Reigate

A reasonably prosperous market town, Reigate had only 90 tenements in 1622 but 124 households within the borough were recorded in 1664 as being chargeable for hearth tax, with a further 34 not chargeable.1 VCH Surr. iii. 233; Surr. Hearth Tax 1664 (Surr. Arch. Soc. xvii.), p. cxxi. Well wooded, with plenty of common land and water, and with many inns, the town enjoyed regular communications with London, just over twenty miles away.2 VCH Surr. iii. 229, 230, 234; W. Hooper, Reigate: its Story through the Ages (1945), 148; J. Taylor, The Carriers Cosmographie (1637) n.p. Although it had returned Members to Parliament since 1291, it had never been incorporated, remaining a mesne borough under the control of the lord of the manor.3 VCH Surr. iii. 233. In the early seventeenth century moieties of the manor were held by the Sackville and Howard families, but by 1640 it had been reunited in the possession of William Monson*, 1st Viscount Monson of Castlemaine [I]. The widower of Margaret, countess of Nottingham (d. 4 Aug. 1639), Monson had secured a life interest in the Howard inheritance and had acquired the remainder of the manor, which he vested in trustees including his cousin, Robert Goodwin*.4 Hooper, Reigate, 29-31. However, the Priory, which had been the Howards’ chief residence, descended to the earl of Nottingham’s granddaughter Margaret, wife of John Mordaunt, 1st earl of Peterborough, a circumstance which occasioned conflict between Monson and the Mordaunts, and potentially complicated the former’s electoral interest.5 VCH Surr. iii. 236.

Monson was already a controversial figure. His ostentatious wedding in 1625 at Reigate parish church to the countess of Nottingham had created a considerable stir locally: his bride, to whom he had once been page, was 15 years older than himself.6 C115/108/8632; Church Notes, 126; Hooper, Reigate, 29-31; CP. Nonetheless, the Howard interest had been sufficient to gain him one of the borough seats in 1626, before he obtained an Irish peerage and the focus of his activities turned temporarily elsewhere.7 HP Commons 1604-1629. However, in the 1630s, as well as disagreements with the trustees of his step-son Charles Howard (later 3rd earl of Nottingham), there were also lawsuits between Monson and his Howard kin on the one hand and certain tenants of the manor on the other over rights of free warren.8 SP16/323, f. 109; Hooper, Reigate, 72; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 290. The fact that he and others like the constable and churchwardens were united in refusal to pay Ship Money, in an area which was a centre of resistance to the tax, may not have outweighed a more general unpopularity.9 CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 198; SP16/350, f. 4; Hooper, Reigate, 138. Allegiances may also have been complicated by religious dissension. The Howards and Monsons – although not, as it proved, the viscount himself – had long been tinged with Catholicism; William Hardwick, former curate, had declared himself against Protestant nonconformity to the Laudian church; a lectureship attached to the Reigate parish had lapsed or been suppressed. 10 s.v. ‘Monson, William, viscount Monson’; W. Hardwick, Conformity with Piety, requisite in Gods service (1638); Walker Revised, 351; Hooper, Reigate, 138.

At the election in the spring of 1640, three candidates were returned to Parliament. Monson was either unsuccessful or decided not to stand at all. His interest seems to have been represented by Goodwin, although from the latter’s point of view possibly only as an insurance policy against failure elsewhere.11 CJ ii. 10b. The others were Sir Thomas Bludder* from the adjacent manor of Flanchford, who owned copyhold land in Reigate and had sat four times for the borough in the 1620s, but who looks to have been by this time somewhat estranged from his original allies the Monsons, and Edward Thurland*, a rising lawyer with roots in the town who had become a man of business for various local worthies, perhaps already including the countess of Peterborough.12 HP Commons 1604-1629; Surr. Arch. Colls. xlviii. 43; Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 295.

