The name said it all. For countless centuries hot water, which had fallen as rain thousands of years earlier in the Mendips, had bubbled up through the underlying limestone mantle at three points close together within a bend of the River Avon. B. Cunliffe, Roman Bath Discovered (2004), 10-12. This is what had attracted the earliest settlers to the site and what had brought innumerable visitors there in every intervening century. Bath in the mid-seventeenth century was very different from the Aquae Sulis of the Romans or its eighteenth-century re-creation. But the three springs – the King’s Bath, the Cross Bath and the Hot Bath – were no less central to its prosperity. It was already dependant on the tourists who came there in large numbers to bathe in those baths. Royal visits by Anna of Denmark in 1613 and 1615 and by Charles I in 1628 could even be said to have made it fashionable. Large-scale growth was all in the future, however. At this date it was still almost entirely confined by the surviving medieval walls. In 1628 Tobias Venner, a Bath physician who was keen to publicise the city’s attractions, had described it as
a little well-compacted city, and beautified with very fair and goodly buildings for the receipt of strangers. Although the site thereof, by reason of the vicinity of hills, seem not pleasant, being almost environed with them; yet for goodness of air, nearness of a sweet and delectable river, and fertility of soil, it is pleasant and happy enough; but for the hot waters that boil up even in the midst thereof, it is more delectable and happier, than any other of the kingdom. T. Venner, The Baths of Bathe (1628), 1.
Visiting in 1654, John Evelyn reported that Bath was ‘entirely built of stone’, a reference to the local oolitic limestone that was one of its best known exports, but found the streets ‘narrow, uneven and unpleasant’. Evelyn Diary ed. De Beer, iii. 102. In his more famous account of his visit 14 years later, Samuel Pepys† was similarly struck by the narrowness of the streets. Pepys’s Diary, ix. 233. Its other major source of wealth was the cloth trade, although, as elsewhere in Somerset (and indeed the rest of the country), that was by the 1630s experiencing a prolonged slump. J. Wroughton, A Community at War: The Civil War in Bath and North Som. 1642-1650 (Bath, 1992), 29-35. The local economy was inevitably overshadowed by Bath’s proximity to Bristol. Its location on the Avon just upstream from the country’s second most important port was less useful than it might have seemed, for shipping was difficult along that stretch of the river. The corporation throughout this period made repeated attempts to promote schemes to improve river navigation between the two cities. These were usually countered by opposition from Bristol. Bristol Reference Lib. Bristol MS 10160.
Since the late eleventh century Bath had also been a cathedral city, although its bishop had to be shared with the rival city of Wells. The cathedral, Bath Abbey, had been a priory dissolved at the Reformation. The priory’s substantial landed estates within the city had then been acquired by the city corporation. This created a highly unusual situation in which the corporation was the largest landowner within the city. A royal charter of 1590 had specified that the corporation should consist of a mayor, between four and ten aldermen and 20 common councilmen. Collinson, Som. i. 22-3. In this period they alone exercised the parliamentary franchise. W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva (1662), 318-20.
Earlier in the seventeenth century the Bath corporation had tended to prefer to elect townsmen and borough officials. From 1640, however, they consistently elected members of the local gentry. In the spring of 1640 one of the first men to consider standing there was Thomas Smyth I*, apparently encouraged by some of his friends on the corporation. However, since both he and Alexander Popham* preferred county seats, on 16 March 1640 he wrote to the mayor, William Chapman, indicating his interest in standing for Bath, but asking that the election there be delayed until after the county poll in case neither he nor Popham succeeded in that contest. The mayor obliged. On 30 March, Smyth was elected as a knight of the shire, but Popham lost out to Sir Ralph Hopton*. However, although the Popham estate at Hunstrete was just five miles from Bath and Alexander’s elder brother had been one of its MPs in the previous Parliament, when the city held its poll on 2 April Popham did not have a clear run. In the meantime, both Sir Charles Berkeley* and Robert Hyde* had come forward. Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 155, 156. As the corporation’s recorder, Hyde would normally have had an advantage over the other two, but he was also recorder of Salisbury and he had already been elected by that city as their MP. The Bath corporation chose to pass over him and instead favour Berkeley and Popham. C219/42, pt. 2, f. 9.
