Monmouth Boroughs

Under Tudor legislation, Monmouthshire was treated idiosyncratically as a parliamentary entity. It was given two shire Members, putting the county on a par with the English shires and bestowing on it better representation than that given other Welsh counties, which returned one knight. However, the boroughs were given a single Member, in the dispensation that applied in Wales. Monmouth was designated the county town, and six other boroughs were required to contribute to the fees settled on elected Members to meet their expenses. Monmouth was hardly centrally located to fulfil the role of county town, as it was in the north east of the county, but it was accessible for assize judges on circuit to Hereford and Gloucester, and it was firmly in the control of the crown in the Tudor period as part of the duchy of Lancaster.1 W.R.B. Robinson, M. Gray, ‘The making of Monmouthshire’, Gwent Co. Hist. iii. 2-3. To judge from the number of contributors to the ‘free and voluntary present’ to the king in 1661-2, Abergavenny was the largest borough, followed by Monmouth, Caerleon and Newport.2 P. Courtney, ‘Towns, Markets and Commerce’, Gwent Co. Hist. iii. 252. By the mid-seventeenth century Newport and Caerleon were places of greater account economically. Some recognition of Monmouth’s outlying location was given in the legislation, because sessions of the sheriff’s county court were required to alternate between Monmouth and Newport, a town further south and west. By 1640 the crown had alienated its interest in Monmouth, as it was no longer a duchy possession. The purchaser of the borough and lordship of Monmouth in 1631 was the earl of Worcester, but already by this time the overshadowing political entities in the county were the interests of the Somerset family, the earls of Worcester, seated at Raglan castle, and the Herbert earls of Pembroke, resident elsewhere but still a powerful electoral force, drawing on an extensive network of kinship and economic loyalties. It happened that Monmouth was firmly within the orbit of the Catholic Somersets, while the contributory borough of Caerleon, near Newport was regarded as ‘the earl of Pembroke’s town’.3 P. Courtney, ‘Towns, Markets and Commerce’, 258; H. Dircks, The Life, Times and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester (1865), 65. In the period 1604-29 the earls of Worcester were successful in exerting a strong influence over parliamentary elections, most of the returned Members having links to Raglan in some way.

The return of two Members on 2 April 1640 to the Short Parliament was a double return, since only one Member was entitled to sit. It is possible that this was an error made in ignorance on the part of the sheriff or the mayor and burgesses of Monmouth, but the double return may just as easily be interpreted as a way of seeking a resolution by the Commons of their difficulty in choosing a candidate. Monmouth and the other contributory boroughs were in the habit of selecting outsiders for the seat. A return survives for William Watkins, a monopolist enjoying associations with the earl of Worcester. The indenture, in the name of ‘the most and major part of the burgesses of the said town’ of Monmouth makes no reference to the contributory boroughs, and includes the names of two bailiffs and justices of the peace for Monmouth with the names and signatures of 35 other burgesses.4 C219/42/1B/3. However, it seems clear that Charles Jones, deputy recorder of London and son of a Welsh judge, who was also elected at Beaumaris, and whose contributions to the brief sitting were generally critical of the government, was also elected. He reported on several occasions from the privileges committee, and Sir Thomas Aston* noted that he had been returned for Monmouth. On 28 April he was exempted from the order that Members returned for more than one seat should declare their choice within ten days.5 Aston’s Diary, 79; CJ ii. 15a. Because of the early dissolution, the case of Monmouth Boroughs was never resolved.

In the second election of 1640 there was another double return. Returned to the Long Parliament as well as Watkins was Thomas Trevor, an auditor of the duchy of Lancaster since 1637, and like Charles Jones a north Walian judge’s son, though it might be added that Trevor’s father had sat in the House on the earl of Pembroke’s interest. Watkins attempted to take his seat, but was reprimanded and made to withdraw (16 Nov. 1640), both for disregarding the rules relating to controverted elections, and for his monopolist practices, which were under scrutiny, though he escaped expulsion for them.6 CJ ii. 29b, 30a. The committee of privileges was in receipt of a petition from Abergavenny, Usk and Newport presented to the House on 26 November 1640, which was doubtless concerning their exclusion from the electoral process, but no decision was reached.7 CJ ii. 36b. On 23 January 1644 the committee was finally ordered to report on the case: Watkins was by then a member of the king’s Parliament at Oxford. On 28 October the report was fixed for 1 November, but it was not until 29 November that year that Sir Robert Harley reported that Trevor’s election had not been made good, though the committee ‘thought fit’ that he should serve, and that ‘the whole election of burgesses to serve for the town of Monmouth is void’.8 CJ iii. 374a, 679b, 708b. The intention had surely been to unseat Watkins, but an indenture then extant had returned both men, and Harley knew either from the indenture or another source that Watkins had secured 28 voices against Trevor’s 15. The only surviving, though badly faded, indenture mentions Trevor only.9 Harl. 166, f. 168; C219/43/4/3.

Not until 1646, after the retinue of the marquess of Worcester had marched out of Raglan castle in surrender to Parliament, was it safe to contemplate a by-election. The writ was moved on 18 November 1646, by which point the election at Monmouth was being seen by Sir Trevor Williams† as a contest between Presbyterian and Independent interests. Colonel Thomas Carne, of Brocastle, Glamorgan, who had governed the Isle of Wight under the command of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, was mentioned as a possible candidate, presumably for the Presbyterians, but was reported to have declared himself uninterested in the outcome at Monmouth as long as no Independent was returned. The result must therefore have been a disappointment to him, for at some point late in November or early in December, the borough returned Thomas Pury II, who took his seat in the Commons on 19 December. Pury was the son of Thomas Pury I*, who was a leading figure in the Gloucester, Hereford and south Wales committee and second in importance at the Army Committee only to Robert Scawen* and thus very well connected with the New Model army. The younger Pury must also have been able to secure the support of the earl of Pembroke, who by this time controlled the dominant interest in Monmouthshire, worked with Pury senior on the Army Committee, and later nominated him as one of his executors. The indenture has not survived, and there is no direct evidence of a formal contest. Indeed, according to one newsbook report, Pury had been returned ‘with the general consent, not a man dissenting; unanimously they set their common seal to the indenture The high sheriff and many others of the gentry were present and freely gave their consent thereunto’.10 Supra, ‘Thomas Pury I’; CJ iv. 724b; Bodl. Nalson V, f. 231; E. Sussex RO, GLY/554, Williams to Sir John Trevor, 10 Nov. 1646; Sheffield Archives, Elmhirst ms 1360.Perfect Occurrences no. 52 (18-25 Dec. 1646), sig. Eee3 (E.368.2).

Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Monmouth lost its electoral identity, and only recovered it when the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament were announced. The return was in the name of the ‘mayor, bailiff and burgesses of the borough of Monmouth’, and as in 1640 there was no mention of the contributory boroughs. No electors’ names appear on the indenture.11 C219/47. Nathaniel Waterhouse, a staunch Cromwellian, had sat for Monmouthshire in the Parliament of 1656. His election is unsurprising, given the extent to which the house of Cromwell had benefited from the confiscations of the estates of the Somersets of Raglan. At the restoration of the monarchy the Cromwellian interest disappeared overnight. Despite the suppression of the involvement of the contributory boroughs during the 1640s and 50s, their electors played a part in challenges during the 1680s to the Somersets, now seated at Badminton, Gloucestershire.