Berkshire

With its boundary in the north and east defined by the river Thames, Berkshire fell into three natural divisions. The Vale of the White Horse in the north provided fertile corn-growing land and meadows. Pasturage on the chalk downs above Wantage fed sheep producing high quality wool for export to the Low Countries and laid the foundation of Berkshire’s later pre-eminence as a ‘rich cloth-making county’; important centres of cloth manufacture developed at Abingdon, Reading and Newbury. Stretches of woodland and royal forests in the east furnished timber and recreational activities. During the period here under review communications by road between London and the west of England were improved by the building of new bridges at Maidenhead and Abingdon. VCH Berks. i. 371-2, 374-5, 377-8, 387-90; ii. 167-8. Enveloped by five other counties – Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire – it was most closely linked with the last, Oxfordshire; for the purposes of royal administration the two shires shared a sheriff and escheator. Although Berkshire belonged to the diocese of Salisbury, the bishop of Winchester possessed substantial manorial estates there, and in addition two Benedictine abbeys of the first rank, at Abingdon and Reading, whose abbots received summonses to Parliament, and the important collegiate chapel of St. George in Windsor castle were significant landowners in the county.

Windsor castle, the birthplace of Henry VI, long remained a favourite residence of the King, although for periods of his childhood he also stayed with his mother Katherine de Valois in the county’s other major royal castle, that of Wallingford. Both castles were kept in good order throughout the reign. Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, i. 239. The ancient honours in the county had long since been absorbed by the Crown and large tracts of land now belonged to the ruling house of Lancaster. The duchy of Cornwall honours of Wallingford and St. Valery pertained to Henry V’s widow in dower, yet throughout the period 1399-1450 the practical exercise of royal authority in this part of the Thames valley lay initially with the influential Thomas Chaucer* and then with his son-in-law William de la Pole, earl (afterwards marquess and then duke) of Suffolk. Chaucer, the steward of the honour and constable of Wallingford castle from the accession of Henry IV until his death in 1434, shared these offices in his final months with de la Pole, who subsequently occupied them jointly with Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf (from 1437 to 1441), and during the 1440s with his wife Alice. Her father, Chaucer, had adopted nearby Ewelme (just across the Thames in Oxfordshire) as his home and this became one of the chief residences of Alice and her husband. It was as ‘late of Ewelme’ that the duke of Suffolk faced charges of treason in the Parliament of 1449-50, and it was there that Alice spent much of her widowhood. J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, i. 112; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 44, 366; 1441-6, p. 74; PROME, ii. 94-106. Similarly, from 1437 the duchy of Lancaster lands in Berks. fell under the stewardship of William de la Pole and his countess: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 622-3. Significantly, after her death depositions in a suit in Chancery, referring back to the late 1450s, asserted that she, the dowager duchess, had in that decade ‘chief rewle of all the shire’. Save for a brief spell in 1460-1, the dowager duchess and her son John, the young duke of Suffolk (Edward IV’s brother-in-law), remained in charge of Wallingford castle for the rest of their lives. C1/66/360; CPR, 1461-7, p. 42.

At the start of Henry VI’s reign other Crown lands in Berkshire were held for life by the King’s uncles, John, duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, most prized among them being the valuable lordships, hundreds and manors of Cookham and Bray, which reverted to the King after Gloucester’s death in 1447 – only then to be leased out by the Exchequer for upwards of £101 p.a. to a favoured esquire in his Household, John Norris, who was also appointed steward there. B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 278. Neither Bedford nor Gloucester had normally resided in the locality, and, similarly, such members of the lesser baronage who took a role in the county’s administration also established their principal residences elsewhere. William, Lord Lovell and Holand (d.1455), for example, lived across the county border at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire, and Sir Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford (constable of Windsor castle from 1417 to 1438) primarily in Wiltshire. It was Lovell who was commissioned in 1434 with Bishop Neville of Salisbury and Berkshire’s MPs in the recently dissolved Parliament (Sir Robert Shotesbrooke and William Fynderne) to administer in the county the parliamentary oath to eschew maintenance of any who broke the peace. Remarkably, in their response, which listed 198 men whom they deemed worthy to be sworn, none named were knights by rank, which means that in this respect Berkshire was unique among the counties for which such lists survive for the lack of men of this status among its resident gentry. Twenty-three ‘esquires’ were listed, of whom 11 are known to have represented the county or Reading in Parliament. CPR, 1429-36, pp. 402-4. Perhaps because so much of the landed wealth of the county lay in the direct possession of the Crown, the total value of its tax assessments in 1450-1 was only £1,558, a sum which placed Berkshire as low down the list of the 29 counties for which figures are available as 26th. S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii. 258. Perhaps as a consequence, the pool of men suitably qualified to represent Berkshire in Parliament was a relatively small one.

