Dover

The ancient town of Dover was one of the five ‘head-ports’ of the confederation of Cinque Ports as well as the base and administrative centre of the warden of the Ports. As the site of an important royal castle and the gateway to Lancastrian France for most of Henry VI’s reign, it enjoyed an important strategic and symbolic position. According to the author of the Libelle of Englysche Polycye, when the Emperor Sigismund met Henry V in 1416 he advised the King to guard especially the towns of Dover and Calais and to ‘kepe these too townes sure to your mageste/as youre twayne eyre to kepe the narowe see’.2 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 750; Libelle of English Polyce ed. Warner, 2.

Since the mid 1340s, the Portsmen of Dover had possessed a monopoly right, confirmed in 1381, 1390 and 1399, as the point of embarkation for all passengers save recognized merchants crossing the English Channel. The privilege resurfaced as an important issue in the period under review. In response to a petition from the mayor and commonalty of Dover, Henry VI confirmed it while the Parliament of 1439 was taking place, but the Portsmen still faced attempts by other Kentish ports to encroach upon their liberties. In June 1451 they received another grant upholding their right of control over passenger traffic and imposing a fine of £10 on any transgressors, to be levied by the warden of the Cinque Ports, half to be used for the repair of Dover castle and the remainder for the upkeep of the Port’s walls and sea defences.3 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 753; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 392-3; 1446-52, pp. 427-8.

Notwithstanding these threats to the monopoly over cross-Channel traffic, a steady stream of soldiers, dignitaries and important foreign visitors passed through Dover, and Henry V’s corpse returned to England via the Port, arriving there on 31 Oct. 1422. In April 1430 Cardinal Beaufort, the duke of Gloucester and other members of the King’s Council were at Dover as the young Henry VI embarked on his coronation expedition to France, and the King returned to England via the Port in February 1432. In the following year, the dukes of Bourbon and Orléans lodged at Dover while awaiting the expected arrival of emissaries from Charles VII.4 B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 63, 70. The King also visited Dover in Feb. 1451 as part of his tour of Kent in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion: ibid. 268. Late in the same decade, Cardinal Kemp, the bishops of Norwich, Rochester and St. David’s, the earls of Oxford and Stafford, Lord Hungerford†, Sir Thomas Kyriel* and other ambassadors passed through Dover on their way to France, to discuss a possible meeting between Henry VI, Charles VII and the duke of Burgundy.5 Add. 29810, f. 28; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 446-50. Generally, however, visitors appear not to have lingered long in the Port, perhaps preferring the relative comforts of Canterbury during the journey between London and the Channel coast.

While Dover was a corporation with the right to manage its own internal affairs, the Crown appointed its chief officer, the bailiff. He presided over the town court, where he sat alongside the mayor, and collected those revenues due to the King. By this period, townsmen often served as bailiff, so helping both to prevent potential conflicts between holders of the office and the rest of the municipal administration and to preserve Dover’s liberties. Even when the bailiff was a royal servant, he usually nominated a townsman to act as his deputy. On a day-to-day basis, the governance of Dover lay in the hands of the mayor and a dozen jurats. Below them, two constables administered each of the Port’s eight wards and it was at ward level that the watch and taxation were organized. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, a relatively small oligarchy controlled the government of Dover. For a considerable part of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, Walter Stratton dominated the mayoralty, an office in which John Braban and Ralph Toke were also prominent. In theory, the incoming mayor chose the jurats for the coming year from the ranks of the commonalty; in practice, jurats often served continuously for more than a decade. According to a custumal of 1356, the whole commonalty, gathered in St. Peter’s church, elected the mayor every 8 Sept. although the jurats might reject unsuitable candidates. Other important elected officials were the four chamberlains (otherwise custodes of the common chest), responsible for collecting the Port’s revenues – mainly rents and the local taxes known as maltolts. Typically, one or two of them came from the ranks of the jurats and the rest from the ranks of rising commoners. For the commoners among the chamberlains the office was usually a precursor to election as a jurat and marked an important step in the cursus honorum of the leading inhabitants of Dover. The commonalty also elected the town’s nominees for service as one of the Cinque Ports’ bailiffs at the annual herring fair at Great Yarmouth. Traditionally, the town’s common assembly, known after the method of its summoning as a ‘hornblowing’, was the body that approved the making of ordinances and grants of maltolts, although it appears to have met less frequently and to have lost significance in the first half of the fifteenth century.6 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 753; S.P. Statham, Dover, 65, 205-6; J.B. Jones, Annals of Dover, 231-2; Add. 29615, f. 181v.

