Southwark

Southwark’s origins may be traced back to the construction of the first London bridge by the Romans, and the settlement owed its subsequent growth to the combined importance of this river crossing and of the evolving city on the northern bank of the Thames. The town’s position on the doorstep of the metropolis allowed it to develop into a flourishing, if largely unregulated, centre for the manufacture of a wide range of commodities, many of which found their way into the shops and markets of the city. The growing numbers of alien artisans living south of the Thames added to the range of skills available, while nobles and substantial gentry increasingly drawn to the royal court and the markets of London built or purchased houses in the borough. In economic terms, Southwark soon became pre-eminent among the urban settlements in Surrey and in the later Middle Ages readily outstripped even the county town of Guildford.

In spite of its prosperity, Southwark remained a settlement without any municipal institutions of its own, divided into a number of manors and liberties: the Guildable manor, governed from 1327 by the city of London; the Great Liberty manor of the archbishop of Canterbury; and the liberties owned by the bishop of Winchester, the priories of St. Mary Overey and Bermondsey and St. Thomas’s hospital. Nevertheless a sense of community can be perceived among the upper echelons of Southwark society. This was apparent not only in the parliamentary representation of the borough but also in the flourishing of parochial life. The fraternity of the Assumption of the Virgin, founded in St. Margaret’s church in 1449 by Peter Saverey, John Gloucester III and other prominent parishioners, epitomised the extent to which the most prosperous residents actively identified themselves with its institutions, despite the lack of a central authority to bind the urban community together. Among the borough’s other churches, St. Olave’s had at least four fraternities and St. George’s two or more. The priory of St. Mary Overey itself maintained good relations with the local community, and listed several residents in its register of confraternity. Carlin, 393, 414-29; Ricardian, v. 311-14.

Perhaps the most telling evidence for some sort of community spirit arises from the troubled relationship between the residents of Southwark and the city of London. Since the early fourteenth century the annual fee farm of £10 yielded to the Exchequer from the Guildable manor had been collected by the City’s bailiff, with the assistance of constables and other officials appointed by the civic authorities. The bailiff took half of any profits arising from the governance of the manor, but the post never became a particularly lucrative one, even after John Reynwell* bequeathed to the City sufficient rents to cover the annual farm. Cal. Wills ct. Husting London ed. Sharpe, ii. 577; D.J. Johnson, Southwark and the City, 47. In the fifteenth century, royal charters acquired by the Londoners in 1406, 1444 and 1462 sought to strengthen the City’s hold over the borough and increase the scope of its initially limited, and somewhat vague, jurisdiction in the manor. The charter of 1406, ostensibly marking the transfer of most of the King’s rights in the manor to the City, was the cause of bitter resentment within the borough community which did not diminish with the passage of time. Particularly sensitive were the clauses allowing the bailiff to make arrests and transport prisoners across the Thames to Newgate, and, most significantly, the right to return writs, displacing the sheriff of Surrey in whom this right had traditionally been vested. The charter resulted almost immediately in a petition to Parliament from the ‘liges burgeys’ of Southwark, protesting that the borough had always been part of the county of Surrey and that the grant should be annulled. Johnson, 48-49; PROME, viii. 389-90; SC8/168/8396. The petition was not successful, and some burgesses resorted to more forthright tactics: in June 1423 Richard Tyler and 12 of his fellows were ordered by the King’s Council to appear before the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of the City to seek a pardon for ‘dishonestly obstructing the mayor in execution of his governorship of the said borough’. Corp. London RO, jnl. 2, f. 7. By the early 1440s opposition to the City’s governance of the Guildable manor found its expression in regular complaints about the actions of John Combes, the City’s bailiff in Southwark. In October 1443 he was accused of exceeding the powers granted to him by charter and was forced to present articles to the court of aldermen in London defending his actions. The matter was still not settled by March the next year and evidence from both sides was placed in the hands of two senior aldermen. This came at a sensitive time for the City, which was in the process of negotiating a new grant of letters patent from Henry VI. In May a commission was established to look at the question of the City’s rights in Southwark and its conclusions prompted the Londoners to formalize some of the bailiff’s powers and responsibilities. An ordinance was passed which forbade him to put the bailiwick to farm and required his presence in the borough at least twice a week. Moreover, he was also explicitly instructed to respect Southwark’s ancient customs. These clauses were incorporated in a revised oath of office he was obliged to sware. Ibid. jnl. 4, ff. 9v, 20, 21, 25v, 27, 30, 60v. Fresh letters patent, issued on 26 Oct., reiterated the charter of 1406, including the controversial clauses concerning the rights of the City’s officials to arrest felons and return writs. Citing ‘uncertainties’ which had arisen concerning the City’s rights in the manor, further clauses were added. These included the right to collect treasure trove and to seize the goods of felons and outlaws, but most important was the grant of an annual fair to be held on 7-9 Sept. CChR, vi. 43-44. The mayor and aldermen were aware of the continuing opposition to the city’s presence in the manor and the practical difficulties of implementing these provisions. In early 1445 the court of aldermen listed the defence of its liberties in Southwark as one of the purposes for which a levy, to be raised from the citizens, should be used. Corp. London RO, jnl. 4, f. 60v. Perhaps to appease the men of Southwark, in February 1460 the mayor and aldermen appointed a local man, John Gloucester III, as the City’s bailiff, but they themselves were still not satisfied with the existing arrangements, and the ‘matter of Southwark’ continued to be contested in the reign of Edward IV. Ibid. jnl. 6, f. 44.

