Wootton Bassett

The borough of Wootton Bassett evolved, perhaps by deliberate creation, out of the manor of Wootton, some six miles to the south-west of Swindon. By 1236 there is a mention of burgesses, probably indicating the existence of tenants by burgage, although no explicit references to such tenure are found until 1334. Nevertheless, three years earlier, the settlement at the heart of the manor had been referred to as a ‘burgus’, and had its own court. This was nevertheless presided over by the steward of the lord of the manor, and only in 1408 is there any record of a mayor.1 CAD, i. C1205. In about 1631 the burgesses claimed to have been deprived of their royal charter of 1561, under the terms of which the government of Wootton Bassett had been vested in a mayor, two aldermen and 12 capital burgesses, but no other evidence of such a grant is known.2 The Commons 1604-29, ii. 454.

In the thirteenth century the twin manors of Old Wootton and Vastern (into which the demesne at Wootton had been divided administratively) were held by the Basset family, from which it descended to Edward II’s favourite, Hugh Despenser, earl of Winchester. After the Despensers’ fall, Edward III settled Wootton successively on his mother, Isabella, and his queen, Philippa, before granting it in 1376 to his younger son, Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge and later duke of York. The manors remained in the hands of successive dukes of York and their widows, until Richard, duke of York, attained his majority. After York’s attainder in the Parliament at Coventry in 1459, the stewardship and custody of the manor of Vastern and an annuity from Old Wootton were granted to James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, only for the manors to be returned to Cecily, dowager duchess of York, after her son’s accession to the throne in 1461. Cecily retained them until her death in 1495.3 VCH Wilts. ix. 186-205; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 574, 585.

As far as is known, Wootton Bassett first returned MPs to the Commons in 1447.4 No Wilts. return survives for the Parl. of 1445, and it is thus uncertain whether Wootton Bassett was already represented in this assembly. The circumstances of the borough’s enfranchisement are obscure. In the absence of a formal charter granting the borough the right of parliamentary representation (as had been conferred on Plymouth in 1440), there has to be some suspicion that a precept was issued to the burgesses by the sheriff, William Stafford* (a client of the treasurer of the king’s household, (Sir) John Stourton II*) in an attempt to find secure seats for candidates agreeable to the Court. Certainly, there are indications that the return of Members for Wootton Bassett was something of an afterthought. The names of the borough’s MPs were listed last on the schedule that accompanied the sheriff’s electoral indenture, and no sureties were named.5 C219/15/4.

Little is known of the conduct of Wootton Bassett’s parliamentary elections. As elsewhere in Wiltshire, they were probably held locally on the authority of a precept from the sheriff and reported to the shire court, where the sheriff compiled the names of the MPs chosen by the constituencies within his bailiwick into a schedule, which he returned to Westminster along with the county indenture. From February 1449, however, the sheriff also sealed separate indentures with each of the boroughs in his shire. Three such indentures survive for Wootton before 1461, the last of them a mere fragment. The indentures for 1449 (Feb.) and 1453 (both sealed on the day before the electoral meeting of the shire court), were counter-sealed by two burgesses (Walter Hele and John Clynche), rather than the mayor of the borough, probably on account of the lack of a common seal.6 C219/15/6; 16/2. In any case, there is evidence to suggest that any choice made locally could be (and was) overridden by external agency on more than one occasion. Thus, in 1450 the name of Alexander Appleby was inserted into the sheriff’s schedule over an erasure, and the same is true of Trygotte’s name in the Wootton indenture three years later.7 C219/16/1, 2.

The names of Wootton Bassett’s MPs are known for six of the eight Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign to which the borough returned representatives. Twelve men divided the seats between them; none of them represented the borough more than once. Indeed, only two of Wootton’s MPs in the period under review are known to have possessed prior experience of the Commons at the time of their return. John Lawley, elected in 1450, had previously sat in four Parliaments, either for Bridgnorth in Shropshire or for Downton in Wiltshire, while John Watkins, one of the MPs in 1459, had represented the Cornish borough of Liskeard six years earlier. In the service of other constituencies, several of Wootton’s MPs nevertheless managed to build up respectable parliamentary careers. While Watkins (and perhaps Hasard) are each believed to have sat only twice, Norris was returned four times, and Lawley on an impressive seven occasions. There was no clear pattern to the other constituencies represented by these men, which seem to have been determined rather by personal ties and a desire to be returned to the Commons regardless of place. Hasard found his second seat in Malmesbury, while Norris secured election at Devizes.

