Surrey

The main lines of medieval traffic through Surrey were based upon the old Roman roads crossing the north-west side of the county from Hampshire to London and running from the capital towards Kent in the south-east. These facilitated the movement of trade and military retinues between the Thames valley and the coast on either side of the county’s core, the former to Southampton and Portsmouth, and the latter to the Cinque Ports. Nevertheless, it was on or near an important transverse road along the North Downs (which took pilgrims to Canterbury and wool from the West Country for shipment to the Low Countries), that several market towns had developed; and in proximity to that route had also been built Surrey’s four chief castles, at Farnham, Guildford, Reigate and Bletchingley. The more inaccessible roads, cutting through the Wealden Forest from the Sussex ports in the south were becoming increasingly less frequented, and iron, the most important product of the Sussex weald, seems to have been transported to London by sea. Forests, notably those of Windsor, with its vast hunting grounds, Woolmer and Alice Holt, also girdled the north and west of the county. Thus, although the royal administration bound Surrey to its neighbouring county to the south, so that Surrey and Sussex shared a sheriff and an escheator, in practice the gentry and merchants of Surrey looked more towards Westminster and London than to the south, leaving Sussex much more isolated from the capital. In the north of the county Southwark, Lambeth and Bermondsey shared in the life of London and prospered as several ecclesiastical dignitaries, including the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops of Winchester and Rochester, took up semi-permanent residence there.4 VCH Surr. i. 354-60.

The greatest landowner in the county was the King himself. Henry V chose the site of his restored palace at Sheen for the most ambitious monastic foundation ever attempted by an English king, endowing his Charterhouse there with estates of suppressed alien priories. After he came of age Henry VI often prolonged his visits to this Thames-side residence,5 Hen. V: Practice of Kingship ed. Harriss, 110-11; B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 90, 94, 361-5, 367-71. so that it was at Sheen that his Council sometimes met in the 1440s, and a great council was summoned there in September 1449. The pattern of the King’s movements changed, however, following his period of insanity and the protectorates of the duke of York, leading to the neglect of Sheen after 1456.6 PPC, v. 196-9, 224, 229; J. Watts, Hen. VI and the Politics of Kingship, 245; Wolffe, 305. Next in importance were the episcopal overlords, notably the successive bishops of Winchester, Beaufort and Waynflete, with their valuable estate (comprising castle, manor and hundred) at Farnham, and their palace at Southwark. No single lay magnate dominated Surrey during Henry VI’s reign. Part of the great Clare inheritance, broken up in the fourteenth century, had passed to the Staffords, so that in the period here under review the estate and castle at Bletchingley belonged to Humphrey, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham.7 VCH Surr. i. 363-4; C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 192. Similarly, the de Warenne inheritance, which had descended intact to Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, had been split up on his childless death in 1415 between his three sisters and their descendants; in Surrey the chief beneficiaries of the partition, the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, focused their estate administration on Reigate castle. Of lesser barons, the Cobhams of Sterborough had not received personal summonses to Parliament since 1372; and it was not until 1455 that Sir John Bourgchier, a brother of the archbishop of Canterbury, was summoned as Lord Berners by virtue of the inheritance of his wife, the widow of the MP John Feriby.8 CP, ii. 153; iii. 354.

Assessments made in 1412 for the special tax on landed incomes recorded the earl of Arundel as the only nobleman with substantial holdings in the county (in his case worth £60 p.a.). By this account, wealth was surprisingly evenly distributed: as many as 55 of the 72 landowners deemed subject to taxation were said to possess land worth the round sum of £20 p.a. (the minimum amount subject to the tax). Just seven received an annual income of £40 from their possessions in Surrey, and only the incomes of Sir Reynold Cobham, John Uvedale† and Nicholas Carew† exceeded £60.9 Feudal Aids, vi. 516-19.

