Lobbying Parliament: the London Companies in the Fifteenth Century

M A T T H E W D A V I E S

In 1457 the Mercers’ Company of London paid the sum of 26s. 8d. to Hugh Wyche, one of their most prominent members and a former M.P. for the City, ‘ptir une livre de parchemyn contenant xx quayers ovesqs divers statutesfaites par parlements’.’ This book no longer survives, but the purchase took place at a time when the Mercers, like a number of the London companies, were increasingly trying to lobby parliament, its members and officials in order to promote their interests. What follows is an attempt to reconstruct the lobbying activities of the London livery companies in the fifteenth century and the various strategies they adopted to have their concerns addressed by king and parliament. Success was very mixed, and this reflected a number of factors including the methods used, the prominence of the company or companies involved, the resources at their disposal, and the extent to which London’s concerns were perceived to be in the interests of the ‘common weal’.

The growth of lobbying was an important expression of a wider awareness of political events and processes. Recent work has, for instance, emphasized this in the context of early sixteenth-century lobbying by groups and corporations.2 Although we do not know what use Hugh Wyche made of his book of statutes in the 1450s, there is evidence to suggest that individual citizens, as well as institutions, were taking an active and growing interest in what was going on in parliament. In some instances, this awareness encompassed knowledge not only of what parliament did, but also of parliament’s place in wider affairs. In 1443, for example, an otheiwise little-known citizen named ‘Henxton’ precociously argued that a writ recently issued by the king, which allowed the mayor to restrict attendance at civic elections, could not supersede the provisions of the city’s Great Charter of 1319, because the latter had been confirmed by parliament. Such an appreciation of constitutional niceties was supplemented by a more practical concern about the performance of the city’s four M.P.s in parliament, even to the extent that it could be made the subject of accusation and slander. In January 1445 an ironmonger named John Sturgeon was chosen as one

’ H. Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts of the Mercers’ Company, 1347, 1391-1464: University of London M.Phil., 2 vols, 1977, 11, 208. Earlier versions of this paper were delivered to the Parhamentary History conference held at the Institute of Historical Research in 2001, and to a meeting of the seminar of the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester in 2002. I am grateful to those who attended these meetings for their suggestions, and especially to Dr Linda Clark for her comments and suggestions.

* Richard W. Hoyle, ‘Petitioning as Popular Politics in Early Sixteenth-Century England’. Hisrorical Research, LXXV (2002), 365-89.

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of the city’s two commoner M.P.s, to attend the parliament summoned to meet at Westminster the following month. The parliament lasted for four sessions and was dissolved in early April 1446. In March 1446 -in other words while parliament was in session - Sturgeon was forced to come to Guildhall in London to defend himself against allegations made by two London skinners, Robert Osgood and Thomas Creek. Their first charge was that Sturgeon, evidently seen as an ambitious character, had gone about London writing repeatedly above shop windows the words ‘John Sturgeon alderman, John Sturgeon alderman’. To undermine him still further, the two men made a second allegation, claiming that he had done ‘much harm [multa malu] to the interests of the city in parliament’. Whether or not this second charge had any basis in fact, both Sturgeon and his detractors clearly felt it had political ‘currency’ and could damage his reputation among ordinary citizen^.^

Awareness of parliament among the citizens is difficult to quantify from such anecdotal evidence. Nevertheless, as Caroline Barron and others have noted, direct participation in political processes by citizens does appear to have increased during the fifteenth century. Membership of the common council almost doubled from 96 in the late fourteenth century to 187 by 1460, and, although still made up of many prominent and wealthy citizens, reflected a wider range of occupations than the court of aldermen.4 A similar pattern can be found in the parliamentary returns made by the sheriff, in which are recorded the names of those who attested the election of London’s M.P.s in the city’s husting This was apparent by the 1440s when the returns yield an average of 45 names of non-aldermen, compared with figures of 18 for the 1420s and 27 in the 1430s. These were men who did not normally hold any of the important civic offices, but were nevertheless of some standing within their wards and crafts. Whilst the aldermen were drawn mainly from the mercantile companies, the non-aldermen represented more than 30 different trades, meaning that prominent members of the saddlers, haberdashers and waxchandlers, as well as girdlers, jewellers and bladesmiths, were able to take part in the ratification of the elections of M.P.s.‘

It was in this context, therefore, that the London craft and merchant guilds became more actively involved in lobbying parliament. Their ability to do so was a reflection of the way in which their organizational structures and corporate resources had developed by the fifteenth century. The organizational roots of a number of these companies can be traced back to the thirteenth century, if not earlier, and the charters they acquired from successive monarchs in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries confirmed their standing within their respective crafts and in the urban community as a whole.’ Much of the wealth possessed by the companies was in the form of property

Corporation of London R.O., Journals, 4, f. 119v. Caroline M. Barron, ‘The Government of London and its relations with the Crown 1400-1540’,

University of London Ph.D., 1970, p. 53; Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit .f Stability. Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), p. 30.