At the poll Bludder headed the list of voters for Thurland in an indenture without signatures but evidently naming leading burgesses, while occupations given for his own supporters in another included a baker, a butcher, a fuller, and a victualler.13 C219/42/136, 137. A third indenture, which has not survived, evidently named Goodwin, probably in combination with Thurland. Reports of election returns listed three Reigate candidates in the order Thurland, Bludder and Goodwin, and ‘upon view of the indentures’ by the privileges committee, it was agreed on 20 April that Thurland’s election ‘appeared clear’. He was thereupon called into the House, while consideration of the others’ cases was referred for further consideration.14 A Catalogue of the Names of the Knights 13 April 1640 (1640), A5v (E.1091.4); CJ ii. 7a. On the 24th Goodwin’s election by inhabitants of East Grinstead was upheld, but there was no reference to Reigate and no formal resolution of the situation there then or later in the short session.15 CJ ii. 10b. However, Bludder seems to have come to be regarded as having been the second Member.16 A Catalogue of the Names of the Knights, A5v.

Thurland, who made no recorded contribution to the spring Parliament, seems not to have sought re-election in the autumn. Goodwin concentrated successfully on canvassing at East Grinstead. Monson, on the other hand, put himself forward, perhaps confident that unlike fellow candidate Bludder, who was a gentleman of the privy chamber, he would be widely acceptable as an anti-court candidate. In a reassertion of the Howard interest, he was joined by his brother-in-law Sir Francis Howard†, who had sat for New Windsor 30 years earlier and held naval office before retiring to the life of a Surrey country gentleman.17 HP Commons 1604-1629. Once again there were three indentures, with all three candidates named as returned, but there is no reference to a dispute in the Journal.18 C219/43/3/194, 195, 196. Monson took his seat some time before 28 January 1641, when he complained to the House that tenants at Reigate had taken advantage of his absence at Parliament in order to re-open an old dispute by ploughing up his warren. This was duly deemed a breach of privilege.19 Procs. LP ii. 319, 322. He profited again from his status a few months later when he used it in his dispute with the Mordaunts, which overshadowed much of his early Commons service.20 Hooper, Reigate, 72; Procs. LP v. 64, 70-1; CJ ii. 200a. The other successful candidate was Bludder, who emerged in the Westminster records only when he was summoned, sequestered (29 June 1643) and then disabled (3 Sept. 1644) for joining the king at Oxford and sitting in the Parliament there.21 CJ iii. 149a; iv. 262b. He too had had an ulterior motive for entering Parliament – in his case protection from debt proceedings. In the meantime, Howard had presumably relinquished his claims.

Early in September 1645, the Commons ordered a new election at Reigate to replace Bludder, and the necessary writ was issued on 20 September.22 CJ iv. 262b; C231/6, p. 21. At some point during the next three weeks or so the Reigate voters elected George Evelyn*, a regular member of local parliamentarian commissions since 1643 who had an estate nine miles away at Wotton, and who is likely to have been a candidate of moderates in the area. Perhaps thanks to supporters in the House like his cousin Sir John Evelyn of Surrey*, a petition lodged by the sheriff of Surrey, Sir Matthew Brand, alleging that he had sent horse to the king, which was presented on 10 October, failed to unseat him.23 CJ iv. 303b. Evelyn took the Covenant on 29 October, and, although the sheriff’s petition was still under investigation on 17 December, it was eventually dismissed.24 CJ iv. 326a, 378b, 379a. Evelyn made little mark on the Parliament and did not sit after Pride’s Purge. Monson, in contrast, was a regicide and a prominent Rumper.

Meanwhile, Monson’s local standing was again eroded. During the rebellion of Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, in the summer of 1648 Reigate briefly experienced its worst fighting of the war. The Derby House Committee, concerned that new defences added by Monson to his residence in the ruined Reigate Castle might attract an enemy garrison, ordered him and the Surrey committee to disable them.25 SP21/24, ff. 171, 217. They were too late to prevent the seizure of the castle, although the royalists abandoned it within a day as untenable and were then defeated just outside the town by a force under Major Lewis Audley*.26 Hooper, Reigate, 145-7. Yet Monson remained slow in obeying DHC orders to sleight local strongholds, while at the same time incurring their displeasure for ignoring the county committee and acting on his own authority, and for precipitate sequestration of Reigate inhabitants, as well as other acts tending to antagonise the local population.27 SP21/24, f. 235.

