Herefordshire

Herefordshire, according to Sir Robert Harley, was the most ‘clownish’, meaning rustic, county in England.1 J.S. Levy, ‘Perceptions and Beliefs: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Origins and Outbreak of the First Civil War’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1983), 42. It was certainly remote, but its gentry exercised an influence over the south-eastern counties of Wales, and its importance in Welsh affairs was consolidated by its subjection to the council in the marches of Wales, based at Ludlow. Among the Herefordshire gentry there was a deep-seated aversion to parliamentary elections whose outcome was not pre-arranged. This was evident in the 1620s, when Sir John Scudamore†, Viscount Scudamore [I] was discouraged by a warning that he would ‘hazard a canvass’ if he stood, when it would be better

for the quiet of the country and reconcilement of the competitors ... to avoid heart burning, whereof inconveniencies will grow amongst yourselves, a hurt to the country perhaps for many years, as it hath done in former times.2 Hereford City Lib. Pengelly and Scudamore Pprs. 109.

At the first election of 1640, this preference for harmony still prevailed. The two unopposed candidates corresponded with one another, Sir Walter Pye reporting to Sir Robert Harley in February 1640 the opinion of Sir William Croft† that there would be no opposition to them unless a hidden competitor disclosed his hand on election day. By 28 February it was regarded as settled that these would be returned as knights of the shire, but for reasons of prudence, Harley was advised to bring along his freeholders to prevent any subterfuges.3 Add. 70002, f. 261; Brilliana Harley Letters, 84. One local gentleman, Richard Skinner of Baysham, drew up for Harley’s use a list of 16 relatives and friends ready to attend, ‘for the good of the church and common weal’, an indication of priorities among some, at least. Skinner also provides us with the date of the election, 14 March, and with a statement of the franchise: freeholders, copyholders and those holding properties for their lives or three lives.4 Add. 70002, f. 273. In the event, the election went according to plan, and Pye and Harley were safely returned.5 Brilliana Harley Letters, 87.

Herefordshire county elections were usually held on Lugg Meadow, Hereford, and entertainment was laid on for those visiting the city in order to vote. Sir Robert Harley gained experience in organising hospitality in the elections of the 1620s, and was asked to make similar arrangements in 1640, not just in the interests of his own candidacy, but in these conditions of unanimity, on behalf of all involved.6 Add. 70002, f. 261. Harley’s entertainment costs at the second election of 1640, held on 24 October, amounted to £155. The entertainment and rituals of celebration went beyond the alimentary, for as well as amounts for criers and for food and beer, Harley’s accounts included sums for bell-ringers, singers and trumpeters.7 Add. 70002, f. 311. These were only the sums spent on shared services and facilities, however, as at least another £50 was spent by Harley on entertaining freeholders.8 Add. 70058, loose: receipt, 25 Mar. 1641. Despite the show of celebration, the October 1640 election was not by unanimous pre-selection. The mechanism for Harley and Fitzwilliam Coningsby to represent the shire without a contest was put to work, and they jointly wrote to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, who enjoyed a significant interest in the county, to gain his approval.9 Add. 70002, f. 307. But on election day, Coningsby was challenged by Sir Robert Whitney, who may have been standing on the interest of Viscount Scudamore.10 Add. 70110, unbound: Brilliana Harley to Sir Robert Harley, n.d. [Oct. 1640]; I. Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Early Stuart England: the career of John first Viscount Scudamore (Manchester, 2000), 225, 232. Whitney stood down when he saw the size of the Coningsby turn-out, and there is no report of a poll. On the indenture returning Harley and Coningsby were the names of 17 electors, including three who were in 1642 to appear among the ‘Nine Worthies’, refuting the authority of Parliament to impose the Protestation on the country.11 C219/43/1/207; Add. 70003, ff. 227-8v. Nothing can be inferred from this election as to future political orientation among the gentry, however, as the 17 were later to divide roughly equally into supporters of the king and of Parliament.

