Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire was a county of very marked physical divisions, the most obvious of which was the River Severn. West of the Severn below Gloucester lay the Forest of Dean, an important source of naval timber. In the Vale of Gloucestershire, further east, were Gloucester itself and above it, Tewkesbury, both parliamentary boroughs. The hinterland of Gloucester was incorporated into the city government as the ‘Inshire’. At the southernmost tip of the county lay Bristol, England’s third most important city after London and Norwich, a county in its own right, with separate representation at Westminster. North-east of Bristol, the western escarpment of the Cotswold uplands extended as a visible boundary of the Severn and Worcestershire Avon river valleys. Among Cotswold towns were Stroud and Cirencester, with an important clothing industry. Contemporaries such as Christopher Guise* divided Gloucestershire into four divisions: the Forest, Kiftsgate (the north Cotswold district), the Seven Hundreds, which included the southern Cotswolds, and Berkeley, in the Severn vale between Bristol and Gloucester.1 A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Gloucestershire 1640-1672 (Woodbridge, 1997), 7-19; Mems. of the Fam. of Guise ed. G. Davies (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxviii), 103.

The county was roughly divided into three economic zones: woodland in the Forest, clothing in the Vale and the southern Cotswolds, and pasture in the North Cotswold district, and this ensured that interest groups worked to secure their own political representation. It is evident that in this county, as elsewhere, there was intense public interest in the decision in December 1639 to hold a Parliament after an 11-year interval, and from the outset, concern to avoid a contest. That month, Sir Maurice Berkeley wrote to John Smyth of Nibley, agent of George Berkeley, 8th Baron Berkeley, asking him not to commit himself in the election before it was known who was to stand, ‘then we may both join and go one way for both voices’.2 Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley Vol. II, f. 89. Just over a week later, Lord Berkeley communicated to Smyth his wish that the Berkeley interest should be engaged for Sir Maurice himself if he should stand, and if he did not, the peer was content that Smyth should commit himself to the best choice for the good of the commonwealth. At this early stage, Sir Baynham Throckmorton had come to Lord Berkeley’s attention as a possible partner for Sir Maurice in the contest for the two county seats.3 Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley Vol. X, f. 100.

In discussions among the gentry at the winter assizes early in 1640, there was an agreement that the county would return Sir Robert Tracy and Sir Robert Cooke of Highnam, which would have been an alliance between Cotswold and Vale. This agreement seems to have been fragile from the outset, as on 18 February Lord Berkeley reported to Smyth a request by Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, that he should give his support to another intending candidate, Sir Ralph Dutton. Berkeley wanted Smyth to comply, using ‘all the means and power you have amongst my tenants and others in whom you have any interest’.4 Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley Vol. II, f. 90. The election itself began at Castle Green, Gloucester on 18 March, although an assembly of supporters for Tracy and Cooke gathered in the city on the eve of the poll. Tracy was kept away by illness, but John Dutton appeared as his most important supporter. The agreement was wrecked, however, not by Sir Ralph Dutton, who though expected by some, including Edward Stephens*, in the event did not appear. Instead there was a surprise campaign by Nathaniel Stephens*. He represented the clothing interest, excluded from the agreement at the assizes, and carried weight as an opponent of Ship Money. According to a Laudian observer, John Allibond, Stephens was supported by 11 puritan ministers.5 CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 580-2.

As the poll began, it became evident that while Tracy’s voters stuck to the agreement, Cooke’s supporters were bestowing their second votes on Stephens: Tracy men gave 800 votes to Cooke, but Tracy ‘received not 20 back’ in return. John Dutton suspected a plot, and confronted Cooke with a declaration that he would ‘never more trust any man that wore his hair shorter than his ears’.6 SP16/448, f. 79. In February, Cooke himself had detected that the pre-election pact was disintegrating, however, reporting to John Smyth that preparations were ‘much interrupted by jealousies and unexpected canvassings’.7 Glos. RO, D7115, Cooke to Smyth, 24 Feb. 1640. It is clear enough that the confusion was deepened by the sheriff, who seems to have intervened against Stephens, but the main source for this is the petition of complaint which Stephens himself presented to the Commons. All accounts agree that the sheriff, a kinsman of Tracy’s, adjourned the poll to Winchcombe, ‘a poor beggarly town’, convenient for Tracy’s Cotswold supporters, but inaccessible for partisans of Stephens. A variety of other tricks by the sheriff were alleged, including calling for Stephens voices in a less than audible voice, making adjournments and then not reappearing until hours after the specified time, ignoring petitions of freeholders against adjournments and requests by Stephens supporters to be polled.8 Aston’s Diary, 153-5. The election itself seems to have concluded on 21 March, with the return after all of Tracy and Cooke, partners in the pact at assizes. Stephens carried through his threat of a petition, but in the sheriff’s defence it was argued that the crowd had overthrown his table, that he had been ill, and that Stephens’s supporters argued that tenants holding leases for lives should have voices. This last point may have carried sufficient weight for Stephens to have refrained from pressing his case further, but the matter dropped in any case when the Short Parliament was dissolved.9 Aston’s Diary, 155-6.

