Chapter 4 Regional governance

Background

Although gentle and noble members of the guild hailed from across England and Wales, there was a concentration around the Welsh Marches: both the Marcher lordships and the English border counties of Herefordshire, Shropshire, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.¹ Warwickshire was also strongly represented, no doubt due to the holding of land across multiple counties by Marcher lords. The historic governance of the Marches, particularly the predominance of English ruling lords, was a strong influence on membership patterns. The smaller number of gentry and nobility from the western Marcher lordships (especially those in what is now south-west Wales), compared with those residing in the English border counties, suggests that the relationship between the noble and gentry membership was connected to the structures of governing the region set up by English kings: Justices of the Peace (JP), Members of Parliament (MP), sheriffs and the Council of the Marches.

As discussed in the previous chapter, the relationship between urban politics, governance, and fraternities has long captured the attention of historians. Yet the relationship of guilds with rural or, rather, regional (county or otherwise) governance has not been seen as worthy of the same attention.² Most guild studies have concluded that major town guilds usually welcomed the gentry among their brotherhood, but that the majority were local.³ In Warwickshire, the gentry (with three major guilds at Knowle, Coventry and Stratford) focused their membership on the guild most local to them.⁴ Norwich’s guild of St George counted local Norfolk gentry among their members.⁵ Gervase Rosser and Christine Carpenter have both suggested, respectively, that the Palmers and Holy Cross guilds actively sought out connections with the gentry and nobility in the fifteenth century.⁶ In the mid-fifteenth century, the officers of the Palmers’ Guild regularly invited ‘outsiders and gentry’ to its dinners, freely giving livery hoods to these prestigious figures or to their retainers.⁷ Donning a livery hood or gown was a visually significant step in the assumption of an ‘altered identity’ conferred upon an individual with their entrance into a guild.⁸ The significance of the invitation to the guild feast – the usual venue to recruit and/or induct new brethren – along with the gift of livery, suggests that this process equated to membership. Given the importance of fraternity feasts in brokering social relations, the gentry benefitted from attending because the events facilitated economic, social and political relationships, such as marriages and electoral influence.⁹

Pursuing gentry and noble connections may indeed have been a feature of the Palmers’ Guild in the fifteenth century, but there was a significant shift in the next century. The guild no longer expended resources on gifting livery to the gentry or nobility – or at the very least, no expenses were recorded in the wardens’ and stewards’ accounts. Yet the numbers of gentry and nobility rose in the sixteenth century, despite (or because of) this apparent change in tactic. The societal elite had to pay in the same manner as the rest of the brethren, and the riding books duly record that gentry and nobility did pay their own fees, rather than be gifted membership as part of the guild’s policy of garnering influence. It therefore appears that gentry and nobility in the sixteenth century saw guild membership as valuable enough to seek out and pay for themselves. Most strikingly, it was not only the local gentry and nobility that joined the Palmers. Gentry came from further afield – even Warwickshire, where the competition for membership was high with three popular fraternities. The concentration of gentry along the Marches and Warwickshire points to a particularly strong regional attachment to the guild.

Council of the Marches

This section will explore the relationship between the Council of the Marches (operating ostensibly under the direction of the king or his heir), the guild and the resulting political landscape of the Marches. The influence of the Prince of Wales and the Council of the Marches was particular to this guild among England’s fraternities. The difference, numerically and geographically, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries speaks to a change in the region that was important to those that governed. A rough sketch of the rising interest in the nobility and gentry interest can be outlined by the fragmentary membership list dating from the reign of Edward IV. The establishment of the Council of the Marches with his eldest son, Edward, generated interest in the guild, but, so far as the records show, only in a handful of gentry and nobility, and those with familial ties to the king, such as John de la Pole, second duke of Suffolk, or those with familial ties to the Marcher region, like John Sutton VI, 1st Baron Dudley.¹⁰ With the re-establishment of the Council in the 1490s (nominally under Prince Arthur), the frequency with which members of the gentry and nobility joined the Palmers significantly increased.

Upon examination of the guild’s membership lists, it is evident that the Council was integrated into the Palmers’ Guild. The association between the two permeated the top rank of the Council: while there is no record of Arthur having joined the guild, his younger brother, the next Prince of Wales and future Henry VIII, signed up in 1503.¹¹ As Henry’s name was committed immediately after he assumed his late brother’s title, it is highly possible that Arthur was a member, although this assumption cannot be corroborated due to the dearth of membership records for the 1490s. A significant number of people associated with members of the Council are present in the records. Bishop William Smyth, president of the Council, was likely a Palmer: twenty-two servants, plus a chaplain and a registrar in his employ, joined between 1497 and 1509. Participation from Smyth’s companions and household was prolific during his tenure as president. Smyth’s successor as president, Geoffrey Blythe, committed his name to the Palmers, as did some of his servants, further underscoring the formal ties initiated by the Council leaders.¹² The councillors under Arthur and Henry’s terms as Prince of Wales were quick to associate with the guild. Sir William Uvedale, comptroller of Arthur’s household and a member of the council, joined the guild in 1503/4,¹³ while councillors Henry Vernon, Thomas Poyntz, Henry Marian, Anthony Willoughby, Maurice St John and Ralph Egerton were also members of the Palmers.¹⁴

This trend of overlapping membership between the Council and the guild extended beyond Arthur and Henry’s tenures as head of the Council to Princess Mary’s residence in the Marches as the titleholder. A letter to the Council from its president in 1526/7 names five men directly, ‘with others of the Princess’s Council’.¹⁵ All of these men were addressed in relation to their role in governing the Marches for Princess Mary but, crucially, four of these five were Palmers. ‘The right worshipful my lord abbot of Reading’ was Hugh Faringdon, who joined the guild in 1515/16.¹⁶ Sir John Port, justice of the Council by 1526 at the latest, was a member of the Palmers, along with his wife, Jane Fitzherbert.¹⁷ John Russell, secretary of the Council from 1525, had been a member since his days in employment with Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham.¹⁸ Finally, George Bromley, a lawyer attached to the Council (who has been described as one of the Council’s most active members), was also a Palmer.¹⁹ Another member of the council, described as such in other correspondence, was Edward Croft, a fellow Palmer (and indeed, MP, sheriff and vice chamberlain for South Wales).²⁰ Roger Wigston, made councillor in 1533, had become a Palmer in 1509.²¹ Other familiar members of the local gentry who were already Palmers, like John Scudamore, discussed later in the context of MPs, were put forward as possible options for councillors, and Scudamore was eventually appointed in the 1540s.²²

Guild membership, however, was not restricted to the Council, and the influence of the latter in setting a precedent of membership can be seen among those with whom the Council worked. For example, in 1517/8, a number of knights and esquires were ‘appoynted by the kinges most noble grace in the marches to gyff attendaunce … as they may make to assist the kinges Commyssyoners at Lodlowe from tyme to tyme’.²³ The ‘kinges Commyssyoners’ were another name for those who sat on the Council.²⁴ Those named to ‘gyff attendaunce’ were, for the most part, also Palmers. Out of the seven listed for Herefordshire, four Palmers appear: Sir Richard de la Bere, Edward Croft (at this point not yet a member of the Council), Richard Cornwall and John Gifford. Two-thirds of the Shropshire appointees were either Palmers themselves or had immediate family members who were.²⁵ Only two men were appointed for Worcestershire – John Savage and Thomas Poyntz – and both were also associated with the Palmers.²⁶ Thomas Poyntz was, as discussed earlier, already a member of the Council of the Marches from Arthur’s time. Others, like Croft, became councillors during Princess Mary’s regime in the Marches. Those dispensing justice in the Marches were predominantly members of the fraternity.