The electoral process in London is described in Barron, ‘Government of London’, p. 327; eadem, ‘London and Parliament in the Lancastrian period’, Parliamentary History, IX (1990), 344-5.

Figures derived from a database developed by the author while employed by the History of Parliament Trust. I am grateful to the Trust for permission to reproduce these findings here. ’ The standard work on the early history of the city companies has for many years been George Unwin,

The Gilds and Companies $London (1908). For more recent work on their origins and development see:

138 Matthew Davies

holdings, many of which had been bequeathed as part of arrangements for chantries, anniversaries and other post obit services. Snapshots of the incomes of some of the companies are contained in the tax returns of 1412 and 1436 that show, for instance, that the income from land of the Tailors (later reincorporated as Merchant Taylors) rose from just over A44 to L77 per annum. Figures from the wardens’ accounts of that company show that their income continued to rise throughout the fifteenth century, with property accounting for some two-thirds of a total income of more than A200 by the 1470s. The same was true with the other ‘greater’ companies, a group that was headed by the Mercers, Grocers and Drapers and which, by 1528, was becoming known as the ‘Great Twelve’. The resources they possessed could be used for a wide range of internal functions, such the provision of charity to poor members, or could be used to fund campaigns and lobbying activities, such as those described below.’ Company halls were built or enlarged during this period, providing impressive spaces for the guild celebrations and the entertainment of important guests. Other significant developments included the formation of ‘courts of assistants’, formal bodies designed both to deal with internal matters such as apprenticeship and disputes, but also to discuss and formulate policies to deal with economic and political matters which could be presented in the form of petitions to the city and to the crown and parliament. These bodies came to depend upon the figure of the company clerk, and as this office developed in stature a number of the companies began to employ trained legal officials, often drawn from the ranks of scriveners and lawyers who were active in the city courts. Their expertise was invaluable, both for the internal affairs of the companies and for dealing with litigation, property transactions and the drafting of bills and petitions.’

For the late medieval period, lobbying by individuals and institutions is only partially reflected in the surviving records of parliament itself. It can often be a matter of chance whether a particular statute refers to the petitioners, or whether the petition itself survives in the rolls of parliament, or among the numerous un-enrolled ancient petitions in the Public Record Office. Surveying these sources, one can certainly find petitions from a wide range of craft and merchant guilds in London, whether it be the petitions filed in 1386 against the iniquities of Nicholas Brembre’s governance of London; the complaints of the upholders to the parliament of 1495 about the use of false materials for filling cushions and featherbeds; or indeed the five statutes enacted by parliaments between 1455 and 1504 that restricted imports of silk wares, most of which seem to have resulted, directly or indirectly, from representations made by London’s silkwomen.’’ A number of other petitions were

’ (continued) Anne F. Sutton, ‘The Silent Years of London Guild History before 1300: The Case of the Mercers’, Historical Research, LXXI (1998), 121-41; E. M. Veale, ‘The “Great Twelve”: Mistery and Fraternity in Thirteenth-Century London’, ibid., LXIV (1991), 237-63; Matthew Davies, ‘Artisans, Guilds and Government in London’, in Daily Li$ in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Richard H. Britnell (Stroud, 1998), pp. 125-50.

* The income from property of the Goldsmiths rose from 6 4 6 to 670, and that of the Mercers from 6 1 3 to 670: ‘Lay Subsidy temp. Henry IV’, ed. J. C. L. Stahlschmidt, ~ r c ~ a e o ~ o g i c a ~ ~ o u ~ a ~ , XLIV (1887), 65; Sylvia L. Thmpp, The Merchant Clars $Medieval London (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1948), p. 386.

The Merchant Taylors’ Company ofLondon. Court Minutes 1486- 1493, ed. Matthew Davies (Stamford, 2000), pp. 3-6, 8-11.

‘“Statutes, 11, 374-5, 395-6, 472, 506, 582, 654.

