Warwickshire

Like other counties of the Midlands, Warwickshire lacks natural boundaries, but within these borders the medieval county was divided into two distinct regions by the valley of the Avon. To the north of the valley lay the Arden, largely given to pasture and with substantial areas of high ground, notably the Birmingham Plateau; to the south, the more fertile and densely-populated Feldon region. This geographical division was reflected in an ecclesiastical one: the Feldon lay mostly in the diocese of Worcester, while the Arden was under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Coventry and Lichfield. 2 C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 19-25; A.K. Gundy, Ric. II and the Rebel Earl, 34.

Recent historiography has argued that these divisions were matched, importantly in the context of the county’s parliamentary representation, by political and tenurial ones. These were largely occasioned by the chance distribution of Crown and baronial estates. Several of the peers who had significant estates in Warwickshire had lands in neighbouring shires that interested them as much if not more. The Staffords, represented in the period under review here by Humphrey, earl of Stafford and (from 1444) duke of Buckingham, had more important holdings in Staffordshire and Gloucestershire. The Mowbrays, Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, an influential figure in the county until her death in 1435, and the Lords Ferrers of Groby (first in the person of William, Lord Ferrers (d.1445) and then in that of Edward Grey, the husband of his grand-daughter and heiress), were all more concerned with Leicestershire, with which Warwickshire was paired in respect of the offices of sheriff and escheator. Even the dominant landholders in the county, the Beauchamp earls and briefly dukes of Warwick, who might have given some sense of coherence to the county from their caput honoris at the castle of Warwick, more or less in its centre, had lands lying predominantly in the west, forming a distinct block with their Worcestershire estates. The strength of the Crown’s influence in the north of the county, as lord of Coventry and of the nearby castle of Kenilworth, together with the proximity of the duchy of Lancaster honours of Leicester and Tutbury, added another centrifugal force, tending to orientate that part of Warwickshire politically towards Staffordshire and Leicestershire. Thus, the county can be seen as comprising a number of separate regions, each looking outwards to a neighbouring shire.3 Carpenter, 27-32.

The two most significant developments in the political geography of the county during Henry VI’s reign may have served further to diminish unity. The first was the acquisition of the castle of Maxstoke, ‘one of the crucial strategic points in north Warwickshire’, by a great lord, the earl of Stafford, from a minor and impoverished one, John, Lord Clinton, in 1438, the same year that the death of the earl’s mother reunited his inheritance in his hands. The Staffords had long had lands in the south of the county, but the acquisition of Maxstoke greatly increased their influence, and this was yet further extended by the earl’s appointment as steward of the honour of Tutbury.4 Ibid. 32. The second was more significant, namely the end of the house of Beauchamp with the death of Anne, infant daughter of Henry, duke of Warwick, in June 1449, and the succession of Richard Neville to its earldom (in right of his wife, Anne, the late duke’s only sister of the whole blood).

Of the counties for which figures are available for the tax of 1451, Warwickshire ranks as high as ninth of the 29, higher than all the surviving Midland counties with the exception of Northamptonshire.5 S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258. Its relative wealth ensured that the gentry were numerous. It has been estimated that, in the 1430s, there were as many as 18 knights, 59 esquires and 55 gentlemen either resident in the county or with significant landed interests there.6 Carpenter, 55. The divisions within the county occasioned by the distribution of magnate land had an obvious impact on the networks that existed within this numerous gentry class. A detailed analysis of these networks suggests that most of the gentry living west of Warwick were more likely to turn westwards, to Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, for associates than to other Warwickshire gentry to the north or east of the Avon. In other words, their relationships followed the contours of the Beauchamp landholdings. By contrast, in the north-east of the county, where the earls of Warwick were largely landless, the gentry were drawn into the circles of magnates whose main local interests lay in Leicestershire, namely, in the first part of the period, Joan, Lady Abergavenny (at Ashby de la Zouche), and William, Lord Ferrers (at Groby), and later on Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers, and Lady Abergavenny’s grandson, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire.7 Ibid. 308, 313. These cross-border associations were strengthened and others created by the landholdings of some of the leading gentry families themselves. The Cockaynes, for example, were principally a Derbyshire family; the Catesbys were as significant in Northamptonshire as they were in Warwickshire; the Erdingtons had considerable holdings in Leicestershire; and so on. In short, there is considerable evidence to suggest that Warwickshire was a much divided county, and it remains to ask how far this was reflected in its parliamentary representation.

The MPs for Warwickshire are known for 21 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, the exception being that of 1460. Twenty-five men were returned, filling only 52 Warwickshire seats between them and with as many as 15 representing the county only once.8 If Hotoft did not take his seat in the Parl. of 1449 (Feb.) then there were only 24 MPs, with 14 sitting for the county only once. For the purpose of statistical analysis, however, Hotoft has been counted as the MP in that Parl. None the less, the MPs as a group had greater parliamentary experience than these figures imply. Four of the 15 were returned for other constituencies, and one of these had a notable parliamentary career: Hotoft sat for Leicestershire four times and for the borough of Warwick twice. Of those elected for Warwickshire more than once, only Edmund Mountfort sat for another constituency.