Like the urban elite, the councillors of the Marches and officers of county governance in the 1520s and 1530s had, overwhelmingly, joined the guild ten to twenty years before they took on major offices in governance, which speaks to the social and political space that the guild occupied. A few case studies, drawn from the experiences of the gentry discussed previously, demonstrate the importance of guild membership for men at the early stages of their ‘career’. In the Palatinate of Chester, George Bromley acted as deputy justice in 1505 (although he was not formally appointed until 1509).²⁷ A year prior to this, Bromley had become a member of the Palmers along with his wife Elizabeth, making an initial contribution of 3s 4d towards their total 13s 4d admission fee.²⁸ Thirteen years later, Bromley became an active member of the Council of the Marches.²⁹ John Port, a fellow lawyer and councillor during Princess Mary’s tenure in the marches, exhibits a similar pattern. His membership of the Palmers in 1503 coincided with his first forays into practising law, before becoming a successful lawyer and king’s commissioner, and occupying roles such as attorney general for the Palatinate of Chester, solicitor-general for Henry VIII and assize commissioner.³⁰ Port was appointed to the council in 1525.³¹ Other young gentlemen, like Richard Snede, joined the guild at similar points in their life cycles. Snede became a Palmer in 1505, was active in local matters in Cheshire by 1512, and was appointed deputy justice for the county Palatinate in 1523.³² His appointment to the Council of the Marches, twenty years after he joined the Palmers, places him as a contemporary of Bromley and Port.³³ Roger Wigston, as mentioned earlier, was appointed to the Council in 1533 but had become a Palmer in the first decade of the sixteenth century, when he was in his late twenties.³⁴ The relatively early incidence of guild membership in the professional life cycle is, therefore, the defining feature of membership of the gentry, and it is one that was also experienced among urban elites, despite the very different structures their roles inhabited.

The Council of the Marches: residency in Ludlow

It is hard to separate guild membership from the Council of the Marches. To do so would, moreover, ignore the relationship between two major institutions in the Welsh Marches. The connection between the Council and the guild began almost immediately as soon as Arthur took up residence in Ludlow and was certainly prevalent during the years for which we have membership lists; but it also continued throughout Princess Mary’s patrimony some three decades later. At a basic level, this was the result of proximity: the Council was a consistent presence in the town, holding their court there during term times.³⁵ Yet the presence of the prince or princess of Wales, their household, and the Council of the Marches in Ludlow under the presidencies of Smyth (1501–12) and Blythe (1512–25) is difficult to reconstruct from central administration or legal records. Meanwhile, the guild’s integration with the town, through its expansive rental portfolio, the widespread enrolment of Ludlow’s inhabitants, its involvement with local governance structures, large guildhall and overt presence in the parish church, made them an unavoidable presence for any visitor to Ludlow.³⁶ The regular attendance of the councillors in Ludlow presumably meant that they were able to enjoy some of the social benefits of membership that were less viable to those who lived some distance away. The councillors, and those appointed to assist them, had regular formal and informal contact with the brethren of the Palmers in Ludlow itself, and are more likely to have attended the guild feasts as the feasts at Michaelmas and All Saints fell within the Hilary and Michaelmas terms during which the Council was at Ludlow.³⁷ The officers of the guild ensured that there were further opportunities to network with the council. In 1518/19 and 1520/1, for example, the warden sought reimbursement from the guild’s coffers for hosting dinner for the king’s commissioners.³⁸

The presence of the Council of the Marches in Ludlow was instrumental in the proliferation of guild membership among the gentry classes of the region, physically drawing leading gentry to the town in order to assist justice (such as when the commissioners summoned gentry in 1518/19), but also in a more abstract manner. The Council worked to reinforce the importance of Ludlow as a centre of Marcher justice, and therefore gentry would do well to associate with the town in different guises, such as the guild. The context of the governance of the Marches is important to remember; those who resided in areas under royal lordship (which was the majority of Marcher lordships in the sixteenth century), the Principality of Wales and the English border counties were to seek remedy from the Council.³⁹ In return, the Council assisted judicial bodies operating in Wales and the Marches.⁴⁰ Reducing the need for people to travel to Westminster and present cases in the Star Chamber, the Council heard cases in an itinerant court within the Marches. Over the course of its existence, the Council held sessions at major towns within the Marches. Chief among them were Ludlow, Shrewsbury and Bewdley.⁴¹ The Council also interacted with gentry and nobility in the arbitration of cases involving officers of the Principality of Wales; in 1518/19, Thomas Wolsey, then chancellor, ordered the Council to examine evidence of charges presented against the chamberlain of north Wales, Sir William Griffith, and other officers there.⁴²

The Council’s itinerant nature and expansive responsibilities did not negate its integration into urban structures within the Marches: rather the opposite. The Council’s presence clearly impacted the local environs, in both material and judicial forms. This was most apparent in the latter half of the sixteenth century, with the maintenance of pews and the construction of funerary monuments for council members in the churches in Bewdley, Shrewsbury and Ludlow.⁴³ In pre-Reformation Ludlow, the Council’s presence materialised in a social and judicial manner – and each related to the Palmers’ Guild. Ludlow was frequented by the Council in the first few decades of the sixteenth century, and an impression of the Council’s presence can be found in the town’s court records. Ludlow had been granted the right of self-government in 1461 and the two bailiffs dispensed justice in the town court. Yet the wider regional governance of the Council naturally intersected with the bailiff’s operations and chance mentions of the commissioners of the Council survive in the town records. In May 1524, Thomas Ferley was ordered to stay within the bounds of the town, appearing before the bailiffs ‘onys a day’ until such time that he (and the men standing surety for him) were discharged by the king’s commissioners. The following month, William Walker was bound to appear before the king’s commissioners when they called him.⁴⁴ Both cases required men to bind themselves to the bailiffs of the town, who acted as conduits for justice dispensed by the Council. These bonds provide crucial evidence for the Council being in Ludlow in the 1510s and 1520s before Mary’s household moved there. In addition, in Ludlow’s borough court, several cases survive in which the Council wrote to the bailiffs to order that suits against individuals were dropped, either in their entirety (like that of Laurence Becke c. John Cofe, 1549) or that instead the case was to be heard by the Council (as in Richard Gemyne c. Thomas Bedo, 1550).⁴⁵ Similar cases survive for later in the sixteenth century in Shrewsbury’s town court.⁴⁶ Alongside issuing orders to local courts regarding cases, the Council also acted as arbitrators. In Shrewsbury, Charles Booth and William Uvedale (both members of the Council) arbitrated a case between the abbot of Shrewsbury and the town’s bailiffs.⁴⁷ The appearance of the council in the urban courts of the Marches were not solely one of interference or support: the Council also used the mechanisms of the local courts for their own purposes. John Veysey, president of the Council, along with Council members Jacob Denton, John Port, John Salter and George Bromley, brought a case against Roger Walcot, rector of Lydham (Shropshire) for a debt of £40 in Ludlow’s town court.⁴⁸ In the same year, Veysey once again brought a case (along with other Council members) against a Marcher man, Ieuan ap Jamys of Bleddfa, for a debt of £100.⁴⁹ Examples of such practice can be found throughout the town’s court records. The Council, as an institution, acted in the same manner as inhabitants of Ludlow, using the local court to pursue debt cases.

Ludlow’s bailiffs were the lynchpin for the legal interaction between the local and regional judicial processes. Of course, the bailiffs were not just bailiffs: the holding of office within Ludlow was linked to holding office within the Palmers’ Guild. From 1461 onwards, guild officers almost always occupied roles within the civic hierarchy of Ludlow. The cursus honorum of office holding was loosely fixed so that the office of steward of the Palmers and the low bailiff of Ludlow were considered equal in status and were held in no particular order. After holding both of those offices, men proceeded to be the rental collector for the guild, followed by high bailiff of the town, and then finally wardenship of the Palmers. This pattern was followed well enough that eleven out of the thirteen guild wardens in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries served as bailiff.⁵⁰ The bailiffs (who brought men and women forward for justice to the Council as well as acquiescing to the Council’s instructions for certain cases) were deeply involved within the guild. So, then, returning to the Ferley and Walker bonds of 1524, the interaction between the Council, the bailiffs and the participants were cast onto a stage alongside the Palmers’ Guild. The bailiffs who facilitated the appearance of the defendants Ferley and Walker to the commissioners were Thomas Clonton and Richard Davies, who had both served as stewards of the Palmers between 1517 and 1521. The commissioners were professionally involved with guild officers, whose identities within local society were multifaceted and public, which is only visible through a granular reading of multiple types of surviving sources. These layers of identity, offices and connections are vital to understanding late medieval society: these men operated within trade, social and religious spheres that existed at the same moments of time.

