Worcestershire

Geographically a county of two regions, Worcestershire was predominantly forested and pastoral in its north and west and largely arable country in its south and east. Running through it was the river Severn, a major trading artery for the transport of goods between Bristol and the city of Worcester. Worcester, a minor inland port and a centre of exchange for agricultural produce, began in the fifteenth century to specialize in the manufacture of textiles, producing broadcloths of the highest quality which were sent to London for sale and export abroad. The development of this industry meant that Worcester, unlike many towns and cities, grew in affluence during the later Middle Ages. Also the county town and a diocesan centre, it was easily more important than other urban settlements like Bromsgrove, Evesham, Kidderminster, Pershore and Droitwich, of which the last was the centre for salt making, one of the oldest industries in the county.2 The Commons 1509-58, i. 234, 235; A.D. Dyer, City of Worcester in 16th Cent. 13-15, 17, 18, 26-27, 57, 59-60, 70-71, 85, 93, 100, 113, 162.

While the Crown, the duchy of Lancaster and the bishop of Worcester all held land in Worcestershire, the earls of Warwick were the most important immediate presence, and the apparent stability of local politics in the county was almost certainly due to the position that they enjoyed there.3 The Commons 1509-58, i. 234; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 360. As hereditary sheriffs of Worcestershire, the earls appointed the deputies who actually fulfilled the duties of that office and conducted parliamentary elections, meaning that they were strongly placed to influence the county’s representation in the Commons. Yet their dominance was not continuous. When Henry Beauchamp, earl (subsequently duke) of Warwick, succeeded his father, Richard, in 1439, he had not yet attained his majority, and when he in turn died in June 1446 aged just 21, he left an infant daughter and heir, Anne. As a result, John Beauchamp, Lord Powick, and Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley, together with their ally, Sir James Butler, the future earl of Wiltshire, enjoyed a short period of considerably enhanced influence in the west Midlands. It was short because the earldom of Warwick passed to a powerful and increasingly important figure, Anne’s uncle by marriage, Richard Neville, after her death in 1449.4 Carpenter, 331-2, 411-12, 421-2, 446, 450, 456, 465.

At least 20 different men sat as knights of the shire for Worcestershire in Henry VI’s reign, but the evidence is incomplete and it is possible that the county had as many as 22 representatives in this period, assuming that both of its unknown Members of 1459 had not already represented it in one of Henry’s earlier Parliaments. As in the previous three and a half decades,5 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 721. most of the known MPs were certainly or probably from local families, although Thomas Hewster and Sir William Lichfield were from Staffordshire, John Huband from Warwickshire, John Nanfan from Cornwall, Walter Skulle from south Wales and Thomas Winslow from Wiltshire. Whether natives of the county or not, all of them possessed interests there when elected and the Worcestershire residences of all but two of them are known.6 The two being the obscure John Stafford II and John Throckmorton II. As a whole, they were not concentrated in any particular part of the county, although it appears that only Lichfield’s lay in its north-west. It is not easy to attach any particular significance to the location of these residences vis-à-vis the MPs’ connexions with the most important regional magnate, the earl of Warwick, given that his interests, while most sparse in the north-east, were likewise fairly evenly spread throughout the county. Yet it is worth noting that John Throckmorton I, his son Thomas, John Vampage and William Wollashull, all servants rather than just adherents of Warwick, resided not far from Elmley in the south-east of Worcestershire, the important castle lying at the heart of the earl’s estates in the west Midlands.7 Carpenter, 440, 449.

At least four of the MPs were from families that had something of a tradition of service in Parliament or were in the process of establishing one. Humphrey Stafford I was the son and grandson of knights of the shire for Worcestershire and the great-grandson of an MP for Staffordshire as well as the father of Humphrey III. Robert Russell’s father and grandfathers also sat for Worcestershire, while John Throckmorton I was the father of Thomas and John II. There were also other family ties with Parliament among the MPs. First, Winslow was the son-in-law of John Throckmorton I. Secondly, Skulle’s father-in-law, Sir John Beauchamp†, had sat for Worcestershire in three Parliaments, and his son and heir married a daughter of Humphrey Stafford I. Thirdly, Nanfan’s wife was the daughter, sister and widow of knights of the shire for Cornwall. Fourthly, John Brace may have been the son of Richard Brace†, who had sat for the county as far back as 1330. Less certainly, John Wood was perhaps an illegitimate son of Sir John atte Wood†, a knight of the shire for Worcestershire in five Parliaments of the later fourteenth century, and Fulk and John Stafford were probably related to each other.

