Lordship of the barony and honour of Lewes, of which the borough formed a part, had passed at the beginning of the century to Thomas Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, who used Lewes castle as the administrative centre of his estates in east Sussex. Shortly before leaving for France in Henry V’s army in 1415, the childless earl settled the honour on his wife, Countess Beatrice, as part of her jointure, so it remained in the countess’s possession after his death that October, and she may have used Lewes castle as a place of residence on occasion. When Beatrice died in 1439 the barony devolved upon the descendants of the late earl’s sisters: John Mowbray, 3rd duke of Norfolk, Elizabeth Neville, Lady Abergavenny, and Edmund Lenthall, then still a minor. The partition of the estate as put into effect in 1440 strictly divided it between the three heirs in equal proportions, so that each received manors and other properties estimated to have a gross annual value of £139 13s. 4d. With regard to Lewes itself, revenues from the castle were split into three, as too were the assized rents from the town and the proceeds of the local courts, as well as the tolls collected at the Whitsuntide fair and the Saturday market and the profits of the local fishery.
Such scanty information about the constitutional history of Lewes as still exists suggests that in Henry VI’s reign it possessed little more than the attributes associated with a manorial borough. The bailiffs of the town may have also served as bailiffs of the rape of Lewes; the offices were certainly combined on occasion, but too few names of occupants of either post survive to justify generalization. Thus, in 1476 Thomas Lancaster was bailiff of both the borough and the barony, and the association of borough and lordship is likewise demonstrated in an appointment made by the King in 1477, during the minority of the heiress Anne Mowbray, when Henry Rake was made porter of the castle and bailiff of both castle and town. The fact that Rake was granted the accustomed fees of his predecessor suggests continuity of practice rather than innovation. A later bailiff of the rape was also ‘clerk of the town’. Yet while we can be certain that the bailiffs represented the interests of the lord, it is less clear who took responsibility for the election of the two constables of Lewes, appointed in the borough court. The likelihood is, however, that they were chosen by the burgesses.
The names of 25 of the MPs for Lewes in the period 1422-61 are recorded on the returns, which survive for 19 of the 22 Parliaments summoned. Half of the group (13) would appear to have sat in only one Parliament each, and five more just twice. The most experienced parliamentarians among them were William Fagger and John Gosselyn, with four Parliaments apiece, and Thomas White with five, and since the parliamentary service of these three individuals was concentrated in the years between 1417 and 1435 it seems clear that during this early part of our period the burgesses of Lewes preferred to be represented by men with some experience of the workings of the Commons. In at least six of the 14 Parliaments summoned between 1419 and 1435 inclusive Lewes elected two men who had been tried before, and in six more one of the MPs is known to have been qualified in this way. The re-election of Andrew Maffey in 1423 and of William Penbridge in 1433 provided direct continuity of service. After 1435 the borough came to be more frequently represented by novices than had earlier been the case. Both of the men sent to the Parliaments of 1437, 1442, 1447, 1449 (Nov.) and 1459, as well as one of the Members in each of the Parliaments of 1449 (Feb.) and 1453, appear to have been newcomers to the Commons, although the gaps in the returns for those of 1439 and 1445 make it impossible to be certain on this point. In this latter part of Henry VI’s reign continuity was best provided by the returns of John Southwell to three consecutive Parliaments between the autumn of 1449 and 1453.
For the most part the MPs returned between 1422 and 1460 were local men, who were living in Lewes at the time of their elections. This was certainly the case with regard to 19 of the 25. Furthermore, some of them were carrying on family traditions of parliamentary service for their home town. John Gosselyn was the son of Walter Gosselyn†, John Parker V the son of the John Parker† who had represented Lewes in 1417, and Giles and Robert Wodefold were both sons of William Wodefold. Such traditions continued in our period with the return of two members of the Godeman family (perhaps the descendants of an earlier MP), and the brothers Thomas and John Sherman† (who was to sit in the Parliament of 1467). It is of interest that three of Lewes’s MPs (Thomas Best, William Delve and John Rodys), lived in Southover, on the outskirts of the town, for in the sixteenth century it was to be claimed that it had long been the custom for the inhabitants of Southover to elect one of the Members for Lewes to serve in every alternate Parliament at their own cost.
On a few occasions Lewes elected men who came from outside the immediate locality. Three of those chosen in period here under review, all of them members of the legal profession, lived elsewhere in Sussex: William Thwaites and John Wody several miles to the north, at Crawley, and Edward Mille in west Sussex at Petworth or Pulborough, like his father and elder brother Edmund*. Thwaites and Wody, at least, had become well known to the burgesses of Lewes through the legal work they undertook on behalf of local people and institutions, so to that extent they were not strangers to the community. Two other MPs may be more firmly categorized as outsiders, even though both of them came to hold property and official positions within the town and barony of Lewes before their elections to Parliament. These two were John Bekwith, probably a Yorkshireman, and John Southwell, whose family, which originated in Nottinghamshire, had settled in East Anglia.
