Taunton

A fair and pleasant town this is, I assure you, whether you consider the largeness of it, the beauty of the streets and market place, having springs of the most sweet water continually running through them, or the sweet situation, or the rich soil; for in these three respects, it equals, if not surpasses, any town in this county; is also for frequency of trading, which most consists in woollen cloths and stuff, and the Saturday market, which is so great that notwithstanding divers other little market towns are round about it, that an honest and sufficient townsman hath ascertained me, it is constantly served by 140 butchers, and indeed the town is the chief in the whole county setting aside the cities. T. Gerard, Particular Description of the Co. of Som. ed. E.H. Bates (Som. Rec. Soc. xv), 56.

Located on the River Tone with good access to the Bristol Channel, Taunton dominated the economy of southern Somerset. As Gerard noted, its wealth was based on woollen manufacturing. It had since the fourteenth century also been the county town. Much of the town centre comprised the manor of Taunton and Taunton Dean, part of the estates of the bishop of Winchester, whose castle was its major landmark. Its structures of civic government were much more recent, however, for rule by a bailiff appointed by the bishop had been replaced in 1627, under a new royal charter, by a more conventional corporation, consisting of a mayor, two aldermen, 11 other capital burgesses and ten inferior burgesses. J. Toulmin, Hist. of Taunton (Taunton, 1822), 278, 280. But that charter had not altered the very wide parliamentary franchise, which allowed all resident men not receiving alms to take part in elections for its MPs.

In the first of the 1640 elections, held on 25 March, two members of the local gentry were returned. C219/42, pt. 2, f. 10. The Portmans had been one of the leading families in the area for centuries and their seat, Orchard Portman, lay just to the south of the town. Two of the Portman brothers, Sir Henry† and Sir Hugh†, had sat as MPs for Taunton during the 1620s. Now that all his brothers were dead, Sir William Portman* was the obvious choice. The other MP, Roger Hill I*, was related to William Hill of Poundisford (father of Roger Hill II*), another of the major landowners in the vicinity, and Roger I had probably previously served as mayor of the town.

Later that year Portman was re-elected. This time the other candidate was another former mayor, George Serle*. During his year of office, Serle had insulted one of the townsmen, Robert Browne, brother of John Browne I* and one of Portman’s relatives. In 1639 Browne had successfully sued Serle in the high court of chivalry and Serle had already petitioned the Short Parliament against that decision. Cases in the High Court of Chivalry 1634-1640 ed. R.P. Cust and A.J. Hopper (Harl. Soc. n.s. xviii), 33; HMC 4th Rep. 25. Serle’s immediate purpose in standing may therefore have been to obtain a platform from which to continue this campaign. He was only allowed to take his seat on 6 November after the Commons had decided against barring him on the grounds that Taunton had recently experienced an outbreak of the plague. CJ ii. 21a-b.

The civil war devastated Taunton. In the summer of 1643 Sir Ralph Hopton* set out to seize Somerset for the king. In early June Edward Popham*, commander of the parliamentarian forces defending the town, judged it more prudent to withdraw and so, left defenceless, the town surrendered to Hopton on 5 June. A year later Robert Blake* and Sir Robert Pye II* were entrusted by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, with the task of recapturing it for Parliament. The royalist garrison capitulated to them on 10 July 1644 after a short siege. But this was only the beginning of the town’s sufferings. Over the next year a succession of royalist officers attempted to overwhelm Blake. Each time Blake resisted, although each time defeat seemed a real possibility. First, Sir Edmund Wyndham* laid siege in the autumn of 1644. He withdrew in December only in the face of the relieving force under James Holborne and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*. The following spring Lord Goring (George Goring*), Sir John Berkeley* and Sir Richard Grenville† resumed the siege. This culminated in the full-scale onslaught on the town by Hopton on 8 May. Over three days Hopton fought his way into the town centre, forcing Blake to withdraw into the castle. Then, on 11 May, the arrival of parliamentarian forces under Ralph Weldon* persuaded Hopton to withdraw. Blake had been saved at the last minute, but much of the town was a smouldering ruin. Even then the danger was not passed, as several weeks later Goring attempted a third siege.

Portman had supported the king and in January 1644 attended the Oxford Parliament. He was therefore expelled from the Commons by the Westminster Parliament on 5 February 1644. CJ iii. 389b. He died the following year while being held as a prisoner by Parliament. Soon after, on 25 September 1645, as part of a general move to fill the various Somerset vacancies, the Commons ordered that a by-election be held at Taunton to replace him. CJ iv. 286b. The new county committee, presided over by John Pyne*, now made sure that one of their trusted candidates was elected for that seat. They put forward John Palmer*, a physician in the town who had become one of Pyne’s closest political associates. The Taunton by-election was one of those which had not yet been held by 27 January 1646, when the Commons criticised the sheriff, Sir John Horner*, for his lack of urgency in making those returns. CJ iv. 420a. Palmer, who may then have been elected unopposed, had taken his seat by the middle of May. CJ iv. 545b.