While the antecedents of some of the 20 are uncertain, several of them were from families ranked not far below the baronage. The two Humphrey Staffords in particular were from a cadet line of one of the most prominent landed families of the west Midlands. Of considerably more distinguished lineage than many of their fellow gentry, they were distant kin of the Staffords, earls of Stafford and dukes of Buckingham. They also counted among their relatives one of the most influential churchmen of their day, John Stafford, bishop of Bath and Wells and archbishop of Canterbury. Similarly, as his family relationship with John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, indicates, Sir Hugh Cokesey was another figure of high social status and impressive connexions, while Russell was from another well established Worcestershire family, if not of the same rank as those of the Humphrey Staffords and Cokesey. Huband and Thomas Rous were likewise from old west Midlands families, although in both cases with roots in neighbouring Warwickshire.

While those MPs with recently formed ties with Worcestershire were not all social parvenus (Nanfan, for instance, hailed from an old Cornish landed family), well over a quarter (seven) of the 20 were of obscure, modest or even non-gentle background and had advanced themselves through their own abilities, patronage or a combination of both. Fulk Stafford, for example, made his way in the world in the service of Richard Neville, earl of Warwick. Yet he and his putative relative, John Stafford II, were not necessarily of mean lineage since it is possible that they were cadet members of the Staffords of Grafton and so related to the two Humphrey Staffords. By contrast, the origins of the successful lawyer Vampage are by no means obscure, for his family had resided at Pershore in south Worcestershire, where they were tenants of the abbey of Westminster, since the early fourteenth century if not before. He was however born into modest circumstances, and he did not inherit lands of any significance. John Throckmorton I, another lawyer, was of a very similar background. Until the early fifteenth century, the Throckmortons were merely manorial tenants of the bishops of Worcester at Throckmorton in south-east Worcestershire and the family owed its rise almost entirely to John’s legal abilities and his membership of the Beauchamp affinity. Thanks to his success in establishing his family among the gentry, he was able to contract respectable marriages for his sons, Thomas and John II, of whom Thomas played a very full part in local government. Another of the men of law, Hewster, was certainly not born into the gentry, for his father was a tradesman from Lichfield in Staffordshire. By the end of his life, he was beginning to use the alias ‘Westcote’ as well as his original surname, apparently in an attempt to distance himself from his origins. His eldest son, Thomas, a far more distinguished lawyer than he, adopted the simpler expedient of calling himself ‘Lyttleton’, the maiden name of his mother, whose lineage was far superior to that of the Hewsters. Two of the belted knights among the MPs were also of modest or obscure background. Like Hewster, Sir William Lichfield had a connexion with Lichfield, where he inherited an estate that a wealthy merchant cousin had held in that town and in its vicinity. More importantly, he made two good marriages, the first with the daughter and heir of the Shropshire knight Sir John Cornwall†, a spectacular match that may have come about through his connexion with Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, the lord whom he accompanied to France in 1415. In common with Lichfield, Skulle had limited prospects at birth, for he was the younger son of an obscure Welshman who had settled in Herefordshire. He owed his rise to a combination of his own ability, patronage and his marriages.

The belted knights were very much in a minority. Apart from Lichfield and Skulle, only Cokesey and Humphrey Stafford I sat as such in the Commons and both Skulle and Stafford were esquires when they began their parliamentary careers. Yet at least five of the other MPs were distrained for knighthood,8 Humphrey Stafford III, John Throckmorton II, Thomas Throckmorton, Wollashull and Wood. and most, if not all, of the 20 had the means to support the honour. The paucity of representatives with knighthoods corresponds with the general decline in the proportion of belted knights among the Commons. In Worcestershire, as elsewhere, the decline had set in before the period under review, since no more than six of the known MPs for the county in the three and a half decades before 1422 were knights when they entered the Commons for the first or only time.9 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 721. A similar pattern is clearly apparent in neighbouring Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, if not to such a marked extent in the latter county. A mere two of the 21 known MPs for Gloucestershire in Henry VI’s reign represented the county as belted knights, while only six of Herefordshire’s 18 known representatives were knighted either before or during their parliamentary careers. Knighthood continued to retain its military connotations. Cokesey won his on campaign in Ireland in Henry V’s reign and Humphrey Stafford I his in Normandy, and all four of the belted knights among the 20 served in France before entering the Commons, as indeed did Nanfan and, perhaps, Fulk Stafford.

