Northamptonshire

Situated in the southern midlands and bounded by no fewer than nine other counties, Northamptonshire was described in the Restoration period as ‘of a fat and rich soil both for tillage and pasturage, bearing excellent grain and feeding great store of sheep and cattle ...[and] honoured with the seats of as many (if not more) of the nobility and gentry as any county in the kingdom, especially as to its extent’.1 R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 174. The county was divided by the River Nene into two main administrative units, the western and eastern divisions. The western division was rich farming country, while in the far corner of the eastern division lay the soke or liberty of Peterborough, which contained areas of fenland and formed part of the western edge of the Great Level.2 Lindley, Fenland Riots, 33; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Northamptonshire’. According to the hearth tax returns there were approximately 24,000 households in Northamptonshire by 1674, suggesting an overall population of about 100,000.3 E179/254/14. Parliamentary elections were usually held in Northampton Castle, and the electorate in 1640 numbered at least 350 and probably well above a thousand. The freeholders who gathered in March 1640 to give their voices in the election to the Short Parliament were referred to as ‘a multitude’ and required three days of polling to determine their choice of Members.4 Bodl. Bankes 44, f. 27; Diary of Robert Woodford ed. J. Fielding (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xlii), 346; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 587.

Since early Tudor times, Northamptonshire had tended to return one Member from the western and one from the eastern division. But this ‘ancient course’ had begun to break down in the early 1620s with the regular return of Members from the western division families of Spencer and Knightley. After 1621, only one knight of the shire – Sir John Pickering – had been drawn from the county’s eastern division.5 HP Commons 1509-1558, HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Northamptonshire’. By 1640, however, any electoral rivalry between the two divisions had largely been subsumed in common opposition to the policies of the personal rule of Charles I, and notably Ship Money and military charges. Contributing greatly to what the sheriff of Northamptonshire, Sir Christopher Yelverton*, referred to in 1640 as the county’s ‘radical humours’, was the presence of a large and well-organised puritan community under the leadership of the Crewe, Dryden, Knightley and Pickering families and their clerical and gentry allies.6 SP16/445/54, ff. 101-4; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 246, 466, 527; 1640, pp. 25-6, 195; J. Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts: the Diocese of Peterborough 1603-42’ (Birmingham Univ. PhD thesis, 1989), passim; S.C. Osborne, ‘Popular Religion, Culture and Politics in the Midlands, c.1638-1646’ (Warwick Univ. PhD thesis, 1993), 59, 63, 66, 68-9, 71-2, 79-80. Indeed, Northamptonshire has been described, with some justification, as the most fervently puritan county in all of England.7 VCH Northants. ii. 43.

The frontrunners in campaigning for the shire places in the elections to the Short Parliament early in 1640 were the godly grandees and, it seems, electoral partners, John Crewe I* and Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*. Crewe, who had sat for constituencies in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire in the 1620s and had been a steadfast Ship-Money refuser, was destined to take the senior seat. But Pykeringe’s relative youth – he was still in his twenties – and lack of political experience, encouraged competition for at least one of the county places and vigorous campaigning by his own agents at the quarter sessions and other public occasions. The prominent Northamptonshire gentleman and future royalist, Sir Christopher Hatton*, was canvassing for votes by early March 1640, but then decided, or was persuaded, to withdraw from a contest in which he evidently enjoyed insufficient support, particularly among the county’s godly community. A more serious rival to Pykeringe was the court candidate Thomas Elmes: a Northamptonshire deputy lieutenant with strong links of his own to the region’s godly grandees (his daughter had married Sir Arthur Hesilrige*). Elmes drew most of his support from northern Northamptonshire, where he resided, and enjoyed the backing of some, probably the majority, of his fellow deputy lieutenants and of the earls of Peterborough, Northampton and Westmorland – the two latter being future royalists. Several of the county’s Laudian churchmen also canvassed on his behalf. For his part, Pykeringe relied heavily for campaign organisers on the Northampton godly, including Peter Whalley* and the town’s leading puritan cleric Thomas Ball. One of their tactics was to smear Elmes – indeed, to assert that he was ineligible to stand for election – by claiming that he was supported by papists and that, as a deputy lieutenant, he was involved in levying ‘unparliamentary’ military charges for the second bishops’ war. On election day, 19 March, it was clear that Crewe commanded sufficient support to take the senior place, but a fierce contest developed for the second place between Elmes and Pykeringe. After the sheriff had read out the writ, the earls of Northampton, Peterborough and Westmorland ‘with others, mounted their horses and ... rode between the companies [of freeholders], calling men to come to Mr Elmes’s company’.8 Woodford Diary ed. Fielding, 342-6; Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts’, 244-7. In response, Whalley and Pykeringe’s other electoral agents ‘walked up and down the castle yard amongst the multitude [of freeholders], making outcries [of] “A Pickering, a Pickering”, “No deputy lieutenant”’.9 Bodl. Bankes 44, f. 27. Elmes’s supporters demanded a poll in which they quickly conceded the senior place to Crewe but continued to rally their ‘company’ against Pykeringe. Polling continued until 21 March, when Pykeringe was declared the winner, ‘to the joy of the hearts of God’s people’.10 Woodford Diary ed. Fielding, 346. The electoral indenture, which was dated 19 March, was signed by the future parliamentarians Sir John Driden*, Edward Harby* and Zouche Tate*.11 C219/42/1/159.

