Wareham

Situated in east Dorset, on a peninsula between the rivers Piddle and Frome, Wareham had long been superseded in importance as a stronghold by the expansion of Corfe castle in the Isle of Purbeck, and by Henry VI’s reign its own castle was in ruins. The silting-up of the higher reaches of Poole harbour had led to the decline of Wareham as a port, and now most seagoing vessels sailed no closer than Poole. In 1436 the borough was included in the list of ‘desolated, wasted, destructed and depopulated’ Dorset towns, and accordingly was granted a remittance on its parliamentary subsidies. That this remittance amounted to only one mark suggests that Wareham was faring better than Dorchester, Lyme Regis and Melcombe Regis, and the revenues from Wareham received by the seigneurial lords of the borough rose in the first part of the century, from £18 in 1399 to £25 8s. 10d. in 1422. SC11/23; E142/38. Although it was valued at just five marks (£3 6s. 8d.) on the death of the earl of March three years later: CIPM, xxii. 486. Thereafter, however, they declined. By 1459-60 rents of assize in Wareham had been fixed at £14 9s. 8d. a year, and the more variable perquisites of the local courts only brought the total paid to the lord up to £19 8s. 10d. in that year, £20 9s. in the next and £21 6s. 10d. in 1477-8. SC6/1113/14-16; 1114/1, 3-8. Nevertheless, these figures point to a relatively stable economy through the course of the period.

The townsmen of Wareham may have resented the privileges accorded to Dorchester, whereby under an Act of 1431 and in accordance with its charter the county town had been excluded from compliance with the statute of weights and measures imposed by the previous Parliament of 1429-30. This meant that the burgesses of Dorchester received the profits from weighing all goods bought and sold within a radius of 12 miles of their town (thus extending their control over trade to within a short distance of Wareham). Whether the men of Wareham ever challenged this ruling does not appear from the surviving records, although it may be pertinent that it was not until 1460 that they formally acknowledged the right of pesage claimed by their rivals. Dorset Hist. Centre, Dorchester bor. recs., DC/DOB/24/1.

Since the twelfth century Wareham, as part of the Clare inheritance, had descended like Weymouth to the Mortimer earls of March, and it was to the earls’ receivers of the Cranborne portion of their estate that the ‘portreeves’ of Wareham accounted for the town’s dues. SC6/1112/3; J. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 82. In the period here under review it belonged to Edmund, earl of March, from whom it passed on his death in 1425 to his nephew Richard, duke of York. CIPM, xxii. 486; Dorset Hist. Centre, Pitt-Rivers Fam. mss, D/PIT/M7; Harl. Ch. 53 H 17. Wareham remained in the duke’s possession until he was killed at the close of 1460, thereafter forming part of the dower of his widowed duchess, Cecily, the mother of Edward IV. The borough was governed by a mayor and one or two bailiffs. For deeds witnessed by the mayor, two constables and just one bailiff, see Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 104-5. The latter appear to have been distinguished from the two ‘portreeves’ who were elected annually to collect the rents for which they were accountable to the receivers of the ducal estates, although in 1461, uniquely, these officials were also called ‘bailiffs’ in the receivers’ accounts. SC8/21/1014; SC6/1114/1. A set of regulations, known to have come into force in 1450 but missing since the eighteenth century, apparently included a ruling that 12 burgesses should regularly be chosen to form an advisory council for the mayor. In 1623 it was stated that according to ‘old custom’ the mayor was chosen at the Michaelmas court leet by a jury composed of 15 burgesses, and that he and two constables governed with the assistance of six other burgesses, but for how long before the seventeenth century this had been the practice is not known. Hutchins, i. 124-7.

The names of Wareham’s representatives are recorded for 19 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign; returns are missing for those of 1439, 1445 and 1459. (The now lost Dorset returns for 1433 were transcribed by William Prynne† in the seventeenth century.) Twenty-five individuals filled the documented seats, yet as many as 20 of them only ever sat for this constituency once; clearly, for only a very few did parliamentary service for Wareham count for much in their careers. Standing in contrast to the majority were William Gerard, who represented this borough in all eight of the Parliaments for which returns are extant between 1414 and 1423; Walter Reson, who did likewise almost without break from 1420 to 1432 (also eight Parliaments); and William Byle, who was returned to six Parliaments between 1425 and 1437. Members of the Byle family were especially prominent in Wareham’s representation in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, for even before William’s first appearance they had filled at least eight seats. Both the MPs in the Leicester Parliament of 1426 have proved impossible to identify, but this, it may be suggested, is perhaps because the names written on the indenture (Thomas Byle and Thomas Reson) were a mistake for those of the experienced and well-documented William Byle and Walter Reson, Wareham’s representatives in the previous Parliament. Re-election to consecutive Parliaments certainly happened in 1422, 1423 (both Members), 1425, 1429, 1432 and 1437, but seemingly never thereafter in our period.

