The privileged position enjoyed by the freemen of the Cinque Ports had been established since the twelfth century, and by the fourteenth the original ‘head Ports’ – Dover, Hastings, Sandwich, Hythe and New Romney – had been joined by the ‘ancient towns’ of Rye and Winchelsea, each afforded equal standing. Other towns and villages became ‘limbs’ of the Ports and their freemen shared some of the responsibilities and privileges (if not the political importance) of those of the principal members of the federation. The main responsibility of the Ports was to provide 57 ships for 15 days’ annual service to the Crown, and in return the Portsmen had customarily enjoyed freedom from the fifteenths and tenths granted by the Commons in Parliament. Men from the Ports were summoned to Parliament for the first time in 1302 (although this was specifically said to be in order to settle their dispute with the bailiffs of Yarmouth), and similar writs were sent out for the Parliament of 1323. Thereafter, summonses to each successive Parliament were enrolled on the close roll, and although no electoral returns survive before 1366 it is clear from local sources that the Cinque Ports sent representatives to take their seats in the Lower House regularly throughout the fourteenth century. The term ‘baron’ used for freemen of the Cinque Ports, and hence for their MPs, reflected an early concept that military service at sea constituted a tenure by barony, and the early fourteenth-century treatise, Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, gave them a place next after the lay magnates and above the representatives of the shires and boroughs.
By the beginning of Henry VI’s reign the fortunes of all the Ports were in decline. Their economic status had waned, a result both of the changing geography of the south coast as estuaries silted up and of the fluctuations of international and national trade. As a result, the Ports’ ability to supply ships for the Crown had suffered. Nevertheless, they did fulfil their obligations for the siege of Le Crotoy in 1423, for the conveyance in 1430 of Henry VI and his impressive entourage to France for his coronation and back again two years later, and for the transport of the duke of York’s expeditionary force to Normandy in 1436. In 1445 the Portsmen assembled their ships to escort Margaret of Anjou to England, albeit not without complaining to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, the warden of the Ports, about the costs involved.
At least twice a year the Portsmen assembled for a meeting of the Brodhull or ‘brotherhood’. This also followed ancient practice. The meetings, originally held at Dymchurch, had since 1357 always assembled at New Romney. The most important gathering took place every year on the Tuesday following the feast of St. Margaret (20 July), and it was on this occasion that the Ports’ bailiffs for the autumn herring fair at Yarmouth were appointed. On six occasions during the 1430s the second general Brodhull was held in December, and on three others in that decade it took place on the third Tuesday after Easter. From 1440, however, the second Tuesday after Easter (that is, nine days after the feast) became the fixed date. Special Brodhulls were occasionally called to deal with extraordinary matters pertinent to all the Ports or to one or more of them. The format of the Brodhull’s meetings is difficult to ascertain with certainty. Up to eight, but more usually between four and six, delegates from each of the original and ancient towns attended, with their expenses being met by their home Ports. By the middle of the sixteenth century the meetings had come to be presided over by a speaker, clearly following parliamentary practice, but it is uncertain when this procedure was introduced. Besides the appointment of bailiffs to officiate at Yarmouth, Brodhulls considered various matters relating to the confederation as a whole, including calls for ship service, disputes between Portsmen and, most importantly, the protection of the Ports’ liberties and ancient constitution as defined in their various custumals.
Regular records of the meetings of the Brodhull are extant from 1432. These demonstrate that two issues dominated the collective concerns of the Ports during Henry VI’s reign. The first, unsurprisingly, was the familiar conflict between the Ports’ four bailiffs at the annual herring fair and the bailiffs of the town of Great Yarmouth. For the purposes of choosing the bailiffs Hastings stood alone in having to send a bailiff every autumn, but the other towns were paired (Rye and Winchelsea; New Romney and Dover; and Sandwich and Hythe), with one of each pair taking a turn in alternate years. During the fourteenth century the Ports’ bailiffs had established their rights to exercise jurisdiction and levy fines during the 40 days of the fair.
If the Portsmen appear to have wavered at times over covering the costs of promoting their rights at Great Yarmouth, they showed more resolve in defending their ancient exemption from parliamentary taxation. Indeed, it was on this issue that they showed an increasing sense of communal identity as the fifteenth century progressed. It became normal practice for the Portsmen to send representatives to the Exchequer to secure the traditional allowance for the Ports in the accounts drawn up by the collectors of fifteenths and tenths in the counties of Kent and Sussex, but also to sue out writs exempting the ‘advocants’ (those freemen not resident within the Ports themselves) from parliamentary taxation. The advocants included some of the leading gentry of the shires, and the fees they paid for their freedom of the Ports was becoming an increasingly important source of income for the individual towns. At the beginning of Henry VI’s reign the cost of obtaining such writs seems to have fallen on each Port separately, and the men sent to the Exchequer sued out writs relating to the advocants of particular towns.
