According to civic legend, Exeter, said to have been originally called ‘Penholtkeyre’, was ‘the most or one of the most auncion cite’ of England. The details of its supposed foundation were lost even by the later Middle Ages, but it was said to have been a walled city even before the birth of Christ. In the first century A.D., it was claimed, Exeter had been besieged by the Emperor Vespasian for a period of eight days, but had held out, causing the Emperor instead to turn his attention to Jerusalem. It is not certain whether even the native inhabitants of fifteenth-century Exeter believed in these proud origins, but the reaction of outsiders like Archbishop John Stafford and Bishop Edmund Lacy varied between amusement and incredulity.
Although of less importance than the ports of Bristol, Southampton and Sandwich, Exeter enjoyed a degree of prosperity, arising from trade with its hinterland and dealings across the Channel through its port of Topsham on the Exe estuary. In the immediate term, the loss of the English possessions in France in the 1450s was disastrous for the city’s overseas trade, but recovery was rapid, and by the last quarter of the fifteenth century Exeter enjoyed levels of commercial activity far in excess of those at its beginning. Thus, in the last year of Henry VI’s reign merchants exported more than twice as many broadcloths through the ports of Exeter and Dartmouth as they had done in his first year.
Later medieval Exeter was governed by a hierarchy of local officers headed by a mayor, receiver and two stewards (by the mid-fifteenth century referred to as bailiffs), who were elected annually on the first Monday after Michaelmas by an electoral college of 36 freemen. A second, smaller, college of 12 elected the city’s lesser officials, including the gatekeepers and aldermen. Alongside the mayor and bailiffs, the senior electoral college also chose a council of 12, which in 1435 was augmented by the election of a further 12 men ‘pro communitate’, an experiment that for reasons that remain obscure was discontinued three years later,
The reign of Henry VI was a troubled period in Exeter’s history. Central to the troubles was an ongoing rivalry between the citizens and the ecclesiastical authorities over the city’s jurisdiction within the chapter fee of St. Sidwell and the episcopal fee of St. Stephen. A settlement brokered by the King’s justices in 1416 had collapsed by 1428-9, when the citizens called upon the joint stewards of the young earl of Devon, John Copplestone* and Nicholas Radford*, to treat with the cathedral chapter on their behalf, but their efforts and those of John Mules* at an arbitration in 1433 also came to nothing.
Within months of Vouslegh’s arrest, Bishop Lacy seized the initiative and had the privileges that he claimed for his liberty enshrined in a charter and royal letters patent, which were respectively granted on 15 Nov. 1445 and 14 July 1446. Under their terms, St. Stephen’s fee was placed completely out of bounds to any of the city’s officers, and the bishop himself assumed a jurisdiction similar to that exercised by the mayor elsewhere in Exeter.
Hardly had the city emerged from this period of sustained conflict when it became engulfed in the wider unrest brought about by the increasingly acrimonious feud between the earl of Devon and his local rival Sir William Bonville (elevated as Lord Bonville in 1449). During Courtenay’s protracted minority, the political vacuum left in the south-west by the absence of an adult earl had been filled by a group of local landowners focused around Sir Walter Hungerford† (from 1426 Lord Hungerford), a leading member of the King’s Council and treasurer of England from 1426 to 1432, and represented in Devon by Bonville and Hungerford’s son-in-law, the young earl’s cousin (Sir) Philip Courtenay.
The participation of the earl of Devon’s army in the duke of York’s rebellious march to Dartford early in 1452 and his subsequent imprisonment meant that Exeter’s defences were not yet put to the test, but by the spring of 1454 the earl was once more at liberty, and with the King incapacitated and York temporarily in the ascendant he was free to resume his assault on Lord Bonville. On 30 Apr. the earl’s sons entered Exeter with an armed force to prevent Bonville from executing a government commission to raise a loan; on the feast of Corpus Christi (20 June) his retainers attacked the mayor, John Germyn, and two days later they seized control of the gates, took the keys from their keepers, and mockingly took charge of the government of the city, imposing fines on a number of men, including the common clerk, William Speare.
