Hastings

Hastings, in the Bourne valley on the east Sussex coast, was one of the original Cinque Ports, and a centre for fishing and for the transport of commodities related to the iron industry, as well as a focal point of the county’s sea defences. The town’s status as a port had been declining since the middle ages, however, as Rye and Winchelsea increased in importance, and much of the commerce with which Hastings was involved appears to have been coastal. The harbour had decayed significantly by the mid-sixteenth century, attempts to raise money for repairs having proved fruitless. Fishing remained the town’s principal trade, and as late as 1641 there were over 30 vessels of between 20 and 30 tons registered in the town, but by the mid-1650s severe coastal erosion rendered the port almost without value as a trading centre. Fletcher, Suss. 189-90; VCH Suss. ix. 4, 9, 12-13.

By the terms of the 1588 charter, the government of the town lay in a mayor, elected annually in a general assembly of mayor and hereditary freemen. Those freemen paying scot and lot – probably less than 70 men – also chose the two Members which the borough had sent to Westminster since the fourteenth century. VCH Suss. ix. 10-12. In 1676 the parish of All Saints recorded 358 conformists and five non-conformists, while the parish of St Clements Hastings recorded 690 conformists and 20 non-conformists, giving a population in excess of 1,000 people, despite the town’s decline. Compton Census, 150. Such figures meant that in 1636 the town was required to pay £250 towards Ship Money, one of the highest assessments in the county. CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 196-7. Although thereafter the town appears to have been dilatory in paying its contribution, this may have been caused in part by the illness of the mayor. CSP Dom. 1637, p. 145; 1638-9, p. 7; 1639, pp. 235, 305.

Although Hastings was situated in the eastern half of Sussex, long susceptible to puritan influence, the advowsons were owned by the Catholic Browne family, viscounts Montagu of Cowdray, who installed controversial ministers like Christopher Dow and John Hinson. VCH Suss. ix. 26; Fletcher, Suss. 78, 108. Sir John Baker, who owned Hastings Priory, erected a lavish private chapel there in the late 1630s and attracted equally contentious clergy to its consecration. Cent. Kent. Studs. U24/Q9; Walker Revised, 209, 219, 222, 297. Meanwhile, the traditional local interest wielded by the lord warden of the Cinque Ports – in 1640 Theophilus Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk – was complemented by the engagement of other courtiers, notably the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†).

This formed the backdrop to a contested parliamentary election in the spring of 1640, where there were four candidates. In addition to Baker, who probably stood on his own interest, there was a second local man, Thomas Eversfield, whose staunchly puritan father had won the Hastings seat in 1624 and 1626 in opposition to the wishes of the earl of Dorset and the then lord warden, but who had himself turned his back on godly circles. HP Commons 1604-1629; VCH Suss. ix. 20. The lord warden’s principal nominee was an outsider, Robert Reade, nephew and secretary to the secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke*, who also had support from his uncle and from Dorset, as well as recommendations from these and other courtiers for three other seats. SP16/441, f. 130; SP16/442, f. 90. However, on this occasion the earl of Suffolk sought to extend his influence by nominating a second candidate in the shape of John Ashburnham, a gentlemen of the privy chamber from a long-established Sussex family, who was untainted by the suspicion of Catholic sympathy and association with unpopular royal policies which attached to Reade and Windebanke. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607; SP16/449, f. 86.

On 13 March 1640 the mayor (Thomas Barlow), six jurats and 31 freemen were present when the names of the four candidates were announced. SP16/450, f. 79. Piecing together subsequent testimonies, it appears that Baker was already regarded as likely to obtain one of the seats, despite his ceremonialist religious tastes and contentious decisions taken when he was sheriff in 1633-4. CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 471; 1635-6, pp. 465-6. On his own admission, Ashburnham did not exert himself to get the second seat, but Reade tried to squeeze him out definitively by telling the freemen that his rival would be departing imminently for Scotland with the king’s army. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607; SP16/449, f. 86. Furthermore, the earl of Dorset’s secretary, John White I*, offered the borough both money and gunpowder on Reade’s behalf. This gesture received some support, but Mayor Barlow, detecting also some opposition, adjourned the meeting. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 565; SP16/448, f. 90.

Reconvening on 17 March, the mayor and five jurats were initially joined by 30 freemen, who were called on one by one to state whether they approved of Reade’s letters of recommendation. This they did, but they refused to endorse Reade himself, whereupon the mayor threatened to report them to the lord warden. This prompted 15 freemen to walk out, according to the mayor, ‘in a rude and contemptuous manner’; despite threats of fines, they failed to return. The poll then proceeded in the presence of only 21 men, and returned Reade and Baker, with a mere four voices recorded against Reade. Hastings Museum, C/A(a)2, f. 88; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 556, 565-6; SP16/448, ff. 39; 90; SP16/450, f. 79 This almost certainly owed something to White, who had that very day been made a baron and freeman, ‘in regard of his good service (intended) for this town’. Hastings Museum, C/A(a)2, f. 88.

