Gloucester

The site of a royal castle and an important abbey, the town of Gloucester was one of the more significant middle-ranking parliamentary boroughs of late medieval England. It lay at the lowest bridging point of the Severn, close to several different areas of economic activity: the production of grain in the Severn valley, of wool in the Cotswolds and of timber, charcoal and coal in the Forest of Dean. Historically a centre for the iron and cloth industries, it was also a major market for the sale and exchange of produce, and for the distribution of luxury goods to the nobility and gentry. In addition, it was an inland port with an overseas trade, although for this activity it depended on neighbouring Bristol, which controlled the seaborne trade of the Severn. Free navigation of the Severn was a matter of some importance for the burgesses, who are likely to have supported the petitions by which the Commons of the Parliaments of 1427, 1429 and 1431 sought action against those Welshmen and others who would disrupt traffic on the river.3 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. ciii. 150-1; The Commons 1386-1421, i. 407-8; PROME, x. 361, 396-8, 409, 470-1; Statutes, ii. 265. See VCH Glos. iv. 31-53 for a detailed analysis of the economy and administration of the town in the later Middle Ages.

Any interruption of trade would have worried the burgesses, given the economic problems Gloucester faced in this period. Like other towns of its size, it suffered from the effects of the general recession at the end of the Middle Ages, if not to the extent as the burgesses claimed. During the later fourteenth century, it had about 4,500 residents,4 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. ciii. 149. This figure, from recent research, is preferred to that of about 3,360 inhabitants suggested for Gloucester in 1377 by The Commons 1386-1421, i. 407, an estimate based on older authorities. having regained some of the population it had lost to the Black Death, and enjoyed a period of some economic prosperity. The population and economy of Gloucester are likely to have remained largely stable through the first few decades of the fifteenth century, although by the second half of the 1440s it faced the sort of problems encountered by many other urban communities. In 1447 the burgesses petitioned the Crown for a remission of their annual fee farm of £60, pleading that it had become extremely burdensome on account of the ‘pestilences’ afflicting their town and the ruin into which some of its buildings had fallen. As a result, they alleged, it was barely possible to raise £40 of the farm, meaning that the borough’s bailiffs found themselves undertaking to make up the shortfall out of their own goods. If, the petition continued, such a situation prevailed, it would become impossible to find anyone willing to serve as bailiff in the future. In response, the Crown issued the town a charter that, while not reducing the fee farm, granted the burgesses the right to build two water mills on the banks of the Severn, to exploit for their own profit and to hold free from any taxes or other charges to the King. In the following decade the burgesses petitioned the Parliament of 1455 for powers to enforce the paving of their town, pleading that they lacked communally owned property or other sources of income to maintain the streets, and in 1483 Richard III reacted to their pleas of hardship by reducing their fee farm to just £20. In reality, the situation was not as black as they claimed, for urban petitions of this type, which often followed a set formula, invariably presented the gloomiest possible picture. The petition of 1455 actively distorted the truth because there was quite a substantial stock of houses under communal ownership at that date, while Richard III’s concession was primarily a reward for the town’s support and Henry VII reversed it at his accession. On the other hand, there are very few signs that mid fifteenth-century Gloucester possessed wealthy trading burgesses akin to those of previous decades, and the claims of hardship advanced in the later 1480s, when the town made another attempt to obtain a reduction in the fee farm, were probably closer to the truth than earlier appeals. It is also worth noting that the evidence provided by subsidy returns would suggest that Gloucester’s population had shrunk to no more than about 3,000 by the 1520s, a decline hardly illustrative of prosperity. Nonetheless, the town enjoyed sufficiently varied sources of livelihood to ensure that it subsequently surmounted its economic problems.5 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. ciii. 149, 158; Gloucester Corporation Recs. ed. Stevenson, 15; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 70-71; VCH Glos. iv. 21, 35-37, 41, 57; SC8/115/5704.