Like the other Cinque Ports, Dover seems to have suffered a declining economy during the period under review, although it is difficult to gauge the extent of the slump. It had never prospered from overseas trade like Sandwich or Winchelsea, but equally it did not suffer to the same extent as Hythe. It is difficult to distinguish truth from rhetoric in appeals like that of 1451. Then, the Portsmen claimed they were ‘grievously charged by pretext of the said liberties [of keeping the passage to Calais] for the governance and repair of their ships . . . and in fortifying the town for the defence of the realm’ whereby ‘great poverty’ had arisen in the Port.7 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 427-8. In 1428-9, an apparently typical year, the Port’s income was £44 17s. 10d., derived almost exclusively from rents and the maltolt, and a further £13 6s. 10d. in murage, and its expenditure was £32 12s. 8d.8 Add. 29615, ff. 146v, 148. The total of receipts remained at about this level throughout the first half of the century, with a peak of £61 in 1438-9 and a trough of £26 in 1447-8. At times there were significant additional expenditures, as in the expenses arising from a dispute between Dover and its member-port of Faversham that ran for much of the first two decades of Henry VI’s reign. The efforts necessary to maintain walls and sea-defences, to ensure the continuance of the Cinque Ports’ exemption from parliamentary subsidies and to pursue other communal business of the Ports also proved particularly costly. After the mid 1430s, Dover’s outgoings regularly exceeded its receipts, resulting in the carrying over from year to year of an increasing amount of debt owed to individuals.9 Ibid. ff. 77-220; Add. 29810, ff. 1-83. Petitions to the Crown for grants of murage are further evidence of the pressure on the chamberlains. Even so, the jurats, unlike their counterparts at New Romney, seldom resorted to general levies on Dover’s inhabitants. They did, however, impose a tax to pay for the Port’s share of the costs of transporting the coronation expedition to Calais in 1430, and again for the King’s return in 1432.10 CPR, 1429-36, p. 496; Add. 29615, ff. 161v-2, 179v-81.

The relative decline of the Port’s finances is also evident in the difficulties the chamberlains had in paying parliamentary wages. Frequently these fell into arrears and even leading Portsmen might have to wait several years for the settlement of such debts. During Richard II’s reign, Dover had been generous with the wages it assigned to its MPs, allowing each of them a daily rate of 3s. 4d. By 1423, the official rate had dropped to 2s. 8d., still more than the other Cinque Ports usually paid, and in the first half of the sixteenth century the town’s parliamentary barons usually received 2s. per day. In practice, rates of pay often varied from Parliament to Parliament during the period under review, presumably in accordance with a baron’s status and the state of municipal finances, and were evidently the subject of negotiation with the men elected. Whatever the rate agreed, there were several instances of MPs struggling to obtain their full wages. The MPs of 1425, Thomas atte Crowche and John Garton, for example, encountered considerable difficulty in securing the payments promised for their services. Garton was particularly unfortunate. He received no more than £5 of the £9 14s. 8d. the town owed him, and in 1426-7 he appealed to the warden of the Cinque Ports, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, for a letter commanding Dover to hand over the remainder. In response, the jurats agreed to a general levy, but Garton obtained no more than a further 13s. 4d. and eventually had to release the commonalty from the rest of its debt to him.11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 754-5; iii. 160; 1509-58, i. 255.