Lobbying Parliament 139 presented to parliament in the name of the mayor, aldermen and commonalty of London, but clearly had their origins in the concerns of specific crafts that were sufficiently uncontroversial to be adopted by the city’s government. There were also a number of bills that were less obviously tied to their London origin by being presented in the form of Commons petitions, having found support from other interests in parliament. In other words, what often survive in the records are the final, official stages of lengthy lobbying processes that are otherwise difticult to reconstruct. For the London companies, however, there are accounts and other records which survive with increasing frequency during the course of the fifteenth century, not just for the elite groups of mercers, grocers, drapers and so on, but also for the so-called ‘lesser’ companies such as the Pewterers, Cutlers, Blacksmiths, Carpenters and Brewers.” The value of these records is that they enable us to see parliament from the ‘bottom up’, from the perspective of groups of citizens who for various reasons hoped that lobbying would achieve concrete results.” The intention here is to use these records to try and reconstruct the lobbying activities of the companies, to look at the ways in which they sought to gather information, obtain legal advice, establish links with officials and M.P.s, and then tried to get their concerns addressed. What is generally still missing from the records is the middle phase - the proceedings and debates in parliament which determined the fate of a petition - whch historians of the later sixteenth century have used to reconstruct the lobbying process through all its various ~tages.’~ Nevertheless, through the records of the city companies we can begin to see the development of lobbying strategies and techniques, and in some cases the successes and failures which greeted their efforts.

Parliament itself was, of course, just one of several fora where craft and merchant guilds could present their concerns. The vast majority ofbills drawn up by the London companies were sent straight to the mayor and aldermen for consideration, as they generally related to city matters that did not concern parliament or the crown. The city letter books contain an increasing number of petitions from the crafts, on issues such as immigration and employment practices, apprenticeship and the regulation of behaviour among their younger members.14 This pattern is also reflected in the records of the guilds themselves. The earliest account book of the Brewers’ Company, for instance, contains many such petitions from the first half of the fifteenth century, usually to do with aspects of the regulation of the craft in the city. These records also, however, provide a good example of issues that lay beyond the scope of the city government and were thus the object of persistent lobbying of crown and parliament during the reign of Henry VI. The twin aims of the Brewers in this period were first to obtain a new charter, and second to secure legislation for the establishment of proper measures for malt used in the brewing process. Their first expenses were paid out in May 1432 when they sent three senior members to Westminster ‘in the

” Most of these are now deposited in Guildhall Library, although some companies, notably the Mercers and Drapers, still retain their records at their livery halls.

l 2 Barron, ‘London and Parliament’, pp. 343-67. l3 I. W. Archer, ‘The London Lobbies in the Later Sixteenth Century’, Historicaljournal, XXXI (1988),

17-44; David Dean, ‘London Lobbies and Parliament: The Case of the Brewers and Coopers in the Parliament of 1593’, Parliamentary History, VIII (1989), 341-65.

j 4 See Davies, ‘Artisans, Guilds and Government’, pp. 143-8.

140 Matthew Davies

tyme of the parlement’. Their lobbying continued until 5 June, noted in the accounts as the ‘last day of be courte’, which appears to indicate that they had in fact spent most of their time presenting the case to members of the king’s council. These efforts eventually bore fruit in February 1438 when they obtained their charter from Henry VI, but only after paying the sum of A40 to the chancellor and a further A13 6s. 8d. to John Norris, an esquire of the king’s ~ h a m b e r . ’ ~ In the meantime, however, they had continued to pursue the parliamentary route in their quest for legislation dealing with malt: in October 1433, during the second session of the parliament that had first assembled in July that year, they made payments ‘for divers costes to yeve to divers persones of the parlement for to have viij busshell of clene malt for j quarter’. Their efforts were not successful, for a subsequent entry shows that they had been forced to meet again to redraft their bill after it had apparently been ‘kid aside’ by the parliament. They tried again during the parliament that met between January and March 1437 when they put forward ‘an gret supplicacion to oure lord the Kyng and to the parlement for the mesure of malt’, but again their efforts seem to have failed.I6

The case of the Brewers reflects one of the themes that emerge from the records of the London companies, that is an awareness of parliament’s position as both an instrument of royal government and as a sounding board for issues affecting the king’s subjects. When obtaining a new royal charter, companies tended towards direct engagement with the crown alone: this was certainly the case with the Drapers and Tailors, both of whom sought new charters in the late 1430s. For the Tailors, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Adam Moleyns, the clerk of the council, were seen as key points of contact in their negotiations with the crown. Both men were admitted as brethren of the Tailors’ fraternity and in 1439 received cash payments of A30 and A8 6s. 8d. respectively for services rendered in connexion with the guild’s new charter.” A great deal of expense was often incurred in obtaining legal advice, drawing up bills, and wining and dining important individuals, but generally this was a dialogue between the company concerned and the royal government. Parliamentary lobbying developed in conjunction with dialogue with the crown when, for instance, a London company wanted to extend outside the capital its right to ‘search’ the workshops of craftsmen and to inspect their goods. In 1452-3, for example, the Pewterers began lobbying both the king and parliament for a ‘charter for be craft to haue serche thurgh England’, a prize they were eventually to achieve in 1473.18 The Cutlers too seem to have had a similar aim in mind when in 1468-9 they made payments to the recorder of London, to various attorneys, as well as to the clerk of the parliament ‘for to examyn oure corporacion by the acte of b” ~ar lament ’ . ’~