The integration of the Council and prince(ss)’s household with the guild had a range of expressions. It took the form of more interpersonal relationships, such as Philip Penson paying the guild membership payment of 4s for Reynold Goldman, servant of the king, in 1517/18.⁵¹ Or that of Master Lane, whose debt to the guild was entered into the steward and warden’s memoranda book that he ‘most pay for’ Thomas Cardygan, groom of the king’s chamber, at a charge of 6s 8d.⁵² It is not stated what the debt is for but, given the total, it was most likely membership. The surviving evidence of interactions between the Council and the prince(ss)’s household and the guild also demonstrate the guild’s position as a dominant landowner in the town in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Arthur’s household moved to Ludlow in 1493, members of his household began renting tenements from the guild.⁵³ Throughout the 1490s, a number of granaries, stables and tenements were rented on an annual basis by the prince, his household or clerks of the ‘prince’s council’.⁵⁴ By 1501/2, the prince’s household was renting nine granaries from the guild.⁵⁵ The Council officers continued to utilise the guild’s resources within Ludlow throughout the sixteenth century. Although the castle was the nominal residence of the Council and its members while in session, councillors Ralph Egerton and Edward Croft rented houses in the town from the Palmers throughout the first half of the sixteenth century.⁵⁶ The guild leased stables to the president of the Council in the 1530s and 1540s.⁵⁷ The relationship unsurprisingly appears as one defined by everyday practicalities of two institutions co-existing in a small market town. Members of the Council had recourse to use local courts: Edward Croft brought suits of debt against men of Ludlow.⁵⁸ The princess’s servants also appeared in the town’s court, particularly during the period in which Mary’s full household resided in Ludlow in 1528.⁵⁹

The residence of Arthur and Mary’s households in the Marches, particularly the court and the guild, had a noticeable effect on the town of Ludlow. But the disbandment of their respective households also had an impact on the Marches as a region, not just a single town within it. When Arthur’s household was dissolved after his death, Bishop William Smyth, president of the Council, requested that two men from Arthur’s household, who were ‘well servynge jentylmen’, be given employment.⁶⁰ Praising the skills of a third ex-servant from the prince’s household, Smyth’s letter was designed to encourage new and fruitful opportunities for these men. A precedent was then set for the Council, whether in the form of councillors or the president, to look out for, and deal with the practicalities of, ex-servants. When Princess Mary left Ludlow to return to her father’s court in 1528, the president, Bishop John Veysey, wrote in recommendation of certain men in Mary’s employment for offices they desired when her Marcher household was dissolved. The quality of work undertaken by men in the Marches, such as Russell, Croft and Port, were lauded by Veysey, serving his purpose to gain favour for the men from Wolsey and the king.⁶¹ Veysey took it upon himself to write recommendations for future ‘employment’ for those under not only his purview in the Marches, but also the princess’: he implored Wolsey to remember ‘the princess’s household servants and councillors for their preferment’ for offices that were vacant. While the close relationship between the Council and the Crown is indicative of the physical presence of Mary in the region and the long-standing relationship between the prince(ss) of Wales’ household and Council, the obligation to deal with dissolved members of the household was also a matter of regional governance. A letter from the Council in the same year, written to Wolsey (and the king), requested that monastic houses take in ex-servants. The letter makes clear the concern that the councillors had if these servants were not given means to live, and particularly what might be ‘spoken therof in this hard yere if we shuld put theym abrode [i.e. dismissal]’.⁶² The letter further betrays concerns over the ‘dearth of graynes’ and rising food prices in the Marches, which tie into the councillors’ concerns about releasing household servants and officers into the region without gainful employment.⁶³ As the principal governing authority of the region, the impact of food shortages and economic hardship on disorder and crime within towns and counties must have been present in the minds of councillors, especially given the insurrection that arose in Kent due to the grain shortages and high prices in the same year.⁶⁴ The pleading to find employment for these servants was a concern for the Council to maintain order as much as it was in their duty to help administer the princess’s estates and household in the March. The existence of several other letters written in the same year, seeking employment for individual men from the princess’s household, speaks to the amount of work created for the Council by the disbandment of the princess’s household.⁶⁵

The appeal to the religious houses (via Wolsey and the king) by the Council was drawing on an important relationship in the Marches: that of the role of religious houses in helping govern the region. From the mid-fifteenth century onwards, priors and abbots increasingly acted as Justices of the Peace in their localities.⁶⁶ But in the Marches, prelates were deployed to assist in governing the entire region, rather than a single county. The priory at Worcester provides a clear example. The joint role that the Council and the priory of Worcester occupied in governing the Marches can be explained with reference to a letter sent by John Russell, a Palmer, as the secretary of the Council, to Prior William More in 1530.⁶⁷ It outlined a plan to keep the peace, with the help of both More and the abbot of Evesham. Russell’s, and the Council’s, trust in More to play his part in the mechanisms of governance was explicit, ‘having good trust for my part that we shall do a good deed therein, acceptable before God and to the great quietance of both shires’. The historic state of tension surrounding justice in the Marches necessitated a partnership between the powerful priories and the Council, and it is striking that Palmers frequently recur as participants in this respect.⁶⁸

Further connections between the Council and the priory at Worcester abound: the Council of the Marches sometimes resided at Worcester.⁶⁹ In 1525, the same year that the Princess Mary set up her household in the Marches, Prior More’s account recorded that the princess’s council (in other words, the Council of the Marches) was at Worcester, noting several payments to the princess’s servants as well. The prior paid 12d to one John Parret for torches for the princess’s council, implying that the hospitality for the princess and her council was at the expense and responsibility of the prior.⁷⁰ They were likely housed in the priory on this occasion and on future visits. Hospitality for royal households was an accepted aspect of a superior’s role in late medieval England, and the attention paid to the princess and her entourage is not surprising.⁷¹ What is noteworthy, however, is the mention of the Council explicitly – it is not simply part of the provisions for Mary and her household. The Council utilised the priory as a base while embarking upon what was presumably judicial business for the city and county. In 1526, the princess was recorded being at Worcester with the prior for multiple weeks.⁷² Unlike the previous year, where the presence of the Council is explicit in the account’s description, the arrival of the Council at the priory is indicated through a payment of ‘dyvers other pryvate rewards 33s 4d to ye councell servants & others’.⁷³

The second set of circumstances in which the Council and priory interacted was as part and parcel of the work of the former as a regional judicial and administrative body. As discussed earlier, the Council of the Marches was appointed to assist the prince(ss) of Wales in governing the Marches and the Principality of Wales – a role that involved the administration of justice and the settling of disputes. In reality, it was the councillors who were more often than not the primary arbitrators in the settlement of cases, rather than the prince or princess, and many of these men were, as we have seen, Palmers.⁷⁴ In one such dispute, the prior of Worcester was embroiled in a four-year quarrel with tenants in the lordship of Lyndrige which was brought before the Council of the Marches.⁷⁵ Encountering the regional judicial system was one aspect of the priory’s role as a lord, bringing them into an official arena with the powerful councillors of the region.

