New Windsor

As its name implies, New Windsor was a new town, albeit one built as long ago as the twelfth century. Saxon Windsor, which had become a royal residence as early as the ninth century, occupied part of the site of the present Old Windsor, three miles downstream, but because it was low-lying and ill-suited for defence in about 1070 William I erected a fortress on the chalk cliff above the Thames, this being the only strong point in the valley between London and Wallingford where one might be built. In the early years of the next century a settlement grew up at the castle gates to serve its needs, and the first explicit reference to the new borough is found in the pipe roll of 1130-1. Windsor’s principal attraction as a royal residence was the excellent hunting to be had in the adjacent forest and heaths, and the town prospered from the presence of Kings and their households and the consequent traffic up, down and across the river, although it frequently suffered disturbance from building works, notably Edward III’s great additions to the castle, which transformed it into the fortified palace it has since remained. M. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages, 395-6; Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 864-88.

New Windsor increased in importance as a trading and market centre during the reign of Henry III, who frequently stayed in the castle or at his new hunting lodge in the forest. By 1268 the town may already have had a merchant guild, and the clauses of its first charter, granted by Edward I in 1277, appear to have been mainly confirmatory. The charter stated that Windsor should be a liber burgus, and that the King’s probiores homines of the vill and their successors should be free burgesses with their own merchant guild, enjoying the same liberties and customs as burgesses of other royal boroughs and freedom from tolls throughout the realm. The itinerant justices of both common pleas and the forest were to hold their eyres at Windsor, and the chief gaol of the county was to be sited there. (This latter provision came to an end in the fourteenth century with the building of a new gaol at Wallingford.) The charter was confirmed by successive monarchs in 1316, 1328 and 1379. From 1281 until the 1440s the burgesses held the borough from the Crown at a fee farm fixed at £17 p.a., which, presumably for convenience, was paid into the Exchequer by the constable of the castle. It is implied that from an early date they elected reeves or bailiffs to be responsible for collecting and handing over the farm, although the term ‘King’s bailiffs’ continued in use as late as 1400. The bailiffs, who sat with the mayor at the borough court, CPR, 1446-52, p. 547. began their year of office around Michaelmas, and by 1491 their election invariably took place on the Sunday before St. Matthew’s day (21 Sept.). The burgesses or ‘good men’ of New Windsor had a common seal, and acted together in petitioning for grants of pontage (which they successfully obtained in 1403, 1408, 1412 and 1425), CPR, 1401-5, p. 314; 1405-8, p. 427; 1408-13, p. 398; 1422-9, p. 289. in imposing tolls on boats on the Thames, and in respect to the leasing of land on the outskirts of their town. Their merchant guild had come to assume overriding importance in Windsor’s affairs. In the fourteenth century it had been headed by the ‘senescallus gilde mercatorie’ and holders of this office in the 1430s were called stewards of the ‘Gilde aule’. The office of mayor, first recorded in 1363, seems to have been interchangeable with that of the steward. Indeed, the two offices and two organizations (guild and borough) gradually became fused, and after the charter of 1439 the office of steward disappeared entirely. The mayor was apparently elected annually at the same time as the bailiffs, and often the same man remained in post for several consecutive years. He received writs from Chancery, served as coroner and as clerk of the market, and presided over the borough court, which, as records from the 1480s reveal, assembled every three weeks in the guildhall. S. Bond, ‘Med. Constitution of New Windsor’, Berks. Arch. Jnl. lxv. 21-39.