Given the opposition it aroused, the City’s persistence in asserting its authority is telling evidence both for the attractiveness of Southwark as a haven for felons and for the vitality of economic life south of the river, each of which was a source of irritation to the civic authorities. In the first place there were numerous London citizens living and working in Southwark who were thus able to avoid paying the duties (such as lot) demanded from freemen resident in the city. As a consequence, in September 1455 the civic authorities ordained that those citizens living in the borough and not paying lot should each pay 5s. to the City chamber, and more drastically five years later it was decided that all citizens continually resident in Southwark who refused to contribute to levies raised in Bridge ward should lose the freedom. Ibid. jnls. 5, f. 260; 6, f. 261v. Control of economic life in the town was another objective of London’s government, but one which was just as difficult to achieve. After 1406 the City was able to enforce the assizes of bread, wine and ale in the Guildable manor, a vital step in preventing the influx of cheap or poor quality foodstuffs into the City. The fifteenth century also saw the craft and merchant guilds of London increase their powers outside the City, in the suburbs and in Southwark itself. The Fishmongers’ new charter, acquired in 1433, allowed the guild to hold lands and tenements in Southwark as well as the City, and increasingly the charters granted to the guilds included rights of ‘search’ south of the river. Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 225; Johnson, 79. Thus, for example, by the last quarter of the century the wardens of the Goldsmiths’ Company were required to make their ‘search’ in Southwark and Westminster as well as London. In their case, the large numbers of alien goldsmiths living outside the city walls made supervision essential: in 1469 a survey undertaken by the wardens showed that 98 out of 113 alien craftsmen and apprentices did so. T.F. Reddaway and L.E.M. Walker, Early Hist. Goldsmiths’ Co. 108, 131. The clothing industry, also flourishing in Southwark, was another in which the London guilds were increasingly keen to make their presence felt: the annual cloth fair held at St. Mary Overey was searched by the wardens of the Drapers’ Company and by the late fifteenth century the Skinners too were sending their wardens into the town to search the workshops of alien artisans. A.H. Johnson, Hist. Drapers’ Co. 161; Recs. Skinners of London ed. Lambert, 131.

These measures proved only partially effective, for the men of Southwark soon found ways of circumventing the Londoners’ controls. John Halle of Southwark was surely not alone in using the trade-mark of a prominent London baker on his bread instead of his own. Moreover, some Londoners were not averse to importing cheap goods for re-sale in the City: in 1456 a citizen was caught selling a girdle which he had bought across the river in Southwark; and similarly, one London saddler put his apprentice to work in Southwark as a ‘fuster’, making the saddle-bows which would then be turned into saddles in his own workshop in the City. The difficulty of regulating the training and activities of apprentices in the town were appreciated by the City government which, in 1456, ordered citizens living in Southwark to pay double the usual fee for enrolling an apprentice. Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 247n; Corp. London RO, jnls. 2, f. 448; 6, ff. 108v 109.