When it came to broader economic concerns, therefore, it seems to have been extremely useful to negotiate with the crown either before or during a parliamentary session. A particularly clear example of the advantages of royal support can be seen

‘5 Guildhall Library, Brewers’ Company MS, 5440, ff. 203v-204, 270v, 290. “Ibid., fT 226, 270v. ” C . M. Barron, ‘Ralph Holland and the London Radicals, 1438-1444’, in T h e Medieval Town

1200-1540, ed. Richard Holt and Gervase Rosser (1990), p. 166; Guildhall Library, Merchant Taylors’ Company MS, 34048/1, E 302, 305v, 313v. ” Charles Welch, History ofthe Worshipful Company ofpewterers ofthe City ofLondon (2 vols, 1902), I, 18.

Guildhall Library, Cutlers’ Company Records, MS 7146, roll 16 [1468-91.

Lobbying Parliament 141

in the so-called ‘Fane Fragment’, the only surviving part of a Lords journal for the first parliament of Edward IV’s reign (which assembled on 4 November 146 1) where an entry for 9 December records that a ‘bill conteyning the hurtes & remedies of marchaundises made by the marchaunts of London was put in by the kings owne hande & red’.20 At least one group of Londoners was intent on lobbying the king at this time. In late October, shortly before the commencement of this parliament, the Pewterers hired a barge ‘to bryng certeyn men of the craft to Westmynst’ & a yene W‘ be mair for to speke w‘ be kyng’.21 The involvement of the mayor is unusual, but can perhaps be explained by the fact that the opening of this parliament took place soon after the newly-elected mayor of London journeyed by barge to Westminster, accompanied by the crafts, in order to swear his oath of ofice before the barons of the exchequer. Possibly the Pewterers had persuaded the new mayor, Hugh Wyche, to put their case to the king. Indeed, for all the city companies these lavish annual processions to Westminster were doubtless a good opportunity to impress leading figures within the royal government and to engage in lobbying key individuals and groups at parliament when it was in session. It is worth noting that out of the 37 parliaments which met between 1422 and 1504, 11 were in session at Westminster at the time of the mayoral procession in late October, while another nine had sessions which commenced in early or mid November, like the parliament of 1461.22 This did not, of course, preclude lobbying at other times of the year and indeed London’s proximity to Westminster gave the citizens a clear advantage over other towns and cities when it came to keeping in touch with what was going on in parliament at all times, especially as it was increasingly rare for sessions to be held elsewhere. Indeed, such was the attachment of Londoners to the notion that parliament ought to be held at Westminster that in 1447 Henry Frowyk, one of the elected representatives for the city, refused to attend parliament at Bury St Edmunds unless he was guaranteed sufficient lodging and heating for himself and his ~ervants.’~

This lobbying of crown and parliament together reflected the fact that parliament was essentially still a tool of royal government. During the last session of the parliament which met following the first battle of St Albans in 1455, the Mercers’ Company, probably at the instigation of some of the merchants of the staple, asked the recorder of London to petition both the king and the Commons about the seizure of Flemish ships by William, Lord Bonville. One of the M.P.s, the lawyer John Whittoksmead, then sitting for Calne, was paid 6s. 8d. ‘to be our friend in parliament’, and a similar sum was spent on food and drink for four days ‘for the matter of Lord Bonville’. The complaints of the staplers were recorded in a letter written to John Paston by John Stodeley, a London scrivener who was employed by the Mercers to write up their accounts in the early 1440s. He was subsequently in the service of the duke of Norfolk

2o The Fane Fragment o f the 1461 Lords’]oumal, ed. William H . Dunham (Yale Historical Publications, Manuscripts and Edited Texts, XIV, New Haven, 1935), p. 19.

21 C. Welch, History of the Cutlers’ Company o f London and o f Minor Cutlery Craffs. With Biographical Notices $Early London Cutlers (2 vols, 1916-23), I , 28.

22 Parliaments in session in late October: 1423, 1427, 1429, 1433, 1435, 1445, 1460, 1472, 1489, 1491, 1495; parliaments with sessions commencing earlylmid November: 1422, 1439, 1449 (Nov.), 1450, 1455, 1461, 1470, 1485, 1487.

