Aldborough

Lying about a mile downstream from Boroughbridge on the River Ure, and 15 miles north west of York, the ‘village or town’ of Aldborough was one of Yorkshire smallest constituencies, containing only 64 householders in 1664 – which suggests a population of approximately 300.1 R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 259; E179/210/393, m. 30 dorse. The manor of Aldborough was part of the duchy of Lancaster until 1629, when it was purchased by Arthur Aldburghe, who owned the capital messuage of Aldborough Hall.2 N. Yorks. RO, ZUH, Lawson-Tancred mss (mics. 1759, 1760); T. Lawson-Tancred, ‘The township of Ellenthorpe and the Brooke fam.’, YAJ xxxiv. 73; Recs. Yorks. Manor, 10. Aldborough had first returned Members to Parliament in 1558, and the franchise was vested in the owners of nine specified burgage tenements.3 HP Commons 1558-1603, HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Aldborough’. At least three of these burgage properties belonged to the Aldburghes during the early Stuart period, although being heavily in debt after purchasing the manor, they had probably sold them by 1650.4 J.W. Walker, ‘Recs. relating to a seventeenth century parlty. election’, YAJ xxxiv. 30; R. Carroll, ‘Yorks. parlty. boroughs in the seventeenth century’, NH iii. 101. The returning officer was the borough bailiff, who was chosen annually by the burgage-owners from among their own number.5 P.A. Bolton, ‘The Parlty. Representation of Yorks. Boroughs, 1640-85’ (Leeds Univ. MA thesis, 1966), 64.

Since the election of 1620, the Aldburghes, or their dependents, had usually claimed at least one of the seats, the other going to friends or allies of Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future 1st earl of Strafford).6 HP Commons 1604-1629; T. Lawson-Tancred, ‘Parlty. hist. of Aldborough and Boroughbridge’, YAJ xxvii. 329. A similar pattern appears to have prevailed in the elections to the Short and Long Parliaments. On 16 March 1640, Arthur Aldburghe and seven of the boroughmen returned Aldburghe’s eldest son, Richard Aldburghe, and Brian Palmes of Lindley, near Otley.7 C219/42/2/88. Palmes’s family held lands in the forest of Knaresborough, to the south west of Aldborough, but he enjoyed no known proprietorial interest in or near the borough itself. In the absence of any landed influence in the area, he may have relied on a recommendation from Strafford. Both Palmes and his father, Sir Guy Palmes*, were well known to, and on friendly terms with, the earl.8 Infra, ‘Brian Palmes’; ‘Sir Guy Palmes’; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P2/50, 13/107, 14/144, 15/182. In October, the same voters, with one addition, returned Richard Aldburghe and Robert Stryckland of Thornton Bridge, which lay some five miles north of the borough.9 C219/43/3/90. Stryckland may also have been a nominee of Strafford, who had appointed him a deputy lieutenant that August, although as a property-owner in the area, Stryckland probably had strong local connections himself.10 Infra, ‘Robert Stryckland’. In order to secure his candidates’ election, Strafford would have needed the consent of the Aldburghes, and it is worth noting that Richard Aldburghe was one of only six Yorkshire MPs to vote against the earl’s attainder in April 1641.11 Cliffe, Yorks. 328.

Both Aldburghe and Stryckland sided with the king during the civil war and were disabled by the Commons on 6 September 1642 and 21 January 1643 respectively.12 CJ ii. 754b, 938b. On 12 September 1645, the House ordered that a writ be issued for a new election at Aldborough.13 CJ iv. 272b. The indenture for this election does not survive, although probably its only point of interest would have been to reveal the disqualification of Arthur Aldburghe, whose estate had been sequestered for delinquency.14 SP23/62, pp. 166, 168. The boroughmen returned Brian Stapylton of nearby Myton, a man with strong local connections, and Major Thomas Scot II, who was a son-in-law of the MP for Boroughbridge, prominent local landowner and friend of the Fairfaxes, Sir Thomas Mauleverer. Following Scot’s death early in 1648, he was replaced as MP on 10 April by James Chaloner of Guisborough in the North Riding.15 C219/43/3/92. Chaloner was a kinsman of the Fairfaxes, on close terms with the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), and was probably returned on their interest.16 Infra, ‘James Chaloner’; D. Underdown, ‘Party management in the recruiter elections, 1645-1648’, EHR lxxxiii. 246. Of the eight voters on this occasion, six had also signed the October 1640 indenture.17 C219/43/3/92.

Stapylton declined to sit after Pride’s Purge and the borough was therefore reduced to one MP – Chaloner – for the duration of the Rump. Aldborough was disfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, but regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Major-general John Lambert and the Gray’s Inn barrister Francis Goodricke. This was possibly the most open of any Aldborough election since 1628 – Arthur Aldburghe having sold the manor to his son-in-law John Wentworth of Woolley, who does not appear to have consolidated his interest in the borough until after the Restoration.18 Infra, ‘Richard Aldburghe’; N. Yorks. RO, ZUH, Aldborough manor title deeds and pprs. (mics. 1716). Goodricke, who resided in Lincolnshire, probably owed his return to the local influence of his brother Sir John Goodricke†, whose residence at Ribston lay some ten miles from Aldborough. Lambert’s return for Pontefract as well as Aldborough was secured largely, it seems, on the strength of his interest as Yorkshire’s most powerful political figure by 1658.19 Infra, ‘John Lambert’. Competition for his place at Aldborough appears to have begun even before he had opted to sit for Pontefract. On 28 January 1659, a correspondent of Captain Adam Baynes* informed him that the previous day he had met Lambert and ‘demanded a question of him, which he was not then pleased to resolve, but said he should within 2 days, viz. for what place he would serve’, for ‘it is desired he would leave Aldborough at liberty, because my brother Matthew Beckwith may peradventure be chosen there himself’.20 Add. 21425, f. 11. In addition to Beckwith – a godly North Riding magistrate – those interested in contesting the vacant seat reportedly included Colonel Robert Lilburne* and Thomas Widdrington†, son of Sir Thomas Widdrington*.21 Add. 21425, f. 29. A new writ was ordered on 5 March 1659, but there is no evidence that another election was held before Parliament’s dissolution in April.22 CJ vii. 610b. Stapylton had died in 1658, and Chaloner did not resume his seat when the Rump was restored in May 1659, leaving Aldborough without parliamentary representation until the 1660 Convention, to which the burgage-holders returned Goodricke and another moderate royalist, Solomon Swale.23 HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Aldborough’.