The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485-1504

THE E N G L I S H PARLI AME NTS OF H E N RY VI I

OXF O R D H I S TO R I C A L M O N O G R A PH S Editors p. clavin r. j. w. evans l. goldman j. robertson r. service p. a. slack b. ward-perkins j. l. watts

The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485–1504 P. R . C AV ILL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © P. R. Cavill 2009

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Cavill, P. R. (Paul R.), 1980– The English Parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504 / P. R. Cavill. p. cm.—(Oxford historical monographs) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–19–957383–7 (hardback) 1. Great Britain. Parliament—History—To 1500. 2. Great Britain. Parliament—History—16th century. 3. Great Britain—Politics and government—1485–1509. 4. Constitutional history—Great Britain. 5. Henry VII, King of England, 1457–1509. I. Title. JN525.C36 2009 328.4109 024—dc22 2009020075 Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in the UK on acid-free paper by MPG Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–957383–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

For my mother

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Preface The parliaments of Henry VII have usually been narrated as a minor episode in the grand sweep of constitutional history that encompasses the ‘new monarchy’, the ‘Tudor despotism’, and the ‘Tudor revolution in government’. Lack of familiar evidence has reinforced that marginalization and has discouraged sustained investigation. My intention therefore has been to examine these parliaments in their own right through a broader range of sources. The large body of work on the late medieval and early modern parliament has guided my research, while many studies of political, legal, and administrative history have underpinned my argument. Drawing on these works, this study seeks to show that Henry’s parliaments were livelier and more consequential than has been thought. I have not exhausted the subject; further research, particularly by the History of Parliament Trust, will extend and modify the findings presented here. My study aspires to be an engaging exploration of what remains a relatively opaque period of parliament’s history. Since starting research in 2001, I have accumulated many debts—both academic and personal—which it is a pleasure now to acknowledge. Steve Gunn proposed the subject, supervised my graduate work, and edited this study. In all that time his enthusiasm and generosity have never flagged, for which I am deeply grateful. An inspiring undergraduate tutor, John Watts has continued to counsel and encourage; to him also I am most grateful. My approach in this study reflects, I hope, what I have learned from John and Steve as scholars. Hannes Kleineke welcomed me as an apprentice parliamentary historian and has since shared much of his research and learning. This study has benefited from his insights, as I have appreciated his support; I am very grateful to Hannes too. For lending their expertise, offering advice, and putting me right on many occasions, I should like to thank the examiners of my doctoral thesis, Ian Archer and George Bernard, and also Paul Brand, Linda Clark, Sean Cunningham, Cliff Davies, David Grummitt, Alasdair Hawkyard, Mark Horowitz, Rosemary Horrox, Maureen Jurkowski, Malcolm Mercer, Simon Payling, and James Ross. I am especially grateful to George and Hannes for their comments on drafts of this work, which improved it considerably.

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In addition, I should like to thank those people whose company, encouragement, and intellectual stimulus made possible the research and writing of this study. In particular, I am grateful to my graduate contemporaries Katherine Halliday, Alex Lumbers, and Megan Wheeler (fellow residents of Randolph Street) and Tracey Sowerby, whose friendship has meant a lot to me. I should also like to thank Anna Bayman, Alex Gajda, Caroline Halliday, Judith and David Loades, Kevin Sharpe, George Southcombe, Grant Tapsell, and everyone at Barbeyroux. I have appreciated the support of the following bodies: the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded my graduate research at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; Merton College, Oxford, which elected me to a junior research fellowship; and the School of History, Welsh History, and Archaeology at Bangor University, which appointed me to a lectureship. Finally, I owe an immense debt to my family for all their support: to my grandparents, to my sister Nicola, and—most of all—to my mother. This work is dedicated to her with love and gratitude. P.R.C. July 2008

Contents Abbreviations Note on the Text Sessions of Parliament, 1485–1504 Introduction

xi xiii xiv 1

I . T H E C ROW N A N D PA R L I A M E N T 1. Legitimation 1.1 Ceremony, Communication, and Consultation 1.2 The Royal Title and the Succession 1.3 Punishing Disloyalty 2. Income

21 21 28 33 46

2.1 Crown Lands 2.2 Customs 2.3 The Lay Subsidy 3. Justice

46 56 59 71

3.1 Motives for Legislation 3.2 Conciliar Remedies and Equitable Jurisdictions 3.3 Profit

72 78 92

I I . PA R L I A M E N T I N T H E P O L I T Y 4. Representation 4.1 The Lords 4.2 Elections 4.3 Constituencies and MPs

105 106 117 132

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5. Law-Making 5.1 Procedure 5.2 Lobbying 5.3 Types of Legislation 6. The Wider Realm 6.1 Reporting Parliament 6.2 The Reception of Legislation 6.3 Tax Collecting

146 146 153 161 175 175 180 187

I I I . PA R L I A M E N T U N D E R T H E ‘ N EW M O N A RC H Y ’ 7. The Illusion of Decline 7.1 The Infrequency of Parliaments 7.2 Fiscal Feudalism 7.3 A Comparative Perspective 8. The Evolution of Parliament

199 199 205 212 218

8.1 The Parliamentary Trinity 8.2 The Rise of the Legislature 8.3 Authorized Tyranny

218 228 239

Conclusion

245

Bibliography Index

247 283

Abbreviations

BIHR

Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research

BL

British Library

CCR

Calendar of the Close Rolls

CPR

Calendar of the Patent Rolls

CSP

Calendar of the State Papers

EETS

Early English Text Society

EHR

English Historical Review

HMC

Historical Manuscripts Commission

HP 1386–1421

J. S. Roskell, C. Rawcliffe, and L. Clark (eds.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1386–1421, 4 vols. (Stroud, 1992)

HP 1439–1509

J. C. Wedgwood and A. Holt (eds.), The History of Parliament, 1439–1509, 2 vols. (London, 1936–8)

HP 1509–58

S. T. Bindoff (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1509–1558, 3 vols. (London, 1982)

LJ i.

Journals of the House of Lords, i: 1509–1577 (London, 1802)

LP

Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. Gairdner, and R. H. Brodie, 21 vols. in 36 pts. (London, 1862–1932)

OA

Parliamentary Archives, Original Acts

PRO

The National Archives: Public Record Office

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Abbreviations

PROME

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al., 16 vols. (Woodbridge, 2005)

RP

Rotuli Parliamentorum, ed. J. Strachey et al., 6 vols. (London, 1767–77)

SR

The Statutes of the Realm, ed. A. Luders et al., 11 vols. (London, 1810–28)

STC

A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475–1640, ed. A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, rev. W. A. Jackson, F. S. Ferguson, and K. F. Pantzer, 3 vols. (2nd edn., London, 1976–91), cat. no.

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

TRP

Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin, 3 vols. (New Haven, 1964–9)

YB

[Year Books] Les Reports des Cases, ed. J. Maynard, 11 vols. (London, 1678–80)

Note on the Text The principal sources for this study are the parliament rolls. In a footnote the main reference is to the new printed edition (PROME). An additional reference is given in brackets in order to locate the passage in the computerized versions of PROME; this reference is usually to the corresponding passage in the old edition of the parliament rolls (RP). Where only one edition is cited, the material is not found in the other. References to statutes are by regnal year and chapter number, following the official calendar The Chronological Table of the Statutes (published annually by the crown). Note that there is an alternative numbering for the statutes of 3 Hen. VII (1487). The text of the statutes is taken from the parliament rolls as edited in PROME; RP did not print the statutes of Henry VII’s reign. The standard edition of the statutes (SR) prior to the publication of PROME was based for Henry’s reign on manuscript statute books and on the parliament rolls. For the parliaments of 1491–2, 1495, 1497, and 1504, SR reproduced from the parliament rolls all the acts passed, private as well as public. This decision is replicated by The Chronological Table, which therefore assigns chapter numbers to public acts passed in Henry’s first three parliaments but to all acts passed in Henry’s last four parliaments. Only public acts are cited by chapter number here. Contemporary printed editions of proclamations and statutes are referenced in footnotes by Short-Title Catalogue number (STC). Further details are given in the Bibliography under the headings ‘Proclamations’ and ‘Statutes’ in the Primary Sources: Printed Works. Dates are given old style, but the year is taken to begin on 1 January. RP and SR followed contemporary practice in beginning the new year on 25 March. Thus the parliaments of 1488(–9), 1496, and 1503 by their reckoning are the parliaments of 1489(–90), 1497, and 1504 here. In quotations from manuscript sources, punctuation and capitalization have been modernized.

Sessions of Parliament, 1485–1504 1485–6 Parliament Summoned: 15 Sept. 1485¹ Met: 7 Nov. 1485² Prorogued: 10 Dec. 1485³ 2nd session met: 23 Jan. 1486⁴ Dissolved: 4 March 1486⁵ 1487 Parliament Summoned: 1 Sept. 1487⁶ Met: 9 Nov. 1487⁷ Dissolved: 18 Dec. 1487⁸ 1489–90 Parliament Summoned: ? mid Nov. 1488⁹ Met: 13 Jan. 1489¹⁰ ¹ CCR 1485–1500, 14–15. ² PROME xv. 90 (RP vi. 267a). ³ PROME xv. 112–13 (RP vi. 278). ⁴ Ibid. ⁵ On 4 March a writ de expensis was issued to Warwickshire’s MPs for 76 days’ attendance (excluding travel): PRO, E13/172, Mich., rot. 12d. That figure would have meant dissolution on 5 March, which fell in 1486 on a Sunday, when parliament did not sit. The figure of 76 was probably an error for 75. According to Canterbury’s accounts, the parliament was dissolved on 4 March: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 7, fo. 42r. According to Hull’s accounts, the parliament was dissolved on 3 March; the dates given for the first session were incorrect, however: Hull City Archives, BRF/2/385, m. 2. ⁶ CCR 1485–1500, 69. ⁷ PROME xv. 337 (RP vi. 385a). ⁸ Hull City Archives, BRF/2/387, m. 2. According to Canterbury’s accounts, the parliament lasted 40 days: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 7, fo. 86r. ⁹ The summonses were unlikely to have pre-dated the meeting of a great council on 9 or 10 Nov.: ibid., fo. 101v; P. Holmes, ‘The Great Council in the Reign of Henry VII’, EHR 101 (1986), 844 n. 7. The convocations of Canterbury and York were summoned on 19 Nov. and 14 Nov. respectively: Records of Convocation, vi: Canterbury, 1444–1509, ed. G. Bray (Woodbridge, 2005), 337–8; Records of Convocation, xiv: York, 1461–1625, ed. G. Bray (Woodbridge, 2006), 79–80. Of the constituencies whose election dates are known, London held its election the earliest on 2 Dec.: London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fo. 222r. ¹⁰ PROME xvi. 8 (RP vi. 409a).

Sessions of Parliament, 1485–1504

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Prorogued: 23 Feb. 1489¹¹ 2nd session met: 14 Oct. 1489¹² Prorogued: 4 Dec. 1489¹³ 3rd session met: 25 Jan. 1490¹⁴ Dissolved: 27 Feb. 1490¹⁵ 1491–2 Parliament Summoned: 12 Aug. 1491¹⁶ Met: 17 Oct. 1491¹⁷ Prorogued: 4 Nov. 1491¹⁸ 2nd session met: 26 Jan. 1492¹⁹ Dissolved: 5 March 1492²⁰ 1495 Parliament Summoned: 12 Aug. 1495²¹ Met: 14 Oct. 1495²² Dissolved: 21 Dec. 1495²³ 1497 Parliament Summoned: 20 Nov. 1496²⁴ Met: 16 Jan. 1497²⁵ Dissolved: 13 March 1497²⁶ ¹¹ PROME xvi. 43–4 (RP vi. 424a). ¹² PROME xvi. 44 (RP vi. 424a). ¹³ PROME xvi. 49 (RP vi. 426a). ¹⁴ Ibid. ¹⁵ PROME xvi. 88 (RP vi. 439b). ¹⁶ CCR 1485–1500, 165–6. ¹⁷ PROME xvi. 92 (RP vi. 440a). ¹⁸ PROME xvi. 100 (RP vi. 444a). ¹⁹ Ibid. ²⁰ PROME xvi. 134 (RP vi. 457b). ²¹ PRO, C54/355, m. 19[b]d (CCR 1485–1500, 248). ²² PROME xvi. 141 (RP vi. 458a). ²³ Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), 207. ²⁴ CCR 1485–1500, 287–8. ²⁵ PROME xvi. 283 (RP vi. 509a). ²⁶ Chronicles of London, 213; The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley (London, 1938), 275.

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1504 Parliament Summoned: 3 Nov. 1503²⁷ Met: 25 Jan. 1504²⁸ Dissolved: 29 March—1 April 1504²⁹ ²⁷ Huntington Library, HAP 5/2. ²⁸ PROME xvi. 319 (RP vi. 520a). ²⁹ Three pieces of evidence are contradictory. On 3 April a writ de expensis was issued to Herefordshire’s MPs for 65 days’ attendance (excluding travel), implying dissolution on 29 March: PRO, E13/182, Trin., rot. 9. Another writ de expensis, issued on 5 July for 72 days’ attendance (including travel to and from Reading), has survived as a copy: Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/1, p. 163. Four days were normally allowed for travel to and from Berkshire: H. Kleineke, ‘The Payment of Members of Parliament in the Fifteenth Century’, Parliamentary History, 26 (2007), 284. On this basis, the writ suggests dissolution on 1 April. Thirdly, Thomas Wode, MP for Canterbury, was paid for 67 days’ attendance, excluding travel: Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 2, fos. 401v–402r. Unaccountably, the entry claimed that the parliament began on 12 Jan. and finished on 18 March. Counting from 25 Jan., the figure implies dissolution on 31 March. In 1504, however, 31 March was Palm Sunday, when parliament would not have sat.

Introduction At its inception the reign of Henry VII promised a new beginning. Opening parliament in 1485, Bishop Alcock anticipated the return of the golden age.¹ Alcock’s demarcation has acquired a permanence far greater than the bishop or the new king could have imagined. The frontiers of medieval history would stretch to 1485, beyond which lay new terrain: a different dynasty inaugurated the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Americas—the modern age.² While these frontiers may now have shifted or even have dissolved, the fundamental issue in interpreting Henry’s reign remains its liminality: its location at the threshold of a different age, or at least of another way of writing history.³ In parliamentary history, metanarratives of constitutional change have been erected along the same dynastic and epochal frontier: the ‘Lancastrian constitutional experiment’, the ‘Tudor despotism’—‘from medieval to modern’. Yet little research has been conducted into Henry VII’s parliaments. A small number of studies have shed light, but a sustained analysis is wanting. This work seeks to redress that omission by presenting a detailed and wide-ranging account of Henry’s parliaments.⁴ Despite the dearth of work on this particular field, the broader historiographical legacy on which I have drawn is immense: to research parliament is to stand on the shoulders of giants. Here I acknowledge my intellectual debts and explain my points of departure. ¹ PROME xv. 91 (RP vi. 267b). ² J. L. Watts, ‘Introduction: History, the Fifteenth Century and the Renaissance’, in Watts (ed.), The End of the Middle Ages? England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Stroud, 1998), 8–15. ³ B. Thompson, ‘Introduction: The Place of Henry VII in English History’, in Thompson (ed.), The Reign of Henry VII (Stamford, 1995), 1; S. Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context: Problems and Possibilities’, History, 92 (2007), 301. ⁴ This work is limited to the English parliament. It does not address the Irish parliament, on which there are several studies: S. G. Ellis, Ireland in the Age of the Tudors, 1447–1603: English Expansion and the End of Gaelic Rule (London, 1998), 374, 393.

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Introduction

Debates surrounding the character of Henry’s reign and the nature of his parliaments crystallize in the term ‘new monarchy’, which is where we must begin.⁵ The term was the product of the ‘Whig interpretation of history’.⁶ That misleadingly partisan label was only coined once the prevailing mood was hostile, for prior to the twentieth century an unabashedly present-centred interpretation of the past was taken for granted: it was not the preserve of a political party.⁷ In order to account for the sovereign parliament and constitutional monarchy of a later age, English history was presented as a protracted contest between royal authority and the liberty of the subject. In the seventeenth century Englishmen used the medieval past to validate resistance to what they perceived to be the burgeoning absolutism of the Stuart monarchy.⁸ This persuasion reached its zenith under the Victorians, where it found fullest expression for the middle ages in the work of Bishop Stubbs.⁹ ‘Whig’ history was thus genealogical: it searched for the antecedents of the present condition. Viewed in this light, the reign of Henry VII scored poorly. After the precocity of the Lancastrians, the power of parliament along with everything else that was admirable in the constitution waned, as the country sank into the quagmire of civil war. The kingship to emerge after the demise of the Lancastrian monarchy was stronger but less constitutional: ‘Servile as his parliaments were, he [Edward IV] would rather rule without any such check.’¹⁰ Stubbs’s contemporary J. R. Green labelled the reigns of the Yorkist and Tudor kings a ‘new monarchy’.¹¹ Although Stubbs confirmed the concept and Green coined the phrase, as an idea the ‘new monarchy’ seems to have been much older. The ⁵ The term is discussed in A. Goodman, The New Monarchy: England, 1471–1534 (Oxford, 1988), 1–8. ⁶ The title of a celebrated historiographical essay: H. Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931). ⁷ J. W. Burrow, A Liberal Descent: Victorian Historians and the English Past (Cambridge, 1981), 11–35; M. Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past: English Historiography in the Age of Modernism, 1870–1970 (Cambridge, 2005), 5–7. ⁸ The classic account is J. G. A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: A Study of English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (rev. edn., Cambridge, 1987). ⁹ P. B. M. Blaas, Continuity and Anachronism: Parliamentary and Constitutional Development in Whig Historiography and in the Anti-Whig Reaction between 1890 and 1930 ( The Hague, 1978), 153–93; Burrow, Liberal Descent, 126–51; Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, 19–32. ¹⁰ W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in its Origin and Development, 3 vols. (i: 6th edn.; ii: 4th edn.; iii: 5th edn.; Oxford, 1896–7), iii. 240–7, 280–2 at 282. ¹¹ J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People (London, 1874), 282–97.

Introduction

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Scottish scholar George Buchanan (d. 1582) explained how the rulers of late fifteenth-century England (naming Edward IV), Scotland, France, Burgundy, and Portugal had ‘laid the Foundations of Tyranny in their respective Kingdoms’.¹² In England and on the Continent ‘new monarchs’ ran authoritarian, but effective regimes: they exercised greater personal control, achieved financial independence, displayed hostility to the old nobility, and forged an alliance with the rising middle classes—in sum, they laid the foundations of the modern state.¹³ ‘New monarchies’ preferred to bypass representative institutions: English regimes managed with as few parliaments as possible, rigorously controlled those sessions they did summon, and aspired to govern without parliament altogether. Thus, for Green, ‘Parliamentary life is almost suspended, or is turned into a form by the overpowering influence of the Crown.’¹⁴ Only gradually did parliament recover its former independence, as ‘the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII grew into the murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous Parliament of James I, and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I’.¹⁵ The ‘new monarchy’ was thus a chapter in the story that culminated in the seventeenth-century revolutions. Of course, little of that epic has survived the assaults of the professional scholarship of the twentieth century.¹⁶ Science undermined faith: by 1936, ‘Stubbs’ account of the early history of parliament resembles the opening chapters of the book of Genesis in two important respects—it describes an act of creation and it no longer commands general acceptance.’¹⁷ A fundamental problem in the ‘Whig’ account was the presumption that parliament and the king were natural adversaries. This polarity was factitious: monarchs enjoyed ¹² George Buchanan, History of Scotland, ed. W. Bond, 2 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1733), ii. 93; also, Francis Bacon, The History of the Reign of King Henry VII and Selected Works, ed. B. Vickers (Cambridge, 1998), 204. Cf. French views of their ‘new monarch’: A. E. Bakos, Images of Kingship in Early Modern France: Louis XI in Political Thought, 1560–1789 (London, 1997). ¹³ Most elements were present in a lecture by A. F. Pollard, first published in 1907: ‘The New Monarchy’, in Factors in Modern History (3rd edn., London, 1932), 52–72. ¹⁴ Green, Short History, 283. ¹⁵ W. Bagehot, The English Constitution, ed. P. Smith (Cambridge, 2001), 177. ¹⁶ Blaas, Continuity and Anachronism, 240–373; Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, 32–44. ¹⁷ G. Lapsley, ‘Some Recent Advance in English Constitutional History (before 1485)’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 5 (1935–7), 122–3. The contrasting attitudes are caught in Burrow, Liberal Descent, 11; and Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, 9.

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Introduction

generally harmonious relations with their parliaments, for parliament was not a ‘self-perpetuating corporation’ dedicated to advancing the cause of liberty, but rather part of the machinery of government.¹⁸ No longer was the ‘Lancastrian constitutional experiment’ a principled and far-sighted partnership between crown and parliament; rather it was the enforced consequence of the challenging circumstances in which Henry IV took the throne.¹⁹ Effective kingship required a single and sovereign will: Lancastrian constitutionalism would have been an unworkable ‘dyarchy’, hampering the proper exercise of government.²⁰ On the same basis conspicuous reassessments of the Elizabethan and early Stuart parliaments dismantled the ‘High Road to Civil War’: pre-revolutionary England became ‘Unrevolutionary England’.²¹ Studies demonstrating the political primacy of the Lords challenged the ‘Whig’ emphasis on the rising Commons.²² The necessary corollary of dispensing with the Commons’ struggle to wrest supreme authority from the crown should have been dispensing with the crown’s distrust of and hostility towards parliament. On the first premise A. F. Pollard (the pre-eminent Tudor historian of the early twentieth century) rescued ‘Tudor despotism’ from its nineteenthcentury critics.²³ Yet Pollard did not apply the second premise to Henry VII: ‘the English parliament might have perished like the French statesgeneral had it not been for other Tudors than the first.’²⁴ Echoes of the ‘Whig’ interpretation could be heard more recently: ‘The king’s control of parliament was at this period almost total’; ‘No observer at the time of Henry’s death in 1509 would have predicted a vigorous future development for the English parliament.’²⁵ The critique of the ‘Whig’ interpretation was therefore imperfectly applied when writing ¹⁸ G. O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (London, 1975), 124. ¹⁹ K. B. McFarlane, ‘Henry IV’s Government: Council, Parliament, Finance’, in Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), 99–100. ²⁰ A. F. Pollard, Parliament in the Wars of the Roses (Glasgow, 1936), 27–8. ²¹ G. R. Elton, ‘A High Road to Civil War?’, in Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1974–92), ii. 164–82; C. Russell, Unrevolutionary England, 1603–1642 (London, 1990). ²² D. L. Smith, The Stuart Parliaments, 1603–1689 (London, 1999), 2, 7–8, 24–6, 74–5, 87–92. ²³ A. F. Pollard, ‘Parliament’, in Factors in Modern History, 93–4, 97–8. ²⁴ A. F. Pollard, ‘The Mediaeval Under-Clerks of Parliament’, BIHR 16 (1938–9), 87. ²⁵ J. Loach, Parliament under the Tudors (Oxford, 1991), 54; J. R. Lander, Government and Community: England 1450–1509 (London, 1980), 63–4.

Introduction

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about parliament in Henry’s reign. The piecemeal dismantling of that interpretation had meant that individual elements, floating free from their moorings, lived on.²⁶ One feature of the ‘Whig’ interpretation was to characterize Yorkist and Tudor regimes as manifestations of the same phenomenon: 1485 did not change the political landscape, for regrettably Henry VII emulated the Yorkist kings. The professionalism that undermined so much of the ‘Whig’ interpretation perhaps also revived the historiographical frontier of 1485, for it demarcated scholars as either medievalists or early modernists. Medievalists and early modernists developed alternative ways of analysing the polity, which made it harder to appraise the border-zone between those two interpretative landmasses.²⁷ After the Second World War, this divergence could be encapsulated in two great scholars: K. B. (Bruce) McFarlane, the inspiration for research into the fifteenth century; and G. R. (Sir Geoffrey) Elton, the dominant figure for the sixteenth century.²⁸ For Elton, the crown’s interests were those of the realm, so he sympathized with the firm government of Henry VII.²⁹ For McFarlane and his students, however, the realm’s interests should not be so readily identified with the king’s.³⁰ McFarlane preferred to position the king at the head of the political nation as the ‘good lord of all good lords’.³¹ For McFarlane lordship was the object of study, for Elton central government; hence McFarlane’s work was grounded in nobles’ estate papers and gentry correspondence, Elton’s in the state papers. Thus different questions, different priorities, and different sources, it has been suggested, created a ‘fault-line of mutual incomprehension’ between the two persuasions.³² Scholars have now started to come to terms with assimilating these two perspectives. By making allowances for divergent conceptual and methodological assumptions, the frontier of 1485 began to dissolve. In the 1970s a cluster of general histories broke ²⁶ A central argument of Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, esp. 7–8, 111–12. ²⁷ C. Carpenter, ‘Henry VII and the English Polity’, in Thompson (ed.), Reign of Henry VII, 11–15. ²⁸ S. J. Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 1485–1558 (London, 1995), 2–8. ²⁹ G. R. Elton, ‘Henry VII: Rapacity and Remorse’, in Studies, i. 45–65 (esp. 53–6, 65); id., ‘Henry VII: A Restatement’, in Studies, i. 66–99 (esp. 82, 96). ³⁰ J. P. Cooper, ‘Henry VII’s Last Years Reconsidered’, Historical Journal, 2 (1959), 103–29 (esp. 103, 127–9). Cooper, a pupil of McFarlane, edited his The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973). ³¹ K. B. McFarlane, ‘The English Nobility, 1290–1536’, in Nobility, 119. ³² S. J. Gunn, review of C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), in Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 999.

6

Introduction

free from ‘the stranglehold of 1485’.³³ An ‘unwarranted importance’ had been attached to the accession of Henry VII, while the terms ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’ were to be banished from the historian’s lexicon.³⁴ More recently, an account of the years 1471 to 1529 rejected any view ‘that would imply an old age was ending and a new one beginning, since such a claim is no more appropriate for this period than for any other of equivalent length between 1066 and 1529’.³⁵ By agreement of medievalists and early modernists, change could be located in the 1530s (Elton’s revolutionary decade) or later still: the 1550s sometimes appear to be the new 1530s.³⁶ As an outpost of two historical power blocs whose heartlands lay elsewhere, Henry VII’s reign had been something of a no man’s land. The bread-and-butter sources employed by both historical communities were less plentiful than in other periods, which discouraged interest.³⁷ The reign benefited, however, from the revival of research from the 1970s onwards, both by medievalists and early modernists. Much more is understood now about the court and royal ministers, about the regime’s foreign policy and its financial administration, and about the crown’s relationship with the nobility and its exercise of power in the localities.³⁸ The gravity of the challenges to the regime is better appreciated: the Wars of the Roses did not end at Bosworth or even at Stoke, so the reign could be seen as ‘one long usurpation crisis’.³⁹ What remains up for debate is how these insights should be synthesized.⁴⁰ Innovation, it has been proposed, was improbable when survival was uppermost in the king’s mind: Henry therefore behaved as a conventional late medieval ruler.⁴¹ McFarlane’s assertion that England’s only ‘new monarchy’ had been introduced at the Norman Conquest was intended to finish off an outmoded model; Elton would prove ³³ Watts, ‘Introduction’, 5. ³⁴ C. S. L. Davies, Peace, Print and Protestantism: 1450–1558 (1976; rev. edn., London, 1995), 11–12. ³⁵ R. H. Britnell, The Closing of the Middle Ages? England, 1471–1529 (Oxford, 1997), 1, 254. ³⁶ Cf. Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context’, 315. ³⁷ Carpenter, ‘Henry VII’, 12–13; Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context’, 302–3, 309. ³⁸ G. Bernard, ‘Foreword’, to S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (new edn., New Haven, 1999), pp. ix–xix; S. Cunningham, Henry VII (London, 2007), 277–80. ³⁹ Thompson, ‘Introduction’, 9–10. ⁴⁰ S. Anglo, ‘Ill of the Dead. The Posthumous Reputation of Henry VII’, Renaissance Studies, 1 (1987), 46; Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context’, 317; Cunningham, Henry VII, 280. ⁴¹ K. B. McFarlane, ‘An Early Paper on Crown and Parliament in the Later Middle Ages’, in Nobility, 287; Bernard, ‘Foreword’, pp. ix–x.

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7

equally dismissive.⁴² Yet historians still need some chronological framework—whether explicit or implicit—within which to work: McFarlane, though problematizing the term, found ‘bastard feudalism’ a necessary heuristic device.⁴³ What continuity appears to mean is ‘a continuum of slow change’, stasis being the least plausible of historical states.⁴⁴ Another interpretation, making much of Henry’s lack of training in kingship or even in exercising territorial lordship, sees the reign as unique, even aberrant: ‘if ever there was a ‘‘New Monarchy’’ in England, it began and ended with Henry VII.’⁴⁵ Henry’s style of kingship deviated from ‘the more presidential mode of Edward IV and Elizabeth’.⁴⁶ Yet if Henry exercised his kingship in a ‘new world’, could he still be ruling the same ‘medieval polity’?⁴⁷ Could we really envisage the ‘monarchical republic’ of Edward IV?⁴⁸ Monarchy after the Wars of the Roses was going to be different: even restoration required a heightened awareness of what the status quo ante had actually been.⁴⁹ There was no off-the-peg ‘medieval kingship’ that could be resurrected: Henry VII’s regime perhaps found its archetype in Edward I—the king of Prerogativa Regis and quo warranto—rather than the popular choice of Edward III.⁵⁰ Therefore, other scholars, stressing continuities of personnel and of outlook, have perceived innovative but not aberrant features that went with the grain of broader political developments.⁵¹ When the notion can be traced ⁴² McFarlane, ‘Crown and Parliament’, 282–3, 287; G. R. Elton, review of J. D. Mackie, The Earlier Tudors, 1485–1558 (Oxford, 1952), in EHR 68 (1953), 277. ⁴³ K. B. McFarlane, ‘ ‘‘Bastard Feudalism’’ ’, in England in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1981), 23–43; Watts, ‘Introduction’, 2–3. ⁴⁴ Ibid. 18; J. L. Watts, ‘Conclusion’, in Watts (ed.), End of the Middle Ages, 263–5. ⁴⁵ T. B. Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’, in G. W. Bernard (ed.), The Tudor Nobility (Manchester, 1992), 91. ⁴⁶ Carpenter, ‘Henry VII’, 30. Cf. McFarlane, ‘Crown and Parliament’, 285. ⁴⁷ Carpenter, ‘Henry VII’, 16, 29–30. ⁴⁸ Formulated in P. Collinson, ‘The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 69 (1986–7), 394–424. ⁴⁹ Watts, ‘Introduction’, 19; Watts, ‘Conclusion’, 268–9. ⁵⁰ For Prerogativa Regis, see Section 7.2. R. Stewart-Brown, ‘The Cheshire Writs of Quo Warranto in 1499’, EHR 49 (1934), 676–84; H. Garrett-Goodyear, ‘The Tudor Revival of Quo Warranto and Local Contributions to State Building’, in M. S. Arnold et al. (eds.), On the Laws and Customs of England (Chapel Hill, NC, 1981), 231–95; J. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, vi: 1483–1558 (Oxford, 2003), 120; D. A. L. Morgan, ‘The Political After-Life of Edward III: The Apotheosis of a Warmonger’, EHR 112 (1997), 856–81. ⁵¹ Goodman, New Monarchy, 80–1; J. Watts, ‘ ‘‘A Newe Ffundacion of is Crowne’’: Monarchy in the Age of Henry VII’, in Thompson (ed.), Reign of Henry VII, 31, 52; S. J. Gunn, ‘Sir Thomas Lovell (c.1449–1524): A New Man in a New Monarchy?’, in

8

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from Elizabeth’s reign, debating the ‘new monarchy’ may not be so anachronistic after all. Most recent work on Henry’s reign has focused on informal types of power. In parliament, by contrast, power was exercised within a uniquely public context, for the whole realm was supposedly present either in person or by proxy. How the regime behaved in that peculiar context could therefore prove especially illuminating. Parliamentary history has been written in a number of ways, so it is worth explaining how I have approached this study. The line taken here is ecumenical rather than evangelical. Henry’s parliaments are probably the worst documented of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, so a range of approaches is needed to flesh out an account, whereas in better resourced periods a single source-type and thus a particular perspective could be privileged. That is the pragmatic justification; there is also a principled one. Parliament mattered because of the plurality of activities in which it was engaged; insisting on a single perspective obscures its multidimensional nature.⁵² Thus the ‘double historiographical context’ of late medieval and early modern history turns out to be an advantage.⁵³ Discussion of sources is necessary for two reasons: firstly, to appreciate the limits of what can be established; secondly, to understand how Henry’s parliaments have been characterized. The formal record of a parliament was the parliament roll: each parliament had its own roll, and the parliament of 1485–6 produced two (the second being reserved for the act of resumption).⁵⁴ The rolls were drawn up by chancery clerks under the supervision of the clerk of parliament (a master in chancery) who usually signed off at the end of a roll. John Morgan served Henry’s first five parliaments, and Richard Hatton the king’s last two parliaments.⁵⁵ The parliament rolls provided a selective record: in Henry’s reign they were overwhelmingly concerned with the acts passed, for debates, votes, and measures that failed to be enacted were Watts (ed.), End of the Middle Ages, 152–3; Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context’, 307–9, 316–17. ⁵² K. Sharpe, ‘Re-Writing the History of Parliament in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-Century Politics (Cambridge, 2000), 269–71. ⁵³ Gunn, ‘Henry VII in Context’, 311. ⁵⁴ PRO, C65/123–30, printed in PROME xv. 81–395, xvi. 1–419 (RP vi. 267–555). Each roll is described in PROME. ⁵⁵ Their careers are described in A. F. Pollard, ‘Fifteenth-Century Clerks of Parliament’, BIHR 15 (1937–8), 156–61.

Introduction

9

not entered.⁵⁶ Much of a parliament’s business was thus omitted; for its traces, we have to search elsewhere. Other sources are in comparatively short supply. In order to follow proceedings, the clerks must have kept notes tracking the progress of bills and petitions; daily records of business in the Lords may well have been made, but only transcripts of lists of peers in attendance have been found.⁵⁷ A clerical list of bills and petitions read in the parliament of 1495 compensates by naming thirteen measures that failed to pass.⁵⁸ Texts have not survived; unluckily, the large class of ‘ancient petitions’ runs out at the end of Edward IV’s reign.⁵⁹ Most of the ‘original acts’ for Henry’s last two parliaments of 1497 and 1504, however, have survived.⁶⁰ The term describes the texts of the bills and petitions usually drawn up once measures had passed the first house before they were finalized. From amendments to these texts it is possible to deduce which measures proved controversial. Only one of the surviving ‘original acts’ failed to pass, so they barely add to our awareness of business omitted from the parliament rolls.⁶¹ Valuable as these sources are then, each demonstrates how much more we should understand if comparable records had survived for other parliaments. Drawing on other sources—other administrative and legal records and also non-governmental records—is therefore essential. By far the most significant is the diary written by Colchester’s two MPs, Thomas Christmas and John Vertue, which was entered in the borough’s memorandum book.⁶² Christmas and Vertue provided a day-by-day account of proceedings in the first session of Henry’s first parliament, which met in November and December 1485.⁶³ Although valuable, ⁵⁶ G. R. Elton, ‘The Rolls of Parliament, 1449–1547’, in Studies, iii. 110, 118, 124–5, 136, 141. ⁵⁷ See Section 4.1. ⁵⁸ PRO, C49/42/2, printed in PROME xvi. 278–9 (1495 plt., app.). ⁵⁹ PRO, SC8. This class was artificially created in the 19th century; many related documents are found in C49. ⁶⁰ OA, 12 and 19 Hen. VII. Among the ‘original acts’ are two important royal letters of 1498 (12 Hen. VII, no. 13) and 1504 (19 Hen. VII, unnumbered). ⁶¹ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 22. Also unaccountably preserved among the ‘original acts’ is a roll containing articles drawn up by the city of York in 1476 that justified the dismissal of its common clerk Thomas Yotten: OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 14; The York House Books, 1461–1490, ed. L. C. Attreed, 2 vols. (Stroud, 1991), i. 44–8, 50–1, 75. ⁶² The Red Paper Book of Colchester, ed. W. G. Benham (Colchester, 1902), 60–4; Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages, ed. N. Pronay and J. Taylor (Oxford, 1980), 185–9. ⁶³ Biographies are in HP 1439–1509, i. 186, 911.

10

Introduction

the MPs’ report fell far short of the detail provided by Elizabethan diaries. A briefer but more insightful account of the same parliament was written by the third continuator of the chronicles of Crowland Abbey (Lincolnshire).⁶⁴ Although his identity remains mysterious, the continuator was better informed than Colchester’s representatives; he may even have sat in the Lords.⁶⁵ In other respects chronicles and histories yield little. The Year Books—records of fine points of common law argument—add a unique dimension for the parliament of 1485–6.⁶⁶ What can be gleaned from personal correspondence is disappointing when compared with earlier in the fifteenth century. The occasional letter reported news from parliament, but none illuminated county politics as the Paston family’s correspondence did the electioneering of the 1450s, 1460s, and 1470s.⁶⁷ To compound matters, the parliamentary returns have not survived, so the identities of most MPs are not known. Again, a private record compensates somewhat: the Londoner John Colyns entered in his commonplace book a list of MPs in the parliament of 1491–2.⁶⁸ Finding sources on which to base discussion of county representation in parliament is thus difficult; the position improves for many parliamentary boroughs, whose own records are preserved. Lastly, the records kept by other corporate bodies—mercantile companies, Oxford and Cambridge colleges, even parishes—sometimes reveal activities omitted from the formal records. The sources for Henry’s parliaments thus provide ‘lean fare’.⁶⁹ To put a positive gloss on this, the discovery of new evidence—in correspondence, in accounts of parliamentary activity, or in a copy of a journal—would enhance or even transform our understanding of Henry’s parliaments. The relative scarcity of records may well have played ⁶⁴ The Crowland Chronicle Continuations: 1459–1486, ed. N. Pronay and J. Cox (London, 1986), 194–5. ⁶⁵ H. A. Kelly, ‘The Last Chroniclers of Croyland’, Ricardian, 7 (1985–7), 159–61; M. Hicks, ‘The Second Anonymous Continuation of the Crowland Abbey Chronicle 1459–86 Revisited’, EHR 122 (2007), 356–7. The identity of the third continuator hinges upon the identity of the second continuator, a contested subject. ⁶⁶ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., pleas 3, 5; Hil., pleas 1, 25 (fos. 3–5, 12–13). ⁶⁷ The Plumpton Letters and Papers, ed. J. Kirby, Camden Soc., 5th ser., 8 (1996), 63–5, 112; Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. N. Davis, R. Beadle, and C. Richmond, 3 vols., EETS ss 20–2 (rev. edn., 2004–5), i. 668–9. ⁶⁸ ‘List of Members of the Fourth Parliament of Henry VII’, ed. W. Jay, BIHR 3 (1925–6), 168–75. ⁶⁹ M. A. R. Graves, The Tudor Parliaments: Crown, Lords and Commons, 1485–1603 (London, 1985), 44.

Introduction

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its part in the enduringly downbeat assessments of Henry’s parliaments, particularly when contrasted with the better-documented and apparently livelier parliaments after 1529.⁷⁰ Like has to be compared with like: simply juxtaposing the evidence of the Colchester diary and that for Elizabethan parliaments is methodologically flawed.⁷¹ ‘Quiescence’ is not perhaps so much a comment on the actual nature of Henry’s parliaments as on the comparative scarcity of evidence.⁷² Arguments from silence are sometimes unavoidable, yet they remain inherently vulnerable. The familiar—but mistaken—point that the king never vetoed a proposal originated in an incomplete appreciation of the selective contents of the parliament rolls.⁷³ The types of sources used also determine the sorts of parliamentary history that have been written. In the foregoing account, formal records have been implicitly preferred over non-governmental sources, whose function—it has been suggested—is to supplement deficiencies in these official accounts. This administrative approach informed Elton’s early work on parliament. That approach, it has been objected, obscures the real nature both of parliament and of political life. McFarlane rejected as old-fashioned the study of bureaucracies and institutions. What counted were the informal networks of patronage, clientage, and friendship through which real politics was configured—as had been demonstrated already for the late Roman Republic and for eighteenthcentury England.⁷⁴ McFarlane identified a common misconception that ‘it is possible and desirable to write the history of institutions apart from the men who worked them’: Institutions sometimes seem to have a life of their own, but this is only an appearance. They are born, develop, change, and decay by human agencies. Their life is the life of the men who make them. Constitutional history is concerned with men.⁷⁵ ⁷⁰ J. P. Cooper, ‘A Revolution in Tudor History?’, Past & Present, 26 (1963), 111. ⁷¹ G. R. Elton, ‘The Tudor Revolution: A Reply’, Past & Present, 29 (1964), 40. ⁷² R. L. Storey, The Reign of Henry VII (London, 1968), 117–18; M. A. R. Graves, Early Tudor Parliaments, 1485–1558 (London, 1990), 21. ⁷³ P. R. Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent in Henry VII’s Parliaments’, Parliamentary History, 25 (2006), 162–3. ⁷⁴ McFarlane, ‘Crown and Parliament’, 296–7; J. P. Cooper, ‘Introduction’, in McFarlane, Nobility, pp. xii–xiii; C. Carpenter, ‘Political and Constitutional History: Before and After McFarlane’, in R. H. Britnell and A. J. Pollard (eds.), The McFarlane Legacy: Studies in Late Medieval Politics and Society (Stroud, 1995), 186–90. ⁷⁵ McFarlane, ‘Crown and Parliament’, 280.

12

Introduction

Thus parliamentary history entailed studying the governing class: in particular, researching the lives and experiences of peers and of MPs.⁷⁶ McFarlane’s approach—but not his subtle analysis—was shared in the first two volumes produced by the newly established History of Parliament project in 1936 and 1938.⁷⁷ Josiah Wedgwood’s volumes, covering the parliaments of 1439 to 1504, present easy targets, not least for imagining ‘Lancastrians’ and ‘Yorkists’ rather as Whigs and Tories.⁷⁸ Such criticism would be ungrateful, for Wedgwood’s volumes provided the template for successive studies published after the reestablishment of the project following the Second World War. These studies have illuminated what parliament meant to those who sought election and to the constituencies they represented, and have shown how the composition of the Commons was changing over time.⁷⁹ The forthcoming volumes on the MPs of 1422 to 1504 will revise Wedgwood’s work and should significantly advance understanding of Henry’s parliaments.⁸⁰ Increasingly Elton too emphasized parliament’s local and interpersonal dimensions, although his gaze remained trained on Westminster.⁸¹ Sessions served as a ‘point of contact’ for members of the elite, local communities, and corporations wishing to access royal grace and exploit the machinery of government.⁸² In Elizabeth’s reign, ‘lobbying’—the pursuit of legislation by particular interests—occupied more of a session’s time and energy than did high politics.⁸³ Analyses of the many ways in which subjects experienced and made use of parliament therefore qualified accounts that concentrated on high politics, presumed a unitary perspective among parliamentarians, or took constitutional progress as parliament’s raison d’ˆetre.⁸⁴ Much of this study draws on these ⁷⁶ McFarlane, ‘Crown and Parliament’, 290–1; K. B. McFarlane, ‘Parliament and ‘‘Bastard Feudalism’’ ’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, 1–21; Cooper, ‘Introduction’, pp. xviii–xx, xxxiii–xxxiv. ⁷⁷ D. Cannadine, ‘The History of Parliament: Past, Present—and Future?’, Parliamentary History, 26 (2007), 366–86. ⁷⁸ HP 1439–1509. Cf. Bentley, Modernizing England’s Past, 44 n. 93. ⁷⁹ G. L. Harriss, ‘The Medieval Parliament’, Parliamentary History, 13 (1994), 206–26, a review of HP 1386–1421. ⁸⁰ L. Clark, ‘Introduction: Parchment and People in Medieval Parliaments’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 5–13. ⁸¹ G. R. Elton, ‘Studying the History of Parliament’, in Studies, ii. 7–12. ⁸² G. R. Elton, ‘The Points of Contact: Parliament’, in Studies, iii. 3–21. ⁸³ G. R. Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. ix, 197, 318, 348–50, 378–9. ⁸⁴ P. Croft, ‘The Parliament of England’, TRHS 6th ser., 7 (1997), 217–19.

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13

approaches. But can accumulating the life-stories of the men who served in parliament (whether as MPs, peers, law officers, or clerks) or itemizing the many parochial and peculiar interests arriving at Westminster fully capture parliament? What this comes down to is an argument (already intimated) about the nature of politics. Politics once meant studying the public workings of government through its administrative and legal structures and its ministers and bureaucrats. This definition, however, neglected personal and informal dimensions, while treating the formal face of political life as neutral, value-free, or uncontested.⁸⁵ In response, politics in the age of personal monarchy was reconceived as the fluid interplay of relationships at court in which supposedly discrete ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres in fact proved permeable.⁸⁶ As a public face of government, parliament was thus cut down to size: a series of one-off ‘events’, reducible to a ‘point of contact’ or to the outward signs of real, court-based politics.⁸⁷ By thus redefining the term, the Tudor parliament could even be characterized as ‘apolitical’.⁸⁸ More recently, however, interest in the ‘principled’ dimension of politics and therefore of parliaments has revived.⁸⁹ McFarlane’s criticism of an analysis derived from Year Books as being ‘more concerned to define the law of the constitution than to probe the realities of political power’ is now seen to present a false choice.⁹⁰ While there were not hard-and-fast ‘rules’, there did exist ‘values, ideals and conventions’ that conditioned the exercise of power.⁹¹ Those who deploy the concept of ‘political culture’ remain wary of administrative structures, but unnecessarily: institutions certainly were staffed by men, yet ⁸⁵ J. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), 81–2. ⁸⁶ The contrasting approaches are brought out in G. R. Elton, ‘Tudor Government’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), 425–34; and D. Starkey, ‘Tudor Government: The Facts?’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), 921–31. ⁸⁷ C. Russell, Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), 3. ⁸⁸ D. Starkey, ‘Introduction: Court History in Perspective’, in Starkey (ed.), The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987), 10. ⁸⁹ D. Dean, ‘Revising the History of Tudor Parliaments’, Historical Journal, 32 (1989), 401–11; Croft, ‘Parliament of England’, 223–34; J. Guy, ‘General Introduction’, in Guy (ed.), The Tudor Monarchy (London, 1997), 1–10. ⁹⁰ K. B. McFarlane, review of S. B. Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1936), in EHR 53 (1938), 707; Carpenter, ‘Political and Constitutional History’, 196–7. ⁹¹ E. Powell, ‘After ‘‘After McFarlane’’: The Poverty of Patronage and the Case for Constitutional History’, in D. J. Clayton, R. G. Davies, and P. McNiven (eds.), Trade, Devotion and Governance: Papers in Later Medieval History (Stroud, 1994), 10.

14

Introduction

men acted through institutions.⁹² The effectiveness of a parliament—as of any political action—partly rested on aligning present function with underlying values.⁹³ E. P. Thompson’s observation about the ‘rule of law’ in the eighteenth century rings true: ‘If the law is evidently partial and unjust, then it will mask nothing, legitimize nothing, contribute nothing to any class’s hegemony.’⁹⁴ Parliamentary values were widely shared and its rules also understood. What assumptions underlay Jack Cade’s advice to his followers that ‘the kinges letres of pardone graunted to hym and theyme be nat vailable ner of noon effecte withoute auctorite of parliamente’?⁹⁵ It is worth labouring an obvious point. Parliament’s authority depended ultimately neither on its ability to gratify members of the elite nor on its potential to publicize disagreements about policy: rather it depended upon values that justified its existence and rationalized its behaviour—notions of commonalty, counsel, and representativeness. Capturing parliament thus entails more than piecing together a series of private interests, for it needs to embrace parliament’s public and therefore ‘political’ character. Admittedly, parliament was not a permanent presence in government: it did not have a dedicated staff, could not issue writs, and did not possess its own seal—for these it relied on chancery.⁹⁶ Conceptually, however, parliament was a fixture of governance—an institution as well as an event. To take this one stage further, parliament’s relationship with other arms of government, its own culture (in its business, records, and procedure), and the ways in which it was conceived all changed over time. Change is a particularly problematic concept, for it appears in the ‘Whig’ vein to invest something inanimate with its own momentum. Nevertheless parliament undoubtedly did develop, even if it may often ⁹² Cf. similar reservations in C. Carpenter, ‘Introduction: Political Culture, Politics and Cultural History’, in The Fifteenth Century, iv: Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain, ed. L. Clark and Carpenter (Woodbridge, 2004), 4–8. ⁹³ In theory, Q. Skinner, ‘Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action’, in J. Tully (ed.), Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and his Critics (Cambridge, 1988), 107–18; in practice, J. L. Watts, ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), The Wars of the Roses (London, 1995), 110–33. ⁹⁴ E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (London, 1975), 263. ⁹⁵ The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, ed. M. L. Kekewich et al. (Stroud, 1995), 208. ⁹⁶ A. F. Pollard, ‘The Clerical Organization of Parliament’, EHR 57 (1942), 31–58 (esp. 33–4).

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15

be difficult to explain why. The best known analyst is Elton, who tracked parliament from the mid fifteenth century to the 1530s—‘from medieval to modern’.⁹⁷ For Elton, Henry VIII’s marital exigencies and Thomas Cromwell’s political genius propelled the medieval parliament in the 1530s to sovereignty.⁹⁸ Elton’s detailed examinations were more nuanced than his initial presentation or subsequent summaries sometimes reflected. The ‘medieval’ did not simply end and the ‘modern’ begin in 1529: the pre-Reformation parliaments were ‘transitional’—it was a ‘subtle’ revolution.⁹⁹ Old battles may not now need re-fighting; engaging with Elton’s thesis and its critics, however, helps to locate Henry VII’s reign within a general account of parliament’s development. A panoramic perspective on parliament would therefore present both an institution and a series of occasions. Parliaments were summoned at particular moments to address specific issues, so a chronological perspective needs outlining.¹⁰⁰ Henry’s first parliament assembled eleven weeks after his victory at Bosworth. Much of its business was concerned with consolidating the new regime: the parliament affirmed the royal title, showcased Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth of York, and restored his supporters.¹⁰¹ Once that parliament had been dissolved in spring 1486, the king headed north to confront resistance. In 1487 Henry faced the most serious challenge so far in Lambert Simnel, who impersonated the earl of Warwick (possessor of the strongest Yorkist claim). The king’s victory at Stoke in June set the confident, reforming tone of his next parliament which met that winter.¹⁰² The emphasis shifted to foreign affairs and taxation in Henry’s next two parliaments of 1489–90 and 1491–2. Dominating English ⁹⁷ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 132, 142. Elton used these terms—it has been suggested—as a realist rather than as a nominalist: C. Russell, ‘Thomas Cromwell’s Doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty’, TRHS 6th ser., 7 (1997), 236–7. ⁹⁸ G. R. Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1953), esp. 3, 8, 426–7. The overall argument is summarized in P. Williams, ‘Dr. Elton’s Interpretation of the Age’, Past & Present, 25 (1963), 3–8. ⁹⁹ G. R. Elton, ‘ ‘‘The Body of the Whole Realm’’: Parliament and Representation in Medieval and Tudor England’, in Studies, ii. 35, 54; id., ‘Tudor Revolution: A Reply’, 42; id., ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 124, 132; id., Parliament of England, 17, 26; id., England under the Tudors (3rd edn., London, 1991), 476, 481–3. ¹⁰⁰ There is a narrative of the reign in Cunningham, Henry VII, 43–119. ¹⁰¹ Chrimes, Henry VII, 50–67. ¹⁰² M. Bennett, Lambert Simnel and the Battle of Stoke (Gloucester, 1987).

16

Introduction

foreign policy in these years was the duchy of Brittany.¹⁰³ Henry, with the support of Maximilian, king of the Romans and Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon and Castile, sought to prevent Charles VIII of France from annexing this semi-autonomous duchy. The duchy’s absorption threatened England’s strategic interests, for it would extend French power across her facing seaboard and neutralize a dimension of her diplomacy. In March 1489, under the terms of a treaty concluded with Duchess Anne, English forces landed in Brittany. Divisions at the Breton court, the unpopularity of the occupation, and the unreliability of Henry’s allies combined to undermine English actions. Henry failed to prevent Charles from marrying Anne in December 1491 and thereby absorbing the duchy into his kingdom. In response, under treaties agreed with Maximilian and with Ferdinand and Isabella, Henry prepared to launch an invasion of France. The king landed in France early in October 1492; his campaign lasted barely a month before peace was concluded.¹⁰⁴ Perkin Warbeck—the soi-disant ‘Richard of York’, younger son of Edward IV—dominated the mid 1490s.¹⁰⁵ Warbeck received support from foreign rulers, first from Charles, next from Maximilian, and then from James IV of Scotland; of equal danger, Warbeck found sympathizers in England among those whose loyalties lay with the house of York or who were disaffected with the regime. Warbeck’s first attempt to enter his realm in July 1495 did not succeed. That episode may have concentrated Henry’s mind on discharging his office, for the parliament which met that winter was the most productive session of the reign, demonstrating Henry’s commitment to the commonwealth. In September 1496 James with Warbeck in his company raided northern England. A new parliament was convened early in 1497 in order to facilitate the retaliatory campaign that had already been approved by a great council. The planned summer offensive, however, had to be abandoned because of rebellion in the West Country provoked by the heavy taxes granted by the parliament. ¹⁰³ C. Giry-Deloison, ‘Henri VII et la Bretagne: aspects politiques et diplomatiques’, in J. Kerherv´e and T. Daniel (eds.), 1491: la Bretagne, terre d’Europe (Brest, 1992), 231–41; J. M. Currin, ‘England’s International Relations, 1485–1509: Continuities amidst Change’, in S. Doran and G. Richardson (eds.), Tudor England and its Neighbours (Basingstoke, 2005), 15–22. ¹⁰⁴ J. M. Currin, ‘ ‘‘To Traffic with War’’? Henry VII and the French Campaign of 1492’, in D. Grummitt (ed.), The English Experience in France, c.1450–1558: War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange (Aldershot, 2002), 106–31. ¹⁰⁵ I. Arthurson, The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 1491–1499 (Stroud, 1994).

Introduction

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Warbeck’s capture in the autumn improved the king’s position. The executions of Warbeck and Warwick two years later reduced the threat to the regime; for the first time, Henry enjoyed satisfactory relations with all neighbouring states. The need to hold parliaments thus diminished. Yet by November 1503—when he summoned his seventh parliament—the king was once more vulnerable. His oldest son Arthur was dead, and a new Yorkist claimant—Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk—had found refuge on the Continent.¹⁰⁶ Subjects’ loyalties were now redirected to the king’s sole surviving son, created prince of Wales during the session. The king also sought a new tax grant on feudal grounds that were widely felt to be improper; perhaps in response, he intimated his intention not to hold another parliament for a long time. As it turned out, Henry died in April 1509 without having summoned another parliament. In the next parliament in 1510 the new king and the political nation delivered their verdict on Henry’s regime.¹⁰⁷ Although this chronological perspective is important, the present study is structured thematically. A thematic framework seems better suited to addressing the larger issues set out here. This approach also complements the introductions for the new edition of the parliament rolls, where Rosemary Horrox places each session in context and surveys its business.¹⁰⁸ Thus Part I of this work is concerned with the king and his regime. Chapter 1 discusses parliament as a means through which Henry could communicate with his subjects and also buttress his regime. Chapter 2 examines royal income and especially taxation, while Chapter 3 reviews the provision of justice. Part II adopts the subjects’ perspective. Chapter 4 addresses representation in parliament through its membership, elections, and constituencies. Chapter 5 analyses lawmaking, and Chapter 6 considers how decisions taken in parliament affected everyday life. Part III explores the ‘new monarchy’. Chapter 7 debates the nature of the king’s relationship with parliament, while Chapter 8 places the reign within a broader account of parliament’s development. Out of these multiple perspectives, a fuller and more focused picture should emerge. ¹⁰⁶ See Section 7.1. ¹⁰⁷ Cooper, ‘Henry VII’s Last Years Reconsidered’, 124–7; Elton, ‘Henry VII: A Restatement’, 92–5; Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 173–5. ¹⁰⁸ PROME xv. 82–9, 331–6, xvi. 1–7, 89–91, 135–40, 280–2, 314–18.

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I THE CROWN AND PARLIAMENT

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1 Legitimation Although legislation and taxation dominated the rolls (the official record of a session), each parliament was also a political occasion: an interface between the crown and its subjects. A parliament could project majesty, demonstrate the king’s respect for proper government, and provide a channel for communication. This chapter sets out some structural and ceremonial features that helped discharge these roles. Particular attention is paid to the king’s most pressing problem, his own insecurity. Parliament provided a means of publicizing the royal title and of fostering allegiance; this dimension may have had more significance to the crown than it is now possible to demonstrate. On the parliament rolls, however, far more space was given over to punishing disloyalty than nurturing loyalty; an examination of acts of attainder provides a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes negotiations underlying the formal business in the chambers.

1 . 1 C E R E M O N Y, C O M M U N I C AT I O N , A N D C O N S U LTAT I O N A parliament was a spectacle, without doubt intended to impress.¹ The opening days were particularly rich in ceremony.² The Colchester burgesses described the occasion in 1485.³ On Monday 7 November the Lords assembled at the palace of Westminster. Between nine and ten o’clock in the morning, the king and peers in their parliament robes ¹ D. Dean, ‘Image and Ritual in the Tudor Parliaments’, in D. Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture (Cambridge, 1995), 243–71. ² These ceremonies were not repeated in subsequent sessions of the same parliament: Joannis Lelandi Antiquarii de Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. T. Hearne, 6 vols. (2nd edn., Oxford, 1774), iv. 248. ³ Parliamentary Texts, 185–6.

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processed to Westminster Abbey.⁴ There they heard the mass of the Holy Ghost, and the king alone made a token offering (6s. 8d . in 1495).⁵ While the king and lords were at mass, the steward of the royal household Thomas Stanley, earl of Derby, presided over the roll-call and swearingin of the MPs. Then the full parliament—king, peers, MPs—convened, probably in the Painted Chamber in the southern part of the palace. The Painted Chamber was sometimes called the ‘Parliament Chamber’, but that name was also applied to the space where the Lords alone deliberated (normally the adjacent White Chamber).⁶ Heralds drew up seating plans to manage the assembly.⁷ The Painted Chamber was rectangular in shape, measuring 24.5 by 7.9 metres.⁸ At one end sat the king on a throne, wearing his crown or the cap of estate. Sitting on benches running parallel with the throne or standing were the two archbishops and the principal officers of state; in later parliaments, Henry would presumably have been joined by the heir apparent. Behind the throne royal councillors may have been standing, while at the back the eldest sons of peers could have observed the proceedings. On the king’s left along the length of the chamber sat the lay peers in two rows by rank, with barons on the cross bench. To the king’s right, facing the lay peers, sat the spiritual peers, the bishops on the front bench and the abbots behind. In the centre of the chamber, sitting on four woolsacks set out in a square, were the crown’s law officers. Behind them, resting their papers on the last woolsack, were the chancery clerks, keeping a record of proceedings. At the far end of the chamber, separated by a wooden bar, stood the Commons. The chancellor, Bishop Alcock of Worcester, then got up in front of the king to address the assembly.⁹ He took as his text the ambitious ‘Strive to prosper, go forth and triumph’.¹⁰ For ‘strive to prosper’, Alcock invoked the classic text of reciprocity, Livy’s fable of the discord ⁴ A herald’s account of the opening of the 1510 parliament exists, while a roll depicts the peers’ procession in 1512: J. E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages: A History of the English House of Lords to 1540 (London, 1968), 543–4; A. Wagner and J. C. Sainty, ‘The Origin of the Introduction of Peers in the House of Lords’, Archaeologia, 101 (1967), 142–50 (plates 17–20). ⁵ PRO, E101/414/6, fo. 4r. ⁶ I. M. Cooper, ‘The Meeting-Places of Parliament in the Ancient Palace of Westminster’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 3rd ser., 3 (1938), 97–128 (esp. 122–8). ⁷ The finest is for the 1523 parliament, which met at the London Blackfriars: Dean, ‘Image and Ritual’, 252. ⁸ P. Binski, The Painted Chamber at Westminster (London, 1986), 9. ⁹ PROME xv. 90–1 (RP vi. 267). ¹⁰ Ps. 44: 5.

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between the stomach and other parts of the human body. For ‘go forth’, Alcock spoke of the value of combined endeavour through analogy with bees: the loyal subjects prospered producing wax and honey, while the stingless queen bee ruled mildly and piously. For ‘triumph’, Alcock imagined a return to the golden age: a reversal of the descent of man from precious to base metal. Under Henry’s beneficent rule, Alcock foretold, England would emerge from the lawlessness and violence of civil war into a new age of peace and prosperity. Alcock concluded his sermon by urging his audience to join with him in praying for a long, happy, and fertile reign. The opening sermon served to set the context of the session, informing and educating the subject, and advancing the crown’s policies under the moral certainties of topoi drawn from biblical and classical sources.¹¹ In 1491 Archbishop Morton warned against the dangers of appeasing France through analogy with Sallust’s account of the Jugurthine War.¹² Like Charles VIII, the Numidian king Jugurtha, having offered his opponents ‘a simulated and fictitious peace’, proved harder to defeat in the end because the Romans had failed to acknowledge the threat he posed at the outset. This sermon and Morton’s address in 1497 showed how the king’s proposed campaigns met the criteria for a just war. In 1497 Morton rousingly invoked the patriotic heroism of the martyrs of the Roman Republic, urging his hearers to emulation.¹³ In 1512 Archbishop Warham, speaking for over an hour and a half, would show how ‘Justice shuld be mynystrid and peas shuld be norysshid and by what meanys Justice was putt by, and peas was turnyd In to warre’.¹⁴ To return to Henry’s first parliament: his sermon finished, Bishop Alcock commanded the Commons to elect a speaker. On the following morning (Tuesday 8 November) the Commons assembled in their usual meeting place, the refectory of Westminster Abbey.¹⁵ There they chose ¹¹ J. Watts, ‘The Policie in Christen Remes: Bishop Russell’s Parliamentary Sermons of 1483–84’, in G. W. Bernard and S. J. Gunn (eds.), Authority and Consent in Tudor England (Aldershot, 2002), 33–4; J.-Ph. Genet, ‘Paix et guerre dans les sermons parlementaires anglais (1362–1447)’, in R. M. Dessì (ed.), Prêcher la paix et discipliner la société: Italie, France, Angleterre (XIII e –XV e siècle) ( Turnhout, 2005), 167–200. ¹² PROME xvi. 92 (RP vi. 440a). ¹³ PROME xvi. 283 (RP vi. 509a). ¹⁴ Great Chronicle, 378; LJ i. 10. ¹⁵ A. Hawkyard, ‘From Painted Chamber to St Stephen’s Chapel: The Meeting Places of the House of Commons at Westminster until 1603’, Parliamentary History, 21 (2002), 68–77.

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by acclamation Thomas Lovell, whom the knights of the shires then set in the speaker’s chair. The recorder of London, Thomas Fitzwilliam, moved that a delegation of twenty-four senior members be dispatched to inform the chancellor. On Wednesday morning the Commons presented Lovell to the king.¹⁶ By convention the speaker attempted to decline the office, citing his own inability—‘my symplenesse and myne vnkunnyng’ in the words of one protestation—but his request was refused by the chancellor.¹⁷ The speaker then asked that if he misrepresented the views of his fellow MPs his words could be corrected. Not noted on the parliament rolls, the speaker probably also asked ‘in the name of alle my maystres, felowes and me’ for ‘all pryuelegiez, libertes, ymyunytes [immunities], and fraunchisez’ that his predecessors had enjoyed (what these in fact comprised being left vague).¹⁸ The chancellor granted the speaker’s request, whereupon the main business of the parliament got under way. The opening sermon was not the only occasion on which the crown addressed the two houses. Other speeches may have been directed at both peers and MPs. In 1472–5 ‘speakers both from home and abroad’ had delivered ‘many eloquent speeches’ in order ‘to arouse the interest of lords and commoners for the French war’; one well-tuned address to the Commons on the benefits of ‘werre outward’ had circulated in manuscript.¹⁹ Preambles to acts possibly reproduced the rhetoric of addresses that have not survived: in 1491–2 parliament was informed that the French king was planning to ‘distroie this realme’ by weakening its military capability through the war of attrition in Brittany.²⁰ The crown may have prepared texts for distribution in parliament. In January 1489—as he prepared for military intervention—Henry personally asked William Caxton to translate Christine de Pisan’s Les Faits d’Armes et de Chevalerie, which Caxton managed to publish that July.²¹ Among the target audience could have been MPs, for Caxton ¹⁶ PROME xv. 92–3 (RP vi. 268). ¹⁷ Beinecke Library, MS 163, fos. 22r–23r, printed in Parliamentary Texts, 200–1. This volume was owned by John Whittocksmead (1410–82). ¹⁸ J. S. Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376–1523 (Manchester, 1965), 31–42, 51–2. ¹⁹ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 132–3; Literae Cantuarienses: The Letter Books of the Monastery of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. J. B. Sheppard, 3 vols., Rolls Ser., 85 (1887–9), iii. 274–85 at 278. ²⁰ PROME xvi. 101 (RP vi. 444). ²¹ Christine de Pisan, The Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyualrye (Westminster, 1489), envoi.

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was renting a bookstall in the precincts of Westminster Abbey during that parliament.²² During the course of a session, peers and MPs were also kept informed of important developments. Royal councillors informed the convocation of Canterbury on 3 February 1489 about letters the king had received from overseas warning that the French king was about to launch a major offensive against Brittany; parliament was presumably also kept informed.²³ In October 1489 the English ambassadors to France, Sir John Risley and Stephen Fryon, were reportedly speeding home to deliver their report to the forthcoming session.²⁴ The issue of Brittany probably dominated that meeting, for in seven weeks only five acts were passed.²⁵ During the session, a French embassy arrived, while Maximilian, king of the Romans was elected a knight of the garter at a chapter held at Westminster (in an effort to resurrect the alliance against France).²⁶ Proroguing the session on 4 December, Archbishop Morton explained that one member of the French embassy was to return to Charles VIII to seek fuller powers.²⁷ At Candlemas (2 February) 1490 the king and the peers attending the new session staged a procession to Westminster Hall for the benefit of the French and Castilian ambassadors.²⁸ It was diplomatically advantageous to demonstrate through parliament that the whole realm was committed to action, or even that the king was purportedly exercising a restraining influence over his jingoistic people.²⁹ Participation in these collective actions possibly promoted an affinity between king and realm. In theory, the purpose of parliament was not only for the king to communicate with his subjects but also for his subjects to provide him with the counsel on which good governance was seen to depend.³⁰ Plural counsel was preferable to singular counsel because ‘through the counsel of them [the many] the better and surer ²² G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster: 1200–1540 (Oxford, 1989), 39. ²³ Records of Convocation, vi. 347. ²⁴ CSP Venetian, i: 1202–1509, ed. R. Brown (London, 1864), 182–3. ²⁵ PROME xvi. 44–9 (RP vi. 424–6). ²⁶ J. M. Currin, ‘Persuasions to Peace: The Luxembourg-Marigny-Gaguin Embassy and the State of Anglo-French Relations, 1489–90’, EHR 113 (1998), 882–904; Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 248. ²⁷ PROME xvi. 49 (RP vi. 426a). ²⁸ Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 256. ²⁹ CSP Milanese, i: 1385–1618, ed. A. B. Hinds (London, 1912), 253, 290; Polydore Vergil, The Anglica Historia, A.D. 1485–1537, ed. D. Hay, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., 74 (1950), 34–7; Currin, ‘Persuasions to Peace’, 891. ³⁰ Watts, Henry VI, 25–9.

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way can be chosen’: ‘Heere euery man is counseil & aduise | Paciently & chese therof the best’, princes were advised.³¹ In 1497 Archbishop Morton reminded parliament how Hannibal had come close to victory, but how the Romans were ultimately victorious because they possessed the counsel of good men.³² Because it comprised the most formal taking of counsel by the king, parliamentary deliberation also authorized the making of new laws and the granting of taxation. Enacting clauses stated that the king was acting ‘with the advice and assent’ of the two houses. In practice, what Henry really needed was their assent. This requirement, it has been suggested, was also true of great councils: ‘their counsel was of value to the king in justifying whatever action he might deem useful as a result’.³³ Expanded meetings of the king’s regular council, great councils (like parliaments) were convened on occasion in order to obtain the support of the political nation for important matters of state. Because they were more ad hoc assemblies than parliaments, summonses to great councils offered specific rather than formulaic explanations of why the king had called them. Thus on 4 October 1496 Henry summoned a great council to Westminster in response to the Scottish invasion of England the previous month.³⁴ The king’s letter declared that, ‘in asmoche as this great matier touchethe vs, oure reame, and euery Englishemane in the same, we haue delibred and prefixed a counseille . . . for to haue there lordes spiritualle and temporalle and certain wisemen of cities and townes’. The letter explained how the king wished that ‘amonges theym this thing that is of soo great weight and importaunce to be debated to suche an end and entent as by theire counseilles and wisedoms som wayes maye be founden howe the honour of vs and of oure reame maye be saued in this caas, and howe also the same our reame maye be protected and defended fromhensfurthe against the malice of the said Scottes’.³⁵ The presence of urban representatives from across the country—unlikely to be military experts—suggests, however, that the purpose of the great council was as much to secure authorization for a loan which would anticipate the expected parliamentary grant as it was to plan a military strategy. Wells echoed the parliamentary summons when it recorded that the king had requested that the city ³¹ Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, ed. J.-Ph. Genet, Camden Soc., 4th ser., 18 (1977), 142–3; George Ashby, Poems, ed. M. Bateson, EETS es 76 (1899), 24. ³² PROME xvi. 283 (RP vi. 509a). ³³ Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 855. ³⁴ Ibid. 844–57 passim. ³⁵ Coventry Archives, BA/H/17/A79/17.

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send a representative ‘there to agree to what the council of the realm of England cause to be ordained against the Scots’; Salisbury granted its representatives ‘full actorite and powere ffor this cetey to aunswere to suche causis as shalbe alegyd to them by resoun of the said councell’, in other words the plena potestas automatically conferred on MPs.³⁶ Yet in his report of 1 December Henry presented his plan of action as the proposition made to him by those attending the council, who ‘all togidre haue humbly besought vs for the defense of this oure reame and for the tuicion of the honnour therof ’.³⁷ Therefore by taking part in the formal counselling of the king, representatives committed their communities to what was decided, perhaps to decisions already taken.³⁸ If the course of action was already determined when parliament met in January 1497, that course had probably been set—before the great council had convened three months earlier—by the royal council that had convened at Sheen earlier in October.³⁹ Major foreign policies were not decided in parliament or in the plenary great councils of 1496 and also of 1488; more likely, they were settled in the regular royal council. Although they were unlikely to alter policy, this did not preclude members of a parliament from offering advice; having formally solicited it, a king was obligated to receive it, albeit unwelcome. Hence in 1512 MPs questioned the wisdom of Henry VIII personally leading an invasion of France.⁴⁰ A remarkable speech composed for the parliament of 1523, responding to the chancellor’s address and the speaker’s recapitulation, identified pitfalls in Henry VIII’s plans for a French campaign, dismissed his earlier conquests as ‘vngracious Dogholes’, and urged him to turn his attention to Scotland instead.⁴¹ Because the crown was seeking assent to policies already settled, it sought to manage parliamentary business. The chancellor and the speaker, in particular, provided royal oversight of the houses. Bishop ³⁶ Wells City RO, 2nd convocation book, p. 198; Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fo. 195v. ³⁷ Coventry Archives, BA/H/17/A79/18. ³⁸ J. G. Edwards, ‘The Plena Potestas of English Parliamentary Representatives’, in E. B. Fryde and E. Miller (eds.), Historical Studies of the English Parliament, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1970), i. 136–49. ³⁹ I. Arthurson, ‘The King’s Voyage into Scotland: The War that Never Was’, in D. Williams (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century (Woodbridge, 1987), 4–5; Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 860–1. ⁴⁰ Trevelyan Papers, ed. J. P. Collier et al., 3 vols., Camden Soc., os 67, 84, 105 (1857–72), iii. 8. ⁴¹ Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, ed. R. B. Merriman, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1902), i. 30–44 at 39.

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Alcock seems to have been chosen specifically to preside over Henry’s first parliament: experienced in handling sessions, he surrendered the chancellorship as soon as the parliament was dissolved in order that Henry could appoint Bishop Morton.⁴² Henry’s first speaker Thomas Lovell was already chancellor of the exchequer and an esquire of the body when chosen; legal advice that Lovell could not serve while he was still attainted seems to have been disregarded.⁴³ Although elected by the Commons, the speaker was a royal nominee, rewarded by the crown at the end of the parliament; selection was thus regarded by contemporaries as a mark of high favour.⁴⁴ In 1497 Henry received competing bids from Giles, Lord Daubeney on behalf of Sir Robert Sheffield and from Sir Reynold Bray on behalf of Thomas Englefield, both parties offering to forgo the £100 fee.⁴⁵ Edmund Dudley may have declined appointment as a serjeant-at-law in early October 1503 in order to serve as speaker in the forthcoming parliament (summoned a month later).⁴⁶ Successful management, however, did not turn parliament into a rubber stamp; rather it engaged the two houses and by extension the realm with the crown’s agenda.

1 . 2 T H E ROY A L T I T L E A N D T H E S U C C E S S I O N Claimants to the throne based their titles on indefeasible hereditary right rather than on acts of parliament.⁴⁷ Nevertheless declaration in parliament mattered to the king’s subjects: Richard III hoped that it would remove ‘the occasion of doubtes and ambiguitees’.⁴⁸ To an adherent, Edward IV was ‘verrey trew and rightwise enheritoure to the roylme and corone of England &c. and so he was declared by [the] iij astates of the land, at a parliament holden at Westmynster, unto this day never repelled, ne revoked’.⁴⁹ The more grounds on which a ⁴² Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 132–3; CCR 1485–1500, 18. ⁴³ CPR 1485–1494, 18, 23; YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 5 (fo. 4). ⁴⁴ Great Chronicle, 348; Roskell, Commons and their Speakers, 59–75, 104–16. ⁴⁵ PRO, E101/414/6, fo. 128r. Englefield, who was preferred, would be allowed to retain £50: E101/414/16, fo. 119v. ⁴⁶ PRO, E101/413/2/3, fo. 46r; J. H. Baker, The Order of Serjeants at Law, Selden Soc., ss 5 (1984), 166, 265–6. ⁴⁷ J. W. McKenna, ‘The Myth of Parliamentary Sovereignty in Late-Medieval England’, EHR 94 (1979), 481–506. ⁴⁸ PROME xv. 14 (RP vi. 240a). ⁴⁹ Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV, ed. J. Bruce, Camden Soc., os 1 (1838), 4.

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claim could be based the better: the papal bull of 1486 gave primacy to Henry’s ‘nyghest & vndouted title of succession’, but also invoked ‘the right of his most noble victory’, his ‘eleccyon’ by the nobility, and ‘the acte ordenaunce & auctorite of parlyament made by the .iij. states of this lande’.⁵⁰ In his first parliament Henry buttressed his claim in several ways. On 9 November 1485, after the Commons had presented their speaker, he addressed the Lords and members of the Commons.⁵¹ Although the parliament roll stated that the king addressed the whole parliament, his speech was not recorded by the Colchester diarists. Possibly, the burgesses had not attended, for a delegation of MPs usually presented the speaker, seemingly in the Lords’ own chamber rather than in the Painted Chamber.⁵² The roll described Henry’s speech briefly: the king stated that his title was just, and pointed to its vindication by judgement of God on the battlefield. How far Henry went in elaborating upon his title is uncertain. The third continuator of the Crowland Abbey Chronicles implied that much—too much—was made of the king’s title during the parliament.⁵³ Henry’s claim, of course, was that he was the heir of the last rightful king of England, his half-uncle Henry VI. He may well have wished to answer the charge, levelled by Richard III, that being ‘discended of bastard blood bothe of ffather side and of mother side . . . no title can nor may [be] in hym’.⁵⁴ Yet other sources suggest a greater degree of circumspection. Acts referred to Richard as ‘late in deed and not in right king of England’; Henry’s claim presupposed that Edward IV too had been a usurper. Henry owed his victory in a considerable measure, however, to the support of that part of the Yorkist household which had refused to accept Richard’s usurpation.⁵⁵ Acts thus sidestepped the question of Edward’s legitimacy: unlike his younger brother, Edward was styled ‘late king of England’. That this formula was universally ⁵⁰ STC 14096. ⁵¹ PROME xv. 93 (RP vi. 268b). ⁵² Cooper, ‘Meeting-Places of Parliament’, 117–18, 124. Alternatively, the king’s address could have been delivered in French or Latin, or it could have been regarded as an ‘empty formality’ not worth noting: Parliamentary Texts, 179. Yet Henry surely would not have spoken in an inaccessible language, while an address by the new, little-known king was unlikely to have been ignored. It has also been suggested that the burgesses could have been unable to hear the address; they reported, however, the opening sermon. ⁵³ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 194–5. ⁵⁴ The Paston Letters, ed. J. Gairdner, 6 vols. (London, 1904), vi. 82. ⁵⁵ R. Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, 1989), 138–77, 273–333.

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applied may indicate some degree of official guidance. In his address Henry could therefore have toned down his Lancastrianism. This was the approach adopted in a short bill that declared, but did not explain, the king’s title.⁵⁶ In his address Henry had reassured his audience that his accession did not jeopardize their titles. During its passage, Chancellor Alcock asked the justices for advice ‘whether the franchises and liberties of all manners of persons were by this act resumed or not’; the justices replied that they were not.⁵⁷ In 1461 the Commons had presented a petition of twenty-four articles seeking confirmation of a range of Lancastrian grants, which peers had spent three days answering on the king’s behalf.⁵⁸ The precedent then established—that grants were valid though the rulers who had authorized them were kings in deed and not in right—was now upheld. Given that it had no explanatory content, it may appear improbable that this act would have circulated widely. Nevertheless in Colchester’s records a transcript prefaced the MPs’ diary.⁵⁹ Perhaps Christmas and Vertue had been given a copy in order that they might publicize it; if so, this could indicate how an act of parliament was seen to enhance the royal title. The king also introduced a bill to repeal the infamous act of 1484—the titulus regius —which had ratified the petition announcing the bastardy of Edward IV’s children and hence establishing Richard’s claim to the throne.⁶⁰ Following the justices’ advice, the bill provided no more than the opening clause of that petition so that ‘the matter might be and remain in perpetual oblivion for the falsness and shamefulness of it’. Only an act of parliament, the justices considered, could authorize its removal from the parliament roll. The bill was presented on parchment (rather than on paper) for a swift and uncontroversial passage. Peers proposed, however, that the man believed to have drawn up the petition—Bishop Stillington of Bath and Wells—should be required to answer for it before them.⁶¹ Probably seeking to draw a line under this sensitive subject, Henry replied that he had already pardoned Stillington and ‘for that reason he did not want any more to do with him’.⁶² The act required men to surrender copies of the titulus regius in order that they ⁵⁶ PROME xv. 97 (RP vi. 270b). ⁵⁷ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 25 (fos. 12–13). ⁵⁸ PRO, C49/52/8/1–5; PROME xiii. 67–78 (RP v. 489–93); The Fane Fragment of the 1461 Lords’ Journal, ed. W. H. Dunham (New Haven, 1935), 6–15. ⁵⁹ Red Paper Book, 61. ⁶⁰ PROME xv. 133–4 (RP vi. 288–9). ⁶¹ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 1 (fo. 5). ⁶² Henry had pardoned Stillington by 22 Nov. 1485: PRO, C82/4/127.

