Commons 1386-1421

Returns for Dorset are missing for five of the 32 Parliaments of the period. From those which survive it appears that two men who had sat before either for this county or for some other constituency were elected on 13 occasions, and on 12 more one such tried Member accompanied a newcomer, but both the shire knights in the Parliaments of 1397 (Sept.) and 1404 (Oct.) would appear to have been novices. Immediate re-election of both Members occurred twice (1401 and 1407) and of one Member a further ten times.

It would not be difficult to refute Justice Thirning’s opinion, delivered in 1388, that Totnes was ‘de plus auncien de tout dengleterre’, but undoubtedly there was a settlement there in the ninth century, if not before. Totnes had been one of the Saxon fortified ‘burghs’, and the town was chosen in the tenth century to house a royal mint and in the 11th a castle. It soon became the most important market town between Exeter and Plympton and eventually was also a depot for overseas trade.

A small settlement existed at Tavistock even before the Benedictine abbey was founded there in c.974, but the borough as such owed its existence to the abbots. At some date between 1105 and 1185 one of them deliberately created a town on the right bank of the Tavy, detaching an area from the extensive rural manor of Hurdwick for this purpose. By 1291 the place contained 120 messuages and tenements (55 of them with gardens) and 35 plots separately held, all owing rent to the abbey.

The town of Plympton Erle took the second part of its name from the earls of Devon. In 1107 a member of the family of Reviers built a castle on his manor of Plympton, shortly afterwards another erected the church, and in 1194 a third, William Reviers, earl of Devon, gave the town the status of a mesne borough. Earl William allowed the burgesses a market and a fair, and by a charter granted in 1242 by his descendant, Earl Baldwin, they were permitted to hold the borough at farm and to have the same liberties as were then enjoyed by the citizens of Exeter.

In the late 14th century Exeter was a city of modest proportions; its estimated population of about 3,000 suggests that it was only a quarter the size of York or Bristol, half the size of Salisbury, and outstripped by some 20 other provincial towns.

Dartmouth owes its existence to the magnificent deep-water anchorage in the estuary of the Dart. The town resulted from the coalescence in the 12th century of two small riverside settlements, Hardness and Clifton, and was generally known in the medieval period by its full title, Clifton-Dartmouth and Hardness. The suburb of Southtown is first recorded in 1328 and marks the expansion of the population.

The poll tax returns of 1377, which noted Barnstaple’s adult population as no more than 680, suggest that the town was then only about one third the size of Exeter and a seventh that of Plymouth. But in the assessments for taxation made in Devon in 1334 Barnstaple had come next after these two places in economic importance, and seems to have held that position for the rest of the century.

The manor of Ashburton became ecclesiastical property in the early 11th century, and from 1050 onwards it belonged to the bishops of Exeter. At some date before 1238 most of the inhabited portion of the manor was constituted as a borough. The bishops were represented in Ashburton by their stewards, who visited the town only to hold courts, leaving the day-to-day administration and rent collection in the hands of the portreeve of the borough, the reeve of the manor and the bailiff.

Since returns for the county of Devon to the Parliaments of 1413 (Feb.), 1415 and 1416 (Oct.) are missing, only the names of Members in 29 of the 32 Parliaments of the period under review are now known. There were 17 occasions when both shire knights were men with previous parliamentary experience, and a further eight when an experienced Member accompanied an apparent newcomer.

Derby, situated in the open valley formed by the river Derwent, in 1377 had an estimated population of 1,569. Clearly somewhat smaller than its neighbour, Nottingham, the town was nevertheless comparable in size with Newark and Lichfield; and by 1428 it contained four parish churches. Perhaps the oldest most important occupation of the townspeople was dyeing; in 1204 they had purchased for 60 marks a monopoly of this industry within a radius of ten miles, although as the burgesses of Nottingham already enjoyed the same privilege, the effect was limited.