Chichester

First established by the Romans as the capital of a native kingdom, Chichester had long been the wealthiest and most densely populated place in Sussex. Even though it lacked direct access to the sea, the city had become an important trading centre and customs and subsidies charged by the Crown on wool, woolfells and hides were collected in Chichester harbour from the thirteenth century onwards. After 1341 the locally-based customs officials were held accountable at the Exchequer for shipments along a coastline extending many miles from the Solent to Hythe. The difficulties encountered by John Exton and John Tamworth* in dealing with the Exchequer demonstrate that in practice the collectors of customs at Chichester divided the coastline between them: Exton’s responsibilities extended no further than Shoreham and Tamworth’s from there east to the border with Kent. Chichester housed the staple for the same region, and its leading merchants habitually filled the principal staple offices of mayor and two constables. Yet, as had always been the case, Chichester could not rival Southampton in size or importance as a commercial centre, nor could its merchants compete with those of the much larger port in terms of the value of their imports and exports and the scale of their enterprise. Furthermore, as the customs accounts of the 1460s indicate, the bulk of cargoes entering and leaving Chichester harbour were freighted by foreign merchants, not native ones. E122/34/17, 21, 23.

Chichester’s status as the administrative centre of Sussex had been challenged in the fourteenth century, most notably in the 1370s by the earl of Arundel’s ‘shire court’ at Arundel, established to deal with suits from the rapes of Chichester and Arundel, and the temporary removal of the county court to Lewes. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 651. In the fifteenth century, however, it was at Chichester that the sheriffs of Sussex always convened their courts. The city’s cathedral had continued to be a popular place of pilgrimage since the canonization of Bishop Richard Wych (d.1253), and the business of the diocese increased the number of inhabitants of the city engaged in the service of the Church. The jurisdiction which the bishop and the dean and chapter exercised, particularly over the south-western quarter of the city, inevitably sometimes led to disputes with the civic authorities. Such tensions had manifested themselves as recently as 1407, but in the period under review here relations between ecclesiastical and secular bodies appear to have been largely amicable, and there is no suggestion that the citizens took any part in the murder of the bishop, Adam Moleyns, at Portsmouth in January 1450. Moleyns’ roles as diplomat, keeper of the privy seal, and member of the Council, inevitably led him to neglect his diocese: Oxf. DNB, ‘Moleyns, Adam’.

The civic government of Chichester is less well served by surviving records than the administration of the staple, but it is certain that the mayor was elected every year on the Monday before Michaelmas and by the freemen of the city. Confirmation of the city’s charters, as contained in the letters patent granted by Henry IV in 1401, was authorized by the advice and assent of the Lords in the Parliament of 1422, although this confirmation was itself not entered in the patent rolls until nearly 20 years later, on 1 Mar. 1442. W. Suss. RO, Chichester city archs., A/4; CPR, 1441-6, p. 45. This enrolment took place while Parliament was in session, and the city was represented by an experienced lawyer, Humphrey Heuster, and a local draper, Nicholas Pole. Another matter which was probably dealt with by the city’s MPs was the official recognition of the guild of St. George, to which the leading citizens belonged. On 13 May 1446, shortly after the dissolution of the Parliament which had begun in February 1445, letters patent were granted whereby the guild (in existence since the twelfth century) was formally incorporated, with the mayor of Chichester designated as master and assisted by four wardens. The guild was allowed to acquire land to the value of £10 p.a. to sustain a chaplain to conduct religious services on its behalf in St. George’s chapel in the cathedral. This remodelling of their fraternity was done at the instigation of the guild’s seven most prominent members, three of whom (William Hore, Heuster and Pole) are known to have sat as MPs on other occasions, and it may well be the case that this group included the two men (their names now lost) who had sat in the Parliament just ended. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 461-2.

The liberties of the city came under threat in the few days, from 8 to 13 July 1451, that Henry VI visited Chichester, for as the mayor, John Hilly, and his fellow citizens later protested, the clerk of the market of the Household and other royal officials, ‘plotting to molest them’, deliberately infringed their rights. In response to their complaints, on 3 Sept. the King, considering that Chichester was the place where the county court was held, that the city had been incorporate ‘time out of mind’, that it was situated by the coast and was a ‘special port of the realm . . . where a multitude of denizens and aliens flock’, not only confirmed its liberties, but also granted that henceforth the mayor might hear and determine all matters previously pertaining to the j.p.s in the county, and that the citizens should not be made to collect parliamentary subsidies beyond the walls. B.P. Wolffe, Hen. VI, 369; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 522-3; Chichester city archs., A/5; F.W. Steer, Chichester City Chs. (Chichester Pprs. iii), 12. Edward IV confirmed Chichester’s charters on 1 Aug. 1462. CPR, 1461-7, p. 229; Chichester city archs., A/6.

