Winchelsea

The surviving records provide a patchy and sometimes contradictory view of the state of Winchelsea’s economy in the period which followed soon after Henry V had decreed that the Port should be reduced in size. Winchelsea had ceased to be a head port for the collection of customs over 40 years earlier, and the two customers appointed for Chichester, in the west of Sussex, were held jointly responsible by the Exchequer for the entire coastline of the county. In practice, however, the two men divided the area between them, with one of the customers having Winchelsea as his base in the east. At the start of Henry VI’s reign this was John Tamworth, whose place was subsequently taken, for many years, by Godard Pulham. Reference was made in the Parliament of 1432 (when Pulham was a Member of the Commons) to the practice of having deputies to the Chichester customs officers stationed in Winchelsea, this being a convenient practice and one beneficial to the Crown.1 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 766-7; RP, iv. 417 (not transcribed in full in PROME, xi. 64); E159/204, communia Trin. rot. 15d. Yet the extent of the overseas trade passing through Winchelsea, and of its coastal traffic (which was not recorded in the customs accounts), is impossible to assess. In Henry V’s reign and the early years of that of Henry VI, deputies to the chief butler were appointed specifically for Winchelsea (their brief sometimes extending from Seaford to Romney), but there is no mention of the post after the appointment of Thomas Pope* in 1435, and how long Pope himself served there as deputy butler is not known. This may indicate that after the 1430s the Port’s trade in wine declined in importance.

In 1416 concern had been expressed that the channel leading to the port at Winchelsea was becoming clogged with stones, sand and ballast discharged from ships,2 CPR, 1416-22, p. 75. but the problem seems to have been successfully dealt with for a while, since from 1417 and on many occasions thereafter, until the loss of Normandy, Winchelsea was designated a place of muster for mariners employed in the King’s service, and for soldiers embarking for France. Furthermore, it was often used as a point of assembly for ships requisitioned for naval duties, as in 1423 when vessels from ports all along the south coast were brought together at Winchelsea for a concentrated offensive. Fleets assembled there on other occasions in the 1430s and 1440s. In 1433 ships of up to 200 tons were ordered to Winchelsea for transport purposes, and five years later (Sir) Richard Wydeville* and other military commanders crossed from there to Honfleur with a force of 1,000 men-at-arms and archers.3 CPR, 1429-36, p. 277; Chrons. London ed. Kingsford, 145-6. Winchelsea was the port from which the strategically important fortress of Le Crotoy was regularly supplied with victuals and reinforcements, and in 1441 stonemasons, carpenters and raw materials were dispatched from it for works of construction at Le Crotoy’s castle.4 CPR, 1441-6, p. 48.

As one of the Cinque Ports Winchelsea was obliged to supply ships for royal service; and in 1442 the vessels assigned to the national force appointed in Parliament to keep the seas expressly included two ‘barges’ of Winchelsea (each with an 80-strong crew), one of which belonged to William Morfote, the former MP.5 PROME, xi. 373-5. It is clear that Winchelsea’s inhabitants made their living primarily through trade, fishing, or, like Morfote, as sea captains engaged in transporting men and supplies. On 20 Jan. 1440 the Portsmen of Winchelsea, Rye and Hastings were licensed to make provision of corn for their own sustenance, as it was said that they ‘care nothing for agriculture’, but were employed solely in fishing and other sea-faring activities.6 CPR, 1436-41, p. 381. Defence of these Ports was a constant concern to the government, bearing in mind the ever-present likelihood of attacks by the King’s enemies.7 Although the assertion that Winchelsea and Rye were burnt down in 1449 (made by W.D. Cooper, Hist. Winchelsea, 101-2, among others), may have arisen through a misinterpretation of the records: L.A. Vidler, New Hist. Rye, 34. The French assault on Sandwich in August 1457 prompted the appointment of Edward Neville, Lord Abergavenny, to take charge of the defence of Winchelsea, and in December 1459 William Scott III* was ordered to arrest ships for a force of 200 men-at-arms to safeguard the Port from sea-borne attack (in this case threatened by the attainted earl of Warwick).8 E. Suss. RO, Rye mss, acct. bk., 60/2, f. 56; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 371, 401, 556. All this activity at Winchelsea indicates that it was a busy, prospering community for most of Henry VI’s reign, although the loss of Normandy must have severely affected both its shipping and its trade in the 1450s. From Edward IV’s reign onwards Winchelsea’s economy declined as the sea retreated: increasingly, ships were unloaded instead at the Camber or at Rye, and the town gradually fell into decay as its harbour silted up. Nevertheless, Winchelsea was still able to contribute its quota to the fleet called out for the invasion of France in 1475.

