Salisbury

New Sarum had grown up on the banks of the Avon around the foundations of the new cathedral, built by the bishops of Salisbury in the early thirteenth century to replace the one on the hill-top site at Old Sarum, some two miles away. Destined to be an important route centre, it was situated on the principal highways from Exeter and the south-west to London, and from the Midlands to Southampton and the Channel. Early on, the bishops introduced a weekly market and annual fair, adding a second fair in 1270 and a third in 1315. By the late fourteenth century Salisbury ranked as the seventh largest urban settlement in England, its growth based mainly upon the wool-trade and the expanding cloth industry, with its flourishing weaving and fulling enterprises producing medium-quality cloth in large quantities. Much of the finished product was exported through Southampton, sometimes in ships owned, or partly owned, by merchants from Salisbury. Southampton also served as a place of entry for the city’s substantial imports, which included dyestuffs, wine, fish, fruit and soap, along with smaller amounts of spices, groceries, wood and hardware. Such goods were the stock-in-trade of Salisbury’s busy markets, which not only served the needs of the south Wiltshire towns and the local cloth industry but also attracted buyers from all over the south-west and towns as far away as Coventry and Ludlow. During the period under review Salisbury prospered. VCH Wilts. vi. 124-9.

Nevertheless, although the citizens enjoyed increasing wealth, in part owed to the many commercial advantages obtained for them by successive bishops, the city remained firmly under episcopal control, and its inhabitants were long denied the liberties acquired by their counterparts in other places of similar size and economic status. In 1225 Bishop Poore had granted the inhabitants a charter, allowing them to hold their tenements at a fixed quit-rent and to alienate such holdings by sale or mortgage. Although a charter from Henry III permitted the citizens such liberties as were enjoyed by the men of Winchester and also freedom from tolls throughout the realm, the bishop was confirmed in as feudal lord of the city and given the right to retain the profits of the local fairs and markets and to levy taxes on the populace. His control over Salisbury’s courts and markets persisted into the period under review, as did his exclusive authority in the administration of justice. The citizens were allowed to elect their own mayor and other officials, yet all of these were held to be subordinate to the bishop’s bailiff, before whom the mayor had to be sworn into office.

Disputes between the civic authorities and the bishop had continued on and off throughout the fourteenth century, culminating in a dramatic clash with Bishop Waltham in the 1390s. The mayor and commonalty achieved some success in acquiring from Henry IV in 1406 the right to hold property in mortmain, a privilege previously denied them by the bishop, and in 1412 Bishop Hallum granted his permission for the citizens in their corporate capacity to acquire property to the annual value of £40, but the interpretation of these concessions proved to be a recurrent bone of contention for several subsequent decades. For what follows, see F. Street, ‘Relations of the Bishops and Citizens of Salisbury, 1225-1612’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 186-257, 319-67; VCH Wilts. vi. 101-3; First General Entry Bk. pp. xi-xii. The question whether the commonalty was holding certain property contrary to the Statute of Mortmain was raised by Bishop John Chandler in 1426 and Bishop William Aiscough in the 1440s, while the latter pursued in the law-courts a vigorous prosecution of Thomas Freeman over building-works undertaken on episcopal land. Disputes such as these only served to worsen relations between the citizens and their lord. It is significant that Aiscough’s murder at Edington on 29 June 1450, in the course of Cade’s rebellion, was allegedly perpetrated by men from Salisbury, R. Benson and H. Hatcher, Old and New Sarum, 129-30; VCH Wilts. iii. 323. and that a former MP, Richard Hayne, was implicated. When the insurrection spread to the city itself the mace of the mayor’s serjeant got broken in the fray. Salisbury compotus rolls, G23/1/44, no. 2. Aiscough’s successor, Richard Beauchamp, demonstrated by his pursuit of citizens in the law courts, his careful compilation of records, the ordering of a detailed rental of his property in the city in 1455, and his appeals to royal justice, a steady determination to preserve all his episcopal rights. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxvii. 66-91. Beauchamp made his presence felt by taking the unprecedented step of presiding over civic assemblies, doing so in April 1452 and again in December 1457. First General Entry Bk. no. 452; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 31. Relations between the citizens and their lord became increasingly strained. During Simon Poy’s mayoralty of 1452-3 the commonalty was engaged in preparing a petition for a royal charter of incorporation, which John Hall (one of the Members in the Parliament of 1453) was instructed to present to Henry VI. Matters came to the boil in 1465, when a seemingly insignificant issue stirred up even deeper antagonisms and resulted in nine years of litigation. At the centre of the storm were the argumentative William Swayn (whose acquisition from the bishop of a plot of land to which the commonalty claimed title triggered off major internal disputes), and Hall, whose insolent behaviour towards Edward IV and his Council led to his imprisonment and the King’s demand that he be removed from his position as principal spokesman in the city’s cause. Yet despite Hall’s stand, the strong support shown to him in the civic assembly, and the expulsion of Swayn from Salisbury’s councils, the citizens’ attempts to assert their independence came to nothing. Submitting in 1474, they eventually agreed that the mayor would in future take his oath before the bishop in person. Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 229-31; HMC Var. iv. 204. Not until 1612 was the city to be freed from episcopal dominance.