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could be destroyed; interestingly the text was not expunged from the parliament roll of 1484.⁶³ The repeal of that act was important not only to set the historical record straight but also for Henry’s present purpose, for it removed the stigma of bastardy from Edward’s daughters as well as from his sons—in particular from Edward’s oldest child Elizabeth, Henry’s intended queen. On 10 December the king and peers summoned the Commons in order to announce the prorogation of the parliament. There the Commons through their speaker asked Henry to marry Elizabeth of York. Lovell emphasized that parliament had already declared that Henry and his heirs were rightful inheritors of the crown of England, but that the union—with the hope of children ‘from the stock of kings’—would be a comfort to the whole realm. The Lords then added their support, and the king, speaking personally, agreed.⁶⁴ Henry had previously publicly committed himself, on Christmas Day 1483 in Rennes Cathedral, to marry Elizabeth. With an announcement now widely anticipated, Lovell’s request must have been made at royal behest.⁶⁵ A priest, Thomas Betanson, writing from London to his master Sir Robert Plumpton, reported simply that ‘my lord schanchler publyshed in the Parlament house . . . that the kings gud grace shall weede my Lady Elizabeth’.⁶⁶ The Colchester diarists did not refer to the announcement: even within the parliament, access to or understanding of events may have been limited.⁶⁷ The union of York and Lancaster was thus to be endorsed in a groundswell of parliamentary support. The Crowland continuator sounded a sceptical note: some men thought that it would have been better if Henry had not expounded his own title but had relied on his forthcoming marriage to Elizabeth where ‘could be found whatever appeared to be missing in the king’s title elsewhere’.⁶⁸ This was the interpretation of the union that Speaker Lovell had denied. Nevertheless the crown appreciated its value as a means of reconciliation. The papal bull of 1486 explained how Innocent VIII had granted the dispensation in order to end ‘the longe & greuous variaunce, discentions & debates’ between the houses of Lancaster and York. The bull repeated Lovell’s point that Henry was king in his own right: should Elizabeth die without ⁶³ PROME xv. 13–18 (RP vi. 240–2). ⁶⁴ PROME xv. 112–13 (RP vi. 278). ⁶⁵ Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, ed. W. Campbell, 2 vols., Rolls Ser., 60 (1873–7), i. 199. ⁶⁶ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 63. ⁶⁷ Parliamentary Texts, 189. ⁶⁸ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 194–5.

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issue, then the children of any subsequent marriage would inherit the crown. The bull was translated, proclaimed, and read out from pulpits during the king’s first progress, and also printed.⁶⁹ Henry and Elizabeth’s marriage took place on 18 January 1486, five days before the parliament reconvened. That September, Elizabeth bore Henry a son, christened Arthur. The queen’s coronation was staged during Henry’s next parliament in 1487. On Friday 23 November Elizabeth sailed upstream from Greenwich to the Tower of London; on Saturday her litter was borne to the palace of Westminster. On Sunday she processed to Westminster Abbey, where she was crowned by Archbishop Morton. On Monday Elizabeth sat in state in the Parliament Chamber, and on Tuesday she returned to Greenwich on account of ‘the great Besynesse of the Parlyament, ells the Fest had dured lenger’.⁷⁰ Parliament was also in session during the next great familial occasion. In November 1489 the royal couple celebrated the knighting of Arthur and his creation as prince of Wales, and the birth of their second child Margaret, there being ‘the greate Parte of the Nobles of this Royalme present at this Parlement’.⁷¹ At the beginning of November Elizabeth had ceremonially retired to her chamber. Later that month Arthur (aged 3) journeyed from Sheen to London by water, with peers joining his barge between Mortlake and Chelsea. On Sunday 29 November Henry and Arthur formally dined together; that evening the queen gave birth to a daughter. On Monday morning the king created Arthur prince of Wales and earl of Chester and knighted him; Arthur then sat in state with the other newly dubbed knights in the Parliament Chamber. By knighting Arthur with his fellows, the king may have hoped to foster loyalty to the prince from his future subjects. On the same morning Princess Margaret was christened.⁷² That Monday (30 November) was thus a striking demonstration to the political nation of the fecundity Chancellor Alcock and Speaker Lovell had hoped for in Henry’s first parliament. Through such ceremonies, carefully planned by the royal council, the king fostered identification with his family among his subjects.⁷³ MPs and peers took part in and witnessed these ceremonies: around 250 lords ⁶⁹ STC 14096; TRP i. 6–7; Select Cases in the Council of Henry VII, ed. C. G. Bayne and W. H. Dunham, Selden Soc., 75 (1958), 8; Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 196, 198. ⁷⁰ Ibid. iv. 216–33 at 229. ⁷¹ Ibid. iv. 249. ⁷² Ibid. iv. 249–54. ⁷³ PRO, E405/75, rot. 26.

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and knights attended the queen’s coronation in 1487. Involvement did not, however, dissuade Lord Fitzwalter, Sir William Stanley, Sir Gilbert Debenham, or Sir Humphrey Savage from allegedly supporting Yorkist rivals.⁷⁴ When Prince Arthur was born, messengers were dispatched to spread the glad tidings throughout the kingdom, prompting nationwide celebrations. The mourning following Arthur’s death in 1502 may reveal an emotional investment in the success of the royal line.⁷⁵ In the king’s last parliament in 1504, subjects’ loyalty was redirected to the king’s second son Henry, then aged 13. His creation as prince of Wales during the session demonstrated the continued viability of the Tudor succession.⁷⁶ This ceremony may also have helped ease the business of a difficult session, which baulked at the king’s claim to an aid for the knighting of Henry’s elder brother.⁷⁷

1 . 3 P U N I S H I N G D I S LOY A LT Y The king was rapidly disabused of Bishop Alcock’s hope in 1485 that Bosworth marked a watershed: that December it was ‘not wele’ among the lords, while in February ‘the king purposyse northward hastyly after the Parlament, & it is sayd he purposses to doe execution quickly ther on such as hath offended agynst him.’⁷⁸ During his first progress in spring and summer 1486, Henry faced risings by Viscount Lovell and Humphrey Stafford of Grafton; he then defeated Lambert Simnel and his supporters in battle in June 1487. Opening the new parliament in November, Chancellor Morton chose an admonitory text: ‘Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it’.⁷⁹ Peace, Morton argued, was achieved through obedience—both familial (to the head of the household) and political (to the king).⁸⁰ Exemplary justice was required against the disobedient: as the act of attainder explained, for ‘malicious, compassed, greate and heynous offence, not all oonly commytted ayen oure seid sovereygn lorde but also ayenst the unyversall ⁷⁴ Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 229–33. ⁷⁵ S. Gunn, ‘War, Dynasty and Public Opinion in Early Tudor England’, in Bernard and Gunn (eds.), Authority and Consent, 132–3, 135, 139, 143. ⁷⁶ PROME xvi. 325, 344–5 (RP vi. 522–3, 532). ⁷⁷ Cf. 1610: P. Croft, ‘The Parliamentary Installation of Henry, Prince of Wales’, Historical Research, 65 (1992), 177–93. ⁷⁸ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 63–4. ⁷⁹ Ps. 3: 14. ⁸⁰ PROME xv. 337–8 (RP vi. 385).

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and comen wele of this realme, ys requisite sore and grevous punycion; and also for an example hereafter, that non other be bold in like wise to offend’.⁸¹ Authorized by the whole realm, acts of attainder lent the maximum degree of legitimacy to the regime’s proscription of its enemies; they had become a principal instrument in the struggle between the houses of York and Lancaster.⁸² Unlike the process of impeachment, parliamentary attainders were not judicial proceedings: no evidence needed to be produced, no witnesses were examined, and no defence could be made. They were read like other bills and petitions, and simply imposed the prescribed penalties. Although acts of attainder could supplement judgments in lower courts, men need not have been tried elsewhere; it did not matter whether they were alive, dead, or outside royal jurisdiction. Parliamentary attainder amplified existing penalties for high treason: under martial law, possessions were forfeit, while under the common law lands in fee simple were included, but acts encompassed lands in fee tail and lands held to use as well.⁸³ In 1495 the act attainting Perkin Warbeck’s adherents specifically extended forfeiture to lands held to the traitors’ use, explaining that these had not been touched by convictions before a commission of oyer and terminer.⁸⁴ Six of Henry’s parliaments passed acts of attainder (the exception being 1497). In his address on 9 November 1485, Henry announced his intention to punish those who had offended him ‘in the court of the present parliament according to their deserts’.⁸⁵ A bill of attainder, introduced in the Lords, reached the Commons in December.⁸⁶ It denounced the odious crimes committed under Richard’s rule—including the ‘shedyng of infantes blode’—and then passed sentence against twentytwo men, headed by the ‘late duke of Glouc[ester]’.⁸⁷ The number was comparatively small—‘far more moderate’ than under the Yorkist kings, observed the Crowland continuator—and at least eight of those ⁸¹ PROME xv. 362 (RP vi. 397–8). ⁸² This section draws on J. R. Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture, 1453 to 1509’, in Crown and Nobility, 1450–1509 (London, 1976), 127–58, 307–8; and on M. Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion 1461–1529’, Parliamentary History, 3 (1984), 17–23. ⁸³ J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), 191–5, 201–3; id., The Tudor Law of Treason: An Introduction (London, 1979), 235. ⁸⁴ PROME xvi. 229–30 (RP vi. 503–4). ⁸⁵ PROME xv. 93 (RP vi. 268b). ⁸⁶ Parliamentary Texts, 188. ⁸⁷ PROME xv. 107–12 (RP vi. 275–8).

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attainted were dead.⁸⁸ Henry may have delayed introducing the bill in the hope of persuading Ricardian supporters in the north to accept his succession: three of the eight men excluded from the royal pardon of 11 October were not attainted in December.⁸⁹ Names could be removed from bills of attainder during their passage through parliament. In 1504 Henry would instruct Speaker Dudley and his councillor Sir John Mordaunt to remove the name of Robert Symson from a bill of attainder only a few days before the session would be concluded.⁹⁰ Acts of attainder did not necessarily result in the destruction of the men convicted. Of those attainted in Henry’s first parliament, only Humphrey Stafford—who went on to launch a new rising—was executed by authority of the act in July 1486.⁹¹ The crown could pardon the capital sentence and restore forfeitures; it could also revoke legal disablement, which enabled the attainted to acquire and to inherit lands.⁹² Less than a week after Henry’s first act of attainder passed, the Warwickshire esquire Roger Wake successfully petitioned the king.⁹³ Wake explained how he had fought at Bosworth ‘ageinst his will and mynde’ (somewhat implausibly as he was William Catesby’s brother-inlaw); he quoted and offered to produce Richard’s letters commanding him to fight ‘vpone payne of forfaiture of lyf, lond, and asmoche as he myght forfaite’. Wake then explained how he had a wife and eight children ‘of tender age, which without your especialle grace vnto them showed be like to perisshe for defaute of sustenance: the childerne be of so tender age they can be put to noone vse to relief them self, and theire moder can full symply applye hir to aske almes for theym it is so contrarious to hir bryngyng vpe’. Invoking Henry’s ‘gracious and mercifull disposicioun withe whiche God of His grete grace hathe excellently and habundantly endowed you’, Wake asked the king to pardon him his life and to grant him his personal possessions, ‘wherby he, his said wyf, and childerne may have som lyvyng vnto the tyme that he at your other leiser sue ferther to your good grace for theire more relief ’. Wake’s petition revealed his expectation that Henry would take further steps to undo the consequences of his attainder. Contemporaries ⁸⁸ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 194–5. ⁸⁹ TRP i. 3–4. ⁹⁰ OA, 19 Hen. VII, letter of 28 March. A name has been erased from the bill of attainder: OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 24. Symson was pardoned by 21 April: PRO, C82/257. ⁹¹ PRO, KB27/900, rex rot. 8 f.; KB29/116, rot. 16d; C. H. Williams, ‘The Rebellion of Humphrey Stafford in 1486’, EHR 43 (1928), 181–9. ⁹² PRO, DL5/3, fos. 195v–196v. ⁹³ PRO, C82/5 (15 Dec. 1485).

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anticipated that Henry would pardon many of those attainted: Thomas Betanson expressed surprise in February 1486 that ‘these lords and gentlemen that was attaynted, they gytt no grace, as yt is sayd’.⁹⁴ The attainder of Geoffrey St German (a Northamptonshire esquire, who had died the day after Bosworth, probably of wounds received) was reversed in the second session of the parliament on which Betanson was reporting.⁹⁵ Wake’s attainder was annulled in the next parliament, and by the time of his death in 1503 he had recovered almost all the lands he had forfeited.⁹⁶ To the penitent the king was expected to show mercy: to forgive and therefore to restore.⁹⁷ Restoration served as a probationary system in which men could work their way back into the king’s favour and which also helped to heal the fractured political nation. The loyal service of Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, allowed him gradually to recover his position.⁹⁸ Also attainted in 1485 was Thomas Pulter, who was pardoned his life and admitted to the king’s allegiance in November 1486. Pulter served the king at the battle of Stoke in June 1487, but died before parliament could convene that November, where his attainder was thus reversed for his son.⁹⁹ Restoration could come at a price, however. Forfeited goods and the profits from lands seized—if they were not used to reward loyal servants—were paid into the royal coffers, income the king forwent when attainders were reversed.¹⁰⁰ The crown was determined to ensure that it received all the forfeitures to which it was entitled: in August 1486 commissioners were charged with identifying those which had not been received.¹⁰¹ The crown retrieved plate which Sir Robert Brackenbury had given a week before the battle of Bosworth to a London chaplain in order to pay off his debts, but which the chaplain had not passed ⁹⁴ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64. ⁹⁵ PROME xv. 212–14 (RP vi. 328–9); Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem: Henry VII, 3 vols. (London, 1898–1955), i. 7. ⁹⁶ PROME xv. 353–5 (RP vi. 393–4); Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion’, 22. ⁹⁷ Cf. K. J. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge, 2003), 2–3, 16–21, 111–19. ⁹⁸ Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 145–7; R. Virgoe, ‘The Recovery of the Howards in East Anglia, 1485–1529’, in E. W. Ives, R. J. Knecht, and J. J. Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England (London, 1978), 1–20. ⁹⁹ PRO, C66/565, m. 11 (CPR 1485–1494, 143); PROME xv. 352–3 (RP vi. 392–3). ¹⁰⁰ B. P. Wolffe, The Crown Lands, 1461 to 1536: An Aspect of Yorkist and Early Tudor Government (London, 1970), 142–5. ¹⁰¹ CPR 1485–1494, 133–4.

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on.¹⁰² In May 1507 Edmund Dudley apparently recovered a diamond ring belonging to Sir Robert Chamberleyn, attainted fifteen years earlier.¹⁰³ The crown also pursued debts owed to attainted men—for example, money owed by men of Calais to Sir James Tyrell, the town’s former lieutenant—although it honoured debts Sir William Stanley had incurred.¹⁰⁴ The king thus might strike a hard bargain in exchange for restoration. Petitioners could emphasize how little their ancestors had been worth: Richard Ratcliff explained how his father as a third son possessed few lands, so his restoration would cost the king little.¹⁰⁵ In 1501 Henry received £500 from Elizabeth Brews in exchange for the lands of her late brother Sir Gilbert Debenham and for a promise to have his outlawry and attainder reversed in the next parliament. The king agreed only to return lands which were presently in the crown’s possession (worth £40 a year); lands granted out were to remain with the grantees for the term of their lives, unless Elizabeth and her family could ‘bargeyne and agree’ with them.¹⁰⁶ The reversal of the attainder in the next parliament ensured that Elizabeth and her heirs held the lands in their own right rather than by royal grant, which might be resumed.¹⁰⁷ An act also passed in 1504 empowered Henry to reverse by letters patent attainders enacted in his or Richard III’s reigns, on the grounds that he did not intend to summon another parliament for some time.¹⁰⁸ In the original bill ten suitors seeking restoration were named; one—James Harrington—was then erased, for he secured an act reversing his attainder in this parliament.¹⁰⁹ Two of the nine remaining names were not covered by the general provisions of the act because the attainders pre-dated the parliament of 1484. John Baynton’s father Robert had been attainted for fighting on the Lancastrian side at Tewkesbury in 1471. Baynton had perhaps been unable to secure the reversal of this attainder earlier in Henry’s reign because his father’s lands had been granted to a leading royal servant Sir John, later Lord Cheyne, who died without issue in 1499. This attainder was now ¹⁰² ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹

PRO, E159/262, recorda, Hil., rots. 6r, 8d. BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 42r. PRO, DL5/4, fo. 56v; E101/414/16, fo. 58v. PROME xvi. 208–10 (RP vi. 492–3). PRO, C66/588, m. 10 (CPR 1494–1509, 238–9); E101/414/16, fo. 83r. PROME xvi. 400–3 (RP vi. 549–50). PROME xvi. 331–3 (RP vi. 526). OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 32; PROME xvi. 418–19 (RP vi. 555).

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reversed in August 1504.¹¹⁰ Charles Clifford was seeking the reversal of an even older attainder of 1461, that of his uncle Thomas Courtenay, fourteenth earl of Devon.¹¹¹ Although the act claimed that a shortage of legislative time prevented parliament from restoring these men, a petition to reverse an attainder outright need not have taken any more time than the act that was passed. But there was insufficient time to decide on what terms the petitioners should be restored: the restoration of Harrington (who had entered the priesthood) apparently cost the comparatively small sum of £53 6s. 8d .¹¹² Thomas Tyrell and Thomas Wyndham were seeking the reversal of their fathers’ and their own common law convictions and of the attainders which were actually being enacted in the present parliament.¹¹³ Nevertheless the Wyndhams’ attainders were the first to be reversed on 21 July.¹¹⁴ The Tyrells’ attainders were reversed in April 1506, for which Thomas agreed to pay £1,728.¹¹⁵ In November 1505 Lord Fitzwalter’s son Robert was required to pay £5,000 for the reversal of his father’s attainder.¹¹⁶ The attainders of Sir Richard Charleton (1485) and John Malory (1487) do not seem to have been reversed, while Humphrey Stafford’s attainder (1485) would only be reversed for his son in 1514, and Sir Simon Mountford’s (1495) for his grandson in 1534.¹¹⁷ The other beneficiaries of the act were West Country rebels of 1497, attainted in 1504, with whom Edmund Dudley negotiated on the king’s behalf.¹¹⁸ Men seeking pardons looked to those who stood high in the king’s favour to assist them.¹¹⁹ Attainted in 1461, Edward Ellesmere had turned to Jacques Fryis, Edward IV’s physician. According to Fryis, Ellesmere had solicited ‘hys good wyll to be meane and laboure’ to Edward ‘for hys restytucion’, promising in return that Fryis should have London properties worth £26 a year. Consequently, Fryis had ‘labored a bylle to the kynges good grace by hys handys’ for the revoking of Ellesmere’s attainder, which bill Fryis caused the king ¹¹⁰ CPR 1467–1477, 533–4; PROME xv. 257 (RP vi. 348a); CPR 1494–1509, 374. ¹¹¹ See the appendix to this chapter. ¹¹² PRO, E36/214, p. 445. ¹¹³ PROME xvi. 380–2 (RP vi. 545–6). ¹¹⁴ PRO, C82/260. ¹¹⁵ BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fos. 41v, 42v; PRO, E36/214, p. 519; CPR 1494–1509, 506–7. ¹¹⁶ SR iii. 15–20; Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 147 n. 85. ¹¹⁷ SR iii. 102–3; PRO, C66/663, mm. 5–6. ¹¹⁸ PRO, C82/294 (CPR 1494–1509, 509); C82/320 (CPR 1494–1509, 622); C82/322 (CPR 1494–1509, 594); BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 34v. ¹¹⁹ Cf. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, 119–35.

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‘with hys owen handys to assygne and spede . . . so that the sayd acte was avoydyt and adnullyd . . . and a playne restitucion made’ in 1475. From a position of strength in 1485, Ellesmere now repudiated this transaction as coerced.¹²⁰ Similarly, in 1495 Lord Zouche sold five manors at a knock-down price to Sir Reynold Bray in exchange for Bray’s ‘especiall labour, assistens, and meanes’ in helping Zouche to attain ‘the singuler fauour and the especiall grace’ of the king ‘where thorowgh the seid acte of atteyndre is adnulled and repellid’.¹²¹ William Horne, the 13-year-old heir of Gervase Horne, a Kent esquire, was fortunate in 1495. Gervase should have been attainted for high treason, but at the ‘greate instaunce’ of Archbishop Morton and Sir Richard Guildford and at the ‘most humble request’ of Gervase’s friends and kinsmen, Henry agreed to restore William’s inheritance when he came of age.¹²² Acts of attainder were therefore fine coercive tools: they enabled Henry to punish traitors, reward followers, and conciliate penitents. As judgments of the king’s highest court, they also possessed considerable authority; Colchester’s MPs seemingly brought home a list of those attainted in December 1485.¹²³ Seeking supporters in April 1486, Humphrey Stafford claimed that the king had pardoned him by letters patent and accepted him as a true subject; when Stafford’s deception was discovered, some of those who had rallied to him reportedly now forsook him.¹²⁴ Attainders also served as a deterrent: three of those attainted in early 1490 may have been executed on Tower Hill during the parliament.¹²⁵ Even when penalties were remitted, attainder brought hardship: Sir Gilbert Debenham, pardoned in 1499, was so poor that the king paid for his burial in 1500.¹²⁶ Men could not always recover their ancestral lands: some of Lord Zouche’s manors stayed with Henry’s supporters; Humphrey Stafford’s seat of Grafton remained in the hands ¹²⁰ PRO, C1/66/369; C4/26/13 (a reference I owe to Hannes Kleineke); PROME xv. 210–11 (RP vi. 327). ¹²¹ PRO, C54/356, m. 13d (CCR 1485–1500, 270); PROME xvi. 193–9 (RP vi. 484–7); M. Condon, ‘From Caitiff and Villain to Pater Patriae: Reynold Bray and the Profits of Office’, in M. Hicks (ed.), Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1990), 143–4. ¹²² PROME xvi. 147–8 (RP vi. 461). ¹²³ Red Paper Book, 64. ¹²⁴ PRO, KB9/127/9; KB9/138/70, 83. ¹²⁵ PROME xvi. 70–1 (RP vi. 436–7); Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 257; D. A. Luckett, ‘The Thames Valley Conspiracies against Henry VII’, Historical Research, 68 (1995), 164–72. ¹²⁶ PRO, C66/585, m. 14 (CPR 1494–1509, 190); E101/415/3, fo. 25v.

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of Sir Gilbert Talbot and his descendants; and the Berkeleys were unable to retrieve their seat of Northfield and Welley.¹²⁷ Acts of attainder affected the king’s subjects in several ways. In particular, sentences of forfeiture provoked concern among those whose own titles could be prejudiced. Acts commonly contained clauses protecting others’ rights (for example, the titles of the wives of those attainted, or properties which the attainted held to the use of somebody else). The composite acts of attainder allowed anyone to challenge the findings of an inquisition, provided that the traverse was brought within a month.¹²⁸ The inquisition on Richard Banke of Allerton Bywater (Yorkshire), attainted in 1487, was held on 11 February 1488; on 8 March its findings were duly traversed in chancery.¹²⁹ Margaret Stafford, ‘then beyng widowe, not knowing the seid acte’, however, missed the opportunity to challenge an inquisition of July 1486 on her husband Humphrey Stafford of Grafton, so a separate act of parliament was required to enable her cousin and heir Lady Margaret de Vere to traverse the inquisition’s findings.¹³⁰ Others with claims to the estates of forfeited men were quicker off the mark. The coheirs of Humphrey Stafford, earl of Devon (c.1439–69) claimed that Humphrey Stafford of Grafton had wrongly entered eight manors thanks to Richard III’s favour. Two days after Henry’s ‘most victorious jorney’, the rightful heirs had entered these manors, which in the king’s first parliament they then asked be exempted from Stafford of Grafton’s forfeiture.¹³¹ Provisos to acts of attainder were another means by which people could protect their titles from the consequences of forfeiture, but may have required prior agreement with the crown. In 1491 Sir Robert Chamberleyn was convicted and executed for high treason; in 1492 he was attainted by parliament. A proviso to the act exempted from forfeiture the manor of Chambers in Epping (Essex).¹³² This manor had escheated to the crown upon the death without issue of Sir John Skrene in 1474; Skrene’s widow Elizabeth had then remarried Richard Harper.¹³³ In 1475 Edward IV had granted the manor to ¹²⁷ Lander, ‘Attainder and Forfeiture’, 144–5, 152; Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion’, 20–2. ¹²⁸ PROME xv. 111–12, 366–7, xvi. 234–5, 386–7 (RP vi. 277–8, 399–400, 506b, 548). ¹²⁹ PRO, KB27/908, rex rot. 10. ¹³⁰ PRO, E150/1169/4 (fragment); PROME xv. 341–3 (RP vi. 387–8). The traverse failed: PRO, STAC2/32/27/3; CPR 1485–1494, 302. ¹³¹ PROME xv. 206–7 (RP vi. 325–6). ¹³² PROME xvi. 123–5 (RP vi. 455–6). ¹³³ PRO, C140/50/42/13.

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Chamberleyn and his heirs.¹³⁴ Chamberleyn had enfeoffed the manor to the use of himself and his heirs, and had then admitted the Harpers as tenants. By his common law conviction in 1491, Sir Robert ‘forfeytyd not any maners, landes, tenementes, or heriditamentes wherof any othir persone was seasyd to his vse’, but his son Ralph was disabled from inheriting Chambers. Harper therefore approached Chamberleyn’s feoffees, offering to purchase the manor. Yet, ‘dredyng lest by auctorite of parlament all suche maners, landes, and tenementes the whiche the seid Sire Robert or any other to hys vse had the tyme of the seyd attendeure shuld be forfeytyd’, Harper decided not to conclude the purchase. Instead, possibly taking advantage of his position as MP, he asked the king to exempt Chambers from the act of attainder.¹³⁵ This proviso cost Harper at least £50, the sum the solicitor-general Andrew Dymmock received on the king’s behalf.¹³⁶ Thanks to the proviso, the Harpers acquired the manor and passed it on to their heirs.¹³⁷ More generally, the draconian and sweeping nature of parliamentary attainder was unpopular: princes were expected to show mercy to all but the most unrepentant recidivist.¹³⁸ Bishop Alcock, after all, likened the office of king to that of the stingless queen bee when opening Henry’s first parliament.¹³⁹ Although some members of both houses were seeking retribution in 1485, criticism of the attainders was vociferous and widespread.¹⁴⁰ The Crowland continuator observed that the act ‘did not pass without much argument or, to be more truthful, rebuke for what was done’.¹⁴¹ Thomas Betanson commented, ‘Howbeit ther was many gentlemen agaynst it, but it wold not be, for yt was the kings pleasure.’¹⁴² Perhaps anticipating this reaction in the Commons, on 8 December (the feast of the conception of the Virgin Mary, when parliament did not sit) Henry granted ¹³⁴ CPR 1467–1477, 536. ¹³⁵ PRO, E211/311; ‘List of Members of the Fourth Parliament’, 172. ¹³⁶ PRO, E101/413/2/2, fo. 30r (13 May 1492). On 3 March the secretary Oliver King had paid £40 into the chamber for an unidentified proviso: ibid., fo. 27v. ¹³⁷ PRO, E150/303/7. ¹³⁸ Cf. M. Kekewich, ‘The Attainder of the Yorkists in 1459: Two Contemporary Accounts’, BIHR 55 (1982), 25–34. ¹³⁹ PROME xv. 90 (RP vi. 267a). ¹⁴⁰ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 1 (fo. 5); Parliamentary Texts, 186. ¹⁴¹ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 194–5. ¹⁴² Plumpton Letters and Papers, 63.

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a general pardon for offences committed before the opening of the parliament.¹⁴³ Nevertheless when the bill of attainder reached the Commons on 9 December, it ‘sore was questioned with’, but passed the following day.¹⁴⁴ The grounds for this opposition are matters for conjecture. There could have been disagreements about whether men’s names should be in the act; peers and MPs may have spoken up for some of those named.¹⁴⁵ Names could have been removed from the bill during passage, as seems to have occurred with the mass attainder bill of 1461.¹⁴⁶ Members of the two houses may also have opposed the attainders on grounds of natural justice. The act reversing Geoffrey St German’s attainder explained how he had been ‘so manasshed by the lettres’ of Richard ‘that onles he came to the same feld he shuld lose his lyve, londes and goodes; for drede wherof, he was in the same feld, full sore ayenst his wyll’.¹⁴⁷ Some in parliament probably knew this to be true: Richard had summoned Henry Vernon to fight ‘upon peyne of forfaicture unto us of all that ye may forfait and loose’.¹⁴⁸ The Crowland continuator thought the attainders poor policy: ‘what assurance will our kings have, henceforth, that on the day of battle they will not be deprived of the presence of their subjects who, summoned by the dreaded command of the king, are well aware that, if the royal cause should happen to decline, as has often been known, they will lose life, goods and inheritance complete?’¹⁴⁹ It seemed impolitic as well as unjust to attaint men who had turned out for the reigning king. The act of attainder stated that the men named had committed treason on 21 August, the day before Bosworth was fought. In practical terms, this re-dating made no difference, as those attainted fought against Henry the following day. In theoretical terms, the re-dating extended Edward IV’s precedent that the ¹⁴³ Parliamentary Texts, 188; P. R. Cavill, ‘The Enforcement of the Penal Statutes in the 1490s: Some New Evidence’, Historical Research (to be published 2009), 6. ¹⁴⁴ Parliamentary Texts, 188. ¹⁴⁵ Cf. Sir John Scudamore’s account of his attainder in 1461: PROME xiv. 65–8 (RP vi. 29–30). ¹⁴⁶ PRO, C49/52/8/12; PROME xiii. 42–55 (RP v. 476–83). ¹⁴⁷ PROME xv. 212–13 (RP vi. 328b). ¹⁴⁸ HMC, Twelfth Report, Appendix IV: Rutland, i (London, 1888), 7–8; Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 176–9. ¹⁴⁹ Ibid. 194–5.

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rightful king could enter into his royal estate without deposing the incumbent.¹⁵⁰ The crown came to recognize that wholesale attainder might discourage men from committing to anyone, including the reigning king. Months after Perkin Warbeck had attempted to land on the south coast in July 1495, parliament passed a ‘bill that noman goyng to batell with the prince shuld be atteynted’.¹⁵¹ The act did not distinguish between a king de facto or de jure, since this would have revealed a lack of faith in Henry’s title; nevertheless the king ‘for the tyme being’ did have resonances of the king de facto.¹⁵² Englishmen were accustomed to distinguishing kings ‘in deed and not in right’: in 1485–6 the town of Cambridge punctiliously noted its payment to the minstrels of Richard III, ‘nuper de facto et non de iure regis Anglie’.¹⁵³ But the king’s subjects may not have interpreted the act the way Henry hoped. In 1497 one allegedly remarked that ‘we ned nott pray for the kynge be name butt pro rege nostro tunc, for why tys hard to know who is ryghttwys kynge’.¹⁵⁴ Given his failure to convince all his subjects of the incontestability of his title, Henry thus turned to those on whom a special obligation fell—‘suche persones as have by hym promocion or avauncement . . . which owe and verily be bounden of reason to gif their attendaunce upon his roiall persone to defende the same’. In the aftermath of the Lambert Simnel rebellion (1487), facing Perkin Warbeck (1495), and fearing a landing by Edmund de la Pole (1504), Henry legislated on the duty of allegiance owed by the holders of crown offices and the recipients of royal grants.¹⁵⁵ Its tenants provided the crown with a ready supply of manpower, so long as it obtained the exclusive right to their service; copyhold tenants were instructed in manor courts that, under the 1487 legislation, they would forfeit their titles if they were retained by anyone else.¹⁵⁶ A cadre especially obliged to support the ¹⁵⁰ L. Brown, ‘Continuity and Change in the Parliamentary Justifications of the Fifteenth-Century Usurpations’, in The Fifteenth Century, vii: Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Late Middle Ages, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2007), 166–73. ¹⁵¹ 11 Hen. VII, c. 1; PROME xvi. 278 (1495 plt., app.). The title ‘De Facto’ act, by contrast, is not contemporary. ¹⁵² A. F. Pollard, ‘The ‘‘De Facto’’ Act of Henry VII’, BIHR 7 (1929–30), 1–12. ¹⁵³ Cambs. Archives, X/71/3. ¹⁵⁴ Westminster Abbey Muniments, MS 12245. The reading ‘tunc’ is uncertain. ¹⁵⁵ 3 Hen. VII, c. 12; 11 Hen. VII, c. 18; 19 Hen. VII, c. 1. ¹⁵⁶ PRO, DL37/62, rots. 5, 6d, 14d, 17d; KB9/435/48; KB9/436/7, 13, 16; Select Cases in the Council, 28, 80, 83–6.

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king militarily thus compensated for the uncertain allegiance of much of the political nation.¹⁵⁷

Conclusion Parliament provided a channel through which the king could communicate with the realm and a means by which he could bind subjects through their representatives to decisions while displaying a seemly receptiveness to counsel. Like the court and the council, parliament played a part in projecting the royal image. In particular, parliament showed the king at his most dignified: at the apex of the body politic and at the head of a new royal line too. In parliament the crown also laboured subjects’ obligations and the penalties for disloyalty. In the absence of contemporary comment, the effectiveness of Henry’s parliaments as political occasions is difficult to gauge; degrees of commitment, allegiance, and loyalty cannot readily be measured. Nevertheless parliament undoubtedly counted in the public performance of Henry’s kingship.¹⁵⁸

APPENDIX: THE EARLDOM OF DEVON Why was Charles Clifford seeking in 1504 the reversal of the attainder of his uncle, Thomas Courtenay, fourteenth earl of Devon (1432–61)? In October 1485 letters patent had elevated Sir Edward Courtenay of Boconnoc to the earldom of Devon.¹⁵⁹ This was a new creation rather than the restoration of the older title, so the fourteenth earl’s attainder of 1461 was not repealed in Henry VII’s first parliament. The original earldom was not entailed in the male line; there thus ensued a dispute within the senior branch of the Courtenay family.¹⁶⁰ Edward Courtenay was the heir male to that earldom, being the grandson of the eleventh earl’s younger brother; the heirs general were the sisters of the fourteenth earl, Jane (sometimes called Joan) and Elizabeth.¹⁶¹ Jane was Charles ¹⁵⁷ D. Luckett, ‘Crown Office and Licensed Retinues in the Reign of Henry VII’, in R. E. Archer and S. Walker (eds.), Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England (London, 1995), 223–38. ¹⁵⁸ Cf. Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 861. ¹⁵⁹ CPR 1485–1494, 28–9. ¹⁶⁰ The junior branch—the Courtenays of Powderham—does not seem to have been involved. Background on both branches is provided in J. A. F. Thomson, ‘The Courtenay Family in the Yorkist Period’, BIHR 45 (1972), 230–46. ¹⁶¹ G.E.C. et al., The Complete Peerage, 14 vols. in 15 pts. (rev. edn., London and Stroud, 1910–98), iv. 327–31, 335.

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Clifford’s mother. Charles’s father was Sir Roger Clifford (second son of the eighth Lord Clifford), who had been executed by Richard III. Earl Edward was required to make over lands to the heirs general in 1490.¹⁶² In the parliament of 1504, William Courtenay, Earl Edward’s son and heir, was attainted. The act of attainder also converted the 1485 grant of the earldom to Edward from tail male into a life interest.¹⁶³ The earldom would therefore escheat to the crown on Earl Edward’s death. Should the fourteenth earl’s attainder be reversed, Clifford seems to have believed that he could be restored to the original earldom; this looked conceivable by 1508, when it was rumoured that William Courtenay was going to be executed.¹⁶⁴ That June Clifford forged a marriage alliance with Edmund Dudley, possibly with the intention of providing the minister with the incentive to exercise influence over the king.¹⁶⁵ Yet Clifford was to be disappointed: following Earl Edward’s death in May 1509, Henry VIII chose to reverse William’s attainder and then (following William’s death) to create his son and heir Henry earl of Devon anew.¹⁶⁶ ¹⁶² CPR 1485–1494, 305–6. ¹⁶³ PROME xvi. 380–3 (RP vi. 545–6). ¹⁶⁴ The Chronicle of Calais in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, ed. J. G. Nichols, Camden Soc., os 35 (1846), 6. ¹⁶⁵ CCR 1500–1509, 330–1. ¹⁶⁶ LP I. i. 404–5; SR iii. 54–8; H. Miller, Henry VIII and the English Nobility (Oxford, 1986), 7–8, 210.

2 Income Parliament’s tax-raising capability was of overriding importance to the crown; only in 1495 did Henry summon a parliament without seeking a grant. The constitutional framework underpinning public finance was well established and widely shared. Property was inviolable, and could therefore only be given freely. Henry VI’s courtiers had been accused of saying that ‘the Kynge schuld lyve upon his Comyns, and that her bodyes and goodes ern his’; but, the Kentishmen retorted, ‘the contrarie is trew, ffor than nedid hym nevur to set parlement and to aske good of hem’.¹ The expectation that in normal circumstances the crown would be self-sustaining balanced subjects’ obligations to support its exceptional charges—above all in defending the realm, one of the crown’s principal responsibilities alongside dispensing justice. This chapter therefore looks first at two regular sources of income—the crown lands and the customs levies authorized by parliament in 1485—and then addresses extraordinary grants of taxation made in later parliaments. 2 . 1 C ROW N L A N D S The crown lands were the principal constituent of the fisc or royal estate, which also comprised customary revenues such as feudal entitlements and judicial perquisites. For subjects, the purpose of the fisc was to support the exercise of the office of king by sustaining the regular charges of government; it was not private property in the sense that a king should do as he pleased with it. By alienating lands, by making assignments from their revenues, or by leasing them at reduced rates to the favoured few, the crown diminished its own income. This forced regimes in times of war to rely on practices perceived to be extortionate—such as purveyance (the requisitioning of goods for the ¹ I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford, 1991), 189.

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royal household below the market rate)—or to appeal to parliament for subvention.² The crisis of Henry VI’s kingship cast a long shadow over subsequent reigns. From the 1430s parliaments had attempted to earmark permanent and reliable sources of income to meet the expenses of the royal household; the resumption of royal grants became the preferred solution.³ In 1450 subjects complained that ‘the kyng is steryd & mevyd to lyve only on his comyms & other men to have the revenues of the crown whyche harth causyd porete [poverty] in his excellence & grete paiements of the peple nou late to the kyng grauntyd in his parlements’.⁴ The Yorkist regime made a public virtue of its more judicious patronage.⁵ Edward IV introduced his third act of resumption in 1467 with the declaration, ‘Y purpose to lyve uppon my nowne [mine own], and not to charge my subgettes’—a promise, however, flung back at him by the earl of Warwick and the duke of Clarence in 1469.⁶ Management of the fisc remained a priority in 1485. Henry’s first parliament confirmed his possession of the crown and thus the vast estate of the kings of England.⁷ In the second session, early in 1486, an act of resumption was passed.⁸ This act was based on the last Lancastrian resumption of 1455: imposed on Henry VI after the first battle of St Albans, it had complained that his landed revenues were insufficient to sustain his household or other ordinary charges. The new act excised criticism of Henry VI’s household, and implausibly substituted his name for his father Henry V’s as the paragon of political economy. It resumed grants to the same point as the act on which it was based: all the lands which the crown had held on 2 October 1455. Additionally, this act resumed most grants made by Richard III and Edward IV, and also grants made by Henry himself prior to 20 January 1486. Imitating the 1455 measure, the act was drafted as a petition of the Commons, but it originated with the crown, for a government ² G. L. Harriss, King, Parliament, and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), 128–85; B. P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History: The Crown Estate in the Governance of the Realm from the Conquest to 1509 (London, 1971), 40–51, 72–5. ³ Ibid. 76–142. ⁴ Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 187. ⁵ Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 143–58. ⁶ PROME xiii. 257 (RP v. 572a); Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, 215. ⁷ PROME xv. 97–102 (RP vi. 270–3). ⁸ PROME xv. 233–329 (RP vi. 336–84).

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draft has survived.⁹ This draft comprised the preamble, the resumption of all possessions held by Henry VI in 1455, and the cancellation of grants made by Richard III and Edward IV. The royal assent followed, with the stipulation that the king could grant exemptions during the session. Finally a memorandum noted that an exemption for the higher clergy should be drawn up; this would become the first proviso after the royal assent on the parliament roll. The clause resuming grants and letters patent made before 20 January 1486 did not appear on the draft. Following the general exemption for regular clergy and chantry foundations at the end of the main text of the enrolled act, this clause was evidently an afterthought.¹⁰ Had the terms of the act been drafted on a single occasion, it would more appropriately have followed the clause cancelling the Yorkist kings’ grants. On the enrolled text 468 proviso clauses followed the king’s assent, so many that the act required its own roll of thirty membranes.¹¹ The king had in fact only granted 466 provisos, for two were entered twice.¹² The resumption of Henry’s grants accounted for the majority of provisos granted. As a late addition to the petition, this further resumption provoked some uncertainty, and some provisos were not strictly necessary. There was evidently confusion about the date before which grants were resumed: 3 January and 31 January 1486 were also cited.¹³ The act investing Henry with the duchy of Lancaster legitimated grants of office made before the opening of the parliament, and a clause was inserted into the act of resumption protecting any act concerning the duchy.¹⁴ On one reading, it was now duchy offices granted after the opening of parliament which were annulled; duchy officers played safe, seeking provisos irrespective of the grant’s date. An additional clause protected grants of pardon, denization, and manumission made before the first day of the parliament.¹⁵ Not covered were the many pardons granted between 7 November 1485 and 20 January 1486, but no one seems to have noticed, for no provisos were issued for any. According to the act, the provisos were supposed to be ‘made and agreed and duryng the tyme of this present parlement put in wryttyng’.¹⁶ ⁹ ¹¹ ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁶

PRO, C49/42/1. ¹⁰ PROME xv. 235 (RP vi. 337a). PRO, C65/124. PROME xv. 254, 263–4, 310 (RP vi. 347a, 351a, 351b, 375a). Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64; PRO, DL29/635/10333, rot. 2. PROME xv. 101, 238 (RP vi. 272b, 339a). ¹⁵ PROME xv. 239 (RP vi. 339). PROME xv. 239 (RP vi. 339b).

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The act of resumption had passed by 15 February, meaning that there were at least two and a half weeks in which provisos could be granted before the parliament was dissolved on 4 March.¹⁷ Yet there may have been quite a scramble during the last days of the session to secure provisos: in 1465 one bundle had been granted the day that parliament had been dissolved.¹⁸ The original provisos of 1486 have not survived, unlike many of those granted to the resumptions of Edward IV’s reign. These provisos were usually presented—often in batches—for the king to sign, so the exemptions had presumably been agreed in principle already. Authorization did not need to be given in the Parliament Chamber or in the Commons: in 1465 the clerk of parliament received provisos in the council chamber, the king’s closet, and elsewhere within the palace of Westminster.¹⁹ The granting of provisos was potentially a laborious and protracted process. Presence at the parliament was not essential: men who could not attend—such as those serving in the Calais garrison—may have written to seek exemption.²⁰ The chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and other ministers possibly took responsibility for certain offices; composite provisos in 1486 may indicate ministerial involvement.²¹ Influential men at court mediated for their servants: Sir William Stanley had helped secure provisos in 1465, and may well have secured the proviso granted in 1486 to his servants.²² These practices could have led to a duplication of effort between suitors, officers, and patrons, which may explain why some grants were exempted in more than one proviso. Richard Morley was granted three different provisos exempting his bailiffship of a Northamptonshire hundred.²³ Three other men each secured two provisos protecting the same grants.²⁴ Parts of a proviso might be struck out—‘crossed’—in which case that grant was resumed.²⁵ The provisos of 1467 showed the crown ¹⁷ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64. ¹⁸ PRO, C49/57/37. ¹⁹ M. Hicks, ‘King in Lords and Commons: Three Insights into Late-FifteenthCentury Parliaments, 1461–85’, in K. Dockray and P. Fleming (eds.), People, Places and Perspectives: Essays on Later Medieval & Early Tudor England (Stroud, 2005), 132–40. ²⁰ British Library Harleian Manuscript 433, ed. R. Horrox and P. W. Hammond, 4 vols. (Gloucester, 1979–83), iii. 29–30. ²¹ PROME xv. 275–6, 288–9 (RP vi. 357b, 364). ²² PRO, C49/55/9; C49/56/21, 37; PROME xv. 267–8 (RP vi. 353–4). ²³ PROME xv. 251, 276, 307 (RP vi. 345b, 357b, 373b). ²⁴ PROME xv. 281, 295, 303–4, 305–6, 315, 325–6 (RP vi. 360a, 367a, 371b, 372b, 377b, 382b). ²⁵ e.g. PRO, C49/60/55; C49/64/39.

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calculating the value of its grants; grantees could be asked to match the sum anyone else was willing to pay.²⁶ The crown made a point in 1467 of reducing hereditable grants to life grants or limiting them to male heirs.²⁷ The presentation of hundreds of requests for exemption was therefore an opportunity for Henry to scrutinize his first five months of patronage. Very few of the provisos granted protected the subject from anything prejudicial: these were reserved for the especially favoured, such as the earl of Oxford, Sir William Stanley, and St George’s Chapel, Windsor.²⁸ Most provisos itemized the grants exempted, which may indicate some vetting: Alexander Culpepper explained that the London tenement he had inherited from his father was worth only £1 6s. 8d . a year.²⁹ Some requests for exemption Henry presumably rejected altogether. The town of Gloucester failed to retain Richard III’s remission of its fee farm, which was restored to its level under Henry VI.³⁰ The Yorkist college at Fotheringhay lost a manor which the king’s mother was eyeing up as an endowment.³¹ The Cinque Ports were only to retain Edward IV’s grants ‘as long as it shall please the kinges highnes’.³² Omitting to procure a proviso could prove costly, as the London parish of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street would find.³³ In 1468 the parish had been granted two messuages by Edward IV, for which it had secured a proviso between 1473 and 1475; now this grant was resumed.³⁴ The churchwardens may only have become aware of the problem in 1502, when Henry granted one messuage with its backdated revenues to a royal servant William Vaughan.³⁵ Around that time the crown chose to pursue the parish for arrears in the exchequer.³⁶ The churchwardens with their counsel approached the queen and members of the royal council, initially seeking to suspend process in the exchequer; then, assisted by Edmund Dudley, they obtained the cancellation of ²⁶ e.g. PRO, C49/59/55; C49/54/39; C49/60/67. ²⁷ e.g. PRO, C49/62/5; C49/61/40. ²⁸ PROME xv. 254, 262, 288 (RP vi. 346–7, 351a, 363–4); H. Kleineke, ‘Lobbying and Access: The Canons of Windsor and the Matter of the Poor Knights in the Parliament of 1485’, Parliamentary History, 25 (2006), 157–8. ²⁹ PROME xv. 252 (RP vi. 346a). ³⁰ PROME xv. 237–8 (RP vi. 338b). ³¹ PROME xv. 262 (RP vi. 350b); CPR 1485–1494, 94. ³² PROME xv. 237, 242 (RP vi. 338b, 341a). ³³ This episode was discovered by Colin Richmond and drawn to my attention by Hannes Kleineke. ³⁴ CPR 1467–1477, 68–9; PROME xiv. 204–5 (RP vi. 97a). ³⁵ PRO, C66/592, m. 28 (CPR 1494–1509, 319). ³⁶ PRO, E159/281, recorda, Mich., rot. 28 ff.

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Vaughan’s patent in 1505.³⁷ The parishioners also sought the renewal of their own grant, for which they paid £50 plus the standard chancery fee of £8 9s. (which the wardens could not persuade the king to waive, despite appealing to his mother).³⁸ In order to prevent the problem recurring, the churchwardens proposed that a reminder be entered at the beginning of each year’s accounts that a new proviso should be sought every time there was a change of king.³⁹ Additional reminders were added to a copy of the earlier proviso entered in the parish’s custumal.⁴⁰ What was the reasoning behind Henry’s resumption of his own grants? Concern for the health of the royal finances may be one explanation. In late January 1486 the officers of the receipt of the exchequer had attended a working breakfast at the command of the treasurer, Archbishop Rotherham, to discuss the king’s affairs.⁴¹ The regime may have recognized the need for retrenchment after the flurry of grants in Henry’s first months of rule.⁴² The act for the duchy of Lancaster protected only grants of those offices that actually required discharging. The receipt of provisos could have encouraged the crown to establish whether an office ‘nede actuell exercise’ or whether it could henceforth be left vacant.⁴³ The resumption freed up sources of revenue from which to make assignments for the household.⁴⁴ The resumption of grants also made possible revisions of the crown’s patronage. Some were sensitive political adjustments: Sir John Conyers, a knight of the body, replaced Lord Fitzhugh (cousin of Richard III) as constable of Middleham, where resistance to Henry’s accession rumbled on.⁴⁵ Others were restored to offices they had held under Richard: Sir James Tyrell recovered his offices in Glamorgan (including the constableship of Cardiff Castle).⁴⁶ Thomas Betanson reported on 15 February 1486 that the resumption of the king’s grants had pleased ³⁷ CPR 1494–1509, 454. ³⁸ Guildhall Library, MS 4457/1, fos. 120r–121r, 128v–132v; H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926), 334–6. ³⁹ Guildhall Library, MS 4457/1, fo. 124v. ⁴⁰ Guildhall Library, MS 4456, p. 153. ⁴¹ PRO, E36/125, p. 13. ⁴² Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion’, 24–5. ⁴³ PRO, C49/54/37–8; SC6/HENVII/1480, m. 7. ⁴⁴ Materials of Henry VII, i. 445–6; PROME xv. 157 (RP vi. 301a). ⁴⁵ Materials of Henry VII, i. 49, 277–8; Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 187. ⁴⁶ Materials of Henry VII, i. 36, 301. How long Tyrell retained these offices is unclear: ‘A Letter from Sir Richard Croft to Sir Gilbert Talbot in 1486 concerning Sir James Tyrell’s Offices in Wales’, ed. W. R. B. Robinson, Historical Research, 67 (1994), 178–89.

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many members of his household.⁴⁷ Members may have anticipated benefiting from a redistribution of royal patronage; they may already have known that they would retain their existing grants (although some in fact did not retain earlier grants).⁴⁸ Far more provisos were granted in 1486 than had been granted in any of Edward IV’s acts of resumption, and many were for royal servants.⁴⁹ The large number of provisos may not have represented a failure of nerve on Henry’s part, but rather a canny decision to enjoy for a second time the opportunity for displaying ‘the equyte and rightwys rewarde that the king entendeth to do to every of his subgiettes for his merites’.⁵⁰ The act of resumption took time to take effect: that September receivers and auditors of duchy of Lancaster lands in the west had to be ordered to stop paying annuities granted by Richard III.⁵¹ Henry, however, decided to confirm many other grants. At some point between 6 March and 6 October Chancellor Morton was instructed to authorize under the great seal all charters, confirmations, and letters patent made by any king of England other than Richard III.⁵² The strength of resistance Henry encountered in his first progress may have discouraged him from pursuing the resumption further; equally, the regime may have been too preoccupied to review further grants. Henry’s second parliament, meeting in November 1487, was told how ‘sith the begunyng of his raign, [he] hath been besied for the defence of the churche of Englond, and of his moost roiall persone and this his reame’.⁵³ More confident after his victory at Stoke, the king now put the fisc at the top of his agenda. The ‘negligence and unlawfull demenynges’ of estate officers were criticized: they had allowed the lands in their keeping to decay, had failed to turn out for their king as was their duty, and had practised and tolerated illicit retaining.⁵⁴ A new act of resumption was introduced, more single-minded than the first, for it concerned primarily the king’s own grants. Henry had been too preoccupied to appoint ‘such as shuld be to his moost profite and availle’, or ‘provydently make leeses, grauntes or other thyngez . . . for ⁴⁷ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64. ⁴⁸ Materials of Henry VII, i. 45–6, 76–7, 293, 319. ⁴⁹ Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 156. ⁵⁰ PROME xv. 239–40 (RP vi. 339b). ⁵¹ PRO, DL41/461. ⁵² PRO, C82/14/21. Grants of office made to the city of London by Edward IV were excepted. ⁵³ PROME xv. 386 (RP vi. 403b). ⁵⁴ 3 Hen. VII, c. 12.

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his moost profite and approwement of his revenuez and commoditez’. The act therefore resumed all grants of revenue-collecting offices with immediate effect, and also all grants of lands for which rent was paid with effect from 29 September 1488.⁵⁵ The way exemptions were granted in 1487 differed from 1486. Despite its heading, the parliament roll omitted the royal assent, thus obscuring which exemptions were parts of the bill when the king gave his assent, and which were added as provisos.⁵⁶ The copy of the act sent to the exchequer in February 1488 placed the royal assent after the exemption for cities, towns, and boroughs.⁵⁷ There then followed thirty-nine provisos, mostly for individual offices; some concerned other acts as well as the resumption, while the proviso for the merchants of the Hanseatic League applied to the alien subsidy.⁵⁸ Unlike in 1486, these provisos did not need to be added while the parliament was in session. The final proviso to appear on the parliament roll—exempting William Stafford’s office of warden of the mint—was not added until December 1498, when the king instructed Richard Hatton, John Morgan’s successor as clerk of parliament, to enter ‘the contynue of a bil of prouiso signed with oure hand’ and then to return the roll to the master of the rolls.⁵⁹ A contrast with the earlier act of resumption was the number of provisos granted: 39 as against 466. The former act had concerned a broader range of grants stretching back to 1455, but the majority of provisos had exempted Henry’s grants. The latter act thus portended a far more extensive reappraisal of crown patronage: to existing royal officers, reference to their negligence and misdemeanours may have seemed ominous. It is tempting to connect this resumption with an incident which occurred while the parliament was in session. A new statute spoke of the great dangers that arose when men quarrelled with those chosen by kings to be ‘in greate auctorite, office and of councell’. The cause was often the ‘envy and malice of the kinges owne howsold servauntes, as nowe late lyke thyng was lykely to have ensued’. The ⁵⁵ PROME xv. 386–95 at 386 (RP vi. 403–8 at 403b). ⁵⁶ PROME xv. 386 (RP vi. 403b). ⁵⁷ PRO, E175/11/59: ‘Le roy le vuelt ouecque lez prouisions cy ensuyauntez’. This roll was probably copied from the ‘original act’, as proviso clauses followed in a different order from that on the parliament roll. ⁵⁸ The royal assent therefore should have been entered before the proviso for Sir Thomas Wolton: PROME xv. 387 (RP vi. 404a). ⁵⁹ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 13; PROME xv. 395 (RP vi. 407–8).

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statute therefore appointed senior household officers to investigate and determined that such actions were henceforth felonious (thus capital crimes).⁶⁰ On the parliament roll this statute was followed by an act of attainder, misplaced among the common petitions.⁶¹ According to this act, on 15 December eighty ‘mysruled and myschevous persones’—of whom six were named—conspired ‘to have slayne, murdred and dystroyed dyvers of the kynges grete officers, and other of his most honorable councell’. The six were attainted of felony as if they had been convicted at common law, a sentence to be carried out ‘without delaye or other proces’. The act was as good as its word: on 17 December Edward Plumpton reported from London that ‘this day was hanged at the Tower Hill iiij servants of the kings’.⁶² According to a London chronicle, ‘this yer was a resistance made in the parlement tyme of men in the kinges howys, and therfor was iiij of the kinges seruantes hangyd at the Towur Hill.’⁶³ That the supposed conspiracy occurred during a parliament guaranteed that it was widely known about. Henry had begun his reign by asking his subjects in parliament and then nationwide to take an oath not to maintain miscreants; his council required lords and gentry to produce any of their servants who offended; and the present parliament was majoring on the importance of discipline and obedience.⁶⁴ Embarrassingly, it was now the king’s control over his own servants that was found wanting. Process at common law would have been too slow for the exemplary justice the king wished to display, as the approach of Christmas meant that parliament would have to be prorogued or dissolved. Through an act of attainder Henry was thus able to demonstrate to the nation his impartial rigour and still dissolve the parliament the day after the executions.⁶⁵ A little is known about four of the six men attainted. A yeoman of the crown, John Spynell held the offices of gauger at Bristol and bailiff of a Shropshire lordship and the keepership of the park there, ⁶⁰ 3 Hen. VII, c. 14. ⁶¹ PROME xv. 379–80 (RP vi. 402–3). ⁶² Plumpton Letters and Papers, 87 (where the letter is dated 1489). ⁶³ ‘Historical Notes of a London Citizen, 1483–1488’, ed. R. F. Green, EHR 96 (1981), 589. ⁶⁴ See Section 3.2. ⁶⁵ Curiously, a memorandum in Dover’s accounts stated that on 15 Dec. the parliament had been adjourned to reconvene on 20 Jan. 1488: BL, Add. MS 29617, fo. 34v. Perhaps the port’s MPs left the session prematurely.

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for which offices he had secured a proviso in 1486.⁶⁶ On 1 June 1486 the king rewarded him for his ‘grete costis and charges in oure seruice . . . from the begynnyng of oure reigne and afore’.⁶⁷ John Sutton secured a proviso in 1486 for the keepership of a park in Derbyshire.⁶⁸ In reward for his faithful service ‘aswele beyond the see as on thisside’, Thomas Bromehill had been granted property in Fleet Street in October 1485, for which he too had secured a proviso in 1486.⁶⁹ His service notwithstanding, Bromehill was one of the four men executed.⁷⁰ Morris ap Hugh, a yeoman of the crown, was one of the two men to be pardoned.⁷¹ Nothing concrete connects what occurred to the act of resumption, yet it seems a plausible speculation. By mid December 1487 it would have been apparent that the large number of exemptions granted to the resumption of the previous year would not be repeated. Royal councillors could have been blamed for promoting the act and, given their role in vetting provisos, perhaps also their failure to exempt household members. In 1486 the resumption of the king’s grants had been a late decision, its purpose uncertain; now the crown made its intentions clear. On the same day that the culprits were executed (17 December), the king appointed a conciliar committee to begin the rolling programme of reappointing officers and then re-leasing lands.⁷² It was during this parliament then that Henry’s prioritization of the crown’s regular income emerged. In terms of its financial contribution to the regular expenses of government, Henry’s management of the crown lands was a success.⁷³ By 1502–5 his income from the crown lands (albeit from an enlarged demesne) was perhaps five times what Henry VI had received.⁷⁴ Edward IV had faced criticism in parliament in 1483 for failing to make adequate assignments to support his household; Henry’s assignments of 1485–6 and 1495, by contrast, seem to have proved adequate, for this would not be a complaint against the regime ⁶⁶ CPR 1485–1494, 58, 83; PROME xv. 272 (RP vi. 356a). ⁶⁷ PRO, E404/79/329; Materials of Henry VII, i. 406, 427–8, 445. ⁶⁸ PROME xv. 255 (RP vi. 347a); Materials of Henry VII, i. 558, 599. ⁶⁹ PRO, C82/3/22; Materials of Henry VII, i. 82, 242; PROME xv. 303 (RP vi. 371). ⁷⁰ CPR 1485–1494, 220. ⁷¹ Ibid. 257–8. ⁷² PRO, C82/33 (Materials of Henry VII, ii. 215); Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 199–201; Hicks, ‘Attainder, Resumption and Coercion’, 25. ⁷³ Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 217–25. ⁷⁴ Tabulated in Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 114.

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in the parliament of 1510.⁷⁵ Yet in maximizing income from the crown estate, the regime neglected other dimensions of lordship. Henry VIII thought the political price too high, for by 1515 he had reduced the crown’s annual income from land by around £15,000.⁷⁶ Seeking parliamentary supply, he now sugared the pill by presenting an act of resumption.⁷⁷ His father, by contrast, chose not to enact any more general resumptions after 1487; the other major act of resumption, concerning the principality of Wales, passed in 1495—in the only parliament in which he did not request taxation.⁷⁸ 2 . 2 C U S TO M S Parliaments granted the crown a range of import and export levies: ‘the ‘‘ancient custom’’ on wool, hides and woolfells, the custom on cloth and the subsidy of tunnage on wine, which were paid by both denizen and alien merchants; the petty custom on general merchandise which was paid by alien merchants and the poundage on general merchandise which was paid by all merchants except for the Hanse’.⁷⁹ These levies were supposedly granted for the defence of the realm, in particular the keeping of the seas—in 1469 Warwick and Clarence’s manifesto had urged that tunnage and poundage ‘maybe emploied to the keping of the see as it was graunted and to noon other use’—but Henry saw no impediment to assigning customs revenue to support the household.⁸⁰ The life grant made to Richard III in 1484 had lapsed on Henry’s accession, so its renewal was the first matter before the Commons in 1485. The measure was introduced on 10 November, examined by MPs, and agreed the following day.⁸¹ Henry was only the second king (after Richard) to be granted the customs for life in his first parliament.⁸² ⁷⁵ PROME xiv. 405–6, xv. 155–61, xvi. 219–26 (1483 plt., intro.; RP vi. 299–303, 497–502). ⁷⁶ Wolffe, Crown Lands, 83–5, 179–82. ⁷⁷ S. J. Gunn, ‘The Act of Resumption of 1515’, in D. Williams (ed.), Early Tudor England (Woodbridge, 1989), 87–106. ⁷⁸ PROME xvi. 155–61 (RP vi. 465–8). ⁷⁹ H. S. Cobb, ‘ ‘‘Books of Rates’’ and the London Customs, 1507–1558’, Guildhall Miscellany, 4 (1971–3), 1. ⁸⁰ Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, 215; PROME xv. 155–6 (RP vi. 299–300). ⁸¹ Parliamentary Texts, 186; PROME xv. 93–7 (RP vi. 268–70). ⁸² HP 1386–1421, i. 120 and n. 123.

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Customs levies provided Henry with on average £37,000 a year (more than a grant of a fifteenth and tenth); at their peak in 1507–8, the crown received as much as £48,000.⁸³ Although the crown was the beneficiary of a trade boom in the 1490s and 1500s, royal policy also helped.⁸⁴ Like its predecessors, the regime acted on the belief—probably well-founded—that it was defrauded of a significant part of its customs income.⁸⁵ The crown pursued customs officers who were non-resident, participated in trade, or colluded in fraud: 134 informations were laid against customs officers in the court of the exchequer in Henry’s reign.⁸⁶ In 1495 the king’s council employed the professional informers Henry Toft and John Baptist Grimaldi to identify an officer complicit in fraud within the port of London.⁸⁷ The king’s chamber supervised collection of customs within London, which accounted for more than half of the national total.⁸⁸ As the court concerned primarily with pursuing the king’s dues, the exchequer dealt with a large number of customs violations. More than three-quarters of the 1,806 cases brought in that court over the reign concerned such offences. In line with a general trend in the court, the number of prosecutions increased after 1500, although the number of actions brought against customs officers for malfeasance declined. The majority of customs cases concerned smuggling; a smaller proportion concerned breaches of regulations restricting imports and exports. Most actions were brought by customs officers and the attorney-general rather than by private informers. Of the cases in which a specific statute was cited, the majority concerned regulations newly enacted in Henry’s reign.⁸⁹ Complaints about

⁸³ Tabulated in Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 122. ⁸⁴ P. Ramsey, ‘Overseas Trade in the Reign of Henry VII: The Evidence of Customs Accounts’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 6 (1953), 178–9. ⁸⁵ Ibid. 173–7. Cf. E. T. Jones, ‘Illicit Business: Accounting for Smuggling in Mid-Sixteenth-Century Bristol’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 54 (2001), 17–38. ⁸⁶ Ramsey, ‘Overseas Trade’, 175; D. J. Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement, 1485–1509’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Pittsburgh, 1967), 140, 228–33. ⁸⁷ PRO, E159/272, recorda, Trin., rots. 18–19. ⁸⁸ Cobb, ‘Books of Rates’, 2, 6–8; H. S. Cobb, ‘Cloth Exports from London and Southampton in the Later Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries: A Revision’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 31 (1978), 603. ⁸⁹ D. J. Guth, ‘Enforcing Late-Medieval Law: Patterns in Litigation during Henry VII’s Reign’, in J. H. Baker (ed.), Legal Records and the Historian (London, 1978), 85; Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement’, 140–3, 185–235.

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the enforcement of old and new statutory regulations surfaced in parliament. In 1504 a Commons’ petition requested the repeal of a statute of 1402, which had required all merchandise entering and leaving England to be customed at the great seaports and not at smaller landings on pain of forfeiture.⁹⁰ This statute notwithstanding, the petition claimed, imports and exports had continued to be assessed in the havens and creeks lying within the bounds of the great seaports until recently, when troublesome and ill-disposed men had started to seize such merchandise on authority of the statute. Having passed the Commons, the petition was sent to the Lords, who gave it their assent, but the king rejected it.⁹¹ The petition complained about a practice of which Henry no doubt approved, for the import and export of goods outside the ports increased the likelihood of evasion. Only one case was brought in the exchequer, which had resulted in two Irish merchants trading in Bristol forfeiting grain worth £13 9s. in 1500.⁹² Other interests must have been engaged by 1504, for a further attempt to repeal the statute was probably made in the next parliament in 1510.⁹³ A statute enacted in 1487 produced the greatest number of cases in the exchequer during the reign: ninety-four actions, resulting in twentyeight forfeitures.⁹⁴ This statute required merchants to obtain a customs certificate if they wished to move goods between English ports; it also prohibited merchants from registering their goods under somebody else’s name.⁹⁵ According to the parliament of 1510, the latter measure had been intended to prevent foreign merchants from paying reduced rates by entering goods in Englishmen’s names, but because its wording was general the regulation had applied to any merchant ‘contarie to the verry entent & meanyng of the seid Statute’.⁹⁶ An act of 1485–6 had increased the likelihood of such offences by requiring aliens made denizens to pay customs as aliens, not Englishmen.⁹⁷ The real problem was that the letter of the law had been applied strictly, even where there was no intention to defraud: in 1488 customs officers at Bristol seized imports belonging jointly to brothers William and John Rowley, on the grounds that John had entered only his older brother William’s name ⁹⁰ 4 Hen. IV, c. 20. ⁹¹ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 22. ⁹² Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement’, 214, citing PRO, E159/276, recorda, Pas., rot. 10. ⁹³ LJ i. 5b, 6a. ⁹⁴ Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement’, 203–6. ⁹⁵ 3 Hen. VII, c. 7. ⁹⁶ 1 Hen. VIII, c. 5. ⁹⁷ 1 Hen. VII, c. 2.

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in their register.⁹⁸ A prominent victim was Sir William Capel, mayor of London in 1503–4 and again during the 1510 parliament, who had forfeited £222 of wool in 1494.⁹⁹ In January 1509 London, possibly anticipating or reacting to royal concern, instructed companies to report those who obtained goods on behalf of strangers.¹⁰⁰ The crown also revised the valuation of goods whose price was not fixed (those subject to the petty custom and poundage). By 1502–3 London’s customers were applying new rates, presumably set higher than the values merchants themselves would have placed on goods.¹⁰¹ In the last months of Henry’s reign, the crown may have attempted to change the duties again.¹⁰² Henry’s death, voiding the customs grant of 1485, provided merchants with immediate relief. When parliament met in 1510, London’s livery companies campaigned unsuccessfully against its renewal on the same terms.¹⁰³ The merchant adventurers attempted to incorporate in the grant clauses restoring rates to the level of the early years of Henry VII’s reign.¹⁰⁴ The companies’ campaign floundered on the lack of support in the Commons; the adventurers even ended up paying customs backdated to the beginning of the reign, something they had been able to avoid in 1485.¹⁰⁵ Merchants’ grievances were not shared by a broad enough spectrum of the political nation for the new regime to make major concessions over an important source of regular income. 2 . 3 T H E L AY S U B S I DY Although some levies—such as the benevolence of 1491—could be demanded for the commutation of military service, general taxation ⁹⁸ PRO, E159/265, recorda, Trin., rot. 16d f.; The Great Red Book of Bristol, ed. E. W. W. Veale, 5 vols., Bristol Record Soc., 2, 4, 8, 16, 18 (1931–53), iii. 159–60, iv. 157–8. ⁹⁹ PRO, E159/271, recorda, Mich., rots. 7d, 10d. John Baptist Grimaldi was supposedly the real owner of the shipment, which may suggest entrapment. ¹⁰⁰ Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453–1527, ed. L. Lyell and F. D. Watney (Cambridge, 1936), 320. ¹⁰¹ Cobb, ‘Books of Rates’, 3–6. ¹⁰² London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CA/01/01/002, fos. 56r, 61r; Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 319–20; A. F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Aldershot, 2005), 343–4. ¹⁰³ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 346–60; H. Miller, ‘London and Parliament in the Reign of Henry VIII’, BIHR 35 (1962), 136; Sutton, Mercery, 344–5. ¹⁰⁴ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 348–9. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid. 346–7, 351, 380–1; Materials of Henry VII, i. 273; Sutton, Mercery, 323.

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required the consent of parliament.¹⁰⁶ The crown, confronted by a real necessity, was entitled to ask its subjects for financial aid; presented with such a case, subjects were morally obliged to contribute, yet consented freely.¹⁰⁷ Edward IV encapsulated this convention in 1467 when he promised ‘not to charge my subgettes but in grete and urgent causes, concernyng more the wele of theym self, and also the defence of theym and of this my reame, rather than my nowne pleasir’, in which causes he trusted that the present parliament would prove ‘as tender and kynde’ as had its predecessors.¹⁰⁸ An extraordinary grant made in exceptional circumstances, the lay subsidy was thus an important consideration in summoning parliament in 1487 and 1503 and the overriding consideration in 1488, 1491, and 1496.¹⁰⁹ Each grant was a one-off, limited in duration, and requiring a particular justification. In 1487 the rationales for a grant of two fifteenths and tenths and for a tax on resident aliens were the discharge of a fifteenth and tenth granted in 1483 but not collected, and also ‘the hasty and necessarie defence of this youre realme’.¹¹⁰ Edward IV and Richard III had both collected taxes granted in the preceding reign, but only alien subsidies; fresh from victory at Stoke, Henry felt confident enough to invoke the uncollected fifteenth and tenth (which Richard had chosen not to collect) in securing a new grant.¹¹¹ In justifying this demand, the king could point to past expenditure against rebels and possible threats to the English outposts at Berwick and Calais.¹¹² He could also cite growing concern about developments in Brittany, for the French had sent troops into the duchy in April. Work had begun on the construction of two state-of-the-art warships, intended to match French vessels; in September Henry had dispatched a small fleet.¹¹³ The crown’s entitlement to taxation would not—as far as it ¹⁰⁶ G. L. Harriss, ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences’, Historical Journal, 6 (1963), 1–19. ¹⁰⁷ Harriss, King, Parliament, and Public Finance, 509–10. ¹⁰⁸ PROME xiii. 257 (RP v. 572a). ¹⁰⁹ M. Jurkowski, C. L. Smith, and D. Crook, Lay Taxes in England and Wales, 1188–1688 (Kew, 1998), p. xiv. ¹¹⁰ PROME xv. 368–71 (RP vi. 400–2). ¹¹¹ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 106–7, 120–1. ¹¹² Select Cases in the Council, 16; ‘Historical Notes of a London Citizen’, 590; N. Macdougall, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh, 1982), 219–21; D. Grummitt, ‘ ‘‘For the Surety of the Towne and Marches’’: Early Tudor Policy towards Calais, 1485–1509’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 44 (2000), 185–91. ¹¹³ PRO, E404/79/178 (15 April 1487); C. S. Goldingham, ‘The Navy under Henry VII’, EHR 33 (1918), 474–5; J. M. Currin, ‘ ‘‘The King’s Army into the Partes of

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is possible to tell—be questioned until the last parliament of the reign in 1504.¹¹⁴ The form a grant took could prove controversial. The standard lay subsidy was the fifteenth and tenth. Before 1334 each fifteenth and tenth had been directly assessed on individuals’ moveable goods; thereafter it was based on the county totals of 1332. Remissions for hardship in Henry VI’s reign reduced its yield to around £31,000.¹¹⁵ The fifteenth and tenth had advantages: its yield was stable and the cost of collection was low.¹¹⁶ Yet the tax no longer tapped subjects’ real wealth. In the fifteenth century the crown had therefore intermittently secured grants based on fresh assessments of individual income and wealth; these had generally proved unpopular and difficult to collect, and had not raised as much as had been hoped.¹¹⁷ Henry first secured such a grant from the parliament which met early in 1489. In autumn 1488 royal policy towards Brittany had shifted from concerned neutrality to a preparedness to support militarily the new duchess Anne in resisting the annexation of her territory.¹¹⁸ In November the king convened a great council to discuss the situation; during this meeting, it was probably decided to summon a parliament and both convocations.¹¹⁹ On 23 December commissions of array were issued, and an advanced party would be dispatched on 21 January 1489.¹²⁰ In February Henry concluded a treaty with Anne whereby he formalized his military commitment.¹²¹ The main English force was expected to set sail early in March.¹²² The king therefore looked to parliament for a generous grant to support this undertaking. The parliament opened on 13 January. The great council had prepared the ground well; unusually for such a meeting, borough representatives Bretaigne’’: Henry VII and the Breton Wars, 1489–1491’, War in History, 7 (2000), 383–4. ¹¹⁴ See Section 7.2. ¹¹⁵ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, pp. xxxi, 37–8. ¹¹⁶ R. Schofield, Taxation under the Early Tudors, 1485–1547 (Oxford, 2004), 54–7, 170. ¹¹⁷ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 74–5, 78–9, 88–9, 91–2, 102–6, 109–13. ¹¹⁸ Giry-Deloison, ‘Henri VII et la Bretagne’, 231–5. ¹¹⁹ Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 844, 853–4, 856–7. ¹²⁰ Currin, ‘King’s Army’, 384–5. ¹²¹ J. M. Currin, ‘Henry VII and the Treaty of Redon (1489): Plantagenet Ambitions and Early Tudor Foreign Policy’, History, 81 (1996), 343–58. ¹²² Paston Letters and Papers, i. 668.

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had been summoned to attend.¹²³ Representatives of London, York, Canterbury, Norwich, Ipswich, and Stamford at the great council went on to serve as MPs.¹²⁴ The political nation was probably well acquainted with the major business of the forthcoming session and primed to be receptive to the request for supply. Although the amount of money required may have been discussed in the great council, the issue was not settled there.¹²⁵ In the parliament the Commons were informed that the total cost of Henry’s requirement for 10,000 archers for a year was £100,000.¹²⁶ By the time the parliament was prorogued on 23 February, it had been agreed that a quarter of this sum was to be levied from the clergy, with separate grants from the Commons and from the Lords to raise the remaining £75,000.¹²⁷ The proportion that would be borne by the Church proved contentious. On 19 January royal councillors, headed by the treasurer Lord Dynham, appeared before the southern convocation at St Paul’s to explain how the king—‘partly by the special request of the whole community then assembled in parliament’—was seeking a grant to address the danger the French actions posed to the realm.¹²⁸ On 28 January the collector of papal taxes in England Giovanni de Giglis reported to Pope Innocent VIII that a grant of £100,000 had now been agreed, but not without an argument. Members of the laity had wanted the clergy to bear two-thirds of this grant; following ‘deputations and conferences of prelates and nobles’ the clergy’s contribution had, however, been fixed at only a quarter.¹²⁹ On 3 February the councillors returned to St Paul’s to seek a grant without delay.¹³⁰ On 18 February the solicitor-general Andrew Dymmock was sent to the northern convocation at York, to make the king’s case for a grant.¹³¹ On 27 February—four days after parliament—the convocation of Canterbury formally presented its grant of £25,000.¹³² Although Giglis wrote of negotiations taking place between the lay peers and the bishops, the issue may well have been

¹²³ Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 847–9. ¹²⁴ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fo. 222r; York House Books, ii. 610, 626; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 7, fos. 101v–102r; Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16d/1, fo. 138r; case 16c/1, fo. 33r; Suffolk RO, C/2/10/3/1, pp. 155, 160; Stamford Town Hall, 1st hall book, fo. 45r–v. ¹²⁵ Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 855–6. ¹²⁶ PROME xvi. 37 (RP vi. 421a). ¹²⁷ PROME xvi. 37–43 (RP vi. 420–4). ¹²⁸ Records of Convocation, vi. 345–6. ¹²⁹ CSP Venetian, i. 177–8. The editor’s transcript is in PRO, PRO31/14/152. ¹³⁰ Records of Convocation, vi. 347. ¹³¹ PRO, E404/80/216; Records of Convocation, xiv. 85. ¹³² Ibid. vi. 350–7.

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resolved in joint discussion between the Lords and Commons.¹³³ The convocation of York, whose contribution was apparently overlooked in negotiations, granted two tenths in March.¹³⁴ The crown therefore expected to receive £100,000 through three separate grants of the Commons, the Lords, and the southern province of the Church. Each grant came with conditions attached; some conditions were common to more than one grant. In order to interpret these conditions, we need to look back at the taxation of 1472 on which these grants were based. In 1472 the Commons and the Lords had each granted a directly assessed tax of one tenth (modelled on an uncollected grant of 1453) in order to raise 13,000 archers for a year.¹³⁵ Stringent conditions had been attached: details of individual wealth were not to be returned to the exchequer or other courts of record; money raised was to be stored in designated repositories until required; and the total amount was to be certified not in the exchequer but in parliament, which would then authorize payment to the king once he had begun to muster his troops; if the campaign was not under way by September 1474, then the grants would be cancelled and the money repaid. In subsequent sessions of this parliament, these terms had been renegotiated.¹³⁶ In the final session in 1475, the Commons had converted the money outstanding into grants of fifteenths and tenths—‘the moost easy, redy and prone payment, of any charge’.¹³⁷ The modelling of the new grants on the taxation of 1472 is therefore surprising: the earlier grants were weighed down with stipulations which had proved difficult to fulfil, and they had failed to raise the sum intended. Yet the Commons’ grant now lifted some clauses word for word. It also made substantive changes: in particular, the grant was to be assessed on goods and chattels (at the rate of one eightieth) as well as on lands and fees. In normal circumstances, tax grants were probably drafted by the crown, as can be shown in Henry VIII’s second parliament.¹³⁸ Usually, it has been proposed, ‘Additional clauses favourable to the crown are either to be found inserted into the general corpus of clauses in the relevant place, or added at the end of the bill’, whereas ‘additional clauses favourable to the taxpayers are always to be ¹³³ Cf. J. G. Edwards, The Commons in Medieval English Parliaments (London, 1958), 18–22. ¹³⁴ Records of Convocation, xiv. 84–7. ¹³⁵ PROME xiv. 14–21 (RP vi. 4–8). ¹³⁶ M. Jurkowski, ‘Parliamentary and Prerogative Taxation in the Reign of Edward IV’, Parliamentary History, 18 (1999), 275–83. ¹³⁷ PROME xiv. 312 (RP vi. 151a). ¹³⁸ Schofield, Taxation, 19–20.