Information about how Winchelsea was governed is derived from a custumal of the mid fifteenth century, and from a unique survival from its series of assembly books, covering some 19 years from 1430. On Easter Monday every year the people of Winchelsea gathered in the ‘Hundred Place’ and by common consent elected a mayor, who was constrained to accept the charge on threat of having his house demolished. He took an oath of loyalty to the King and the commonalty, and chose 12 jurats from among the most ‘prudent’ men of the town to assist him. Together, the mayor and jurats selected a clerk, and the mayor alone chose a serjeant.9 Suss. N. and Q. vi. 65-66. Records of such elections survive in detail from 1431 to 1446.10 Cotton Julius BIV, ff. 40-43, 47v-51v, 64-65v, 71v-73v. Unlike the position of mayor, that of bailiff was a royal appointment, although, in theory at least, the King’s nominee could be rejected by the town. A new bailiff was required to show his commission to the mayor and jurats, and be formally accepted by them, taking his charge from the mayor and swearing an oath to perform his office without detriment to the liberty of Winchelsea. The mayor was ex officio coroner within the liberty, and all cases punishable by loss of life or limb (save for counterfeiting and sedition, which pertained to the court of Shepway), were tried before him and the bailiff presiding over the hundred court together.11 Suss. N. and Q. vi. 66-67. Strangers might become freemen if they lived peaceably in Winchelsea for a year and a day. A new freeman paid a fee and took an oath to maintain the common privileges and to pay scot and lot for his goods and chattels. The mayor and commonalty might grant land within the liberty for the provision of religious services, the upkeep of hospitals, and the maintenance of the churches of St. Thomas and St. Giles, all without the necessity of procuring a licence from the Crown. Furthermore, the mayor and bailiff might take ‘withernam’ (reprisals on the goods of a community as a whole for the debts or liabilities of one of its individual members), for instance against citizens of London or burgesses of Calais, thus protecting Winchelsea’s merchants in their dealings in other towns or cities.12 Ibid. 97-98, 131.

The internal affairs of Winchelsea did not always run smoothly in the period here under review. Failure to elect a new mayor at Easter 1433, ‘propter discordiam communitatis’, meant that the outgoing mayor, John Godfrey, had to remain in office beyond the end of his term. The cause of the trouble was a serious quarrel between two of the jurats, William Morfote and William Worth (both of them former MPs), with blame for the disruption being placed on the former. On 31 May Morfote was required to find three sureties who were each bound in 100 marks that he would keep the peace towards Worth,13 Cotton Julius BIV, ff. 42, 51v. and when, 11 days later, William Fynch (one of the leading landowners of east Sussex), was elected mayor, he excluded Morfote from the new group of jurats, while keeping Worth on as a member of this advisory body. As a consequence of the disturbances, which caused ‘magna diversitas et murmuracio’, two years later new ordinances were brought into force to govern the elections of officials in future, particularly in the event of a contested election, and a common council of 36 was established. The process depended ultimately on which of the candidates for the mayoralty received a louder acclamation.14 Ibid. f. 59.

