East Grinstead

East Grinstead, a borough pertaining to the duchy of Lancaster, had been granted by Henry IV with the rest of the duchy estates in Sussex to Sir John Pelham*, to hold for life. Accordingly, it returned to the possession of the Crown only at Pelham’s death in 1429. Revenues paid annually by the townsmen to the Crown did not amount to much during the remainder of Henry VI’s reign, at best coming to a little over £2 13s. clear after deductions (as in 1440-1), at worse to no more than 18s. (as in 1458-9). On average, the profits amounted to about 33s. 4d. a year, but there was a noticeable decline in receipts in the late 1450s. DL29/442/7114-16, 7119, 7121-3; 453/7297, 7298, 7301, 7303-7. This decrease in revenues may be partly attributed to the adoption by the duchy council of a more realistic attitude towards the collection of arrears; some rents were simply impossible to collect. In response to petitions claiming depopulation and poverty on the Sussex estates of the duchy, new arrangements were made in May 1442 whereby certain of the dues from inhabitants of East Grinstead were relaxed. Hitherto, the town had paid a flat sum of 20s. as a ‘common fine’, but from henceforth every resident over 12 years of age was to pay 1d. The amount collected varied over the years between then and 1461, with the number of adults charged varying from as many as 114 in 1444-5 to as few as 48 in 1456-7. Yet as no regular pattern of decline is discernable, it may be that the considerable fluctuation in the figures reflects more on the ability of individual collectors to levy the sums due, rather than to an improbable variation in the number of inhabitants from one year to the next. On average, the number of adults listed was 75; DL29/442/7117-20, 7122, 7123; 443/7124, 7126-32. and despite the fluctuations the population seems to have stayed quite stable. In 1472-3 the amount collected was 6s. 1d., indicating that 73 adults were then living in East Grinstead. DL29/735/12056.

Given the size of the borough’s population it is not surprising that only ten of the 25 men known to have represented East Grinstead in the Parliaments summoned from 1422 to 1460 were resident in the town or lived in its immediate locality, and that the borough was often represented by strangers. Nevertheless, the introduction of outsiders was a new phenomenon, apparently first occurring in the period here under review. Although the place of residence of nine of the 18 MPs who represented the borough in the Parliaments of 1386-1421 has not been discovered, they are presumed to have been obscure local men, while the other nine were definitely resident, or were landowners from nearby; none of the 18 are known for certain to have been outsiders. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 655. This state of affairs continued for a while after Henry VI came to the throne, with nine of the ten seats in the Parliaments of 1422 to 1429 being taken by local men. Many of them were experienced in the workings of the Commons: they included John Mason and John Alfray I, both returned twice for this constituency, William Fenningham and Richard Fowell, who each sat for East Grinstead three times, John Woghere, who did so in six Parliaments between 1414 and 1437, and John Dyne, a veteran of ten Parliaments from 1383 to 1423. Two of this group came from families which had provided representatives for the borough in the past: John Woghere was perhaps the son of Richard†, and Alfray came from the third generation of his family to sit for East Grinstead since the 1360s. Yet despite their experience of Parliaments, for the most part the MPs who sat before the 1430s failed to make a mark beyond the confines of the immediate neighbourhood. Few owned much land, although most of them probably made a living from farming. Woghere, for example, was described as a ‘yeoman’. None of them held office as duchy bailiff of East Grinstead – at least not in the years between 1438 and 1464 when the names of the bailiffs are recorded. The most outstanding of the group was Fenningham, an attorney whose busy practice in the court of common pleas attracted many clients from among the leading gentry and burgesses of Sussex; his three returns for his home town of East Grinstead, as well as elections for two other Sussex boroughs, suggest that his skills as an advocate were also expected to be of use in the Commons.

A change in the representation of the borough took place in the 1430s. After 1429 it only happened on one occasion (in 1437) that two local men were sent to Parliament together. Thereafter, local men filled just one of the two seats in 1447, 1450, 1453, 1459 and 1460, on each occasion this being one or other of the Alfray brothers, John II and Richard, and they, although natives of East Grinstead, were markedly different in type from the Wogheres and Dynes so dominant in the earlier years of the century. The Alfrays were landowners with holdings at Worth and over the county border in Surrey, and John Alfray II was to be accorded armigerous rank when at the peak of his career in royal service. Richard, being a lawyer, was more often described as a ‘gentleman’, and numbered among his clients various London merchants and such leading members of the Sussex gentry as (Sir) Roger Lewknor*. The Alfrays provided continuity in the representation of their home town, for between them John Alfray I and his two sons represented East Grinstead in nine Parliaments between 1421 and 1478.

