Comprising just a single parish and established as a parliamentary borough before the end of the thirteenth century, Great Yarmouth lay 20 miles east of Norwich at the mouth of the river Yare. An important fortified town and fishing port since the early Middle Ages, its history after the mid fourteenth century is one of decline, even if it remained a major centre for herring fishing. By contrast, it was a flourishing port and one of the wealthiest towns in the kingdom in the early 1300s, and it may have had a population of over 4,500 on the eve of the Black Death. Visitors from as far away as Scandinavia, Spain and Italy came to its herring fair, and its own merchant fleet – much involved in the wine and salt trades as well as fishing – sailed to most of the ports on the North Sea and Atlantic coasts of continental Europe. The plague played its part in the decline of Yarmouth, but more significant were the Hundred Years’ War, the silting up of the harbour and commercial competition from the larger ships and more advanced fishing and processing techniques of the Low Countries. The war disrupted trade and obliged the burgesses to divert resources into the repair and maintenance of the town’s walls and other coastal defences. Providing the Crown with ships to transport armies to France or to guard the seas was another financial burden, especially when vessels were lost or damaged on the King’s service.
The silting up of the harbour affected Yarmouth’s efficient functioning as a port, since it forced incoming ships to discharge their cargoes at Kirkley Road, an area of open sea near the entrance to the haven. Edward III granted the road and other privileges to the burgesses in 1371, in return for an annual farm of £5, but for the rest of the fourteenth century and beyond there were quarrels with the neighbouring port of Lowestoft, which strongly objected to the grant. Both towns pursued these disputes at the highest levels, appealing to the King and Council and petitioning Parliament in defence of their respective claims. Lowestoft found powerful allies in the London Company of Fishmongers, who did not wish to see Yarmouth’s merchants monopolizing the supply of herring caught off the East Anglian coast. By the early 1400s, the Fishmongers, previously the most important outside customers for Yarmouth’s herring, were increasingly turning to the Low Countries for their fish.
The town’s defences became more necessary than ever in the mid fifteenth century, as the fortunes of the war in France began to turn against the English. On the front line of the vulnerable east coast of England, in the 1450s Yarmouth faced the threat of French naval raids. The well-known correspondence of the Paston family refers to the dangers faced by the town. In a letter of March 1450 Margaret Paston told her husband John* that there had ‘ben many enemys azens Yermowth and Crowmer’, who had ‘don moche harm’.
In return for its privileges, the borough paid the Crown £60 p.a., consisting of its original fee farm of £55 and an additional £5 for Kirkley Road. In practice, the expedients of assignment and exempting the burgesses from having to pay the complete farm meant that the Exchequer rarely collected the whole of this sum. Among those assigned shares of the farm in Henry VI’s reign were Alice, widow of Sir John Dallingridge†, the gentlewoman who looked after the King during his infancy, Alice de la Pole, countess of Suffolk, and John Brecknock*, treasurer of the royal Household in the later 1450s.
Between 1387 and 1485, Great Yarmouth received no significant new charters, but there were changes to the structure of borough government in Henry VI’s reign. There were still four bailiffs in 1422 but a subsequent decision to reduce them to two came into effect at Michaelmas 1426. Elected annually like other members of the administration, the bailiffs worked with the assistance of an inner council of 24 burgesses, a common council of 48 and other municipal officers. The reign also witnessed the creation of new offices, with the introduction of two chamberlains in 1426 and a steward, to act for the town in a legal capacity, by 1447-8.
The burgesses had sole control of their affairs for most of the year, but the Cinque Ports, for which the Norfolk coast was a traditional fishing ground, enjoyed jurisdictional rights at Yarmouth during the annual herring fair. In accordance with regulations introduced by the Crown in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the Ports sent representatives known as bailiffs to the fair, where they administered justice in co-operation with the bailiffs of Yarmouth. Initially each Port sent its own delegate to the fair but by the late fourteenth century four bailiffs jointly represented the Ports as a whole. The Portsmens’ privileges were a cause of friction throughout the Middle Ages and there were several quarrels between Yarmouth and the Ports in Henry VI’s reign. Upon their return home from the fair of 1433, for example, the Ports’ bailiffs cited numerous wrongs done to them at Yarmouth, and in response the Portsmen decided to pursue a lawsuit against the borough at Westminster. They also resorted to the law to protest about the conduct of the bailiffs of Yarmouth during the herring fair of 1456. On at least one other occasion the Ports brought their complaints to Parliament, since in 1453 they decided that their MPs should submit a bill about the ‘dyverse derogacion and hurte done to our Baylyfes at Yernemouth’ to the warden of the Cinque Ports, Humphrey Stafford, duke of Buckingham.
