Cheshire

‘Cheshire ... is a county of a fat, fruitful and rich soil, both for tillage and pasturage ... And although (in most places) it is flat and even, yet it is not without several noted hills ... besides the mountains that divide it from the shires of Derby and Stafford’.1 R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 52, 53. Bounded on its English borders by Lancashire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire and by Wales to the west, Cheshire has traditionally been regarded as an isolated border county, one of ‘dark corners of the land’.2 Blome, Britannia, 52; G. Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003), 13. This impression has been reinforced by its status as a county palatine, with its own courts of exchequer and great sessions.3 VCH Cheshire, ii. 36-40. Yet in fact Cheshire was no more peculiar or exceptional than most other counties. Its governing elite comprised the usual aristocratic-gentry clique of a lord lieutenant and deputies, county sheriff and justices of the peace.4 VCH Cheshire, ii. 41-3, 54-5. Its criminal justice system ‘operated in much the same way as elsewhere’ in England.5 Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 15-16. Moreover, although its gentry have often been characterised as an unusually insular breed, Cheshire men were apparently no worse represented at court and in central government than their counterparts in other counties.6 Morrill, Cheshire, 3-4; VCH Cheshire, ii. 102; Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 14.

In logistical and economic terms, too, Cheshire was an integral part of the Stuart realm. Chester and its outports were England’s main embarkation and landing point for troops, royal officials, general travellers and supplies to and from Ireland.7 Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 15. The county’s economy was based predominantly upon the rearing and fattening of cattle and on diary farming, ‘from which the inhabitants reap good profit from the sale of their butter and cheese to most parts of England’.8 Blome, Britannia, 52; Morrill, Cheshire, 5. Only in the Wirral – the peninsula between the rivers Dee and Mersey – was arable farming the dominant form of agricultural production.9 Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order, 18. There are no reliable figures for the county’s population during the seventeenth century, but it is thought to have been significantly less than that of its northern neighbour Lancashire, which rose from about 100-120,00 in 1600 to approximately 150,000 by the 1660s.10 Blackwood, Lancs. 3, 5. Cheshire’s electorate, on the other hand, was one of the largest in the country.11 VCH Cheshire, ii. 99. It was reported that ‘many thousands’ had converged upon Chester to take part in the 1628 county elections.12 Harl. 2125, f. 59v. And it has been estimated that the number of voters in the contested election of 1681 was not far short of 5,000.13 HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Cheshire’.

Following Cheshire’s enfranchisement by statute in 1543, its parliamentary elections had generally followed a pattern in which the senior seat had been taken by leading members of the county’s gentry and the junior place went to local gentlemen with court connections. This convention broke down decisively in the 1620s, however, when both seats were occupied by county gentlemen who were uncontaminated by close association with the court.14 HP Commons 1604-29; VCH Cheshire, ii. 102, 106-7. The bitterly contested election for the 1626 Parliament has led to arguments for the emergence of a lasting factional divide among the county’s electoral power-brokers between ‘the barons’ and ‘the baronets’ – the former, a group of prominent gentry who had or would acquire Irish peerages, while the latter were gentlemen who had obtained baronetcies. Electoral contests of some kind were perhaps always likely in Cheshire given that it was grossly under-represented at Westminster, with only the shire and Chester returning Members.15 Morrill, Cheshire, 31. Yet despite causing a ‘very great stir such as the like was never observed in Cheshire before’, the 1626 election seems to have reflected a struggle for local prestige and precedence rather than an ideological conflict over national issues.16 HP Commons 1604-29. Moreover, there is little evidence of sustained factional rivalry among Cheshire’s governing elite in the decade or so after 1626 – the ‘barons’ and ‘baronets’ generally working together to protect and promote the county’s interests. Nevertheless, the personal rule of Charles I did see the emergence of two distinct political groupings or axes in Cheshire. The so-called ‘patriots’, a group dominated by Sir George Booth, Sir Richard Grosvenor† and Sir Richard Wilbraham, combined an ‘evangelical Calvinist religious outlook ... with a distrust of courtiers and royal favourites and a readiness to look to Parliament to remedy the county’s problems’. The other grouping was centred upon John Savage†, 2nd Viscount Savage, Robert Needham†, 2nd Viscount Kilmorey [I] and the minor courtier Sir Thomas Aston* and ‘tended to be strongly anti-puritan ... relatively indulgent towards Catholicism and Laudianism, ready to identify with the interests of king and court and willing to take an authoritarian line when it came enforcing the crown’s demands’.17 R. Cust, P. Lake, Gentry Culture, and the Politics of Religion: Cheshire on the Eve of the Civil War (Manchester, 2020), 173.

