Oxfordshire

Centrifugal and centripetal elements affected elections to Oxfordshire seats throughout this period. Although Oxford provided an unrivalled focus for judicial, administrative and ecclesiastical life in the county, and a critical point of access to riverborne communications with London, its position close to the border with Berkshire and its status as a university city always had potential to complicate public life in the area.1 M.S. Gretton, Oxon. Justices of the Peace in the Seventeenth Century (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xvi), p. lxxxxvi. On the one hand, a strong but decentralized educational institution beyond the individual or even collective influence of the local nobility and gentry overshadowed Oxfordshire’s political centre, while at the same time particular colleges retained the personal loyalty of many. On the other hand, topography, economy, estates and religion often pulled the élite towards the periphery. The Thames valley in the south east, with its representation of recusants, and the area towards Thame and Aylesbury in the east, included many landowners like the Crokes and Whitelockes with interests in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. Burford and Witney to the west, home to an ancient but now somewhat depressed clothing industry, had strong links with Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, as did local families like the Carys, Danvers, Lees and Lenthalls. In the north ‘Banburyshire’ enjoyed a national reputation for the intensity of its puritanism.2 Add. 32,093, f. 239. It comprehended part of Northamptonshire, but was dominated on the eve of the civil wars by the man with the claim to be Oxfordshire’s pre-eminently native peer, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele; neither the wealthiest nor the most representative he was none the less the most distinctive and controversial in his influence. Meanwhile other grandees, newly ennobled or scions of older aristocratic families, like Thomas Howard†, 1st earl of Berkshire, Henry Danvers, 1st earl of Danby, Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland [S], and Richard Wenman†, 1st Viscount Wenman [I], had myriad outside interests, as well as commanding particular local loyalties. The earl of Berkshire was steward of the city and university of Oxford; Danby had endowed a botanical garden there; Falkland had many scholarly friends.

Notwithstanding such diversity, there was relatively widespread and general opposition in the 1630s to some central aspects of royal policy and (judging by subsequent events) a significant weight of opinion against the rule of William Laud as archbishop and vice-chancellor of the university. In economic decline and assessed only seventeenth among the counties of England for the purposes of levying Ship Money, Oxfordshire proved among the more recalcitrant areas when it came to collection.3 VCH Oxon. ii. 190-7; J.E.T. Rogers, Hist. of Agriculture and Prices in Eng. (Oxford, 1887), v. 69, 104. Danby protested directly to the king.4 CSP Ven. 1636-9, pp. 110-12, 119. Successive sheriffs Sir Peter Wentworth*, Sir Francis Norreys*, William Walter, Sir Thomas Penyston* and John D’Oyly* sought to excuse their failure to the privy council. Wentworth argued (with justice) that he was an outsider; Penyston (another newcomer) was himself among the 40 justices of the peace and other county leaders reported on 26 November 1636 as not having paid; also on the list were Saye and Sele and Sir Francis Wenman*.5 CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 474, 505, 509; 1635-6, pp. 216, 224, 313; 1636-7, pp. 210, 291, 438, 494, 548; 1637, pp. 196, 404, 530, 542, 547; 1637-8, pp. 232, 234, 235, 265-6, 303, 333, 394, 420, 566; 1639, pp. 6, 246, 492; Vis. Oxon. 1634 (Harl. Soc. v), esp. 153; Vis. Oxon. 1669 and 1675 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xii), esp. 24. Saye and his heir James Fiennes* paid the price in omission that autumn from the commission of the peace with another northerner, Sir William Cobb; others were purged the following July for failing to attend their swearing-in.6 C231/5, pp. 219, 253. In contrast, there was an excess of enthusiasm for pursuing recusants. When the government ordered an investigation in 1639, sheriff Ralph Warcupp or Warcop drew a reprimand for allowing commissioners to exceed their brief to the extent of violent persecution.7 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 12. One potential target (and thus perhaps informant) was the lord lieutenant: the earl of Berkshire, if not a Catholic himself, had almost certainly allowed his eldest son, Charles Howard*, Viscount Andover, to be educated in that faith.8 s.v. ‘Howard, Charles’. Religious differences and the war against the Scots perhaps began to open up cracks in the political élite: in 1639 Saye and Sele despatched a son to attend the general assembly of the kirk; Falkland, though no great supporter of bishops, volunteered to fight for the king in the north.9 s.v. ‘Fiennes, Nathaniel I’, ‘Cary, Lucius’.

