New Woodstock

A modest market town dominated by distributive and victualling trades, by the reign of Charles I Woodstock was overshadowed by the adjacent royal park.1 VCH Oxon. xii. 361-3, 369-71, 373. A custom whereby the councillors and other freemen (who by 1627 numbered respectively 23 and 46, and may have totalled around 80 by mid-century) made their choice of one Member of Parliament, usually the recorder, while bowing to the wishes of the high steward of the manor with regard to the other, was disregarded in the later 1620s. In 1625, 1626 and 1628 seats went exclusively to nominees of the steward, Philip Herbert*, later 4th earl of Pembroke, and the keeper of the park, Sir Gerard Fleetwood†.2 HP Commons 1604-1629; VCH Oxon. xii. 374, 376-7, 382, 440; A. Ballard, Chronicles of the Royal Borough of Woodstock (1896), 61. Regular late summer progresses by king to the palace in the 1630s doubtless helped to reinforce the town’s dependence on royal officials, not least because Pembroke was also lord chamberlain; the Fleetwoods were also courtiers, although Sir Gerard’s nephew Sir William Fleetwood*, who became ranger of the park, probably shared Pembroke’s discontent with aspects of prevailing royal policy.3 CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 131, 133, 134, 143; 1633-4, pp. 180, 192, 196; 1635, pp. 330, 340, 346, 347, 349, 353, 360; 1636-7, pp. 99, 100, 106; 1637-8, pp. 603, 604, 606, 607; Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.85.

Repeated proposals by the admiralty in 1636 and 1637 for digging saltpetre on the royal estate, which might have provided further local employment, appear to have come to nothing.4 CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 448; 1636-7, pp. 239, 431, 458; 1637-8, p. 95. In a county which was generally rated relatively lightly on account of perceptions of economic decline, in 1635 Woodstock was assessed at only £20 for Ship Money, less than non-parliamentary towns Burford and Chipping Norton.5 CSP Dom. 1635, p. 474. All were reluctant payers, but Woodstock alone benefitted from a reduction in rating in 1637.6 CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 494; 1637, p. 511. At the end of the decade the town was expending its small resources on a long-running suit against Sir William Spencer, from the family of a former steward, over his alleged withholding of a dole for the poor.7 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 1609-50, 178, 187, 200.

It is not clear whether an impetus afforded by economic grievances or the indulgence of Pembroke explains a return to traditional form in the spring election of 1640. On 12 March the recorder, William Lenthall*, who to his chagrin had been squeezed out in the later 1620s, was chosen with Sir William Fleetwood. The ‘wax to seal [the] indenture’ appears in the chamberlains’ accounts, but only the mayor’s signature is affixed to the document.8 C219/42, 1A/3/43; Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 185. While Lenthall played a prominent part in the Short Parliament, Fleetwood had a single committee nomination and did not otherwise distinguish himself.

None the less, a partly illegible indenture of 23 October reveals at least 46 burgesses and freemen willing to return Fleetwood to the next Parliament, this time with Benjamin Merrick, a resident of and property owner in the town.9 C219/43, 4/6/108; Oxon RO, Woodstock archives Box 4/2/F1/2; VCH Oxon. xii. 352. This was almost certainly a majority of voters, but although at least one former chamberlain was among them, signatories do not seem to have included the most important inhabitants.10 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 238, 240; Vis. Oxon. 1634 (Harl. Soc. v), 255. If the later careers of the two candidates are at all indicative, it is possible that their election represented an attempt by the second rank of the corporation to promote men who would render the town acceptable to the king (and thus perhaps obtain the abatement of Ship Money sought by the mayor in May).11 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 186. The attempt, if that was what it was, soon failed. Following a despatch to ‘Mr Recorder’ and the arrival of ‘a letter from Oxon about burgesses’, on 27 October an unsigned indenture announced the election of Lenthall with Pembroke’s son William Herbert II*.12 C219/43, 4/6/107; Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 186. Lenthall’s seat was secure enough for him not only to appear in Parliament at the beginning of the session on 4 November but also to be made Speaker. However, in the meantime Herbert had also been chosen as a knight of the shire for Monmouthshire, and on 20 November it was announced that he waived both Woodstock and Downton.13 CJ ii. 33a. Pembroke’s influence was sufficient to procure another outsider as replacement on 2 December. This was Sir Robert Pye I*, trustee with Sir Benjamin Rudyerd* to the earl’s estates.14 C219/43, 4/6/109, 4/6/110; C231/5, f. 414. Final confirmation of Lenthall and Pye as burgesses came on 5 January 1641.15 CJ ii. 63a.

