Lancashire

Lancashire had several distinctive features that influenced its parliamentary representation. Although not agriculturally rich, it was home to a significant number of gentry families of knightly rank. This was a function both of its size – it was the sixth largest English county – and the distribution of property within its borders. The landholdings of neither the aristocracy nor the Church were extensive, and thus an unusually high proportion of property, perhaps as much as three quarters, was in the hands of the gentry.4 M.J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism, 9-10, 74-77, 241. As a result there were a large number of knights resident in the county: in the 1410s there were at least 26 and, according to the list made of those qualified to take the parliamentary oath not to maintain peace-breakers, at least 21 in 1434.5 Lancs. Knights of the Shire (Chetham Soc. xcvi), 207-10; CPR, 1429-36, p. 379. With the Irish Sea to the west and Pennines to the east, the county’s physical isolation, which it shared with its southern neighbour, Cheshire, gave its numerous gentry another distinctive feature.6 For the geographical boundaries defining the two counties: Bennett, 7-8. Even the knightly families among them had landed interests that were relatively narrowly confined, and, partly for that reason, their social horizons were restricted to their immediate areas. Thus, the gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire maintained ‘far closer – and consequently more complex – family relationships’ than their social counterparts in most other shires.7 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 467-8.

To this geographical and social distinctiveness was added an administrative one. Both counties, as separate palatinates, had their own administrations. Not only did this make them ‘more self-contained institutionally’ than all other shires save the county palatinate of Durham, but, more significantly, it served to tie them more closely to the Crown. Both palatinates were royal appanages, endowing them with ‘a significance in national affairs totally out of keeping with their remoteness and indigence’. Under both Richard II and the Lancastrian Kings they served ‘as independent sources of royal power’ and as such attracted more than their fair share of the rewards of royal patronage.8 Bennett, 11, 37. These distinctive geographical, administrative and political features give Lancashire’s parliamentary representation a particular interest, as, too, does the consideration that it alone of the three palatinate counties returned MPs in the period under review here.

The names of Lancashire’s MPs are recorded for 21 of the 22 Parliaments that met in Henry VI’s reign.9 Election indentures are extant for 18 of these Parliaments, a writ, endorsed with the names of the elected, survives for that of 1453, and the MPs for those of 1439 and 1445 are provided by the enrolled tax comms.: C219/330/25; CFR, xvii. 141, 326. These 42 seats were taken by 23 men, only two of whom are known to have represented other shires: Sir John Byron was elected for Lincolnshire in 1447 and (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I for Yorkshire in 1455. This insularity was, unsurprisingly, not unique to the period under review. Of the 30 MPs of the 1386-1421 period, only Byron represented another county. In short, taking the two periods together, just two of 47 MPs are recorded as sitting elsewhere. No county in England had a lower comparable figure, and the pattern persisted, with a slight relaxation, into the late sixteenth century. Of the 39 men known to have sat for Lancashire between 1461 and 1558, only three are recorded representing other counties.

As election outside Lancashire was so rare, the MPs as a group had a lower average of Parliaments per person than their counterparts in most other counties. The 23 MPs of Henry VI’s reign are recorded as having filled 48 seats for this county and two for other shires, in other words, a little over two Parliaments each. As many as 11 of them appear to have been returned only once; and only one was elected on more than three occasions. (Sir) Thomas Stanley, a figure of national importance, was returned to as many as ten Parliaments from 1427 to 1455. Other parliamentary careers were short, although there was as many as 24 years between Henry Halsall’s first and last elections.

With so many of its MPs sitting only once, there was a low level of representative continuity measured over the whole period, but within it there were significant variations. Continuity was markedly low in the first part of Henry VI’s reign, as it had been since about 1404. Between 1422 and 1435 only nine of the 20 county’s seats were filled by MPs with previous parliamentary experience, and there was not a single case of immediate re-election. From the mid-1430s, however, the pattern changed, returning to the high level of continuity that had prevailed before 1404. Of the 24 seats from 1437 to 1459, experienced MPs filled as many as 16. On no occasion were the county’s seats taken by two novices; and there were no fewer than nine instances of immediate re-election. In part, this fluctuating pattern of continuity is to be explained by the presence or lack of an individual returned to multiple Parliaments, as Sir Robert Urswyk† and Sir John Boteler† were before 1404 and Stanley was after the mid-1430s. Yet, while this exaggerates the contrast, it does not entirely account for it, and in any event the emergence of such individuals reflects the dynamics of representation. It may be that there was little competition for seats, allowing a leading figure to dominate representation if he had a mind to; and that when there was no such individual, representation fell into the hands of a wider and less influential group who took it in turns to take up the burden.

A study of the fluctuating status of the MPs, using knighthood as guide, certainly suggests that a decline in representative continuity was associated with a decline in the status of the MPs. Between the Parliaments of 1386 and 1404 (Jan.), as many as 25 of the county’s 30 seats were filled by knights, a predictable statistic in a county of many knights; between those of 1404 (Oct.) and 1435, however, only 16 of 44 seats were so filled. This is a remarkable decline since, even though the number of knights was falling, there were more than 20 knights resident in the county in the 1430s.