Writing to the county’s lord lieutenant a few days after the election, several of his deputies informed him that ‘some turbulent spirits, by undue practices, caused great clamours amongst the multitude to be raised against the authority of the lieutenancy’.12 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 587; 1640, pp. 25-6. On 17 April, a few days after the Short Parliament had assembled, Pykeringe presented a petition to the Commons that had been ‘delivered him at his election’, complaining of how the county had

been unusually and unsupportably charged, troubled and grieved in our consciences, persons and estates by innovation in religion, exactions in spiritual courts, molestations of our most godly and learned ministers, Ship Money, monopolies, undue impositions, army money [coat and conduct levies]... and enlarging the forest beyond the ancient bounds and the like.13 CJ ii. 5b; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 7; Aston’s Diary, 10.

Early in May, with Parliament on the point of being dissolved, Ball, Whalley and 11 of their confederates were summoned before the privy council to answer for their temerity at the Northamptonshire election. The council was particularly concerned that by using the rallying cry 'No deputy lieutenants', Pykeringe’s agents had ‘made an exception in the minds of the people, to the great hindrance of the levy of soldiers then in hand’ for the second bishops’ war.14 Bodl. Bankes 42, f. 117; Bankes 44, f. 27; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 299; Woodford Diary ed. Fielding, 84.

In the elections to the Long Parliament, held on 29 October, Pykeringe was returned again – this time in first place – with his uncle, the godly Northamptonshire baronet Sir John Driden, taking the junior seat.15 C219/43/2/69. Why Crewe decided to relinquish his place as a knight of the shire in favour of a seat at Brackley is not clear; but there is no evidence on this occasion of any contest for the honour of representing the county. Early in 1641 the county’s godly interest petitioned Parliament against episcopacy.16 Woodford Diary ed. Fielding, 385. A year later a group of the county’s gentry – including Richard Knightley*, Harby and others who had been active in opposing the policies of the personal rule – petitioned the Commons, requesting (among other things) that ‘the votes of popish lords and bishops’ be removed, the court purged of evil counsellors, papists disarmed, the militia put in safe hands and ‘scandalous ministers outed’.17 The Petition of the Knights, Gentlemen, and Free-holders of the county of North-hampton (1642, E.135.36); Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts’, 254.

Both Pykeringe and Driden sided with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, as did probably a majority of Northamptonshire’s inhabitants, although there were pockets of strong popular royalism in the south and east of the county. Despite being under parliamentarian control by early 1643, the county was subject to royalist raiding for most of the war.18 Osborne, ‘Popular Religion’, 177, 180-1, 186, 191, 195, 206-7, 210-11, 213, 224, 238, 245, 258-9, 274, 280, 307. To Edward Hyde* (the future earl of Clarendon), Northamptonshire was a ‘country [sic] of very eminent dissatisfaction to the king throughout the war’.19 Clarendon, Hist. iv. 212. Neither Pykeringe nor Driden were excluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, but whereas the former became a prominent Rumper, the latter was not admitted to the Rump until April 1652 and does not appear to have resumed his seat before Parliament was dissolved a year later.20 Infra, ‘Sir John Driden’; ‘Sir Gilbert Pykeringe’.