23 Barron, ‘London and Parliament’, p. 348.

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and was returned to parliament for the duke’s boroughs of Reigate and Gatton, but maintained his links with the Mercers while so doing.24 A more comprehensive example can, once again, be found in the archives of the Pewterers’ Company, which, during the first parliament of Henry VII’s reign, pressed for a statute against itinerant craftsmen who made and sold inferior goods. They began by employing a scrivener to draw up two supplications that were then sent to the king and lord chancellor. These were followed up by journeys by river to Greenwich to see Henry and then to Lambeth where they had an audience with the chancellor. The outcome of the meetings is not recorded, but the Pewterers were sufficiently confident to put the second phase of their plan into operation, the lobbying of parliament itself. After drawing up their ‘supplicacion for the Comon house’ they then paid the sum of 6s. 8d. to Thomas Bayen, the under-clerk of the parliament (that is, the Commons’ clerk) ‘to spede oure billes to be redde’. The Pewterers’ concerns were not rejected out of hand, for two lawyers from the Middle Temple, who can probably be identified as John Kingsmill and Thomas Englefield (not ‘Englethorp’ as he was described in the accounts), were paid to correct their bill. Finally the company paid 26s. 4d. for ‘gamysshe large vessell newe fascioned counterfeit for Maister Speker of the parliament’. Unlike the various fees paid to other officials, which were payments for services rendered, this was an impressive gift-in-kind, probably comprising a complete set of 12 each of various pewter vessels, that they doubtless hoped would help to progress their cause.25 Yet despite these considerable efforts the Pewterers’ bill did not end up as a statute. They tried again in the last parliament of Henry’s reign, and after laying out more than A10 in expenses they were finally successful in getting an act passed, albeit one that was only to remain in force until the next parliament.26

Several themes emerge from these and other examples of lobbying activity among the London companies, which shed light both on their capabilities and on the machinery of parliament itself. First, as the payment made by the Mercers to Hugh Wyche demonstrates, it was vital to collect as much information as possible about existing statutes. This was especially important in the case of those crafts that did not have a long tradition of record keeping, and which had only relatively recently adopted the organizational structures of the more established misteries. In the spring of 1497, for instance, the Blacksmiths paid 12d. to the clerk of the Skinners’ Company for a copy of a statute from the reign of Edward 111 which regulated the work of alien craft~men.~’ A common means of obtaining information was to employ chancery clerks to do the necessary research: the Pewterers did exactly that in 1453 when a clerk was paid 5s. in ‘laboryng to serche for statuts & obr thyngs’, prior to drawing up their bill.28 The Tailors took things a stage further by granting livery robes to a chancery clerk named Richard Selby, and in 1435-6 small payments were made to him and to the clerk of the parliament that met for ten weeks in the autumn of 1435.

24 Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts’, 11, 193; T h e Paston Letters, 1422- 2509 A.D., ed. James Gairdner

25 Welch, Pewterers, I, 64-5. 26 Statutes, 11, 651-2. 27 Arthur Adams, T h e History of the Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths from Early Times until the Year

28 Welch, Pewterers, I, 18.

(4 vols, Edinburgh, 1910). I, 267-8.

1647 (1937), p. 8.

Lobbying Parliament 143

The reason for the payments is not clear, although the Tailors may have been engaged in preliminary discussions about the charter that, as we have seen, they eventually obtained from the crown in 1440.29

The companies also increasingly learned to seek detailed advice on matters of law and procedure at an early stage, to help in the drafting of the bills that were taken to parliament. Some legal advisers were used regularly in connexion with disputes and other matters: the Cutlers employed Thomas Ive on several occasions during the 1460s and drew on his skills in 1468 when they petitioned parliament about their ‘corpora~ion’.~~ John Whittoksmead, whom the Mercers had lobbied in 1455, was employed in 1461-2 to draw up a bill protesting at the trading activities of the Hanse merchants and the Lombards. The bill was not successful, as the privileges of the Hanse merchants were confirmed until Christmas 1462, but this did not stop the Mercers from trying again in the next parliament when they drafted ‘a bille ageins the~terlings’.~~ Once parliament was in session lawyers were hired to assist with the re-drafting process, as we saw with the Middle Temple lawyers hired by the Pewterers. Even more useful were lawyers who were themselves members of parliament: in 1432, for example, the Brewers paid 13s. 4d. to unnamed ‘men of lawe knyghtes of be shir for be parlemente’. They paid a similar amount two years later to another ‘man of lawe’ ‘for the sute of an bill’, which may indicate that this man was also an M.P.32

The dealings between the companies and London’s own M.P.s are more difficult to reconstruct. Surprisingly perhaps, there is relatively little evidence of payments to London M.P.s by the crafts to assist with pushing bills through parliament or of other contacts that might suggest that they were helping to lobby influential individuals. A rare example comes from the records of the Mercers, who in 1453 were in the fortunate position of having two representatives in the parliament that met initially at Reading. William Cantelowe was one of the two aldermen M.P.s, while John Middelton was one of the two commoners. To make sure that their interests were represented a letter was drawn up by the company and sent to them while they were in Reading.33 The mercantile companies did, of course, have a distinct advantage over the ‘lesser’ crafts: 37 of the 53 men returned as M.P.s between 1422 and 1460 were from just three companies, the Mercers, Grocers and Drapers. The remainder were drawn from the Fishmongers, Ironmongers and Salters (themselves among the ‘greater’ companies), with four others chosen because they held important legal offices in the city government. It made little difference whether a man was chosen as one of the two aldermen M.P.s or as one of the two ‘commoners’, for more than half of the latter were destined to join the court of aldermen in due course and were