While Sir William Fleetwood remained a presence in the town throughout the next two decades, Lenthall’s and Pye’s constant attendance at Westminster kept them from their constituency even before the outbreak of war.16 CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 509; 1641-3, p. 317; CJ iii. 100b; Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.85; Wootton, Oxon. par. reg. During the brief ascendancy in the Oxford area of troops raised by William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, it was doubtless Lenthall’s influence that secured an order (10 Sep. 1642) for Woodstock’s town clerk, Edmund Hiorne, to appear before the Commons on a charge of ‘endeavouring to get into his hands part of the magazine of the county of Oxon’ for the king.17 CJ ii. 761b. Called to the bar of the House on 4 October, Hiorne was informed by Lenthall of the ‘very heinous’ nature of his offence, which included publishing a proclamation declaring that Parliament’s lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, was a traitor.18 CJ ii. 792b. But such sanction some became irrelevant. While not continuously garrisoned during the period from late October 1642 to June 1646 when Oxford was the king’s headquarters, the town’s proximity to royalist lines meant that soldiers were a regular presence and citizens largely subject to royal authority.19 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 200 seq.; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 402; 1644, p. 30; CJ ii. 829a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 275, 750; Ballard, Chronicles of Woodstock, 87.

There was fighting around Woodstock in the summer of 1644 when Sir William Waller* took the king’s sheriff Sir Robert Jenkinson† prisoner, in February 1645 when Colonel Charles Fleetwood* (Sir William’s brother) made an assault, and in May 1645 when Lieutenant-general Oliver Cromwell* was briefly in the area.20 Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 672; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 199, 357, 361, 363, 373, 507, 528; 1645-7, pp. 145, 239; Ballard, Chronicles of Woodstock 87-8. Only in April 1646, however, did Charles Fleetwood and Colonel Thomas Rainborowe* finally secure the town for Parliament.21 CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 391, 399, 400; CJ iv. 523a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 260. The taking of the manor was among a string of successes ordered on 28 April to be celebrated at a day of public thanksgiving in and around London.22 CJ iv. 526b.

It was to Woodstock that royalist propositions for negotiating the surrender of Oxford were initially directed.23 CJ iv. 523b-524a. As the treaty approached its conclusion, and ‘divers of the inhabitants on this side of the country’ petitioned for Charles Fleetwood to be appointed governor of the city, activists on the county committee, including John D’Oyly*, met in Woodstock to launch an appeal for the appointment of their own choice.24 Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 359. Fleetwood’s regiment subsequently supplied a garrison there and the town was fixed as a rendezvous for the disbandment of troops in 1647, but it was by no means subservient.25 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 213a; CJ v. 183b, 195a. On 8 July 1646 the Commons ordered that Lenthall’s servant, Mr [?Elisha] Cole, ‘now in those parts’, investigate covert communication to a local baker, while local notables like Benjamin Merricke and Edmund Hiorne represented an undercurrent of dissent.26 CJ iv. 607a; CCAM 1183; ‘Edmund Hiorne’, Oxford DNB.