Windsor castle was Henry VI’s birthplace, and although a meeting of the royal council held in 1428 decided that the castles of Wallingford and Hertford should be furnished for him to inhabit during summers and Windsor and Berkhampstead only in wintertime, when he was older he frequently chose Windsor before other castles as a favoured place of residence, whatever the season. B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 361-71; PPC, iii. 295. Windsor was the permanent residence of the King for some 17 months after he suffered his mental breakdown in the autumn of 1453. It was kept in good repair for his visits. In 1433 the annual outlay on maintenance of the castle was reckoned at 100 marks, but this sum was regularly exceeded by up to £50, and in the early 1440s over £1,200 was spent on the castle and its dependent manors. RP, iv. 435; E364/73, rot. O; 76, rot. K; 77, rot. Q; 84, rot. G; 95, rot. F. Perhaps personal acquaintance with the town made the King especially responsive to the burgesses’ petitions. After he came of age they sought alleviation of the burden of their fee farm, fearing that Windsor was ‘likely to be widowed of its inhabitants’ because of the imposition. An inquiry conducted in December 1438 before commissioners headed by important Exchequer officials found that the town had become depopulated as a consequence of pestilence and had been largely deserted by the merchants whose trade at the annual fair and weekly markets had once contributed to its prosperity. Many burgages and other dwellings which the men of Windsor held as parcel of their farm, were now lying ruinous and empty. As a consequence, the annual profits of Windsor’s courts, fair and market tolls, stallage and rents of assize had fallen since the late thirteenth century from £17 11s. to just £6 11s. CPR, 1436-41, p. 266; CIMisc. viii. 124; Tighe and Davis, i. 305-7. In response to this report, on 19 May 1439 Henry VI granted the burgesses a new charter in which they were empowered to take all fines, amercements and forfeitures levied in the town and to seize the chattels of felons, waifs and strays. Furthermore, he granted exclusive civil and criminal jurisdiction to the borough authorities. No other court or view of frankpledge should be held in the town, and the mayor and bailiffs, who now had the right of return of all writs and summonses, were to be ex officio j.p.s. The burgesses could devise their land by will. CChR, vi. 5-6. It was claimed in 1447 that lands and tenements in the town had always been devisable by testament; and wills were ‘made, proved, proclaimed and enrolled’ in the court of the mayor and burgesses ‘after the custom of the town out of tyme that no mynde is used’: C1/16/630a. To help alleviate the burgesses’ immediate burdens, the King remitted £7 of the fee farm for the next ten years. Naturally, the charter did not note this temporary provision, but see E364/76, rot. Kd; 95, rot. Fd. The burgesses took prompt action to secure their new privileges. In Michaelmas term that year the prior of Merton brought an action against the mayor and eight named townsmen of Windsor, headed by William Hunt and his son Roger (the future MP, otherwise known as Sherman), for, on 18 Oct., forcibly preventing the priory’s steward Thomas Haydock* from holding a court of frankpledge in the town as the priory’s officers had done from time immemorial. CP40/718, rots. 537-9. An assize jury awarded the prior damages of £40 in 1440, but the suit returned to c.p. on a writ of error in June 1442. Further changes came about in the following year when, on 11 Oct. 1440, the King formally founded Eton College, just half a mile across the river from Windsor. As part of the endowment of the new college, on 3 July 1443 he licensed the burgesses of Windsor to grant it the ‘aquas et piscarias in riva Thamesie’ which they enjoyed by virtue of the grant of the town at farm in 1281. They completed the transaction four days later, but were careful, in a quitclaim made in September 1448, to reserve their rights to pontage or passage over and under the bridge, and to the assay and assize of all victuals on the Windsor side. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 179, 389; Eton Coll. recs. Windsor deeds 204-7. In return for Windsor’s generosity the King temporarily reduced the farm by a further £2 p.a., so that it would be £8 until 1449 and £15 thereafter. Tighe and Davis, 311-12; Berks. RO, Windsor recs., Wi. I.C. 1; CPR, 1441-6, p. 363; 1452-61, p. 644.

More changes to Windsor’s constitution were to be made in Edward IV’s reign. A year after his accession Edward confirmed the royal grants of 1439 and 1444, and then, in September 1466, he issued new letters patent. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 248, 551; Berks. RO, Wi. I.C.3; Tighe and Davis, i. 361-2. Parkland was already beginning to encircle the town on three sides, and the new King had extended it by enclosing a further 200 acres of land where the burgesses had previously enjoyed common of pasture and the right to carry away chalk and flint, and from which part of the fee farm had been raised. In compensation, they were now formally incorporated in the name of the mayor, two bailiffs and burgesses, and the fee farm was permanently reduced to £10 p.a. Within a decade this corporation was defined as ‘the fraternity’ and limited in numbers to 28 or 30. Regulations laid down in 1474 specified that the elite brethren, selected for life, were to be chosen from the body of freemen by co-option. Thirteen of their number were to be benchers, and out of the 13 seven (drawn from the ranks of former mayors), were to be known as aldermen. Bond, 21-39.

New Windsor had made returns to 20 of the Parliaments summoned between 1302 and 1335, but had then gone unrepresented for more than 110 years. It is significant that the burgesses were instructed to begin electing Members to Parliament again just after they had participated in Henry VI’s endowment of Eton College, according to the surviving records first doing so to the Parliament summoned to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on 10 Feb. 1447. It is possible, however, that Windsor was represented in the Parl. of 1445-6, for which no returns survive. It may be assumed that this new privilege was a further mark of Henry VI’s personal favour and recognition of the borough’s altered status following the charter of 1439. In the six (out of the eight) Parliaments between 1447 and 1460 for which the names of Windsor’s MPs are known, the borough was represented by seven individuals. Most of the seats were taken by Richard Forster III (who was returned to the three consecutive Parliaments between November 1449 and 1453), and Roger Sherman (who sat in four of the five Parliaments between 1447 and 1453). Although, not surprisingly, in 1447 the borough was represented by two parliamentary novices, in the other Parliaments at least one of the MPs was experienced in the workings of the Commons, such experience having been gained in the cases of Henry Fraunceys and John Frampton III by their service in immediately preceding Parliaments as representatives of Guildford in Surrey. Continuity of representation in successive Parliaments was provided by the re-election of Sherman in February 1449 and again in 1453, and by the return of Forster to three Parliaments in a row.