It is thus clear that at periods, some of them quite lengthy, Lancashire’s representation, at least if conceived in terms of individuals, was not dominated by the county’s leading men. Indeed, of the 21 knights recorded as resident in the county in 1434, only four – (Sir) Thomas Stanley, Sir Thomas Radcliffe, Sir Robert Laurence† and Sir William Assheton – are known to have represented it in Parliament. Further, the county frequently returned men who, although drawn from its leading families, were either younger sons or yet heirs apparent. This feature of the county’s representation appears to have been particularly marked under Henry VI. Between the Parliaments of 1427 and 1449 (Feb.), these junior members of leading families took as many as eight of the 24 seats.10 Stanley (in 1427 and 1433); the two Laurences (in 1429 and 1435); the two Thomas Haryngtons (in 1432, 1437, 1447 and Feb. 1449). Earlier, Sir Thomas Radcliffe had been returned to the Parls. of 1421 (May) and 1423 while his father lived. Other MPs, although at the heads of their families, were from families below, and sometimes well below, the knightly elite. It is hard to see how, if there had been a strong competition for seats, Nicholas Boteler, Morley, Gernet and Halsall, all elected between 1426 and 1445, would have secured election. Low representative continuity had been similarly manifest in Henry V’s reign in the election of another series of lesser men, Boteler and Morley again among them, between the Parliaments of 1414 (Apr.) and 1421 (Dec.). The absence of many of the county’s knights on campaign in France has been used to explain these elections;11 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 465. but it seems they were more generally characteristic of the pattern of the county’s representation in the first third of the fifteenth century.

Lancashire’s representation fluctuated in respect of the social standing of its MPs, as it did also, less surprisingly, in the distribution of MP’s residences. The county was divided into six hundreds, and in both the periods 1386-1421 and 1422-61 the majority of its MPs were residents of just two of them, those of West Derby, the south-western part of the county, and Lonsdale ‘South of the Sands’ in the north. (Conspicuously, not a single MP came from the part of the Lonsdale hundred, ‘North of the Sands’, which is detached from the rest of Lancashire by the southern part of Westmorland.) Of the 30 MPs elected between 1386 and 1421, 17 had their principal residences in one of these hundreds; and of the 23 returned in Henry VI’s reign as many as 15 did. Markedly under-represented in both periods were the two central hundreds of Leyland and Blackburn, which provided only three MPs in the earlier period and only one, Assheton, in the latter.

There is some evidence that the residences of MPs had an influence upon the results of individual elections. To only one of the 16 Parliaments between 1422 and 1449 (Feb.) inclusive did the county return MPs with their main residences in the same hundred: in 1425 both came from the hundred of Salford, the south-eastern part of the county. Similarly, to the 20 Parliaments between 1394 and 1421 (Dec.) for which Lancashire’s MPs are known, only to that of 1411 were the two MPs from the same hundred, again that of Salford. The rarity of such returns may thus be a result of policy rather than accident. If so, however, it was a policy not followed in the late 1380s and early 1390s, when, to three out of six Parliaments, the county returned MPs from the same hundred, twice from Lonsdale and once from West Derby. Nor, much more emphatically, was it followed in the 1450s: to five successive Parliaments from that of 1449 (Nov.) to that of 1459, Lancashire returned two MPs from West Derby.12 This depends on the probable assumption that Sir Richard Haryngton’s main residence was his wife’s manor of Westleigh in West Derby hundred, rather than his own principal manor of Fishwick in that of Amounderness. It may, therefore, be that there was an informal policy that the county be represented by MPs from different parts of the shire, but that this policy was necessarily abandoned when representation fell into the hands of a dominant individual or individuals.

The story of the county’s representation in the context of the histories of the families that provided its MPs emphasizes continuity above difference. It is striking to note that as many as 22 of the 23 MPs from the reign of Henry VI can be confidently said to be the representatives of families settled in the county for several generations, and even the exception, Sir William Assheton, may have been a scion of the long-established Asshetons of Ashton-under-Lyne. Hence it was natural that a significant number of these MPs should have been the descendants in the male line of earlier Lancashire MPs. The most impressive records of parliamentary service belonged to the Haryngtons and Radcliffes. Between 1327 and 1478 six successive generations of the Haryngtons sat for the county, filling as many as 22 recorded seats. The Radcliffes, spread over four branches, had a similar record. Between the Parliament of 1340 (Jan.), when Sir John Radcliffe† of Ordsall and his illegitimate brother, Robert Radcliffe†, the progenitor of the Radcliffes of Smithills, were elected together, and the election of Sir John’s descendant, Alexander, in 1455, the Radcliffes provided the county with ten MPs filling 21 seats. Three other of Lancashire’s leading families – the Botelers of Warrington, the Gerards of Bryn and the Laurences of Ashton – had records of parliamentary service that would have been outstanding in the context of any other county. 13 Biog. Sketches MPs of Lancs. (Chetham Soc. ser 2, xciii), 12-16, 37-39, 43-49, 64-68, 78-83.

