Devizes

The town of Devizes had been part of the royal demesne since the reign of King Stephen, and by the later fourteenth century customarily formed part of the dower settled on successive queens consort. Thus, it was held by Joan of Navarre from 1405 to 1437, and was then allotted to the King’s uncle, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, after whose death it became part of the endowment of Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou. CPR, 1446-52, p. 559. The older part of the borough to the north-east of the castle (also known as the ‘Old Port’) formed the historic centre of the community, where much of its commerce and industry were concentrated. To the south-west of the castle the parish of St. John formed the ‘New Port’, where the growing town expanded into the former castle precinct and old park. By the Lancastrian period, the castle and park had evidently been allowed to fall into some disrepair, and in 1410, 1420 and 1433 Robert Tyndale†, John Coventre I and his son John Coventre III were respectively commissioned to make the necessary arrangements for their renovation. CPR, 1416-22, p. 274; 1429-36, p. 277. The royal lordship was administered by the constable of the castle, an office granted by Duke Humphrey to Sir Edmund Hungerford*, who continued to hold the post along with the surveyorship of the royal park under Queen Margaret. CPR, 1441-6, p. 168.

In 1334 the borough’s contribution to a parliamentary tenth and fifteenth had been set at just £6 – less than those of Chippenham, Malmesbury, Marlborough and Wilton, but greater than those of Calne, Cricklade or Downton – while in 1377 just over 300 inhabitants had been assessed for contribution to the poll tax, indicating that Devizes was smaller in terms of population than Marlborough, but more substantial than either Calne or Chippenham. The comparative sizes of Devizes and Marlborough did not change significantly over the next 160 years. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 695; VCH Wilts. x. 226. In the first half of the fifteenth century the town was a prosperous one, owing its wealth chiefly to the manufacture and sale of cloth. The volume of this trade could be considerable, with individual traders achieving annual transactions of over £1,000 in value. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 696; VCH Wilts. iv. 296-306. During Henry VI’s reign Devizes, like other boroughs, was approached at various times by the King’s commissioners to provide loans in anticipation of future parliamentary taxation, and on two occasions, in April 1430 and June 1431, the burgesses, headed by John Coventre III, were persuaded to find advances of £10 and £6 respectively. E401/724, m. 2; 727, m. 14.

Devizes’ early charters, dating from the reigns of Matilda, Henry II, and John, had been confirmed by successive monarchs, including Henry IV and Henry V, and the renewed confirmation petitioned for by the burgesses in the Parliament of 1422 was eventually sealed in November 1423. CPR, 1422-9, p. 222. The Crown had recognized the guild merchant in 1371, and ten years later had conceded to the burgesses the privilege of returning writs (previously vested in the constable of the castle), and the right to appoint their own coroner. From an early date, they chose their own mayor, but the method of his election during the Middle Ages remains uncertain, and in 1513 was to become the subject of a formal dispute: one party claimed that the mayor should be jointly elected by the town’s guildsmen and the council of 12 ‘chosen to the rule of the town’, whereas the opposing view was that the guildsmen alone should make the choice. The borough was not to be formally incorporated until 1605. The Commons 1509-58, i. 221.

As with mayoral elections, the franchise for parliamentary elections is obscure. In line with other Wiltshire boroughs, Devizes elected its MPs in response to a precept from the sheriff, and that official then included their names in a schedule which he returned to Westminster along with the shire indenture. In 1453 the burgesses sealed their own indenture, and the electorate was then said to consist of the ‘mayor and burgesses’. C219/16/2. Devizes had returned MPs to the Commons intermittently since 1295, but its representation seems to have fallen into abeyance for the 30 years between 1332 and 1362. The names of both of its MPs are recorded for 17 of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign, but damage to the return of 1455 means that only one of those elected on that occasion is now known. Gaps remain for the borough’s representation in the Parliaments of 1439, 1445, 1459 and 1460. Twenty-one men divided between them the 35 seats for which the incumbents’ names are extant.

Two distinct phases can be discerned in the parliamentary representation of Devizes in this period. The first, up to the end of the 1420s, formed the tail-end of an older tradition which predominantly saw local cloth merchants or manufacturers elected to represent the community. Within this tradition, a single family, the Coventres, established a near-stranglehold over the borough’s representation, claiming 17 of the 30 seats for which the MPs’ names are known between the accession of Henry V and the Parliament of 1427 (a proportion only slightly reduced to 19 out of 40 if the five additional Parliaments until the last return of a Coventre in 1435 are taken into account). It is possible that the Coventres’ record was even more impressive: the returns for the three consecutive Parls. of 1410-1413 (Feb.) and that of 1416 (Oct.) are lost. If anything, the Coventres consolidated their hold on the borough seats after Henry VI’s accession: in four out of the first five Parliaments of the reign both Devizes seats were taken by a member of the family.

Even in the second phase of the borough’s parliamentary representation some element of the older tradition persisted, for while from 1429 a professional lawyer from outside the borough was usually one of its two MPs, his colleague continued to be drawn from the ranks of the town’s clothiers. Overall, eight of the borough’s 21 known MPs between 1422 and 1460 (Chandler, John Coventre I, John Coventre III, Thomas Coventre, William Coventre, Hendelove, Ismell and Smith), accounting between them for 17 of 35 seats, earned their living in the cloth industry, and it is possible that two other local men, Bremesgrove and Craye, were also active in the same trade. Conversely, seven MPs (Giles, Gough, Long, Norris, Spetchley, Walrond and Whittocksmead), accounting for 12 seats, were professional men of law. In 1442, for the first time, two lawyers were returned together.

