Situated in the far eastern corner of Northamptonshire, on the county’s borders with Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, early Stuart Peterborough lay on the western fringes of the Great Level fen, close to where the Great North Road crossed the River Nene. VCH Northants. ii. 424. It had been raised to the status of a city at the Reformation, when the Benedictine abbey that had controlled the old town since medieval times had been reconstituted as a cathedral in 1541. HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Peterborough’. Although described in the Restoration period as a city ‘of no great extent, having but one parish church, besides its cathedral’, it was nevertheless ‘a place of some account and trade; and the rather by reason of the episcopal see here seated and its market, which ... is well served with provisions’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 176. According to the 1670 hearth tax returns the city contained approximately 600 households, suggesting a population of about 2,700. E179/157/446, mm. 29d-30d.
Henry VIII had granted both the manor and liberty of Peterborough to the dean and chapter, and with them had come ‘powers of local government not usually exercised by dignitaries of the church’. Indeed, the dean of Peterborough would become ‘a permanent quasi-mayor’ and was usually addressed in customary mayoral manner as ‘right worshipful’. Eliz. Peterborough ed. W.T. Mellows and D.H. Gifford (Northants. Rec. Soc. xviii), pp. xxiii, xxv, xxvii-xxviii, xxxiii; Foundation of Peterborough Cathedral ed. W.T. Mellows (Northants. Rec. Soc. xiii), p. xxiv. During Elizabeth’s reign a body of 14 feoffees, or trustees, chosen from the most ‘honest, substantial and discreet’ citizens, had been created to administer lands and property in public ownership; but, as the privy council acknowledged in 1637, ‘the principal power of government and managing of the affairs of that city’ remained in the hands of the dean and chapter. PC2/48, f. 166; VCH Northants. ii. 428; Peterborough Local Admin. ed. W.T. Mellows (Northants. Rec. Soc. ix), intro. passim. Peterborough had first sent Members to Parliament in 1547, and the electorate consisted of the householders in the city and the cathedral precincts paying scot and lot. Bridges, Northants. ii. 539; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Peterborough’. In the absence of a corporation and the usual municipal officeholders, the role of returning officer at parliamentary elections was performed by the high bailiff of the city, who was appointed by the dean and chapter. Eliz. Peterborough, pp. xxv, xxvii; Foundation of Peterborough Cathedral, p. lxviii; HP Commons 1558-1603.
Despite the dean and chapter’s extensive powers in Peterborough, the cathedral interest had not intervened significantly in the city’s parliamentary elections since the mid-sixteenth century. Peterborough’s principal electoral patrons during the 1620s had been the Fane family of Apethorpe Hall, about ten miles west of the city, and the Cecils of Burghley, who had purchased the liberty of Peterborough in the 1570s. HP Commons 1509-1558, HP Commons 1558-1603, HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Peterborough’. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, the voters returned David Cecil – nephew and doubtless candidate of William Cecil†, 2nd earl of Exeter – and William Fitzwilliam, whose family had enjoyed an electoral interest in the city since the 1550s. Infra, ‘David Cecil’; ‘William Fitzwilliam’. The election indenture was signed by about 20 individuals. C219/42/1/160.
Cecil succeeded his uncle as 3rd earl of Exeter in July 1640, creating a vacancy – and a contest – at Peterborough in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn. On 22 October, the voters were united in returning Fitzwilliam in first place, but divided between Sir Robert Napier and Anthony Fane for the second place, and the result was a double return. The two election indentures – now badly faded – were each signed by what appears to have been at least 50 individuals. C219/43/2/74-5. The son of Francis Fane, 1st earl of Westmorland, who had been MP for Peterborough in 1624, Anthony Fane would die fighting for Parliament in the civil war (his widow married Henry, Lord Grey of Ruthin*). E. Brydges, Collins’s Peerage of England, iii. 294-5. Napier, a future royalist, owned lands in Northamptonshire, but the basis of his electoral interest at Peterborough is not known. Infra, ‘Sir Robert Napier’. Nor is it clear whether this division within the city’s electorate related primarily to local or national issues. The case was reported to the Commons by the committee of privileges on 9 November and again 6 January 1641, whereupon the House resolved that Fitzwilliam should sit but that Napier and Fane should forbear to do so ‘until their election be decided’. There is the suggestion in the parliamentary diary of Sir Simonds D’Ewes that the ‘right of election’ was at issue in this dispute – and assuming that this was indeed the case then perhaps the likeliest cause of electoral controversy would have been an attempt by either Fane’s or Napier’s supporters to exclude voters residing in the cathedral precincts. CJ ii. 23a, 63b; Procs. LP ii. 124. On 4 February, another report was made concerning the Peterborough election, following which the House agreed with the committee that Napier’s election was good and that he should be admitted accordingly. CJ ii. 78b; Procs. LP ii. 366.
