Gatton

By the seventeenth century Gatton, once ‘a famous town’, was ‘scarce a small village’.1 W. Camden, Britain (1637), 296. Doubtless it was difficult to compete with the reasonably prosperous market town of Reigate, only two miles away. Much of the manor, consisting of a handful of cottages and a manor house, was in the hands of its lord, who for decades had been a member of the recusant Copley family and during the early Stuart period was William Copley (d. 1643).2 VCH Surr. iii. 196; A.B. deM. Hunter, Gentlemen of Merstham and Gatton, 1519 to 1979 (1993), 51. More recently, adjacent Upper Gatton and the manor of Chipstead had been purchased by Samuel Owfeild*, who together with the Howards of Effingham, was also influential in the neighbourhood.3 VCH Surr. iii. 199; Hunter, Gentlemen of Merstham and Gatton, 55; ‘Samuel Owfield’, HP Commons 1604-1629. In 1635 or 1636 the advowson of the rectory of St Andrew’s was gifted by the Calvinist minister Nehemiah Rogers, a friend of Archbishop William Laud, to the latter’s alma mater of St John’s College, Oxford, a donation which had the potential to encourage in the propagation of ceremonialist religion and pro-government sentiments locally.4 CSP Dom. 1635, p. 392; ‘Nehemiah Rogers’, Oxford DNB.

Gatton had first returned Members to Parliament in 1452-3 through the constable of Reigate hundred and ‘with the assent of the whole borough’. The electorate was always small and in 1547 Sir Roger Copley was the only inhabitant and sole voter.5 VCH Surr. iii. 197. By the 1620s there were between eight and 12 at the polls. More often than not there were also election disputes, arising from ambiguity over the extent of the franchise and from the attempts of William Copley to claim exclusive rights and to return crypto-Catholics.6 ‘Gatton’, HP Commons 1604-1629. Then a decade without Parliaments apparently only obscured the issues at stake.

In 1632 Copley, one of whose brothers was a Jesuit operating in London, was pardoned for his recusancy and thus recovered control of some of his lands.7 Hunter, Gentlemen of Merstham and Gatton, 54, 58;VCH Surr. iii. 198; SP16/163, f. 62; SP16/178, f. 141. On 20 March 1640 he once again headed the list of voters in an election indenture which returned Samuel Owfeild and Edmund Saunders*.8 C219/42, pt. ii/132. Owfeild’s interest, evidently conceded by his local rival, thereby secured him a Gatton seat for a fourth time. Saunders, whose family was long-established nine miles away at Charlwood, was following in the footsteps of his great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Saunders†, who represented Gatton in 1542, and a kinsman, Sir Nicholas Saunders† of Ewell, who sat in 1604.9 HP Commons 1509-1558; HP Commons 1604-1629. While less prominent than some of his ancestors, Saunders presided as a justice of the peace in sessions at Reigate and was thus a familiar figure, if not always in harmony with some of his neighbours.10 SP16/356, f. 122; Cases in the Court of Chivalry (Harl. Soc. n.s. xv), 133; R. Sewill and E. Lane, Free Men of Charlwood (1951), 105-7. Nonetheless, on this occasion there was no visible dispute: the not unprecedented involvement of a clergyman (‘Edmund Shoe’), and the submission of an unsigned indenture mentioning 15 names ‘and divers other’ burgesses, went unchallenged in the short parliamentary session.11 C219/42, pt. ii/132.

It is perhaps a sign of heightened political tension that matters were otherwise that autumn, although it took more than a year to resolve them. A double return at the election on 23 October 1640 re-opened old controversies. When on 3 November 1641 John Maynard* finally reported from the privileges committee, the return, yet again, of Owfeild was recognised as ‘settled’ – he had in fact appeared in the chamber at the very beginning of the session – but ‘doubts’ had been raised by indentures naming Edmund Saunders and Thomas Sands, a Middle Temple barrister who lived seven miles from Gatton at Randalls, Leatherhead.12 CJ ii. 21a. Maynard explained that Saunders had 14 voices, all of whom had ‘freeholds in the town’ but ‘eight of them [were] dwellers out of the town and one of them a minister’.13 CJ ii. 212b, 303b. (The indenture in fact named two clergymen – Edmund Shoe and George Moore – as well as two gentlemen – Edward and William Huntley.)14 C219/43 pt. ii/202. Sands, on the other hand, had only eight voices but they were all apparently ‘burgesses by common right’; of these ‘one was a recusant convict and another the clerk of the parish who received yearly wages from the parish’.15 CJ ii. 303b. (The indenture makes clear that this was Copley, who had the previous April been presented again for non-attendance at church; the appearance on both indentures of the name ‘Andrew Lambert’ appears to have passed without comment.)16 C219/43 pt. ii/203, cf. ii/202; Mdx. County Recs. iii. 75-9. If, Maynard observed, non-resident freeholders, those receiving remuneration from the parish and recusants were ruled out, then Saunders and Sands had equal voices (i.e. six), but clearly this did not resolve the problem. The committee noted sixteenth-century precedents which privileged inhabitants, but also the 1621 ruling which favoured freeholders. However, after debate the House resolved that the ‘common right’ of inhabitants should be preferred to the wider franchise of freeholders and that the vote of ‘How, parish clerk’ for Sands should be accepted. This gave Saunders six votes and Sands seven, allowing the Commons to shelve the question of Copley. Sands was therefore declared ‘well-elected’.17 CJ ii. 303b.