These five parliamentary dynasties provided as many as 15 of the 23 MPs returned in Henry VI’s reign. In addition, two other of the MPs, Urswyk and Stanley, were the sons of Lancashire MPs. A further three, Halsall, Keighley and Nicholas Boteler, could claim descent, in the direct male line, from remoter parliamentary ancestors. Thus, remarkably, only five of the 23 MPs was not a descendant in the male line of an earlier Lancashire MP, namely Byron, Longford, Morley, Gernet and, probably but not certainly, Assheton.14 Assheton may have been a gds. of Sir John Assheton† (d.c.1398) of Ashton-under-Lyne, MP for the county in Ric. II’s reign, but the heraldic evidence is against this identification. Longford was the son of Sir Nicholas†, MP for Derbys. in the Parl. of 1404 (Jan.).

This near-monopoly of representation by the county’s established families implies that there was little immigration into, or much social mobility within, the higher ranks of its gentry. One reason for this was the robustness of its leading families in the male line, produced, in part, by an early adoption of that preference for heirs male over heirs general that was later to become commonplace among English landed families. The families of the 23 MPs provide several examples of this preference. Indeed, Urswyk would not have been lord of Tatham but for the disinheritance of his fraternal nieces.15 The families of Byron, Halsall, Radcliffe of Smithills and, most famously, Haryngton provide later instances. The consequent lack of social mobility into and within the county may explain another curious feature of its representation, namely the lack of lawyers among its MPs. Of the 23 MPs only Gernet can certainly said to have been one, although Urswyk may have been.

The long continuity of these Lancashire families reflects not only the county’s inheritance practices but also its clannishness. In the period 1386-1421 the county was, remarkably, represented by as many five sets of fathers and sons and two of brothers. These close ties of blood were less apparent in the MPs of Henry VI’s reign when there were only two sets of each: the Gerards and John Botelers as fathers and sons, and the Laurences and Sir Richard and Thomas Haryngton II as brothers. In terms of the marriages of the MPs, however, there is no contrast between the two periods. Of the 24 brides of the 23 MPs of Henry VI’s reign that can be identified by paternity, as many as 18 came from Lancashire. The same pattern is apparent in the earlier period: of the 19 identifiable marriages made by the MPs of 1386-1421 (excluding the marriages of those who sat in both periods), 14 were made within the county.

With so high a proportion of marriages made within the county, it was inevitable that several of the MPs in both periods would be closely related by marriage.16 For marital connexions in the earlier period: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 468. The most significant marital grouping was focused on the Haryngtons. Several of the MPs can be fitted on a narrow family tree with that family at its centre, and this kinship network came to dominate the county’s representation from the late 1430s. In 1437, Thomas Haryngton I was returned with Halsall, the husband of one of his first cousins, and thereafter nearly every election fits into this pattern. In 1442 Thomas Haryngton I was returned with his first cousin, (Sir) Thomas Stanley; to the successive Parliaments of 1447 and 1449 (Feb.) a pair of first cousins was again returned in Stanley and Thomas Haryngton II; and to the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.) Stanley was elected with his second cousin, Sir John Boteler (who was later to marry Stanley’s daughter). The pattern persisted with more intensity in the 1450s: in the Parliaments of 1450 and 1453 Lancashire was represented by Stanley and another of his first cousins, Sir Richard Haryngton; in 1455 Stanley was elected with Alexander Radcliffe, the husband of Thomas Haryngton I’s sister; and in 1459 a pair of brothers-in-law were elected in Sir Richard Haryngton and Halsall.17 This pattern persisted into the Yorkist period. Of the five Lancs. MPs known for these years, three were Haryngtons and one a Stanley. It is hard to imagine that so consistent a pattern emerged by chance however closely-related were the county elite. While Stanley, who had a virtual monopoly of one of the county seats, and the two Haryngton cousins, Sir Richard and Thomas I, could command election in their own right, the same could not be said of Halsall and Sir Richard’s impoverished brother, Thomas II. Their elections were manifestations of the power of the Haryngton connexion.

There is also one piece of evidence, albeit indirect, that this series of returns was co-ordinated and deliberate. On 23 June 1455, in the tense atmosphere in national politics in the aftermath of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I, an important retainer of the Yorkist Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, was elected to represent Yorkshire. A week later his brother-in-law Alexander Radcliffe was elected for Lancashire. There is every reason to suppose that the two elections were connected, with Haryngton, powerful enough to win election in another county, leaving the Lancashire seat free for his kinsman by marriage.