By the late fourteenth century the citizens of Salisbury were governed internally by a body known as the ‘convocation’. Initially, the number of its members varied between 20 and 60, but by 1412 a senior group of probi homines called ‘the 24’ had been established, and there later emerged a distinct subordinate group of 48. On All Saint’s Day every year the convocation elected a mayor, two reeves (who collected the rents due to the bishop), four aldermen (one for each of the city’s wards), and two serjeants-at-mace to assist the mayor. Every year, but not necessarily on that same occasion, two chamberlains were chosen to administer the city’s own property, and after 1421 four auditors were regularly appointed to check their accounts. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the town clerk, usually a trained lawyer given the post for an indeterminate length of time, had become another member of the civic hierarchy. In 1410 the mayor obtained a royal writ which allowed the community to choose two coroners for the city, and thereafter the election of one or two coroners was recorded from time to time as vacancies occurred, notably when a serving coroner was elected mayor. First General Entry Bk. p. xxii, nos. 89, 128, 275, 358.

In practice the bishop did not interfere with the election of any of these civic officers, although his bailiff could, in theory, refuse to take the oath of a new mayor found not to his liking. All the senior civic officials were ex officio members of the bailiff’s court, which met fortnightly and dealt with cases of probate as well as with miscreants. The bishop’s bailiffs of the period under review were invariably lawyers and selected from the Wiltshire gentry: William Westbury, from 1413 to1426 (when he was elevated to the judiciary), Robert Long, from 1426 until his death in 1447, and John Whittocksmead from 1447 until 1471. Whereas during the period 1386-1421 none of those returned to Parliament for Salisbury are known to have been servants of the bishop, this was not the case in two of the Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign. While in office as bishop’s bailiff Long was returned to the Parliament of 1442, and to that of February 1449 his successor Whittocksmead secured election. This raises the possibility of the exertion of influence on the city’s representation by the bishop, although there are no reports of any such interference provoking any protest from the citizens. They may, however, have actively excluded the bishop’s bailiff from their convocations, for he is only ever recorded in attendance at such a meeting once throughout our period. On that particular occasion he (Long) was present at a parliamentary election held in the convocation on 26 June 1433, and, significantly, was named next after the mayor. Ibid. no. 289.

Salisbury’s relations with the Crown revolved around the financial and military support demanded by the latter. As one of the largest and most prosperous towns in the kingdom, it was frequently called upon to make contributions towards the expenses of national government, over and above more usual taxation. Between 1426 and 1452 Salisbury made loans to the King amounting to more than £500. E401/713, m. 17; 724, m. 2; 727, m. 14; 737, m. 13; 743, m. 13; 747, m. 14; 763, m. 12; 771, m. 29; 780, m. 28; 786, m. 18; 813, m. 10; 830, m. 25. The citizens often sent one of the members of the council of 24 (chief among them William Swayn) to negotiate with officials at the Exchequer the terms of repayment of the loans. In January 1453 the convocation dealt directly with royal commissioners regarding a loan of 50 marks, and in April 1454 the Crown made an express request for £50 from Salisbury, Poole and Weymouth to help fund the sea-keeping force recently established in Parliament. This last was no doubt a matter dear to the hearts of Salisbury’s two MPs, Hall and Hore, who were both heavily engaged in overseas trade and concerned about the security of their merchandise as it crossed the Channel. PROME, xii. 264-7; CPR, 1452-61, p. 164.