On four occasions during the period here under review Parliament met in Berkshire itself, at Reading abbey. The first session of the Parliament of 1439-40 was held at Westminster, and no reason is given in the parliament roll for the change of location to Reading after the Christmas recess, although the threat of plague may have been a factor; it sat at the abbey from 14 Jan. probably until 2 Mar. 1440. PROME, xi. 236. A common petition referred to the presence of plague in the realm: ‘a sekeness called the pestilence, universelly thorough this youre roialme more comunely reyneth, than hath bien usuell bifore this tyme’: ibid. 306. For the date of the dissolution, see Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth recs., ct. roll, Y/C4/148, m. 15. Then, in 1453 Parliament was summoned to assemble at Reading for its first session, which from 6 to 28 Mar. was conducted in the abbey’s refectory. After a session at Westminster in the summer, a third opened at Reading again on 12 Nov. , only for the chancellor, Cardinal Kemp, to prorogue the Parliament, ostensibly on account ‘de magna mortalitate in dicta villa de Redyng jam regnante’. Kemp also reported that the King was unable to be present ‘for other reasons’ – in fact (although this was not stated) because of his mental breakdown. After briefly reconvening at Reading on 11 Feb. 1454, Parliament was transferred to Westminster. PROME, xii. 229, 236-7, 248, 251-4. Henry VI stayed at Windsor until his recovery.

The only one of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign for which the names of Berkshire’s representatives are unknown is that of 1455. As few as 18 individuals filled the 42 recorded seats, yet as many as eight of these only ever represented this constituency once. Continuity of representation was amply provided by the rest: three MPs sat for Berkshire four times each; another, William Danvers, did so five times; and John Norris was elected for this constituency on as many as seven occasions. In fact, Norris sat in every Parliament summoned between 1439 and 1453 (one of them as a shire knight for neighbouring Oxfordshire), a record which placed him among the most active parliamentarians of the years of Henry VI’s majority. Even so, he could not match the even more remarkable record of parliamentary service established by John Golafre, who following an early election for Oxfordshire in Richard II’s reign had sat for Berkshire in no fewer than 12 of the Parliaments assembled between 1401 and 1429.

Besides Golafre and Norris (who may have first entered the Commons, in 1422, as a parliamentary burgess for the impoverished town of Lyme Regis), another eight of Berkshire’s MPs also represented other constituencies in the course of their careers. Richard Restwold had initially appeared as one of the knights of the shire for Cumberland and Thomas Drew as a Member for Malmesbury in Wiltshire. The others, and Restwold as well, were all returned at other times for counties adjacent to Berkshire: altogether six of the 18 also sat in Parliament for Oxfordshire; Shotesbrooke represented Wiltshire; and John Roger and William Warbleton also entered the Lower House as knights of the shire for Hampshire. Taking this additional parliamentary service into account it transpires that just three of the 18 only ever sat in a single Parliament, and their total of 71 Parliaments indicates an average of four apiece.

