Barnstaple

Barnstaple was one of Devon’s most ancient parliamentary boroughs, having sent representatives to all of Edward I’s Parliaments for which returns are extant. Unlike the inhabitants of late medieval Exeter or Plymouth, the burgesses did not seek their origins in a mythical Trojan or Roman past, but instead looked in more recent history to King Athelstan as their first benefactor: nevertheless, by the fifteenth century Athelstan’s charter, which the burgesses claimed to have lost, had adopted quasi-mythical status. Although rather smaller than Exeter or Plymouth (the poll tax returns of 1377 suggested a population of no more than 680 adults), in the mid-fourteenth century the borough was of considerable economic importance, outstripped in wealth only by the former two ports. Strategically placed on the Taw estuary, it opened the south-western counties to the trade with Ireland and Wales and was the principal market centre in northern Devon. Central to the town’s trade was the export of cloth, and although its orientation towards the Bristol Channel made it less directly susceptible to the decline of the English fortunes in France than the Channel ports of Exeter, Dartmouth and Plymouth, it seems that Barnstaple’s prosperity was nevertheless affected by the more general economic downturn of the mid-century. Thus, whereas in 1397 the townsmen had been in a position to provide a generous loan to Richard II, they never provided similar assistance to Henry VI’s government – in contrast with their counterparts at Bristol and Bridgwater who did support the Crown in this way. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 341-2. Similarly, whereas in the fourteenth century separate customs officials had been appointed for the north Devon district of Barnstaple, Brampton and Ilfracombe, by Henry VI’s reign this district had been subsumed under the authority of the collectors and controllers at Exeter and Dartmouth.

Since the eleventh century Barnstaple had been the caput of the honour or barony of the same name, which Richard II granted in 1388 to his half-brother, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. After Richard’s deposition and Holand’s unsuccessful rebellion against Henry IV and consequent forfeiture in 1400, it had been settled with other estates on the latter’s widow, King Henry’s sister Elizabeth, and her second husband, Sir John Cornwall, later Lord Fanhope. It was not until the reign of Henry VI that Elizabeth’s lands were returned to her son John Holand, duke of Exeter, from whom they descended in 1447 to his son and heir, the volatile Duke Henry. At Edw. IV’s accession the honour of Barnstaple remained in the hands of Holand’s wife, Anne, the new King’s sister, who after Duke Henry’s death in 1475 married Sir Thomas St. Leger† (exec. 1483). Hen. VII settled it on his mother, after whose death it reverted to the Crown: HMC 9th Rep. app. 213; The Commons 1509-58, i. 67. Perhaps aided by the remoteness of their absentee lords, whose principal interests lay in Bedfordshire, and certainly encouraged by their town’s at least initially growing prosperity, the inhabitants of Barnstaple consistently throughout the later Middle Ages pressed for greater independence. Although the borough had a mayor by 1210, his powers were far more limited than those of his counterpart at Exeter. The burgesses made their first documented bid for self-government in 1340, when they petitioned Edward III for a confirmation of the privileges they claimed to have been granted by Athelstan, but a series of inquiries ad quod damnum ordered by the Crown found unequivocally that although the borough customarily sent Members to Parliament, the majority of the rights asserted by the burgesses legally pertained to their lord. C143/255/22; 268/29; 272/17; HMC 9th Rep. app. 212. Having failed in their attempt to secure formal recognition of their independence, over subsequent decades the burgesses sought to achieve their aim by the tacit disregard of their lords’ rights. Thus, in 1408 Sir John Cornwall and the Countess Elizabeth complained to the chancellor that the mayor and burgesses had infringed their rights on no fewer than ten counts, particularly by taking control of the assize of bread and ale and its profits, and by holding their own courts, and the charter of confirmation that they granted to the burgesses on 20 Oct. that year was restricted to the rights they had enjoyed in the time of the earl of Huntingdon in Richard II’s reign. HMC 9th Rep. app. 205, 212-13. It was probably on account of these repeated failures to procure their freedom from the Crown by the formal channels that the men of Barnstaple resorted to the less salubrious means of forging royal charters. It is now generally accepted that Athelstan’s purported charter to the people of Barnstaple never existed, and that the subsequent charters said to have been granted by Henry II, John, Henry III, Edward I and Edward III were fabricated in the fifteenth century by copying the privileges granted to Exeter, substituting the name of Barnstaple, and having these copies exemplified in Chancery under the King’s seal. S. Reynolds, ‘Forged Chs. Barnstaple’, EHR, lxxxiv. 699-720.