In the period under review, the administration of Gloucester lay in the hands of two bailiffs, who also performed the role of justices of the peace, and four stewards, who administered the communal funds.6 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 408. As in other boroughs, the burgesses were very much a minority among the total number of inhabitants, being either the sons of freemen or those who had acquired the freedom of the town through purchase or apprenticeship. The almost complete loss of Gloucester’s medieval archives severely hampers any study of its administration. For instance, just four bailiffs’ accounts are extant, of which three are in a very poor condition, and much of William Stevenson’s Gloucester Corporation Records is comprised of material originating from other local institutions.7 R.A. Holt, ‘Gloucester’ (Birmingham Univ. Ph.D thesis, 1987), 3. There is no doubt that many of the lost accounts would have provided much useful evidence: although damaged, the surviving one for 1408-9 contains some interesting information about Gloucester’s contacts with the outside world. It records that the burgesses gave rewards to minstrels employed by the King and other dignitaries, among them Anne, countess of Stafford, and Thomas, Lord Berkeley. It also shows that they made small gifts to the sons of Robert, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, that they had dealings (unspecified) with Edward, duke of York, and that they bore the expenses arising from the visits of the bishop of Worcester, various minor Exchequer officials and the justices of assize.8 Glos. Archs. Gloucester bor. recs., bailiffs’ acct. 1408-9, GBR, F3/4.

The assize justices would have provided one of the most important links between the central government and the borough, although the municipal administration was not the only body to wield authority within Gloucester. Several local religious houses, in particular Gloucester abbey and Llanthony priory, enjoyed jurisdictional rights there and the King possessed a local representative in the person of the constable of Gloucester castle. At the beginning of Henry VI’s reign Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, took on that office, which he retained until his death in February 1447. In practice, he exercised it through two deputies, first, until 1444, Thomas Porter, a minor royal servant, and then Thomas St. Barbe, a more prominent Household man.9 CPR, 1422-9, pp. 5, 226; 1441-6, pp. 297, 460. Although from Warws., Porter should be distinguished from the esq. who sat for that county in three Parls. of Hen. VI’s reign. The duke’s successor was another royal servant, Sir John Beauchamp, the son of a former constable, Sir William Beauchamp†. Beauchamp, to whom the Crown had granted the reversion of the office in June 1446, appears to have remained constable until the accession of Edward IV. He was already associated with Gloucester before becoming constable, because Henry VI had assigned the town’s fee farm to him in 1437. The Crown confirmed the grant upon Sir John’s elevation to the peerage as Lord Beauchamp of Powick a decade later. The King himself became personally familiar with Gloucester in the mid 1430s, since he and his mother celebrated the Christmas of 1434-5 there and remained in the town until the following April. Henry returned to Gloucester in less happy circumstances in 1452, when he accompanied a commission of oyer and terminer sent to deal with the supporters of Richard, duke of York, in the West Country. When York lost his life at Wakefield just over eight years later, his eldest son, Edward, earl of March, heard the news at Gloucester where he was spending Christmas.10 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 93, 251; 1446-52, p. 48; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 61, 237, 264; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 102; C.D. Ross, Edw. IV, 31.

During the troubled years of the mid fifteenth century, the town itself witnessed its fair share of political unrest. According to some annals kept by a monk of Gloucester abbey, in 1449 the townsmen attacked a manor and vineyard at nearby Highnam belonging to Reynold Boulers, the abbot of Gloucester from 1437 to 1450, a figure widely hated for his association with the unpopular government and Court. In the following year the authorities chose to dispatch one of the quarters of the defeated rebel leader Jack Cade to Gloucester, no doubt to deter anyone there who would oppose the Crown. It would appear that the warning was not heeded, since in the autumn of 1450 the town was allegedly the scene of a plot to begin a new rebellion against the King, and one of its most respected burgesses and MPs, Thomas Deerhurst, was indicted for his part in the supposed conspiracy. Deerhurst was able subsequently to secure a pardon but he never held public office again.11 J. Rhodes, ‘Anarchy at Gloucester in 1449 and 1463’, Glevensis, xxv. 39; Archs. and Local Hist. in Bristol and Glos. ed. Bettey, 27; PPC, vi. 108; KB27/761, rex rots. 15v, 16v; CPR, 1446-52, p. 429.