As in the case of other Dorset boroughs, a remarkably high number of the MPs (ten of the 25) also sat on occasion for other constituencies in the West Country, thus adding to their personal experience of parliamentary proceedings. Four of those elected for Wareham in the latter part of Henry VI’s reign (Robert Brunyng, Thomas Mallory, William Milford and William Veysy), were not then newcomers to the Commons, as they had all sat before – albeit as representatives for other places. Even so, in perhaps as many as six Parliaments (1426, 1433, 1442, February 1449, 1453 and 1455), Wareham was represented entirely by novices, Although one of the MPs in 1433, Henton, had been a proxy in the Parl. of 1431 for the abbot of Cirencester. and in only seven Parliaments can both MPs be shown to have had prior experience of the workings of the Lower House. Thus, during Henry VI’s reign overall such experience would appear to have become more diluted than it had been in the three and a half decades before 1422. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 384.

In the course of the period there was also a noticeable decline in the number of MPs who were resident in Wareham or came from the same part of Dorset, and evidence of a growing tendency for outsiders to be allotted the borough’s seats. Apart from Thomas Byle and Thomas Reson, three other MPs (Thomas Dryffeld, Henry Odyngley and Richard Syde), remain virtually unidentified: either they were local men who do not figure in the few extant records, or obscure outsiders. However, the surnames of the MPs of 1426 do at least indicate that they came from leading Wareham families, and ten other MPs are also known to have been resident in or very near the town. These residents, notably the Byles, Gerards and Resons, dominated the borough’s representation until 1447. Thus, both Members in ten of the 12 Parliaments documented between 1422 and 1442 came from the immediate locality, and one of those returned to the other two Parliaments (1433 and 1437) appears to have been well-known to the burgesses. Few of the office-holders in the town are now on record, but Richard Byle, Thomas Doge and Walter Reson are all known to have served terms as mayor, and Byle and Reson also as bailiffs. Reson was elected to the first Parliament of Henry VI’s reign during his mayoralty, and both he and Byle also figured prominently among the witnesses to Wareham’s parliamentary returns, doing so nine and seven times respectively. Reson went so far as to witness his own election in 1431.

Several of this group of residents, including Richard Byle and Walter Reson, made a living from trade, chiefly by exporting wool and importing wine through Poole harbour, and Byle extended his commercial activities to Southampton. Yet traders such as these did not necessarily dominate the borough’s representation. In all but two of the Parliaments between 1406 and 1422 for which returns have survived one of Wareham’s MPs was a lawyer, and in three of them (1406, 1417 and 1419) both were members of that profession. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 384. This preference continued to be shown at the elections held during Henry VI’s minority (down to 1437), when eight of the 22 seats were taken by men trained in the law: William Gerard and William Byle. Significantly, Byle had acquired property in Lambeth just across the river from Westminster, where he advanced his career as an attorney in the royal courts, and at the date of his election for his native borough to the Parliament of 1432 he was already in Middlesex, for he attested the indenture recording the return of that county’s shire-knights. Byle’s familiarity with the law-courts and the fact that he had a home so close to the Parliaments’ normal venue no doubt enhanced his eligibility as a candidate. William Henton, returned in 1433, offered a different sort of professional expertise. Long employed as an administrator in the service of Cirencester abbey in Gloucestershire, he had served as a proxy for the abbot in the Parliament of 1431. Byle, Gerard and Henton, all styled ‘gentlemen’, established themselves among the landowning gentry: Henton with property worth as much as £20 p.a. given him as a reward for his services to the abbots of Cirencester, and Byle with an income from land in Dorset and Middlesex assessed at £16 p.a. Nor were they the only landholders returned by Wareham before 1447. Richard Chalcote I, William Clavyle of Ferne (who possessed land worth £12 p.a.), John Gerard III and William Leyot also fell into this category.

