Landlocked in central southern England and surrounded by six other shires, Wiltshire stood eighth among the English counties in terms of wealth, as reflected in the returns for the subsidy of 1450-1.
Major landowners of Wiltshire included the Benedictine monastery of Malmesbury (whose abbots received summonses to Parliament) and the nunnery at Wilton, and the sees of Salisbury and Winchester. Estates pertaining to the Crown were regularly assigned to the queen in dower, so that Henry IV’s consort, Joan of Navarre, held land in the county valued at £158 p.a. in the subsidy assessments of 1412, and Margaret of Anjou’s revenues from Wiltshire provided her with annual revenues ranging from £122 to £178.
Most important in the latter group were the Hungerfords, resident at Heytesbury as well as at their castle at Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset. Sir Walter Hungerford†, created Lord Hungerford in 1426, accumulated estates worth some £1,800 by the time of his death; and his grandson, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, acquired by marriage land assessed at £200 in 1451. Sir William Beauchamp, returned to the Commons in 1447, was summoned to the Upper House from 1449 as Lord St. Amand, in right of his wife, while his brother, Richard Beauchamp, as bishop of Salisbury, joined him there the following year. The Wiltshire family of Stourton provided another baron in the person of John Stourton II, created Lord Stourton in 1449, by which date his estates were worth well over £600 a year.
Although Wiltshire appears to have been relatively immune to the feuds between members of the nobility which escalated into civil war in the 1450s, it did not escape the violent upheavals of the period. At the height of Cade’s rebellion, William Aiscough, bishop of Salisbury, was murdered by a mob at Edington on 29 June 1450. As one of the duke of Suffolk’s closest associates at the centre of government, in the aftermath of Suffolk’s fall Aiscough was held by many to be a traitor. Theft may also have motivated his killers: they plundered his baggage and removed articles allegedly valued at £1,000 as well as £3,000 in cash. On the same day there was a rising in Salisbury directed against the church authorities, in an escalation of the ill-feeling which long endured between the citizens and their episcopal overlord. Other riots flared up elsewhere in the county, and serious unrest continued through to the autumn. Yet Wiltshire was less directly affected by the major uprisings of 1451-2, led by the duke of York and earl of Devon, for their armies skirted the county on their march to Dartford, as did the itinerary chosen by the King and justices after their submission.
The names are known of all the MPs for Wiltshire in Henry VI’s reign, save those who represented the county in the last Parliament summoned before his deposition. The 42 recorded seats were filled by 26 individuals. Although more than half of them (15) only ever represented this constituency once in the course of their careers, a few became well-established parliamentarians. Robert Long represented Wiltshire five times and Sir William Sturmy eight, and if their service for other constituencies is added to their totals they marked up eight and 12 appearances in the Commons respectively. Long’s overall record was exceeded by John Fortescue, who sat in the Commons in nine Parliaments (albeit only one of them for Wiltshire), and Sturmy’s was equalled by John Whittocksmead, who, although he too only sat once for Wiltshire, in the course of a long parliamentary career represented eight different constituencies. The commitment of the last two was impressive by any standard: Sturmy’s service, spread over 38 years and covering four reigns (from 1384 to 1422) included election as Speaker in 1404 (while representing Devon); and 48 years elapsed between the assembly of Whittocksmead’s first Parliament (for Bath) in 1427 and the dissolution of his 12th (for Cricklade) in 1475.
Nor were Fortescue, Long, Sturmy and Whittocksmead out of the ordinary in also securing election for other constituencies: altogether 15 of the 26 shire knights did so, six of them sitting for other shires,
Nevertheless, there were changes in the pattern of representation as the century progressed. While between 1386 and 1421 it had seemingly only happened once (in 1420) that two novices were elected together (although gaps in the returns must qualify this statement), on probably three occasions in Henry VI’s reign (at the elections to the Parliaments of 1427, 1442 and 1447) this was the case. It may be significant, too, that seven of the eight novices returned to these particular Parliaments were never elected again for Wiltshire; and the fact that two of them (Paulet and Green) did sit in the Commons later, albeit for other shires, may indicate that in this county they faced increasing competition for seats. It is not possible, however, to determine from the electoral records whether or not any of these four elections were contested.