It is unlikely that the attack on Abbot Boulers’s property in 1449 was solely politically inspired, for relations between his abbey and the town were frequently fractious, perhaps particularly so during his tenure as abbot. Throughout the later Middle Ages, the burgesses recurrently fell into dispute with local religious houses, most notably the abbey and the Augustinian priory of Llanthony.12 Cal. Regs. Llanthony Priory (Bristol and Glos. Rec. Soc. xv), p. xiv. By the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, they had come increasingly to challenge the abbey’s jurisdiction over its dependants and employees and the authority it wielded within its walled precinct. It was in the face of such assertiveness that the monks petitioned the Crown for confirmation of these rights in 1414, but with little lasting result. Later, in 1429, the two sides went to arbitration, which established that the borough’s officers might enter the precinct but confirmed that the bailiffs should have no power to attach any of the abbey’s tenants and servants who lacked distrainable goods. By 1447, it was necessary to draw up a further agreement between the town and abbey. The monks accepted that the precinct was part of the town and within its jurisdiction and agreed that they would not provide sanctuary there to fugitives from justice. In return, the burgesses agreed that the officers of the borough would only enjoy full exercise of their powers in the precinct with regard to cases of felony and treason and to the holding of coroners’ inquests.13 VCH Glos. iv. 60-61; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. ciii. 157. By the fifteenth century, the borough had become similarly assertive in its relations with Llanthony priory, with which it was frequently at law. Like the abbey, the priory suffered a decline in its authority at Gloucester during the later Middle Ages, and in 1440 its canons drew up a catalogue of all the wrongs they claimed to have suffered at the hands of the burgesses since the mid fourteenth century. Furthermore, at that date the bailiffs of Gloucester had yet to pay the canons compensation of £50, as awarded by the courts 50 years earlier. They were also withholding rents to the priory of over £7 p.a. and exercising their powers beyond the south gate, in a suburb where traditionally the prior had claimed jurisdiction. It is nevertheless far from certain that the canons were more sinned against than sinning: according to one modern authority, the burgesses were in fact remarkably indulgent to the priory until ‘abused beyond endurance’. The quarrel between borough and priory went to arbitration in 1456 but there was no agreement and it was necessary to hold a ‘loveday’ between the two sides in the following year. From then until 1483, when Richard III’s charter officially extended the powers of the borough, the burgesses and the canons appear to have used a perambulation held at Gloucester in 1370 to define their respective jurisdictional claims.14 Archs. and Local Hist. 27, 39; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. ciii. 157; Cal. Regs. Llanthony Priory, pp. xvi-xviii, 4-20, 22-26.

At least 21 men sat for Gloucester during Henry VI’s reign, but in the absence, through the loss of the returns, of any information about its Members in three Parliaments, it is conceivable that as many as 27 represented it in this period. The antecedents of most of the 21 are either uncertain or unknown. Only three of them, John and Thomas Bisley and Deerhurst, were certainly natives of Gloucester, although Bentham was from a family long connected with the town, Edwards was probably another local man and Gilbert was possibly the son of a burgess. Were the evidence available, it is likely that the great majority of the 21 had links with the town or its vicinity. Gloucester was large enough to preserve its independence and none of the MPs was an outsider. It is very likely that all of them resided in the town when they represented it in Parliament, just as all their known predecessors of the period 1386-1421, and nearly all of the 14 men known to have sat for the town between 1509 and the accession of Elizabeth I appear to have done. The earlier of these two other periods saw a tradition of parliamentary service among some of the borough’s families, including the Bisleys who provided a couple of the MPs among the 21. By contrast, the Bisleys are the only such example in the reign of Henry VI although it is worth noting that Robert Gilbert’s first wife was the widow of the John Banbury† who sat for Gloucester in the first Parliament of 1390.15 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 409-10; 1509-58, i. 96.