The city also had to pay for the lavish hospitality expected by royal visitors: when Henry VI and Queen Margaret visited in the summer of 1457, all the citizens were instructed to turn out wearing special livery, and the queen was presented with gifts of wine, game, cygnets and peacocks. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 3v, 10, 26v. In the same year Salisbury sent 60 men to help defend Southampton from sea-borne attack, and in February 1460 the convocation raised £60 for the country’s defence against the threat of invasion by an army commanded by the attainted Yorkist lords. Ibid. ff. 28-29, 39v. Drawn into the civil war, like it or not, the mayor and commonalty had to decide where to place their loyalty, and responded by dutifully complying with demands from ‘the King’, whoever was in fact holding the reins of power. In January 1461 they arrayed and paid for a force of 128 armed men to defend Henry VI (in reality to help the Yorkists resist Queen Margaret’s northern army), and when on 8 Mar. letters under the privy seal were sent ‘by the King’ asking for more money to pay this same body, the assembly meeting at Salisbury two days later (which, as noted by the clerk, was now in the first year of the reign of Edward IV), made him a grant of as much as 100 marks for the men assembled in his service. Ibid. ff. 43v-44v, 48v-49; PPC, vi. 310. Once committed, Salisbury proved ready to support the new regime financially. That summer, gifts of a silver-gilt cup worth £10 and £20 in money were presented when King Edward came on a visit; Salisbury again sent soldiers north in the spring of 1462; in the following July the manning and victualling of The Trinity of Lymington for the voyage of the earl of Kent and Lord Audley* was financed by the city; and in the next year further sums amounting to 155 marks helped supply the military needs of the Crown. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 52v, 53, 55-56, 58v-59v, 65. Demands continued to be made in the 1460s and over the troubled period of 1469-71.

Salisbury had sent citizens to Parliament since 1275. By Henry VI’s reign elections were made by the whole convocation, in the course of a regular meeting at the guildhall and in response to precepts sent by the sheriff of Wiltshire. These precepts were often enrolled or stitched into the city’s ledger books. For the most part elections took place within a week of the date of the precept (two days being the most prompt response), but nine days elapsed between precept and election in 1461, ten in the spring of 1463 and 12 in 1470. Ibid. ff. 12, 38, 41, 51v, 59v, 63v, 64, 82, 98v-99. A bye-law passed in 1416 allowed any member of convocation to propose whom he pleased as a candidate for election, but stipulated that no one could be elected on a single nomination. Benson and Hatcher, 122-3. The date is 1416, during the second mayoralty of William Waryn†, not 1450 as given in VCH Wilts. vi. 105. On occasion there was disagreement and some of the names put forward were discounted by the assembly. On 7 Dec. 1436 three men were nominated to go to the Parliament summoned to meet on 21 Jan. following, but all three were rejected and William Pakyn and George Westeby were elected instead; and of the three proposed in 1439 one (John White) was eliminated. In 1447 Thomas Temys and the town clerk Philip Morgan were chosen, but then, for an unexplained reason, Morgan was replaced by John Mone. First General Entry Bk. nos. 325, 348, 408. Earlier on in the century the names of the electors were not always noted (the usual formula being that the mayor and ‘many others’ had made the choice), E.g. for Feb. 1413: ibid. no. 114. but in the period under review those present were nearly always listed by name. Numbers of electors varied from election to election, ranging from a minimum of 20 (in 1432) to as many as 52 (in 1461), Ibid. no. 282; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 51v. the average being 38. Sometimes a distinction was made in the record between those who were members of the council of 24 and those belonging to the 48. This shows the participants in the proportions of 15:32 for the Parliament of 1449 (Feb.); 16:30 for the next Parliament; 14:21 in 1453 and 11:38 in 1472. First General Entry Bk. nos. 425, 434; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 4, 109. Clearly, therefore, the superior body did not dominate the proceedings, at least in numerical terms. Curiously, it was not uncommon for the candidates themselves to participate in elections. On eight occasions between 1411 and 1477 both of the men elected were present in the assembly, and on at least eight more one of them was there.