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found at the end of the bill and are never inserted into the general corpus of clauses.’¹³⁹ Yet in 1489 the requirements that money be deposited for safe keeping and that parliament be certified with the amount raised were part of the general corpus of clauses modelled on the 1472 grant; even the clause stating that the individual assessments should not be returned to any court of record was copied from the earlier grant. Could these clauses have been in royal drafts? The main part of the Commons’ grant appears to have extended as far as the exemptions for the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.¹⁴⁰ There followed a mixture of clauses in no evident order, which may be those added by the Commons themselves. The most significant of these subsequent clauses, however, was one favourable to the crown, also present in the Lords’ grant: that the subsidy could be renewed each year for two years ‘yf eny armee contynue out of this reame’ (although it would be reduced should the size of the force diminish).¹⁴¹ The final main clause in the Commons’ grant, which appeared in a similar form in the Lords’ grant, stated it should ‘be never take for example or president’ and even added that ‘ther was never afore this tyme eny like graunte made’, the justification being ‘the spede of the seid payment’.¹⁴² The convocation of Canterbury’s grant, moreover, resembled the laity’s: it was to be paid in the same two instalments, and could also be renewed for two years; it was also made for urgent necessity, and was therefore not to be regarded as a precedent. This similarity reinforces the possibility that the process was less confrontational than has been supposed.¹⁴³ The crown may have appreciated that it would need to incorporate conditions in order to secure a large grant quickly. The principle that the crown should not know how much subjects were worth was conceded. A clause in the Commons’ grant provided for penalties on those who refused to take deposit of the sums collected, something Edward IV had not been prepared to countenance.¹⁴⁴ Where the new grant differed from its model was that once the money had been deposited the king was entitled to requisition it: there was to be no parliamentary reckoning before Henry accessed it.¹⁴⁵ Indeed Henry would move swiftly to claim the money in May, possibly circumventing depositories ¹³⁹ ¹⁴¹ ¹⁴³ ¹⁴⁴ ¹⁴⁵

Schofield, Taxation, 20. ¹⁴⁰ PROME xvi. 41 (RP vi. 422b). PROME xvi. 41–3 (RP vi. 423). ¹⁴² PROME xvi. 42–3 (RP vi. 423–4). e.g. Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 164–5. PRO, C49/36/25; PROME xvi. 41 (RP vi. 422b). PROME xiv. 16–17, xvi. 40 (RP vi. 5b, 422).

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by commandeering the cash directly from some collectors.¹⁴⁶ He was helped in this by the majority of collectors, who ignored the terms of the act and made payments directly to the exchequer, possibly because it would guarantee proper acknowledgement of receipt in the traditional manner.¹⁴⁷ The grant did not prove a success, however. The second instalment of the levy on lands was due in November, during the second session of the parliament. In the third session of the parliament in 1490, the Commons reported how much the grant had raised.¹⁴⁸ According to ‘the certificates by your commissioners in that behalf unto us made, as by othre resonable estimacion’, it appeared that the total raised did not exceed £27,000. Now taking upon themselves responsibility for the whole lay contribution, the Commons admitted that the king was owed about £48,000; ‘knowing the poverte of the cominalte of this your realme’—and mindful perhaps of the rising provoked in Yorkshire the previous April and May—they asked for remission.¹⁴⁹ Henry agreed to waive the outstanding amount for a single fifteenth and tenth, to be levied over twenty-one months; he therefore forwent £17,000, and rescheduled payment of the remainder.¹⁵⁰ The increased cost of assessment and collection may have contributed to the tax’s poor yield.¹⁵¹ London chroniclers also blamed underassessment for the shortfall.¹⁵² That seems the likeliest explanation in the case of Norwich, whose assessment roll is one of few to have survived. The city’s total amounted to less than half the sum assessed in 1472 (despite the additional levy on goods and chattels); decline in the number of tenements assessed and in the rate at which they were assessed was largely responsible.¹⁵³ Evasion of the levy on goods and chattels may also have occurred. The tax was supposed to be assessed on goods and chattels as well as on land, but many could have been assessed on one or the other.¹⁵⁴ In four Norfolk hundreds 98 per cent of assessments were on land.¹⁵⁵ Although assessed at a lower rate, levies on goods and ¹⁴⁶ Schofield, Taxation, 78; Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 165. Leicester’s contribution was assessed—not paid—on 2 May, as stated here. ¹⁴⁷ Schofield, Taxation, 78. ¹⁴⁸ PROME xvi. 85–8 (RP vi. 437–9). ¹⁴⁹ For this rising, see Section 6.3. ¹⁵⁰ PROME xvi. 86 (RP vi. 438). ¹⁵¹ Schofield, Taxation, 79; ‘Income Tax Assessments of Norwich, 1472 and 1489’, ed. M. Jurkowski, in Poverty and Wealth: Sheep, Taxation and Charity in Late Medieval Norfolk, Norfolk Record Soc., 71 (2007), 109. ¹⁵² Great Chronicle, 243; Chronicles of London, 194–5. ¹⁵³ ‘Income Tax Assessments of Norwich’, 113–19. ¹⁵⁴ Schofield, Taxation, 79. ¹⁵⁵ PRO, E179/149/184–6; E179/151/353.

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chattels were remunerative: in Norwich they constituted 11 per cent of assessments, but 31 per cent of the city’s contribution.¹⁵⁶ Assessments may also have derived from quotas for a fifteenth and tenth. In the hundred of Godalming (Surrey), assessors noted in the margins against some townships and tithings their contributions to a fifteenth; this did not, however, prevent the hundred from paying a larger sum.¹⁵⁷ Norwich’s assessment, by contrast, was less than threequarters of the city’s contribution to a fifteenth and tenth.¹⁵⁸ Local means of levying a fifteenth and tenth had diverged considerably from its historical status as a levy on moveable wealth, so by widening the assessment to include land the new tax conformed rather more closely with actual practice than did the traditional grant.¹⁵⁹ Yet the fifteenth and tenth was the norm: Colchester used ‘fifteenth’ to describe local as well as parliamentary taxes, even though the borough’s contribution had originally been assessed as a tenth.¹⁶⁰ The sum raised came suspiciously close to the tax with which Englishmen were most comfortable: a fifteenth and tenth raised in two instalments—something the country was in fact paying at the same time as the subsidy as the third and fourth parts of the grant of 1487.¹⁶¹ Following the failure of the 1489 tax, the next grant in 1491 reverted to the fifteenth and tenth. In 1497 another directly assessed tax was granted. This grant was intended to match the two fifteenths and tenths also granted in the parliament. Unlike in 1489, each county was thus charged with its usual total, but individual assessments replaced communal apportioning by vill. A similar hybrid was adopted in 1504, with the amount to be raised in each county fixed at approximately the level of its contribution to a fifteenth and tenth. Grants after 1489 thus used direct assessment to apportion contributions within a ¹⁵⁶ ‘Income Tax Assessments of Norwich’, 141–56. ¹⁵⁷ Surrey History Centre, LM/1499/2. The levy raised £49 7s. 2 1/2d . The hundred contributed around £30 to a 15th: Surrey Taxation Returns: Fifteenths and Tenths, being the 1332 Assessment and Subsequent Assessments to 1623, ed. J. F. Willard and H. C. Johnson, Surrey Record Soc., 11 (1932), 153. ¹⁵⁸ ‘Income Tax Assessments of Norwich’, 113. ¹⁵⁹ C. Dyer, ‘Taxation and Communities in Late Medieval England’, in R. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds.), Progress and Problems in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1996), 168–90. ¹⁶⁰ R. Britnell, ‘Tax-Collecting in Colchester, 1489–1502’, Historical Research, 79 (2006), 478, 483. ¹⁶¹ Hence the new grant’s stipulation that those who ‘weer, be or shalbe collectours’ of the previous tax were exempt from serving again: PROME xvi. 42 (RP vi. 423a).

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community rather than to determine the total due to the crown.¹⁶² Unlike Henry’s first directly assessed tax, the grants of 1497 and 1504 did not fall short. The terms of the fifteenth and tenth were not so fixed that they could not be adapted to serve the crown’s purpose. The parliament which convened on 17 October 1491 granted Henry two fifteenths and tenths.¹⁶³ The whole grant was to be paid in April and November 1492, more swiftly than was normal; a third fifteenth and tenth could be levied if the royal army remained in France for eight months or more. Henry seems to have had little difficulty in securing this grant, for the parliament was prorogued on 4 November, making it the shortest session of the reign. Henry’s French campaign proved a disappointment, however. Although initially intended to set sail at Easter 1492, the force did not depart until September. In early October the king joined the siege of Boulogne; later the same month he opened negotiations with ´ the French, concluding the treaty of Etaples on 3 November.¹⁶⁴ In the light of the large pay-off Henry received, subjects of Henry’s ally Maximilian, king of the Romans, suspected that his real purpose had been to raise money.¹⁶⁵ This view may have resonated with Englishmen: city chroniclers noted that Henry had invaded France ‘but peace was made without battle’.¹⁶⁶ Defensively Henry explained how his captains and ‘thestats [the estates] and noble men of this our armye’ unanimously had presented him with compelling reasons for making peace.¹⁶⁷ The captains’ ‘Requestes and Supplications’ were probably concocted at the king’s behest for the consumption of his subjects back home.¹⁶⁸ The assertion that the peace would ‘conserve greatelie his Honeour’ protested too much: the twenty-four signatories undertook that, ‘if herafter it shall happin that any Person within the Realme of England . . . have of the said Peas any maner of Obloquye, Displeasur, or Grugge’, they would bear witness that the king had agreed ‘at our instant Request’.¹⁶⁹ The Burgundian-French statesman Philippe de Commynes ¹⁶² Schofield, Taxation, 79–85. ¹⁶³ PROME xvi. 97–100 (RP vi. 442–4). ¹⁶⁴ Currin, ‘Traffic with War’, 116–31. ¹⁶⁵ Ibid. 107, 127–31. ¹⁶⁶ Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 167 n. 62. ¹⁶⁷ York Civic Records, ii: 1487–1504, ed. A. Raine, Yorks. Archaeological Soc., 103 (1941), 94–6. ¹⁶⁸ Foedera, Conventiones, Literae, ed. T. Rymer, 10 vols. in 40 pts. (3rd edn., London, 1739–45; reprinted Farnborough, 1967), V. iv. 48–50. ¹⁶⁹ Signatures are visible on the damaged original: PRO, E30/612.

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praised ironically the English parliament’s gullibility in funding such campaigns.¹⁷⁰ The abortive campaign of 1492 may well have influenced the Commons’ attitude when Henry next sought a grant in 1497. The case for taxation was strong: on 20 September 1496 James IV, accompanied by Perkin Warbeck, had launched a six-day raid into Northumberland, breaking a seven-year truce agreed three years earlier.¹⁷¹ On 4 October Henry summoned a great council to endorse a military response and authorize its funding.¹⁷² The advantage of a great council was that it could be convened more swiftly than could a parliament, which by convention required at least forty days’ notice; indeed, the meeting was already under way as borough representatives began to arrive at Westminster.¹⁷³ According to the king’s report, the royal council presented its estimate of the cost of the proposed summer campaign, whereupon the plenary council advised the summoning of parliament and convocation. In order to retaliate immediately and to begin preparing for the major campaign, the great council also endorsed the levying of a loan to be repaid out of future taxation.¹⁷⁴ The benevolence of 1491 had proved difficult to collect quickly, with many payments still outstanding in 1495: it may have been hoped that men would be readier to contribute to a loan to be repaid out of taxation.¹⁷⁵ The king’s public pronouncements did not put a figure on the total cost of the military action. The letters seeking loans (sent in December) explained how Henry was seeking to raise £40,000 on top of what had already been lent him by royal councillors and peers.¹⁷⁶ London’s Great Chronicle stated that the great council agreed to raise £120,000, and that parliament was then summoned to ratify this because the council ‘was not of Sufficient auctoryte for the levyyng thereof ’.¹⁷⁷ This may be a telescoping of events: the author had confused the great council of ¹⁷⁰ Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI, 1461–83, ed. M. Jones (Harmondsworth, 1972), 225. ¹⁷¹ N. Macdougall, James IV (Edinburgh, 1989), 130–3. ¹⁷² Coventry Archives, BA/H/17/A79/17; TRP i. 38. ¹⁷³ Magna Carta, c. 14; Parliamentary Texts, 80; Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 849–52. ¹⁷⁴ Coventry Archives, BA/H/17/A79/18. ¹⁷⁵ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 125. ¹⁷⁶ Christ Church Letters, ed. J. B. Sheppard, Camden Soc., ns 19 (1877), 62–3; ‘Letter Missive of King Henry VII to John Calycote of Shepton Mallet’, ed. E. ChisholmBatten, Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 30/2 (1885), 159–60; H. Kleineke, ‘ ‘‘Morton’s Fork’’?—Henry VII’s ‘‘Forced Loan’’ of 1496’, Ricardian, 13 (2003), 317 n. 10, 323 n. 33. ¹⁷⁷ Great Chronicle, 274–5.

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winter 1488 and the parliament of spring 1489, so it is possible that he made the same mistake here.¹⁷⁸ Assembling on 16 January 1497, the parliament made two separate grants: two fifteenths and tenths and a directly assessed tax also worth two fifteenths and tenths.¹⁷⁹ The preamble to the latter act implied that it had been granted after the former act, which on its own ‘doth not suffise’.¹⁸⁰ That the king would be granted £120,000 in the parliament thus may not have been a foregone conclusion when the session opened. Henry’s short campaign and swift peace of 1492 seem to have made MPs wary. Both grants carried a condition: the second instalment, payable on 8 November 1497, was not to be levied if the king did not lead an army into Scotland or if a peace were concluded, although it could be reactivated should a truce break down. This condition was added to the first grant after the rest of the text had been engrossed (that is, written up on parchment).¹⁸¹ Although measures were normally engrossed once they had received the assent of the first house, in this instance the grant was probably presented already engrossed to the Commons, who then added this condition.¹⁸² The full text of the directly assessed tax, by contrast, was engrossed at one time.¹⁸³ It may be that, having accepted the condition attached to the first grant, Henry agreed to its being appended to the second grant before it was engrossed. Alternatively, it may be that, whereas the first grant could be presented to the Commons already engrossed, the terms of the directly assessed tax needed to be hammered out by the Commons, at which stage the conditions were also attached to the grant, after which it was engrossed before being sent to the Lords. By fixing a minimum threshold for liability, the directly assessed grant may have sought to prevent poorer subjects from being overburdened: there were more than 500 assessments for the two fifteenths and tenths in Colchester, but only 118 inhabitants were liable to pay the directly assessed tax.¹⁸⁴ Nevertheless, as the vanguard was about to head north in mid May, rebellion in the south-west, provoked by the heavy taxation, disrupted Henry’s plans; James took advantage of this setback to launch another raid into England.¹⁸⁵ James’s decision to expel ¹⁷⁸ ¹⁷⁹ ¹⁸⁰ ¹⁸² ¹⁸⁴ ¹⁸⁵

Ibid. 243; Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 855–6. PROME xvi. 297–313 (RP vi. 513–19). PROME xvi. 300 (RP vi. 515a). ¹⁸¹ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 8b. See Section 5.1. ¹⁸³ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 8a. BL, Stowe MS 828, fos. 99r–108v; Britnell, ‘Tax-Collecting in Colchester’, 482. Arthurson, ‘King’s Voyage’, 10–11; Macdougall, James IV, 136–40.

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Warbeck, however, removed the principal obstacle to rapprochement, and on 30 September a seven-year truce was agreed.¹⁸⁶ In November, this truce notwithstanding, Henry levied the second fifteenth and tenth (though not the second half of the directly assessed tax).¹⁸⁷ Shortly after, he began repaying the loan, which may have dampened any disquiet about his apparent disregard of the terms of the grant.¹⁸⁸

Conclusion Parliaments’ grants enabled the crown to pursue major policies, above all to sustain a military commitment on the Continent from 1489 to 1492. Extraordinary taxation raised at least £282,000 over the reign.¹⁸⁹ Subjects’ willingness to grant these taxes is difficult to gauge, while the extent and nature of opposition to the king’s demands remain uncertain. If the reappraisal of the 1489 grant is accepted, then the degree of resistance to fiscal reform may have been overstated; this could help to explain how a standardized directly assessed subsidy would develop with relative ease in the 1510s and 1520s.¹⁹⁰ Reform of the tax system was a practical attempt to raise more money, so the crown may have resiled from further innovation after 1489, the least successful grant of the reign. Parliament also contributed to royal finances through regular taxation: by the end of the reign, the customs provided a greater proportion of regular income than did royal lands.¹⁹¹ The crown drew much less on extraordinary revenues in the second half of the reign: with more justification than Edward IV, Henry could claim to be a king who ‘lived off his own’, yet this did not prove to be the panacea Englishmen had imagined.¹⁹² ¹⁸⁶ ¹⁸⁷ ¹⁸⁸ ¹⁸⁹ ¹⁹¹ ¹⁹²

Foedera, V. iv. 120–2. Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 127. Coventry Archives, BA/H/17/A79/21; Kleineke, ‘Morton’s Fork’, 324. Schofield, Taxation, 170–1 (col. 6). ¹⁹⁰ Ibid. 85–92. Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 114, 122. Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 225.

3 Justice Justice was the most valuable attribute of any commonwealth, without which it crumbled, Archbishop Warham instructed parliament in 1504.¹ Requiring an impartial and transcendent authority, justice was the king’s personal responsibility.² ‘The governance of justice resides solely in the king’s person, as head of the common wealth’, the lawyer John Spelman would state in 1519.³ Henry VII was therefore ‘chief justice’—an office he could not delegate, though he should instruct deputies.⁴ At the same time, responsibility for delivering justice was widely diffused: rebuking the mayor and leading citizens of York for the city’s disorder, the king reminded them in 1495 that ‘ye may rewle accordyng to my lawez as and I were ther [in] my nawn [mine own] person’.⁵ These laws were under the king’s stewardship rather than in his possession. The royal will was both subject to the law and also its animating force: a king ‘lawlesse ys as afisshe watirlesse’, yet the law lived through his actions.⁶ The king’s submission to the law, affirmed in his coronation oath, was binding; a ruler who dispensed with that—it could be alleged—had un-kinged himself.⁷ This chapter sets the enactment and enforcement of parliamentary legislation within the broader framework of the crown’s responsibility to dispense justice and uphold the law. Contextual factors that influenced the volume and range ¹ PROME xvi. 319–21 (RP vi. 520). Cf. John Spelman, Reading on Quo Warranto delivered in Gray’s Inn (Lent 1519), ed. J. H. Baker, Selden Soc., 113 (1997), 76. ² E. Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989), 23–44; Watts, Henry VI, 16–31, 79–80. ³ Spelman, Reading on Quo Warranto, 119. ⁴ YB, 20 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 17 (fos. 6–8 at 7); Edmund Dudley, The Tree of Commonwealth, ed. D. M. Brodie (Cambridge, 1948), 34. ⁵ York Civic Records, ii. 115–16. ⁶ Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, 188; E. H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, 1957), 127–35; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 480. ⁷ English Coronation Records, ed. L. G. W. Legg (Westminster, 1901), 230; Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 189; Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, 210.

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of law-making by the crown are considered first. Next the problems statutes identified and the remedies they designed are explored in the light of legal theory and practice. Lastly the crown’s financial interest in enforcing statutory regulations is examined.

3 . 1 M OT I V E S F O R L E G I S L AT I O N The king’s legislative power was exercised through parliament, for he ‘may not rule his peple bi other lawes than such as thai assenten unto’.⁸ According to Sir John Fortescue, England ‘is always really or potentially governed by the most excellent laws’, because ‘if some of them need improvement, the rules of parliament teach us that it can quickly be done there’.⁹ Statutes were held to affirm, abridge, and enlarge the common law.¹⁰ John Mordaunt (speaker in the parliament of 1487) explained that ‘diverse statutes are in confirmation of the common law, and where sufficient remedy [already] was at the common law but for better remedy’.¹¹ If a statutory remedy was available, then a party should follow it: ‘when an action is given by statute, which did not exist in the same form beforehand at common law, the action must be pursued in accordance with the wording of the statute.’¹² Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the way the legal system worked, parliament did not undertake systematic reform. Procedural innovations—such as the common recovery or the bill of Middlesex—appear to have developed without any discussion in parliament.¹³ Law-making in parliament was thus in most instances strictly remedial. The degree of attentiveness and originality in law-making varied ⁸ Sir John Fortescue, The Governance of England, ed. C. Plummer (Oxford, 1885), 109–10. ⁹ Sir John Fortescue, De Laudibus Legum Anglie, ed. S. B. Chrimes (Cambridge, 1942), 134–5. ¹⁰ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 258–62, 283–5; N. Doe, Fundamental Authority in Late Medieval English Law (Cambridge, 1990), 39–42. ¹¹ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Pas., plea 2 (fos. 10–13 at 13). ¹² John Caryll, Reports of Cases, ed. J. H. Baker, 2 vols., Selden Soc., 115–16 (1999–2000), i. 364–5; Sir John Spelman, The Reports, ed. J. H. Baker, 2 vols., Selden Soc., 93–4 (1977–8), i. 34. ¹³ M. Blatcher, The Court of King’s Bench, 1450–1550: A Study in Self-Help (London, 1978), 90–137; E. W. Ives, The Common Lawyers of Pre-Reformation England: Thomas Kebell: A Case Study (Cambridge, 1983), 191–4, 207–12; J. Biancalana, The Fee Tail and the Common Recovery in Medieval England, 1176–1502 (Cambridge, 2001), 250–312, 338–9.

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between Henry’s parliaments. A case study of the abduction act of 1487 has concluded that ‘the accident of a parliament allowed the king to legislate about his current preoccupations’.¹⁴ Prior to this act, abduction had been treated only as a trespass.¹⁵ Now, on the grounds that women of property were commonly abducted for gain, the new act raised from trespass to felony abduction without rape and without forced marriage.¹⁶ The problem had been drawn to the crown’s attention in the previous parliament, when a petition had been presented on behalf of Jane Sacheverell, who had been abducted in November 1485 during the first session. Jane’s petition found ways of emphasizing the gravity of the offence: her abductors had assembled ‘riotously . . . in maner of warre’, had ‘made assaute’ upon her, had robbed her, and had (at least) threatened her with rape or forced marriage.¹⁷ Weighing more heavily on the crown’s mind in the parliament of November and December 1487 was probably the abduction of Margery Ruyton of Temple Balsall near Solihull that September.¹⁸ At the earliest opportunity—nine days after her abduction—Warwickshire’s JPs assembled to hear the indictment; at the king’s command, Chief Justice Huse, Lord Hastings and Hungerford, Lord Grey of Codnor, and the solicitor-general Andrew Dymmock were present.¹⁹ The perpetrators’ identities may have made the difference: the principal Robert Bellingham (gent.) was a member of the king’s household.²⁰ Bellingham was acting at the instigation of another royal servant Thomas Wodeshawe, bailiff of Berkswell, from where Bellingham’s four accomplices had been recruited.²¹ The king may have wished to discourage similar offences and also, in a parliament focusing on misconduct among royal servants, to set an example (although the perpetrators did not remain out of grace for very long).²² ¹⁴ E. W. Ives, ‘ ‘‘Agaynst Taking Awaye of Women’’: The Inception and Operation of the Abduction Act of 1487’, in Ives, Knecht, and Scarisbrick (eds.), Wealth and Power, 21–44 at 30. ¹⁵ YB, 11 Hen. IV, Mich., plea 30 (fos. 13–14). ¹⁶ 3 Hen. VII, c. 2. ¹⁷ A. Cameron, ‘Complaint and Reform in Henry VII’s Reign: The Origins of the Statute of 3 Henry VII, c. 2?’, BIHR 51 (1978), 83–9 at 87. ¹⁸ Ives, ‘Abduction Act’, 26–9. ¹⁹ PRO, KB9/377/22. ²⁰ It was probably Bellingham’s namesake—an esquire in the king’s household—who had captured Lambert Simnel at the battle of Stoke: Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 214, 247; Materials of Henry VII, i. 546. ²¹ CPR 1485–1494, 4. ²² Ives, ‘Abduction Act’, 29–30; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 577–8.

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Much law-making, the argument runs, was thus casual rather than programmatic, reactive rather than proactive. A similar case could be made for the three other statutes enacted in Henry’s reign which created new felonies. The law enacted in the same parliament against conspiracy by members of the royal household was by its own acknowledgement a hasty response to an event which had occurred only days earlier.²³ Desertion had been a problem during the Brittany campaigns, for in the summer of 1489 Henry sent commissions to the south coast to punish men who had returned without their captains’ licence; as the king now prepared to launch his invasion of France in 1492, parliament enacted that soldiers who departed without licence were to be punished as felons.²⁴ The statute of 1486 making hunting in disguise but not admitting the offence a felony was probably intended to target gangs of Wealden poachers.²⁵ Individual clauses of composite legislation may also have had specific origins. In a statute enacted in 1487 to reverse the ‘dailly encreace’ of murders, one clause permitted the crown to arraign a murderer without waiting the customary year and a day for the victim’s relatives to appeal him first, a problem which had recently arisen following the murder of a former mayor of York that May.²⁶ Given Fortescue’s conception of law-making as corrective, laws were necessarily topical. They were rarely ‘accidental’ in the sense of being enacted on the spur of the moment, but could be described as incidental in so far as their enactment seldom was the sole or principal grounds for summoning a parliament. The exception was the parliament of 1495, where the king put forward a well-prepared legislative programme.²⁷ Henry had undertaken to hold a parliament ´ by the end of that year in order to ratify the treaty of Etaples, concluded with France in November 1492.²⁸ The king therefore knew that he was committed to summoning parliament, knowledge his subjects may have shared: in 1494–5 Hull collected money to meet the wages of the ²³ See Section 2.1. ²⁴ East Sussex RO, RYE 60/3, fo. 76r; Red Paper Book, 146–7; 7 Hen. VII, c. 1; Currin, ‘King’s Army’, 393. ²⁵ 1 Hen. VII, c. 7; Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64; B. H. Putnam, Early Treatises on the Practice of the Justices of the Peace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1924), 383; R. B. Manning, Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485–1640 (Oxford, 1993), 21, 64. ²⁶ 3 Hen. VII, c. [2]; York House Books, ii. 561–2, 564–8; Baker, Laws of England, 512–14. ²⁷ As noted in Ives, ‘Abduction Act’, 22, 30. ²⁸ Foedera, V. iv. 55–6, 135–6; PROME xvi. 236–7 (RP vi. 507–8).

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city’s representatives in anticipation of a parliament being held.²⁹ In November 1494 Henry, considering how best to remove ‘corrupcons’ and ‘other evills, the kingdome & commonwealth of the same, much infecting and hurtinge’, appointed nine councillors to ‘intreate, handle and commen what and of what kind’ these problems were, ‘soe that they maie be ripe, against the next Parliament’, where ‘convenient remedies’ could be provided for their ‘extirpacon’.³⁰ Although that is the only evidence of the council’s involvement in drafting legislation, this may well be misleading, as conciliar proceedings have survived only as Elizabethan extracts.³¹ This conciliar committee nevertheless had an unmatched length of time in which to prepare legislation, and its work was evident when the parliament eventually met on 14 October 1495. Opening the parliament, Archbishop Morton uncharacteristically spoke explicitly about specific problems—the standardization of weights and measures, usury, perjury, and extortion by royal officers—which would be addressed in subsequent legislation.³² Twenty-seven statutes were enacted in all, which was more than in any other of Henry’s parliaments (including those which had two or three sessions). One explanation may be that, as the king was not seeking a grant of taxation, more time was available for other measures to be read. The council’s preparations were central, however, because more than half of the new statutes may reasonably be taken as the crown’s work. This session thus bears out Fortescue’s view that ‘the parlementes shall mowe do more gode in a moneth to the mendynge off the lawe, then thai shall mowe do in a yere, yff the amendynge theroff be not debatyd, and be such counsell ryped to thair handes’.³³ What motivated Henry to prepare this legislative programme? The Perkin Warbeck imposture provided the backdrop to this parliament.³⁴ Backed by Maximilian, king of the Romans (from 1493 emperor), and by his ‘aunt’ Margaret, the dowager duchess of Burgundy, ‘Richard of York’ had found high-level supporters in England among those formerly ²⁹ Hull City Archives, BRF/2/390, mm. 1–2. The accounting year ran from 29 Sept. A reference to ‘knytys of the schyre’ in Nov. 1494 could also have concerned a future parliament: Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 471. ³⁰ Select Cases in the Council, 28–9. The royal council was especially busy at this time, hence perhaps the delegation: Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 471. ³¹ J. A. Guy, ‘Wolsey’s Star Chamber: A Study in Archival Reconstruction’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, 5 (1974–7), 174–9. ³² PROME xvi. 141 (RP vi. 458a); 11 Hen. VII, cc. 4, 8, 14–15, 24–5. ³³ Fortescue, Governance, 148. ³⁴ Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 53–120.

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loyal to that house. In May 1493 Henry had been anticipating Warbeck landing in England ‘in right short tyme’.³⁵ In January 1495 the extent of adherence to Warbeck had become apparent, encompassing the chamberlain (Sir William Stanley) and steward (Lord Fitzwalter) of the king’s household. Warbeck and his supporters had attempted to land at Deal on the south coast that July, but had then sailed for Ireland. Henry did not know what had happened to Warbeck when he summoned parliament in August. In November Warbeck headed to a new backer, James IV of Scotland, prompting musters in anticipation of an attack from the north.³⁶ Protagonists in the Wars of the Roses had appealed through proclamations, bills, ballads, and rumours to a sophisticated, well-informed, and broadly defined public.³⁷ Those struggling to wrest control of the crown therefore courted popular opinion by associating hereditary right with the promise of better government. Lambert Simnel explained in 1487 how he had entered ‘this our realme not oonely by Goddes grace to atteyne our right of the same but also for the relief and well of our said realme . . . which hath bene gretely iniuried and oppressid in default of nowne ministracion of good rules and justice’.³⁸ In February 1494 Warbeck’s supporters in London pinned up at the Standard in Cheapside and at the door of St Paul’s Cathedral rhyming bills and ballads attacking the king and his councillors.³⁹ In September 1496 Warbeck would launch his incursion into England with a promise to uphold the realm’s ‘good Laws and Customes . . . according to the effect and true meaning they were first made [and] ordained for’.⁴⁰ Through the parliament of 1495 Henry thus attempted to answer such claims by showing his commitment to his royal office. Law-making was thus ‘a branch of public relations’.⁴¹ The timing, tone, and content of law-making were intended to put forward a positive image of the regime. Laws extolled the king’s virtues: one statute of 1495, granting poor plaintiffs free writs and legal ³⁵ York Civic Records, ii. 100–1. ³⁶ CPR 1494–1509, 52. ³⁷ C. Ross, ‘Rumour, Propaganda and Popular Opinion during the Wars of the Roses’, in R. A. Griffiths (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), 15–32; J. Watts, ‘The Pressure of the Public on Later Medieval Politics’, in Fifteenth Century, iv. 159–80. ³⁸ York House Books, ii. 570. ³⁹ PRO, KB9/78/20; Great Chronicle, 250. ⁴⁰ The Reign of Henry VII from Contemporary Sources, ed. A. F. Pollard, 3 vols. (London, 1913–14), i. 154 (where this proclamation is dated 1497). ⁴¹ C. S. L. Davies, ‘The Cromwellian Decade: Authority and Consent’, TRHS 6th ser., 7 (1997), 178–81.

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representation, explained how Henry ‘willeth and entendith indiffrent justice to be had and mynystred according to his comen lawes to all his true subgettis’.⁴² Prefaces glossed acts in terms of the king’s concern for the commonweal: a royal proclamation of 1493, promulgated as a statute in 1495 and revised and reissued in 1504, claimed that ‘the King’s grace most entirely desireth amongst all earthly things the prosperity and restfulness of this his land, and his subjects of the same to live quietly and surefully to the pleasure of God and according to his laws, willing and always of his pity intending to reduce them thereunto by softer means than by the extreme rigor thereof’.⁴³ Admittedly, such claims may have been so commonplace as to have been little regarded: Leicester’s copy of the revised statute omitted this preamble, possibly regarding it as padding.⁴⁴ Characterizing legislation as ‘propaganda’ is misleading if it implies that law-making was only a presentational exercise. The regime intended through new legislation to improve the way the law was administered; it wished laws to be observed, for their neglect reflected poorly on the crown’s authority. Promoting laws merely as ‘propaganda’ which did not need implementing could even have heightened awareness of the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality. In particular, the re-enactment of existing regulations is sometimes taken to indicate the supposedly rhetorical nature of much legislation. Certainly, some statutes were statements of intent, setting out the crown’s position; but others were advertisements, drawing attention to remedies the crown offered; and many were enablers, empowering local communities to act to resolve problems. Despite statutes’ claims to ‘universal, complete, and permanent’ implementation, ‘discretionary enforcement’ was therefore normal and expected.⁴⁵ Thus it made sense for new laws to re-enact existing legislation: to reaffirm and, if appropriate, to revise. For example, early in 1504 the new retaining act restated existing statutory prohibitions, possibly in the light of the recent misbehaviour of Lord Bergavenny’s retinue in Kent and Sussex.⁴⁶ Coming into force ⁴² 11 Hen. VII, c. 12. ⁴³ TRP i. 32–4; 11 Hen. VII, c. 2; 19 Hen. VII, c. 12. ⁴⁴ Leics. RO, BR/II/16/1. ⁴⁵ Adapted from J. Goodare, The Government of Scotland, 1560–1625 (Oxford, 2004), 120–7 at 120, 122. ⁴⁶ 19 Hen. VII, c. 14; A. Cameron, ‘The Giving of Livery and Retaining in Henry VII’s Reign’, Renaissance and Modern Studies, 18 (1974), 17–35; A. Dunn, ‘Inheritance and Lordship in Pre-Reformation England: George Neville, Lord Bergavenny (c.1470–1535)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 48 (2004), 117–27.

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that May, the act swiftly had an effect. The number of cases returned to the king’s bench (the indicator of activity at quarter sessions) increased. Across the country, men were indicted for giving liveries and badges to those who were neither their household servants nor legal counsel, or for wearing (with or without the owner’s consent) liveries and badges to which they had never been or were no longer entitled.⁴⁷ The benefits of reissuing existing regulations were thus realized. But the retaining act also multiplied the ways in which offenders could be prosecuted: quarter sessions juries, JPs, the king’s bench, the king’s council at Westminster, and the council attendant were all engaged. Bringing royal authority more directly to bear in the localities was—rightly or wrongly—the crown’s preferred solution to disorder.⁴⁸ How legislation sought to enhance the crown’s leverage over the legal system is our next subject.

3 . 2 C O N C I L I A R R E M E D I E S A N D E QU I TA B L E JURISDICTIONS At the beginning of Henry’s reign, the justices, dining at Blackfriars, discussed ‘the king’s matters concerning the parliament’.⁴⁹ They agreed that there existed already ‘many good statutes very profitable to the realm’; in particular, they recalled how a compilation of statutes—beginning with the statutes of Westminster I (1275) and Winchester (1285)—had been prepared in 1483 at the Commons’ request for distribution to JPs.⁵⁰ The justices proposed reissuing this compilation (adding a statute of 1445–6 concerning sheriffs), in the hope that, armed with this information, JPs would ensure that ‘the law will fairly have its course’.⁵¹ The crown is not known to have acted upon this suggestion, perhaps because the justices themselves had their doubts: ‘how these [statutes] should be enforced, that was the question’. Chief Justice Huse’s opinion was that ‘the law would never be well enforced until all the lords spiritual and temporal are of one resolve—for the love and dread which they have towards God or the king or both together—to put it into practice’. Huse recalled an ⁴⁷ PRO, KB9/434/18, 20, 22, 38; KB9/435/6, 9, 11, 48, 56; KB9/436/7–9, 13–14, 16, 42; KB9/437/34, 102, 105; KB9/438/41; KB9/439/5. ⁴⁸ Carpenter, ‘Henry VII’, 19–25. ⁴⁹ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 3 (fo. 3). ⁵⁰ PROME xiv. 413 (RP vi. 198b). ⁵¹ 23 Hen. VI, c. 9.

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occasion in the 1470s when he had been attorney-general: in the Star Chamber ‘all the lords were sworn to keep the statutes’, but ‘within the hour . . . several of the lords made retainers by oath and swearing, and did other things that were directly contrary to their said sureties and oaths’. Unless the lords fully agreed to it, Huse concluded, such an oath was futile, an opinion he said he had expressed to the king. Huse’s scepticism notwithstanding, Henry orchestrated a mass oath-swearing in the parliament, drawing on precedents in 1433 and in 1461 (Edward IV’s first parliament).⁵² On 19 November 1485 the principal knights and esquires of the royal household and of the Commons took an oath in the Parliament Chamber not to assist lawbreakers, practise maintenance, retain men, or distribute liveries illegally, and not to hinder the administration of justice; the peers present then joined them in taking the same oath.⁵³ The king had apparently sent the text to the Commons the previous day, where MPs who had not been invited to the Parliament Chamber may have subscribed.⁵⁴ Colchester’s representatives seem to have brought a transcript of the oath home with them, and may have been expected to organize the town’s subscription.⁵⁵ At the prorogation on 10 December, Chancellor Alcock reinforced this message: he exhorted his audience—and especially the JPs among them—to redouble their efforts to secure the peace of the Church and the realm by punishing murder, robbery, rape, extortion, and vagrancy, promising that if they did this they would receive the king’s thanks when they returned in January.⁵⁶ In the new year Henry appointed commissioners to put the oath to other knights, esquires, gentlemen, and yeomen across the country; he also personally oversaw the taking of the oath on his first progress.⁵⁷ A council ordinance in July reinforced the message that masters should take responsibility for their servants’ conduct.⁵⁸ The justices in their discussion and the text of the oath both identified two underlying causes of lawlessness: the ability of those in positions of strength to manipulate the legal process and the failure of officers to do their duty diligently and honestly. A particular weak point in the system was perceived to be its reliance on the jury, which was believed to be prone to perjury and susceptible to manipulation, bribery, and ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸

PROME xi. 79–83, xiii. 64–6 (RP iv. 421–2, v. 487–8). PROME xv. 131–2 (RP vi. 287–8). ⁵⁴ Parliamentary Texts, 186. Red Paper Book, 61. ⁵⁶ PROME xv. 112–13 (RP vi. 278). Foedera, V. iii. 167b; York House Books, ii. 521. Select Cases in the Council, 2, 11.

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intimidation.⁵⁹ Statutes therefore changed its composition, either by raising the jurors’ property qualification or by allowing justices to amend the panels.⁶⁰ New legislation made it easier to convict for perjury: in 1495 a statute reduced the draconian penalties, probably with the intention of encouraging convictions.⁶¹ The jury’s role in the legal system could also be circumvented. By authorizing indictments by information or by bill (first before the king’s council and then in 1495 before JPs and assize justices too), statutes bypassed the jury’s role in making presentments.⁶² Summary conviction on record or by examination provided an alternative to jury trial. First employed in 1349, this approach was becoming increasingly attractive: in 1495 four statutes authorized summary conviction.⁶³ The retaining act of 1504 penalized jurors, constables, and bailiffs who failed to identify offences, and also authorized conviction without the normal common law process of indictment.⁶⁴ JPs were the principal agents of the legal system in the localities, eclipsing the sheriff.⁶⁵ In his Inner Temple reading in 1503, Thomas Marowe strained his interpretation of his chosen text (the statute of Westminster I, c. 1) in order to focus on their responsibilities.⁶⁶ In Henry’s reign, JPs acquired new summary powers: a statute of 1495 targeting those who orchestrated riots allowed JPs to proceed on the basis of a bill rather than indictment by a jury, made failure to appear when summoned result in automatic conviction, and invited JPs to certify the king and his council of heinous offenders for further punishment.⁶⁷ The crown, however, did not express great confidence in JPs’ abilities. In the early 1490s it began adding new men drawn from the inner circles of the regime to the commissions of the peace, presumably with the intention of enhancing its control over the local administration of the legal system.⁶⁸ A statute of 1490 required a proclamation to be read out ⁵⁹ M. Hastings, The Court of Common Pleas in Fifteenth Century England: A Study of Legal Administration and Procedure (Ithaca, NY, 1947), 217–36. ⁶⁰ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 21, 24–5; Putnam, Early Treatises, 364–5. ⁶¹ 11 Hen. VII, c. 24; Baker, Laws of England, 371–3. ⁶² 3 Hen. VII, c. 1; 11 Hen. VII, c. 3; 19 Hen. VII, c. 14. ⁶³ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 2, 4, 17, 22; J. G. Bellamy, Criminal Law and Society in Late Medieval and Tudor England (Gloucester, 1984), 8–32 (esp. 15–19). ⁶⁴ 19 Hen. VII, c. 14. ⁶⁵ J. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), 89–96; R. Gorski, The Fourteenth-Century Sheriff: English Local Administration in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2003), 1–4. ⁶⁶ Putnam, Early Treatises, 167, 321. ⁶⁷ 11 Hen. VII, c. 7. ⁶⁸ J. R. Lander, English Justices of the Peace, 1461–1509 (Stroud, 1989), 112–19, 124–5, 128–9.

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at quarter sessions over which JPs presided. The proclamation criticized their negligence, misbehaviour, and partiality, and invited dissatisfied subjects to complain to the assize justices and, that failing, to the king or his chancellor.⁶⁹ Subjects’ willingness to seek redress from the agencies of central government made possible the crown’s oversight of the legal system. Parliament through its petitionary process gave them access to royal justice.⁷⁰ The crown, however, no longer solicited complaints at parliament; it preferred to encourage the aggrieved to resort to the royal council.⁷¹ Conciliar justice was Henry’s principal solution to disorder. The king’s council was a flexible body, its judicial business being shared between two sorts of meeting: the council attendant upon the king’s person; and the council meeting at Westminster, usually in the Star Chamber, under the chancellor.⁷² Both were sessions of the king’s council, with a single jurisdiction and personnel in common.⁷³ Four statutes authorized the prosecution of certain offences before particular councillors.⁷⁴ Earliest was a statute of 1487, known since the sixteenth century as the ‘Star Chamber’ act (although that phrase did not appear in the text).⁷⁵ Its preamble explained how a cluster of related offences—the giving of liveries and retaining, the maintenance and embracery of juries, and riots and unlawful assemblies—was undermining the integrity of the legal system, so that ‘the polacye and good rule of this realme is almost subdued’. The statute nominated six or seven councillors to call offenders before them upon information or bill, there to determine their cases and, if appropriate, to punish them according to the relevant statutes as ‘if they were therof convycte after the due ordre of the lawe’. For a king who ‘turned naturally to a conciliar solution for every administrative problem’, these tribunals were an attractive answer to offences that undermined the integrity of the legal system.⁷⁶ In 1495 a second act addressing perjury nominated a conciliar tribunal to receive ⁶⁹ 4 Hen. VII, c. 12. ⁷⁰ See Sections 5.1 and 5.3. ⁷¹ For the decline of parliament as a court of law, see Section 8.2. ⁷² PRO, REQ1/1–3; Select Cases in the Council, 1–59. ⁷³ Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 471; Baker, Laws of England, 193 n. 13. ⁷⁴ 3 Hen. VII, c. 1; 11 Hen. VII, c. 25; 19 Hen. VII, cc. 12, 14. ⁷⁵ The two headings on the parliament roll were added later: PRO, C65/125, m. 10 (PROME xv. 371), reproduced in BIHR 3 (1925–6), plate 2. ⁷⁶ M. M. Condon, ‘Ruling Elites in the Reign of Henry VII’, in C. Ross (ed.), Patronage, Pedigree and Power in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1979), 132.

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and determine bills of complaint.⁷⁷ When the vagrancy and gaming legislation of 1495 was reissued in 1504, an additional clause empowered a conciliar tribunal to examine royal officers and, if appropriate, to punish the deficient as though they had been convicted at common law in accordance with the penalties enacted in 1495.⁷⁸ Little is known about the workings of these tribunals. The overlapping and interlocking nature of conciliar work may explain why they do not seem to have established distinctive identities. In 1504 the informer Henry Toft, possibly searching for a law under which to bring a perjury action now that the conciliar act of 1495 had expired, claimed that the ‘Star Chamber’ act ‘sithen the makyng therof have not be put in execucion’.⁷⁹ Although Toft was incorrect, some of the tribunal’s work may have been reabsorbed into the regular business of the king’s council.⁸⁰ Delegation to individual councillors was a regular feature of the council’s judicial business, which did not require parliamentary approval; the council also remitted cases to the council learned in the law (a subcommittee primarily of common lawyers at work by 1500), which did not have a statutory footing.⁸¹ Statutory authority was required, however, if conciliar process was to equate with conviction at common law. Yet that authority could prove constricting: by defining narrowly which councillors were empowered to judge particular offences, the ‘Star Chamber’ act created the unintended possibility that a writ of error could lie against some conciliar proceedings.⁸² The common law was every subject’s birthright: his or her ‘inheritance’.⁸³ Statutory remedies, however, truncated or bypassed the normal workings of the common law. Legislation thus conflicted with principles enshrined in Magna Carta and affirmed and amplified in fourteenthcentury statutes: men should be prosecuted only through indictment or presentment, proceedings should be matters of record, and no one should be convicted without due process.⁸⁴ Defendants in cases before ⁷⁷ 11 Hen. VII, c. 25; Select Cases in the Council, pp. lxii–lxiii, 74–7. ⁷⁸ 11 Hen. VII, c. 2; 19 Hen. VII, c. 12. ⁷⁹ Select Cases in the Council, 70–1. ⁸⁰ Ibid. 62–7; J. A. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court: The Impact of Thomas Wolsey in Star Chamber (Hassocks, 1977), 20, 150 n. 169. ⁸¹ PRO, REQ1/3, fos. 117r, 212v, 242r. ⁸² Select Cases in the Council, 7, 60–1. Cf. Christopher St German, On Chancery and Statute, ed. J. A. Guy, Selden Soc., ss 6 (1985), 123–4. ⁸³ Caryll, Reports, ii. 670. ⁸⁴ Magna Carta, c. 39; 5 Edw. III, c. 9; 25 Edw. III, st. 5, c. 4; 28 Edw. III, c. 3; 31 Edw. III, st. 4, c. 16; 37 Edw. III, c. 18; 42 Edw. III, c. 3.

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the king’s council regularly entered formal demurrers on the basis of these statutes.⁸⁵ From 1501 some defendants brought actions under these statutes in the common law courts against their accusers.⁸⁶ New legislation may have also encountered opposition during its passage through parliament. In 1495 the riot statute and the two perjury statutes were limited in duration to the next parliament.⁸⁷ In 1497 an act renewing these three measures explained how ‘the seid statutes for shortnes of tyme syn the making of theym have not be putte in execucion, wherby the effecte of the same as yet may not be perfitely knowen’.⁸⁸ The crown’s intention was to make these three acts permanent; but the measure was amended—probably in the Commons—so that it renewed these three acts only until the next parliament.⁸⁹ In the next session in 1504 parliament renewed one of the two statutes concerning perjury, but again it was modified (probably in the Commons) so that it would last only until the next parliament.⁹⁰ The act establishing the conciliar tribunal was not renewed, while a new measure superseding the riot act reaffirmed pre-1495 legislation and omitted the JPs’ power to proceed on the basis of bill as well as indictment.⁹¹ The new retaining act meanwhile, with its provisions for conciliar justice and conviction without due process, was only to last the king’s lifetime.⁹² That act was amended, seemingly by the Lords, so that of the three councillors appointed to hear cases two had to be lords spiritual or temporal: peers may have been hoping to receive a more sympathetic hearing.⁹³ More generally, the amendment could have reflected mistrust of the king’s non-noble councillors. Contemporary conceptions about the sources of law and the nature of justice deepen our appreciation of the principles that may have sustained such disagreements within parliament.⁹⁴ Justice was in origin divine: laws were either God-given (divine and natural) or deduced through ⁸⁵ Select Cases before the King’s Council in the Star Chamber, ed. I. S. Leadam, 2 vols., Selden Soc., 16, 25 (1903–11), i. 20–1, 33, 63. ⁸⁶ Spelman, Reports, ii. 72–3; Baker, Laws of England, 192–3. Cf. St German, On Chancery and Statute, 121–2. ⁸⁷ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 7, 24–5. ⁸⁸ 12 Hen. VII, c. 2. ⁸⁹ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 2. ⁹⁰ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 3 (c. 3). ⁹¹ 19 Hen. VII, c. 13; Putnam, Early Treatises, 342–3. 11 Hen. VII, c. 3, which allowed JPs to try any statutory misdemeanour on the basis of an information, remained in force, however. ⁹² 19 Hen. VII, c. 14; Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 171–2. ⁹³ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 12. ⁹⁴ The fullest analysis is Doe, Fundamental Authority.

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the exercise of God-granted faculties (positive or man-made).⁹⁵ ‘Statute’ was a rule of the law of nature or of custom committed to writing and promulgated.⁹⁶ The relationship between natural and man-made law was thus like the sun and moon, the moon receiving its light from the sun.⁹⁷ The making of human law required the exercise of reason; because statutes were rationally created, they necessarily partook of the law of nature.⁹⁸ Because man-made law should be the revelation of eternal law, human law was void if it conflicted with the laws of God or of nature.⁹⁹ Positive law was therefore a second-order system, which derived its theoretical authority from its congruence with higher principles rather more than it did from the actual processes through which it was created.¹⁰⁰ These higher principles, constantly open to fresh interpretation, transcended the fixedness of positive law: strict adherence to the written text or to the customary imperative of a particular precedent. In the ‘mirrors for princes’ genre, rulers were instructed that behaving fairly ‘to iche Creature’ transcended strict adherence to ‘lawe positife’.¹⁰¹ Drawing on these abstract qualities, the crown exercised an equitable jurisdiction over the normal workings of the legal process through the council and the English side of chancery.¹⁰² As fairness and reason, equity suffused the entire legal system, enabling justices, for instance, to construe statutes in the light of the ‘common profit’.¹⁰³ But equity was also a quality external to the common law: ‘an excepcyon of the lawe of god, or of the lawe of reason, from the generall rewles of the lawe of man’, and thus the defining characteristic of courts of ‘conscience’.¹⁰⁴ The common lawyer Christopher St German (who began his career in Henry’s reign) regarded equity as a necessary complement to the ⁹⁵ Sir John Fortescue, The Works, ed. T. Fortescue, Ld. Clermont, 2 vols. (London, 1869), i. 90–111, 220–45. ⁹⁶ Fortescue, De Laudibus, 36–7. Fortescue here used ‘statute’ to mean any written positive law. ⁹⁷ Fortescue, Works, i. 108–9, 241–3. ⁹⁸ Ibid. i. 168–9, 314–15; Christopher St German, Doctor and Student, ed. T. F. T. Plucknett and J. L. Barton, Selden Soc., 91 (1974), 13–15, 27. Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Selected Political Writings, ed. A. P. D’Entr`eves (Oxford, 1948), 114–15. ⁹⁹ St German, Doctor and Student, 15. ¹⁰⁰ Fortescue, Works, i. 113–14, 246–7. ¹⁰¹ Ashby, Poems, 34–5. ¹⁰² Baker, Laws of England, 171, 173–5. ¹⁰³ YB, 14 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 19 (fos. 7–10 at 9); Caryll, Reports, ii. 572; Doe, Fundamental Authority, 84–107; Baker, Laws of England, 39–48. ¹⁰⁴ St German, Doctor and Student, 97.

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common law, without which ‘it were a very grosse lawe, and far insuffycyent’.¹⁰⁵ How equitable jurisdictions complemented the common law was nevertheless contentious. The issue perhaps lay behind criticism within parliament of royal intervention in the legal system. Equity filled the common law’s lacunae: ‘in cas that ony thinge falle of the whiche the determinacion is not expressed in the common lawe, thann the prince moste be asked and inquired and by his excedyng auctorite and prudens of his conseyle an expikan shalbe made tharopon’.¹⁰⁶ As chief justice, Fortescue had advocated an extension of chancery’s authority in cases concerning enfeoffments to use, a practice which the common law did not recognize.¹⁰⁷ It was good law, both chief justices held in 1494, for a party who could not be relieved at common law to be relieved through ‘conscience’.¹⁰⁸ Yet equity also sought to fulfil the common law system, to conform its workings to the higher-order principles that provided its rationale. The equitable jurisdictions of the council and chancery therefore encroached on cases which properly were the preserve of common law courts. This perceived intrusion may have motivated some of the opposition in parliament to extending the council’s judicial role. The draft council ordinances of 1491 or 1492 (copying instructions of 1430) stated that ‘all billes that comprehendeth matiers determinable at the comyn lawe shalbe remytteth ther to be determined’, unless ‘the counseill fele to grete myght on that oon side and unmyght on that other or ellis other cause resonabill’.¹⁰⁹ Rarely did the council remit such cases; it compelled defendants to answer and made decrees on common law matters (above all, questions of title).¹¹⁰ The council did not act as an appellate jurisdiction: judgments in common law and other courts were respected, the council attendant refusing to hear a man who had been outlawed.¹¹¹ That principle applied in reverse too: in 1493 ¹⁰⁵ St German, On Chancery and Statute, 110. ¹⁰⁶ ‘A Defence of the Proscription of the Yorkists in 1459’, ed. J. P. Gilson, EHR 26 (1911), 518. An ‘expikan’ presumably means a decision made according to epieikeia (equity). ¹⁰⁷ Caryll, Reports, ii. 396. ¹⁰⁸ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Pas., plea 2 (fos. 10–13). ¹⁰⁹ M. M. Condon, ‘An Anachronism with Intent? Henry VII’s Council Ordinance of 1491/2’, in R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (eds.), Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1986), 245. ¹¹⁰ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 154v; REQ1/3, fo. 62v; Select Cases in the Council, 25, 46, 59, 118. ¹¹¹ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 81r; REQ1/2, fos. 35r, 114r, 128r–v, 171v.

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the king, ‘speaking with great vehemence in the presence of his whole Council’, ordered that a writ be sent to the court of common pleas requiring it to halt proceedings in a case where title had already been determined before the council.¹¹² Where cases were not yet decided in other courts, the council forbade parties from pursuing actions.¹¹³ Sometimes this provided the basis for an arbitrated settlement between parties.¹¹⁴ Richard III’s ordinances for the council of the north had stipulated that cases concerning title were to be settled only with the consent of both sides; yet Henry’s council regularly awarded title to one side, requiring the other to abide by its decree ‘without any let, vexacion, or sinistre impediment fromhensforthe’.¹¹⁵ Thomas Wickham would be fined £100 ‘in case be he any thing attempt to the derogacion of this decre’ in 1505.¹¹⁶ The council’s concern was with offences that undermined the integrity of the legal system or breached the peace: it was particularly interested in riot, which was defined broadly to include non-violent action by unarmed men.¹¹⁷ The majority of cases which came before the council, however, were private property suits embellished with accusations of riot and forcible entry (in the case of chancery, questions of title also featured, but detention of deeds was the common allegation).¹¹⁸ The council admitted as much when it referred some cases to the determination of individual justices and law officers on the grounds that they concerned title; on occasion, the question of title and the allegation of riot in a bill were explicitly examined separately.¹¹⁹ Yet in 1506 the council threatened to imprison counsel who argued that his client should ‘make none answere to the title of Lande’.¹²⁰ The pressure on conciliar business caused by these private suits may partly explain the crown’s preference for statutory tribunals to deal with official prosecutions.¹²¹ ¹¹² Select Cases in the Council, 25; Guy, Cardinal’s Court, 16–17. ¹¹³ e.g. PRO, REQ1/1, fos. 26v, 59v; REQ1/3, fo. 47r; Select Cases in the Council, 19, 49–50; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 60–8. ¹¹⁴ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 52r; REQ1/2, fos. 172v–173r; REQ1/3, fos. 80v–81r, 161r. ¹¹⁵ PRO, REQ1/3, fo. 162r–v; BL Harleian MS 433, iii. 107. ¹¹⁶ PRO, REQ1/3, fos. 205v–206r. ¹¹⁷ PRO, REQ1/2, fo. 123v; Select Cases in the Council, 20, 45–6; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 175; Putnam, Early Treatises, 339–40. ¹¹⁸ Guy, Cardinal’s Court, 15–18. ¹¹⁹ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 46v; REQ1/2, fos. 150v, 164v; REQ1/3, fos. 129r–v, 172r–v. ¹²⁰ Select Cases in the Council, 46. ¹²¹ Guy, Cardinal’s Court, 18–20.

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Tension between the two systems was contained because common lawyers practised within the equitable jurisdictions.¹²² The judicial work of chancery and of the council depended on the participation of the highest ranks of the common lawyers, and on litigants being represented by other members of that profession.¹²³ Yet, as the council and chancery’s business grew, the number of cases heard in king’s bench and common pleas seems to have been declining; in reality, economic and demographic conditions probably determined levels of common law litigation, but perceptions may well have been different.¹²⁴ This apparent encroachment on the business of common law courts may explain a proposal put up in Henry’s first parliament. On 10 December 1485—the last day of the session—the Commons, according to the Colchester diary, passed ‘a byll for the Court of Request that it is annulled, and it (shall) be occupied no more’.¹²⁵ Despite the diary’s remark, the measure did not pass: it could have been lost at the prorogation of the parliament, could have failed to receive the Lords’ assent, or could have been rejected by the king. What was meant by ‘the Court of Request’ in 1485 is uncertain: possibly a body had developed recently out of the sessions of the council attendant. Richard III had appointed an additional clerk to the council with special responsibility for requests, enhancing the distinctiveness of this aspect of his council’s work.¹²⁶ This appointment may have reflected Richard’s efforts to conform his rule to the highest standards of kingship in the hope of neutralizing antipathy to his accession.¹²⁷ The crown did not initiate the proposal in 1485: an embryonic court of requests had no statutory basis, and so did not require annulling if the crown had wished to dispense with it. Could lawyers in the Commons ¹²² Ives, Common Lawyers, 208. ¹²³ Select Cases in the Council, 52; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 60, 187–8. ¹²⁴ Blatcher, Court of King’s Bench, 10–33 (esp. 18, 21); Ives, Common Lawyers, 199–207; C. W. Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The ‘Lower Branch’ of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), 79–101. ¹²⁵ Parliamentary Texts, 189. ¹²⁶ A. F. Pollard, ‘The Growth of the Court of Requests’, EHR 56 (1941), 300–3; H. Kleineke, ‘Richard III and the Origins of the Court of Requests’, Ricardian, 17 (2007), 22–32. ¹²⁷ A. F. Sutton, ‘ ‘‘A Curious Searcher for our Weal Public’’: Richard III, Piety, Chivalry and the Concept of the ‘‘Good Prince’’ ’, in P. W. Hammond (ed.), Richard III: Loyalty, Lordship and Law (2nd edn., London, 2000), 77–80, 95–7, 104.

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have taken advantage of Richard’s overthrow to launch an assault on a prominent dimension of his council’s work? A parallel is a short-lived civic ‘court of requests’ instituted by the mayor of London Sir John Shaa in 1501–2.¹²⁸ In this court Shaa favoured the poor more than ‘Justyce & good lawe Requyrid’, which proved unpopular with ‘men of mygth’ and with the lawyers (possibly those working in the sheriffs’ court) who lost business—but ‘who is In auctoryte’, the chronicler asked, ‘that can please all parties’?¹²⁹ Experience of equitable jurisdiction as a party to a dispute probably shaped attitudes in parliament rather more than did underlying theory. The crown and many of its subjects benefited from equitable jurisdictions. The crown dispensed exemplary justice against the powerful (peers not excepted) pour encourager les autres.¹³⁰ The crown also dispensed indifferent justice, where inequalities of standing or wealth (as between a landlord and a tenant) precluded a fair hearing.¹³¹ Equitable jurisdictions, for example, upheld the right of copyhold tenants, which was not justiciable at common law.¹³² Although the regime may not have revived a special clerical position, the council attendant was sometimes referred to as the council or court ‘of requests’.¹³³ Equitable jurisdictions thus helped the crown fulfil its duty: as one plaintiff put it in 1504, ‘alle and euery of the kynges true subgettes ought of ryght to be contented to sue and to be sued before the kynges highnes whiche is the hedde of justice and in his absence before the lordes of his moost honorable counseill’.¹³⁴ For plaintiffs, the conciliar courts and chancery could do what ‘shal be thought consonant with righte and good consciens’, that is, find ‘a resounable way’.¹³⁵ Common law preferred ‘mischief’ (particular wrong) to ‘inconvenience’ (an action whose inconsistency undermined the robustness of the whole system); suffering personal wrong for the greater good hardly appealed to litigants, who thought it ‘ayenst all ¹²⁸ A civic ‘court of requests’ would be re-established in 1518, initially as a small claims court: P. Tucker, Law Courts and Lawyers in the City of London, 1300–1550 (Cambridge, 2007), 117–18, 121, 126, 194, 224, 333. ¹²⁹ Great Chronicle, 320. ¹³⁰ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 98r; Select Cases in the Council, 19–20, 58. ¹³¹ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 57v; REQ1/2, fo. 50v; Plumpton Letters and Papers, 199–200; Select Cases in the Council, 20. ¹³² PRO, REQ1/3, fo. 258r–v; Baker, Laws of England, 644–50. ¹³³ Condon, ‘Anachronism with Intent’, 236, 252 n. 74. ¹³⁴ PRO, REQ2/1/33 (1st replication). ¹³⁵ PRO, REQ1/3, fos. 239r, 245r.

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right and good consciens’.¹³⁶ Equitable jurisdictions prioritized doing what was right: in 1489 Archbishop Morton defended chancery’s jurisdiction against common law objections on the principle that no one who had a case in conscience should leave the king’s courts without a remedy.¹³⁷ Freed from the constraints of due process, equitable jurisdictions acted more flexibly: the council could, for example, order a defendant to restore the plaintiff whom he had disseised while the case was still being determined, the reverse of the common law position.¹³⁸ A judicial mechanism which worked well for the plaintiff, however, was comparatively disadvantageous to the defendant. Particularly unpopular was the means by which men were brought before the council, chancery, and individual ministers: chiefly through the issuing of subpoena writs under the privy seal, also through the issuing of letters missive under the signet, and occasionally through the dispatch of a sergeant-at-arms.¹³⁹ Summonses did not state the charges, imposed heavy penalties for non-compliance, required men to attend at short notice, and denied them the right to appear by attorney; they also disregarded the jurisdictional independence of cities and other corporations.¹⁴⁰ The crown was cavalier in issuing writs on its own behalf: men were summoned before the council learned to account for debts they had in fact paid, or summoned in error for someone else; upon appearance, they might find that no one knew why they had been summoned, yet they were punished if they departed without licence.¹⁴¹ The whole process, victims felt, was protracted, and it was difficult to secure dismissal (at least without payment).¹⁴² At common law, an ‘original’ writ was required in order to commence a real or personal action; ‘judicial’ writs followed in order to secure the ¹³⁶ Select Cases in the Council, 92; Caryll, Reports, i. 129; Doe, Fundamental Authority, 155–74. ¹³⁷ YB, 4 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 8 (fos. 4–5). Morton was glossing the statute of Westminster II: 13 Edw. I, st. 1, c. 24. ¹³⁸ PRO, REQ1/2, fos. 63v, 179v; REQ1/3, fos. 99r, 245r; Select Cases in the Council, 56. ¹³⁹ Two subpoena writs are printed in M. R. Horowitz, ‘ ‘‘Agree with the King’’: Henry VII, Edmund Dudley and the Strange Case of Thomas Sunnyff ’, Historical Research, 79 (2006), 365–6. ¹⁴⁰ Select Cases in the Council, 23, 36, 47; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 180–1; Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 172–3. ¹⁴¹ PRO, DL5/4, fos. 76r, 84v, 103r–v, 110r, 153r. ¹⁴² PRO, KB9/453/40.

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appearance of a defendant.¹⁴³ The alternative system dispensed with the original writ. Subpoena writs had developed comparatively recently, in the mid fourteenth century.¹⁴⁴ The advantage of subpoena writs and letters missive was that, unlike common law writs, they were still invested with the personal authority of the king.¹⁴⁵ Mesne process—the common law process of distraint leading to outlawry—was poor at producing parties quickly.¹⁴⁶ By contrast, the subpoena process—summons under financial penalty, summons on pain of allegiance, writ of attachment, and proclamation as rebel—appears in most cases to have produced defendants swiftly (although there were plenty of occasions upon which people refused to receive the writs, contemptuously discarded them, or intimidated or attempted to bribe others into not serving them).¹⁴⁷ The crown made these writs available to plaintiffs before the council and in chancery; a complaint to a single councillor attending upon the king was sufficient to secure a subpoena writ.¹⁴⁸ On occasion, plaintiffs may have been required to enter an obligation to pay a sum if they could not prove the case, but this does not seem uniformly to have been required, for in 1495 a bill or petition ‘concernyng pryve sealis’ was presented to parliament.¹⁴⁹ This proposed that no writs be issued unless sureties were given for any damages subsequently awarded to the recipients; it may well have cited earlier legislation to that effect.¹⁵⁰ Although this proposal was not enacted, apparently it did prompt members of the king’s council to require some financial commitment from those seeking writs.¹⁵¹ Notations on plaintiffs’ bills suggest that, while some were required to enter a bond, provide securities, or name sureties, many more may not have been.¹⁵² The king and council may further have promised this parliament that privy seals would in future only be issued where ‘the mater therin conteyned concernyd a great cause of Ryot forcible entre vnlaufull & ¹⁴³ Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 20 n. 6; Baker, Laws of England, 323, 328. ¹⁴⁴ Caryll, Reports, ii. 396; W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Origins of the Sub Pena Writ’, Historical Research, 61 (1988), 11–20. ¹⁴⁵ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 201. ¹⁴⁶ Hastings, Court of Common Pleas, 211–17; Blatcher, Court of King’s Bench, 63–81; ‘A Wiltshire Sheriff ’s Notebook, 1464–5’, ed. M. M. Condon, in Medieval Legal Records, ed. R. F. Hunnisett and J. B. Post (London, 1978), 412–14. ¹⁴⁷ PRO, REQ1/1, fos. 144v, 159v–160v, 164v, 179r; REQ1/3, fo. 185r; Select Cases in the Council, 13, 21, 30, 49; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 50–1, 162, 190–1. ¹⁴⁸ PRO, KB9/453/5–7. ¹⁴⁹ PRO, E40/9544; PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.). ¹⁵⁰ 15 Hen. VI, c. 4. ¹⁵¹ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 112. ¹⁵² Select Cases in the Council, p. lxxxiii.

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riotouse Assemblees’, or where one of the parties was impoverished.¹⁵³ Given the way plaintiffs embellished their suits, this limitation would in practice have been unlikely to have reduced the volume of writs issued. By 1509, the regime was widely believed to have intervened too readily in the normal workings of the common law. In his accession pardon Henry VIII instructed his officers henceforth to minister justice indifferently, disregarding any royal letters or conciliar commands to the contrary.¹⁵⁴ The oyer and terminer commissions of July to October 1509 indicted private individuals who had procured privy seal writs in breach of the various statutes.¹⁵⁵ A London jury denounced Sir Richard Empson as ‘the devil’s spawn’ (filius diabolicus), for he had summoned men before him by privy seals under heavy penalties without due authority in order to determine offences properly the preserve of the king’s courts, thereby subverting the common law, Magna Carta, and other statutes.¹⁵⁶ Edmund Dudley conceded past abuses when he urged the new king neither to ‘enforce or oppresse’ any of his subjects ‘by privie Seale or lettres missyves’, nor to employ them ‘in stopping of iustice’.¹⁵⁷ In 1510 a bill before parliament complained how people had been summoned ‘personally to apere withoute due originall be fore diuerse persons by priuey seall and lettres missives for maters and causes determinabull at the commen lawe . . . contrary to the commen lawe, the statute of Magna Carta, and to the tenure of mony sundry good and profitable statuts’. The bill proposed a large fine on anyone who infringed these laws (excepting royal commissioners in the marches, Wales, and Cheshire). Although it was limited to the next parliament, Henry VIII rejected the bill.¹⁵⁸ This backlash may in fact indicate the effectiveness of conciliar jurisdiction in Henry VII’s reign. Read against its grain, Roger Pilkington’s account of his protracted property dispute in Derbyshire in the 1490s may suggest how the council—while in practice far from perfect—could be perceived as swifter, cheaper, and less partial than local common law courts. Indeed, it was because a suborned jury found against him—a judgment the council should not reverse, requiring ¹⁵³ Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 21. It seems unlikely that this could have referred to the ‘Star Chamber’ act, the basis on which the editor dated the case: ibid., vol. i, pp. lxxxii, 21 n. 9. The original documents are PRO, STAC2/24/396. ¹⁵⁴ TRP i. 80. ¹⁵⁵ PRO, KB9/453/5–7, 17, 362. ¹⁵⁶ PRO, KB9/453/459, 469. ¹⁵⁷ Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 35–6. ¹⁵⁸ OA, 1 Hen. VIII, no. 22.

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process in error—that Pilkington’s case was ultimately stymied.¹⁵⁹ An interesting study of sheriffs’ conduct may show how royal supervision also made the common law work better. Its examination of the judicial writs that required sheriffs to enforce debts (under the statute staple of 1353) reaches a striking conclusion: in the 1490s sheriffs were more diligent in executing these writs than ever before. Although other, more procedural explanations are conceivable, greater royal oversight and a readiness to punish malfeasance quite possibly were affecting the sheriffs’ performance. Irrespective of how it came about, this improvement benefited the king’s subjects rather than the crown directly.¹⁶⁰ Yet royal intervention in the administration of justice was seen as a mixed blessing. Critiquing the regime he had served, Dudley realigned justice with ‘the dew order of the law’.¹⁶¹ Except in its immediate aftermath, this was possibly a minority view in Henry’s reign: justice required the king to transcend the ‘dew order and course of his lawes’ to do what was right. Conciliar justice appealed to the crown as a more effective way of fulfilling its responsibility, both to individual suitors and to the realm as a whole; conciliar justice ‘both attracted and repelled’ the king’s subjects.¹⁶² The importance Dudley attached to observing due process was in part pragmatic, born of experience: ‘thoughe the matter be neuer so trew that thei be callyd for, though their pain or ponysshement should be sorer by the dew order of the law, yet will thei murmur and grudge by cawse thei arre callyd by the waie of extraordynarie [iustice].’¹⁶³

3 . 3 P RO F I T Under Magna Carta the crown promised not to sell justice.¹⁶⁴ The profits of justice—its amercements, distraints, and forfeitures—were, however, a legitimate part of the fisc which the crown was entitled to pursue. Many of these penalties, after all, arose from a failure to comply with court orders, which commonly resulted in outlawry and ¹⁵⁹ HMC, Various Collections, ii (London, 1903), 28–56. ¹⁶⁰ P. Nightingale, ‘The Intervention of the Crown and the Effectiveness of the Sheriff in the Execution of Judicial Writs, c.1355–1530’, EHR 123 (2008), 1–34. ¹⁶¹ Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 36. ¹⁶² C. Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Landowners in Late Medieval England’, Law and History Review, 1 (1983), 236. ¹⁶³ Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 36. ¹⁶⁴ Magna Carta, c. 40.

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therefore (in theory) forfeiture of moveables and (in practice) fines for its reversal.¹⁶⁵ The prerogative of pardon enabled the crown to display mercy and also to tailor a punishment to reflect the gravity of the offence and the status of the offender.¹⁶⁶ In July 1503 a goldsmith from Totnes, Thomas Prendergast, paid £10 into the king’s chamber to be pardoned coining offences.¹⁶⁷ There was nothing covert about the crown’s financial interest: Kentishmen who had shipped wool overseas without licence were noted to be ‘thriftye and richemen’.¹⁶⁸ Thus when Henry VII sought to improve the profitability of the crown lands in the parliament of 1487, he also set about increasing his income from the law.¹⁶⁹ A day after he had appointed a conciliar committee to oversee the act of resumption and the same day that he dissolved parliament, Henry instructed the king’s bench to resume process on indictments that had been suspended by the Yorkist kings ‘for suche interest and profite as be longeth vnto vs as in the righte of oure said corowne’.¹⁷⁰ Henry also granted a general pardon for offences committed before 9 November, the day the parliament had opened.¹⁷¹ Those who found dormant indictments against them revived could sue for this pardon in chancery at a cost of 18s. 4d.¹⁷² This pardon raised at least £120 for the crown by 1491, while others raised much more.¹⁷³ Statute law created new sources of income by imposing financial penalties of fine or forfeiture for particular offences. Such penalties were presumed to be an effective means of prompting royal officers to do their duty. One stipulation of the murder statute of 1487 was that coroners should deliver all indictments of homicide and untimely death to justices of gaol delivery on pain of a £5 fine; after some initial prompting, inquests began to be forwarded in large numbers.¹⁷⁴ The fine imposed on JPs who failed to inquire into a riot within a month ¹⁶⁵ Blatcher, Court of King’s Bench, 94–9. ¹⁶⁶ Cf. Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, 131–2. ¹⁶⁷ PRO, E101/413/2/3, fo. 44r; CPR 1494–1509, 307. ¹⁶⁸ BL, Add. MS 59899, fo. 197v. ¹⁶⁹ See Section 2.1. ¹⁷⁰ PRO, KB27/906, rex rot. 7. ¹⁷¹ Cavill, ‘Enforcement of the Penal Statutes’, 6–7. ¹⁷² Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, 332. Of this sum, 2s. was paid to the chancellor. ¹⁷³ PRO, C67/54. I am grateful to Hannes Kleineke for sharing his unpublished draft indexes to the pardon rolls. ¹⁷⁴ PRO, KB9/379/37; 3 Hen. VII, c. [2]; R. C. E. Hayes, ‘ ‘‘Ancient Indictments’’ for the North of England, 1461–1509’, in A. J. Pollard (ed.), The North of England in the Age of Richard III (Stroud, 1996), 28–9.

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purportedly spurred members of the Huntingdonshire bench into action in 1499.¹⁷⁵ In 1504 the fines (zealously pursued by the crown) levied on keepers of gaols who let those convicted or on remand escape were put on a statutory footing, while some private grants of custodianship were resumed.¹⁷⁶ Financial penalties were also common in regulations governing trade and commerce. Members of the upholsterers’ company of London bound themselves to account annually in the exchequer for the crown’s moiety of all defective goods seized by virtue of an act of 1495.¹⁷⁷ The volume of legislation creating new trespasses or misdemeanours (non-capital offences) was increasing: sixty-nine such statutes were enacted in the reigns of Edward I to Richard III, but twenty-six in Henry’s reign alone.¹⁷⁸ The crown was not expected to enforce all legislation all of the time. In 1508 the king dismissed an action under a statute of 1484 restricting imports, ‘not wylling the said acte to be putte in execucion’.¹⁷⁹ Writing to Viscount Wells in 1489, by contrast, the king claimed that in the case of retaining, ‘we dayly execute . . . the penalte of our seid lawes in that behalf in euery part thorough this our reyme and so entend to do’.¹⁸⁰ Often ‘the written law lies as it were dead under a covering of words’, Fortescue observed, ‘and then the Prince, by means of equity, rouses its vital spirit as if from sleep’.¹⁸¹ In 1495 Henry announced to parliament that ‘the olde necessarie statutes, wherof many beth penall, made and ordeigned for the comene well of this his realme and the subiectes of the same with the penalties therin lymeted shuld be put in playne and due execucioun’.¹⁸² Whether the king intended that all laws not repealed should be enforced is unclear: if so, it was a remarkably ambitious policy. Henry may have intended this announcement to showcase the virtues of his kingship, complementing the raft of new legislation enacted in that parliament. Henry also granted a general pardon for a range of statutory offences committed before the opening of the parliament, for a fair-minded king notified his subjects of his intentions—‘not willing ¹⁷⁵ Select Cases in the Council, 121. 11 Hen. VII, c. 7 had restated (but not in fact re-enacted) existing legislation, including the fines laid down in 13 Hen. IV, c. 7. ¹⁷⁶ BL, Add. MS 59899, fo. 212r; 19 Hen. VII, c. 10; R. B. Pugh, Imprisonment in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1968), 151, 232–8, 248–9. ¹⁷⁷ PRO, E159/273, recorda, Mich., rot. 6d; 11 Hen. VII, c. 19. ¹⁷⁸ Bellamy, Criminal Law and Society, 96, 100. ¹⁷⁹ PRO, E159/286, recorda, Hil., rot. 6; 1 Ric. III, c. 12. ¹⁸⁰ PRO, DL37/62, rot. 6d. ¹⁸¹ Fortescue, Works, i. 85–6, 215. ¹⁸² Cavill, ‘Enforcement of the Penal Statutes’, 10.