The calling of a new Parliament, late in 1639, brought the latent tension between these two Cheshire groupings into the open. The first gentleman to throw his hat in the ring was Aston, who had won considerable local popularity as Cheshire’s first Ship-Money sheriff, when he had defended the county’s interests in a rating dispute with the Chester city authorities.18 Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Aston’. Aston was a cousin of Viscount Kilmorey. But it was another of the ‘barons’, Viscount Savage (a recusant and future royalist), and his younger brother Thomas who apparently persuaded Aston to stand for election.19 UCNW, Mostyn ms 9082, no. 19; ‘John Savage’, HP Commons 1604-29. On 10 December, Thomas Savage wrote to his father-in-law, William Whitmore, in Cheshire urging him to encourage his tenants to give their voices for his ‘very good friend’ Aston, ‘whose parts and deservings are so generally known and liked that I hope there will be no resistance’.20 UCNW, Mostyn ms 9082, no. 18. Aston wrote to Whitmore the same day (10 Dec.), claiming that he had the support of the county’s leading men – namely, the Catholic peer John Talbot, 10th earl of Shrewsbury, Cheshire’s lord lieutenant James Stanley†, Lord Strange (the future 7th earl of Derby), Robert Cholmondeley†, 1st Viscount Cholmondeley of Kells [I], and Viscounts Savage and Kilmorey. All of these noblemen would go on to support the king in the civil war. Aston also assured Whitmore that he would strive for ‘a quiet election, without trouble, but ‘tis feared the puritan faction will universally through the kingdom struggle for a party’.21 UCNW, Mostyn ms 9082, no. 19.

Given Aston’s evident hostility towards the ‘puritan faction’, there was more than a hint of pragmatism in the electoral partnership that he formed at some point over the winter of 1639-40 with another prominent defender of the county’s rights over Ship Money, the strongly puritanical Sir William Brereton*. Brereton claimed in mid-December that he had been ‘moved by divers’ to stand. But having sat for the county in 1628, he himself was keen to return to the House, for ‘it may probably be conceived that there depends as much upon the good success of this Parliament as upon any that ever was in our age’.22 UCNW, Mostyn ms 9082, no. 21. Although associated with the ‘patriots’ during the personal rule, he may well have fallen out with them and into alliance with Aston after Booth and Wilbraham decided to settle on alternative candidates – probably either Booth’s younger son John or his grandson George Boothe*, and Wilbraham’s eldest son Thomas.23 Infra, ‘George Boothe’, ‘Sir William Brereton’; VCH Cheshire, ii. 107; Morrill, Cheshire, 33; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 178. Aston and Brereton made a formidable electoral pairing – the former could call on the considerable proprietorial interest of the barons, while Brereton was popular with the county’s godly.24 Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 179-80.

Aston and Brereton had teamed up by 7 March 1640 at the latest, when Whitmore was informed that Viscount Savage – who had succeeded as 2nd earl Rivers – was engaged to both men, and that ‘if Sir William lose it [the election], my lord [Rivers] suffers equally [in reputation] as if Sir Thomas did then stand and lost it’.25 UCNW, Mostyn ms 9082, no. 17. Tempers were running ‘very high’ on both sides by mid-March,

and the contestation like to be the greatest that ever we heard of in our country [i.e. county]. Sir Thomas Aston has divulged a judicial apology to all the freeholders [probably for his proceedings as sheriff], and Sir William Brereton wins daily amongst the religious [i.e. the puritans], so that many are sensibly seen to fall off from their engagement [to the patriots] and victory more doubtful.26 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 565.

The pendulum seems to have swung even more decisively in Aston’s and Brereton’s favour by the end of the month, when it was reported that the two men were ‘pretty confident and full of reproaches against the two popular patriots [Booth and Wilbraham] ... neither of whom will appear at the election it is said, or if they do they are sure to be boldly accused in the face of their country as adversaries to the peace of it’.27 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 590. In addition, Cheshire’s lord lieutenant, Lord Strange, was said to be taking Aston’s and Brereton’s part, ‘though very temperately’.28 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 591. Perhaps realising that defeat was inevitable, the patriots appear to have withdrawn from the contest before election day on 6 April 1640, which saw Brereton and Aston duly returned as knights of the shire, in that order.29 VCH Cheshire, ii. 108. Foremost among the signatures on the election indenture were those of the victorious barons Rivers, Kilmorey, Cholmondeley and Thomas Savage. The names of Booth, Wilbraham and their allies were conspicuously absent.30 C219/42/1/50; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 180.