Little information survives about how these Salisbury elections were officially reported to the sheriff in the county court at Wilton. In our period there is no sign that the bishop’s bailiff made the return of the names of those chosen, as had been the case in the late fourteenth century. After 1406, when a parliamentary statute imposed a system of indentures on the shires, it may be that Salisbury, in common with the smaller Wiltshire towns, sent a deputation to the county court formally to present the names of elected MPs for inclusion in the indenture for the county as a whole, but if so there is no evidence to confirm that this happened. From 1407 to 1453 the names of Salisbury’s MPs were merely recorded with those of their sureties on a schedule attached to the indenture for the shire. The schedule listed the names of the shire knights, citizens and burgesses for all the Wiltshire boroughs, with Salisbury always being listed immediately after the county, as befitted its status. Although men from Salisbury occasionally attested the shire indentures, not until 1450 did a clearly identifiable group of five citizens do so. A group from Salisbury may also be identified in later years, although they were not specifically described on the indentures as coming from the city. In 1453 and 1455 separate indentures were drawn up between the sheriffs of Wiltshire and each of the boroughs. The Salisbury indenture for the first of these was dated 26 Feb. 1453 (the day after the election had been held in the city’s convocation), and drawn up by the mayor, Simon Poy, and his ‘fellow citizens’ (concives), who were said to have elected Hore and Hall. That for 1455 was made on 21 June (again the day after the election), with the parties being the sheriff and the mayor (William Swayn), 11 named citizens and ‘all other citizens’. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 4l; C219/16/2, 3. In all probability indentures were produced on other occasions too, although they have not been preserved among the returns sent to Chancery. In fact, one such indenture, for the Parliament of 1472, was interleaved in the city’s ledger book. Four days after 49 named citizens had elected Roger Huls† and John Chaffyn† on 16 Sept. that year, an indenture was drawn up between the mayor on one part and (Sir) Maurice Berkeley* the sheriff of Wiltshire on the other, testifying that the mayor and four named citizens ‘with other citizens’ had made the election. It is of interest to note that the election and the indenture both post-dated the election in the county court of the knights of the shire, which had taken place on 15 Sept. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 109; C219/17/2.

Although there are gaps in the returns for the Parliaments of 1439, 1445 and 1459, and the return for 1455 is now damaged, a complete record of Salisbury’s parliamentary representation survives for our period as the names of the city’s MPs are to be found in its ledger books. Twenty-four individuals filled the 44 seats in the Parliaments of 1422-61. Of these, half only ever represented the city once. However, seven did so at least three times; Alexander sat in five Parliaments for Salisbury, Man in six between 1415 and 1429, and Shirley in an impressive 15 from 1411 to 1423. Furthermore, besides representing this constituency, as many as nine of the 24 also sat for other places in the course of their careers. There was a continuing tendency for Salisbury men to seek and obtain election in the smaller or decayed Wiltshire boroughs, most notably for Old Sarum, with the practice of the early fifteenth century becoming more pronounced after 1422. Conversely, while the citizens of Salisbury may be seen as extending their influence by obtaining election for other constituencies, at the same time men from outside (members of the Wiltshire gentry and lawyers) were starting to be accepted as MPs for the city. In the first category (that of merchant citizens obtaining election elsewhere), fell Freeman, who besides his three Parliaments for Salisbury sat in four for Old Sarum and one each for Calne and Westbury, and Hayne who sat twice for Salisbury, once for Heytesbury and later also for the Dorset borough of Poole. In the second category were Alexander, who before he ever represented the city had been returned as a knight of the shire for Wiltshire; Long, who as well as sitting five times for Wiltshire in the course of his career also represented Old Sarum and Calne; Ludlow who sat six times for Ludgershall as well as once for Salisbury; Mone and Penston, who each sat once for Old Sarum; Morgan, who at different times represented Marlborough and Westbury; and finally Whittocksmead, who sat in 12 Parliaments all told for eight different constituencies, among them the county. When all this experience of the Commons is taken into account the average number of Parliaments for members of this group came to four.