Three days later, however, 23 freemen brought charges that Reade had secured the seat through bribery, alleging that White had offered £20 on his behalf, as well as £10 and two barrels of powder a year. They stressed that they had not been asked directly to approve of Reade himself. CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 565-6; SP16/448, f. 90. When Sir John Baker arrived on 31 March to take his oath as a freeman, he was harangued, and pressure was also put on the town clerk. CSP Dom. 1640, p. 2; SP16/450, f. 13. The mayor and jurats, however, stood by Reade, advising him to seek assistance from the lord warden and other nobles against the refractory freemen, who had acted with support from Eversfield and Robert Underwood, a London fishmonger with a history of disputes with the town and its corporation. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 2-3; SP16/450, f. 14.

Eversfield was probably reacting against Reade’s supposed Catholicism and his attempts to bribe the corporation, rather than expressing opposition to the royal court. Ashburnham, against whom no objections were made, also had doubts about the propriety of Reade’s election, telling his friend, the later secretary of state Edward Nicholas†, that he was aware of the extravagant promises made by White and Reade to the borough. It was out of friendship rather than a belief in Reade’s innocence that Ashburnham claimed to have defended Reade in public, possibly to counteract a protest anticipated from local puritan grandee Sir Thomas Parker*. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607; SP16/449, f. 86.

To feed counter-allegations against Eversfield’s campaign, Reade took pains to gather evidence that Eversfield’s ally Robert Underwood

intermeddles in all things, sides with the discontented, [and] is bold and insolent’, and that he was ‘a great man amongst the freemen and worketh with great mischief and mutiny, scorns the mayor and jurats, [and] confronts and abuses them.

Reade claimed that Underwood had no personal interest in the town, other than as an agent of the Fishmongers’ Company, and that he had abused his privilege as a warder of the Tower of London in accusing the town clerk of having accepted the bribes offered by John White. It was also suggested that Underwood was responsible for ‘divers libels and scandalous songs have been thrown about and sung in alehouses’ against the mayor and jurats; that he was, ‘never at quiet but runs from house to house, from man to man amongst the freemen and makes parties and divisions amongst them’; and that he was the ‘main cause of the disquiet of the town, for he is very mutinous, a busy body, bold, impudent, ready to attempt, say, or do anything’. The freemen, Reade concluded, had been ‘led and stirred up by such a malicious and furious incendiary’. CSP Dom. 1640, p. 3; SP16/450, ff. 15-16.

In early April Reade received submissions from the mayor and jurats, claiming that ‘some of Mr Eversfield’s party went about privately from house to house to get hands to a writing framed … for his election’, and that ‘some of the freemen are his tenants’, who were able to ‘labour for him strongly’ at the taverns and alehouses, as well as at ‘private assemblies’. Moreover, Eversfield himself had sent three letters to the freemen over the heads of the mayor and jurats, despite being neither a baron, freeman nor inhabitant of the town, and ‘not within the compass at election’. CSP Dom. 1640, p. 12; SP16/450, ff. 77-8. He and his supporters had tried to oust the mayor and the town clerk (Thomas Reynolds), partly by questioning their role in the collection of Ship Money, and sought to replace the former with one John Brett, regarded as Eversfield’s lackey, since his great age – he was born in 1559 – made him unfit for the office. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 36, 45; SP16/450, ff. 193-4, 228.

With regard to Reade, the mayor and jurats certified that ‘there was nothing moved or offered to us that could be interpreted [as] bribery’. They admitted that ‘a friend both to us and the said Mr Reade upon occasion given him here in town made some propositions to us for the general good of the town’, but denied that this had swayed them. Nor would they ‘oblige’ Reade to keep to promises made by others on his behalf, ‘well knowing that of himself and by his relations he is able to be more beneficial to our town in other kinds’; those benefits, and the ample letters of recommendation, were the reasons they had elected him. SP16/450, ff. 79, 81.

Underwood and Eversfield probably orchestrated the petition presented to Parliament on 14 April by the freemen, who claimed that the election had not been held freely. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 17, 28; SP16/450, ff. 112, 173. The mayor counselled Reade on 20 April to petition the privy council about attempts to undermine local government and to seek further assistance from the lord warden. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 56, 68; SP16/451, ff. 14, 104. In the end, however, allegations and counter allegations yielded no result, and Reade and Baker held their seats for the brief span of the Short Parliament.

