Situated where the South Downs met the Sussex Weald, west of the River Adur, Steyning was one of the county’s many declining ports, overshadowed by New Shoreham, a few miles downstream at the mouth of the river. By the seventeenth century its economy relied on its role as a market town for the area’s arable produce. VCH Suss. vi(i). 220, 232-4. The population may be gauged from the 203 adult males who took the Protestation in 1642 and the recording of 290 conformists and ten non-conformists in the 1676 Compton census. West Suss. Protestation Returns, 164-7; Compton Census, 145. In the early 1660s, between 51 and 66 households were listed as being liable to pay the hearth tax. E179/368/1; E179/258/17/9, ff. 1-2; E179/258/14, ff. 38-9.
Steyning originally returned Members with its near neighbour, Bramber, but from 1453 each was able to send two representatives to Parliament. The franchise was extended to those paying scot and lot; the constable, elected annually, acted as returning officer. VCH Suss. vi, pt. 1, 240. The manor and borough, granted in 1562 to Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, were forfeited after his attainder a decade later, and although Thomas Howard, 14th or 21st earl of Arundel, regained much family property in Sussex in the 1620s, he was unable to reassert electoral patronage here. The borough had become dominated by gentry families and local figures – the Shirleys of Wiston, the Bishoppes, Sir Thomas Farnefold† and Sir Edward Fraunceys†, who was a member of the household of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland. HP Commons 1604-1629. Fraunceys was also a trustee for the Leedes family, who were seated at nearby Wappingthorne and whose head was one of 11 reputed recusants in the town in the 1620s. VCH Suss. vi, pt. 1, 244 However, contributing to the complexity of the constituency, the grammar school, founded in 1614, was probably puritanically inclined, and in the early 1640s the town contained at least one reported Anabaptist, Mr Benbrick, who at the death in 1642 of the vicar, Leonard Stalman, somehow secured the living for one Robert Childes, a coachman. Fletcher, Suss. 69-70; Sawyer, ‘Procs. CPM Suss.’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxvi. 139-40; Clergy of the C. of E. database.
In the spring election of 1640 the first seat went to Sir John Leedes*, a minor gentleman of the privy chamber, who had eschewed his family’s Catholicism and who had twice sat for other Sussex boroughs during the reign of James I. C219/42ii/34. Although he had been close to the 3rd earl of Northumberland, his relationship to the 4th earl (Algernon Percy†) is unclear, and he may have been returned with the assistance of his old family friend, and trustee, the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†). APC 1630-1, p. 397; SP16/191, f. 74; SP16/203, f. 51; SP16/210, f. 74; SP16/220, f. 92; SP16/250, f. 165; W. Suss. RO, QR/W25; Household Pprs. of Henry Percy ed. G. R. Batho (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. xciii), 120, 157. The second seat went to Sir Thomas Farnefold, another local man, who served as a gentleman pensioner, and an usher of the court of wards. Farnefold, who had once successively been the ward of both Sir Thomas Leedes and the earl of Dorset, had already represented Steyning in 1624, 1625, and 1628, and was probably returned on the basis of his own interest. W. Powell Breach, ‘Farnefold of Steyning’, Suss. Arch. Coll. lix. 88, 97-100; C142/311/115; C142/325/196; WARD9/162, f. 77v; W. Suss. RO, Add. MS 3137; Suss. Manors, i. 202. Both he and Sir John Leedes may have sought election at least partly for the protection it offered Members from their creditors; neither made any visible impact on the proceedings of the Short Parliament.
At the autumn elections of 1640, three returns were made for the two seats. C219/43/3/4. Sir Thomas Farnefold was again returned. The earl of Dorset had sought to ensure a seat for his eldest son, Richard Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, by getting him returned both at Steyning and at East Grinstead, the borough traditionally most amenable to Sackville influence. Buckhurst was named to the privileges committee on 6 November, before the matter of his election had been resolved. CJ ii. 21a. Three days later he opted to sit for East Grinstead, where his election was ratified on 16 November. CJ ii. 23a, 30a; D’Ewes (N), 36. Sir John Leedes had evidently made way for his eldest son Thomas Leedes, who perhaps enjoyed some support from the earl of Northumberland; one of the earl’s clients, Christopher Lewkenor*, had assisted his career a few years earlier. MTR ii. 857. Nevertheless, despite Buckhurst’s choice on 9 November, doubt over Leedes’s election appears to have persisted until 15 February 1641, when it was decided that Leedes would occupy the seat until the election was determined; a confirmation that may never have taken place. CJ ii. 86a; D’Ewes (N), 361.