On 30 October 1641, Coningsby was expelled the House as a beneficiary of a monopoly. The ensuing by-election suggests that even at this stage, the consensual element in Herefordshire politics had still not been dispelled. Brilliana Harley naturally hoped for ‘a good one’ to appear as a candidate, but the Harleys’ own interest was not mobilised through a want of clear instruction by Sir Robert in London to his wife at Brampton Bryan.12 Add. 70003, ff. 169, 173. Harley wanted Thomas Whitney, son of the candidate in the October 1640 election to stand, while his wife hoped that Sir William Croft might throw his hat into the ring; the implication of these surprising preferences is that the Harleys subscribed still to some notion of balance in the selection of MPs.13 Add. 70003, f. 173. On the day, 20 November 1641, Humphrey Coningsby, son of Fitzwilliam Coningsby, stood against Whitney and defeated him with no involvement of the Harleys’ interest.14 C219/43/1/209; Add. 70003, f. 173.

By March 1642, the tensions which had been building in Herefordshire between the minority puritan group led by Harley – which was closely linked through him to the group in the Commons in opposition to the king – and most of the leading gentry were evident. On 5 March, the Nine Worthies wrote to Harley and Coningsby, to report that the Protestation had been administered at Hereford, Leominster and Weobley. The justices had encouraged it as a voluntary and not unlawful act, but the writers doubted its validity and whether Parliament had the authority to impose an oath on the country that it was claiming for itself. They hoped for a continuing purge from the cathedrals of popery, the suppression of sectaries and a bill for more orderly elections.15 Add. 70003, ff. 227-8v. By late April, the same writers sought to impress on Harley and Coningsby a perspective which they promoted as the directive of the county to its MPs. They perceived there to be no continuing threat from foreigners or papists, and hoped for an agreement between king and Parliament, and for protection of Protestants in Ireland. It seemed to them that various parliamentary initiatives had failed: a treaty with the Scots was still not concluded; the triennial act of 1641 had not improved the flow of credit and encouraged the business community as had been hoped, and the king was still waiting for a grant of tonnage and poundage for life. It was clearly intended as a shot across the bows of parliamentary reformers such as Harley.16 Add. 70003, ff. 238-9. At the midsummer assizes in Hereford, a disturbance by anti-puritan elements, encouraged by the gentry, helped crystallise the parties for and against Parliament, a process continued by the issuing of the Militia Ordinance for Parliament and the commission of array for the king.17 Harl. 7189, f. 241v.

Humphrey Coningsby was disabled for royalism on 8 May 1643, but not until 1646 was Parliament fully in control of the county and thus able to issue the writ for a by-election. Early in June, John Flackett*, a stalwart of the sequestration committee of the county, confided to Edward Harley* that John Birch* was building up a party of his own, both in Hereford and the county, with the aim of promoting candidates of his own in parliamentary elections. Flackett was sure that only ‘private ends’, rather than the public good, motivated Birch, but the resentments of the Herefordshire men, including the Harleys, towards Birch, derived from jealousy at the success of an outsider.18 Add. 70058, loose: John Flackett to Edward Harley, 6 June 1646. Manoeuvring for place ahead of an election increased when a sheriff was appointed, thus making possible the electoral process, but from the early summer Edward Harley was receiving expressions of support from various quarters including from the former governor of Gloucester, the Presbyterian Edward Massie*, who had himself recently entered the House. Massie hoped to be joined by Harley in the Commons in order that they could wage a political war against the Independents: ‘we want but a small addition of more honest and diligent men in the House to set this straight’.19 Add. 70005, f. 42 (3rd foliation). In the event, the writ for Herefordshire was not moved until 11 September 1646, three days before the earl of Essex died. On 2 October, Robert Wigmore, working in support of Harley, reminded his patron of the need to secure the ‘intended favours of the late earl of Essex’. Wigmore suggested that Harley should approach Dr William Sherborne of Pembridge, an active royalist but a friend of the late earl, ‘for he commands beyond Hereford’. Walter Kyrle* was a more obvious object of Harley’s canvassing because he continued to be steward of Essex’s Herefordshire estates, although because of the terms of the earl’s will, that interest was at the time of the election in the control of William Seymour†, marquess of Hertford. Wigmore’s suggestions that approaches should not only be extended to Lady Kent, another of Essex’s executors, but also to Walter Meyrick, who was soon to become one of the county’s most radical committeemen, were a clear indication that Harley’s candidature was being visualised as in the interests of county unity.20 Add. 70125, loose: Robert Wigmore to Edward Harley, 2 Oct. 1646; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 224; Oxford DNB, ‘William Sherborne’; CCC 2035; Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 114; Milton State Pprs. 92.