There were three principal candidates for the shire places in Cheshire’s elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640 – Aston, Brereton and Viscount Cholmondeley’s brother-in-law Peter Venables*. The contest that developed on this occasion may have been a three-way struggle between the men, or it is possible that Venables and Brereton stood together as the preferred candidates of the Booth-Wilbraham group.31 Harl. 2125, f. 133; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 181-2. Having forfeited the support of the barons by the autumn – probably because of his increasingly close identification with what Aston had termed the national ‘puritan faction’ – Brereton had apparently patched up his differences with the Booth-Wilbraham group. Aston had retained the barons’ favour, but his interest among the generality of the freeholders seems to have declined in the months after the dissolution of the Short Parliament. On 6 October, he put in his first ever appearance at a meeting of the Cheshire quarter sessions (having been added to the bench back in 1637); there he felt obliged to take ‘elaborate steps’ to clear himself over allegations of extortion and malfeasance during his time as sheriff.32 Cheshire RO, QJB 1/6, ff. 9, 15-17; QJF 69/3, nos. 11-14; P. Lake, ‘The collection of ship money in Cheshire during the sixteen-thirties’, NH xvii. 67; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 181. Venables’s alignment and the identity of his electoral patrons, assuming he had any, are more difficult to pin down. Although linked with the barons via Viscount Cholmondeley and, like them, no friend to the puritans, he had joined Brereton by 1640 in encouraging his tenants to resist the collection of Ship Money. He had also worked with the Booth-Wilbraham group as a deputy lieutenant in 1639-40 – notably, in mustering the county’s trained bands for the second bishops’ war.33 Infra, ‘Peter Venables’; SP16/462, ff. 5-11; Cheshire RO, ZCR 63/2/6, ff. 60v, 80; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 181-2.

On election day, 19 October 1640, there was reportedly ‘much feuding and faction between Sir Thomas Aston and Sir William Brereton and Peter Venables’ – a form of wording that does not suggest a well-publicised electoral partnership between any of the candidates – ‘but at last’, presumably after a ‘shout’, Venables and Brereton were returned in that order (and not vice versa as one account has stated).34 Harl. 2125, f. 133; C219/43/1/77-8; Morrill, Cheshire, 34. Booth, Wilbraham and their friends evidently approved of the result and had probably backed one or both of the successful candidates, for their names figured prominently among the parties to the election indenture – the signatures themselves are too faded to decipher. The names of the barons are notable by their absence.35 C219/43/1/77-8; Cust, Lake, Gentry Culture, 182.

Aston’s defeat raises the question of what had gone wrong between the Short and Long Parliament elections to undermine his local hero status. The most plausible explanation is that doubts had been raised about his commitment to wholesale political reform, as opposed to simply defending the county from the excesses of the personal rule.36 Lake, ‘Collection of ship money’, 68; P. Lake, ‘Puritans, popularity and petitions’, in Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain ed. T. Cogswell, R. Cust, P. Lake (Cambridge, 2002), 261. The political and military disasters the king and country had suffered since the spring of 1640 may well have encouraged the Cheshire voters to see their grievances in more national terms and thus sensitized them to Aston’s court connections, his friendship with Catholics like Earl Rivers and, perhaps also, to the conciliatory tone he had struck in the Short Parliament over redress of grievances.37 Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Aston’. The large sum of money that Aston and his Catholic cousin, the professional soldier and future royalist Sir Arthur Aston, had lent to the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) by 1641 was very probably connected to the prosecution of the king’s unpopular war against the Scottish Covenanters.38 LJ iv. 176b. Moreover, Aston’s younger brother John had acted as the king’s agent in Scotland during the bishops’ wars – which heightens the suspicion that Aston and his immediate circle stood on the wrong side of public opinion in Cheshire by the autumn of 1640.39 ‘Sir Thomas Aston’, Oxford DNB.