One final example serves to further underscore the ways in which the Palmers, the priory and the Council regularly interacted in a variety of capacities. More’s journal records payments (‘rewards’) to individuals who were sent on behalf of the president of the Council. These numbers vary from 4d through to 3s 4d. The first of these payments was given to ‘mr John prat of Ludlow coming from my lord president’ in 1520.⁷⁶ No other information about the identity of John Prat, nor about what he was providing in his communication from the Council to the prior. Prat does not appear in the extant membership lists for the Palmers, but alternative evidence suggests that he played an important role in the activities of the guild. In the collection of deeds relating to the Palmers’ Guild, Prat features as a witness several times alongside other Palmers at the very end of the fifteenth century and in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Prat was active in Ludlow from as early as 1492, when he and John Grenlef were given land by Geoffrey Baugh (a Palmer and guild elder).⁷⁷ The grant was witnessed by Thomas Teron and William Grene (bailiffs of Ludlow), Thomas Coke, Richard Lane and William Cheyne – all of whom were Palmers.⁷⁸ Thomas Teron was steward of the guild between 1485 and 1489, rent collector in 1499–1500 and elder from 1497 onwards. Likewise, William Grene was steward between 1501 and 1503.⁷⁹ One deed in particular illuminates Prat’s role within the sphere of the guild. In 1497, Walter Morton, warden, the elders (all named) and brethren were granted land in Ludlow.⁸⁰ John Prat is not listed as an elder. He is, however, one of five witnesses, two being town bailiffs and the other two being members of the guild. In 1500, Prat witnessed a document alongside brethren Thomas Coke and Thomas Clonton, involving the grant of land by another Palmer: John Browne alias Hobold.⁸¹ Prat witnessed another deed the same year with the same Thomas Coke and, again, William Cheyne.⁸² Prat gifted tenements and land in Ashford Carbonel, Ashford Gameyll, Ashford Jones and Huntington to the Palmers in 1503.⁸³ Two years later, in 1505, he was acting as bailiff for the town of Ludlow.⁸⁴ It is abundantly clear that Prat was a close associate of the Palmers, with both individuals and the guild as a body, and was in all likelihood a member. The relationship between Prat and the guild was fostered through land transactions and the institutional role of the guild as an active landholder in the area. Not only was Prat witnessing deeds involving the most prominent members of the guild, notably alongside other Palmers, he was also renting land from them in Overton as late as 1527.⁸⁵ It might well be argued that it was through Prat’s connections to the Palmers – as he was evidently regularly involved in both guild and town business – that provided him access to the Council, culminating in President Blythe’s employment of him as a messenger to Prior More. Although we cannot say much with certainty, his network of connections, via the guild, to political structures that superseded Ludlow demonstrates the intertwined and multifaceted connections between the Council and the priory that were founded on the relationships formed through mutual guild membership. The prevalence of membership of the Palmers, therefore, cannot be separated from these peculiar local circumstances. As has become increasingly clear, the complex web of relationships between individuals and institutions (and between institutions themselves) in the Marches resulted in connections that were strengthened through multiple avenues – the Council, religious houses and the Palmers’ Guild being three threads woven together in the fabric of the region.

Nowhere are the connections between these institutions better demonstrated than in the funeral of Prince Arthur in 1502. Having died at Ludlow Castle, Arthur’s body lay in repose there for several days before being transported to the parish church of St Laurence, Ludlow. The short procession between the castle and the church has been described as the ‘first stage in making the prince’s funeral an inclusive public event’.⁸⁶ From there, the body was transported to Worcester Priory, where it was buried in an elaborate ceremony, although his ‘heart’ (internal organs) was in fact buried in the parish church at Ludlow. The connections between the Council and the priory are therefore immediately apparent in this series of events, but it is striking to note the fact that many of the principal mourners and participants were also Palmers.

A contingent of Palmers associated with Arthur’s household were present throughout the whole affair: William Smyth, bishop of Lincoln and president of the Council,⁸⁷ sang vespers and read a lesson at Ludlow and then sang the mass of requiem (the culmination of the whole funeral) at Worcester; the chief mourner was Thomas Howard, earl of Surrey, who joined in 1501/2;⁸⁸ and Anthony Willoughby, a friend of Arthur and member of his household, who had joined in 1499/1500, carried the canopy over the hearse at Ludlow.⁸⁹ Richard Lye, abbot of Shrewsbury and a Palmer, sang a mass at the observances in St Laurence’s,⁹⁰ and he was assisted in this by the abbot of Bordesley, another Palmer.⁹¹ At Worcester, after two days’ travel, Arthur’s body was greeted by ‘honest men of the cittie’, including the abbots of Gloucester, Evesham, Chester, Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, Hales and Bordesley and the prior of Worcester.⁹² All represented houses whose brethren were members of the Palmers, and the superiors of Shrewsbury, Bordesley and Worcester were Palmers themselves.⁹³ The abbots and priors, along with many monks of the religious houses of the region, were present at Arthur’s funeral.⁹⁴ Finally, the accounts for Arthur’s funeral reveal the presence of lesser members of the guild in the recording of gifts of black cloth with which mourning gowns were to be made. Among those named were Humphrey Blackburn, parson of Ludlow who had joined the guild in 1485, and William Cheney, who was a steward of the guild.⁹⁵ Thomas Wriothesley (Garter King of Arms, 1505–34) accounted that at the funeral ‘children, prike song and Organs’ accompanied the Our Lady mass performed by the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield at the church in Ludlow – the organist was likely the same musician who was regularly employed by the guild between 1492 and 1503.⁹⁶ It seems doubtless that scores of local guild members would have taken part in the prince’s obsequies at Ludlow as well. This convergence of institutions – religious houses, the Palmers and the Council of the Marches – points to an underlying relationship that would certainly have been apparent to many of those involved.

County and Marcher Lordship Offices

The Council of the Marches was not the only form of local and regional power exercised by those connected to the guild. Guild members and associates also held other positions of regional importance, such as Justices of the Peace and Members of Parliament. It is not an easy task to examine the relationship between county governance and guild membership in a similar way to that achieved by urban studies. There was no direct shire equivalent to the systems which existed in urban centres, but, nevertheless, several areas of government prove to be useful delineations of study.

MPs and electors

Members of Parliament wielded significant local power, and election as an MP was part of the ‘cursus honorum of shire office’.¹²³ In this sphere, again, the influence of the guild can be detected. Those who were elected, along with those who elected them, are two ways to view the prevalence of membership among those involved in rural governance. The county members of the Commons were often knights and esquires – associates of the lords in both a parliamentary and social sense.¹²⁴ Elections took place in the county court, requiring the ‘common assent’ of the shire community, which, after 1429, theoretically included all freeholders, from the upper ranks of the gentry to yeomen and husbandmen.¹²⁵ That did not, however, translate into a mass turn-out of the entire eligible population.¹²⁶ The electors, in terms of their status, remained restricted to the wealthiest of the county. The loss of parliamentary returns presents difficulties, however, in constructing a full picture. There are no surviving returns for any of Henry VII’s seven parliaments and the names of the members for Henry VIII’s parliaments in 1510, 1512 and 1515 for the counties of Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire do not survive.¹²⁷ The returns for the 1523 parliament do not survive for Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire either.¹²⁸ Our opportunity to understand the shape and tenure of guild membership among the elected is, therefore, affected by the surviving source material, with the limited cross-over between the two groups of source material with which we are concerned. The survival of a parliamentary return for Herefordshire in 1523 demonstrates the issues arising from this lack of overlap, but it nevertheless offers an example of what might have been more typical.

The MP for Herefordshire that year was Sir Richard Cornwall (sitting in both 1523 and 1529), who joined the Palmers in 1501.¹²⁹ Born around 1480, he was in his twenties when he joined the Palmers, and it was just over twenty years later that he became an MP. According to Gerald Harriss, most MPs were elected between the age of thirty and forty-five, and, as Cornwall was on the more senior end of the average age of most first-time MPs, his age helps to explain why he alone can be found amongst the Palmers.¹³⁰ Cornwall’s enrolment in the guild accords with timelines of the urban elite discussed in the previous chapter and, as will be demonstrated here, the county elite. His fellow MPs of 1529, and MPs from the 1530s and 1540s, would probably have been too young to join the guild during the years for which we possess membership records. The receipts for membership, which survive in fragmentary form for the 1510s, confirm this with the existence of a note that the MP for Herefordshire in 1532, John Scudamore, had made a payment towards his membership fee.¹³¹ In fact, crucially, the parliamentary returns demonstrate that MPs were frequently the sons of Palmers. Gloucestershire’s MP in 1545, Nicholas Arnold, was the son of a Palmer; in Shropshire, Richard Trentham (MP 1536) and Richard Mytton (MP 1539) were sons of Palmers; the same applies for Herefordshire MP George Cornwall (1539), the Worcestershire MP Gilbert Talbot (1542) and the Warwickshire MPs George Throckmorton (1529), John Greville (1539) and Fulk Greville (1545).¹³² Guild membership among the fathers of MPs during the later years of Henry VIII’s reign suggests that these MPs, too, would likely have been members, but the fragmentary receipts for membership leave lengthy gaps in our knowledge of membership.