On 6 October, Edward Harley, his ally Ambrose Elton and others, wrote to Sir Robert Harley and Walter Kyrle at Westminster, enclosing a grand jury petition calling for the postponement of by-elections in Herefordshire until the military presence in the county had been significantly reduced. This was an obvious attempt to stifle the electoral ambitions of John Birch, even if the other elements of the petition, in favour of the ministry, the establishment of schools and an attack on ‘the cankerworm of usury’ were aspects of a wider project of the Herefordshire godly.21 HMC Portland, iii. 146. The grand jurors affirmed that despite the unfortunate former choices of Members since disabled from sitting at Westminster, they could not ‘but consider the right of free election of Members of Parliament as a privilege of highest concernment to the English subject’.22 Add. 70005, f. 57 (2nd foliation). As the election approached, Birch retaliated against what he considered the Harleys’ campaign against him both in Parliament and in institutions of government in the county by imprisoning the troublesome committeeman, Isaac Bromwich, a distant cousin of the Harleys, provoking in turn a statement of their independence from the military by the county committee, signed by Herbert Perrott*, John Flackett and Edward Harley.23 Add. 70105, unbound: Isaac Bromwich to Sir Robert Harley, 16 Oct. 1646. Bromwich confessed ruefully to Sir Robert that he ‘had little dreamt it had been so dangerous a thing to oppose Colonel Birch in being knight of the shire’, subject as he then was, to the full rigours of Birch’s martial law.24 Add. 70105, loose: same to same, 20 Oct. 1646. One of the Brampton Bryan servants, Samuel Shilton, was busy canvassing a few days before the election, when there was still some local uncertainty as to whether Birch would stand. He feared that Birch would benefit from tactical moves by a Leominster freeholder who had summoned only freeholders and not copyholders to vote. Shilton confirmed that contact had been made with Major-general Rowland Laugharne†, one of the Presbyterian generals originally from Essex’s territories in Pembrokeshire, an indication that this by-election was conducted with improving the Presbyterian interest very much in mind, and offered advice on the most economical way to entertain the voters.25 Add. 70123, loose: Samuel Shilton to Edward Harley, 9 Nov. 1646. A late entrant to the contest was Sir Richard Hopton†, who had tried to hedge his bets during the civil war by favouring Parliament but also seeking pardon from the king’s court at Oxford.26 Add. 70112, loose: John Barnesby to Edward Harley, 13 Nov. 1646; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Richard Hopton’.

In the week beginning 4 November, the London press reported Birch as likely to take the seat.27 The Weekly Account no. 4 [47] (4-11 Nov. 1646), sig. Xx2v (E.361.10). It was presumably to minimise the impact of Birch’s interest at Hereford, where the soldier was governor, that the election was held at Leominster, on 14 November. Edward Harley was elected, having spent over £470 on 577 suppers and 2,898 dinners.28 Add. 70005, ff. 70-4 (2nd foliation); HMC Portland, iii. 147. The location suggests that the elections both for the borough of Leominster and for the county may have been held on the same day, although no evidence to confirm this has been found. Birch was certainly returned for Leominster, so the outcome of both elections may represent some kind of compromise, which would have been congruent with the customary practice in the county. From 1647, relations between Birch and the Harleys began to thaw, and by the time of Pride’s Purge of Parliament in December 1648, the former antagonists were as one in their Presbyterian outlook and alienation from the New Model army. As both Sir Robert and Edward Harley were victims of the army’s coup, the county of Herefordshire lacked direct representation at Westminster until 1653.

The interest that Wroth Rogers had built up as governor of Hereford accounts for the selection of Rogers and John Herring for the Nominated Assembly in 1653. After he had settled in Hereford, Rogers retained military rank as garrison commander, but it was the sectarian godly church, Independent and millenarian in character, of which Rogers and Herring were members, that recommended them to the council of state as representatives of the county. Two more Herefordshire men, John James and Robert Holmes, served for the neighbouring counties of Worcestershire and Gloucestershire respectively. Although a modern authority cautions against exaggerating the impact of nominations by churches, this is probably a case in which the council took heed of a congregation’s wishes, no doubt because of the seniority of Rogers in the army.29 Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 118-9. The Harleys were but helpless, frustrated observers of the process of selection, and against this background, the comment of Thomas Harley’s, that their county would also be well-served by the selection of James and Holmes (both of them minor gentry), reads as sardonic.30 HMC Portland, iii. 202-3. All four of the Herefordshire men to sit in the Assembly were religious radicals far from the Presbyterian conservatism of the Harley family.