In the period 1386-1421 Salisbury’s representatives had rarely both been novices (this happened on no more than four occasions), in 14 Parliaments both Members had served before, and in 12 one with previous experience accompanied an apparent newcomer. Furthermore, re-election had been a common event, occurring at 16 of the 30 recorded hustings of the period. To a certain extent this pattern was repeated after 1422: only in two of the 22 Parliaments of Henry VI’s reign (1445 and 1455), would it appear that both MPs were newcomers to the Commons; in nine Parliaments both those elected were experienced, and in 11 more one was, although it should be noted that seven of Salisbury’s representatives had gained their initial experience of the House by representing other constituencies. Continuity of representation was provided by Shirley, who was returned to every single Parliament from 1411 to 1423; and re-election happened for all four of the Parliaments from 1422 to 1426, and again in 1432 (Alexander) and 1450 (Penston). After the election had been held ‘in the usual way’ on 9 Nov. 1422, the convocation decided that henceforth it would elect to Parliament ‘one old man and one young one’. First General Entry Bk. no. 231. It is uncertain what was intended by this ruling. If it was that a man nearing the end of his career should be accompanied by someone just starting out, then there is nothing to show that any notice of the decision was taken thereafter: nearly always whenever a man who had sat in the Commons before was returned with a novice the latter could invariably boast several years’ experience of city government as a councillor or office-holder. Furthermore, the novices returned together in 1445 and 1455 were far from newcomers to civic affairs: indeed, in 1455 one MP had 12 years’ experience of the city’s business and the other 30. It may be suspected that the motion passed in the assembly of 1422 was simply a reaction by some of those present to the election of Shirley for the fourteenth consecutive time: new blood was long overdue.

Surprisingly, and contrary to what was so often the case in other urban centres, the parliamentary representation of Salisbury did not usually run in families, and none of the 24 were the sons of former MPs for the city (although Whittocksmead was the son of a former MP for Bath). It should be noted, however, that Freeman, Hall, Long, Pakyn and Swayn all fathered men who were elected to the Commons in their lifetimes (though in the cases of Long and Pakyn not for the city but for other Wiltshire boroughs). Thomas Temys was the brother of William*, who sat for Calne and Devizes.

In the convocation held on 16 Jan. 1445 a resolution was passed that in future no one was to be elected to Parliament for Salisbury unless they were citizens and resident within the walls. Ibid. no. 396. The circumstances of this decision to exclude outsiders are unclear. It may be that external pressure had been put on the assembly, perhaps to re-elect the bishop’s bailiff Long, who would thus repeat the role he had taken in the previous Parliament. Even so, with regard to residence there was no noticeable difference in Salisbury’s representation before and after 1445. The city and its trade naturally attracted migrants from elsewhere, and by no means all the MPs were born in Salisbury: for instance, Lightfoot came from Essex, Mone from Dorset and Pakyn from Sussex. Yet by the time of their elections the majority of the 24 MPs are known to have held property in Salisbury, and although Long, Ludlow, Temys and Whittocksmead may have normally resided elsewhere in the county, they were often to be seen about the city, where Long and Whittocksmead were successive bailiffs for the bishop, Ludlow was clerk of the statute merchant and Temys’s wife was a local heiress. Salisbury continued to favour residents for several years more, at least until 1478. Then, the outsider Edward Hardgill† of Mere, a yeoman of the Crown, was returned only after he agreed to ask no more than 40s. for his parliamentary wages.