Clearly, the majority of the 18 were often eager to obtain a seat in the Commons. Indeed, two of them apparently took positive steps to ensure the success of their candidacy by standing for more than one constituency at the same time. This is what happened in 1426, when Warbleton was returned by those gathered at the county courts of both Berkshire and Hampshire for elections to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Leicester. Five days elapsed between the meeting of the Berkshire court at Grandpont, on 30 Jan., and that at Winchester on 4 Feb., but it is likely that news of the outcome of the first had failed to be carried to the second. C219/13/4. It is not known which constituency paid his expenses, or if either sent another representative in his stead. The chain of events that led to the return of Norris to the Parliament of 1453 (called to meet at Reading on 6 Mar.) not only as a knight of the shire for Berkshire but also as a burgess for the borough of Truro in distant Cornwall is shrouded in obscurity. Twelve days passed between the date of the sheriff’s indenture for Berkshire (21 Feb.), and the return for Cornwall and its boroughs (tardily dated only a day before the Parliament was due to assemble), and there is clear evidence of external interference with the latter, for the names of both the MPs originally elected for Truro were erased from the schedule dispatched by the sheriff and replaced with those of Norris, a courtier especially favoured by the King, and Roger Thorpe*, son and heir of Thomas Thorpe* the prominent Exchequer official destined to be elected Speaker of the Commons. C219/16/2.

Besides the five MPs who had sat for Berkshire before 1422, another five were already versed in the workings of the Commons when first elected for this county in Henry VI’s reign, after representing other places earlier on in their careers. This factor made them an unusually well-qualified group in respect of their parliamentary experience. In 13 of the 21 Parliaments for which the names of the MPs are known, both of Berkshire’s representatives had been returned previously, and in the remainder one was qualified in this way. On no known occasion was the county represented by two novices (although the possibility remains that this may have happened in 1455, a Parliament for which the returns are lost). Berks. was very unusual in this respect, although not unique, for this record was shared with Essex. A high level of continuity in representation was also achieved through the re-election of those who had sat in immediately preceding Parliaments. Such re-elections occurred at least ten times during Henry VI’s reign, ensuring that Golafre sat in three Parliaments running from 1426 to 1429, Fynderne in two (1433 and 1435), Restwold in two (1442 and 1445), and Norris in as many as six (from 1445 to 1453); while in 1450 both Members of the previous Parliament, Norris and Edward Langford, were chosen to represent the county again. Furthermore, to these examples of re-election for the same constituency should be added those of Warbleton, returned by Berkshire in 1426 and 1431, who had sat in both the immediately preceding Parliaments for Hampshire, and Restwold and Norris, returned in 1442 and 1445 respectively, who had sat in the preceding Parliaments for Oxfordshire. This meant that a third (14) of Berkshire’s 42 seats were allotted to men who had sat in the previous Parliament and were presumably cognisant of the matters which the Commons would be required to consider.

Knowledge about the procedures of the Lower House might also have been passed down from generation to generation, since at least ten of the MPs came from families which had supplied parliamentary representatives in the fourteenth century. Five of the 18 were the grandsons of earlier knights of the shire for this or another county, Chalers, Danvers, Foxley, Harcourt and Langford. and as many as nine (half the total) were the sons of former MPs. Bessels, Chalers, Drew, Foxley, William Norris, Restwold, John and Thomas Roger and Shotesbrooke. In addition, Danvers was a stepson of Sir Richard Adderbury†, Fynderne a son-in-law of Thomas Childrey†, Golafre son-in-law of Sir Edmund de la Pole† (and nephew of William Golafre†), and Harcourt son-in-law of Sir John Byron*. The paternal and maternal grandfathers of both Langford and Harcourt had sat in the Commons, and Harcourt himself was emulated by his younger brothers, Richard* and Sir William†, while a tradition of parliamentary service was carried on by Shotesbrooke, the younger son and brother of former shire knights, and by members of three generations of the family of John Roger. Marriages provided further links with other MPs: for example, Langford was the brother-in-law of Walter* and Thomas Blount*; and Shotesbrooke was related in a similar way to the influential Stourtons. Warbleton and Stephen Haytfeld both married the widows of former shire knights. In fact, only one among the 18, the lawyer William Perkins, lacked any known ties of kinship with other Members of the Commons.