The names of Winchelsea’s barons are known for 18 or 19 of the 22 Parliaments assembled between 1422 and 1460,15 It is unclear whether Sylton and Phyppes sat together in 1459 or 1470. and numbered 20 or 22 individuals. For the most part they each sat on just one or two occasions, and it is possible that in as many as six of the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign Winchelsea was represented entirely by novices. The increase in the number of inexperienced representatives is especially noticeable from 1442 onwards. Of the eight Parliaments for which both seats went to men with previous experience of the workings of the Commons, all but two fell before 1442; and after that date the six experienced MPs chosen were outnumbered by ten apparent newcomers. Thus, in the earlier part of the period tried and tested individuals predominated. In the consecutive Parliaments of 1425, 1426 and 1427 both of the barons elected had sat in the Commons before, and the four instances of re-election in the course of Henry VI’s reign (Roger atte Gate in 1422, Alexander Beuley in 1426, Godard Pulham in 1432 and William Pope in 1435), all occurred during the King’s minority. Those most frequently returned in the period as a whole were Roger atte Gate, who stands out for his eight Parliaments between 1399 and 1427, and Thomas Thunder I and Thomas Sylton, with four Parliaments each. Only Sylton made his mark after 1442. Two of Winchelsea’s barons went on to represent other of the Cinque Ports after their service for Winchelsea had ended: following his three Parliaments for Winchelsea Tamworth sat twice for Hastings, and John Copledyke sat for Sandwich in 1461, 11 years after he had represented the more westerly Port.

For the most part Winchelsea was represented by men from local families: 17 of the 22 fell into this category, some of them being sons or grandsons of former parliamentary barons.16 E.g. Lundeneys, the two Thomas Thunders, and possibly Pulham. Thomas Thunder II was the third man of this name to represent Winchelsea in successive generations, and Thomas and John Sylton, who perhaps both sat in this period, were father and son. Many of this group were merchants, trading in such commodities as grain, wine, wool, fish and iron, the most prominent among them being atte Gate, Godfrey, Pulham and the Syltons. At least nine owned ships, and Godfrey and Pulham acquired four or more vessels in partnership. Most notable in this group was the notorious sea captain and privateer William Morfote. These ship-owners regularly sent their boats out to patrol the Channel, supply Le Crotoy with victuals and armaments, and transport men and goods to France. While there is now no way of measuring their relative wealth, their activities suggest that they were successful in their enterprises. Many of these Portsmen acquired land outside the liberty of Winchelsea, in such places as Icklesham, Guestling, Pette and Fairlight, and duly claimed exemption from parliamentary taxation on the chattels they kept there. Among the more prosperous were Tamworth, long remembered as a benefactor to Battle abbey, and Godfrey, who held property in west Sussex as well as closer to home. Richard Lundeneys owned a mill and several acres in Brede, and, besides his considerable landed interests around Winchelsea, Pulham acquired buildings in the city of London through marriage to a widow.

The remaining five parliamentary barons fall into a separate category, for although they each, to a greater or lesser extent, participated in the affairs of the Port, their careers marked them out as different from most of the inhabitants. William Fynch cannot be classed as an outsider to the community of Winchelsea, since his family had long taken a close interest in the Port’s governance – indeed, his father had sat in Parliament for the Port three times, and his elder brother had done so once. Yet, of armigerous status, he was primarily a member of the county gentry, and before his election to Parliament in 1433, in the unusual circumstances of the dispute over the mayoralty, he had served as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex. His landholdings in Sussex and Kent were said to be worth as much as 100 marks a year. Four others were accorded the same social standing – all four being styled ‘esquire’. William Pope, the King’s bailiff of Winchelsea returned to the consecutive Parliaments of 1433 and 1435, had been engaged in royal service at least since Henry IV’s reign, and currently also occupied the offices of chirographer of the court of common pleas and verger of the Order of the Garter at Windsor. Of obscure origin, he owed his more recent advancement to the patronage of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the warden of the Cinque Ports, and enjoyed an income of £80 p.a. from fees and annuities awarded him by Crown and duke. John Greenford, a lawyer from Lydden in Kent, who received at least £40 p.a. from his lands in that county and Sussex, entered the community of Winchelsea by marrying one of the daughters of the parliamentarian Roger atte Gate. Although occasionally active on the business of his adopted home, his principal occupation was as steward of Dover castle, an office which kept him constantly engaged in business on behalf of all the Ports, and this and his membership of the quorum on royal commissions in Kent can have left him little time for visits to Winchelsea. Before his election for Winchelsea in 1450, John Copledyke, who perhaps came from Lincolnshire, had spent his time as a soldier, serving as lieutenant of Le Crotoy for the eight or so years immediately preceding his return. A ship-owner, he was later to be selected to command a fleet in the service of the newly-crowned Edward IV. Similarly, John Convers (who sat in 1453) had also been a military man, in his case serving as lieutenant of Caen. He became a royal serjeant-at-arms by appointment of the Yorkist government of 1460.