In this period lawyers featured more prominently in the parliamentary representation of Worcestershire than did belted knights. Apart from Hewster, John Throckmorton I and Vampage, at least three others of the MPs, Brace, Wollashull and Wood, were certainly members of the legal profession, as probably were Winslow and Thomas Throckmorton. Vampage, who rose to become Henry VI’s attorney-general shortly after leaving his last Parliament, was the most distinguished of these lawyers although Hewster was a prothonotary of the court of common pleas. As for Brace, Throckmorton, Wollashull and Wood, they made their names at a local level where their professional competence ensured them busy careers as legal advisers and administrators. To an extent, the prominence of lawyers among Worcestershire’s knights of the shire represented the continuation of an existing trend, since from 1386 to 1421 over one third of the known MPs for the county were members of that profession. On the other hand, there were important differences between those three and a half decades, when lawyers all but monopolized the parliamentary representation of Worcestershire,10 Ibid. 721-2. and the period under review. They did feature prominently in Henry VI’s first ten Parliaments, but this was not the case later in that King’s reign. While at least one lawyer sat for the county in every Parliament from 1422 to 1435 and both MPs in those of 1422, 1425, 1429, 1432 and 1433 were members of that profession, just one of the men who sat after 1435 (John Throckmorton I in 1439) was certainly a lawyer. Even if Thomas Throckmorton in 1445 and 1449 and Winslow in 1449 (Nov.) were indeed lawyers and both of the unknown MPs of 1459 fall into the same category, this clearly discernible shift, while less marked, still holds true. The war in France was perhaps one reason for the predominance of lawyers earlier in the century. When absent across the Channel, members of the county’s gentry elite were not available to stand for Parliament, leaving a gap for stay-at-home lawyers to fill.11 Ibid. 722. By contrast, fewer of them crossed to France during the latter stages of the war when English fortunes were in decline, meaning that they had more opportunity to pursue a parliamentary career. Furthermore, the loss of France hugely contributed to the political divisions that led to civil war. As politics at home became potentially more dangerous, it is possible that lawyers, commonly apolitical, were less willing to stand for Parliament. On the other hand, this was not the case in other counties like neighbouring Gloucestershire, and the seemingly dramatic falling away of lawyer MPs for Worcestershire in the latter decades of the reign might have owed nothing more than to chance.

While the election of lawyers shows that the electorate were prepared to countenance the return of men who were not necessarily established members of the upper gentry, the more prominent men of law among the 20 would have enjoyed considerable professional incomes, giving them the wherewithal to invest in land. According to assessments for the subsidy of 1436, Vampage, Hewster and Wollashull respectively received £70, £40 and £26 annually from their lands and fees. These were probably very conservative estimates, not least because they were all commissioners for that tax, but they do provide some idea of relative wealth, and of the success that these men of modest background had achieved in building up their estates by that date. Another assessment for the same tax found that Russell, an MP in the Parliament that granted it to the Crown, enjoyed a landed income of £66 p.a. Russell’s landholdings extended beyond Worcestershire and nearly all of his fellow Members likewise held lands outside the county. In the main, these holdings lay elsewhere in the west Midlands and the south-west of England, although the Staffords of Grafton and Cokesey in particular possessed significant lands outside those regions. The extent and geographical spread of the Staffords’ properties owed much to the succession of advantageous marriages that they managed to contract in every generation from the late fourteenth to late fifteenth centuries, and extant valors of their estates show that they held lands worth about £400 p.a. in the mid fifteenth century. There is no doubt that they were the wealthiest landowners among the 20, although Cokesey, the other MP of particularly notable lineage, also held very significant estates. An infant when his father died, he became a ward of the Crown, which estimated that he was the heir to lands worth 300 marks p.a. At a lesser but still substantial level, Skulle probably held estates worth comfortably over £100 p.a. in the right of his first wife when he first entered Parliament, but, for lack of evidence, it is impossible to estimate his total annual landed income. Other evidence of landed wealth is very piecemeal. For example, an inquisition post mortem held for Thomas Throckmorton in Warwickshire found that he died seised of estates in that county worth £35 p.a. but the inquisitions relating to his holdings in Worcestershire and elsewhere are no longer extant. Similarly, Winslow inherited a manor and lands worth at least £5 p.a. in Wiltshire from his father as well as other estates in Oxfordshire and Berkshire worth more than £23 p.a. from his mother, but the value of his holdings in Worcestershire is unknown.