The civil war divided Cheshire’s two MPs, with Brereton emerging as the commander of Parliament’s forces in the north-west and Venables as an ineffectual royalist. Venables was disabled by the Commons on 22 January 1644 for attending the Oxford Parliament – as indeed were the two Chester MPs – and, with Brereton away from the House for long spells on military duty, Cheshire was largely bereft of formal representation at Westminster for much of the mid-1640s.40 Infra, ‘Chester’, ‘Peter Venables’. In May 1645, some of Cheshire’s leading parliamentarian gentlemen, resentful of Brereton’s dominance of the county’s military affairs and, in some cases, of his alignment with the Independent interest both locally and nationally, petitioned the Committee of Both Kingdoms* in terms implicitly critical of their MP. Indeed, an earlier draft of this petition had requested that

some course may be taken for a supply of our defect in Parliament, having neither knights nor burgess to appear for us there. That until supply be made for the aforementioned defection [sic], the House and the committees thereof will be pleased to pass no particular ordinance, order, or vote upon private information concerning this county without knowledge of the opinions of the committees for this county how they conceive it will tend to the good or hurt of the public service of this county.41 Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 349.

These two clauses were highly disrespectful to Brereton, who was, after all, still the county’s MP, and were omitted from the final version.42 Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 351, 352-3.

The ‘driving force’ behind opposition in Cheshire to Brereton and his Independent allies were Sir George Booth and his grandson George Boothe.43 Infra, ‘George Boothe’; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 14, 353; Morrill, Cheshire, 83, 152-3, 157-8. By May 1645 at the latest, the Booth faction was angling for the election of an MP for Cheshire to replace Venables and to counter Brereton’s influence at Westminster – and young George Boothe was almost certainly their preferred candidate.44 Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 353; ii. 14. Although the Booths seem to have enjoyed a commanding lead in the race (if such it was) for the county’s vacant parliamentary seat, they remained fearful that Brereton would somehow snatch victory from them. When Brereton returned to Cheshire from Westminster in October 1645, they suspected that he brought with him the writ for a new election but was concealing it in order to spring a candidate of his own upon the county.45 Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 14. Sir George Booth, Brereton’s one-time father-in-law and patron, went so far as to have his four daughters write to Brereton to the effect that their nephew, George Boothe, enjoyed the ‘love and respect’ of the county, and urging Brereton to use his endeavours for a ‘free and clear’ election.46 Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 214. Sir George also wrote to Brereton directly, and in a rather peremptory tone, to express the hope that the county would not be ‘surprised’ by any sharp practice involving the writs, ‘but a fair election had’. In a letter the next day (9 November 1645), he effectively demanded that Brereton support his grandson’s candidacy.

I am now making speedy despatches to all my friends, requesting their concurrence and assistance. These carry the same errand unto you, from whom relations to me expect much – as of my other friends, so particularly of you. I desire by a return to receive your approbation and assurance of utmost assistance.47 Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 234.

In fact, the Booth family’s suspicion that Brereton was concealing the writ were groundless – not least because the Commons did not order the issuing of such a writ until after the surrender of Chester in February 1646.48 Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 214, 233-4; CJ iv. 457b. Further delays were caused by technical hold-ups in Cheshire, and it was probably Brereton who was instrumental in having these resolved – a new writ would be issued in October.49 C231/6, p. 66; CJ iv. 528b-529a; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 29, 138. Admittedly, Brereton seems to have toyed with the idea of putting up the future regicide John Bradshawe* as a candidate against Boothe. But Bradshawe’s ‘not appearing in this cause’, and the evident strength of Boothe’s interest, had persuaded Brereton by December 1645 that it would be ‘mighty hard and hazardous’ to challenge the Booths’ electoral preparations.50 Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 440. Nevertheless, the Booths took nothing for granted, and a petition to the Commons of April 1646 from a number of the county’s grandees, including Sir George Booth, claimed that ‘this county hath long suffered through the want of a Member in the House of Commons in the absence of Sir William Brereton’.51 PA, Main Pprs. 26 Sept. 1646, f. 113; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 148-9. In the event, the Cheshire voters returned George Boothe late in November 1646 ‘without any gainsaying, none opposing him, so generally was he beloved and desired’.52 Perfect Occurrences no. 49 (27 Nov.-4 Dec. 1646), sig. Bbb3v (E.365.1); Clarke Pprs. ii. 136.

The high opinion in which the Cheshire voters held Boothe was not shared by the army, which secluded him at Pride’s Purge for his Presbyterian sympathies, leaving only Brereton to represent the county in the Rump.53 Infra, ‘George Boothe’. In May 1651, the justices of the peace, grand jury, ‘and other well-affected persons to this commonwealth’ attending the Cheshire quarter sessions, petitioned the Rump, bemoaning ‘that this county is burdened beyond its proportion for want of fit persons to represent in Parliament their condition ... and that it may have liberty to proceed to new elections for fit persons to represent them in Parliament’ – but to no avail.54 The Humble Representation and Petition of the...County Palatine of Chester (1651), 6, 7-8 (E.629.4); CJ vi. 573b; Morrill, Cheshire, 259.