The names are known of 28 shire knights who served as Surrey’s representatives in 21 of the 22 Parliaments assembled between 1422 and 1460. (The returns for the Parliament of 1455 have not survived, but otherwise the information is complete.) More than half of this number could not be said to have had parliamentary ‘careers’, for 15 were elected for Surrey just once or twice, and are not known to have been returned by other constituencies. John Feriby and John Weston were each elected three times in Henry VI’s reign; and by dint of their returns under the King’s grandfather and father four others represented the county more often, so that William Yerde notched up at least four Parliaments, William Ottworth five, John Wintershall six and John Clipsham seven. Such parliamentary service might be relatively compressed: Yerde’s was contained within the ten-year period from 1413, and Clipsham’s in the 13 years from 1414. Conversely, Wintershall’s extended over 30 years, from 1401 to 1433. It is also worthy of note that at least eight of the 28 had represented other constituencies before their elections for Surrey: John Ellingbridge and the Gaynesford brothers (William, John II and Nicholas), had all sat for the Surrey borough of Bletchingley; William Weston for the county town of Guildford; Ralph Legh for boroughs in three different counties; and William Sydney twice as a knight of the shire for Sussex. John Wood, a veteran of three Parliaments for Midhurst and another for Sussex by the time he represented Surrey in 1460, became the most experienced parliamentarian of them all by going on to sit in at least five more either for Surrey or Sussex, and ending his very long participation in the proceedings of the Commons (spread over 48 years), with election as Speaker of the House in 1483. If service for other constituencies is taken into account, the average number of Parliaments attended by this group of 28 individuals amounted to three.

It would seem that the Surrey electorate generally preferred candidates who offered some previous experience of the workings of the House of Commons. In eight of the 21 Parliaments for which the names of Members are recorded both had been elected before, for this or another constituency; and in 11 more one of them is known to have been qualified in this way. In the light of this statistic, the county’s Membership in the consecutive Parliaments of 1442 and 1445 stands out as very much out of the ordinary, for all four of those elected were apparent novices. A similar election of two newcomers had not happened since 1420 – and, given the previous gaps in the returns, it is doubtful that those two, Skerne and Ottworth, were indeed untried. As a caveat to the conclusion that experienced men appear to have been preferred, it should be noted that in Henry VI’s reign the electors set little store by continuity in representation from Parliament to Parliament. Only in 1427, when Clipsham, one of the MPs of the previous year, was re-elected, and in 1447 when Stanley was returned for the second time, did such strict continuity apply. In this respect there was a change from the electoral pattern of the late fourteenth century and the earlier part of the fifteenth, a period which had seen Nicholas Carew sitting in four consecutive Parliaments (1394-7) and John Burgh† in three (1414-16), as well as five other incidences of re-election.10 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 623-7, 815.

To a certain extent continuity of representation may have been provided by the election of ten men who belonged to local families that had supplied MPs in the past, and thus carried on a tradition of service. Among them were Arnold Brocas, the son and heir of Thomas Brocas†; Nicholas Carew, the third of his name to serve Surrey in three successive generations; William Uvedale, the son of John, brother of another John*, and uncle of two more MPs; John and William Weston, the sons of another William Weston†; and Thomas Wintershall, the son of John and brother of Robert*. In the fifteenth century the families of Weston, Wintershall and above all Gaynesford stand out for their numerous appearances in the Commons for Surrey and its boroughs. Four members of the Weston family occupied 17 seats from 1380 to 1447; five Wintershalls filled 11 between 1397 and 1435; and five Gaynesfords occupied at least 11 between 1431 and 1491. Even so, no single family could be said to have dominated Surrey’s representation in Henry VI’s reign.

With one exception (Sir John Norbury, returned in 1445) all the shire knights were resident landowners in the county at the time of their elections, in compliance with the statutory requirements. Thirteen or more acquired their holdings principally through inheritance; and at least seven others did so by contracting a marriage to a well-endowed local widow or heiress. This latter group included Feriby, Founteyns, Slyfield and Tyrell (who married the heiresses of Berners, Clipsham, Weston and Croyser, respectively), and Wood, the husband of an heiress who was also a wealthy widow. Others accumulated their lands in Surrey mainly by purchase or lease – among them Nicholas Gaynesford, Legh and Stanley – or else by royal grant (a category into which John Penycoke fell). Of course, these different categories were not mutually exclusive. For example, Feriby, although made rich by his marriage, came by the manor of Witley, worth £40 p.a., by grant of Henry V. For a few, the provenance of their landed holdings remains uncertain. We do not know how John Basket acquired his property in Bagshot, and while it can be shown that the Surrey lands of Ellingbridge’s father belonged to the latter’s second wife (John’s stepmother) of necessity he himself had sought his fortune by other means.

As this summary indicates, by no means all the shire knights were natives of Surrey. Nearly half of them (at least 12) originated from elsewhere, and while one of this group, Wood, came from no further away than Sussex, many of the rest migrated from a considerable distance. Ottworth’s origins lay in Wiltshire and Basket’s in Dorset, while Feriby and Penycoke probably hailed from Lincolnshire, Yerde from Cornwall, Ellingbridge from the Welsh marches, Skerne from Yorkshire, and as many as three others (Legh, Stanley and Norbury) from Cheshire (although the family of the last had settled in Hertfordshire in his father’s lifetime). In short, although many of the shire knights did belong to local families, a significant proportion of the 28 were new arrivals to the county, who entered the local community through marriage into the established gentry or, more often, as a consequence of their service to the Crown.

