Situated on the river Colne, Colchester engaged in both coastal and overseas trade through its port of New Hythe, and its position on the road between London and the main east-coast ports ensured good inland communications. An administrative centre, its royal castle served as a base for the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire but its location in the north-east corner of the county ensured that the smaller but more centrally situated Chelmsford fulfilled the role of county town. As it happened, the Crown took little immediate interest in the castle, which was of no military importance by this period.
Colchester recovered quickly from the effects of the Black Death. From probably below 3,000 in the immediate aftermath of the plague, its population jumped, perhaps to a medieval peak of over 8,000 inhabitants by about 1400 before falling away again in the second half of the fifteenth century. By the mid 1520s, it is unlikely to have had more than 5,300 residents, although in terms of taxable wealth it was then the 12th largest town in England. In national terms, Colchester remained relatively prosperous during the period under review but it appears to have fared less well than nearby Ipswich.
During the second half of the fourteenth century, the merchants of Colchester increased their trade with Gascony and the Baltic and also came to use the services of Italian exporters based in London. By the later medieval period, the town had come to specialize in textiles and it was probably the largest centre of the cloth trade in eastern England in the early fifteenth century. Russet cloth, a material of medium quality that found customers at home and abroad, was its most important product, although a wide variety of raw materials, foodstuffs and luxury items also passed through the New Hythe. Rapid economic growth ended in the second decade of the fifteenth century when war and depopulation damaged its markets in Gascony and Prussia. Its cloth-makers adapted to the new situation by altering their production methods. They increased the size of their cloths from a traditional measurement of some 12 yards by two yards to one closer to the standard size used in England (24 yards by two yards) and improved the quality of the finished product. These changes achieved some temporary success, for the new styles attracted merchants from Cologne and cloth output reached a peak in the 1440s. Merchants from the Hanseatic League were particularly active in the town in this period. They imported the woad and other dye-stuffs used in cloth production and exported 80-90 per cent of its finished cloth. The second half of the century witnessed a decrease in exports and a contraction in cloth manufacture. Lesser enterprises began to withdraw from the industry, leaving it in the hands of a relatively small number of large-scale manufacturers. Colchester’s finances suffered as a result. Its rulers farmed out its houses, cranes and water tolls at the New Hythe for £56 p.a. in the late 1430s, but for only £35 in 1484-5. The farm of its land tolls and wool market in the moot hall cellar sank from £22 p.a. in 1443-4 to £16 in 1484-5.
The largest single item of expenditure for the borough was its annual fee farm of £35. Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, held the farm by grant of the Crown from 1404 until he died in 1447. After the duke’s death, Henry VI awarded £24 of the farm to John Hampton II*, an esquire for the King’s body, and his wife and the remaining £11 to another royal servant, Robert Manfeld*. The grants to the Hamptons and Manfeld were for life but proved short-lived, since in 1453 Parliament reassigned the whole farm to the queen (again for life). Another significant expense for the borough was the fees and wages of its officers. These amounted to some £27 at the end of the fifteenth century, of which each of the two bailiffs received £5 (along with livery robes worth 20s.) and the town clerk ten marks.
The bailiffs headed the government of the borough in association with eight aldermen and two chamberlains, all elected by a committee of 24 burgesses on the first Monday after 8 Sept. each year. Once appointed, the new bailiffs and aldermen chose 16 men to serve on the borough council. The bailiffs received royal writs directed to the borough, presided over its courts and had ultimate responsibility for its financial obligations. The aldermen were essentially a group of inner councillors. By 1447 they wore full robes to distinguish them from the ordinary councillors, but to a large extent their status was honorific. They had little in common with their counterparts in London, who served for life, performed a wide range of functions and were associated with particular wards. The chamberlains had the important responsibility of receiving the borough’s rents, farms and other income. They lacked the dignity of the bailiffs and aldermen, but their office was a first step to a higher position in the governing hierarchy. Although elected annually, they usually served two years in succession during the mid fifteenth century. A second group of officers, comprising four clavigers (who kept the keys of the town chest), two coroners, the town clerk and four serjeants (responsible for collecting fines imposed by the borough court), were elected on the Monday after Michaelmas every year.