These returns for other constituencies arose from both landholdings outside Warwickshire and baronial connexions. The elections of Hotoft and Erdington for Leicestershire and Catesby for Northamptonshire are to be explained by the former. The latter account for the election to the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.) of Filongley, as a servant of Sir James Butler (created earl of Wiltshire at the end of that assembly), for the Dorset borough of Weymouth; of Hotoft for Warwick in the 1450s through the patronage of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick; and of Edmund Mountfort, late in his career, for Gloucestershire, where he was steward of the lordship of Thornbury, held jure uxoris by Jasper, duke of Bedford.9 In the period 1386-1421 only three of the Warws. MPs represented other counties, namely Sir Thomas Clinton, Sir John Cockayne and William Spernore, all owing their additional returns to land in other shires. The earlier survey is in error in claiming that Henry Sutton† was a fourth, sitting additionally for Notts. (The Commons 1386-1421, i. 665; iv. 535-6). In fact, the Warws. and Notts. MPs were different men. It is worth noting that no MP in this period represented both Warwickshire and Worcestershire, and only one, William Spernore alias Durvassall† (d.1401), did so between 1386 and 1421. Thus the picture of a county drawn apart by the cross-borders interests of its leading landholders is only partially reflected in its parliamentary representation.

If representation for other constituencies is taken into account, the 25 MPs filled 63 seats, a lower average of Parliaments per MP than in the earlier period. This was in part because there were no parliamentary careers to compare with those of Sir William Bagot† and Sir John Cockayne*, both of whom are known to have been returned to 11 Parliaments (although Cockayne only sat twice for Warwickshire). Of the MPs of 1422-61 Sir William Mountfort, returned at least eight times, was the most active. This relatively low average number of Parliaments is reflected in the percentage of seats taken by inexperienced MPs. Of the 42 seats, 17 were filled by men without previous parliamentary experience (and the figure rises to 20 if experience gained in other constituencies is excluded). There were only four certain instances of immediate re-election. Metley was elected to three successive Parliaments between 1432 and 1435 and Sir William Mountfort twice to successive assemblies in the 1420s.10 If Edmund Mountfort did indeed supersede Hotoft in the first Parl. of 1449, there was another. If experience for other constituencies is included then there are two further instances: Hotoft’s election to the Parl. of Feb. 1449 came between two elections for Leics.; and Catesby, elected for Warws. to the second Parl. of 1449, had represented Northants. in the first.

Yet, despite this low level of representative continuity, on only three occasions were two novice MPs returned together, that is, in 1425, 1431 and 1432, although in 1449 (Nov.) and 1453 neither of the MPs had represented the county before. On seven occasions two experienced MPs were elected together, and four of these fell between 1422 and 1429, suggesting that representative continuity diminished as the period progressed. Indeed, of the ten Parliaments between 1439 and 1459, two experienced MPs were elected only to that of 1449 (Feb.), and even then one of the MPs only had experience in respect of another constituency (assuming Hotoft rather than Mountfort was the MP).

A noteworthy feature of Warwickshire’s representation in the fifteenth century is the close blood ties that bound many of the MPs together. Three generations of Hugfords (Robert†, his son, Thomas, and his grandsons, John† and William†) and Mountforts (Sir William, Edmund, his son, and Sir Simon†) sat for the county, as did two of each of the families of Harewell, Erdington, Mallory (in all three cases, father and son), Burdet (grandfather and son) and Castell (whose relationship is uncertain). Strikingly, the Burdets, Erdingtons, Harewells and Mountforts were among the county’s fourteenth-century MPs, and between 1339 and 1449 four out of five successive generations of the Catesbys provided the county with an MP. A Catesby and a Burdet number among Warwickshire’s sixteenth-century Members. There are probably two reasons for this continuity: first, there was the longevity of several of the county’s principal gentry families; and, second, the tradition of service of some of these families to the earls of Warwick, who long exercised a powerful influence over the county’s representation.

There was no attempt, as there was in some shires, to divide representation between the different areas of the county.11 Carpenter wrongly asserts that one of the MPs generally came from the east of the county: Locality and Polity, 385. A preponderance of MPs came from the north-west. In part, this was because the Mountforts, from their home at Coleshill, filled nine of the county’s seats during this period (or ten if Edmund Mountfort supplanted Hotoft in the Parliament of February 1449), but this was not the only reason. The north-west of the county was dominated by the landholdings of the greater gentry, and several other MPs came from the immediate neighbourhood of Coleshill: Arderne from Parkhall, Erdington from Erdington and Rugeley from Dunton. From only slightly further afield came Bate (from Pooley), Chetwynd and Castell (both from Alspath in Meriden), Filongley (from Old Filongley) and Porter (from Solihull).12 For the tenurial complexion of this part of the county: ibid. 298. For a general map of the distribution of gentry estates: ibid. 54. In these circumstances it is not surprising that both MPs should have come from this part of the county in several Parliaments (1422, 1437, 1439, 1447 and perhaps also February 1449). By contrast, in only six – 1425, 1426, 1433, 1435, 1453 and 1455 – was neither of the MPs from there. Only two or three MPs, all of whom represented the county only once, came from south of the Fosse Way, that is, Doddingselles from Long Itchington, Boughton from Lawford, and perhaps also Catesby if he is counted as resident at Ladbroke rather than Lapworth. This geographical distribution was new. Earlier a very different dispensation had prevailed. Remarkably, between 1386 and 1407 only two MPs, George Castell† of Withybrook in 1386 and Sir Thomas Clinton† of Amington in 1397, had come from the north of the county.13 For a map of the residences of the Warws. MPs for 1386-1421: G. Dodd, ‘Crown, Magnates and Gentry: The English Parliament, 1369-1421’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1998), 345. With William Mountfort’s first election in 1410, however, the pattern changed and MPs from the north came to fill the majority of seats.