The overwhelming majority (17 of 18) possessed residences in the county at the time of their elections, thus complying with the statutory requirements. Eight of these had already inherited family lands in the locality, while two more, Thomas Roger and William Norris, were destined to do so. (Yet when they were elected in 1453 and 1459, respectively, their fathers yet lived, and they themselves were landless young men whose careers had barely begun.) Five of the 18 had entered the shire community after marrying local heiresses or wealthy widows: Sir John Chalers, who belonged to a Cambridgeshire family of great antiquity, acquired the manor of Lyford by marriage to a Cowdray coheiress, at an unknown date close to his election in 1447; Fynderne, a lawyer from Derbyshire, married a Childrey coheiress; Haytfeld, a Yorkshireman, was the husband of the wealthy thrice-widowed Isabel Russell (‘Lady Scrope’); Perkins, of obscure background, married the heiress to Ufton Robert; and Warbleton, whose own inheritance lay in Hampshire and Sussex, came to Berkshire after his marriage to Sir Peter Bessels’ widow. By contrast, although Shotesbrooke came from a Berkshire family, his own holdings in the county were seemingly acquired by gift of his patron Lady St. Amand; and John Norris, although also probably a native of Berkshire, was not born to large estates or into the ranks of the higher gentry: a self-made man he purchased his substantial estates using the profits of service to Henry VI. While the careers of Chalers, Fynderne, Haytfeld, Perkins and Warbleton identify them as newcomers to Berkshire, Harcourt, elected in 1460, stands out for his lack of a territorial stake in the county. The Harcourt family seat at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire, was, however, only a short distance from the border, and Sir Robert owed his election to political circumstances and very recent appointment as constable of Wallingford castle.

With the exception of William Norris, Thomas Roger (at the time of his first election) and Perkins, all the shire knights held lands in other parts of the kingdom. Generally, these were located in one or other of the shires adjacent to Berkshire, but some MPs inherited property in more distant places too: Chalers in Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, Bessels in Warwickshire and Somerset, Harcourt in Staffordshire and Leicestershire, Langford in Devon and the Isle of Wight, Restwold in Cumberland and Cambridgeshire, and Warbleton in Sussex. Haytfeld’s wife brought him manorial holdings in eight counties, ranging from Northumberland to Dorset. All this gave the group a very widespread range of interests, which in some cases was made even more extensive through their marriages. Yet although the evidence of substantial landed holdings gives an impression of affluence, how the shire knights ranked in terms of wealth is difficult to evaluate, especially as the Berkshire tax returns of 1435-6 have not survived. From other sources, however, we can be certain that nearly all of the 18 were in receipt of annual incomes in excess of £40 at the time of their elections. Doubt remains only in respect of Thomas Roger on the occasion of his first election (in 1453) and William Norris in 1459. When, in 1460, Roger took his second seat he had just entered his paternal inheritance, estimated as worth £150 p.a. in the lifetime of his father John. Six others enjoyed comparable incomes, in excess of £100: Harcourt was undoubtedly wealthy (though precise figures are lacking); Golafre and Warbleton each had £110, according to tax assessments of 1412 and 1436 respectively; Haytfeld £167; and to his income from land worth £93 p.a. Shotesbrooke added fees and annuities from the Crown and aristocratic patrons of some £101. The richest of all was John Norris. Thanks to the profligate generosity of Henry VI, who on one occasion made him an outright gift of £600, he was able to purchase land worth at least £250 p.a., and thus to rise spectacularly from humble beginnings. Those with annual incomes below £100 included Danvers with £95, Drew and Bessels with £71 and £70, respectively, and Foxley and Fynderne with more than £52 each.