Often forced to look beyond the common chest to meet parliamentary wages, the jurats generally turned to murage receipts. The Crown made a grant of murage to the mayor and commonalty of Dover for two years in 1423, although there were regular collections of murage thereafter and further such royal grants, each for eight years, followed in 1435 and 1443. Murage receipts were the most usual source of income used for MP’s wages until at least 1449, not only for the Port’s own barons, but also for those of New Romney who represented Dover’s interests in Parliament, as did James Lowys* for ten days in that of 1425 and for a further 43 days in that of 1433.12 CPR, 1422-9, p. 139; 1429-36, p. 496; 1441-6, p. 220; Add. 29615, ff. 78v, 148v, 160v, 166v, 168v, 171v, 175v, 178v, 186v, 191v, 200v. Prevalent in the first decade or so of Henry VI’s reign, the practice of sharing parliamentary representation and wages with Romney, the Port with which Dover also alternately supplied bailiffs for the Yarmouth herring fair, to some extent eased the financial burden of supporting MPs. In turn, Dover assisted Romney during the Parliaments of 1426 and 1432. Following the early homecoming of Romney’s MPs from the Parliament of 1426, one of the barons for Dover in that assembly, John Byngley, continued to represent its interests and Romney contributed to his wages. Similarly, Walter Nesham represented Romney for eight days in 1432.13 E. Kent Archs., New Romney recs., assmt. bk. 1384-1446, NR/FAc 2, ff. 107v, 116v.

In theory, if not always in practice, contributions from Dover’s member-ports and limbs also helped to meet the expense of sending barons to the Commons.14 In 1425 the parishes of SS. John, Peter, Nicholas, All Saints, Wade in the Isle of Thanet, Kingsdown, Ringswold, Goresend and Birchington had been incorporated as limbs of Dover: Dover Chs. 181; K.M.E. Murray, Constitutional Hist. Cinque Ports, 242-3. Birchington supplied 40s. for that purpose in 1425,15 Add. 29615, f. 80v. but there is no evidence that it or the other limbs and member-ports made similar contributions on a regular basis and, from 1420, at least one member-port, Faversham, actively resisted pressure to make them. The dispute that followed, in itself a considerable charge on Dover’s resources, ran well into Henry VI’s reign. To help them in this controversy, the jurats retained the lawyer Gilbert German and returned him to Parliament in 1427 and 1432. They also made frequent gifts of wine to secure the ‘friendship’ of the duke of Gloucester’s lieutenant at Dover castle, Geoffrey Lowther*. It was only after arbitration that there was a final resolution of the dispute in August 1438. The settlement reached ruled that Dover should cede its right to collect taxes at Faversham in return for a payment of 40s. p.a., and that at parliamentary elections it should choose one of its MPs from a group of four barons nominated by the member-port. Should it decline to return one of these nominees, it was to forfeit half of the 40s. due from Faversham for that year. It would appear that Thomas Brown II, who had played a prominent part in resolving this dispute, was the Faversham baron in the first Parliament to meet after the settlement, that of 1439. Over the following five years, Dover received a full annual contribution of 40s. from Faversham, but in 1445-6 the member-port paid only 20s., presumably because neither of the barons in the Parliament of 1445, both of whom were servants of the duke of Gloucester, was one of its nominees. Faversham again paid 40s. in 1446-7 and 1448-9, although which of the MPs of 1447 and February 1449 were its nominees is unclear. In 1450-1, however, the jurats remitted half of Faversham’s annual contribution, presumably to secure fuller control of the election to the Parliament of 1450, and there is no further evidence for the putting into practice of the agreement of 1438 thereafter.16 Ibid. ff. 79v, 125v, 137, 147v, 153v; Egerton 2105, f. 5v; Add. 29810, ff. 7, 16, 27, 36, 43v, 48v, 60, 62v, 64v, 72v; Dover Chs. 184-99.

At least 22 men were MPs for Dover in Henry VI’s reign but the evidence is incomplete. As the Port’s returns to the last three Parliaments of the reign are no longer extant, it is possible that as many as 28 individuals represented the town in this period although, in reality, it is unlikely that all of the unknown Members were newcomers to the Commons. Dover sent fewer local men to Henry VI’s Parliaments than hitherto. While all of the known MPs for the Port in the years 1386-1421 resided there,17 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 754. only some two thirds of the 22 appear to have done so and it is possible that actual natives of Dover were in a minority. The change may have arisen from a combination of wardens of the Cinque Ports taking a more active interest in elections there than in the past and the decline in municipal wealth. First, being based at Dover, the warden and his administration were an immediate presence in the town and, presumably, could more easily intervene at parliamentary elections there than in the other Ports. Secondly, outsiders might sometimes be ready to receive reduced wages, meaning that they were a less of a demand on Dover’s resources. Morgan Meredith, for example, appears to have received a single payment of £5 for his attendance at the Parliament of 1445-6, the longest of the reign.