that they knawed well that he was a gentill man and a lord born dwelling yn þis contrey here negh by, and so his antecessours be fore hym and also how þat his enemy lord Bonevyll was negh to þis cite wyth grete multitude of puple, yn cas þat he my seid lord of Devon wold remove out of þis cite, how sone he wold or how late, his wyst not what ordynance þe mayer and his feloship wold make as for kepynge of þe cite and kepynge out of his seid enemy out fro entrynge yn to this cite yn cas þat he wold entre at suche tyme as my seid lord of Devonshire wold remove fro þis cite, seyyng furthermore þat in cas þat his seid enemy didde entre yn suche wyse, yet most he my seid lord of Devon come yn to þis cite and wold entre and make suche a brusshe atte taill of his seid enemy, that perchaunce wold turne to litell ayse, aswell to the cite as to his seid enemy.
Germyn mustered all his courage and answered evasively,
þat þeire were and beth þe Kynges tenauntes and þis þe Kynges cite, þey under the Kynge having þe governaunce of þe same, prayng my seid lord of Devon to pardon ham as for kepynge out of eny lord out fro þis cite, and þat hit was not yn þeire power so to do, wherfor þat hit might like his lordship to pardon ham and to have ham askused as of þat.
Exeter mayor’s ct. roll 34-35 Hen. VI, rot. 8d; Kleineke, 155.
It is a measure of the urgency with which the earl sought to deal with Sir Philip Courtenay that he did not apparently try to put any more pressure on the citizens at this time, but withdrew his forces southwards along the estuary to join the siege of Powderham. The mayor lost little time in arraying what armed men he could muster within the city, but Exeter had not seen the last of Earl Thomas. After failing in a final attempt to batter Powderham into submission with his artillery, he abandoned the siege and (to the undoubted horror of the citizens) returned to Exeter to prepare a direct assault on Bonville. For a further three weeks his ‘grete multitude of puple iakked and saletted and harnayssed’ populated the streets of the city, while their lord traded insults and challenges with Bonville. On 15 Dec. the earl and his force rode out to confront Bonville’s men on Clyst Heath, and drove them to flight, before returning to Exeter in triumph.
Now, however, the citizens, freed from the need to unite against external opponents began to squabble among themselves. They had, indeed, begun to do so even while the earl’s force was occupying the city, and it is possible that the changes to the composition and mode of election of the council in 1454-5 was a direct consequence of recent events. The lesser inhabitants of the city were restless. The murder of Radford necessitated the appointment of a new recorder, and on 20 Dec. 1455 a delegation of ‘puple of þe cite and oþer’ appeared at the guildhall to demand an election. Informed that John More of Columpton had already been chosen by the mayor and council of 24, ‘þe puple of þe cite and oþer seid þt he shold be chosen by alle þe comyns of þe cite and also þey refused to have þe seid John More for þer recorder. So som helde on opiniyon som helde anoþer. So atte laste hit what thoght þt hyt wer ayenst lawe and reson to putte hym out of recordership wtout answere of hym wher he wolde take hit apon hym or not.’ It was consequently decided that two representatives of the city should seek out More at his house, but since one of them refused to ride while the countryside was in upheaval, the matter remained unsettled, and More apparently officiated as recorder for the remainder of the reign.
Not long after, Exeter’s cordwainers and the city’s weavers and tuckers openly quarrelled over their respective guilds’ pre-eminence. The question that brought this dispute to a head was which craft should have precedence in the mayor’s procession on Midsummer night. There were evidently violent clashes between the members of the two trades, before on 16 Apr. 1459 Mayor Richard Druell reached the Solomonic verdict that henceforth both crafts were to walk side by side in civic processions, and that the extra members of the larger craft would walk two by two ahead of their fellows.
The citizens once more had to see to their own defences. Exeter’s walls and gates were repaired and strengthened, and men hired specially to keep armed guard by day and night. At the guildhall a permanent headquarters was set up and kept manned by candlelight, gunners were brought in from Exmouth, and the recorder and the prominent local lawyer Thomas Dowrich were summoned to advise the council about measures necessary for the safe-keeping of the city.