The introduction of outsiders to the representation of Lewes happened gradually at first, with the election of Wody in 1435, Thwaites in the subsequent Parliament, and Mille in 1442. The return of Southwell to three consecutive Parliaments, starting in 1449, of Southwell and Bekwith together in 1450 and the latter’s final return in 1460 owed more to political circumstances, for although both men complied with the statutory regulations requiring MPs to be resident in their constituencies the principal factor deciding their elections to Parliament for this borough (as, in Bekwith’s case, elsewhere) was undoubtedly their status as retainers of the duke of Norfolk. Their elections marked a new phase in the borough’s representation. No close personal links between Earl Thomas of Arundel and the parliamentary burgesses of the early years of the century have been discovered,
The elections to the Parliament summoned to meet on 6 Nov. 1450 took place in the immediate aftermath of Cade’s rebellion which had spread turmoil throughout Sussex. In July many men from the neighbourhood of Lewes, including several from nearby Cliffe, Westout and Southover, had seen fit to procure the King’s pardon, not necessarily because they were guilty of participation in the rising, but perhaps to protect themselves against prosecution for unrelated misdemeanours. Among them were two of our group of MPs – Best, returned in 1447, and Delve, who had sat in the Parliament in session at Leicester when the rebellion erupted – and the Mowbray retainer Bekwith joined his fellow constable of Lewes in procuring pardons for themselves and the burgesses as a body.
At least half of the MPs returned for Lewes in the period 1386-1421 had been engaged in the wool trade, and the tasks allotted to them while in Parliament included the promotion of petitions seeking to establish Lewes as a commercial centre from whence produce could be shipped to Calais directly from Shoreham and Seaford, and independently of the staple at Chichester. Lack of evidence in the form of customs’ accounts means that it is difficult to establish how many of Lewes’s MPs of Henry VI’s reign possessed similar interests, although John Godeman, Andrew Maffey and William Wodefold were all merchants who almost certainly traded in wool, and the butcher William Feret sold fleeces as well as carcasses. Of the rest one was described as a husbandman and four as ‘yeomen’, so it may well be the case that they grazed sheep on the South Downs. To this group might also be added Thomas Sherman, whose livestock and crops indicate one source of his income, although he also profited from money-lending. None equalled Southwell’s status as ‘esquire’, but Sherman, a landowner and ‘gentleman’, was not alone, albeit the other ‘gentlemen’ were lawyers by profession. Their election marks another change in the borough’s representation from the earlier years of the century. In the period 1386-1421 only one of the MPs is thought to have received some training in the law: he, White, served for several years before his first return to Parliament as a county coroner. By contrast, during Henry VI’s reign certainly five and possibly seven of the 25 MPs were men of law. Rodys, Thwaites, Wody and Robert Wodefold, all active as attorneys in the courts at Westminster, fall into this category along with White; while Best and Edward Mille (who inherited the contents of his brother’s chambers at Gray’s Inn), may also have done so. If all seven were indeed lawyers, then men with a legal education took 11 out of the 38 recorded seats.
Few of those elected developed wider concerns in the county of Sussex or beyond, although four of the MPs attested indentures at shire elections held in Chichester: White, three times when he was a coroner; Maffey in 1431 (probably after he had acquired property in the city); and the lawyers Thwaites and Wody in 1442 and 1449 respectively. Similarly, just a handful were appointed to collect parliamentary subsidies in the county – Delve, Gosselyn, Maffey, White and William Wodefold –and it is likely that in Maffey’s case he was elected to Parliament in 1422 because he was due to render account at the Exchequer for part of the yield of one such subsidy when the Parliament would be in progress. The service of Southwell and Robert Wodefold on other ad hoc commissions in Sussex came only after their service in the Commons had ended; indeed, Wodefold’s appointment as a j.p. of the quorum late in his career can have owed nothing to his attendance at a single Parliament many years earlier. By contrast, the position Thwaites had previously held as under sheriff of Surrey and Sussex, may have stood him in good stead when he put himself forward as a candidate for election for Lewes in 1437.
As with the selection of the constables of Lewes, the conduct of the borough’s parliamentary elections remains obscure. Up to and including 1450 the names of the MPs were recorded only on the schedules that were regularly sent to Chancery with the indentures attesting the elections of the knights of the shire. As was the case with other boroughs in Sussex, the first indenture specifically relating to Lewes was drawn up for the Parliament of 1453. Having named the parties as the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex and the three constables of the borough, it stated merely that the constables, by virtue of the writ directed to the sheriff, had made election of two men to represent Lewes in the forthcoming Parliament.