Huntingdon

In spite of its advantageous location in a fertile valley where Ermine Street, the main road connecting London with the north-east, crossed the river Ouse, Huntingdon was already in decline before the Black Death. The consequences of the plague were extremely serious: a charter Edward III granted to the burgesses in 1363 observed that its ravages and other ‘sudden adversities’ had left one quarter of the town uninhabited. Huntingdon was never the sole trading centre for Huntingdonshire, owing to the proximity of St. Ives and its important annual fair. A frequent threat to its commercial activities in the later Middle Ages were the various mills and sluices situated downstream of it on the Ouse since these impeded its communications with the port of Bishop’s Lynn. M. Wickes, Hunts. 11, 45; VCH Hunts. ii. 121, 123-4. Huntingdon’s decay continued well into the sixteenth century, with the borough authorities complaining that many burgesses had fled rather than accept the burdens of local office. In 1535, for example, they alleged that half of the houses were deserted and only four of the 16 medieval churches were still in use. Even allowing for hyperbole it is clear that the town faced serious difficulties in Henry VI’s reign. These difficulties had significant long term consequences, since they helped to ensure that it became a place that later delighted Cobbett (‘one of those pretty, clean, unstenched, unconfined places that tend to lengthen life and make it happy’) rather than a leading urban centre. Wickes, 78.

The burgesses’ feelings of economic insecurity probably contributed to the considerable ill feeling that existed between them and Hinchingbrooke priory, a local religious house, in the early 1420s. A quarrel arose from the refusal of the prioress, Anne Brynkeley, to allow them rights of way and access to pasture, and it was serious enough to warrant the attention of higher authority. On 7 July 1425, the Crown issued a commission of oyer and terminer to investigate her complaint that 18 men from Huntingdon had broken into her close, carried away crops and fodder and imprisoned two of her employees. A formal agreement made between the parties over two weeks later was probably an imposed settlement, since it resolved nothing. Soon afterwards, the prioress petitioned the Council for redress, complaining that various townsmen had again occupied her lands and detained her servants. VCH Hunts. ii. 123; Add. Chs. 33616-17, 33440; CPR, 1422-9, p. 303; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 181.

Nearly 20 years later, the burgesses drew up a petition of their own, seeking exoneration from an increment to their annual fee farm of £45, a charge attached to the duchy of Lancaster since the 1260s and therefore payable to the King in his capacity as duke of Lancaster. The borough had first begun to pay the increment, a sizeable £20, in Henry III’s reign, but this was in return for certain toll rights which were no longer of any profit. The petition, referred to a commission of inquiry in February 1442, appears to have succeeded, for there was a subsequent reduction, to £41, of the farm itself. The fee farm was not the Crown’s only interest in the town, since the castle and honour of Huntingdon had escheated to it in the mid fourteenth century. CPR, 1441-6, p. 79; VCH Hunts. ii. 131.

Despite its economic difficulties, Huntingdon managed in Henry VI’s reign to preserve its corporate independence although it could not remain immune from outside events. In 1426 and 1427 it was the scene of riots, apparently connected with a dispute between the earl of Huntingdon and the duke of Norfolk, and Roger Hunt*, one of the local gentry involved, was subsequently indicted on several charges, including one of ‘terrorizing the townspeople’. Parliamentary elections also brought a potentially troublesome influx of outsiders into the town, since it was where the county met to choose its representatives. The disputed shire elections of 1429 and 1450 in particular may have caused some worrying moments for the burgesses. Several hundred people actually participated in that of 1450, at which there were probably numerous bystanders present as well. J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 207; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 458; C219/16/1; J.G. Edwards, ‘Hunts. Parlty. Election of 1450’, in Essays presented to B. Wilkinson ed. Sandquist and Powicke, 393-5. The civil-war conflicts of the second half of the fifteenth century were another potential threat to Huntingdon. It suffered the depredations of Queen Margaret’s army as it marched south in early 1461, although tradition has probably exaggerated the extent of the devastation. J.R. Lander, Govt. and Community, 213n.