Whatever their links with other counties, all but one of the 20, John Stafford II, played at least some part in the local government of Worcestershire. Previous experience in the administration of the county was not however a sine qua non for its MPs. No doubt reflecting their family’s high standing and connexions, both Humphrey Staffords, for example, gained election to their first Parliaments at an early age, prior to holding public office there. Eleven of the MPs served one or more terms as deputy sheriff of the county, the majority holding the office before entering the Commons for the first (or only) time, although Fulk Stafford received his first appointment as such in the autumn of 1455, even though he was then a Member of the Parliament then in being. Another, Brace, was sheriff of Worcestershire at the beginning of the fifteenth century, by direct appointment of the Crown during the minority of the then earl of Warwick, Richard Beauchamp. Some of the MPs exercised the shrievalty elsewhere, in several cases doing so before sitting for Worcestershire. Humphrey Stafford I was pricked as sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in the autumn of 1423, just weeks after he was returned to his first Parliament for Worcestershire, meaning that for several weeks he was simultaneously (and irregularly) sheriff of one county and a knight of the shire for another. Seven of the MPs served in the less prestigious office of escheator of Worcestershire, of whom three took up the office before entering the Commons. Vampage was escheator when elected to the Parliament of 1422 and Russell received his appointment to that office while a sitting Member of the Parliament of 1435. Another of the 20, Winslow, was never escheator of Worcestershire but exercised the office in Gloucestershire several years before his election in 1449. All of the MPs served on ad hoc commissions at a county level, although John Stafford did not do so in Worcestershire.

Their associations with the Court may have played a part in the elections of some of the MPs, although only Skulle and Nanfan definitely joined the King’s household. Skulle, later treasurer of the Household, was already an esquire of the royal establishment when returned to the Commons for the first time in 1437, as was Nanfan at the time of his election (or very shortly afterwards) in 1445. During the latter part of the 1440s, when he was twice a knight of the shire for Worcestershire, Humphrey Stafford I was known as a ‘King’s knight’ although he does not feature in any of the extant Household accounts. He also served as a royal ambassador in the same decade, as did Nanfan after his parliamentary career had ended. Finally, Stafford’s son, Humphrey III, may have gained election to the Commons of 1453, a body with a substantial Household element, while one of the queen’s esquires.12 On the other hand, it is possible that the queen’s man was his cousin and namesake, Humphrey Stafford II* of Dorset.

It was no doubt through his attachment to the Household that Skulle became chief remembrancer of the exchequer in Ireland between his second and third Parliaments, but the appointment was a sinecure and there is no evidence that he ever crossed the Irish Sea. Some of his fellow MPs served the Crown at a central government level at home, whether at Westminster or elsewhere, although not all of the offices in question predated their parliamentary careers. Hewster held his office in the common pleas for much of his life, for he received his initial appointment as a prothonotary there nearly three decades before his election in 1431. Both John Throckmorton I and Nanfan were Warwick chamberlains of the Exchequer, with Nanfan taking up the office while sitting in the Parliament of 1445, although they owed their respective appointments to the then earl and duke of Warwick rather than to the Crown. Throckmorton also became under treasurer of the Exchequer, by nomination of the treasurer of England, Ralph, Lord Cromwell, while a Member of his penultimate Parliament. His son, Thomas, was attorney-general for the infant Edward, prince of Wales, late in Henry VI’s reign, although by then the younger Throckmorton’s parliamentary career was over. Similarly, Vampage had already left Parliament for the last time when appointed the King’s attorney-general in 1429.