Throughout Henry VI’s reign the task of suing out writs of exemption at the Exchequer routinely fell on a small group of Portsmen, usually those with legal training or those most experienced in dealing with the Ports’ external affairs. In the 1420s and 1430s John Rede of Hastings, John Adam, Richard Clitheroe* and John Lowys of New Romney, and John Green of Sandwich were the men most frequently allotted the task; in the early 1440s it often fell upon John Greenford and Godard Pulham of Winchelsea and John Chenew of New Romney; while in the 1450s Chenew, Robert Scras*, also of Romney, and Thomas Bayen* of Rye were likewise regularly employed. Bayen became especially useful because of his place on the clerical staff of the Chancery. It was no coincidence that these men were also prominent in the Ports’ parliamentary representation, and service in the Commons was frequently combined with the Ports’ other business at Westminster.
The Brodhull also dealt with more extraordinary matters affecting the Ports’ collective privileges. The most important of these required the suing out of confirmations of their original charters at the beginning of each reign. This was something for which individual Ports were willing to pay: in 1425 the Portsmen of Dover paid their two MPs, John Garton* and Thomas atte Crowche*, an extra 16s. 8d. for their efforts in securing a renewal of the Ports’ charters. In the autumn of 1460 the Brodhull authorized Chenew and John Joseph† of Romney to ‘engrose their conseytes for the reformacion and renovacion of the Commen Charter’, which was to be sent to Thomas Bayen to show to learned counsel and devise a suit to the King and lords. The process involved the confederation’s members in a protracted and expensive set of negotiations with the Crown that were not settled for several years. The barons in the Parliament assembled in April 1463, notably Babylon Grantford*, were heavily engaged in the process, and Bayen, who from the beginning of the reign had been officiating as clerk of the Commons, readily offered his services while the Parliament dragged on until 1465.
Most importantly, the Brodhull also authorized delegations of Portsmen to represent their grievances to the warden of the Cinque Ports or his deputy, the lieutenant of Dover castle. The warden, a royal appointee and usually a prince of the royal blood or great nobleman, was officially the sole conduit between the Ports and the royal government. During the period here under review the office pertained to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester (from 1415 until his death in 1447), James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele (1447-50), and Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham (1450-60).
Men closely associated with the warden were sometimes returned to Parliament, especially in Dover. There, four of those with ties, formal or otherwise, with Gloucester were elected in this period: Walter Nesham* in 1432 and 1437; John Pirie* in 1435; and Morgan Meredith* and Richard Needham* (the clerk of Dover castle) together in 1445. William Pope*, the King’s bailiff of Winchelsea, who owed his advancement largely to Gloucester’s patronage, was returned for that Port in 1433 and 1435. There are, however, no overt signs of interference in the free choice of the Portsmen until the wardenship of Lord Saye and Sele. His intervention in the parliamentary elections at Dover may be strongly suspected in the returns of Stephen Slegge and John Toke* to the first Parliament summoned in 1449, and of Ralph Toke* to the second, and the evidence of interference in the electoral processes at Hythe and Rye prior to that same Parliament of November 1449, in order to secure the election of Robert Berde*, his servant as clerk of Dover castle, is clear enough. Berde was a stranger to both Ports, and not one of the resident barons. More doubt attaches to the return for Winchelsea to the same Parliament of John Greenford, the steward of Dover castle, but Greenford’s links with Fiennes appear to have been limited to his official role, and he had already become a freeman of the Port some years earlier. Fiennes may also have attempted to interfere in the meetings of the Brodhull, despite the fact that at his first court of Shepway in May 1447 the Brodhull had granted him the exceptional gift of 100 marks. On 21 July 1450, two weeks after his death at the hands of Cade’s rebels, the Brodhull ordered that no officer of Dover castle should have ‘entresse rule of Judgement’ at their assembly, and any officers present were to be considered strangers unless sent as a representative by one of the towns.
It was most likely in reaction to Fiennes’ attitude to the liberties of the Ports that the Brodhull meeting on 4 May 1451 decreed that ‘no one who is not a mayor, bailiff or jurat shall be chosen baron to parliament or [bailiff] to Yarmouth on pain of 10 li. from the town so electing’, and that ‘other elections shall be void and the persons so chosen shall have neither fee nor wages’.
Clearly, the individual towns that made up the Cinque Ports confederation felt and exercised a collective identity in the first half of the fifteenth century. This was manifested in Parliament as well as at meetings of the Brodhull, and the representation of communal interests made the barons of the Cinque Ports unique among members of the Lower House. Various formal and informal agreements ensured that they represented the concerns of the Ports as a whole, and, where appropriate, the interests of their neighbours as well as those of their own town; and it was common practice for MPs returning home to attend the next meeting of the Brodhull to report on parliamentary proceedings. The most important way in which this was achieved was the arrangement by which Portsmen from one town contributed to the parliamentary wages of another. The best documented example of this is the reciprocal arrangement between Dover and New Romney, although it seems the sharing of MPs may have originally been more widespread. Nevertheless, financial pressures appear to have compromised this arrangement and there is no evidence that Dover and New Romney shared the costs of parliamentary representation after 1433. In July 1444 the Brodhull appears to have attempted to revive this ‘olde custome’ throughout the Ports. It ordered that the barons, after spending four weeks in Parliament, should ‘labour to our warden of the v portes for Lycence to be had that certeyne of them maye abyde there and others to come home’. The rationale appears to have been financial and to lessen the burden of parliamentary wages on individual Ports, but it seems likely that the arrangement foundered on an equitable division of the costs. There is certainly no evidence that the Ports shared their parliamentary representation during the 1440s and beyond as they had done earlier.