In the fifteenth century the elections of the town’s mayors were conducted annually on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin (15 Aug.), as was the case in 1403. Then, the mayor had been chosen by a jury of 12 men, a method similar to that adopted at Exeter. This, however, was the limit of the burgesses’ freedom: following the election, the mayor and bailiffs had to be presented before the lord’s steward, who presided over the borough court, to be sworn in. From at least the 1420s (when the requirement was codified in the borough ordinances) any candidate for the mayoralty had to be permanently resident in the town and to have previously served as a bailiff. By then, the mayor’s status was also recognized by the Crown which addressed its writs ‘maiori et communitati ville de Barnestaple’. KB145/6/30/68-69.

The elections of Barnstaple’s parliamentary representatives during the period under review were held locally and presided over by the mayor, who then (after 1445 in response to a written precept) sent the names of those elected to the sheriff of Devon, who then recorded them in cumulative indentures and schedules also containing the names of the knights of the shire and those of the representatives of the other boroughs in the county. No evidence of the extent of the franchise has been discovered, but it was probably vested in the burgesses, for in the autumn of 1451 the mayor returned into Chancery that on 30 Oct. 1449 Richard Newcombe, then mayor, and Walter Gayncote, John Barbour and John Saunder ‘cum ceteris conburgensibus suis, adtunc communitas ville predicte’ had elected two of their fellow burgesses to represent them in Parliament. KB146/6/30/2/141. While on this occasion the Barnstaple elections took place five days before the meeting of the county court on 4 Nov., this may not always have been the case: evidence from elsewhere in Devon suggests that both in January 1449 and October 1450 the sheriff’s precepts to the boroughs were not issued until the day of the county court itself. H.R.Watkin, Totnes Priory and Town, i. 399, 413.

At the end of Richard II’s reign Barnstaple’s MPs were still at least occasionally paid at the customary rate of 2s. per day, CCR, 1399-1402, p. 109. but thereafter the burgesses increasingly sought to return Members who would content themselves with a lump sum, rather than a payment that depended on the length of the individual assembly. Thus, in October 1449 Creche and Treweman agreed to accept a mere 6s. 8d. each, however long Parliament might turn out to last. Should they not be content with this sum, so it was laid down, the mayor and burgesses were to be within their rights to replace them. It is not known whether the terms of this agreement were a result of a substantial expense claim submitted by the borough’s representatives in the exceptionally long assembly of 1445, but Creche and Treweman evidently changed their minds, sued out a writ de expensis, and by the autumn of 1451 were pressing their claim further. KB145/6/30; KB146/6/30/2. Separate agreements evidently continued to be concluded with every MP: in 1455 the town’s receiver accounted for just 20s. paid to Walter Gayncote ‘pro parliamento’, a mere fraction of what the borough’s Members might have claimed at the accustomed rate. HMC 9th Rep. app. 205.

The names of Barnstaple’s MPs are known for 18 out of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign: only for the assemblies of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460 have no names been discovered. Thirty-one individuals divided these 36 seats between them. As far as it is possible to tell, 24 of them were only returned to Parliament for this constituency once, six sat twice (although in the case of three of them their first return predated Henry VI’s accession, and Denys sat a second time in Richard III’s Parliament), Denys probably also sat in Parl. at other times between or after his two recorded elections for Barnstaple, but the loss of the returns for most of the Parls. of Edw. IV and Hen. VII makes it impossible to be sure. and only John Cokeworthy was able to secure election for Barnstaple four times between 1421 and 1435. Several other of Barnstaple’s MPs nevertheless gathered additional experience of the Commons in the service of other constituencies. In three instances such service predated the Members’ first return for Barnstaple: Giffard had previously sat for Liskeard and Radford for Plymouth, while prior to his single election for Barnstaple Gille had sat in no fewer than seven Parliaments for Totnes and Dartmouth. More commonly, however, election for this borough came at the start of a parliamentary career. Thus, Gascoigne served as a knight for Bedfordshire two years after sitting for Barnstaple, Clerk was later a burgess for Weymouth, Giffard for Lostwithiel, Davy for Totnes, Wolston for Tavistock and Plymouth following his two returns for Barnstaple, and Gille returned to Dartmouth for his final Parliament. With the benefit of hindsight, Barnstaple’s representatives in the 39 years of Henry VI’s reign were thus a more impressive collection of parliamentarians than the bare statistics of their returns for the borough suggest. Gille’s nine returns stand out, but Cokeworthy and Wolston each sat four times, Giffard three times and TEN men secured Membership of at least two Parliaments. Barry, Clerk, Davy, Denys, Gascoigne, More, Radford, Redwyn, Trebell and Wood. This meant that just under half of the Barnstaple Members during the period under review only sat a single time, as far as is known.