Northamptonshire retained its two seats in the Nominated Parliament, for which the council of officers nominated Cromwell’s ally Pykeringe and the much more obscure figure of Thomas Brooke. The scion of a godly family, but not trusted with local office by Parliament before 1647, Brooke was one of 19, generally obscure, men who appear to have been nominated at a later stage than the majority of MPs, which may well indicate that they were chosen because some of the original nominees had been considered politically unreliable, or, more likely, because they had refused to sit.21 Infra, ‘Thomas Brooke’; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139-40.

Under the 1653 Instrument of Government the county’s representation was increased to six seats; and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 it returned Pykeringe, Crewe I, Sir John Norwich, John Cleypoole, Driden and Brooke – apparently in that order.22 Perfect List of the Members Returned (1654, 669 f.19.8). Although Cleypoole was a Northamptonshire gentleman and parliamentarian, he almost certainly owed his seat to the fact that his eldest son, John Claypoole*, had married one of Cromwell’s daughters and been appointed a lord of the protector’s bedchamber and his master of horse.23 Infra, ‘John Cleypoole’; ‘John Claypoole’. Norwich’s popularity with the freeholders probably rested on the strength of his connections with the county’s godly interest.24 Infra, ‘Sir John Norwich’. All six men were included on the list of Members approved by the protectoral council early in September.25 Severall Procs. of State Affaires no. 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22).

The county election for the second protectoral Parliament was held on Kettering heath on 20 August 1656 and was ‘ordered and managed’ – or so it was later alleged – by Major-general William Boteler*. According to an eighteenth-century chronicle of local affairs, after the sheriff read the writ, Boteler named the six gentlemen to be elected, beginning with Pykeringe, and then

took a party of his own and rode round the heath crying “A Pickering, a Pickering” till he came to the sheriff, and then he ordered the sheriff to set him [Pykeringe] down as duly chosen; and in like manner he did manage the same for the other five successively ... not taking notice of Colonel [Henry] Benson and his party, which were [sic] great and cried up [Richard] Knightley and other considerable persons of the county.26 Bodl. Top. Northants. c.9, p. 109.

Knightley and his neighbour Colonel Benson were leading members of the county’s Presbyterian interest and had doubtless been sidelined by Boteler as opponents of the rule of the major-generals.27 Infra, ‘Richard Knightley’. The successful candidates, in order of their return, were Pykeringe, Claypoole, Boteler himself, James Langham, Thomas Crew and Alexander Blake.28 C219/45, unfol; A Perfect List of the Names of the Several Persons Returned to Serve in this Parliament 1656 (1656), 5 (E.498.5). Pykeringe and Claypoole were members of Cromwell’s household; Langham and Crew almost certainly owed their election to their family’s longstanding connection with and considerable estates in the county; and Blake had been active in assisting Boteler administer the decimation tax and suppress ‘profaneness’.29 Infra, ‘Alexander Blake’; ‘Thomas Crew’; ‘James Langham’. All six men were allowed to take their seats by the protectoral council, although in the case of Langham and Crew there is no evidence that they did so. Reduced to its traditional two seats for the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, the county returned Knightley and another godly Northamptonshire gentleman, Philip Holman, on 30 December 1658.30 C219/47, unfol. Holman enjoyed a considerable proprietorial interest in the county and was probably closely aligned with Knightley in opposition to army influence in local affairs.31 Infra, ‘Philip Holman’. Among the 15 or so gentlemen named as parties to the election indenture were Sir Henry Yelverton† and Knightley’s friend Henry Benson.32 C219/47. Knightley, Holman and Thomas Crew (who had been returned for Brackley) were named to a committee set up on 12 April 1659 for preparing an impeachment against Boteler.33 CJ vii. 637a. Sir John Driden having died the previous year, Pykeringe was left as the county’s sole representative in the restored Rump of 1659-60.