Southwark’s strategic position at the foot of London bridge, along with the diversity of its community, ensured that it not only saw its share of internal discord, but periodically found itself drawn into wider political disturbances. Thus, in October 1425 it became the scene of one of the most flagrant open manifestations of the simmering discord between the Protector, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and his uncle, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester. The City authorities, sympathetic to Gloucester but conscious of their duty to keep the peace, ordered the gates of London bridge to be manned in order to prevent an attack on Beaufort’s heavily-barricaded residence in Southwark. Meanwhile the bishop’s men gathered at the southern end of the bridge and cut the chains of the drawbridge. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 73-74; Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 159; Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 137. At other times, members of the royal household were the source of trouble. Thus, in May 1443 ‘ii persones of the K. hous of the stable that maad a riot in Southwerk wer comitted to Flete’. PPC, v. 278. Most dramatic in this period were the events of the first week of July 1450, when the Kentish rebels led by Jack Cade arrived from Blackheath at the foot of the bridge and installed themselves in some of Southwark’s many inns. Cade himself stayed at the White Hart where one John Payn (probably Sir John Fastolf’s servant of this name) was robbed of a fine furred gown and other belongings worth £8, and where ‘one Hawaydayne of Sent Martyns’ was murdered. Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, i. 133-4; Chron. Grey Friars London (Cam. Soc. liii), 19. The rebels were prevented from crossing the bridge until 3 July, when the arrival of the contingent from Essex coincided with the King’s departure from the capital. It was not until the 5th that the Londoners were able to organize sufficiently to try to prevent further destruction in their City, and a furious battle ensued around the bridge during which the drawbridge was set alight and the royal prisons of the Marshalsea and King’s bench were thrown open. The next day negotiations took place at St. Margaret’s church between the rebels and the archbishops of Canterbury and York and Bishop Waynflete of Winchester. The resulting pardons offered to the insurgents were taken up by 62 men and several married couples from Southwark; these may have included some of the owners and tenants of the inns in which Cade and his men had lodged. Cade meanwhile escaped to Kent where he was killed while being recaptured. His body was brought back to Southwark for identification by the hostess of the White Hart. Griffiths, 614-15; I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 89 n. 82; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 351-2, 366, 370; Historical Collns. Citizen London, 194. Some sympathy for the rebels perhaps persisted in Southwark, as well as in Kent and Essex, where in the early days of 1453 Robert Poynings*, the local gentleman who in 1450 had allegedly served as Cade’s carver and swordbearer, was said to have attempted to entice ‘much sympell and noghtie pepill’ into fresh rebellion. PROME, xii. 271-2, 324; Carlin, 223.

Trouble on a lesser scale periodically arose from the presence in late mdieval Southwark of several groups of inhabitants driven out of London by the more rigidly administered city. One of these groups were the prostitutes who plied their trade (closely associated in contemporary perception with the dual problems of robbery and violence) in the brothels legalized in the ‘Stewes’ in the bishop of Winchester’s liberty of the Clink. Though these were outside the jurisdiction of the city of London, the authorities there nevertheless did what they could to prevent ‘stew-holders’ and prostitutes from entering the City and to limit the citizens’ access to the Stewes. Carlin, 482-3; Mems. London ed. Riley, 647-8. Nor, however, were these concerns restricted to the wealthy merchants of London. The residents of Southwark themselves complained in 1433 in a petition to Parliament that stew-holders who had ‘sodenement devenuz as graundes richess’, were buying property and hence, as 40s. freeholders, could serve on juries and commissions. These jurors, they argued, had caused many miscarriages of justice in the already suspect court of the bishop of Winchester. As a result an Act of Parliament was passed prohibiting stew-holders from keeping taverns outside stews, in order to curtail their acquisition of landed wealth. PROME, xi. 129-30; Statutes, ii. 278-9. In the 1450s greater efforts were made by Bishop Waynflete’s officers to regulate the Stewes through the court leet and the ‘xii men’ who were to determine cases. Ordinances were promulgated at a series of meetings of the court held between 1450 and 1459, which laid down detailed requirements for the licensing and inspection of prostitutes and those who housed them. Jnl. Soc. Archivists, v. 418-28. Elsewhere in the town prostitution, though illegal, was no less of a problem, and in June 1460 a 20-strong royal commission headed by the bishop of Winchester’s bailiff was appointed to remove prostitutes from all other areas of Southwark. Its success was limited, and prostitution was still a major cause of crime and disorder well into the sixteenth century. CPR, 1452-61, p. 610; Johnson, Southwark and the City, 65; Carlin, 498-505.