Since Edward II’s reign Chichester’s fee farm had been fixed at £36 p.a., a sum which, initially allotted by the Crown to the earls of Kent to hold in tail, fell in the early fifteenth century to Edmund Mortimer, earl of March (d.1425). In 1415 the earl granted it for life to Sir John Pelham*, who sometimes encountered difficulties in extracting payment from the civic authorities, but continued to demand it until his death in 1429. The fee farm then reverted to the earl’s heir, his nephew the duke of York, whose son Edward IV granted it in part to his mother, Cecily, the dowager duchess. CP40/651, rot. 483; C1/7/30; C139/18/32; CPR, 1461-7, p. 131. Subsequently, nearly all of it fell to the earl of Worcester: C140/34/53.

Returns for Chichester have survived for 19 of the 22 Parliaments assembled between 1422 and 1460, providing the names of 23 MPs for this period. Surprisingly, one of them, William Brereton, remains unidentified, even though he was presumably the man who had earlier represented Midhurst in three Parliaments and must therefore have made a mark in this part of west Sussex. There is no doubt that the remaining 22 all lived in Chichester and were well known in the local community. In this respect the electorate complied with the statutory requirements. Indeed, the indentures of 1453 and 1460 state categorically that the elected men were residents of the city. Although 11 of the 23 apparently only sat for Chichester in one Parliament each, and six more seemingly did so just twice, continuity of representation was provided by John Dolyte (returned to four Parliaments between 1406 and 1433), William Farnhurst (four between 1415 and 1422), and especially John Hilly, who after representing Arundel on three occasions sat in at least seven of Henry VI’s Parliaments for this constituency. Hilly was clearly the most notable parliamentarian of the group, with experience of the Commons extending over 34 years. In six of the 19 Parliaments for which returns are extant, Chichester was represented by two men with previous experience of the workings of the Commons, and in ten more Parliaments at least one of the MPs was so qualified. Continuity was also ensured by the occasional return of certain individuals to consecutive Parliaments. Both the MPs of 1425 were re-elected to the next Parliament summoned to meet just seven months later, and one of them (Lede) was elected for a third consecutive time, in 1427. Hilly sat in three Parliaments in a row (1427, 1429 and 1431), and later on in two more (1450 and 1453). Although it might possibly be the case that in 1425, 1437 and 1447 both of Chichester’s representatives were novices, uncertainty on this point must remain, owing to the gaps in the returns. There was no obvious break in continuity, or any notable change in the character of Chichester’s representation in the course of the period.

A continuity of sorts was also provided by the election of members of the same local families. Geoffrey Hebbe came from the third successive generation of his family to represent the city in Parliament; John Smolyn was probably a descendant of a namesake who had sat in 1384; and John Fust was a younger son of Richard Fust†, the MP of 1421. Similarly, the MPs of this period carried on the occupations of their predecessors. Nearly all of the 23 made a living from trade, or a combination of trade and inn-keeping. Four of them were usually described as taverners or ostlers, but the variety of descriptions applied to others (such as ‘merchant’, ‘brewer’ or ‘husbandman’), suggests a diversity of interests, and among those elected was a chapman (Balman), a tanner (Seman) and two drapers (Baron and Pole). This was a period when the city companies were beginning to seek incorporation, and the earliest surviving indenture between the civic authorities and one such company, the weavers’ guild, dates from 1479. Chichester city archs., AH/1. There is, however, no indication that those concerned with the manufacture or trade in cloth had in any way predominated in Henry VI’s reign. Goods were shipped through the port of Chichester, at Dell Quay, but there is little evidence to show that the city’s MPs participated in overseas trade to any significant extent; rather, they seem to have confined themselves to coastal traffic and dealings with urban communities further inland. The most successful merchant among the MPs was William Hore, a taverner and mercer who dealt in wine, fish, salt and wool, but his commercial interests bore little comparison to those of the merchants of Southampton, such as Peter James* or John Payn I*, who traded in products from the Mediterranean. The failure of Geoffrey Hebbe’s trading ventures forced him to become a victualler of garrisons in France, and even to become a hired soldier himself in an attempt to recoup his losses.

