New Shoreham

The port of New Shoreham on the estuary of the Adur had declined in the fourteenth century, owing to changes in the channel to the sea, caused by drifting sandbanks which from time to time blocked the river’s mouth. In the early fifteenth century a part of the town was destroyed by incursions of the sea, resulting in a dramatic reduction in its population. Whereas 100 years earlier New Shoreham had housed over 500 inhabitants, by 1421 there were said in a petition to Parliament to be no more than 36 impoverished people living in buildings all but surrounded by water.1 VCH Suss. vi (1), 138, 140, 142; SC8/24/1169; PROME, ix. 310 (printed in full in RP, iv. 159-60); Reg. Rede, i (Suss. Rec. Soc. viii), 40. The figures given by juries at the inquisitions post mortem for successive lords of the borough may also point to economic decline. According to these, the Mowbrays received from New Shoreham net revenues of £19 p.a. in 1400, £17 p.a. in 1403 and a mere £5 3s. 4d. in 1425. But as valuations provided in post mortems are notoriously inaccurate, these figures may be of little use in themselves, even for the purposes of comparison.2 VCH Suss. vi (1), 152; CIPM, xviii. 288, 908; C139/16/25. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that trade through the port had declined sharply since the early fourteenth century, and New Shoreham had lost its pre-eminence with regard to the shipment of wine and wool, now ceding precedence to Chichester in the west of the county and Winchelsea in the east. Although the Crown appointed deputy butlers to regulate wine imports at Shoreham in the 1430s, none were named subsequently, and from 1444 wool awaiting shipment through the port had first to be weighed at Lewes. Even so, references to wool exports made in 1453 and 1472 indicate that the trade did not entirely cease. It should also be noted that the collectors of customs and subsidies in Sussex, as elsewhere, had no need to record vessels entering and leaving Shoreham with cargoes intended for other English ports, so the extent of coastal traffic is impossible to gauge. The same applied to the trade in grain, which was certainly shipped from Shoreham in Henry V’s reign, and there was a corn-market in the town in the 1470s. Even so, John Wryther was probably not the only local merchant of our period who decided to move away from Shoreham in order to expand his business.3 CCR, 1441-7, p. 239; CPR, 1416-22, p. 60; 1429-36, pp. 100, 490; 1452-61, p. 117; 1467-77, p. 357; E40/4145. Although there are no surviving petitions from Henry VI’s reign to clarify the economic circumstances of the town, the Commons in six of the Parliaments between 1472 and 1497 asked for exoneration from payment of parliamentary subsidies by the people of New Shoreham, which, they said, was ‘nowe of late gretely wasted by the see’.4 PROME, xiv. 87, 237, 247, 313, 411; xv. 369; xvi. 87, 97-98, 298. This undoubtedly points to a more recent natural disaster than the one that had occurred in Henry V’s reign.

The lordship of New Shoreham had descended, like that of Bramber (just five miles up river), from the de Braoses to the Mowbrays. Elizabeth Fitzalan, widow of Thomas, duke of Norfolk, held the borough at her death in 1425, but a later lord, her grandson Duke John, relinquished some of his holdings in the locality to Sele priory in 1438, after confirming a grant in frank almoin made to the monks by one of his progenitors.5 C139/16/25; CAD, iii. D549. Little is known about the internal government of the borough in the Middle Ages. No reference was made to a mayor after 1346, and it would appear that a single bailiff continued to be the principal official there for most of the fifteenth century. The electoral returns indicate that two constables held positions of responsibility, but it remains unknown how they were chosen.6 VCH Suss. vi (1), 165.

Shoreham’s difficulties at the end of Henry V’s reign, which prompted the townsmen’s petition to Parliament in 1421, are reflected in its later representation. Gaps in the returns occurred not only when those for all the Sussex boroughs are lost, but also for the consecutive Parliaments of 1419, 1420 and May 1421 and again in 1422, when other constituencies in the county are known to have sent Members. On those occasions it must be assumed that either the sheriffs thought that New Shoreham (perhaps because of recent inundations) was in no state to furnish representatives, or else the burgesses failed to respond to the sheriffs’ precepts. Matters improved later in Henry VI’s reign, when there are gaps only when the returns for other Sussex boroughs are also missing. Between 1422 and 1461 the borough was represented by 29 different men,7 The names of the MPs for 1425 have been torn off the schedule, but enough remains to show that they were different from the rest. although the names of two of them are now impossible to decipher. In 1425, 1429, 1447 and 1459, as on four earlier occasions in the century, both MPs were apparently newcomers to the Commons, but this was an unusual state of affairs. Generally, at least one man of proven experience of the workings of the House would be elected. In perhaps five of the 17 Parliaments for which we know the names of Members the borough was represented by two individuals qualified in this way, and in nine of the rest one of the MPs had sat before. Yet it is worthy of remark that an increasing number of Shoreham’s MPs first gained their experience of Parliaments in the service of other constituencies: perhaps as many as nine of the MPs of Henry VI’s reign sat for other places before they represented this borough.8 Gloucester, Gynnour, Hamme, Morley, Rauff, Redstone, Say, Waleys and Cager (if it was he and not Spert who sat in 1460). Most of the nine had been previously elected for other boroughs in Sussex or Surrey, but William Say had appeared in the Commons for Canterbury. Nicholas Morley was unique: he had sat as a knight of the shire (for Hertfordshire), as well as for Bramber, and his return in 1460 for New Shoreham marked his entry to Parliament for the sixth time. Before the 1440s only two of Shoreham’s MPs had sat for other constituencies earlier in their careers, but the frequency of the elections of men tried elsewhere increased noticeably after 1447, so that in the six of the seven Parliaments summoned between then and 1460 (the exception being that of 1459), one or just as often both MPs had acquired their experience of the Commons while sitting for other places.