It is striking that despite their relative wealth few of Berkshire’s MPs rose above the status of ‘esquire’. While the percentage of knights among MPs throughout England was in general decline between 1350 and 1450, this decline was starkly pronounced in this particular county, where it had commenced quite early in Richard II’s reign. Just six out of 22 Berkshire seats were taken by belted knights between 1386 and Richard’s deposition, only one out of 16 in Henry IV’s reign, and one out of 18 in Henry V’s. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 261-3. A slight reversal of the trend followed after 1422. Between that year and 1460 knights filled six of the 42 seats, and in 1423 both those returned were of this rank (something that had not happened since 1394). The four belted knights of our period included Bessels, whose naval and military career had begun as long before as 1387, Shotesbrooke, who had served in Wales under Henry IV and in Normandy under Henry V, and Harcourt, who crossed the Channel with forces dispatched by Henry VI. That Shotesbrooke (a veteran of Agincourt who was dubbed at Caen in 1418), earned four nominations to the prestigious Order of the Garter, and Harcourt was to be installed as KG after fighting for the house of York in the north of England, is a mark of recognition of the two men’s exceptional prowess. By contrast there is no evidence that the fourth knight, Chalers, excelled in martial pursuits, although he may have joined the coronation expedition of 1430-2; he was probably knighted on the ceremonial occasion of Margaret of Anjou’s crowning in 1445. Another of the MPs, William Norris, was to be knighted on the eve of the battle of Northampton, just a few months after representing Berkshire for the only time at the Coventry Parliament. The remaining 13 were all distrained for failing to take up knighthood, some of them twice or even three times. That Golafre, who had campaigned in France in 1417 and served as receiver-general of the duchy of Normandy, Warbleton, who had fought overseas in Henry V’s campaigns, and Haytfeld, another veteran of Agincourt who served under the command of the duke of Bedford as Regent of France, all chose to reject the honour of knighthood is perhaps surprising, but in this respect they emulated a much greater man, Thomas Chaucer.

In contrast to the number who engaged in military activities, only three of Berkshire’s MPs (Drew, Fynderne and Perkins) are known to have been lawyers by profession, although it is possible that Restwold had also received a legal education. Nevertheless, in 1435 both those returned for Berkshire were men of law (which is something that had previously happened almost 30 years before, in 1406), Ibid. 264. and if Restwold is to be counted among them this small group of lawyers occupied a disproportionate 11 of the 42 documented seats of the period.

As was the case in other counties, those elected to Parliament for Berkshire nearly all took a leading role in local administration by serving in one of the three major offices, as sheriff, j.p. or escheator. A surprisingly high number of the MPs –nine of the 18 – held the lesser of these offices, that of escheator of the joint bailiwick of Oxfordshire and Berkshire or of other counties. More significantly, two-thirds of the total (12) served as sheriffs of the joint bailiwick, and seven of these 12 were also appointed to this office elsewhere. In addition, Shotesbrooke officiated as sheriff in Wiltshire and Warbleton in Hampshire and the joint bailiwick of Surrey and Sussex, although neither of them did so in Berkshire. Some of them were prepared to take on the task repeatedly: Chalers, Fynderne and Langford each served four annual terms as a sheriff, Golafre and Restwold five apiece, and Norris as many as seven. Furthermore, their appointments sometimes breached the statutes, as when Chalers and Langford were appointed to consecutive terms for the same bailiwick. Chalers petitioned to be discharged as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire at the end of his term in November 1446, but as nobody else could be persuaded to take on the office he was still sheriff when elected by Berkshire to the Parliament of 1447. This was Berkshire’s second of five contraventions of the statutes which forbade the election of sheriffs to Parliament, although none of the five MPs were actually responsible for returning themselves. All took place in the 1440s. Restwold, the sheriff of Wiltshire, had been elected for Berkshire in 1442, and John Norris, the acting sheriff of Worcestershire (during the minority of the earl of Warwick), was returned as Chalers’s companion in 1447, and then to the two Parliaments summoned in 1449 while sheriff of Wiltshire.

