Honiton was in the mid-1640s described as ‘a very poor built town’. Symonds, Diary, 37. When John Taylor, the ‘water-poet’, came there in 1649 he remembered the place more for the poor quality horse he was provided there than for its amenities. J. Taylor, John Taylors wandering to see the Wonders of the West (1649), 19-20 (E.573.12). A more sympathetic contemporary made out the straggling settlement, three-quarters of a mile long, to be ‘a very pretty town indifferently well builded’. W. Pole, Collns. towards a Description of the County of Devon (1791), 132-3. In the 1670s, the population was put at around 1,400, making it much smaller than Tiverton, and probably less than a quarter of the size of Exeter, its neighbouring parliamentary boroughs in Devon. Compton Census, 273. It was a noted centre of the trade in fabrics. A recent historian of this industry has noted how the ‘weaving skills of Honiton and adjacent parts of east Devon were more diverse than their fame as a kersey and serge region would lead one to suppose’. H.J. Yallop, The Hist. of the Honiton Lace Industry (Exeter, 1992), 19. In particular, the town was gaining recognition as a hub for the making of lace – the product known as bone lace because the bobbins were made of bone – which was dependent in turn on the manufacture of fine linen thread. Yallop, Hist. Honiton Lace Industry, 19-20. In 1638 a petition to assizes from the Honiton churchwardens and overseers of the poor complained of the influx of strangers who had come to weave lace but with no means of supporting themselves. Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 30. The origins of the Honiton bone lace industry have been located in the Elizabethan period, and despite assumptions to the contrary, no evidence of pioneering by Flemish refugees has been detected. Yallop, Hist. Honiton Lace Industry, 9, 12-18. Packs of bone lace were transported to London from Honiton in this period, along a route that was also an arterial highway for the postal service. Honiton was a postal town of note for the west country. Robert Serle of Honiton, a kinsman of Samuel Serle*, claimed to have invented the ‘certain weekly and speedy’ post there before the mid-1630s, and bitterly opposed the encroachment by Thomas Withring* on his privileges. To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses ... Arguments, or reasons humbly tendred (1640).
Honiton is said to have sent burgesses to Parliament as early as 1300, and returns have survived from 26 Edw. I, the date to which MPs of the Long Parliament were able to trace the parliamentary franchise in the town. Procs. LP i. 304n., 310, 316. Honiton and Ashburton were similar cases, both places subject to investigation in November 1640 by the committee of privileges chaired by John Maynard. CJ ii. 36b, 37a. It has been stated in nineteenth-century sources that either ‘William Pole Esq.’ or ‘Sir W. Pole’ was energetic in attempting to restore Honiton’s parliamentary privileges in 1640. D. Lysons, Magna Britannia vi. Devonshire, 280; A. Farquharson, The Hist. of Honiton (Exeter, ?1868), 9. This seems to be a conflation of William Pole and his father, Sir John Pole†. It is more plausible that Sir John rather than William Pole involved himself in the business, but it is not really likely that either did. The recovery of parliamentary representation was part of a drive by the reformers in the Long Parliament to recover seats in Devon to meet demand from would-be candidates for them. Ashburton and Honiton were linked in this campaign, both places ‘ground poor’ in the words of George Peard*. Procs. LP i. 316.
Honiton was a borough only by prescription, and had no charter. Government lay in the hands of a portreeve, a nominee of the lord of the manor who presided at the manor court, and the ecclesiastical officers of churchwardens and overseers. The manor was owned by the Courtenays of Powderham, the Honiton bells being tolled for Sir William Courtenay when he died in 1630, but Francis Courtenay had died in 1638, and the Courtenay interest played no known part in the election which took place late in 1640. Devon RO, 1639A/PW 1. Instead two members of local gentry families were returned, each on his own local interest. Walter Yonge I was seated at nearby Colyton, but owned the manor of Battishorn in Honiton, and the Pole family also owned lands in the town. Pole, Collns. 134. The first surviving return, for the ‘recruiter’ election of 1646, was made out in the name of the portreeve and the burgesses, and it may be assumed that the election return in 1640 was framed in similar terms.
Because of its location, on the main route into the far west of England, during the civil war royalist and parliamentarian forces marched through Honiton at least seven times. Yallop, Hist. Honiton Lace Industry, 31. Around 9 June 1643, supporters of Parliament were driven out by royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton*, and a year later (1 July 1644), Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex marched into the town from Axminster on the way to Cornwall, followed weeks later by the king, who stayed in Honiton on 25 July and 23 September 1644, the second occasion on his way back from the western peninsula. Bellum Civile, 46; Symonds, Diary, 37, 98. Another year on, Sir Thomas Fairfax* stayed in Honiton as the New Model army drove the royalists out of the west country to end the first civil war. Lysons, Devonshire, 281. Only after this campaign was concluded was it possible to hold a by-election at Honiton to replace William Pole who in June 1643 had been disabled from sitting further in the Parliament because of his active support for the king. Charles Vaghan of nearby Ottery St Mary and the parliamentarian treasurer in Devon, was elected on 25 June 1646 in the name of the portreeve and burgesses, although no burgesses’ names are shown on the return. C219/43/1. Vaghan is the only burgess to serve for Honiton in this period who had no estate in Honiton itself, and he probably owed his election to the work on his behalf of the Devon county committee. Both Vaghan and Yonge were victims of Thomas Pride’s* purge of the House in December 1648, leaving Honiton without direct representation. When recommendation to fill the living of Honiton rectory was made to the Rump Parliament in December 1652, it came from George Serle*, a native of the town, and the Member for Plympton Erle, Christopher Martyn. Add. 36792 f. 57.
Honiton was reduced to one seat by the terms of the Instrument of Government of December 1653. The election in July 1654, which seems to have been uncontested, secured victory for Sir John Yonge, son of Sir Walter Yonge I, an unremarkable result given the Yonge family’s property interest in the borough. The indenture differed from that of 1646 in that the electors were in 1654 not the burgesses but the inhabitants, six of them signing the return. C219/44. In 1656, Younge served as knight of the shire, leaving the Honiton seat to Samuel Serle. Serle was from the minor gentry/upper ranks of the yeomanry, but had an interest of his own in the town that was probably sufficient to account for his return without patronage. Under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice, the 1640 franchise of portreeve and burgesses was restored for the election held in January 1659. C219/46. The outcome on this occasion was an apparently amicable one by which a third generation of the Yonge family, the eldest son of Sir John Yonge, entered the House for the first time, while Serle served once more. The portreeve in 1659 was Gabriel Barnes, who had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the parliamentarian army mainly through service in the Plymouth garrison during the civil war. SP28/128, pt. 26; BL Loan 29, f. 34. Under the protection of men like Barnes and Serle, Honiton became a centre for dissent. In 1655 George Fox met there some Particular Baptists, who had probably come in from nearby parishes such as Luppitt and Upottery. Jnl. of George Fox ed. J.L. Nickalls (1952), 233; Association Records of Particular Baptists. Part Two: West Country and Ireland ed. B.R. White (1973), 75, 107. The arrangement which returned a Yonge and Serle endured for the Convention of 1660, when Sir John Yonge returned to the seat, but in 1661 the old cavaliers Sir Courtenay Pole and Peter Prideaux defeated Walter Yonge II and Sir William Waller*. The high sheriff at the 1661 elections, Sir Copleston Bampfylde*, wore a sash of Honiton lace. Yallop, Hist. Honiton Lace Industry, 62-5. Elections after 1660 seem to have been fought with a much larger turnout than is visible between 1640 and 1660.
