against him in the first parliamentary session.39 SC8/114/5698. Two years later, Mackerell secured election as protection against a serious threat to his interests. His third marriage had brought him into a damaging dispute with the redoubtable widow, Margaret, once wife of Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1406). In 1424 she had brought an action of waste against the couple, claiming the massive sum of £2,000 in damages. After the customary delays, a jury was summoned to appear at the octave of Michaelmas 1427.40. CP40/653, rot. 7d. In the meantime, at an election held on 25 Aug., Mackerell had, by irregular means, secured his return to the Parliament convened to meet on 13 Oct. In this assembly he presented a petition to the Commons complaining that the jury had been packed with supporters of the plaintiff, and this seems to have produced the desired result for the case was still pending in 1431.41. CP40/660, rot. 215; 678, rot. 203d; SC8/125/6242.

Mackerell’s election arose out of purely selfish motives, and it may be that this was why he needed to resort to subterfuge to secure it. There were, however, other instances when a private interest with a much broader support determined the county’s representation. The elections to the Parliaments of 1435 and 1437 were dominated by the issue of the ransom of one of the shire’s leading men and a major military figure, Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1458). He had been captured at the battle of Patay in 1429 and the huge ransom of some £3,000 proved predictably difficult to raise. The Parliament of 1435 saw the presentation of two petitions on his behalf, and it is more than coincidental that his friend, John Bowes (who seems to have owed his legal training to the patronage of Rempston’s father), sat for the county. More significantly, the issue may also explain Bowes’s election to the Speakership. Although a lawyer, he was not of sufficient account to be a candidate for that office on his own merits. The best explanation for his selection lies in the support of Rempston’s powerful friends, numbered among whom was William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who looked to him to forward the petitions to be presented on the captive’s behalf.42 PROME, xi. 179-80; S.J. Payling, ‘Identifiable Motives’, in The Fifteenth Century VI ed. Clark, 98. In this Bowes was successful and Rempston’s release was secured, but that was not the end of the matter. The issue also determined the result of the next Nottinghamshire election: on 10 Dec. 1436 Sir Thomas’s nephew of the half blood, Plumpton (the only occasion on which this wealthy Yorkshire knight sat in Parliament), and friend, Chaworth, were returned by attestors including four of the Leek kinsmen of his mother. It was no doubt these two MPs together with Rempston’s son-in-law, Sir Brian Stapleton*, MP for Yorkshire, who sponsored the Commons petition complaining of the Exchequer’s refusal to disburse the 1,000 marks granted to him by the Crown. Their own self-interest was probably also engaged in that they had advanced money to Sir Thomas and repayment depended on this royal grant.43 C219/15/1; SC8/137/6844. More complete evidence would undoubtedly reveal other instances of the operation of private interest.44 Norman Babington, when sitting in the Parl. of 1426, purchased a pardon for an unlicensed alienation; and, as an MP in 1442, Sir William Meryng received a royal grant of two tuns of wine a year (earlier he had used his M embership of the assembly of May 1421 to petition for money due to him from the Crown). In 1460 the candidature of one of the unsuccessful candidates, Robert Sutton, was probably prompted by a desire to forward his claim to the valuable manor of Bingham: CP40/793, rot. 450; 798, rot. 200.

Nottinghamshire’s representation presents some unusual features. Baronial influence could be effectively exerted over it, as Cromwell demonstrated in the late 1440s and early 1450s, but this was very much the exception rather than the rule. The county’s political leadership lay in the hands of a well-defined elite of gentry families, who dominated its parliamentary representation not only in the period under review here but throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Within this elite there appears to have been a competition for seats. Although open to more than one interpretation, the comparative infrequency of re-election and the relatively high proportion of MPs recorded as representing the county only once can be taken as general indicators of that competition. The electoral indentures provide more particular evidence. The poll list of 1460 shows that at least one of the elections of this period was contested, and the long indenture of October 1449 implies so was at least one other. Further, another contest is known to have occurred in 1467. It is revealing of the county’s electoral dynamics that John Stanhope was one of the successful candidates on all three occasions. The indentures suggest his family enjoyed a greater electoral influence than others. As one of only two leading county families resident in north Nottinghamshire, they were able to mobilize the freeholders of the northern wapentake of Bassetlaw, and it may not be coincidental that, in the reign of Henry VI, they took as many as eight seats. The Stanhopes may also have benefited electorally from a perception on the part of the electors that, for each Parliament, one MP should be drawn from the south of the county and one from the north. This principle was honoured in respect of most of the Parliaments of the period.

With regard to the relationship between the representation of the county and its county town, no MP in the period sat for both. The infiltration of the leading county families into the Nottingham’s representation came later. In the period under review here the only MP for the town from these families was Thomas Babington*, returned five times as Nottingham’s recorder between 1447 and 1470; by contrast, from 1529 to 1558, the next period for which a near-complete record of the town’s representation survives, as many as eight of the 24 seats were taken by the families of Babington, Pierrepont and Markham.45 The Commons 1509-58, i. 166-7.