As in the case of nearly every other county, there was a marked decline in the number of belted knights returned. Twenty-five of 53 seats between 1386 and 1421 were taken by knights, compared with 13 of 42 seats in the period under review here. The real decline was even more marked than these figures imply, for it is partly disguised by the parliamentary career of Sir William Mountfort, who took seven of these 13 seats. Comparing the beginning and end of the two periods gives a starker impression. Nineteen seats in the 14 Parliaments from 1386 to 1402 were taken by knights; but only six in the 14 between 1432 and 1459. Oddly, however, although the number of seats taken by knights declined between the two periods, the number of knights among the county’s MPs did not. In the earlier period eight MPs were elected as knights, another, William Mountfort, took up knighthood soon after the start of his parliamentary career and a two further MPs became knights after their last recorded service in the Commons. In the later one, seven (of 25) were elected as knights (with Sir Thomas Burdet and Sir William Mountfort common to the two periods), and two, Everingham and Catesby, took up the rank after representing the county. In short, the sharp decline in the number of seats taken by knights is not matched by a decline in the number of knights among the MPs.

The maintenance of knighthood by some of the county’s MPs is reflected in military service. Sir Thomas Burdet was active against the Glendower rebels in 1402-3, and Castell had the distinction of having fought at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403. Two – Byshoppeston and Sir William Mountfort – had very notable military careers in France, and five others – Castell, Doddingselles, Everingham, Edmund Mountfort and Porter – saw at least one period of service there.

At the end of the period under review here, some of the MPs fought in the civil war of 1459-61. Curiously, despite the Neville earl of Warwick’s adherence to York, the county, at least as far as its political sympathies are reflected by its MPs, was firmly Lancastrian. The removal of the court to Coventry in the late 1450s and the senior places held there by Catesby, Filongley and Edmund Mountfort may stand as partial explanations. However this may be, of the 11 MPs who lived through all or part of the civil war, only one, Hugford, can be identified as an active Yorkist, and he only by proxy in that his eldest son, John, is known to have been in the earl of Warwick’s retinue at the battle of Towton. Two others, Burdet and Middleton, who as annuitants of the earl of Warwick might have been expected to have benefited from the change of regime, did not do so, implying that they had offered their lord no active support.

By contrast, the Lancastrian interest in the county was effectively mobilized with four of the MPs active in that cause. Filongley appears to have been among the notable Lancastrian casualties at Towton. Everingham was in Queen Margaret’s army at the second battle of St. Albans, and, although apparently reconciled with Edward IV, he reverted to the Lancastrians during the Readeption and may have fallen at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. Catesby , who was probably present in the Lancastrian ranks at the battles of Ludford Bridge, Northampton and Towton, fled briefly to Scotland in the wake of Edward IV’s accession before reaching an accommodation with the new King, but Mountfort proved much more recalcitrant. After fighting at the battle of Towton, he continued in arms with the Lancastrian diehards and was attainted in the first Parliament of the new reign. Not until Henry VI’s death did he seek Yorkist favour.14 Of the remaining four MPs alive in 1459-61 – Boughton, Erdington, Hotoft and Sir Thomas Mallory – nothing certain can be said of their political sympathies.

None the less, even in view of these military credits, both at home and abroad, it would be idle to pretend that the MPs as a body were distinguished by martial endeavour. In fact, lawyers were more prominent than soldiers among the county’s MPs. One was a lawyer of more than local significance: had he not died prematurely, Nicholas Metley of Middle Temple would have risen to the profession’s higher reaches. Another, Bate, was qualified enough to have been a candidate for the office of recorder of Coventry, although, despite the support of Queen Margaret, he failed to secure the office. Three and possibly four others were lawyers of lesser degree – Chetwynd, Hugford, and Hotoft with the slightly doubtful case of Boughton – and another, William Catesby, although never active as a lawyer, was educated at Inner Temple. Discounting the last, Metley and the others filled 13 of the 42 known seats, and on three occasions – to the Parliaments of 1435, 1442 and 1449 (Feb.) – the county elected two lawyers.15 This assumes that Hotoft’s election to the Parl. of 1449 (Feb.) was not set aside. Lawyers were thus very much more prominent among the county’s MPs than they had been in the 1386-1421 period, taking up the seats that had previously been filled by knights.

The number of knights among the county’s MPs is a rough index not only of military involvement but also of wealth, for as the number of knights declined it was only the wealthier gentry families that maintained knighthood. Hence the wealthy Erdington, who had no traceable military involvement, took up the rank. Several other MPs had the minimum qualifying income of £40 that would, in earlier generations, have supported knighthood. Nine of them were distrained to take up the rank,16 Arderne, Thomas Burdet, Everingham, Filongley, Hotoft, Hugford, John Mallory, Middleton and Rugeley. but only one of them, Everingham, did so. More accurate and direct evidence of the income of these MPs and others is provided by the tax assessments of 1435-6. These show that, in addition to those distrained, several others had incomes sufficient to have supported knighthood. Metley and Porter were both assessed above the qualifying income of £40, and Harewell’s widow was assessed at as much as £136. On this evidence the poorest of the MPs were Bate, Boughton, Castell, Chetwynd and Cotes, three of whom appear in the subsidy returns at less than £40. Bate is to be excluded from this list, for after these assessments and before his election to Parliament he married the widow of Sir John Cockayne, who had been assessed at as much as £200 and had made an extravagant settlement upon her. There must also be doubts about the impecuniousness of Boughton, who in 1450 was able to devote more than 300 marks to the marriage portion of his daughter. It is also worth noting that both Cotes and Chetwynd had expectations (the first as his long-lived mother’s heir and the second as heir-presumptive of his uncle), that promised to make them wealthier men.