Even so, such figures, distinguished in the locality, were outnumbered by the 15 outsiders returned for the borough in this period. Some of the outsiders were at least men of Sussex: Chaloner lived at Cuckfield and had lands near Lewes and on the coast, besides the property he acquired in Surrey; Eyr probably lived at Battle and Page at Buxted; while Westbourne came from the neighbourhood of Hastings in the east of the county, and Russell’s interests were in the west, centred on Chichester. Two others usually lived in Surrey: Janyn at Croydon and Redstone at Southwark. Yet an equal number of MPs had their origins much further away: Robert Danvers came from Oxfordshire, Richard Dalby II from Warwickshire, John Blakeney from Norfolk, Hugh Huls and Ralph Legh from Cheshire, and Robert Rednesse from Yorkshire, while Richard Strickland’s family hailed from Westmorland (although he probably lived in Buckinghamshire). The place of residence of the last, John Stokes II, has not been discovered. Another characteristic of this group of MPs was that so many of them (nine of the 15) represented other constituencies besides East Grinstead in the course of their careers. Blakeney, Danvers and Legh all sat as shire knights, respectively for Norfolk, Oxfordshire and Surrey. The rest all represented other boroughs in Surrey and Sussex: Stokes also sat for Midhurst; Westbourne for Hastings; Huls for Gatton and Midhurst; Russell for Chichester, Midhurst and Reigate; Redstone for Southwark, New Shoreham and Bletchingley (a total of five Parliaments); and Janyn for Bletchingley, Reigate and Horsham (bringing his total up to six Parliaments of which three were for East Grinstead). Besides representing Surrey, Legh also sat for the Wiltshire borough of Downton three times, and the Somerset borough of Taunton once, so that he too sat in six Parliaments all told. Yet despite this accumulation of parliamentary experience, only four of the nine had sat in the Commons prior to their returns for East Grinstead. Russell, Legh, Westbourne and Blakeney. The last, Blakeney, had previously served as a shire knight.

Although the 15 outsiders do not fit readily into fixed categories, nine of them were evidently professional lawyers or administrators, who may have commended themselves to the electors by their familiarity with the courts at Westminster and their influential contacts there. Such were Chaloner, an attorney in the court of common pleas, Dalby, an experienced feodary who found employment with a succession of noble patrons, Danvers, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer – already in 1435 showing the qualities which would lead to his promotion to the judiciary 15 years after he sat in Parliament for East Grinstead, More to the point, he was currently engaged in lawsuits over the estates of the prominent local landowner Thomas St. Cler (d.1435). Janyn, subsequently bailiff of the liberties of the bishop of Chichester, Legh, chirographer of the common pleas, Rednesse, another feodary, Redstone, a ‘gentleman’ and probable lawyer, Russell, an attorney at the Sussex assizes and former bailiff of the rape of Arundel, and Westbourne, later steward of the Pelham estates. Several of them were, or afterwards became, landowners of substance: Redstone’s income from land in Middlesex and Surrey amounted to at least £20 p.a.; Dalby inherited property worth £33 p.a.; Danvers stood to inherit considerable estates in Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire and died a very wealthy man; and Legh became rich through royal service.

Legh was by no means alone among the MPs in being a servant of the Crown, and, most likely, owing his return for East Grinstead to his position at the royal court. The influence of the Crown on the representation of the borough may be charted from the 1440s. Dalby, returned in 1442, was perhaps already linked to the duchy of Lancaster; Legh (1447) was a leading servant of the Household and former serjeant of the catery, currently occupying many offices by Henry VI’s appointment; to the two Parliaments of 1449 East Grinstead returned John Blakeney, usher of the King’s chamber and clerk of his signet; Currently also joint clerk of the exchange in the Tower, controller of customs at Yarmouth and escheator of Norf. and Suff. John Stokes II (February 1449) was possibly the household esquire of this name; Hugh Huls (November 1449) was, like Legh, a crown servant holding offices in North Wales; and Richard Strickland (returned in 1453 when aged just 21) was master of the King’s harriers. Undoubtedly, Strickland’s father-in-law, Thomas Thorpe*, one of the barons of the Exchequer and destined to be Speaker in the Parliament, was influential in securing his return. To this group of Household men with no known connexion with East Grinstead may be added John Alfray II, the local man who sat in four Parliaments from 1447 to 1459, for Alfray was a yeoman of the Crown, and, like Blakeney, an usher of the King’s chamber.

Yet, if there was any active interference from outside in the elections at East Grinstead this is not revealed in the electoral returns. Before 1453 the names of the representatives were simply given on a schedule with those of the other Members for the Sussex boroughs. For the Parliament of 1453 each of the nine parliamentary boroughs returned an indenture. That for East Grinstead was drawn up on 20 Feb. between the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex and William Moumbray and Thomas Coke, the town constables, and merely testified that the constables and ‘community of the borough’ had elected Strickland and Alfray. As the indenture pre-dated the meeting of the shire court at Chichester by two days, East Grinstead shared with Bramber the distinction of making the earliest return of the Sussex boroughs, but even so this was a mere two weeks before the Parliament assembled at Reading. The second indenture to survive related to the Parliament summoned in 1472. This, written in English, had as its parties the sheriff of Sussex and 12 named burgesses of East Grinstead with an unspecified number of others un-named. Finally, in 1478 the indenture was made between the sheriff and the bailiff of East Grinstead with 11 named burgesses ‘and others’. C219/16/2, 5; 17/2, 3. Thus, all that can be said is that the returns lacked consistency, and even the principal participants varied from one election to another.