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rigourously without due monycioun to put theyme to eny losse or daunger’—and pardoned past transgressions when these laws had been in abeyance.¹⁸³ Yet the enforcement of statutory regulations turned out to be one of the most unpopular and widely criticized aspects of Henry’s reign: upon his accession his son promised ‘reformation of the great extremity and rigor wherewith his said subjects have been grievously vexed and troubled in time past’.¹⁸⁴ The means by which statutes were enforced explain much of this backlash. The crown could not rely on royal officers to implement most regulations. Only in the case of the customs was there a bureaucracy charged with enforcing particular laws.¹⁸⁵ Escheators were responsible for identifying the crown’s tenurial rights rather than statutory offences. The escheator of Gloucestershire chose to draw the crown’s attention in October 1495 to those who had bought up wool for export prematurely, prompting the attorney-general to sue in the exchequer; yet detecting that offence was not the formal responsibility of an escheator.¹⁸⁶ Many statutory regulations therefore relied on private parties pursuing cases. Commonly they were given incentives: legislation in 1495 provided for a forfeiture or a fine shared between the king and the party suing when men installed fishing weirs in Southampton harbour, committed usury or entered specious contracts, ignored summonses in Tynedale (Northumberland), exported horses without royal licence, concocted offences to boost their profits as sheriff, under-sheriff, or county clerk, employed nets to catch partridges or pheasants, harmed hawks, and manufactured sub-standard cloths.¹⁸⁷ Such legislation frequently allowed actions to be brought by third parties who had not personally suffered from the offence in question.¹⁸⁸ Under these ‘popular actions’, the informer sued for the king as well as for himself: tam pro domino rege quam pro seipso. A statute in 1490 advertised how accions populers in divers cases have ben ordeigned by many gode actis and statutes afore this tyme made, for the reformacion of extorcions, mayntenaunces, oppressions, injuries, exaccions and wronges used and committed within this ¹⁸³ Ibid. 11. ¹⁸⁴ TRP i. 81. ¹⁸⁵ See Section 2.2. ¹⁸⁶ PRO, E101/414/6, fo. 123r; Cavill, ‘Enforcement of the Penal Statutes’, 8; D. Luckett, ‘Henry VII and the South-Western Escheators’, in Thompson (ed.), Reign of Henry VII, 54–6. ¹⁸⁷ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 5, 8–9, 13, 15, 17, 27. ¹⁸⁸ Bellamy, Criminal Law and Society, 90–103.

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your realme, whiche accions be verry penall to all mysdoers and offendours in suche accions condempned, and muche profitable aswell to your highnes as to everyche of your subgiettis that theym woll sue and maynteyn.¹⁸⁹

The crown wished to encourage subjects to inform for its and their benefit: the purpose of this statute was to prevent collusive actions, whereby someone arranged to be sued by a sympathetic party, who did not intend to claim the award, in order to bar further actions against him. Procedure by private information had a number of advantages: ‘It avoided the cumbersome details of criminal procedure with its presentment and trial by jury; it interested the largest possible number of people in the enforcement of the law; and it enabled the central courts to deal with offences of which they would never otherwise have heard.’¹⁹⁰ A statute of 1495 allowed justices at the assizes and quarter sessions to try statutory misdemeanours on the basis of an information, on the grounds that the corruption and partiality of juries meant that many laws—addressing riot and unlawful assembly, the giving of liveries and retaining, perversion of the legal process, and wages, gaming, and apparel—were not being enforced.¹⁹¹ In 1510, however, this statute would be repealed on the grounds that it had prompted ‘meny Synestre and craftely feyned and forged informacions’.¹⁹² In Henry’s reign the crown gave unprecedented encouragement to these ostensibly private prosecutions. Early in the reign the crown sought to take control of the suing of informations. In January 1493 the king complained that ‘fewe or nooun’ of his statutes or his predecessors’ statutes were being executed, ‘to the derogacioun and losses of our rightes and prouffites and vnto the great lette and hurte of the said comune weal’. Sir Robert Clifford was therefore to be assigned direction of all ‘popular actions’ for three years; nothing came of this, however, for that summer Clifford fled England to join Warbeck in Flanders.¹⁹³ This experiment does not seem to have been repeated; instead, the crown gradually assumed greater direction over a small group of informers or ‘promoters’. At ¹⁸⁹ 4 Hen. VII, c. 20. ¹⁹⁰ G. R. Elton, ‘Informing for Profit: A Sidelight on Tudor Methods of LawEnforcement’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 11 (1953–5), 150. ¹⁹¹ 11 Hen. VII, c. 3; Putnam, Early Treatises, 404. ¹⁹² 1 Hen. VIII, c. 6. Little is known about how the statute had worked: Cavill, ‘Debate and Dissent’, 174 n. 121. ¹⁹³ PRO, E159/269, recorda, Hil., rot. 7.

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the beginning of the reign, the office of king’s promoter referred to the civil lawyer who sued cases before the courts of the admiral and of the constable.¹⁹⁴ This position was usually held by those associated with the royal council: in the mid 1490s it was filled by Robert Samson, clerk to the council attendant.¹⁹⁵ In the later years of the reign the meaning changed: the informer Henry Toft, a clerk to the attorneygeneral and an officer in the royal mint, was recognized by 1504 as ‘the kinges promoter’.¹⁹⁶ Around 1506 there ‘sprang much sorwe [sorrow] thorw the land, ffor by meane of a ffewe ungracious personys which namyd theym sylf the kyngis promoters many unleffull & fforgotyn statutis & actis made hunderyth of yeris passid were now quykenyd & sharply callid upon’.¹⁹⁷ The chronicler may have exaggerated: a network of informers comparable to the nationwide network of deputy surveyors of the royal prerogative appointed in 1508 cannot be traced.¹⁹⁸ The pace of enforcement certainly quickened, however: 56 per cent of the penal actions in the exchequer over the reign were brought from 1500, and 38 per cent from 1504.¹⁹⁹ Henry VIII’s accession pardon described how statutes ‘made of long time past’ had not been put in execution ‘till now of late time’.²⁰⁰ The case of William Pyrton illustrates the promoters’ modus operandi. In November 1504 Toft brought an action of debt for £200 against Pyrton in the king’s bench.²⁰¹ While sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire in July 1502, Pyrton (Toft alleged) had taken payments from prisoners prohibited under legislation of 1445–6.²⁰² Although he denied the offences, Pyrton—like many others—obtained a pardon from the crown, paying Edmund Dudley £66 13s. 4d. by May 1505.²⁰³ This pardon only discharged the king’s interest in the action, so Pyrton compounded separately with Toft, giving him £6 13s. 4d . and a buck and a roe deer in June 1505.²⁰⁴ Pyrton presumed that this was the ¹⁹⁴ CPR 1485–1494, 112; Baker, Laws of England, 209–10. ¹⁹⁵ BL, Add. MS 7099, fos. 20r, 22r; PRO, E101/414/6, fos. 12r, 24r. ¹⁹⁶ Select Cases in the Council, 71. ¹⁹⁷ Great Chronicle, 334. ¹⁹⁸ W. C. Richardson, ‘The Surveyor of the King’s Prerogative’, EHR 56 (1941), 64–5, 69–71. ¹⁹⁹ Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement’, 284–5. ²⁰⁰ TRP i. 81. Cf. Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 102–3. ²⁰¹ PRO, KB27/973, rot. 102 f. ²⁰² 23 Hen. VI, c. 9. ²⁰³ BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 4v; CPR 1494–1509, 418; Great Chronicle, 334–5. ²⁰⁴ Spelman, Reports, i. 170, 191–2; Reports of Cases from the Time of King Henry VIII, ed. J. H. Baker, 2 vols., Selden Soc., 120–1 (2003–4), i. 52.

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end of the matter, but omitted to be formally discharged from the court; without Pyrton’s knowledge, Toft continued his suit. By the time Pyrton realized this, the process had reached the point where he was barred from counter-pleading. Pyrton was thus obliged to purchase another royal pardon in April 1506 for a further £40, which this time he had formally entered in court.²⁰⁵ At the same time Pyrton appealed to chancery, hoping to prevent Toft securing his condemnation; this appeal may have seen some success, for, although Toft maintained the action until the end of the reign, he did not obtain judgment.²⁰⁶ Dudley’s accounts imply that he was complicit in Toft’s sharp practices, exploiting them in order to increase the crown’s profit. As Dudley admitted in 1509, Pyrton was ‘twoe tymes hardlie dealt withall’: actions which were strictly legal could be far from just.²⁰⁷ Men could be doubly or trebly mulcted: by the promoters, by the king’s ministers, and by the crown itself.²⁰⁸ Following Henry’s death, Londoners heaped vitriol on the promoters in verse: in one, John Baptist Grimaldi was called ‘Imp of the devyll’ and accused among other enormities of having deflowered his own daughter.²⁰⁹ The new regime acknowledged how damaging the crown’s partnership with the promoters had been: it promised that in future subjects should go about their business ‘without any fear of forfeiture by reason of any light and untrue informations’ by customs officers or by ‘any persons calling themself promoters’.²¹⁰ Henry VIII immediately ordered the arrest of Toft and eleven others (not all of whom were informers) ‘for suche vnlawfulle demeanuris as they vsid’ under his father’s regime.²¹¹ Chroniclers implied that promoters were seized and punished across England, claims that the surviving indictments before the commissions of oyer and terminer of July to October 1509 do not substantiate.²¹² A proposal presented to the parliament of 1510 sought to debar promoters from future office-holding; it did not pass, possibly reflecting the crown’s decision not to punish further. The Lords ordered that the promoters’ names be entered among the records of ²⁰⁵ BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 20r. ²⁰⁶ PRO, C1/346/32. ²⁰⁷ ‘The Petition of Edmund Dudley’, ed. C. J. Harrison, EHR 87 (1972), 88. ²⁰⁸ Great Chronicle, 348; Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 37. ²⁰⁹ Great Chronicle, 343, 352–66 at 363. ²¹⁰ TRP i. 80–1. ²¹¹ PRO, C82/343 (17 Dec. 1509) (LP I. i. 137); Great Chronicle, 336–7. ²¹² PRO, KB9/453; Great Chronicle, 343; The Customs of London, otherwise called Arnold’s Chronicle, ed. F. Douce (London, 1811), p. xliv.

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the parliament as testimony to their infamy, but this was not done either.²¹³ On its own terms, the approach taken by the old regime had a rationale. Promoters pursued corruption and negligence in the administration of justice and customs violations, offences that especially concerned the crown. In one law term—possibly Trinity 1502—Toft was pursuing ‘for your highnes’ actions in cases concerning gold plate, usury, fustians, extortion by another Essex–Hertfordshire sheriff and under-sheriff, and (following the acquittal of the same under-sheriff in another suit) also perjury by jurors under the 1495 legislation.²¹⁴ To increase the profitability of the legal process was also to make it more effective. Statutory offences created debts to the crown which it pursued with the same zeal that it did other regalian rights; the quickening pace of enforcement reflected the intensification of the regime’s fiscalism in its later years.²¹⁵ Similarly, the crown came to penalize outlawry more stringently: from around 1505 some of those outlawed purportedly had to make over half the income from their estates for two years in order to reverse what should (subjects felt) be granted automatically by chancery.²¹⁶ As a consequence, however, the regime engaged in actions which appeared removed from the ideal of justice that a king was supposed to uphold. John Spelman, who practised in the king’s bench in the last years of the reign, described Empson and Dudley as promoters ‘who did not look after the common wealth but sought only to fulfil the covetous purpose’ of the king.²¹⁷ Mercy and pity were vital attributes of the pater patriae, but ones this king apparently had forsaken.²¹⁸ Greater discretion was required: ‘consydering the greate nomber of penall Lawes and statutes made in his realme for thard and straighte ponyshement of his subiectes’, Dudley urged Henry VIII ‘in cawses toching hym self to mynister his Iustice discretly medlyd with marcye, or els his iustice wilbe sore, that it will oftetymes appere to be crueltie rather then iustice’.²¹⁹ In the parliament of 1510 a bill, echoing the phrasing of the accession pardon, complained that ‘The greate nombre of . . . Statutes penalle have nott ben putt in ²¹³ ²¹⁴ ²¹⁵ ²¹⁶ ²¹⁷ ²¹⁹

LJ i. 6a, 6b, 7a; LP I. i. 137, 172, 499 (nos. 289/35, 381/28, 1003/6). PRO, STAC1/2/124. The suggested date is based on PRO, KB27/963, rot. 38 f. See Sections 7.1 and 7.2. PRO, KB9/453/469; BL, Add. MS 59899, fo. 202v. Spelman, Reports, i. 175. ²¹⁸ Caryll, Reports, i. 285. Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 41.

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execucion tyll nowe of late’.²²⁰ Henry VIII accepted its proposal for placing a time limit on the bringing of informations, but only until the next parliament (against the wishes of the Commons).²²¹ Nevertheless the same parliament enacted new sumptuary regulations to be enforced through popular actions.²²² As the desire for nationwide regulation continued to grow, informers would remain unavoidable figures at the margins of sixteenth-century law enforcement; they would not again be so damagingly identified with a regime.²²³

Conclusion Justice was pivotal to the exercise of kingship. It was an ideal which could prove hard to define or realize. For some, conciliar solutions and truncated processes violated the proper course of the law; for many, the enforcement of statutory regulations degenerated into a mercenary exercise. In its relentless pursuit of the fiscal logic, the crown neglected its broader responsibility to justice; in offering remedies in its equitable jurisdictions, however, the crown provided the ministerial justice subjects desired. Dudley’s strictures were contradictory: the new king should follow the ‘dew order’ of the common law, but intervene personally in defence of the poor and against those who abused positions of authority.²²⁴ Different expectations of justice were difficult to balance. A preference for local self-policing over central intrusiveness may have characterized elite attitudes to the law; but the broader interests of a widening political nation were arguably better served by royal engagement.²²⁵ Attitudes to the crown’s role in dispensing justice were ambivalent: the king should observe the absolute standards of the law himself, yet permit subjects to settle their own disputes how they saw fit; he should allow the law to take its course, yet underwrite the fairness of the whole system. Subjects thus held a ‘contradictory vision of the law, wanting it unbending but ²²⁰ 1 Hen. VIII, c. 4. ²²¹ OA, 1 Hen. VIII, no. 4; LJ i. 5b, 6a, 6b, 8a. ²²² 1 Hen. VIII, c. 14. ²²³ M. W. Beresford, ‘The Common Informer, the Penal Statutes and Economic Regulation’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 10 (1957–8), 221–38; D. R. Lidington, ‘Parliament and the Enforcement of the Penal Statutes: The History of the Act ‘‘In Restraint of Common Promoters’’ (18 Eliz. I, c. 5)’, Parliamentary History, 8 (1989), 309–28. ²²⁴ Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 36. ²²⁵ M. T. Clanchy, ‘Law, Government, and Society in Medieval England’, History, 59 (1974), 73–8; Nightingale, ‘Intervention of the Crown’, 1–6, 28–34.

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malleable’.²²⁶ Tensions could be characterized as the workings out of a more interventionist model in which justice was increasingly sought and found at the centre. This was not necessarily a better system, but it was a different one, driven by subjects as much as by the crown. Henry’s reputation suffered, his remedies endured. ²²⁶ Carpenter, ‘Law, Justice and Landowners’, 210–13, 228–37, at 213.

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II PARLIAMENT IN THE POLIT Y

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4 Representation In parliament everyone was supposed to be represented. Chief Justice Thorpe had explained in 1365 that ‘as soon as parliament has decided something, the law holds that every person has knowledge of it, for the parliament represents the body of the whole realm.’¹ Parliament’s representativeness was both geographical and social. Representatives of the counties, cities, towns, and boroughs of England sat in the Commons. Yet laws enacted by parliament (although not grants of taxation) bound other, unrepresented royal territories: the palatinates of Durham and Chester, the marches and principality of Wales, the lordship of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and the marches of Calais.² Parliament also embodied the ‘estates of the realm’, yet its structure did not reflect the classic division of society into three estates. The second estate—the martial class—was divided between the two houses, between the lay peers in the Lords and the knights of the shires in the Commons. Over time the lords spiritual, the lords temporal, and the Commons themselves came to be seen as the three estates, as constitutional theory glossed over the practical limitations upon parliament’s representativeness.³ The first estate—the clergy—had a complex relationship with parliament. In parliament this estate was attenuated: originally, the attendance had been required not only of bishops but also of archdeacons, of the heads of cathedral churches (either a dean or a prior), and of ¹ YB, 39 Edw. III, Pas., plea 3 (fo. 7). ² R. A. Griffiths, ‘The English Realm and Dominions and the King’s Subjects in the Later Middle Ages’, in King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1991), 52–3. In the case of Ireland, this was disputed on the grounds that the lordship had its own parliament: A. Cosgrove, ‘Parliament and the Anglo-Irish Community: The Declaration of 1460’, in Cosgrove and J. I. McGuire (eds.), Parliament and Community, Irish Historical Studies, 14 (1983), 25–41. ³ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 115–26.

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proctors representing cathedral chapters and the diocesan clergy. Over the fourteenth century the clergy came to deal with the crown through the convocations of Canterbury and York rather than in parliament.⁴ Writs of summons nevertheless continued to instruct bishops to arrange for the representation of the lesser clergy in parliament; on occasion, proctors were appointed, but there is no indication that they were involved in parliament’s business any more.⁵ Meetings of parliament and convocations often coincided; the Lords were adjourned on five occasions in 1510 because Chancellor Warham and other prelates were attending the provincial council at St Paul’s Cathedral.⁶ Proceedings in parliament and in convocations sometimes overlapped, and the bodies shared leading members, but they were discrete institutions. When in 1483 Bishop Russell described parliament as ‘the place of wordely [worldly] policie’, he may have intended to distinguish it from places of ‘spiritual policy’.⁷ This chapter looks first at the Lords, then at the conduct of elections to the Commons, and lastly at constituencies and their representatives.

4 . 1 T H E LO R D S Establishing who sat in the Lords is an involved business. Our principal sources are the writs of summons that instructed peers to attend.⁸ Only one original writ—summoning Edward, Lord Hastings and Hungerford to the parliament of 1504—seems to have survived.⁹ The issuing of such writs, however, was usually recorded on the close rolls: for five ⁴ A. K. McHardy, ‘The Representation of the English Lower Clergy in Parliament during the Later Fourteenth Century’, in D. Baker (ed.), Sanctity and Secularity: The Church and the World, Studies in Church History, 10 (1973), 97–107; J. H. Denton, ‘The Clergy and Parliament in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in R. G. Davies and Denton (eds.), The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981), 88–108. ⁵ Records of Convocation, vii: Canterbury, 1509–1603, ed. G. Bray (Woodbridge, 2006), 1; HMC, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells, 2 vols. (London, 1907–14), ii. 218–19. ⁶ LJ i. 5–7; E. B. Fryde et al., Handbook of British Chronology (3rd edn., Cambridge, 1986), 603. ⁷ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 183. Cf. Reginald Pecock, The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, ed. C. Babington, 2 vols., Rolls Ser., 19 (1860), i. 105: ‘spiritual policie or worldli policie’. ⁸ HP 1439–1509, vol. ii, pp. cxxviii–cxxxi. ⁹ Huntington Library, HAP 5/2.

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of Henry’s seven parliaments summonses were recorded, there being no entries for the parliaments of 1489–90 and 1504.¹⁰ An entry in a chancery formulary book has provided another list of summonses.¹¹ The names listed best match spring 1488, when no parliament was summoned; this may have represented revisions made to an existing list, but it could not have been the final list of those summoned to the parliament of 13 January 1489. Writs of summons did not record who was present in parliament: the issuing of a personal summons did not guarantee an individual’s attendance; conversely, the absence of an entry on the close rolls did not mean that an individual was necessarily absent.¹² On two occasions we know which peers were actually in attendance. The parliament roll listed those present on 19 November 1485 to take the oath to uphold the law.¹³ The ratification of the treaty ´ of Etaples in parliament on 27 October 1495 named the peers present as witnesses.¹⁴ Although records of daily attendance and of business in the Lords were kept in the fifteenth century, the earliest extant journal covers the parliament of 1510. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century transcripts of business in the parliaments of spring and summer 1449 and 1461 have survived; most of these were associated with the heralds of the College of Arms.¹⁵ Two other transcripts shed light on Henry’s parliaments. One is an entry in a volume belonging to Sir Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King-of-Arms from 1505 to 1534, which listed sixty-one peers present in Henry’s first parliament of 1485–6.¹⁶ This entry may have represented attendees on a single day or over a longer period; the likeliest source was records of daily proceedings. The other text is found in a commonplace book belonging to the scholar William Camden, ¹⁰ PRO, C54/346, m. 3d; C54/348, m. 18d; C54/352, m. 2d; C54/355, m. 19[b]d; C54/357, m. 6 (CCR 1485–1500, 14–15, 69, 165–6, 248, 287–8). ¹¹ PRO, C193/1, fo. 109r. I owe this reference to Hannes Kleineke. ¹² HP 1439–1509, vol. ii, pp. lx–lxx; H. Miller, ‘Attendance in the House of Lords during the Reign of Henry VIII’, Historical Journal, 10 (1967), 325–6. ¹³ PROME xv. 131–2 (RP vi. 287–8). ¹⁴ PRO, C76/180, mm. 18–20, printed in Foedera, V. iv. 135–6. ¹⁵ For 1449, six transcripts have been identified: these are itemized in R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Winchester Session of the 1449 Parliament: A Further Comment’, in King and Country, 253 and n. 1. For 1461, two transcripts have been identified: Fane Fragment; ‘A New Fragment of the Lords’ Journal of 1461’, ed. R. Virgoe, BIHR 32 (1959), 83–7. A general discussion is in W. H. Dunham, ‘ ‘‘The Books of the Parliament’’ and ‘‘The Old Record,’’ 1396–1504’, Speculum, 51 (1976), 694–712. ¹⁶ BL, Harley MS 1417, fo. 37v.

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Clarenceux herald from 1597 until his death in 1623.¹⁷ Camden named sixty peers present in Henry’s last parliament in 1504.¹⁸ Camden’s list included the law officers in attendance, which none of the extant journal entries noted. Law officers were recorded, however, on the ‘old’ roll naming the peers and MPs of 1449 in the possession of Robert Glover, Somerset herald from 1570 to 1588, which may have been a roll-call of those in attendance.¹⁹ Camden’s list could have been derived from such a source. Summonses were sent to the archbishops of Canterbury and of York, to the nineteen bishops of England and Wales (excluding the bishop of Sodor and Man), to twenty-five abbots, to the prior of Coventry, and to the prior of the crusading order of St John of Jerusalem (who sat at the head of the barons).²⁰ Summonses were sent to laymen of the ranks of prince, duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron; the number summoned varied from parliament to parliament, as titles passed to minors (who were not normally summoned) or became extinct, and as new peers were created.²¹ Thirty-one lay peers were summoned to the parliament of 1485–6, thirty-six to the parliament of 1487, forty to the parliament of 1491–2, forty-three to the parliament of 1495, and forty to the parliament of 1497. These included Henry’s first son Arthur (1486–1502), summoned to the parliaments of 1491–2, 1495, and 1497 as prince of Wales, and his second son Henry (b. 1491), summoned as duke of York to the parliaments of 1495, 1497, and 1504 (in the last of which he was created prince of Wales). Summonses to the earliest parliaments had been sent to the king’s tenants-in-chief, holding by barony. In 1515, at the height of the controversy over benefit of clergy, the judges ruled that ‘the king could perfectly well hold his parliament . . . without any spiritual lords; for the ¹⁷ W. H. Dunham, ‘William Camden’s Commonplace Book’, Yale University Library Gazette, 43 (1969), 139–56. ¹⁸ Beinecke Library, MS 370, fo. 40r. ¹⁹ ‘A List of Members of the Parliament of February, 1449’, ed. R. Virgoe, BIHR 34 (1961), 200–10. ²⁰ J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, BIHR 29 (1956), 155; ‘A Parliamentary Debate of 1449’, ed. A. R. Myers, BIHR 51 (1978), 78–9; G. O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford, 2005), 122–5. ²¹ K. B. McFarlane, ‘Extinction and Recruitment’, in Nobility, 143–5, 156–62; C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages: The Fourteenth-Century Political Community (London, 1987), 55–62.

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spiritual lords have no place in the parliament chamber by reason of their spiritualty, but only by reason of their temporal possessions.’²² A tenurial relationship had, in reality, ceased to determine who was summoned: clergymen were summoned by virtue of the offices they held; laymen were summoned on the basis of a hereditable title. When succession was in the direct male line, a writ of summons followed naturally, but modern peerage law governing the descent of titles did not yet exist.²³ Sir Charles Somerset probably owed his summons as Lord Herbert in 1495 to his marriage in June 1492 to Elizabeth Herbert, heiress to the barony.²⁴ Whether men possessed an estate sufficient to support the dignity still mattered. Sir Christopher Willoughby (1453–1498/9) was not summoned to Henry’s first six parliaments, presumably because the Willoughby baronial lands, to which he was heir, remained by act of parliament in the hands of Sir Richard Hastings for term of life. Both men styled themselves Lord Willoughby, but neither appears to have received a summons; following Hastings’s death in 1503, however, Christopher’s son William was summoned to Henry’s last parliament.²⁵ Henry also created new peers. Writs of summons for his second parliament were dispatched on 1 September 1487. On 22 September the king ordered the chancellor to send two new writs of summons, ‘ffor asmoche as we haue determined vs to calle oure trusty and right welbeloued knightes and counsaillours Sir John Cheyne and Sir Thomas [Burgh] to the dignitie and preeminence of baronie’.²⁶ Cheyne and Burgh’s names were then added to the close roll.²⁷ A writ of summons, without a separate patent of creation, normally instituted a hereditable peerage.²⁸ Robert, Lord Willoughby de Broke was first summoned to the parliament either of 1489–90 or of 1491–2. Although the writs of the former parliament were not recorded, he was probably summoned then to coincide with his joint command of the expeditionary force to ²² Caryll, Reports, ii. 690. ²³ L. O. Pike, A Constitutional History of the House of Lords (London, 1894), 57–119. ²⁴ BL, Harley MS 1417, fo. 38v; G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, vi. 440; vol. ix, app. B, p. 11; XII. ii. 848 and n. c, 850. ²⁵ PROME xv. 131 (RP vi. 287b); G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, vi. 385–7, XII. ii. 447–8, 668–73. ²⁶ PRO, C82/30. ²⁷ PRO, C54/348, m. 18d. The name of Henry, Lord Grey of Codnor was also added. ²⁸ Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, 537–8.

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Brittany. Willoughby de Broke died in 1502, so his son (also Robert) was summoned to Henry’s final parliament in 1504.²⁹ After the initial writs had been sent out early in November 1503, two further summonses to this parliament were delivered to the Lords Conyers and ‘de Vernon’.³⁰ The first recipient was the Yorkshire knight William Conyers of Hornby, a leading royal servant who had also inherited the moieties of two baronies.³¹ The second recipient can only have been Sir Henry Vernon of Haddon (Derbyshire), even though no substantiating evidence has been found. Vernon’s royal service, the consolidation of the Peaks’ offices in the family’s hands, his prominence among the gentry of the north Midlands, and the baronial level of his income certainly justified a summons.³² Vernon, Conyers, and Sir Thomas Darcy—also summoned for the first time to this parliament—had recently escorted Princess Margaret on her journey north to marry James IV of Scotland.³³ Following his disgrace later in the reign, Vernon was not summoned to Henry VIII’s early parliaments.³⁴ Similarly, the untrustworthy behaviour of Sir Edward Burgh—possibly early signs of mental illness—meant that he was not summoned to take up his father Thomas’s seat in 1497, and that the peerage thus lapsed.³⁵ Summons to a parliament did not therefore guarantee a permanent or hereditary noble status. Peers did not have an indefeasible right to sit in the Lords. The king might deliberately choose not to summon someone.³⁶ This could be because of incapacity: Edmund, Lord Roos, judged incapable of governing himself, was not summoned to Henry’s parliaments, although ²⁹ PRO, E405/75, rot. 54; G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, XII. ii. 684–5 n. l; D. A. Luckett, ‘The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty: Henry VII and the Lords Willoughby de Broke’, Historical Research, 69 (1996), 254–65. ³⁰ PRO, E405/80, rot. 34, 34d. Conyers could be the penultimate name on Camden’s list of lords temporal; Vernon’s name did not appear. ³¹ G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, iii. 404; A. J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society, War, and Politics, 1450–1500 (Oxford, 1990), 90–1, 385, 394–5. ³² HP 1439–1509, i. 907–8; S. M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century, Derbyshire Record Soc., 8 (1983), 10, 22–3, 28, 82, 85, 107–9; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 593–4. ³³ HMC, Twelfth Report, Appendix IV: Rutland, i. 17–18; G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, iv. 73–4. ³⁴ Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 140–2. ³⁵ S. J. Gunn, ‘The Rise of the Burgh Family, c.1431–1550’, in P. Lindley (ed.), Gainsborough Old Hall, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, occasional papers, 8 (1991), 9–10. ³⁶ Miller, ‘Attendance’, 326–35.

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William, Viscount Beaumont, judged profligate, was.³⁷ Peers who were out of favour might not be summoned: supporters of Richard III did not receive summonses to Henry’s first parliament, sent out on 15 September 1485. The earl of Surrey and Lord Zouche, who were in the king’s custody, and Viscount Lovell, who remained at large, were not summoned; also omitted was Bishop Stillington, believed to be responsible for the pre-contract story through which Richard III had bastardized his nephews.³⁸ Other lords, who are not recorded as having received an initial summons, possibly because they too were judged disaffected, were subsequently allowed to sit in the Lords. Richard’s nephew the earl of Lincoln was present on 19 November. Wriothesley’s list named other peers who were not recorded as having been sent an initial writ of summons. These included Richard’s treasurer John, Lord Audley and the earl of Northumberland, who had been imprisoned after Bosworth, but was freed by 6 December.³⁹ Two Ricardians among the episcopate were also included: Bishop Langton of Salisbury, pardoned and restored to his temporalities the day before the parliament opened, and Bishop Redman of St Asaph’s, pardoned as late as 22 February 1486.⁴⁰ Also present on Wriothesley’s list was Giles Daubeney, who was not formally created a baron until after the parliament had been dissolved.⁴¹ Wriothesley’s list therefore probably recorded lords present in the second session of the parliament (23 January to 4 March 1486). The summonses of Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset reflected the king’s fluctuating estimations of his loyalty.⁴² Having attempted to abandon Henry’s cause shortly before his invasion, Dorset remained in France as surety for the new king’s debts, and was thus not summoned to Henry’s first parliament. During Lambert Simnel’s rising, Dorset was taken into custody; released after the king’s victory at Stoke, he was not listed among those summoned to the parliament which met later in 1487. Dorset’s name appeared on the chancery formulary list of 1488, so he may have been summoned to the parliament of 1489–90 ³⁷ PROME xv. 345, xvi. 117 (RP vi. 389b, 452b). ³⁸ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 1 (fo. 5). ³⁹ Materials of Henry VII, i. 199. ⁴⁰ The Register of Thomas Langton, Bishop of Salisbury, 1485–93, ed. D. P. Wright, Canterbury and York Soc., 74 (1985), pp. vii–xii, 123; CPR 1485–1494, 57; R. J. Knecht, ‘The Episcopate and the Wars of the Roses’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, 6 (1957–8), 124–7. ⁴¹ PRO, C82/8 (12 March 1486). ⁴² Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’, 62–4.

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(as may the Yorkshire barons Scrope of Bolton and of Masham, who had actively supported Simnel, but whose names also appeared on that list).⁴³ The marquis’s name was not entered on the list of those summoned to the parliament of 1491–2, perhaps because the king again doubted his trustworthiness, for shortly before Henry launched his French expedition Dorset would be required to enfeoff his lands under penalty of forfeiture should he prove disloyal.⁴⁴ Thus the first time Grey’s name appeared on the close roll was in 1495. Writs of summons instructed recipients to attend cessante excusacione, but some of those summoned did not attend.⁴⁵ Bishop Pavy of St David’s attended the first session of the parliament of 1489–90, which coincided with a meeting of the convocation of Canterbury, but remained in his diocese during the second and third sessions.⁴⁶ Camden’s list for 1504 named the two archbishops, twelve out of the nineteen bishops summoned, sixteen out of the twenty-five abbots summoned, the prior of Coventry, and twenty-nine temporal lords. Attendance may have been boosted when a parliament coincided with other state occasions. Letters summoning men to attend Queen Elizabeth’s coronation went out at the same time as the writs for Henry’s second parliament: seventyfive peers were present at the coronation in November 1487, which was held during the parliament.⁴⁷ The crown had made repeated efforts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to insist that the Lords be better attended: fifty peers were fined for non-attendance in 1454, and penalties were threatened in 1455 and 1474.⁴⁸ Henry is not known to have punished peers for non-attendance, although fines were imposed in the Irish parliament (where the practice was more common) in 1499.⁴⁹ Not all absentees were truants. Peers may have been formally excused attendance or have been instructed to stay in post.⁵⁰ The earl of ⁴³ G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, xi. 545, 570. ⁴⁴ Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’, 102–5. ⁴⁵ Roskell, ‘Problem of Attendance’, 156–7. The most detailed analysis is R. G. Davies, ‘The Attendance of the Episcopate in English Parliaments, 1376–1461’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 129 (1985), 30–81. ⁴⁶ The Episcopal Registers of the Diocese of St David’s, 1397 to 1518, ed. R. F. Isaacson and R. A. Roberts, 3 vols., Cymmrodorion Record Ser., 6 (1917–20), ii. 554–9, 562–5, 574–9, 580–1. ⁴⁷ Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 216, 229–30. ⁴⁸ Roskell, ‘Problem of Attendance’, 162–72, 186–97; HP 1386–1421, i. 27–39. ⁴⁹ H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, The Irish Parliament in the Middle Ages (2nd edn., Philadelphia, 1964), 137–44, 178. ⁵⁰ Roskell, ‘Problem of Attendance’, 157–8; Miller, ‘Attendance’, 330, 339, 343.

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Surrey was serving in the north in 1492, while Bishop Morton of Worcester was representing the crown at the papal curia in Rome in 1495.⁵¹ Bishop Fox remained in his diocese of Durham in spring 1497, overseeing the defence of the north against renewed Scottish invasion and preparing for the king’s forthcoming campaign.⁵² Clergy of the northern province could not attend both parliament and convocation when meetings coincided in 1489 and 1492. Peers also sought licences for non-attendance on personal grounds, often claiming ill health or infirmity.⁵³ On 20 May 1483 the abbot of St Mary’s, York was excused ‘his personalle attendaunce’ at Edward V’s forthcoming parliament (summoned a week earlier) because of his ‘impotencie & Age’.⁵⁴ Lords also alleged pressing business, abbots sometimes claiming that they were preoccupied with the reformation of their houses.⁵⁵ Lords occasionally pleaded poverty, for the cost of attending suitably arrayed and accompanied could be considerable.⁵⁶ Peers could also be granted permanent exemptions: in 1505 William, Lord Stourton was pardoned attendance at future parliaments.⁵⁷ Where a peer was absent, he was usually expected to nominate proctors to represent him.⁵⁸ In the Lancastrian period, proctors did not have to be peers, but included regular and secular clerics below the peerage, chancery clerks (often the clerk of parliament), and common lawyers; by Henry VIII’s reign, peers were almost always chosen.⁵⁹ Peers usually nominated more than one proctor, spiritual lords tending to prefer spiritual peers and lay lords lay peers.⁶⁰ Wriothesley’s list of peers ⁵¹ SR iii. 59; Foedera, V. iv. 135b. ⁵² The Register of Richard Fox, Lord Bishop of Durham, 1494–1501, ed. M. P. Howden, Surtees Soc., 147 (1932), 44–9. ⁵³ Miller, ‘Attendance’, 340–2. Obtaining the licence could require intercessors at court: D. A. L. Morgan, ‘The House of Policy: The Political Role of the Late Plantagenet Household, 1422–1485’, in Starkey (ed.), English Court, 62. ⁵⁴ BL Harleian MS 433, iii. 4. The parliament was cancelled on 16 June. ⁵⁵ PRO, SC10/50/2454, 2460, 2476; Miller, ‘Attendance’, 342–3. ⁵⁶ Ibid. 339–41. A dozen servants was an insufficient number to accompany the duke of Suffolk in 1471: Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483, ed. C. Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996), 205. ⁵⁷ No explanation was given: PRO, C66/598, m. 28 (CPR 1494–1509, 451). According to Camden’s list, Stourton had attended parliament in 1504. ⁵⁸ There are approximately 2,600 letters of proxy in PRO, SC10; none appears to have survived for the parliaments after 1447 and before 1523. ⁵⁹ PRO, SC10/50/2486; SC10/51/2521, 2542; V. F. Snow, ‘Proctorial Representation and Conciliar Management during the Reign of Henry VIII’, Historical Journal, 9 (1966), 5–14; Miller, ‘Attendance’, 346. ⁶⁰ Snow, ‘Proctorial Representation’, 5, 10–11; Miller, ‘Attendance’, 346–50.

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recorded that the bishop of Bangor and the abbots of Glastonbury, Battle, York, and Bardney were represented by proctors in Henry’s first parliament. The bishop and three of the four abbots swore the oath on 19 November; they may not, however, have attended the second session of the parliament.⁶¹ In 1510 the abbot of Bardney, permitted to leave the parliament early, appointed two proctors for the remainder of the session.⁶² The purpose of proctorial representation was not to cast the absentee’s vote but to discharge his duty of attendance, in feudal terms his suit of court.⁶³ No proxy votes had been cast when peers were called to give their views on 1 December 1461.⁶⁴ Proxy voting may only have become established practice in the mid sixteenth century, perhaps in response to more regular divisions and more contentious measures.⁶⁵ Even if peers were present in parliament, they might not be in daily attendance. Fifty peers were present in parliament on 19 November 1485 and sixty-two on 27 October 1495.⁶⁶ As formal events, however, both occasions may well have produced inflated attendance figures. In seven (non-consecutive) days in 1461 attendance fluctuated by almost one-third.⁶⁷ In 1515 only 29 per cent of the peers present attended on three-quarters or more of the days on which attendance was recorded.⁶⁸ Peers might not make the opening of a parliament: Anthony, Earl Rivers did not regard his presence as essential in 1483, while Bishop Langton of Salisbury missed the first few days in 1492.⁶⁹ Peers also left early: on 20 December 1515, as lords may have been heading home for Christmas, those present in the chamber decided to fine absentees.⁷⁰ Some peers may have been licensed to return home early. In 1489 Archbishop Rotherham of York left the parliament on 9 February—heading to join the convocation already in session—and the earl of Northumberland intended to leave on 13 February, although the session was not prorogued until 23 February.⁷¹ ⁶¹ The bishop’s register has not survived. ⁶² LJ i. 6b. ⁶³ V. F. Snow, ‘The Evolution of Proctorial Representation in Medieval England’, American Journal of Legal History, 7 (1963), 319–39. ⁶⁴ Fane Fragment, 9–12. ⁶⁵ Articles in Graves, Tudor Parliaments, 16 n. 15. ´ ⁶⁶ As the estates of England ratified the treaty of Etaples, the attendance of the Welsh bishops was not recorded in 1495. ⁶⁷ Fane Fragment, 93–6. ⁶⁸ Miller, ‘Attendance’, 336–7. ⁶⁹ E. W. Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock and the Papers of Antony, Earl Rivers, 1482–3’, BIHR 41 (1968), 227; Register of Langton, 127. ⁷⁰ LJ i. 56a. The parliament was dissolved on 22 Dec. ⁷¹ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 668; Records of Convocation, xiv. 81–2, 85.

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If some peers chose to be absent from a parliament, others had reasons to attend. Peers belonged to the spectrum of lordly counsel—encompassing the court, the council, the great council, and parliament—whose collective duty was to represent the interests of the country to the king.⁷² Noblemen were the crown’s natural counsellors, and at least two-thirds attended the king’s council at some point (most the plenary rather than the regular working sessions); spiritual peers were also royal servants, filling the great offices of state and attending council.⁷³ Peers thought of themselves as upholders of royal prerogatives, a role in which they acted as intermediaries between the crown and the Commons.⁷⁴ The journals suggest that the Lords’ principal business was the reading of legislation. As the king’s counsellors, however, peers are likely to have ranged broadly: in 1449 they had discussed how new armies could be levied, and how justice could be promoted; in 1456 they had even pondered the appearance of a bright star.⁷⁵ Discussions of foreign and military policy possibly predominated in 1489–90, 1491–2, and 1497. Much of the Lords’ work would have been delegated to smaller groups: in January 1490 London corporations put into the Commons a complaint against the town of Calais; on receipt, the Lords seem to have committed it to Treasurer Dynham, Lord Audley, and Lord Daubeney (the lieutenant of Calais), who then negotiated an agreement between the parties.⁷⁶ Nobility had come to mean the parliamentary peerage.⁷⁷ An abbot who wore a mitre was assumed to be a ‘lord of parliament’, although that privilege was granted by the papacy.⁷⁸ Peers theorized about their status: in 1449 the Lords had debated whether the earldom of Arundel recently had been revived or had been newly created.⁷⁹ They did not yet presume to judge titles, however: Robert, Lord Willoughby de Broke, claiming the barony of Latimer in the 1490s, presented his petition to ⁷² Watts, Henry VI, 51–80. ⁷³ Select Cases in the Council, pp. xxx–xxxi; Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, 130–1. ⁷⁴ Fane Fragment, 8–15; ‘Aske’s Examination’, ed. M. Bateson, EHR 5 (1890), 568. ⁷⁵ Griffiths, ‘Winchester Session’, 261–3; Paston Letters and Papers, iii. 162. ⁷⁶ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 198–200, 204, 206–7. ⁷⁷ K. B. McFarlane, ‘The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages’, in Nobility, 268–9. ⁷⁸ The Babees Book . . ., ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS os 32 (1868), pt. 1, p. 188; Joannis Lelandi Collectanea, iv. 229; A. M. Reich, ‘The Parliamentary Abbots to 1470: A Study in English Constitutional History’, University of California Publications in History, 17 (1929–42), 283–318, 339–61. ⁷⁹ English Historical Documents, iv: 1327–1485, ed. A. R. Myers (London, 1969), 469.

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the king rather than to his fellow peers.⁸⁰ Peers possessed legal privileges, notably trial by their equals in certain cases: the earl of Warwick, who had never been summoned to parliament and who was arguably subject to his father’s attainder, was nonetheless tried for treason by his fellow lords in 1499.⁸¹ The abbot of St Albans in 1500 claimed the automatic right of any ‘lord of parliament’ to appear by attorney, although this was denied in the case of a ‘general’ act such as praemunire.⁸² Others recognized being a ‘lord of parliament’ as a distinct rank or office; in 1483 parliament decreed that ‘no man under thestate of a lorde were playne clothe of goolde’.⁸³ Members of the Lords may therefore have developed a corporate identity. Peers used parliament to transact personal business. They secured acts reversing attainders, regulating their affairs, and doing deals with the crown. Peers also took the opportunity to pursue legal matters. In London in 1495 and again in 1504 the abbot of Shrewsbury, ‘beyng yn the Citie . . . by summons of the kynges writt to appere here and attende opon the hiegh Court of parlament’, complained to the king’s council over his jurisdictional dispute with the townsmen of Shrewsbury.⁸⁴ William Strode, servant of Edward, Lord Hastings and Hungerford, spent spring 1489 in London pursuing his master’s dispute with Sir Walter Hungerford, ‘ther beynge the parlement the same tyme’. At issue was the Hungerford inheritance: Edward’s wife Mary was the heir general, but her uncle Walter was the heir male. Edward’s suit was handled by his counsellor Serjeant Kebell and his attorney Thomas Jakes; together with Strode, they plotted their course of action over dinner at Westminster on the opening day of the parliament. They sought out Chief Justice Huse at his residence, on one occasion producing a book refuting Walter’s title. Justice Townshend was also entertained, and King’s Serjeant Vavasour rewarded for his help. Then on 18 February, while the parliament was in session, Edward and his wife and Walter agreed to the arbitration of their dispute by Huse and Townshend.⁸⁵ ⁸⁰ Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, 583–92. The editors date this to 1497 through internal evidence: ibid. 589 n. 18. The timing of Willoughby de Broke’s legal actions against Lord Latimer supports this: Caryll, Reports, i. 304–34. ⁸¹ Third Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records (London, 1842), app. 2, pp. 216–18. ⁸² YB, 15 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 12 (fo. 9). ⁸³ Select Cases in the Council, 124; 22 Edw. IV, c. 1. ⁸⁴ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 141r; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 178–87 at 183. ⁸⁵ Hants. RO, 44M69/A7/7/2, m. 7 (a reference I owe to Chris Skidmore); Huntington Library, HA Misc. 10/1; CCR 1485–1500, 113; Ives, Common Lawyers, 97–8;

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The concentration of lawyers at parliament may well explain why Hastings pursued the matter then. The crown’s law officers, like peers, received individual summonses to parliament (which were also recorded on the close rolls), although they were not regarded as members of the house.⁸⁶ Summonses were recorded for the chief justices and other justices of the king’s bench and of the common pleas, the king’s serjeants, and the attorney-general. The chief baron of the exchequer was summoned in 1485, but he was not recorded as having been summoned to Henry’s later parliaments; other legal officers, such as the solicitor-general, were probably in attendance as well.⁸⁷ Some of those summoned below the rank of justice may have sat as MPs in the Commons: as a king’s serjeant, Sir John Mordaunt was presumably summoned to the parliament of 1504, but he did not appear on Camden’s list; instead he seems to have been assisting Speaker Dudley in the Commons.⁸⁸ These law officers must have played an important part in the Lords’ business. In Henry VIII’s early parliaments they not only provided expert legal opinions but also scrutinized, drafted, and amended proposed legislation, sat on committees, and engrossed and carried measures down to the Commons.⁸⁹ Their professional expertise must have facilitated the efficient working of the house.

4.2 ELECTIONS We turn now to look at the Commons, examining first the elections and then those elected. In Henry’s reign, the Commons had 296 members, representing 147 constituencies; each constituency elected two representatives, except for London which elected four.⁹⁰ The identities M. A. Hicks, ‘Piety and Lineage in the Wars of the Roses: The Hungerford Experience’, in Griffiths and Sherborne (eds.), Kings and Nobles, 90–108. ⁸⁶ Cf. Condon, ‘Anachronism with Intent’, 232–4. ⁸⁷ LJ i. 4–5. Cf. E. R. Adair and F. M. Greir Evans, ‘Writs of Assistance, 1558–1700’, EHR 36 (1921), 356–72. ⁸⁸ OA, 19 Hen. VII, letter. ⁸⁹ Graves, Tudor Parliaments, 22–3, 47–8. ⁹⁰ According to its charter of 1468, Much Wenlock was to return one MP; in 1478 it returned one MP, but by 1491 was returning two: M. McKisack, The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs during the Middle Ages (London, 1932), 45, 106. The borough’s own record obfuscates the position. In 1495–6 Wenlock collected 28s. for ‘the knights of the last parliament’ (phrasing that normally meant county representatives), and paid 26s. 8d. to ‘a certain Master Alenson, burgess of the aforesaid parliament’: Shropshire Archives, B3/1/1, p. 204.

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of most of those returned are not known; three sources, however, are particularly informative.⁹¹ In Henry VIII’s reign, the London mercer and bookseller John Colyns copied into his commonplace book a list which supplies the names of all but two of the MPs in the parliament of 1491–2.⁹² A list has also survived of MPs who took delivery of the new weights and measures ordained in 1495.⁹³ The record of those ´ witnessing the treaty of Etaples has given other names from 1495; because the witnesses were listed by diocese, it is not always possible to identify their constituencies.⁹⁴ In addition, local records have supplied the names of many borough MPs, and legal cases (principally concerning unpaid wages) have identified some others.⁹⁵ Few of these sources tell us how MPs were actually chosen. By 1485 shire elections were well regulated: six statutes between 1406 and 1446 had prescribed how they should be conducted, who was eligible for election, who constituted the electorate, and how the result should be determined and then certified.⁹⁶ Elections were to be held openly in the county court at prescribed hours; those seeking election had to be resident; the electorate was limited to residents who possessed freehold land worth at least 40s. a year; and returns were to take the form of an indenture drawn up between the sheriff and the electors.⁹⁷ The final electoral regulation laid down a process by which someone deprived of his seat could sue both the officer responsible and the man who had supplanted him.⁹⁸ It is through actions under this statute that we learn most about shire elections in Henry’s reign, since the returns have not survived, and there is nothing to match the accounts of Norfolk elections in the third quarter of the fifteenth century in the Paston family’s correspondence.⁹⁹ ⁹¹ Where no citation is given below, an MP is identified from these sources. Unreferenced biographical information is from HP 1439–1509. ⁹² BL, Harley MS 2252, fos. 28r–32v, printed in ‘List of Members of the Fourth Parliament’, 168–75; C. M. Meale, ‘The Compiler at Work: John Colyns and BL MS Harley 2252’, in D. Pearsall (ed.), Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge, 1983), 82–103. Either Colyns or the text from which he was copying omitted the MPs for Bath. ⁹³ PRO, E163/9/11; 11 Hen. VII, c. 4. ⁹⁴ Foedera, V. iv. 135–6. ⁹⁵ I am particularly indebted to Hannes Kleineke in discussing legal cases. Dr Kleineke provided several references, and also shared the introduction to his forthcoming Parliamentarians at Law (an edition of these and other cases). ⁹⁶ HP 1386–1421, i. 61–8. ⁹⁷ e.g. the Cornwall indenture for Edward V’s abortive parliament in 1483: Trevelyan Papers, i. 87–8. ⁹⁸ 23 Hen. VI, c. 14. ⁹⁹ McFarlane, ‘Parliament and ‘‘Bastard Feudalism’’ ’, 4–12.

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In 1487 Sir Richard Corbet brought an action under this statute.¹⁰⁰ His suit explained how Henry had summoned parliament on 15 September 1485, and how Sir Gilbert Talbot, the sheriff of Shropshire, had received the writ on 20 September. Talbot had then convened the county court in the shire-house at Shrewsbury on 27 October, where the election was held between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. There, Corbet’s attorney maintained, the majority of the 40s. freeholders had chosen Corbet and Sir Thomas Leighton; however, the writ Talbot returned to chancery, attested by the electors, had stated that Sir Richard Ludlow and Leighton had been elected. Corbet therefore demanded the £100 fine imposed on sheriffs who falsified returns. This return apart, Corbet’s suit emphasized that the election had been properly conducted. Borough elections were the subject of fewer statutory regulations. It was the responsibility of the sheriff on receipt of the writ of summons to instruct a borough to elect representatives and then to certify the result to chancery.¹⁰¹ For example, on 22 September 1495, six weeks after chancery had dispatched the writs, Richard Pudsey, sheriff of Wiltshire, duly wrote to Salisbury.¹⁰² As shires in their own right, twelve parliamentary boroughs—London, Bristol, York, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Norwich, Lincoln, Hull, Southampton, Nottingham, Coventry, Canterbury, and Gloucester—received summonses directly from chancery and made their own returns, as did Scarborough.¹⁰³ Southampton copied its return to the 1497 parliament as ‘The forme of the indentures after that burgeises of the parlement be chosene and made bi twene the shrief of the towne of Suthampton on that one parte and the meire of the same towne on that other partie’.¹⁰⁴ In 1445–6 the practice of making indented returns had been extended to other boroughs.¹⁰⁵ A sheriff could return an indenture made between him and borough representatives: Bridgwater’s customer sealed an indenture at Wells on the town’s ¹⁰⁰ PRO, CP40/902, rot. 404 f. ¹⁰¹ ‘A Document concerning the Parliamentary Election at Shrewsbury in 1478’, ed. K. N. Houghton, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 57 (1961–4), 164. ¹⁰² Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, between fos. 191 and 192. ¹⁰³ Although Henry revoked Richard III’s grant of county status to Scarborough, according to the close rolls the town was sent its own writs in 1485, 1487, and 1491, a practice which seems to have continued: HP 1509–58, i. 249–50. ¹⁰⁴ Southampton Archives, SC 2/1/4, fo. 20r. ¹⁰⁵ K. N. Houghton, ‘Theory and Practice in Borough Elections to Parliament during the Later Fifteenth Century’, BIHR 39 (1966), 130–2; HP 1386–1421, i. 65–6.

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behalf in 1503–4.¹⁰⁶ A sheriff could also forward an indenture made between the borough officers and the electors; and, despite the legislation, he could also still record borough elections on the county indenture. This system remained open to manipulation: the sheriff of Staffordshire Sir Henry Willoughby was accused of having erased in 1487 one name from Stafford’s indenture in order to substitute another.¹⁰⁷ Unlike in the counties, there was no uniform electoral process in the boroughs. Rare evidence of voting in Henry’s reign comes from Grimsby.¹⁰⁸ In the elections of 1485 and 1487 the choices made by individual burgesses were noted. Each burgess had two votes, and the two men who received the most votes were returned. In 1485 thirty burgesses nominated five men. The mayor Thomas Pormard and town counsel John Saynton (a county lawyer and duchy of Lancaster officer) were elected with twenty-two votes each; interestingly, Pormard did not feel that he could vote for himself. In 1487 twenty-four burgesses nominated three men. Saynton was returned with twenty-three votes, as was a local gentleman John Moigne with eighteen votes.¹⁰⁹ The large proportion of votes collected by the men returned may indicate that the majority of the burgesses were agreed in advance of the meeting. The process was similar, but not identical, at Salisbury on 31 October 1485.¹¹⁰ There thirty-nine assembly members named one man each; the mayor William Boket apparently did not take part. Boket and Roger Holes were chosen, Holes voting for the mayor. Only one of those present seems to have nominated someone else.¹¹¹ Evidence from other periods suggests that the overwhelming majority of elections in Henry’s reign are unlikely to have been formally contested ¹⁰⁶ Somerset RO, D/B/bw 1429, fo. 8v; Reading Gild Accounts, 1357–1516, ed. C. Slade, 2 vols., Berks. Record Soc., 6–7 (2002), ii. 82–3, 116–17, 143, 158. ¹⁰⁷ PRO, E13/172, Hil., rot. 7. ¹⁰⁸ A. Rogers, ‘Parliamentary Elections in Grimsby in the Fifteenth Century’, BIHR 42 (1969), 219–20. ¹⁰⁹ R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, 2 vols. (London, 1953–70), i. 584; A. Rogers, ‘Parliamentary Electors in Lincolnshire in the Fifteenth Century’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 4 (1969), 45, 49; E. Gillett, A History of Grimsby (London, 1970), 61. ¹¹⁰ Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fo. 156v. ¹¹¹ John Mone named ‘Halle’, probably William Halle, who would be returned in 1487: ibid., fo. 164r. Under attainder in Oct. 1485, Halle would be restored in the king’s first parliament.

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on election day.¹¹² This does not mean that only two men ever considered standing. In shire elections a contest could have been seen as undesirable, since it promoted ‘faction’.¹¹³ Those who recognized that they had no chance of success might decide to withdraw. In 1472 John Paston III aborted his brother John II’s candidacy when he discovered that it ‘was an impossybyl to be browhgt a-bowght, for my lord of Norffolk and my lord of Suffolk wer agreid more then a fortnyght go’.¹¹⁴ On election day those assembled in the county court would commonly have affirmed the only two names put forward: they gave consent; they did not exercise choice.¹¹⁵ In boroughs too the formal process of selection seldom would have resembled a contested election between competing candidates. In many boroughs civic elites made the real choices, to which the wider community assented. York’s returns stated that elections were made in the county court, but the decision lay with the mayor and the two civic councils.¹¹⁶ When the city found in December 1488 that there was no county court scheduled to meet before the opening of parliament in a fortnight’s time, it certified the election in the council chamber there and then.¹¹⁷ At Salisbury between thirty-seven and fifty-four assembly members out of a possible seventy-two took part in choosing the city’s MPs in Henry’s reign.¹¹⁸ In 1487 Canterbury’s MPs were chosen by ‘the mayor and his brethren and the wiser part of the whole community of the citizenry’.¹¹⁹ In London elections took place in the court of aldermen and in the common council (which comprised about 150 men out of about 3,000 citizens) rather than in the county (or husting) court.¹²⁰ The city’s representatives comprised two aldermen ¹¹² G. Edwards, ‘The Emergence of Majority Rule in English Parliamentary Elections’, TRHS 5th ser., 14 (1964), 179–86; M. A. Kishlansky, Parliamentary Selection: Social and Political Choice in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986), 3–101. ¹¹³ Cf. J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London, 1949), 69. ¹¹⁴ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 577. ¹¹⁵ S. J. Payling, ‘The Widening Franchise—Parliamentary Elections in Lancastrian Nottinghamshire’, in Williams (ed.), England in the Fifteenth Century, 175–6. ¹¹⁶ P. Jalland, ‘The ‘‘Revolution’’ in Northern Borough Representation in MidFifteenth-Century England’, Northern History, 11 (1976), 33–4. ¹¹⁷ York House Books, ii. 610. ¹¹⁸ Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fos. 156v, 164r, 167v, 175v, 191v, 197r. Attendance was not recorded in 1504. ¹¹⁹ Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 7, fo. 86r. ¹²⁰ A. B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols. (London, 1908–13), i. 273; C. Barron, ‘London and Parliament in the Lancastrian Period’, Parliamentary History, 9 (1990), 343–5.

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(of whom the recorder could be considered one) and two commoners; the aldermen chose the two aldermen and the common council the two commoners.¹²¹ Some boroughs used an indirect system of election which reduced popular involvement. In 1452 Cambridge had decided that its MPs were to be elected by a majority of burgesses in the guildhall, but by 1503 the town had reverted to an indirect system, in which the mayor and aldermen nominated one person and the commonalty another, and these two men then named a further eight men who chose the MPs.¹²² At Bishop’s Lynn—despite pressure earlier in the century for full participation by all burgesses—the mayor nominated four men (two jurats and two common councillors), who began the process of co-opting burgesses until a twelve-man election jury was formed.¹²³ Yarmouth responded in 1491 to disagreements among its inhabitants by establishing a new form for civic elections, which required ‘an innocent or a man nott lettered’ to draw from hats the names of twelve senior burgesses in order to form an electoral committee. The new process vested the community’s choice in a body whose composition was not known until election day, thereby inhibiting canvassing.¹²⁴ Civic records therefore established—and perhaps occasionally fabricated—the univocal character of elections: at Wells ‘the master and the whole community with unanimous assent freely chose’ their MPs.¹²⁵ The statute of 1430, however, recognized the principle that elections should be determined by the majority of those eligible to vote. This was not formally prescribed for borough elections, but was widely observed: the election in Shrewsbury in 1478 ought to have been decided by the ‘grettir nowmbur’ of the assembled burgesses.¹²⁶ In 1496 Worcester confirmed a thirty-year-old ordinance ‘that citesens appoynted for to come to the parlyament be chosen openly in the Yeldhall of such as byn dwelling within the franchises, and by the most voyce’.¹²⁷ ¹²¹ The aldermen may have proposed names to the common council: Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 128–9. ¹²² Annals of Cambridge, ed. C. H. Cooper, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1842–1908), i. 205, 272. ¹²³ M. McKisack, ‘The Parliamentary Representation of King’s Lynn before 1500’, EHR 42 (1927), 583–4. ¹²⁴ Norfolk RO, Y/C18/1, fo. 26r–v. ¹²⁵ Wells City RO, 2nd convocation book, p. 148. ¹²⁶ ‘Document concerning the Parliamentary Election at Shrewsbury’, 164. ¹²⁷ English Gilds, ed. T. Smith, EETS os 40 (1870), 393; V. Green, The History and Antiquities of the City and Suburbs of Worcester, 2 vols. (London, 1796), vol. ii, pp. lx–lxi.

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The nature of the county and borough electorates may explain why contests were thought to be undesirable: the majority rule, even after the limitation on the county franchise, created an unwelcome equipollence between men of differing social status. Indeed, an unintended consequence of this limitation may have been a move away from qualitative counts—where a majority was estimated by acclamation, by show of hands, or by the sheriff taking a ‘view’ of a group of electors—towards the polling of individual 40s. freeholders.¹²⁸ One reason to avoid a contested election therefore was that those outside the county elite could decisively affect its outcome. Tenants were mobilized, and money and other emoluments given to supporters.¹²⁹ In 1482 in Norfolk 273 men attested the election indenture, of whom only sixty-three were styled as knight, esquire, gentleman, or even yeoman.¹³⁰ A contested election was also undesirable because it was potentially disorderly—indeed, a well-padded doublet could prove a sensible precaution.¹³¹ On election day one man’s electorate was another’s mob: the duke of Norfolk’s ‘servauntz and tenantz’ at Ipswich in 1453 ‘for to have yoven ther voyse to the knyghtes of the shire after the lawe of this lande’ were also the sheriff’s 600 malefactors ‘arrayed in warlike and riotous manner’.¹³² Opponents’ supporters were disqualified from participating because they were not resident or did not meet the property qualification. According to the sheriff Sir John Howard, in 1461 John Paston I and his supporters had prevented him examining them, warning ‘Nay Pleynly Shirif ye shall trie no sufficiente here for every man shall have his election and gif his voyce’.¹³³ Borough elections equally risked disorderly conduct. Nottingham’s recorder quoted Sir Thomas Lovell, the town’s patron, on ‘the inconveniences that hath ensued opon the callyng of the commons to geder in the Cite of London, and in oder Cites and Borowes’.¹³⁴ ¹²⁸ Edwards, ‘Majority Rule in Parliamentary Elections’, 186–94. ¹²⁹ S. J. Payling, ‘County Parliamentary Elections in Fifteenth-Century England’, Parliamentary History, 18 (1999), 244–5, 247–8; Payling, ‘Widening Franchise’, 177–85. ¹³⁰ R. Virgoe, ‘An Election Dispute of 1483’, Historical Research, 60 (1987), 26–31. ¹³¹ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 392. ¹³² Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, ed. H. Nicolas, 7 vols. (London, 1834–7), vi. 183; R. Virgoe, ‘Three Suffolk Parliamentary Elections of the Mid-Fifteenth Century’, BIHR 39 (1966), 196. ¹³³ ‘A Norfolk Parliamentary Election, 1461’, ed. C. H. Williams, EHR 40 (1925), 81, 85. ¹³⁴ Records of the Borough of Nottingham, iii: 1485–1547, ed. W. H. Stevenson (London and Nottingham, 1885), 341–2.

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In July 1489 the king wrote to Leicester’s rulers, explaining how he had been informed that at euery eleccioun of the Mayr ther, or burges of the parliamentes . . . the commonaltie of oure said towne, as well pore as riche, have alway assembled at youre comen hall, wher as such persones as bee of lytyll substaunce or reason & not contributories, or ellys full lytill, to the charges susteyned in such behalue . . . haue had interest thorugh theyr exclamacions & hedynes to the subuersion not oonly of the gode polyce of oure seid town but lykly to the often breche of the peax & othyr inconvenientes.

Henry ordered that in future the commons were to be represented by a council of forty-eight of ‘the most wise & sad comyners’ chosen by the civic elite.¹³⁵ In September, disregarding the king’s instructions, the commons proceeded to choose a mayor in the old manner.¹³⁶ An act of parliament therefore confirmed this change early in 1490, when an identical measure also passed for Northampton.¹³⁷ The towns’ MPs may have helped alert the king to the perceived problem during the first two sessions of this parliament in 1489. Reducing the commons’ role in elections did not become Tudor policy, however; the acts creating the new Welsh parliamentary boroughs would envisage all burgesses participating in elections.¹³⁸ When choosing their representatives, counties and parliamentary boroughs could be subject to influence, pressure, and manipulation. The first attempts in fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century parliaments to regulate the conduct of shire elections grew out of a desire to curb such actions.¹³⁹ The principle that the county should choose ‘freely and indifferently’ (as the writs ran) resonated outside the elite: sheriffs and their deputies who failed to hold the election properly could face popular censure, and the commons (prompted or not) might formulate their own version of events.¹⁴⁰ In 1450 inhabitants of Kent had complained that ‘the peple may not have here fre eleccion in chesyng knyghtys of ¹³⁵ Records of the Borough of Leicester, ii: 1327–1509, ed. M. Bateson (London, 1901), 324–5. ¹³⁶ Ibid. ii. 325–7. On 25 Oct. (during the parliament) seven inhabitants entered bonds for their good behaviour towards the town’s officers: PRO, C54/376, m. 9d. ¹³⁷ PROME xvi. 60–2 (RP vi. 431–3). ¹³⁸ 27 Hen. VIII, c. 26; 35 Hen. VIII, c. 11. ¹³⁹ Payling, ‘Widening Franchise’, 168–73; Payling, ‘County Parliamentary Elections’, 238–42. ¹⁴⁰ Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 243, 344.

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the Shyre’.¹⁴¹ This was also an ideal to which lords paid lip-service: John, Lord Tiptoft’s only concern, he assured Henry VI’s council, had been ‘supportyng and comfortyng the said Commones to make free eleccion’.¹⁴² The intervention of magnates in county elections was sometimes decisive, but it could also be repudiated.¹⁴³ In 1455 Richard, duke of York and John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, attempted to nominate Norfolk’s two MPs. One of their choices, Sir John Howard, ‘hadde no lyvelode in the shire, nor couersaunt’: it was ‘a evill precedent for the shire that a straunge man shulde be chosyn . . . for yf the jentilmen of the shire will suffre sech inconvenyens . . . the shire shall noght be called of seche wurshipp as it hathe be’. Although their selection brought them ‘no wurshipp’, the dukes got their way (the election was, after all, held shortly after the first battle of St Albans), but perhaps only once Mowbray promised that ‘the shire shulde have fre eleccion’.¹⁴⁴ Effective intervention tended to promote uncontested elections, partly because it dissuaded others from standing; force majeure may more often have prevented an election from being held than have secured the desired outcome.¹⁴⁵ It was a sign of weakness that Mowbray had allegedly resorted to kidnapping the sheriff’s clerk in order to influence Suffolk’s election in 1453.¹⁴⁶ County elections were ‘an acid test of a magnate’s local worth’—if they chose to treat them as such.¹⁴⁷ In order to claim the leadership of East Anglian society, Mowbray felt impelled to take that gamble, which he did not always win.¹⁴⁸ When there was less at stake, magnates may not have intervened as intrusively. The most common way magnates and others influenced borough elections may have been by writing letters of recommendation. On 15 December 1448 John, Viscount Beaumont, anticipating the summoning of parliament on 2 January, wrote to Grimsby requesting that ¹⁴¹ Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 187. ¹⁴² R. Virgoe, ‘The Cambridgeshire Election of 1439’, BIHR 46 (1973), 101. ¹⁴³ S. Payling, ‘Identifiable Motives for Election to Parliament in the Reign of Henry VI: The Operation of Public and Private Factors’, in The Fifteenth Century, vi: Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2006), 95–6. ¹⁴⁴ Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 119–21. ¹⁴⁵ Ibid. ii. 54–5; Payling, ‘County Parliamentary Elections’, 246–7. ¹⁴⁶ Virgoe, ‘Three Suffolk Parliamentary Elections’, 195. ¹⁴⁷ Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 386. ¹⁴⁸ H. Castor, The King, the Crown, and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power, 1399–1461 (Oxford, 2000), 156–89.

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it elect his servant Ralph Chandler and promising his favour.¹⁴⁹ For Grimsby, Beaumont maintained, Chandler was not a ‘straung persone’, even though at the time of Beaumont’s writing Chandler had yet to be sworn in as a burgess of the town.¹⁵⁰ Nevertheless Beaumont may not have got his way.¹⁵¹ Ralph Neville II, earl of Westmorland (1406/7–84), wrote in rather different terms to the town, requiring it to submit to him its precept in order that he could return two of his counsel, adding ‘I efftsons hartely requyre yowe not to faile as ye intend to have my goode wylle and favour’.¹⁵² The forthright nature of Westmorland’s demand reflected Grimsby’s dependence upon the Nevilles’ favour for a reduction of the fee farm it owed them.¹⁵³ Similar letters have not been found for Henry’s reign, but they may well have been sent. Maldon in Essex provides an example of a seigneurial borough which seems to have chosen its own MPs. John de Vere, earl of Oxford, held the manor of Earls Maldon, which comprised some tenements in the borough and farmlands behind. Henry Bourchier, earl of Essex, held the manor of Little Maldon, which was focused on Maldon Hall approximately one mile south-west of the borough centre; one of Essex’s stewards served several times as town bailiff between 1499 and 1518.¹⁵⁴ Although neither was lord of the borough itself, the earls’ associates represented Maldon in parliament: in 1487 Richard Fitzlewis, servant and kinsman of Oxford, who had been knighted earlier that year at Stoke, was chosen; Robert Plummer, elected in 1491, was a leading follower of the Bourchiers.¹⁵⁵ The earls may have written in support of a servant; equally, the earls’ followers might have been selected because ¹⁴⁹ HMC, Fourteenth Report, Appendix VIII (London, 1895), 250. Although the letter’s dating clause did not state the year, the parliament of 12 Feb. 1449 best fits its content. ¹⁵⁰ In line 4 the HMC transcription gives ‘maund’, i.e. ‘made’ a burgess. Inconveniently, the word looks more like ‘maried’ in the rather faded original: North East Lincs. Archives, 1/31/1. ¹⁵¹ On 16 Jan. 1449 Grimsby chose other MPs, and on 6 Feb. admitted Chandler to the freedom of the town: North East Lincs. Archives, 1/101/5/39, mm. 7d, 9. Grimsby could have annulled its Jan. election in order to return Chandler, now a burgess. ¹⁵² HMC, Fourteenth Report, Appendix VIII, 252. ¹⁵³ S. H. Rigby, Medieval Grimsby: Growth and Decline (Hull, 1993), 115–21. ¹⁵⁴ W. R. Powell, ‘The Medieval Manors of Maldon’, Essex Archaeology and History, 3rd ser., 31 (2000), 147–53; S. J. Gunn, ‘Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex (1472–1540)’, in Bernard (ed.), Tudor Nobility, 158, 161. ¹⁵⁵ Essex RO, D/B 3/1/2, fo. 37v; HP 1509–58, ii. 140; Gunn, ‘Henry Bourchier’, 161–3, 166.

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they possessed sufficient local standing and strong connections to be appealing candidates in their own right. It was not just magnates who intervened: in 1450 John Paston I was urged to ‘laboure’ the mayor of Norwich.¹⁵⁶ Boroughs did not always respond favourably: they may have disliked being forced to weigh up the risk of affronting important people against the imperative of preserving their independence in choosing civic officers. Ipswich had decided in 1474 that if any burgess procured letters recommending that he should serve as MP he should be forever disbarred from election.¹⁵⁷ In 1486 York excluded Robert Langston from the vacancy of sword-bearer because he had procured a letter of recommendation from the king, on the disingenuous grounds that Henry himself had commanded that the city ‘shuld enioy ther auncheant liberties and costomes with free eleccion of allmaner ther officers’.¹⁵⁸ In 1504 Rye determined that no one was to procure a letter from any gentleman in support of his candidacy for the office of mayor’s sergeant on account of the ‘variaunces’ this had caused between the mayor and fellow jurats.¹⁵⁹ What benefit did magnates perceive in having their servants and allies in the Commons? ‘It would be hard to find a great landowner’, it has been proposed, ‘who did not have a direct interest in parliamentary business at some point in his life, either through his involvement in matters of state, his tenure of high office, or as a result of private disputes over property or precedence.’¹⁶⁰ Lords may have intervened to ensure the return of those who could look out for their interests in the Commons.¹⁶¹ Ructions in national politics heightened the importance peers attached to support in the Commons: ‘it is thought right necessarie . . . that my lord haue at this tyme in the parlement suche persones as longe vnto him’, the duchess of Norfolk remarked in 1455.¹⁶² Viscount Beaumont intervened in 1448, when the crown urgently but controversially was seeking supply; the earl of Westmorland probably demanded the nomination of Grimsby’s ¹⁵⁶ Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 48. ¹⁵⁷ Nathaniell Bacon, The Annalls of Ipswiche, ed. W. H. Richardson (Ipswich, 1884), 135. ¹⁵⁸ York House Books, ii. 487–8. ¹⁵⁹ East Sussex RO, RYE 60/4, fo. 157v. ¹⁶⁰ C. Rawcliffe, ‘Baronial Councils in the Later Middle Ages’, in Ross (ed.), Patronage, Pedigree and Power, 95 (emphasis added). ¹⁶¹ L. Clark, ‘Magnates and their Affinities in the Parliaments of 1386–1421’, in Britnell and Pollard (eds.), McFarlane Legacy, 144–6. ¹⁶² Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 117.

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burgesses either in 1460 after the duke of York’s victory at Northampton or in 1470 during Henry VI’s readeption.¹⁶³ In January 1483 Anthony, Earl Rivers was seeking the returns of his attorney Andrew Dymmock, the Suffolk lawyer Robert Drury, and three or four East Anglian men, where he was a significant landowner and head of the royal affinity.¹⁶⁴ Rivers had made enquiries about seats at Yarmouth but none was available. Instead he looked to the seats controlled by Edward IV’s sons: the duchy of Cornwall boroughs, the Mowbray inheritance, and possibly the boroughs around the prince of Wales’s council at Ludlow.¹⁶⁵ Rivers subsequently heard from a duchy servant in the West Country that there were three ‘Rowmes voide of Burgeses’, which he therefore planned to fill with Norfolk gentry.¹⁶⁶ It appears that Rivers was looking for vacancies, rather than intending to overturn existing elections. He did not explain why he was seeking to influence the Commons’ membership. Certainly, he could not have anticipated Edward IV’s illness in late March, his unexpected death some ten days later, Gloucester’s coup against his family, and the duke’s subsequent usurpation.¹⁶⁷ What may have mattered was the likelihood of a difficult session, which would hear complaints about extra-parliamentary levies and an expensive royal household.¹⁶⁸ The earl may have been seeking wider powers as governor of the prince of Wales, but it seems improbable that MPs could have played a part in pressing such a suit.¹⁶⁹ Like lords, the crown had no formal role in shire elections. Lancashire was exceptional: as its duke, Henry nominated the county’s MPs.¹⁷⁰ Enclosed with the writ of summons in 1503, a royal bill named the two MPs, Sir Thomas Butler and Sir John Booth.¹⁷¹ Leading royal servants were returned for other shires: Sir Thomas Lovell, Henry’s first speaker, sat for Middlesex in 1491–2 and for his ¹⁶³ McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, 62; HP 1439–1509, vol. ii, pp. cxix–cxx. ¹⁶⁴ Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, 226–7; Horrox, Richard III, 79–81. ¹⁶⁵ Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, 222–3. ¹⁶⁶ Ibid. 227–8. ¹⁶⁷ Horrox, Richard III, 89. ¹⁶⁸ PROME xiv. 403–6 (1483 plt., intro.). ¹⁶⁹ Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, 223–4. ¹⁷⁰ J. S. Roskell, The Knights of the Shire for the County Palatine of Lancaster (1377–1460), Chetham Soc., ns 96 (1937), 6, 21–8. ¹⁷¹ PRO, DL5/3, fo. 218v. The writ would normally have been sent to the chancellor of the duchy; however, in Nov. 1503 this office was vacant, following the death of Sir Reynold Bray in Aug. The writ was therefore forwarded by the duchy’s attorneygeneral Richard Empson to Sir James Molyneux, baron of the exchequer at Lancaster, to pass to the sheriff. I owe this explanation to Alasdair Hawkyard.

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home county of Norfolk in 1495, while Sir Richard Guildford sat for Kent for three successive parliaments between 1489 and 1495.¹⁷² In 1495 Guildford, Sir Reynold Bray, and Richard Empson led the Commons’ delegation which announced the appointment of the speaker; Lovell headed this delegation in the next parliament.¹⁷³ Yet it does not follow that the crown intervened to ensure their elections: such actions had in the past provoked hostile comment, of which there is no indication in Henry’s reign.¹⁷⁴ Men may have been more likely to be chosen when it was known that they were congenial to the crown. One side in the Huntingdonshire election of 1450 explained in a petition to Henry VI that, ‘Consideryng the grete nedefull ayde’, they had intended to elect ‘youre men of youre honorable houshold’ who ‘shuld be most like the expedycion and to execute and assente to the saide aydes’.¹⁷⁵ A number of those returned to the Commons in 1485 were apparently under attainder, either for their Lancastrianism or for their part in Buckingham’s rebellion in 1483.¹⁷⁶ Through the boroughs it controlled, the crown was able to provide seats for its servants.¹⁷⁷ In 1491 Ludgershall returned Robert Lytton, under-treasurer of England; Devizes returned Richard Pudsey, an esquire of the body and courtier; and Newcastle-under-Lyme returned Richard Harper, receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster. On occasion the crown systematically intervened: for the parliament of 1478—summoned to attaint the duke of Clarence—every Cornish borough return had new names inserted after the original entries had been erased, with the result that no local men were returned.¹⁷⁸ Even in the sixteenth century, such coordinated intervention was unusual: the electoral patronage of the duchies of Cornwall and of Lancaster did not normally constitute a crown slate.¹⁷⁹ The break with Rome ¹⁷² PRO, E5/5/28/5 (1489–90 plt.). ¹⁷³ PROME xvi. 142, 285 (RP vi. 458–9, 510a). ¹⁷⁴ HP 1386–1421, i. 60–1. ¹⁷⁵ J. G. Edwards, ‘The Huntingdonshire Parliamentary Election of 1450’, in T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (eds.), Essays in Medieval History ( Toronto, 1969), 394. ¹⁷⁶ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 5 (fo. 4). ¹⁷⁷ S. J. Payling, ‘The Rise of Lawyers in the Lower House, 1395–1536’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 112–17. ¹⁷⁸ PRO, C219/17/3/15–20; Houghton, ‘Borough Elections’, 137–8. ¹⁷⁹ G. Haslam, ‘The Duchy and Parliamentary Representation in Cornwall, 1547–1640’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, ns 8 (1978–81), 224–42; Neale, Elizabethan House of Commons, 224–32.

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prompted increasingly orchestrated royal intervention in parliamentary elections—in 1539 Thomas Cromwell was promising ‘never more tractable’ a parliament—yet the crown’s electoral patronage was mediated through its ministers, local officers, and well-wishers rather than concentrated under a central command.¹⁸⁰ The crown had not needed to order the return of particular men to attain a complaisant Commons in 1459.¹⁸¹ In autumn 1554 Queen Mary, prompted by two fractious parliaments, would issue instructions with the writs of summons.¹⁸² The sheriff of Lincolnshire informed Grimsby that it was to elect MPs from its own inhabitants ‘and of the wysest, grave & catholycke sort, syche as in deyd meyne the trew honor of god with the prosperyte of the comen welthe’.¹⁸³ According to the imperial ambassador, these letters were modelled on ones issued by Henry VII.¹⁸⁴ The stipulation that boroughs should return Catholic MPs would not, of course, have had the same connotation in Henry’s reign as it had in Mary’s. This requirement aside, Mary’s instructions reaffirmed the statutory requirements that boroughs choose two wise and wealthy resident burgesses.¹⁸⁵ Although no evidence has been found to corroborate the ambassador’s observation, it is possible that Henry did send such instructions, for the crown nominally upheld the principle that local men should represent boroughs.¹⁸⁶ When Henry VIII wrote to Wallingford explaining that he wished to hold a parliament ‘within breif tyme’, he asked the borough to elect ‘the mooste discrete, expert, and sufficient personnes contynually reseaunt [resident] and inhabited within the same’, adding in a postscript that if Wallingford could not find suitable inhabitants ¹⁸⁰ State Papers: King Henry VIII, 5 vols. in 11 pts. (London, 1830–52), I. ii. 604; H. Miller, ‘Lords and Commons: Relations between the Two Houses of Parliament, 1509–1558’, Parliamentary History, 1 (1982), 17–23. ¹⁸¹ S. J. Payling, ‘The Coventry Parliament of 1459: A Privy Seal Writ concerning the Election of Knights of the Shire’, Historical Research, 60 (1987), 349–52. ¹⁸² J. Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986), 29. ¹⁸³ HMC, Fourteenth Report, Appendix VIII, 255. ¹⁸⁴ CSP Spanish, xiii: 1554–1558, ed. R. Tyler (London, 1954), 67. ¹⁸⁵ Yet the crown’s difficulties in 1555 would be attributed to the preponderance in the Commons of self-confident gentry in place of the ‘timid and respectful’ burgesses of old: CSP Venetian, VI. i: 1555–1556, ed. R. Brown (London, 1877), 251–2. ¹⁸⁶ D. M. Dean, ‘Parliament and Locality’, in Dean and N. L. Jones (eds.), The Parliaments of Elizabethan England (Oxford, 1990), 141–2.