With the advent of the protectorate, Monson lost his offices and was swamped by his debts, so in a weak position to bid for a parliamentary seat and probably to influence elections.28 A. and O.; The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby ed. J. J. Cartwright (1875), 41. Under the Rump’s plans for electoral reform, Reigate had narrowly survived abolition as a decayed borough and was reprieved at the cost of losing one Member (23 Mar. 1653).29 CJ vii. 270b. The Instrument of Government similarly reduced the borough’s representation to one seat, attractive to neighbouring gentry deprived altogether of opportunities in some other Surrey boroughs. In the election for the first protectorate Parliament on 3 July 1654, bailiff Benjamin Heaver returned Edward Bysshe II* on behalf of ‘the burgesses and inhabitants’; heading the list of about 26 signatories and makers of marks was Edward Bysshe I*, the candidate’s father.30 C219/44. Bysshe I, a Lincoln’s Inn bencher, had handed his parliamentary pretensions to his son 14 years previously; with Bletchingley closed to him, Bysshe II, who had survived through the Rump by keeping his head down, appears to have turned to a seat at Reigate, seven miles from his home, in order to support ambitions to legal and heraldic office.31 CJ vii. 381a, 381b, 407b; Wood, Ath. Ox., iii. 1219; Bibliotheca Bissaeana (1679).

On 7 September 1656 John Goodwyn* was returned to the second protectorate Parliament. In 1648 he had acquired an interest in half the manor of Reigate from his cousin Lord Monson’s stepson, Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Nottingham, and thus may have had a chance to build his profile locally.32 VCH Surr. iii. 235. However, like his brother Robert in 1640, he also stood for East Grinstead. Elected there too, for reasons unknown he was initially excluded altogether from the Parliament (19 Sept., as MP for Reigate), but on 28 November he was finally admitted, having chosen to sit for East Grinstead.33 CJ vii. 425b, 461a.

On 2 December a writ was issued for a by-election. Six days later a poll was held with two (or two serious) candidates, Colonel Jerome Sankey*, a close associate of Charles Fleetwood* who was endorsed by Goodwyn, and Sir Thomas Pride*, who was also the sheriff. Two indentures were drawn up. One, in which the list of 24 ‘burrissers and ... divers other burgesses of the said borough qualified and prescribed in the government of England, Scotland and Ireland’ was headed by Goodwyn, and to which there were 22 signatories (including only one or two marks), returned Sankey. The other, naming 25 ‘burgesses and inhabitants’, and with identical signatories (a dozen making a mark), returned Pride. However, what seemed like a victory for Pride has the hallmarks of manipulation, perpetrated by himself. The bailiff, John Lyfe the younger, was party only to the Sankey indenture; one signatory to that indenture was not formally listed among the 24 ‘burrissers’ (hinting at economical counting) and there were two John Richardsons, senior and junior, to one of the name in the Pride indenture (hinting at duplication).34 C219/45.

On 13 December Bulstrode Whitelocke* reported from the privileges committee that Sheriff Pride had refused to make a return and requested that he be chivvied. John Lambert* excused Pride on grounds of insufficient time – motivated perhaps by antipathy to parliamentary bullying, perhaps by factional considerations (although he employed Goodwyn as steward of his manorial courts).35 Burton’s Diary, i. 127; C 6/117/145. Goodwyn himself argued that whereas in a general election the sheriff had 20 days in which to make his return, at a bye-election he was obliged to do so as quickly as possible. He suggested ‘a difference between Sir Thomas Pride and the party that is duly chosen’. He or others took the opportunity to make a dig at ‘Pride’s modesty, that will not return himself’, while Samuel Hyland*, radical Member for Southwark, claimed that Pride was in any case ineligible, by virtue of his office.36 Burton’s Diary, i. 127. Apparently ducking that issue, the Commons ordered Pride to make his return by Monday 15th, but on that day consideration of the James Naylor case may have squeezed out any further discussion.37 CJ vii. 467b. By 31 December Sankey had opted to sit for New Woodstock with Lambert’s rival army grandee, Charles Fleetwood*.38 CJ vii. 477b. Although the case never seems to have been formally resolved, Pride was seated for Reigate by 24 April 1657.39 CJ vii. 524a. During the second session of the Parliament, he was elevated to the Other House, leaving the seat vacant.

In 1659 Goodwyn was returned for Bletchingley, where he was probably by then resident. Reigate was represented by John Hele*, who three years earlier had bought the manor of Flanchford from Sir Thomas Bludder and who had close links with crypto-royalists.40 C6/139/96; Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 306. His partner, with similar allegiances, was Edward Thurland who, after nearly two decades of successful legal practice and property acquisition, was once again chosen an MP. Both men were to sit again in the Convention.41 HP Commons 1660-1690.