Somerset

County

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

Background Information

No names known for 1510-23

Elections

DateCandidate
1529SIR NICHOLAS WADHAM
 SIR WILLIAM STOURTON
aft. Dec. 1535?HUGH PAULET vice Stourton, called to the Upper House
1536?HUGH PAULET
 (not known)
1539(SIR) HUGH PAULET 1
 SIR THOMAS SPEKE 2
1542(not known)
1545SIR THOMAS SPEKE
 SIR JOHN ST. LOE
1547SIR MAURICE BERKELEY 3
 SIR HENRY CAPELL 4
1553 (Mar.)SIR RALPH HOPTON 5
 SIR EDWARD ROGERS 6
1553 (Oct.)SIR EDWARD ROGERS
 SIR RALPH HOPTON
1554 (Apr.)SIR EDWARD WALDEGRAVE
 SIR JOHN SYDENHAM
1554 (Nov.)SIR EDWARD WALDEGRAVE 7
 HUMPHREY COLLES 8
1555?SIR RALPH HOPTON 9
 ?SIR JOHN ST. LOE 10
1558SIR EDWARD ROGERS
 JOHN WALSHE

Main Article

The Somerset elections were held at Ilchester by the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. In April 1554 a bill to make Glastonbury the shire town was introduced in the Commons but proceeded no further than its second reading, when it was committed to Sir John Sydenham. Election indentures survive only for the Parliaments of 1545, March and October 1553 and 1558, together with the sheriff’s schedule for 1545. The earlier indentures are in Latin but the Marian ones, the second of which is in very poor condition, are in English; the contracting parties are the sheriff and between a dozen and 25 named electors.11

The 13 known knights of the shire all held land in Somerset. The strong Protestant group among them included St. Loe, Hopton and Rogers. The last two took a stand against the initial measures towards the reunion with Rome in Mary’s first Parliament, and Hopton and St. Loe followed the lead of Sir Anthony Kingston, St. Loe’s brother-in-law, in opposing one of the government’s bills in her fourth. Their recalcitrance supplies the only evidence that Hopton and St. Loe were Members of that Parliament, and whereas they may then have been sitting for Somerset both were to be elected elsewhere at their next return in 1559. Their election for Somerset in 1555 would not only have been a gesture against the regime but also a particular rebuff to Waldegrave, who had been forced to seek election outside his own shire because of the pre-emption of its seats by two more senior Councillors, his uncle Sir Robert Rochester and Sir William Petre: he had sat for Wiltshire in October 1553 and if he was not re-elected for Somerset in 1555 he could have found himself without a place in the House. Two of the remaining Marian Members, the relatively insignificant Sydenham and the successful lawyer John Walshe (who had previously represented Bristol in five Parliaments), were related to Baron Chandos, and the third, Colles, was a brother-in-law of the Essex peer Thomas Darcy, 1st Baron Darcy of Chiche; Waldegrave, or the Council acting through him, may have had a hand in their election, perhaps as counterweight to men like Rogers and Hopton.

The sale of wool in Somerset was regulated by two Acts (22 Hen. VIII, c.1 and 37 Hen. VIII, c.15) and the manufacture of cloth by another (5 and 6 Edw. VI, c.6). Nothing came of bills for weaving introduced in 1539, 1547 and 1553, for the barrelling of butter and cheese in 1549, and for the upkeep of roads in 1553.12

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

  • 1. E159/319, brev. ret. Mich. r. [1-2].
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. Hatfield 207.
  • 4. Ibid.
  • 5. C219/282/5.
  • 6. Ibid.
  • 7. Huntington Lib. Hastings mss Parl. pprs.
  • 8. Ibid.
  • 9. Guildford mus. Loseley 1331/2.
  • 10. Ibid.
  • 11. C219/18C/101, 21/130, 25/93, 282/5; CJ, i. 35, 36.
  • 12. LJ, i. 117; CJ, i. 14, 15, 29-31.