Perhaps at the instigation of Fleetwood or Lenthall, it was proposed to exempt ‘the honour, manor and parks of Woodstock, with appurtenances’ from the act to secure arrears for soldiers out of royal lands, but this was defeated (13 July 1649).27 CJ vi. 259b. A survey undertaken that October, which afforded the Fleetwoods, royalist and parliamentarian, ample opportunity to assert their claims to supervisory office, emphasised the depredations resulting from garrisoning the manor house.28 Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.85. The commissioners sent by Parliament to value the estate for sale had a hostile reception from some local residents and faced the derision of the rest. Richard Croke* (from 1649 also deputy recorder to the absent Lenthall and deputy steward), his brother Colonel Unton Croke II* and others were allegedly intimidated by poltergeists into beating a hasty retreat, their humiliating withdrawal mocked in pamphlets.29 The Woodstock Scuffle (1650, E.587.5); The Just Devil of Woodstock (1661, E.1055.10). Richard Croke’s election as a freeman in August 1652 was opposed by several leading townsmen, including Hiorne.30 Woodstock Chamberlains’ Accts. 225, 229. It is conceivable that perceptions of disaffection as well as of economic decline lay behind a resolution late in the Rump Parliament that the borough should henceforth have only one Member.31 CJ vii. 268a.

Woodstock was not represented in the Nominated Parliament of 1653 or, in practice, in 1654. Charles Fleetwood, who had taken on his royalist brother’s rangership of Woodstock Park as he had also his office in the court of wards, was apparently returned for the borough to the first protectorate Parliament, but he opted to sit in one of the augmented county seats. Debate on the Instrument of Government produced a motion on 5 December 1654 that Woodstock ‘might not be dismembered’, but this was rejected. The next day the House accepted the committee recommendation that the burgess be transferred to more loyal and more populous Banbury.32 Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxi; CJ vii. 396b.

Yet in the longer term this decision was ignored, perhaps out of deference to Fleetwood’s increasing importance. The proposed sale by the admiralty commissioners of growing timber in Woodstock Park was postponed in July 1655 until the lord deputy of Ireland could come to England and express his view, while he also became nominally major-general for the area.33 CSP Dom. 1655, p. 265. Once he and his deputy, William Packer*, were in charge, the town may have looked more governable. Trustees for the maintenance of ministers settled an extra £50 a year on the incumbent in March 1656 (increased when the unimpeachable Samuel Blower was inducted in April 1657), while the commission of the peace issued the next month included Fleetwood, his nephew Miles Fleetwood* (a protectorate officeholder in contrast to his father Sir William), Packer, Thomas Kelsey* and Richard Croke.34 CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 211; 1656-7, p. 278; C181/6, pp. 156-7; Calamy Revised, 61-2. The council of state (including the lord deputy) discussed in summer 1656 and again in January 1657 a new charter confirming the privileges of the borough, fixing additional fairs and guaranteeing one parliamentary seat.35 CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 5, 71, 241. In the meantime, Packer, extending his role of deputy major-general, was returned in the election in 1656, while Fleetwood sat elsewhere.

On 12 January 1659 the mayor, Alexander Johnson, a mercer who had been on the 1656 commission of the peace, signed an indenture recording the election of Jerome Sankey* and Miles Fleetwood.36 C219/47. A Baptist preacher with tolerant religious views, a distinguished military record and some Oxfordshire experience, Sankey had been unofficial secretary of Lord Deputy Fleetwood in Ireland. Chosen also for Tipperary and Waterford, which he had represented previously, he opted for Woodstock (5 Mar.).37 CJ vii. 610b. That Fleetwood had secured the election was clear, and Sankey continued to support him.38 Wood, Fasti, ii. 119. By this time Miles Fleetwood had experience both in local government and as an MP, but there is no surviving evidence for his having expressly forwarded the interests of Woodstock or its charter, as yet unenacted, in the Parliament.

Elections to the Convention witnessed the temporary total eclipse of the Fleetwood family, but Sir William, who regained his post of park ranger, was elected again for the borough in 1661 with the support of his son Miles. The former’s influence persisted, albeit diminished from pre-war days and overshadowed by the resurgent Spencers, even after Miles had been purged from the corporation in 1662.39 HP Commons 1660-1690.