As with two of the other Kentish Cinque Ports, Sandwich and New Romney, there is no sign of any real family traditions of sitting in the Commons and little evidence of other, more recent family links with Parliament. John and Ralph Toke were, however, brothers and Thomas Doyly, John’s fellow MP in 1453, had probably already married Ralph’s widow when he entered the Commons. It is also possible that John Pirie was the son of John Pirie†, a burgess for Canterbury in 1401, and that Walter Nesham was the father of John Nesham†, who sat for Sandwich in the Parliament of 1463. Thomas Brown was certainly the father of Sir George Brown†, a burgess for Guildford in the Parliament of 1472, a knight of the shire for Surrey in that of 1478 and a Member for Canterbury in that of 1483.

As a group, the MPs for the Port during the period under review were from significantly more disparate backgrounds than hitherto and the distinction between locals and outsiders was, with a few exceptions, a marked one. At least three of the latter were from outside Kent: Thomas Brown was of London mercantile stock, Richard Needham, already a wealthy mercer in the City when first elected for Dover, was probably from a Cheshire family, and Morgan Meredith was of Welsh origin. The others, John Pirie, Gilbert German and Stephen Slegge, were Kentish men. An official of the Exchequer with an impressive range of connexions and interests, Brown had already begun to acquire lands in Kent some time before his election in 1439, while Needham was clerk of Dover castle, an appointment he owed to his lord, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, then warden of the Cinque Ports. Meredith, Needham’s fellow MP in 1445, was another of Gloucester’s servants. He had no connexion with Dover prior to his election and there is no evidence he maintained a link with the Port after leaving the Commons. Pirie, German and Slegge were all lawyers who had professional connexions with Dover, of whom Pirie was also associated with Gloucester and Slegge with the duke’s political opponent and successor as warden, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele. At least one of the MPs of more local origin, Ralph Toke, was another lawyer, as possibly was his brother, John. The evidence for the occupations of the rest of the 22 is scanty. Thomas Gore appears to have begun his career as a baker but he subsequently traded in other commodities as well and became a ship-owner. Richard Grygge, his fellow in the Parliament of 1450, was a wine merchant. He was also another ship-owner, as was John Ward I, while William Brewes and Walter Stratton were others who traded in wine. It is possible that Gore was of relatively lowly social origin and that the same holds good for Thomas Frankelyn. By contrast, all of the outsiders enjoyed the status of gentry, whether ‘gentlemen’ or esquires and whatever their origins or the mercantile interests of some of them. As for the more locally based MPs, only the putative lawyer, John Toke, and Thomas Doyly certainly bore the style of ‘gentlemen’ although there is no doubt that Toke’s brother, Ralph, also enjoyed that status, thanks to his membership of the legal profession, his family’s landed interests and the lands he himself acquired.

By the 1440s, the decade in which he gained election to both his Parliaments, Ralph was a man of great substance in local terms. He had purchased an estate in east Kent and, according to one of his sons, died possessed of moveable goods worth some £1,000. In terms of wealth, however, Toke ranked well below Thomas Brown. Easily the richest of the MPs, the latter had considerable mercantile interests in London. These gave him the wherewithal to invest in real property, and he added to his lands through his fortuitous marriage to the daughter and heir of a Surrey knight. By the mid fifteenth century, he held some 30 manors, and a valuation of his estates, situated in Kent and elsewhere in southern England, for the purposes of the subsidy of 1450-1 put his landed income at £200 p.a. The only other MP for whom subsidy evidence survives is Stephen Slegge. His assessment for the subsidy of 1436 was a mere £7 p.a. in lands although it is very likely that his Kentish estates, which included manorial interests, were worth considerably more than that when he came to sit for Dover over a decade later. The landed holdings of the other MPs were largely restricted to the east Kent hundreds of Bewsborough, Newchurch and Ringslow and only a few of them extended their interests beyond that part of the county and the Cinque Ports.