A paucity of records hinders a full analysis of the municipal government of medieval Huntingdon but its basic structure was straightforward. A royal charter granted in 1348 provided a first precise definition of its liberties although the emergence of the two bailiffs (elected annually) as the chief officers of the borough had taken place in the thirteenth century. Subsequent charters confirmed and sometimes amplified that of 1348. There was only one in our period – that of 1424: VCH Hunts. ii.132. Huntingdon did not obtain a mayor and aldermen until 1630. The bailiffs, who answered directly to the Exchequer and had the return of all writs and summons, managed all the borough’s affairs, both civil and financial, with the assistance of two coroners and a common council. By the period under review, the municipal courts enjoyed cognizance of all pleas arising within the borough, including those involving non-residents. The general law of inheritance was from father to eldest son but burgesses had the customary right to devise land away by will. There were, however, three sokes or liberties belonging to other jurisdictions within Huntingdon, two of which belonged to the priory of St. Mary (a religious house situated in the town) and Ramsey abbey respectively, and the third, a street known as ‘Baldwins hoo’, pertained to the honour of Huntingdon’s property in Great Stukeley. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 451; VCH Hunts. ii. 132-5; Wickes, 40.

At least 22 men sat for Huntingdon in Henry VI’s reign, although one of them is unidentified. Only the Christian name (Charles) of John Welles’s fellow MP of 1453 is visible on the return. The returns for 1439, 1445, 1455, 1459 and 1460 have not survived but a lawsuit of the late 1440s names the Members of 1445: CP40/752, rot. 340. Most of them resided in the borough: there were just two complete outsiders, the lawyer Prysote and the royal retainer Trevelyan, and three ‘semi-outsiders’, Arneburgh, Culham and Andrew. Only Trevelyan certainly sat for another constituency, as a knight of the shire for his native Cornwall in 1453. A lawyer like Prysote, Arneburgh lived either in or near the borough and served as its recorder. Culham, almost certainly a member of the same profession, appears not to have had such strong links with the town although he was involved in property dealings there and lived at Abbots Ripton just a few miles to the north. Andrew may have resided at nearby King’s Ripton, since the John Andrew of that parish who was active in the first half of the fifteenth century enjoyed a long connexion with Huntingdon. It is assumed but impossible to prove that four of the other MPs, Chapman, Garnett, Raad and Welles, were residents of the town, although none of them appears to have exercised borough office. Chapman, Garnett and Welles sat in the latter half of Henry VI’s reign, as did the outsider Trevelyan and the semi-outsider Arneburgh, suggesting that the borough was by then finding it more difficult to return MPs who were both active local office-holders and residents. It seems that this was an accentuating trend: while there are large gaps in the evidence with regard to the parliamentary representation of Huntingdon in the following century, only four of its 13 known MPs of the years 1509-58 were actually townsmen. The Commons 1509-58, i. 112. In short, by the latter stages of the period under review residency was not always an attainable ideal and Huntingdon was unable to match the record of a more prosperous borough like Cambridge in returning residents to the Commons. This was not necessarily a disadvantage, since a lawyer might prove a far more useful representative in the Commons than a true townsman with little or no knowledge of the ways of Parliament and Westminster. Furthermore, the election of outsiders could serve as an economy measure, since they were often prepared to forgo parliamentary wages. In this respect, it is worth noting that there survives a writ of expenses for John Andrew, one of the MPs of 1437, although not for his fellow in that assembly, the outsider and lawyer John Prysote. Andrew’s writ shows that he was allowed 2s. per day: C219/15/1. this was the standard rate for parliamentary burgesses but it is curious that the borough had not resorted to the same economy measure as the more prosperous Cambridge, which had cut its MPs’ daily wages to 1s. over a decade earlier.

Even more than was the case with their predecessors in the decades immediately preceding the accession of Henry VI, the MPs of this period inherited little or no tradition of parliamentary service. Indeed, only the two Pecks, presumably related to each other, came close to establishing such a tradition. Robert, perhaps a relative of the burgess of that name who was one of the bailiffs of Huntingdon in the early 1380s, had already sat in seven Parliaments prior to 1422, and between them he and John represented Huntingdon in a further seven during the first half of the period under review. There is, however, no evidence that any descendants of theirs sat for the borough following the dissolution of John’s last Parliament in 1435. While the lack of information as to the antecedents of the other MPs (or, in some cases, the shortage of biographical detail in general) could simply reflect the paucity of source material, it might also indicate that other, more established townsmen of Huntingdon were not prepared to stand for Parliament.

