Maldon

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Elections

DateCandidate
1510SIR RICHARD FITZLEWIS 1
 THOMAS HINTLESHAM 2
1512THOMAS CRESSENER 3
 (not known)
1515JOHN STRANGMAN 4
 (not known)
1523JOHN BOZOM 5
 THOMAS WYBURGH 6
1529THOMAS TEY
 EDWARD PEYTON
1536WILLIAM HARRIS II 7
 JOHN RAYMOND II 8
1539JOHN EDMONDS 9
 WILLIAM BONHAM 10
1542EDWARD BURY 11
 HENRY DOWES 12
1545CLEMENT SMITH
 NICHOLAS THROCKMORTON
1547(SIR) CLEMENT SMITH
 HENRY DOWES
by 23 Jan. 1552WILLIAM BASSETT vice Dowes, deceased13
1553 (Mar.)(SIR) WALTER MILDMAY
 HENRY FORTESCUE
1553 (Oct.)?ANTHONY BROWNE II
 JOHN RAYMOND II
1554 (Apr.)THOMAS HUNGATE
 EDMUND TYRRELL
1554 (Nov.)ANTHONY BROWNE II
 JOHN WISEMAN
1555SIR HENRY RADCLIFFE
 RICHARD WESTON
1558EDMUND TYRRELL
 ROGER APPLETON
by 5 Nov. 1558HENRY GOLDING vice Appleton, deceased

Main Article

A small and declining port, Maldon was included in Acts for urban renewal in 1540, 1542 and 1544 (32 Hen. VIII, c.19; 33 Hen. VIII, c.36; and 35 Hen. VIII, c.4). The lordship of the borough was shared between the bishop of London and the Darcy family until Sir Thomas Darcy surrendered his interest to the crown in 1550; under the terms of a grant of the moothall and other places and privileges made in 1403, the borough paid the bishop a fee-farm of £6 13s.4d. Its other obligations included the equipping of a ship for the royal service for 40 days each year. The manors of Great and Little Maldon, previously held by the Bourchier family, passed from Henry Bourchier, 2nd Earl of Essex, to his son-in-law William, Baron Parr, created Earl of Essex in 1543. Of this line only Parr, whose sister Queen Catherine’s jointure included several Essex manors, seems to have exercised any influence on the choice of Members, the most important dynasties in this respect being the Radcliffes, lords Fitzwalter and from 1529 earls of Sussex, and the de Vere earls of Oxford.14

Maldon had received its first charter in 1171 and began returning Members in 1332. The charter of incorporation granted on 18 June 1554 the borough appears to have owed to Sir Robert Rochester rather than to any local nobleman: it was he who attested to the townsmen’s loyalty during the succession crisis of the previous year. The authority previously wielded by two bailiffs, assisted by 15 lesser officials and 15 wardmen, was thenceforth vested in a common council consisting of the two bailiffs, six aldermen and 18 capital burgesses. The charter neither named these functionaries nor prescribed the method of their election, which had to be dealt with by a second charter of 25 Feb. 1555. This laid down that the aldermen and capital burgesses should elect two aldermen as bailiffs annually on the Friday after Epiphany (6 Jan.), that the bailiffs and capital burgesses should elect to vacancies in the aldermanic ranks, and that the bailiffs and aldermen should elect capital burgesses ‘from time to time’. In January 1559 the governing body took advantage of its power of altering the town’s customs to restrict the parliamentary franchise to the common council and 12 other burgesses of its choice; this was done on the ground that earlier elections by ‘bailiffs, burgesses, freemen and commonalty’ had been made ‘only by most voices and greatest number contrary to all good order and wisdom’. Election indentures, all in Latin, survive for the seven Parliaments between 1545 and 1555. The contracting parties in December 1544 (when the indenture bears the same date as that for the shire and may be in the same hand) are the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire and the two bailiffs of Maldon, with 13 named burgesses and other burgesses and inhabitants unnamed. Later indentures are between the sheriff and bailiffs alone but they record the participation of the community. John Wiseman’s name is added to the indenture of November 1554 in a different hand.15