Although not a closed oligarchy, since its ranks were open to wealthy immigrants (an important source of fresh blood) or to natives of lesser status who had suddenly made money, the municipal elite that dominated the government of Colchester strengthened its control of the town over the course of Henry VI’s reign.
The charter of 1447 also defined the borough’s liberty, which covered the vills of Lexden, Greenstead, Mile End and Donyland as well as the walled town. The burgesses did not enjoy complete jurisdiction throughout the liberty because the abbey of St. John’s, Colchester (which owned the manors of Greenstead and West Donyland), the Fitzwalter family (lords of Lexden manor), and the priory of St. Botolph’s all enjoyed extensive legal privileges over their lands which lay within it. Inside the walls, the castle and the bishop of London’s soke in the parish of St. Mary-at the-Walls were also exempt from the authority of the borough. In Henry VI’s reign the castle was successively in the hands of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who held it from 1404 until his death, of John Hampton, who held it for two months in 1447, and finally of the queen, who appointed Hampton her constable. The existence of several jurisdictions within the liberty frequently caused conflict. Although the burgesses eschewed factionalism among themselves, they often quarrelled with St. John’s abbey, usually in connexion with rights in Greenstead and West Donyland.
The burgesses’ willingness to stand up to the earl illustrates the de Veres’ inability to achieve the dominance they came to enjoy at Colchester by the mid Tudor period. During Henry VI’s reign, the borough generally avoided unnecessary entanglements with the earl or other local landowners and endeavoured to keep clear of national politics.
Outside events most notably affected Colchester in 1450, during Cade’s rebellion and its aftermath. Cade derived significant support from Essex, where his representative, the Londoner John Gibbes, was active on his behalf. In Colchester the authorities struggled to keep order, for Gibbes was able to enter the town and, according to later indictments, helped to instigate a rising there on 1 July. One target of the disturbances was John Hampton, the constable of Colchester castle, but the main victim was his servant, Thomas Mayne*. Finding that Hampton was absent, the rebels contented themselves with looting his possessions and taking Mayne with them when they marched off to join Cade. They took the unfortunate servant to Southwark, where the rebels executed him on Cade’s orders. Mayne made a brief will there on 4 July, the eve of his execution. Of no particular interest for its contents, the will is of most significance for its list of witnesses. At the head of the list are one of the bailiffs of Colchester, William Lecche, and another burgess, Robert Selby, showing that Gigges had brought them to London with Mayne. Although Lecche and Selby did not suffer the deputy constable’s fate, it is very unlikely that they had come to London willingly; indeed, their witnessing of his will suggests that they had shared his confinement. There were further disturbances at Colchester on the following 10 Sept. when a mob, claiming that Cade was still alive, gathered in the town. The bailiffs arrested the ringleader, a brick-maker named Richard Tailor, but some of his fellow insurgents broke into the local gaol and released him a few days later.
In the four decades prior to 1422, the town had obtained almost continuous exemption from returning burgesses to the Commons, because of the expense it faced in rebuilding its walls. In practice, however, it appears it continued to send representatives to most, if not all, of the Parliaments of that period, with the MPs in question forgoing their wages to these repairs.
The surviving returns for Colchester supply the names of 24 of its MPs of Henry VI’s reign but those of its Members in the Parliaments of 1439 and 1445 and of one of its burgesses in that of 1460 are unknown. Only one of the 24 was not a resident burgess at the time of his election, another sign of the borough’s ability to maintain its independence in this period.
All of the 24 were of the borough’s oligarchy or, in the case of John Godstone, soon to join it. A majority were ‘merchants’, although some of those so described pursued particular occupations as well: Priour was additionally known as a mercer, Selby as a dyer, William Foorde as a draper and Rouge as a tailor. John Trewe and Bonfay also participated in the cloth trade. Several of them had business dealings abroad. Rouge, for example, was the co-owner of a ship impounded at Bergen in Norway on one ill-fated trading venture of unknown date. Thomas Godstone was another ship-owner, and he obtained a royal licence to carry pilgrims to the shrine of St. James at Compostela in his own vessels.London loomed large in the lives of several of the 24. John Godstone was a citizen and mercer there long before he settled in Colchester, and John Bishop, who spent part of his career as a clerk in Chancery, likewise resided in the city before moving to the borough. Boss had a brother who was a London grocer while William Foorde likewise became a freeman of the City, although not until after his time in Parliament was over, and others of the MPs had business dealings there. Bishop engaged in trade after moving to Colchester but he was also a lawyer, as perhaps were Sumpter and John Wright. Bishop and Wright enjoyed the status of ‘gentlemen’ but Sumpter (whose father-in-law was a knight), and the Godstones were of armigerous rank. The Godstones and Peek, who was born into minor gentry from Suffolk, were landowners of some substance, although their holdings could not match the estates in Essex, Hertfordshire and Warwickshire that Sumpter enjoyed in the right of his wife.