At least 11 of the 24 MPs were merchants of considerable standing and wealth, who exported cloth and imported substantial quantities of luxury goods, wine and oil through Southampton. Some, like Hall, owned ships. Several of them were engaged in the production of cloth and traded in the woad and madder needed for its finishing processes; others were grocers. Yet although such merchants filled at least 20 of the 44 available seats they did not completely dominate the representation of the city; only in 1433, 1453, 1455 and 1460 were both MPs known to have made a living from trade. Indeed, there was a discernible change in the representation of Salisbury in our period. From 1386 to 1421 not a single one of the MPs is known to have been a man of law. But in Henry VI’s reign six lawyers were returned. The civic authorities engaged Alexander as counsel and attorney, and, recognizing the value of his experience as an apprentice-at-law employed as deputy chief steward by the duchy of Lancaster, they elected him to five of the seven Parliaments summoned between 1423 and 1432. In 1437 they returned Westeby, a lawyer previously employed by the bishop as an attorney at the Wiltshire assizes; in 1442 Long (then a member of the quorum on the Wiltshire bench); in early 1449 Whittocksmead (a leading attorney in the common law-courts) in company with Morgan (the town clerk, afterwards a fellow of Lincoln’s Inn); and to the next two Parliaments they sent Penston, regularly an attorney in the court of common pleas for citizens of Salisbury. However, it should be noted that although these men of law filled as many as 12 of the 34 seats from 1423 to 1450, thereafter they were excluded from representing the city.

Those MPs who were neither merchants nor lawyers are not always easy to categorize. A few were in the direct employment of the Crown: Pakyn (1431 and 1437), was purveyor of the works at Clarendon; the military background of Ecton (1435), a King’s esquire and royal annuitant to Henry V, was to recommend him as leader of Salisbury’s contingent to relieve the siege of Calais; Ludlow (1439), a yeoman of the King’s cellar for the previous 25 years, was parker of Ludgershall and royally-appointed clerk of the statute merchant at Salisbury; and Hayne (1445 and 1459) later became clerk of the King’s works at Clarendon and constable of Old Sarum castle. Both the MPs of 1447 (Temys and Mone) are best described as members of the gentry; indeed, Mone was called ‘gentleman’ on the occasion of his election.

These last two and at least eight more of the MPs built up sizeable landed holdings in Wiltshire, and five of them also possessed land in the neighbouring counties of Dorset, Hampshire and Berkshire. It is perhaps a measure of their standing as landowners that 14 of the 24 attested the parliamentary elections for the county (Penston doing so at least five times and Hall four), and Mone was especially active in this respect in Dorset, where he did so 12 times. It is not always easy to assess their relative wealth, especially when such wealth was derived from trade rather than from land and took the form of cash and moveable goods, but at least seven of the group were thought to have incomes from land in excess of £40 p.a. and were fined for failing to take up knighthood, Alexander, Freeman, Hall, Long, Ludlow, Mone and Swayn. and the Wiltshire tax returns of 1450-1 show that Poy had land of an annual worth of at least £8, Lightfoot £10, Warwick’s widow £12, Morgan £13 6s. 8d., and Ludlow an impressive £266 (although this included income from estates belonging to his wards). Ecton’s royal annuities brought him £23 6s. 8d. a year, while Mone’s inheritance in Dorset alone was worth £63. So far as status was concerned, 11 of the 24 aspired to armigerous rank (even if, like Freeman and Swayn, they had spent their careers engaged in trade), while five more were styled ‘gentlemen’.

As might be expected, the majority of those elected for Salisbury actively participated in the government of the city, their involvement usually progressing from membership of the council of 48 to membership of the 24 and eventually to mayor, with other offices such as chamberlain, coroner and auditor interspersed. Such a progression was not necessarily uninterrupted, for quarrels in convocation (a not infrequent occurrence) could lead, as in the cases of Hayne, Penston and Swayn, to temporary or permanent expulsion from the 24. In the period 1386-1421, many of the MPs had served as reeves, but practice and attitudes were changing, and between 1422 and 1461 only four (Bromley, Man, Shirley and Temys) are known to have held this post. It now often happened that citizens were prepared to pay a hefty fine of £4 to be exonerated from the offices of reeve and alderman. There was an increasing tendency for the position of alderman to be filled by members of the Wiltshire gentry, esquires or lawyers, who otherwise took little or no part in civic convocations, such as Thomas Hussey I*, Ludlow, Mone and Temys, and only the last, Temys, had been an alderman before his election to Parliament. Swayn was unique among the merchant MPs in ever agreeing to serve in the post. It could excite controversy. Although the prior of Ivychurch was elected alderman in November 1455 and came to be presented with the new mayor before the bishop’s steward, he was taken to task for failing to fulfil his duties, and sued out three writs of discharge against the mayor and commons within the year. Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 21, 22.