From 1447 the pattern of Wareham’s representation changed; henceforth factors other than personal acquaintance with the townsmen seem to have often governed their choice of MPs. Of the 13 individuals who took the 14 documented seats between 1447 and 1460, only two (Doge and William Chyke) had close links with the town. Doge had been serving as collector of customs at nearby Poole when elected earlier, in 1442, and remained actively engaged in the customs service of the region in the years that followed; while Chyke, a local ‘gentleman’, seems to have been a lawyer. Three of the rest did at least belong to the county, and owned manorial estates there – Henry Baret at Pimperne in the north-east, Robert Brunyng at Winterbourne Steepleton to the west of Dorchester and Richard Chalcote II close by in the Isle of Purbeck – while Alexander Browning came from the wealthy and prominent family seated at Melbury Sampford in the north-west. Baret, then water-bailiff of distant Dartmouth and a servant in the King’s household, may have put himself forward for Membership of the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447 to make sure of receiving the offices he had been granted in reversion on the death of the duke of Gloucester, whose downfall was then widely predicted. Neither of the two men returned to the next Parliament, in February 1449, have been satisfactorily identified, yet the association of one of them, Dryffeld, with Bridgwater in Somerset suggests a link with the estate administration of the duke of York, the feudal lord of that borough as well as of Wareham. To the second Parliament of the year Wareham elected William Veysy, a man specially favoured by Henry VI (who had made him royal brick-maker and supervisor of beer-brewers throughout the realm), and an intimate acquaintance of Master John Somerset*, the King’s personal physician and chancellor of the Exchequer. It looks as if officials of the Exchequer also played a part in the return in 1450 of Thomas Mallory, a young man born in Shropshire and living in Cambridgeshire who although not remunerated as a member of the staff had close dealings with a number of Exchequer clerks while the Parliament was in progress. In this context, it is worth remarking that in the Parliaments summoned between February 1449 and 1455 other Dorset boroughs were also represented by outsiders all busy about the Exchequer in official or unofficial capacities, and that such men took at least 12 of the seats.

Mallory’s fellow MP in 1450 was Brunyng, a lawyer who by marriage had acquired land worth more than £40 p.a. and, significantly, was currently engaged as a feoffee of the estates of the treasurer of the King’s household, John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton. In 1453 Wareham returned two other outsiders likely to have also been acceptable to the royal establishment. The election of John Brokeman, a gentleman or ‘esquire’ whose landed interests were located far away in Essex and Kent, must be ascribed to his place in the service of Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset. Beaufort held the nearby lordship and castle at Corfe and was the principal rival for power at Court to Wareham’s lord the duke of York – currently disgraced and excluded from the King’s counsels as a consequence of his rebellion at Dartford the previous year. Brokeman’s companion, the obscure Henry Odyngley, possibly came from Oddingley near Droitwich in Worcestershire and may have been an associate of Thomas Froxmere* of Droitwich, returned to the same Parliament for Weymouth, probably at the instigation of James Butler, earl of Wiltshire. To the Parliament summoned shortly after the Yorkist victory at the battle of St. Albans in 1455, Wareham elected Alexander Browning, a younger son of William Browning I* (then returned for the county), the receiver of the duke of York’s estates in the region and a member of his council. Then in 1460, after the Yorkist earls triumphed at Northampton, the borough returned William Milford, recently in the service of one of those earls, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, from whom he held land at South Tawton in Devon; as the then controller of customs at Exeter and Dartmouth he was an outsider to both Wareham and its county.

It seems clear that from 1447 external influences played a significant part in deciding the choice of Wareham’s representatives, the strength of these influences (whether they emanated from the royal household, the Exchequer or Wareham’s lord the duke of York), depending on the fluctuating fortunes of those at the centre of government.

Practical advantages to the townsmen may have resulted from their choice as MPs of individuals who needed to go to Westminster to account for revenues collected for the Crown, notably the customs and subsidies levied in the Channel ports. Walter Reson was a collector of customs at Melcombe Regis when elected by Wareham to six Parliaments from 1420 to 1427; William Byle was holding the same office when elected to his fourth Parliament, in 1432; Doge was a collector at Poole when returned in 1442 and had only recently retired from office when elected again in the autumn of 1449; Richard Chalcote II, elected in 1455, had also just completed a term as customer at Poole; and, similarly, Milford was controller of customs in Exeter and Dartmouth when returned in 1460. Five of the MPs were appointed as escheators in Dorset or elsewhere, but only in the case of Milford did such an appointment precede election for Wareham. Milford had been escheator of Devon and Cornw.; Doge and Leyot served later in Som. and Dorset, and Brokeman and William Byle in Kent and Mdx. Ten of the MPs were at some stage in their careers appointed to ad hoc royal commissions (again, not necessarily in Dorset), although only four of them (Baret, Richard Chalcote II, Doge and Walter Reson) had received such appointments before they were elected for Wareham, and in the cases of Baret and Chalcote their commissions concerned Devon and Hampshire, respectively, and not Dorset.

Returns for Wareham were listed on the schedules sent to Chancery by the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, and also, for 30 years from 1407 to 1437 but not thereafter, in indentures for the Dorset boroughs drawn up separately from those for the shire. The parties to the boroughs’ indentures were the sheriff and four delegates from each of the seven towns, and they were invariably dated on the same day and at the same place (Dorchester) as the shire elections were held. Nevertheless, it is likely that the borough elections were held locally and independently from those of the shire.