In spite of Exeter’s extensive civic records, little is known of the conduct of the city’s parliamentary elections. Throughout the reign of Henry VI, the sheriffs of Devon recorded the names of the representatives of the urban constituencies in their county in the indentures which certified the election of the knights of the shire, as well as in an accompanying schedule. While the county court which elected the knights met in the Norman castle of Rougemont within the walls of Exeter, the city’s own MPs appear to have been chosen elsewhere, in a separate assembly. No records of such an election have survived, however, and it is thus impossible to determine the extent of the franchise or electoral procedure, although it seems not unlikely that the choice was made by an electoral college similar to that which chose the city’s council and senior officers. The outcome was not in every instance uncontested. While there is no indication that Exeter’s parliamentary elections in the reign of Henry VI were as controversial as those of the sixteenth century, when at times as many as seven candidates fought for seats, there is at least a hint of a contest in the sheriff’s return for the Parliament of 1432. While the election indenture, sealed on 15 Apr., named the Lincoln’s Inn lawyer Adam Somaster* as one of the city’s MPs, the schedule replaced his name with that of John Symon, a minor city officer. Unlike his apparent rival, Symon was part of the narrow ruling elite of Exeter, and it was he who eventually rode to Westminster and was paid for attendance in the Commons.
The names of Exeter’s representatives are known for all the Parliaments summoned between 1422 and 1460, although the identification of Thomas Holland as one of the city’s MPs in 1445 is based on circumstantial evidence. Twenty-seven men divided these 44 seats between them, but just over half this number only represented the city once. Five (Dowrich, Netherton, Pope, Tylerd and Vessy) sat for Exeter in two Parliaments each and two others (Salter and Shillingford) in three. More impressive were the parliamentary careers of Calwodlegh and Holland, who were returned for Exeter four times, Thomas Cook and Cutler alias Carwithan, who each achieved five returns, and John Shaplegh, who was MP for Exeter on no fewer than eight separate occasions between April 1414 and 1427, securing direct re-election three times (in 1419, 1420 and 1427). In addition, William Hyndeston and Thomas Calwodlegh were more familiar faces among the ranks of the parliamentary Commons than their record as Members for Exeter indicates, for both served in a total of six Parliaments, Calwodlegh doing so for Totnes in 1449 (Nov.) and 1450, and Hyndeston as knight of the shire for Devon from 1445 to 1450. Like him, Dowrich and Henry Hull also went on to serve as shire knights, respectively for Devon and Somerset, later in life.
The pattern of Exeter’s representation in the 1420s and 1430s largely mirrored that of the reigns of Richard II and the first two Lancastrians. Then, the citizens had frequently chosen men with prior experience of the Commons, and the return of two complete novices is documented in just one of Richard’s, two of Henry V’s and three of Henry IV’s Parliaments. Similarly, in every one of Henry VI’s Parliaments from 1422 to 1442 at least one Exeter Member had previously sat in the Commons, and in 1426, 1433 and 1437 both of the city’s representatives were so qualified. On two occasions, in 1427 and 1437, one of the MPs was directly re-elected. Furthermore, the Members during Henry VI’s minority were normally chosen not merely from the ranks of the city’s ruling elite, but from its upper echelons. Thus, of the 22 seats available between 1422 and 1437, six were filled by men who had previously held the mayoralty of Exeter, eight by former receivers or stewards, and a further one by a man who had at least served on the city council. Indeed, 14 of the seats in question were filled by serving members of the council, while Thomas Cook was a councilman at the time of his election in 1435, but assumed the mayoralty before Parliament assembled.
