Westbury

Borough

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
1529THOMAS KIRTON
 THOMAS TEMYS
1536(not known)
1539(not known)
1542(not known)
1545WILLIAM HARTGILL
 GEOFFREY CARTER
1547JOHN STOKES 1
 KENELM THROCKMORTON 2
1553 (Mar.)(not known)
1553 (Oct.)ANDREW BAYNTON
 GRIFFIN CURTEYS
1554 (Apr.)GRIFFIN CURTEYS
 PETER MORGAN
1554 (Nov.)WILLIAM BENNETT
 GRIFFIN CURTEYS
1555(SIR) THOMAS THROCKMORTON I
 WILLIAM HOSKINS
1558JOHN BUCKLAND
 WILLIAM ALLEN alias HELYER

Main Article

Once a royal manor, Westbury was much subdivided in the 15th and 16th centuries, the most important estates being later named after the families which had held them, Westbury Arundell, Westbury Seymour and Westbury Stourton. In 1549 or 1550 property probably comprising the whole of Westbury Arundell was sold to Thomas Long, a Trowbridge clothier, and in 1557 Westbury Stourton was forfeited to the crown after the 8th Baron Stourton’s murder of his father’s steward William Hartgill. The Willoughby family held the manor of Brook and took their baronial title from it; after the death of the 2nd Lord Willoughby de Broke in 1521 the manor passed through his daughter Anne to the Blount lords Mountjoy, who also acquired the manor of Bremeridge. Bratton was granted to Sir Thomas Seymour II in 1543 and after his attainder part of it fell to William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, whose son was married to Lord Willoughby’s second daughter Elizabeth. In 1549 the manor of Heywood, acquired by Sir Edward Baynton in 1537, was conveyed by his son Andrew (senior Member for Westbury in Mary’s first Parliament) to Henry Long of Whaddon, Thomas Long’s brother.3

The prosperous clothmaking town was not coextensive with the borough, enfranchised in 1448 and apparently covering only that part of the urban area in which the burgage tenements lay. It was never incorporated and its government remained largely manorial, although there was a mayor by 1554. Election indentures survive for the last Parliament of Henry VIII and the five Marian Parliaments, in Latin except those for the Parliaments of November 1554 and 1555. The contracting parties in 1545 are the sheriff of Wiltshire and the portreeve and burgesses; in September 1553 and March 1554 the sheriff and four or five named burgesses et alii burgenses, and thereafter the sheriff and the mayor and burgesses. In 1545 Geoffrey Carter’s name was inserted in a hand different from that of the indenture. No pattern emerges from an examination of the Membership save that of the 14 known Members only Kenelm Throckmorton and his cousin (Sir) Thomas Throckmorton did not reside within easy reach of the borough. On the other hand, only William Bennett is known to have lived at Westbury.4

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes

  • 1. Hatfield 207.
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. VCH Wilts. viii. 148-62.
  • 4. Ibid. 139, 168, 185, 186; C219/18C/137, 21/170, 22/95, 23/154, 24/176, 25/127.