Although it is not always possible to discern to which part of convocation individual MPs belonged, it is certain that at least 32 of the 44 seats in Parliament were filled by members of the higher body of 24. Exceptionally, members of the 48 were returned in 1437 (Westeby), 1445 (Hayne), 1447 (Mone and possibly Temys too), 1449 and 1450 (Penston), and 1459 (Hayne again). Thirteen of those elected to Parliament served as mayor at some stage in their careers, Bromley, Freeman, Gatour, Hall, Hore, Lightfoot, Man, Pakyn, Payn, Poy, Shirley, Swayn and Warwick. seven of them doing so for more than one annual term. Hall and Warwick served four terms each. During Bromley’s mayoralty of 1427-8 it was agreed in convocation that anyone who had been mayor should be exonerated from office for five years after the end of his term, First General Entry Bk. no. 419B. yet despite this ruling Freeman, Hall and Warwick all subsequently served consecutive terms. As many as nine MPs (more than a third of the total) had been mayor before their first or only election to Parliament. Besides their participation in the administration of their city, the majority of the MPs showed a continuing interest in Salisbury’s parliamentary elections: at least 16 of them took part in choosing the city’s representatives in convocation, several doing so many times (for example, Freeman did so on 12 occasions, Poy on ten, and Penston on nine).

In addition, several of Salisbury’s MPs were periodically engaged in tasks for the Crown. Although six received royal commissions concerned with the affairs of Salisbury alone, Freeman, Hore, Lightfoot, Man, Penston and Warwick 14 were appointed to ad hoc commissions or as tax collectors in the county at large. In the case of ten MPs experience of such duties preceded their earliest election to Parliament. The most active in this respect were the lawyers, Alexander, Long, Morgan and Whittocksmead, who all served as j.p.s in Wiltshire; Mone did likewise in Dorset, by virtue of his standing as a landowner there. Alexander was of the quorum on the bench when elected in 1425, 1431, 1432, and Long in 1442. In addition, some of them had held offices by royal appointment: Long had been escheator of Wiltshire and Hampshire and alnager in Somerset before that Parliament met, Ludlow had been deputy butler in Bristol and gauger in Hull and London (and was in post when elected by Salisbury in 1439), and Poy had been alnager in Wiltshire and Salisbury for 15 years before he was elected in 1455.

The city’s ledger books are sometimes informative about the wages Salisbury paid its MPs. Often the writs ‘de expensis’ they obtained from Chancery at the close of their Parliaments were enrolled there, and assessors and collectors of the sums needed were appointed in convocation. It was expected that the MPs would be paid at the standard rate of 2s. a day each. First General Entry Bk. nos. 232, 242, 245, 248, 267, 284, 296, 312, 330, 351. There was sometimes an unexplained delay, such as in 1442 when the writ for payment for Long was dated 1 May, over a month after the Parliament’s close, and that for his companion Freeman was dated as late as 20 Nov. Ibid. nos. 375-6. What is lacking, however, are the financial accounts to show whether the MPs actually received the full amounts to which they were entitled. It is at least likely that the two Members of the long Parliament of 1445-6 did not. Their writs ‘de expensis’ instructed the authorities to pay them £40 8s. for 202 days’ service. Ibid. no. 403. This clearly proved unacceptable, even for a prosperous city like Salisbury. As a consequence, negotiations were undertaken with the MPs chosen to go to Bury St. Edmunds for the Parliament of 1447: Temys and Mone agreed to attend for 1s. a day each and no more. In the event the bill amounted to £4 each. Similarly, it was decided that the MPs sent to the next two Parliaments, in 1449, would receive half wages only ‘unless at the discretion of the mayor and commonalty they are to be otherwise remunerated for their deserts and labours’. In the event they were not ‘otherwise remunerated’ and such payment as they did receive was subject to considerable delay. Ibid. nos. 408-9, 425, 434, 444; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, f. 3v. The writs de expensis for the Parliaments of 1451 and 1453 again specified 2s. per day per Member, but whether those elected were actually paid this amount is unclear. The MPs of 1461 received only half wages, and that not until nearly a year after the Parliament had been dissolved. First General Entry Bk. no. 449; Salisbury ledger bk. 2, ff. 8, 51v, 63v.