The location of candidates’ homes may have been a factor in their success in the elections held during the early years of Henry VI’s reign. While the King was a minor, from 1422 to 1437, most of Surrey’s MPs were drawn from the south-west of the county, and lived in or relatively near the county town of Guildford. Such men took 15 of the 22 seats in those years. By contrast, in the Parliaments of 1439-60, only four of the 20 recorded seats were allotted to inhabitants of that area; and eight of the 16 MPs lived much closer to London. Among the latter were Stanley and Legh whose homes, respectively at Stockwell and Battersea, were conveniently placed for access to the centre of government at Westminster. Unusually, Basket lived in the far west of Surrey, at Bagshot, Sydney in the south, close to the Sussex border, and Ellingbridge and the three Gaynsford brothers in the east on the other side of the Downs.

It is not easy to determine the extent of the wealth of individuals within this group of MPs. Nevertheless, while none ranked among the highest gentry of England, several were undoubtedly affluent and in possession of landed holdings in other south-eastern shires besides Surrey. The most useful evidence comes from the tax returns of 1412 and 1436 and from inquisitions post mortem, but these records are by no means complete and are in several respects unsatisfactory for the purpose of assessing relative incomes. As already noted, the Surrey landowners listed in 1412 included only seven laymen thought to have received more than £20 a year. Yet other records show that Carew’s estates in five counties provided him with as much as £162 p.a., that Legh grew wealthy enough to purchase lands worth some £100 p.a., that Feriby’s annual income from land amounted to at least £90 (and he could set about buying more in Oxfordshire), that Stanley derived an income of £78 from the Crown in the form of fees and annuities, and that the holdings of John Gaynesford I in Surrey, Sussex and Kent, estimated at £60 p.a. in 1436 (five years after he sat in Parliament), grew in size and value before they were inherited by his sons. Precise figures for the incomes of Sydney and Wood are lacking, but both clearly became wealthy, especially Wood, who through advantageous marriages and employment by the Crown accumulated estates in three counties and valuable properties in London. Others appear to have been more modestly placed: Tyrell’s marriage brought him £40 p.a. from Surrey and more from Bedfordshire, an income matched by those of Ottworth and John Weston; while Clipsham received about £24 p.a., Skerne, John Wintershall and Yerde £20 p.a., and Founteyns just 20 marks.

As had been the case in the three and a half decades before 1422, one of the striking features of the parliamentary representation of Surrey was the almost complete domination of the returns by esquires and gentlemen rather than belted knights, even though many of those returned were clearly eligible for knighthood by virtue of their wealth and standing.11 A mere five of the 56 MPs between 1386 and 1421 were knights by rank: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 623-4. In fact, only a single MP in Henry VI’s reign may have been a knight at the time of his election, and it is not even certain that he, Norbury, had definitely been knighted before the start of the Parliament in which he sat. This is because the names of the shire knights for the assembly of 1445 are known only from their appointments at the close of the second session of the Parliament on 3 June to apportion tax allowances, and there is a possibility that Norbury was dubbed only five days earlier, on the eve of the coronation of Margaret of Anjou. Norbury was an unusual choice as MP in several other respects. A younger son of a namesake who had been a close friend of Henry IV and that King’s first treasurer of England, he is not known to have held any property in Surrey, and it is strange that it was he who was elected and not his elder brother Sir Henry Norbury*, who had entered the shire community by marrying the Croyser heiress after the death of her former husband the MP Richard Tyrell. John’s knighthood may have been warranted by exemplary military service in France, although here again he fell far behind his brother in terms of notable exploits in the field. The only other MP for Surrey in this period ever to attain knighthood was Wood, whose knighthood came very near the end of his long career and as a reward for service in the Exchequer and as Speaker in 1483.