None the less, despite the difficult cases of Boughton and Bate, the distribution of incomes among the county’s MPs is fairly clear and corresponds with that of other midland shires. At the top was a small elite with incomes over £100 p.a., one of whom, Sir William Mountfort, was particularly distinguished by his wealth. His assessment of £258 in 1436 was an underestimate of his real income, put at just over £300 in a valor of 1417. In addition to him, on the evidence of the 1436 subsidy, three further MPs were worth more than £100 p.a., namely Erdington, Arderne and Harewell. To these other evidence adds Catesby and the two Burdets. Below this small group was another with incomes of between £40 and £100, the wealthiest of whom was Doddingselles, assessed at £90 p.a. This group comprised the bulk of the MPs and it is likely that only three – Castell, Chetwynd and Cotes – fell below an income of £40 p.a. at the time they represented the county in Parliament.17 E179/192/59. For the assessments of Doddingselles and Rugeley: E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 20d; EHR, xlix. 613.

With respect to the distribution of the landholdings of the MPs, a similar pattern emerges as to that which had prevailed in the earlier period. As many as 20 of the 25 MPs held lands in one or more of the six counties bordering Warwickshire, a manifestation of the centrifugal forces dividing the county. Eight of them had lands in Leicestershire, six in Gloucestershire, six in Northamptonshire, five in Staffordshire and four in each of the two other shires, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire. Of these 20, only two – Catesby, whose main residence was at Ashby St. Ledgers in Northamptonshire, and Hotoft, who lived at Humberstone in Leicestershire – can be said to have had their main interests outside Warwickshire, and Catesby’s interests in Warwickshire were more than sufficient to justify the part he took there. Several of the MPs had landed interests further afield. Indeed, no fewer than 14 further counties (beyond the neighbouring ones) are represented among the landholdings of the MPs, of which the most distant were Somerset, Dorset, where Harewell and Erdington respectively inherited lands, and Wiltshire, where Sir William Mountfort held a manor by the assignment of Queen Joan of Navarre. Only one MP who held lands outside the county did not do so in one of the six surrounding counties, namely Filongley, who held lands in Essex in right of his wife. This leaves only four MPs who at the time they represented Warwickshire had lands confined to the county, that is, Castell, Chetwynd, Hugford and Middleton.

All the MPs held lands in Warwickshire and 18 of them came from families established in the county for at least a generation (a slightly higher proportion than in the earlier period). Of these, ten were from the front rank of the county’s gentry,18 Namely, Arderne, the two Burdets, Byshoppeston, Catesby, Doddingselles, Erdington, Harewell and the two Mountforts, although in the case of the Catesbys their principal interests were in Northants. the other eight were from lesser local families,19 Castell, Cotes, Filongley, Hugford, the two Mallorys, Metley and Porter. some only very recently established in the county. Of these the most interesting is Porter who appears to have been from a family of sub-gentry status, but made a successful career in the service of the Beauchamps and built up a local estate by purchase. The other seven MPs were imports who came into Warwickshire by a variety of social and geographical routes. Chetwynd and Rugeley, both from established Staffordshire families, came into the county by purchase. The rest owed their place to marriage. The most unusual was the lawyer Bate, who appears to have moved to the county on his brother John’s appointment as dean of the collegiate church of Tamworth and then married a wealthy widow with lands in Warwickshire and elsewhere. Another lawyer, Hotoft, from Leicestershire, married the widow of Nicholas Metley; Boughton, from Bedfordshire, acquired his initial stake in the county by purchase but then married the heiress-presumptive of a Warwickshire lawyer; Everingham, from Yorkshire, married a widow and heiress from Coventry; and Middleton, from distant Northumberland, married the widow of a Warwickshire knight. The first two of these matches appear to have arisen from ties within the legal profession, and Middleton’s was made within the retinue of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Everingham’s marriage is more difficult to explain, although it is probably more than coincidence that he married at about the time Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, entered Warwickshire politics. To have a fifth of the MPs as imports into the county by marriage implies that the county’s office-holding class was more than usually permeable, and it is interesting to note that three of these imports – Bate, Hotoft and Middleton – were able to secure election even though they had only a life interest in their wife’s lands.

As in all other counties there was a strong correspondence between the county’s MPs and those who filled the principal local administrative offices of j.p., sheriff and escheator. Fourteen of the 25 MPs served at some point in their careers as j.p.s. in Warwickshire, although only four did so before their first election for the county to Parliament.20 Of these 14, Catesby was additionally commissioned in Northants. and Herefs. and Hotoft in Leics. and Rutland. Edmund Mountfort was a j.p. in Glos. but not in Warws. There was little correlation between parliamentary service and a first appointment to the bench, for only Metley received his first commission while sitting as an MP. More interesting is the increasing frequency with which serving j.p.s were elected. While in this period the percentage of j.p.s among the MPs was about the same as in the period 1386-1421 (when 13 of 28 had been so appointed, or 14 of 28 if experience in other counties is included), there was a marked difference in the percentage elected when in receipt of the commission of the peace in the county. In the earlier period as few as seven of 53 known seats had been so filled; the equivalent figures for the reign of Henry VI are 19 out of 42 with two serving j.p.s elected together on as many as six occasions (1422, 1423, 1427, 1435, 1437, 1442, 1455).21 The figure rises to seven if service in other counties is included and Hotoft was the MP in the Parl. of 1449 (Feb.), for he was then serving on the Leics. bench. In addition, Catesby was serving as a Northants. j.p. when elected in 1449 (Nov.). This new preference for electing serving members of the bench appears more marked than in most other shires and to have further intensified over time.22 The Commons 1509-58, i. 210. It would seem that a place on the county bench came to be seen as a necessary qualification for election to Parliament.