29 Guildhall Library, Merchant Taylors’ Company MS, 34048/1, f. 271v. 30 Welch, Cutkrs, I , 158-9. 3’ Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts’, 11,235,242. The court ofthe Mercers in June 1461 asked the wardens

to ‘comen with suche parsons as they deme necessarie for to devyse a bill for the parlement’: Acts of Court ofthe Mercers’ Company, 1453- 1527, ed. Laetitia Lyell and Frank D. Watney (Cambridge, 1936), p. 50.

32 Guildhall Library, Brewers’ Company MS, 5440, ff. 203v-4. 33 Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts’, 11, 174.

144 Mutthew Duvies

generally drawn from a similarly narrow range of occupation^.^^ The vast majority of the companies, therefore, could not expect to see one of their freemen representing the city in parliament and would have had to look beyond their own ranks for a sympathetic voice in the Commons. Yet although they were often assiduous in their courting of city officials and aldermen in connexion with business in the court of aldermen, the lesser companies appear to have been less eager to establish links with the London M.P.s in order to have their causes promoted in parliament. Rather, the evidence suggests that they preferred to follow the example of the Brewers in seeking help from lawyer M.P.s and others who could be of particular help to them. Some references to connexions with M.P.s are tantalizingly vague: the Pewterers’ lobbying expenses of 1461-2, for instance, refer to their bill and ‘the expens done on such as shold put it up’, but it is not clear whose support they had been able to secure.35

More visible in the records of the companies are the arrangements that they made with the various officials at parliament. Payments and gifts-in-kind to the Commons’ clerk and the Speaker, for instance, reflected their awareness and use of parliamentary procedures and their hopes that the lower house might support their bill, or even incorporate it into a Commons petition. To this end it was especially important to establish links with the clerk of the parliament, for as well as being one of the official ‘receivers’ of private petitions, the clerk also seems to have acted as a means by which Commons petitions could be sent direct to the king and his council for consideration. A good example of this can be found in the records of the Carpenters’ Company during the parliament of 1497, when a statute passed two years earlier which limited the wages and working hours of building craftsmen and other workers was revoked. The Carpenters seem to have been behind the drive to repeal this act, and drew up no fewer than five supplications to the parliament. To keep an eye on the progress of their bills they hired boats for the duration of the parliament and allowed a sum of money for breakfasts for their members. It is unclear from the accounts whether they had particular ‘well-willers’ among the Commons, but they made every effort to ensure that the officials of the parliament were favourably disposed towards them: payments were made to the porter of the parliament chamber, to the ‘clerkys of the Comyn howse’ and for good measure 8s. 8d. was allocated for the serjeant at arms and ‘Doctor Hatton’, this being Richard Hatton the recently appointed clerk of the parliament and a future councillor of Henry VII. A final payment of 20s. was made by the Carpenters to the king’s attorney, another important figure who could act as a conduit to both the king and the Lords. Once their aims had been achieved the Carpenters paid two men to ‘crye the same acte’, to spread the word throughout the craft in London that the restrictions on hours and wages had been lifted.36

34 I am grateful to the History of Parliament Trust for permission to cite material from the constituency survey of London in The History ofParliament. T h e Commons 1422- 1461 (in preparation); Barron, ‘London and Parliament’, pp. 349-50.

35 Welch, Cutlers, I, 28. 36 In 1449-50 the company had paid John Thorn 2s. ‘in goyng a bowte the towne to wame the crafte of

the newe ordenaunce’: Records ofthe Worshipfl Company of Carpenfers, ed. Bower Marsh, John Ainsworth and Annie M. Millard (7 vols, Oxford, 1914-68), I, 28; 11, 116. In 1456-7 the Mercers paid 6s. 8d. to the king’s attorney so that he would speak to the Lords on their behalf: Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts’, 11, 192.

