Thetford

Located where the main London-Norwich road crossed the Little Ouse, Thetford straddled the county boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk. The Little Ouse flowed westwards, joining the Great Ouse between Ely and Downham Market. Navigable to Thetford, it could be used for the trade in goods to and from King’s Lynn and those parts of Norfolk and Suffolk that were furthest from the sea. But by the seventeenth century the town had decreased in importance. The main reminder of its former status was that the Norfolk Lent assizes were usually held there. Its anomalous status as a town in two counties meant that it also had its own commission of the peace. Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel was the de facto owner of the town’s two manors, Thetford Priory and Halwick, although that they were at times nominally held by trustees obscures the exact descent of their ownership in this period. Blomefield, Norf. ii. 57, 59; T. Martin, Hist. of the Town of Thetford (1779), 194.

The parliamentary franchise was exercised by the corporation which, under the Elizabethan charter of 1574, consisted of the mayor, ten principal burgesses and 20 other men, described as the commonalty. Since 1620 the two seats had usually been filled by men separately nominated by Arundel and Framlingham Gawdy*, although there was no agreement to split the patronage and the elections had often been contested. The only time when Gawdy had not been returned on his own interest had been in 1628 when he had been prevented from doing so by his appointment as sheriff. HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Thetford’. The two 1640 elections followed that pattern, with Gawdy claiming a seat on both occasions. Arundel’s influence was less apparent, however. The other seat was taken by Sir Thomas Wodehouse* of Kimberley. C219/42, pt. 1B, f. 153; C219/43, pt. 2, f. 67. As one of the principal landowners in the district, the owner of the former royal palace in the borough and a member of its commission of the peace, he may not have needed the assistance of a patron to secure the seat. Martin, Thetford, 274. The town’s recorder, Thomas Talbott I*, might have been a potential candidate but he was elected at Castle Rising, another seat with a tradition of Howard influence.

The second 1640 election seems to have been a re-run of its predecessor. On 12 October Gawdy wrote to the Thetford corporation asking to be elected again. As their MP, he hoped ‘to see many things happily effected which have been formerly proposed, wherein I shall be most glad to do you and my country the best service my poor ability will give me leave’. Add. 27396, f. 166. He and Wodehouse were then re-elected. C219/43, pt. 2, f. 67. Both men supported Parliament during the civil war, although in the later 1640s both, and especially Wodehouse, spent long periods away from Westminster. Unlike Gawdy, Wodehouse sought readmission to the Commons after the purge of December 1648, but he probably never took his seat in the Rump.

The borough was disfranchised by the 1653 Instrument of Government. The next election was therefore not until 1659. The two men returned then both had links with the Cromwells. Robert Steward*, a barrister, was a third cousin of the late lord protector. Three years earlier that connection had helped get him elected as MP for Orkney, Shetland and Caithness, and before the result at Thetford was known, he had again been considered by government officials as a possible candidate for a Scottish seat. TSP vii. 572, 584, 613. But he had not been a slavish supporter of the protectorate in the 1656 Parliament and is likely to have been elected at Thetford in 1659 as much because of his own local connections as his kinship links. He was a resident of Barton Mills, just outside Mildenhall, ten miles to the south west of the town, and a member of the Norfolk commission of the peace. The other successful candidate, William Stane*, could not claim such connections, but had much more tangible links to the Cromwells. By 1645 at the latest Stane, a physician by training, was already one of Oliver Cromwell’s closest friends and, as a consequence, he had since then held a number of military offices, most notably as commissary-general of musters.

But Stane and Steward may not have been unopposed. Another person who probably considered standing was Philip Wodehouse*. At the two previous general elections, Wodehouse, Sir Thomas’s eldest son, had been a leading figure in the group of those critical of the protectorate who had dominated the elections for the Norfolk county seats. He is likely to have sought a seat again, especially since he had inherited the Wodehouse interests in the borough on his father’s death the previous year. Someone else who might have posed a threat to Stane and Steward was William Gawdy†, eldest son of Framlingham, who had inherited the Gawdy lands in 1654, but he seems to have stayed out of politics until after the Restoration. HP Commons 1660-1690.

The wild-card in all this was the influence of the Howards. Owing to the mental incapacity and absence in Italy of Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel and future 5th duke of Norfolk, the Howard estates were now being controlled by his younger brother, Henry. Since Henry was openly Roman Catholic, his own election was almost unthinkable and his attempts to exercise any electoral influence were highly controversial. He intervened in the contest at Castle Rising and he quite possibly also tried to influence the outcome at Thetford. However, all that is known is that the corporation chose Stane and Steward. C219/47, Thetford indenture, 14 Jan. 1659. Stane was also elected for Dumbartonshire, Argyllshire and Bute and it was not until 1 March that he waived the Scottish seat. CJ vii. 609a. The dispute over the Castle Rising election prompted the Commons to create a committee on 8 April to investigate the circumstances behind the earl of Arundel’s detention in Italy and Howard’s role in any other election to that Parliament. CJ vii. 632a. But this Parliament was dissolved later that month.

By the late 1650s both Framlingham Gawdy and Sir Thomas Wodehouse were dead, so Thetford was unrepresented in Parliament in 1659 and 1660 when first the Rump was twice recalled and later the secluded Members were readmitted.