For the most part the choice of shire knights (in the case of 21 of the 26) fell on men whose principal residence was in Wiltshire and who had established personal links with other members of the county gentry. Many could look to a strong tradition of service in Parliament within their families. Ten were the grandsons and ten the sons or stepsons of former MPs. Indeed, the fathers of John Stourton, Sir Edmund Hungerford and Sir William Beauchamp had all been singled out by their fellows in the Commons of Henry V’s reign to preside over them as Speaker and convey their views to the King. Others emulated their fathers-in-law or uncles. Among our group certain relationships are of particular note. Sir Edmund Hungerford, both grandson and son of former Speakers, was the great-uncle of Thomas Hungerford; Robert and Henry Long were father and son; and John Seymour I – the grandson of another Speaker (Sturmy) – was the father of the namesake who was returned twice in the 1450s. Just over a third (nine) of the 26 went on to father MPs themselves. All this implies a closely-knit community, with a shared interest in parliamentary affairs, or at least an awareness of the importance of engaging in national concerns, which passed down the generations.
At least 16 of the shire knights came from old established gentry families of Wiltshire, and the county formed the focus of the landed interests and administrative commitments of the majority. Yet by no means all the MPs were natives of the shire. William Darell and John Dewall, the one a Yorkshireman, the other probably of Welsh origin, migrated to Wiltshire after marrying local heiresses; although heir to lands in this county, Henry Green was born in Middlesex to a Northamptonshire family; Richard Milborne most likely came from Dorset; and Sir Robert Shotesbrooke and Whittocksmead hailed respectively from Berkshire and Somerset. Three of those elected in Henry VI’s reign (John Paulet, John St. Loe and Richard Warre) usually lived in Somerset; and Fortescue, a Devonshire man with no significant landed interests in this county, should also be classed as an outsider. Several of the MPs added to their inheritances land acquired through marriage, and in this respect the most advantageous match was that contracted by Beauchamp with the heiress of St. Amand and Braybrooke. By contrast, St. Loe owed his property in Wiltshire to the King’s favour, while others (self-made men such as Robert Andrew, Robert Long and Whittocksmead) acquired the bulk of their landed holdings by purchase. It was by no means unusual for the shire knights to possess manorial estates in other counties (and not exclusively in the adjacent ones): at least 16 did so.
Full and accurate details about the annual incomes of these men of wealth and standing are rarely available. Nevertheless, a rough picture emerges from the subsidy returns of 1412 and 1450-1,
With respect to their social standing, two of our MPs (Sir Edmund Hungerford and his great-nephew Thomas) were the sons of members of the peerage, but neither ever entered the Upper House themselves, even though Thomas, as the son and heir of Robert, Lord Hungerford and Moleyns, would have been entitled to do so in the 1460s had it not been for his father’s attainder for treason. Three of the 26 were later summoned to the Lords on their own merits: as chief justice of the King’s bench, Fortescue received a personal summons to the ten Parliaments from 1442 to 1460, and, as already noted, Stourton and Beauchamp, respectively as newly created Baron Stourton and Lord St. Amand, took their seats in the upper chamber from 1449. The rest of the shire knights were nearly all of armigerous rank, and although ten of them were fined for declining to take up knighthood, 11 did become knights (although not necessarily before their earliest elections to Parliament).
As might be expected, in several cases knighthood followed in the course of military service to the Crown. At least 18 of the Wiltshire seats in Henry VI’s reign were taken by men with experience of warfare overseas. Sturmy had crossed to Ireland with Richard II; St. Loe, who probably fought at Agincourt, had afterwards continued to serve Henry V in Normandy; while Shotesbrooke, definitely a veteran of that great battle, was knighted by the victor at Caen, and later nominated four times to the Order of the Garter (albeit without success). By contrast, Sir Edmund Hungerford was knighted in a ceremony at Leicester in 1426 at the side of the young Henry VI,
This stands in contrast to what had happened in previous reigns. In the three decades before 1422, Wiltshire’s electorate had preferred to be represented by men of war rather than men of law. Between 1394 and December 1421, just six lawyers had been elected, and they had taken no more than eight of the 44 recorded seats. Only in 1415 (when many of the country’s fighting men were in Normandy) had two members of the legal profession been elected together.