Nevertheless, although they were ‘outsiders’ in the sense that they were esquires, landowners or soldiers and had not emerged from the typical mould of a Portsman, all five took more than a passing interest in Winchelsea, and the sons of two of them (Copledyke and Convers), followed in their footsteps by sitting in Parliament for the same Port. Fynch and Pope, as we have seen, were returned in 1433 at a time of crisis in the town’s government, and Pope’s re-election to the next Parliament, in 1435, could have been made in the expectation that his links with the Crown and the warden of the Ports might prove to the advantage of Winchelsea’s ruling elite. The return of Greenford in November 1449 may have owed much to the political crisis triggered by the military disasters across the Channel; and the election of the two soldiers, Copledyke in 1450 and Convers in 1453, may be attributed to the value placed on their personal experience of warfare, and of the way that the loss of English possessions in France was affecting the trade and shipping interests of the men of the Cinque Ports. Albeit standing apart from the other Portsmen returned for Winchelsea, Fynch, Greenford and Copledyke all became actively involved in local affairs: Fynch officiated as mayor for two terms, Greenford served as a jurat and bailiff to the Yarmouth herring fair before his election to Parliament, and Copledyke later represented Winchelsea both as bailiff to Yarmouth and delegate to Brodhulls.

Complete lists of the jurats of Winchelsea are now impossible to compile, but surviving records do show that at least 13 of Winchelsea’s MPs were chosen as jurats at some stage in their careers, and it seems likely that most, if not all, of the others were too. Certainly, both of the elected MPs in 1431, 1432, 1442, 1445 and 1447 were currently serving as jurats. Similarly, although the evidence is not complete (particularly for the period before 1430), no fewer than 13 of the MPs attended sessions of the Brodhull at New Romney as delegates from Winchelsea. Some did so frequently: for example, Thomas Thunder II was present at as many as 49 assemblies, and John Sylton at 43. It looks as if on their homecoming from Parliaments the barons were regularly sent to the Brodhull to report directly what had taken place while they were in the Commons. For instance, Copledyke attended a Brodhull immediately after the dissolution of his Parliament in 1450. At least ten of Winchelsea’s MPs were chosen as bailiffs from Winchelsea and Rye at the annual herring fair at Yarmouth, although only three are known to have done so before their earliest elections to Parliament.

Twelve of the 22 men considered here were sometime mayors of Winchelsea,17 Alard, Fynch, atte Gate, Godfrey, Phyppes, Pulham, John and Thomas Sylton, Tamworth, the two Thomas Thunders and Worth. and certain of them served several terms in office: atte Gate five, Thomas Thunder II seven, and the latter’s father Thomas I and John Sylton as many as eight each. The electors at Winchelsea may have set much store on experience of this, the highest local office, for former mayors were elected to 12 Parliaments of the period, and in three of them (1422, 1447 and February 1449) both MPs had previously served as mayor. On three of the five occasions that an ‘outsider’ was elected, a former mayor accompanied him to the Commons. There was a close correlation between election as mayor and election as parliamentary baron, for of the 13 individuals recorded as mayor between 1422 and 1461, only two are not known to have ever been MPs, and as these two occupied the mayoralty in the 1450s (Thomas Woodward in 1452-3 and Simon Farncombe in 1457-9), it may well be the case that they sat in one or other of the Parliaments of 1455 and 1460, for which the names of Winchelsea’s representatives are lost. This continued the practice of the period 1386-1421 (when all but one of the dozen men recorded as mayor represented the town in the Commons). By contrast, however, whereas in the earlier period the current mayor was returned to as many as five Parliaments, in Henry VI’s reign this only happened in 1433, when, as we have seen, the mayoral elections had been disrupted.