Less of a problem as far as the Southwark residents were concerned were the many alien workers whose businesses flourished in this period, particularly in St. Olave’s parish, close to the large market of London but out of the reach of all but the most zealous guild wardens. Forty-four per cent of the aliens living in and around the capital in 1436 were to be found in Southwark. The dominant group among them were the ‘Doche’ from Flanders and the Low Countries who brought with them important skills, particularly in the manufacture of clothing and the working of metal. Although there was inevitably a degree of clannishness among these immigrants it appears that on a day-to-day basis they attracted little hostility from their fellow residents and often joined the guilds attached to their local parish churches. Studies in London Hist. ed. Hollaender and Kellaway, 258-9, 271-2; Carlin, 511-16. Yet sudden outbreaks of open xenophobia, fuelled by political events, could not always be prevented. Feelings often ran high in the City. In 1424 ‘were caste many billes in the Citee and in the subarbes a yens the flemmynges And somme were sette upon the Bysshops gate of Wynchestre and on other B[ishops’] gatys’; Gt. Chron. London, 136. and in March 1436, following the treaty of Arras, when the duke of Burgundy switched his support to the French king, London mobs again attacked the Flemings. On the latter occasion their concern was shared by certain residents of Southwark. A few months later a petition complained about the subversive activities of Flemings who owned taverns and inns in the Stewes and who harboured other aliens, ‘as well Frenshmen and Picardes’, for the purpose of convening seditious meetings. PROME, xi. 234. 511; SC8/27/1309; Carlin, 525. It was reported to the Council in June 1449 that, because of the ‘evil disposition’ of the duke of Burgundy towards Calais, Flemings in London and Southwark ‘ben troubled spoyled and indewly vexed hurt and cruelly entreted dayly as well by souldiours going towards our said towne of Calais for the defence of the same as other people’. PPC, vi. 74-75.

The names of Southwark’s MPs are known for 19 of the 22 Parliaments assembled between 1422 and 1460; returns are lacking for the assemblies of 1439, 1445 and 1455. A total of 22 men shared these 38 seats between them. Of these, 13 were returned just as single time, four were elected twice and another was returned on three occasions. Of the rest, William Hawkesworth and William Kirton II were chosen on four occasions, while William Kirton I was elected to five Parliaments. Exceptional among Southwark’s representatives in this period was Adam Levelord, who was returned for the borough no fewer than six times. It is also worthy of note that four of the borough’s MPs in the period also sat for other constituencies: Bridges was returned for Downton and probably also for Great Bedwyn; William Redstone for East Grinstead and New Shoreham in Sussex as well as for Bletchingley in Surrey; John Gloucester III also for New Shoreham, and Levelord rounded off his parliamentary career with an appearance for the Cinque Port of Rye in the Parliament of 1449-50. Some significance should be attached to the way that Redstone and Gloucester swapped seats at New Shoreham and Southwark in the consecutive Parliaments of 1449. The remarkable parliamentary careers of even just a comparatively small number of Southwark’s MPs meant that more often than not the borough was represented by at least one man with prior experience of the Commons: in nine Parliaments during this period one of Southwark’s MPs was so qualified, while in a further five both MPs had previously been returned. To only five Parliaments (1423, 1427, 1429, 1449 (Feb.) and 1459) did Southwark apparently elect two complete novices, and in the light of the loss of various election returns it is entirely possible that this figure is exaggerated. Moreover, while it continued to be rare for a Southwark Member to be directly re-elected, There were only three known instances between 1386 and 1433: The Commons 1386-1421, i. 817. Hawkesworth secured three successive returns between 1432 and 1435 and Levelord was re-elected in 1437. Indeed, the loss of the Southwark returns of 1439 and 1445 raises the possibility that Levelord might have served continuously from 1435 to 1447. Furthermore, Redstone sat in three Parliaments in a row from 1447 to 1449 (Nov.), although the one in the middle was for a different constituency.