There can be no doubt that the Crown depended on reliable men such as these for the smooth administration of the localities. For instance, in seven of the years between 1417 and 1432 Fynderne was either escheator or sheriff, with responsibilities in eight widely-separated shires. Nor was this the extent of the MPs’ activities. All 18 of them served on ad hoc commissions, and all but one (the exception being Danvers) were appointed at some stage in their careers to the Berkshire bench, with the lawyers Drew, Fynderne and Perkins placed on the quorum. Furthermore, eight of this group of shire knights also served as j.p.s in other counties. Oxon. in all cases except for John Roger and Warbleton, who were placed on the bench in Hants. Members of Berkshire’s bench filled 20 of the shire’s 42 seats in Parliament in this period, and in 1422, 1433, 1439, 1442, 1445 and February 1449 both MPs were then justices. Only five of those returned for this county lacked any experience of local administration when they were elected to Parliament for the first or only time: Danvers, Restwold, Perkins, Thomas Roger and William Norris. That this was so is surprising in the case of Danvers, a man of mature years when returned for the first time in 1420, but not with regard to Roger, who was only 23 when elected in 1453, and Norris, who may even have been under age when elected in 1459. Explanations for the elections of all five can be sought in the wider perspective of changing shifts in the focus of power in the locality and in national politics as the country descended into civil war.

The period fell into two distinct parts: the early years of the reign, from 1422 until the King attained his majority, in 1437, and from 1439 until his deposition. Only Restwold and Shotesbroke were elected in both parts, and as many as eight of the ten individuals returned between 1439 and 1460 were then representing this county for the first time. Initially, Berkshire’s representation continued in the vein of earlier decades of the century, carrying on a long tradition whereby the holders of the honour of Wallingford and constables of its castle had been an abiding influence, and friends and associates of Thomas Chaucer took half of the available seats between 1399 and 1422. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 264-5. Prominent among them was John Golafre, returned to four of the six Parliaments of 1422-9, who received an annuity charged on the episcopal estates of Chaucer’s cousin, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, while Thomas Foxley, elected in 1425 when Beaufort was chancellor of England, had been known to him personally since 1402 when he had accompanied Beaufort to Brittany to escort Henry IV’s new queen across the Channel, and remained a member of his close circle. Beaufort was still chancellor in 1426 when writs were issued summoning Parliament to meet at Leicester, and in this Parliament Berkshire was represented not only by Golafre but also by Warbleton, a retainer of the bishop and confidante of both Golafre and Chaucer. As already noted, Warbleton’s determination to secure a seat in the Commons led to his return for Hampshire, the heartland of Beaufort’s diocese, as well as for this county. Since another one of Chaucer’s associates, Restwold, sat in 1425 and 1432, half of the 18 seats available between 1422 and Chaucer’s death in 1434 were occupied by men he knew personally, and in whom he placed his trust.

Other of the seats in the 1420s and 1430s were taken by those in the service of one or other of the young King’s surviving uncles, the dukes of Bedford and Gloucester. Fynderne, returned in May 1421, 1422, 1433 and 1435, was so highly regarded by Bedford as to be engaged as a member of the duke’s council in England, accorded powers of attorney to act on his behalf while he was absent in France; and Perkins, who sat for Berkshire in December 1421, 1429, 1432 and 1435, was retained by Gloucester as legal counsel, acted for him as feoffee and mainpernor and officiated as steward of his lordships of Cookham and Bray. Between them Fynderne and Perkins accounted for six seats. During the King’s minority the Berkshire electorate also twice returned Shotesbrooke, a Lancastrian retainer whose services were valued by the King’s ‘governor’ Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. The earl gave him an annuity of £10 to set beside the yearly payments of 70 and 50 marks granted him respectively by Henry V and his son. Shotesbrooke’s impressive record as a soldier had been followed by employment as a diplomat, and only shortly before his second Parliament for Berkshire in 1433 he had visited Denmark and the Hanse towns as an envoy of the Council of the minority. Further diplomatic assignments took him to the Congress of Arras and to Prussia before he sat again in the Parliament of 1439.