With respect to the office of sheriff, 11 of the 25 held that office in the joint shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire (compared with 12 of 28 in the earlier period).23 Of these 11 Byshoppeston additionally held the office in Glos. and Edmund Mountfort in Oxon. and Berks. Catesby was sheriff in Northants. but not in Warws. and Leics. Of these 11, six served as MP before their first appointment as sheriff (namely Sir Thomas Burdet, Filongley, John Mallory, the two Mountforts and Porter), and 11 of the 42 seats were taken by former sheriffs.24 Byshoppeston, when elected in 1426, had been sheriff in both Warws. and Leics. and in Glos. Catesby, as MP in 1449 (Nov.), was a former Northants. sheriff. Occasionally there was a correlation between shrieval appointments and parliamentary service. As MP in the Parliament of 1450, Sir William Mountfort was pricked for a third term as sheriff, but, perhaps exploiting the additional influence accorded him as an MP, refused to act until the Crown granted him the privilege of accounting in the Exchequer for only what he could collect. Wider considerations determined the nomination of Sir William’s son, Edmund, on 24 Nov. 1459, when sitting for the county in the Coventry Parliament. He was named as a committed Lancastrian during the assembly that proscribed the Yorkists. On two other occasions there was a lesser correlation. John Mallory and Porter were named as sheriffs at the prickings that followed their service in the Parliaments of 1424 and 1447 respectively.

Appointment to the deputy shrievalty of Worcestershire is to be considered separately, as appointment lay not in the hands of the Crown but in that of the hereditary sheriffs, the earls of Warwick. Four MPs held the office – Thomas Burdet, Hugford, Middleton and Sir William Mountfort – and it is interesting to note that, rather surprisingly given the high degree of overlap between the Warwickshire office-holders and retinues of the earls of Warwick, only Mountfort was also appointed to the Warwickshire shrievalty. Of the four, three were appointed as servants of the earls: Hugford and Mountfort both served two terms under the Beauchamps and Middleton was appointed by the Neville earl in 1465-6. The exception was Burdet who was appointed by the Crown in 1459 after the forfeiture of Earl Richard Neville. Both he and Middleton were appointed only after the end of their parliamentary careers, but Mountfort was named to the office while sitting as an MP in 1423 and Hugford just after he had been elected in 1435.

Only seven of the MPs held the joint escheatorship of Warwickshire and Leicestershire (compared with eight in the earlier period).25 In addition, Boughton held the office in Northants. and Rutland. Bate served in both Warws. and Leics. and in Staffs. Curiously, to two successive Parliaments the serving escheator was returned, namely Porter in 1447 and Bate in 1449 (Feb.). On an earlier occasion a sitting MP – John Mallory in 1423 – was named as escheator. Since the office was a junior one in local administration, it might be expected that appointment to it would generally precede a first election to Parliament. Oddly, however, five of the eight had served as MPs before their appointment as escheator, and Mallory was sitting in his fourth Parliament when appointed. Thus only six of the county’s 42 seats were filled by serving or former escheators.26 The figure rises to seven if Boughton’s appointment in Northants. and Rutland is included.

Only three of the MPs did not hold at least one of the offices of j.p., sheriff or escheator in the county, namely Harewell, who died young, Middleton, whose only office was the deputy shrievalty of Worcestershire, and Sir Thomas Mallory, who spent most of his career in prison; and yet as many as 13 of the county’s 42 seats were filled by men who had yet to hold one of the three major offices of administration.27 Hugford in 1425 and 1429; Harewell and Porter in 1431; Metley in 1432; Metley and Cotes in 1433; Sir Thomas Mallory in 1445; Edmund Mountfort in 1447 and 1459; Catesby in 1449 (Nov.) (he had, however, served as sheriff in Northants.); Middleton in 1450; and Filongley in 1453. The figure rises to 14 if Mountfort is counted as the MP of 1449 (Feb.). Further, in several other cases appointment to office came only shortly before election to Parliament, most notably in that of Bate, named to the bench on 20 Nov. 1441 and elected to Parliament less than five weeks later. Clearly, for many of the MPs, election, or at least a first election, to Parliament came relatively early in their careers. Indeed, the 25 MPs survived their first election by an average of between 22 and 23 years, and this figure would have been higher but for the executions of Arderne and Thomas Burdet and the probable death in battle of Filongley. Remarkably, five of the MPs – Sir Thomas Burdet, Doddingselles, Hugford and the two Mountforts – survived their first elections by more than 40 years.

