Essex

Large, rich and well populated, Essex possessed a coastline longer than that of any other English county. Trade with the continent of Europe was of great significance for its economy, as was its proximity to London since it provided much of the capital’s firewood, hay, meat, dairy produce and other supplies. While predominantly agricultural, Essex also had an important cloth industry in which Colchester played the principal part. N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Essex, 1-3; T. Wright, Essex, 24-25. Colchester, the largest urban settlement in the county, was the base in Essex for the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, although the more centrally located Chelmsford fulfilled the role of county town. One of the more prominent structures at Colchester was its royal castle but it was of no military importance by this period and the Crown took little immediate interest in it. Henry IV had granted it to Humphrey of Lancaster, subsequently duke of Gloucester, in 1404, and it remained with Humphrey until his death in 1447, after which it passed very briefly to the Household servant, John Hampton II*, and subsequently to the queen. The other royal castle of Hadleigh, which stood on a prominent spur overlooking the Thames estuary, was likewise of no immediate interest to the Crown. Like Colchester castle, it was also in Gloucester’s hands at the accession of Henry VI, by virtue of a grant of 1418. After his death, it came successively to two other royal grantees, Richard, duke of York, and Edmund Tudor, earl of Richmond, before reverting to the King when Tudor died in 1456. VCH Essex, ix. 241-2; M. Alexander and S. Westlake, Hadleigh Castle, 1, 18. Of far greater significance than these castles were other royal interests in Essex like its forests, the lordship of Havering atte Bower and its duchy of Lancaster estates. From the beginning of the fourteenth century, the main royal forest in the county was known as Waltham forest, although there were outlying forests at Kingswood, Writtle and Hatfield and elsewhere. Havering-atte-Bower, situated in the south-west of the county, normally formed part of the queen’s dower and did not usually fall within the immediate jurisdiction of the Crown. Shortly before the accession of Henry VI, the duchy of Lancaster lands in Essex received a major augmentation in the form of the King’s share of the former de Bohun inheritance in the county, namely the castle and manor of Pleshey and the manors of High Easter and Enfield. Upon his marriage to Margaret of Anjou in 1445, Henry VI assigned Pleshey, High Easter and other duchy manors in Essex to his bride. W.R. Fisher, The Forest of Essex, 1, 15, 18; VCH Essex, vii. 1-2; R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 180, 340, 605, 607, 610, 611.

Apart from the King, other significant figures had stakes in the county, although no single lay magnate was dominant there in this period. Peers with interests in Essex included the Lords Fitzwalter, Scales, Morley and Ferrers of Groby and the duke of Norfolk, but the de Vere earls of Oxford ranked first in terms of status and prestige of those landowners primarily resident there. Yet the de Veres lacked the resources richly to reward their followers and did not spend much time at Court, meaning that they were not in the best position to help retainers access the patronage of the Crown. As a result, the upper gentry of the county – in any case often extremely substantial figures in their own right – did not feature prominently in their affinity. After the earl of Oxford, the next most important resident lord was Henry Bourgchier, Lord and then Viscount Bourgchier, the head of a much more recently established peerage family. Potentially, the rise of the Bourgchiers, whose seat at Halstead in north Essex lay just five miles away from that of the de Veres at Castle Hedingham, might have caused dissension. Essex did not however witness the discord of Norfolk and Suffolk, where there were frequent clashes between members of magnate affinities, or of Bedfordshire, where the arrival of a newcomer, John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, threatened the traditional dominance of the Lords Grey of Ruthin. Instead of regarding Bourgchier as a rival, the earl of Oxford co-operated with him, apparently amicably, without undermining his own status as primus inter pares. Several leading churchmen and religious houses also held estates in Essex, among them the bishop of London, the abbeys of Colchester, Walden and St. Osyth, the priory of Colchester and wealthy nunnery at Barking. J. Ross, John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, 33-34, 177, 179, 225; L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1974), 267; Feudal Aids, ii. 211-32; VCH Essex, ii. 93-102, 110-22, 148-50, 157-62.