The election for the second Parliament of 1640 was held in October, and seems to have been less contentious than that for the first. Some 15 freeholders, including John Stephens*, attached their names to the return of John Dutton and Nathaniel Stephens, which is unlikely to have been the result of any pact between these two antagonists of the earlier contest.10 C219/43/179. On this occasion, Sir Humphrey Tracy tried to engage Smyth to support his appearance as a candidate, but Smyth declined to cast the Berkeley interest behind this north Cotswold man, and assured him of the strength of support for Nathaniel Stephens. Tracy withdrew.11 Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley Vol. XVI, f. 24. Once again, Smyth’s command of the Berkeley interest was courted; Sir Robert Cooke, on this occasion standing in Tewkesbury, wondered whether Sir Maurice Berkeley would make a suitable partner for Stephens at Westminster. Cooke was clear on the need for there to be a careful choice. Berkeley seems not to have stood, but the principle of seeking an agreement prior to the poll to deploy the powerful Berkeley interest seems to have run deep.12 Glos. RO, D7115, Cooke to Smyth, 18 Oct. 1640.

John Dutton was expelled from the Commons on 1 January 1644 for his involvement in royalist activity. The writ for a by-election in Gloucestershire was not moved until 3 November 1646, after Bristol had been taken from the king, and when the county was beyond immediate disturbance from royalist forces.13 CJ iv. 712b. An election was held at Stroud on 18 November, and the only candidate seems to have been Sir John Seymour, who was elected with support from leaders of the county committee, including Sylvanus Wood* and the son of Edward Stephens*.14 C219/43/180. Seymour himself was active in the county committee before his election, and had brought in force of irregular soldiers or ‘clubmen’ to help subdue Bristol in September 1645. Both he and Nathaniel Stephens were out of sympathy with the army coup in December 1648. Seymour was secluded, Stephens probably withdrew, and neither resumed his seat during the rule of the commonwealth; between 1649 and 1653 the county was thus unrepresented.

Under the arrangements for the Nominated Assembly, Gloucestershire was to be represented by three Members, and it is clear that the Congregationalist churches rather than the army exerted the decisive influence. In the spring of 1653, the churches wrote to Oliver Cromwell* and the army council to assure them that Jesus Christ had arisen ‘in places of gross darkness and profaneness’, despite ‘encouragements, threatenings and oppressions’. The churches had evidently supported the army council in its appeals to the Rump to take forward the cause of religious reform, but had ‘found little encouragement therein’. In the churches' list of 17 nominees for a ‘council of good and faithful men to the government of the nation’, the first and third names, William Neast and John Croft proved to be two of the choices to sit in Parliament for the county. The third Member, Robert Holmes, was not on the churches’ list, but was well-known as an arbitrator in Tewkesbury, a stronghold of the Independent congregations. He may also have been chosen partly through links with Thomas Wall, who was on the list and resident in Holmes’s parish of Dymock.15 Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 125-6.

The county was allocated a generous allowance of five Members during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell*, but there seems scant evidence of the election to the 1654 Parliament. A complaint seems to have been made about the election, and it seems likely that the complaint emanated from the radicals of the stamp of Neast and Croft, who lost their places to a mix of county gentry representing traditional interests, such as George Lord Berkeley and Christopher Guise, and moderate committeemen such as Sylvanus Wood. One of the Members elected on this occasion was Matthew Hale, and although there is a degree of doubt about which election he was referring to, it seems likely that it was during preparations for this one that he declared himself to be appearing in the interests of the ‘country’.

The military interest seems to have been more determined to succeed in the elections for the Parliament of 1656. The sheriff adjourned the meeting several times during the election in Gloucester on 20 August, apparently in an attempt to disperse the strong following of George Lord Berkeley, John Grobham Howe, Christopher Guise, Thomas Overbury and Robert Atkins, who it seems had all appeared as candidates in the interest of the ‘country’. This was a coming together of pre-civil war aristocratic and gentry families, which had won the support of influential Presbyterians such as Nathaniel Stephens*.16 Glos. RO, D2768/1/1; Alnwick, Northumberland 551, ff. 92v, 93. The sheriff denied requests for a written poll, and early the following morning with only 30 persons present, declared John Croft, Baynham Throckmorton and William Neast, with the two original candidates Berkeley and Howe, to be returned. Neast apparently had ‘few or no voices’.17 Glos. RO, D2768/1/1. He and Croft were stalwarts of the Gloucestershire militia, and supporters of the local major-general, John Disbrowe*. Nothing seems to have come of the subsequent petition to Parliament by the losers Atkyns and Overbury, but Guise withdrew from public life after this episode, which in his case was the culmination of earlier conflicts with the military.

The alliance between old county families and the Presbyterians prevailed in the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, when John Grobham Howe held his seat even while actively colluding with royalist plotters. His partner, John Stephens, held strongly anti-military views, and was no friend of the protectorate. In elections for the Convention the theme of ‘country’ prevailed again. George Lord Berkeley hoped that the revived interest of the Somerset family at Badminton would be cast in favour of Matthew Hale and Sir Baynham Throckmorton, whom Berkeley assumed would be supported by the ‘clothiers’.18 Glos. RO, Smyth of Nibley Vol. II, ff. 97, 100. In 1660 as in 1640, calculations were being made in Gloucestershire as to how recognised economic and territorial interests would translate into electoral terms.