Haryngton’s election for Yorkshire raises the general question of the extra-county landed interests of the MPs as a group. In their marriage patterns, they appear a self-contained group with few connexions outside Lancashire; yet that is not to say they were devoid of landholdings outside Lancashire’s borders, only that these holdings were less extensive than those of comparable groups in other counties. Of the 23 MPs, ten seem to have had lands confined to Lancashire at the time they represented the county in Parliament.18 Assheton, Nicholas Boteler, Halsall, the three Haryngtons, Morley, Sir Thomas Radcliffe and Richard Radcliffe. I have not included Sir Richard Haryngton’s temporary holdings in France, which had, in any event, been lost before he was an MP. Haryngton I had not yet inherited his mother’s extensive estates when he last sat for Lancs. The extra-county lands of four others – the two Gerards, Alexander Radcliffe and Sir Ralph Radcliffe (as the dower lands of his wife) – were restricted to Cheshire; the Laurences, to Westmorland; and Keighley and Urswyk to Yorkshire. Stanley, by far the richest man to represent the county, also had English lands confined to Cheshire, but in addition he derived a large income from the Isle of Man. Of the other four, Longford had lands in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, the latter of which were as important to him as his Lancashire lands; the two Botelers, in Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire and distant Wiltshire; and Byron, after his mother’s death in 1426, in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Yorkshire. In short, several of the MPs had landed interests outside Lancashire, but, and this may mark a point of difference with representatives from other shires, these interests were insufficient to draw them away, even briefly, from their native county. It is relevant here that the two elections of Lancashire men for other shires owed much to special circumstances. Byron, elected for Lincolnshire to the Parliament of 1447, was then anxious for a parliamentary seat to defend himself against charges of malfeasance as sheriff of Lancashire, yet was debarred from representing Lancashire because he was sheriff. Haryngton would no doubt have been elected for Lancashire rather than Yorkshire in 1455 had he not been concerned to secure a seat for his brother-in-law.

The landed income of the MPs is more difficult to measure than the geographical extent of their landholdings. The returns for the 1436 subsidy are lost and those for 1451 survive only in incomplete and damaged form, yet there is enough evidence to rank the MPs in terms of wealth. Stanley, after he had inherited the family lands in 1437, was one of the richest men to sit in the Commons in Henry VI’s reign. He drew a considerable income, perhaps as much as £400 p.a., from his lordship of the Isle of Man, and this was augmented by his several offices in royal service and his substantial landholdings in Lancashire and Cheshire. Below him were a group of five MPs who can, with a fair degree of certainty, be said to have enjoyed a landed income of between £100 and £200 p.a., at least at the time of their parliamentary careers when their incomes were at their greatest. The two John Botelers, Thomas Haryngton I, Longford, Byron and the two Gerards all fall into this category. Below this group of eight MPs were ten others whose incomes lay somewhere between £40 p.a. and £100 p.a. The wealthiest of this group were probably Sir Richard Haryngton and the four Radcliffe MPs, with incomes nearer £100; and the poorest appear to have been Assheton, Nicholas Boteler, Halsall, Keighley and Urswyk.

This leaves five MPs with very modest resources. Robert Laurence was yet to inherit when he sat in 1429, although he could look forward to a reasonable inheritance, but the same could not be said of his brother, Thomas, who was assessed on an income of only £9 p.a. in 1450-1. Even poorer was another younger son, Thomas Haryngton II, who was assessed to the same subsidy at only £6 p.a. The other two MPs were wealthier but, at least in terms of purely landed income, were worth less than £40 p.a. The lawyer, Gernet, was assessed in 1436 on an income of £27; and Morley, although his income was supplemented by a royal annuity of £20, had only modest landed holdings.

The election of several MPs of slender means was one reason why there was a lower overlap between the personnel of shire administration and that of representation than was the case in other counties. There was, however, a more important reason for this difference. In Lancashire two of the three principal offices of county administration, those of sheriff and escheator, were not subject, as they were elsewhere, to annual rotation. Despite this, as many as nine of the 30 MPs who represented the county between 1386 and 1421 served as sheriff, as did more than half of those elected from 1509 to 1558.19 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 466; 1509-58, i. 119-20. Yet, strikingly, of the 23 MPs of Henry VI’s reign only Byron did so. This marked contrast is largely to be explained by Byron’s longevity in the office. First appointed in November 1437, he remained sheriff until his death in about 1451, when he was succeeded by his son Nicholas who held the office for the rest of the period. The Byrons’ long tenure did not move the other MPs to seek the office in the other shires in which they had interests. Only Thomas Haryngton I held the office in another county, namely in Yorkshire, serving some years after his last election for Lancashire.

In the case of the lesser office of escheator there was a greater correspondence between the periods 1386-1421 and 1422-61 with three MPs from each holding the office. Both Halsall and Richard Haryngton served briefly before representing the county in Parliament, and Stanley held the office jointly and, given his myriad other responsibilities, no doubt nominally, from 1441 until his death in 1459 (and was thus in office when elected to his last seven Parliaments). Only one of the MPs served as coroner: Morley held that office when elected to the second of his Parliaments, that of 1431. That post was generally below the dignity of men who could aspire to election to a county seat, but it appears to have enjoyed a greater prestige in Lancashire than it did elsewhere.20 One of the county’s knights, Sir Edmund Trafford, was a coroner in the 1440s: PL15/9, rot. 17d; 11, rot. 28.