It was a similarly rare occurrence for the royally-appointed bailiff of Winchelsea to be elected to Parliament, since this only happened six times in the whole of the fifteenth century, so far as the records show. During his term of office William Catton†, who held the bailiwick for life from 1413, was returned to three Parliaments; as already noted, his successor William Pope was returned to the Parliaments of 1433 and 1435; and although John Copledyke, who held the post from 1452, is not known to have been elected to Parliament when in office, his son John† was to be returned to the Parliament of 1478 while so employed.

There is no overt sign of interference in the parliamentary elections at Winchelsea on the part of the warden of the Cinque Ports. It should not escape notice, however, that the warden’s retainer, Pope, was elected in 1433 and 1435, to Parliaments in which Gloucester had need of support – in 1433 when he suffered loss of influence on the return to England of his brother the duke of Bedford, and in 1435 in the aftermath of Bedford’s death and the necessity for Gloucester to settle the terms of his captaincy of Calais.18 PROME, xi. 67-69, 160-1, 168-71. In the autumn of 1449 the next warden, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, actively sought the return to Parliament of his servant Robert Berde*, the clerk of Dover castle, initially by approaching the jurats at Hythe directly, and then, more successfully, applying to those at Rye, and it may therefore not have been merely coincidental that his steward at Dover, John Greenford, secured election at Winchelsea. As a veteran of five Parliaments, Fiennes, the newly-appointed treasurer of England, no doubt appreciated that as news came in of the military collapse of English forces in Normandy the backing of Members of the Commons would be essential for raising the necessary men and money to recover their territory. Nevertheless, Greenford’s links with Fiennes appear to have been limited to his official role, and the fact that he was kept on as steward after the warden was murdered the following summer suggests that he had not been personally associated with Fiennes in the minds of Cade’s rebels.

Current employment by the Crown does not necessarily seem to have been a decisive factor in the election of Winchelsea’s representatives, although one of the customers for Sussex, Tamworth, was returned in 1422 (to sit with his fellow customer, John Exton*, elected by Chichester), and in 1431 and 1432 his successor in office, Pulham, was elected. Convers, Copledyke and John Sylton were customers or controllers of customs later, but in their cases royal office did not coincide with election to Parliament; and nor did it coincide with the periods in office of Tamworth, Pulham and Thomas Thunder II as deputies to the chief butler. Similarly, Convers, who became a royal serjeant-at-arms, and John Sylton, a sometime yeoman of the Crown and King’s bailiff at Rye, do not appear to have sat in Parliament while so engaged. Twelve of the 22 MPs were appointed to royal commissions concerned with naval matters (to conscript mariners, requisition vessels, arrest pirates and victual Le Crotoy), for the most part after they first sat in Parliament.

The parliamentary returns for the Cinque Ports, being merely a list of the barons elected, reveal nothing of the electoral processes followed in each place, and although Winchelsea’s own records contain reports of elections, they are not particularly informative. The election of 1432 took place on the same day (21 Apr.), as that for the mayor, and in the customary venue of the hundred court. It was held in response to a mandate sent to Winchelsea by the lieutenant warden of the Ports, but there is no indication as to how it was conducted.19 Cotton Julius BIV, f. 40. In the aftermath of the disputes at the mayoral election of the following year, that for the Parliament summoned for 8 July 1433 was held on 14 June: William Fynch, who had taken his oath as mayor only three days earlier, was chosen in association with William Pope, the King’s bailiff. The choice of these two officials to serve as MPs is a measure of the serious nature of the quarrels among the Portsmen; it was very unusual for a serving mayor to be sent to Parliament and not since 1417 had the mayor and bailiff sat in the Commons together.20 Ibid. f. 51v. The parliamentary elections held on 18 Sept. 1435, 7 Jan. 1442, in January 1445 and on 15 Jan. 1447 were all recorded, but save for noting the names of those elected, and referring to the warden’s mandate, no further information was provided.21 Ibid. ff. 60v, 65v, 72v, 73v.