Berkeley seems not to have stood for re-election later that year, although, as there is a gap in the corporation minutes for this period, it is impossible to be sure. He was replaced by William Bassett*, whose estates at Claverton were even closer to Bath than those of the Pophams. Four years earlier Bassett had been a controversial Ship-Money sheriff for Somerset. However, any resentments between him and the Bath corporation arising from that role seem to have disappeared by October 1640. Popham was re-elected with him.
Once war had broken out in the summer of 1642, Popham played a leading role in securing control of north-east Somerset, including Bath, for Parliament. Popham’s own regiment was raised in the city and was later used to assist Sir William Waller* in the defence of the surrounding area. Bath was rightly seen as providing the forward defences for Bristol, the greatest prize in the south west. It was as a preliminary to a planned attack on Bristol that Bath came under threat from the royalists the following summer. In early July 1643 Hopton approached Bath from the south and then circled it to the east. To prevent him attacking the city from the north, Waller took up a position on Lansdown Hill. The two armies engaged on 5 July. Popham, as the commander of the Bath regiment, fought alongside Waller to prevent his constituency falling to Hopton. By forcing Waller to make a tactical retreat, the royalists were able to claim the battle of Lansdown as a victory, but Bath remained in Waller’s hands until his defeat at Roundway Down (13 July) left the city unprotected; royalist troops entered it shortly afterwards. The fall of Bristol (26 July) completed their control of the Avon valley. Sir Thomas Bridges became Bath’s new royalist governor. Not until the summer of 1645 did the parliamentarian army attempt to retake the city. On 29 July 1645 Sir Thomas Fairfax* sent a small force under Nathaniel Rich* and John Okey* to probe the royalist defences. Bridges panicked and surrendered the following morning. A Full Relation of the Takinng of Bath (1645, E.294.21); A Fuller Relation of the Taking of Bath (1645, E.294.30). Most of Somerset was already under Fairfax’s authority. Bristol was recaptured two months later. Parliamentarian control of Bath was now unchallenged.
The period of royalist rule in Bath had already cost Bassett his seat in Parliament. His decision to return to Somerset at that time appeared to confirm suspicions of his loyalty and he was expelled as an MP on 5 February 1644. CJ iii. 389b. The recapture of the city for Parliament in July 1645 now made it possible to hold a by-election. The new writ was moved on 25 September 1645. CJ iii. 286b. The corporation’s initial reaction was to offer the seat to John Harington I*. H. Harington, Nugae Antiquae (1779), ii. 248-9. Harington stood apart from the factional in-fighting dividing the county committee and appointing him would have been a convenient way of avoiding offence to either side. However, those same reasons enabled Harington to get elected for one of the two vacant county seats on 1 December 1645. No other suitable compromise candidate was available, so the Bath election eight days later became an extension of the wider divisions after all. The Pophams had sided with the dominant, more radical faction within the county, headed by John Pyne*. They now put forward Alexander’s younger brother, Edward*, as their candidate for the Bath vacancy. Against him stood James Ashe*, son of John Ashe*, who by this stage had become one of the leading anti-Pyne figures on the county committee.