In terms of personnel, our knowledge of the parliamentary representation of Essex in this period is particularly full, since the names survive of all but one of the MPs. At least 17 (and at most 18) men sat as knights of the shire for the county in Henry VI’s reign. While the returns for 1439, 1445 and 1460 have not survived, the fine rolls record the names of those elected in 1439 and 1445 and John Green certainly sat in the Parliament of 1460, since he was Speaker in that assembly. It is assumed, for want of evidence to the contrary, that he sat for his native county of Essex, which he had previously represented in 1455. As in the period 1386-1421, when none of the MPs was a complete outsider to the county and the great majority of them kept their chief residence there, most of the 17 were natives of Essex. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 389-90. The county, situated as it was near to London, was a convenient area for wealthy merchants, lawyers and other ‘new men’ to invest in land, but a few of the MPs came from families associated with Essex for many generations. The families of Baynard, Godmanston and Torell had been connected with Essex since the twelfth century or earlier, and the Torells held their manor at Little Thurrock from the Crown, by the ancient petty serjeanty of serving as naperer at royal coronations.

At least four of the MPs, Lewis John, Robert Darcy I, Sir Thomas Fynderne and Thomas Thorpe, were not born in the county although John and Darcy were certainly resident there when representing it in Parliament. All four sat for other constituencies as well, all bar Fynderne before they came to represent Essex. Two of the Tyrells, John and his son William, likewise found seats elsewhere: John was a knight of the shire for Hertfordshire in 1427, having sat for Essex on eight occasions; while William represented the borough of Weymouth in the Parliament immediately preceding his first as one of the MPs for Essex. In all likelihood, Thorpe’s career as a royal bureaucrat prompted him to establish himself in Essex, since the lands he acquired in the county were conveniently close to London and Westminster, where he served as an officer of the Exchequer. The main residences of six of his fellow knights of the shire (including John Tyrell and Lewis John, both men closely connected with the government and the Court) also lay in the south-west of the county. Only one of the 17, William Tyrell, resided in the relatively sparsely populated south-east, an area of coastal marshes.

Service in the Commons was something of a family tradition for many of the MPs of the period 1386-1421, and the same is true for a majority of the men who sat in Henry VI’s reign. Furthermore, as was the case in the earlier period, there existed many bonds of kinship among the 17. Ibid. 389. For example, Robert Darcy II was the son of Robert Darcy I, Lewis John the father of Lewis Fitzlewis and Thomas and William Tyrell the sons of John Tyrell. Sir William Coggeshall’s grandfather, father and uncle also represented Essex as knights of the shire and Fynderne’s father sat for Berkshire in four Parliaments, including three of Henry VI’s reign. John Tyrell (Coggeshall’s son-in-law) and his younger brother Edward were nephews of Sir Thomas Tyrell†. They were also uncles of Torell, with whom each sat alongside in the Commons. Both Torell and Clement Spice were the sons-in-law of MPs, Torell was the son-in-law of Sir Roger Beauchamp†, who sat for Beds. in 1399; Spice’s father-in-law, Sir John Montgomery*, sat for Herts. in 1426. while John Doreward was the grandson of two knights of the shire for Essex – his namesake who was Speaker in the Parliaments of 1399 and 1413, and Coggeshall. Two members of the prominent Tyrell family attended the same Parliament on at least five occasions: in 1422 and again in 1429, John sat for Essex and his brother Richard* for Surrey; in 1427, John and his other brother Edward were respectively knights of the shire for Hertfordshire and Essex; in 1447, Thomas sat for Essex and his brother William I* for Suffolk; and in the Parliament of February 1449, Thomas again sat for Essex and another of his younger brothers, William II, for Weymouth. In all, a Tyrell represented Essex in no fewer than 16 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Few other families in England could match their parliamentary experience and they may have wielded considerable influence in the Commons chamber.