As might be expected, the majority of the shire knights (23 out of 26) participated in administration of the county, the three exceptions being Cheyne, who died prematurely (aged 28), shortly after the dissolution of his only Parliament in 1430, Warre, whose later employment focused on Somerset and Dorset, and Thomas Hungerford, whose only appointment was as sheriff in Gloucestershire. Altogether 17 were appointed as sheriffs in the course of their careers, all but three of them in Wiltshire;
Experience in local government may have been seen as a desirable qualification for election to Parliament, for 18 of the 26 had been appointed to royal commissions or office before their earliest returns for the county. Yet four of the MPs (Henry Long, Lye, Russell and John Seymour II) received their earliest appointments to ad hoc commissions only when actually attending Parliament for the first time, and it was during his single Parliament in 1435 that Sir Edmund Hungerford was appointed sheriff. Maturity in terms of age may have been a significant factor too, although the evidence for this is not clear-cut. Sturmy, sitting in his last Parliament in 1422, was about 66; both of the MPs of 1433 and 1450 were in their fifties, and Andrew (1426), Milborne (1439) and St. Loe (1447) were all similarly advanced in years. Yet when Sturmy had been elected for the first time, in 1384, he had still been in his twenties, and at least eight of the MPs of Henry VI’s reign were of a similar age: Warre (1449), only about 24, Stourton (1425) and Baynton (1431) both 25, and Cheyne (1429) 27, while Paulet, Green and John Seymour II, whose dates of birth are not recorded, were almost certainly their contemporaries. The youngest of all the shire knights was Thomas Hungerford, who at date of his election in 1459 had not even attained his majority.
It is possible to discern political groupings in the changing pattern of representation, where the leadership of major landowners in the county played a part. Traced back to before 1415, the influence of Sir Walter Hungerford (Lord Hungerford from 1426), continued to prevail far into Henry VI’s reign. Hungerford had himself sat in the Commons in seven Parliaments, the last (in 1414) as Speaker of the House, and his abiding interest in parliamentary affairs may have lain behind the selection of suitable candidates in the period here under review. His friends, close associates, servants or even kinsmen filled as many as 21 of the 22 seats in the 11 Parliaments assembled between May 1421 and 1433, inclusive. Members of this intimate circle included Baynton, Cheyne and Paulet, while Milborne was steward of Hungerford’s estates and Darell served as under treasurer of England by his nomination. The exception to this near monopoly of Hungerford associates was Sturmy, elected to the first Parliament of the reign, for he, of an older generation to Hungerford, had never formed an amicable relationship with him or his forebears. It is of interest that this particular election of 1422 was verified by 52 attestors, a number well above the average for Wiltshire, which perhaps points to disagreement at the hustings. An even stronger case for controversy may be made for the election of 1435, when the number of listed attestors reached 75 (many more than on any other occasion in the fifteenth century). The outcome was the return of Sir Edmund Hungerford (Lord Walter’s younger son), in company with Sturmy’s grandson John Seymour I, who, contrary to the practice of several years, did not belong to the Hungerford circle. A significant factor in 1435 may have been the absence abroad of Lord Hungerford himself. Thereafter, the latter’s influence on Wiltshire’s representation became less marked, although men associated with him filled both seats in the Parliaments of 1437 and February 1449. Subsequent elections of Seymour in 1439 and 1445, and the choice of the parliamentary novices Green and Lye in 1442 and Beauchamp and St. Loe in 1447, signal a further change, and perhaps a weakening of Hungerford authority in the locality (although Lye was to serve as Lord Hungerford’s steward in Wiltshire later on). After Lord Walter’s death in the autumn of 1449 the influence of his family waned; his son and heir, Robert, 2nd Lord Hungerford, failed to distinguish himself on the national stage.