Cheshire was allotted two seats in the Nominated Parliament of 1653, where it was represented by Colonel Robert Duckenfeild, governor of Chester, and his colleague (the lieutenant-colonel of his militia regiment) Henry Birkhened. Duckenfeild was Cheshire’s most celebrated parliamentarian officer after Brereton and had surpassed Brereton in his support for the county’s religious Independents.55 Infra, ‘Robert Duckenfeild’. Whether he was selected primarily on the basis of his patronage of the Cheshire Independents or as a gesture of good will to his brother-in-law Charles Fleetwood, commander-in-chief in Ireland, is not clear. Nor is it apparent exactly what recommended Birkhened to the council of officers, beyond his links with Duckenfeild. Although described by one authority as a ‘sectarian’, there is no firm evidence that he had moved beyond the ‘orthodox’ puritan mainstream.56 P.J. Pinckney, ‘The Cheshire election of 1656’, BJRL xlix. 389.

The only known representation from Cheshire to the council of officers that selected the Members of the Nominated Parliament was sent from Chester on 15 May 1653.57 Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 93. The writers expressed the hope that ‘the Lord will make you circumspect ... in the choice and permission of representatives for the several counties, that not the eminency of their persons but the excellency of their spirits may be looked at, that the Saints’ interest may be enlarged, the enemies hopes and expectations frustrated’. A majority of the six known signatories to this letter – indeed, probably all six – would have been on familiar terms with Duckenfeild and Birkhened. One of the six was a Chester alderman, two were members of the city’s sequestrations commission (one of these two men was also a common councilman and the other was a captain in the city’s militia), while another, George Manley, was a member of the Cheshire sequestrations committee.58 SP28/225, f. 10; Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, ff. 79v, 82v; ZML/2/298; ZCTB, f. 53.

Cheshire was awarded four parliamentary seats under the Instrument of Government, and in the summer of 1654 an informal ‘caucus of gentlemen’ – among them Brereton, Peter Brooke* and Thomas Marbury* – convened to select the men who would stand for the county in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that July.59 Cheshire RO, DDX/384/1, p. 173; Morrill, Cheshire, 287. Who their nominees were is not known, but the successful – indeed, apparently the only – candidates were John Bradshawe, George (now Sir George) Boothe, John Crewe II and Henry Brooke.60 Perfect List of the Members Returned (1654, 669 f.19.8). Bradshawe had been appointed chief justice of Chester and a judge in Wales in 1647 and had emerged under the Rump as Cheshire’s senior legal officer. The fact that he was a known opponent of the protectorate does not appear to have dented his considerable popularity with certain sections of the electorate, particularly the county’s sectaries.61 Infra, ‘John Bradshawe’; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 396, 406-7. Boothe’s appeal to the voters rested in part on his standing as one of Cheshire’s greatest landowners and partly, too, on his distinguished record of service to the county. Crewe was also one of the county’s wealthier gentlemen – his estate being worth in excess of £1,000 a year.62 Infra, ‘John Crewe II’. His career since the early 1650s suggests that he was a political ally of Boothe’s and, like him, a Presbyterian – which may also have counted in his favour with some of the selection caucus and the electorate. The last of the four, Henry Brooke, had served as the parliamentarian sheriff of Cheshire for much of the mid-1640s and probably owed his return to his high profile in county affairs and his standing as the lord of an estate worth perhaps as much as £780 a year before the war.63 Infra, ‘Henry Brooke’. The election indenture has not survived. Of the four Cheshire MPs, only Bradshawe made any recorded impression on the proceedings of the House; and it seems likely that the other three Members failed to take their seats – which, in the case of Boothe and Crewe at least, was probably by way of protest at the constitutional illegitimacy of the protectoral regime.

The Cheshire election to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656 was a hotly contested affair. In the weeks preceding the election the informal caucus of Cheshire gentlemen – which included the sheriff and several of the county’s commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth – reconvened to choose suitable candidates.64 Cheshire RO, DDX/384/1, pp. 255, 257; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 397, 404-5. The caucus had decided upon a strongly anti-militarist slate of John Bradshawe, Richard Legh*, Thomas Marbury and Peter Brooke*, when Major-general Tobias Bridge* arrived in the county in mid-August and presented four candidates of his own – and Bradshawe, Legh and Brooke were not among them.65 TSP v. 313; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 397. Bridge’s main concern, however, was to exclude the fiercely anti-Cromwellian Bradshawe, and, ‘after much debate and arguing’, he managed to persuade the commissioners to drop their support for the judge on the implicit understanding that he (Bridge) would not insist on his own slate of candidates.66 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 396-7. Having secured his main objective, at least with regard to the commissioners, he moved on to Lancashire and played no further part in the Cheshire election. Brereton, too, had been canvassing hard for voices, but since the 1640s he had been absent from the county for too long to sustain his local influence. Bridge deemed his ‘interest among the gentlemen very little, only some of the rigid [Presbyterian] clergy cry him up’.67 TSP v. 313; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 405, 407-8.