The degree of overlap between Lancashire’s j.p.s and its MPs was more typical of other shires than was the case for the offices of sheriff and escheator. Twelve of the 23 MPs are known to have been named to the bench at some stage of their careers. This was a lower percentage than in the earlier period, when as many as 21 of the 30 MPs are recorded as j.p.s. (and in the 1509-58 period when 12 of the 15 MPs were named to the bench).21 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 467; 1509-58, i. 120. The contrast may, partly at least, be explained by the loss of some of the palatinate’s patent rolls, which means the composition of the bench is incompletely recorded. Of these 12, three were also appointed in other counties. The lawyer Gernet was appointed in Kent soon after representing Lancashire in the Parliament of 1442; Thomas Haryngton I was a j.p. in the West Riding when elected for Lancashire for the third and last time in 1442 (and later also served in Cumberland); and Henry Keighley, soon after the end of his parliamentary career, was a j.p. in the archbishop of York’s lordship of Ripon. Six of the 12 were first appointed to the Lancashire bench before their earliest recorded elections to Parliament, and Thomas Haryngton I and Keighley were first named to the Lancashire bench when sitting in the Parliaments of 1442 and 1445 respectively. Judging from the incomplete surviving records, only 13 of the 42 known seats were filled by serving j.p.s.; and only in the Parliament of 1422 was the county represented by two serving j.p.s.

None the less, if in Lancashire there were fewer opportunities to hold office in county administration than was the case in other shires, this deficiency was outweighed by the opportunities for office in the extensive duchy of Lancaster estates in the county. The concentration of these stewardships, receiverships and other lesser offices in the hands of the local gentry added both to their standing and their geographical distinctiveness, focusing their energies more narrowly on their native county than would have been the case had they needed to seek opportunities elsewhere. Not surprisingly, several of those who represented the county in Parliament were prominent among these office-holders: seven of the 23 filled such posts.22 Sir Richard Haryngton was on the council of the duchy when elected in 1453 and 1459, but I have not counted this as a formal office. Yet not all of them were in office at the time they were elected to Parliament. Indeed, it is surprising how comparatively little correlation there was, and even where such a correlation can be found it would be hard to argue that an MP’s position as a duchy officer did anything to determine the timing of his elections to Parliament. Thomas Haryngton I, for example, had already been elected to two Parliaments when on 26 Jan. 1437, five days after the beginning of his second Parliament, he joined his father in the stewardship of the hundreds of Amounderness and Lonsdale. Stanley’s record of office-holding in the duchy was more extensive, yet even he did not hold his first office until after he had represented the county in three Parliaments. In any event, he hardly needed the status of office to recommend him to the electors of his native county.

Three of the MPs, Stanley chief among them, were important enough to hold significant offices outside Lancashire. That they did so was not only a reflection of their high personal status but also of the close relationship between the county and the Lancastrian Crown. As a young man, Stanley acted as lieutenant of Ireland, as his grandfather had done before him, and he was holding that post when elected to the Parliament of 1433. He went on to hold, again as his grandfather had done, leading office in the royal household: he was controller from 1439 to 1451 and as such sat in six Parliaments, and, while sitting in the last of his ten Parliaments, he was named as chamberlain. His record of office-holding was exceptional, not only in the context of the county he represented but in that of the whole population of fifteenth-century MPs.23 His other offices, aside from the duchy offices cited above, included the chamberlainship of N. Wales and the justiceship of Chester and N. Wales. His successor as controller of the Household was his first cousin, Sir Richard Haryngton, returning from his long career in France where he held a succession of offices and commands, and Sir Richard was in office when elected for Lancashire in 1453 and 1459. It was probably during the second of these Parliaments that he added to his responsibilities that of controller of the household of the young prince of Wales. The third MP, Sir John Boteler, did not hold formal household office until this same period – he was appointed carver of the queen’s household in about 1458 – but he already had a place among the knights of the royal household when he sat for the county in the late 1440s.

This close relationship between the county palatinate and the Crown was manifest not only in the service of Lancashire men in senior Household positions but also in the distribution of royal patronage in the county more generally. At least ten of the MPs enjoyed royal annuities at some point in their careers. Five of these were granted in the early years of Lancastrian rule: Nicholas Boteler, Byron, Morley, Ralph Radcliffe and Sir Thomas Radcliffe had annuities ranging from £10 to £20 granted by Henry IV and Henry V, and were in receipt of them throughout their parliamentary careers. Sir Richard Haryngton was granted as much as £40 p.a. after his first Parliament in 1450.24 In the last years of Lancastrian rule in France, Haryngton had had an annual salary as a councillor in Normandy of 1,000 livres tournois. The other four –Sir John Boteler, Halsall, Alexander Radcliffe and Urswyk – had their annuities only after the parliamentary careers were over.