Altogether, perhaps as many as 12 of the 27 MPs for Shoreham whose names are known also sat for different constituencies in the course of their careers.9 i.e. the nine listed above, and Bekwith, Mille and Wryther. This meant that some of them became practised parliamentarians. Four sat in three Parliaments each; another four in four; William Redstone in five and Morley in seven all told. As these statistics suggest, a large proportion of those who represented Shoreham were not local men, and as the period progressed so outsiders increasingly predominated. Initially, as the town’s economy deteriorated and its inhabitants moved away, the borough was represented by obscure men of little importance beyond their small community. But these nonentities gradually gave way, particularly after 1447, to strangers of greater account: servants of the Crown, lawyers and members of the county gentry who had made their mark elsewhere.

Uncertainty remains about the places of residence of five of the MPs (Awger, Bury, Hill, Kemp and Langley), three of whom sat before 1447 and may have been obscure local men. The seven who certainly came from Shoreham itself (Dammer, Feret, Furby, Roger, Snelling, Wryther and Young), all sat in Parliament before that date, some of them more than once. To this group might also be added Richard Jay, a lawyer from the north of the county whose acquisition of land in and near Shoreham in the year of his first return to Parliament (1432) may reflect a conscious decision on his part to comply with the statutory requirements. Jay went on to represent this borough in three more Parliaments. With regard to their origins, the remaining MPs may be divided into distinct groups. Six came from elsewhere in Sussex: Grevet from Winchelsea, Gynnour from West Firle, Hamme probably from Withyham, Veske from Lancing, Waleys from West Hoathley and Weston from Buxsted. Two, Say and Spert, came from Kent, two more, Gloucester and Redstone, from Southwark in Surrey, and Rauff appears to have been a Londoner. Others originated from much further away: Bekwith was probably a Yorkshireman, Mille hailed from Gloucestershire and Morley, perhaps a native of Lancashire, had long been settled in Hertfordshire. It may be noted that Bekwith, Morley and Spert did live in Sussex some of the time (Bekwith at Lewes, Morley at Glynde, the manor which he claimed jure uxoris, and Spert at Hellingly), but it seems unlikely that they ever complied with the residential qualifications for election for New Shoreham.

The occupations of many of the MPs have not been discovered, but it is likely that more than a few were engaged in trade. Gloucester, for example, was a grocer who dealt in spices in Southwark. After representing his home town in Parliament, Wryther, the most successful merchant among them, moved to Winchester, where he prospered by continuing to trade through Southampton and along the Sussex coast to Winchelsea. Shoreham maintained close links with Winchelsea, one of the Cinque Ports, and it may be remarked that Grevet, returned in 1442, was at that time town clerk of the latter place, and that Dammer, returned to three Parliaments for Shoreham, enjoyed the privileges of a Portsman, which included exemption from parliamentary subsidies levied on his moveable goods outside the liberty of the Ports and in Shoreham itself. Of those MPs who made a living from farming, Richard Roger was a mere ‘husbandman’, but William Young became affluent enough to take on a lease of the rectory of Old Shoreham for £26 a year. Of members of the landowning gentry there were just two, Weston and Morley, and the latter’s military career and previous service as a sheriff and escheator (in Essex and Hertfordshire) place him in a category all of his own. Morley’s status was that of an esquire.