In the week before the election, the ‘gentlemen confederates’, as the caucus became known, had several meetings at Richard Legh’s house at Lyme and at Chester to firm up their choice of candidates.68 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 409-10, 412. Several of their number clearly had reservations about selecting Bradshawe even before Bridge’s intervention. Bradshawe’s republicanism and patronage of the county’s sectaries were not likely to endear him to the more conservative of Cheshire’s electoral power-brokers, although Peter Brooke, a Presbyterian, assured Bradshawe’s brother and electoral manager Henry Bradshawe that he would vote for the judge ‘with all his might’ – not that Henry seems to have trusted him or his ‘fraternity’.69 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, f. 20v; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 410. And sure enough, after considering the matter further, the gentlemen confederates ‘agreed to join all their forces together for those four they afterwards voted for’ – which was their original slate but with Sir George Boothe in place of Bradshawe.70 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, f. 21. Boothe’s opposition to the major-generals and his popularity with the voters, particularly the Presbyterians, were probably major factors in recommending him to the gentlemen.71 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 414-15. It is also possible that he had decided to stand already and that the gentlemen were keen to include him on their ticket in order to prevent a contest.72 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 415.

On election day, 20 August 1656, some of John Bradshawe’s party suggested to Brereton that he join his supporters, who were (according to Henry Bradshawe) ‘inconsiderable few’, with the judge’s, who were ‘a great number of substantial men ... so to advance him [Brereton] and oppose the four nominated gentlemen, a great number of whose voters, if not the greater half’, were for the judge but not for Brereton. Jealous of his honour, however, Brereton would not countenance this suggestion. After one of the candidates – probably Boothe – was declared elected, many of the voters, possibly a majority, began to shout for Bradshawe, while some also declared in favour of Brereton, and both sets of supporters demanded a poll. The sheriff, backed by the gentlemen confederates, adjourned proceedings from the shire hall in Chester to Flookersbrook common just outside the city in an effort to frustrate calls for a poll. But when this ploy failed, the sheriff simply declared Boothe, Marbury, Legh and Brooke (in that order) the winning candidates and returned them accordingly. These proceedings reportedly ‘discontented the generality of freeholders’, whereupon some of the gentlemen confederates ‘smoothed up the matter’ by explaining that they sympathised with Bradshawe, but that electing him would be detrimental to his interests – presumably a reference to the hostility his return would invite upon him from Whitehall.73 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, ff. 20v-21; Cheshire RO, ZCR 63/2/702, pp. 39, 40; A Perfect List of the Names of the Several Persons Returned to Serve in this Parliament 1656 (1656), 3 (E498.5); Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 416-18. Again, the election indenture is no longer extant. Brereton and his supporters apparently considered petitioning Parliament against the sheriff ‘and others, his complices’, particularly for their refusal of a poll, claiming that Brereton had enjoyed the support of the ‘greater number of freeholders’ and would have been elected on a fair vote.74 Cheshire RO, ZCR 63/2/702, p. 39; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 418. Instead, Brereton seems to have confined himself to making a presentment to the Cheshire grand jury to this effect, which, as the jury was effectively nominated by the sheriff, sank without trace.75 Cheshire RO, ZCR 63/2/702, p. 42; Morrill, Cheshire, 292.

Boothe aside, it is likely that none of the successful candidates for the shire places in 1656 possessed an electoral interest to rival that of the defeated Bradshawe. Nevertheless, Thomas Marbury was a plausible figure to represent his county, having a long record of service in local government and extensive estates and influence in the north west of the county.76 Infra, ‘Thomas Marbury’. Richard Legh was head of an even grander estate in Cheshire and owned considerable property in Lancashire and, despite his royalist associations, seems to have enjoyed the support of several of the Cheshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth.77 Infra, ‘Richard Legh’. It has been argued that Peter Brooke was elected largely on the basis of his supposed role as election manager for Richard Legh rather than through his own or his family’s interest in the county.78 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 403, 410. Yet this seems a rather unflattering assessment of a man whose estate was not, it is true, among the largest in the county but who had been at the centre of its political life since the early 1650s, when Legh was still a minor.79 Infra, ‘Peter Brooke’.