In the case of Vampage, his link with Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, rather than the offices he held under the Crown, was of most significance for his parliamentary career. His sudden emergence in the records early in Henry VI’s reign, and his successive elections to Parliament in 1426 and 1427 are explicable only in terms of his place in the retinue of that great magnate. Similarly, most of the other MPs were followers of the Beauchamp earls or their successor, Richard Neville, the lords best placed to influence the parliamentary representation of the county. During the earlier years of the reign, Vampage, John Throckmorton I, Wood and Wollashull were members of a group of lawyer-administrators closely associated with the Beauchamps and active in local government. Later in the reign, Humphrey Stafford III, Nanfan, Fulk Stafford, Skulle, Thomas Throckmorton and John Throckmorton II had attachments to Richard Neville, but not in every case before first entering Parliament, or with predictable consequences since not all of them joined the Yorkist cause in which Neville played such a leading part. Although predominant in Worcestershire, the earls of Warwick did not command the exclusive service of their followers among the MPs, and at least a dozen of the 20 also associated with other lords, mainly those with significant interests in the west Midlands. The two Humphrey Staffords, for example, took fees from several different lay and ecclesiastical patrons, among them their namesake and distant relative, Humphrey Stafford, earl of Stafford and duke of Buckingham, and James Butler, earl of Wiltshire.

In the three and a half decades prior to 1422, there was generally a preference for candidates with previous parliamentary experience when it came to returning the knights of the shire for Worcestershire.13 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 720. Even though both MPs were newcomers to the Commons in the Parliaments of 1431, 1437, 1445 and November 1449, the county did enjoy considerable continuity in parliamentary representation in this period, since several of the 20 represented it more than once. The already noted family ties that several of them had with Parliament also helped to ensure continuity. Wood was easily the most experienced parliamentarian among them: he sat in no fewer than nine Parliaments of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, some of them consecutive, although in three of them as a burgess for the city of Worcester rather than as a knight of the shire. Like Wood, John Throckmorton I was likewise an MP for Worcestershire in six Parliaments, two of them consecutive. Humphrey Stafford III’s parliamentary career spanned nearly three decades since, having sat for Worcestershire in four consecutive Parliaments of the 1440s and 1450s, he represented Warwickshire in that of 1478. He and Wood were not the only men to sit for other constituencies as well, since the elder Humphrey Stafford represented Staffordshire in 1427 and Winslow was a knight of the shire for Wiltshire in 1455. As far as is known, Humphrey Stafford III is the only man among the 20 to gain election after Henry VI’s reign, although four others (Brace, John Throckmorton I, Wood and Wollashull) first sat before 1422.

The venue for the elections of the knights of the shire for Worcestershire was the shire court sitting at Worcester castle. The first two decades of the reign saw the continuance of the practice, dating back to 1407, of entering the names of the representatives for the city of Worcester on the same indenture as that for the knights of the shire. In at least two of these combined indentures – those of 1425 and 1427 – the names of the MPs for the city are in a different shade of ink. Clearly, these were later additions, inserted on a section of the indenture deliberately left blank. The combined indentures likewise recorded the names of the electors for the city as well as the county, which in some indentures are much more clearly distinguishable than in others. In spite of the appearance of a joint election by a common assembly for the county and city, it is likely that the citizens – who in the century before 1407 had customarily elected their representatives at a separate assembly – had already chosen their representatives by the time the shire court met. The method of making electoral returns introduced in 1442 was probably far closer to reality: from then on there were usually separate indentures for the county and city, not always bearing the same date.14 For whatever reason, there was again just one indenture in 1455. None of the extant indentures lists a particularly large number of attestors. Each of the combined returns for 1435 and 1437 and the separate indenture for the county of 1442 gives the names of only 12 such witnesses and that for the Parliament of February 1449 as many as 26. The remaining indentures bear totals between these minimum and maximum figures, but the attestors were not the only persons present at elections held at the shire court at Worcester. This reality is revealed by the indenture of 1442, which records that, apart from the 12 named attestors, the election was also witnessed by ‘alias notabiles personas’. Even if the exact number of persons attending these occasions is impossible to ascertain, the relatively few attestors who feature in the surviving indentures for Worcestershire suggests that there were few if any disputed elections, since an unusually large number of witnesses often indicates that such a dispute had occurred.

As already noted, the earls of Warwick were well placed to influence the parliamentary representation of Worcestershire. The fact that so many of the MPs possessed links with them suggests at least some intervention by them at elections and bears testimony to their local dominance. National politics also appear to have played a part. The courtier Skulle was returned to the Parliaments of 1447 and 1453, both assemblies summoned in circumstances favourable to the Court-dominated government of the time, and the Yorkist Fulk Stafford to those of 1455 and 1460, called when Richard, duke of York, and his allies were in the ascendant. Furthermore, Fulk’s fellow MP in 1460 was his putative relative John Stafford, another committed Yorkist. A few months before his election that year, John fought for York at the battle of Northampton and he met his end bearing arms for Edward IV at Towton in March 1461.