Generally, the electorate returned knights of the shire of considerable local standing and many of the 17 were of the county’s upper gentry at the time of their election. It just so happened that one of those of particularly obscure (and probably lowly) origins, Lewis John, formed the most exalted family connexions, marrying first a daughter of an earl of Oxford (the mother of his son, Lewis Fitzlewis), and secondly a daughter of an earl of Salisbury. John was among those nine of the MPs who became belted knights, although he did not attain that status until shortly after the dissolution of his last Parliament. Only Coggeshall and Fynderne received their knighthoods before entering the Commons, but John Tyrell and Thomas Tyrell were knights when elected to their penultimate and second Parliaments respectively. Doreward and Robert Darcy II did not become knights until after the period under review, well after their time in Parliament was over. A decline in the number of belted knights occupying the county’s seats in the Commons had already set in during the previous reign. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 390. In only seven of the Parliaments in the period under review was one of the county’s MPs actually a knight, and in none did two knights-proper represent Essex at the same time. Yet the great majority, if not all, of the 17 could comfortably support knightly status, and at least 12 of them suffered distraint for knighthood at one time or another during their careers. Whether knights or not, several of the MPs saw service in the field. Both John and Edward Tyrell, who participated in one or more of Henry V’s expeditions to France, gained military experience before the accession of Henry VI, and it is possible that John’s son, Thomas Tyrell, spent some of his early career across the Channel. Torell certainly campaigned in France some years before his first election to Parliament, and Fynderne may have earned his knighthood while on active service there. Coggeshall was another MP well qualified to contribute to parliamentary debates about military matters, although he had gained his considerable experience in the field as a mercenary in Italy with his father-in-law, the celebrated condottiere Sir John Hawkwood, in the late 1370s and early 1380s.

Other MPs pursued legal careers. Baynard, Robert Darcy I, Thorpe (who became a baron of the Exchequer) and Green certainly did so, as probably did Godmanston. It is also possible that John and Thomas Tyrell and Doreward received a legal training of some sort. In all but four of Henry VI’s Parliaments (those of 1427, 1435, November 1449 and 1450) at least one of these lawyers or putative lawyers sat for Essex, a continuation of a pattern since lawyers were prominent in the representation of the shire in the previous reign. Ibid. Several of these men were of obscure origin and the earnings and connexions their profession gave them provided a means of advancement without which some of them could never have sat as knights of the shire. Trade was another potential source of wealth and Lewis John, who began his career as a merchant, was not the only MP with commercial interests. The elder Darcy also engaged in trade, as probably did Doreward (whose family possessed close connexions with Colchester, a centre for the local cloth industry and a busy port) and Fitzlewis.

As in 1386-1421, Ibid. many of the 17 were substantial landowners although, as a group, their combined landed wealth was probably less than that of their predecessors of the earlier period. Tax assessments provide nearly all of the evidence for the value of their holdings, although these probably underestimated their landed wealth, perhaps significantly. Pre-eminent were the Tyrells. By the end of his life, John Tyrell received at least £396 p.a. from his lands, rents and royal annuities, making him the wealthiest non-baronial proprietor in Essex, while his younger brother Edward paid tax on a yearly landed income estimated at £135 in the mid 1430s. Robert Darcy I, Lewis John and their sons were also men of great substance. According to assessments of the mid 1430s, Darcy (remembered as ‘a greate Riche man’ by his descendants) and John derived yearly incomes of £366 and £350 respectively from their lands and fees, impressive figures given that neither was born into landed wealth. The Doreward estates were worth at least £255 p.a. in the same period, making the head of that family (at that time Doreward’s father and namesake) the fifth richest landowner below baronial rank in Essex. There also survive assessments for more middling incomes from lands, those of Coggeshall (£132 p.a. late in Henry IV’s reign), Torell and Godmanston (£150 and £80 respectively in the mid 1430s) and Fynderne (100 marks in the early 1450s). Lower down the scale was Baynard, whose estates were valued at just under £50 p.a. for the purposes of the subsidy of 1412 but at some £80 for that of 1436 when they were in his widow’s hands, although neither assessment took account of his property in London. Of those MPs for whom no such assessments survive, it is possible to reach a plausible estimation of the landed wealth of Spice who, as other evidence suggests, was not a landowner of especial significance. The bulk of his estate sold for £800 in the late fifteenth century and, assuming that a rate of 15 years’ purchase was then the norm, it is unlikely that his lands could have been worth much more than £50 p.a. Like their immediate predecessors, a majority of the 17 owned property outside the county, mainly but not exclusively in East Anglia, the south-east of England and London. Ibid.; S. Raban, Mortmain Legislation, 178-9; C.E. Moreton, Townshends, 129.