Lobbying Parliament 145

The efforts made by the Carpenters and the other ‘lesser’ companies does show that lobbying could have an impact, even if the financial and political clout possessed by these guilds did not match that of the mercantile companies. As noted above, the statutes enacted by parliament in this period contain a number emanating from petitions submitted by artisan crafts, such as the Upholders, Pewterers and Brasiers. The success of the silkwomen of London is particularly striking, given that they did not have the organizational structures or funds of the more formally constituted guilds in London. Their lobbying of parliament remains elusive, but a possibility is that they were able to draw upon the influence of members of the Mercers’ Company, with whom they were connected through the trade in silk goods, their roles as suppliers to the great wardrobe, and in some notable cases by Indeed, one good way for companies with less influence to lobby parliament was to join forces. A good example of this can be seen in the anti-Brembre petitions submitted to parliament by the guilds in 1386, for as well as individual petitions from crafts such as the Mercers there was another petition that was submitted jointly by the Cutlers, Bowyers, Fletchers, Spurriers and Bladesmiths. The final section of this paper will examine some examples of this ‘collusive’ lobbying of parliament, activity which involved dialogue between the companies and the city government in order to achieve specific aims. Evidence of this dialogue survives in petitions submitted by the companies to the crown, copies of which were also entered into the city records. An example of this is a petition of 1451 from the Cordwainers protesting about the economic threat posed by aliens and other strangers to the city. Over the next few decades petitions from the crafts about this issue became ever more urgent, and a statute was eventually passed in parliament in 1484 that placed restrictions on the employment of aliens.38

One of the most concerted campaigns waged by the London companies was against a statute passed by parliament in 1406 which aimed to slow down the migration of young men from the countryside into towns, seen as exacerbating existing problems in the rural labour market. To this end the statute prohibited parents from apprenticing their sons or daughters unless they were in possession of lands or rents worth at least 20s. per a l ~ n u r n . ~ ~ As well as being viewed as an attack upon the customary practices of the city, the statute was also opposed by many employers who were already concerned at the high price, and poor supply, of labour in the city. Initial attempts to have the statute revoked began soon afterwards: in 1408-9 the Tailors’ Company paid 3s. 8d. for legal advice on two occasions ‘to annul the ordinance of the enrolment of apprentices’. The Drapers may have tried their luck in parliament, possibly the assembly that met in April 1414, for their accounts for 1413-14 contain a payment

37 The Coronatiun o f Richard Ill. The Extant Documents, ed. Anne F. Sutton and Peter W. Hammond (Gloucester, 1983), pp. 65-6. For the silkwomen and their trade see M. K. Dale, ‘The London Silkwomen of the Fifteenth Century’, Economic History Review, IV (1933), 324-35.

38 R.P., 111, 225-7; The National Archives, P.R.O., SC8/345/E1323; Calendar ofletter-Books Presented among the Archives ofthe Corporation ofthe City ofLondon at the Guildhall, ed. R. R. Sharpe (11 vols, A-L, 1899-1912), Letter Book K, ed. Sharpe, pp. 335-6; James L. Bolton, The Alien Communities ofLondon in the Fifteenth Century (Stamford, 1998), pp. 35-40; Statutes, 11, 489-93.

39 Statutes, 11, 157-8.

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‘for a bill concerning apprenti~eship’.~’ Yet at this stage no one appears to have been too concerned: in fact the city government’s policy seems to have been to ignore the act. This remained possible until 1428 when a royal clerk brought an action against a prominent London scrivener for breaching its provisions. This prompted the city, led by the mayor, Wdiam Estfield, to draw up a petition to the parliament that met in the autumn of 1429, in which it sought an exemption for London and its freemen &om the 1406 Like many of the surviving petitions presented in the name of the mayor, aldermen and commonalty this only tells part of the story, for the city government’s appeal was essentially a vehicle for the concerns of the city companies, especially those which were accustomed to recruiting apprentices from far outside the city. Estfield received the support of the most prominent companies: the Tailors paid A4 ‘to the mayor of London for discharging of the statute of apprentices to the King’, while the Grocers’ accounts record the payment of 40s. ‘for costes of our parte off Repelyng off ye statut off prentyshodys’. Estfield’s own company, the Mercers, was also involved and just over A3 was paid ‘to William Estfield mayr of London foe divers costes & expenses be hym done in the tyme of a parlement holden at Westminster the xx day of September anno viij Henrici vjti. As for remedy & withstondyng of grete offence don ayens a statute maad of long tyme passed in takyn of apprentices.’ The pressure brought to bear by the Londoners yielded the desired result in the form of an exemption from the provisions of the statute, while the townsmen of Oxford, who had submitted a similar request, saw their petition reje~ted.~’