Although very prominent in the town, Robert Peck was not a ‘typical’ burgess, given that he was a ‘gentleman’ and not identified by a trade. Apart from Trevelyan and the lawyers or possible lawyers (Abbotsley, Arneburgh, Culham and Prysote), who enjoyed gentry status through their profession if not their landholdings, John Peck, Charwalton and Chiksond were also known as ‘gentlemen’, although on occasion Charwalton was referred to as a ‘yeoman’ or even a mere ‘husbandman’ and Chiksond as a ‘yeoman’. Of the other Members with a known status or occupation, Bickley and Copull were also yeomen, Colles was a wool merchant or ‘wolman’, Bridges a mercer and Salisbury a ‘butcher’, a designation that might denote a grazier rather than a butcher in the modern sense. Whatever their occupation or social status, it is likely that most of the resident burgesses among the MPs were relatively prosperous, if not as wealthy as the likes of the two outsiders, Prysote, who rose to the highest ranks of the legal profession, and Trevelyan. Robert Peck possessed the resources to secure the keeping of the royal castle and honour of Huntingdon in 1413, and Colles and Charwalton jointly acquired the same farm ten years later. Charwalton was a figure of some substance beyond the borough, for he had attested the election of the knights of the shire for Huntingdonshire to the Parliament of 1415 and served as bailiff of the hundred of Toseland. He was also of sufficient status in the county to join others of its residents in swearing the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the realm in 1434, as did Abbotsley, Bridges, Chiksond and John Peck. Yet evidence as to landed income is singularly lacking. The only known tax assessment for any of the MPs relates to Chiksond, reckoned to hold lands worth £10 p.a. when assessed for the subsidy of 1436, although there does survive an inquisition post mortem for Culham. The jury declared that his manor at Abbots Ripton was worth six marks a year, but the findings of such inquisitions were often underestimates. In any case, that for Culham, held after his death in late 1472, provides a valuation made long after he had left Parliament rather than an estimate of his actual landed income at the time of his election to the Commons.

In spite of sitting for Huntingdon in the Parliament of 1445, Culham appears never to have held borough office and the same seems to hold true for ten of the other MPs. Andrew, Chapman, Copull, Garnett, John Peck, Prysote, Raad, Scott, Trevelyan and Welles. What distinguishes this group of 11 (who apparently never served in Huntingdon’s municipal administration) from the 11 who did, is that the latter were all elected to Parliament before Henry VI attained his majority in 1437. Before that date, it evidently mattered to the burgesses of Huntingdon that one of their officials should represent them in Parliament, at least on occasion. Robert Peck had been returned to four of Henry V’s Parliaments while serving as a bailiff, and, more remarkably, in the early years of Henry VI’s reign it would appear that the authorities at Huntingdon adopted as a matter of policy the rule that one of their MPs should always be a bailiff currently holding office. Accordingly, at the elections to all eight of the Parliaments assembled from 1422 to 1432, a serving bailiff took a seat for Huntingdon: Colles in 1422 and 1423, Robert Peck (again) in 1425, 1427 and 1429, Bickley in 1426, Charwalton in 1431 and Salisbury in 1432. Curiously, this practice, unusual among the parliamentary boroughs, ceased after that date, so that the borough’s representation noticeably changed character thereafter.

Apart from Trevelyan, Culham, an under sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in 1440-1, and Prysote, none of the MPs held office under the Crown outside Huntingdonshire, and the latter did not begin to do so until after entering Parliament. While Prysote had certainly earned a retainer with the duchy of Lancaster for his counsel by the later 1440s, there is nothing to link him with that institution when he gained election for Huntingdon. In any case, there is no evidence that the duchy, to which the burgesses paid their fee farm, tried to influence the parliamentary representation of the borough before the late sixteenth century. The Commons 1509-58, i. 112; The Commons 1558-1603, i. 180. Only Trevelyan certainly possessed a direct connexion with the Crown at the time of his first election, and he must have owed his return to the Parliaments of 1442 and 1447 to his membership of the royal household, either because the King helped a valued servant to find a seat or because the burgesses had deliberately sought an influential outsider.

It is impossible to prove that such links as existed between some of the MPs and magnates, lay or religious, were of any significance for their parliamentary careers. For decades, Prysote’s family had been tenants of successive Lords Scales at Haslingfield in Cambridgeshire, but if any lord supported his election to the Commons in 1437 it is most likely to have been John, Lord Tiptoft†, whom he appears to have served as an estate official and who was the most active magnate in Huntingdonshire at that date. Copull was certainly a follower of Tiptoft in the early 1440s, although his lord had been dead for two years when he gained election to the Commons of 1445. It is impossible to say whether he had remained in the service of Tiptoft’s son and heir, who was still a very young man at that date. Similarly, the evidence for Charwalton’s links with Tiptoft relate to a period when his parliamentary career was long over. Culham, Copull’s fellow MP in 1445, was the bailiff of the abbot of Ramsey, one of the greatest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Yet, while the abbot enjoyed various rights and franchises in the county, he appears to have played little part in its affairs in general and there is no evidence that he intervened in parliamentary elections.