For many, family influenced the decision to join the Palmers: this was explored in detail in Chapter 2, but the prevalence of this particular influence means that a brief discussion here serves to illuminate the relationships between family, gentry membership and the holding of county office. It was characteristic of gentry families along the Marches to have patrilineal membership of the Palmers. Father and son membership often occurred in quick succession, with sons joining within one or two years of their fathers, such as Sir John Wogan and his son, Henry, who joined in 1503/4 and 1505/6 respectively.¹³³ The son of William Uvedale, the active administrator and justice in the Marches, joined in 1503, and the son of Edward Croft (member of the Council of the March, MP, sheriff and JP) joined in 1513.¹³⁴ Especially of interest here, however, are instances where patrilineal enrolment took place many years apart. It was suggested earlier that Richard Mytton, MP for Shropshire in 1539, was likely a Palmer, as his father, William, had previously enrolled with his wife, Cecily, in 1505.¹³⁵ Thirty-two years earlier William’s own father was recorded as paying 12d towards his membership.¹³⁶ John Scudamore, MP for Herefordshire in 1529, was a member of the Palmers’ Guild from 1509.¹³⁷ His father William contributed 2s 4d towards his own membership fee in 1472/3.¹³⁸ Male membership of the Palmers’ Guild was a feature over generations for the county elites of the Marches.¹³⁹ Intergenerational membership of the Palmers sits comfortably alongside wider use of guilds by children, parents, and even grandparents in the case of Richard Hall from Presteigne.¹⁴⁰ Parents enrolled their deceased children and vice versa, highlighting the regularity with which families could utilise a guild to fulfil spiritual obligations, while the living reaped social and political benefits of association.¹⁴¹

While the names of MPs survive for many of Henry VIII’s parliaments, our knowledge of the electors is patchy. The loss of parliamentary returns for the first half of the sixteenth century for the counties in question prevents a full examination of Palmers’ membership among those electors; rather, the only relevant documents available are the returns from the 1540s. This is by no means ideal, as a thirty-year gap between the guild records and the parliamentary sources naturally narrows the option for comparison: members who joined in the first decade of the century may have died or removed themselves from more active roles by the 1540s. But there still remains some value in a brief examination of the electors, however, as the situation in towns outlined in the previous demonstrates that a handful of Palmers were still occupying official roles in the 1540s.¹⁴² Each return is structured as an indenture, recording the two men elected to parliament and the names of those who elected them.¹⁴³ In Worcestershire’s by-election in 1542, four of the twenty-one electors were Palmers – nineteen per cent.¹⁴⁴ In the other counties, there was less representation: for Gloucestershire, one of fifteen was a Palmer in 1545 (six and a half per cent), and for Shropshire in the same year two of thirty-three were Palmers (six per cent).¹⁴⁵ Warwickshire, although not a Marcher county, has strong representation in both general and gentry membership, but that is not reflected in their 1547 election indenture.¹⁴⁶

Much as is the case for MPs, family names reveal the prominent governors of county administration. The Shropshire indentures name men from the Purslow, Hosyer, Kynaston and Spencer families, all of whom had members of the Palmers in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.¹⁴⁷ Likewise, the Cressets from Upton Cresset became Palmers in the early sixteenth century, and the Palmer Richard Cresset’s son Robert was a parliamentary elector in the 1540s.¹⁴⁸ Examples from Warwickshire demonstrate that this trend was by no means restricted to the local gentry that one might expect to find in the home county of the Palmers’ Guild. The Throckmortons, originally a Worcestershire family who shifted their focus and energy to their Warwickshire estates in the late fifteenth century, were members of the guild.¹⁴⁹ There is again, with George Throckmorton’s participation as elector for Warwickshire in 1547, a nod to the continuation of involvement of these gentry families in county affairs; families that were previously Palmers very well may still have been.¹⁵⁰ These sons of Palmers were members of the county elite, participating in the process of electing an MP to represent their interests.¹⁵¹ There is little reason to think that their forefathers held drastically different attitudes in their own involvement with county structures, or to think that the guild’s attractiveness to these gentry families plummeted in the 1510s and onwards. The guild’s longevity was clearly proven by the sixteenth century, being in its third century of activity, and the security of a guild, in light of the long-term employment of priests to pray for members’ souls, has been proffered as a reason for gentry membership.¹⁵² There was, however, more of a familial expectation that members of the county gentry joined the Palmers, placing weight on the access to regional political powers facilitated through the Palmers’ Guild.

Conclusion

Membership of the Palmers brought access to local power structures. Institutions in the Welsh Marches were highly interconnected, and the presence of the Council of the Marches had a significant impact upon the social, political and religious aspects of the region. The plurality of the roles held by numerous Palmers worked in the favour of each institution to which an individual belonged, be it the Council, regional, local or ecclesiastical governing systems. The nature of late medieval governance demanded collaboration and, at times, integration. The Palmers provided a channel through which the late medieval guild ethos of cooperation and support strengthened the relationships between regional institutions. As the association between guild and Council grew, those wishing to participate in governance of the Marches – be it through sitting on commissions, acting as justices, or participating in shire elections – found in the Palmers a subsidiary ‘space’ in which it was possible to interact with the region’s most influential governors either directly or through mutual associates. Membership of the Ludlow guild was an opportunity to garner, foster and utilise what we might today call ‘soft power’. While it is challenging to identify such power in pre-modern sources, a granular and critical reading of under-explored records demonstrates the convergence of the social and the political in medieval and Tudor politics in the Welsh Marches.

Whereas previous historiography has viewed guilds operating in local political contexts, that is a narrow view, omitting the importance of regional political structures. By looking outside conventional arenas, we have seen how a guild might take on a political aspect in the early Tudor period. In a time that equally saw more obvious political changes, the Palmers’ Guild of Ludlow demonstrates not only the importance of the personal and social connections that guided high politics, but also the ways in which they could be formed, maintained and influenced.

Notes

1. 1.  Worcestershire, although not located along the border, was considered a border county and under the purview of the Council of the Marches. Michael A. Jones, ‘An Earthly Beast, a Mole and an Enemy to All Godly Learning: The Life and Career of Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, and Lord President of the Council in the Marches of Wales, c. 1487–1543’ (MA thesis, University of Wales, 1997), 114.

2. 2.  The exceptions remain in part in the work of Gervase Rosser and Christine Carpenter. Carpenter’s focus, however, was on a singular county and Rosser’s discussion of gentry membership formed part of a wider argument surrounding the importance of feasting in forming social relationships. Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33, no. 4 (October 1994), 430–46; Gervase Rosser, ‘The Town and Guild of Lichfield in the Late Middle Ages’, Staffordshire Archaeological and History Society Transactions, 27 (1985/6), 41–2; Christine Carpenter, ‘Town and Country: The Stratford Guild and Political Networks of Fifteenth-Century Warwickshire’, in The History of an English Borough: Stratford-upon-Avon, 1196–1996, ed. Robert Bearman (Stroud, 1997), 62–79.

3. 3.  Rosemary Horrox argues that most major town guilds counted local gentry and nobles among their members. Rosemary Horrox, ‘The Urban Gentry in the Fifteenth Century’, in Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century, ed. John A.F. Thomson (Gloucester, 1988), 34–5.