One of the most constant features in the parliamentary representation of Dover in Henry VI’s reign was the election of barons who had served in municipal administration, and 14 of the 16 MPs who were not outsiders certainly served in the government of Dover before entering Parliament. Towards the end of the reign, the Cinque Ports as a whole formalized the practice of returning men with such experience, taking it a step further. By means of an ordinance of 1451, the confederation decreed that only those currently serving as mayor, bailiff or jurat should represent their Port in the Commons, and that a fine of £10 would be imposed on any Port breaking this rule. As a jurat Doyly, one of Dover’s MPs in the first Parliament to meet after the passing of the ordinance, that of 1453, fulfilled the criterion, but it is not certain that his companion John Toke did so.18 White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports (Kent Rec. Ser. xix), 28. Dover observed the ruling throughout Henry VIII’s reign: The Commons 1509-58, i. 254, 255.

A minority of the known MPs of Henry VI’s reign served as mayor. Nine of them attained the office, five of them not until after sitting in their first or only Parliaments. By contrast, 13 of them served as jurats, the majority of them before beginning their parliamentary careers. In the years 1386-1421 the town did not customarily return barons currently serving as municipal office-holders to the Commons,19 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 754. although it appears to have done so a little more regularly during the period under review. The incumbent mayor sat in the Parliaments of 1423, 1435, 1437, 1442, 1450 and 1453 and in each of those of 1425, 1427, 1431, 1433, 1439, 1442 and 1453 one of the MPs was a serving jurat. Furthermore, Thomas Frankelyn combined the role of the town’s common clerk and MP in the Parliaments of 1426 and 1433, although he was not actually in office as clerk when elected to the latter assembly, and his fellow MP in 1433, John Byngley, sat while a chamberlain. Just one of the 22, Walter Nesham, served as bailiff of Dover, and he did not do so until after sitting in the second of his two known Parliaments. He was however the deputy bailiff when returned to the first of these assemblies, that of 1432. Nesham was in a distinct minority in holding the latter position, since John Braban is the only other MP who certainly served as such. Braban was in office as deputy bailiff in the late summer of 1423 but it is unclear whether this was still the case at his return to the subsequent Parliament of that year. The three and a half decades immediately prior to 1422 appear to present a different picture, for none of the known parliamentary barons of that period was ever bailiff but as many as six of them acted as his deputy, although not while serving in Parliament.20 Ibid. Yet these findings are based on available rather than complete evidence and it is possible that the difference is more apparent than real. Fewer of the 22 were bailiffs for the Cinque Ports at Great Yarmouth than their predecessors of 1386-1421. Ten of the 16 known MPs of the earlier period served one or more terms as bailiffs at Yarmouth, of whom exactly half had already exercised the position when they took up their seats in their first or only Parliaments. By contrast, nine of the 22 certainly held the office, with only three of them doing so before entering the Commons.

Just four of the resident townsmen among the MPs, Richard Grygge, Walter Nesham, Walter Stratton and Ralph Toke, appear to have held office by direct appointment of the Crown, as ad hoc commissioners and customs officials in Kent or elsewhere. Only Nesham first did so prior to representing Dover in the Commons although he, Stratton and Toke subsequently came to combine the responsibilities of customs officers and MPs during their later Parliaments. As one might expect, the outsiders enjoyed far greater experience of office-holding outside Dover and nearly all of them had already begun that part of their careers when they first took up their seats for the Port. Particularly noteworthy is Stephen Slegge’s return in 1449, even though he was then sheriff of Kent, although Thomas Brown was a j.p. for the county when elected a decade earlier. Slegge was also an auditor in the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster at the time of his election for Dover, and his fellow lawyer, John Pirie, was both a deputy steward in the same north parts and the duchy’s chief steward in Sussex when he sat in 1435. Only Brown, who worked in the Exchequer for many years, certainly served in central government although he did not attain his most important positions, those of under treasurer and member of the King’s Council, until some years after sitting for Dover.