From 1439, the pattern of Exeter’s representation began to change, beyond doubt as a consequence of the growing assertiveness of the earl of Devon, who had been declared of age in 1435, and subsequently of the ambitions of Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, who began to participate in regional politics in 1450. Just eight (or nine, if Thomas Holland sat in 1445) of Exeter’s 22 seats in the period from 1439 to 1460 were filled by men with prior parliamentary experience; only three times was someone directly re-elected; and in 1447 and 1453 (and probably also in 1445) two complete novices were returned. Moreover, while the leading citizens were usually still able to claim one of the city’s seats in each Parliament for themselves (between 1439 and 1460 two seats were taken by the former mayor Thomas Cook – who in 1442 became the only one of Exeter’s mayors to return himself – and seven by former stewards or receivers), it is clear that outside influences were now at play, for alongside a leading citizen Exeter now routinely returned men of little standing in the civic hierarchy, but who had close connexions with one or other of the dominant magnates of the region. Among those returned by the city between 1439 and 1460 were Thomas Holland, the earl of Devon’s retainer, William Hyndeston, one of his legal counsellors, and Thomas Dowrich, an associate of his cousin Sir Hugh Courtenay*; while the duke of Exeter’s servants Thomas Calwodlegh, David John and Hugh Payn all took seats in the 1450s. The control exercised by the two lords over the city’s elections was at its most pronounced in late 1449 and 1450, when none of the MPs were drawn from the civic elite, and the citizens even went to the extent of sending messengers to consult the earl and the duke over their choice of parliamentary representatives. To the Parliament of 1449-50 they returned two of the earl’s men, and for the next Parliament they selected a supporter of each magnate.
It may be the case that the citizens sought to preserve at least a semblance of independence by insisting that such outsiders should be at least formally qualified for election by being admitted to the freedom of the city. Nevertheless, the seigneurial retainers Thomas Dowrich, Hugh Payn and David John, as well as the complete outsider Poyntz, were not freemen of Exeter when they took their seats in Parliament, and in John’s case this defect was only remedied after the dissolution of his Parliament of 1453-4.
Despite the closed nature of the Exeter franchise, the ‘revolution in borough representation’ that saw the merchant class increasingly displaced by lawyers in the ranks of the Commons was making inroads even here. Whereas over half the MPs returned by the city between 1386 and 1421 had been merchants, just ten of the 27 who sat in Henry VI’s reign are known to have made a living from trade. At least four (Attwyll, Thomas Cook, John Hull and Symon) were general merchants, John Cook was a draper, Roger Shaplegh a cloth merchant, and Vessy a chapman or fishmonger, while the city’s artisans were represented among its MPs by the tailor Hammond, the skinner Pope and the saddler Salter. By contrast, at least eight MPs were professional men of law. The most prominent among them was Hyndeston, who represented Exeter at the very beginning of his career, but within a few years rose to become a serjeant-at-law. Like him, Thomas Dowrich, later a recorder of Exeter, and Thomas Calwodlegh, steward and legal counsellor to several south-western lords, served on the Devon county bench as members of the quorum. The lesser ranks of the profession were represented by John Shaplegh, an apprentice-at-law, John Bolter, a county coroner, and John Cutler alias Carwithan and John Netherton who both served as under sheriffs of Devon. More unusual was Hugh Payn, a civil lawyer who presided over the court of admiralty and owed his return to the Commons to the duke of Exeter’s patronage. It is not clear whether John Shillingford and Richard Druell, who skilfully conducted the city’s case against Bishop Lacy and the cathedral chapter through the royal courts at Westminster, had any formal legal training.
A similar change is also evident with regard to the officers of the Exeter staple, who were elected locally but had to have their appointments formally confirmed in Chancery. By the fifteenth century, the ‘merchants’ of the staple included not only local gentry, like Richard Holland* of Bowhill, but even regular clergy like the prior of Cowick.
Although two thirds of Exeter’s MPs in the period 1422-60 held office under the Crown, in a majority of cases such appointments remained limited both in number and regional scope. Thus, Thomas Cook, Druell and Poyntz each received just a single royal commission, as did Cutler alias Carwithan, and Thomas Holland was a tax collector on one occasion, while John Hull was twice ordered to investigate acts of piracy. Both Cutler and Netherton served terms as under sheriff of Devon, the latter being appointed feodary of the duchy of Lancaster in the county while still holding this post, and Bolter held office as one of the county coroners for many years. More extensive were the careers under the Crown of the prominent lawyers Calwodlegh, Dowrich and Hyndeston, who were all included in a range of royal commissions across southern England, and sat on the county bench. Calwodlegh in addition twice served as escheator of Devon and Cornwall and as feodary of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster in the south-west. Similarly, Hugh Payn successively served John and Henry Holand, dukes of Exeter, as their commissary general in the court of admiralty, and on account of his association with Duke Henry was granted the stewardship of the Welsh estates forfeited by the Yorkist lords in early 1460. Henry Hull’s marriage into the Somerset gentry led to appointments as a commissioner and j.p. in that shire appropriate to his new status as a landed gentleman.