To those who benefited from royal annuities are to be added those who profited from favourable leases of the Crown’s local property: at least eight of the MPs did so.25 Assheton, John Gerard, Gernet, Halsall, both Thomas Haryngtons, Sir Thomas and Richard Radcliffe, Stanley and Urswyk. Indeed, in total 18 of the 23 MPs gained from royal patronage, albeit in markedly varying degrees. The exceptions were the two Laurences, Longford, John Boteler I and Peter Gerard, and Boteler is to be counted as only a partial one for he held military office in France as captain of Vincennes.

Although as a body the Lancashire MPs had close ties with the Crown and were a focus of its patronage, the lack of baronial estates in the county meant that they had few baronial links. Consequently, such attachments were a negligible factor in determining the county’s representation. This is not, however, to say that Lancashire’s MPs were entirely innocent of them, only that none of these connexions had any determinative influence on their county’s representation. Assheton was a retainer of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, a connexion seemingly formed through military service, when he represented the county in 1432, but there is no reason to suppose that it was a factor in his election. Much more significant was Thomas Haryngton I’s service to Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, which appears to have begun when he served under Salisbury on the Calais campaign of 1436. In the 1450s this connexion determined his loyalties in national politics, yet if it had any relevance to his parliamentary career it lay not in his election for Lancashire to three Parliaments from 1432 to 1442 but in his election for Yorkshire in 1455.

The county’s links with the Crown and a strong tradition of military service ensured that, as a body, the MPs maintained a significant level of participation in the war in France.26 For the tradition of military service: Bennett, 162-91; Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 20. The most notable soldier was Sir Richard Haryngton, son of Sir James†, who died at the siege of Caen in 1417. He remained almost constantly in arms from the battle of Agincourt in 1415 to the fall of Lancastrian Normandy in 1450, when, as bailli of Caen, he surrendered the town his father had died in the taking. His influence may have drawn his cousin, Thomas Haryngton I, and brother, Thomas II, into pursuing brief but intense military careers at a time when such service was becoming, as English fortunes waned, increasingly unattractive. Assheton pursued an intermittent military career between Agincourt and the relief of Calais in 1436; and Morley, who had first seen military service in 1390, was also at Agincourt, as was Thomas Radcliffe, who may have continued campaigning into the 1420s. Stanley served on the coronation expedition as a young man, as too did John Boteler, the only one of the 23 MPs to die in the French war; and Longford fought at Verneuil in 1424. In short, at least eight of the 23 MPs can, with a fair degree of certainty, said to have seen action in France, and it is significant, in view of the general evidence of disengagement from the French war after Henry V’s death, that most of them saw action after 1422. Two of the MPs also fought in other theatres of non-domestic conflict. Stanley campaigned in Ireland as lieutenant there and later defended his own Isle of Man against the Scots, and Thomas Haryngton I was captured by the Scots at the English defeat on the river Sark in the autumn of 1448.

This military tradition might have inclined Lancashire’s gentry to take an active part in the civil war of 1459-61, and, given the close connexions between the house of Lancaster and the county, it might be expected that they would have inclined to support Henry VI. If the admittedly small sample represented by the seven of the 23 MPs who lived through at least part of that civil war is taken a guide, that inclination was largely absent. Two held high places in the service of the militant Lancastrian regime of the late 1450s – Sir John Boteler as carver in the queen’s household and Sir Richard Haryngton as controller of that of the young prince of Wales – and might be presumed to have taken up arms in that cause. Haryngton had certainly done so earlier as one of the principal commanders on the King’s side at the first battle of St. Albans. Yet, if either fought later, neither was identified as a Lancastrian partisan in the prescription of the leading Lancastrians in the Parliament of 1461. Only one of the seven is certainly known to have fought. Sir Richard’s first cousin, (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I, as one of the leading retainers of the Yorkist earl of Salisbury, was a committed Yorkist. He fought at Blore Heath, was captured and imprisoned by the Lancastrians after the rout of Ludford Bridge, and was killed, along with his eldest son, at the battle of Wakefield. On this admittedly slender evidence, it seems that the Lancashire gentry did not show themselves as committed to the cause of the house of Lancaster at the end of its rule as they had done at its outset in 1399.

The county election held on 12 Nov. 1459, a month after Ludford Bridge, provides an illustrative cameo of the confusion of loyalties in Lancashire. The indenture names as many as 91 attestors, the greatest number in any of the county’s fifteenth-century indentures, and begs the question of what brought so many men to the county court. The answer probably lies in the election’s local context. The rout had exposed (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I to ruin as a captive of the Lancastrians, and there could be little doubt that he would be a strong candidate for attainder in the forthcoming Parliament. A desire to secure the election of MPs favourable to his troubled cause prompted the attendance of some of those named as attestors. They were headed by Sir Thomas’s eldest son, John, who was to die with his father at Wakefield, and his cousin William, son of Sir Richard Haryngton. Sir Richard was returned in company with Halsall, who was a close associate of the Haryngton family. In short, the election resulted, as it did in many other counties, in the election of an important servant of the house of Lancaster, but, in this case, not principally because he was such but because he was a friend and kinsman of a committed Yorkist.