4. 4.  With the exception of those linked with the Warwick affinity, who did tend to join the Stratford guild. Carpenter, ‘Town and Country’, 66, 77.

5. 5.  Ben R. McRee, ‘Religious Gilds and Civic Order: The Case of Norwich in the Late Middle Ages’, Speculum, 67, no. 1 (January 1992), 79.

6. 6.  The Stratford guild gave hoods to members of the gentry, and membership to Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1477, along with Anthony, Lord Rivers and John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester: Carpenter, ‘Town and Country’, 62–79; Gervase Rosser, ‘Solidarités et changement social. Les fraternités urbaines anglaises à la fin du Moyen Âge’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations (1993) 48, no. 5, 1139.

7. 7.  Gervase Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast’, 442.

8. 8.  Gervase Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Late Middle Ages: Guilds in England, 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015), 66.

9. 9.  Rosser, ‘Solidarités’, 1138; Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast’, 442.

10. 10.  Dudley’s wife’s family were Gloucestershire landowners. SA: LB/5/3/1, f. 5r.

11. 11.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 63v.

12. 12.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 79v; LB/5/3/40.

13. 13.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 79v.

14. 14.  Names of councillors can be found in Caroline A.J. Skeel, The Council in the Marches of Wales: A Study in the Local Government During the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1904), 34. For their membership see SA: LB/5/3/2, ff. 84r, 148v, 184v; LB/5/3/4, f. 31r.

15. 15.  ‘Bishop John Vesey to the Marcher Council, 24 March 1526/7’, in Little Malvern Letters I: 1482–1737, ed. Aileen M. Hodgson and Michael Hodgetts (Woodbridge, 2011), 13–4.

16. 16.  His name would be found in SA: LB/5/3/10, except for the loss of almost all of the document. Luckily, a nineteenth-century transcript of the riding book survives. W.C. Sparrow, ‘A Register of the Palmers’ Gild of Ludlow in the Reign of Henry VIII’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 2 (1884), 85.

17. 17.  ‘Bishop John Vesey to the Marcher Council, 24 March 1526/7’, in Little Malvern Letters, 134.

18. 18.  Russell was the secretary of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham, until Stafford’s execution in 1521. He became secretary of the Council in 1525. Little Malvern Letters, 13; SA: LB/5/3/8, f. 6v.

19. 19.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 7r. Skeel ascribes him this title as one of the most active, along with Lord Ferrers, Edward Croft, Ralph Egerton and Richard Sydnour: Skeel, Council of the Marches, 58.

20. 20.  ‘Bishop John Vesey to the Household of Princess Mary Tudor’, in Little Malvern Letters, 23; SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 29v.

21. 21.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 50v. He joined in Coventry, where he held interests and offices. See also S. Thorpe, ‘Roger Wigston’, History of Parliament Online, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/wigston-roger-148283-1542.

22. 22.  Scudamore’s appointment to the council was initially blocked by the president of the Council in 1536. Jones, ‘The Life and Career of Rowland Lee’, 127.

23. 23.  BL: Cotton MS Vitellius C I, f. 6r.

24. 24.  The document itself is preserved in a compilation of material specifically relating to the Council but more strikingly, the council call themselves the king’s commissioners in three letters to Ludlow’s bailiffs preserved in the town’s court book. SA: LB/9/1/17; LB/9/1/21.

25. 25.  Sir Robert Corbet, Thomas Blounte, Thomas Scriven and Thomas Mytton were enrolled in the guild, while Thomas Cornwall and Thomas Leighton’s sons were Palmers. SA: LB/5/3/4, f. 10r; LB/5/3/2, f. 104r; LB/5/3/8, f. 11r; LB/5/3/37 f. 1v; LB/5/3/7, f. 40v; LB/5/3/3, f. 20r.

26. 26.  Poytnz’s enrolment can be found in SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 184v. Savage was almost certainly a Palmer. Savage’s wife and children were all members and, given the propensity of the head of the household to enrol before his wife and household, he probably enrolled in the years leading up to that of his family’s – a period for which membership lists do not survive. For his household’s enrolment, see SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r; LB/5/3/5, f. 74r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 50v, 51r; LB/5/3/7, f. 68v; LB/5/3/8, f. 11r.

27. 27.  Tim Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 1480–1560 (Woodbridge, 2000), 147.

28. 28.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 7r.

29. 29.  Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 91.

30. 30.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 30v.

31. 31.  W.R.B. Robinson, ‘Princess Mary’s Itinerary in the Marches of Wales 1525–1527: A Provisional Record’, Historical Research, 71, no. 175 (June 1998), 237.

32. 32.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 26r; Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 147.

33. 33.  Thornton, Cheshire and the Tudor State, 147.

34. 34.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f.50v; https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/wigston-roger-148283-1542.

35. 35.  Ralph Churton, Lives of William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Richard Sutton, Founders of Brase Nose College Oxford (Oxford, 1800), 67.

36. 36.  For the guild’s property portfolio see Rachael Harkes, ‘Building Success: Property Investment and Development in Ludlow’, Fourteenth Century England, vol. 13 (Woodbridge, 2025), 89–105. For the almost methodological encouragement of guild membership within the town, see an undated clerk’s receipt for membership within Ludlow, which has been divided up into streets and wards and details the payments of roughly 480–500 Ludlow-based members (approximately one-third of Ludlow’s tax-paying population). Based on the stewards’ names identifying when individuals joined, this document appears to have been written in the 1530s. SA: LB/5/3/41.

37. 37.  Churton, Lives of William Smyth, 67; Madge Moran, The Guildhall, Ludlow (Ludlow, 2011), 4.

38. 38.  The warden spent £3 6s 8d on two dinners in 1518/19 and then a further 33s 4d in 1520/1. SA: LB/5/3/36, ff. 27r, 30r.

39. 39.  It was calculated that Henry VII had fifty marcher lordships in his possession during his reign and a large number of those were transferred to the prince, resulting in a large proportion of individuals who would approach the Council of the Marches for judicial purposes. S.B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London, 1972), 248, 150.

40. 40.  For an example of an explicit directive of the Council taking over a case when Princess Mary moves to Ludlow: NLW: MSS 6620D, f. 20.

41. 41.  Skeel, Council of the Marches, 180. The princess and the council resided at Bewdley in spring 1527, and Rowland Lee, while president of the Council, heard a case there on 13 November 1542. Little Malvern Letters, 22–3; Jones, ‘Life and Career of Rowland Lee’, 116.

42. 42.  Steven Gunn, ‘The Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk’, Welsh History Review, 12, no. 4 (December 1985), 474. For William Griffith’s biography see ‘Griffith of Penrhyn, Caernarfonshire’, Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig/Dictionary of Welsh Biography: https://biography.wales/article/s1-GRIF-PEN-1300.

43. 43.  Skeel, Council of the Marches, 193–4, 200, 205.

44. 44.  SA: LB/5/1/4.

45. 45.  Both cases can be found in SA: LB/1/9/23. The letters appear near the record of the case within the so-called ‘action book’ that recorded the cases presented before the bailiffs. For example, a letter calling for the Blount c. Webbe case to be heard by the Council (instead of the bailiffs) is attached to the page on which the case was recorded in the bailiff’s court. SA: LB/9/1/21.

46. 46.  W.A. Champion, ‘Litigation in the Boroughs: The Shrewsbury Curia Parva, 1480–1730’, Journal of Legal History, 15, no. 3 (1994), 209–11.

47. 47.  SA: 215/37.

48. 48.  SA: LB/9/1/10. Roger Walcott was presented to Lydham on 16 February 1524: Register of Charles Bothe, Bishop of Hereford, 1516–1535, ed. A.T. Bannister (Hereford, 1921).

49. 49.  SA: LB/9/1/10. This case may be connected with another case of debt involving Vesey et al. c. Ieuan ap Jamys et al. in the Court of Common Pleas. TNA: CP 40/1076.