By 1640 the increasingly dilapidated state of Oxford Castle may have prompted the removal of most county elections to the courtyard outside the city council chambers in St Aldate’s which also witnessed contests for Oxford borough seats.10 HP Commons 1604-1629. While this might have enhanced the capacity of Berkshire (who was high steward) to influence proceedings, at the March elections he concentrated his efforts on obtaining a city seat for his heir. Danby’s brother Sir John Danvers* was for the fourth successive time a candidate for the university and Falkland (as a Scottish peer) opted for Newport. There thus appears to have been no substantial obstacle, the remainder of county seats having already been settled, to the re-election on 18 March of James Fiennes and Sir Francis Wenman, who had occupied the county seats in 1628-9. As prominent defaulters they were presumably recognised to be standing against further fiscal impositions.

Over the spring and summer of 1640 Oxfordshire continued to experience unrest. Sheriff Warcop claimed to have done his best to collect subsidies, but the task was dangerous and too often unproductive.11 CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 253, 370-1, 599; 1640-1, pp. 25, 70-1, 95. The earl of Berkshire used his own money to subsidise coat levies for the army in the north, but raising and retaining soldiers was a challenge in spite of martial law.12 CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 491, 552; 1640-1, p. 125 In late September constables imprisoned over non-collection of Ship Money were still languishing in Oxford Castle.13 CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 110. A petition subsequently presented to the Commons rehearsed familiar grievances of unparliamentary taxation, enlargement of royal forests, and persecution of godly ministers as well as the new irritant, the Canons issued by Convocation.14 Bodl. Rawl. D 922, f. 276. Yet in the autumn elections the alliance of James Fiennes and Wenmans faced a challenge. Sir Francis, who had made no recorded contribution to the Short Parliament, died in June, and his baton was taken up by the kinsman who had occupied the seat in 1626, Thomas Wenman*, who had recently succeeded to the Irish peerage as 2nd Viscount Wenman. James Fiennes also had made only a modest impact in the House, and this may have played a part in prompting a reassertion by gentlemen in the south of the county of a custom that at least one of them should be represented.15 HP Commons 1604-1629. According to Bulstrode Whitelocke, in a context of uncertainty as to whether Fiennes would stand at all, two alternative candidates were mooted – himself and Sir William Waller*, who had sat for Andover in the spring – by Sir Thomas Coghill of Bletchingdon (in the north of the county) and others. ‘The town of Henley and the freeholders thereabouts were very hearty to him’ [i.e. Whitelocke], and he reckoned that through participation in sessions, the assizes and the commission at Woodstock for Wychwood Forest he had gained a wider ‘reputation’. Seeking clarification of Fiennes’s plans, Whitelocke heard that Saye ‘wondered that … an upstart lawyer should contest with his son in that country’. On

perceiving that Lord Wenman and Mr Fiennes were resolved to put all their interest upon this business and that Whitelocke opposing would increase the charge to all, and breed a division in the county, and unkindness betwixt him and them who were friends, and the issue [to] be doubtful, and the public business of danger

the lawyer took counsel of his friends. Finding that there was support for him but not (he recounted) for Waller, and yielding to persuasion from Judge George Croke†, he ‘thereupon gave over the competition and signified the same to his friends’. On the day, Waller duly garnered ‘only a few votes’, but Whitelocke’s ‘name was so cried up, that if he had appeared, he had carried it, as his friends testified’.16 Whitelocke, Diary, 118, 121-2. This may just have been wishful thinking. At any rate, the surviving (though damaged) indenture which signalled the return of James Fiennes and Wenman appears to carry the endorsement of members of many of the leading gentry families of the north and east, if not the south – among them Bray, Chamberlaine, Croke, Curson, Denton and Dormer. All those visible had been named, unlike Coghill, Whitelocke and the latter’s cousin and supporter Dixon, to the unenviable task of collecting subsidies in Oxfordshire.17 C219/43, 4/6/99; SR v.; cf. Vis. Oxon. 1634.

Both Fiennes and Wenman sat until excluded from the Commons on 6 December 1648. Although neither was consistently active in the early days of the Long Parliament, Fiennes moved for action against Ship Money in May 1641 and (according to Simonds D’Ewes*) presented the Oxfordshire petition against episcopacy that July.18 Harl. 163, ff. 191a, 359, 413a. With the county largely under royalist control from late October 1642 until the siege of Oxford began in 1645, both contributed significantly to the parliamentarian cause, Fiennes principally as a local commissioner, Wenman as a peace negotiator. After Pride’s Purge both lived in retirement.