By then, following the deaths of Chaucer and Bedford, the character of the county’s representation had undergone significant change. The constableship of Wallingford castle had passed to Chaucer’s son-in-law William de la Pole, who as steward of the Household came to exercise a profound influence over the King. The Berkshire electorate responded by electing to Parliament men known to have personal access to him, such as Restwold, confirmed in his role as a trustee of the estates settled by Chaucer on his daughter and de la Pole at the time of their marriage, who sat in 1442 and 1445; and to five of the six Parliaments which met between 1439 and Suffolk’s murder in 1450 the county returned John Norris, a close associate of his at court. Yet Norris cannot be dismissed as a mere puppet of de la Pole. This prominent courtier had long occupied a place in close proximity to the King, having risen from the ranks of the yeomen of the chamber to become one of the select few esquires for the body, and his virtual monopolization of one of Berkshire’s parliamentary seats is suggestive of a strong personality well able to gather support at the shire court on his own behalf. When Parliament met in 1445 he was currently serving as keeper of the great wardrobe, and he went on to hold office as treasurer of the chamber to Queen Margaret and keeper of her wardrobe too. Regularly in attendance on the King’s frequent visits to Windsor castle, Norris assumed a new importance after the death of the duke of Gloucester in 1447 as lease-holder and steward of the royal lordships of Cookham and Bray where he had made his home. The recipient of many royal grants and of annuities amounting to nearly £92 before the Act of Resumption of 1450, Norris must have been perceived by the shire community as a figure of influence at Court. Nor was he the only member of the royal establishment to be elected by Berkshire in this period. Restwold, a household esquire, received a fee of 6d. per day from 1440, which was doubled in 1443, and Sir John Chalers, Norris’s companion at the Bury St. Edmunds Parliament of 1447, was then a household knight. Another of the King’s esquires, Edward Langford, who had conducted the election of 1447 as sheriff of Berkshire, joined Norris in the Commons in the consecutive Parliaments of November 1449 and 1450. A staunch Lancastrian, his loyalty was rewarded after the close of his third Parliament, at Coventry in 1459, with the stewardship of estates of the attainted earl of Salisbury in Devon and Cornwall, and the escheatorship of the duke of York’s in Denbighshire. At Coventry, Langford’s colleague was Norris’s son and heir, William, perhaps already the son-in-law of John de Vere, earl of Oxford, a committed adherent of the Lancastrian regime. In short, between 1439 and 1459 royal retainers filled as many as 15 of the 18 recorded seats.

The remaining three seats of that period were taken by Thomas Drew (1442), John Roger (February 1449), and the latter’s son Thomas (1453). The election of Drew, a busy lawyer, may perhaps be ascribed to his close links with the courtiers Langford and Norris, but those of John and Thomas Roger are more likely to have been influenced by John’s association with Richard, duke of York, whom he served first in a military capacity as one of his company in France in 1441 and then as steward of the ducal lordships in Hampshire. There can be no doubt that John Roger was instrumental in securing the election of his youthful son Thomas in 1453, for as sheriff of Berkshire John chose to hold the election on 21 Feb. at his own place of residence, Lambourn, where the county court had never met before. That this discomfited John Norris, the shire’s choice at six of the previous seven elections, is suggested by the insertion of his name in the return for the Cornish borough of Truro, perhaps as a fail-safe, although in the event he was accorded his accustomed seat for Berkshire.