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it should return the nearest royal servants living within the county.¹⁸⁷ This postscript suggests that the crown did not orchestrate the influx of the gentry, royal servants, and lawyers into borough seats. Nevertheless the number of royal officers in the Commons grew over the course of the fifteenth century.¹⁸⁸ In 1536 critics would cite an ‘old’ custom that royal servants should not sit as MPs.¹⁸⁹ Consequence need not imply design: the changing composition of the Commons may have reflected the general intensification of the crown’s influence in local communities over the second half of the fifteenth century.¹⁹⁰ The crown’s influence became more diffuse, as it increasingly co-opted the gentry, the lawyer, and the gentleman-bureaucrat as local agents, binding them through formal and exclusive associations of household and office.¹⁹¹ The royal household was expanding beyond the king’s living quarters: by 1509, the number of esquires of the body had grown to ninety-three.¹⁹² Thus more royal servants may have been sitting in parliament because more of the sorts of men who sat in parliament were becoming royal servants.¹⁹³ Their presence must have helped ease the passage of royal business: the 1529 act discharging Henry VIII from repaying loans purportedly passed because ‘the most parte of the commons were the kynges seruauntes’.¹⁹⁴ As the parliaments of Henry IV had demonstrated, however, royal servants did not necessarily feel inhibited from offering constructive criticism: Henry VII’s parliaments could also have constituted ‘a community of interest . . . in which a highly selective membership came together to thrash out the difficulties facing the new regime’.¹⁹⁵ ¹⁸⁷ Berks. RO, W/AEp 1. This letter may have concerned the 1523 parliament: HP 1509–58, i. 35. ¹⁸⁸ Clark, ‘Parchment and People’, 8–10. ¹⁸⁹ LP xi. 478. ¹⁹⁰ Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 23–48. ¹⁹¹ D. A. L. Morgan, ‘The King’s Affinity in the Polity of Yorkist England’, TRHS 5th ser., 23 (1973), 1–25; R. Griffiths, ‘ ‘‘Ffor the Myght off the Lande, Aftir the Myght off the Grete Lordes thereoff, Stondith Most in the Kynges Officers’’: The English Crown, Provinces and Dominions in the Fifteenth Century’, in The Fifteenth Century, i: Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages, ed. A. Curry and E. Matthew (Woodbridge, 2000), 80–98. ¹⁹² Morgan, ‘House of Policy’, 25–70; S. J. Gunn, ‘The Courtiers of Henry VII’, EHR 108 (1993), 41–2. ¹⁹³ Goodman, New Monarchy, 48–9. ¹⁹⁴ Edward Hall, Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis (collation of 1548 and 1550 edns., London, 1809), 767. ¹⁹⁵ A. J. Pollard, ‘The Lancastrian Constitutional Experiment Revisited: Henry IV, Sir John Tiptoft and the Parliament of 1406’, Parliamentary History, 14 (1995), 103–19; G. Dodd, ‘Conflict or Consensus: Henry IV and Parliament, 1399–1406’,

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4 . 3 C O N S T I T U E N C I E S A N D M PS Whom did constituencies choose to represent them and why? There were 37 counties and 110 cities, towns, and boroughs represented in parliament, varying considerably in character.¹⁹⁶ The idea of a ‘county community’ as an instinctively cohesive association mapped on to the administrative structure of the shire is problematic, for patterns of landholding, lordship, and kinship cut across county boundaries.¹⁹⁷ Nevertheless there could exist a sense of a shared identity, which was worth appealing to—even if the pedigree of the person making the claim was questionable: ‘remembre we are neyghbours and warrewykshire men’, the relative newcomer Sir Henry Willoughby told the quarter sessions in July 1494.¹⁹⁸ Shires preferred members of the county elite—local men, whether their ties were of long standing or more recent. Well-established county families were chosen: Calthorpe (Norfolk, 1491–2), Fetiplace (Berkshire, 1485–6), Markham (Nottinghamshire, 1491–2), Musgrave (Westmorland, 1491–2), Mynors (Herefordshire, 1504), Paulet (Somerset, 1495), and Verney (Buckinghamshire, 1491–2).¹⁹⁹ Newcomers could also be returned: Sir David Owen, the king’s kinsman, married into Sussex society at the beginning of the reign, and went on to represent the county in 1491–2. Exceptionally, Sir Gilbert Talbot, having represented Shropshire in 1491–2, sat in 1495 for Cambridgeshire or Huntingdonshire, counties with which he seems to have lacked strong connections.²⁰⁰ Local links were bolstered through the status conferred by royal office-holding. The Welshman Davy Philip, who had been in exile with the king, was rewarded with the stewardship of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Northamptonshire, which he went on to represent in 1491–2. in T. Thornton (ed.), Social Attitudes and Political Structures in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 2000), 118–49 at 139. ¹⁹⁶ Listed in HP 1439–1509, vol. ii, p. vi. There is a map at the back of the same vol., which is reproduced in Chrimes, Henry VII, 142–3. ¹⁹⁷ C. Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 340–80. ¹⁹⁸ Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 581–2; S. Walker, ‘Communities of the County in Later Medieval England’, in Political Culture in Later Medieval England (Manchester, 2006), 68–80. ¹⁹⁹ PRO, E13/175, bills of attorney, Mich. ( Thomas Fetiplace); E13/182, Trin., rot. 9 (Richard Mynors). ²⁰⁰ HP 1509–58, iii. 420.

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Sir Richard Tunstall and Sir Henry Wentworth, deputies to the earl of Surrey, the king’s lieutenant in the north, represented Yorkshire in 1491–2.²⁰¹ Northumberland’s MP in 1491–2, Sir William Tyler, was lieutenant of Berwick and the king’s representative on the borders, charged with filling the hiatus of lordship in the north during the minority of the fifth Percy earl.²⁰² Sir William Scott may have been elected for Kent in 1495 because of his position as lieutenant of Dover Castle and former warden of the Cinque Ports.²⁰³ Sir Gruffydd ap Rhys possibly owed his Herefordshire seat in 1504 to his association with the late Prince Arthur and with the council in the marches.²⁰⁴ Borough representation did not reflect accurately the size and wealth of England’s towns: some of the wealthiest towns were not represented in parliament, but Henry is not known to have created any new constituencies.²⁰⁵ There was no typical ‘parliamentary borough’, for the term itself is a modern coinage.²⁰⁶ Some were royal manors; others enjoyed chartered rights of self-government; a sizeable minority belonged to noble and gentry families or to the Church. The distinction between manorial and civic forms of government should not be drawn sharply: in some parliamentary boroughs the forms overlapped, while in others the absence of explicit seigneurial authorization did not preclude communal governance. Nevertheless a parliamentary borough which did not enjoy wide rights of self-government was likely to be represented differently from one which possessed greater autonomy. In the latter MPs were often drawn from among the most senior and respected members of the civic elite: Worcester’s MPs were to ‘be of good name and fame, and not wtelawed [outlawed] nor accombred in accions as nye as men may know it for worship of the seid citie’.²⁰⁷ In seigneurial boroughs, by contrast, the formal authority of lordship could determine who was elected. The bishop of Winchester possibly chose two of his servants (a father and son) to represent his boroughs of Hindon and Taunton in 1491–2, while Sir Walter Hungerford ²⁰¹ Pollard, North-Eastern England, 166, 386–7. ²⁰² Ibid. 155–6, 384, 387. ²⁰³ HP 1509–58, i. 113. ²⁰⁴ PRO, E13/182, Trin., rot. 9; R. A. Griffiths with R. S. Thomas, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government, i: South Wales, 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 1972), 190–1; Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, 116, 125. ²⁰⁵ A. D. K. Hawkyard, ‘The Enfranchisement of Constituencies, 1509–1558’, Parliamentary History, 10 (1991), 2–5. ²⁰⁶ S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), 112. ²⁰⁷ Green, History and Antiquities of Worcester, vol. ii, pp. lx–lxi.

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may have arranged the return of the lawyer John Kingsmill for his borough of Heytesbury. John Bohun controlled Midhurst, but it was perhaps his son-in-law Sir David Owen who organized the election of William Middleton, a gentleman usher of the chamber. In the past the practices of leaving blanks and of making amendments in returns had occurred regularly in the shrievalties of Cornwall, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Surrey–Sussex, which contained the majority of seigneurial boroughs.²⁰⁸ This does not mean that in every case a local choice had been overturned: in 1483 three seats in the West Country remained unfilled a few days before the parliament was due to open.²⁰⁹ Some boroughs may not have attached much importance to the choosing of representatives: in 1491 Plympton (which belonged to the earl of Devon) returned two men who had apparently also been chosen by Plymouth and Tavistock—perhaps to save on wages. The lord did not direct the election in every seigneurial borough: in the four best documented—Bishop’s Lynn, Salisbury, Wells, and Reading—there is no evidence that their lords (the bishops of Norwich, Salisbury, and Bath and Wells, and the abbot of Reading) exercised any influence over choices. In some boroughs the lord’s preference and the inhabitants’ choice may have coalesced. The boroughs belonging to the dukes of Buckingham regularly returned their servants and retainers.²¹⁰ This persisted during the minority of Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham, when Bletchingley returned William Fisher and Thomas Garth (1491–2), who had served the Staffords before they entered royal service; Bedwin returned William Paston II (1491–2), who was related to the Stafford–Beaufort connection by marriage; and Stafford returned Humphrey Barber (1495), the fourth generation of his family in succession to represent the borough and to serve the family.²¹¹ It was possible for a borough’s choice to be subverted in other ways: the sheriff may have substituted William Trussell’s name in Stafford’s return in 1487 because Trussell was a servant of the duke of Bedford, who had married the dowager duchess of Buckingham, and was administering part of the ducal estates.²¹²

²⁰⁸ HP 1439–1509, vol. ii, pp. cxi–cxvi; Houghton, ‘Borough Elections’, 137–9. ²⁰⁹ Ives, ‘Andrew Dymmock’, 227. ²¹⁰ C. Rawcliffe, The Staffords, Earls of Stafford and Dukes of Buckingham, 1394–1521 (Cambridge, 1978), 80–2; Clark, ‘Magnates and their Affinities’, 152–3 n. 69. ²¹¹ Rawcliffe, Staffords, sub nom.; HP 1386–1421, ii. 122–3. ²¹² CPR 1485–1494, 79.

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The importance boroughs attached to parliamentary representation thus varied considerably: some had little say over who represented them; others may not have cared whom they returned so long as it did not cost them much; for yet more, the choice of MPs was one token of a self-governing community.²¹³ Increasingly many boroughs were being represented by non-residents.²¹⁴ By the mid fifteenth century, a quarter of borough MPs did not reside within the same county.²¹⁵ A statute of 1413, confirmed in 1445–6, had required that borough MPs be resident; Salisbury, Cambridge, and Wells passed ordinances in 1444, 1460, and 1483 determining that ‘foreigners’ were not to represent them.²¹⁶ Yet selecting outsiders had attractions: parliamentary representation was one way in which boroughs could build up contacts or foster a sense of obligation on the part of patrons.²¹⁷ In urging John Paston II on Maldon in 1472, John Arblaster pointed out his connections not only with the duchess of Norfolk but also with William, Lord Hastings, the most powerful patron a borough could have.²¹⁸ In 1484 Salisbury speculatively offered a seat to John Musgrave, a Cumberland esquire of the body planted in Wiltshire by Richard III.²¹⁹ Bishop’s Lynn did not anticipate that the local gentleman and new burgess Thomas Gibbon would refuse to represent the town in 1504.²²⁰ Parliamentary boroughs did not always need to look outside their walls to find well-connected individuals. Townsmen were to be found among the royal household, especially as yeomen of the crown and sergeants-atarms: John Bingham of Dover was made a yeoman of the crown while representing the port in Henry’s first parliament, and Thomas Bulkley, a sergeant-at-arms, represented Sandwich in 1489–90.²²¹ Richard Smith, ²¹³ H. Kleineke, ‘The Widening Gap: The Practice of Parliamentary Borough Elections in Devon and Cornwall in the Fifteenth Century’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 121–35. ²¹⁴ McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, 100–18; J. S. Roskell, The Commons in the Parliament of 1422: English Society and Parliamentary Representation under the Lancastrians (Manchester, 1954), 125–44. ²¹⁵ R. Virgoe, ‘The Parliament of 1449–50’, Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1964), 137, 175. ²¹⁶ 1 Hen. V, c. 1; 23 Hen. VI, c. 14; Houghton, ‘Borough Elections’, 134. ²¹⁷ R. Horrox, ‘Urban Patronage and Patrons in the Fifteenth Century’, in Griffiths (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces, 158–60. ²¹⁸ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 580–1. ²¹⁹ Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fo. 151v; Horrox, Richard III, 193. ²²⁰ King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/5, fos. 50v, 51v, 56v–57r; HP 1509–58, ii. 206–7. ²²¹ BL, Egerton MS 2107, fo. 4v; East Kent Archives Centre, Sa/AC 2, fo. 2r.

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who had played an active part in Reading’s merchant guild until he entered royal service at the beginning of Henry’s reign, represented the town in 1497 and 1504.²²² Boroughs also looked to familiar royal servants: Sampson Norton, Southampton’s MP in 1487, was a former collector of customs, while William Tunstall, Scarborough’s MP in 1491–2, was constable of its castle and an esquire of the body.²²³ Remarkably, in 1485–6 the clerk of the Commons Thomas Bayen appears also to have served as MP for Rye.²²⁴ Bayen had long been a freeman of the port and its valued agent; he also acted as the Cinque Ports’ attorney in chancery.²²⁵ Around a quarter of the MPs in 1491–2 were lawyers.²²⁶ Lawyers combined a reputation for eloquence, local knowledge, and wideranging and high-powered connections.²²⁷ In 1495 Salisbury elected Richard Elyot, recently appointed a JP for Wiltshire; in 1500 he was discharged from the mayoralty on account of services performed for the city.²²⁸ Recorders were also a popular choice; in some boroughs (including London), the position seems to have entailed election.²²⁹ Often non-resident, recorders bridged urban communities and the rest of the political nation.²³⁰ Exeter’s recorder Roger Holand, who represented the city in 1504, was also joint escheator of the duchy of Cornwall.²³¹ Boroughs took advantage of lawyers’ enthusiasm for a seat in parliament by offering reduced wages.²³² The burgess’s wage was set at 2s. a day, for which MPs were able to secure writs de expensis from chancery.²³³ Worcester required MPs to be paid ‘after ther comyng ²²² Reading Records: Diary of the Corporation, i: 1431–1602, ed. J. M. Guilding (London, 1892), 92, 101–2, 110; HP 1509–58, iii. 335–6. ²²³ Southampton Archives, SC 5/1/22, fo. 15r. ²²⁴ East Sussex RO, RYE 60/3, fo. 61r. ²²⁵ Pollard, ‘Mediaeval Under-Clerks’, 82–6. Additional information is from a draft entry by Linda Clark in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1422–1504. ²²⁶ Payling, ‘Rise of Lawyers’, 104–5. ²²⁷ Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 48. ²²⁸ Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fos. 191v, 204r. ²²⁹ Beaven, Aldermen, i. 273; Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 48; HMC, Fifteenth Report, Appendix X (London, 1899), 13. ²³⁰ J. Lee, ‘Urban Recorders and the Crown in Late Medieval England’, in The Fifteenth Century, iii: Authority and Subversion, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2003), 163–77. ²³¹ Devon RO, ECA, receivers’ account rolls, 19–20 Hen. VII, m. 2d. ²³² Payling, ‘Rise of Lawyers’, 109–12. ²³³ A. D. K. Hawkyard, ‘The Wages of Members of Parliament, 1509–1558’, Parliamentary History, 6 (1987), 302–11; Kleineke, ‘Payment of Members’, 281–300.

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whom [home] within a quarter of a yere next following’, but even boroughs as prosperous as Norwich sometimes struggled to pay promptly and fully.²³⁴ Representatives content to take a reduced wage were therefore attractive; outsiders might agree to serve for free in order to be elected. In January 1510 Grimsby decided to void its previous election at the request of Sir William Tyrwhitt, on condition that Tyrwhitt enter an obligation that neither he nor his nominees would demand wages.²³⁵ The lawyers and crown servants William Brille and William Young made the same promise to Wallingford at this time.²³⁶ Yet non-residents did not invariably prove cheaper than a ‘true’ burgess. Salisbury expected to pay an ordinary citizen only a shilling a day. The MPs of 1495, the county lawyers Richard Elyot and John Hampton, however, procured writs de expensis, costing the city an extra £6 12s. At the next election in January 1497, Salisbury reaffirmed the halved rate and proceeded to choose two merchants.²³⁷ It was possible to persuade ‘true’ burgesses to accept reduced wages or payment by instalments: John Tuder, Romney’s MP in 1495, agreed to receive a mere 6s. 8d.; Thomas Christmas, Colchester’s MP, accepted reimbursement for the 1489–90 parliament over fourteen years.²³⁸ It may have been rarer for ‘true’ burgesses to enter a formal undertaking to take a reduced wage than it was ‘foreigners’.²³⁹ Cost was therefore not the sole explanation for the return of outsiders. Why did men seek election to parliament?²⁴⁰ Election symbolized social recognition. For some, this was an acknowledgement of a position already attained: Christopher Dacre, the younger brother of Thomas, Lord Dacre of the North, reached his majority while representing Cumberland in 1491–2. For others, election consolidated success and facilitated advancement: William Page, Rochester’s MP in 1495, was ²³⁴ Green, History and Antiquities of Worcester, vol. ii, p. lxi; Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16d/1, fo. 131r; case 16c/1, fo. 33r; PRO, E13/175, Mich., rot. 4, 4d. ²³⁵ North East Lincs. Archives, 1/102/1, fo. 224r. ²³⁶ Berks. RO, W/AEp 2/1. ²³⁷ Wilts. and Swindon History Centre, G23/1/2, fos. 156v, 164r, 194[a]v, 197r; McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, 94–6; HP 1509–58, i. 385, 668–9. ²³⁸ East Kent Archives Centre, NR/FAc 3, fo. 107v; Red Paper Book, 129–30; R. H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), 228. ²³⁹ Unusually, Exeter’s MPs had been required in 1455 to provide two sureties: Devon RO, ECA, mayors’ court rolls, 33–4 Hen. VI, rot. 36d (rot. 111 on dorse). I owe this reference to Hannes Kleineke. ²⁴⁰ This discussion is based on Payling, ‘Identifiable Motives’, 89–105.

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probably created a yeoman of the crown during the session.²⁴¹ Thomas Cromwell would not have been alone in believing that ‘he had oons adventured to put in his foote where he trusted shortly to be better regardyd’; the same may have been true for Edmund Dudley, who entered royal service in September 1504, having served as speaker that spring.²⁴² In the 1450s disturbed national politics had discouraged those who might otherwise have sought election from standing, and seats were therefore taken by men of lower rank.²⁴³ Under normal circumstances, status was an important criterion: the Vernon and Blount families, who had dominated the representation of Derbyshire for much of the century, shared the seats in 1491–2.²⁴⁴ Conversely, the failure to secure election as an MP was socially damaging: ‘your aduersarys wold haue reportyd that ye had mad labor to haue ben on, and that ye koud not bryng your purpose abowght’.²⁴⁵ Wounded pride may have impelled defeated candidates to claim that the return was fraudulent.²⁴⁶ Sir Richard Corbet seems to have felt his loss in Shropshire in 1485 keenly. On 5 December Corbet entered an obligation not to harm Elizabeth Mytton, wife of John Mytton, or any other of the king’s subjects.²⁴⁷ The Myttons were an important Shropshire family; one branch was headed by Thomas Mytton, former bailiff of Shrewsbury, whose name was the first on the list of electors who had witnessed the sheriff’s return.²⁴⁸ Corbet could have been venting his anger over the election by attacking a member of the family. Only four days after entering the obligation, he broke it by committing an assault at Westminster. Corbet was clearly determined to be present during the new king’s first parliament, and it is conceivable that he had secured a seat for another constituency. The loss of returns after 1478 hampers attempts to establish a relationship between seats in parliament and individuals’ careers, locally ²⁴¹ CPR 1494–1509, 62. ²⁴² George Cavendish, The Life and Death of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. R. S. Sylvester, EETS os 243 (1959), 112; BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 1r. ²⁴³ Payling, ‘Identifiable Motives’, 92–4, 100–5. ²⁴⁴ Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, 82, 112–18. ²⁴⁵ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 578. ²⁴⁶ Virgoe, ‘Three Suffolk Parliamentary Elections’, 193–4. ²⁴⁷ PRO, KB27/908, rex rot. 18 and preceding rot. ²⁴⁸ PRO, CP40/902, m. 404 f.; HP 1439–1509, i. 620–1; G. T. O. Bridgeman, History of the Manor and Parish of Weston-under-Lizard, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 20 (1899), 110–28.

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or nationally. Election may have brought individuals to the crown’s notice as potential office-holders.²⁴⁹ William Harcourt was appointed for the first time sheriff of Berkshire and Oxfordshire while representing Berkshire in 1491.²⁵⁰ But it is difficult to prove that an election made an immediate difference to a career; equally likely, it put men like Robert Harrington, MP for Rutland, in mind when choosing in 1491 the sheriff of the county, where Harrington had been a JP since 1486.²⁵¹ Therefore, although there was considerable overlap between service as JP, sheriff, and knight of the shire, the term cursus honorum should not strictly be applied.²⁵² Service in parliament was not a rite of passage in the sense that it was life-cycle specific: Sir Simon Mountford had first represented Warwickshire in the parliament of 1463–5, yet still sat in 1485–6 and in 1491–2.²⁵³ The case for there being a career path in the boroughs is stronger, since there often existed a correlation between senior office-holding and election to parliament. In December 1485 Thomas Overton was elected mayor of Sandwich while serving as the port’s MP.²⁵⁴ York’s representatives commonly had either already served as mayor or would do so shortly afterwards; in 1492 the city chose Thomas Scotton as mayor while he was at Westminster.²⁵⁵ Representing one’s borough was probably undertaken as a civic duty, particularly as MPs might well end up out of pocket; it was an acknowledgement of status, not something for which to campaign. When Sir John Percyvale at his fifth attempt (and then only after the king’s intervention) was elected mayor of London in 1498, it was remarked that he ‘sundry yerys passid was putt by . . . ffor as much as It was thowgth . . . that he was verray desyrous to have It’.²⁵⁶ Demand for seats in parliament seems to have been growing, sometimes outstripping supply. In Shropshire in 1491 it was Sir Thomas Leighton, MP in 1485–6, who had cause to complain. Leighton’s suit alleged that on 22 September the majority of those assembled in Shrewsbury Castle had chosen Leighton and Corbet, but that the sheriff John Newport returned a writ to the effect that Talbot and Corbet ²⁴⁹ S. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), 114–16. ²⁵⁰ List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, PRO, List and Indexes, 9 (1898), 108. ²⁵¹ Ibid. 113. ²⁵² Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, 140 n. 78. ²⁵³ PRO, E13/172, Mich., rot. 12d. ²⁵⁴ East Kent Archives Centre, Sa/AC 1, fos. 304v, 305v. ²⁵⁵ York Civic Records, ii. 80–1. ²⁵⁶ Great Chronicle, 288; Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 131.

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had been elected.²⁵⁷ Thus Corbet, the wronged candidate of 1485, was returned in 1491, while Leighton, the wronged candidate in 1491, had been returned in 1485. Talbot, sheriff in 1485, sat in the parliament of 1491–2 alongside Corbet, the man who was suing him. Although Leighton did not secure another seat, one way round this problem was to seek to be returned elsewhere. From the early fifteenth century the gentry had started to sit for boroughs.²⁵⁸ By Henry’s reign the residency requirement was commonly ignored: the parties in the Stafford election dispute of 1487 were not resident burgesses, but this defect was not raised in court. Representing a borough was not necessarily a stepping stone to the more prestigious county seat. Sir William Say, MP for Hertfordshire in 1491–2 and 1495, sat for Maldon in 1504, while Sir William Tyrwhitt, Lincolnshire’s MP in 1491–2, was prepared to sit for Grimsby in 1510.²⁵⁹ Service as speaker did not mean assurance in future of a county seat: John Mordaunt, speaker in 1487, represented Grantham in 1491–2. The availability of borough seats may have discouraged men from seeking to contest a county election which they might lose: unable to be returned for Norfolk in 1472, John Paston II found himself another seat.²⁶⁰ Tyrwhitt was engaged in such a calculation in January 1510: he planned to nominate as MPs for Grimsby either himself and the royal servant Sir Robert Wingfield or Wingfield and the county lawyer John Hennage, depending on the outcome of the shire election, which had been postponed following disturbances.²⁶¹ But in a county with fewer borough seats—such as Staffordshire—these too could be fought over. Individuals may also have had specific reasons to seek election to particular parliaments. Some wished to promote private legislation: the London goldsmith John Shaa, representing the city in 1495, presented a petition to the Commons asking parliament to confirm his title to certain manors.²⁶² Those under attainder at Henry’s accession had a compelling ground for seeking election to his first parliament in order to promote bills and petitions reversing their attainders.²⁶³ Opening that session, ²⁵⁷ PRO, E13/175, Mich., rots. 14–15. ²⁵⁸ HP 1386–1421, i. 166, 248–9. ²⁵⁹ Essex RO, D/B 3/3/63, no. 1; North East Lincs. Archives, 1/102/1, fo. 224r. Say was father-in-law to the earl of Essex, lord of Little Maldon. ²⁶⁰ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 589–90. ²⁶¹ HP 1509–58, i. 132, iii. 504, 642–4. ²⁶² London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/010, fo. 58v; PROME xvi. 201–2 (RP vi. 488–9). ²⁶³ YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 5 (fo. 4).

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Bishop Alcock reminded his audience that they were elected ‘not for private and individual profit, but for the public and common good’.²⁶⁴ Nevertheless MPs used the occasion to advance their own interests. John Tichborne, MP for Hampshire, secured his reinstatement on the county bench in November 1485.²⁶⁵ Others may have made the most of an unexpected opportunity: when his brother John died in December 1485, William Hugford, MP for Warwickshire, was well placed to further his claim to his brother’s estates against that of John’s three daughters and their husbands. He demised his brother’s principal manor to Jasper Tudor and other feoffees, presumably with the intention of giving them an incentive to support his claim.²⁶⁶ During the parliament of 1491–2, Sandwich MP John Naseby secured the office of town verger; Lyme Regis MP John Burgh was appointed gauger at Poole, and Yarmouth MP Robert Crowmer collector of customs at Yarmouth; and Oxford MP Robert Caxton acquired a recommendation for the office of gentleman beadle of the faculty of the laws within the university.²⁶⁷ Like peers, MPs did not necessarily attend conscientiously. They could have skipped a day to conduct other business (for example, in the law courts) or to enjoy the amenities of Westminster’s service sector.²⁶⁸ They did not always remain in the capital during the entire session. Writs de expensis normally required payment on the basis of full attendance, so concealed an imperfect record.²⁶⁹ Seeking to recover his wages as MP for Wiltshire (allegedly embezzled by the under-sheriff ), Richard Elyot assured the chancellor that he had attended ‘contynually from the begynnyng to the endyng’ of the parliament in 1497.²⁷⁰ Worcester’s ordinance required that ‘the said persons so chosen for the parliament be at hit from the beginning to the end of the same’, but this stipulation suggests that many were tempted not to.²⁷¹ Canterbury MP John Crysp made only a token appearance in the second session of 1489, setting ²⁶⁴ PROME xv. 90 (RP vi. 267a). ²⁶⁵ PRO, E5/5/1/13; CPR 1485–1494, 500. ²⁶⁶ PRO, E13/172, Mich., rot. 12d; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 575 and n. 70. ²⁶⁷ PRO, C82/87 (2 Nov. 1491); C82/90 (28 Feb. 1492); CPR 1485–1494, 372; Epistolae Academicae Oxon., ed. H. Anstey, 2 vols., Oxford Historical Soc., 35–6 (1898), ii. 603–4. ²⁶⁸ Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 119–65. ²⁶⁹ In 1490 the writ de expensis for Kent’s MPs was issued on 24 Feb., three days before the dissolution on 27 Feb.: PRO, E5/5/28/5–6. In calculating the number of days’ service, however, the writ assumed attendance until 27 Feb. Other writs proved less reliable: see Sessions of Parliament, nn. 5, 29. ²⁷⁰ PRO, C1/199/11. ²⁷¹ Green, History and Antiquities of Worcester, vol. ii, p. lxi.

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out on 20 October and returning to the city on 24 October; having attended the 1504 parliament for thirty days, Henry Gosebourne came home and returned later on to attend for a further fourteen days.²⁷² One of Hull’s representatives spent ten days travelling to and from Westminster in 1487, but only seven days actually at the parliament.²⁷³ In 1495 Robert Chapman set out from Hull a day after the parliament had opened; he then left London a few days before the parliament was dissolved, possibly to be home in time for Christmas.²⁷⁴ It seems unlikely that many MPs attended a whole session when representatives of the incorporated shires of Canterbury and Hull did not attend punctiliously. Absence could, however, have serious repercussions. In the first session of the 1491–2 parliament, an act established that someone outlawed in the county palatine of Lancashire was not outlawed elsewhere; in the second session this act was repealed, its earlier success being partly explained by the absence of the county’s MPs.²⁷⁵ Sandwich sent its MPs to the next parliament with instructions to ‘defend [against] everything attempted against the liberties of the ports’, something they could not do as absentees.²⁷⁶ MPs were also busy pursuing constituency business outside the chambers. Boroughs found it convenient to offset the cost of attending parliament by discharging some necessary civic task. Colchester’s MPs paid the borough’s fee farm into the exchequer in 1485, while Exeter’s MPs in 1497 sued over writs of protection.²⁷⁷ Parliament presented an opportunity for boroughs to have their charters confirmed: Canterbury’s MPs helped the city to secure confirmation during the parliament of 1487, while in March 1504 Robert Burgh wrote from Westminster to inform Norwich that the king had confirmed its charters.²⁷⁸ Grants to other boroughs made during or around a parliamentary session may well have involved their MPs: in 1486 Dartmouth secured a grant towards its tower and bulwark; Northampton was granted the right to appoint ²⁷² Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/FA 7, fo. 117r; CC/FA 2, fos. 401v–402r. Crysp may have returned immediately because he was mayor. ²⁷³ Hull City Archives, BRF/2/387, m. 2. The city’s other MP was present for the duration of the parliament. ²⁷⁴ Hull City Archives, BRF/2/391, m. 2d. ²⁷⁵ PROME xvi. 96–7, 132–3 (RP vi. 442, 456–7). ²⁷⁶ East Kent Archives Centre, Sa/AC 2, fo. 42r. ²⁷⁷ Parliamentary Texts, 187; Devon RO, ECA, receivers’ account rolls, 12–13 Hen. VII, m. 3. ²⁷⁸ Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/AA 38; CC/FA 7, fo. 86v; Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16c/1, fos. 99v–100r.

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a recorder and to choose its own JPs in 1495; in 1504 Dorchester’s letters patent were renewed.²⁷⁹ One of Sandwich’s MPs lobbied the king in 1504 for the grant of two fairs, which were conceded later that year.²⁸⁰ In theory, the Commons comprised two separate classes: the knights of the shires, and the citizens and burgesses. In the fourteenth-century Commons the knights had dominated proceedings: they dominated contemporary accounts of the Good Parliament of 1376, for instance.²⁸¹ Symbolic distinctions remained: the shire knights were probably sworn in first (as their names headed John Colyns’s list), and they installed the speaker in his chair.²⁸² The speaker may have been expected to be a knight: Sir Thomas Fitzwilliam, London’s recorder, exchanged his city seat for Lincolnshire in 1489, the parliament in which he was to be chosen speaker.²⁸³ Yet the influx of the gentry into borough seats must have eroded this distinction: as the merchant adventurers of London found in 1510, ‘the most parte of the Parlement hous stondith by gentilmen’.²⁸⁴ Moreover, the experience, outlook, and culture of the gentry and the urban elites were converging.²⁸⁵ Christopher Browne, Stamford’s MP in 1485–6, 1489–90, and 1495, was a characteristic member of the urban gentry whose connections extended well beyond his town, but who retained his prominence within it even when he ceased to be resident.²⁸⁶ Citizens and burgesses were therefore unlikely to have been regarded as second-class MPs. ²⁷⁹ Devon RO, DD 61190; The Records of the Borough of Northampton, ed. C. A. Markham and J. C. Cox, 2 vols. (London, 1898), i. 104–10; Dorset History Centre, DC/DOB: A1/8. ²⁸⁰ East Kent Archives Centre, Sa/AC 2, fo. 124r–v; CPR 1494–1509, 402. ²⁸¹ A. L. Brown, ‘Parliament, c.1377–1422’, in Davies and Denton (eds.), English Parliament, 120–1; G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), 134–9. ²⁸² Parliamentary Texts, 185. ²⁸³ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fos. 222r, 224r; Roskell, Commons and their Speakers, 74, 300–1. Other explanations are considered in PROME xvi. 1–2 (1489–90 plt., intro.). ²⁸⁴ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 346–7. ²⁸⁵ R. Horrox, ‘The Urban Gentry in the Fifteenth Century’, in J. A. F. Thomson (ed.), Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1988), 22–44; C. Barron, ‘Chivalry, Pageantry and Merchant Culture in Medieval London’, in P. Coss and M. Keen (eds.), Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2002), 219–41. ²⁸⁶ Stamford Town Hall, 1st hall book, fos. 38r, 45v, 59v, 78r–79r; A. Rogers, ‘Late Medieval Stamford: A Study of the Town Council, 1465–1492’, in A. Everitt (ed.), Perspectives in English Urban History (London, 1973), 22, 29, 34–6; M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1992), 132.

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More significant was possibly the social distance between MPs and peers. The concentration of peers was, in fact, for some constituencies one of the attractions of a parliament: in Henry’s first parliament York approached lords in support of its request for a remission from its fee farm, while in 1510 Plymouth reimbursed its MPs ‘for rewards and pleasures gyvene to dyuers lords of the courte to be fryndely to the towne’.²⁸⁷ This social distance must have affected the way business was conducted. In 1489 the Lords may have determined how the burden of taxation should be shared, even though the Commons granted the largest portion.²⁸⁸ Yet the Lords were unlikely to have overlooked the collective importance of the Commons. Some had direct experience of the lower house (Sir Richard Beauchamp, MP for Wiltshire in 1491–2, being summoned to the next parliament as Lord St Amand); others had family members there (in 1491–2, the Stanleys and Lords Dudley, Burgh, and Willoughby de Broke).²⁸⁹ Little can be said, however, about the interaction between the two houses in Henry’s reign.

Conclusion Duty to the crown, service to the constituency, ambition, self-interest, and a combination of these motives prompted peers to attend and commoners to seek election. A seat was of increasing importance to a burgeoning number of the political nation: bureaucrats and lawyers—the ancestors of the Elizabethan ‘men of business’—perhaps regarded election as a form of royal service, a development which the crown encouraged.²⁹⁰ If the increasing permeability of urban government created new challenges to their independence, it also presented boroughs with new opportunities to advance their interests. However short it fell in reality, parliament’s position as the nation’s pre-eminent representative body was undoubted at the macrocosmic level. Yet local attitudes varied markedly; those who were not represented do not appear to have been pushing for enfranchisement. The principle of representation through properly constituted parliaments nevertheless resonated widely: in 1536 a critic of royal policy would characterize recent sessions not ²⁸⁷ York House Books, i. 388–91; York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls, 1396–1500, ed. R. B. Dobson, Surtees Soc., 192 (1980), 189; Plymouth and West Devon RO, W130, fo. 87r. ²⁸⁸ See Section 2.3. ²⁸⁹ Miller, ‘Lords and Commons’, 13–16. ²⁹⁰ Formulated in M. A. R. Graves, ‘The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council’s ‘‘Men-of-Business’’ ’, Parliamentary History, 2 (1983), 11–38.

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as true parliaments but as ‘counsylles of the Kynges [a]poyntment’.²⁹¹ As a ‘point of contact’, parliament perhaps intensified existing connections between members of the political elite rather better than it could have articulated a truly representative range of views to the crown. But parliament’s authority depended not only on its ability to advance the aspirations of a class but also on the success of its claim to embody the community of the realm. ²⁹¹ LP xi. 504–5; M. L. Bush, ‘The Tudor Polity and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, Historical Research, 80 (2007), 50–3.

5 Law-Making Law-making was the most important and distinctive thing parliament did. The capacity to legislate in the temporal sphere resided in parliament and in parliament alone, a principle Sir John Fortescue had already declared a defining characteristic of the English polity.¹ Purely spiritual matters, it was agreed, lay outside parliament’s competence—an act of parliament could not make the king a parson—but definitions of the boundaries with the secular varied.² Parliament’s legislative authority ranged over most areas of life. Few doubted that statutes modified current customs and revised, abridged, and enlarged the common law.³ Serjeant Butler in 1497 referred simply to ‘this new statute, which makes a new law’.⁴ This chapter looks first at the mechanics of law-making, the formalities of legislative procedure as it operated during Henry’s reign, and next at less formal features that oiled this procedure. Then the chapter considers the types of laws that were enacted and who might have proposed them.

5 . 1 P RO C E D U R E Although a dry and complex subject, legislative procedure is central to understanding how parliament worked. In theory, there were two ways in which proposals could be presented at a parliament. On the opening day, the chancellor announced the appointment of receivers (chancery clerks) and triers (peers and other royal councillors), explained where they would meet, and invited people to present their complaints ¹ Fortescue, Governance, 109–10; Fortescue, De Laudibus, 24–5, 86–7. ² YB, 21 Hen. VII, Hil., plea 1 (fos. 1–5 at 2). ³ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 258–62, 283–5; Doe, Fundamental Authority, 39–42. ⁴ YB, 13 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 3 (fos. 4–9 at 6).

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to the receivers within seven to ten days. By Henry’s reign, however, the receivers and triers probably played little part in proceedings.⁵ People preferred to present proposals directly to parliament, which was possible even if they were not members of either house.⁶ On 17 November 1485 the dowager countess of Warwick appeared before the Commons, ‘and there she shewd a pytelous compleynt, and therupon she delyvered a (byll)’ (though her request was not granted until the next parliament).⁷ An oral explanation thus might supplement a written text. This written text was professionally drafted, usually by common lawyers or royal clerks. The petition put forward by Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge in the parliament of 1489–90, for example, was drawn up by Serjeants Jay and Rede and Humphrey Coningsby (later a serjeant), and then written out by Coningsby’s clerk.⁸ Such a proposal took the form of either a bill or a petition: a bill was declaratory, setting out what was to be enacted; a petition was a request, asking the king, the Lords, and the Commons singly or in combination, to enact or to help to have enacted a specified remedy. In most contexts, the distinction did not matter: the Colchester burgesses referred to all proposals during their passage as ‘bills’, as did the Lords’ journals of 1510 onwards.⁹ The parliament rolls, however, carefully distinguished between the two forms in the linking sentences that introduced acts, so the rolls’ convention will be observed here. The suitor had to decide whether to introduce the proposal in the Lords or in the Commons. In the parliaments of 1497 and 1504, the Commons initiated more successful proposals than the Lords—twentyeight as against twenty-one.¹⁰ Almost all legislation, including public acts, could be introduced in either house.¹¹ The acts of attainder of ⁵ See Section 8.2. ⁶ A. R. Myers, ‘Parliamentary Petitions in the Fifteenth Century’, in Crown, Household and Parliament in Fifteenth-Century England (London, 1985), 13–17. ⁷ Parliamentary Texts, 186; Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’, 85. ⁸ King’s College Muniments, KCAR/4/1/1/8, 5–6 Hen. VII, fo. 31r–v; PROME xvi. 68–70 (RP vi. 435–6). ⁹ Parliamentary Texts, 186–9; LJ i. 4 ff. ¹⁰ OA, 12 and 19 Hen. VII. The ratio in the Reformation Parliament was similar: S. E. Lehmberg, ‘Early Tudor Parliamentary Procedure: Provisos in the Legislation of the Reformation Parliament’, EHR 85 (1970), 2. ¹¹ Claims that the Commons did not initiate public acts are unfounded: Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 53–4; Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 128. In 1497 three of the seven public acts began in the Commons, and in 1504 eleven of the twenty-two extant public acts.

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1485 and 1504 began in the Lords, but restorations were introduced in both houses.¹² Grants of taxation began in the Commons, except in 1489 when the two houses made separate grants.¹³ Measures promoted by counties, towns, companies, and guilds usually started in the Commons, where there were MPs who could introduce them, whereas a bill to uphold the privileges of the German merchants of the Hanseatic League—disliked by merchants in the Commons—began in the Lords.¹⁴ Status did not always determine the house into which a measure was introduced: in 1497 the earl of Surrey’s bill began in the Commons, while in 1504 the silk-workers’ bill started in the Lords.¹⁵ The number of readings a proposal received was not fixed. The parliament rolls only rarely recorded the precise number of readings, sometimes giving the vague description ‘often’ or ‘very often’.¹⁶ When a precise figure was given, however, it was always three, which suggests that this number of readings was already beginning to become significant (something the Lords’ journals confirm from the 1510s).¹⁷ At this stage in proceedings changes could be made to proposals. Individuals or small groups—legal officers and peers in the upper house—might be appointed to revise a proposal, usually at its first reading.¹⁸ Formal revising committees, however, seem to have developed later on in the Tudor period.¹⁹ As well as redrafting, changes included adding and deleting clauses; in the absence of earlier versions, such changes are impossible to identify for Henry’s reign. Exemptions—usually introduced with the phrase ‘provided always that’, and called ‘provisos’ or ‘provisions’—were also inserted. These ¹² PROME xv. 112 (RP vi. 278a); OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 24 (PROME xvi. 379–87 (RP vi. 544–8)). ¹³ PROME xvi. 37–43 (RP vi. 420–4). ¹⁴ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 35 (c. 23). In a letter to L¨ubeck in May 1504, Henry claimed to have surmounted many objections in passing this act: Hanserecesse: Dritte Abtheilung: von 1477–1530, ed. D. Sch¨afer and F. Techen, 9 vols. (Leipzig and Munich, 1881–1913), v. 74–5. ¹⁵ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 11 (PROME xvi. 288–9 (RP vi. 511–12)); OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 19 (c. 21). ¹⁶ Collected in Reign of Henry VII, ii. 20–1. ¹⁷ PROME xvi. 208–11, 289, 342 (RP vi. 492–3, 512a, 530b). ¹⁸ Fane Fragment, 19–20; LJ i. 4–6. ¹⁹ M. A. R. Graves, ‘ ‘‘[B]y Committinge of a Bill the Howse Allowed of the Bodie thereof ’’. Tudor Parliamentary Legislative Committees: Development, Purposes, Value and Problems, 1510–1601’, in C. R. Kyle and J. Peacey (eds.), Parliament at Work: Parliamentary Committees, Political Power and Public Access in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2002), 25–41.

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absolved an individual, group of people, or corporation from the terms of the act. In 1504 the Commons accepted the London draper Thomas Creymour’s proviso to a petition for restitution from a fellow citizen, the merchant John Heron, which protected Creymour’s title to two cottages in Stepney.²⁰ Provisos did not need to be read at the same time as the bill or petition: in 1510 the Lords sent to the Commons a proviso to a petition they had sent down the previous day.²¹ Some exemptions, however, were included in proposals when they were introduced.²² Involvement in amending proposals was not restricted to members of parliament: interested parties might present formal objections.²³ In the case of private measures, parties could be represented at the bar of the house or in committees, evidence produced, and witnesses examined.²⁴ In Henry’s first parliament the dean and canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor presented written responses to the case put forward by the college’s ‘poor knights’.²⁵ Next the proposal was voted on by the first house. In the Lords each peer was asked for his view.²⁶ In the Commons acclamation may have been the norm, but on occasion individual votes were evidently counted, for in 1420 the speakership had been decided by four votes.²⁷ If a proposal received the support of the first house (possibly at the second reading), ordinarily it was then engrossed.²⁸ Engrossment literally meant the ‘making large’ of a document; in the parliamentary context, it also entailed the copying of proposals presented on paper on to parchment. Some proposals, however, were introduced on parchment in the expectation that they would not need rewriting. How common this practice was remains unclear: the parliament rolls of 1485–6 noted ²⁰ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 25; PROME xvi. 408–10 (RP vi. 550–2). ²¹ LJ i. 7b–8a. ²² Cf. Lehmberg, ‘Early Tudor Parliamentary Procedure’, 4–6. ²³ LJ i. 12b, 14a, 15a, 15b, 16a (Burdett vs. Conway); William Roper, The Lyfe of Sir Thomas Moore, Knighte, ed. E. V. Hitchcock, EETS os 197 (1935), 64–5; M. A. R. Graves, The House of Lords in the Parliaments of Edward VI and Mary I: An Institutional Study (Cambridge, 1981), 283 n. 156. ²⁴ Thomas More’s intervention on his own behalf in 1534 was probably remarkable because it concerned a crown bill (viz. an act of attainder). In his professional capacity, More had represented a private party in the upper house in 1512: LJ i. 14a. ²⁵ Kleineke, ‘Lobbying and Access’, 156–7. ²⁶ Fane Fragment, 9–12. ²⁷ McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, 142; Roskell, Commons and their Speakers, 63, 170–1; G. Edwards, ‘The Emergence of Majority Rule in the Procedure of the House of Commons’, TRHS 5th ser., 15 (1965), 165–87. ²⁸ LJ i. 5b–6a.

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that two bills were submitted on parchment, presumably because this was rare.²⁹ An unusually ornate engrossed bill of 1504, renewing an act of 1487 concerning the Calais Staple, was possibly introduced in that form in the Lords.³⁰ After engrossment (if necessary), the proposal was then dispatched: from the Commons with the formula soit baille aux seigneurs, and from the Lords with the formula missa a dominis (the formula soit baille aux communes being added in 1504).³¹ Chancery clerks or the crown’s law officers then carried the measure to the other house: on 30 November 1485 the clerk of the crown, Richard Ive, brought twelve bills and petitions from the Lords to the Commons.³² Proposals were then read in the second house, where they could also be amended. The Commons read the twelve proposals received on 30 November the same day; on 3 December they received and then read a further nine.³³ These measures evidently did not receive much scrutiny—not surprising if they were petitions for restoration—yet the Commons’ formal assent was required.³⁴ In some cases, the second house could ask the first to revise its measure: the Lords twice insisted that the Commons amend one proposal in 1510.³⁵ Scrutiny could be close: in 1510 the Commons altered two words of a measure they had received from the Lords.³⁶ The erasures and insertions in the engrossed bills and petitions of 1497 and 1504 should in most cases represent amendments made by the second house. In 1497 the Commons appear to have adjusted the date upon which penalties for non-compliance with the revised standard weights and measures would come into force, and the Lords to have altered the maximum fine ²⁹ PROME xv. 133, 217 (RP vi. 288b, 331a); LJ i. 4b, 7a, 11b. Cf. G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (Cambridge, 1973), 81–2; Lehmberg, ‘Early Tudor Parliamentary Procedure’, 2–3. ³⁰ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 20b; PROME xvi. 325–30 (RP vi. 523–5), renewing PROME xv. 356–61 (RP vi. 394–7). Another bill, which began in the Commons, repealed one clause of the 1487 act: OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 20a (c. 22). I am grateful to Harry Cobb for sharing his work on this subject. ³¹ Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 54. ³² Parliamentary Texts, 187. Ive’s career is discussed in A. F. Pollard, ‘The Clerk of the Crown’, EHR 57 (1942), 316–18. ³³ Parliamentary Texts, 187–8. ³⁴ The two rolls for the parliament of 1485–6 did not distinguish acts passed in the first session from those passed in the second session, so an attempted comparison with the number of measures mentioned in the Colchester diary is not in fact possible: Hicks, ‘King in Lords and Commons’, 147. ³⁵ LJ i. 6 (4 and 8 Feb.). ³⁶ LJ i. 7b.

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which London’s merchant adventurers were permitted to levy on other merchant adventurers.³⁷ Changes were referred back to the first house for its assent. In 1485 the Lords amended the Commons’ petition seeking the reversal of the attainders of 1484, delaying the restorations until after the parliament had been dissolved.³⁸ This amendment, written up on a separate schedule, was sent to the Commons to secure their agreement.³⁹ Whether this happened every time an amendment was made by the Lords is uncertain. In 1455 Thomas Kirkeby, master of the rolls and a former clerk of parliament, had explained that if a Lords’ amendment reduced the scope of a Commons’ grant (for example, from four years to two) the measure did not need to be returned to the Commons, but if the Lords’ amendment extended the scope of a Commons’ grant (from two years to four) then the measure needed to be returned to the Commons.⁴⁰ Kirkeby’s example concerned taxation, which was a special sort of act granted by the Commons, so it is not clear how generally the principle might have applied. Over the course of the fifteenth century the Commons were gaining legislative parity, so that rule may not have lasted long.⁴¹ In 1510 even a proviso the Lords added to the Commons’ grant of tunnage and poundage was returned to the lower house for its assent.⁴² Having received the assent of both houses, the measure was then ready to be shown to the king. Proposals were probably formally presented at the end of a session, when the king’s reply to each was announced.⁴³ Grants of taxation were a special case: having received the assent of the Lords, they were returned to the Commons in order that the speaker could formally present them to the king.⁴⁴ Presented with a grant, the king sometimes replied with a special assenting ³⁷ OA, 12 Hen. VII, nos. 5–6 (cc. 5–6). ³⁸ Acts were deemed to have commenced on the opening day of the relevant session unless they specified otherwise: Baker, Laws of England, 75–6. ³⁹ PROME xv. 107 (RP vi. 275b). ⁴⁰ YB, 33 Hen. VI, Pas., plea 8 (fos. 17–18). Kirkeby’s career is discussed in Pollard, ‘Fifteenth-Century Clerks of Parliament’, 148–50. ⁴¹ A. R. Myers, ‘Some Observations on the Procedure of the Commons in Dealing with Bills in the Lancastrian Period’, in Crown, Household and Parliament, 64–7. ⁴² LJ i. 7b–8a. ⁴³ This was the position in 1510 (LJ i. 8–9), although in 1461 Edward IV had given his assent to a measure during the session (Fane Fragment, 22). Assent during a parliament did not preclude formal presentation at its end. ⁴⁴ On 11 Nov. 1485 Speaker Lovell sent word to Chancellor Alcock that the Commons had granted the king tunnage and poundage, but this grant may still formally

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formula in which he thanked the Commons for their goodwill.⁴⁵ For other measures, the king could give three answers: he might reject the measure, giving the answer le roi s’avisera; if acceptable, the king answered either le roi le vuelt or soit fait comme il est desire. The first of the affirmative answers was usually given to a bill and the second to a petition.⁴⁶ The chancery list of bills and petitions of 1495 attempted to categorize the private acts passed on the basis of which answer they had received.⁴⁷ The chancery clerks noted the king’s formal reply on the back of the engrossed proposal, and the king himself initialled each membrane. At this stage, the king might make further changes to the act.⁴⁸ Before they could be enrolled, new acts needed to be designated public or private: 128 acts were designated public in Henry’s reign.⁴⁹ This was a formal legal distinction: proclaimed and thus assumed to be universally known, public acts or statutes were automatically available to any litigant; private acts, by contrast, needed to be produced in court through certification by chancery.⁵⁰ The parliament rolls preserved a separate section on the rolls for the public acts, misleadingly headed communes peticiones.⁵¹ The criterion for inclusion was not consistently applied: some grants of lay taxation and acts of resumption were entered at the end of these sections, but they were not strictly speaking statutes.⁵² Measures appear to have been earmarked by the clerk as being public during passage: in the parliaments of 1491–2 and 1495, all communes peticiones —irrespective of their legislative format—received the answer have been presented at the end of the first session: Parliamentary Texts, 186. The parliament roll did not date its presentation: PROME xv. 93–7 (RP vi. 268–70). ⁴⁵ The engrossed tax grants of 1497 and 1504, however, were endorsed le roi le vuelt: OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 8; 19 Hen. VII, no. 34. This reply was enrolled: PROME xvi. 300, 305, 350 (RP vi. 515a, 517a, 534b). The engrossed grant of two fifteenths and tenths was indented, the directly assessed subsidies not. ⁴⁶ In one case in 1504 the reply endorsed on an engrossed bill was changed from desire to vuelt: OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 20a (c. 22). ⁴⁷ PROME xvi. 278–9 (1495 plt., app.). ⁴⁸ See Section 8.1. ⁴⁹ The higher figure of 192 is arrived at by counting the acts in SR ii. 499–694. This volume, however, printed all acts passed between 1491 and 1504. ⁵⁰ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 248–9. ⁵¹ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 118–22, 127–30. The roll for 1504 mixed up the public and private sections: PROME xvi. 315 (intro.). ⁵² The relationship between the communes peticiones section and printed statute books is considered in G. R. Elton, ‘The Sessional Printing of Statutes, 1484–1547’, in Studies, iii. 105–7; and in K. F. Pantzer, ‘Printing the English Statutes, 1484–1640: Some Historical Implications’, in K. E. Carpenter (ed.), Books and Society in History (New York, 1983), 75–81, 99–102.

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le roi le vuelt.⁵³ The chancery list of 1495 drew up a separate section for public acts, but then displayed confusion about which acts should go there.⁵⁴ The clerks’ designation was probably reviewed by the crown and its law officers prior to the giving of the royal assent.⁵⁵ In 1455 Kirkeby had explained that a ‘common’ act would automatically be enrolled, but that a ‘particular’ act would not be unless the party sued for it.⁵⁶ Enrolment was something for which one had to pay, the rate apparently being 2s. in 1504.⁵⁷ Exemplification under the great seal was arguably sufficient proof at law, although some thought enrolment necessary.⁵⁸ Enrolment may not have mattered to suitors if the purpose of the act could be fulfilled by sending it as a warrant to another court.⁵⁹ Even acts reversing attainders were not invariably enrolled in the 1470s.⁶⁰ In Henry’s reign it has been assumed that all acts passed—there being 309 on the rolls—were entered, but this cannot be proven.⁶¹ The cost of enrolment, however, was small set against the other costs of securing an act, so there are likely to have been very few—if any—acts that were not enrolled.⁶²

5 . 2 LO B B Y I N G Legislative procedure did not operate in a vacuum, sealed off from the politics of the king’s court and council or isolated from the physical environs of Westminster.⁶³ The success of a proposal may have depended as much on what went on outside the two chambers as what went on inside them. A repertoire of informal actions—‘lobbying’—took ⁵³ The assenting formulas on the parliament rolls accorded with those on the engrossed acts of 1497 and 1504, with one exception: a Commons’ petition of 1497 (12 Hen. VII, c. 4), first endorsed le roi le vuelt, which was then replaced by soit fait comme il est desire (OA, no. 4), the reply on the roll remaining le roi le vuelt (PROME xvi. 292–3). ⁵⁴ PROME xvi. 278–9 (1495 plt., app.). ⁵⁵ The confusion persisted: Elton, Parliament of England, 43–55. ⁵⁶ YB, 33 Hen. VI, Pas., plea 8 (fos. 17–18). ⁵⁷ Guildhall Library, MS 22211/9, m. 4. ⁵⁸ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (fos. 14–16). ⁵⁹ S. J. Payling, ‘Murder, Motive and Punishment in Fifteenth-Century England: Two Gentry Case-Studies’, EHR 113 (1998), 11–15. ⁶⁰ R. A. Griffiths, ‘The Hazards of Civil War: The Mountford Family and the Wars of the Roses’, in King and Country, 365–82. ⁶¹ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 126. ⁶² For a possible instance, see the appendix to this chapter. ⁶³ Rosser, Medieval Westminster, esp. 35–41.

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place alongside the formal legislative procedure. As this usually cost money, accounts have proved our principal source for this dimension of law-making. What look now like ‘bribes and gifts for services rendered’—payments to men to speak for or against a proposal, payments to royal councillors for the crown’s favour, and gifts to the speaker to prefer a measure—were entered indiscriminately alongside more ‘regular and above board’ payments—expenses for travel and attendance, fees to lawyers for their counsel (particularly in drafting a proposal), and ‘small courtesies’ to the officers of parliament.⁶⁴ Lobbying depended on access: physical access to the two chambers, political access to those in positions of authority and influence, and professional access to arcane procedures.⁶⁵ Physical access to the two chambers was controlled by the sergeant-atarms, the porter, and their deputies. Suitors purchased their goodwill: the dean and canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor gave the porter 2d . ‘for his favour’.⁶⁶ On 20 February 1490 representatives of King’s College, Cambridge gave the hostiarius (usher) of the Parliament Chamber 3s. 4d . and his colleague in the Commons 1s. 8d.⁶⁷ When the chambers rose, MPs and peers spilled out into Westminster, where they could be approached, entertained, and hopefully won round by suitors. London’s carpenters hung around Westminster ‘all the parlement tyme’ in 1497.⁶⁸ Lobbying could be intensive: in January 1489 London appointed six men to assist its four MPs in pursuing the city’s business.⁶⁹ In the parliament of 1489–90 the Cinque Ports’ fourteen MPs worked together to settle an issue arising from the confederation’s tax-exempt status.⁷⁰ The MPs dined the barons of the exchequer, the under-treasurer Robert Lytton, the lieutenant of Dover Castle Philip Fitzlewis, Serjeant Fyneux, and ‘various other lords and gentlemen of the parliament house’.⁷¹ ⁶⁴ Adapted from D. Dean, ‘London Lobbies and Parliament: The Case of the Brewers and Coopers in the Parliament of 1593’, Parliamentary History, 8 (1989), 349. ⁶⁵ Kleineke, ‘Lobbying and Access’, 146–9. ⁶⁶ Ibid. 156. ⁶⁷ King’s College Muniments, KCAR/4/1/1/8, 5–6 Hen. VII, fo. 31v. ⁶⁸ Records of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, ii: Warden’s Account Book, 1438–1516, ed. B. Marsh (Oxford, 1914), 116. ⁶⁹ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fo. 224r. ⁷⁰ East Kent Archives Centre, CP/B1, fo. 99v; NR/FAc 3, fo. 102r; BL, Egerton MS 2107, fo. 19r; East Sussex RO, RYE 60/3, fo. 75v; K. M. E. Murray, The Constitutional History of the Cinque Ports (Manchester, 1935), 156–7, 219–23. ⁷¹ Fitzlewis was also a servant of the admiral, the earl of Oxford: The Household Books of John, Duke of Norfolk, and Thomas, Earl of Surrey; Temp. 1481–1490, ed. J. P. Collier (London, 1844), 504–6 (reattributed in M. J. Tucker, ‘Household Accounts 1490–1491 of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford’, EHR 75 (1960), 468–74).

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The crown’s favour could be sought before the legislation was introduced.⁷² In 1485–6 an act was passed permitting the inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet to erect a bridge at the Sarre ferry since the river had silted up. The bill referred to the king’s personal engagement; in another indication of official backing, it was introduced in the Lords already engrossed.⁷³ London’s pewterers approached the king at Greenwich and the chancellor at Lambeth before presenting their proposal in 1487.⁷⁴ Such access might require suitors to approach intermediaries: King’s College, Cambridge gave 7s. to members of the king’s chamber in 1490.⁷⁵ Late in 1496 representatives of London’s drapers and tailors sailed to Sheen in order to persuade the king to support their measure in the forthcoming parliament.⁷⁶ As the king’s mouthpiece in the Lords, the chancellor would often have been approached: when their measure reached the upper house in 1490, the merchant adventurers of London sent a delegation of fifteen men in the company of the city’s recorder to lobby Archbishop Morton.⁷⁷ Finding someone to promote one’s measure in the chamber was of vital importance. On shire election day the sheriff invited anyone who had business to pursue in parliament to approach the newly elected MPs, although this did not guarantee the MPs’ assistance.⁷⁸ Inhabitants of an enfranchised borough could turn to its representatives. Norwich’s worsted weavers were permitted in 1495 to merge their measure into another petition from the city; when the petition succeeded, the weavers were required to make a special contribution to the £10 4s. 8d . the act had cost.⁷⁹ Some suitors presumably approached friends and relatives; others paid one of the many lawyers in the lower house to promote their measure.⁸⁰ Nicholas Stathum had received 10s. from ⁷² Nothing is known about the use of the sign manual to indicate royal approval in Henry’s reign: cf. J. I. Miklovich, ‘The Significance of the Royal Sign Manual in Early Tudor Legislative Procedure’, BIHR 52 (1979), 23–36. ⁷³ PROME xv. 217–19 (RP vi. 331–2). ⁷⁴ C. Welch, History of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers of the City of London, 2 vols. (London, 1902), i. 64–5. ⁷⁵ King’s College Muniments, KCAR/4/1/1/8, 5–6 Hen. VII, fo. 31r. ⁷⁶ Drapers’ Company, WA.2, fo. 63r; 12 Hen. VII, c. 4. ⁷⁷ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 198. ⁷⁸ ‘Norfolk Parliamentary Election’, 85. ⁷⁹ Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16c/1, fo. 60v; case 17d, 1st book of worsted weavers, fo. 83r; 11 Hen. VII, c. 11. Regretting its decision, the city secured the repeal of the weavers’ measure in 1504: Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16c/1, fo. 107r; 19 Hen. VII, c. 17; Guth, ‘Exchequer Penal Law Enforcement’, 262–4. ⁸⁰ Cf. a roundabout approach to an MP in 1453: Registrum Abbatiae Johannis Whethamstede, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Ser., 28 (1872), 92–4.

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a West Country esquire to further his business in the parliament of 1467–8, but had done nothing in return; even if he had, Stathum declared in his will, ‘yet it is agenst my conscience for somoche as I was one of the parleament and shuld be indifferent in euery mater in the parleament’.⁸¹ Such scruples do not seem widely to have been felt (at least until eternity beckoned). In 1485–6 London’s drapers, having commissioned the city’s recorder to draft their proposal, paid John Vavasour, king’s serjeant, 6s. 8d . ‘for puttyng up of the seid bill’.⁸² The crown’s law officers, though summoned by writs of assistance, did not think it improper to receive payments from private suitors.⁸³ It was the officers of parliament, however, who controlled the order of business. Ensuring prompt readings was important, for lack of time could cause proposals to fail: in 1484 John Mustell explained how in the previous parliament the Lords had approved his proposal, but how the Commons, ‘for briefnesse of tyme onely, that they myght not have perfitz examinacioun of the same’, were not able to give their assent.⁸⁴ In theory, once royal and public business had been read, other bills and petitions ought to have been heard in the order in which they were received.⁸⁵ In practice, emoluments were offered: in 1487 London’s pewterers gave 6s. 8d . to Thomas Bayen, clerk of the Commons, ‘to spede oure billes to be redde’. The pewterers’ most valuable offering was to Speaker Mordaunt, who was given a large vessel worth £1 7s. 4d .⁸⁶ Although it may have been more regular for speakers to receive gifts-in-kind, they were not above taking cash-payments: in 1486 Thomas Lovell received the substantial sum of £3 6s. 8d. from the dean and canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor.⁸⁷ Such rewards may partly explain why Sir Robert Sheffield and Thomas Englefield both offered to forgo the customary £100 reward should the king nominate them as speaker in 1497.⁸⁸ ⁸¹ ‘Nicholas Stathum’s Will’, ed. C. H. Williams, BIHR 3 (1925–6), 49. ⁸² Drapers’ Company, WA.2, fo. 35v. Vavasour would have been a familiar figure as one of the city’s counsel: Tucker, Law Courts, 265–6. ⁸³ M. Davies, ‘Lobbying Parliament: The London Companies in the Fifteenth Century’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 144. ⁸⁴ PROME xv. 57 (RP vi. 261a). ⁸⁵ Parliamentary Texts, 88; Paston Letters and Papers, ii. 187. ⁸⁶ Welch, History of the Pewterers, i. 64–5. ⁸⁷ Kleineke, ‘Lobbying and Access’, 156. ⁸⁸ PRO, E101/414/6, fo. 128r.

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Doing business in parliament was therefore costly, especially for those who did not live in London or nearby. The amount spent could be considerable, yet Lincoln’s MP William Bele had nothing to show for the £3 or more he claimed to have spent on the city’s behalf in 1495, so it was not surprising that he had trouble claiming his expenses.⁸⁹ What proportion of the proposals presented was eventually enacted is not known. The list for the 1495 parliament recorded thirteen proposals which did not succeed.⁹⁰ These are unlikely to have been all of that parliament’s failed bills and petitions: the skinners of London had also presented a proposal, but it does not appear to be on the list.⁹¹ They could be those proposals that had received the assent of the house in which they were introduced but that then failed to secure the assent of the other house. Perseverance was required: the majority of these thirteen proposals were never enacted in Henry’s reign, but in 1504 the bowyers’ measure succeeded.⁹² Having failed in 1487, London’s pewterers tried again in 1495, once more without success.⁹³ Finally in Henry’s last parliament in 1504 the company’s measure was also enacted, at a cost of £10 17s.⁹⁴ A paper bill itemized how most of this sum had been spent.⁹⁵ This source reveals the dynamics of the whole legislative process—its formal and informal dimensions—in relationship and in action. The gist of the pewterers’ complaint was that pedlars were hawking sub-standard pewter throughout England. The pewterers paid two clerks in Westminster Hall to write up a ‘clere byll’, upon which they sought further legal advice; having incorporated the lawyers’ suggestions, the pewterers had their measure copied as ‘a clen byll in paper’ and introduced it in the Commons.⁹⁶ The company then set to work securing backing on the floor of the house. The pewterers needed to know who the MPs were. While plying him with wine, they secured from the clerk of the Commons Thomas Hilton ‘a beyll ovte of the reullys ⁸⁹ PRO, C1/189/20–3. ⁹⁰ PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.). The first failed measure was ‘for goulde of Venyce’. ⁹¹ Guildhall Library, MS 30727/1, fo. 60v. ⁹² 19 Hen. VII, c. 2. ⁹³ Guildhall Library, MS 7086/1, fo. 112v; PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.). ⁹⁴ Guildhall Library, MS 7086/1, fo. 148v. ⁹⁵ Guildhall Library, MS 22211/9. The following account assumes that items were entered in a roughly chronological order. The bill was headed 4 Feb. 1504, although the full title is lost. The fifth entry was for the ‘second day’. The entry fourth from last was for ‘Tevsday’, presumably the one before the list was drawn up. ⁹⁶ The lawyers were ‘Skote’ and ‘Yernley’. The latter was probably John Ernley of Gray’s Inn, appointed attorney-general in 1507.

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[rolls] of dyuers borges namys’.⁹⁷ The pewterers attended parliament assiduously: based on the number of payments made for boat hire to and from Westminster, company members may have attended on as many as half the days the parliament was sitting. The pewterers remained at Westminster in the afternoon, when parliament by custom did not sit. When MPs had completed the morning’s business, the pewterers sought their support over drinks and a meal, thereby persuading York’s MPs to co-sponsor their proposal. The pewterers were busy on a Sunday when parliament did not sit; they even sought out MPs at night. The pewterers also entertained the wardens of the armourers’ company and the clerk of the market of the king’s household, who was an important figure in enforcing trading regulations around the capital.⁹⁸ Interestingly, nothing was spent explicitly on London’s MPs. The degree of support that livery companies could command evidently varied; the mercers, by contrast, expected to ‘instructe’ the city’s MPs in 1510.⁹⁹ Despite their efforts, the pewterers’ proposal did not have an easy passage through the Commons. At the first attempt, the Commons rejected their proposal, so the pewterers again sought out their legal counsel; after correction, the proposal was written out anew (this time on parchment) and resubmitted to the Commons. Some time later—perhaps after it had received another reading in the Commons—the proposal was submitted to the mayor and aldermen of London for further revision. The revised proposal was once more written up on parchment and resubmitted to the Commons. Even then, the pewterers rewrote their petition on the advice of Speaker Dudley. What appear to be corrected drafts have survived.¹⁰⁰ Although a chronology cannot be confidently established, the pewterers seem to have been seeking more sweeping powers than they were finally granted. The company proposed that its members or nominees should be given the authority to carry out searches for sub-standard pewter throughout England. One redrafting of this section made provision for local crafts in other cities and boroughs to carry out their own searches and to be responsible for searching the neighbouring towns and villages and the surrounding countryside. A further redrafting vested the authority to organize searches in JPs and ⁹⁷ A similar piece of lobbying could explain how the list of MPs in 1491–2 later came into John Colyns’s possession: ‘List of Members of the Fourth Parliament’, 168–75. ⁹⁸ N. Williams, ‘Sessions of the Clerk of the Market of the Household in Middlesex’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 19 (1956–8), 76–89. ⁹⁹ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 345; Davies, ‘Lobbying Parliament’, 143–4. ¹⁰⁰ Guildhall Library, MS 22211/4–8.

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in city and borough officers. Thus the company’s regulatory functions were to be exercised under the supervision of borough officers and JPs; London’s mayor and aldermen may have demanded this before they would give their approval.¹⁰¹ The company also secured important backing for the proposal. It paid 10s. to the royal councillor, king’s serjeant, and former speaker Sir John Mordaunt ‘to stope heyme that vose [sic] a genste vs’. Mordaunt could have exploited his involvement in managing the Commons’ business to obstruct the pewterers’ opponents.¹⁰² The company made payments (at what looks like a standard rate of 3s. 4d .) and also gave wine to the clerks to ‘profer’ and ‘kaulle’ their petition.¹⁰³ At least three clerks seem to have been working in the Commons: the clerk of the Commons, whom the pewterers called the ‘redyre’, suggesting that it was he who usually read out proposals; another clerk also called the ‘redyre’, perhaps deputizing for Hilton; and the speaker’s clerk.¹⁰⁴ Speaker Dudley was given a pike worth 2s. 8d. At last the pewterers secured the Commons’ assent. The company paid the speaker’s clerk 3s. 4d. for their petition’s engrossment, described as ‘a nev vreytyng [new writing] in parchement to pott vp to the lordes’, and Hilton was paid 5s. ‘for beryng vp our byll and for assynyng yt’.¹⁰⁵ The clerk of parliament Richard Hatton was then given 6s. 8d . the ‘fyrste tyme to labore our byll be fore the lordys’. The pewterers set about lobbying the peers. The company had already drawn up a submission for the chancellor, Archbishop Warham, which they had paid one of his gentlemen to deliver; it had also asked him to explain to his master their case, so that Warham might look ‘the reyper [riper]’ on the petition. Chief Justice Frowyk, who was attending the Lords, was given a pike. Robert Rydon, clerk of the king’s council, was paid off ‘to stope heyme of heys malles [malice]’. ¹⁰¹ The city government sought oversight of companies’ legislative business: Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 129–30. ¹⁰² OA, 19 Hen. VII, letter. ¹⁰³ In 1490 King’s College, Cambridge had paid 6s. 8d . to the clerk of parliament and 3s. 4d . to the clerk of the Commons for reading the college’s petition in the Commons: King’s College Muniments, KCAR/4/1/1/8, 5–6 Hen. VII, fos. 31v–32r. 3s. 4d . was also the standard piece-rate normally paid to lawyers and court officers: Ives, Common Lawyers, 293–305; Baker, Laws of England, 123–4. ¹⁰⁴ Hilton’s career is discussed in Pollard, ‘Mediaeval Under-Clerks’, 86–7. ¹⁰⁵ The pewterers’ petition was apparently already written up on parchment, which suggests that engrossment was concerned as much with producing a formal text as with the paper–parchment distinction. Cf. S. E. Lehmberg, The Later Parliaments of Henry VIII, 1536–1547 (Cambridge, 1977), 243.

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Unlikely to have taken a disinterested concern in such a measure, Rydon possibly had been stirred to be hostile to the pewterers’ petition by its opponents. At some point, these opponents secured a damaging amendment, limiting the measure’s duration to the next parliament. The pewterers’ engrossed petition, presumably the one drawn up by the speaker’s clerk, has survived.¹⁰⁶ This reveals that the amendment was added after the rest of the text had been drawn up, so it was probably made in the Lords. Finally, the pewterers’ petition was ready for the king to sign ‘with heys hand’. The pewterers paid 2s. ‘for entyryng of our actys’. Later in the Tudor period a public act was enrolled without a fee being paid, but this does not seem to have been the position in 1504: although the pewterers’ bill became a public act—being listed on the parliament roll among the communes peticiones and being printed as a statute—the company had to pay for its enrolment.¹⁰⁷ Clerical fees were also payable on public acts, again something that was not true later in the sixteenth century.¹⁰⁸ Indeed, fees and gifts were not clearly distinguished: the clerk of parliament received 20s. ‘for to follefyll our promes before and for heys feys of the howse for euery byll that pasythe’; Clement Clerc, the clerk of the crown, received 10s. ‘be promes yf our byll paste’.¹⁰⁹ The sergeant-at-arms received a gift of ‘a gret platere bassyne’. Thus through a combination of parliamentary management and energetic canvassing the pewterers at their third attempt in Henry’s reign secured an act. Their success had depended on access—to the chambers, to important people, and to legislative procedure. The tactics adopted by the pewterers reveal the accessibility of parliament: it was a public occasion, where suitors bustled for the attention of royal ministers, officials, peers, and MPs.¹¹⁰ Business was pursued outside the chambers as well as inside them, not least in Westminster’s numerous drinking establishments.¹¹¹ When proposals jostled for attention, promoting legislation became expensive and time-consuming. Accessibility, cost, and location must have restricted the sorts of people and groups who were able to resort to parliament. ¹⁰⁶ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 6. ¹⁰⁷ PROME xvi. 396–8 (1504 plt., item 28). ¹⁰⁸ Elton, Parliament of England, 49–50, 55–8. ¹⁰⁹ Clerc’s career is discussed in Pollard, ‘Clerk of the Crown’, 317–18. ¹¹⁰ Cf. C. R. Kyle and J. Peacey, ‘ ‘‘Under Cover of so much Coming and Going’’: Public Access to Parliament and the Political Process in Early Modern England’, in Kyle and Peacey (eds.), Parliament at Work, 1–23. ¹¹¹ Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 122–33.

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5 . 3 T Y PE S O F L E G I S L AT I O N It tended to be those with ready access to parliament and deep pockets who secured legislation in Henry’s reign: members of the nobility, gentry, and urban elite; counties, cities, and towns; merchant and craft associations; and religious and educational establishments. Why did they resort to parliament? Only another act of parliament could undo an earlier act, so a significant proportion of private legislation was concerned with reversing acts of attainder. In 1485–6 a large number of attainders needed reversing; the only one which did not was Henry’s own, for he ‘was personally discharged from any attainder because he has taken upon himself the ruling and is king’.¹¹² Petitions were presented seeking reversals of the mass attainders of 1484; during passage, several were amalgamated into a composite act.¹¹³ Other acts restored the supporters of Henry VI and their heirs, who had been attainted under Edward IV. Some of those attainted in 1485 would secure restoration in subsequent parliaments.¹¹⁴ Legally, acts of parliament were ‘matters of record’ in the king’s highest court, which could therefore put a doubtful title beyond question or annul an action in a lesser court.¹¹⁵ The clerks occasionally enrolled the supplementary material submitted with a proposal—an assize of novel disseisin, a widow’s appeal for homicide, or a fine and recovery.¹¹⁶ Acts could override local custom, enabling Sir Richard Guildford to alter the inheritance pattern on his Kentish lands from gavelkind (partible inheritance) to primogeniture in 1495.¹¹⁷ Acts could also modify the process in other courts. Members of the Kynaston family had been summoned to face serious allegations by privy seal writs, which they had so far ignored. An act of 1487 established that if the Kynastons failed to appear they would be outlawed for felony as though the process had taken place at common law.¹¹⁸ In 1504 an act enabled Sir William Meering to claim damages awarded against Sir Edward Stanhope, even though Stanhope had enfeoffed others with ¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷

YB, 1 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 5 (fo. 4). Parliamentary Texts, 186–8; PROME xv. 102–7 (RP vi. 273–5). See Section 1.3. ¹¹⁵ Caryll, Reports, i. 12. PROME xv. 196–206, xvi. 17–19, 113–15 (RP vi. 321–5, 413–14, 450–1). PROME xvi. 199 (RP vi. 487b). ¹¹⁸ PROME xv. 383 (RP vi. 403a).

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his lands prior to the award, putting them beyond the reach of the common law.¹¹⁹ In such cases, only an act of parliament would do. The city of York found itself unable to take advantage of the new king’s remission of its fee farm because the exchequer believed that the act of 1485–6 assigning this income to support the royal household took precedence over Henry’s grant. Thus in the next parliament in 1487 the city secured an act, confirming the king’s letters patent and cancelling the household’s appropriation.¹²⁰ Such measures must have been agreed with the crown prior to being submitted. A petition of 1504 ratifying letters patent and a subsequent agreement (to be concluded during the parliament) between the king and the nuns of Syon bore the signatures of the attorney-general James Hobart, the solicitor-general Thomas Lucas, and the king’s councillor Richard Empson.¹²¹ Acts could confer on towns the authority to improve their civic spaces. In 1487 Bristol was empowered to compel inhabitants to repair the pavement outside their tenements and, that failing, to distrain the goods of defaulters in order to fund the necessary repairs; by 1491 ‘dyuers stretes in Bristowe were new paved’.¹²² There were other attempts to enforce necessary repairs. In 1495 three proposals addressed breaches in the banks of the Thames, of the Ouse and another unnamed river (perhaps the Humber), and around Newcastle.¹²³ No legislation on this subject, however, passed in any of Henry’s parliaments, possibly because of opposition from those through whose land the rivers ran. Many communities depended on freshwater and marine waterways for food, transport, and commerce, so this issue recurred. ¹¹⁹ PROME xvi. 403–4 (RP vi. 550); A. Cameron, ‘A Nottinghamshire Quarrel in the Reign of Henry VII’, BIHR 45 (1972), 27–37. ¹²⁰ PROME xv. 156, 347–8 (RP vi. 300b, 390); L. C. Attreed, ‘The King’s Interest: York’s Fee Farm and the Central Government, 1482–92’, Northern History, 17 (1981), 24–43; ead., ‘Medieval Bureaucracy and York’s Fee Farm during the Fifteenth Century’, York Historian, 6 (1985), 24–31. ¹²¹ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 33; PROME xvi. 333–7 (RP vi. 526–9). ¹²² PROME xv. 348–50 (RP vi. 390–1); Robert Ricart, The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar, ed. L. T. Smith, Camden Soc., ns 5 (1872), 47–8. ¹²³ PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.). To judge from the harvest, 1495 did not see excessive rainfall, which would have made the problem especially pressing that year: C. J. Harrison, ‘Grain Price Analysis and Harvest Qualities, 1465–1634’, Agricultural History Review, 19 (1971), 152.

