East Grinstead, situated in the midst of royal forests, passed in 1372 into the possession of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, together with Ashdown forest, the manor of Willingdon and Maresfield, and the rape and castle of Pevensey, after the duke had formally surrendered to the Crown certain other properties in the east of the county.
First established by the Romans as the capital of a native kingdom on the coastal plain, Chichester became in medieval times an important trading centre and port, even though it lacked direct access to the sea. Markets and fairs were regular events there, and from the early 13th century customs dues on wool, woolfells, and hides were collected in Chichester harbour, after 1341 the locally based customers being made responsible for the whole coastline from Southampton Water to Seaford.
The two boroughs, scarcely a mile apart on the west bank of the river Adur, shared a common parliamentary history, even though their origins were diverse. Steyning, settled in the early Saxon period, had become so prominent a centre of trade as to have housed a mint for much of the 11th century, only to be eclipsed as the chief town of the region following the creation of New Shoreham, five miles down river on the coast. As the lordship of the manor of Steyning pertained to Fécamp abbey, from 1369 the manor was continuously in the hands of the Crown, owing to the war with France.
Arundel’s strategic position at the extremity of one of the high, narrow ridges of the South Downs, overlooking the Arun valley, had made it an obvious place to build a stronghold in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. The castle, manor and borough of Arundel formed part of the honour of the same name then created, which from the mid 13th century was held in chief from the Crown by the Fitzalans.
Returns for Sussex are missing for the last three Parliaments of Henry IV’s reign and for that of October 1416. To the remaining 28 Parliaments the county elected 30 different individuals. A dozen are known to have represented the shire in just one Parliament, and eight more in only two; but the more sustained service of the remainder brings the average number of Parliaments up to three per Member. Outstanding in this respect were (Sir) John Pelham with at least eight appearances to his credit, Sir Edward Dallingridge with ten, and Sir William Percy with 12.
Although Southwark cannot properly be described as a suburb of London until 1550, its earlier history was inseparably bound up with that of the City. It owed its very existence as a bridgehead settlement, founded by the Romans during the first century AD, to the establishment of a military and trading centre on the other bank of the Thames; and London’s subsequent expansion was reflected in the rapid development of Southwark as a residential area and market town.
The area around Reigate was occupied from prehistoric times, although the town owed its origins to William de Warenne, earl of Surrey, who built a castle on his land there at the end of the 11th century. He was lord of the manor of Reigate, or Cherchfelle, as the small agricultural settlement was then known, and his newly built castle, which lay within the confines of the manor but some distance from the existing village, soon attracted a community of tradespeople, labourers and husbandmen from the surrounding countryside.
Although its early history remains obscure, Guildford had clearly achieved considerable importance as a market centre by the mid tenth century, by which time it had become one of the two towns in Surrey to possess a mint. Geographical factors hastened this development and ensured continued prosperity during the later Middle Ages. The original settlement had grown up as a fording place over the Wey and, because of its strategic position in a gap in the chalk uplands, it was able to command the main line of communication across England south of the capital.
Although the site of the medieval borough of Bletchingley was not settled until Anglo-Saxon times, there is evidence of Roman occupation in the neighbouring manor of Pendell and of prehistoric fortifications on the crest of the chalk downs a few miles to the north. The heavy clay and dense forest of the Surrey Weald formed an impenetrable boundary to the south, and may well have deterred the Romans from cultivating the lighter belt of greensand on which Bletchingley stands.
The parliamentary representation of Surrey is comparatively well documented for our period, since 28 of the returns to the 32 Parliaments held between 1386 and December 1421 have survived. It is not known who sat for the county in the Commons of 1410, 1411, February 1413 and October 1416, so we cannot be entirely certain about the experience of the 26 Members whose names are recorded.