All bar one of the 17 served to a greater or lesser extent in the administration of Essex, a similar pattern to that presented by their immediate predecessors, The Commons 1386-1421, i. 391. and, indeed, by those known to have sat for the county in the century following the period under review. Fynderne is the sole exception, although it would appear that Spice sat for the county in the Commons before serving in local government, indicating that the electors of Essex usually preferred Members with some previous administrative experience. Ten of them served as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire, in six cases before sitting for Essex in one or other of Henry VI’s Parliaments. Fourteen gained appointment as j.p.s for Essex, of whom eight had already served on the commission of the peace before sitting in any of the Parliaments of the reign and five (all of them lawyers or putative lawyers) became members of the quorum. Baynard, Godmanston, Green, Thorpe and John Tyrell. As one might expect, a minority of the MPs served as escheator, a lesser office that members of the upper gentry, into which most of the 17 were born or joined, often did not hold. Of the six escheators, Edward Tyrell was in office when returned to his first Parliament and his nephew, William Tyrell, was the only man among them to serve as such after having sat for Essex in the Commons. Yet William, from a family identified with the Lancastrian regime, became escheator in extraordinary times. His appointment came just under a fortnight before the opening of the partisan Parliament of 1459 and only a week before the Crown, no doubt anxious to secure its control of the county, would prick his brother Thomas to his third term as its sheriff, even though the latter had only just gained election to the forthcoming assembly. Several of the MPs were relatively young men when they took up their seats in the Commons. Ages are difficult to ascertain with any great accuracy, but it appears that Fynderne and two of the Tyrells, Thomas and William, were under 30 when first elected and that Robert Darcy II had only recently attained his majority when he entered the Parliament of 1450. Darcy evidently possessed a maturity beyond his years (he was named as an executor in his father’s will and attested his first parliamentary election while still a minor), although his fellow MP, William Tyrell, had already sat in the Commons.

Just three of the MPs, Lewis John, his son and Thomas Tyrell, were officers on Crown estates in Essex. Lewis obtained the stewardship of the royal manor of Havering atte Bower, although not until 1424, after he had first sat for the county. He retained the office, a valuable sinecure, for the rest of his life and his son succeeded him as steward after his death in 1442. At that date Lewis Fitzlewis, who secured letters patent awarding him the stewardship for life a decade later, was still 17 years away from entering the Commons. Early in his public career, just over a year before his first Parliament, Tyrell became joint steward (with his brother, William Tyrell I) in Essex, several other home counties and London for the duchy of Lancaster.

It is probable that Lewis John and Tyrell owed these offices to their pre-existing links with the royal establishment, and that an association with the Court was significant for the parliamentary careers of some of those of the MPs who enjoyed such links. While there is no evidence that Lewis ever held a formal position in the Household, as early as the first decade of the fifteenth century he was known as a ‘King’s servant’ and was close to Prince Henry, the future Henry V. The Tyrell family’s Household links were particularly strong. John Tyrell was treasurer of the household from 1431 until his death in 1437. By 1438 at the latest, his brother, Edward, was an esquire of the hall and chamber but it is possible that the latter already occupied that position when he first gained election to the Commons in 1427. John’s sons, Thomas and William, also became esquires of the Household, both of them several years before entering Parliament for the first time. Thomas’s membership of the Household was surely significant when he stood for election to his second Parliament in 1447, since the government mobilized its resources to secure the return of courtiers to the Commons and his fellow MP was Fynderne, a committed supporter of the Crown and a ‘King’s knight’, if never formally of the Household. Five years later, another courtier, Thorpe, a more regular recipient of royal grants and annuities than Tyrell, sat for the county in the ‘royalist’ Parliament of 1453, during which he was Speaker of the Commons. Similarly, Thomas Tyrell’s last Parliament, that of 1459, was a partisan assembly packed with Household men and other supporters of the Court, and his distinctly irregular appointment as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire just a day after his formal election as a knight of the shire further demonstrates his close association with the royal establishment at that date.