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Certain fishing techniques, often involving the use of weirs, were believed to damage stocks.¹²⁴ In 1490 London secured an act extending the mayor’s jurisdiction over the Thames in order to prevent overfishing.¹²⁵ In the same session an act prohibited the intensive fishing techniques which were leading to a decline in stocks in Orford Haven (Suffolk).¹²⁶ Fishing weirs also impeded navigation: in 1495 Southampton was permitted to remove those which were obstructing its harbour.¹²⁷ Fishing nets and weirs had long caused problems on rivers.¹²⁸ In 1495 proposals ‘concernyng purprestures in the water of Trente’ and one ‘concernyng the ffishgarthes in the water betwix Lincoln and Boston’ were presented.¹²⁹ Lincoln probably sponsored the latter: the River Witham provided essential passage for the city’s trade, and obstructions would have exacerbated the underlying problem that it was silting up.¹³⁰ The two measures possibly failed because of the influence of those (including the bishop of Lincoln, sitting in the Lords) who owned weirs on these rivers.¹³¹ The aim of merchant and craft associations such as the pewterers was to achieve through legislation ‘the maximum degree of control over their trades, the elimination of outside interference, and the maximization of employment prospects for members’.¹³² Shearmen turned to parliament to stop a less labour-intensive treatment for fustians—the hard-wearing material worn by the common people—which, they alleged, caused garments to fall apart in only four months.¹³³ What was in the interests ¹²⁴ Illustrated in J. M. Steane and M. Foreman, ‘Medieval Fishing Tackle’, in M. Aston (ed.), Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, 2 vols., British Archaeological Reports, British ser., 182 (1988), i. 170–8. ¹²⁵ 4 Hen. VII, c. 15. ¹²⁶ 4 Hen. VII, c. 21, renewed in 1491: PROME xvi. 95–6 (RP vi. 441–2). ¹²⁷ 11 Hen. VII, c. 5. ¹²⁸ Magna Carta, c. 33. ¹²⁹ PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.); C. R. Salisbury, ‘Primitive British Fishweirs’, in G. L. Good, R. H. Jones, and M. W. Ponsford (eds.), Waterfront Archaeology, Council for British Archaeology, research reports, 74 (1991), 76–87; id., ‘An Early Tudor Map of the River Trent in Nottinghamshire’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society of Nottinghamshire, 87 (1984), 54–9; A. J. White, ‘Medieval Fisheries in the Witham and its Tributaries’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 19 (1984), 29–35. ¹³⁰ PRO, C1/189/20–3; J. W. F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948), 305, 313–14; M. K. Jones, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort, the Royal Council and an Early Fenland Drainage Scheme’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 21 (1986), 11–18. ¹³¹ BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fos. 18r, 37r. ¹³² I. Archer, ‘The London Lobbies in the Later Sixteenth Century’, Historical Journal, 31 (1988), 19. ¹³³ 11 Hen. VII, c. 27.

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of one company was often not in the interests of another. Clothiers, wholesale wool merchants (principally the Calais staplers), and cloth merchants (chiefly the merchant adventurers) competed for wool.¹³⁴ The clothiers may have been behind an act to inhibit dealers from buying up wool for export, but exporters of cloth were beneficiaries of a measure to cap the price of the cloths sold on the English market.¹³⁵ Almost all companies were hostile to foreign merchants and craftsmen. In 1495 an unsuccessful proposal ‘concernyng thertificers estrayngers’ possibly addressed Richard III’s protectionist legislation of 1484.¹³⁶ Another proposal concerned juries ‘of halfe tonge’, the mixed juries of native Englishmen and foreigners which heard cases between different nationalities; it probably did not claim—as a Venetian visitor did—that Italians’ ability to hold out for longer without sustenance gave them an unfair advantage over their English counterparts when deliberating.¹³⁷ Different interests could work together in promoting legislation.¹³⁸ In Henry’s first parliament, the representatives of London, York, Bishop’s Lynn, Hull, and other ports complained about the Hanse, asking the king not to renew the merchants’ privileges; one MP claimed that every agreement reached with the confederation since 1474 had been broken. These representations notwithstanding, Henry renewed the Hanse’s privileges only a few days after the parliament had been dissolved.¹³⁹ In 1495 an act halved the property qualification required of jurors in the counties of Hampshire, Surrey, and Sussex in order to make it easier for the counties’ sheriffs to hold their tourns.¹⁴⁰ One possible promoter of this petition sitting as an MP was Sir William Uvedale, probably representing Hampshire which he had served as sheriff three times.¹⁴¹ This petition, however, went against the prevailing concern in the parliament with the problem of perjury, which Chancellor Morton had raised in his ¹³⁴ P. J. Bowden, The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962), 113–15; T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), 282–3; A. Hanham, The Celys and their World: An English Merchant Family of the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 296–9, 341–2. ¹³⁵ 4 Hen. VII, cc. 8, 11. ¹³⁶ PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.); 1 Ric. III, c. 9. ¹³⁷ A Relation, or rather a True Account, of the Island of England, ed. C. A. Sneyd, Camden Soc., os 37 (1847), 32–3; Baker, Laws of England, 612–14. ¹³⁸ Cf. C. D. Liddy, War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns: Bristol, York and the Crown, 1350–1400 (Woodbridge, 2005), 155–75. ¹³⁹ Hanserecesse, ii. 21, 32–4; T. H. Lloyd, England and the German Hanse, 1157–1611: A Study of their Trade and Commercial Diplomacy (Cambridge, 1991), 235–9. ¹⁴⁰ 11 Hen. VII, c. 26. Surrey and Sussex were a joint shrievalty. ¹⁴¹ HP 1439–1509, i. 901.

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opening sermon.¹⁴² Two other acts gave justices the discretion to amend jury panels, while a third actually raised the property qualification in London.¹⁴³ The counties’ petition was amended so that it would last only until the next parliament, where it was not renewed. In 1504 a fresh petition sought to reinstate the earlier act; after a difficult passage, the petition succeeded, but was once more limited to the next parliament.¹⁴⁴ London’s growing economic dominance united others in opposition: in 1510 Norwich’s merchant adventurers, canvassing support for the parliament, would complain to their counterparts in York that ‘the marchants of the cytte of London wyll bynde alle marchants of Englend att there wyll and plesure’.¹⁴⁵ In February 1487 a civic ordinance prohibited Londoners from selling wares and merchandise at any fair or market outside London.¹⁴⁶ The ordinance may have provoked some opposition within the city, for in March its implementation was postponed until September.¹⁴⁷ Then in the parliament which met in November and December a Commons’ petition annulled London’s ordinance, attributing the city’s actions to its ‘syngler lucre’, and referring to its damaging effect on fairs held in Salisbury, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, Nottingham, Ely, and Coventry.¹⁴⁸ This parliament was generally unsympathetic to London: the city was criticized for charging too much for goods by allowing livery companies to make harmful ordinances.¹⁴⁹ The city government responded during the parliament by calling in company ordinance books for inspection and physically removing undesirable ones.¹⁵⁰ When the next national assembly approached—the great council of winter 1488—the mayor and aldermen instructed Londoners to behave courteously, to sell their wares at a reasonable price, and to avoid starting quarrels with the representatives.¹⁵¹ ¹⁴² PROME xvi. 141 (RP vi. 458a). ¹⁴³ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 21, 24–5. ¹⁴⁴ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 14 (c. 16). ¹⁴⁵ The York Mercers and Merchant Adventurers, 1356–1917, ed. M. Sellers, Surtees Soc., 129 (1918), 121–2. ¹⁴⁶ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fos. 133v–134r; COL/ AD/01/011, fo. 226r–v. ¹⁴⁷ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fo. 143r; COL/AD/ 01/011, fos. 232r, 236v–237r. ¹⁴⁸ 3 Hen. VII, c. 9. ¹⁴⁹ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 183. ¹⁵⁰ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/AD/01/011, fos. 238v, 280r; Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 183, 186. ¹⁵¹ Ibid. 183–4. A dispute involving MPs may have broken out during the 1487 parliament: The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes, 1486–1493, ed. M. Davies (Stamford, 2000), 39–40, 97.

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Despite its difficulties, London and its livery companies were probably the busiest proponents of legislation in Henry’s parliaments. Deeper resources and the city’s proximity to Westminster—a short boat trip up river—explain this. No other city or town is known to have appointed a committee to discuss what measures it should pursue, as London did in the week running up to the opening of parliament in 1497.¹⁵² Intriguingly, the aldermen asked in 1504 for a draft proposal on the subject of the Church’s testamentary jurisdiction.¹⁵³ In all, the city probably promoted proposals in five of Henry’s parliaments; by comparison, England’s second wealthiest city Norwich presented them in three. Smaller and more cohesive urban communities seem to have been more likely to seek legislation than were the more diffuse communities of the shires. Sussex secured two acts, though the borough of Lewes possibly promoted both measures: an act of 1487 set up a county gaol in the borough, while an act of 1504 required the county court to alternate between Chichester (its old site) and Lewes.¹⁵⁴ Perhaps inspired by the similar measure passed for the city of Norwich in the previous parliament, in 1497 the worsted weavers of Norfolk secured exemption from the regulations governing the taking of apprentices.¹⁵⁵ One way contemporaries distinguished between acts was by characterizing them as ‘special’, ‘general’, or ‘particular’.¹⁵⁶ Private acts, benefiting named individuals or entities, were ‘special’. Public acts were ‘general’ but did not need to be universal: they could be ‘general in a particularity’—if, for example, they stated that ‘all bishops or all the justices shall do or have such and such a thing’.¹⁵⁷ When individuals, corporations, or professions submitted petitions in their own name—as the pewterers did in 1504—the origins of legislation are evident. Where a measure concerned particular interests, it is possible to guess at the identity of its proponents. It is much harder to establish who might have been behind the most ‘general’ acts that adjusted the way the law worked, addressed social problems, and regulated economic behaviour. One view—held by Francis Bacon—treats such acts as ‘monarchical policy’: problems the crown had identified, upon which it then drafted ¹⁵² ¹⁵³ ¹⁵⁴ ¹⁵⁵ ¹⁵⁶ ¹⁵⁷

London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CA/01/01/001, fo. 10v. Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 134. PROME xv. 343 (RP vi. 388); 19 Hen. VII, c. 24 (the original act is missing). 12 Hen. VII, c. 1. The petition began in the Commons: OA, no. 1. Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 262–4. Reports of Henry VIII, ii. 343.

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legislative remedies.¹⁵⁸ Another view doubts whether much of this legislation really represented royal policy ‘except in the sense of mere acceptance’.¹⁵⁹ There is room for disagreement about the extent of monarchical engagement because format is no guide to legislative initiative. All acts invoked the king’s will in the enacting clause, but this was in his public person and not in his private capacity.¹⁶⁰ The part councillors played in drafting legislation was never referred to. Some bills launched straight into the enactment, without preamble; other bills explained how the king, mindful of the commonweal, having thought over some problem, had now devised a remedy. Yet these bills could have been projecting on to the king a role with which he would identify. Subjects legitimated their proposals by framing them around the government’s concerns: restrictions on the import of merchandise in foreign ships were justified on the grounds that the king needed a viable fleet from which to assemble his navy.¹⁶¹ The piece of social regulation which may perhaps most closely be associated with Henry personally is the act protecting hawking, the king’s favourite pastime: those who imported certain desirable birds were invited to present them to him for a reward.¹⁶² Even when the crown drafted a measure, it could have been prompted by complaints in parliament. The conversion of arable lands to pasture and the resulting depopulation had been raised in several parliaments before the first act addressing the problem passed in 1490.¹⁶³ A complex legislative interaction matched the contemporary expectation (emphasized by Bishop Alcock in his 1485 sermon) of a parliament as a cooperative venture that united the king and his subjects in pursuit of good governance.¹⁶⁴ It is not only the crown’s role which legislative format obscures. As explained above, the labelling of an act on the parliament rolls as ¹⁵⁸ Bacon, Henry VII, esp. 64–9; W. Busch, England under the Tudors, i: King Henry VII, trans. A. M. Todd (London, 1895), 241–80. ¹⁵⁹ G. R. Elton, ‘State Planning in Early-Tudor England’, in Studies, i. 285–93; Chrimes, Henry VII, 184 n. 2 (quoted), 219. ¹⁶⁰ Cf. Watts, Henry VI, 105–6. ¹⁶¹ 1 Hen. VII, c. 8; 4 Hen. VII, c. 10. Cf. R. C. L. Sgroi, ‘Piscatorial Politics Revisited: The Language of Economic Debate and the Evolution of Fishing Policy in Elizabethan England’, Albion, 35 (2003), 1–24. ¹⁶² 11 Hen. VII, c. 17; Gunn, ‘Courtiers’, 25. ¹⁶³ 4 Hen. VII, c. 19; John Rous, Historia Regum Angliae, ed. T. Hearne (2nd edn., Oxford, 1745), 120–1; Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 180–1. Rous’s diatribe, written in the 1480s, anticipated the arguments made in the act: Historia, 111–37. ¹⁶⁴ PROME xv. 90 (RP vi. 267a).

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either a bill or a petition was a distinction without a difference: it only mattered in so far as it usually determined which version of the royal assent was given. The two formats do not allow us to distinguish acts drafted by the crown from acts presented by the king’s subjects, for the king’s subjects sometimes presented proposals drafted as bills, while the crown sometimes presented proposals drafted as petitions. In 1495 the act enabling the removing of fishing tackles from Southampton harbour—presumably local in origin—took the form of a bill, while the act requiring those who had promised the king money in the benevolence of 1491 to pay up—presumably a crown measure—took the form of a Commons’ petition.¹⁶⁵ In the same parliament an act of resumption for Prince Arthur even took the form of a petition to the Commons.¹⁶⁶ Henry’s final parliament shows how misleading legislative form could be. In 1504 two measures framed as petitions of the Commons, according to the annotations on the engrossed texts, were actually introduced in the Lords.¹⁶⁷ The first act required company ordinances to be presented to the crown for scrutiny by its senior ministers and law officers.¹⁶⁸ This act embodied the complaints made in the parliament of 1487 against racketeering by London companies. There may, however, have been a more immediate context: the city’s response to the king’s grant of a new charter to its tailors in January 1503. London’s reaction, led by the tailors’ rivals the drapers, strayed into defiance of the royal will: the city repeatedly challenged the grant, attempted to pressurize the tailors into forgoing it, and possibly encouraged popular protests.¹⁶⁹ This vigorous opposition was probably counter-productive in that it impelled the crown to uphold royal authority, for the act referred three times to the king’s prerogative. The second act also concerned London: it addressed a duty called scavage, which the city had levied on merchandise sold not only by ‘strangers’ but also by ‘foreigners’ (Englishmen who were not citizens of London).¹⁷⁰ In 1500 Exeter had challenged this practice, and in 1503 the royal council ruled in its favour.¹⁷¹ London was not inclined to accept this decision: as the ¹⁶⁵ 11 Hen. VII, cc. 5, 10. ¹⁶⁶ PROME xvi. 155–61 (RP vi. 465–8). ¹⁶⁷ OA, 19 Hen. VII, nos. 7, 36. ¹⁶⁸ 19 Hen. VII, c. 7. ¹⁶⁹ Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 130–5; M. Davies and A. Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company (Leeds, 2004), 74–7, 82–7. ¹⁷⁰ 19 Hen. VII, c. 8. ¹⁷¹ John Hooker, The Description of the Citie of Excester, ed. W. J. Harte, J. W. Schopp, and H. Tapley-Soper, 3 vols., Devon and Cornwall Record Soc., os (1919–47), iii. 606–14; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 71–95.

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parliament of 1504 got under way, a civic commission was busy looking for further proofs.¹⁷² Into this parliament, however, Exeter introduced a proposal on the subject.¹⁷³ This could have been the basis of the measure that passed, but the city’s two MPs were more likely to have introduced their measure in the Commons. As passed, the new act stipulated that scavage should not be levied on any of the king’s subjects.¹⁷⁴ Therefore in both cases the crown may well have drafted legislation framed as a petition from the Commons.¹⁷⁵ Private suitors had for a long time appropriated the Commons’ petition for their own proposals; now the crown too was borrowing it.¹⁷⁶ Commons’ petitions were thus not necessarily measures which the Commons as a house had formulated. The Commons may have drawn up some measures collectively: in 1485 they engaged in the sort of discussion—on the subject of ‘fals money’—which might in other circumstances have generated a petition.¹⁷⁷ Another way in which such legislation could have been generated was by appropriating a private proposal in discussion. In 1489 two London parishes petitioned against the pollution caused by the slaughtering of animals in the Shambles, one of the city’s principal butchers’ markets. The parishes therefore asked that butchers be prohibited from slaughtering animals within London’s walls. A clause added to the petition during its passage prohibited the slaughter of animals within the walls of any town (except Berwick and Carlisle).¹⁷⁸ Similarly, an act in 1497 removing benefit of clergy from laymen guilty of petty treason had originated in an attempt to prevent an individual yeoman who had murdered his master from claiming it.¹⁷⁹ MPs and peers—like the crown—were prepared to seize upon a good idea when one came before them. Some of these ideas were of national rather than of purely parochial or professional interest. In 1486 parliament apparently debated a measure to make ¹⁷² London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CA/01/01/001, fo. 147v. ¹⁷³ Devon RO, ECA, receivers’ account rolls, 19–20 Hen. VII, m. 4. ¹⁷⁴ London secured a proviso, allowing it to seek the council’s approval for the reimposition of the duty, but this was denied: Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 134, 140. ¹⁷⁵ Another possibility is that these petitions were presented in the Commons, but were then revised so extensively in the Lords that they were treated as new measures, as happened with the heresy act of 1534: S. E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970), 187 n. 2. ¹⁷⁶ D. Rayner, ‘The Forms and Machinery of the ‘‘Commune Petition’’ in the Fourteenth Century’, EHR 56 (1941), 198–233, 549–70; Myers, ‘Parliamentary Petitions’, 24–33. ¹⁷⁷ Parliamentary Texts, 187. ¹⁷⁸ 4 Hen. VII, c. 3. ¹⁷⁹ 12 Hen. VII, c. 7.

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the telling of prophecies a felony, presumably on the grounds of its subversive potential.¹⁸⁰ At that point the king, who regarded his victory at Bosworth in a prophetic light, was unlikely to be sympathetic; the next time parliament met, Chancellor Morton referred to the problem, but still no legislation was forthcoming.¹⁸¹ Another live issue during Henry’s reign was sanctuary. Chief Justice Huse denounced special sanctuaries as ‘more like a den of thieves’ than ‘a place of protection’.¹⁸² There was a widespread belief that hardened criminals abused the special sanctuaries (those places where protection was not limited to forty days). Once it had established that royal grant alone authorized a special sanctuary, the crown took a more sanguine view; it negotiated with the papacy to ensure that traitors were denied sanctuary rights and to rectify abuses by debtors and recidivists.¹⁸³ In 1483 Edward IV had rejected a Commons’ petition which proposed fining the governors of sanctuaries who failed to restrain sanctuary-men who committed felonies and lived off the proceeds.¹⁸⁴ More narrowly, in 1492 Norwich, unwilling to keep watch on a city church where a man had taken sanctuary, turned to parliament for a solution.¹⁸⁵ The bill or petition in 1495 ‘ayenst fayned seyntuaries’ would probably have garnered much support, but could also have faced opposition from churchmen in the Lords.¹⁸⁶ Who could have promoted this and similarly wide-ranging proposals? The ‘poor’ yet ‘true’ and ‘faithful’ commons outside parliament were a more nebulous entity than the ‘wise’, ‘discreet’, or ‘honourable’ Commons within it; nevertheless they provided a rhetorical entry-point for those seeking to promote their possibly partisan, almost certainly sectional interests.¹⁸⁷ A parliamentary petition was presented—probably ¹⁸⁰ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64–5. The crucial word is ‘profyres’, which is probably a misreading by the 17th-century copyist of ‘profyces’. ¹⁸¹ PROME xv. 337 (RP vi. 385a); T. Thornton, ‘The Battle of Sandeford: Henry Tudor’s Understanding of the Meaning of Bosworth Field’, Historical Research, 78 (2005), 436–42; id., Prophecy, Politics and the People in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2006), 14–18. ¹⁸² Caryll, Reports, i. 286. ¹⁸³ I. D. Thornley, ‘The Destruction of Sanctuary’, in R. W. Seton-Watson (ed.), Tudor Studies (London, 1924), 182–207; P. I. Kaufman, ‘Henry VII and Sanctuary’, Church History, 53 (1984), 465–76; D. M. Sartain, ‘Sanctuary in the Reign of Henry VII, with Particular Reference to Beverley and Durham’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge University, 2002). ¹⁸⁴ PRO, C49/40/10. ¹⁸⁵ See the appendix to this chapter. ¹⁸⁶ PROME xvi. 279 (1495 plt., app.). ¹⁸⁷ 3 Hen. VII, cc. 9, 11; 19 Hen. VII, c. 19.

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in 1512—in the name of ‘[the poor,] blynd, lame, sore, miserable, and impotent people of this [land that may nott labour]’, who were dying daily in the streets of starvation and the cold because hospitals and almshouses were failing in their duty to succour them.¹⁸⁸ Sincere though the complaint may have been, the real petitioners cannot have been England’s homeless, but someone ‘choreographing the meaning of public space to support a claim that the excluded were speaking’.¹⁸⁹ The thrust of the measure was a pragmatic and potentially self-interested idea of allowing founders or their descendants and, failing that, the king to resume endowments in order to reform failing institutions.¹⁹⁰ Bills and petitions were thus pieces of ventriloquy, purporting to speak for a much broader swath of interests than they did, or in fact could. Simply to unmask the private interest cloaked in public rhetoric, however, is to overlook an important dimension of the legislative system. There has survived a remarkable petition to the king in parliament, possibly presented in 1472–5.¹⁹¹ Its preamble contrasted England’s past glories with its present woes, and then proposed nine articles by which the realm might be restored to its former condition. The most sweeping article called for the appointment of a commission of learned men to codify the laws of the land; the thrust of the articles was a critique of common lawyers, in particular their cavalier attitude to the liberties of the Church. It has fairly been said that this petition ‘smacks of a private agenda’.¹⁹² While individual articles voiced grievances commonly felt by the clergy, the petition reads too idiosyncratically to have been the product of a formally constituted assembly such as convocation. Had the petition originated with such an identifiable interest, its authorship would probably have been stated in the preamble. Our petitioner sounds more like a clergyman who felt ill-used by the common law and its practitioners: a group of professionals he did not trust, working in a language he could not understand, and basing their decisions on rules he could not follow. If so, the petitioner took ¹⁸⁸ PRO, E175/11/65; BL, Add. MS 24459, pp. 157–60 (transcript); LJ i. 14b, 15a. Re-dating the petition to the 1530s seems unconvincing: Elton, Reform and Renewal, 79–80. ¹⁸⁹ S. Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, 1994), 80 n. 41. ¹⁹⁰ Cf. a Lollard petition (probably of 1410) and a statute of 1414: Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), 135–7; 2 Hen. V, st. 1, c. 1. ¹⁹¹ PROME xiv. 341–2 (1472–5 plt., app., no. 2). ¹⁹² Morgan, ‘Political After-Life’, 872.

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care to interpret his difficulty as symptomatic of England’s lawlessness and martial ignominy. Fanciful though its proposals are, this petition therefore suggests how private grievance might prompt public legislation. Interested parties mobilized a universalizing rhetoric in pursuit of their own peculiar ends because the representative character of parliament encouraged them to relate their particular concerns to more general ones.

Conclusion The importance of parliamentary bills and petitions lay as much in their public character as it did in their private origins. A wide range of people turned to parliament because it had proven to be an authoritative, sophisticated, and expansive law-making body. Many aspects of procedure were becoming settled: multiple readings were common; the making of amendments followed established patterns; and the relationship between the two houses was clear. There were also informal dimensions to the legislative process, entailing the canvassing of support and the purchasing of favours, which affected the chance of a proposal succeeding. Thanks to its extensive legislative capability, parliament thus engaged many sections of society: the governing class used private acts to manage its affairs; companies and corporations advanced their members’ interests; and local communities found ways of resolving problems. The business of reforming the commonweal was not solely the crown’s concern: others brought these matters to the attention of parliament, where complaints were aired, proposals could be heard, and remedies might be devised.

APPENDIX: NORWICH’S SANCTUARY PROBLEM According to a retrospective entry in the city’s records, John Estgate took sanctuary in the church of SS Simon and Jude on 22 July 1491, ‘to the great detriment of this city on account of having to keep watch in that part’.¹⁹³ No action is recorded as having been taken in the first session of the parliament from 17 October to 4 November 1491. On 19 January 1492 the city agreed that its ¹⁹³ Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16c/1, fo. 42v.

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MPs Philip Curson and John Pynchamour should be reimbursed for expenses incurred in expediting an act of parliament on the subject.¹⁹⁴ The second session of the parliament convened on 26 January and ended on 5 March. On 29 March Curson, speaking also for Pynchamour, reported to the city’s assembly. He asked for the wages due for their service in parliament, ‘and also for diverse costs and expenses by them sustained among lawyers in formally drawing up a certain bill and putting it into the said parliament, for a certain act in the said parliament then to be made for the removal of John Estgate’. Some days later, Pynchamour, ‘by authority of which act of the aforesaid parliament, upon the aforesaid bill put in by the same citizens in the said parliament by reason of the things above said and by the common house of the same parliament seen, read, and affirmed’, went to the church to ask Estgate whether he was willing to leave the sanctuary.¹⁹⁵ When Estgate replied that he was not, Pynchamour and his posse ‘gently’ removed him from the church and took him to the guildhall, where he was placed in safe custody. In June 1493 the MPs received a special payment for their costs of £5 or more if funds were available.¹⁹⁶ The city’s account is problematic. The church of SS Simon and Jude was not a special but a common sanctuary, where the privilege availed for only forty days, which had long passed in Estgate’s case by January 1492. Thereafter someone claiming sanctuary, though he could not be forcibly removed, should have been denied sustenance and thus forced to submit; to supply him with food after this date was to become an accessory.¹⁹⁷ An incident in 1464 suggests one possible explanation for the city’s actions.¹⁹⁸ That year a homicide, having taken sanctuary in one of the city’s churches, had refused to abjure the realm when his forty days had elapsed; the city government therefore had it proclaimed that no one should give him food. This proclamation had provoked a protest from the city’s clergy, who had claimed that it infringed their right to give alms. Underlying this protest was the fact that canon law did not recognize the forty-day rule.¹⁹⁹ Perhaps Norwich resorted to parliament in 1492 in order to override such a challenge. It is unclear from the city’s records whether its measure had actually passed. On the one hand, the account referred to an ‘act of parliament’; on the other hand, the ‘bill’ was only described as having received the assent of the Commons. Without the

¹⁹⁴ Ibid., fo. 40r. ¹⁹⁵ Ibid., fo. 42v. A fair copy is case 16d/2, fo. 26v. ¹⁹⁶ Norfolk RO, NCR, case 16c/1, fo. 50r. ¹⁹⁷ The Records of the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey, 2 vols. (Norwich and London, 1906–10), i. 140–1, 212–13, 215, 218, 220–2, ii. 52. ¹⁹⁸ Ibid. ii. 96. ¹⁹⁹ R. H. Helmholz, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, i: The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1640s (Oxford, 2004), 174, 497–8.

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assents of the Lords and the king, this measure would not have been enacted, and would thus have been unable to authorize the city to remove Estgate from sanctuary. There is no record of Norwich’s ‘act’ on the parliament roll, although this does not entirely preclude the possibility that the city’s proposal had passed.

6 The Wider Realm As a political occasion at Westminster, parliament primarily concerned the elite. Membership of parliament was socially restricted, and access as a petitioner was limited by considerations of status, wealth, and location. Nevertheless decisions taken in parliament placed demands upon the lives of those who had never attended a session or even taken part in an election: how ordinary people responded is the concern of this chapter. It begins by looking at the ways in which people—elite and non-elite—could find out about what had been agreed in parliament. Next the chapter considers the degree to which ordinary people were aware of, experienced, and chose to make use of national legislation. It then addresses taxation as a central means by which parliament impinged upon the lives of ordinary people, and tackles the protests this sometimes provoked.

6 . 1 R E P O RT I N G PA R L I A M E N T The impact of parliament depended on popular awareness of its decisions. Proclamations were the principal means through which the crown sought to publicize the acts passed.¹ At the end of each parliament, sheriffs were required by writ to proclaim the statutes in all the cities and towns within their jurisdiction, at county courts, at markets and fairs, and at other occasions when people gathered in large numbers.² The earliest printed edition of the statutes of 1504 was apparently taken ¹ J. A. Doig, ‘Political Propaganda and Royal Proclamations in Late Medieval England’, Historical Research, 71 (1998), 253–80; R. W. Heinze, The Proclamations of the Tudor Kings (Cambridge, 1976), 1–29. ² The writ was supposed to be returned with an endorsement recording where it had been proclaimed, but there are no examples from Henry’s reign in PRO, C255/3/11.

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from the text prepared for the sheriff of Essex.³ Independent jurisdictions were also sent copies: Romney, a member of the Cinque Ports, received ‘the great proclamation of the acts of parliament’ of 1495 from Dover Castle.⁴ Winchester spent 4s. on declaiming this proclamation ‘for knowledge of the same acts’, while Dover would pin up the acts of 1510 at the market cross.⁵ In 1504 London copied the text of the new coinage statute from the writ the city’s sheriffs had received into the minutes of its common council proceedings.⁶ A few statutes included a requirement that they be proclaimed.⁷ The crown also issued supplementary proclamations to publicize individual acts or to order the enforcement, alteration, or suspension of existing ones.⁸ Following mounting confusion about which coins were legal tender, in 1504 parliament attempted to define comprehensively what English and foreign coins were current and to remove clipped coins from circulation.⁹ This statute introduced newly designed groats and half-groats, which had a circle engraved around the outside that had to be intact for the coin to be considered unclipped. A special proclamation issued in July sought to explain this complex measure.¹⁰ For the second time in Henry’s reign, a proclamation was printed.¹¹ A single sheet (or broadside) printed by William Faques, this proclamation bore woodcuts depicting the obverse and reverse sides of an old groat, a new groat, and a Flemish double plack.¹² Rye paid a man for ‘crying’ the proclamation ‘for goyng off money’, but the printed text was probably also intended to be pinned up for consultation.¹³ Proclamations could be important points of reference for local government: Maldon bought two copies of this text.¹⁴ MPs played a part in informing their constituencies about the parliaments they had attended. Knights of the shires may have delivered ³ STC 9357, sig. A2r. ⁴ East Kent Archives Centre, NR/FAc 3, fo. 107v. ⁵ Hants. RO, W/E1/41, m. 3; BL, Add. MS 29618, fo. 28r. ⁶ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/010, fos. 309v–311r. The writ was dated 3 April. ⁷ 4 Hen. VII, cc. 8, 9, 12; 7 Hen. VII, cc. 3, 6; 11 Hen. VII, cc. 2, 10, 22. ⁸ TRP i. 11–12, 17–19, 32–4, 55–6, 60–1, 70–4; Heinze, Proclamations, 65–84. ⁹ 19 Hen. VII, c. 5. ¹⁰ P. Grierson, ‘Notes on Early Tudor Coinage’, British Numismatic Journal, 41 (1973), 87–9. ¹¹ The first occasion was the papal bull approving the king’s marriage, printed in 1486 (STC 14096). ¹² STC 7760.4; TRP i. 60–1. Another edition, without the woodcuts, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde: STC 7760.6. ¹³ East Sussex RO, RYE 60/4, fo. 153v. ¹⁴ Essex RO, D/B 3/3/227, m. 5.

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reports in their county courts and borough representatives certainly did so in local meetings; where this was not possible, MPs might appoint someone to report on their behalf.¹⁵ This occasion also provided an opportunity for MPs to request their wages and reimbursement of money spent on the constituency’s behalf. Although Colchester’s MPs delivered their report in 1485 in the form of a journal, MPs seem more commonly to have recounted the acts passed.¹⁶ At the end of the first session of the 1489–90 parliament, the mayor, jurats, and commons of Sandwich assembled ‘for to haue knoulage of the gode expedicion of the . . . burgeis of this laste parlement’, John Archer and Thomas Bulkley: they were told of the progress of the town’s proposals and ‘were shewed by the seid burgeis dyuers actes of parlement’.¹⁷ Bishop’s Lynn’s MPs reported upon each of Henry’s parliaments: on 8 January 1496 John Gryndyll ‘declarid and redde them [the acts] opynly afore all the congregacioun here’.¹⁸ MPs also returned home with copies of acts: on 8 March 1490 Gryndyll presented Lynn with two ‘papyres of the acts of parlement’, which were then locked in the town chest.¹⁹ Letters also circulated news from parliament. Thomas Betanson wrote excitedly to his master Sir Robert Plumpton with the latest tidings from Henry’s first parliament.²⁰ Correspondents might include copies of acts.²¹ Less immediate sources of information about legislation existed in statute books. Statute books were among the most common secular reading material in late medieval England, and demand was booming in the fifteenth century.²² They had developed from the thirteenth century into well-organized works of reference: in fifteenth-century statute books, the acts were ordered chronologically by regnal year and were supplied with a subject index. Although other individuals and corporations possessed copies, lawyers were the principal customers for ¹⁵ HMC, Fourteenth Report, Appendix VIII, 251; J. R. Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies, 1272–1377’, in Davies and Denton (eds.), English Parliament, 81–5. ¹⁶ Parliamentary Texts, 185–9. ¹⁷ East Kent Archives Centre, Sa/AC 2, fo. 2r–v. ¹⁸ King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/4, fo. 308r. ¹⁹ Ibid., fo. 283r. ²⁰ Plumpton Letters and Papers, 63–5. ²¹ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 669; Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 195. ²² D. C. Skemer, ‘Reading the Law: Statute Books and the Private Transmission of Legal Knowledge in Late Medieval England’, in J. A. Bush and A. Wijffels (eds.), Learning the Law: Teaching and the Transmission of Law in England, 1150–1900 (London, 1999), 113–31.

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these volumes.²³ The duchy of Lancaster owned a red-boarded statute book, which Richard Empson commandeered in November 1503, possibly in preparation for the forthcoming parliament.²⁴ Alternatively, institutions might produce their own record of the statutes: in 1486 the Cinque Ports instructed their representatives to bring back copies of all the acts passed in every parliament, which were then to be recorded in Romney’s register.²⁵ How did people use their statute books? Statute books kept lawyers in training, labouring ‘in ynnes of court in Londoun, bi tymes of vacacioun, aboute the reding and declaring of the kingis statutis’.²⁶ Around 1470 London acquired a new statute book bearing the city’s arms in its borders.²⁷ Known now as the Cartae Antiquae, it covered when complete the years 1327 to 1495 inclusive. Acts up to and including those passed in Henry’s second parliament were in law French and those for the remaining three parliaments in English. That the language of choice was French suggests that the volume was intended for the use of the city’s legal counsel. Marginal notes, written in Latin, French, and English, summarized an act or one of its provisions. Annotations alongside trading regulations suggest how these may have influenced the policing of the capital’s economic and commercial life: for example, the fine prescribed for tanners working sheepskins was noted against the 1485–6 statute distinguishing the leather-working crafts.²⁸ New acts concerning the silk trade, usury, money exchange, and drapery were also noticed, as were additional powers granted JPs to inquire into fraudulent inquests, to bail felons, to close down alehouses, and to punish those who played prohibited games. In the last two decades of the fifteenth century two developments affected the nature of such statute books: a change in language (from ²³ J.-Ph. Genet, ‘Droit et histoire en Angleterre: la pr´ehistoire de la ‘‘r´evolution historique’’ ’, Annales de Bretagne, 87 (1980), 355–66. ²⁴ PRO, DL5/3, fo. 218v. ²⁵ East Kent Archives Centre, CP/B1, fo. 91v; East Sussex RO, RYE 60/3, fo. 75v; RYE 60/4, fo. 33v. Romney’s register has not survived; possibly only the titles of statutes would have been entered. ²⁶ Reginald Pecock, Book of Faith, ed. J. L. Morison (Glasgow, 1909), 228. ²⁷ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CS/01/007; K. L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490, 2 vols. (London, 1996), vol. i, plates 481–3, ii. 346; ead., ‘A Late Fifteenth-Century Group of Nova Statuta Manuscripts’, in A. C. de la Mare and B. C. Barker-Benfield (eds.), Manuscripts at Oxford (Oxford, 1980), 102–5. ²⁸ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CS/01/007, fo. 282r (1 Hen. VII, c. 5).

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law French to English) and of medium (from manuscript to print).²⁹ Over the fifteenth century, English became the language of legislation, reflecting the gradual growth in the use of the vernacular in official contexts.³⁰ The parliament rolls appear to have entered bills and petitions in the language in which they were presented; by Henry’s reign, all the enrolled acts were in English. For most of the century, however, acts not already in law French had been translated for entry on to the statute roll, and could then be retranslated if required: Bridport labelled its copy of an act of 1430 (originally in English) ‘the statut out of Frensshe drawe in to Englysshe’.³¹ How long this practice continued is not known: the latest extant statute roll, covering the years 1461 to 1468, was in French.³² In 1485 it was still common for statute books such as the Cartae Antiquae to be in French; the exchequer’s statute book entered acts in French up to 1485 and in English thereafter.³³ The first printed statute book—William de Machlinia’s edition of the acts of 1484—was in law French; subsequent printed editions—beginning with William Caxton’s edition of the acts of Henry’s first three parliaments (probably printed in 1491)—were in English.³⁴ Manuscript texts in French for Henry’s first two parliaments circulated, but apparently ceased to be available thereafter (except as abridgements).³⁵ In 1519 John Rastell would attribute this change to Henry VII, who ‘ordeynyd & causyd that all the statutys & ordynauncis whych were made for the commyn welth of thys realme in hys days shuld be endytyd & wryttyn in the vulgare englysh tong, & to be publyshyd, declaryd, and ymprintyd, so that then vniuersally the people of the realme myght sone haue the knolege of the seyd statutes & ordynauncys’.³⁶ Commercial imperatives may have been more important in promoting the switch than royal initiative. Royal involvement in what was originally a private venture, however, grew over the course of the reign.³⁷ ²⁹ The rest of this section is based on Elton, ‘Sessional Printing of Statutes’, 92–109; and Pantzer, ‘Printing the English Statutes’, 69–114. ³⁰ W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Use of English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England’, Speculum, 78 (2003), 750–87. ³¹ Dorset History Centre, DC/BTB: H1, pp. 8–9; PROME x. 403–4 (RP iv. 349); 8 Hen. VI, c. 5 (SR ii. 241–2). ³² PRO, C74/8, printed in SR ii. 380–430. ³³ PRO, E164/11; SR ii. 499 n. ³⁴ STC 9347, 9348. ³⁵ SR ii. 499–523. ³⁶ STC 9515.5, proem (punctuation modernized). ³⁷ Henry’s use of printing is discussed in P. Neville-Sington, ‘Press, Politics and Religion’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, iii: 1400–1557, ed. L. Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), 577–80.

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From the parliament of 1491–2, statute books printed the public acts in the same order as on the parliament rolls, which required the greater involvement of the chancery clerks.³⁸ In his 1504 edition William Faques described himself as ‘the kyng [sic] Prynter’; in the first years of Henry VIII’s reign the royal printer (now Richard Pynson) would establish his exclusive right to print the statutes.³⁹ From the parliament of 1491–2 onwards, separate editions for each parliament were issued; printing the statutes of each parliament at its conclusion, however, only became established practice in Henry VIII’s reign.⁴⁰ In 1507 and 1508 the statutes of Henry’s seven parliaments were printed in omnibus editions.⁴¹ Printing made statutes cheaper and more widely available: a manuscript copy of the acts of 1489–90, purchased at the parliament, cost 18d.; a bulk-order for a small thick statutory abridgement printed in 1503 valued each volume at around a shilling.⁴² The final text to be entered in the Cartae Antiquae —the statutes of 1495—was probably copied from the sessional print.⁴³ The printed proclamation of 1504 also pointed towards a future in which the printing of individual acts and proclamations would become a principal means of bringing them to public attention: in 1509 ‘the tenour’ of Henry VII’s final general pardon with his son’s amplification ‘was put In prynt that every man mygth thereof have knowlage’.⁴⁴

6 . 2 T H E R E C E P T I O N O F L E G I S L AT I O N The success of legislation depended upon engaging the energies and abilities of ordinary people, above all as local officers and as jurors. ³⁸ Caxton’s edition of the statutes of 1485–90 (STC 9348) agreed with the order on the parliament rolls in only the third session of the 1489–90 parliament. ³⁹ STC 9357, sig. C8r. ⁴⁰ The first printings were: for the 1491–2 parliament, in (?) 1496 (STC 9351a.7); for 1495, in 1496 (9354); for 1497, in (?) 1501 (9355.5); and for 1504, in (?) 1504 (9357). ⁴¹ STC 9351, 9351a. ⁴² BL, Add. MS 29617, fo. 47v; STC 9515; H. R. Plomer, ‘Two Lawsuits of Richard Pynson’, Library, ns 10 (1909), 131–3. ⁴³ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CS/01/007, fos. 304r–325r; STC 9354. The statutes of 1489–90 were possibly copied from Caxton’s volume (STC 9348); the statutes of 1491–2 may have derived from the parliament roll. ⁴⁴ Great Chronicle, 337; STC 7761.3, 7761.7, 7762, 7762.3; TRP i. 79–83.

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Ordinary people acting as jurors presented statutory offences.⁴⁵ Their pronouncements were authoritative: ‘a presentment in a leet shall be presumed as true as the gospel’, Chief Justice Frowyk affirmed.⁴⁶ The charge given to juries at quarter sessions and in other local courts required them to present a wide range of statutory offences.⁴⁷ Nevertheless jurors chose to identify an offender, to categorize the offence, and to define what rule had been broken. For example, around 1507 a Canterbury jury presented a shoemaker as a common disturber of the peace as defined in a statute of 1361.⁴⁸ Offences were, admittedly, seldom described—as a Nottingham jury did in 1509—as ‘conterary to the acte of parlament in that be half mad’; usually, they were described as contra formam statuti.⁴⁹ This vague formula encompassed non-parliamentary legislation, including borough ordinances, manorial decrees, and even craft rules.⁵⁰ A manor court within the honor of Clitheroe (Lancashire) presented a widow in 1508 for keeping a fire in her cottage ‘contrary to the Statute’, but no act of parliament appears to have prohibited this.⁵¹ Communities also put their own interpretation on parliamentary legislation: juries presenting those who received beggars ‘contrary to the statute’ were possibly applying a somewhat reductive reading of the statute of Winchester (1285).⁵² Statute law assisted when local officers proved negligent: at the Durham quarter sessions in October 1511, the jurors who presented four bailiffs for failing to remove vagabonds from their townships were possibly thinking of a statute of 1504.⁵³ Other presentments voiced only a hazy notion of an action as prohibited: in presenting men for erecting bowling alleys within ⁴⁵ P. R. Cavill, ‘The Problem of Labour and the Parliament of 1495’, in The Fifteenth Century, v: Of Mice and Men: Image, Belief and Regulation in Late Medieval England, ed. L. Clark (Woodbridge, 2005), 143–4. ⁴⁶ Caryll, Reports, ii. 461. ⁴⁷ One charge was printed in The Boke of Iustices of Peas (1505?), sigs. A5–C1v. It had probably been drawn up 60 years earlier, but now included two new statutes: Putnam, Early Treatises, 52–7. ⁴⁸ Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CC/JQ 306 i, citing 34 Edw. III, c. 1. ⁴⁹ Notts. Archives, CA/14d/1. ⁵⁰ e.g. Beverley Town Documents, ed. A. F. Leach, Selden Soc., 14 (1900), 59, 81, 128–9. ⁵¹ The Court Rolls of the Honor of Clitheroe, in the County of Lancaster, ed. W. Farrer, 3 vols. (Manchester, Burnley, and Edinburgh, 1897–1913), i. 30. ⁵² 13 Edw. I, st. 2, c. 4; TRP i. 34; Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 152. ⁵³ Durham Quarter Sessions Rolls, 1471–1625, ed. C. M. Fraser, Surtees Soc., 199 (1991), 71; 19 Hen. VII, c. 12.

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Clitheroe, one jury invoked the steward’s mandate, another invoked a statute, and a third cited no authority.⁵⁴ Within a community a regulatory system thus ‘hybridized’ statute law, local ordinance, and peculiar custom.⁵⁵ Ordinances promulgated in manors and boroughs addressed a gamut of social, economic, and moral problems, many of which were also the subject of parliamentary legislation. Their enactment, usually in the local court, echoed the legislative phraseology of parliament.⁵⁶ In 1495 new legislation restricted gaming by rank, with bowls, football, and tennis—already prohibited by many boroughs—now included. Ordinances about gaming sometimes acknowledged the statutory context, but did not feel obliged to follow the new law in every point.⁵⁷ Moreover, action did not depend on instruction from above: the concern felt in Northallerton (Yorkshire) about gaming seems to have anticipated national regulation.⁵⁸ At the same time, statutes could prompt communities to develop new solutions. By placing the responsibility for supporting the deserving poor somewhat more firmly on the community, Henry’s vagrancy legislation may have encouraged cities to begin to license begging.⁵⁹ National legislation thus strengthened communities’ own efforts to tackle problems and spurred them on to tighten up their own regulations. In 1466 Worcester had turned into a by-law a royal ordinance against the wearing of liveries and the receiving of badges contrary to statute law; in 1496 the city confirmed this prohibition, but adopted it as its own, dropping the royal prefix.⁶⁰ In 1490 High Wycombe decreed penalties of disenfranchisement, fine, and imprisonment upon inhabitants who wore any livery ‘contrare to the statute of the lande’.⁶¹ In March 1503 York ordered that ‘no fraunchesed person were no connisaunce or leverey of any lord or gentilman contrary unto the ⁵⁴ Court Rolls of Clitheroe, i. 246, ii. 17, 31. The most recent prohibition was 19 Hen. VII, c. 12. ⁵⁵ G. Seabourne, Royal Regulation of Loans and Sales in Medieval England: ‘Monkish Superstition and Civil Tyranny’ (Woodbridge, 2003), 81. ⁵⁶ e.g. The Royal Charters of the City of Carlisle, ed. R. S. Ferguson, Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Soc., es 10 (1894), 116–17. ⁵⁷ Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 153. ⁵⁸ C. M. Newman, Late Medieval Northallerton: A Small Market Town and its Hinterland, c.1470–1540 (Stamford, 1999), 126–8. ⁵⁹ Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 152–3. ⁶⁰ English Gilds, 388–9; Green, History and Antiquities of Worcester, vol. ii, pp. lv–lvi. ⁶¹ The First Ledger Book of High Wycombe, ed. R. W. Greaves, Bucks. Record Soc., 11 (1947), 50–1.

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statutez therappon provided.’⁶² Shortly after the passing of a new act the following year, Gloucester ordered that no man should be retained because of the ‘dyvers myscheffes and greate ennormytyes that in this towne before this tyme hath bene usyd by ret[e]yneres’.⁶³ Rarely was the relationship between national and local regulation as direct as in London in March 1488, when a proclamation targeted the ‘fowle and horrible vice of vsurie and fals chevisaunce’.⁶⁴ A statute enacted in winter 1487, observing that this vice was prevalent in towns, had provided a conciliar remedy.⁶⁵ London’s proclamation noted the great harm done to the city by its reputation, and attempted to pre-empt further criticism by promising immediate redress, as the city had provided in the past.⁶⁶ Ordinances were promulgated by ruling elites, but they could also come about through grass-roots petitioning.⁶⁷ One of Bridgnorth’s new ordinances in 1500, passed in answer to a petition from the town’s tanners, ordered that no butcher convey untreated animal hides out of the town, but that hides be instead sold to the tanners. The tanners had begun their petition by reminding the assembled bailiffs and burgesses howe that in tymes passed ther hath be made dyuers statutes and actis by thauctoritie of the highte courte of parlament for the true and feithefulle occupying of the seide occupacion, and furthir that alle bayliffis or othir hede officers hauyng the rule of cites and boroughis may by the seide auctoritie serche the seide occupacion of tanners within ther ffraunchessis and libertees, as in the seide actis more playnlie dothe appere.⁶⁸

Pressure for the implementation of laws could come from within communities as well as without. What exercised contemporaries was as much the better execution of existing regulations as the making of new ones.⁶⁹ Their sense of what was recent legislation may surprise: the throwaway formula contra formam statuti nuper editi included acts which were ‘recently made’ more than a hundred years earlier.⁷⁰ The laws which mattered to everyday life were old already: in the terms of the statute books, many were antiqua ⁶² York Civic Records, ii. 181. ⁶³ HMC, Twelfth Report, Appendix IX (London, 1891), 436; 19 Hen. VII, c. 14. ⁶⁴ London Metropolitan Archives, COL/CC/01/01/009, fo. 169r. ⁶⁵ 3 Hen. VII, c. 5. ⁶⁶ G. Seabourne, ‘Controlling Commercial Morality in Late Medieval London: The Usury Trials of 1421’, Journal of Legal History, 19 (1998), 116–42. ⁶⁷ Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 146. ⁶⁸ Shropshire Archives, BB/F/1/1/1, fos. 68v–69v. ⁶⁹ See Chapter 3. ⁷⁰ e.g. PRO, E137/132/3/7, rots. 1–3.

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statuta—royal ordinances promulgated before the accession of Edward III, which were now regarded as parliamentary enactments irrespective of their origins.⁷¹ The statute of Winchester remained the basis for communal policing: although a statute of 1487 supplemented its provisions, when in 1511 a proclamation once more addressed the prevalence of violent crime, it would give pride of place to a translation of the relevant part of the statute of Winchester and then summarize the later act.⁷² Economic life was regulated under existing legislation: particularly important were the assizes of bread and ale and other market regulations, such as the prohibitions on forestalling (buying up goods outside a regulated market) and regrating (buying up goods at market in order to sell them on).⁷³ Standardization of weights and measures was also a long-standing concern: legislation in 1492, 1495, and 1497 harked back to Magna Carta.⁷⁴ In quarter sessions’ records of the later middle ages, these older economic regulations featured extensively, whereas more recent legislation (with the exception in the second half of the fourteenth century of the new labour regulations) appeared only occasionally.⁷⁵ Full records of sessions have not survived for Henry’s reign, but—to judge from the cases forwarded to the king’s bench—the distribution of statutory offences was most likely similar.⁷⁶ Offences of riot and forcible entry probably predominated, but presentments for illegal retaining, for playing prohibited games, and for clipping or counterfeiting the coinage were not uncommon. Economic offences featured less often than could be expected, but this may well be because they were less likely to be forwarded to the king’s bench. A miller of St Neots was presented at the Huntingdonshire quarter sessions in 1506 for infringing the assize of bread (by baking and then selling loaves which had not been weighed) and for regrating (by buying up wheat on market day at 2d . a bushel more than the going rate).⁷⁷ Statutory regulations concerned borough courts too. There were, for instance, occasional presentments of men of insufficient worth ⁷¹ Skemer, ‘Reading the Law’, 116–20. ⁷² 13 Edw. I, st. 2; 3 Hen. VII, c. [2]; TRP i. 85–8. ⁷³ J. Davis, ‘Baking for the Common Good: A Reassessment of the Assize of Bread in Medieval England’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 57 (2004), 465–502; Seabourne, Royal Regulation, 73–159. ⁷⁴ 7 Hen. VII, c. 3; 11 Hen. VII, c. 4; 12 Hen. VII, c. 5. ⁷⁵ Proceedings before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries: Edward III to Richard III, ed. B. H. Putnam (London, 1938), pp. cxx–cxxiv. ⁷⁶ The available sources are described in Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 145 n. 18. ⁷⁷ PRO, KB9/440/8.

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keeping hunting dogs: John Furser, presented by a Lyme Regis jury in 1508 as a common hunter, kept greyhounds and bloodhounds.⁷⁸ Craft regulations were applied frequently in urban centres: those who practised more than one of the leather-working crafts were presented at Shrewsbury and Gloucester and also by a Norfolk quarter sessions jury.⁷⁹ Rarer statutory offences included making tiles of poor quality (Nottingham), selling young salmon (York), and practising joinery as a foreigner (Westminster).⁸⁰ In the manor of Bromsgrove and King’s Norton (Worcestershire) in 1502, two men were presented for the new offence of catching pheasants and partridges ‘against the form of the statute’; on the next occasions when offenders were presented, no authority was cited.⁸¹ Paradoxically, the greater the degree to which national regulation was internalized, the less it may have stimulated awareness of parliament. The reception of new legislation therefore depended on how relevant it appeared to local communities. New labour legislation, enacted in 1495, revised the national wage rates for agricultural labourers and artificers set in 1446.⁸² Although breach of contract suits persisted, the wage rates laid down fifty years earlier seem to have been largely ignored by the 1490s. Attempts to enforce the new regulations provoked two smallscale risings by agricultural workers in east Kent in April 1496 and again that October, and also agitation in London, led by the city’s carpenters. In December the crown probably decided to suspend enforcement, and in the new parliament in the spring the act was repealed.⁸³ While this episode demonstrates the difficulties of implementing national wage rates, it also shows that efforts were being made to enforce them. By contrast, the legislation of 1483 governing what clothes ⁷⁸ Dorset History Centre, DC/LR: B1/2, no. 19. ⁷⁹ Shropshire Archives, 3365/964; PRO, E137/13/2, rot. 3d; KB9/402/11, citing a statute of Hen. VI (2 Hen. VI, c. 7). ⁸⁰ Records of Nottingham, iii. 26–7; York Account Rolls, 176; PRO, KB9/415/30, citing 1 Ric. III, c. 9. ⁸¹ The Court Rolls of the Manor of Bromsgrove and King’s Norton, 1494–1504, ed. A. F. C. Baber, Worcs. Historical Soc., ns 3 (1963), 126, 128, 133; 11 Hen. VII, c. 17. ⁸² 11 Hen. VII, c. 22. ⁸³ Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 144–51. Since this article was written, the names of four other men involved in the April rising have been discovered: William Bredford, a smith from Littlebourne; James Bellynger, a labourer from Wingham; Thomas Thursby, a labourer from Ickham; and Hugh Pykyll, a labourer from Littlebourne. They were convicted of high treason; as no pardons were recorded, they may have been executed. PRO, KB29/127, rot. 15.

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people could wear seems to have been disregarded despite the crown’s concern.⁸⁴ Therefore statutes that addressed a perceived problem (such as gaming or vagrancy) were invoked; other regulations (such as new wage rates) were enforced even when they proved unpopular; other laws (such as sumptuary restrictions) were ignored when they seemed unworkable.⁸⁵ At the same time, it is striking how far the crown could chivvy its subjects into complying with complex reforms. Mounting concern on the part of the king and of his subjects about the ‘smallness’ of the coinage had culminated in the legislation of spring 1504.⁸⁶ In November the royal council noted that clipped coins continued to circulate and that many subjects still traded with them, and therefore reiterated the order that they should be surrendered.⁸⁷ But the order to destroy clipped groats ‘at the begynnyng was a grete Grudge & losse to the comons’, possibly because coins were exchanged for their real rather than their face value.⁸⁸ London’s pewterers lost 8s. when they exchanged 37s. ‘of clippid grotes takene bifore tyme of the proclamacioun of the acte therof made in the parliament’.⁸⁹ In April 1505 the king therefore issued and printed a further proclamation, blaming local officers for the incomplete implementation of the act, clarifying its intentions, providing a period of grace within which coins could be exchanged, and setting up an additional exchange.⁹⁰ Gradually people perceived the benefits of the measure, and, as defective coins were slowly surrendered, so the crown was able to re-coin them and introduce new designs depicting the king in profile.⁹¹ Although Henry continued to criticize the negligence of local officers, the recall and re-coining of much of England’s specie appear to have succeeded.⁹² Even in the far north of the kingdom in Cumberland ‘the kingez proclamacion and statute’ were known about and applied at the quarter sessions.⁹³ Delegating its authority constricted the direct control central ⁸⁴ 11 Hen. VII, c. 3; Select Cases in the Council, 40–3. ⁸⁵ Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 151–5. ⁸⁶ 19 Hen. VII, c. 5; C. E. Challis, The Tudor Coinage (Manchester, 1978), 44–59, 274–87. ⁸⁷ Select Cases in the Council, 42. ⁸⁸ Great Chronicle, 328. ⁸⁹ Guildhall Library, MS 7086/1, fo. 148v. ⁹⁰ STC 7761; TRP i. 70–4; Grierson, ‘Notes on Early Tudor Coinage’, 93–4. ⁹¹ Challis, Tudor Coinage, 60–1, 235. ⁹² The still relevant parts of the 1505 proclamation were reissued in 1508: Coventry Archives, BA/C/1/1/1. ⁹³ PRO, KB9/961/58.

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government possessed, but it also made possible the collaborations on which the later successes of the Tudor state would rest.⁹⁴ Statute law was more than a royal imposition that sometimes by good fortune could resonate locally. Law-making in parliament, it has already been suggested, was participatory.⁹⁵ The development of legislation was also circular: statute law and local regulation were mutually informing—indeed, they cross-fertilized.⁹⁶ Local concern about an issue often emerged before it received attention at the national level; local remedies could provide the inspiration for national measures (for example, in the aftermath of the Black Death).⁹⁷ Parliament provided one of the means through which local issues could be drawn to the attention of the king and his councillors. Even when the council drafted its legislative programme in 1494–5, its judgement about what problems needed addressing and which remedies should be proposed could have been informed by representations from local communities through parliament and other forums (such as county courts).⁹⁸ In 1483 the Commons had asked that existing labour regulations be reissued; in the next parliament of 1484 Nottingham may have raised the problem of retaining; and in 1485 the Commons debated false coining: each a representation that could have fed into subsequent law-making.⁹⁹ Parliamentary authority strengthened the hand of communities in enforcing order, and legislation which imposed responsibilities on officers and courts may have reflected local wishes as well as an increasingly demanding crown. Statute law was not only onerous: it could also be empowering.

6 . 3 TA X C O L L E C T I N G If the ‘pre-eminent instrument of politicization’ was ‘the government and what it is doing to people’, then no aspect of parliament was ⁹⁴ P. Williams, The Tudor Regime (Oxford, 1979), esp. 457–64. ⁹⁵ See Section 5.3. ⁹⁶ This line of argument draws on M. K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998), esp. 127–36. I am grateful to Prof. McIntosh for her comments. ⁹⁷ A. Musson, Medieval Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’ Revolt (Manchester, 2001), 207–9. ⁹⁸ See Section 3.1. ⁹⁹ PROME xiv. 413 (RP vi. 198b); Records of the Borough of Nottingham, ii: 1399–1485, ed. W. H. Stevenson (London and Nottingham, 1883), 396; Parliamentary Texts, 187.

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more apt to heighten political consciousness than taxation.¹⁰⁰ Demands for taxation affected ordinary people. From 1334 communities themselves decided how to spread the burden, so the threshold at which people became liable to contribute varied. Most adult male inhabitants—including smallholders, craftsmen, and wage-labourers—were expected to contribute, even if the sum received (possibly only one or two pence) was small.¹⁰¹ In Colchester in Henry’s reign more people paid parliamentary taxation than levies for the borough’s own needs: 177 inhabitants contributed to the MPs’ wages in 1504, but around 500 to parliamentary taxation.¹⁰² Assessing and collecting taxes also engaged ordinary people, for responsibility was commonly devolved to the smallest units of rural and urban government: the vill and the parish.¹⁰³ In overall charge were the county’s collectors, who were held jointly liable by the exchequer for payment.¹⁰⁴ MPs were supposed to nominate men to be collectors for the shires and for those cities, towns, and boroughs that accounted separately; the grants of 1490 and 1491 provided for the punishment of those MPs who took bribes not to nominate individuals.¹⁰⁵ One sympathetic observer noted the ‘grett labour’ a collector had ‘in gederyng the money, and muche trowbull . . . in rydyng from towne to towne’; when multiple grants were made, men were exempted from serving as collector more than once.¹⁰⁶ The collectors were required to distrain the goods and lands of those who refused to pay their assessment, but this was not always easy.¹⁰⁷ In 1498 an innkeeper called Richard More told the constables of Babraham (Cambridgeshire), who were attempting to collect the grants, ‘I wil paye no taske nethere for lorde nor kynge, and rathere than ye schold distrayne for any taske here I schal threst my dagere thorow bothe your chekys’.¹⁰⁸ If they were prevented from distraining goods, then the officers were supposed to bring a legal action against the ‘rescuer’: 62 per cent of actions in the exchequer during the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII were ¹⁰⁰ T. Harris, ‘Introduction’, in Harris (ed.), The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), 8–9. ¹⁰¹ Dyer, ‘Taxation and Communities’, 168–90. ¹⁰² BL, Stowe MS 829, fos. 2r–11r; Britnell, ‘Tax-Collecting in Colchester’, 482–3. ¹⁰³ Schofield, Taxation, 35–42; Dyer, ‘Taxation and Communities’, 186–7; Britnell, ‘Tax-Collecting in Colchester’, 480–2. ¹⁰⁴ Schofield, Taxation, 29–35, 151–65, 187–97. ¹⁰⁵ PROME xvi. 87–8, 99 (RP vi. 439, 443b); Schofield, Taxation, 58. ¹⁰⁶ PRO, SC1/60/5; Schofield, Taxation, 58. ¹⁰⁷ Ibid. 45–6. ¹⁰⁸ PRO, KB9/417/59.

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brought in the 1490s.¹⁰⁹ This statistic suggests a continuum of low-level resistance to parliamentary taxation in Henry VII’s reign. Taxation and estrangement from the crown were connected. On 11 April 1504 in Norwich in the parish of SS Simon and Jude within the house of one Jeffrey Jowell, cordwainer of the city, Jowell and his two apprentices, Thomas Gooch and William Rippis, were working. According to Gooch, they ‘talked of the ayde that is nowe graunted to the kynges grace at the laste parliament’. Jowell ‘seid he toke thought for mony for the world wasse so harde’, to which Rippis replied that ‘the kyng dothe well to take that he may for he schall nat take it longe’, for ‘he trusted that he schulde see Edmond de la Pole were the croune or he dyed’.¹¹⁰ Rippis naturally denied the allegation. Rather, when Gooch ‘bosted of hyme self that he had done seruyce bothe to lordes and jentell mene’, Rippis retorted that Gooch had ‘but one cote to your backe’ and that was de la Pole’s livery. The dispute, Rippis added, really concerned money Gooch claimed to have won at a game of tennis. Whatever the truth of the matter, the allegation suggests the readiness with which hostility to taxation could prompt expressions of more general disaffection.¹¹¹ Tax demands had the potential to arouse mass discontent, as the Yorkshire rising of 1489 and the West Country rebellion of 1497 amply demonstrated. In early Tudor Yorkshire, tax payments were repeatedly late or incomplete.¹¹² The two fifteenths and tenths granted in 1487 were supposed to be paid in four instalments over two years.¹¹³ One day before the first instalment was due in June 1488, the city of York reported the ‘common opynion’ that the king ‘wol remit and fully pardon us and other of this northparties the same tax’, noting in support of its claim that no levies had yet been made in the surrounding countryside.¹¹⁴ No remission, however, was forthcoming, and on 20 February 1489 commissions to collect the second fifteenth and tenth were issued, with the third instalment due on 24 June. At the same time, the new parliament granted a subsidy of a tenth of the value of ¹⁰⁹ Schofield, Taxation, 46–51. ¹¹⁰ Norfolk RO, NCR, case 17d, 1st book of worsted weavers, fos. 78v–79r. ¹¹¹ A similar case, concerning clerical taxation, is printed in The Tudor Constitution, ed. G. R. Elton (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1982), 61–2. ¹¹² R. W. Hoyle, ‘Resistance and Manipulation in Early Tudor Taxation: Some Evidence from the North’, Archives, 20 (1992–3), 158–76. ¹¹³ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 122. ¹¹⁴ York House Books, ii. 617–19, 625.

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lands and goods.¹¹⁵ The assessment for the tax on goods and for the first instalment of the tax on lands was supposed to take place between 25 March and 19 April, with payment due on 1 May. The counties of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Northumberland were exempted, but Yorkshire was not. Therefore in spring 1489 fiscal pressure increased markedly. Moreover, the terms of the new subsidy may have been unusually regressive. Because there was no threshold of liability for assessments on land, the subsidy possibly reached further down the income-scale. This subsidy was modelled on that granted to Edward IV in 1472: when this earlier grant had been assessed in the wapentake of Claro in the West Riding, 1,001 individuals had contributed—more than twice the number that would contribute to subsidies in 1524 and 1525.¹¹⁶ Popular protest, centred on Ayton in Cleveland, broke out in mid April 1489.¹¹⁷ Initial steps could have involved a boycott of the commissioners, attempts to prevent their meeting, and refusals to make assessments.¹¹⁸ The protestors numbered about 700 when Henry Percy, fourth earl of Northumberland, set out lightly armed to defuse the protest. Northumberland’s murder on 28 April at South Kilvington by Thirsk transformed this protest into a rising. The rebels marched first to Doncaster and then back to York. About 5,000 strong, they took York on 15 May, assisted by sympathizers within the city and aided by its weak defences.¹¹⁹ The royal host had set out on 12 May to confront the rebels, but around 17 May the rebels dispersed without having met the king’s forces. Advancing from the south, the king’s army tracked down rebels; by the time the king entered York on 23 May the rising was over.¹²⁰ At its outset, Henry and many of his subjects suspected a dynastic uprising, a pseudo-popular movement stirred up by unseen hands (as in 1469 and 1470).¹²¹ A proclamation issued on 10 May revived the virulent anti-northern polemic of civil war, while Sir John Egremont, ¹¹⁵ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 122–4. ¹¹⁶ Bodleian Library, Dodsworth MS 50, fos. 39r–79v; Hoyle, ‘Resistance and Manipulation’, 161. ¹¹⁷ The principal account is M. A. Hicks, ‘The Yorkshire Rebellion of 1489 Reconsidered’, Northern History, 22 (1986), 39–62. ¹¹⁸ Cf. Hoyle, ‘Resistance and Manipulation’, 161–3. ¹¹⁹ Apparently, only two citizens were killed defending the city: PRO, KB9/381/8. ¹²⁰ M. Bennett, ‘Henry VII and the Northern Rising of 1489’, EHR 105 (1990), 34–59. ¹²¹ CSP Venetian, i. 181.

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the only figure of note to participate in the rising, had been a retainer of Richard III.¹²² Yet these fears proved unfounded: the rising never grew from a tax revolt into a wider undertaking, while no grievances other than taxation were recorded by contemporaries. The rebels’ proclamation is not as straightforward a text to interpret as it seems.¹²³ A foreign observer suggested that Northumberland’s unintended murder forced on the protestors the mantle of rebels because they had deprived themselves of the man who could negotiate with the king on their behalf.¹²⁴ London’s mercers wrote dismissively of ‘suche symple guydyng of insurreccion by symple parsones made for paying the Kynges mony by parlement graunted, and also for sleying therle of Northumberlande’.¹²⁵ The commission of oyer and terminer, which sat in York in May and June, indicted sixty-six people, predominantly yeomen, husbandmen, craftsmen, and labourers from York, Beverley, and the North Riding.¹²⁶ These indictments represented only a small fraction of those involved: according to an eyewitness, Henry pardoned 1,500 men while in York.¹²⁷ Resistance to parliamentary taxation in the north persisted. In April 1492 the earl of Surrey suppressed a rising at Ackworth near Pontefract. This may well have been a tax protest, as the deadline for payment of the first instalment of the fifteenths and tenths granted in 1491 had just passed.¹²⁸ Although very little is known about this protest, it was serious enough for the earl to execute the leaders under martial law, to record the mayor of Pontefract’s assistance in ‘subduyng of rebelles’, to refer to ‘the field’ of battle, and to record his victory on his tomb.¹²⁹ Repeated appearances of collectors in the exchequer for failing to account fully suggest continuing difficulties in Yorkshire.¹³⁰ The second major act of resistance to parliamentary taxation in Henry VII’s reign, however, took place at the other end of his kingdom. The second peak in taxation occurred in 1497.¹³¹ In October and ¹²² TRP i. 20–1; Horrox, Richard III, 145 n. 30. ¹²³ See the appendix to this chapter. ¹²⁴ CSP Venetian, i. 180–1. ¹²⁵ Acts of the Mercers’ Company, 190. ¹²⁶ Hicks, ‘Yorkshire Rebellion’, 42, 47–8. ¹²⁷ Bennett, ‘Henry VII and the Northern Rising’, 58. ¹²⁸ M. Bush, ‘Tax Reform and Rebellion in Early Tudor England’, History, 76 (1991), 388. ¹²⁹ PRO, DL37/62, rot. 16d; Plumpton Letters and Papers, 105–6; Reign of Henry VII, i. 81. ¹³⁰ Hoyle, ‘Resistance and Manipulation’, 163–4. ¹³¹ The rest of this section is based on Ian Arthurson’s work.

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November 1496 the great council had approved a forced loan worth £40,000; the first letters seeking contributions went out at the beginning of December.¹³² The spring parliament of 1497 granted two fifteenths and tenths and a directly assessed subsidy worth the same amount, in all approximately £120,000. The tax burden peaked in May: collection of the first fifteenth and tenth had begun in mid March, with payment due by 31 May; assessment of the subsidy began on 13 May, with payment of the first half due by 31 May also.¹³³ Thus over six months Englishmen were being asked to pay the equivalent of more than three fifteenths and tenths: as in 1489, the cumulative burden of successive grants provoked problems.¹³⁴ This burden was not shared equally: Cornwall lent a disproportionately large amount in the forced loan, three times the value of its share of a fifteenth and tenth.¹³⁵ Thus within a few months that county was expected to pay the equivalent of five contributions to fifteenths and tenths. Cornwall had also contributed heavily towards the forces being prepared for the expedition to Scotland, even though it was least affected by Scottish aggression.¹³⁶ On 14 May the actions of a tax collector in St Keverne in west Cornwall prompted protests, which spread rapidly across the county. The Cornishmen marched east, drawing supporters from neighbouring counties. Under the leadership of first Michael Joseph an Gof, a blacksmith from St Keverne, Thomas Flamank, a gentleman from Bodmin, and (from Somerset forward) James Tuchet, Lord Audley, the rebels marched on London. The king’s army, preparing to head north, turned back to defeat the rebels at Blackheath outside London on 17 June. The pretender Perkin Warbeck saw an opportunity, however, to capitalize on the simmering regional resentment by uniting his claim with a popular movement. In July James IV expelled Warbeck from Scotland. Unable to find support in Ireland, Warbeck sailed to Cornwall, arriving at Land’s End on 7 September. His supporters butchered the tax collector whose behaviour had triggered the rising in May. Warbeck’s ¹³² Kleineke, ‘Morton’s Fork’, 315–27. ¹³³ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 127–8. ¹³⁴ Bush, ‘Tax Reform’, 388. Heavy demands were also placed on the clergy through the forced loan and grants of £40,000 by the convocation of Canterbury and of a tenth by the convocation of York. ¹³⁵ Kleineke, ‘Morton’s Fork’, 324, 327. ¹³⁶ I. Arthurson, ‘The Rising of 1497: A Revolt of the Peasantry?’, in J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (eds.), People, Politics and Community in the Later Middle Ages (Gloucester, 1987), 3–5.

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intervention came too late; after a failed siege of Exeter, he was captured in October.¹³⁷ In the aftermath, Henry appointed commissions to fine those who had taken part in the risings, as Edward IV had in Kent in 1471.¹³⁸ These commissions punished ‘rebels and transgressors’ not only in Cornwall but also in Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The Cornish peasantry did not feature prominently, although this may be because their wealth was insufficient to sustain such punishments. The commissions did not record why men were punished; indeed they did not even distinguish between involvement in the western rebellion and in Warbeck’s landing.¹³⁹ On 20 June 1497 Henry had promised ‘to pardon not only them that have been actually offenders in the said insurrection and rebellion but also all such that have been councilors, aiders, or privy favorers unto them or any of them, the which will sue and submit themself unto his highness, and desire his grace, making their reasonable fines according to their haviors and demerits’.¹⁴⁰ Those fined were not only ‘actual offenders’, but also those who had colluded—or perhaps those who had merely failed to show sufficient diligence in resisting the rebels: Henry’s complaint against the gentry was apparently ‘slackenes and breache of dutie’.¹⁴¹ Heavy taxation was evidently the catalyst for the rebellion, but it need not have been its only motivation. The crown’s suspension of the privileges of the Cornish stannaries (the tin-working jurisdictions) may well have helped to trigger the initial uprising; Cornwall’s distinctive cultural identity possibly intensified a sense of grievance.¹⁴² Residual Yorkist loyalties and resentment at the restricted nature of Henry’s favour in the region could have fostered acts of disloyalty; among the gentry fined were individuals who could be classified as Lancastrian or as Yorkist. His family’s service to the house of York may have ¹³⁷ Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 160–90. ¹³⁸ The commissions are the subject of Arthurson, ‘Rising of 1497’, 1–18. ¹³⁹ Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Reigns of Richard III and Henry VII, ed. J. Gairdner, 2 vols., Rolls Ser., 24 (1861–3), ii. 335–6. ¹⁴⁰ TRP i. 39–40. ¹⁴¹ Devon RO, ECA, book 51, fo. 328v. ¹⁴² P. Payton, ‘ ‘‘A . . . Concealed Envy against the English’’: A Note on the Aftermath of the 1497 Rebellions in Cornwall’, Cornish Studies, 2nd ser., 1 (1993), 4–13; M. Stoyle, ‘The Dissidence of Despair: Rebellion and Identity in Early Modern Cornwall’, Journal of British Studies, 38 (1999), 435–6; J. P. D. Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the Westcountry (Oxford, 2003), 52–8, 187–8, 191–3.

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mattered less to Audley than did the growing local position of Giles Daubeney and John Cheyne.¹⁴³ Contemporaries believed that the rebels’ aim was not to install the earl of Warwick as king, but to punish Henry’s ‘evil councillors’ who had persuaded him to seek taxes.¹⁴⁴ Excessive taxation was a grievance that could be shared across society: Thomas Flamank and another rebel leader William Antron had represented Bodmin and Helston respectively in the parliament of 1491–2.¹⁴⁵ Yet it was the blacksmith, the commons’ captain, whom everyone remembered; it was Audley’s name that was first overlooked and then interlineated in a description of the rebellion entered in the king’s chamber accounts a few years later.¹⁴⁶ Not only in origin but also in essence, this may well have been a rising of the commons after all. It is worth emphasizing that the greater part of taxation granted to the king was collected and paid into the exchequer promptly.¹⁴⁷ Although taxation provoked mass protests in the north and in the south-west, perhaps surprisingly it did not produce risings in the Home Counties—even in Kent or Essex, where a stronger tradition of popular resistance existed. Parliament was an effective means of authorizing Henry to draw on his subjects’ wealth; the downside was that the sensitivities of particular areas could be overlooked in this national forum. In the writs of summons communities were required to give their MPs ‘full power’ to bind them to what would be agreed.¹⁴⁸ MPs were not entitled to refer proposals to their constituencies during a parliament, and regions could not renegotiate what had been agreed once a parliament was dissolved. The readiness of MPs and peers to grant taxation may have misled the king into underestimating how unpopular its collection could prove on the ground. ¹⁴³ Arthurson, ‘Rising of 1497’, 10–11, 17 n. 41; Arthurson, Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 163–5; D. A. Luckett, ‘Crown Patronage and Political Morality in Early Tudor England: The Case of Giles, Lord Daubeney’, EHR 110 (1995), 582–9; id., ‘Patronage, Violence and Revolt in the Reign of Henry VII’, in R. E. Archer (ed.), Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century (Stroud, 1995), 153–60; M. Mercer, ‘Lancastrian Loyalism in the South-West: The Case of the Beauforts’, Southern History, 19 (1997), 54. ¹⁴⁴ Chronicles of London, 216; Great Chronicle, 278; CSP Venetian, i. 256; Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, 56–7. ¹⁴⁵ HP 1439–1509, i. 14, 337. ¹⁴⁶ PRO, E101/415/3, fo. 247v. ¹⁴⁷ Schofield, Taxation, 168–90. ¹⁴⁸ Edwards, ‘Plena Potestas’, 136–49.

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Conclusion Mass protest was thus positioned at one end of a spectrum of critical engagement with parliament, spanning compliance, co-option, ignorance, neglect, rejection, and resistance. Engagement was not only episodic or confrontational: it was also constant and cooperative. Sources are skewed towards the more critical responses—the failures of parliament to authorize demands on people’s wealth or to regulate some aspect of their lives—while compliance leaves fewer records. The reception of legislation and the assessing and levying of taxation were processes over which ordinary people exercised leverage because they participated in the governance of their communities.¹⁴⁹ Statute law did not fulfil the ambitious terms in which individual acts were framed because, despite its theoretical supremacy, in practice it operated interdependently with other, more local conventions. But the demands it made meant that parliament impinged upon everyday life; ordinary people helped determine its impact, and their responses stimulated further law-making.

APPENDIX: THE REBELS’ PROCLAMATION OF 1489 In a letter of May 1489 to his brother John Paston III, William Paston III included a copy of the proclamation issued by the rebels shortly after the murder of the earl of Northumberland. Addressing the ‘Northe partys of England’, this proclamation summoned ‘euery lorde, knyght, esquyer, gentylman, and yeman’ to array themselves ‘for to geynsstonde suche persons as is abowtward for to dystroy owre suffereyn lorde the Kynge and the Comowns of Engelond for suche vnlawfull poyntys as Seynt Thomas of Cauntyrbery dyed for’.¹⁵⁰ Becket could have been invoked because of his reputed championing of the interests of the poor, or because of his defence of ecclesiastical privileges.¹⁵¹ Such interpretations assume that ‘vnlawfull’ was a hostile interpolation made by William Paston or his source, yet Becket’s martyrdom was universally admired: a more conventional invocation of Becket during the protests in Kent in 1496 paired him with St George.¹⁵² Moreover, the proclamation was issued in the name of a local hobgoblin, ‘Mayster Hobbe Hyrste, Robyn God-felaws ¹⁴⁹ M. Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England’, in Harris (ed.), Politics of the Excluded, 153–4. ¹⁵⁰ Paston Letters and Papers, i. 658–9 (emphasis added). ¹⁵¹ Bush, ‘Tax Reform’, 395; Hicks, ‘Yorkshire Rebellion’, 53–5. ¹⁵² Cavill, ‘Problem of Labour’, 149–50.

