Commons 1509-1558

The history of the town of Cambridge, particularly after the Peasants’ Revolt, is dominated by its long series of disputes with the university, often erupting into armed conflict. Of the Members in the early 16th century only Robert Chapman and Alexander Ray had any known connexion with the university, except a trading one; almost all are recorded to have acted as spokesmen or representatives of the borough against the university, and many committed acts of hostility to the university’s authority, or insolence towards its representatives, beyond the call of municipal duty.

The knights for Cambridgeshire were elected at a county court held in Cambridge castle by the sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Of the 32 returned between 1510 and 1558 the names of 12 are lost, and of the ten Parliaments for which the names of the knights are known three lack election indentures. The indentures, in Latin, throw no light on the process of election: about 30 electors are usually named, with more than 40 listed early in 1553 but less than 20 a year-and-a-half later.C219/18B/12, 19/17, 20/14, 21/14, 22/12, 23/15, 24/14.

Situated in rich pastoral country along a river which supported a large number of mills, Chipping Wycombe was a centre for the woollen trade. Although in 1500 the town had had its fee-farm reduced from £30 to £26, when taxed for the subsidy of 1524 it remained the wealthiest place in the county. The privileges of the free borough rested on an early 13th-century grant, several times confirmed by the crown. A confirmation at the beginning of Mary’s reign (15 Nov. 1553) was followed at its end by the incorporation of the borough (27 Aug.

In the early 16th century Buckingham was a country town of little significance. Its list of taxpayers for the subsidy of 1524 runs to only 111 names and it was to be one of the 11 towns to which the Act of 1542 for urban revival (33 Hen. VIII, c.36) applied. The castle of the dukes of Buckingham appears to have fallen into ruin and nothing in the neighbourhood was worth a comment by Leland.Subsidy Roll for Bucks. 1524 (Bucks. Rec. Soc. viii), 61-62; Browne Willis, Bucks. 49-50; Leland, Itin. ed. Smith, v. 111-12; VCH Bucks. iii.

The manor of Aylesbury, held by the Butler earls of Ormond, was inherited in the early 16th century by Margaret, widow of Sir William Boleyn. In 1538 her son Thomas, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, sold the manor to (Sir) John Baldwin, who already held of the King a manor there called Otters Fee. On Baldwin’s death in 1545 the property passed to his grandson Thomas Pakington, son of his daughter Agnes by Robert Pakington.

The Buckinghamshire elections were held at the county court at Aylesbury by the sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire: a bill to separate the two counties was introduced into the Commons in the Parliament of April 1554 but not enacted. The 16 knights whose names are known all had land in the shire, although some of them were seated elsewhere, Sir Andrew Windsor in Middlesex, Sir John Dauntesey in Oxfordshire and Edmund Verney in Hertfordshire; a few lived in London.

Wallingford owes its origin to a ford across the Thames. Having been held by the earls of Cornwall in the 13th century, the castle, town and honor formed part of the duchy of Cornwall until 1540, when they were annexed to the King’s Oxfordshire manor of Ewelme. The first charter was granted in 1156 and parliamentary representation began in 1295. The records, including the minute book of the corporation which starts in 1507, suggest that the right of election was exercised by the mayor and leading burgesses.

Reading owed its prosperity to the abbey founded there in 1121, and in particular to the cloth trade which flourished under monastic protection. The abbot of Reading became lord of the town but his rule was resisted by the merchant guild whose master was by 1301 also the mayor; this office the abbot refused to recognize until it was agreed that he should appoint to it from those candidates presented by the town. After being challenged in the reign of Henry VII, this method of appointment was observed from 1509 until the abbey’s dissolution in 1538.

New Windsor is so called to distinguish it from an older settlement two miles away, forming part of a manor briefly held by Westminster abbey before the Conquest. The new town grew up in the shadow of the castle and was a royal borough by the reign of Henry I. A charter of 1277 was confirmed in 1316 and later, and in 1466 the mayor, bailiffs, burgesses and inhabitants were incorporated. Municipal offices were monopolized by the brethren of the guild of the Holy Trinity.

The town of Abingdon grew up around the Benedictine abbey and under its rigorous and much resented control. Cloth and malt were the staple manufactures. In 1542 Leland reported that the town ‘standeth by clothing’, but by then the surrender of the abbey (1538) had threatened its markets and the surveyor of the abbey found the town ‘sore decayed and like daily more to decay’. At the beginning of Edward VI’s reign the confiscation of the property of the town guilds of the Holy Cross and of Our Lady hastened this decline.J. Townsend, Abingdon, 4; VCH Berks. iv.