Turning to the elections themselves and the factors that determined their results, the electoral indentures are the only direct evidence and these present two unusual features. First, the average number of attestors to each return is significantly lower than in the generality of counties. Only two of the surviving fifteenth-century indentures for Warwickshire name 30 or more attestors, that is, 30 in 1431 and 31 in 1478. Two returns – those of 1407 and 1423 – name only six, and another, that of 1449 (Feb.) names none. Second, and more interestingly, there is an unusually small overlap between the attestors and those they returned. Of the 25 MPs, as many as 16 are not found among those attesting elections in the county, and of the nine that are only three did so on more than one recorded occasion. In short, the 25 MPs attested only 14 Warwickshire elections between them.28 If attestation in other counties is included, the figure rises to 21. Filongley’s appearance as an attestor in Dorset is noteworthy: on 19 Feb. 1453 he headed the attestors there, and thus his election for Warwickshire two weeks later was in breach of the electoral statutes. A comparison with neighbouring counties serves to emphasize how unusual a state of affairs this was. In Northamptonshire, for example, 18 of the 21 MPs appear as attestors, witnessing between them as many as 73 elections in their county. One possible explanation is that the sheriffs of Warwickshire and Leicestershire followed a different diplomatic, routinely recording only a few attestors, but this is contradicted by the returns for the latter county. There, 15 of the 21 MPs appeared as attestors on 63 occasions between them, with as many as 70 attestors recorded for the election of 1429. It is thus clear that the gentry of Warwickshire absented themselves from the hustings to a far greater extent than elsewhere.29 No satisfactory explanation presents itself, although it has been observed that those from the north of the county rarely attended the county elections, a state of affairs that appears to have persisted into the 17th century: Carpenter, 29, 303, 342; The Commons 1604-29, ii. 420. This is also evident in the infrequency with which knights are found at the hustings: only at four elections is a knight recorded as present.30 Sir Thomas Burdet in 1422, Sir William Lucy in 1427, Sir Edward Doddingselles in 1453, Sir John Greville in 1472.

In the general absence of evidence of direct baronial intervention in elections (in Warwickshire as elsewhere), the part played by baronial patronage has to be inferred. Indirect evidence of such intervention is provided, on the one hand, by the return of men whose status derived primarily from their place in a lord’s retinue and, on the other, by those instances on which there was a demonstrable correlation between the return of a particular lord’s connexions and the promotion of that lord’s interests in the ensuing Parliament. Warwickshire provides an example of the latter in respect of the Parliament of 1426, when Sir Thomas Burdet and Sir William Byshoppeston, who, through their service in France, had found places in the retinue of John, duke of Bedford, won seats in his interest. The duke had called Parliament to Leicester to bring an end to the dispute between his brother, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Bishop Henry Beaufort, and it was obviously valuable to have his own men in the Commons. This is not, of course, to say that the two MPs could not command election on their own account (Burdet had already represented the county four times), only that they might not have been disposed to seek return but for their concern for the duke’s affairs.

For other MPs, however, their lordly association was vital to their prospect of securing seats. Bate had little land in the county in his own right and the bulk of his income derived from the property his wife held in dower and jointure; it is likely that he would not have been returned to the Parliaments of 1442 and 1449 (Feb.), but for his place in the retinue of Humphrey Stafford, whose influence in the county had increased markedly in the late 1430s. The same could be said of the Leicestershire lawyer, Hotoft, who was returned with Bate to the second of these Parliaments (although his election may have been set aside in favour of Edmund Mountfort). Much more important, however, than Stafford’s influence in moulding the county’s representation was that of the Beauchamps, particularly in the time of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (d.1439). Nearly all the county’s MPs during the 1420s and 1430s had ties with the earl, and his patronage explains the return of Chetwynd, Cotes, Hugford, Porter and Rugeley, none of whom were of a standing sufficient to make them natural candidates for election. Other more substantial men from his retinue, namely Sir William Mountfort, elected five times in the 1420s and 1430s, Sir Thomas Burdet and Byshoppeston (who were both retainers of the earl as well as servants of the duke of Bedford) and Harewell, filled other seats. This pattern merely reflected the historic dominance of the retinue in the county, which was as near complete in the time of Earl Richard as it had been in the time of his father, Earl Thomas (d.1401).31 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 667-8.

On one occasion, however, in this period of Beauchamp dominance, the county’s representation was contested. In 1427 Sir William Peyto was accused of having come to the county court at the head of an armed band to set aside the election of John Mallory in favour of his own. This has been seen in terms of a struggle amongst the local baronage: the county court elected in Mallory an MP opposed to the interests of Earl Richard, then absent in France, and Peyto, as one of the earl’s leading men, acted in the earl’s interest to supersede the election.32 Carpenter, 385-7. If this interpretation is accepted, then the earl’s dominance of the county’s representation did not reflect a political consensus, but needed, on this occasion unsuccessfully, to be maintained by violent intervention in the electoral process. There are, however, difficulties with such a view. Mallory, although not among the earl’s intimates, was connected with the earl’s circle both before and after the election; and there is no evidence to place him in the service of the earl’s aunt, Joan, Lady Abergavenny, and John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, who appear to have been acting in opposition to the earl in the late 1420s. Indeed, in a suit in the Exchequer of pleas in Michaelmas term 1431 Lady Joan named him among those inimical to her who had been corruptly empanelled as a juror. Some other explanation is thus required for what happened at this election. Significantly, the election came to the attention of the Crown not through the allegation that Peyto had forcibly intervened, but through Peyto’s complaint that the sheriff, Sir Richard Hastings*, had falsely returned Mallory despite his own election by those present at the county court. Faced with this accusation, Hastings replied that, on the contrary, Peyto, ‘cum multitudine hominum pomposorum’ of the borough of Warwick had violently set aside Mallory’s election with the connivance of the under sheriff. The terms of this defence are important: the sheriff asserted that the borough returned its own MPs and thus the townsmen had no voice in the election of the knights of the shire. A jury agreed with him. This looks like a quarrel over a poll with Peyto’s return depending on the disputed validity of the votes of the townsmen. The most likely interpretation of these events is that, in the earl’s absence, a quarrel had arisen as to who should accompany Sir William Mountfort, elected with Mallory at the county court, to Parliament, and that Peyto was the disappointed of one of two candidates equally acceptable to the earl.33 C219/13/5. The other relevant documents are printed in Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 108-15.