At least nine lawyers sat for Gloucester in the period under review,16 Andrew, Thomas Bisley, Buckland, Deerhurst, Doding, Edwards, Gilbert, Hamlin and Nottingham. apparently an acceleration of an existing trend since men of law were beginning to gain election for the borough in the decades immediately preceding 1422.17 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 409. By contrast, this was not the case at Bristol, the other parliamentary borough in Gloucestershire, since almost all of that town’s MPs in Henry VI’s reign were merchants. Only six of the 21 certainly pursued a trade: Thomas Stevens and William Eldesfeld were mercers, Henry Dode a baker, skinner and ‘merchant’, William Oliver a chaloner (or manufacturer of bedspreads), Walter Chaunterell a brewer and Nicholas Hert a tanner. It is nevertheless likely that John Strensham was a clothier, that Thomas Hewes had an interest in the wool trade and that several of the others engaged in some kind of commercial activity. Gloucester’s economic problems may have contributed to the increasing frequency with which lawyers represented it in Parliament: with fewer wealthy merchants than in the late fourteenth century, it possessed a smaller pool of men of the type who might have stood for election to the Commons in the past. As it was, by the mid fifteenth century the leading burgesses were more reluctant than hitherto to serve more than one or two terms as bailiff of the town. In the circumstances, local lawyers performed a useful function by accepting municipal office and putting themselves forward for election to Parliament. They were also serving themselves, since in doing so they increased their opportunities of attracting the notice of significant patrons, including the King himself.18 VCH Glos. iv. 36, 37, 42. Yet there were real advantages for the borough in returning those who, by virtue of their profession, were well equipped to lobby for the borough’s interests, both inside and outside of Parliament. The increase in the election of lawyers was not however a dramatic change since all of the men of law among the 21 held property in the town, and they included the native-born Thomas Bisley and Deerhurst. Like most of the other lawyers, Bisley and Deerhurst enjoyed the status of gentry, as did Robert Bentham and John Bisley, neither of whom appears to have practised the law, and on occasion contemporaries recognized Deerhurst, Bentham and John Andrew as esquires.

The more prominent lawyers among the MPs, especially William Nottingham, must have had considerable incomes through the practice of their profession, but there is little evidence for the wealth of the 21 in general. In local terms at least, the tradesmen among them, some of whom had business dealings in London, must have been among the richest inhabitants of the borough. Nottingham was comfortably the most substantial landowner among the 21 by the end of his life (then reportedly in possession of estates worth £132 p.a.), but he lacked holdings of any significance outside Gloucester when elected in 1449. His fellow lawyer, John Edwards, inherited his brother’s holdings in Gloucestershire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex and London but not until nearly two decades after representing Gloucester in Parliament. In short, few of the MPs are likely to have represented the borough while possessed of lands of any great value although another of the lawyers, Deerhurst, owned estates in Gloucestershire of sufficient size to allow him to sit for the county in two Parliaments.

What evidence there is of the MPs’ participation in the administration of the borough relates to the two main offices of bailiff and steward. At least 16 of the MPs became bailiff, but only seven of them held the office for more than two terms. In the years 1386-1421, by contrast, 13 or 14 of the known MPs (also numbering 21) of that period had served as bailiffs for three terms or more. Half of the Members of the period under review who became bailiff appear not to have done so until after beginning their parliamentary careers. Even if service as a bailiff was by no means a sine qua non for prospective MPs, there was a close relationship between the office and election to Parliament, as had been the case in the decades immediately preceding 1422. Five men, Andrew, Bentham, Eldesfeld, Gilbert and Hamlin, were simultaneously MPs and bailiffs, and another five, Walter Chaunterell, Henry Dode, Hert, Hewes and Strensham, gained election to the Commons immediately after completing a term as bailiff.19 Cf. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 409. Of the six MPs who served as stewards of the borough, four of them (Andrew, Hamlin, Hert and Strensham) did so before they sat for Gloucester in the Commons.