Employment in the Exchequer and a place on the Council were not Brown’s only associations with the centre of power. By the early 1440s, he was an esquire of the hall and chamber in the King’s household, although whether he already enjoyed that status when he sat for Dover is impossible to establish. Another of the outsiders, Morgan Meredith, also became an esquire of the hall and chamber, in his case only after sitting for Dover. Stephen Slegge, however, was certainly associated with the Household when returned for Dover in 1449. Yet there is no evidence that he was ever formally a member of it, and any proximity to the King resulted purely from his connexion with his patron, James Fiennes, the chamberlain of the Household. It appears that the only properly resident townsman among the 22 who joined the royal establishment was Thomas Doyly, even if one deems the Tokes, through their links with Fiennes, to be members of the Court interest in Kent. While Doyly was an esquire of the Household by the mid 1450s, it nevertheless remains unproven that this was the case at the time of his election in 1453.

Several of the 22 had associations with magnates when returned for Dover, notably those lords who occupied the office of warden of the Cinque Ports. Four of the outsiders, Morgan Meredith, Richard Needham, Walter Nesham and John Pirie, had ties, formal or otherwise, with the then warden, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, at the time of their first or only returns to Parliament as Members for Dover. Similarly, three other MPs, Stephen Slegge and the Toke brothers, enjoyed links with Gloucester’s successor as warden, James Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and John Toke had entered the servivce of the warden who succeeded Fiennes, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, by the time of his election to his last known Parliament in 1453. Finally, Thomas Brown had already enjoyed a long association with Walter, Lord Hungerford, whom he had served in the Exchequer and as steward of his household, when elected for the Port in 1439.

In common with those of the other Kentish Cinque Ports, the parliamentary barons of Dover possessed a wealth of parliamentary experience. Foremost in this regard was John Braban, who first entered the Commons in 1416 and was at least nine times an MP, although Walter Stratton and Thomas atte Crowche, who likewise began their parliamentary careers before 1422, respectively sat in at least five and four Parliaments. Of the other MPs, John Garton (another who first sat before Henry VI’s reign) and John Toke certainly sat in three Parliaments, nine represented the Port in two and John Pirie, Richard Needham and Stephen Slegge sat for other constituencies before taking their seats for Dover. Indeed, among those Parliaments for which there are returns for the Port, only to those of 1426 and 1439 did the Portsmen elect men with no previous parliamentary experience. The number of occasions in which barons served in consecutive Parliaments reinforced the continuity of representation. In each of the Parliaments of 1422, 1423, 1442, 1447, February 1449 and 1450, one of the MPs had sat for Dover in the Parliament immediately preceding. Furthermore, the return of Pirie in 1435 was a re-election in as much as he had represented Kent in the Parliament of 1433, and likewise Needham (returned in 1445) had represented the Wiltshire borough of Cricklade in the preceding Parliament of 1442. As far as the evidence goes, only Thomas Gore gained election to the Commons after Henry VI’s reign, as a baron for Dover in that of 1463.

As with their counterparts in the other Cinque Ports, the barons of Dover held elections to Parliament upon receiving a precept from the clerk of Dover castle, to whom they sent back the results to include in the return he made to the Chancery for all the Ports. At Dover, parliamentary elections, like those for the mayor and other officers, appear to have taken place at ‘hornblowings’.21 Ibid. 753. As already noted, the influence of successive wardens of the Cinque Ports is apparent in the return to the Commons of several MPs, largely but not exclusively the outsiders among them. The Portsmen elected barons from outside their own governing elite to at least seven Parliaments, those of 1427, 1432, 1435, 1439, 1445, 1447 and February 1449, although outsiders filled both seats only in 1445 when those elected were Gloucester’s servants, Meredith and Needham. There is no evidence that the pair’s election caused resentment. Needham, at least, seems to have enjoyed good relations with the townsmen. Then clerk of Dover castle, he actively represented the interests of both Dover in particular and the Cinque Ports in general while attending the Parliament. On other occasions, the Portsmen of Dover freely elected outsider MPs who might use connexions or professional qualifications to the advantage of their Port, not least the lawyer German Gilbert whom they twice returned during their dispute with Faversham.