For the 32 Parliaments assembled during the period 1386-1421, returns for Wiltshire are missing for only three, and the names are known of 35 Members. Of these, as many as 20 represented the county just once, no fewer than 12 of them only ever being elected to Parliament that one time. But although these figures might suggest that the Wiltshire electors set little store by parliamentary experience, other factors point to the opposite conclusion.
Although of considerable importance as a defensive site during the early Middle Ages, Appleby played a less vital strategic role after it was destroyed by the Scots in the 1170s; and by our period the combined effects of disease, depopulation, economic recession and war had taken a heavy toll.Later Recs. N. Westmld. ed.
Returns for Westmorland survive for 28 of the 32 Parliaments which met during our period. No fewer than 35 shire knights represented the county between 1386 and 1421, an unusually large number which illustrates clearly enough how hard it could be to find suitable candidates ready to undertake the long journey from Westmorland to London. The problems of travel (especially in winter) made some of the local gentry reluctant to seek election unless they had strong personal reasons for so doing.
Little is known about the size of the medieval population of Warwick. The lay subsidy roll of 1332 provides 92 names of the more affluent inhabitants, but these can represent only a fraction of the total number of householders. There can be no doubt, however, that the place was less populous and wealthy than its thriving neighbour, Coventry; there, the 134 taxpayers paid £47 2s., in comparison with Warwick’s £17 16s. The Avon was not navigable as far up as Warwick, and the town’s situation away from important roads denied it a share in long-distance trade.
Returns for Warwickshire have survived for 27 of the 32 Parliaments of the period, but any attempt to analyse the county’s representation has to take into account the long gap of four consecutive Parliaments between 1415 and 1417, which seriously restricts our knowledge of the MPs of Henry V’s reign. Given this difficulty, only tentative conclusions may be reached about such matters as parliamentary experience in the later part of our period.
Seaford had been in use as a port from at least the 11th century. It supplied vessels for Edward II’s wars; and in our period the wool merchants of Lewes and the South Downs regularly made shipments there.
New Shoreham, planted after the Norman Conquest at the mouth of the river Adur, near the Saxon village of Old Shoreham, became one of the most important Channel ports of the 12th and 13th centuries, and at a stage in its history even threatened to oust Chichester as the county town. It frequently provided ships for royal service: in the 1340s as many as 21 vessels manned by 300 men at a time. But thereafter the port declined.
Midhurst, situated 12 miles due north of Chichester, was scarcely more than a village. Returns made for the tenths granted by Parliament in 1332 listed no more than 32 taxpayers, of whom only one was assessed to pay 13s.4d., one 6s.8d. and all the rest less. Fifty-eight persons (20 of them women) contributed to the poll tax of 1379, and on that occasion just two paid 1s., most of the rest being charged the basic sum of 4d. Despite its size, Midhurst enjoyed borough status from quite early times.
Build on a spur of the South Downs descending to the banks of the river Ouse, Lewes had emerged in the tenth century as the virtual capital of east Sussex, and in the later Middle Ages it sometimes challenged Chichester’s supremacy in the county as a whole.
Probably founded as a ‘new town’ by the de Braose family soon after the Norman Conquest, Horsham grew up in a heavily wooded area which regularly supplied timber, firewood and charcoal to manorial estates in the south of the county. Called a ‘borough’ from the early 13th century, it nevertheless remained one of little economic or administrative significance until long after our period. In 1334 it had the lowest taxation assessment of any Sussex borough except Bramber, and although the county court had met there on a handful of occasions in the past, it did not do so again after that date.