The county’s electoral indentures for Henry VI’s reign, excepting that of 1459, are not as revealing as those for the period before 1422.27 For the Lancs. returns from 1411 to 1459: Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 203-26. The earlier survey wrongly states that an indenture survives for 1407, but this is a confusion with that of 1411: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 469. There is nothing to compare with the remarkable indentures of May 1413, which named as many as 18 knights, and that of October 1414, which named 16.28 Appended to the 1413 indenture is an additional indenture witnessing the election of only one of the MPs, John Stanley, and naming 43 attestors, only three of whom appear in the main indenture: Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 205-10. Significantly several of those named only in the subsidiary indenture were important men, principally Sir Richard Keighley and the future MP, Ralph Radcliffe, and this rather contradicts the notion that electoral indentures, although not naming all those present at an election, named the principal men present. None the less, they provide the basis for certain speculations. As far as one may judge, the elections were generally well attended with a tendency to become more so as the reign progressed. The 18 surviving indentures named an average of just over 34 attestors each, but that average increased markedly between the first and second parts of the reign. The first nine indentures, dating between 1422 and 1433, named an average of about 22 attestors; the second nine, dating from 1435 to 1459, an average of as many as 47.29 Thereafter, judging from the only three surviving indentures for the period 1461-85, the number of named attestors falls back to its earlier average. The indentures of 1467, 1472 and 1478 name 39, 17 and 18 attestors respectively: C219/17/1-3. Not surprisingly the least well-attended election, the one held at Preston in 1426 which named only eight attestors, occurred in the early part of the reign; and the best-attended, that of 1459 with its 91 attestors, occurred at its end.

Yet, strikingly, if the measure is the social quality of the attestors rather than their quantity, the first part of the reign is the most notable. Of the nine elections held between 1422 and 1433, at least one knight is recorded as an attestor in six, with five each appearing at the successive elections of 1432 and 1433.30 Lancs. Knights of the Shire, 227. By contrast, knights are recorded as present at only two of the later elections, and on each occasion only a single knight is named. Clearly this change cannot be explained simply in terms of the declining number of knights through the reign – it is too sudden for that – and it might not be straining the evidence too far to suggest that as the period advanced the leading gentry showed increasingly little interest in the hustings. One reason may have been the virtual monopoly exercised over representation by Stanley and the Haryngtons in the 1440s and 1450s.

Most of the recorded elections between 1422 and 1460 were held at the county town of Lancaster, but there was a period in the 1420s when the elections were held elsewhere. Aside from the 1426 election at Preston, those of April 1421 and 1423 were convened at Croston, and that of 1427 was, like that of May 1413, held at Wigan. As Lancaster lay in the north of the county, it was not the most convenient location for the hustings, and this may explain this experiment of holding the elections at locations further to the south. It was, however, soon abandoned. After 1427, the elections were convened at Lancaster for the rest of the fifteenth century and beyond.

Sixteen of the 23 MPs are recorded as attesting parliamentary elections in Lancashire, but only two were prolific in the role. Nicholas Boteler, whose home at Out Rawcliffe lay only a dozen miles from Lancaster, attested as many as 11 elections between 1413 and 1450, more than any other attestor whether MP or not.31 Ibid. 21. Thomas Laurence is recorded as attending seven elections from 1432 to 1459, and he too, if not exactly resident in the immediate environs of the county town, resided about the same distance away as Boteler. Between them the 16 who appear as attestors made 51 recorded appearances in the witness lists, a little over three each. Not surprisingly, given that few of the MPs had interests outside the county, only two are known to have attested elections elsewhere: (Sir) Thomas Haryngton I attested the Cumberland indenture for the Parliament of 1447; and Byron the Nottinghamshire one for that of 1449 (Feb.). In addition, Assheton was present at the Suffolk election to the Parliament of 1453, although not as an attestor but as part of a riotous group of Mowbray supporters intent on disrupting the proceedings.

There are several examples of a close kinship between an elected MP and an attestor. In both 1432 and 1437 Sir William Haryngton headed the attestors to the election of his son, Thomas I; and in 1433 Sir John Stanley† did the same in respect of his son, Thomas. Since the sons, although from the leading county families, had not yet inherited their patrimonies (and Thomas Haryngton I was yet a younger son, albeit one with a landed endowment in the county through marriage), the interventions of their fathers may have been a factor in securing their elections. Even so it is probably better to see these and other examples not as evidence of an active intervention by the attestor in favour of a relative, but rather as an affirmation and validation of a relative’s return. The election of Sir Richard Haryngton in 1450, for example, was witnessed by his brother, Thomas II, and his son, William, but, as a famous soldier, it is unlikely that he required the intervention of his lesser kinsmen to secure his seat.