As far as Great Yarmouth’s own MPs are concerned, the names of 25 men who definitely sat for the borough in Henry VI’s reign have survived, although it is likely that John Heydon was one of its burgesses in 1459. There are no extant returns for the Parliaments of 1426, 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460, but the names of those returned in 1439 are recorded in a local court roll and letters from the Paston family’s correspondence indicate that Heydon was a Member of the Commons of 1459.
A majority of the 25 either lived at Yarmouth or possessed family connexions with it, although from the mid 1430s one of the borough’s seats often fell to a member of the East Anglian gentry. This was a development almost certainly connected with its late medieval decline. First, such men invariably met their own expenses, so providing at least some financial alleviation to the borough. (Early in Henry VI’s reign at least, Yarmouth allowed its MPs wages of 2s. each per day, the customary rate for parliamentary burgesses.) Secondly, depopulation through plague, particularly the extinction of leading local families, could have led to a shortage of burgesses of the right sort to sit for the borough in Parliament.
Of those MPs possessing a firmly rooted connexion with Yarmouth, Robert Ellis was from a local family with a long tradition of parliamentary service, since he was the sixth Ellis to sit for the borough since 1355.
A sizeable minority of those of the 25 who were not outsiders were also not typical townsmen. While a native of the borough and from a well established local family, Hugh atte Fenne was a lawyer and officer of the Exchequer who spent much of his career outside Yarmouth, and it is possible that John Jakes, Ralph Lampet and Thomas Dengaine were lawyers as well. Lampet and Dengaine, both either usually or sometimes styled ‘esquire’, enjoyed recognition as members of the gentry, as did John Lowys and John Fastolf. Fastolf was primarily an East Anglian landowner but, like atte Fenne, he had strong family connexions with Yarmouth. Notwithstanding his social status, Fastolf had business interests and owned a quay at Yarmouth. Similarly, Lampet acquired a quay and became a dealer in grain after settling in the borough, while Thomas Dengaine is likely to have had interests in the local herring industry. Other MPs certainly had direct stakes in fishing: Robert Ellis traded in herring and cod and was master of a dogger; John Hastyng, known as a ‘mariner’, was likewise the master of a fishing vessel; Hamon Pulham owned two fish houses and Edmund Wydewell exported fish. Fish were not the only commodities in which the latter two dealt, since Pulham also traded in wine and Wydewell in cloth and grain. Lampet, William atte Fenne and Robert Pynne had commercial dealings with the Low Countries where much of Yarmouth’s overseas trade lay. As the examples of Pulham and Wydewell show, nearly all of the MPs who pursued careers in commerce were general merchants handling several different commodities, although John Phillip – known as a ‘spicer’ – may have specialized in a particular occupation.
As the extent and nature of these business interests and trading ventures indicate, most of the resident MPs were among the more substantial of Yarmouth’s burgesses. For want of evidence, their wealth is impossible to quantify, although Browning, Hall, Hastyng and Phillip were evidently men of some status, since they were among those in Norfolk required to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the realm in 1434. It is also likely that Wydewell was a relatively substantial figure: an inquisition post mortem held for him in Suffolk found that he died in possession of lands worth £10 p.a. in that county but a like inquisition for Norfolk has not survived. Although a little more plentiful, the evidence for the outsiders’ wealth is still very limited. Hugh atte Fenne, who acquired considerable lands and possessions as an administrator in the service of the Crown, died an extremely rich man but he was almost certainly not as wealthy when elected to the Commons in 1450. The relatively small sums he lent to Henry VI in the 1450s came nowhere near the huge advances he made to Edward IV in the 1460s and 1470s. It is nevertheless probable that William Yelverton, who would rise to the top of his profession, was already enjoying substantial earnings when he sat for Yarmouth in the mid and later 1430s, even if the extent of his wealth in that period is unknown. An assessment of a mere £27 p.a. in lands for the subsidy of 1436 bears testimony to the humble beginnings of his fellow lawyer, John Heydon, but the latter was a far more substantial figure by the time of his putative election for Yarmouth in 1459. By contrast, another of the lawyers, John Dam, was certainly an insignificant landowner when he sat for the borough in 1442, since his assessment for the subsidy of 1451 found that he received just £13 p.a. in lands and fees. It is also unlikely that Richard Southwell was especially wealthy when elected in 1455, although he enjoyed a landed income of some 200 marks shortly before his death some five decades later.