According to one contemporary report, Marbury, Legh and Brooke were among those excluded from the House in 1656 as opponents of the protectorate – a claim that has been repeated by modern authors and which is probably the source of the equally mistaken assertion that Boothe, too, was excluded.80 Harl. 1929, f. 19v; CCSP iii. 189; J.R. Jones, ‘Booth’s rising of 1659’, BJRL xxxix. 432; Morrill, Cheshire, 293; ‘George Booth’, Oxford DNB. In fact, none of the four MPs was excluded. Nevertheless, Boothe withdrew from the House in protest soon after taking his seat, and Brooke and Marbury registered their opposition to the exclusions by voting against a motion on 22 September 1656 that the secluded Members apply to the protectoral council for ‘approbation’ to sit – which was interpreted as support for ‘the bringing in of the excluded Members into the House’ and was comprehensively defeated.81 Infra, ‘George Boothe’; Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 166; CJ vii. 426b. Most of the MPs who voted with the noes have been accounted Presbyterians.82 M. J. Tibbetts, ‘Parliamentary Parties under Oliver Cromwell’ (Bryn Mawr Univ. PhD thesis, 1944), 127-9. Two of Cheshire’s MPs, the familiar pairing of Legh and Brooke, were listed in 1658 among the ‘kinglings’ at Westminster – that is, those MPs who had supported offering Cromwell the crown.83 [G. Wharton], A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5);

Cheshire reverted to its customary two seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, thereby making some kind of electoral contest in this already under-represented and politically-divided county almost inevitable. As in 1654 and 1656, the gentlemen confederates met prior to the election to select their ‘official candidates’, who were apparently Richard Legh and Peter Brooke.84 Cheshire RO, DDX/384/1, p. 355; Morrill, Cheshire, 293. Defying this gentlemanly consortium once again was John Bradshawe, who this time had the great advantage over his rivals in that the county sheriff was his friend, not theirs. Not only that, but his popularity with the freeholders does not appear to have diminished, and in the county’s Quakers he had a solid and organised block of electoral support.85 Newton, House of Lyme, 200. Brooke, for one, seems to have realised that he had a fight on his hands, reportedly offering to spend £1,000 towards defraying the charges of those that would vote for him.86 Newton, House of Lyme, 199.

Yet this would be no straightforward battle between the forces of radicalism and conservatism in the county. Brooke’s and Legh’s leading supporters included several of Cheshire’s most prominent civil-war royalists as well as a group of ‘alienated’ parliamentarian gentry of mostly ancient descent and political Presbyterian sympathies – an electoral interest that Bradshawe’s supporters branded ‘the malignant party’.87 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, f. 22v; Greater Manchester County RO, E17/89/26/1; Morrill, Cheshire, 295. Surprisingly, Bradshawe, too, had the backing of at least one prominent former royalist, the Catholic peer Earl Rivers, not to mention that of the Presbyterian and friend of Boothe, John Crewe II.88 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, f. 22v. But Bradshawe appealed to political constituencies that Legh and Brooke did not, most notably the county’s leading military men and radical gentry, including George Manley, Henry Birkhened, Robert Duckenfeild and the latter’s successor as governor of Chester, Colonel Thomas Croxton.89 Greater Manchester County RO, E17/89/26/1; Morrill, Cheshire, 295-6.

