Morpeth

Morpeth lay on the Great North Road at the point where it crossed the River Wansbeck, some twelve miles north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was described in 1673 as ‘a very fine town’, and its market was esteemed the best in Northumberland, ‘being sufficiently stored with corn, all provisions and living cattle, which from hence are dispersed to divers parts of the kingdom’.1 R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 181. As this description implies, Morpeth’s principal source of wealth was its large cattle market.2 J. Hodgson, Hist. of Morpeth, 59. According to the 1642 Protestation lists, the town contained about 340 adult males, although what proportion of these were householders with wives and families is impossible to say.3 Durham Protestations ed. H.M. Wood (Surt. Soc. cxxxv), 192-4. The 1665 hearth tax returns list 190 householders in Morpeth, suggesting an overall population of approximately 900.4 E179/158/105.

The government of the town, which was not incorporated, was based upon its seven craft guilds.5 Hodgson, Morpeth, 65, 67-8; J.R. Boyle, ‘The insignia and plate of the corporation of Morpeth’, Arch. Ael. ser. 2, xiii. 209-16. At a court leet held every Michaelmas, each guild presented several of its members as candidates for the various borough officers, from which the lord of the manor or his steward selected two bailiffs and other officials. The bailiffs governed the borough for the year, convening meetings of the ‘free burgesses’, or freemen, and acting as returning officers in parliamentary elections.6 Hodgson, Morpeth, 67-8. The town had first sent Members to Parliament in 1553, and the franchise was vested in the freemen, who were chosen by the guilds from among their own members. Only freemen could be proposed as candidates for borough office or serve as jurors on the town’s manorial courts.7 Hodgson, Morpeth, 67-8, 167; HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Morpeth’.

The manor and barony of Morpeth was owned by the Howards of Naworth, and almost all of the borough’s MPs during the early seventeenth century had been nominated by the head of the family, Lord William Howard.8 HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Morpeth’. However, Howard was an old man by 1640 and in bad health (he died in October of that year) and his family’s influence in the borough may have suffered as a result. On 16 March, in the elections to the Short Parliament, the freemen returned two carpetbaggers – Sir Philip Mainwaring and Thomas Withring – neither of whom had close ties with the Howards.9 C219/42/1/165. Mainwaring was secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland and lord president of the council of the north, the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), and was almost certainly still in Ireland at the time of his election.10 Infra, ‘Sir Philip Mainwaring’. Withring was master of the king’s postal service and based mainly in London (Morpeth would have been familiar to him only as the location of a staging post on the Great North Road).11 Infra, ‘Thomas Withring’. Mainwaring was clearly Strafford’s nominee, and it seems likely that the lord lieutenant also exerted himself on Withring’s behalf – either as a favour to his ally and Withring’s patron Sir John Coke†, or simply because he was eager to impose another friend of the court upon an amenable borough. Strafford may have approached the Morpeth voters through his principal northern ally Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. The earl was the county’s most powerful magnate – a position augmented by his office as lord high admiral. Both Strafford and Northumberland would have been able to command the services of the man who was probably steward of Morpeth in 1640, Sir Thomas Widdrington*.12 Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Widdrington’; J.C. Hodgson, ‘An acct. of the customs of the ct. leet and ct. baron of Morpeth’, Arch. Ael. ser. 2, xvi. 62.

The king’s defeat in the second bishops’ war destroyed whatever interest Strafford had enjoyed at Morpeth; whether it also weakened any influence enjoyed by the earl of Northumberland and Widdrington is not clear. In the elections to the Long Parliament, the borough returned John Fenwick and Sir William Carnabye on 19 September 1640.13 C219/43/2/93. Fenwick was the son of Sir John Fenwick*, who was a close friend of Northumberland and had been a leading figure in county affairs since Jacobean times. The Fenwicks’ main residence at Wallington and their manor of Walker were both held in fee from the barony of Morpeth, and it is therefore likely that they were well known in the borough.14 Infra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’; Hodgson, ‘Customs of Morpeth’, 62. Carnabye’s second seat was at Bothal Castle, some three miles from Morpeth, and he had been returned for the borough to the 1624 Parliament.15 Infra, ‘Sir William Carnabye’.

Both Fenwick and Carnabye sided with the king at the outbreak of civil war and were in due course disabled from sitting by the Commons. In the resulting by-election at Morpeth on 20 October 1645, the bailiffs, with the ‘whole assent and consent of the rest of the burgesses’, returned John Fiennes and George Fenwick. The indenture was signed by 37 of the freemen – which was possibly the total number present on the day, although a list of the ‘free burgesses’ compiled in 1653 runs to 58 names.16 C219/43/2/95; Hodgson, ‘Customs of Morpeth’, 67. Fiennes was the son of the Oxfordshire peer and Independent grandee William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and was clearly a carpetbagger.17 Infra, ‘John Fiennes’. It is likely that he was elected on the interest of Charles Howard*, the great-grandson of Lord William Howard, as exercised by his guardian and Saye’s intimate friend Henry Darley* (Northumberland, who was Saye’s parliamentary ally, may also have used his influence in the Morpeth area on Fiennes’s behalf).18 Infra, ‘Henry Darley’; ‘Charles Howard’. Saye may have employed this Howard-Darley connection to present a member of his clerical stable to the rectory of Morpeth in 1645.19 Walker Revised, 290. George Fenwick, too, may have owed his election to his intimacy with Saye and Darley – his collaborators on the Saybrook colonial project of the 1630s. His estate at Brinkburn lay some ten miles north of the borough, which suggests that there were few, if any, of his tenants among the Morpeth freemen.20 Infra, ‘George Fenwick’. However, he may well have had kinsmen among the leading inhabitants – indeed, one of the bailiffs that year was his namesake.21 C219/43/2/95.

Morpeth was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, but regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. On 14 January 1659, the bailiffs returned Robert Delaval and Robert Mitford ‘with the whole assent and consent of the rest of the burgesses’.22 C219/47, unfol. The basis of Delaval’s interest at Morpeth is a mystery. His estate at Dissington lay some ten miles south of Morpeth, and he does not appear to have had ties with the Howard family.23 Infra, ‘Robert Delaval’. Mitford, on the other hand, owned considerable property in and around the town and reportedly exercised ‘great power and authority in those parts’.24 Infra, ‘Robert Mitford’; C6/143/126. The Howard interest at Morpeth regained much of its old potency in 1660, although further attempts by Charles Howard (created earl of Carlisle in 1661) to obtrude strangers upon the borough were resented, and occasionally resisted, by the freemen.25 HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Morpeth’; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 163.