None of Windsor’s MPs were strangers to the local community. Two of them, Sherman and Towe, were the sons of leading burgesses, and four of the rest are known to have held property in the town. The last, Forster, lived nearby, at Bray or Binfield, and was well known to the townsmen as steward of courts held at Windsor. Fasnam, Sherman, Toller and Towe all occupied borough offices at some stage in their careers: all four of them served as bailiff for at least five terms each, and Towe had been bailiff for six terms and mayor for two before he was returned, during his third mayoralty, to the Parliament of February 1449. His fellow MP, Sherman, was currently bailiff of Windsor, a post he had occupied for three terms before his first election to Parliament in 1447. Former bailiffs filled five of the 12 recorded seats, but only Towe had experience of the mayoralty before his election. Yet it would seem that participation in local administration was not an essential prerequisite for representing the borough in Parliament.

The townsmen made a living primarily through trade, by farming land in the Thames valley and by servicing the needs of the occupants of the castle. So too with the MPs. Sherman and Towe were both husbandmen, although the former, as his occupational surname name implies, also made cloth, and Toller was a tailor. Forster, who was probably steward of New Windsor when returned to all three of his Parliaments and later became joint steward of the lordships of Cookham and Bray, had most likely been trained in the law. He may well have been the man of this name who was appointed clerk to the justice in eyre in the forests south of Trent during the recess of the third of his Parliaments, that of 1453. Even though the remaining three MPs also farmed land in the vicinity of Windsor, they are best described as royal servants. Fasnam had been a groom of the saucery in the Household for ten years or more before he was returned to the Bury Parliament of 1447, and Fraunceys and Frampton both served as clerks of Windsor castle. Fraunceys held the clerkship for at least 15 years from 1438, during which period he was returned by Windsor to the Parliament of November 1449, and Frampton was almost certainly engaged in that office by 1460 when he was elected. The clerk of the castle took responsibility for the maintenance of the royal parks at Guildford as well as Windsor, and it is significant that besides their Parliaments for New Windsor, both these successive holders of the office also sat in the Commons for Guildford. The electors at Windsor could be sure of Frampton’s attendance in the Commons in 1460, for in the previous two Parliaments he had officiated as one of the two ushers charged with furnishing and preparing the chambers for the assembly, and this role he continued to perform not only in 1460 but for some ten years longer.

If Forster may be counted as a royal official along with Fasnam, Fraunceys and Frampton, then seven out of the 12 seats were filled by those with connexions at Court, and the question arises as to how far the burgesses of Windsor may have been influenced in their choice of representatives from outside. Forster was linked with John Norris*, the courtier who sat as a shire knight for Berkshire in the same Parliaments as he did, and Fraunceys and Frampton, as clerks of the castle, are inevitably recorded in association with their superior officer, the constable, and Frampton’s association with the constable, John, Lord Berners, appears to have been personal as well as official in nature. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that any of these men were imposed on an unwilling electorate.

In response to the original summons dated 14 Dec. 1446, for a Parliament to meet at Cambridge on 10 Feb. 1447, the sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire sent a mandate to the mayor and bailiffs of Windsor to make an electoral return to him at Abingdon ‘cum omni possibili festinacione’. The indenture, made on 3 Feb. 1447, just a week before Parliament met at the changed venue of Bury St. Edmunds, stated that the mayor and community of burgesses of the borough, assembled together, had ordained, elected and named of their common counsel Roger Fasnam and Roger Sherman, burgesses of Windsor, to represent them there. It was attested by the mayor, the two bailiffs and seven others, all named, and ‘others’ not identified, and referred to the King in the same obsequious language as was employed on the indenture for Reading. Returns also survive for six more of the seven Parliaments summoned before Henry VI’s deposition, although that for 1459 is now damaged and illegible. The indenture for the Parliament of February 1449 followed the previous formula, with the mayor and seven burgesses named as attestors, but the return for the subsequent Parliament, in the autumn of that year, adopted a different format: a simple ‘response’ of the two bailiffs of the liberty, it provided the names of two sureties for the attendance of each of the Members elected, but identified none of the other participants. The indentures of 1450 and 1453 ‘testified’ that the mayor and community of the borough had made the election and attached their seals, but in both cases only the mayor was named. Unusually, that of 1460 was drawn up between the sheriff of Berkshire on the one part and the mayor, bailiffs ‘and whole community’ on the other, testifying that they had unanimously elected their fellow burgesses Toller and Frampton. C219/15/4, 6, 7; 16/1, 2, 6.