Lord Walter, a leading member of the Council of Henry VI’s minority, treasurer of England from 1426 to 1432, and incumbent of major duchy of Lancaster offices, provided a bridge between Wiltshire’s gentry and the centre of government. Personal contact with him counted for much, and in return for his patronage he might reasonably have expected the support of well-wishers in the Commons. For instance, during the Parliaments of 1427 and 1431 he could look to his under treasurer, Darell, for assistance in preparing summaries of Exchequer records to demonstrate the financial state of the realm to the Lords. Hungerford himself belonged to an outstanding group of Members returned to Parliament for Wiltshire under Richard II and the first two Lancastrian monarchs, who all took a prominent part in national affairs. They included Walter’s father, Sir Thomas Hungerford†, the infamous Sir Henry Green†, and five of the known Speakers of the period.
It is perhaps possible to see in the election of Seymour in 1435 a reflection of the interests of the duke of Gloucester, under whom he had served both in France as a soldier and at home in forest administration, but around the time of his next Parliament, that of 1439-40, Seymour disengaged himself from Gloucester’s affinity, then forming instead an association with the duke’s political opponent Cardinal Henry Beaufort, who appointed him constable of Farnham castle. Although links between Beaufort and certain other MPs for Wiltshire are on record – notably with regard to the support for him shown by Robert Andrew during the Parliament of Bats (1426), and in the personal relationship between his family and Stourton – there is nothing to suggest that Beaufort made any effort actively to influence the outcome of Wiltshire’s elections. Of Stourton himself more may be said. His name appears as a witness on six extant parliamentary indentures, including that of 1426 when his uncle Shotesbrooke was elected. More significantly, when, in the autumn of 1449, Lord Stourton’s youthful and inexperienced son-in-law Warre was elected to Parliament, the peer’s retainer William Twyneho* stood surety for his appearance in the Commons.
Although the duke of York possessed substantial estates in Wiltshire, only one of the county’s MPs is known to have been closely connected with him. He, Russell, who had served under York in France, held office as steward of these estates, and it is significant that he secured election to the Parliament of 1450, which met in the autumn following Cade’s rebellion and at a time when the duke was preparing to mount a challenge against those prevailing in the King’s counsels. Evidence from elsewhere points to the duke’s active electioneering to secure supporters in the Lower House. Wiltshire was still in a state of unrest following the murder of Bishop Aiscough, yet the election of Russell was balanced by the unusual choice of Whittocksmead as his companion, for although Whittocksmead was the veteran of seven Parliaments he had never before represented a shire. What commended him was his office as bailiff of the liberties of the bishop of Salisbury in which he had been kept on by Aiscough’s replacement, Richard Beauchamp, an intimate of the King and brother of Lord St. Amand. While, towards the end of the Parliament, Russell might have privately backed Thomas Young II* in advocating their patron as contingent heir to the throne, and he went on to sit in the first Parliament summoned by York’s son, Edward IV, there is little evidence to suggest that his partisanship was emulated by any of the other Wiltshire MPs, save perhaps Winslow. Rather, staunch support for the house of Lancaster, notably from Chief Justice Fortescue and those closely linked with the Hungerfords (such as Baynton), is more readily apparent. In this context the election of the young Thomas Hungerford to the Coventry Parliament of 1459 which proscribed and attainted the Yorkist lords, is a reflection of the more widely-held sympathies of the Wiltshire gentry. Even so, while Thomas eventually met the fate of a traitor under Edward IV, his great-uncle Sir Edmund successfully weathered the political storms.
The Wiltshire elections were invariably held at the shire court at Wilton, and always on a Tuesday, even when (as happened before the Parliament summoned to assemble on 21 Jan. 1437), it meant that the court had to meet on Christmas Day.
Some significance should also be attached to the return to the Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, for whereas at earlier elections it had rarely happened that a belted knight attested a return,
Only a third (nine) of the 26 MPs are known to have ever attested an election in this county,
The returns for Wiltshire also recorded the elections for up to 16 of its parliamentary boroughs, usually in the form of a schedule attached to the indenture. On the schedules were simply listed the names of those elected along with those of mainpernors who were supposed to guarantee their appearance in the Commons. As was clearly the case in some other counties, the names of these sureties were not always genuine: sometimes they rhymed with each other, and repetitions were not uncommon. That in Wiltshire they were completely fictitious on at least two occasions in our period cannot be doubted. On the return following an election conducted at Wilton on 16 June 1433 by the sheriff Walter Strickland I* the surnames of the mainpernors for the knights and burgesses read as ‘God Save Alle This Faire Compayne Ande Gyffe Theym Grace Weel Forto Spede For Fayn Wold They Been Ryght Mery [They Been Ryght Mery – repeated] This Too Pray Hyt Hys Nede Godde Thatte Alle This Worlde Ganne Make Ande For Usse Dyed Apon Thee Roode Tree Save Usse Alle’.