At least five of the MPs held office under the Crown at a national or regional – as opposed to a county – level, whether in the court of common pleas, Exchequer, the administration of the duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster or the royal mint. This is not a surprising picture for a county adjacent to London and, by the mid Tudor period, most of the known Essex knights of the shire were leading figures at Court or in government. The Commons 1509-58, i. 88. Thorpe was third baron of the Exchequer when elected to the Parliament of 1453 and he had certainly joined the King’s Council by July that year, while that assembly was in recess. Robert Darcy I began his second term as keeper of the writs in the common pleas less than a year before gaining election for the first time in Henry VI’s reign as one of the knights of the shire for Essex. Green took up office as an apprentice-at-law for the duchy of Lancaster in 1455, the same year that he gained election to Parliament for the first time. John Tyrell, on the other hand, took up his duchy of Lancaster appointments relatively late in life, well after his parliamentary career had begun, as indeed he did his membership of the King’s Council in France, a position he held for some six months in 1431. Lewis John also served the Crown abroad, in his case as an ambassador, but likewise not until late in his career. He also began to hold his duchy of Cornwall offices long after first entering Parliament although he yielded his office in the Mints at London and Calais just seven months before the accession of Henry VI.

Most of the MPs enjoyed a connexion with one or more lords, whether secular or religious, although with what significance for their parliamentary careers is not always easy to discern. Given that several of them were very considerable figures in their own right, a connexion with a magnate does not denote subservience. Woodger, 279. Yet Lewis John could scarcely have enjoyed such an extensive parliamentary career without the advancement he achieved through his association with patrons like Thomas Chaucer* and John, duke of Bedford, and his spectacular marriages to the daughters of two earls. One might also speculate that Lewis Fitzlewis, his son by his first wife, owed something to his high born connexions for his election to the partisan assembly of 1459, for by that date Fitzlewis’s cousin, the 12th earl of Oxford, had committed himself to the Lancastrian cause. Furthermore, it is likely that others of the MPs probably or certainly enjoyed the support of noble patrons when standing for Parliament. The relatively insignificant Spice, for example, may have benefited from his links with the duke of Buckingham at his election to that of 1449-50, while William Tyrell, the other knight of the shire in that assembly, possessed a powerful patron in Richard, duke of York. Tyrell had sat for the duke’s borough of Weymouth in the previous Parliament, and he would sit again for Essex in the following one, summoned in favourable political circumstances for York. His fellow MP in 1450-1, Robert Darcy II, likewise possessed links with the duke. Their association with York may have placed both of them in rather an invidious position, since at that date Tyrell was a member of the Household, as perhaps was Darcy. It is also worth noting that William Tyrell’s final Parliament met in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans in the spring of 1455, and that Green, his fellow knight of the shire, was a client of Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, the newly appointed treasurer of England. It was no coincidence that the colourless Green also gained election to the Parliament of 1460 and became Speaker of that heavily pro-Yorkist assembly, for by then his patron had completely committed himself to York’s cause and taken up office as treasurer for the second time.

Essex supplied more medieval Speakers than any other county, The Commons 1386-1421, i. 389. and Green and Thorpe were not the only men among the 17 to hold the office while sitting for Essex. John Tyrell and Baynard also served as such, although the latter did so in the reign of Henry V rather than the period under review. The four Speakers were necessarily particularly involved in national politics, although Thorpe is the most notable in this regard. Dismissed from the office after the duke of York had taken legal action against him in the winter of 1453-4, he was among those whom the Parliament of 1455 blamed for the battle of St. Albans, in which he participated as a member of the royal party. Thorpe joined the small group of lawyers responsible for preparing the attainder of the Yorkist lords in that of 1459, in which he probably sat for Northamptonshire, and he may have fought for Henry VI at the battle of Northampton in the following year. His partisanship proved fatal, for it led to his execution, probably in early 1461. Three other former MPs, Fitzlewis, Fynderne and Thomas Tyrell, also took up arms for the Lancastrian Crown – with the first two meeting violent deaths as a result.