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brodyr’.¹⁵³ Protestors adopted such fictive personas not only to conceal identity but also perhaps to associate their grievances with Everyman and to invoke a popular culture of misrule.¹⁵⁴ Elsewhere we find a ‘queen of the fairies’ leading a rising and her ‘servants’ poaching; indeed, the first ‘black act’ against poaching when disguised passed in 1486.¹⁵⁵ Therefore in this text a spritely prankster invoked, only to subvert, the most revered native saint. What mattered was the proclamation’s call to arms and its demotic resonances: the reference to Becket may be a red herring. ¹⁵³ Examples of Printed Folk-Lore concerning the North Riding of Yorkshire, York and the Ainsty, ed. Mrs Gutch (London, 1901), 131–4. ¹⁵⁴ T. Pettitt, ‘ ‘‘Here Comes I, Jack Straw’’: English Folk Drama and Social Revolt’, Folklore, 95 (1984), 3–20; Justice, Writing and Rebellion, 13–38. ¹⁵⁵ Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. R. Flenley (Oxford, 1911), 127; ‘Some Ancient Indictments in the King’s Bench referring to Kent, 1450–1452’, ed. R. Virgoe, in Documents Illustrative of Medieval Kentish Society, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay, Kent Records, 18 (1964), 254–5; 1 Hen. VII, c. 7; Plumpton Letters and Papers, 64; Thompson, Whigs and Hunters, esp. 57–8, 64, 81–2, 142–6.

III PA RLIA MENT UNDER THE ‘NEW MONARCHY ’

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7 The Illusion of Decline In the first half of his reign, Henry summoned six parliaments; in the second half of his reign, he summoned only one—where he made it known that he did not intend to summon another for a long time. How that imbalance should be interpreted is the subject of this chapter. At the time, no one seems to have thought it remarkable: no contemporary comment—either favourable or unfavourable—has been preserved. Yet out of these bare facts the old historiographical tradition fashioned a strong narrative: that Henry would have preferred to rule without parliament, and that as his reign progressed his preference simply became more apparent.¹ The intention here is to lay that lingering contention to rest, partly by suggesting that its roots lie in seventeenth-century concerns. Reasons why the king summoned only one parliament in the last twelve years of his reign are examined in the light of attitudes towards the frequency of parliament. Next the implications for parliament of the crown’s efforts to improve its regular income are considered. Then the possibility that what occurred in England reflected a general diminution in the stature of representative assemblies across Europe at this time is explored.

7 . 1 T H E I N F R E QU E N C Y O F PA R L I A M E N TS It is almost always quoted out of context: ‘his highness is not mynded, for the eas of his subgiectes, withowt grett necessarye and urgent causes, of longe tyme to calle and somone a newe parliament’.² This statement was not a public address to the peers and MPs assembled in 1504: it was a preamble to a bill authorizing the king to annul attainders by letters patent on the grounds that there was insufficient time to reverse ¹ See the Introduction.

² PROME xvi. 332 (RP vi. 526a).

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them during the present parliament. The purpose of this preamble was therefore to justify delegating to the king parliament’s power to undo acts of attainder.³ Moreover, even if this preamble is taken as a statement of royal policy, it did not say that the king would never summon another parliament—only that Henry did not intend to do so for a long time, barring some unexpected and pressing need. As a declaration, this was orthodox. Summonses should be occasional, and only issued when necessary: ‘parlyament schold never be callyd but only at the electyon of our prynce, or els for some other grete urgent cause concernyng the commyn state & pollycy’, for ‘to cal veray oft the commyn conseyl of parlyament . . . were no smal trowbul to the commyns of thys reame’, the humanist Thomas Starkey would write in Henry VIII’s reign.⁴ The preamble indicated that the king’s decision was prompted by concern for his subjects’ ‘eas’. This may have alluded to the costs that they bore in meeting MPs’ wages; more likely, parliament’s association with taxation may have been intended. The preamble echoed Edward IV’s promise in 1467 ‘not to charge my subgettes but in grete and urgent causes’; it anticipated Henry VIII’s declaration in 1529, when he was seeking the cancellation of his obligation to repay loans, ‘that oonles right urgent causes move hym (which shalbe evident to all his said subgiectes) his grace woll never demaunde peny of them duryng his lyff naturall’.⁵ The preamble offered nothing more: it did not inhibit Henry VII from summoning another parliament should the need arise. All that the preamble indicated is that the king did not presently foresee another occasion on which he would need to summon a parliament in order to ask for taxation. Had an expedition to Ireland mooted in 1506 taken place, he might have looked to a parliament for subvention, as had happened the last time a king campaigned in Ireland.⁶ In July 1508 Henry undertook to ratify one grant in his next parliament and also licensed the convening of a parliament in Ireland.⁷ Thus the statement of 1504 simply reflected the realities of Henry’s position at that stage of his reign. The late 1490s had been a watershed.⁸ In 1497 Henry had captured Perkin Warbeck, the greatest threat to his throne; by the turn of the century, he was formally at peace with all ³ See Section 1.3. ⁴ Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T. F. Mayer, Camden Soc., 4th ser., 37 (1989), 70, 112. ⁵ PROME xiii. 257 (RP v. 572a); Miller, ‘London and Parliament’, 145. ⁶ Select Cases in the Council, 46–7; Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 69–70. ⁷ CPR 1494–1509, 576–9. ⁸ Cunningham, Henry VII, 93–108.

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neighbouring kingdoms. Milan’s ambassador correctly predicted that, despite allies’ appeals, the king would never go to war again.⁹ The deaths of Prince Edmund in 1500, Prince Arthur in 1502, and Queen Elizabeth in 1503 heightened the prospect of renewed vulnerability, as did the emergence of a new Yorkist claimant, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk (who fled to the Continent for good in August 1501). A thorn in the king’s side until 1506, Suffolk presented less of a threat than had the earlier claimants: he did not obtain foreign support to the extent Warbeck had; he did not provide an alternative focus of allegiance to the degree that the earl of Warwick (executed, like Warbeck, in 1499) had.¹⁰ Hundreds of thousands of pounds were loaned to the Habsburgs from 1502—in part to dissuade the dynasty from backing Suffolk—but this did not provide acceptable grounds on which to seek parliamentary taxation.¹¹ Indeed, the suggestion that their taxes were being used to buy off foreign princes, Warbeck had hoped, would alienate the king’s subjects.¹² Subjects were grateful for peace: praise came from the unlikely quarter of London’s armourers, who remembered Henry as a king ‘whom his enemys drade bothe fare and nere, with whome all crysten princes as it doth apere ine his actes ware glad to make bondes of pece and forto leve ine quyete, reste, and eace’.¹³ Subjects no longer demanded regular parliaments. Seven times between 1258 and 1377 the Lords or the Commons had requested that parliament be held at least annually; no such requests are known to have been made in the fifteenth century.¹⁴ Although other aspects of Henry’s regime came in for criticism, the infrequency of his parliaments did not. In 1512 Archbishop Warham stated in his parliamentary sermon, ‘no less is it necessary than healthy and useful in kingdoms and empires, at least when serious and pressing business is at hand, that subjects ought to assemble more often in parliaments or in general councils’.¹⁵ Warham was, however, preparing the ground for future sessions, anticipated in order to fund Henry VIII’s ambitious foreign policy. His remark was unlikely to have been intended as a further ⁹ CSP Milanese, i. 340–1; Currin, ‘International Relations’, 23–4, 26–7. ¹⁰ Busch, England under the Tudors, i. 165–98; S. Cunningham, ‘Edmund de la Pole’, in H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison (eds.), The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford, 2004), xliv. 696–8. ¹¹ BL, Add. MS 59899, fo. 1r; Wolffe, Royal Demesne, 223–4; Pugh, ‘Henry VII and the English Nobility’, 95 n. 42. ¹² Reign of Henry VII, i. 151. ¹³ Guildhall Library, MS 12071/1, fo. 10v. ¹⁴ S. L. Waugh, England in the Reign of Edward III (Cambridge, 1991), 201. ¹⁵ LJ i. 10a.

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criticism of Henry VII, for Warham had already censured other aspects of that regime in Henry VIII’s first parliament two years earlier.¹⁶ Good kings were expected to take counsel widely and often: one fifteenth-century version of the Secreta Secretorum said that a king should ‘haue parlement and wys counselle oft tymes’.¹⁷ But counsel did not have to be delivered through parliaments, which were now associated with wage bills and with taxation. Explaining why he had summoned a new parliament in April 1536 less than a fortnight after the dissolution of the Reformation Parliament, Henry VIII promised that this new parliament in marked contrast to its predecessor would be of short duration.¹⁸ Sir Thomas Smith had a character in his ‘Dialogue on the Queen’s Marriage’ (1561) ask, ‘What can a commonwealth desire more than peace, liberty, quietness, little taking of base money, few Parliaments, their coin amended, friendship with their neighbours, war with no man’?¹⁹ Far from being a bastion of liberty, a parliament may in practice have seemed a costly inconvenience: those elected had to suspend what they were doing and communities to pay their wages, while the possibility of redress of grievances was outweighed by the likelihood of taxes being granted. Neither of the men Bishop’s Lynn chose to represent the town in 1489 was prepared to serve, Thomas Thorisby claiming that he would be away and Robert Pillye that he had injured his foot.²⁰ Thus the fourteenth-century statutes stipulating annual parliaments were apparently neglected until the early seventeenth century, when uncertainty about the intentions of the new Stuart kings would revive interest.²¹ Despite its anachronism, the idea of a ‘personal rule’ may hover over the second half of Henry’s reign. In 1629 Charles I would announce his intention not to hold further parliaments until ‘our people shall see more clearly into our intents and actions’; Charles II would repeat his father’s complaint in 1681.²² In doing so, the Stuarts would challenge political conventions, respectively disregarding parliamentary authorization of taxation and the terms of the second ¹⁶ LJ i. 3. ¹⁷ Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, ed. R. Steele, EETS es 74 (1898), 11. ¹⁸ LP x. 344. ¹⁹ J. Strype, The Life of the Learned Sir Thomas Smith (Oxford, 1820), 192. ²⁰ King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/4, fo. 278r–v. ²¹ P. Croft, ‘The Debate on Annual Parliaments in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 16 (1996), 163–74. ²² K. Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven, 1992), 52–62 at 57; G. Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II, 1681–85 (Woodbridge, 2007), 35–43.

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Triennial Act (1664). Henry VII, by contrast, transgressed no political norms: parliaments were occasional meetings rather than permanent fixtures in the governance of the realm. Nevertheless, the king’s decision not to hold more parliaments in the second half of the reign could have been connected with the way the regime developed: the later years witnessed intensified activity, particularly in areas relating to the raising of regular income.²³ Contemporaries explained this in personal terms: Polydore Vergil described Henry as becoming increasingly avaricious after 1502.²⁴ New ministers were also blamed: Londoners contrasted Cardinal Morton (d. 1500) and Sir Reynold Bray (d. 1503)—who were unfairly censured—with their justly infamous successors, Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley.²⁵ Could these changes account for Henry’s failure to summon regular parliaments in the second half of his reign? No longer advised by wise councillors, increasingly rapacious, did Henry choose to rule curially rather than by council and in parliament? Did he eschew parliament as a means of raising revenue, preferring to mulct his subjects? This superficially attractive explanation should be rejected. The king was already acquiring and also cultivating a reputation for wealthiness before either Empson or Dudley had attained prominence in royal service, while the rumour that Henry wrote his accounts himself was circulating by 1498.²⁶ The change was one of degree rather than of direction. Over the whole reign the regime demonstrated a determination to collect what it took to be its dues, including from the demesne, the customs, and the law; in each area, however, it became more demanding and more assertive.²⁷ What altered were the means by which the crown pursued policies and the personnel who set out to implement these policies.²⁸ The council’s functions were increasingly devolved to smaller groups of councillors acting in quasi-legal bodies ²³ The subject of a famous debate, on which I have drawn here: Elton, ‘Rapacity and Remorse’, 45–65; Cooper, ‘Henry VII’s Last Years Reconsidered’, 103–29; Elton, ‘Henry VII: A Restatement’, 66–99. ²⁴ Vergil, Anglica Historia, 126–31. ²⁵ Great Chronicle, 294–5, 325–6. ²⁶ CSP Spanish, i: 1485–1509, ed. G. A. Bergenroth (London, 1862), 163, 177–8, 206–7; CSP Venetian, i. 261; Gunn, ‘Courtiers’, 24. Empson and Dudley’s careers are analysed in M. R. Horowitz, ‘Richard Empson, Minister of Henry VII’, BIHR 55 (1982), 35–49; and D. M. Brodie, ‘Edmund Dudley: Minister of Henry VII’, TRHS 4th ser., 15 (1932), 133–61. ²⁷ See Sections 2.1, 2.2, and 3.3. ²⁸ Condon, ‘Ruling Elites’, 128–34; Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 48–50; L. L. Ford, ‘Conciliar Politics and Administration in the Reign of Henry VII’, Ph.D. thesis (University of St Andrews, 2001), esp. 98–196.

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(by-courts), the council learned in the law and the committee auditing the king’s landed revenues.²⁹ After Bray’s death, the pursuit of the crown’s feudal dues was apportioned between the council learned and new offices—the master of the wards (1503) and the surveyor of the king’s prerogative (1508).³⁰ This greater specialization may well account for contemporary impressions that the king had become increasingly grasping. At the same time, changes to the structure of government could explain the especial animosity some ministers aroused. The redirection of conciliar business away from plenary sessions towards these ‘by-courts’ brought to the fore men of lower status than the king’s ‘born’ counsellors.³¹ Empson behaved ‘more liker the degree of a duke then a batchelor knight’; Dudley ‘becam soo prowde that the best duke In this land was more easy to sue & speke to, then he was’.³² This specialization may also have broken the unity of purpose that had characterized the regime earlier in the reign. The king’s noble councillors probably orchestrated the coup against Empson and Dudley upon Henry’s death.³³ Another factor could have been the king’s declining health, which may have reduced his personal control over government as it had Henry IV’s.³⁴ The king was seriously ill on several occasions in the last years of the reign; yet he recovered, remained mentally alert, and even contemplated campaigning in Ireland in 1506.³⁵ If sometimes a prince’s councillors and servants would go ‘further then hym self wold shold be don’, Dudley nevertheless implicated his master fully in the general policy.³⁶ ²⁹ R. Somerville, ‘Henry VII’s ‘‘Council Learned in the Law’’ ’, EHR 54 (1939), 427–42; Wolffe, Crown Lands, 69–75, 147–63; J. A. Guy, ‘A Conciliar Court of Audit at Work in the Last Months of the Reign of Henry VII’, BIHR 49 (1976), 289–95. ³⁰ Westminster Abbey Muniments, MS 16018; M. M. Condon, ‘Sir Reynold Bray’, in Matthew and Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vii. 407; H. E. Bell, An Introduction to the History and Records of the Court of Wards and Liveries (Cambridge, 1953), 4–8; Richardson, ‘Surveyor of the King’s Prerogative’, 52–75. ³¹ Cf. J. Guy, ‘The Rhetoric of Counsel in Early Modern England’, in Hoak (ed.), Tudor Political Culture, 292–305. ³² Plumpton Letters and Papers, 186; Great Chronicle, 348. ³³ S. J. Gunn, ‘The Accession of Henry VIII’, Historical Research, 64 (1991), 278–88. ³⁴ P. McNiven, ‘The Problem of Henry IV’s Health, 1405–1413’, EHR 100 (1985), 760–5, 770–2. ³⁵ Letters and Papers of Richard III and Henry VII, i. 233; Vergil, Anglica Historia, 142–5; CSP Spanish, i. 408, 428, 438–9, 460; CSP Venetian, i. 330, 342; Select Cases in the Council, 46–7; Ford, ‘Conciliar Politics’, 191–5. ³⁶ Dudley, Tree of Commonwealth, 29, 37; ‘Petition of Dudley’, 85–90.

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7.2 FISCAL FEUDALISM Thus the regime, especially in its later years, pursued ‘exquysite meanes of geytinge of good’.³⁷ What were the implications for parliament of this policy? One familiar interpretation sees the policy as driven by the desire to obtain financial independence and thus reduce the need to hold parliaments: His [Edward IV’s] success in building up his income from crown estates and other royal assets increased his independence in dealing with parliaments. After some initial fumbling, Henry VII proved even more successful in achieving the same result. Both Edward and Henry were thus enabled to call parliaments at rarer intervals in the later years of their respective reigns.³⁸

This line of argument may hold for the early seventeenth century, when the crown—pursuing alternatives to insufficient and grudging parliamentary supply—regarded Henry VII and his ministers as exemplary exploiters of the crown’s prerogative rights.³⁹ In 1610 Robert Cecil threatened the Commons, ‘I do not say the King shall send you an Empson and a Dudley, but this I say, the King must not want.’⁴⁰ In our period, however, this line presents an unnecessary choice. Parliamentary taxation was supposed to be exceptional: it complemented efficient exploitation of the crown’s own resources, served a different purpose, and provided on occasion a greater sum than a ruler could expect to raise from improving regular streams of income.⁴¹ In the fifteenth century the Commons’ challenge was not to demonstrate the value of parliamentary taxation; rather, in the face of the crown’s misuse of the funding it received, it was to uphold the principle that supply should be extraordinary and dedicated to funding war. Edward IV’s promise in 1467 to ‘lyve uppon my nowne’ reaffirmed this principle after he had misappropriated the taxation granted in the previous parliament.⁴² Until the Great Contract was mooted, no ruler asked parliament persistently to meet regular expenditure; conversely, no ruler chose to forgo ³⁷ Fortescue, Governance, 119. ³⁸ E. B. Fryde, ‘Introduction’, in Fryde and Miller (eds.), Historical Studies, ii. 11. ³⁹ J. Cramsie, Kingship and Crown Finance under James VI and I, 1603–1625 (Woodbridge, 2002), 33, 40, 75, 91, 110, 172, 174, 190–1. ⁴⁰ Proceedings in Parliament: 1610, ed. E. R. Foster, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1966), ii. 301. ⁴¹ See Chapter 2. ⁴² Jurkowski, ‘Parliamentary and Prerogative Taxation’, 273–4.

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parliamentary subvention if entitled to it, unless the political price seemed too high.⁴³ Perhaps Henry decided in the second half of his reign that parliamentary taxation was too difficult to obtain or to levy. The second continuator of the Crowland Abbey chronicles believed that Edward IV made this decision after 1475. Having squandered his subjects’ goodwill in an abortive French expedition, Edward had ‘reached a point where he no longer dare exact subsidies’. Instead he ‘flung himself whole-heartedly into plans to reassemble treasure worthy of his regal estate from his own resources and by his own effort’. Edward thus tracked down his feudal dues, exacting ‘heavy fines from those who were found to have intruded into inheritances without following the procedure required by law’, and pursuing ‘similar kinds of snare, more numerous than anyone without special experience could imagine’.⁴⁴ Henry too had grounds for wariness about seeking taxation from parliament, as the last grants in 1497 had provoked rebellion in the south-west.⁴⁵ Yet any reservations to this effect did not deter the king from asking parliament for taxation in 1504, so there seem few grounds for thinking that Henry remained at peace or exploited his feudal rights more fully because he was fearful of asking parliament for taxation. The king’s request to parliament in 1504 differed from earlier ones in that it was grounded not on the defence of the realm but on the crown’s rights as feudal overlord. The Norman Conquest had imposed the theory that all tenure depended ultimately on the crown. As a consequence, kings possessed extensive rights over their tenants-in-chief. On the death of a tenant without heir, the land escheated to the crown. If the heir was of age, then he or she had to pay a relief and then perform homage; until homage was performed, the crown could occupy the land (the right of primer seisin). If the heir was under age, the crown was entitled to his or her wardship and also to choose whom he or she should marry. When the heir came of age, he or she had to apply formally for livery of the land.⁴⁶ Edward IV, Henry VII, and Henry VIII sought to reverse the long decline in these dues and the revenues they provided.⁴⁷ ⁴³ N. Cuddy, ‘The Real, Attempted ‘‘Tudor Revolution in Government’’: Salisbury’s 1610 Great Contract’, in Bernard and Gunn (eds.), Authority and Consent, 249–70. ⁴⁴ Crowland Chronicle Continuations, 136–9, 150–1. ⁴⁵ See Section 6.3. ⁴⁶ J. M. W. Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism, 1215–1540 (Manchester, 1968), 7–20. ⁴⁷ Ibid. 235–301; Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 124–9; Cunningham, Henry VII, 135–7.

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The crown’s feudal rights were set down in the late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century text Prerogativa Regis.⁴⁸ In 1495 Robert Constable and Thomas Frowyk, two of the serjeants-elect, delivered readings on this text at Lincoln’s Inn and at the Inner Temple.⁴⁹ Prerogativa Regis was an unusual choice, as many—including Frowyk—doubted whether it was actually a statute; that, after decades of apparent neglect, it was the subject of two readings in a single year probably reflected the heightened importance to the crown of the feudal dues that the text itemized.⁵⁰ The serjeants-elect offered differing interpretations: Frowyk gave a narrow, traditionalist reading which respected tenants’ rights; Constable read the text more broadly, amplifying the king’s rights of wardship and primer seisin.⁵¹ The relationship between the royal prerogative, common law, and statute law was debated shortly after in Stonor’s case.⁵² This case concerned the king’s right of wardship. The first chapter of Prerogativa Regis stated that the king should have custody of all the lands—whether held directly of the crown or not—of which a man who held in chief by knight service was seised when he died until his heir was of age. This prerogative wardship was in abeyance in 1485; now the crown revived its claim. An obstacle, however, remained: tenants commonly evaded feudal incidents through uses, the practice whereby a tenant enfeoffed others with his land, thus transferring seisin while retaining the interest.⁵³ In 1490 parliament had begun to redress this by plugging a gap in the statute of Marlborough of 1267.⁵⁴ The new statute provided that, when a man who had enfeoffed land held by knight service died intestate, and if he left a minor as his heir, his lord could sue for the land and for wardship, the use notwithstanding.⁵⁵ In 1494 Sir William Stonor had died intestate; his heir John was a minor. William had been seised of two manors held in chief by ⁴⁸ SR i. 226. ⁴⁹ Robert Constable, Prerogativa Regis: Tertia Lectura Roberti Constable de Lyncolnis Inne Anno 11 H. 7, ed. S. E. Thorne (New Haven, 1949); Spelman, Reading on Quo Warranto, 32–5; M. McGlynn, The Royal Prerogative and the Learning of the Inns of Court (Cambridge, 2003), 261–94. ⁵⁰ Ibid. 3–9, 22–72, 261. ⁵¹ Ibid. 73–155. ⁵² The following account is based on Ives, Common Lawyers, 248–57; and on McGlynn, Royal Prerogative, 81–3, 105–11. ⁵³ Bean, Decline of English Feudalism, 20–39, 104–234; Baker, Laws of England, 653–60. ⁵⁴ 52 Hen. III, st. of Marlborough, c. 6; Baker, Laws of England, 661–4. ⁵⁵ 4 Hen. VII, c. 17.

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knight service of the crown; he had also possessed one manor held in socage of the crown and another manor held of another lord by unknown tenure, both of which he had enfeoffed. The crown was entitled to John’s wardship and to the lands held by knight service. But could it also claim the other two manors? If the statute was construed strictly, the crown could not, for the statute only addressed land held by knight service and vested the right of wardship for lands in use in the immediate lord rather than the king. The lawyers who argued for a strict construction did so on the grounds that the statute was in the negative, superseding the common law. Serjeant Butler explained that ‘This is a new wardship given to lords, which did not exist at common law, and, because of this, the King shall not have his prerogative’.⁵⁶ Humphrey Sedgewick distinguished between a statute in the affirmative which enlarged the common law—in which case the prerogative was similarly enlarged—and this instance: ‘where the statute makes a law which did not exist before . . . this does not extend to the king and his prerogative’.⁵⁷ Their view was that the prerogative could therefore only have been extended by a specific provision within the statute. Sedgewick produced a parallel: Suppose that a statute were made that everyone who is over the age of eighty should be in ward. In this case the king would not have his prerogative because he is not guardian at common law but through a statute, which can only be taken according to its words.⁵⁸

Thomas Marowe took a more radical line: ‘the king cannot have any prerogative except in a matter which has always been conceded to him through the prerogative, because a prerogative cannot begin today’.⁵⁹ Marowe thus seems to have argued that the king’s prerogative could not be amplified by statute. The crown’s lawyers disagreed. Their position, as stated by the attorney-general James Hobart, was based on an equitable interpretation of the statute.⁶⁰ The makers of the statute had intended to remove the impediment of enfeoffment which had barred the king, as much as other lords, from his rights; this was also the line Constable had taken in ⁵⁶ Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber, ed. M. Hemmant, 2 vols., Selden Soc., 51, 64 (1933–48), ii. 167. ⁵⁷ YB, 12 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (fos. 19–22 at 19). ⁵⁸ YB, 13 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 12 (fos. 11–12). ⁵⁹ YB, 12 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (at fo. 19). ⁶⁰ Ibid.

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his reading (though Frowyk had disagreed).⁶¹ The equity of the statute encompassed land held in socage as well as by knight service. King’s Serjeant Mordaunt explained that ‘a statute will be construed according to the intention of those who made the statute, not always after the words of the statute’. Those who made the statute could not have intended ‘that the king should be in a worse condition than a common person would be’.⁶² Mordaunt also held that the statute ‘shall be interpreted as widely as possible, for it is in affirmation of the common law’. In order to support this view, Mordaunt proposed that enfeoffment to use was an abuse of the common law, which was inherently void in law.⁶³ Thus legal principles were invoked to contrary effect. Mordaunt held that ‘where a statute is made which restrains the liberty of all people, nevertheless the king will not lie within the statute unless he is named in the statute’.⁶⁴ Frowyk agreed with Mordaunt that ‘the king does not lie within this statute, because he is not named in the statute’, but thus maintained that the statute could not confer any new rights on him.⁶⁵ Mordaunt argued that the intention of the makers of the statute had been to encompass the king, but Justice Vavasour retorted that ‘no mention was made of this at the time of the making of the statute’.⁶⁶ The case also divided the justices. Speaking last, Chief Justice Fyneux argued that the king should have wardship only of land held in chief by knight service which was enfeoffed to use but should not have wardship of socage land.⁶⁷ Fyneux’s opinion seems to have prevailed, for the time being at least.⁶⁸ Stonor’s case illustrates the freshness of debates in the mid 1490s about the crown’s prerogatives. Mordaunt’s suggestion that uses were intrinsically fraudulent anticipated the attack on uses in the 1520s and 1530s; Thomas Audley would develop this idea when he lectured on the 1490 statute in 1526.⁶⁹ But the prerogative was defined strictly as well as generously, and the principle that a statute did not embrace the king unless it named him was made to work against the interests of the crown as well as in its favour.⁷⁰ This case shows also that fiscal feudalism was ⁶¹ ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰

Constable, Prerogativa Regis, 37; McGlynn, Royal Prerogative, 265–6. YB, 12 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (at fo. 20). Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber, ii. 165. YB, 12 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (at fo. 20). ⁶⁵ Ibid. (at fo. 21). Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber, ii. 170. Ibid. ii. 173–5; Caryll, Reports, i. 365–6. ⁶⁸ Ibid. ii. 530–1. Baker, Laws of England, 664–79; McGlynn, Royal Prerogative, 160–204. Caryll, Reports, i. 371.

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a common law phenomenon. The feudal revival extended Fortescue’s ‘newe ffundacion of is crowne’, even if this method of re-endowing the monarchy—unlike the resumption of the royal demesne—would not have met with his approval or with the approval of all common lawyers in Henry’s reign.⁷¹ The boundaries between service to the crown and service to the law were difficult practically to demarcate.⁷² Fiscal feudalism was thus entrenched in the same professional culture that held parliament to be the nation’s high court. The tempo of fiscal feudalism fits the general trend across the reign. The crown’s interest in raising feudal incidents was noted in the 1490s, but seems to have heightened after 1502.⁷³ In Wales the death of Prince Arthur that April prompted a renewed determination to exploit ‘the rights which pertained to the king’s regality and prerogative as prince’.⁷⁴ The king had in his personal possession by 1507 a ‘great booke’ of royal rights called the ‘Jura Regalia’.⁷⁵ The exploitation of these rights depended on identifying tenants-in-chief, so the copying around this time of a volume of assessments on knights’ fees made for the subsidy of 1428 may well have formed part of this undertaking.⁷⁶ Existing tenancies were challenged on the grounds that their ancestors had in fact held in chief. New inquisitions post mortem disregarded enfeoffments to use, finding the heirs to have been seised at the moment of inheritance and thus liable to the full range of feudal incidents including wardship. Heirs were allegedly denied the right to traverse findings in chancery, being forced to compound with the crown instead. The sums demanded grew markedly, since liveries and other grants were no longer being issued automatically by chancery.⁷⁷ By 1506 wardship and livery payments were providing almost one-tenth of the crown’s regular income.⁷⁸ This was the context in which the king sought two retrospective feudal aids in the parliament of 1504. One aid was for the knighting in 1489 of his first son, the late Prince Arthur; the other was for the marriage of ⁷¹ Fortescue, Governance, 119, 154–5; Watts, ‘Newe Ffundacion’, 38, 42–4. ⁷² Ives, Common Lawyers, 222–46, 262; McGlynn, Royal Prerogative, 12–15, 155–9. ⁷³ Relation of England, 50–1; Schofield, Taxation, 246 n. 86. ⁷⁴ J. B. Smith, ‘Crown and Community in the Principality of North Wales in the Reign of Henry Tudor’, Welsh History Review, 3 (1966–7), 157–71 at 158. ⁷⁵ BL, Lansdowne MS 127, fo. 53r. ⁷⁶ PRO, E164/4; Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 85–6, 129. ⁷⁷ PRO, KB9/453/39, 49, 344, 460, 462, 469; ‘Petition of Dudley’, 88–90; 1 Hen. VIII, cc. 8, 10, 12. ⁷⁸ Gunn, Early Tudor Government, 111, 126–7.

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his elder daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland in 1503. Henry’s request was in keeping with his increasing determination to receive what he took to be his dues: his entitlement to an aid for Margaret’s marriage had been noted straight away in his chamber accounts alongside other memoranda.⁷⁹ Magna Carta had approved both types of aid, and had also dispensed the king from obtaining common consent to their levying.⁸⁰ Only four feudal aids had been collected thereafter, the most recent in 1401.⁸¹ That aid—for the marriage of Henry IV’s daughter Blanche—had not received parliamentary approval; nevertheless Henry VII turned to parliament.⁸² The feudal aid did not have a fixed yield; the rate proposed may have been that established in 1352 (20s. per knight’s fee, or 20s. for every £20 worth of land held in socage).⁸³ This request, however, proved controversial: following a heated debate in the Commons, the king settled for a subsidy of £40,000, of which he remitted £10,000.⁸⁴ This remission may have been a conciliatory gesture at the last moment; equally, it may have been agreed with the Commons in advance in order to approximate the grant to one fifteenth and tenth. The subsidy’s preamble muted but still voiced a sense that the grounds for the king’s request seemed questionable and his motivation suspect. The Commons acknowledged that the king was ‘rightfully intitled’ to the aids, but feared lest the investigation into feudal tenures that this would entail ‘shuld be to theym doutefull, uncerteyn and gret inquietnes’. In order to levy the aids, the crown would have identified its tenants-in-chief, information that could then have been used to enforce other feudal rights. The subsidy also justified the grant on the grounds that the king ‘hath susteyned and borne gret and inestimable charges for the defense of this his realme, and for a ferme and a perpetuall peace with the realme of Scotland, and other many cuntres and regions, to the gret wele, comfort and quietnes of all his subjettis’.⁸⁵ By invoking the defence of the realm, the grant came close to providing an alternative justification that did not concede the principle of the feudal aid. ⁷⁹ PRO, E101/415/3, fo. 296r. ⁸⁰ Magna Carta, c. 12 (a chapter omitted from the 1225 reissue). The Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, however, regarded parliament’s agreement as essential: Parliamentary Texts, 89. ⁸¹ Jurkowski, Smith, and Crook, Lay Taxes, 15, 26, 47–8, 73. ⁸² Cf. the feudal aids of 1609 and 1612: ibid. 172–3, 176. ⁸³ 25 Edw. III, st. 5, c. 11. ⁸⁴ PROME xvi. 345–50 (RP vi. 532–4). ⁸⁵ PROME xvi. 345–6 (RP vi. 532b).

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Some MPs had probably questioned the crown’s entitlement to these aids. According to William Roper, his father-in-law the young Thomas More inspired the Commons to overthrow the king’s demands, whereupon Henry, taking umbrage, tried to punish More’s presumption.⁸⁶ While the tale of the king’s revenge seems far-fetched, Roper’s account of More’s conduct as an MP is not implausible. Roper may well, however, have magnified More’s precocious defiance in order to foreshadow his mature opposition to the crown. Hostility to the aids must, in fact, have been widely articulated. In sum, the session of 1504 illustrates the depth of opposition the crown’s efforts to realize its feudal dues aroused. Yet the session also shows how these efforts could engage parliament. Yorkist and early Tudor neo-feudalism was not necessarily inimical to the holding of parliaments. Indeed, by treating the prerogative as a body of positive law, fiscal feudalism may have contributed to the regularizing of monarchical power as a more defined set of rules increasingly determined in parliaments.⁸⁷ 7 . 3 A C O M PA R AT I V E PE R S PE C T I V E Contemporaries formed judgements about the nature of one polity by comparing it with another. In 1498 the Spanish envoy Pedro de Ayala commented of Henry, ‘He would like to govern England in the French fashion, but he cannot.’⁸⁸ Europeans held clear views about the nature of the French monarchy. Fortescue had depicted Louis XI’s France as the archetypal dominium regale, where the king’s power to impose taxation upon his subjects without their consent had reduced them to beggary.⁸⁹ In 1525 Englishmen opposed the Amicable Grant on the grounds that ‘if men should geue their goodes by a Commission, then wer it worse then the taxes of Fraunce, and so England should be bond and not free.’⁹⁰ This image of the French kingdom also helped to construct a political identity for the Burgundian and Habsburg Low Countries: in his opening address to the states general in 1473, Chancellor Hugonet contrasted their happy state with that of France, where Louis XI exacted large sums from his subjects at will.⁹¹ ⁸⁶ Roper, Moore, 7–8. ⁸⁷ See Section 8.3. ⁸⁸ CSP Spanish, i. 178. ⁸⁹ Fortescue, De Laudibus, 80–7; Fortescue, Governance, 113–15. ⁹⁰ Hall, Chronicle, 696. I owe this reference to George Bernard. ´ G´en´eraux des Anciens Pays-Bas, i: Actes de 1427 a` 1477, ed. J. Cuvelier ⁹¹ Actes des Etats (Brussels, 1948), 185; H. G. Koenigsberger, Monarchies, States Generals and Parliaments:

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Ayala’s observation is one of the most quoted verdicts on Henry’s kingship, and there may be some truth in it. Henry had spent his formative years at the Breton and French courts, and had no direct experience of English government before becoming king, so features of his government could have been borrowed from the French state. The newly established privy chamber and yeomen of the guard may have imitated the French court.⁹² Henry’s ‘new men’ look something like the French corps of officials ennobled through royal service.⁹³ Yet Ayala did not say that Henry was ruling like a French king: he said the opposite—that Henry was not, because he could not. In seeing parallels between Henry’s style of kingship and the French monarchy, a different point is being made. There is no indication that contemporary Englishmen—however much they disliked aspects of the regime—connected Henry’s kingship with a French exemplar. It was when they began to look back at the growing power of the crown under the Tudors that Englishmen started to draw parallels with France.⁹⁴ In the words of his biographer Fulke Greville (writing under James I), Philip Sidney had feared that the marriage of Elizabeth to the duke of Anjou would have led to an influx of foreign counsellors—‘like Frenchified Empsons and Dudleys’—who would ‘bring the English people to the poverty of the French peasants’.⁹⁵ Englishmen were becoming sensitized to the endangered status of other European representative assemblies.⁹⁶ In 1571 an MP spoke of the advantage to the realm of parliamentarians ‘who have spent their whole tyme in study or have seene alone the manner of goverment of other nations, and can tell you howe the crowne of Fraunce is delivered out of wardshippe, or otherwise to tell a tale of the Kinge of Castile and Portugall howe they in makeinge of lawes use theire owne absolute The Netherlands in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2001), 13, 36, 132, 148, 152–3, 163. ⁹² D. Starkey, ‘Intimacy and Innovation: The Rise of the Privy Chamber, 1485–1547’, in Starkey (ed.), English Court, 74. ⁹³ S. Gunn, ‘ ‘‘New Men’’ and ‘‘New Monarchy’’ in England, 1485–1524’, in R. Stein (ed.), Powerbrokers in the Late Middle Ages: The Burgundian Low Countries in a European Context ( Turnhout, 2001), 163. ⁹⁴ R. Zaller, ‘Parliament and the Crisis of European Liberty’, in J. H. Hexter (ed.), Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War (Stanford, Calif., 1992), 201–6. ⁹⁵ Fulke Greville, Ld. Brooke, The Prose Works, ed. J. Gouws (Oxford, 1986), 32. As Dudley’s great-grandson, Sidney would surely not have made this comparison himself. ⁹⁶ J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), 58–62.

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discretions, the Kinge of Denmarke useth the advise of his nobles alone, and nothinge of his comons’.⁹⁷ Henry’s supposed declining interest in parliament is still sometimes perceived as a manifestation of a European trend by which renascent monarchies sought to reduce or even to eliminate the role of representative assemblies.⁹⁸ In particular, comparisons are drawn with France and with Scotland. After meeting in 1484, the full estates general did not assemble again in France until 1560.⁹⁹ Between 1424 and 1495, Scottish kings had almost always summoned a parliament at least once a year; between 1496 and 1513 James IV summoned only three parliaments.¹⁰⁰ James IV and Henry VII, it could be argued, had both lost confidence in parliament in the late 1490s. Did Henry’s failure to summon parliament therefore reflect pan-European political change? The relevance of the French case can be dismissed quickly, for the estates general had evolved very differently from the English parliament. In France, alongside the estates general, there was a range of regional, provincial, and smaller local assemblies.¹⁰¹ The estates general was one means by which French kings obtained their subjects’ consent; in contrast, parliament was the sole binding means through which English kings could obtain their subjects’ consent. This difference is illustrated ´ in the ways in which France and England ratified the treaty of Etaples of 1492. The treaty required that the three estates of each realm assent: Charles VIII secured their assent through regional, provincial, and bailliage assemblies; in England the assent of the three estates awaited the assembling of the next parliament in 1495.¹⁰² Unlike parliament, the estates general did not acquire the ability to bind the whole nation to ⁹⁷ Proceedings in the Parliaments of Elizabeth I, ed. T. E. Hartley, 3 vols. (London, 1981–95), i. 228. The MP’s identity is considered in N. Jones, ‘The Anonymous Diarist of 1571: Alias Thomas Atkins or Robert Bowes?’, Parliamentary History, 8 (1989), 329–40 (esp. 337–9). ⁹⁸ M. A. R. Graves, The Parliaments of Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 2001), 41–2; K. M. Brown and R. J. Tanner, ‘Introduction: Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235–1560’, in The History of the Scottish Parliament, i: Parliament and Politics in Scotland, 1235–1560, ed. Brown and Tanner (Edinburgh, 2004), 21–2. ⁹⁹ J. R. Major, Representative Institutions in Renaissance France, 1421–1559 (Madison, 1960), 151–2. ¹⁰⁰ R. Tanner, The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, 1424–1488 (East Linton, 2001), 279–85; N. Macdougall, ‘The Estates in Eclipse? Politics and Parliaments in the Reign of James IV’, in History of the Scottish Parliament, i. 147. ¹⁰¹ P. S. Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity (London, 1968), 328–74. ¹⁰² Foedera, V. iv. 80–105 passim, 135–6; Major, Representative Institutions, 121.

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the decisions that it took, as French communities preferred to negotiate with the crown locally.¹⁰³ In 1428 the pays of Rouergue (admittedly far from the centre of royal power) had refused to participate in the estates general or even in the estates of Languedoc or Languedoil, but insisted on its right to its own assembly.¹⁰⁴ Furthermore, the estates general did not command the widespread respect parliament was gradually accumulating: although frequent meetings were burdensome, no parliament ever asked, as did the estates general in 1468, not to be summoned again.¹⁰⁵ In 1484 the estates general voted a taille for two years; at the end of that period, the crown carried on collecting the tax, with the acquiescence of provincial assemblies.¹⁰⁶ Of this assembly ‘Some persons . . . said then . . . that it was high treason to speak about calling the Estates as it diminished the King’s authority.’¹⁰⁷ The absence of consensus about the purpose and value of the estates general vitiated it; at the end of the fifteenth century, regional and provincial estates may have seemed more relevant to the French crown and to its subjects than did the national assembly.¹⁰⁸ Thus the parallel between the estates general and parliament is specious. The parliaments of Scotland and of England had more in common. To Fortescue—who could have seen the Scottish parliament at first hand during his exile—Scotland, like England, was a dominium politicum et regale.¹⁰⁹ Over the fifteenth century the Scottish parliament proved a more regular, trenchant, and robust critic of its kings than its English counterpart. English parliaments did not criticize the reigning monarch, although as a last resort they might censure those around him; Scottish parliaments told the king what he was doing wrong.¹¹⁰ In 1473 parliament rejected James III’s continental ambitions, for which it could see ‘na causes honorable nor acceptable’.¹¹¹ Unlike their English counterparts, Scottish parliaments rarely made grants of taxation.¹¹² Returning from his captivity in England in 1424, James I had attempted ¹⁰³ Edwards, ‘Plena Potestas’, 136–49. ¹⁰⁴ P. S. Lewis, ‘The Failure of the French Medieval Estates’, in Essays in Later Medieval French History (London, 1985), 111. ¹⁰⁵ Ibid. 110–11. ¹⁰⁶ Major, Representative Institutions, 94–116. ¹⁰⁷ Commynes, Memoirs, 346. ¹⁰⁸ Lewis, ‘Failure of the French Medieval Estates’, 108–9. ¹⁰⁹ Fortescue, De Laudibus, 32–3; Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 271. ¹¹⁰ Ibid. 264–6. ¹¹¹ The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ed. T. Thomson and C. Innes, 12 vols. (Edinburgh, 1814–75), ii. 103; Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 201–4. ¹¹² Ibid. 12–13, 264–5.

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to reshape the Scottish parliament along English lines, perhaps hoping to produce a more malleable body as ready to grant taxes.¹¹³ Scottish kings had to exert themselves to wrest control of parliament away from their leading subjects, above all when they took up the reins of power after absence (1424) or minorities (1450 and 1469).¹¹⁴ From the monarch’s perspective, the Scottish parliament thus possessed drawbacks and limitations more acute than its English counterpart. James IV had a-priori grounds for disliking parliament: ‘in the ten years before his assumption of power in the spring of 1495, the king had witnessed successive Scottish parliaments preside over, sanction, or help to stimulate one regicide, two major rebellions, six failed embassies and a coup d’´etat.’¹¹⁵ By amalgamating the responsibilities of the lords auditors (who sat only during parliaments) with that of the lords of council, James reduced the need for regular sessions in order to administer civil justice.¹¹⁶ Like Henry, James had little basis to seek parliamentary taxation after 1497, since he was now at peace with his neighbour and had found himself a bride. Like Henry, James exploited other means of generating revenues, including feudal incidents.¹¹⁷ James did not ask a parliament to authorize the levy to fund the Danish expedition in 1502 (although he may have sought authorization in a general council).¹¹⁸ Possibly the burghs’ declining contribution to taxation explained this decision; nevertheless in 1504 parliament enacted ‘that the Commissares & hedesmen of burrowis be warnit quhene taxtes or contributiouns are gevin to haif ther votes as ane of the thre estates of the Realme’.¹¹⁹ Like English kings, Scottish kings could assemble representative bodies of their leading subjects in general councils and through plenary sessions of the royal council, where attendance—in Scots terms, the sederunt—was greater than usual.¹²⁰ James IV summoned at least three general councils between 1497 and 1512, where he consulted his leading subjects, probably on single issues, at greater speed than in parliament, but without its broader legislative capacity.¹²¹ James could have preferred to hold conciliar meetings because parliaments ¹¹³ Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 7–37. ¹¹⁴ Ibid. 7–13, 122–6, 191–3. ¹¹⁵ Macdougall, ‘Estates in Eclipse’, 156. ¹¹⁶ R. S. Rait, The Parliaments of Scotland (Glasgow, 1924), 452–70; Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 197. ¹¹⁷ Macdougall, James IV, 146–69. ¹¹⁸ Ibid. 191–2, 229–32. ¹¹⁹ Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, ii. 245; Tanner, Late Medieval Scottish Parliament, 205, 268. ¹²⁰ Holmes, ‘Great Council’, 840–62. ¹²¹ Rait, Parliaments of Scotland, 132–42; Macdougall, ‘Estates in Eclipse’, 156–8.

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served as forums for dissent. Yet the second estate that dominated parliament also attended councils; the absence of burgh representatives would not have reduced much the estates’ disposition to criticize the king. Far from discouraging the nobility from attending councils, James sometimes secured larger sederunts at his councils than in his adult parliaments.¹²² Although ‘a parliamentary session could be as dangerous for an unpopular king as a mustering of the Scottish host’, James IV was a popular king; unlike his father, he had little to fear from a parliament.¹²³ Unlike Henry, James had apparently decided to work round parliament.

Conclusion The old idea that Henry endeavoured to dispense with parliaments should be rejected. The later years of the reign intensified existing trends, rather than striking out in new directions that could have accounted for an altered attitude to the holding of parliaments. The crown’s burgeoning fiscalism was a policy underpinned by common law and implemented by that profession; it was not grounded in hostility to the holding of parliaments. The comparative perspective collapses on inspection. Above all, the idea itself is an anachronism whose roots may lie in a tradition that reflects the preoccupations of the seventeenth century—absolutist monarchy versus parliamentary sovereignty—rather more than the realities of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In Henry’s reign parliaments were regarded as occasional rather than regular instruments of government. The summoning of a parliament depended primarily on the crown’s need for taxation. This was a pragmatic decision, not an ideological one. The king who summoned only one parliament in the second half of his reign was indeed the same king who had summoned six parliaments in the first half of his reign.¹²⁴ Decline is an illusion. ¹²² Ibid. 156. ¹²³ Ibid. 146. ¹²⁴ Cf. S. J. Gunn, ‘Henry VII’, in Matthew and Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, xxvi. 520.

8 The Evolution of Parliament Parliament was a dynamic institution whose essentials were changing. Parts I and II have concentrated on analysing the ways in which parliament worked in Henry VII’s reign. Relatively little attention has been paid to what came before and what followed after: we have examined parliament as a still, frozen at a particular moment. The intention of this final chapter is to unfreeze that image: to situate our parliaments within a general account of the institution’s development. Many aspects of this account have been sketched in an impressive body of work; its approach of understanding parliament’s development through its business is followed here.¹ The more immediate historiographical debate concerns the supposed emergence of parliamentary sovereignty in the 1530s.² Our starting point is an examination of parliament at work. The chapter then relates parliament’s business to that of government in general in order to advance an argument about the nature of the institution. Lastly some of the possible implications for the polity are explored.

8 . 1 T H E PA R L I A M E N TA RY T R I N I T Y No commentary on parliament was written in our period; indeed, contemporaries do not seem to have regarded parliament historically. In 1490 Justice Townshend observed how the assize of novel disseisin had been introduced ‘a long time after the common law, by the common counsel and consent of those learned in the law at that time’, for ‘It ¹ In particular, J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913); C. H. McIlwain, The High Court of Parliament and its Supremacy: An Historical Essay on the Boundaries between Legislation and Adjudication in England (New Haven, 1910); A. F. Pollard, The Evolution of Parliament (rev. 2nd edn., London, 1926); also in a different way, Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas. ² See the Introduction.

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was customary in those times’—the assize being introduced in the 1160s—‘to do things that way which are now done by parliament’.³ Yet the standard guide remained the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum, a curious manual-cum-manifesto probably composed in the reign of Edward II.⁴ Texts of the Modus were copied alongside practical legal manuals; in 1510 the new clerk of parliament John Taylor prefaced his record of the Lords’ proceedings with a version.⁵ The Modus purported to describe parliament under Edward the Confessor, and made procedural claims that Taylor at least would have recognized as spurious.⁶ Yet we are able to infer how Taylor and his fellow clerks understood parliament from the ways in which they ran and recorded sessions.⁷ As managers of parliament’s business and compilers of its official records, theirs was the authorized version of parliament. No one was better placed to interpret or indeed to shape the way parliament developed. Regrettably, these clerks did not write accounts of parliament (unlike their early Stuart successor Henry Elsynge, who wrote his own Modus); nevertheless, their administrative practices implicitly articulated views about how parliament worked, what it did, and even what it really was.⁸ A near continuous record has survived from the late thirteenth century in the form of the parliament rolls. By analysing these and other administrative records, a detailed account of parliament’s development in the second half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries has been constructed, on which this section draws.⁹ Law-making in Henry’s parliaments followed a three-stage process: initiation in either house, approval by the other, and acceptance by the king.¹⁰ Parity between the Lords and the Commons had developed comparatively recently. At the start of the fifteenth century, the Commons’ primary purpose was to formulate their own requests or to avow other ³ Caryll, Reports, i. 41. ⁴ Debates surrounding the Modus are summarized in M. Prestwich, Plantagenet England, 1225–1360 (Oxford, 2005), 224–6. ⁵ J. Taylor, ‘The Manuscripts of the ‘‘Modus Tenendi Parliamentum’’ ’, EHR 83 (1968), 680–2; N. Pronay and J. Taylor, ‘The Use of the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum in the Middle Ages’, BIHR 47 (1974), 11–23; A. F. Pollard, ‘The Authenticity of the ‘‘Lords’ Journals’’ in the Sixteenth Century’, TRHS 3rd ser., 8 (1914), 36–7; G. R. Elton, ‘The Early Journals of the House of Lords’, in Studies, iii. 68–9, 84–5. ⁶ Parliamentary Texts, 80. ⁷ Pollard, ‘Clerical Organization’, 31–58. ⁸ E. R. Foster, The Painful Labour of Mr. Elsyng, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, ns 62/8 (1972), 35–46. ⁹ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 110–42. An earlier article by Elton had addressed the same material: ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 21–30, 53–7. ¹⁰ See Section 5.1.

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complaints on which the king and the Lords then acted; only in granting taxation did the lower house shape the legislation that followed.¹¹ The Lollard William Emayn perhaps reflected this transitional stage when in 1429 he described how ‘the king, lordes spirituel and temporel be [by] callyng to hem the comones of the reaume . . . ordeine and make statutis in his [the king’s] parlementis’.¹² Under the Lancastrians the Commons started to play a more active role in law-making, as private petitions began to be submitted to them in large numbers.¹³ The house necessarily acquired a formula to express its assent to these petitions; it also acquired a formula to record its assent to measures sent from the Lords.¹⁴ The clerks noted the Commons’ assent on a proposal sent from the Lords, but not the Lords’ assent to one sent from the Commons; from 1504, the Lords’ assent was also noted on the engrossed bill or petition.¹⁵ Cumulatively these administrative changes revealed parliamentary procedure slowly adapting to reflect the Commons’ full integration. Perverse testimony of the Commons’ integral status came in Bishop Russell’s draft sermons of 1483–4: against the grain of his aristocratic analogies, Russell sought to incorporate in proceedings the Commons standing at the bar while excluding the commonalty outside.¹⁶ Enacting clauses from 1485 recorded the Commons’ assent in the same way as they did the Lords’.¹⁷ In the early fourteenth century, acts had been made by the king with the assent of the Lords; in the early fifteenth century, they had been made by the king with the assent of the Lords and at the request of the Commons; over Henry VI’s reign, the phrase ¹¹ HP 1386–1421, i. 45–7, 69–70, 92–4, 101–3, 124; S. Payling, ‘The Later Middle Ages’, in R. Smith and J. S. Moore (eds.), The House of Commons: Seven Hundred Years of British Tradition (London, 1996), 49–58; G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), 69–74. ¹² A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), 377–8. ¹³ A. R. Myers, ‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, in Davies and Denton (eds.), English Parliament, 167–9; Myers, ‘Parliamentary Petitions’, 13–17; G. Dodd, Justice and Grace: Private Petitioning and the English Parliament in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), 179–87. ¹⁴ Myers, ‘Observations on Procedure’, 64–7; Myers, ‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, 169–70. ¹⁵ OA, 12 and 19 Hen. VII; YB, 33 Hen. VI, Pas., plea 8 (fos. 17–18); PROME xvi. 350 (RP vi. 534b); Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 54. ¹⁶ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 168–9, 173–4; Watts, ‘Bishop Russell’s Parliamentary Sermons’, 50–1. ¹⁷ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 101–4.

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‘by authority of parliament’ was added; in Henry VII’s reign, acts came to be made by the king with the advice and assent of the Lords and of the Commons, and by authority of parliament.¹⁸ Observing these developments, the MP Arthur Hall provocatively suggested in the 1570s that the Commons were ‘a new person in the Trinity’.¹⁹ Yet parliament came to be conceptualized as a trinity because of the developments Hall acutely identified: there could be no parliamentary trinity before the Commons were seen to be fully a part of parliament. Conceptually the original trinity comprised those who prayed, fought, and worked. Over the fifteenth century, this trinity of the three estates became a parliamentary one: the lords spiritual, lords temporal, and the Commons.²⁰ In 1495 the assent of the three estates equated to the assent of parliament.²¹ When it came to making laws, the partnership of the king, Lords, and Commons was now formally invoked, paving the way for a new parliamentary trinity slowly to emerge.²² The absorption of the lower house therefore began to change the way parliament itself was conceived. Laws made in parliament were originally regarded in the same way as other royal ordinances. In the early fourteenth century a statute and a royal command, it could be argued, possessed equal weight because both were made with counsel; by the middle of that century statute law came to be elevated above other royal ordinances.²³ The king remained the legislator, yet he required the consent of his subjects through parliament. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, many laws remained essentially royal ordinances ratified in parliament. The transcription on the roll was of the king’s decision authorized in his fullest and therefore most authoritative council, parliament. Other acts had originated in subjects’ petitions: requests ¹⁸ Elton noted one exception in the act investing the crown on Henry and his heirs: ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 29. The phrase ‘a la request des comens’ was not in the act, but in the roll’s description of the assent: PROME xv. 97 (RP vi. 270b). ¹⁹ E. Evans, ‘Of the Antiquity of Parliaments in England: Some Elizabethan and Early Stuart Opinions’, History, ns 23 (1938–9), 212–13, 217, 219–21; G. R. Elton, ‘Arthur Hall, Lord Burghley and the Antiquity of Parliament’, in Studies, iii. 266–72. The precise phrase was Francis Bacon’s. ²⁰ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 69, 81–126, 234–5. ²¹ Foedera, V. iv. 135–6. ²² Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 32–5; Smith, Stuart Parliaments, 81–6. ²³ T. F. T. Plucknett, Statutes and their Interpretation in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1922), esp. 139–41; Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 269–83.

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to the king and his council in parliament, duly answered and then—if they were to become statutes—redacted by royal councillors and law officers.²⁴ Over the century the distinction between these two types of lawmaking collapsed: by Henry’s reign, there was no administrative or diplomatic means of differentiating legislation which originated with the crown from that promoted by its subjects.²⁵ This came about because the distinction between ‘bill’ and ‘petition’—sedulously preserved on the parliament rolls of Henry’s reign—was in most respects irrelevant.²⁶ For the chancery clerks, ‘bill’ and ‘petition’ were alternative bases for legislation. A bill was declaratory, setting out what was to be enacted; a petition was a request, asking the king to remedy a specified ill. The petitionary form had drawbacks. The Commons had complained in the fourteenth century that the statutes which resulted from their petitions sometimes did not accurately reflect these requests: they might omit provisions or add new ones, or they might include no steps for their implementation.²⁷ In 1414 the Commons protested that—as ‘a membre of youre parlement’—their petitions should not be modified in any way when they were turned into statutes.²⁸ The solution was to include in the proposal the remedies desired complete with enacting clause. Petitions ceased to be merely complaints, but came to propose their own remedies.²⁹ As petitions grew in length and specificity, a new formula for the royal assent developed. This appeared in 1420 as ‘Soit il come est desiree par la petitcone’; analogues appeared in Latin and in English during that decade; at its end what would become the normative answer to petitions emerged—soit fait comme il est desire.³⁰ From 1461 first bills and then petitions began to be described occasionally on the rolls as formam actus in se continens: ‘in the form of an act contained in itself’.³¹ Thus ‘Legislation . . . was no longer the Government’s vague reply to vaguely worded complaints, but rather the deliberate adoption of specific proposals embodied in specific texts’.³² ²⁴ ²⁵ ²⁷ ²⁸ ²⁹ ³⁰ ³¹ ³²

Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, iii. 22. See Section 5.3. ²⁶ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 127. Stubbs, Constitutional History, ii. 603–9, iii. 480–1. PROME ix. 52 (RP iv. 22b); HP 1386–1421, i. 101–3. Dodd, Justice and Grace, 302–5, 335–7. PROME ix. 256, x. 193, 400, 458 (RP iv. 126, 256b, 347b, 374a). PROME xiii. 42, xvi. 370, 375 (RP v. 476b; 1504 plt., items 15, 20). T. F. T. Plucknett, ‘Ellesmere on Statutes’, Law Quarterly Review, 60 (1944), 248.

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Consequently the communes peticiones section on the parliament rolls—containing the requests of the king’s subjects on matters of general concern—began to contain acts drafted as bills.³³ By 1529, the heading’s redundancy was recognized: the roll for the Reformation Parliament, dropping it altogether, attempted to conflate legislative format and legislative status by treating all public acts as bills and all private acts as petitions.³⁴ Already by Henry’s reign, the format of a proposal—bill or petition—was irrelevant: it made no difference to the efficacy of the act, nor did it determine whether an act was adjudged to be public or private. In the second half of the fifteenth century crown measures started to take the form of Commons’ petitions and subjects’ proposals the form of bills.³⁵ After 1490 printed statute books ceased removing any petitionary preambles to public acts.³⁶ Developments in legislative form over the fifteenth century thus reinforced a syncretic view of law-making at the expense of one which emphasized the royal will: in the mid century Bishop Pecock (perhaps precociously) described the king and parliament as making law jointly.³⁷ In Henry’s reign the parliament rolls came to record the assent of both houses explicitly to every act.³⁸ In 1488 it was reported that ‘In the parliament the king wanted a man to be attainted and to forfeit his lands, and the Lords assented, and nothing was said of the Commons, so all the justices held clearly that this was not an act, and thus he was restored’; revealingly, no counter-arguments were noted.³⁹ The rolls now presented a uniform appearance: when royal grants were entered, they were introduced in the same way as other bills and petitions. From 1487 the royal assent was always noted, including for acts that concerned the king and his family personally.⁴⁰ Such measures began ³³ The only detailed account is H. L. Gray, The Influence of the Commons on Early Legislation: A Study of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), esp. 30–3, 39–69, 87–119, 160–3, 177–83, 258–61, 286–7, 303–7, 405–18. This is heavily qualified in Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 236–49; but it remains stimulating. ³⁴ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 135–6. ³⁵ For examples, see Section 5.3. ³⁶ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 129. ³⁷ Pecock, Book of Faith, 281; Pecock, Repressor, i. 21–2. Pecock took the same bullish approach to constitutional niceties that he took to religious ones. ³⁸ In the 1470s the rolls had not always made the Commons’ assent explicit, even though it had been given: PRO, C49/36/23; PROME xiv. 106–7 (RP vi. 49); Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, 264. ³⁹ YB, 4 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 11 (fo. 18). Parliament was not in session that term, and no more details are known. ⁴⁰ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 127.

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in the Lords or the Commons, received the assent of the other house, and were then presented to the king. According to the annotations on the engrossed bill, however, the act of 1504 revising the list of feoffees who would perform the king’s will was sent to both the Lords and the Commons without originating in either house.⁴¹ If not simply an error, this may reveal some confusion about the king’s relationship to the two houses.⁴² The ways in which the crown modified legislation put before parliament also changed. Henry VII, we are told, was ‘the last king who felt able to amend parliamentary statutes after their passage was completed’—but the position is not so clear-cut.⁴³ During passage Henry could amend his own measures without going through the legislative process required of either house. In 1504 he simply required Speaker Dudley and his councillor Sir John Mordaunt to remove a man’s name from the bill of attainder presently before the Commons, seemingly without returning the bill to the Lords, the house in which the measure had begun.⁴⁴ When the amendment did not concern a crown proposal, he may have behaved differently. In 1485–6 a petition was presented to the Commons in the name of Edmund, Lord Roos, seeking the reversal of his father’s attainder. The king made an amendment, reserving the profits of the restoration for the crown. Written on a separate schedule, this amendment was returned to the Commons to receive its assent as the initiating house in the same manner as an amendment made by the Lords would have been.⁴⁵ What happened when a measure was presented to the king for formal approval was changing. When Lancastrian kings had given their assent, they had sometimes modified the general terms of an act. Responses included: ‘The king wills it for three years’; ‘Be it as it is desired, unto the next parlement’; ‘Be it as it is desired . . . as long as it shal like the kyng’; and ‘The kyng graunteth this peticion, if it be thought to the juges resonable’.⁴⁶ There were other ways of answering bills and petitions too, by stating that existing laws should be enforced and existing customs ⁴¹ OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 31; PROME xvi. 322–4 (RP vi. 521–2). ⁴² Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 56. ⁴³ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 131–2. The king did not order in 1499 the removal of a man’s name from an enrolled act of attainder passed in 1497. Elton conflated the two royal letters that he had distinguished earlier: ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 57. ⁴⁴ OA, 19 Hen. VII, letter. ⁴⁵ PROME xv. 174–6 (RP vi. 310–11). ⁴⁶ PROME xi. 137, 211, 226–8, xii. 442 (RP iv. 450b, 500a, 507–8, v. 327b).

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upheld, or that sufficient remedy already existed at the common law. The statute rolls provided a clean text of the public acts: petitionary formulas were rewritten, and modifications made in royal replies were added. When Edward IV had given his assent to a proposal, he had occasionally modified the general terms of the act too—by delaying its implementation, by striking down particular parts of the proposal, or by stating that the act was only to last during pleasure (although he did this much less than had the government of Henry VI).⁴⁷ According to the rolls, when Henry VII formally answered a proposal, he either assented or rejected it: he did not qualify his answer in the same manner that his predecessors had. The king did modify proposals after passage by granting exemptions.⁴⁸ He could protect a named individual (such as a royal office-holder), a group of people (such as a foreign merchant community), or a corporation (such as an Oxford or Cambridge college) from the terms of an act; often this exemption extended to all the acts passed in a parliament.⁴⁹ These exemptions were called ‘provisos’; during passage, they seem to have been distinguished from general amendments which were referred to as ‘schedules’.⁵⁰ Proviso clauses appear to have developed relatively recently, chiefly to qualify the resumptions of 1450 onwards.⁵¹ The term ‘proviso’ referred both to an exemption added during passage and to one added at the royal assent or thereafter. When the king accepted Edmund Roos’s petition in 1485–6, he added a proviso protecting the interests of Edmund’s mother; unlike the substantive amendment to that petition, this did not apparently need the Commons’ assent.⁵² Giving his assent in 1497, the king exempted the colleges of Oxford, Cambridge, Winchester, and Eton from the subsidy granted ⁴⁷ PROME xiii. 111, 239, 361, xiv. 380, 463 (RP v. 506a, 566a, 622a, vi. 182b, 222b). ⁴⁸ Cf. an act of the Irish parliament of 1493, empowering the deputy lieutenant to issue provisos during the parliament protecting individuals from anything prejudicial: Statute Rolls of the Irish Parliament: Richard III—Henry VIII, ed. P. Connolly (Dublin, 2002), 96–7. ⁴⁹ YB, 2 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 20 (fos. 6–7). ⁵⁰ This distinction still obtained under Elizabeth: Observations, Rules and Orders of the House of Commons: An Early Procedural Collection, ed. W. R. McKay, House of Commons Library Documents, 17 (1989), 129. ⁵¹ In 1425 the roll explained how ‘this clause of provision’ had been drawn up with the advice of peers and the serjeants-at-law: PROME x. 260 (RP iv. 288a). ⁵² PROME xv. 176 (RP vi. 311a).

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in the parliament.⁵³ A proviso could also be granted independently of the legislative process, and then delivered to the chancery clerks for enrolment (presumably as proof of exemption in a court of record).⁵⁴ This may explain how a proviso came to be entered on the roll of 1495 with the admission that ‘it is not known to which act it should be attached’.⁵⁵ Henry chose to announce a time limit within which provisos to the act of resumption of 1486 were to be granted, but this was a self-imposed limitation.⁵⁶ He could grant provisos whenever he wanted, whether parliament was sitting or not: in December 1498 Henry sent the roll of 1487 to the clerk of parliament in order that Hatton could enrol a new proviso to the act of resumption.⁵⁷ It may be premature, however, to draw a neat distinction between substantive changes and particular exemptions. In 1504 a Commons’ petition sought to reinstate old legislation granting to all free passage down the River Severn.⁵⁸ The petition passed the Commons and next the Lords and then received the royal assent. On the enrolled act, the final clause invited corporations that had levied tolls in the past to present their case to the king’s council, and authorized the council to permit those corporations who proved their entitlement to continue to levy tolls—as Gloucester and Worcester indeed went on to do.⁵⁹ This clause thus undid the intention of the act. Alert to this danger, one unsuccessful petition stipulated that ‘euery acte of proviso made or to be made in this present parliament of adnullyng, aduoydyng, mynysshyng, or restreynyng any above rehersed ayenst youre seid oratours or ther successours or any of theme contrary to this present acte be vtterly voide and of no force, vertue, ne effecte’.⁶⁰ The final clause of the Severn act was not part of the engrossed petition, but was attached on a separate slip bearing only the sign manual; thus there is no indication that this amendment received the assent of ⁵³ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 8a; PROME xvi. 305 (RP vi. 517). ⁵⁴ See Section 2.1. ⁵⁵ PROME xvi. 216 (RP vi. 496a). Furthermore, Elton suggested that the parliament roll of 1504 misplaced provisos referring to an act of resumption after an act concerning gaol breaks (19 Hen. VII, c. 10): ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 132. These provisos referred to the act as one of resumption, however, because it voided some sinecures; the provisos are also attached to the original bill (OA, no. 8). ⁵⁶ PROME xv. 239 (RP vi. 339b). ⁵⁷ OA, 12 Hen. VII, no. 13; PROME xv. 395 (RP vi. 407–8). ⁵⁸ 19 Hen. VII, c. 18. ⁵⁹ Gloucs. Archives, GBR B2/1, fos. 40v–41v; Worcs. RO, ref. 496.5, accession 9360, CAB17 Severn Navigation, box 1; CPR 1494–1509, 461–2; Select Cases in the Star Chamber, i. 209–26. ⁶⁰ PRO, E175/11/60, m. 6.

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the Lords or of the Commons.⁶¹ As enrolled, however, this amendment appeared integral to the act, preceding the royal assent. In compiling the rolls, the chancery clerks may not have differentiated provisos added during passage from those granted by the king independently. Although an attractive hypothesis, there is nothing to prove that provisos enrolled before the royal assent were the ones accepted during passage and that provisos listed after the royal assent were the ones granted solely by the king; in the case of the act of resumption of 1486, this distinction did not apparently hold.⁶² Lawyers regarded provisos as parts of the act: they should be pleaded in the context of the act, it was agreed, ‘because an act is a thing entire and not several’.⁶³ There was disagreement, however, about the relationship between a proviso and the body of the act: a view held that ‘the one without the other is not the act’, so if they contradicted each other then the whole act was void; an alternative view countered that in the case of incompatibility ‘the act is good, and the proviso void’.⁶⁴ An explicit argument that provisos were of less authority than the body of an act because they had not necessarily received the full assent of parliament does not seem to have been made. Given the nature of the rolls, it would have been difficult for courts to have distinguished between the substantive part of an act and a proviso. Acts of parliament were, however, felt to be more authoritative than provisos. In 1499 the English ambassadors explained to the merchants of the Hanseatic League how a proviso could not confer exemption from subsequent legislation that they judged prejudicial to their interests. Therefore in 1504 the merchants secured a new act of parliament confirming their privileges.⁶⁵ The rationale underlying exemptions from statute law endured. The crown continued to dispense from positive law in individual cases. Henry and his successors could permit a man to commit a malum prohibitum, an action forbidden only by human law (for example, by dispensing an individual from the statutory requirement to ship wool only to Calais); they could not, however, permit a man to commit a malum per se, an action intrinsically wrong such as murder.⁶⁶ The crown’s power to make grants non obstante (notwithstanding a statute) was only abolished by ⁶¹ ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶

OA, 19 Hen. VII, no. 16. ⁶² See Section 2.1. YB, 10 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 20; Hil., plea 13 (fos. 9, 15–16). Caryll, Reports, ii. 597, 659. Hanserecesse, iv. 190–3, 308–9, 315–16, v. 75–6; 19 Hen. VII, c. 23. YB, 11 Hen. VII, Mich., plea 35 (fos. 11–12).

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the Bill of Rights in 1689.⁶⁷ Granting independently of the legislative process exemptions that would form part of the act, however, differed from granting individual letters patent.⁶⁸ In 1512 Chancellor Warham and Bishop Fox confirmed in the Lords that a proviso granted by Henry VIII to the Hanse did not need to receive the assent of either house.⁶⁹ The Tudors’ use of extra-legislative provisos nevertheless appears to have declined, although this subject awaits proper study.⁷⁰ By the mid-Elizabethan period, provisos were, it seems, presumed to be integral to the legislative process: ‘The provisoes in statutes are the laste parte, and they make a lawe, for in them commenlye the wordes are by aucthorytie before sayde.’⁷¹ Although the position in Henry’s reign is obscure, the trend was therefore towards a narrowing of the crown’s range of options in responding to proposals. The last extant statute roll went no further than the parliament of 1467–8.⁷² In the later fifteenth century a statute roll would have seemed an unnecessary duplication of the parliament rolls: proposals were delivered in the form of acts and so did not need rewriting, and their general terms were no longer modified when the royal assent was given. Legislative changes possibly fostered a sense that acts were not royal ordinances but collaborations between the king and his subjects that it was improper for the monarch alone to alter.⁷³

8 . 2 T H E R I S E O F T H E L E G I S L AT U R E Clerical and diplomatic changes over the fifteenth century cumulatively transformed how parliament worked. In doing so, they altered the way parliament related to other parts of government. Parliament was in origin and remained terminologically a council and a court rather than a legislature—a word that entered the language only in the later seventeenth century.⁷⁴ By describing parliament as a council, however, Englishmen did not mean that it exercised exclusively advisory ⁶⁷ P. Birdsall, ‘ ‘‘Non Obstante’’—A Study of the Dispensing Power of English Kings’, in C. Wittke (ed.), Essays in History and Political Theory (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 37–76. ⁶⁸ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 123–4. ⁶⁹ LJ i. 17b. Cf. a petition of 1442 concerning a proviso approved only by the Lords: PROME xi. 335–9 (RP v. 41–3). ⁷⁰ Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, 130; Myers, ‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, 180 n. 192. ⁷¹ [Sir Thomas Egerton], A Discourse upon the Exposicion & Understandinge of Statutes, ed. S. E. Thorne (San Marino, 1942), 114, 172–3. ⁷² PRO, C74/8. ⁷³ Myers, ‘Parliament, 1422–1509’, 180. ⁷⁴ OED.

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functions; and by describing parliament as a court, they did not mean that it exercised exclusively judicial functions.⁷⁵ All government was jurisdiction, the power of giving judgments which were binding on those party to the proceedings: ‘an act of parliament is only judicium’, King’s Serjeant Fyneux stated. Yet judgment in parliament required the assent of the king, the Lords, and the Commons, for ‘none of them can be omitted’.⁷⁶ Since parliamentary attainder legislated its judgment, the Commons’ assent was essential.⁷⁷ Therefore to regard parliament as a judicature because it was a ‘high court’ would be to impose an equally anachronistic separation of powers on an institution that was omnicompetent.⁷⁸ Parliament was ‘not a high court of anything, but simply a high court’: its importance derived ‘in being unspecific, in being omnicompetent, in ranging over the whole field of lay government’.⁷⁹ At the same time, the business transacted and the forms in which that business was expressed altered over time, synchronizing with developments in other institutions of government. Parliament’s emergence as a legislature was the culmination of the medieval pattern of state formation, where different parts of government—the courts, chancery, the council—emerged from the undifferentiated curia regis of the early twelfth century. The late thirteenth-century law book Fleta had described ‘a sort of constitutional protoplasm’: ‘the king has . . . his court (curia) in his council (consilium) in his parliaments (parliamenta)’.⁸⁰ Parliament had originated as an expanded meeting of the king’s council dealing with a range of business, much of which could be classified as judicial. Over the fourteenth century parliament detached itself from the council, developing a complementary (rather than a merely coordinate) sphere of operation. Business in parliament—above all, the granting of taxation and the answering of common petitions—came to differ from other business of the king’s council.⁸¹ In terms of their judicial competence, parliament and the council diverged: parliament as a court of record developed its jurisdiction in error over common law courts ⁷⁵ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 72–6. ⁷⁶ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (fos. 14–16 at 15). ⁷⁷ Cf. McIlwain, High Court, 109–10; Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, 61–2, 76–7. ⁷⁸ McIlwain’s study is subtler: High Court, 119–120, 126–7, 131, 136–7, 230–2 n. ⁷⁹ J. G. Edwards, Historians and the Medieval English Parliament (Glasgow, 1960), 23–4, 41. ⁸⁰ Fleta, ed. H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles, 3 vols., Selden Soc., 72, 89, 99 (1955–84), i. 109; Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, 25. ⁸¹ Baldwin, King’s Council, 307–44; Pollard, Evolution of Parliament, 278–98.

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(supplanting the king’s bench at the apex) and also over the marches of Wales; the council developed an alternative jurisdiction, operating outside the common law.⁸² Legislative and judicial business intersected in dealing with private petitions.⁸³ Edward I had encouraged his subjects to petition through parliament for redress of grievances, and from 1272 petitions were regularly submitted in writing.⁸⁴ These early private petitions were parliamentary petitions only in the sense that they were presented ‘in or at a parliament’: they did not have to address parliament or any of the assembled groups. Petitioners did not necessarily seek legislation, but remedies which the king alone was capable of granting.⁸⁵ The volume of this business prompted the crown to appoint panels of receivers and triers who would answer petitions there and then or assign petitions to be heard before the king, the council, chancery, or the courts.⁸⁶ What the receivers and triers actually did becomes increasingly opaque over the fourteenth century, as private petitions temporarily disappeared from the rolls.⁸⁷ Fifteenth-century parliaments continued to coordinate their business with other arms of government. In the parliaments of 1422 and 1437 unanswered petitions of both the Commons and of others were referred to the council at the end of the sessions.⁸⁸ Private petitions regularly migrated between the jurisdictions of parliament, of the royal council, and of the council in parliament, that is, the Lords.⁸⁹ In the first quarter of the fifteenth century a file of petitions concerning riots was assembled in a single session of parliament for the royal council to determine.⁹⁰ In 1421 the council heard a case concerning the alleged destruction of a deed ⁸² W. M. Ormrod, ‘On—and Off—the Record: The Rolls of Parliament, 1337–1377’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 42–3; J. B. Smith, ‘The Legal Position of Wales in the Middle Ages’, in A. Harding (ed.), Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History (London, 1980), 26–8, 45, 50–3. ⁸³ A little-studied subject until recently: Dodd, Justice and Grace. ⁸⁴ P. Brand, ‘Petitions and Parliament in the Reign of Edward I’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 14–38; Dodd, Justice and Grace, 19–88. ⁸⁵ F. W. Maitland, ‘Introduction to Memoranda de Parliamento, 1305’, in Selected Historical Essays (Cambridge, 1957), 77–83 at 78. ⁸⁶ A. F. Pollard, ‘Receivers of Petitions and Clerks of Parliament’, EHR 57 (1942), 202–26; Dodd, Justice and Grace, 91–108. ⁸⁷ Ibid. 89–90, 108–25. ⁸⁸ PROME x. 22, xi. 225 (RP iv. 174a, 506–7). ⁸⁹ Myers, ‘Parliamentary Petitions’, 5, 9–13; C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Rolls of Parliament, 1399–1421’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 59–61; A. Curry, ‘ ‘‘A Game of Two Halves’’: Parliament 1422–1454’, Parliamentary History, 23 (2004), 83–6. ⁹⁰ PRO, C1/5/41.

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which had originated in a complaint in parliament.⁹¹ In 1440 a petition, presented at parliament, was answered in the Star Chamber five months after the parliament had been dissolved.⁹² Petitioners did not always seek legislation: the ‘serious complaint to us in our present parliament’ from the abbot of St Mary’s, York in 1433 prompted the issuing of proclamations and the appointment of a commission of inquiry authorized ‘through the king himself and his council in parliament’.⁹³ In the middle of the century a draft petition to parliament, like one to the chancellor, sought the issuing of a subpoena writ in order to force a party to produce evidence of title.⁹⁴ At the same time, as we have seen, private petitioners started to circumvent the receivers and triers by submitting their proposals directly to the Commons. One such was William Brampton, a merchant of Chesterfield. William petitioned the Commons around 1432 to complain that his brother Robert had falsely entered into bonds in his name. William’s petition therefore asked that these bonds be annulled by act of parliament. The Commons approved his petition and sent it to the Lords, who seem to have considered the legal questions raised, consulted the chancellor, and then reported in a schedule to the Commons that in principle William ought not to be charged, but that the matter would have to be heard in chancery. The Lords’ view was endorsed on Brampton’s petition. It is unclear whether the petition had actually been accepted by parliament, or whether the Lords had simply laid down the general principles by which Brampton—and anyone else in a similar predicament—might be relieved. Brampton may have hoped to have his petition enacted as it stood: for the response soit fait comme il est desire —for a legislative reply.⁹⁵ Over the fifteenth century, the activities of the receivers and triers probably declined markedly as men like Brampton approached parliament directly, hoping for legislative remedy.⁹⁶ Receivers and triers were still appointed at the beginning of each parliament, their names updated, and a chamber allocated—all duly recorded on the rolls. Petitioners were invited to submit their petitions, within seven to ten ⁹¹ Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ii. 307. ⁹² PRO, PRO36/19, p. 35a. ⁹³ PRO, C266/64/25; RP iv. 458–9. ⁹⁴ The Armburgh Papers: The Brokholes Inheritance in Warwickshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, c.1417–c.1453, ed. C. Carpenter (Woodbridge, 1998), 191–2. ⁹⁵ PRO, C49/43/1; SC8/26/1266 (RP iv. 414a), 1267; Dodd, Justice and Grace, 303–4. ⁹⁶ Ibid. 163–71.