In advance of the autumn elections of 1640, it appears that both sides anticipated a re-run of the spring’s contest. Reade’s plans, evident in notes compiled around 10 October, included securing letters of recommendation ‘absolute’ from the lord warden, or failing that, ‘letters of indifferency, so as [the] election may be free’. But when the secretary to the new lord warden, James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, warned him that he could probably only expect the latter, Reade recognised that he was likely to be reliant on the earl of Dorset and John White. A complementary tactic – to proclaim that ‘burgesses ought to be barons or freemen before the time of the Parliament writ’, and that all those who were not freemen were ‘not capable of election’ – was outflanked on 10 October, when Eversfield was made a freeman at Hastings. CSP Dom. 1640-41, p. 158; SP16/469, f. 163; Hastings Museum, C/A(a)2, f. 89.

On 11 October Reade informed the mayor of his intention to stand, and sought to rebut allegations of Catholicism made by ‘some of the malicious spirits in that town’, and by men ‘of so mean condition’. He assured the mayor and jurats that he had secured a testament of his conformity from privy councillors including Archbishop William Laud, Bishop William Juxon, as well as the earls of Manchester and Arundel, Lords Goring and Newburgh, Sir Francis Windebanke, and Lord Keeper Sir Edward Littleton†. CSP Dom. 1640-41, pp. 160-61; SP16/469, ff. 169-70. On Reade’s behalf the new mayor of Hastings collected evidence regarding the persistent activity of Eversfield’s supporters, who were led once more by Robert Underwood. CSP Dom. 1640-41, p. 172. Nevertheless, Reade was unsuccessful. At the poll on 20 October John Ashburnham – evidently the lord warden’s preferred candidate – was unanimously elected by the mayor, seven jurats and 22 freemen, while Eversfield was supported by the whole body of the freemen. Hastings Museum, C/A(a)2, f. 89; Fletcher, Suss. 249-50.

Hastings played little significant part in the civil war, although Parliament probably valued its strategic position on the south coast. In the summer of 1643 a local parliamentarian activist, Harbert Morley*, sought to purge the town of those likely to support the king. On 9 July Morley and his troops arrived at Hastings with the intention of disarming all the inhabitants and removing the curate of All Saints, Mr Hinson, who was accused of reading the king’s declarations in church. Royalists alleged that one of Morley’s common soldiers preached from Hinson’s pulpit and stole his surplice, while Morley himself demanded money from the jurats and imprisoned those who refused. Morley arrested Hinson and sent him to Parliament for examination, although he subsequently escaped to Oxford. Mercurius Rusticus (1685), 161-7.

Eversfield had absented himself from Westminster by May 1643, while Ashburnham had probably joined the king at York more than a year earlier. In February 1644 both MPs were disabled from sitting in the Commons, and on 3 September 1645 the House ordered writs to be sent to Hastings for the election of their replacements. CJ iv. 263a. As elsewhere in Sussex, the recruiter election at Hastings on 3 October saw the electoral spoils shared between the two rival parliamentarian factions in the county. The ‘war party’, represented most powerfully by Harbert Morley, secured the return of Roger Gratwyke, a member of the county committee and captain of a troop of horse, who had been a jurat at Hastings since 1632. Hastings Museum, C/A(a)2, f. 63. On the other hand, in John Pelham the borough had a representative of the faction headed by Sir Thomas Parker* and Sir Thomas Pelham*, which was more closely aligned with the political Presbyterians. However, while Gratwyke was little in evidence at Westminster until the Rump, where he did participate in some committee work, John Pelham was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.

Hastings was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government, although it is not clear whether this prevented the town from securing satisfaction of its grievances, which centred on the prevalence of Ostenders and Dunkirkers off its coast, and the danger which they posed to the security of local fishermen. CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 177; SP18/124, f. 96. Restored as a two Member constituency in 1659, the borough chose men with no obvious investment in perpetuating the protectorate. One candidate returned to Westminster had been excluded from the previous Parliament: Samuel Gott was a prominent Presbyterian and published author in the Pelham circle, who had been employed as the town’s legal counsel since September 1656. Hastings Museum, C/A(a)3, unfol. The other Member was the younger brother of Thomas Delves, mayor in 1656, 1658, 1659 and 1660, whose estate was just outside the town. Hastings Museum, C/A/(a)2, ff. 91, 92v, 93; Moss, Town and Port of Hastings, 136. Nicholas Delves, a merchant with a local proprietorial interest, had played little or no part in the civil war. C219/48; Suss. Manors, i. 229.