All three men went on to support Parliament during the civil war. Owfeild had received a knighthood at the king’s hands, but died at Hull shortly before 4 May 1643 on his way to assist forces under Oliver Cromwell*.18 J. Sykes, ‘St Mary’s, Hull’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xii. 468. The combination of his death in the service of the cause and the strength of his interest locally probably ensured that the by-election authorised on 3 September 1645 to fill his vacant seat was relatively uncontroversial.19 CJ iv. 262b. His son William Oldfield, who was only 22 years old, was duly returned by 19 September.20 Perfect Passages no. 48 (17-23 Sept. 1645), 381 (E.302.24). A rather spasmodic attender in the House, Oldfield did not sit after Pride’s Purge. Neither did Sands: another irregular attender, but in time a solid political Presbyterian.

Gatton was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government. Following Copley’s death in 1643, the manor descended to his granddaughters and their husbands, John and George Weston. They too were recusants, and following the sequestration of their estates, between 1650 and 1654 they joined in selling Gatton to Thomas Turgis*, a very wealthy London merchant.21 VCH Surr. iii. 198; C3/456/28. He soon also acquired the advowson, as well as land in Surrey from the Saunders family.22 VCH Surr. 200; C3/460/34; C5/27/96.

After elections for the third protectorate Parliament, in an indenture of 24 January 1659 ‘the inhabitants and burgesses of Gatton’, who included Edmund Shoe and constable Gabriel Ainscombe, returned Turgis with Edward Bysshe II*, Garter king of arms, who had previously sat for Bletchingley and Reigate.23 C219/48. William Oldfield, for reasons unknown, appears not to have been a candidate, but there was a complaint by an unsuccessful candidate, New Model army officer and clerk of the ordnance Lewis Audley*, who had sat for the county in 1656. Only three days after the date of the indenture, on 27 January, the opening day of the session, Audley presented himself at Westminster to present a complaint and became involved in an altercation with Turgis and Bysshe as they arrived to claim their seats. On the 28th, the Commons heard that Audley ‘gave very uncivil and provoking language’ to them and ‘had challenged and dared Mr Bysshe to go into the Fields to fight with him’.24 CJ vii. 595a.

The incident was seized on by Members of the House who wished to discredit the army – among them Richard Knightley*, William Bulkeley* and Sir Arthur Hesilrige.25 CJ vii. 595a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 15n. Summoned to answer at the bar, Audley heard from the Speaker on 2 February that there had been a complaint ‘of a great violation of the privileges of the House’. He had been accused of using ‘very foul and contumelious language’ to Bysshe, of calling him ‘a rascal and base rascal’, and of employing ‘other provoking language, tending to a duel’. He had similarly abused Turgis, calling him ‘base fellow’. Thwarted in an attempt to respond with a justificatory petition, Audley was forced on to the back foot – he later claimed (somewhat implausibly) inexperience in speaking for himself and (more plausibly) ‘a passion and natural temper worse than other men’s’ – and to speak ex tempore. He explained that, understanding that there had been a double return at Gatton, he had come to resolve it; he had had ‘discourse’ with Bysshe in Westminster Hall, during which ‘words of heat and anger’ had passed between them, but he had had no weapon; Bysshe had insulted him as a ‘turncoat’ and denied his gentility – both of which he rejected forcefully. He had encountered Turgis at the Sign of the Leg in Whitehall Palace yard and informed him of the intention to challenge the election, but there had been ‘no uncivil language’.26 CJ vii. 596b, 597a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 37-8.

Once Audley had withdrawn from the chamber, witness came forward to contradict his account. Facing Bysshe’s insults, Audley was alleged to have said that ‘he would right himself as a gentleman’, while ‘he had called Mr Turgis a base stinking fellow and a shit-breech’.27 CJ vii. 597b. In the fiercely-argued debate which ensued, both sides had eloquent supporters and detractors, with fellow Surrey Members divided.28 Burton’s Diary, iii. 38-44. A move to oust Audley from the county’s commission of the peace, sponsored among others by Hesilrige, Sir John Lenthall* and Henry Fitzjames*, and opposed by Carew Ralegh* and John Goodwyn*, was rejected by 18 votes, but he was committed to the Tower.29 Burton’s Diary, iii. 44-5; CJ vii. 597b. He was, however, released five days later on his appeal, when his detractors – including Turgis – realised that confinement in the Tower was no particular hardship for the clerk of the ordnance, who already had lodgings there, and that they could definitively undermine his pretensions to sit in Parliament by other means: it had emerged that he had once been in holy orders, which should have rendered him ineligible at the outset.30 Burton’s Diary, iii. 84-6; CJ vii. 601a. However, it is not clear whether Audley pursued his claim any further.

Oldfield returned to Westminster in February or March 1660 with other Members of the Long Parliament.31 W. Prynne, A Full Declaration (1660, E.1013.22). By this time his partner Sands had been dead for over a year.32 Leatherhead par. reg. A double return at the poll on 16 April for the Convention, when Oldfield and Turgis were returned with two others, resulted in the election being declared void. Both were to sit in Parliament again, but while the Turgis interest was sustained after 1700, the Oldfield interest passed on William’s death in 1664 to the Thomson family.33 HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.