Beyond the borough, nine of the MPs (Andrew, Thomas Bisley, Buckland, Deerhurst, Doding, Edwards, Gilbert, Nottingham and Stevens) served the Crown in county administration, whether in Gloucestershire or beyond, although four of them (Bisley, Deerhurst, Doding and Edwards) appear not to have done so before representing Gloucester in the Commons. Nottingham was already an administrator of some experience when elected for the borough in 1449, since he was then a j.p. in the wider county and had served a term as its escheator. Gilbert was likewise a j.p. for Gloucestershire when elected in 1422, by which date he had also twice served as escheator, while another of the lawyers, John Doding, was clerk of the peace for the county when returned in 1455. Both Nottingham and Gilbert were on the quorum as of the commission of the peace, as were Deerhurst and Edwards, although the latter two did not become j.p.s until after they had entered Parliament. None of the 21 held office as sheriff in Gloucestershire or elsewhere but, perhaps significantly, Thomas Buckland was under sheriff of the county at the time of his election in 1450 and John Doding had recently served in that office when returned five years later. It is impossible to establish whether the duchy of Lancaster connexions of six of the MPs, all lawyers, were of any significance for their parliamentary careers. Andrew, Deerhurst, Doding, Gilbert and Edwards found employment with the duchy at a regional level, while Nottingham served it as an apprentice-at-law, but only Andrew and Doding were among its recent or current office-holders when they first entered Parliament. None of the MPs appears to have possessed ties with the royal court and only Nottingham held office at Westminster, although not until after sitting for Gloucester.

As one might expect of a lawyer of his prominence, Nottingham acted for a number of important clients. By the time of his election in 1449, he had served as a bailiff for the abbey of Cirencester (an office he probably still held when he took up his seat), and was perhaps already a councillor of John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, whose service he certainly entered before 1451. Much later in his career, he became a servant of the powerful Stafford family. Several of his fellow lawyers also possessed connexions with members of the nobility or significant religious institutions. First, during the Parliament of October 1416 (of which he himself was not a Member) Robert Gilbert was a proxy for the abbot of St. Peter’s, Gloucester. More significantly, for 17 years or more he was steward of Llanthony priory. He held the office when elected to almost all of his Parliaments, in some of which he may have acted as an advocate for that religious house as well as the town. If so, the recurring tensions between town and priory must sometimes have put him in rather an invidious position. Secondly, John Edwards was a steward on the estates of the Beauchamp inheritance and his clients included John Talbot, who was the son-in-law of the last Beauchamp earl of Warwick, but he appears to have formed these connexions some time after sitting for Gloucester in Parliament. Thirdly, John Andrew associated with prominent members of the Beauchamp affinity before he gained election to the Parliament of 1437, and he had certainly entered the employment of the Stafford family by that date. Through his service to Anne of Woodstock, dowager countess of Stafford, he came into contact with two other prominent figures, Henry and Thomas Bourgchier, her sons by her second marriage to Sir William Bourgchier†. Andrew’s association with the Staffords may well have helped him to win a seat in Parliament on more than one occasion, even if it is impossible fully to ascertain the extent to which the many Stafford retainers who sat in the Commons during the fifteenth century owed their elections to the patronage of that family.20 C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 81. Finally, Thomas Buckland also had a Stafford connexion, for he counted Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham, among his clients a few years before entering the Commons in the autumn of 1450. Six years earlier, he had acted as an attorney at Westminster for William de la Pole, earl (subsequently marquess and then duke) of Suffolk, but when he stood for election to the Parliament in question de la Pole was both discredited and dead. It is also possible that Buckland joined the service of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, before entering Parliament but there is no evidence of ties between the other MPs and the duke, or of links between any of the 21 and Duke Humphrey’s successor as constable of Gloucester, Lord Beauchamp of Powick. None of the MPs appears to have had a connexion with the Lords Berkeley, even though the Berkeleys’ Gloucestershire estates included interests in Gloucester itself.21 Cat. Med. Muns. Berkeley Castle ed. Wells-Furby (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc.), i. 460-1.

