Boroughbridge

Boroughbridge lay at the junction of the York Road and the Great North Road, at the point where the latter crossed the River Ure, some 17 miles north west of York. According to the townsmen, the Ure at Boroughbridge was ‘so great that it bringeth up diverse vessels of great burden from the city of York’.1 E134/11CHASI/EAST2. Yet despite its strategic location and good road and river links, the borough was apparently even smaller than its diminutive twin settlement of Aldborough (which also returned Members), comprising a mere 47 householders in 1672, suggesting an overall population of little more than 200.2 Supra, ‘Aldborough’; E179/210/400, mm. 9-10. The town formed a separate bailiwick within the parish and manor of Aldborough, and when the manor was sold by the crown in 1628 the bailiwick remained part of the duchy of Lancaster.3 T. Lawson-Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor, 11, 139.

Boroughbridge had been represented in the Parliament of 1300, but had only returned Members on a regular basis following its re-enfranchisement in 1553.4 HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Boroughbridge’. The franchise was confined to the owners of some 64 burgage properties, of whom about 20 usually signed the indenture. The returning officer was the borough bailiff who was appointed by the crown or the leaseholder of the bailiwick, although in practice it seems that the burgage-owners elected their own bailiff on the eve of an election.5 Lawson-Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor, 139, 197, 200.

The crown interest in the borough had lapsed by the end of the 1620s, leaving both seats in the gift of local gentry families.6 HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Boroughbridge’. Ownership of the manor does not appear to have carried the electoral influence that it did in Aldborough, where the Aldburghe family, as lords of the manor, had been able to claim at least one of the borough’s seats since the 1620s.7 Supra, ‘Aldborough’; Bolton, ‘Yorks.’, 101. The principal electoral interests by 1640 were those of Thomas Tanckred of nearby Brampton Hall and Sir Ferdinando (later 2nd Baron) Fairfax* of Denton. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, the voters returned Fairfax – who had represented the borough in every Parliament since 1614 – and Francis Nevile, Tanckred’s brother-in-law. The indenture listed 20 of the boroughmen, headed by Tanckred, who was disqualified from standing himself because of his Catholicism.8 C219/42/2/92. Just prior to the election, Nevile had leased a burgage in the town from Tanckred, which suggests that owning property in the borough was seen as a prerequisite for standing.9 W. Yorks. Archives (Wakefield), C1358/83.

The elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640 saw the eclipse of the Tanckred interest at Boroughbridge. Heightened fears of a Catholic conspiracy had probably undermined Tanckred’s standing in the borough, although the fact that Nevile had disgraced himself in May by informing against two of his fellow MPs could not have helped. It would be interesting to know whether Tanckred still headed the list of boroughmen on the return, but unfortunately the indenture is so badly damaged that the date and most of signatories are indecipherable.10 C219/43/3/96. In place of Sir Ferdinando Fairfax, who was elected a knight of the shire for Yorkshire, the voters chose Sir Philip Stapilton, a member of an influential local family, the Stapiltons of Wighill. Nevile’s place was taken by (Sir) Thomas Mauleverer of nearby Allerton Mauleverer, who owned a house (almost certainly one of the burgage properties) in the borough and was leaseholder of the town’s mills.11 Lawson-Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor, 158; E134/11CHAS.I/EAST2; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Galway mss, 9337. Mauleverer had close links with the Fairfaxes, and for all his local connections it is possible that he owed his return in large part to Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’s influence.12 Infra, ‘Thomas Mauleverer’.

Although both Stapilton and Mauleverer sided with Parliament during the civil war, their political paths diverged sharply after 1644. Mauleverer, who remained a close associate of the Fairfaxes, became a member of the Independent interest at Westminster and would sign the king’s death warrant in 1649. Stapilton, on the other hand, was one of the Presbyterian grandees and was forced into exile following the unsuccessful Presbyterian counter-revolution in the summer of 1647. He died in France in August 1647, and on 25 October the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for a new election at Boroughbridge.13 CJ v. 342a. On 9 November, the voters returned Henry Stapylton, who was a cousin of Sir Philip and the eldest son of Brian Stapylton of nearby Myton Hall, a recruiter for Aldborough and a man of considerable local influence. Twenty-three of the boroughmen were listed on the indenture – Tanckred, whose estate was under sequestration, was not among them.14 Infra, ‘Brian Stapylton’; C219/43/3/98; CCC, 1119. At Pride’s Purge in December 1648, Henry Stapylton was secluded as an opponent of the army, leaving only Mauleverer to represent the borough in the Rump.

Boroughbridge, like most of the smaller Yorkshire boroughs, lost its seats under the Instrument of Government in 1653, but was re-enfranchised in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Robert Stapylton – Henry Stapylton’s younger brother – and Lawrence Parsons, who belonged to an Anglo-Irish family with strong Yorkshire connections. Stapylton was a former chaplain to Oliver Cromwell* and his officers, and Parsons had been a colonel under Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and may have been recommended to the townsmen by his son the 3rd baron (Sir Thomas Fairfax*).15 Infra, ‘Robert Stapylton’. However, Parsons was by no means an outsider in the area, for his estate at Newton Hall lay less than eight miles west of Boroughbridge, and his kinsmen, the Stockdales, owned considerable property a few miles to the south of the town.16 Infra, ‘Lawrence Parsons’; ‘Thomas Stockdale’. The borough was not represented in the restored Rump, Mauleverer having died in 1655 and Henry Stapylton apparently remaining in Yorkshire after the re-admission of the secluded Members in February 1660. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, the borough returned Stapylton and his brother-in-law Conyers Darcy, the son of a Yorkshire cavalier.17 HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Boroughbridge’.