No fewer than 11 of the known Devizes MPs in this period fulfilled the requirement for residency, at least in so far as they lived in the borough for at least part of their careers. Moreover, the multiple returns of these men meant that at least half of the Devizes seats in the period under review (and all of those between 1422 and 1429) were taken by ostensibly local men. Of the remainder, five MPs (accounting between them for a further seven seats) came from central Wiltshire: Giles lived at All Cannings, Gore at Henton in Steeple Ashton, Long at South Wraxhall, Whittocksmead at Beanacre by Melksham and Temys at Calne and Rood Ashton. Just four of Devizes’ MPs in the reign of Henry VI were complete outsiders. Gough, who held lands in Devon and Cornwall, normally lived in London, Newerk came from East Greenwich in Kent, Spetchley from Worcestershire and Walrond from Berkshire.

It is hard to overstate the impact of the domination of the borough’s representation in the 1420s by the Coventre family on the overall patterns of Devizes’ parliamentary representation in the first half of Henry VI’s reign. It was chiefly on account of their repeated returns that 14 of the 20 Devizes seats available between 1422 and 1435 were taken by men who had previously held the mayoralty of the borough (the other two MPs so qualified were Bremesgrove and Chandler). In addition, Thomas and William Coventre had the distinction of having previously sat in the Commons while serving as mayors, respectively in 1414 (Apr.) and 1417. Later in the century, Hendelove also held the mayoralty, but he appears not to have attained this distinction until some years after the second of his documented spells in the Commons. The fragmented nature of the Devizes records makes it impossible to be certain whether any of the borough’s other MPs also had prior experience of local office. By comparison, at least 18 of the 46 seats for which the MPs’ names are known in the period 1386-1421 were taken by men who had held the mayoralty prior to their return: since, on account of the loss of the borough records, no full list of Devizes mayors can be compiled, this figure probably also represents an underestimate. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 479, 674, 677; iv. 428; C143/414/20; Wilts. RO, Devizes, parish of St. Mary, 189/34, 41, 54.

The wider administrative experience of Devizes’ representatives at the time of their election was generally limited. Giles stood out, in that he was serving both as clerk of the peace in Wiltshire and as a filacer of the Westminster court of common pleas at the time of his three returns for the borough. Of the remainder, the two John Coventres had been appointed to ad hoc commissions in their county, and John I, Smith and Ismell had served as tax collectors prior to their respective first elections in this period. Chandler, who had no such prior experience, was nevertheless unusual in being commissioned to collect a tax to which he had himself agreed in Parliament.

While it seems clear that a candidate’s standing in the community was of greater consequence to the Devizes electors than his prior experience of the Commons, the effect of the repeated return of local cloth men, above all the Coventres, was nevertheless that several of the borough’s MPs in this period built up very considerable records of parliamentary service. Thus, William Coventre represented Devizes no fewer than nine times between 1414 and 1433, his putative brother John I did so six times between 1413 and 1427, while Thomas Coventre and Chandler each took a seat for the borough on three occasions, as did Norris and Giles. Of the latter two, Norris also sat on a separate occasion for Wootton Bassett, while Giles was a Member of no fewer than nine Parliaments, finding six of his seats in other Wiltshire boroughs. Other notable parliamentarians among them were Henry Long, who went on to sit in a total of five Parliaments, on the last three occasions as a knight of the shire for Wiltshire, and Thomas Walrond, who in the last two of his five Parliaments sat as a knight for Berkshire, while the most outstanding was clearly John Whittocksmead, who was a Member of no fewer than 12 Parliaments between 1427 and 1472, in turn representing seven different boroughs and the county of Wiltshire. At the other end of the spectrum, eight men, Bremesgrove, John Coventre III, Craye, Gore, Gough, Ismell, Newerk and Smith. who were elected only at Devizes, each secured only a single return.

Their individual parliamentary service aside, ties of kinship provided some of Devizes’ representatives with familial traditions of parliamentary service. Apart from the exceptional Coventres, five other men could boast such links. Hendelove and Whittocksmead followed their respective fathers into the Commons, while in 1442 Henry Long accompanied to Westminster not only his father but also two of his brothers and his father-in-law John Newburgh II*. Temys had a brother who was returned for Salisbury, while Smith, whose paternity has not been established, was probably a kinsman of Robert† and Richard Smith†, who had represented Devizes earlier in the century.

A majority of the men returned by Devizes possessed prior experience of the Commons. In no fewer than nine of the 18 Parliaments for which the MPs’ names are known were both of the borough’s representatives so qualified, and in a further five one of the MPs had sat before. Furthermore, there were in this period a number of instances of direct re-election of those who had sat for Devizes in the previous Parliament. Thus, in 1423, 1427 and 1450 both MPs were re-elected immediately, and in 1432 and 1453 the same was true of one of the town’s representatives. Furthermore, in 1433 and 1449 (Nov.) Devizes returned men (Whittocksmead and Norris) who had also sat in the immediately preceding Parliament, albeit for different Wiltshire boroughs.