There is no obvious connexion between tenure of Crown office and election to Parliament for Exeter, except with regard to customs offices in the city’s port. Thus, Beaufitz had been controller of customs at Exeter and Dartmouth for four years prior to his election to the Parliament of 1431; David John had served as searcher in the same ports for a year before his return in 1453; and before first being elected to Parliament, in 1455, Attwyll accumulated 15 years’ experience as searcher both in Exeter and Dartmouth and further west in the district of Plymouth and Fowey. Conversely, Vessy was only appointed as a customs collector some months after the dissolution of his final Parliament of 1422; and John Ash, a yeoman of the Crown appointed as controller of tunnage and poundage at Plymouth and Fowey in April 1460, was dismissed from office by the victors of the battle of Northampton before the Commons assembled.
Since 1413 it had been a statutory requirement for parliamentary citizens and burgesses to be resident in the constituencies that they represented, but Exeter stood out among the boroughs of the south-west in that the vast majority of its representatives in the reign of Henry VI actually fulfilled this condition. Twenty-one out of Exeter’s 27 MPs in the period resided in the city at least from time to time, and a further two lived in its suburbs (Thomas Holland at Cowick and Henry Hull at Larkbeare in St. Leonard). The future recorder Thomas Dowrich lived at Dowrich in Sandford, while his fellow lawyer William Hyndeston came from Wonwell in the south-west of the county. The only complete outsiders among Exeter’s MPs were the canon lawyer Hugh Payn who normally resided in London, and the Essex esquire John Poyntz.
It was in keeping with the closed ranks of the tightly-knit ruling elite that from time to time certain families dominated the city’s parliamentary representation. Thus, John Shillingford’s kinsman Roger† preceded him in Parliament, Henry Hull and John Attwyll† followed their fathers John Hull and William Attwyll into the Commons, another combination of father and son, John and Thomas Cook, occupied one of Exeter’s seats in six Parliaments between 1417 and 1442, while John Shaplegh, his father John† and his uncle Roger took a total of ten seats in nine Parliaments between 1410 and 1427 (the younger John and Roger being returned together on the last occasion). Some of the MPs whose fathers did not themselves represent Exeter could nevertheless point to family traditions of parliamentary service gained elsewhere: John Ash’s father had been a burgess for Totnes in 1420 before serving as a knight of the shire for Middlesex in the 1430s, Thomas Dowrich’s father had sat for the earl of Devon’s borough of Plympton Erle in 1427, and Thomas Holland’s uncle Richard represented Devon in 1431.
Ties within the mercantile oligarchy aside, it was one of the peculiarities of the Exeter cathedral chapter that all prebendaries received an equal share of the cathedral’s common funds, and that the receipt of this payment was contingent upon the canon’s residence at the cathedral. The Exeter prebends thus held little attraction for absentee pluralists, and were often filled by men from local families. In a period of serious and concerted discord between city and cathedral authorities, it is all the more interesting to note the close ties of kinship between the two warring factions. Thus, John Bolter was a nephew of Roger Bolter, the cathedral’s precentor, while Richard Druell was related in the same degree to Master John Druell, the archdeacon of Exeter and a central player in the conflict between the city and the cathedral.
If at the beginning of Henry VI’s reign the citizens were able to weigh up the relative merits, experience and connexions of any given parliamentary candidate, it seems that as the reign progressed economic considerations increasingly came to the fore in the choice of the city’s MPs. By the 1450s Exeter’s common funds from which the MPs’ wages were customarily paid were stretched to the limits, periodically forcing the city receivers to make advances out of their own pockets to meet communal expenditure.
By the end of the 1430s, Exeter had abandoned the practice of paying its MPs a daily wage, opting instead to conclude written agreements, which obliged them to serve in Parliament for a nominal payment unrelated to the duration of the assembly. The size of this payment varied. Thus, in 1439 Henry Hull was paid 53s. 4d., while his colleague, the experienced parliamentarian Thomas Cook, was prepared to accept 40s.