Thus, 27 of the 28 MPs were ranked as esquires or gentlemen, and although five of them were distrained to take up knighthood they declined to do so. Little is recorded about their education and professional training, although it is known that Brocas was educated at Winchester College and that Feriby started out as a clerk intending to enter the Church, only to change course to become a married esquire in royal service. Earlier in the century few lawyers had been returned for the county – only Robert Bussebrigge† in 1407 and Robert Skerne in 1420 are thought to have belonged to that category – but in Henry VI’s reign it became less unusual for men trained in the law to be elected. As many as 11 of the 28 were so qualified. Ellingbridge and three of the Gaynesfords were fellows of Lincoln’s Inn (William Gaynesford had officiated as governor of their Inn before his election to Parliament); legal expertise qualified seven of the MPs (Ellingbridge, John Gaynesford I, William Gaynesford, Skerne, Slyfield, Sydney and Wood) for the quorum of the Surrey bench; and Legh, formerly the King’s attorney in Chester, occupied the post of chirographer of the court of common pleas. Men of this kind, well versed in the common law, were often appointed as stewards of large estates in Surrey and Sussex: John Gaynesford I served in this way both for Battle abbey and Humphrey, earl of Stafford; Sydney for the earls of Northumberland and Arundel; and Wood for Syon abbey. Since William Weston gained appointment as a coroner he too may also have received a legal training.

In the period 1386-1421 Surrey had been represented by a combination of courtiers, government officials and members of established county families (categories which were not mutually exclusive). Because of the proximity of Westminster a considerable number of courtiers and crown officials took up residence in Surrey, while at the same time members of leading county families were attracted to the Court. In that period at least 11 of the 26 shire knights were royal servants of one kind or another, and of these all but one sat in Parliament when currently in receipt of a fee or annuity from the reigning monarch. In seven of Henry V’s Parliaments Surrey was represented by men holding offices at the centre of government (such as John Burgh† the under treasurer, and Yerde the harbinger of the Household).12 Ibid. i. 624-7. This pattern continued in Henry VI’s reign, with a striking number of shire knights having been formally retained by the King or his predecessors. Eight of the 28 are known to have held positions which accorded them personal access to the monarch. Listed chronologically, they were Yerde, still occupied as harbinger when returned in 1423; Feriby, the former clerk and cofferer of Henry V’s household who having assumed the important role of controller of that royal establishment held the office for 16 years from 1423, and was so engaged when returned to the Parliaments of 1425, 1429 and 1433; Carew (elected in 1439), a ‘King’s esquire’ and son-in-law to the treasurer of the Household, Sir Roger Fiennes*; Stanley, an usher of the King’s chamber and serjeant of the armoury in the Tower when returned to the consecutive Parliaments of 1445 and 1447; Penycoke, like Stanley long a member of the Household, who held the exalted rank of esquire for the King’s body when he entered the Commons in the first Parliament of 1449 and again in 1453; Basset, an esquire of the hall and chamber when returned in 1449 (Nov.), was listed, significantly, as a ‘squire of attendance’ during the King’s illness in 1454, and elected to Parliament again in 1459; Legh, Basset’s companion in 1459, had held a number of crown offices and been a member of the Household for at least 18 years; and finally Wood (elected in 1460), who besides being an experienced official at the Exchequer, where he had served as under treasurer, had immediately prior to his election occupied the important position of keeper of the great wardrobe.

To these eight men, all known personally to Henry VI, should be added four others who, although more distant from the monarch, held offices by royal grant. Clipsham was steward of Kennington and Byfleet when returned in 1423, 1426 and 1427; John Wintershall, who served for 20 years as deputy constable of Windsor castle, was still so employed when elected in our period in 1425 and 1433; and Founteyns (1437) had done the King service as an administrator in Ireland. Basket, elected in 1442 and 1449 (Feb.), after the King attained his majority, was constable of Odiham castle. Altogether, this group of 12 shire knights filled half of the 42 recorded seats, and it must be presumed that their status as royal servants played a significant part in their success at the hustings. Even so, there is no evidence to demonstrate direct influence from the Court over the Surrey elections. It may be remarked, however, that when he was sheriff in 1439 James Fiennes*, a favoured esquire for the King’s body, returned his niece’s husband Carew for Surrey and his brother Sir Roger Fiennes, the treasurer of the Household, for Sussex,13 No returns for this Parl. are extant, but the shire ct. would have met on 14 Oct. while Fiennes was still sheriff. and that while sheriff in his turn the ‘King’s esquire’ Carew returned his colleagues Stanley in 1445 and Penycoke in 1449.