It appears that experience of local government was usually a criterion of some importance in the choice of Colchester’s MPs in this period, since they all held borough office, the great majority beginning to do so before entering Parliament. It is therefore unlikely that any of them joined the Commons at a particularly early age.
Several of the 24 also received appointments to royal commissions for Colchester, although only Beche appears to have done so before entering the Commons, and some of them served the Crown on such commissions or in other positions in Essex and beyond, a reflection of their external origins or interests, in most cases only after they had entered Parliament. Uniquely, Thomas Godstone held office under the Crown in Picardy, meaning that he was potentially well qualified to participate in parliamentary debates concerning matters in France. Save for Bishop, none of the 24 served in central government and there is no way of telling whether Bishop’s work as a Chancery clerk had any bearing on his career as an MP.
There is likewise next to no evidence linking any of the 24 with great magnates, whether lay or spiritual. While Bishop may have counted John Mowbray, 4th duke of Norfolk, as a customer for his cloth, his dealings with that lord were not necessarily cordial and, in any case, post-dated his time as an MP. It nevertheless seems that Saxe did have some sort of connexion or dealings with the Mowbrays. As Colchester’s ‘Oath book’ records, at some stage in 1450-1, while Saxe was one of the bailiffs, the 3rd duke of Norfolk wrote a letter to the borough authorities on his behalf (‘pro Willelmi Saxe’). Tantalizingly, this brief entry in the oath book does not reveal the contents of the letter. It is worth noting that Saxe would afterwards sit in the Parliament of 1455, an assembly for which, in East Anglia at least, the duke actively sought the return of his followers. Yet, even if he was a Mowbray retainer, his election does not alter the overall picture of corporate independence in this period: by 1455 he was a fully-fledged burgess of over two decades’ standing who had held office at Colchester since the early 1440s.
There is no evidence that Saxe sat in any other Parliaments apart from that of 1455, but at least 11 of the other MPs gained election to the Commons on more than one occasion, if not just within the period under review. Thomas Godstone represented the borough in no fewer than 13 Parliaments spanning nearly three decades, all but a couple of them before 1422. It is arguable that he alone of the 24 truly had a parliamentary career, but the borough must also have benefited from the continuity and accumulation of experience arising from the concentrated service in Parliament that it received from some of the others. For example, Beche sat in four Parliaments of the late 1420s and first half of the 1430s, three of them alongside Oskyn, his fellow in 1442. In most of Henry VI’s Parliaments, at least one of Colchester’s MPs had sat previously, indicating that the borough valued experienced Members, as it had in the three and a half decades before 1422, although the election together of two apparent newcomers became more common in the later years of the reign.
Drawn up in the county court for Essex, the formal returns to the Commons of the MPs for Colchester recorded the results of the actual elections, previously held in the borough, the mechanics of which are unknown. Just two election indentures, those for the Parliaments of 1455 and 1459, have survived. Both bear the same date as the corresponding indentures for the election of Essex’s knights of the shire. In 1455 the parties were the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire on the one hand and the two bailiffs, ten named attestors and ‘many other burgesses’ on the other; in 1459 they were the sheriff, bailiffs and ten other attestors identified by name. Two later indentures from Edward IV’s reign, those for the Parliaments of 1472 and 1478, suggest that the choice of MPs lay with Colchester’s oligarchy. The parties to these returns are the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire and the bailiffs of the borough. Neither lists any attestors by name, and both simply state that a majority of the resident burgesses of ‘greatest substance’ had elected the men returned.
As with most other boroughs, there is no direct evidence of the activities of the 24 once they had reached Parliament. While Colchester’s MPs in that of 1485 went to the trouble of keeping a journal of its proceedings for the benefit of their fellow townsmen,