The Bath corporation met on 8 December to decide between these two rival possibilities. Two important pieces of business proceeded that vote. The corporation first agreed to admit both men, as well as John Ashe, as freemen of the city. They then agreed that they would elect someone who was ‘a stranger not of the council’. This clarified that either man would be an acceptable choice. When they then voted, James Ashe won comfortably, receiving 16 voices against Popham’s three. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1631-49, p. 226. There are other hints that some on the corporation now wished to distance themselves from the Pophams. When, five months later, they wanted to ask Parliament for the local garrison to be disbanded, it was to James Ashe rather than their more experienced MP, Alexander Popham, that they turned. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1631-49, p. 239. In February 1648, when they sought a replacement for Robert Hyde as their recorder, they appointed William Prynne*, an ally of the Ashes; Harington was the other possibility they considered. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1631-49, pp. 286, 291, 296, 301. Popham and Ashe both continued to sit as the Bath MPs after the December 1648 purge. In September 1652 James Ashe replaced Prynne as the recorder. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 67. Between 1649 and 1652 the Bath corporation sought to obtain a private Act of Parliament to improve navigation on the Avon. In November 1652 they therefore lobbied both their MPs, as well as William Eyre II*, in the hope of gaining their support. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 74. Earlier that year the corporation had even taken the step of leasing out their common land to the north west of the city for £110 in order to raise the funds needed to promote this legislation. J. Wroughton, Stuart Bath: Life in the Forgotten City, 1603-1714 (Bath, 2004), 94.
Bath was one of three Somerset constituencies which lost one of its MPs under the 1653 Instrument of Government. A. and O. The next election therefore saw a contest between Popham and Ashe. This time the Popham interest proved to be stronger and it was Alexander Popham who was re-elected at the meeting of the corporation on 3 July 1654. His margin of victory – 16 votes to ten – was comfortable. The only other candidate was one of the aldermen, Matthew Clift, who received just one vote, possibly his own. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 114; C219/44, pt. 2, unfol. In the 1640s Clift, a mercer by trade, had been the most ardently pro-parliamentarian member of the corporation. Wroughton, Community at War, 50, 120, 150, 168, 170-2; Wroughton, Stuart Bath, 25-6. Quite what he hoped to gain by standing against Popham and Ashe is not clear. In these elections Popham was also chosen in Wiltshire for one of the county seats, but, when Parliament assembled that autumn, he chose to sit for Bath. CJ vii. 374b.
Popham did not stand for re-election at Bath in on 4 August 1656. It is possible that he anticipated that he would be elected 16 days later as one of the 11 Somerset county MPs, although that might have involved a bit of a gamble. Without Popham to spoil his chances, James Ashe was elected almost unopposed. The only other candidate, John Biggs, like Clift two years earlier polled only a single vote. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 157. Biggs, an innkeeper and a former mayor who held that office five times, had been another committed parliamentarian during the 1640s. Wroughton, Community at War, 25, 53, 82, 143, 145; Wroughton, Stuart Bath, 26, On 7 July 1656, a month before the election, three local gentlemen had been sworn in as freemen of the city, possibly with a view to standing for the parliamentary seat. One was Harington’s son, John Harington II*, who would successfully stand for one of the county seats. The others were Samuel Ashe and John Stocker of Chilcompton. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 156.
The Bath election for the 1659 Parliament raised no great problems. Popham again stood elsewhere and, as the old franchises had been restored, the city had regained its second parliamentary seat. Ashe was re-elected unopposed on 10 January 1659, with 27 votes, and joined by John Harington II, who received the votes of all 28 members of the corporation who were present. Presumably Ashe, as recorder, did not vote for himself. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, pp. 205-6.
On 12 May 1660, at Prynne’s prompting, the Bath corporation proclaimed Charles II as king. It fell to Biggs, serving his final term as mayor, to do so. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva, 332-4. By then Popham and Prynne were representing the city in the Convention. A month later Ashe was dismissed as the recorder to allow the reinstatement of Hyde. Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 242. Popham and Prynne were re-elected in 1661, but only after a prolonged election dispute in which Bridges, the former royalist governor, and Sir Charles Berkeley* attempted to use their pro-parliamentarian pasts against them. But Popham and, even more famously, Prynne, had since shifted their positions and they too had become supporters of the restored monarchy. However, that was not enough to prevent Prynne being removed as the recorder in 1662 by the commissioners of the Corporation Act, who also removed Clift, Biggs and ten other members of the corporation. Wroughton, Community at War, 192-3; Wroughton, Stuart Bath, 33.
The document circulating in the nineteenth century purporting to be notes by Sir John Harington II on an election at Bath in December 1646 appears to be a forgery. ‘Election expenses’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, i. 10.