There is no evidence that Southwell possessed links with Great Yarmouth before 1455, and neither he nor the other outsiders, nor the largely non-resident Hugh atte Fenne, ever held any office by appointment of the borough. Fifteen of the 25 did however serve one or more terms as bailiff of Yarmouth, with all but three of them first assuming the office before entering Parliament for the first (or only) time, suggesting that most were of relatively advanced years and experience when they took up their seats in the Commons. Similarly, a majority of the borough’s MPs in the years 1386-1421 who served as bailiffs did so before first entering the Commons. Among them was Robert Ellis, who served no fewer than nine terms as bailiff, two of them before the accession of Henry VI, and he was in office when returned to his final Parliament in 1422. Several of the other Members of the period under review combined the responsibilities of bailiff and MP. Thomas atte Fenne gained election to the Parliament of 1433 during the first of his five terms as bailiff, Hyllys held the office when returned to his second Parliament in early 1449 and John Pynne was bailiff when elected to his first, second, third and fifth Parliaments. Similarly, the three and a half decades prior to 1422 had also sometimes seen the return of a bailiff during his term of office.
Another position of responsibility, that of a j.p. for Yarmouth, was by appointment of the Crown rather than the borough, which did not acquire the right to select its own commissioners of the peace until 1494.
It was through one of his earlier patrons, Sir William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, chamberlain of the royal household and a member of the Council, that Heydon initially entered the duchy’s employment. Whether he sat for Yarmouth or not, it is likely that his Household connexions ensured for him his seat in the Parliament of 1459, a notoriously partisan assembly with a Commons House packed with supporters of the government and Court. It is also likely that the position that Hugh atte Fenne, an officer of the Exchequer, occupied in the bureaucracy of central government at least partly influenced his election in 1450, notwithstanding his strong pre-existing links with Yarmouth. Just two others of the MPs certainly held office at Westminster, although not during their time in Parliament. Yelverton, later a justice of King’s bench, became a serjeant-at-law just over a year after leaving that of 1437, and John Ulveston had relinquished his share of the office of keeper of the writs in the court of common pleas when he gained election to the Commons of 1447.
Ulveston was just one of several of the MPs who possessed links to one or more magnates although it is likely that, in terms of their parliamentary careers, such ties were of most significance for him and the other outsiders. Early in his career, he joined the East Anglian affinity of William de la Pole, earl, marquess and subsequently duke of Suffolk, a lord in whose service Heydon earned considerable notoriety. Another of the outsiders, Richard Southwell, was a member of the rival affinity of the Mowbray dukes of Norfolk, while the lawyer Yelverton counted various lords among his clients and the bureaucrat, Hugh atte Fenne, held office in the Exchequer under several aristocratic treasurers. Of those of the 25 who habitually resided at Yarmouth, John Fastolf was a servant of the de la Poles and Ralph Lampet was an agent or factor in the town for Alice de la Pole, marchioness of Suffolk, a few years before he entered Parliament. Previously, Lampet was a servant of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, but there is no evidence that he continued in the service of Holand’s son and successor after his patron’s death in 1447.
Apart from Ellis, only Dengaine and Cupper definitely entered the Commons for the first time before 1422 and, in spite of the gaps in the evidence, it is clear that many of the 25 (probably a majority) attended a single Parliament. By contrast, some two thirds of the MPs for another of Norfolk’s boroughs, Bishop’s Lynn, sat more than once, with some of them becoming very experienced parliamentarians. Heydon is the sole man among the 25 known to have sat for another constituency (as a knight of the shire for Norfolk in 1445) and only Wydewell certainly sat for Yarmouth again after 1460. John Pynne was exceptional in gaining election on no fewer than six occasions. Together, he and his son Robert represented Yarmouth in at least seven Parliaments between the mid 1420s and 1450, meaning that they played an important, although not dominant, role in the parliamentary representation of the borough during much of the period under review. In spite of the Pynnes’ collective experience, in most Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign Yarmouth’s representatives included at least one newcomer, and in several both Members were new to the Commons. As already mooted, an unwillingness to serve in Parliament might at least partially explain the return of bailiffs on several occasions, and the frequent election of newcomers was perhaps another outcome of such reluctance. It would appear that the prevalence of newcomers was not an entirely recent development although this is impossible to establish for certain, given the gaps in the list of the borough’s MPs in the decades immediately preceding 1422.
Yarmouth enjoyed the privilege of return of writs, meaning that the bailiffs held parliamentary elections in response to a precept from the sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, whom they subsequently informed of the result, which he then included in his return to the Chancery. There are 14 extant indentures of return for Yarmouth from Henry VI’s reign.
While the survey for the years 1386-1421 found no evidence of external interference in Yarmouth’s elections in that period,