In any event, to say that many of the county’s MPs had connexions with the earls of Warwick, the Beauchamps and their successors the Nevilles, says little about the factors determining individual elections. Local political conditions are illuminated not by those occasions when members of a baronial retinue were elected but rather by those on which they were not.34 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 668 cites the interesting example of 1386 from the earlier period. This became a more common occurrence after the death of Earl Richard in 1439, for in the ten years that followed the Beauchamp retinue was only briefly headed by an adult male heir (his son Duke Henry’s majority in 1445-6), and when Richard Neville, the husband of Duke Henry’s sister and heir, assumed the reins in 1449, political conditions, both national and local, were much more disturbed than they had been in the 1420s and 1430s.

These circumstances help explain the change in the pattern of the county’s representation in the second part of Henry VI’s reign, with the appearance of MPs who stood outside what had historically been the dominant retinue. The election in the 1440s of Bate and Hotoft, as servants of Stafford, has already been cited, but much more significant, as indicative of the new dispensation, is the election of Filongley and Boughton in 1453. Both men were associated with the earl of Wiltshire, James Butler, an opponent of Neville in local and probably already in national politics. Their election suggests not only that the new earl of Warwick could not exercise the influence of his predecessors on the county’s representation, but that, as in other counties, political factors beyond the local were coming routinely to play a part in the electoral process. Filongley was a prominent courtier and Boughton was closely connected with the Lancastrian loyalists through Wiltshire and others. Their election is thus to be seen in the context of the resurgence of the court’s fortunes. The same is to be said, even more starkly, in respect of the election of 1459, conducted in the immediate aftermath of the rout of the Yorkist lords, among whom was the earl of Warwick. Then, Filongley, as sheriff, presided over hustings at which two Lancastrian loyalists, (Sir) Edmund Mountfort and Everingham were elected. It is regrettable that the names of the MPs for the following Parliament are lost, for then, with the earl restored, the electoral balance was, in all probability, readjusted with the return of two Neville partisans.

Two other elections are worthy of notice for what they reveal of the dynamics of the county’s electoral process. The indenture of 1447 is unique in presenting a clear correlation between the attestors and those returned. It names 16 attestors, to 14 of whom it assigns a place of residence, either Solihull or nearby.35 Only the first two attestors, both described as ‘esquires’, are not assigned a place of residence: C219/15/4. One other of the county’s indentures follows the same pattern: that of 1467 names seven esquires, three gentlemen and then 14 described by place of residence: C219/17/1. Both the MPs had strong local connexions: Porter lived at Solihull and Edmund Mountfort had, albeit briefly, leased the King’s manor there. Further, the former can be shown to have had a close personal relationship with some of the attestors, four of whom were among those to whom he had illegally distributed livery some years before. It appears that the two MPs had sought to mobilize their local support, with Mountfort, as an esquire in the royal household, presumably being anxious to win a seat in an assembly that was to witness the court’s attack on Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. His cause was probably additionally aided by the sheriff, Henry Everingham’s brother, Thomas*, also a household esquire. As a younger son, albeit of one of the county’s leading gentry families, he was an unlikely candidate.

The other interesting election is that held on 20 Oct. 1449. Here the interest lies not principally in the identity of the attestors but in that of the MPs, Arderne and Catesby. Both were, in different ways, less than ideally-qualified candidates. Catesby, an esquire in the Household, lived in Northamptonshire, which he had represented in the previous assembly, and he had not yet played any part in the administration of Warwickshire. Arderne’s mismanagement of his own affairs had already brought his career to incipient disaster. Their election implies a reluctance on the part of others better qualified to sit in an assembly which met in an atmosphere of crisis, both military and financial, and one, moreover, summoned only two months after the dissolution of the last. Catesby’s election is particularly interesting. On 23 Oct., three days after his return, he attested the election of two royal servants senior to himself, namely William Tresham* and Thomas Thorpe*, for Northamptonshire. It is a reasonable inference that he had withdrawn from that contest to seek one in Warwickshire, where competition for seats was, at least on this occasion, less intense.

The elections of Catesby, Filongley and Edmund Mountfort demonstrate the question of the Crown’s influence in the county’s representation. This had been a clear factor in the reign of Henry IV, most notably in the election of Roger Smart†, steward of the Lancastrian lordship of Kenilworth, to the Parliament of 1404 (Jan.), but had declined thereafter. Of the county’s MPs from then until the late 1440s only the MP of 1414 (Apr.) and 1422, Robert Castell, clerk of the marshalsea of the Household and serjeant of the avenary under Henry V, had intimate ties with the ruling house. This changed markedly in the last years of Henry VI when the three MPs mentioned above had places in the royal household. Catesby rose through the 1450s from the rank of esquire of the King’s body to that of King’s carver, although he had a lesser place in the Household when he sat for the county in 1449 (Nov.); Edmund Mountfort was one of Catesby’s fellow carvers in the late 1450s and held that prestigious post when returned in 1459; Filongley was promoted to the post of keeper of the great wardrobe while representing Warwickshire in the Parliament of 1453. Between 1447 and 1459 these three men filled five of the county’s 14 seats or six if Mountfort was the MP of 1449 (Feb.). Their elections are readily explicable in the local and national context. In the local they reflect the declining influence of the retinue of the earl of Warwick; in the national, they are to be seen in the context of the greater premium placed by the Crown in having its servants in the Commons as national politics became more increasingly divisive.