Nominations to the Parliament of 1653 reflected an influx of personnel to three concentrations of power in the county – administrative, military and scholarly – in the aftermath of the surrender of Oxford in June 1646. William Draper*, son-in-law of the prominent minister Thomas Gataker, was a newcomer to the area who had rapidly come to dominate the county committee. With fellow activist Thomas Appletree he was also a visitor of the university and a sequestration commissioner, and he had served as governor of the Oxford garrison revived during the invasion scare of 1651. Newly installed on the commission of the peace, Dr Jonathan Goddard*, intruded warden of Merton College, represented the reformed university. He had also served as a physician to the army and attended Oliver Cromwell*. The young Sir Charles Wolseley*, a Staffordshire baronet, was rising in political circles at Westminster. He was also a son-in-law to Saye and Sele, who though absent like his eldest son from the public political stage, was still (as he had been since appointed by Parliament in August 1642) lord lieutenant, and may have been active behind the scenes.19 Davenport, Lords Lt. and Sheriffs of Oxon. 6.

In practice, however, the regime change had been and continued to be less thoroughgoing than might appear. Whatever the lobbying for inclusion of new men periodically exercised by activists like Appletree and Draper, alongside receiver Elisha Coles and army officers Richard Ingoldsby* and Thomas Kelsey*, familiar names recurred among assessment commissioners and on the commission of the peace.20 Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 74; C231/6, pp. 56, 81, 84, 95, 99, 110, 116, 11, 144, 159, 172, 173, 220, 229, 236, 242, 266, 340, 399; A. and O.; CJ vi. 214b; The Names of the Justices (1650), 44-5 (E.1238.4) Robert Jenkinson*, son of the king’s sheriff of 1643-4 and son-in-law of the notorious attorney-general John Bankes†, held public office continuously from December 1646 and was sheriff in 1649-50; Sir Francis Norreys*, who had been a commissioner of array in 1642, was also a justice of the peace from December 1646; John Mylles*, ejected from Christ Church in 1651 for refusing the Engagement, was again a magistrate from July 1656. It thus seems reasonable to suppose that, while the commission of triers and ejectors established in August 1654, was somewhat inevitably dominated by Banburyshire puritans, there was plenty of opportunity for the expression of moderate opinion in other spheres.21 A. and O.

Successful candidates for the county seats in July 1654 on the whole combined a traditional claim to voters’ attention with closeness to the protectorate government. James Fiennes was replaced by his next brother Nathaniel I*, who had returned to public life and joined the council of state in April, and this time lacked the option of sitting for Banbury. Similarly, Charles Fleetwood*, was both a councillor and an army grandee, but before choosing to sit for the county, he substituted for his royalist elder brother Sir William Fleetwood* at New Woodstock, just as he had succeeded to his other offices. Former and future Speaker William Lenthall* similarly represented continuity, while Robert Jenkinson had inherited a delinquent’s estate. Bulstrode Whitelocke, now commissioner of the great seal, had a choice of other seats but, 14 years after his previous disappointment, to his great satisfaction had sufficient influence to place his son James Whitelocke* as ‘one of the knights for that county’, through the ‘great kindness of the gentry and freeholders, and of the scholars and citizens of Oxford’.22 Whitelocke, Diary, 391.

There may well have been a core of enthusiasts for the protectorate in county administration who operated as something of a caucus. On 10 March 1655 an apparently self-selecting group of magistrates who described themselves as ‘commissioners (together with others)’ wrote to Cromwell to express their loyalty in times when some ‘hardened their hearts’ against further reformation; signatories to the letter included Draper, Appletree, John Nixon* of Oxford, and Richard* and ?Unton Croke I*.23 Bodl. Rawl. A36, f. 340. Any disaffection or alienation among the rest appears to have been contained, however. If his reports to the protector are to be believed, rising local army officer Unton Croke II*, hotfoot from success in the west country, nipped in the bud plans for a royalist uprising in Oxfordshire in June. Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, and others were promptly taken into custody, and the viscount’s behaviour at least could be dismissed as an expression of unruly youth.24 Bodl. Rawl. A27, f. 101; s.v. ‘Cary, Henry’. Likewise, although, or perhaps also because, Charles Fleetwood’s duties were deputized to outsiders Tobias Bridge* and William Packer*, the rule of the major-generals seems to had relatively little impact on the élite. 25 CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 20, 164.