Indirect evidence of intervention in the electoral process is to be more profitably sought when the family relationship was between MP and the returning officer, the sheriff. Such relationships had been a theme in the representative history of the county in the earlier period.32 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 466-7, 469. Henry VI’s reign provides three further examples: in 1423 Sir Richard Radcliffe was still sheriff when Sir Thomas Radcliffe was again elected; and in 1429 and 1435 Sir Robert Laurence presided over the election of his sons, Robert and Thomas. The last example is of particular interest. As a younger son of a prominent but not a leading county family, Thomas Laurence was the least qualified MP to represent the county in Henry VI’s reign. This consideration, when seen in conjunction with his father’s role as returning officer, suggests the exertion of some improper interference in the electoral process. Further, the attestors included several men who were closely connected with the Laurences: Nicholas Croft, whose daughter was married to Thomas Laurence’s brother, Robert, was named first among them, and three other Crofts were also present. Yet, when this evidence is placed in what else is known of the county’s representation, it seems more likely that, rather than intervening to secure his son’s election against opposition, the sheriff turned to his son to fill a seat that no better-qualified candidate wished to take and to his kinsmen to validate the proceeding. A similar explanation may stand in some other cases when a sheriff returned a kinsman.

Although the leading Lancashire gentry appear to have been generally unenthusiastic about parliamentary service, such service could sometimes be a means of advancement for them. Two of the 23 MPs received the honour of knighthood while MPs: John Boteler was among those knighted with the young King at Leicester on Whitsunday 1426; and Peter Gerard was knighted at the coronation of Queen Margaret on 30 May 1445. Others received royal grants. Urswyk appears to have been either particularly adept or fortunate in this regard. He sat in only two Parliaments: in the first, that of 1421 (May), he secured the continuation of a valuable lease once held by his late half-brother, Sir Robert Urswyk; and as an MP in 1422 he was appointed as the deputy at Liverpool of the chief butler of England. Thomas Haryngton I, a more important man than Urswyk, enjoyed similar success: as mentioned above, it was in January 1437, just after the beginning of his second Parliament, that he was joined with his ageing father in a grant of the stewardship of Amounderness and Lonsdale; and he was an MP in the 1455 Parliament when he was granted the custody of the lands of Lord Clifford, who had fallen in the Lancastrian side at St. Albans, during the minority of his son and heir. More modestly, Assheton was sitting in his only Parliament when, on 5 June 1432, the duchy of Lancaster feoffees granted him the stewardship and master-forestership of Bowland.

Others used their time in Parliament to preserve themselves from loss. While MP in the Parliament of 1449 (Nov.), Sir John Boteler secured a clause of exemption from the Act of Resumption in respect of his view of frankpledge in Warrington. Yet others employed parliamentary service to present petitions. While sitting in the Parliament of 1445 Keighley petitioned his fellow Members, complaining that his long-standing claim to land in Astley (near Manchester) had been frustrated by a series of protections.

In all these cases, it is probably fair to assume their place in Parliament allowed these MPs to further their own interest by more effective means than otherwise would have been open to them. On other occasions, however, the chronological connexion between a grant and an appointment was coincidental rather than causative. This is particularly true of the more important MPs who had so many ways of advancing themselves outside Parliament. On 28 Apr. 1450, shortly before the beginning of the third session of a Parliament of which he was a Member, Sir Richard Haryngton was named as Stanley’s successor as controller of the royal household, and his later nomination as controller of the newly-formed household of the prince of Wales may have come when he was an MP in the Coventry Parliament of 1459. These important appointments reflected the range of his connexions not his Membership of Parliament. The same can be even more emphatically said in respect of Stanley. He won many grants of land and office and served in many Parliaments, and it was inevitable and no doubt accidental that some of his grants came to him while an MP.33 Interestingly, his presence in the Parl. of 1450 did not prevent his fellow MPs naming him among the 29 they accused of ‘mysbehavyng’ about the King. While sitting as an MP in the Parliament of 1455, to cite the most extreme example, he was both appointed as chamberlain of the royal household and elevated to the peerage, honours that owed everything to his political weight and nothing to his place in the Commons.

A county institutionally distinct as a palatinate and dominated by the landholdings of closely-interrelated gentry, Lancashire’s representation presents several distinctive features. Its MPs were drawn, to a greater degree than in almost any other shire, from the families that had represented it in earlier generations. It was also a county in which the junior members of its leading families, whether heirs waiting to inherit their patrimonies or younger sons, were returned with surprising frequency. This might be taken to imply the desire of an elite to maintain representation in its own hands, yet, if so, that desire was manifest in only part of that elite. It is remarkable how many of the county’s knightly families are not found among its MPs in the fifteenth century: there are, for example, no Molyneuxs, Pilkingtons, Scarisbricks or Traffords. It could be argued that their exclusion is to be explained by the dominance of the families of Stanley and Haryngton for a long period in mid-century, but this can only be a very partial explanation. From the early years of Henry IV until Henry VI’s majority, men from the second rank of county society filled many of the seats, and it is probable that both this and the later dominance of two families were a product of the same thing, namely a disinclination of a significant number of the leading Lancashire families to engage with parliamentary affairs.