As in the decades immediately prior to 1422, the electors of Essex appear to have valued previous parliamentary experience. They were not in the practice of choosing two newcomers at the same election, so averting the possibility of a lack of such prior experience prejudicing the interests of their county. On only two occasions in the years 1386-1421 did they certainly elect a couple of novices together, Ibid. and they returned at least one Member with previous parliamentary experience to every Parliament of Henry VI’s reign. Although they elected the young Robert Darcy II in 1450, they took care to elect him alongside William Tyrell who had sat in the previous two Parliaments. During the first half of the reign in particular, the knights of the shire for Essex were regularly Commons veterans. John Tyrell sat for the county in no fewer than 12 Parliaments, some of them consecutive, half of them before 1422 and two of them as Speaker. Like him, the four other MPs who first sat for the county before 1422 (Robert Darcy I, Coggeshall, Lewis John and Baynard), also enjoyed long parliamentary careers, some of them spanning several decades. Darcy gained election to the Commons on 11 occasions, Coggeshall on ten, John on eight and Baynard on six. None of the 17 appears to have sat, whether for Essex or another constituency, after 1461. The dozen MPs who did not sit before 1422 had shorter parliamentary careers. Of this group, the most frequently returned was Thomas Tyrell, who sat in at least four Parliaments spanning a 17-year period. It is possible that the political crises of Henry VI’s reign dissuaded some MPs from aspiring to long parliamentary careers, although a sufficient number of them stood for re-election (whether at their own volition or the urging of others) to ensure that in none of the Parliaments of 1422-61 did two newcomers represent the county.

All but two of the elections for which indentures have survived took place at Tuesday sittings of the county court; the exceptions are those for the Parliaments of 1429 and 1435, held on a Saturday and Monday respectively. Chelmsford, the county town, was the usual venue, although those of 1423 and 1450 occurred at Stratford Langthorne in West Ham, possibly at the Cistercian abbey there. In accordance with the statute of 1406, the names of the newly elected knights were recorded on indentures drawn up between the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire on the one hand and the county’s attestors on the other. Of the surviving indentures, those for the first half of the reign tend to list more attestors than those dating after 1442. None of those made in the period 1422-42 features fewer than 31 such witnesses and that of 1433 names 102. 1422: 60 attestors; 1423: 31; 1425: 31; 1426: 45; 1427: 39; 1429: 38; 1431: 44; 1432: c.60; 1435: 64; 1437: 83; 1442: 32. A statute passed in the Parliament of 1429 had restricted the franchise to 40s. freeholders resident in the county, and the indenture of 1433 (in common with at least six of the others drawn up after 1429) specifically states that all those listed fulfilled this qualification. The six other indentures are those for the Parls. of 1432, 1437, 1442, 1449 (Feb.), 1449 (Nov.) and 1450. With one exception, none of the extant indentures from the second half of the reign lists more than 32 attestors, and that of 1450 has just 15. The exception is that of 1459, in which some 184 witnesses are named. 1447: 24 attestors; 1449 (Feb.): 20, 1449 (Nov.): 28; 1455: 30. Only 14 of the attestors’ names are discernible on the damaged indenture of 1453, but the size of the document indicates that there were unlikely to have been as many as 30. Indentures did not always name all of those present, The Commons 1386-1421, i. 62n. but an especially high number of attestors may indicate a contested election. It is possible that the election to the Parliament of 1459, an assembly packed with supporters of the Lancastrian royal court, was one such, although it may be that the high number of attestors represents a special effort to ensure the return of Thomas Tyrell and Lewis Fitzlewis. Robert Darcy II presided over the proceedings as sheriff, one of his last acts in that office just before his term expired, but while he appears to have enjoyed the trust of the Lancastrian Crown he was no partisan in political terms. No knights and few esquires of any standing attested the return of 1459, and many of those present were probably the tenants and servants of Tyrell and Fitzlewis. Yet the absence of more prominent attestors was not out of the ordinary: more often than not, the witnesses listed in the Essex returns did not include many of the upper gentry from whom most of the MPs themselves were drawn. Sometimes the burgesses elected for Essex’s parliamentary boroughs of Colchester and Maldon featured among the attestors, no doubt because they happened to be in the county court in connexion with their own election. The few indentures that do survive for those boroughs bear the same dates as the corresponding indentures for the knights of the shire. John Bishop IV*, Thomas Oskyn* and, perhaps, John Beche* attested one or more elections of the knights of the shire to Parls. in which they themselves sat as burgesses for Colchester, and Thomas Lamb* attested the county election to that of 1432, in which he represented Maldon.