On the first day of the election, which was held at Chester at some point in January 1659, ‘the most part of the ancient gentry’ appeared for Legh, who duly secured the senior place.90 Harl. 1929, f. 20. However, what seems to have been a highly rancorous contest then developed between Brooke and Bradshawe for the second place. Bradshawe’s supporters and the sheriff made a variety of allegations after the election – that Brooke and his friends had inflicted both private and public ‘affronts and injuries’ upon the sheriff; that they had intimidated and obstructed Bradshawe’s supporters; and that Brooke had publicly called Bradshawe ‘a devil’ and ‘one of proudest, impudent fellows that ever I saw’, ‘and stooping with his face near to the said Mr Bradshawe in a challenging way, uttered and declared that he durst answer him [fight a duel] ... in any part of England’.91 Bodl. Top. Cheshire E.3, f. 22v; Newton, House of Lyme, 201, 202; Morrill, Cheshire, 296-7. After three days of polling in the shire hall, and with Bradshawe’s friends apparently having the worst of the war of words and possibly behind in votes, the sheriff decided to adjourn the election to Congleton, some 30 miles east of Chester and the centre of the judge’s Cheshire powerbase.92 Harl. 1929, f. 20; Newton, House of Lyme, 200, 201; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 406, 423. Now it was Brooke’s supporters who felt intimidated, and this time it was allegedly Colonel Croxton’s troops who were the perpetrators – and certainly the Chester garrison was involved in keeping order at both election venues. Brooke’s supporters also claimed that the sheriff recorded the votes of many non-residents and Quakers ‘without oath made ... of their sufficiencies to vote’. After the election, Bradshawe would defend the Quakers’ right to vote: ‘if they were freeholders and acted as the law prescribes, why should any be so arbitrary as to exclude them, or so simple as to be offended at them; this privilege is a high part of their birthright?’.93 Newton, House of Lyme, 200; Morrill, Cheshire, 296. With Bradshawe’s supporters at Congleton in the majority, the sheriff decided to wrap up proceedings ‘before the contrary party could come and give their votes’, and he duly declared Bradshawe returned. Addressing the voters after his victory, Bradshawe called Legh ‘a child’ and Brooke something even less complimentary (probably a bastard) and declared ‘it was not for the honour of the county to choose such’.94 Harl. 1929, f. 20. Once again, we lack an indenture to provide some official indication of electoral alignments, or of who was returned in first place – although Bradshawe was undoubtedly the more senior figure.

Brooke was not one to take his defeat in the 1659 election lying down. Before the end of January 1659, his supporters had sent an address to the protector, which was reportedly well received, but was not printed in Mercurius Politicus because the editor, Marchamont Needham, ‘would not disoblige my Lord Bradshawe’. Brooke’s party also petitioned Parliament against Bradshawe’s return, with Legh promising to help secure a prompt hearing of the case before the committee of privileges. One of Brooke’s supporters was optimistic that Legh could secure a new election and that Brooke ‘will have a fair pluck for it, for I cannot discern that his friends are less than they were formerly; I rather believe that they are increased’.95 Greater Manchester County RO, E17/89/26/2; Newton, House of Lyme, 200.

Bradshawe’s party used the occasion of the Cheshire quarter sessions late in January 1659 to draw up their own address to the protector, in the name of the sheriff, justices and jurors of the county. They were also reported to be drawing up ‘a particular of their grievances to present to the Parliament, viz. to make Nantwich [20 miles south-east of Chester] and some other towns ... boroughs, capable to elect Parliament-men’.96 Greater Manchester County RO, E17/89/26/1. Evidently the bruising experience Bradshawe’s supporters had received at Chester had convinced them that it was high time to shift the county’s centre of electoral gravity eastwards, towards the strongly puritan area between Nantwich and Manchester. Nantwich was Cheshire’s second town and had been the main parliamentarian garrison in the county during the civil war.97 Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 387, 419. It is not known whether such a petition was ever sent to Parliament, but if it was, it would have made little headway before the case of the county’s disputed election had been resolved.

When the disputed Cheshire election was debated in the committee of privileges on 14 April 1659, ‘Mr Lee’ – almost certainly Richard Legh – appears to have been attended and doubtless put the case against Bradshawe’s return very strongly – although to no effect, because the committee members voted by 17 to ten in favour of confirming the judge’s return. However, the parliamentary diarist Thomas Burton felt that ‘upon the whole, the opinion was that the whole election was void’ and that when the committee’s resolution was reported to the House ‘it will abide debate [i.e. stand a good chance of being overturned]’.98 Burton’s Diary, iv. 430. That chance never came, however, for on 21-22 April the army dissolved Parliament and brought down the protectorate.

The resentments generated by the 1659 Cheshire election contributed significantly to the outbreak of Sir George Boothe’s Presbyterian-royalist rebellion that summer – in which many of Legh’s and Brooke’s gentry supporters played a prominent part.99 Morrill, Cheshire, 295-6. Cheshire was represented in the restored Rump by Sir William Brereton, who continued to attend the House after the re-admission of the secluded Member in February 1660.100 Infra, ‘Sir William Brereton’. Boothe did not resume his seat in the Long Parliament, but was returned for Cheshire with Thomas Mainwaring – who had probably appeared for Boothe in the 1659 rising – in the elections to the 1660 Convention.101 Infra, ‘George Boothe’; ‘Thomas Mainwaring’, HP Commons 1660-90.