In the three and a half decades prior to 1422 men trained in the law had occupied 12 of Chichester’s 46 seats for which returns are extant (that is, nearly a quarter), and this pattern continued in Henry VI’s reign, with roughly the same proportion of seats being filled by lawyers (ten out of the 38 documented). Yet this statistic reflects the repeated election of just two of the 23 MPs (Heuster and Hilly), who were returned to Parliament together in 1450. Both of the lawyers, Heuster (who sat in three Parliaments), and Hilly (who, as already noted, was Chichester’s representative in seven), practised as attorneys in the court of common pleas, where they served clients from the city and county, and it may be speculated that their popularity as candidates stemmed from their readiness to do the business of city and citizens in the lawcourts at the same time as representing their interests in the Commons. As might be expected, as their legal practices flourished so did the two establish themselves as men of property, in Heuster’s case by buying land within a few miles of Chichester, and in Hilly’s by acquiring holdings in Arundel and London. The majority of the rest of the MPs held property only in Chichester itself, along with a few acres outside the walls, although Exton, Fust, William Jacob (who married Fust’s widow), Wyndover and possibly also Richard Hayne, possessed more substantial lands, situated for the most part to the south and east of the city. Five MPs were on occasion described as ‘husbandmen’, and one, Exton, as a ‘gentleman’, which suggests that they derived at least part of their incomes from farming. Even so, none of them became firmly established among the gentry of Sussex.

Not surprisingly, several of the MPs who made a living from trade played a leading role in the administration of Chichester’s staple. Elections of the staple officials are comprehensively documented in this period, revealing that perhaps as many as 11 of the 23 MPs served as a constable at some time in their careers, and seven as mayor (one of the latter, Fust, apparently without first occupying the more junior office). Certain of them held these posts for prolonged periods: for instance, Baron and Grenelef officiated as constables of the staple for seven annual terms each, Bernard for nine and Seman for 12. Once elected it was not uncommon for the mayor of the staple to retain his position indefinitely: Hore did so for 27 years in all, and Jacob for 16. Service of this sort may have been a deciding factor when it came to the choice of MPs, for those with experience of office in the local staple were elected to nine of the Parliaments of the period. Furthermore, on occasion a current occupant of such a post was returned: one of the constables (Grenelef) was elected in 1423 and 1453 (Myldewe), the mayor himself in 1431 (Hore), and at the elections to the Parliament of November 1449 both mayor (Fust) and a constable (Seman) were chosen to represent the city.

Civic offices are comparatively less well documented. We know that the hierarchy consisted of two reeves (preposites), a bailiff (evidently superior to the reeves), and the mayor, for it was these four who were generally called upon to witness property transactions in the city. e.g. ibid. AY45, 53, 76. In addition, there were also two coroners, both elected in the city court, and a town clerk. However, substantial lacunae in the local records, and the fact that Chichester’s fee farm was not paid into the royal Exchequer in this period, makes it impossible to draw up anywhere near complete lists of office-holders, even of the mayors. Nevertheless, we do know that five of our MPs served at some point as a reeve, three of them doing so before they sat in Parliament, and that the two lawyers (Hilly and Heuster), and William Lede (a vintner and innkeeper), all held office as bailiff in the course of their careers, Heuster doing so for a long period. At least six of the MPs were sometime mayors, the most outstanding in this respect being Hore who served for at least nine years, usually combining the civic duties of the mayoralty with those of mayor of the staple. The bailiff of Chichester (Lede, formerly town clerk) was elected to Parliament in 1426, and the outgoing bailiff, Heuster, in 1450, in company with mayor Hilly. The return of two experienced civic officials, both lawyers, on this occasion, may have been prompted by the political crisis in the aftermath of Cade’s rebellion, and following the murder of Chichester’s bishop. By virtue of his office as mayor, William Jacob returned himself to the Parliament of 1460, although he vacated the post before the Commons actually assembled. Only Exton is known to have ever been a coroner in the city, and his service in all likelihood post-dated his single return to Parliament in 1422.