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days in Henry’s reign.⁹⁷ Yet the receivers and triers were not apparently reappointed in successive sessions of a parliament in order to receive fresh requests, so their position may no longer have provided a meaningful way of organizing business. Signs of their activity in the better-documented Tudor parliaments have not been found. None of the manuals written in Elizabeth’s reign would mention them, and the early Stuart committee for petitions in the upper house would supersede them.⁹⁸ The clerk of parliament at that time, Henry Elsynge, having examined the bundles of medieval parliamentary petitions, implied that the triers stopped determining petitions somewhere in the first half of the fifteenth century, when there ‘first began the private bills, now exhibited in Parliament’.⁹⁹ Thus the bypassing of the receivers and triers and the consequent engagement of the whole parliament may have begun to formalize a distinction between legislation and other forms of petitioning.¹⁰⁰ The rolls give the impression that over the course of the fifteenth century the weight of business shifted towards legislative activity. During his first progress in August 1461, Edward IV received complaints from the tenants of the manor of East Meon (Hampshire), alleging that their lord the bishop of Winchester was exacting undue services from them; in response, Edward told the tenants to send representatives to make their complaint ‘at the parlement tyme’. When the tenants’ representatives and counsel for both parties duly appeared at Westminster three months later, the king appointed the serjeants and the attorney-general to examine the case. The lawyers then reported in the Parliament Chamber to the Lords, who concluded that the bishop was within his rights. The chancellor in the presence of the Lords and of the judges then informed the king of the Lords’ decision, whereupon Edward signalled his approval.¹⁰¹ In this case, the Lords were acting in a quasi-judicial capacity as the king’s council; the Commons apparently played no part in proceedings. Although this sort of record disappeared from later fifteenth-century rolls, parliament remained an extension of the king’s council. In the ⁹⁷ PROME xv. 91–2, 338–9, xvi. 9–10, 93–4, 141–2, 284–5, 321–2 (RP vi. 267–8, 385–6, 409–10, 440–1, 458, 509–10, 520–1). ⁹⁸ E. R. Foster, The House of Lords, 1603–1649: Structure, Procedure, and the Nature of its Business (Chapel Hill, NC, 1983), 101–11. ⁹⁹ Henry Elsynge, The Ancient Method and Manner of Holding Parliaments in England (4th edn., London, 1679), 276–7. ¹⁰⁰ Dodd, Justice and Grace, 193–5, 232–9. ¹⁰¹ PROME xiii. 40–1 (RP v. 475–6).

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parliament of 1487 Hull’s complaint against the Hanse was handled by the council.¹⁰² On 17 November 1495, while parliament was in session, the council conducted judicial business in the Parliament Chamber.¹⁰³ In non-legislative contexts, the council remained the core of parliament. Parliament itself did not have a seal; unlike most other chancery rolls, the parliament rolls were not a record of instruments issued under the great seal. In authorizing such warrants, however, parliament could be invoked as a meeting of the royal council, with warrants authorized per ipsum regem et consilium in parliamento.¹⁰⁴ A parliament did not actually have to be in session for warrants auctoritate parliamenti to be issued: commanding his army at Boulogne on 30 October 1492, Henry appointed ambassadors to treat with Charles VIII ‘by authority of parliament’.¹⁰⁵ There probably continued to be a range of conciliar business transacted in the Tudor parliaments that never went through the formal legislative process. Yet in the second half of the fifteenth century the parliament rolls stopped recording such business and concentrated on preserving only a record of laws passed.¹⁰⁶ From the late 1470s the rolls attempted to record all bills and petitions which were enacted; by the late 1480s they ceased to record almost all parliamentary activity which did not result in legislation apart from the formal preliminaries and closures of sessions.¹⁰⁷ Only the outline of sessions was recorded, and even the dissolution was sometimes omitted: there was no longer a connecting narrative. No unsuccessful bills and petitions were entered on the fifteenth-century parliament rolls after 1467–8.¹⁰⁸ Among the business omitted may have been the regular parliamentary confirmations of Magna Carta.¹⁰⁹ The rolls recorded no confirmations after Henry V’s reign, yet the practice of confirming chapter one guaranteeing the liberties of the Church may not have lapsed. At or near the beginnings of their reigns Edward IV and Richard III confirmed the liberties of the Church ‘by authority of parliament’.¹¹⁰ In 1493 the ¹⁰² Hanserecesse, ii. 226. ¹⁰³ PRO, REQ1/1, fo. 147r. ¹⁰⁴ Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, 192–8; T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–33), v. 59–61. ¹⁰⁵ Foedera, V. iv. 13–14, 51–2; CPR 1485–1494, 128; Curry, ‘Parliament, 1422–1454’, 84–5. ¹⁰⁶ Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 125. ¹⁰⁷ For enrolment, see Section 5.1. ¹⁰⁸ PROME xiii. 378–9, 383–4 (RP v. 630b, 632–3). ¹⁰⁹ F. Thompson, Magna Carta: Its Role in the Making of the English Constitution, 1300–1629 (Minneapolis, 1948), 9–19, 140–1. ¹¹⁰ Foedera, V. ii. 111–13; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London, 1737), iii. 614, 616.

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Commons of Ireland claimed that ‘in every parliament or great council held both in this land of Ireland and in the kingdom of England, all kinds of liberties, franchises, privileges and customs which have been used and granted to our mother Holy Church are authorised, approved and confirmed’.¹¹¹ Lord Darcy, who had first been summoned in 1504, claimed in the 1530s that the Lords’ practice was ‘to affirme & allow the furst chapiter of Magna Carta’ at the beginning of every parliament.¹¹² Therefore a change in the contents of the rolls did not necessarily faithfully replicate changes in the actual business parliament transacted. Quirkily, in 1523 the parliament roll recorded the chancellor’s examination in the Lords of Edmund Shaa to determine whether or not he was an idiot—possibly an indication of the range of business now left off the rolls.¹¹³ Comparison with the recording of the common petitions on the rolls in the 1340s may be instructive. That development may have reflected a new self-awareness on the part of the Commons and a recognition on the crown’s part of the Commons’ importance in authorizing taxation (needed to fund the Hundred Years War); yet common petitions were a regular feature of business in parliaments in previous decades without appearing on the rolls. Their recording could thus have reflected the personal inclination of the particular clerk of parliament.¹¹⁴ Similarly, the new clerk John Gunthorpe was presumably responsible for the increasingly comprehensive enrolment of acts passed in the 1470s.¹¹⁵ In altering the contents of the rolls, however, the clerks were not motivated merely by whim. When they selected what to record, the clerks disclosed their understanding of parliament. Their omissions and their inclusions revealed how the professionals running sessions understood the institution. Thus the fact that the rolls in the later fifteenth century ceased to record business which did not result in new legislation, but that they appeared to have entered all or almost all business which did implies that the purpose of parliament was being refined and narrowed down. Ceremonies, debates, the council’s judicial work, and even failed bills and petitions did not need to be recorded; but any and every act should be. The general pardons granted in the parliaments of 1485–6, 1487, and 1495 were not enrolled; from ¹¹¹ Statute Rolls of the Irish Parliament, 86–9. ¹¹² ‘Aske’s Examination’, 568; Beinecke Library, MS 370, fo. 40r; G.E.C. et al., Complete Peerage, iv. 73–4. ¹¹³ LJ, vol. i, p. cxlviii. ¹¹⁴ Ormrod, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 39–43. ¹¹⁵ PROME xiv. 3–4 (1472–5 plt., intro.).

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1515, however, general pardons were reclassified as acts of parliament authorized through the legislative process and thus enrolled.¹¹⁶ To the chancery clerks, parliament was ever more defined by its law-making. In 1492 common lawyers were exploring a related issue: who made an act of parliament. The case concerned the claim of King’s College, Cambridge to the manor of Dunton Waylett (Essex). This manor had been granted to the college by Henry VI in 1451; at the next parliament in 1453 the king ‘with the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal and at the request of the commons of his realm of England’ had confirmed this grant and the college’s other grants.¹¹⁷ Edward IV, however, resumed Henry VI’s grants, so King’s College and Henry’s other foundation at Eton lost many of their lands.¹¹⁸ In 1462 Edward granted Dunton Waylett to the vicar of Ashford (Kent), Thomas Wylmot, to support a chantry college erected at Ashford by the king’s servant Sir John Fogge.¹¹⁹ When Henry VII acceded to the throne, Eton and King’s redoubled their efforts to recover their original grants, drafting petitions to parliament.¹²⁰ All the colleges could secure, however, was an act in 1490 appointing a conciliar commission to arbitrate.¹²¹ King’s tried another tack. In 1492 the college brought an action in the common pleas against Wylmot and his servant, accusing them of forcibly entering the college’s property and there committing waste.¹²² In reply, Wylmot pleaded the act of 1461 that had endowed Edward with all the lands in Richard II’s possession at the time of his deposition, and Edward’s subsequent grants for the chantry foundation.¹²³ The college responded that properly this act could not have put Edward in possession of the manor, for the crown had not been seised of Dunton Waylett in 1399.¹²⁴ The manor had then belonged to the priory of Ogbourne (Wiltshire), daughter house of the Norman abbey ¹¹⁶ Reports of Henry VIII, i. 96; Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, 60; Cavill, ‘Enforcement of the Penal Statutes’, 5–8. ¹¹⁷ King’s College Muniments, DUN/2; DUN/41; CPR 1446–1452, 428. ¹¹⁸ K. E. Selway, ‘The Role of Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge, in the Polity of the Lancastrian Monarchy’, D.Phil. thesis (Oxford University, 1993), 145–57, 245–96. ¹¹⁹ CPR 1461–1467, 76; CPR 1467–1477, 42–3, 585; HP 1439–1509, i. 339–42. ¹²⁰ Eton College, ECR, MS 39/143; King’s College Muniments, KCE/276. ¹²¹ King’s College Muniments, KCE/8; KCE/275; PROME xvi. 68–70 (RP vi. 435–6); J. Saltmarsh, ‘King’s College’, in J. P. C. Roach (ed.), Victoria County History: Cambridgeshire, iii (London, 1959), 379–80. ¹²² PRO, CP40/921, rot. 255 ff. ¹²³ PROME xiii. 16 (RP v. 464b). ¹²⁴ King’s College Muniments, ATH/10; KCE/284, fos. 15r–16v.

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of Bec-Hellouin. Although the crown had in the fourteenth century temporarily taken custody of lands belonging to the alien priories during hostilities with France, it had dissolved the priories and appropriated their lands only in 1414.¹²⁵ Legal discussion addressed another issue: whether the confirmation of Henry VI’s grant in 1453 was an act of parliament.¹²⁶ This may have mattered because a royal grant could have been resumed in 1461, whereas an act of parliament would have remained in force unless repealed. The older view was that a grant ratified in parliament constituted an act of parliament.¹²⁷ Serjeant Rede argued that ‘this is a good act [of parliament] in my opinion because it is exemplified as a good act.’ An act was the judgment of the king in his court: ‘every court should be held according to its customary usage . . . thus the exchequer, king’s bench, and chancery, and thus the court of parliament’, Justice Vavasour maintained. From the evidence of the clerk of parliament as to ‘the course and the order of the court’, he concluded that the grant was indeed an act because the king with the assent of the Lords and of the Commons had granted it.¹²⁸ Others denied that this grant was an act of parliament. Serjeant Kebell maintained that if it were said that ‘ ‘‘the king grants by authority of parliament through his letters patent’’, this is only a grant of the king.’ King’s Serjeant Fyneux added that in order for the grant to be an act, the party had to show that the exemplification ‘by authority of the assembled parliament had been enacted by the Commons, and the Lords, and the king, and that the king confirmed, ratified, and approved’. In this view, the ‘authority of parliament’ was created through a legislative process in which the Commons and the Lords needed actively to be involved. King’s Serjeant Fisher argued that this grant was not an act because it reversed the correct legislative order: it invoked the king’s grant and then the assent of the two houses, whereas an act needed to originate in the Lords or in the ¹²⁵ CPR 1396–1399, 401; CPR 1401–1405, 95, 235, 466; M. Morgan, The English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Oxford, 1946), 119–35; D. Matthew, The Norman Monasteries and their English Possessions (Oxford, 1962), 72–142 (esp. 122); Selway, ‘Role of Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge’, 3–22, 276–7, 307, 315, 321. ¹²⁶ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (fos. 14–16). The defendant was here described as ‘the vicar of C.’, but the resemblance to the common pleas suit is strong: Baker, Laws of England, 75 n. 147. ¹²⁷ Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 74–80. ¹²⁸ Vavasour held the threefold assent to be essential: YB, 11 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 10 (fos. 26–7).

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Commons, to pass both houses, and then to receive the royal assent. To be an act a grant needed to state that ‘the Commons, and the Lords, and the king grant’: saying that the king grants by authority of parliament was insufficient, for ‘the king by himself cannot make an act’.¹²⁹ By January 1493 the court had found in favour of the college, on the grounds that the defendants could not show that Richard II had been seised of the manor in 1399. The college swiftly occupied the manor, but did not enjoy secure possession; in February the case was removed by writ of error to the king’s bench.¹³⁰ In 1497 King’s was forced to re-lease the manor at a reduced rent because of the continuing dispute.¹³¹ By 1503 the royal council had arbitrated an agreement, and from 1505 the college paid the Ashford foundation an annuity of £13 6s. 8d . for untroubled possession of the manor.¹³² King’s and Eton were dissatisfied with the council’s work, for early in Henry VIII’s reign they petitioned parliament asking for other properties to be restored.¹³³ Therefore the question that the case between King’s College and the vicar of Ashford raised was whether an act in parliament was necessarily an act of parliament. Legislative authority was beginning to be seen to reside in parliament, of which the king was the head, not the whole—there ‘to give life, (that is to say) to yeeld the highest and last assent’, it would be said under Elizabeth.¹³⁴ The dominance of the legislative form persisted over the sixteenth century. Sir Thomas Smith claimed that parliament was too busy to hear private disputes, but that when it condescended to do so ‘The matter of giving judgement by parliament’ did not differ from the legislative process he had already outlined.¹³⁵ The formal aspect of parliament’s status as a high court—its appellate jurisdiction from the king’s bench—was in abeyance.¹³⁶ One writ of error may have been heard in Henry VII’s first parliament, but the legal discussion that appeal provoked suggests how seldom it occurred; as Justice Fitzherbert ¹²⁹ YB, 7 Hen. VII, Trin., plea 1 (fos. 14–16). ¹³⁰ King’s College Muniments, DUN/15, rots. 1–4. ¹³¹ King’s College Muniments, KCAR/3/3/1/1, fos. 154v–156r. ¹³² King’s College Muniments, ATH/14/1–2; DUN/37. ¹³³ PRO, E175/11/60; LJ i. 13b. ¹³⁴ William Lambarde, Archeion or, a Discourse upon the High Courts of Justice in England, ed. C. H. McIlwain and P. L. Ward (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 126; Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 32–6. ¹³⁵ Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. M. Dewar (Cambridge, 1982), 89. ¹³⁶ Baker, Laws of England, 404.

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remarked in Henry VIII’s reign, such cases were now heard ‘rarely’.¹³⁷ Only five instances were recorded in the Lords’ journals between 1514 and 1589, when an alternative venue from which error in the king’s bench could be appealed—a joint tribunal of the justices of the common pleas and the barons of the exchequer—was provided.¹³⁸ Parliament’s increasing specialization had been possible because other arms of government were capable of dealing with some of its original business. The Commons’ last call for regular meetings—in order to hear pleas between parties—had been issued in 1377.¹³⁹ Other arms of government which were permanently in session were better equipped to respond to private suits than were parliaments, however frequently they were held. In particular, the expansion of the equitable jurisdiction of chancery and of the judicial work of the king’s council probably affected the quantity and range of business that came before parliament.¹⁴⁰ Lord Ellesmere observed in the early seventeenth century how ‘in ancient time, where the matter was against reason, and the party had no remedy by the Common Law, it was used to sue for remedy in Parliament . . . but now most of those sutes are in the Chancery, and the Parliaments are not so often holden’.¹⁴¹ Parliament’s narrowing range of business meant that it had come to resemble a legislature rather than a judicature. Fortescue compared the English parliament to France’s estates general rather than to her parlements, despite their homonymy; the Elizabethan lawyer and antiquarian William Lambarde explicitly rejected that alternative, for the parlements were ‘but ordinarie Courts of Iustice’.¹⁴² The emergence of the more specialized legislature paralleled the increasing differentiation of other functions of royal government in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries—in the ways in which the crown authenticated its commandments, administered justice, collected its revenues, ran the ¹³⁷ Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber, ii. 109–15; Reports of Henry VIII, i. 202. ¹³⁸ Foster, House of Lords, 179–80. ¹³⁹ PROME vi. 51 (RP iii. 23). ¹⁴⁰ Baldwin, King’s Council, 262–306; M. E. Avery, ‘The History of the Equitable Jurisdiction of Chancery before 1460’, BIHR 42 (1969), 129–44; N. Pronay, ‘The Chancellor, the Chancery, and the Council at the End of the Fifteenth Century’, in H. Hearder and H. R. Loyn (eds.), British Government and Administration (Cardiff, 1974), 87–103; J. A. Guy, ‘The Development of Equitable Jurisdictions, 1450–1550’, in E. W. Ives and A. H. Manchester (eds.), Law, Litigants and the Legal Profession (London, 1983), 80–6; P. Tucker, ‘The Early History of the Court of Chancery: A Comparative Study’, EHR 115 (2000), 791–811. ¹⁴¹ Thomas, Ld. Ellesmere, Certaine Observations concerning the Office of the Lord Chancellor (London, 1651), 47. ¹⁴² Fortescue, Governance, 113; Lambarde, Archeion, 123.

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royal court, managed its affinity, and governed the regions.¹⁴³ It was the less specialized great council rather than parliament that fell into disuse over the sixteenth century.¹⁴⁴ Development was not always one way, however. In the early seventeenth century—as other arms of government became clogged up, as jurisdictional conflicts intensified, and as the whole legal system threatened to grind to a halt—parliament once more came to discharge some of the functions it had offloaded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the 1620s the Lords began hearing original cases and appeals from lesser courts in large numbers, while the process of impeachment was revived.¹⁴⁵ The clerk of parliament Henry Elsynge sought to reflect this by changing the way he drew up the parliament roll: revealingly, he took the rolls of Edward III’s reign—with their mixed business record—as his model.¹⁴⁶ Elsynge’s decision reflected an intervening phase in parliament’s history in which law-making became of such paramount importance that it excluded other forms of business from entry in the records and quite possibly from time in the chambers.

8 . 3 AU T H O R I Z E D T Y R A N N Y Notions of what parliament did and what it was thus were gradually reshaped through clerical and diplomatic adjustments. These adjustments were sufficiently incremental and gradual for their cumulative significance only to become apparent in retrospect. The Modus was not updated until John Hooker—‘finding some alteration and varietie of the Parlements in these dayes, from them which were used in the elder dayes’—printed it alongside his own commentary in 1572.¹⁴⁷ Seemingly, only from Elizabeth’s reign did Englishmen once more attach constitutional significance to the antiquity of parliament that ¹⁴³ The best account is Gunn, Early Tudor Government. ¹⁴⁴ P. J. Holmes, ‘The Last Tudor Great Councils’, Historical Journal, 33 (1990), 1–22. ¹⁴⁵ C. G. C. Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (London, 1974), 54–220; J. S. Hart, Justice upon Petition: The House of Lords and the Reformation of Justice, 1621–1675 (London, 1991), 1–63. ¹⁴⁶ Foster, Painful Labour, 29–35; Elton, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 141; Ormrod, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 39–40. ¹⁴⁷ V. F. Snow, Parliament in Elizabethan England: John Hooker’s Order and Usage (New Haven, 1977), 125.

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the Modus had claimed.¹⁴⁸ This burgeoning attachment to supposedly ancient origins ironically arose because the institution was not static. The interest in and enhanced respect for parliament manifested in Elizabeth’s reign must have reflected the remarkable accomplishments of her father’s sessions—above all, in legislating the royal supremacy and the succession to the crown. This new-found range and reach had impressed and dismayed those on both sides of the widening religious divide: ‘this is the .xiij. artycle of our crede added of late,’ complained the evangelical Henry Brinklow, ‘that what so euer the parlament doth, must nedys be well done’.¹⁴⁹ But if their immediate impact was readily apparent, underlying constitutional shifts were not articulated. Sir Thomas Smith’s description of parliament as ‘The most high and absolute power of the realme of Englande’ is often taken as attesting its elevated status; yet in the 1510s Sir Thomas More—of all people—had already described parliament as ‘the highest and absolute power among the English’.¹⁵⁰ Parliament was described in similar terms at both ends of the sixteenth century: an explicit theory of parliamentary sovereignty was not formulated.¹⁵¹ Thus change was probably evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Parliament became the pre-eminent tool of Tudor centralization because it had already demonstrated its potential. Over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tensions between competing conceptions of the law were increasingly being resolved in favour of the positivist view at the expense of the natural view that law was deduced from—and therefore moderated by—eternal verities: instead, it was made by a human legislature whose will could not be gainsaid.¹⁵² For a late fifteenth-century critic of the legal profession the position was even clearer: sythe every statute is gronded by auctorite of parliament . . . every word comprised in every statute be only undrestond as the vulgar or comon receyveth every suche word, bot if the significacion therof be amplyfyed by auctorite of ¹⁴⁸ Evans, ‘Antiquity of Parliaments’, 206–21; P. Croft, ‘Sir John Doddridge, King James I, and the Antiquity of Parliament’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation, 12 (1992), 95–107. Parts of Doddridge’s treatise followed the Modus: ibid. 102–3; Parliamentary Texts, 89–90. ¹⁴⁹ [Henry Brinklow], The Complaynt of Roderyck Mors (Strasbourg, 1542?), sig. D5v. ¹⁵⁰ Smith, De Republica Anglorum, 78; St Thomas More, The History of King Richard III, ed. R. S. Sylvester (New Haven, 1963), 6. ¹⁵¹ P. Williams, ‘The Tudor State’, Past & Present, 25 (1963), 42–5. ¹⁵² Chrimes, English Constitutional Ideas, 290–2; Doe, Fundamental Authority, esp. 59, 82–3, 175–8. Cf. Elton, ‘Tudor Revolution: A Reply’, 38.

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som parliament, so that the declaracion of suche statute, actes or statutes rest not uppon the opynyon and fume of the juges.¹⁵³

Efforts in the early seventeenth century to demarcate fundamental law beyond the reach of present-day lawmakers endeavoured to restrict the overweening power this conception vested in parliament.¹⁵⁴ Sir Edward Coke singled out for criticism laws which subverted due process—by circumventing the jury trial and convicting without a hearing.¹⁵⁵ These laws were phenomena of the second half of the fifteenth century, which were amplified in the next century.¹⁵⁶ The temporary extension by parliament of the treason law in 1424 to condemn Sir John Mortimer had pointed the way (as Coke perceived); but parliamentary attainder matured with the civil war, as vulnerable rulers sharpened up the crown’s legal arsenal.¹⁵⁷ In rushing his household servants to the gallows in December 1487, Henry VII showed his successors the sheer convenience of dispensing with juristic niceties about whether a particular crime was capital.¹⁵⁸ Parliament, moreover, could retrospectively criminalize a deed that was lawful when it had been committed. In 1495 the justices held that an act overturning an earlier attainder did not reverse but rather annulled it entirely.¹⁵⁹ As Serjeant Kebell pointed out, this meant that ‘he who is restored can have an action of trespass for all the intervening time [of his forfeiture], which is not reasonable’.¹⁶⁰ Kebell’s superiors unanimously restated that parliament could retrospectively invalidate a lawful title. By 1532, Thomas Starkey would write of ‘authorysyd tyranny’ conferred by ‘actys of parlyamentys in tyme past’.¹⁶¹ Disagreements about the competence of statute law persisted. In 1527 Justice More (father of Thomas) claimed that parliament could not alter age-old local customs such as gavelkind (partible inheritance practised in ¹⁵³ PROME xiv. 342 (1472–5 plt., app., no. 2). ¹⁵⁴ Russell, ‘Cromwell’s Doctrine’, 235–46. ¹⁵⁵ Sir Edward Coke, The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England (London, 1644), 37–41. ¹⁵⁶ See Sections 1.3 and 3.2. ¹⁵⁷ E. Powell, ‘The Strange Death of Sir John Mortimer: Politics and the Law of Treason in Lancastrian England’, in Archer and Walker (eds.), Rulers and Ruled, 83–97; Bellamy, Law of Treason in the Later Middle Ages, 177–205. ¹⁵⁸ See Section 2.1; cf. LP vi. 577; Religion, Politics, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England, ed. I. W. Archer et al., Camden Soc., 5th ser., 22 (2003), 56–7; Coke, Fourth Part of the Institutes, 37–8. ¹⁵⁹ YB, 10 Hen. VII, Pas., plea 24 (fos. 22–3). ¹⁶⁰ This was not just a hypothetical possibility: PROME xv. 85 (1485–6 plt., intro., at n. 15). ¹⁶¹ Starkey, Dialogue, 120.

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Kent); Justice Fitzherbert flatly disagreed, holding that neither ancient usage nor Magna Carta would protect a custom abrogated by act of parliament.¹⁶² But parliamentary supremacy was realized in practice rather than in theory. Christopher St German’s ‘Student’ held that the proof of parliament’s authority to do something lay in the fact itself: I holde it nat best to reason or to make argumentes whether they [members of the Reformation Parliament] had auctoritie to do that they dydde or nat. For I suppose that no man wolde thynke, that they wolde do any thynge, that they hadde nat power to do.¹⁶³

Faced with a political crisis, the crown could turn instinctively to parliament to cut the Gordian knot of long-standing constitutional proprieties. But the 1530s were possibly not ‘the first phase of parliamentary history in which a strong crown deliberately exploited, in a new situation, the original notion that parliament was the king’s instrument’.¹⁶⁴ The rise of parliament thus did not require a royal programme of constitutional modernization. Rather it was the product of monarchical reconstruction born of weakness: in the fifteenth century, that grounded in questionable title; in the sixteenth century, that self-inflicted through the radical redrawing of the line between Church and state.¹⁶⁵ Parliament’s prominence in the 1530s was part of a wider search for legitimacy that threw up other ideas.¹⁶⁶ Yet its development may not have depended solely on particular rulers: possibly it owed as much to those serving the institution—as we have seen, the clerks who organized, managed, and recorded parliaments, and the common lawyers who sat in parliaments in ever greater numbers, advised suitors on how to pursue their grievances, drafted their proposals, and theorized about the proceedings. Further consideration of their educational and professional identities could be the key to understanding the institution’s development. As a hypothesis, it could be proposed that administering parliament proved to be a creative process, which cumulatively reinterpreted practice in the light of changing expectations and conceptualizations. The growing number of civilians in the fifteenth-century chancery, it has ¹⁶² Reports of Henry VIII, i. 66–9. ¹⁶³ St German, Doctor and Student, 317. The remark concerned the mortuary legislation of 1529: 21 Hen. VIII, c. 6. ¹⁶⁴ G. R. Elton, ‘A Revolution in Tudor History?’, Past & Present, 32 (1965), 105 (my emphasis). ¹⁶⁵ Williams, ‘Tudor State’, 55. ¹⁶⁶ Davies, ‘Cromwellian Decade’, 177–95.

The Evolution of Parliament

243

been suggested, was instrumental in advancing the chancellor’s equitable jurisdiction; so too the clerks’ professional values may have moulded the way parliament developed.¹⁶⁷ Common lawyers, who switched readily between drafting requests to chancery and to parliament, also contributed to the differentiation of parliamentary petitioning from other litigation.¹⁶⁸ By analysing acts of parliament, they deepened the relationship between the crown and positive law—for example, when interpreting the royal prerogative in the mid 1490s.¹⁶⁹ In the later decades of the fifteenth century, constitutional questions that earlier had been answered by reference to the law of property began to be answered in terms of a recognizably public law.¹⁷⁰ Positive law was becoming the syntax of the state: the sinews of the body politic, the superstructure which knitted the state—king (head) and people (body)—together.¹⁷¹ It was from the judges that Henry VIII learned that, through the union of the body politic, ‘we at no time stand so highly in our estate royal as in the time of Parliament’.¹⁷² Thus parliament may have been shaped by professional cultures that perhaps valued service to the crown as much as to its wearers.¹⁷³ By turning to parliament to assert royal power, the Yorkist and Tudor kings unintentionally conceded that its matrix of ideas and conventions enabled but also circumscribed their actions. Imperial rights annexed to the crown by God or by nature were placed within a framework of man-made law when they were elucidated in parliaments or debated ¹⁶⁷ Pronay, ‘Chancellor, the Chancery, and the Council’, 90–2, 102–3; M. Beilby, ‘The Profits of Expertise: The Rise of the Civil Lawyers and Chancery Equity’, in Hicks (ed.), Profit, Piety and the Professions, 72–90; T. S. Haskett, ‘The Medieval English Court of Chancery’, Law and History Review, 14 (1996), 247–66; id., ‘Conscience, Justice and Authority in the Late-Medieval English Court of Chancery’, in A. Musson (ed.), Expectations of the Law in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2001), 151–4; Tucker, ‘Early History’, 802–9. ¹⁶⁸ T. S. Haskett, ‘Country Lawyers? The Composers of English Chancery Bills’, in P. Birks (ed.), The Life of the Law (London, 1993), 9–23. ¹⁶⁹ See Section 7.2. ¹⁷⁰ T. F. T. Plucknett, ‘The Lancastrian Constitution’, in Seton-Watson (ed.), Tudor Studies, 161–81; G. L. Harriss, ‘Medieval Government and Statecraft’, Past & Present, 25 (1963), 20–4; A. Cromartie, The Constitutionalist Revolution: An Essay on the History of England, 1450–1642 (Cambridge, 2006), 4–58, 80–114. ¹⁷¹ Fortescue, De Laudibus, 30–3; Sir John Port, The Notebook, ed. J. H. Baker, Selden Soc., 102 (1986), 124–5. This development is the central theme of Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution. ¹⁷² Tudor Constitution, 277. ¹⁷³ Watts, ‘Newe Ffundacion’, 49–50; Pronay, ‘Chancellor, the Chancery, and the Council’, 100–3. Cf. Tout, Chapters, iii. 447–9; Ormrod, ‘Rolls of Parliament’, 48–56.

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in the courts. The implications of settling in parliament the nation’s doctrine or the royal succession were probably not anticipated; ultimately such actions facilitated the constitutional ‘slippage’ whereby a right declared in parliament would become a right conferred by parliament.¹⁷⁴ In the case of parliament as in other areas of government, ‘a centralising trend in the constitution did actually mean a constitutionalising trend at the centre.’¹⁷⁵

Conclusion ‘Little or nothing of much significance occurred in the history of parliament in the reign of Henry VII’, decided one historian.¹⁷⁶ Granted, the institution was not ‘notably different’ in 1509 from what it had been in 1485; yet Henry’s parliaments should be seen within the broader setting of longer-term trends which they had inherited and which they would perpetuate. Henry’s reign consolidated the tripartite parliament of two equipollent houses; more than ever before, it interpreted parliament as a legislature; and it pointed the way towards further extending parliament’s authority in the next reign. The parliamentary history of the ‘new monarchy’ thus displayed continuities both with its Lancastrian forebears and also with its Reformation descendants. The gradual emergence of law-making as a uniquely and quintessentially parliamentary activity was cumulatively transformative, generating an institution of both awesome capability and considerable conceptual haziness. The Tudor parliament proved to be more untrammelled than the jurists’ prince or Bodin’s ‘absolute’ monarch without resolving where sovereignty actually resided.¹⁷⁷ Investing supreme authority in the legislature, however, would turn a limited monarchy into a mixed monarchy.¹⁷⁸ ¹⁷⁴ Cromartie, Constitutionalist Revolution, 56. ¹⁷⁵ Watts, ‘Newe Ffundacion’, 53. ¹⁷⁶ Chrimes, Henry VII, 135. ¹⁷⁷ K. Pennington, The Prince and the Law, 1200–1600: Sovereignty and Rights in the Western Legal Tradition (Berkeley, 1993), 202–37, 269–90. Bodin made the English monarch into a ‘sovereign’ by insisting that he or she personally legislated: Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from The Six Books of the Commonwealth, ed. J. H. Franklin (Cambridge, 1992), 20–2. ¹⁷⁸ Elton, ‘Body of the Whole Realm’, 35; M. Mendle, Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the Answer to the XIX Propositions (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1985).

Conclusion Far from being characterized by quiescence, Henry VII’s parliaments should probably be noted for their busyness. There the king and his subjects engaged in a kaleidoscope of activities, of which only a fraction can now be reconstructed. Law-making was a sophisticated business: competitive, rhetorical, and participatory. While little is known about debates, votes, and rejected measures, Henry’s parliaments were lively and occasionally heated affairs. Although the king broadly got what he wanted, he did not always get all that he wanted: his parliaments were supportive rather than supine. Parliament also resonated outside Westminster. Elections drew in the commons, while the prospect of a seat became ever more attractive to the elite; laws and taxes made demands but also engaged individuals and communities. In the localities and at the centre, parliament promoted cooperation between the crown and its subjects. The parliamentary process from summons to dissolution may be taken too much for granted. In retrospect, its efficiency and effectiveness appear remarkable. The kingdom’s pre-eminent representative assembly, parliament was uniquely equipped to approve the weightiest political actions. Rather than resenting the encumbrance, a king in Henry’s vulnerable position therefore turned naturally to parliament to amplify and relay royal authority. Sessions were significant public occasions for which the regime prepared diligently. As well as serving particular ends, they also underscored profound points about the nature of the polity and its style of kingship. Parliaments were thus more than merely ‘points of contact’. While not presenting a straightforwardly beneficent but sadly misunderstood monarch, this study does qualify the more reductive impressions of Henry’s kingship as peculiarly introverted, innately misanthropic, or simply aberrant. A common, public, and defensible rationale underpinned royal policies, even those that proved unpopular.

246

Conclusion

In the venerable ‘Whig’ interpretation, a lifeless, cowed, and marginalized assembly quailed before the renascent power of new dynasties. The overwhelming weight of evidence counts against that view. Greater assertiveness, enhanced ambition, and heightened self-consciousness marked out kingship after the collapse of the Lancastrian monarchy. Parliament thrived on the crown’s intensely legalistic and increasingly professional attitude to government. The medieval institution did not therefore require saving in the 1530s. Parliament could sanction so momentous, even unconstitutional a policy as the break with Rome because of the standing it already possessed rather than that either instantaneously conferred or later acquired. It was paradoxical then that parliament’s subsequent prominence, by engendering fears for its future, should recast the ‘new monarchy’ as a time in which its power had begun to wane, for under Henry VII—out of convenience as much as principle, and with little scrutiny—parliament’s supremacy was nevertheless slowly taking shape.

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Index abduction 73, 79 Ackworth (near Pontefract) 191 acts of parliament: commencement 150–1 duration 83, 100, 160, 165 as grants 235–7 as judgments 229, 236 as matters of record 161, 229–30 origins 72–8, 166–72 retrospective force 241 types 116, 147, 152–3, 160, 166, 223 see also bills and petitions; statutes: interpretation Alcock, John, bishop of Worcester 1, 22–4, 27–8, 30, 32, 33, 41, 79, 141, 151 n. 44, 167 ale, assize of 184 alien priories 235–6 Allerton Bywater (Yorkshire) 40 almshouses 171 Amicable Grant (1525) 212 Anjou, duke of, Franc¸ois 213 Anne, duchess of Brittany 16, 61 Antron, William 194 apparel, regulation of 96, 100, 116, 185–6 Arblaster, John 135 Archer, John 177 armourers 158, 201 array, commissions of 61, 76, 195 Arthur, prince of Wales 17, 32–3, 108, 133, 168, 201, 210 Arundel, earldom of 115 Ashford (Kent) 235 attainder, parliamentary 33–43, 241 passage 34–5, 40–3, 147–8, 149 n. 24, 151, 223, 224, 229 penalties 34–5, 39–40, 54 restoration 35–40, 148, 150, 153, 161, 199–200, 241 attorney-general 57, 79, 95, 97, 157 n. 96, 208 Audley, Lords, see Tuchet Audley, Thomas 209

Ayala, Pedro de 212–13 Ayton in Cleveland 190 Babraham (Cambridgeshire) 188 Bacon, Francis 166, 221 n. 19 Bangor, bishop of 114 Banke, Richard 40 Barber, Humphrey 134 Bardney, abbot of 114 Bath 118 n. 92 Bath and Wells, bishop of 134 see also Stillington, Robert Battle, abbot of 114 Bayen, Thomas 136, 156 Baynton, John 37–8 Baynton, Robert 37–8 Beauchamp, Richard, Lord St Amand 144 Beaufort, Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby 50, 51 Beaumont, John, Viscount 125–6, 127 Beaumont, William, Viscount 111 Bec-Hellouin, abbey of 235–6 Becket, Thomas, St 195–6 Bedford, duke of, see Tudor, Jasper Bedwin 134 Bele, William 157 Bellingham, Robert (esq.) 73 n. 20 Bellingham, Robert (gent.) 73 Bellynger, James 185 n. 83 benefit of clergy 108, 169 Bergavenny, Lord, see Neville, George Berkeley family 40 Berkshire xvi n. 29, 132, 139 Berkswell (Warwickshire) 73 Berwick 60, 133, 169 Betanson, Thomas 31, 36, 41, 51–2, 177 Beverley 191 Bill of Rights (1689) 228 bills and petitions 47–8, 147, 152, 167–9, 220, 222–3, 230–2 see also acts of parliament Bingham, John 135

284 Bishop’s Lynn 122, 134, 135, 164, 177, 202 Blackheath, battle of 192 Blanche, daughter of Henry IV 211 Bletchingley 134 Blount family 138 Bodin, Jean 244 Bodmin 192, 194 Bohun, John 134 Boket, William 120 Booth, John 128 Boston 163 Bosworth, battle of 35, 36, 42, 111, 170 Boulogne 67, 233 Bourchier, Henry, earl of Essex 126, 140 n. 259 bowyers 157 Brackenbury, Robert 36 Brampton, Robert 231 Brampton, William 231 Bray, Reynold 28, 39, 128 n. 171, 129, 203, 204 bread, assize of 184 Bredford, William 185 n. 83 Brews, Elizabeth 37 Bridgnorth 183 Bridgwater 119 Bridport 179 Brille, William 137 Brinklow, Henry 240 Bristol 54, 58, 119, 162, 165 Brittany 16, 24, 25, 60, 61, 74, 109–10 Bromehill, Thomas 55 Bromsgrove and King’s Norton (Worcestershire) 185 Browne, Christopher 143 Buchanan, George 3 Buckingham, dukes of, see Stafford Buckinghamshire 132 Bulkley, Thomas 110, 135, 177 Burgh, Edward 110 Burgh, John 141 Burgh, Robert 142 Burgh, Thomas, Lord 109, 110, 144 Burgundy, see Low Countries butchers 169, 183 Butler, John 146, 208 Butler, Thomas 128

Index Cade, Jack 14 Calais 37, 49, 60, 105, 115, 150, 164, 227 Calthorpe family 132 Cambridge, borough of 43, 122, 135, 165 Cambridge, university of 10, 225 see also King’s College Cambridgeshire 132 Camden, William 107–8, 110 n. 30, 112, 113 n. 57 canon law 173 Canterbury, archbishop of 108 see also Morton, John; Warham, William Canterbury, city of xiv nn. 5 and 8, xvi n. 29, 62, 119, 121, 141–2, 181 Capel, William 59 Cardiff Castle 51 Carlisle 169 carpenters 154, 185 Castile 25, 213 Catesby, William 35 Caxton, Robert 141 Caxton, William 24–5, 179, 180 nn. 38 and 43 Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury 205 chamber, royal 41 n. 136, 57, 93, 134, 155, 194, 211, 213 Chamberleyn, Ralph 41 Chamberleyn, Robert 37, 40–1 Chambers in Epping (Essex) 40–1 chancery 14, 51, 93, 99, 107, 111–12, 152–3, 210, 229, 233 as court 84–6, 89, 98, 231, 236, 238, 242–3 see also parliament, officers in Chandler, Ralph 126 Channel Islands 105 Chapman, Robert 142 Charles I, king of England 3, 202 Charles II, king of England 202 Charles VIII, king of France 16, 23, 25, 214, 233 Charleton, Richard 38 Chelsea 32 Chester, palatinate of 91, 105 Chesterfield 231 Cheyne, John, Lord 37, 109, 194 Chichester, bishop of, see Pecock, Reginald

Index Chichester, city of 166 Christmas, Thomas 9, 30, 39, 79, 137 Church: liberties 171, 195, 233–4 in parliament 105–6, 108–9 taxation 62–3, 189 n. 111, 192 n. 134 testamentary jurisdiction 166, 242 n. 163 see also convocation Cinque Ports 50, 133, 136, 142, 154, 176, 178 civil law 242–3, 244 Clarence, duke of, George 47, 56, 129 Claro (West Riding) 190 Clerc, Clement 160 Clifford, Charles 38, 44–5 Clifford, Robert 96 Clifford, Roger 45 Clifford, Thomas, Lord 45 Clitheroe (Lancashire) 181–2 cloth, see wool trades coinage 93, 169, 176, 184, 186–7, 202 Coke, Edward 241 Colchester 39, 66, 69, 79, 137, 142, 188 diary 9, 11, 21, 29–31, 87, 147, 150 n. 34, 177 College of Arms 107–8 Colyns, John 10, 118, 143, 158 n. 97 common lawyers 87–8, 136–7, 147, 155–8, 171, 210, 242–3 common pleas, court of 86, 87, 235–8 Commons, house of: law-making 69, 147–8, 150–1, 169, 219–21 Lords, relations with 4, 62–3, 144, 219–20 meeting place 23 as petitioners 31, 47–8, 168–9, 222, 234 privileges 24 registration 22, 143 speaker 23–4, 27–8, 29, 35, 128–9, 138, 140, 143, 149, 151, 156, 158–9 see also MPs Commynes, Philippe de 67–8 Coningsby, Humphrey 147 conscience, see equity Constable, Robert 207, 208–9

285 constituencies 117, 132–7 boroughs 119–20, 126–7, 129, 133–5 counties 125, 132–3 enfranchisement 124, 133, 144 at parliament 142–3, 148, 164, 166 plena potestas 27, 194, 214–15 reports by MPs 176–7 see also elections, parliamentary; MPs convocation xiv n. 9, 25, 61–4, 68, 106, 112, 113, 114 Conyers, John 51 Conyers, William, Lord 110 copyhold tenure 43, 88 Corbet, Richard 119, 138, 139–40 Cornwall, county of 118 n. 97, 129, 134, 192–4 Cornwall, duchy of 128, 129, 136 coroners 93 council, great xiv n. 9, 26–7, 61–2, 68–9, 165, 192, 216, 239 council, king’s 50, 53–5, 76, 79, 168, 186, 194, 226 attendant 81, 85, 87, 88 clerk 87, 97, 159 as court 81–92, 238 drafts laws 74–5, 167, 187 learned in the law 82, 89, 204 in the marches 133 membership 81, 83, 115, 203–4 of the north 86 in parliament 32, 116, 162, 229–33 in the Star Chamber 79, 81, 231 tribunals 81–3, 86 at Westminster 81 Courtenay 44–5 Edward, earl of Devon 44–5, 134 Elizabeth 44 Henry, earl of Devon 45 Jane 44 Thomas, earl of Devon 38, 44 William 45 Coventry, prior of 108, 112 Coventry, borough of 119, 165 Creymour, Thomas 149 Cromwell, Thomas 15, 130, 138 Crowland Abbey Chronicles 10, 29, 31, 34, 41, 42, 206 Crowmer, Robert 141 crown: coronation oath 71 de facto kings 29–30, 42–3

286 crown: (cont.) dispensing power 227–8 and law 71, 161, 209, 212, 215 as legislator 72, 221–3, 236–7, 244 n. 177 succession to 28–9, 244 see also prerogative Crysp, John 141–2 Culpepper, Alexander 50 Cumberland 64, 135, 137, 186, 190 Curson, Philip 173 customs 56–9, 70, 95, 136, 141, 151 Dacre, Christopher 137 Dacre (of the North), Thomas, Lord 137 Darcy, Thomas, Lord 110, 234 Dartmouth 142 Daubeney, Giles, Lord 28, 111, 115, 194 Deal 76 Debenham, Gilbert 33, 37, 39 ‘De Facto’ act 43 Denmark 214 Derbyshire 55, 91, 110, 138 desertion 74 Devizes 129 Devon, earls of, see Courtenay; Stafford, Humphrey Devon, county of 193 Doddridge, John 240 n. 148 Doncaster 190 Dorchester 143 Dorset, marquis of, see Grey, Thomas Dorset, county of 134, 193 Dover, port of 54 n. 65, 135, 176 Dover Castle 133, 154, 176 drapers 155, 156, 168, 178 Drury, Robert 128 Dudley, Edmund 28, 35, 37, 38, 45, 50, 91, 92, 97–100, 117, 138, 158, 159, 203–4, 205, 213 n. 95, 224 Dudley, Edward, Lord 144 Dunton Waylett (Essex) 235–7 Durham, bishop of, see Fox, Richard Durham, palatinate of 105, 181 Dymmock, Andrew 41, 62, 73, 128 Dynham, John, Lord 62, 115

Index East Meon (Hampshire) 232 Edmund, son of Henry VII 201 Edward the Confessor 219 Edward I, king of England 7, 230 Edward III, king of England 7 Edward IV, king of England 2–3, 7, 28, 29, 38–9, 42, 47, 55, 60, 64, 70, 128, 151 n. 43, 170, 193, 200, 205–6, 225, 232, 233, 235 Edward V, king of England 113, 118 n. 97, 128 Egerton, Thomas, Lord Ellesmere 238 Egremont, John 190–1 elections, parliamentary 118–31 cancellation 126 n. 151, 137 contests 120–1, 123, 125, 138, 139–40 crown, influence on 128–31 electorate 118, 121–2, 124 lords, influence on 123, 125–8 majority rule 119, 122–3 recommendation, letters of 125–7 refusal to serve 135, 202 returns, chancery 10, 118–20, 134, 138 statutory regulation 118, 124, 130, 135 suits relating to 118–19 voting 120, 122–3 see also constituencies; MPs Elizabeth I, queen of England 3, 7, 213 Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII 15, 31–2, 50, 112, 201 Ellesmere, Edward 38–9 Ellesmere, Lord, see Egerton, Thomas Elsynge, Henry 219, 232, 239 Ely 165 Elyot, Richard 136, 137, 141 Emayn, William 220 Empson, Richard 91, 99, 128 n. 171, 129, 162, 178, 203–4, 205 enclosure 167 enfeoffment to use 34, 40, 41, 85, 161–2, 207–10 Englefield, Thomas 28, 156 equity 84–5, 88–9, 94, 208–9 Ernley, John 157 n. 90 error, process in 82, 92, 229–30, 237–8 escheators 95, 136 Essex, earl of, see Bourchier, Henry

Index Essex, county of 97, 99, 176, 194 Estgate, John 172–4 ´ Etaples, treaty of 67, 74, 107, 114 n. 66, 118, 214 Eton College 147, 225, 235, 237 exchequer 28, 51, 62–3, 94, 129, 154, 162, 179, 188, 191 as court 57–8, 95–7, 188–9, 236, 238 Exeter 136, 137 n. 239, 142, 168–9, 193 extortion 75, 79, 99 fairies 196 Faques, William 176, 180 felony 54, 73–4, 170 Ferdinand, king of Aragon 16 Fetiplace family 132 Fetiplace, Thomas 132 n. 199 feudal tenure 206–11 see also prerogative Fisher, John 236 Fisher, William 134 fishing 95, 163, 168, 185 Fitzherbert, Anthony 237–8, 242 Fitzhugh, Richard, Lord 51 Fitzlewis, Philip 154 Fitzlewis, Richard 126 Fitzwalter, Lord, see Ratcliffe, John Fitzwilliam, Thomas 24, 143 Flamank, Thomas 192, 194 Flanders, see Low Countries Fleta 229 Fogge, John 235 foreign merchants and craftsmen 56, 58–9, 164, 167, 185 see also Hanseatic League forestalling 184 Fortescue, John 72, 74, 75, 85, 94, 146, 210, 212, 215, 238 Fotheringhay, college of 50 Fox, Richard, bishop of Durham, bishop of Winchester 113, 228 France 3, 16, 23–5, 27, 60, 67, 74, 111, 206, 212–13 estates general 4, 214–15, 238 Frowyk, Thomas 159, 181, 207, 209 Fryis, Jacques 38–9 Fryon, Stephen 25 Furser, John 185 fustians 163 Fyneux, John 154, 209, 229, 236

287 games 82, 178, 181–2, 184, 186, 189 gaol delivery, justices of 93 gaols 94, 97, 166, 226 n. 55 garter, order of 25 Garth, Thomas 134 gavelkind 161, 241–2 Gibbon, Thomas 135 Giglis, Giovanni de 62 Glamorgan 51 Glastonbury, abbot of 114 Gloucester, duke of, see Richard III Gloucester, borough of 50, 119, 183, 185, 226 Gloucestershire 95 Glover, Robert 108 Godalming 66 gold 99, 157 n. 90 Gooch, Thomas 189 Gosebourne, Henry 142 Grantham 140 Great Contract (1610) 205 Greenwich 32, 155 Greville, Fulke 213 Grey, Thomas, marquis of Dorset 111–12 Grey of Codnor, Henry, Lord 73, 109 n. 27 Grimaldi, John Baptist 57, 59 n. 99, 98 Grimsby 120, 125–6, 127–8, 130, 137, 140 Gruffydd ap Rhys 133 Gryndyll, John 177 Guildford, Richard 39, 129, 161 Gunthorpe, John 234 Hall, Arthur 221 Halle, William 120 n. 111 Hampshire 141, 164, 193 Hampton, John 137 Hannibal 26 Hanseatic League (Hanse) 53, 56, 148, 164, 227–8, 233 Harcourt, William 139 Harper, Richard 40–1, 129 Harrington, James 37–8 Harrington, Robert 139 Hastings, Richard (Lord Willoughby (of Eresby)) 109 Hastings, William, Lord 135 Hastings and Hungerford, Edward, Lord 73, 106, 116–17

288 Hastings and Hungerford, Mary, Lady 116 Hatton, Richard 8, 53, 159, 226 Helston 194 Hennage, John 140 Henry IV, king of England 4, 131, 204 Henry V, king of England 47 Henry VI, king of England 29, 46, 47, 235 Henry VII, king of England: addresses parliament 29–30, 31, 34 avarice 203–4 besieges Boulogne 67, 233 compared with French king 212–13 health 204 hunting, interest in 167 inexperience 213 initials acts 152, 155 n. 72, 160, 226 marriage 15, 31–2 offers at mass 22 parliament, attitude to 4, 199–200, 214 prophecy, interest in 170 rebukes York 71 speaks in council 86 succession 33, 201 title 15, 29–32, 43 veto, use of 11, 58 Henry VIII, king of England 3, 15, 27, 45, 56, 91, 95, 98, 100, 130–1, 200, 202, 243 as prince 17, 33, 108 Herbert, Elizabeth 109 Herbert, Lord, see Somerset, Charles Herefordshire xvi n. 29, 132, 133 heresy 169 n. 175 Heron, John 149 Hertfordshire 97, 99, 140 Heytesbury 134 High Wycombe 182 Hilton, Thomas 157, 159 Hindon 133 Hobart, James 162, 208 hobgoblins 195 Holand, Roger 136 Holes, Roger 120 Hooker, John 239 Horne, Gervase 39 Horne, William 39 horses 95 hospitals 171

Index household, royal 46–7, 51–6, 73–4, 79, 128, 129, 131, 135, 162, 213 chamberlain 76 clerk of market 158 esquires of the body 28, 129, 131, 135 sergeants-at-arms 89, 135 steward 76 yeomen of the crown 55, 135, 138 yeomen of the guard 213 Howard, John 123, 125 Howard, Thomas, earl of Surrey 36, 111, 112–13, 133, 148, 191 Hugford, John 141 Hugford, William 141 Hugonet, Guillaume 212 Hull xiv n. 5, 74–5, 119, 142, 164, 233 Humber, river 162 Hungerford, Walter 116, 133–4 hunting 74, 167, 185, 196 Huntingdonshire 94, 129, 132, 184 Huse, William 73, 78–9, 116, 170 Ickham (Kent) 185 n. 83 informers, see promoters Innocent VIII, Pope 29, 31–2, 62, 176 n. 11 inns of court 178 Gray’s Inn 157 n. 96 Inner Temple 80, 207 Lincoln’s Inn 207 Ipswich 62, 123, 127 Ireland 58, 76, 192, 200, 204 parliament 1 n. 4, 105, 112, 200, 225 n. 48, 234 Isabella, queen of Castile 16 Isle of Man 105 Isle of Thanet 155 Ive, Richard 150 Jakes, Thomas 116 James I, king of England 3 James I, king of Scotland 215–16 James III, king of Scotland 215 James IV, king of Scotland 16, 68–70, 76, 110, 192, 211, 214, 216–17 Jay, Richard 147 joinery 185 Joseph an Gof, Michael 192, 194 Jowell, Jeffrey 189 JPs 73, 79–81, 93–4, 139, 141

Index Jugurtha 23 juries 79–80, 164–5, 181–2, 241 see also perjury Kebell, Thomas 116, 236, 241 Kent 77, 93, 124, 129, 133, 141 n. 269, 161, 185, 193, 194, 195, 242 King, Oliver 41 n. 136 king, see crown king’s bench, court of 87, 93, 99, 184, 230, 236–8 King’s College, Cambridge 147, 154, 155, 159 n. 103, 235–7 King’s Lynn, see Bishop’s Lynn Kingsmill, John 134 Kirkeby, Thomas 151, 153 knighthood, conferment of 32–3, 210 Kynaston family 161 labour regulations 96, 184, 185–6, 187 Lambarde, William 238 Lambeth 155 Lancashire 128, 142 Lancaster, duchy of 48–9, 51, 52, 120, 128 n. 171, 129, 132, 178 Lancaster, house of 30, 31, 129 lands, crown 43, 46–7, 51–3, 55–6, 70, 204 see also household, royal; resumption, acts of Land’s End 192 Langston, Robert 127 Langton, Thomas, bishop of Salisbury 111, 114 Languedoc 215 Languedoil 215 Latimer, barony of 115–16 law, system of: due process 72, 80–3, 89–92, 95–6, 241 justice 71, 76–8, 84, 88, 92, 98–101 see also equity types 83–4, 240–4 law readings, see statutes: interpretation leather-working trades 178, 185 legislation (procedure) 146–53 amendment 150–1, 160, 224, 226–7

289 assent, royal 48, 53, 151–3, 222–5, 227, 236–7 assent of second house 150–1, 157, 173–4, 220, 223, 236–7 committees 115, 148 dispatching clauses 150, 224 drafting 47–8, 63–4, 147, 158–9 enacting clauses 26, 167, 220–1 engrossment 30, 69, 149–50, 152, 155, 158–9 enrolment 153, 160, 174, 234–5 exemplification 236 fees 153, 159, 160 language 179 pleading 147, 149, 155–6, 161 readings 148, 149, 156 redaction 179, 221–2, 225 voting 149 see also lobbying; provisos Leicester 65 n. 146, 77, 124 Leighton, Thomas 119, 139–40 Lewes 166 Lincoln, bishop of 163 see also Russell, John Lincoln, earl of, see Pole, John de la Lincoln, city of 119, 157, 163 Lincolnshire 130, 140, 143 Littlebourne (Kent) 185 n. 83 liveries, see retaining Livy 22 lobbying (legislative) 12, 153–60 access 154 cost 155, 157 and crown 155, 162 expenses 154 MPs, names of 157–8 success 156, 157, 160 see also legislation (procedure) Lollards 171 n. 190 London, city of xiv n. 9, 52 n. 52, 57, 62, 88, 98, 117, 119, 121–2, 123, 163–6, 168–9, 183, 185 aldermen, court of 121–2, 158–9, 165 Blackfriars 22 n. 7, 78 Cheapside 76 chronicles 54, 65, 67, 68–9, 88, 98 common council, court of 121–2, 176 companies, livery 59, 115, 158–9, 165–6, 168 Fleet Street 55 mayor 88, 139, 158–9, 163, 165

290 London, city of (cont.) recorder 24, 122, 136, 143, 155, 156 St Paul’s Cathedral 62, 76, 106 St Stephen, parish of (Coleman Street) 50–1 Shambles, market 169 sheriffs 88, 176 statute book 178–80 Stepney 149 Tower 32, 39, 54 Lords, house of: adjournment 106 committees 115 judicial role 231–2, 239 law-making 147–8, 150–1 law officers in 22, 108, 113, 117, 148, 150 as Parliament Chamber 22, 29, 32, 49, 79, 154, 232, 233 procession 21–2, 25 proxies 113–14 see also peers Louis XI, king of France 212 Lovell, Francis, Viscount 33, 111 Lovell, Thomas 24, 28, 31, 32, 123, 128–9, 151 n. 44, 156 Low Countries 3, 96, 176 states general 212 L¨ubeck 148 n. 14 Lucas, Thomas 162 Ludgershall 129 Ludlow, Richard 119 Ludlow 128 Lyme Regis 141, 185 Lytton, Robert 129, 154 Machlinia, William de 179 Magna Carta 82, 91, 92, 184, 211, 233–4, 242 Maldon 126–7, 135, 140, 176 Malory, John 38 Margaret, daughter of Henry VII 32, 110, 211 Margaret, duchess of Burgundy 75 Markham family 132 Marlborough, statute of 207 Marowe, Thomas 80, 208 martial law 34, 191 Mary I, queen of England 130 Maximilian, king of the Romans, emperor 16, 25, 67, 75 Meering, William 161 mercers 158, 191

Index merchant adventurers 59, 143, 151, 155, 164, 165 merchant tailors, see tailors Middleham 51 Middlesex 128 Middleton, William 134 Midhurst 134 Milan 201 mint, royal 53, 97 misdemeanour, see trespass Modus Tenendi Parliamentum 211 n. 80, 219, 239–40 Moigne, John 120 Molyneux, James 128 n. 171 Mone, John 120 n. 111 Mordaunt, John 35, 72, 117, 140, 156, 159, 209, 224 More, John 241 More, Richard 188 More, Thomas 149 n. 24, 212, 240, 241 Morgan, John 8, 53 Morley, Richard 49 Morris ap Hugh 55 Mortimer, John 241 Mortlake 32 Morton, John, bishop of Ely, archbishop of Canterbury 23, 25, 26, 28, 32, 33, 39, 52, 75, 89, 155, 164, 170, 203 Morton, Robert, bishop of Worcester 113 Mountford, Simon 38, 139 Mowbray 128 Eleanor, duchess of Norfolk 127 Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk 135 John, duke of Norfolk (d. 1461) 123, 125 John, duke of Norfolk (d. 1476) 121 MPs 117–18, 137–44 activities, private 41, 140–1 under attainder 28, 120 n. 111, 129, 140 attendance 54 n. 65, 141–2 burgesses and citizens 130 n. 185, 139, 143 careers 138–9 competition for seats 139–40 expenses 157, 173, 177 gentry as borough MPs 130 n. 185, 140 knights of the shires 24, 132, 139, 140, 143

Index lawyers 136–7, 155 merchants 59, 143 reasons for serving 137–8, 140–1 residency 125–6, 130–1, 135, 140, 143 royal servants 128–9, 131, 135–6, 144–5 wages 74–5, 118, 134, 136–7, 173, 177, 188, 200, 202 see also Commons, house of; elections, parliamentary Much Wenlock 117 n. 90 murder 74, 79, 93, 161, 173, 227 Musgrave family 132 Musgrave, John 135 Mustell, John 156 Mynors family 132 Mynors, Richard 132 n. 199 Mytton, Elizabeth 138 Mytton, John 138 Mytton, Thomas 138 Naseby, John 141 navy 60, 167 Nevill, Richard, Lord Latimer 116 n. 80 Neville, Anne, countess of Warwick 147 Neville, George, Lord Bergavenny 77 Neville, Ralph, earl of Westmorland 126, 127–8 Neville, Richard, earl of Warwick 47, 56 Newcastle-under-Lyme 129 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 119, 162 Newport, John 139 Norfolk, dukes of, see Mowbray, John Norfolk, county of 65, 118, 123, 125, 128, 129, 132, 140, 166, 185 Northallerton 182 Northampton, borough of 124, 142–3 Northampton, battle of 128 Northamptonshire 49, 132 Northfield and Welley (Worcestershire) 40 North Riding (Yorkshire) 191 Northumberland, earls of, see Percy, Henry Northumberland, county of 64, 68, 133, 190 Norton, Sampson 136

291 Norwich, bishop of 134 Norwich, city of 62, 65–6, 119, 127, 137, 142, 155, 165, 166, 170, 172–4 SS Simon and Jude, parish of 172–4, 189 Nottingham 119, 123, 165, 181, 185, 187 Nottinghamshire 132 novel disseisin, assize of 161, 218–19 Ogbourne, priory of 235 Orford Haven 163 Ouse, river 162 outlawry 85, 92, 99, 142, 161 Overton, Thomas 139 Owen, David 132, 134 Oxford, earl of, see Vere, John de Oxford, borough of 141, 165 Oxford, university of 10, 141, 225 Oxfordshire 139 oyer and terminer, commissions of 34, 91, 98, 191 Page, William 137–8 pardons 14, 30, 35–6, 41–2, 48, 91, 93, 94–5, 97–8, 99, 113, 180, 191, 193, 234–5 parliament, concepts of: absolute nature 240–1, 244 antiquity 218–19, 239–40 as body of realm 8, 105, 243 as council 200, 221, 228–9 as estates 28–9, 105–6, 214, 221 frequency 3, 199–203, 238 as high court 34, 116, 161, 183, 228–30, 236, 237–8 as legislature 228–9, 237–9, 244 as trinity 221 parliament, historiography of 1–5, 11–15 ‘Lancastrian constitutionalism’ 1, 2, 4 and ‘new monarchy’ 2–3, 6–8, 205, 213–14, 244, 246 as ‘point of contact’ 12–13, 21, 145, 245 ‘Tudor despotism’ 1, 4 ‘Tudor revolution in government’ 15, 218, 242 ‘Whig interpretation’ 2–5, 246

292 parliament, officers in: attorney-general 117, 162, 232 chancellor 22–4, 27–8, 31, 146, 155, 159 chancery clerks 8, 22, 113, 146–7, 150, 152, 180, 219, 226, 235, 242–3 clerk of parliament 8, 49, 53, 113, 151, 159, 160, 219, 226, 234, 236, 239 clerk of the Commons 136, 156, 157, 159 clerk of the crown 150, 160 heralds 22, 107–8 justices 78–9, 159, 232 master of the rolls 53, 151 porter 154 receivers 146–7, 230–2 secretary, king’s 41 n. 136 sergeant-at-arms 154, 160 serjeants-at-law 28, 156, 159, 225 n. 51, 232 solicitor-general 41, 117, 162 speaker’s clerk 159 triers 146–7, 230–2 ushers 154 parliament, records of 8–11 bills and petitions, list of 9, 152–3, 157 close rolls 106–7, 109, 112, 117, 119 n. 103 journals, Lords 107, 147, 148, 219, 238 ‘original acts’ 9, 53 n. 57, 150–1, 152, 220, 224 parliament rolls 8–9, 21, 30–1, 48, 53–4, 147, 148, 149–50, 152–3, 179, 180, 219, 223, 226–7, 231–5, 239 peers, lists of 9, 22, 107–8, 111–12, 113–14, 117 statute rolls 179, 225, 228 parliament, sessions of: afternoons 158 ceremonies, opening 21–2, 114, 220 ceremonies, special 25, 32–3, 54, 79, 107, 112 Christmas, approach of 54, 114, 142 holy days xiv n. 5, xvi n. 29, 41, 158 prorogation 25, 31, 79 sermons 1, 22–3, 26, 33, 41, 71, 75, 106, 140–1, 164–5, 167, 170, 201–2, 220

Index parliaments: (1376 (Good)) 143 (1414 (April)) 222 (1422) 230 (1423–4) 241 (1433) 231 (1437) 230 (1439–40) 231 (1449 (Feb.)) 115 (1453–4) 112, 235 (1455–6) 112, 115 (1459) 130 (1461–2) 30, 42, 232 (1463–5) 49 (1467–8) 47, 49–50, 60, 200, 205 (1472–5) 24, 63–4, 112 (1478) 129 (1483) 55, 128, 187 (1484) 30 (1485–6) 9–10, 15, 21–4, 27–36, 41–2, 47–52, 56, 73, 78–9, 87, 107, 111, 129, 147, 150, 151, 161, 169–70 (1487) 15, 32–3, 52–5, 60, 73, 93, 109, 112, 165, 241 (1489–90) 15–16, 24–5, 32, 39, 61–5, 189–90 (1491–2) 10, 15–16, 23, 24, 66–8, 118 (1495) 16, 46, 74–6, 83, 90–1, 94–5, 107, 118, 157, 214 (1497) 16, 23, 26–7, 66–70, 83, 147, 192 (1504) 17, 33, 35, 37–8, 58, 66–7, 83, 108, 110, 147, 157–60, 168–9, 199–200, 206, 210–12, 220, 224, 226–7 (1510) 17, 22 n. 4, 58–9, 91, 98–100, 143 (1512–14) 22 n. 4, 23, 27, 63, 201–2, 228 (1515) 56, 108–9 (1523) 22 n. 7, 27, 131 n. 187 (1529–36 (Reformation)) 131, 147 n. 10, 200, 223, 242 (1536) 202 (1554–5) 130 (1571) 213–14 (1610) 205 Paston 10, 118 John I 123, 127 John II 121, 135, 140 John III 121, 195

Index William II 134 William III 195 Paulet family 132 Pavy, Hugh, bishop of St David’s 112 Pecock, Reginald, bishop of Chichester 223 peers 106–16 abbots 22, 108, 113, 115 attendance 32–3, 107, 112–14 bishops 22, 62, 106, 108 creation by patent 44, 111 creation by writ 109 hereditability 44–5, 109–10 privileges 116 spiritual lords 108–9, 113, 170 summons, right to 110–12 temporal lords 62, 108, 113 see also Lords, house of penal statutes 93–100 Percy, Henry, earl of Northumberland (d. 1489) 111, 114, 190–1, 195 Percy, Henry, earl of Northumberland (d. 1527) 133 Percyvale, John 139 perjury 75, 80–3, 99, 164–5 petitions, see bills and petitions pewterers 155–60, 163, 186 Philip, Davy 132 Pilkington, Roger 91–2 Pillye, Robert 202 Pisan, Christine de 24 Plummer, Robert 126 Plumpton, Edward 54 Plumpton, Robert 31, 177 Plymouth 134, 144 Plympton 134 Pole, Edmund de la, earl of Suffolk 17, 43, 189, 201 Pole, John de la, duke of Suffolk 113 n. 56, 121 Pole, John de la, earl of Lincoln 111 Pontefract 191 Poole 141 poor 76–7, 91, 170–1, 182, 195 see also vagrancy Pormard, Thomas 120 Portugal 3, 213 praemunire 116 Prendergast, Thomas 93 prerogative 168, 205, 208–10, 212, 243 ‘Jura Regalia’ 210 Prerogativa Regis 7, 207

293 quo warranto 7 surveyors 97, 204 see also crown privy seal writs, see subpoena writs proclamations 32, 77, 80–1, 175–6, 180, 186, 190 promoters 57, 96–9 prophecy 170 provisos 40–1, 48–55, 148–9, 151, 169 n. 174, 225–8 Pudsey, Richard 119, 129 Pulter, Thomas 36 Pykyll, Hugh 185 n. 83 Pynchamour, John 173 Pynson, Richard 180 Pyrton, William 97–8 quarter sessions 132, 181, 184, 186 rape, see abduction Rastell, John 179 Ratcliff, Richard 37 Ratcliffe, John, Lord Fitzwalter 33, 38, 76 Ratcliffe, Robert 38 Reading, abbot of 134 Reading, borough of xvi n. 29, 134, 136 Rede, Robert 147, 236 Redman, Richard, bishop of St Asaph’s 111 regrating 184 Rennes Cathedral 31 requests, court of 87–8 resumption, acts of 47–56, 93, 168, 210, 226, 227 see also household, royal; lands, crown retaining 43, 52, 77–8, 79, 80, 81, 83, 94, 96, 182–3, 184, 187 Richard II, king of England 235, 237 Richard III, king of England 28, 29, 30, 34, 42, 43, 56, 60, 87–8, 128, 233 riot 80–1, 83, 86, 90–1, 93–4, 96, 184, 230 Rippis, William 189 Risley, John 25 riverbanks 162 Rivers, Anthony, Earl 114, 128 Rochester 137 Romney 137, 176, 178

294 Roos, Edmund, Lord 110, 224, 225 Roper, William 212 Rotherham, Thomas, archbishop of York 51, 114 Rouergue 215 Rous, John 167 n. 163 Rowley, John 58–9 Rowley, William 58–9 Russell, John, bishop of Lincoln 106, 220 Rutland 139 Ruyton, Margery 73 Rydon, Robert 159–60 Rye 127, 136, 176 Sacheverell, Jane 73 St Albans, abbot of 116 St Albans, battle of (1455) 47, 125 St Amand, Lord, see Beauchamp, Richard St Asaph’s, bishop of, see Redman, Richard St David’s, bishop of, see Pavy, Hugh St George 195 St George’s Chapel, Windsor 50, 149, 154, 156 St German, Christopher 84–5, 242 St German, Geoffrey 36, 42 St John of Jerusalem, prior of 108 St Keverne 192 St Neot’s 184 Salisbury, bishop of 134 see also Langton, Thomas Salisbury, earl of, see Cecil, Robert Salisbury, city of 27, 119, 120, 121, 134, 135, 136, 137, 165 Sallust 23 Samson, Robert 97 sanctuary 170, 172–4 Sandwich 135, 139, 141, 142, 143, 177 Sarre (Kent) 155 Savage, Humphrey 33 Say, William 140 Saynton, John 120 Scarborough 119, 136 scavage 168–9 Scotland 3, 16, 26–7, 68–70, 113, 192, 211 parliament 214, 215–17 Scott, William 133 Scotton, Thomas 139

Index Scrope of Bolton, John, Lord 112 Scrope of Masham, Thomas, Lord 112 Scudamore, John 42 n. 145 Secreta Secretorum 202 Sedgewick, Humphrey 208 Severn, river 226 Shaa, Edmund 234 Shaa, John 88, 140 shearmen 163 Sheen 27, 32, 155 Sheffield, Robert 28, 156 sheriffs 92, 95, 97, 99, 139, 141, 164 in elections 119–20, 123, 124–5, 128 n. 171, 130, 134, 139–40, 155 Shrewsbury, abbot of 116 Shrewsbury, borough of 116, 119, 122, 138, 139, 185 Shropshire 54, 119, 132, 138, 139–40 Sidney, Philip 213 silk-workers 148, 178 Simnel, Lambert 15, 33, 43, 73 n. 20, 76, 111–12 skinners 157 see also leather-working trades Skrene, Elizabeth 40 Skrene, John 40 Smith, Richard 135–6 Smith, Thomas 202, 237, 240 Sodor and Man, bishop of 108 solicitor-general 62, 73 Somerset, Charles, Lord Herbert 109 Somerset, county of 132, 192, 193 Southampton 95, 119, 136, 163, 168 South Kilvington by Thirsk 190 Spain 212 Spelman, John 71, 99 Spynell, John 54–5 Stafford, Edward, duke of Buckingham 134 Stafford, Henry, duke of Buckingham 129 Stafford, Humphrey, earl of Devon 40 Stafford, Humphrey (of Grafton) 33, 35, 38, 39–40 Stafford, Katherine, duchess of Buckingham 134 Stafford, Margaret 40 Stafford, William 53 Stafford, borough of 120, 134, 140 Staffordshire 120, 140 Stamford 62, 143

Index Stanhope, Edward 161–2 Stanley family 144 Stanley, Thomas, earl of Derby 22 Stanley, William 33, 37, 49, 50, 76 stannaries 193 ‘Star Chamber’ act 81–2, 91 n. 153 Starkey, Thomas 200, 241 Stathum, Nicholas 155–6 statute books 152 n. 52, 160, 177–80, 183–4, 223 statutes: enforcement 76–8, 94, 97, 180–7, 195 see also penal statutes interpretation 58, 72, 80, 84, 146, 178, 207–9, 240–2 statute staple 92 Stillington, Robert, bishop of Bath and Wells 30, 111 Stoke, battle of 15, 33, 36, 52, 60, 73 n. 20, 111, 126 Stonor, John 207–8 Stonor, William 207–8 Stourton, William, Lord 113 Strode, William 116 subpoena writs 89–91, 161, 231 Suffolk, duke of, see Pole, John de la Suffolk, earl of, see Pole, Edmund de la Suffolk, county of 125 Surrey, earl of, see Howard, Thomas Surrey, county of 134, 164 Sussex 77, 132, 134, 164, 166 Sutton, John 55 Symson, Robert 35 Syon, nuns of 162 tailors 155, 168 Talbot, Gilbert 40, 119, 132, 139–40 tanners 183 see also leather-working trades Taunton 133 Tavistock 134 taxation 46, 59–70, 148, 151–2, 200, 205 alien subsidy 53, 60 assessment 61, 63, 65–6, 69, 188, 190 benevolence 59, 68, 168 collection 61, 63–5, 188–9, 192, 194 directly assessed subsidy 61–70, 189–90 exemption from 53, 64, 190, 225–6

295 feudal aid 17, 33, 206, 210–12 fifteenth and tenth 60–70 forced loan 26, 68, 70, 192 resistance to 16, 38, 65, 69, 189–94, 206 see also customs Taylor, John 219 Temple Balsall (near Solihull) 73 tenure, see feudal tenure Tewkesbury, battle of 37 Thames, river 162, 163 Thorisby, Thomas 202 Thorpe, Robert 105 Thursby, Thomas 185 n. 83 Tichborne, John 141 tiles 185 Tiptoft, John, Lord 125 titulus regius 30–1 Toft, Henry 57, 82, 97–9 Totnes 93 Townshend, Roger 116, 218 Trent, river 163 trespass 73, 83 n. 91, 94 Triennial Act (1664) 203 Trussell, William 134 Tuchet, James, Lord Audley 192, 193–4 Tuchet, John, Lord Audley 111, 115 Tuder, John 137 Tudor, Jasper, duke of Bedford 134, 141 Tunstall, Richard 133 Tunstall, William 136 Tyler, William 133 Tynedale (Northumberland) 95 Tyrell, James 37, 51 Tyrell, Thomas 38 Tyrwhitt, William 137, 140 upholsterers 94 use, see enfeoffment to use usury 75, 95, 99, 178, 183 Uvedale, William 164 vagrancy 79, 82, 182, 186 see also poor Vaughan, William 50–1 Vavasour, John 116, 156, 209, 236 Venice 157 n. 90, 164 Vere, John de, earl of Oxford 50, 126, 154 n. 71 Vere, Margaret de 40

296 Vergil, Polydore 203 Verney family 132 Vernon family 138 Vernon, Henry (Lord) 42, 110 Vertue, John 9, 30, 39, 79 wages, see labour regulations Wake, Roger 35–6 Wales 56, 91, 210, 230 representation in parliament 105, 114 n. 66, 124 Wallingford 130–1, 137 Warbeck, Perkin 16–17, 34, 43, 68, 70, 75–6, 96, 192–3, 200–1 wardship 204, 206–10 Warham, William, archbishop of Canterbury 23, 71, 106, 159, 201–2, 228 Warwick, earl of, Edward 15, 17, 116, 194, 201 see also Neville, Richard; Simnel, Lambert Warwickshire xiv n. 5, 73, 139, 141 Weald 74 weavers 155, 166 weights and measures 75, 118, 150, 184 Wells, John, Viscount 94 Wells, city of 26–7, 119, 122, 134, 135 Wentworth, Henry 133 West Country 16, 38, 128, 134, 192–4 Westminster, abbey of 22, 23, 25, 32, 138, 141, 160, 185 Westminster, palace of 21–2, 32, 49 Hall 25, 157 Painted Chamber 22, 29 Star Chamber 79, 231 White Chamber 22 Westminster I, statute of 78, 80 Westminster II, statute of 89 n. 137 Westmorland, earl of, see Neville, Ralph Westmorland, county of 64, 132, 190 West Riding (Yorkshire) 190 Whittocksmead, John 24 n. 17 Wickham, Thomas 86 Willoughby, Henry 120, 132 Willoughby de Broke, Robert, Lord (d. 1502) 109–10, 115–16, 144 Willoughby de Broke, Robert, Lord (d. 1521) 110

Index Willoughby (of Eresby), Christopher (Lord) 109 Willoughby (of Eresby), William, Lord 109 Wiltshire 119, 134, 135, 136, 141, 144, 193 Winchester, bishop of 133, 232 see also Fox, Richard Winchester, city of 176 Winchester, statute of 78, 181, 184 Winchester College 225 Wingfield, Robert 140 Wingham (Kent) 185 n. 83 Witham, river 163 Wode, Thomas xvi n. 29 Wodeshawe, Thomas 73 Wolton, Thomas 53 n. 58 wool trades 59, 93, 95, 164, 227 Worcester, bishop of, see Alcock, John; Morton, Robert Worcester, city of 122, 133, 136–7, 141, 182, 226 Worde, Wynkyn de 176 n. 12 Wriothesley, Thomas 107, 111, 113–14 writs, parliamentary: assistance 117, 156 de expensis xiv n. 5, xvi n. 29, 136–7, 141 summons 106–10, 116, 119, 194 Wylmot, Thomas 235 Wyndham, Thomas 38 Yarmouth 122, 128, 141 York, abbot of 113, 114, 231 York, archbishop of 108 see also Rotherham, Thomas York, duke of, Richard (d. 1460) 125, 128 York, duke of, Richard (d. 1483) 16 see also Warbeck, Perkin York, city of 9 n. 61, 62, 71, 74, 119, 121, 127, 139, 144, 158, 162, 164, 165, 182, 185, 189–91 York, house of 29, 31, 33, 75–6, 193–4, 201 Yorkshire 133, 189–91 Yotten, Thomas 9 n. 61 Young, William 137 Zouche, John, Lord 39, 111