Most of the MPs appear to have sat in the Commons just once, a contrast to the period 1386-1421 when apparently only four of the known Members gained election to a single Parliament.22 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 409. It may be that, whether for economic or other reasons, members of the municipal elite had become increasingly reluctant to enter the Commons, just as fewer of them than in the past were prepared to serve multiple terms as a bailiff.23 Cf. VCH Glos. iv. 36. Such reluctance might partly explain why more lawyers than hitherto sat for the borough in this period. As far as the evidence goes, there were four Parliaments to which Gloucester returned two newcomers at the same time, those of 1426, 1429, 1449 (Nov.) and 1460. It appears that the most experienced parliamentarian was Robert Gilbert, who sat for the borough in at least eight Parliaments, closely followed by Thomas Stevens, certainly a Member of seven. John Andrew and Thomas Deerhurst were burgesses for Gloucester in four Parliaments, Richard Dalby in three and John Strensham, John Hamlin and Thomas Hewes in two each. Four of the MPs, Gilbert, Stevens, Dalby and Strensham, began their parliamentary careers in Henry V’s reign, but none of the 21 is known to have sat after 1461. At least three Members sat for Gloucester in consecutive Parliaments (Gilbert in both assemblies of 1421 and that of 1422, Stevens in those of 1422, 1423, 1431 and 1432, and Thomas Deerhurst in those of 1447 and February 1449), although in the period 1386-1421 there had been at least seven instances of this type of re-election.24 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 409, 790. Three of the MPs, Andrew, Deerhurst and Nottingham also represented other constituencies, although not until after sitting for Gloucester for the first (or, in the case of Nottingham, only) time. Andrew was a burgess for Bletchingley in 1449 and both Deerhurst and Nottingham sat as knights of the shire for Gloucestershire, a mark of the standing that they had come to enjoy in the wider county.

The formal return of the MPs for Gloucester took place in Gloucestershire’s shire court, although it is likely that it followed a previous election in the borough. Perhaps the real choice lay with the bailiffs, of whom several in this period combined their office with that of an MP.25 M. McKisack, Parlty. Repn. English Bors. 57. Of the surviving returns for Gloucestershire and Gloucester – all but those for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445 and 1459 are extant – the majority take the form of joint indentures for both the county and the borough and include several burgesses among the attestors. For whatever reason, there were separate indentures made for the borough at the elections to the Parliaments of 1423, February and November 1449, 1450, 1453, 1455 and 1460. The indenture of 1423 simply bears the names of the two bailiffs and those for the Parliaments of February and November 1449, 1453 and 1455 the names of the bailiffs and the other attesting burgesses. In 1450 Thomas Bridge, one of the bailiffs, and an unknown number of ‘comburgesses’ were the attestors, and a single bailiff, Robert Bentham, was among the witnesses in 1460, along with 27 other named burgesses. In both 1450 and 1460 the non-attesting bailiff (John Andrew on the first occasion and Nicholas Hert on the latter) was one of the men elected to Parliament, although in 1453 it was possible for Robert Bentham, then serving his second term as bailiff, to witness his own return to the Commons. It is nevertheless impossible to prove any irregularity in 1453, or in 1450 when Thomas Buckland gained election while under sheriff of Gloucestershire. The circumstances of William Brokwod’s return to the Yorkist-dominated Parliament of 1460 are likewise unknown, although he may have been a Yorkist sympathiser and the man of that name who became a yeoman of the Household soon after the accession of Edward IV.