Commons 1422-1461

In the later Middle Ages Suffolk was one of the most populated and economically advanced counties of England. As identified by an anonymous antiquarian of the early seventeenth century, it consisted of three geographical regions: a central wood-pasture area with fertile soils and the greatest concentration of population; a coastal strip of sheep-corn husbandry; and the breckland, an area of poor soils in the north-west best suited to the farming of sheep and rabbits. Historical Atlas Suff. (revised edn.) ed. Dymond and Martin, 20, 80, 147; Chorography Suff. (Suff.

Stafford obtained its first charter in 1206, with the burgesses holding their privileges for the modest annual fee farm of five marks payable to the Crown. Little is known of the borough’s form of government save that by 1233 it was headed by two bailiffs elected annually on the feast of All Saints, and, under an extension of the borough’s privileges in 1261, these bailiffs were assisted by an elected coroner.

The borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, situated in the north-west corner of Staffordshire, not far from that county’s border with Cheshire, secured its first royal charter in the 1170s. Under the terms of a later charter, in 1251, the Crown farmed the borough to the mayor and burgesses at 40 marks p.a., and 16 years later there came another innovation of at least equal significance. Henry III granted the farm, together with his castle and manor of Newcastle, to his younger brother, Edmund, earl of Lancaster.

Staffordshire, of some 750,000 acres, was the 18th largest of the 39 ancient counties of England, slightly larger than neighbouring Derbyshire. It was also of the middle rank in respect of wealth. In terms of the total of assessments made for the subsidy of 1451, it was 13th of the 29 counties for which figures are available. S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258. Like other Midland shires, its boundaries delineated a unit that was neither geographically nor politically distinct.

Among the largest towns of Somerset, Wells probably had some 1,350 inhabitants at the time of Richard II’s accession. It owed much of its importance to its status as the principal cathedral city of the double see of Bath and Wells, originally acquired in the early tenth century when the diocese of Sherborne was subdivided.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century Taunton, the westernmost of the four parliamentary boroughs of Somerset, was smaller than either the cathedral city of Wells or the neighbouring port of Bridgwater. Nevertheless, since the thirteenth century it had been an important centre of cloth manufacture, and in Henry VI’s reign the trade continued to provide the town with a modest prosperity. In 1430, 1443 and 1453 the townsmen respectively found loans of £15, £10 and £8 in support of the cash-strapped government, E401/724, m. 9; 780, m. 28; 831, m. 1; CPR, 1429-36, p.

The borough of Bridgwater had been granted its earliest charter by King John in 1200, but the community was not formally incorporated until 1468. In 1318 and 1371 the burgesses had sued out letters of confirmation from Edward II and Edward III, but they saw no need to procure similar letters from Richard II or the first two Lancastrians. It may thus have been a sign of the political uncertainty arising from Henry VI’s minority that early in the new reign, just weeks into the first session of the Parliament of 1423, the burgesses acquired a confirmation of Edward III’s grant. Brit.

Although technically accorded city status by virtue of Bishop John de Villula’s transfer of his episcopal see from Wells in 1090, Bath was at best middle-ranking among the urban communities of its region. Its estimated population of 855 in 1377 was smaller by a third than that of its sister cathedral city of Wells and comparable to that of Bridgwater, although substantially greater than that of Taunton, the fourth parliamentary borough in Somerset.

When assessed for tax purposes in 1451, Somerset ranked among the wealthiest of English counties, being estimated at £5,033 – more than Wiltshire to the east and comparing favourably with its southern neighbour of Dorset, which was assessed at less than half that sum. Nevertheless it fell far below Devon to the west, which was rated at more than £8,000. R. Virgoe, ‘Parlty. Subsidy of 1450’, Bull. IHR, lv. 138; S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 158.

Glendower’s revolt appears to have marked the beginning of a long-term decline in Shrewsbury’s economy. Calculations from the subsidy assessments of 1334 suggest that, measured in terms of taxable wealth, the town was then the 13th wealthiest in England; the same calculation for the subsidy of 1524-5 shows that its position had declined to 31st. Cambridge Urban Hist. ed. Palliser, i.