Amersham

In 1642 Nehemiah Wharton, a Londoner, thought that the area around Amersham was ‘the sweetest country that ever I saw’.1 H. Ellis, ‘Lttrs. from a subaltern officer in the earl of Essex’s army’, Archaeologia, xxxv. 313. It was one of three Buckinghamshire towns whose right to elect MPs had been revived in 1624. Research by William Hakewill† established that Amersham, Great Marlow and Wendover had been represented in several of the Parliaments of Edward I and Edward II and, on that basis, that right was restored to them. The electors of Amersham had thanked Hakewill by electing him to the 1624 and 1628 Parliaments. The town would never have been enfranchised in this period by any other means. It consisted of little more than a single street and lacked a town corporation. By 1640 it was dominated by the Drakes of Shardoloes. William Drake had inherited, directly or indirectly, the manors of Shardoloes, Amersham Woodrow and Weedon Hill from his grandfather, William Tothill.2 VCH Bucks. iii. 148-9. The only other major landowner had been the 4th earl of Bedford (Sir Francis Russell†), who had owned Amersham manor, but the sale of the Surrey estates inherited from his father enabled Drake to buy that from Bedford in 1637.3 Coventry Docquets, 705; VCH Bucks. iii. 147. Great Hampden was not far from Amersham and in the special circumstances of 1640, when he was nationally famous as the opponent of Ship Money, it is possible that John Hampden* had some influence in the town. Two of the MPs elected in 1640, Edmund Waller* and William Cheyne*, were related to him. As at Great Marlow and Wendover, it was assumed that the right of election was held by the inhabitants. Unlike at Great Marlow, that assumption seems to have remained undisputed during this period. Indeed, the strength of the Drake interest may well have ensured that all the elections between 1640 and 1659 were uncontested.

William Drake used his dominant electoral interest to get himself elected in 1640 to the Short and the Long Parliaments. In the Short Parliament he was joined by Edmund Waller, the well-connected local gentleman who was already building a reputation as one of the finest poets of his generation and who had represented the constituency in the previous Parliament. Waller’s estates were concentrated around Beaconsfield, the next parish. Twenty-three of the inhabitants signed the indenture returning them at a meeting on 7 March 1640.4 C219/42, pt. 1, f. 66; Bucks. RO, D/DR12/34.

In the elections later that year Waller preferred to stand for the Cornish constituency of St Ives, probably because the Godolphins had offered the seat to him. This made it possible for another local gentleman, William Cheyne, to get elected at Amersham along with Drake. Cheyne, who was aged only 17, was the eldest son of Francis Cheyne, the major landowner at Chesham Bois a mere two miles north of Amersham.

Cheyne’s death on 20 April 1641 created a vacancy which was filled by a new election several weeks later. The by-election was called by the Commons on 30 April, with Sir Alexander Denton* moving the motion.5 CJ ii. 130b; Procs. LP iv. 149, 153. The new MP, Francis Drake*, had taken his seat by 12 May.6 CJ ii. 144a. Drake was William Drake’s younger brother. Sir William (he was knighted and granted a baronetcy in the summer of 1641) tried to remain neutral during the civil war and he used his ill health as an excuse to spend much of the 1640s abroad. His brother was, at best, a lukewarm supporter of Parliament. Francis was among those arrested during the purge of the Commons in early December 1648; Sir William was probably out of the country at the time.

Amersham lost the right to elect MPs in the redistribution of seats implemented by the 1653 Instrument of Government.7 A. and O. As it had regained that right within living memory as an exercise in antiquarian revivalism, the case for abolishing Amersham representation was strong. Five years later, however, the argument was rather different and Amersham then regained that right a second time as part of the wider revival of the older franchises for the elections to the 1659 Parliament. The Amersham inhabitants elected Francis Drake and John Biscoe* on 31 December 1658.8 C219/46: Amersham return, 31 Dec. 1658. Unlike his elder brother, Francis Drake had sat in the two most recent Parliaments and he was sufficiently reconciled to the protectorate to have supported the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell*. He was presumably keener than Sir William to sit. Biscoe, a serving colonel with his own regiment of foot, was even more closely associated with the protectorate; if anything, he felt that Cromwell’s policies had not gone far enough. Although by now he was probably living at West Drayton over the border in Middlesex, Biscoe could claim to be a local boy who had made good given that he was originally from Little Missenden, just outside the town. As in 1654 and 1656, Francis Drake was again elected as knight of the shire for Surrey and so, when Parliament met, he surrendered the Amersham seat in favour of the more prestigious county one. The writ to fill this vacancy was moved in the Commons on 31 January.9 CJ vii. 595b.

The resulting by-election was held on 8 February 1659 and the person elected on that occasion was Sir Richard Beke*.10 C219/46: Amersham return, 8 Feb. 1659. Sir Richard was a professional soldier with strong links to the Cromwell family. His first wife, Levina Whetstone, who had probably died shortly before the election, had been one of Oliver Cromwell’s nieces and Beke had been knighted by her cousin, Richard Cromwell*, as recently as December 1658. It was these connections rather than any obvious links with the constituency – his principal estates were at Haddenham over 14 miles away – that probably recommended him.

The Drakes were able to maintain their dominant interest at Amersham well into the eighteenth century, although over the decades several other gentry families of the area vied with them for control. Two particularly bitter election disputes in 1679 introduced for the first time the debate as to whether the inhabitant franchise ought to be restricted only to scot and lot payers. Amersham thereby replayed the similar argument which had first been raised at Great Marlow in 1640.