As was the case in the 40 years or so before Henry VI came to the throne, the electors of Huntingdon frequently returned men with no previous parliamentary – let alone administrative – experience, The Commons 1386-1421, i. 452. lending further support to contemporary complaints that established burgesses were increasingly refusing to accept the burdens of office. Early in the reign, experienced parliamentarians, notably Robert Peck, dominated the representation of the borough. After 1425, however, the only other Parliaments in which both representatives had certainly sat before were those of 1427 and 1435. As far as the evidence (incomplete as it is) goes, both men were newcomers to the Commons in 1431, 1432, 1437, 1445 and, perhaps, 1453, It is of course possible that one or two of the apparent novices sat in 1439. and 12 of the MPs are not known to have sat more than once. Of those certainly elected to more than one Parliament, a majority (Bickley, Charwalton, Chiksond, Colles and the two Pecks) were primarily townsmen rather than lawyers or outsiders but none of them appears to have sat after 1435. It was only thanks to the willingness of Arneburgh, the lawyer with Huntingdon connexions, to stand for several Parliaments that the borough enjoyed as much continuity of representation as it did in the later 1440s and early 1450s. In short, it became increasingly difficult to return townsmen with previous parliamentary experience as the reign progressed although there is no reason to suppose that the inexperienced did not take their duties seriously. John Andrew, for example, one of those not known to have held any office apart from that of MP, must have attended the Commons diligently, since he received 70 days’ worth of expenses for sitting in and travelling to the Parliament of 1437, an assembly which lasted for only 66.

The loss of municipal records renders a detailed knowledge of the process by which Huntingdon chose its MPs impossible. The formal election, attested by a delegation of burgesses, took place in the county court, frequently on the same day as the election of the knights of the shire for Huntingdonshire. Twelve of the 17 surviving election Huntingdon returns of this period bear the same date as those for the county. There were usually 12 attestors, although the indentures of 1422 and 1436 list eight and those for the Parliaments of 1442 and 1449-50 just six. It is nevertheless almost certain that these proceedings followed an earlier election of the two candidates in the borough court. For want of evidence, it is impossible to ascertain the extent of the franchise: shortly before the passing of the Great Reform Act, a nineteenth-century editor of those borough records that had survived argued that the right of election belonged to all inhabitant householders, paying scot and lot. Yet the purpose of his research was polemical and intended to help one of the parties to the Huntingdon election dispute of 1825. J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 29; Huntingdon Recs. ed. Griffith, 1-5; The Commons 1820-32, i. 519-20.

It is worth noting the identity of some of the sheriffs making the returns. When Trevelyan gained election in 1442, the sheriff was William Lee, probably a fellow Household man. E101/409/9, 11, 16; 410/1, 3, 6, 9; CPR, 1441-6, p. 449. The sheriff at his second return for Huntingdon in 1447 was certainly a member of the royal establishment, Sir John Chalers*. As in 1447, the Crown summoned the Parliament of 1453 in favourable political circumstances for the government and Court. The affiliations, if any, of the then sheriff, Thomas Peyton, are unknown but all four of the knights of the shire for Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire that he returned to that assembly were either current or recent members of the Household. Yet, if the MPs for Huntingdon, the mysterious John Welles and his unknown associate, had any attachment with the Crown they must have been very minor royal servants.

At least ten of the MPs attested one or more parliamentary returns for the borough, in most cases before first entering the Commons themselves, and Abbotsley, Bickley, Charwalton, Chiksond and Segington were particularly regular witnesses. Charwalton and Chiksond, burgesses with interests beyond Huntingdon, also participated in elections of the knights of the shire for Huntingdonshire, while the non-resident Culham attested at least eight returns for the county but none of those that survive for the borough. Charwalton, Chiksond and Culham were all involved in the controversial shire election of 1450, being among the ‘gentlemen’ who supported the return of two established members of the county gentry, Robert Stonham* and John Styuecle*, in the face of a challenge from Henry Gymber‡.