As a body, Southwark’s MPs were surprisingly homogenous, at least in so far as all of them appear to have been resident in the borough at the time of their election: the Southwark electorate, unlike those of many other urban constituencies, generally shunned outsiders. Beyond this, it is possible to identify among the borough’s MPs three rough groupings which, arguably, corresponded at least in part to particular sections of the local community. The most distinctive of these groups was that of London merchants who lived in the borough. The group included the grocers Preest, Purchase, Rokesley and Welles, the tailor Saverey and the vintner Hawkesworth, and made its influence felt above all between 1427 and 1435, when its members filled two thirds of the available seats, and supplied both of the borough’s representatives in 1427 and 1433. Although these men maintained close contacts in the City, even those of them, such as Welles, Purchase and Savery, who later held important offices within their respective crafts, were not as active in London as their fellow guild officials, preferring instead to concentrate upon their interests south of the river. The vintner Hawkesworth was unusual in that his guild activities in London do appear to have affected his activities in Southwark, despite the fact that he was returned for the borough on four occasions. The maintainance of interests in both places had its advantages, as in the case of the grocer Preest who was to be supported financially as an almsman of his guild after the failure of his business in the mid 1450s. A second group of MPs was made up of lesser local tradesmen and artisans, and included the hostelers Overton and John Gloucester I (returned together in 1423), the tailor Moyle, and the minor lawyer, Tyler (who nevertheless had accumulated land in Surrey worth some £16 p.a.). Between them, these men accounted for a further six seats during Henry VI’s minority. Of a somewhat superior social status, but perhaps to be regarded as part of the same grouping, were the two locally resident county coroners Levelord and William Kirton I, and probably also the Chancery clerk, Godyng, all of whom appear to have owed their returns above all to their local credentials, while their professional abilities may have represented an additional bonus. Both Levelord and Kirton were men of property, the former enjoying an annual income of nearly £55 from his land in Surrey and Kent and his buildings in London, the latter passing on to his son and namesake holdings in Surrey worth £20 p.a. To the same group may be added that son, William Kirton II, and Gloucester’s, John Gloucester III, both of whom would serve as coroners later in their careers, although they did not hold the office at the time of their return for Southwark. Taken together, the five men between them took no fewer than 14 of the known seats (that is more than a third). John Gloucester III had much in common with the two other Southwark MPs, Redstone and Bridges, who like him also represented other constituencies. All three found employment under the Crown and in the service of other lords further afield, even if they maintained homes and interests in Southwark that allowed for their election for the borough.

In the absence of any concrete evidence beyond the names of the men returned it is impossible to be certain about the motivation and concerns of the Southwark electorate, but it does seem that the townsmen had a general preference for the sort of men trained in the law who could take on the role of a coroner, and took recourse to less well-qualified neighbours when such men were unavailable. The repeated return of the London liverymen resident in Southwark during a concentrated period early in the reign may point to a concerted effort on the part of this particular community to gain representation in the Commons; the election of one of their number alongside one of the coroners or other local men, as was the case in 1429, 1431, 1432 and 1435, may point to a probably amicable sharing of the borough’s seats between two different interest groups. Only in the crisis years of the 1450s is there any sense of external intervention in Southwark’s choice of parliamentary representatives, when a succession of men closely connected with the royal household and administration claimed a small number of seats. This third group included Pemberton, a master in Chancery, Phillip, a royal serjeant-at-arms, Went, a yeoman of the Household, and Fayreford, the former coroner of the Marshalsea of the Household, and it is possible that further household men were returned to the Parliament of 1455, for which no Southwark returns are known to survive. Even these men, were, however, Southwark residents, and if their household offices made them candidates desirable (or at least acceptable) to the royal administration, there is no reason to suppose that they were unpalatable to the local electorate.

Little is known of the conduct of the borough’s parliamentary elections in this period. For much of Henry VI’s reign, successive sheriffs of Surrey and Sussex compiled schedules lisiting the names of the men elected by the urban constituencies in their bailiwick, and returned these to Westminster along with the county indentures. Only in 1453 and 1460 did Richard and Robert Fiennes* respectively seal separate indentures with the electorates of the boroughs in their counties. The elections themselves were, however, clearly conducted locally in response to the sheriff’s precept to the bailiff of Southwark, who presided over the procedure. It was the bailiff, John Combe, and the two borough constables, John Gloucester III and John Hunt, who counter-sealed the indenture of 1453, while that of 1460 was attested by six named burgesses. C219/16/2; 6.