Several of the MPs for Shoreham styled as ‘gentlemen’ had most likely received some training in the law; indeed perhaps as many as13 out of the 27 may have been qualified in this way. They too fell into different categories. Two served as coroners in Sussex: Dammer for a period of more than 12 years, in the course of which he sat in the Parliament of 1432; and Veske likewise before his election in 1447. As already noted, Grevet was the town clerk of Winchelsea. Others appeared as attorneys for clients from Sussex both at the county assizes and in the central courts at Westminster. They included Waleys, Gynnour and Hamme, but the most active among them was Jay, who represented Shoreham four times. In a career lasting over 45 years, Jay built up an extremely busy practice in the court of common pleas, where he took on briefs from many of the leading landowners of the county, including the bishop of Chichester, several abbots, the countess of Arundel and Lord Poynings. Redstone and Spert, both ‘gentlemen’, were knowledgeable in the law too, although the latter directed his energies into estate administration, becoming highly competent and well-regarded in his field, particularly after he moved away from Sussex to Lincolnshire. It is difficult to discern a pattern in the election of professional lawyers in preference to those engaged in other occupations, although out of the 34 seats considered here, men presumed to have had an education in the law filled 18 (more than half), and in the Parliaments of 1432, 1435, 1442 and 1450 both MPs were of this sort.

Finally, Say, as a long established yeoman of the Crown and usher of Henry VI’s chamber, who was currently a feoffee of duchy of Lancaster estates of joint bailiff of Sandwich by the King’s nomination, took place in the Parliament of 1453 alongside many others associated with the court. They expressed their solidarity with the regime by granting subsidies on a large scale. The election of Hugh Mille to the Parliament of 1459 doubtless also had a strong political dimension. This was the Parliament summoned to Coventry with the express intention of proscribing the Yorkist rebels, and Mille, who had been a member of the quorum on the bench in his home county of Gloucestershire, had strong Lancastrian credentials, which were later to manifest themselves in his alignment in the civil war. His election stood in contrast to that of Morley and Spert to the next Parliament, which met in October 1460 in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at Northampton. Morley had cause to welcome the recent change of regime, since it meant that Chief Justice Fortescue*, who had thwarted his attempts to gain possession of his wife’s inheritance, was now incapacitated; while Spert’s association with the Bourgchier family and his subsequent successful career in administration under Edward IV point to a decided commitment to the house of York.

In earlier decades it may be the case that links between the MPs for New Shoreham and leading landowners of Sussex had played a part in deciding their elections. Waleys, a retainer of Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, had been kept on by the widowed Countess Beatrice as her principal attorney in the law-courts – a role later adopted by Jay; during her lifetime the two men sat in four Parliaments for this borough. Dammer was bailiff of the bishop of Chichester’s liberty in the region when returned to two of his Parliaments. But more significant were the connexions between the MPs and the borough’s lords, the dukes of Norfolk. When elected in 1429, Snelling was bailiff of Steyning, where the Mowbrays held property, and he later occupied a similar post at the Mowbray borough of Bramber. Jay, also sometime bailiff of Bramber, formed a close association with John Ledes*, one of the leading retainers of the second duke, and Rauff was friendly with another Mowbray retainer, John Southwell*. Following his return in 1449, Bekwith, the Yorkshireman, served as constable of the third duke’s castle at Lewes and water-bailiff throughout his Sussex estates. Spert had personal ties to Humphrey Bourgchier*, that duke’s nephew, whose service he had entered before the elections of 1460. It should also be noted that Rauff, Morley and Thomas Cager (if it was he and not Spert who took the seat in 1460), all represented other Mowbray boroughs on other occasions, which suggests that Duke John’s patronage was a factor in securing their returns.

If indeed a link with the lord of the borough was ever a crucial element in deciding the outcome of an election, nothing written in the extant returns confirms that this was the case. The returns are largely uninformative. For most of the period here under review the names of Shoreham’s MPs were merely provided on schedules listing all the citizens and burgesses for Sussex, along with the burgesses for Surrey, which were sent by the sheriff to Chancery along with the indentures for the two shires. Separate indentures for the Sussex boroughs survive for the first time in 1453. That for New Shoreham was drawn up between the sheriff on the one part and the two constables of the borough on the other. It was dated 28 Feb., six days after the election of the knights of the shire which had taken place at the county court in Chichester and less than a week before the Parliament was due to assemble at Reading. Shoreham’s Members for the Parliament at Coventry in 1459 were again recorded only on a schedule, and although in 1460 separate indentures for the Sussex boroughs are extant, they raise a number of questions. Strangely, all the indentures, with the exception of that for the city of Chichester, were dated 28 Aug. and were said to have been drawn up at Chichester in the county court, the parties being the sheriff and individuals from each of the eight boroughs. In Shoreham’s case only three attestors were named, although other un-named residents of the town were stated to have participated in the electoral process.10 C219/16/2, 5. The irregularities in the returns for 1460 strongly suggest that the MPs for the Sussex boroughs were not elected in the towns themselves, but were either selected at the meeting of the shire court, or perhaps not decided until the shire returns reached the Chancery prior to the assembly on 7 Oct. As was the case with Shoreham, many of those elected by the other Sussex boroughs were strangers not only to the constituencies returning them but also to the county.