Commons 1422-1461

Although by the fifteenth century the Wiltshire borough of Downton could look back on a long history of parliamentary representation, it was hardly a township of demographic or economic importance. While its taxable population of more than 200 in 1377 made it a more substantial settlement than the neighbouring constituencies of Cricklade, Calne and Ludgershall, it was far smaller than Wilton or Devizes and positively dwarfed by the cathedral city of Salisbury, a short distance to the north.

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.

One of the smaller Wiltshire boroughs, Cricklade was a market town of moderate size and prosperity lying at a strategic position in the north of the county, where Ermine Street crossed the Thames and near the county boundary with Gloucestershire. Its location near a main road appears to have influenced the trades its burgesses followed, since more than half of those identified by occupation in the poll tax return of 1379 were victuallers who must have counted travellers among their most important customers.

Lying next to the river Avon in west Wiltshire, Chippenham appears to have grown up around a hunting lodge of the West Saxon kings. It had a parliamentary history stretching back to 1295 and was a town of some consequence before the Black Death. The plague probably accounts for a severe decline in its population to about 250 in the later fourteenth century. Its bridge over the Avon made it an important route centre and its modest prosperity in the later Middle Ages rested on trade.

Although by the fifteenth century Calne was one of the smaller boroughs of Wiltshire, in its early history it had been a place of some importance as the site of a residence of the kings of Wessex, and twice, in 978 and 997, the location of proto-parliamentary assemblies of the Witan. On the first of these occasions, the meeting ended in tragedy, when the floor of the upper chamber where it was being held collapsed and several of those present were killed. VCH Wilts. xvii.

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. S.J. Payling, ‘County Parlty. Elections’, Parlty. Hist. xviii 258. Its neighbours Somerset and Hampshire were wealthier. Its prosperity rested on the production of wool, for the chalk down-lands which traverse this region fed great flocks of 1,000 sheep or more. Wiltshire made a vital contribution to the country’s supply of wool, VCH Wilts. iv.

In a petition to the Parliament of January 1380 the burgesses of Appleby painted a bleak picture of decline brought about by the visitations of plague and the economic competition of unchartered markets. At the end of that decade this picture was made bleaker by the devastation wreaked by the Scots in the aftermath of their victory at the battle of Otterburn in August 1388. The Commons 1386-1421, i. 678-9. The process of recovery from such brutal setbacks was a slow one, hampered by the general poverty of the borough’s hinterland.

Westmorland, dominated by high ground and with a consequent dearth of cultiviable land, was among the poorest counties in England, and, at about half a million acres, one of the smallest. A petition presented to the Commons by the ‘poor commons’ of the county and those of neighbouring Cumberland, and Northumberland in the Parliament of May 1421 presented a picture of local desolation as plague and Scottish incursions further damaged a fragile economy. Ibid. ix.

As one of the relatively few ‘medietized’ boroughs in England, held, from 1088, by the earls of Warwick, medieval Warwick was notable ‘for the high degree of its dependence on the earls and for its almost complete failure to develop corporate organs of government’. VCH Warws. viii. 476. Even as late as the early sixteenth century, its administration remained largely in the hands of a steward and two bailiffs, all nominated by the earl.

Through the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a period of prosperity for Coventry, it was the fourth most populous city in England behind London, Bristol and York. Its population has been estimated at as many as 10,000 in the 1430s . R. Goddard, Ldship. and Med. Urbanisation: Coventry, 1043-1355, 294. This population may have been diminished at the end of this period. According to the pro-Yorkist source quoted below in respect of the events of Feb. 1461, in 1458-9 a ‘grete pestilence’ killed 2,627 in the city: P.