50. 50.  See appendices 3 and 5 in Michael Faraday, Ludlow 1085–1660: A Social, Economic and Political History (Chichester, 1991), 186, 189–92.

51. 51.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 221r; for Penson’s involvement with the Palmers see LB/5/2/1343–4, 1462.

52. 52.  Master Lane may refer to either Richard Lane, who was likely an elder of the guild; he was certainly representing the brethren in land transactions in the early sixteenth century as found in SA: LB/5/2/1450, or John Lane, who was a guild member and servant of William Smyth. For the debt see SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 2r.

53. 53.  For example, SA: LB/5/3/52, m.1

54. 54.  SA: LB/5/3/54–8.

55. 55.  SA: LB/5/3/59, m. 1.

56. 56.  Ralph Egerton rented a house from the guild in 1502–4: SA: LB/5/3/60, m. 2. Edward Croft did the same in 1529/30: LB/5/3/29, f. 5r.

57. 57.  SA: LB/5/3/31; LB/5/3/34. Expenses for repairs and maintenance of the stables are also noted in these accounts.

58. 58.  SA: LB/9/1/7.

59. 59.  SA: LB/9/1/7. In one case, two servants of the princess’s household were the defendants in a case raised by Roger Ferne, a member of the Palmers. For Ferne’s identification as a guild member see LB/5/2/1431.

60. 60.  Westminster Abbey Muniments: 16045.

61. 61.  TNA: SP 1/46, f. 78r. For example, Croft desired the position of sheriff-in-fee for Worcestershire. Wolsey, in his capacity as Lord Chancellor, would have been involved in the process of shortlisting shrieval candidates: Jonathan McGovern, The Tudor Sheriff: A Study in Early Modern Administration (Oxford, 2022), 64.

62. 62.  TNA: SP 1/46, f. 191. A circular letter to the abbots of the Marches was devised and then sent to the king for approval: SP 1/47, ff. 127–8.

63. 63.  Grain surveys were taken during the period of 1527–9 due to harvest failures and shortage of grain, which demonstrated that some counties had a surplus while others were in great hardship. The surveys do not survive from the Marcher counties, although Shrewsbury’s town records suggest that one did take place. This letter, therefore, suggests that Shropshire (and perhaps Herefordshire, given Ludlow’s location close to the county border) were among those counties that found themselves in great need. For discussion on the harvest failure of 1527–8 and Wolsey’s response to the acute economic hardship see Buchanan Sharp, Famine and Scarcity in Late Medieval and Early Modern England: The Regulation of Grain Marketing, 1256–1631 (Oxford, 2016), 154, 159–63.

64. 64.  For the Kent insurrection see Sharp, Famine and Scarcity, 165. See also the ‘insurrection’ that took place in Norwich during the same period of grain shortages: Christian D. Liddy, ‘The Household, the Citizen and the City: Towards a Social History of Urban Politics in the Late Middle Ages’, Social History, 49, no. 3 (July 2024), 277–81.

65. 65.  For example, Little Malvern Letters, 25–6.

66. 66.  Martin Heale, The Abbots and Priors of Late Medieval and Reformation England (Oxford, 2016), 211–2.

67. 67.  ‘John Russell to Prior William More’, in Little Malvern Letters, 29–31.

68. 68.  For an insightful and measured discussion of keeping ‘the peace’ and justice by the Council of the Marches, see Jones, ‘Life and Career of Rowland Lee’, chapter 4.

69. 69.  John Noake, The Monastery and Cathedral of Worcester (London, 1866), 170. The Council also stayed at the abbey in Shrewsbury in 1526 and 1532: Skeel, Council of the Marches, 204.

70. 70.  Ethel Fegan, ed., The Journal of Prior William More (London, 1919), 216.

71. 71.  Martin Heale, ‘Abbots’ Households in Late Medieval England’, in The Elite Household in England, 1100–1500: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Medieval Symposium (Donington, 2018), 271–6.

72. 72.  Fegan, Journal of Prior William More, 228–9.

73. 73.  Fegan, Journal of Prior William More, 229.

74. 74.  Steven Gunn, ‘Prince Arthur’s Preparation for Kingship’, in Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, ed. Steven Gunn and Linda Monckton (Woodbridge, 2009), 14.

75. 75.  The details of the case are sketchy, appearing in two letters written by More to Thomas Cromwell, asking for the latter’s favour in moving the Chancellor to examine the depositions which had been taken from witnesses. L&P, vol. 6, 335–6; Skeel, The Council of the Marches, 58.

76. 76.  Fegan, Journal of Prior William More, 114.

77. 77.  SA: LB/5/2/492. It was possible that there was another Palmer involved. John Lane was another Palmer acting as a witness with Prat in 1492, who then entered the guild in 1503/4. Interestingly, he was a servant of the Bishop of Lincoln, the President of the Council. Lane and Prat’s relationship may have been multidimensional – same master, potential guild membership and same town of residence. However, the entry in 1497 may be his father, for he was listed in SA: LB/5/2/249 as being a councillor of the guild (1497).

78. 78.  SA: LB/5/2/671.

79. 79.  SA: LB/5/3/3–4.

80. 80.  SA: LB/5/2/249.

81. 81.  SA: LB/5/2/539.

82. 82.  SA: LB/5/2/671; Cheyne is identified as an elder of the guild in LB/5/2/249.

83. 83.  SA: LB/5/2/1010.

84. 84.  SA: LB/5/2/444. Prat also went on to become recorder for Ludlow, as named such in the court records of 1530: LB/9/1/9.

85. 85.  SA: LB/5/3/36, f. 51r.

86. 86.  Much of the detail regarding Arthur’s funeral that follows, unless otherwise stated, is informed by Sean Cunningham, Prince Arthur: The Tudor King Who Never Was (Stroud, 2016), 178–92; quotation at 187. A near contemporary account also exists in BL: Add MS 45131, ff. 37r–41r.

87. 87.  See earlier in this chapter for a discussion on his likely membership.

88. 88.  The nature of the Palmers’ membership lists means that we do not know at exactly what point in the year Surrey joined the guild – it might be suggested that it was as a result of Ludlow’s prominence in the funeral, but equally likely is the prospect that he joined simply because of the trends set by the Council, as discussed in Chapter 2. SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 36r.

89. 89.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 148v.

90. 90.  Cunningham, Prince Arthur, 188; SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 152v.

91. 91.  Cunningham, Prince Arthur, 188. Cunningham calls him the ‘unnamed abbot of Bordesley’. The name given to the abbot in the Palmers’ record is that of Richard Barlour, who also joined in 1498/9. SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 79v.

92. 92.  John Leland, De rebus Britannicis collectanea, vol. 5, ed. Thomas Hearn (London, 1770), 378.

93. 93.  Richard Lye (Shrewsbury) SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 152v; Richard Barlour (Bordesley) LB/5/3/2, f. 79v; William More (Worcester) LB/5/3/9, 45r.

94. 94.  Cunningham, Prince Arthur, 189.

95. 95.  TNA: LC 2/1, f. 15v.

96. 96.  M.J. Angold et al., ‘Religious Guild: Ludlow, Palmers’ Guild’, in A History of the County of Shropshire, vol. 2, ed. A.T. Gaydon and R.B. Pugh (London, 1973), 134–40. British History Online, https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/salop/vol2/pp134–140.

97. 97.  Christine Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 345.

98. 98.  Lander also suggests that arbitration between disputing parties may have been a task for later medieval justices. J.R. Lander, English Justices of the Peace 1461–1509 (Gloucester, 1989), 8–9, 168.

99. 99.  Lander, English Justices of the Peace, 99–100.

100. 100.  These calculations were made by comparing the membership lists with the list of commissioners, as reprinted in ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57.

101. 101.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57.

102. 102.  Gerald Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), 168; Lander, English Justices of the Peace, 161, 165.

103. 103.  SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 45r. Heale, Abbots and Priors, 212; L&P, vol. 4, 899; L&P, vol. 5, 81, 399, 706.