Nor could more than a minority of the borough’s MPs in this period lay claim to familial traditions of parliamentary service. Hasard was probably the son of a prominent parliamentarian who represented Malmesbury five (or perhaps six) times, including in the Wootton MP’s own Parliament of 1453, while Lawley’s putative uncle William* was a one-time MP for Bridgnorth.

Wootton Bassett’s apparently arbitrary enfranchisement had technically placed the borough’s electoral patronage in the hands of the King’s kinsman, Richard, duke of York. Yet, the duke’s close association with the Court until the upheavals of 1449-50 meant that it was the royal household that effectively controlled the constituency. Thus, in each of the three Parliaments of 1447, 1449 (Feb.) and 1449 (Nov.) at least one of the two MPs was a member of Henry VI’s household, or closely connected to it. Ward was one of the yeomen of the Household attached to the office of the ewery, and was later appointed bailiff of the royal forest of Windsor and keeper of the chase of Cranborne; Daunte was a groom of the King’s chamber and later became parker of Mere and a yeoman of the Crown; while Norris may have been a kinsman of John Norris*, for many years one of Henry VI’s leading courtiers: crucially, he was returned during his putative relative’s shrievalty of Wiltshire in 1448-9.

After 1449, when York increasingly positioned himself as an opponent of the Court, it is clear that he made his influence felt. As is well known from the Paston correspondence, in 1450 (and probably also on other occasions during the 1450s) the duke was at pains to secure the return of supportive candidates in East Anglia, and it is likely that he also sought to place his retainers in his own pocket boroughs.8 Paston Letters ed. Davis, ii. 464. Thus, the northerners Appleby and Trygotte were without doubt York’s preferred choice, and the only thing about their election that is surprising is the need for an alteration of the original election result by an emendation of the return. The names of Wootton’s MPs in 1455 are lost, but it seems reasonable to speculate that in the wake of the victory of the Yorkists in the first battle of St. Albans the borough’s seats were once again taken by candidates agreeable to the duke. Conversely, after Ludford Bridge, when York had been driven into exile, it was the court faction that assumed control of Wootton’s parliamentary representation. The local electorate are unlikely to have played much of a part in the choice of Jurdeley, a man whose father was closely associated with Henry VI’s foundation at Eton, and Watkins, a servant of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter. It is intriguing to speculate whether a year later, after the battle of Northampton, the earl of Wiltshire, who nominally continued to be steward of the lordship of Wootton, was able to secure the return of two further supporters of the queen’s party, or whether the triumphant Yorkist lords succeeded in having men acceptable to the borough’s hereditary lord elected.

As Wootton Bassett had been enfranchised with the clear intention of providing willing place-men with a route into the Commons, it would be otiose to discuss its representation under the aspect of what has been termed the ‘revolution’ in borough representation, that is, the ‘displacement’ of ‘traditional’ merchant burgesses by men of law. There is no suggestion that the borough was ever represented by merchants, and highly qualified lawyers were prominent among its MPs almost from the outset. Thus, Daunte had trained at Barnard’s Inn and his colleague Horton at the Inner Temple; Norris was a fellow of Lincoln’s Inn; and membership of the quorum of the Shropshire and Berkshire benches is testimony of Lawley’s qualifications. It seems probable that Watkins, the steward of the piepowder court of the constable of the Tower of London, and perhaps also Hasard and Lytell, possessed at least rudimentary legal knowledge.

Between them, these men of law accounted for much of the administrative experience that Wootton’s MPs possessed when they represented the borough. Norris had been a tax collector, while Lawley and Watkins had been members of royal commissions in their counties. Both Norris and Lawley later embarked on more extensive careers of office-holding under the Crown: both served as escheators, and Lawley in addition held a string of offices, serving on the county benches of Shropshire and Berkshire, and rising to the more elevated positions of deputy butler of England, attorney-general for North Wales, and marshal of the Exchequer. Several MPs also found employment in the service of other lords. At the time of his return, Watkins was receiver of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, while Trygotte went on to hold a similar post in the administration of John Neville, earl of Northumberland, and Horton to serve as bailiff of the liberty of the mitred abbot of Peterborough.

None of this should be taken to mean that all of Wootton Bassett’s MPs were complete outsiders. Although Appleby and Trygotte hailed from the north, Horton, Jurdeley and Watkins came from Buckinghamshire, Daunte from Gloucestershire and Lawley from Shropshire, the remainder of the borough’s seats in Henry VI’s reign were taken by men who at least resided in Wiltshire, living at Highworth on the Berkshire border (Bridges), Malmesbury (Hasard), Swindon (Norris), and perhaps even from the neighbourhood of Wootton itself (Ward).