Three years later Palmer became warden of All Souls, Oxford. But he did not neglect his constituency. One measure he supported, quite possibly the most important he promoted during his time in the Commons, was of direct benefit to Taunton. Portman’s estates had been sequestered, so in 1648 his widow petitioned Parliament for permission to compound. The Commons granted her that permission on 10 June, on condition that the fine should be ‘bestowed upon the town of Taunton towards recompense of their great losses and sufferings for their eminent faithfulness to the Parliament.’ CJ v. 592a. This order was confirmed on 6 September 1649, when six Somerset MPs, including Palmer and Serle, were given powers to distribute this money. The plan was to rebuild everything damaged in 1645. Palmer then informed the Commons that, with additions from the confiscated estates of Sir John Stawell* and Sir Francis Doddington, this fund would amount to £10,000. The Commons responded by increasing that sum to £12,000. CJ vi. 291b; CCC 150, 614. By the Restoration only £414 of this remained unspent. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 63. This huge injection of cash worked, for the town’s recovery seems to have been swift. By 1662, when William Schellinks visited, it was ‘a nice and large market town and one of the most beautiful of this country’, with ‘long, wide streets, full of shops and spacious market places, graceful high towers etc.’ William Schellinks Jnl. 110. One other change of significance occurred in this period: in 1648 Parliament sold the expropriated manor of Taunton and Taunton Dean to Brampton Gurdon*, the MP for Sudbury, whose connection with the town derived from the fact that his daughter Abigail was married to Roger Hill II. Toulmin, Hist. of Taunton, 48-50. However, Gurdon appears to have played no part in the town’s electoral politics as a result of this interest.

The town retained both its seats under the 1653 Instrument of Government. At the election in 1654, neither Serle nor Palmer seems to have stood. Serle may well have felt that his 12-year stint in the Long Parliament had been long enough. The town instead turned to two brothers, who were probably already making a mark in the town’s civic politics. Thomas* and John Gorges* were the sons of a Somerset gentry family who had fought for Parliament during the civil war; they had both since held county office. Moreover, although the evidence for this dates only from a year later, Thomas, a professional lawyer, may already been the town’s recorder, while his brother may already have been one of the capital burgesses. QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 298. They were also emerging as strong supporters of the protectorate. The election took place on 8 July 1654. The return was made in the names of 192 of the burgesses. C219/44, pt. 2.

The 1656 election might simply have been a re-run of the previous one, except that when it was called that summer, John Gorges was serving as the mayor of Taunton. Barred from standing there, where he would have been his own returning officer, he was forced instead to seek one of the county seats. However, the Taunton electors did not have to look far to find a candidate to pair with Thomas Gorges. Blake, the hero of the defence of Taunton during the civil war, was now, as general-at-sea, a national figure. This was a chance for the town to express its gratitude. Blake’s absence abroad fighting the Spanish seems not to have mattered to the Taunton voters and he was elected anyway. Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 74. He then never actually sat as their MP. By the time he returned in August 1657, Parliament had been prorogued and, in any case, he died offshore without setting foot again in England. The brief second session of the 1656 Parliament in early 1658 was too short for there to be time for the Commons to order a by-election to replace him.

The 1659 contest, held to elect the MPs to sit in Richard Cromwell’s* only Parliament, seemed particularly open. Blake and Serle were dead, while John Gorges was also out of the running: as an army officer serving in Ireland he was elected for one of the Irish seats. Thomas Gorges, on the other hand, stood for re-election. The availability of the second seat also tempted Palmer, who was still master of All Souls, to re-enter Taunton politics. Although he had performed abysmally in the 1656 poll for the county seats and had recently been dismissed from the commission of the peace, he too hoped that his old constituency would re-elect him. With him stood his kinsman, Richard Bovett, who, like Palmer, had been closely associated with John Pyne* in county politics over the years. A fourth possibility also emerged, probably late in the day. Although only aged in his mid-twenties, William Wyndham* was already an experienced MP, having sat for the county in the previous Parliament. That option was not available this time, but if Wyndham wanted a borough seat instead, he seems not to have put his name forward at Taunton. The day after the election, the mayor, Hugh Gunston, wrote to him informing him that he had been elected; the implication was that this news would be unexpected. Som. RO, DD/WY/20/63. Gunston had played a crucial role in other ways as well. As returning officer, he had also openly supported Gorges and, according to their opponents, he was happy to manipulate the election for the benefit of his two favoured candidates. Gunston would be accused of ‘translating the poll from one place to another’ without consulting Palmer and Bovett in order to ‘discourage them from prosecution of their right in electing’. He was also alleged to have refused to accept votes from some of their supporters. CJ vii. 625a. Whatever the truth of these claims, Gunston declared Wyndham and Gorges as the victors and made a return declaring them the new MPs. All Palmer and Bovett could do was to organise a rival indenture. They then petitioned Parliament against the result.

The committee for privileges and elections heard the case over two days some weeks after the new Parliament had assembled. Its recommendation, as reported to the House by Thomas Scot I* on 4 April 1659, was that, despite claims that Palmer and Bovett had more supporters, Wyndham and Gorges had been properly elected. The Commons agreed. But this was not quite the end of the matter. Gunston had submitted his own petition, evidently raising some point relating to the election, and it was proposed that this be read to the House. Wyndham and Gorges, newly-confirmed as MPs, now acted as tellers for the opposite sides in the division on whether to hear it, with Wyndham siding with the majority for the affirmative. Having heard the petition, the Commons resolved that Gunston should instead seek his redress in the law courts. CJ vii. 624b-625a. Later that year Palmer enthusiastically resumed his place as MP for Taunton when the Rump was recalled. The subsequent electoral history of the town echoed earlier times – Wyndham and Thomas Gorges sat in the Convention of 1660, while Portman’s son, Sir William†, sat regularly for the town from 1661 until his death in 1690.