No doubt responsibilities to a patron or the Crown, especially in periods of political disturbance, explain why particular men were returned to particular Parliaments. At other times, however, motives for candidature were more personal. The parliamentary career of Sir William Mountfort is of interest here, for on at least three occasions he appears to have used his time in Parliament to his own advantage. His petition for the grant of letters of denization in favour of his Breton-born wife is probably to be dated to his time as an MP in either 1422 or 1423. This was an uncontentious matter, but he may have put his time in later Parliaments to more questionable use. MPs were responsible for nominating tax collectors, and in 1429 Mountfort and his fellow MP, Hugford, nominated John Cotes. This was inappropriate in that Cotes was of too high a station to be called upon to discharge so lowly a role, and suspicion is raised by the fact that, three years earlier, he had been on a jury which awarded significant damages against Mountfort in a land dispute. Perhaps Sir William was getting a little of his own back. Later, as an old man, he may have secured election to the Parliament of 1450 as part of his efforts to disinherit his eldest son. The final concords by which that disinheritance was formalized were not levied until Trinity term 1451, but it was claimed in a later petition that ‘in dyvers parliamentes’ Sir William had ‘laboured to have hadde auctorised, approved and affermed’ that fine. Since no Parliament met between the levying of the fine and Sir William’s death in 1452, this cannot be the literal truth, but it suggests that he may have sought to prepare the ground in the Parliament of 1450.

Disputes over parliamentary wages were unusually common in Warwickshire, and three of them involved Mountfort.36 Of the known disputes over wages from 1377 to 1505, only Cambs. (with nine cases) appears more often than Warws. (with seven): Parliamentarians at Law, 350-88. Four of the county’s MPs during this period brought actions against sheriffs for unpaid wages. In an effort to secure what was due to him for the Parliament of 1429-30 Hugford brought successive actions against three sheriffs, one of whom, Mountfort, was his fellow MP in that Parliament; Rugeley sued Mountfort, as sheriff in 1431-2, for failure to pay his wages for the assembly of 1432; Mountfort was again the defendant, as sheriff for 1441-2, when sued by Bate in respect of the Parliament of 1442; and Boughton sued Sir Leonard Hastings*, the sheriff of 1453-4, and a later under sheriff, Thomas Stretton, in respect of that of 1453-4. It is impossible to say what lay behind these actions, but it may be that Mountfort was particularly negligent in raising wages. It is also worth noting that two of the cases relate to the greater sums in wages demanded by longer Parliaments (and that another such case arose out of the long Parliament of 1463-5). This implies that there was some structural weakness in the process by which wages were raised in Warwickshire, and that the system broke down when larger than normal sums had to be found. Some of the workings of this process are revealed by Boughton’s protracted efforts to secure payment. A bond he entered into with the under sheriff lists over 100 vills in the county together with the sums, varying between 2d. and 20s., due from each of them to pay his outstanding wages.37 Ibid. 286-93, 378. In Boughton’s case, there may have been a political motive for the failure to pay him. Stretton was an annuitant of Neville, against whose interest Boughton had been elected. No doubt the longer the Parliament and the greater the sums demanded, the more resistant individual communities came to part with money. Either this resistance was overcome or else the county officers were forced to make up the shortfall. Boughton eventually secured payment from Stretton, albeit not until five years after the end of the assembly for which he claimed, and both Hugford and Bate are known to have won judgements in their favour. It is, therefore, unlikely that the occasional problems in raising wages in the county served as a disincentive to service.

Warwickshire’s representation presents several contradictory features. First, although families long-established in the county provided most of its MPs, imports by marriage into the county were surprisingly common, three of whom were elected even though their interest in their wife’s lands were not hereditary. Second, despite the wealth of evidence that portrays Warwickshire as divided with many of its leading gentry looking outwards to neighbouring shires rather than inwards, there was only a modest overlap between its representation and those of other counties. Indeed, of the 52 men who sat for the county between 1386 and 1467, only seven were elected for another county, and of these only five sat for a neighbouring one.

Only one MP, Richard Hotoft, was elected for both Warwick and Warwickshire. There was a relationship between the representation of the county and the borough in that they were both subject to the influence of the earls of Warwick. In the 1450s, when the elections became the subject of rivalry and contention, the earl was able to maintain a stronger influence in the borough than the county. Thus, in Warwick he was able to secure the election not only of two townsmen in his service but of two more substantial men, Hotoft and Thomas Colt, both carpet-baggers; but in 1453 the county saw a marked departure from the established pattern of its representation in that neither of those returned, Filongley and Boughton, was a retainer of the earl. In the exceptional circumstances of 1459, the earl could do nothing to prevent the election of two Lancastrians, (Sir) Edmund Mountfort and Henry Everingham, for the county and the courtier, George Ashby*, for the town.