In many respects the elections of 1656 proved little different from two years earlier. Once again Whitelocke was initially a candidate before pursuing a place elsewhere. He heard from ‘old Speaker Lenthall’ on 3 July that ‘many pitched’ him to be one of the knights of the shire.26 Whitelocke, Diary, 442. Seven weeks later supporters were still assuring him ‘that a great number of the gentlemen and freeholders, and the vice chancellor and scholars generally, and the citizens [of Oxford] appeared for Whitelocke and all about Henley and that way’. However, the sheriff moved the election to Port Meadow, on the north-west side of the city ‘whither’, Whitelocke claimed somewhat implausibly, ‘many of the scholars could not come being on foot’. None the less, he asserted confidently, had his friends demanded a poll rather than assuming he would be elected anyway in Buckinghamshire, ‘it is believed that Whitelocke had carried it’.27 Whitelocke, Diary, 447-8. Whatever the impact of the change of location and Whitelocke’s retreat, Lenthall was returned again with Jenkinson. With Charles Fleetwood sitting for Norfolk, the family was represented by his nephew Miles*, who lacked his father’s royalist past, while Francis Norreys, presumably the alternative to a Whitelocke, had successfully lived his down.

In late 1658 the reduction of county seats to the traditional two may have made for fiercer competition, although this is as likely to have been due to the general political situation. A report in Mercurius Politicus dated 29 December referred to a contest the day before in which Viscount Falkland and Jenkinson stood for the senior place ‘and upon the poll Mr Jenkinson carried it by 13 votes’. Although the newsletter went on to say that the next contest ‘this day’ was between Falkland and Norreys ‘and it’s thought my Lord will carry it’, an indenture of 29 December named Jenkinson and Norreys as the overall victors. The document is damaged, but among more than 30 visible signatures are Appletree, Nixon, Richard Croke and several Oxford notables.28 Mercurius Politicus no. 548 (30 Dec. 1658-6 Jan. 1659), 135 (E.761.2); C219/47. This result was reported again a week or so later, but a further election indenture apparently of 29 January (but perhaps predating this) declared Jenkinson and Falkland elected. This time, among fewer signatures, only those of Cornish, Potter and Tipping, all from well-established minor gentry, are clearly visible.29 Mercurius Politicus no. 549 (6-13 Jan. 1659), 139 (E.761.4); C219/47; Whitelocke, Diary, 505. By 1 February the double return had come to the attention of the committee of privileges and Falkland had petitioned to secure a seat.30 CJ vii. 596b. The sheriff summoned to account was Unton Croke II, himself elected (technically irregularly, given his office) for Oxford city. In his absence from the Commons, his brother Richard, an experienced Member chosen with him, was ready with excuses. According to Thomas Burton*, Richard explained that ‘the sheriff last week was ill of a fever’ from which he was now ‘somewhat better’; the poll ‘proved to be a doubtful case; no malice or design in it’. His request for indulgence while Unton made a full recovery was met with sympathy by John Lambert* and Sir John Lenthall* but dismissed by Presbyterian Henry Hungerford*, while Sir Arthur Hesilrige* considered that since ‘Falkland is a delinquent’ he might as well be admitted and ‘then cast … out tacitly’.31 Burton’s Diary, iii. 24-5. But on 5 February, in the presence of Jenkinson, it was ‘resolved against’ Sir Francis Norreys, and a motion for a new writ was not seconded; on the 7th Falkland was called in to the House.32 C219/47; Burton’s Diary iii. 84; CJ vii. 596b, 601a. It is not clear what lay behind the decision, or the original confusion. It is possible that Unton Croke was suspicious of the man he had detained in 1655 and sought to block his election; it seems almost certain that both brothers preferred Norreys. It is also plausible that Falkland was promoted by covert royalists. The Crokes’ reservations would have been well-grounded: Falkland proved effective at undermining attempts at settlement and in the uprisings of the succeeding summer became an outright rebel. It was he and his son who occupied county seats after the Restoration, together with representatives of other leading families like the Norreys and Wenmans.33 HP Commons 1660-1690.