Likewise, the chances of electoral success were positively affected by personal contact with those of influence at the centre of government. Clipsham, an associate of Thomas Chaucer* (who promoted him to the post of deputy butler in Chichester), had been appointed by Chaucer’s cousin Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, as constable of Farnham castle – a post he may well have still been holding when returned to three of the Parliaments of our period. He should be numbered among Beaufort’s supporters who rallied behind their lord in his quarrel with the duke of Gloucester at the ‘Parliament of Bats’ at Leicester in 1426. When returned in 1431 John Gaynesford I was steward of the estates of the young earl of Stafford, while Ellingbridge, who sat for Stafford’s borough of Bletchingley as well as for the county, later served him in a similar capacity. Basket belonged to the household of the earl’s kinsman John Stafford, successively bishop of Bath and Wells and archbishop of Canterbury, and both his Parliaments assembled while his lord was chancellor of England in the 1440s. Similarly, Legh, returned to the Parliament at Coventry in 1459, was closely connected with William Waynflete, Beaufort’s successor as bishop of Winchester, who as chancellor delivered the opening address.

All but five of the 28 shire knights had some experience of the tasks of local government prior to their elections for Surrey; only Ottworth (1426), Thomas Wintershall (1435), Norbury (1445) and William Gaynesford and Basset (both November 1449), appear to have been lacking in this respect. Twelve of the 28 were sometime sheriffs of the joint bailiwick of Surrey and Sussex,14 Basket, Basset, Carew, Clipsham, Feriby, Nicholas Gaynesford, Penycoke, Stanley, John Wintershall, Uvedale, Wood and Yerde. Basket also served as sheriff of Wilts., Basset of Hants, Penycoke of Oxon. and Berks and Wood of Essex and Herts. and although only five had held this office before their first election for the constituency, former sheriffs filled 13 of the 42 recorded seats. The return of Penycoke to the first Parliament of 1449 stood in breach of the statutes prohibiting the election of sheriffs, for he was then sheriff in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Less serious was the case of Nicholas Gaynesford, whose appointment as sheriff came four weeks after the start of the Parliament of 1460 in which he sat for Surrey, even though this meant that he must have been absent either from his bailiwick or the Commons for the rest of that first session and throughout the second. As many as 13 of the shire knights served terms in the less important office of escheator in the joint bailiwick, and 17 seats were filled by those who had already held that post.15 Basket, Basset, Brocas, Clipsham, Founteyns, John Gaynesford I, Nicholas Gaynesford, Ottworth, Penycoke, William Weston, John and Thomas Wintershall and Yerde. Nine had been escheator before their first elections for Surr. John Wintershall, who occupied the escheatorship for as many as six annual terms, was elected to Parliament while so engaged in 1425, as was Ottworth in 1437. A large proportion of the shire knights (19 of the 28), were named as j.p.s at some stage in their careers, ten of them before their earliest elections. Current members of the Surrey bench were returned to 11 of the 21 Parliaments, and in 1433, 1439 and 1453 both MPs were so qualified. Besides their participation in local administration, certain of the MPs were also employed in the customs service as collectors or controllers in the ports of Chichester or London, but save in the case of Clipsham such employment did not coincide with election to Parliament.

The elections for Surrey were invariably held at Guildford and on a Wednesday. Numbers of attestors named on the 19 surviving parliamentary indentures from Henry VI’s reign varied from election to election (with as few as eight men witnessing the return to the Parliament of 1437 and as many as 35 that for 1460), but it may be significant that on seven out of the 19 a round dozen were listed. The sheriff followed the same practice as in Sussex, and as also was the case in that county there is nothing in the surviving documents to suggest that any of the elections were contested. Altogether 143 men bore witness to the Surrey indentures between 1422 and 1460, and it is worthy of remark that at least 52 of them (37 per cent) sat in the Commons themselves at some point in their careers (although not necessarily for this constituency). This may indicate that only a relatively small body of men from the county took a close interest in parliamentary affairs. The status of those attesting the indentures mirrored that of the elected representatives; only twice – with respect to the elections to the consecutive Parliaments of 1449 (Nov.) and 1450 – was anyone of knightly rank listed (Sir John Bourgchier on both occasions), although sometimes the attestors were specifically described as esquires or gentlemen. Only one attestor (in 1449) was identified as a ‘merchant’, although since he, Robert White*, was currently mayor of the Calais staple his presence may have provoked attention. Of the 28 shire knights considered here, as many as 20 attested elections for Surrey on other occasions, 15 of them doing so before they themselves first entered the Commons. Some of the MPs were frequent attestors: Slyfield’s name appeared on nine indentures, William Weston’s on ten, those of Brocas, John Wintershall and perhaps John Weston on 11 each, and Ottworth’s on as many as 15.