It is unfortunate that the returns to the Parliament of 1455, summoned in the wake of the Yorkist victory at St. Albans, have been lost. Not surprisingly, the earlier status quo applied to the Membership of the Coventry Parliament in 1459 (albeit with John Norris’s son taking his place). After the attainder of York and his allies in that Parliament, the duke’s retainer John Roger became a fugitive and met a violent death early in the following year. In June 1460 the treasurer of England, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, with the authority of a commission of oyer and terminer, subjected inhabitants of York’s lordship of Newbury in the west of the county to a merciless attack, conducting trials of those alleged to have shown friendship to the duke and executing several whom he and his fellow commissioners found guilty. Lucky to escape with his life, John’s son Thomas Roger was imprisoned in the gaol at Wallingford castle along with many men from his father’s lands at Lambourn, Freefolk and Speen, there to remain until after the Yorkist earls won victory at Northampton in July. English Chron. 1377-1461 ed. Marx, 85; CPR, 1452-61, pp. 648-9. Significantly, the Berkshire elections to the Parliament summoned by the triumphant Yorkist regime to meet on 7 Oct. were conducted at Newbury instead of at one of the accustomed venues. Not surprisingly, the newly-released Thomas Roger was elected to represent the county. The Yorkist credentials of his companion, Sir Robert Harcourt, were similarly impeccable. In the previous few years Harcourt had strengthened his links with Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, whom he served as steward of the earl’s estates in Oxfordshire, and, proscribed in the Coventry Parliament, he had been held prisoner by Lancastrian forces which prevented him from fighting on Warwick’s side at the battle of Northampton. The victors promptly placed him in charge of Wallingford castle as its constable and commissioned him to release Roger from its gaol. Officially, Alice, dowager duchess of Suffolk, and her son Duke John were then joint constables of Wallingford, and it may be the case that Harcourt was their appointee. In any event, since 1458 the duke had been York’s son-in-law. They may have hoped to influence the Berkshire election, by promoting the return of John Heydon*, a member of their affinity. A letter written to John Paston* by Friar Brackley just before this Parliament of 1460 assembled, reported that, ‘We sey in this cuntre [Norfolk] that Heydon is for Barkschir in the Comon Hows. And the Lady of Suffolk hath sent up hyr sone and hise wyf to my Lord of York to aske grace for a schireve the next yer.’ Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, iii. 226. The new sheriff was Harcourt’s brother Richard. In the event, Heydon proved unsuccessful in gaining the Berkshire seat, Yet it may be the case that he had taken one of the seats for Berks. in 1455, for which the returns are lost. Correspondence between Paston and James Gloys, probably dated 25 July 1455, strongly suggests that Heydon was then present in the Commons as he intervened to defeat a bill brought by Paston and others: Paston Letters ed. Davis, i. 84-85; ii. 124. Of the constituencies whose MPs are unknown for 1455, Berks. is the most likely to have returned him, but the conjecture cannot now be verified. although the Yorkist earls cannot have been disappointed with the satisfactory outcome of the election of two such committed supporters as Harcourt and Roger.

Before 1422 the Berkshire elections had nearly always been held at Grandpont, situated just outside Oxford and on the very border of the county. The Commons 1386-1421, pp. 265-6. This must have been for the convenience of the sheriff of the joint bailiwick of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, based at Oxford castle, and in Henry VI’s reign the elections to the seven consecutive Parliaments of 1422-1431 and also that of 1433 were conducted there too. In 1432 and after 1433, however, alternative venues were found. The county court met at Abingdon for the hustings of 1419 and now did so in 1432 and for seven other elections of Henry VI’s reign; while Wallingford was the unusual location in 1435. As already suggested the choice of even more unusual venues in 1453 and 1460 (Lambourn and Newbury, respectively), were predicated by political considerations, as being, in the case of Lambourn, the sheriff’s own place of residence, and in the case of Newbury a centre known to be supportive of the victorious Yorkists. As had happened before 1422, the coroners of the shire were generally named on the electoral indentures, with two, three or four of the named attestors being identified in terms of this office in 12 of the 19 documents that survive. Between ten and 30 individuals attested each indenture – the fewest in 1423 and the most in 1435 – the average overall being 17. Altogether, 149 different men were so named between 1422 and 1460, but many of them (some 60 per cent) made only a single appearance on the returns. Nevertheless, certain individuals attended the elections quite often: John Coventre, the coroner, was listed 13 times and his fellows Thomas Denton and John Parker six times each, and other regular attenders included John Fettiplace and William Newman (each with eight appearances). What is clear from an examination of the parliamentary indentures is that those who at some point sat in Parliament themselves rarely witnessed elections. Thomas Rothwell† was exceptional in this respect, in that his name appeared on four indentures. Occasions where a number of sometime knights of the shire validated a return (for instance, in 1427 when there were five of them, 1432, four, and 1435 and 1450 three), may therefore point to more controversial elections.