Conversely, it does not seem that the majority of the Barnstaple MPs in this period were men of any great distinction, either as parliamentarians or otherwise, and there is no suggestion that the borough’s electorate was concerned that they should be. In total, just 12 out of the 36 seats were taken by men with prior parliamentary experience; on only three occasions (1423, 1435 and 1450) had both MPs previously sat in the Commons; and only on the second of those three occasions was one Member (John Wolston) directly re-elected. The pattern of Barnstaple’s representation appears to have remained remarkably consistent with the preceding period of 1386-1421. Although for that period only some 60 per cent of election returns survive (as compared with 80 per cent of those for Henry VI’s reign), there was little change in the proportion of MPs to sit for the borough just once (about three quarters) and the proportion of Parliaments to which two novices were returned (about half). The proportion of Parliaments in which one of Barnstaple’s MPs had prior experience increased only marginally (remaining at just under a third), while the proportion of Parliaments in which both Barnstaple MPs possessed prior experience shrank by a similarly small margin (from about a fifth to about a sixth). In every instance, the variation is small enough to be readily discounted in the light of the missing election returns.

Nor did a record of office-holding under the Crown play much of a part in the considerations of the Barnstaple electorate. Although several of the borough’s MPs in this period rose to considerable prominence as administrators in the course of their wider careers, Eleven of them were appointed to royal commissions and two as tax collectors; five served in the administration of the customs and three as escheators; while Denys was placed on the quorum of the Devon county bench, Giffard was successively under sheriff of Cornw. and Devon, and Cokeworthy and Gascoigne were important enough to be respectively pricked as sheriffs of Cornw. and Beds. few of them had held office before being elected to Parliament by this constituency. Just nine of the 36 seats for which the incumbents’ names are known in this period were taken by men who had in the past held office or did so at the time of their return: Gille, Radford, Trebell and Wydeslade had been appointed to royal commisions prior to their election, Cokeworthy (by 1435) and Gille were former escheators, while Clerk, Cokeworthy (in 1429), Gayncote, Giffard and Gille were all holding posts in the customs system when returned for Barnstaple.

If there is any common factor discernible in the pattern of Barnstaple’s representation in this period, it is the reluctance of the leading townsmen themselves to undertake the representation of their neighbours in Parliament, which perhaps went hand in hand with the community’s parsimony in paying their MPs. While prior service as a bailiff was deemed essential for election to the mayoralty, no similar considerations seem to have weighed with the electorate when choosing their MPs. Of those who represented the borough between 1422 and 1460 just four are known to have held the mayoralty: Bovy had been mayor in 1451-2, immediately prior to his election to the Parliament of 1453, Passeware went on to serve in the office some years after representing the borough in the Commons, and Gayncote assumed the mayoralty while serving as a Member of the Parliament of 1455. It was clearly out of the ordinary for a mayor to return himself to the Commons, but in Barnstaple this happened in 1447 when Hayne was serving his second term. Like many of his counterparts in the boroughs of the south-west he most probably experienced considerable difficulty in finding anyone willing to travel to the provincial backwater of Bury St. Edmunds and was thus forced to undertake the journey himself.

More commonly, Barnstaple’s MPs in this period were either lesser townsmen, or came from the borough’s hinterland. Only about a third of them qualified in any sense as local men. Seven (Bovy, Gayncote, Hayne, Ledycote, More, Passeware and Redwyn) lived in the borough itself, and Treweman may have done so too. A further two (Northleigh and Whitefeld) lived in the neighbouring parishes of Marwood and Goodleigh. Slightly further away, but at least still in northern Devon, in the parishes of Yarnscombe, St. Giles in the Wood, Buckland Brewer, Parkham and East Putford, lay the normal residences of five others (Barry, Cokeworthy, Denys, Giffard and Wydeslade, although Wydeslade’s professional duties meant that he, perhaps more than any of his fellow Members, spent large parts of the year at Westminster). Thorne and Wood respectively lived at Holsworthy and Pancrasweek on the Cornish border. A further group of six MPs (Champernowne, Clerk, Creche, Davy, Gille and Wolston) came from the area around and to the west of the parliamentary boroughs of Dartmouth and Totnes in southern Devon, while another five (Beare, Bertelet, Radford, Strete and Trebell) came from the heartland of the earls of Devon in the south-east of the county, in the parishes of Colyton, Cadleigh and Huntsham and the city of Exeter. Walton’s place of residence has not been discovered, but it would nevertheless appear that the only complete outsider among the MPs was the Bedfordshire gentleman James Gascoigne.