Steyning gained no visible advantage from either of its representatives in the Long Parliament. Apparently preoccupied by personal problems, Sir Thomas Farnefold made such a slight impression on the House that Sussex assessment commissioners in July 1643 seemed not to realise he was a Member. CCAM 190; SP19/90, ff. 35-40. Having kept an equally low profile locally during the civil war, he died in March 1644. C142/710/40; PROB11/192/153. Leedes, on the other hand, after making very little contribution to Commons proceedings prior to the outbreak of civil war, was named to the commission of array in Sussex and then took an active part in the king’s cause. Northants. RO, FH 133, unfol. Participation in the attempt to seize Chichester for Charles I in November 1642 led to his being expelled from the House, along with his friend Christopher Lewkenor. HMC Portland, i. 72–3; Add. 18777, f. 68v; CJ ii. 860b; Perfect Diurnall no. 24 (21-28 Nov. 1642), n.p. (E.242.27).
As part of the Commons’ drive to recruit Members to fill vacant seats, a writ was issued on 12 September 1645 for the election of two burgesses at Steyning. CJ iv. 272a. On election day, 12 October, the first place went to Edward Apsley, whose uncle, Henry Apsley†, had represented the borough in 1589. C219/43ii/210, 212; HP Commons 1558-1603. Apsley’s family had become well-connected at court in the early seventeenth century, and had close ties to Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset. W. H. Blaauw, ‘Apsley manuscripts of the seventeenth century’, Suss. Arch. Coll. iv. 221-5; Letters of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia ed. L.M. Baker (1953), 44-5, 67; ‘Sir Albertus Morton’, Oxford DNB; C142/436/37; C54/2628/22; C54/2894/12. Edward himself had given no obvious sign of disaffection to the policies of the personal rule of Charles I and, prevented from standing for Parliament in spring 1640 by his office as sheriff, had collected nearly half of the Ship Money assessment. C181/5, f. 70; C192/1; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 377; PC2/51, f. 124; Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Suss.’, 57-9. Yet although most of his immediate relatives were royalists, Apsley supported Parliament during the civil war, both militarily and on the county committee. A Catalogue of the Names, 11; CJ ii. 931a; iii. 156a, 173a; SP19/90, f. 40. It was probably his associates there – members of the ‘war party’ like Harbert Morley* and Anthony Stapley I* – who helped to secure Apsley’s return for Steyning. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 198, 202; CJ iii. 607a, 646a; Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Suss.’, 57-9; SP23/176, p. 211; Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-5. However, the electoral spoils were probably shared with more moderate parliamentarians. Herbert Board, who took the other seat, had Morley for a cousin and trustee, but in political terms he appears to have been closer to the political Presbyterianism of Sir Thomas Pelham*. SP23/169, p. 459; Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 493; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 61, 66, 72, 76, 119, 145; E. Suss. RO, QR/E66; ASSI35/85/1. Board died in July 1648, and although a new writ was ordered on 20 September and issued on 5 October for the election of a replacement, none took place. C231/6, p. 122; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 15; Comber, Suss. Genealogies Ardingly, 23; CJ vi. 24a. During the Rump Steyning was represented by Apsley alone until his death in October 1651. Add. 5698, ff. 251, 253; PROB11/218/629; E. Suss. RO, SAS/D310. He made a very modest visible contribution to proceedings.
Thereafter, the town was disenfranchised under the terms of the Instrument of Government and sent no burgesses to Westminster until the 1659 Parliament, when it was restored as a two-Member borough. Steyning thereupon returned Anthony Shirley* and Sir John Trevor I*. Shirley was descended from a cadet branch of the Wiston family which had proved so powerful in Steyning elections in the early part of the seventeenth century, but owed his status in the county to his connection with Sir Thomas Pelham* and, after the latter’s death in 1654, probably to the combined, if distinct, influences deployed by his father-in-law, the Surrey grandee Sir Richard Onslow*, and Major-general William Goffe*. Shirley had sat for Arundel in 1654 and, being regarded favourably by Goffe despite his closeness to Onslow, was endorsed by the major-general in 1656 both at Arundel and for the county (where he was duly elected). PROB11/234/170; SP28/181, unfol.; Brighton, Preston Manor, ES/ET/47; Add. 39483, f. 296; TSP iv. 161, 190. Part of Goffe’s motivation for supporting Shirley had been to prevent Harbert Morley, the leading opponent of the protectorate, from securing a place for his father-in-law, Sir John Trevor, perhaps with assistance from John Fagge*, who lived nearby. TSP v. 341. That in 1659 Shirley and Trevor were elected together suggests that Steyning again succumbed to the influence of competing factions within the county, although by this date there was a measure of alliance between them for the purposes of combating the protectorate, or at least its backers in the army.