The city government articulated the companies’ concerns on numerous other occasions: in 1461-2, for instance, the Grocers wanted to petition parliament, probably as part of efforts to press the Yorkist government to honour the crown’s debts to the merchants of the Calais staple. Instead, as Pamela Nightingale has shown, they gave a draft of their bill to the mayor who then put it forward as the city’s own petition. The Grocers’ interests had already been expressed in a number of petitions and statutes during the reign of Henry VI, some of them relating to the staplers, but others containing complaints relating to the grocery trade. In the parliament that met in November 1439 a petition asked for strict penalties for selling ungarbelled spices. Any one discovering such merchandise was to have ‘full powere by auctorite of the sayd Parlement’ to seize them as forfeit to the king. One of London’s Members in this parliament was John Carpenter, the common clerk, to whom the company had granted a livery suit the same year.43 Indeed it is fair to say that a good deal of the lobbying of the mercantile companies, especially the Grocers and Mercers, was undertaken via petitions submitted by the city government, or else by the mayor and

4” A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipjul Company o f the Drapers of London (6 vols, Oxford,

41 Thrupp, Merchant Class, pp. 215-16; Letter Book K, ed. Sharpe, pp. 87, 105. For the city’s petition see P.R.O., SC8/85/4238; R.P., IV, 354.

42 Guildhall Library, Merchant Taylors’ Company MS, 34048/1, f. 207v; Facsimile ofFirst volume qfMS. Archives o f the Worshipful Company o f Grocers of the City o f London, A .D . 1345- 1463, ed. J. A. Kingdon (2 vols, 1886), I, 204; Statutes, 11, 248; Creaton, ‘Wardens’ Accounts’, I , 368.

43 Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community. The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade ofLondon, 1000- 1485 (New Haven, 1995), pp. 446-8, 491, 524; R.P. V, 32; Guildhall Library, Grocers’ Company MS, 11/571/2, f. 18v.

1914-22), I , 286.

Lobbying Parliament 147 company of the Calais staple, which represented the interests of some of London’s most prominent merchants. The implications for the crown of their petitions were especially far-reaching, particularly when it came to the repayment of the large loans made by the staplers, and this greatly affected their chances of success.44

A final example of co-operation between the companies concerns attempts in the early 1460s to restrict imports of a wide range of consumer goods, including purses, gloves, various types of knives, shears, scissors, curtain rings, pins, playing cards, and tennis balls.45 Lobbying for this had begun during the parliament which met in the autumn of 1461: the Pewterers had provided drink for ‘certeyn men at Cutlers halle to axe hem counsell of certeyn maters touchyng be comon ~ e l e ’ . ~ ~ The Cutlers themselves spent more than 45 ‘in dyuers expenses for suyng of certeyn matiers in the parlement for the wele and profite of the said crafie of Cotillers and in money gifen to dyuers persones for to shewe their gode willes and to be frendely and solicitours in the same matiers’. This activity, together with representations made by other crafts, fed into the bill mentioned in the Lords journal fragment, which contained ‘the hurtes & remedies of marchaundises made by the marchaunts of London’. The bill did not succeed, but the crafts re-grouped for the next parliament which assembled in April 1463. So keen were the Pewterers that they paid 6s. ‘for j barge and j bote for to goo W‘ the Kyng to resceiue hym at his comyng to the parlement’. Their efforts, and those of other crafts were successful and a statute was enacted in the first session. The preamble to the statute characterized it as an issue of national importance, referring not to petitions from specific London companies or crafts but to the complaints of artisans of divers misteries of London and of other cities, towns and villages in England.

The statute of 1463 is a good example of the way in which the concerns of particular interest groups, articulated through M.P.s, lawyers and parliamentary officials, evolved into legislation that was presented as being of benefit to the ‘comon wele’. The question arises, therefore, as to how far parliament in this period was changing as a result of what, from the London evidence at least, seems to have been an increase in the amount of lobbying from private individuals and groups, all keen to have their concerns addressed. Was there a sense in which parliament’s main function was increasingly to discuss private concerns rather than national issues? The difficulty here is with the evidence, in particular the lack of information about the debates and discussions that took place in parliament prior to the enrolling of petitions on the parliament rolls and the promulgation of statutes. What emerges from the London sources, at least, is that the companies and the city government were often highly persistent in their pursuit of parliamentary redress for their grievances and seemingly had high hopes of success. There was also a growing understanding of the parliamentary processes involved, which resulted in expenditure on lawyers and particular parliamentary officials as well as on the practical task of drawing up bills. When necessary, companies could work together, either to draw up petitions or to persuade the city government to present a case on their behalf. All this activity points to a greater pressure on parliament to hear private matters, to deal with conflicts

44 Barron, ‘London and Parliament’, p. 361.

46 Welch, Pewterers, I, 28. 45 Statutes, 11, 395-8.

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of interest between different groups, and between particular groups and what was perceived to be the good of the realm. That London sometimes seems to have prevailed was often a consequence of the fact that its concerns were often of wider, ‘national’ importance, especially in the sphere of trade and other economic matters. Yet there were also occasions when parliament frustrated the efforts of the Londoners, or waited until a consensus had been achieved that would allow it to enact legislation in the interests of all subjects.