Bedfordshire was the normal sphere of influence of Barnstaple’s successive lords, Lord Fanhope and the restored Holand earls of Huntingdon and dukes of Exeter, and it may be that Gascoigne’s return was a rare example of Fanhope’s exertion of what electoral patronage he commanded in Barnstaple. More generally, neither Fanhope nor the Holands appear to have taken much interest in the borough’s seats: Gascoigne aside, just two of the men (Thorne and Beare) who represented the borough in Parliament under Henry VI are known to have been connected with the earls of Huntingdon and dukes of Exeter, and none of the three can be definitely said to have owed his return to their patronage. Indeed, it is interesting to note that in 1453, when Henry, duke of Exeter, was exerting his influence in more than one south-western borough to secure the election of his retainers, Barnstaple returned two local men with no obvious connexion with him. By contrast, there is rather more of an indication that the Courtenay earls of Devon who held the ‘castle manor’ in Barnstaple sought to influence the borough’s parliamentary elections. No fewer than seven of Barnstaple’s representatives (Beare, Bertelet, Davy, Denys, Radford, Strete and Wolston) are known to have been connected with the Courtenays in some way. Nevertheless, even after 1435 when Earl Thomas made a concerted effort to assert his regional status, his electoral influence in Barnstaple remained less pronounced than elsewhere in the county. Walton and Champernowne, respectively returned in 1432 and 1437, appear to have been clients of the earl’s great rival, Sir William Bonville*; Indeed Champernowne, who was still under age, was Bonville’s nephew and the cousin of Roger Champernowne*, elected to the same Parl. as knight of the shire. in the crisis years of 1449-50 when the earl actively promoted his servants for election in the boroughs of Devon just one of Barnstaple’s seats was occupied by one of his known retainers; and if John Radford was still on good terms with the earl when he was elected to the Parliament of 1455, he would go on during the same assembly to present an eloquent petition against the Courtenays over the murder of his kinsman Nicholas Radford*, the recorder of Exeter. Less easy to assess is the influence of the more important gentry families in the region, the Dynhams of nearby Hartland, with whom Gille and Wolston were linked, and the Beaumonts of Heanton Punchardon, who owned property in Barnstaple and numbered Denys and Whitefeld among their circle.

None of this meant that Barnstaple’s representatives were necessarily out of touch with the townsmen’s concerns. Barnstaple continued to return a high proportion of merchants and ship-owners. At least eight of the 31 MPs are known to have had either mercantile or nautical interests, and at least two others must have been au fait with the concerns of the merchant classes by virtue of their service as royal customs officials. Even here, though, the traders and shipmen were outnumbered by men of law. Cokeworthy, Denys, Giffard, Radford, Redwyn, Strete, Trebell, Whitefeld, Wolston and Wydeslade can all be said with some degree of certainty to have practised that profession, and it is possible that one or more of the 12 landed gentlemen and individuals whose occupation is otherwise obscure had also received some legal training. The 12 were Barry, Beare, Champernowne, Creche, Davy, Gascoigne, More, Northleigh, Thorne, Treweman, Walton and Wood. Several of the lawyers to sit for Barnstaple were of some eminence in their profession: although none of them ever took the coif, Wydeslade rose to become chief prothonotary of the court of common pleas and to sit as a justice of assize; Denys was for many years part of the quorum of the Devon county bench; while Giffard was successively under sheriff of Cornwall and Devon.

Moreover, if only a few of Barnstaple’s Members in this period made long parliamentary careers for themselves, a number of them could nevertheless at least point to family traditions of service in the Commons. Thus, Champernowne was not only the great-grandson of Sir William Bonville† (one of the most eminent of south-western parliamentarians of Richard II’s reign), but also the nephew of Sir William Bonville, later Lord Bonville of Shute, whose parliamentary career in the Commons and Lords stretched from 1421 to 1461. Similarly, Cokeworthy could point to an eminent precursor in the person of his putative father who had sat in at least 19 Parliaments between 1377 and 1399. Like him, Gayncote followed his putative father into Parliament, while Hayne was the son-in-law of Thomas Holman†, a leading Barnstaple burgess. Yet there is little indication that the majority of Barnstaple’s MPs took a wider interest in parliamentary affairs, at least as far as the evidence of their attendance at the shire elections in the county court allows us to tell. Beare, Trebell and Whitefeld each attended on one occasion after representing Barnstaple in the Commons and Gayncote and Wolston had done so even before their own elections. Denys and Giffard were each present at two elections, while Cokeworthy alone was present at no fewer than five county elections, the first of them coinciding with his own parliamentary debut.