In this period Wiltshire contained more parliamentary boroughs than any other county – 16 altogether – although not all of the 16 were represented in all the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. Absent from the Commons since 1413, Downton’s MPs reappeared in at least eight of the nine Parliaments between 1442 and 1459; and, of greater significance, it was for the first recorded times that Wootton Bassett was represented (in the Parliament of 1447), Hindon and Westbury in that of February 1449, and Heytesbury in November 1449. In fact, it was only in Wiltshire that completely new parliamentary boroughs were created in the 1440s.
The practice of returning the majority of the Wiltshire borough MPs in the form of an unattested schedule lent itself to manipulation, and it is thus not surprising to find periodic evidence of irregularities which may indicate that these documents had been tampered with. It is quite possible that alterations to the schedules sent from Wiltshire in Henry V’s reign (with regard to a single MP in 1413 and 1421 and to three in 1414), and in the first half of Henry VI’s (three in 1422, and one each in 1426, 1433 and 1442), may have resulted from scribal errors, although the fact that many of these changes related to the MPs for Great Bedwyn must arouse the suspicion that they were not merely coincidental. Such doubts find confirmation in the marked increase of signs of tampering from the beginning of 1449. The schedule for the Parliament of February 1449 contains names of MPs written over erasures for five boroughs (including the previously unrepresented ones of Hindon and Westbury); and the same applies to those of two MPs in 1449 (Nov.), four in 1450 and several more in 1459. This last included both MPs for Cricklade, Great Bedwyn, Westbury and Wilton, and one of those for Hindon. Nor is the evidence of tampering confined to the schedules, for it also occurs on the rare occasions when separate borough indentures are extant. Most notably, an examination of the electoral indentures for the Parliament of 1453 reveals that the names of both Members returned for Calne, Great Bedwyn, Heytesbury and Ludgershall and one of each of those for Chippenham, Hindon, Westbury and Wootton Basset were written over erasures, meaning that as many as 12 of the 32 borough representatives from Wiltshire in that Parliament replaced other men who had been chosen originally.
While the mischievous play on words with respect to the mainpernors for the shire and borough Members of 1432 and 1433 may be dismissed as a harmless exercise, the signs of tampering on a regular basis are much more serious. They provide an insight into procedures employed to secure the return of outsiders, or otherwise influence the outcome of elections. Thus, in 1450 the name of Thomas Thorpe*, the treasurer’s remembrancer in the Exchequer, was interlineated on the return for Ludgershall; in 1453 Thorpe’s associate, the Lincoln’s Inn lawyer Thomas Umfray*, and the usher of the Parliament chambers, Richard Baron*, were given seats for Great Bedwyn, and in 1459, again for Great Bedwyn, the names of the privy-seal clerk, John Alomby*, and the obscure northerner Geoffrey Southworth* replaced two others which were rubbed out. In all probability alterations such as these were made not by the sheriff or his officers at the county court, but after the electoral returns had been delivered at Parliament’s meeting-place. In certain respects Wiltshire’s experience found a parallel in Dorset, where between February 1449 and 1455 at least 12 borough seats were taken by outsiders who, not only strangers to the boroughs themselves but also to the county, were all busy about the Exchequer, in official or unofficial capacities. There too, it may be surmised that records were emended after their return into Chancery, sometimes perhaps on the initiative of Thomas Thorpe.
Otherwise, external influence on the representation of the Wiltshire boroughs may be seen to have emanated from the county’s most important landowners, Sir William Sturmy, until his death in 1427, and his descendants the Seymours thereafter; John, Lord Stourton, particularly during his ascendancy in the King’s counsels; and above all the Hungerfords, whose servants and associates took at least 35 borough seats of the period.