There is no indication that in this period relations between the civic and ecclesiastical authorities in Chichester were as poor as they had sometimes been in the past. Indeed, certain factors suggest the contrary. Heuster, who acted as bailiff of Bishop Praty’s liberty in Chichester for six or more years, was still occupying that position when elected to Parliament for the first time, in 1442, and he and his fellow lawyer Hilly were regularly employed by the dean and chapter as attorneys in the common pleas during their parliamentary careers. The services of these two lawyers proved useful to both city and Church; there was no apparent conflict of interest. Nor is there any hint of interference from the Crown in the selection of Chichester’s MPs. For the most part, citizens of Chichester were not appointed collectors or controllers of customs, deputy butlers or searchers in the port, for these offices were nearly always given to outsiders. Only two of the MPs ever held such posts: Exton, who was collector of customs when elected to the Parliament of 1422, and Smolyn, who had served as tronager and pesager in Chichester for six years and joint alnager of Sussex and Surrey for three prior to his earliest-known election to Parliament. Somewhat different is the case of Henry Wyndover, probably the man of this name who had been a victualler of the Household and valet of the royal bakery for nine years, yet Wyndover’s experience of crown employment can have had little bearing on his election to Parliament, which did not happen until long after he had left royal service. No more than four of the MPs (Exton, Hilly, Hore and Heuster) were ever appointed to royal commissions, and only in the case of Exton did such an appointment precede entry to the Commons. Four (Baron, Hilly, Seman and Wyndover) served at some stage as tax collectors in Sussex, Wyndover and Hilly being very unusual in that they were appointed (in 1437 and 1449 respectively) to collect taxes granted by the Commons of which they had been Members; most MPs successfully evaded such an onerous task.

Only four electoral indentures survive for Chichester: for the Parliaments of 1453, 1459, 1460 and (later, in Edward IV’s reign) 1472. Before 1453 the names of the city’s MPs were usually listed along with those of the representatives of the other boroughs of Sussex and Surrey on the dorse of the writ of summons directed to the sheriff of the joint bailiwick. The fact that several citizens attested the indentures recording the shire elections to Parliament (conducted in the county court held in Chichester), might lead to the conclusion that they were also bearing witness to the authenticity of the city’s parliamentary return, but this cannot be proved. Those prominent citizens who attested the shire elections included the sometime MPs Smolyn and Wyndover, who did so three times each, Exton at least four, and Hilly five. It seems likely that the mayor was usually included, as happened later (for instance in 1467 when the mayor was William Jacob), but the paucity of information regarding the holders of mayoral office makes this difficult to verify.

The four extant indentures relating solely to Chichester each displayed different characteristics. In 1453 the sheriff sent a precept to the mayor and bailiff requiring them to inform him which two men would represent the city in the Parliament summoned to Reading. They returned it to him endorsed with the names of the elected Members, and along with an indenture drawn up by the two principal civic officials in the presence of 12 named and ‘other’ unnamed citizens and residents of the city, according to the form of the mandate directed to them. The indenture of 1459, now damaged, was drawn up between the mayor and bailiff on one part and 12 named citizens on the other, but that of 1460 listed as parties the mayor and bailiff ‘of the liberty of the city’ on one hand and on the other 24 named persons, together with ‘others resident in the city’ in accordance with the statutes. By contrast, the indenture of 1472 had as its parties the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex on the one hand and the mayor and 23 named citizens on the other, and stated that the latter had elected representatives by authority of the King’s mandate directed to them. Despite the sheriff’s participation on the last occasion, it is clear that none of the city elections coincided with those held for the county. Three of the city indentures were dated after the Sussex returns had already been made: that of 1453 was dated 26 Feb., four days after the meeting of the shire court; that of 1460 was dated 22 Sept., nearly four weeks after the shire election held on 28 Aug.; and that of 1472 was dated 25 Sept., 15 days afterwards. C219/16/2, 5, 6; 17/2. The shire indenture for 1459 has not survived. The city’s was dated 16 Nov. – a mere four days before the MPs were meant to assemble at Coventry.

The lists of attestors to the Chichester elections reveal something about the civic heirarchy. The 24 names given on the indenture of 1460 formed two distinct groups of 12. None of the second group, composed of relatively obscure figures, had attested an election previously. This may indicate the existence of two conciliar bodies within the government of the city: the first formed an elite which up until then had controlled the elections, and perhaps still largely did so. Altogether 45 individuals were named on the indentures, of whom one fifth (nine) were sometime MPs. Most attestors appeared only once, but six appeared on three of the indentures, and Robert Whyte and William Jacob on all four. Not surprisingly, those named most often were the civic officials, such as William Style†, the sometime bailiff, and Simon Whyte, the sometime mayor.