Only one of the 27 Members whose names have survived, John Bozom, is known to have been paid wages, and what he received, 40s. and a dinner costing 2s.4d., fell far short of his due at the statutory rate of 2s. a day. It is true that the chamberlains’ accounts are incomplete and in poor condition, but the pattern of representation seems to reflect the town’s poverty and several Members are known to have agreed to serve without wages. Bozom’s fellow-Member in 1523, Thomas Wyburgh, is the only native and office-holder known to have sat, although Henry Dowes was the son of a former bailiff. Nearly all the remaining Members were from Essex. The exceptions were Bozom, a stepson of Thomas Cressener, who held a manor in Norfolk of Robert Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter and later 1st Earl of Sussex; Edward Peyton, a younger son in the Cambridgeshire family which also owned land in Essex; Nicholas Throckmorton and Walter Mildmay, who had their principal residences in Northamptonshire (although Mildmay was of Essex birth and held the manor of Danbury not far from Maldon); William Bassett, who probably came from Cambridgeshire; and Thomas Hungate, a Yorkshireman. Sir Henry Radcliffe was a younger son of the 2nd Earl of Sussex, and five other Members (Cressener, Bozom, John Raymond, William Bonham—whose father was knight of the shire in 1529—and Hungate) were connected with the Radcliffe family. Some eight or nine others were connected in various ways with the earls of Oxford. Sir Richard Fitzlewis, Anthony Browne, John Wiseman and Richard Weston were members of successive earls’ councils, and Henry Golding’s half-sister was married to the 16th Earl. A further three may have owed their return to the patronage of the Parrs: John Strangman’s nephew Edward Bury was William Parr’s associate in a land transaction, Clement Smith’s lease of Bradwell from Queen Catherine could have counted more towards his election than his relationship with the Seymours, and Nicholas Throckmorton was a cousin of the Parrs and a member of Queen Catherine’s household. Edmund Tyrrell was also a servant of William Parr before 1543 but as a staunch upholder of the Marian government he can hardly have owed his two seats to the disgraced Parr. If Tyrrell’s own standing was insufficient to secure his return he could have enlisted the support of his friend and relative by marriage (Sir) William Petre, knight of the shire in every Marian Parliament; he was also a friend of Browne and a kinsman of his fellow-Member Roger Appleton, an equally zealous Catholic. Of the remaining Members, Peyton may have owed his return to the crown, John Edmonds to Cromwell and Dowes either to his own standing or else to Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, a brother-in-law of the Protector Somerset, as was Smith, Dowes’s partner in 1547. Henry Fortescue was a well-connected Essex gentleman whose residence at Faulkbourne was only a few miles from Maldon; he was returned to Edward VI’s second Parliament after Browne, who had been elected for both Maldon and Preston, decided to sit for Preston. Browne was again chosen at both boroughs for the first of Mary’s Parliaments but on this occasion his preference is not known; when elected for Maldon and Ludgershall to her third he chose the Essex borough. Mildmay was similarly presented with a choice between Maldon and Lancaster in the spring of 1553 and decided on Maldon. The Maldon court book, containing lists of officers and freemen from the reign of Henry VI to 1550, shows that at least until 1542 Members were, when necessary, admitted to the freedom on their election; the book thus provides the names of several Members which would otherwise be lost.

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

  • 1. Essex RO, D/B3/1/2, f. 66v.
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. Ibid. D/B3/3/64.
  • 4. Ibid. D/B3/1/2, f. 78.
  • 5. Ibid. D/B3/1/2, f. 98v
  • 6. Ibid.
  • 7. Ibid. D/B3/1/2, f. 112.
  • 8. Ibid.
  • 9. Ibid. D/B3/1/2, f. 115v.
  • 10. Ibid.
  • 11. Ibid. D/B3/1/2, f. 121.
  • 12. Ibid.
  • 13. Hatfield 207.
  • 14. History, lxii. 37; Essex Rev. lxii(248), pp. 47-58; CPR, 1401-5, p. 307; Morant, Essex, i. 329; LP Hen. VIII, xix(1), g. 141(65).
  • 15. CPR, 1553-4, pp. 137-9; 1554-5, pp. 95-97; Essex RO, D/B3/1/3, ff. 42v, 43; C219/18C/40, 19/31, 20/49, 21/66, 22/27, 23/56, 24/68.