104. 104.  L&P, vol. 4, 899.

105. 105.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 30v.

106. 106.  SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 29v.

107. 107.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 16r.

108. 108.  SA: LB/5/3/8, f. 6v.

109. 109.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 7r.

110. 110.  SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 44v.

111. 111.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 84r.

112. 112.  L&P, vol. 5, 81.

113. 113.  SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 52r; ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57.

114. 114.  He joined the Palmers in 1507/8 and was then described as cellarer. SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 47v.

115. 115.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57; SA: LB/5/3/6, f. 48r.

116. 116.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57; SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 29v.

117. 117.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57; SA: LB/5/3/10, f. 29v; LB/5/3/5, f. 7r; LB/5/3/3, f. 20r; LB/5/3/2, f. 172v; LB/5/3/5, f. 53r; LB/5/3/40, f. 17r; LB/5/3/10, f. 37r. It is also worth noting that John Scudamore was married to Richard Mynors’ daughter.

118. 118.  ‘Commissions of the Peace and Miscellaneous’, in L&P, vol. 1, 1533–57.

119. 119.  For his household’s enrolment, see SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 140r; LB/5/3/5, f. 74r; LB/5/3/6, ff. 50v, 51r; LB/5/3/7, f. 68v; LB/5/3/8, f. 11r. For his position as sheriff, see L&P, vol. 1, 969 (23). Savage was removed as sheriff-in-fee because he held the tourn in an ‘unaccustomed place’, instead of the decided place: McGovern, Tudor Sheriff, 139.

120. 120.  McGovern, Tudor Sheriff, 34.

121. 121.  McGovern, Tudor Sheriff, 134.

122. 122.  McGovern, Tudor Sheriff, 44.

123. 123.  Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 173.

124. 124.  Nigel Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981), 122; Simon Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian England: The Greater Gentry of Nottinghamshire (Oxford, 1991), 75; Eric Acheson, A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c. 1425–1485 (Cambridge, 1992), 112.

125. 125.  Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 171.

126. 126.  Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 171.

127. 127.  References to MPs from other sources have allowed Paul Cavill to identify some MPs for Henry’s reign: Paul R. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII (Oxford, 2009); ‘Constituencies’ History of Parliament Online, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constituencies.

128. 128.  ‘Constituencies’ History of Parliament Online, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constituencies.

129. 129.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 20r; ‘Cornwall, Sir Richard of Berrington, Herefs.’, History of Parliament Online, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509–1558/member/cornwall-sir-richard-1480–1533.

130. 130.  Harriss, Shaping the Nation, 68.

131. 131.  SA: LB/5/3/40, f. 17r.

132. 132.  For guild entries (in corresponding order to names listed) see SA: LB/5/1/4, m. 4; LB/5/3/9, f. 2v; LB/5/3/37, f. 1v; LB/5/3/3, f. 20r; LB/5/3/6, f. 16r; LB/5/1/3, m. 4; LB/5/3/2, f. 140v. For MPs, see History of Parliament Online, constituency pages for Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Warwickshire.

133. 133.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 41v; LB/5/3/7, f. 43r.

134. 134.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 79v; LB/5/3/40, f. 68v.

135. 135.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 11v.

136. 136.  Thomas Mytton, esquire, of Shrewsbury: SA: LB/5/3/37, f. 1v.

137. 137.  This is a payment from the year 1512, in which the ‘4 Bragott’ beside his entry indicates that he joined in 1509. SA: LB/5/3/40.

138. 138.  SA: LB/5/3/37, f. 9r.

139. 139.  A very tentative suggestion could be made that a similar situation may have happened in the Corpus Christi guild in Boston but for a singular county, rather than an expansive region such as the Marches, and perhaps for only two generations. The two Hollands that joined in 1513 and 1531 may have been a father–son duo, as well as the Pynchebecks, Reeds and Robertsons, but it is difficult to say with certainty as no location or familial descriptor is provided. BL: Harley MS 4795.

140. 140.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 49r.

141. 141.  Rachael Harkes, ‘Remembering the Dead: Postmortem Guild Membership in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 63, no. 2 (April 2024), 323–48.

142. 142.  For example, in Bristol, William Rowley was a sheriff in 1539/40 and Richard Tonell, John Shipman and John Smyth were still aldermen in the 1540s despite having joined the Palmers in the first decade of the sixteenth century.

143. 143.  These returns are preserved in TNA: C 219/18 (for Henry VIII’s reign) and C 219/19 (for Edward VI’s reign).

144. 144.  They were John Russell, Thomas Trigg, Richard Tony and Thomas Rock.

145. 145.  TNA: C 219/18C/44; C 219/19/37; C 219/18C/94.

146. 146.  C 219/18C/123.

147. 147.  C 219/18C/94. For example, William Spencer of Bewdley made a membership payment in 1473 and it is likely his son was the same William Spencer found in the Shropshire return of 1545. Elector Edward Kynaston was the Palmer Lancelot Kynaston’s nephew. SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 125r.

148. 148.  TNA: C 219/18B/69. Thomas Cresset was engaging in debt litigation in Ludlow’s courts in 1530 and 1531. SA: LB/9/1/9 and LB/9/1/10.

149. 149.  It was in fact the first Throckmorton, Robert, who was a Palmer. He moved the family interests to the Warwickshire estates rather than the Worcestershire ones: Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), 114. This shift can even be witnessed in the guild records, for he joined in Coughton (Warwickshire) not Fladbury (Worcestershire) or any of his other Worcestershire residences. SA: LB/5/1/3, m. 4.

150. 150.  George’s father, Robert became a member in 1507. George also appeared as an elector for Gloucestershire in 1545. SA: LB/5/1/3, m. 4; TNA: C 219/18C/44.

151. 151.  The extent to which these men exercised any political weight, or the frequency of their attendance at county courts, and the subsequent meaning – or, specifically, lack of meaning – attributed to attendance at parliamentary elections is not the focus in this study. The appearance of these men is simply used as a means to understand the gentry members of the Palmers and the possibilities that their position in counties afforded them. For discussions of the county court, especially surrounding elections, see Christine Carpenter, ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 347; Payling, Political Society, 159–65.

152. 152.  Carpenter offers this suggestion in regard to the lesser gentry only. Carpenter, ‘Town and Country’, 74.

153. 153.  TNA: SC 12/17/90.

154. 154.  SA: LB/5/3/5, f. 25v.

155. 155.  TNA: SC 6/HENVIII/4996; L&P, vol. 4, 1526–30: 2599 (5), 5510 (26). The connections of Lowther across the lordship have become apparent through research undertaken for the ERC/UKRI funded project ‘Mapping the Medieval March: Wales and England, 1282–1550’. While currently at its early stages, this public dataset will no doubt reveal further evidence of the entrenchment of guild members in multiple lordships.

156. 156.  SA: LB/5/3/3, f. 20r. He was appointed by Charles Brandon: Gunn, ‘Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk, 478.

157. 157.  Gunn, ‘Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk’, 478.

158. 158.  SA: LB/5/3/9, f. 10r. For his position as recorder see: Gunn, ‘Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk’, 479.

159. 159.  SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 58r; Gunn, ‘Regime of Charles, Duke of Suffolk’, 480.

160. 160.  For Edward Stafford’s entry see: LB/5/3/8, f. 6v. His great grandfather, Humphrey, 1st Duke of Buckingham, was also a Palmer: SA: LB/5/3/24, m. 7.

161. 161.  SA: LB/5/3/7, f. 43r.

162. 162.  Ralph A. Griffiths, The Principality of Wales in the Later Middle Ages: The Structure and Personnel of Government, South Wales, 1277–1536 (Cardiff, 2018), 168–9.

163. 163.  His steward, Thomas ap Rhys: SA: LB/5/3/2, f. 115v; his son: LB/5/3/2, f. 184v. For a brief biography see: ‘Rhys ap Thomas’, Y Bywgraffiadur Cymreig/Dictionary of Welsh Biography: https://biography.wales/article/s-RHYS-APT-1449.