The 1654 election saw an effort to reassert an older pattern of representation. The four places allocated the county under the Instrument of Government were taken by minor gentry. Only John Flackett might have been challenged on the grounds of his social standing, as he was a former pillar of the sequestration committee. This background, although controversial, cannot be taken as evidence of a persistent religious radicalism among the county’s Members. Puritan Flackett may have been, but he was a Presbyterian of the Harleys’ stamp, rather than a co-religionist of the Independent, sometime Quaker-sympathising Rogers. Richard Reed was a cousin of Edward Harley’s, Pateshall had flirted with radical religion, but proved as comfortable with the Cromwellian state church arrangements as with the heyday of millenarianism in the early 1650s. He, Reed and John Scudamore of Kentchurch were identifiably representative of traditional gentry interests. The election took place at Lugg Meadow, and it was only afterwards that complaints were addressed to the lord protector’s council. These addressed the setback to the godly project that the petitioners perceived as a consequence of the return of the four Herefordshire men.31 C219/44/1; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 319.

Some shoring up of the radicals’ strength was achieved by the imposition of the major-generals’ regime in 1655-6. Major-general James Berry recruited from among the more Presbyterian-inclined activists of the interregnum, such as John Flackett, as well as from the Independent sympathisers represented by Rogers, to his body of commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth. If this expedient was intended to unite the godly under the lord protector, it failed. The second election under the Instrument of Government, held at Lugg Meadow on 20 August 1656, was turbulent. The major-general himself was a candidate. The sheriff was Wroth Rogers, who on the day first encouraged electors to cry up their choices ‘promiscuously’. When this achieved no clear outcome, he directed the electors to form into two companies, so he could judge which one was the greater. Those voting for Edward Harley, John Scudamore and Richard Reed – a group representing the long-established county gentry – drew off a little way. Rogers stayed put, and some electors voting for Berry, John James and Benjamin Mason surrounded him and cried up their names. When Rogers said that he only heard those voices, William Gregory† rode up and demanded the poll, asserting that the majority were in the other camp. Gregory said he was acting for Harley, Scudamore and Reed. Harley then joined in to seek a poll and was declared elected, even though those surrounding the sheriff did not vote for him. Harley demanded the poll for Reed as against Mason, and Scudamore as against Berry, as clear an indication as was possible of the sides being taken for and against the military.32 Add. 70007, f. 80.

The poll at this election was also demanded by Captains Taylor and French, among others, suggesting that army officers as well as gentry were being mobilized. There were challenges of some electors on grounds of eligibility, two supporters of Mason confessing to owning estates worth less than £200. The presence of John Birch at the contest was not a revival of his ambitions for a county seat, but an expression of support for the world-view of the Harleys. The indenture recorded the signatures of more than 32 electors, and the result was a balanced return: two Presbyterian county gentry figures, Harley and his close ally Bennet Hoskins on the one hand, and the soldiers Berry and Mason on the other. Among the electors who were willing to sign the indenture were at least two clergymen, the Baptist John Skinner, of Weston-under-Penyard, and Walter Tringham, vicar of Marden, who had been appointed on the recommendation of Wroth Rogers and John Tombes, the Baptist minister who had returned to Leominster.33 Calamy Revised, 444; C 219/45/2; Add. 36792, f. 82v. It seems probable that both these voters turned out in support of Rogers, and hence of the soldiery, by whom Rogers was reported to be surrounded at Lugg Meadow.34 Add. 70007, f. 80. In the event, Berry sat for Worcestershire, where with Monmouthshire he had also been returned, but there is no evidence of any subsequent by-election.

No direct evidence has survived to illuminate the events surrounding the Herefordshire election of 1659. It was conducted on the franchise as it was before 1653, and each of those returned, Hoskins and Wroth Rogers, was an epitome of the interests which had jostled for local supremacy during the 1650s: the traditional county gentry on the one hand and the settled, garrison-based military representatives on the other.35 C219/47. Hoskins was a harbinger of a revival of the Harley interest in 1660.