Neither of Peterborough’s MPs distinguished themselves during the civil war. Fitzwilliam seems to have abandoned his seat – if not necessarily the parliamentarian cause – after 1643 and was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648. Napier apparently withdrew from the Commons early in 1642, and although he seems to have been a lukewarm royalist he avoided being ejected from the House until he, too, was secluded at Pride’s Purge, leaving Peterborough without formal representation in the Rump. Infra, ‘William Fitzwilliam’; ‘Sir Robert Napier’. There is no firm evidence as to the political loyalties of the majority of the city’s inhabitants during the war. In the spring of 1643, Peterborough was seized in rapid succession by first the royalists and then by parliamentarian troops under Oliver Cromwell*, who proceeded to ransack the cathedral. Mercurius Aulicus no. 17 (23-9 Apr. 1643), 218 (E.101.10); C. Holmes, Eastern Assoc. 72. Following the collapse of episcopal authority in Peterborough and throughout the kingdom in the early 1640s, much of the dean and chapter’s role in civic government was apparently assumed by the city’s feoffees, who in 1658 were re-constituted as ‘governors’. Peterborough Local Admin. ed. Mellows, 236.
Under the 1653 Instrument of Government, the city’s parliamentary representation was reduced to one Member, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament, in the summer of 1654, a contest developed for this remaining seat between two of the city’s leading residents, Humphrey Orme and Alexander Blake. Orme’s family had been established in Peterborough since Tudor times, and he and his father possessed an extensive estate in and around the city, much of it formerly leased from the now abolished dean and chapter. Having been omitted from the commission of peace for the liberty of Peterborough in 1650, he had been restored in June 1654, just a month or so before the election. Infra, ‘Humphrey Orme’. Blake, a godly former army officer, appears to have had no connection with the city until his purchase, in about 1649, of the lease of the sequestered deanery of Peterborough. Infra, ‘Alexander Blake’. On election day, 6 July, the contest between the two men went to a poll in which Orme prevailed and was returned by an indenture to which at least 145 ‘citizens and inhabitants’ were named as parties and signed their names accordingly. C219/44, unfol.
Orme’s victory was disputed by Blake’s supporters, however, and his omission from the liberty of Peterborough bench a few weeks later suggests that Whitehall, too, regarded his election as of questionable legitimacy. C181/6, p. 37. In mid-August 1654, seven of the Peterborough ‘well-affected’ petitioned the council of state, claiming that whereas Blake was ‘a person of known integrity, fearing God and of good conversation’, Orme had been canvassed and voted for by cavaliers and others disaffected to Parliament and was himself a crypto-royalist, disrespecter of the sabbath, tavern brawler, hard drinker and ‘profane swearer’. They alleged that Orme’s ‘party’ had opposed the reading of the Instrument on election day and that one of his supporters had ‘thrust down the bailiff from his stool when he stood up to read the same’. SP18/74/87-90, ff. 184, 186, 188-9; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313; Fenland N and Q iv. 99-100. They also cited the polling of a
great number of disaffected persons, strangers and others ...[not qualified to vote under the Instrument]... as also the undue proceeding of the bailiff, who, as we are now informed, had no right to execute the writ and refused to take any of their votes that did live within the minster close, although they are known to be persons of integrity and within the qualifications for election, whereby the said Major Blake had somewhat the less number [on the poll]. SP18/74/87, f. 184.
The petitioners requested that the council uphold Blake’s return ‘if the whole election be thought legal, and if not, that a writ may issue out for a new choice’. SP18/74/87, f. 184. The case was referred to the council’s committee for elections, but whether it was resolved during the life of this Parliament is not known. CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313. It had been Blake, not Orme, who had been named for Peterborough on a list of Members purportedly approved by the council before Parliament had assembled. Severall Procs. of State Affaires, 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22). But there is no evidence that either man attended the House.
In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Blake was returned for Northamptonshire, and his place at Peterborough was taken by Francis St John – the son and heir of Lord Chief Justice Oliver St John*, whose proprietorial interest as the owner of a newly-built mansion at Thorpe Hall in the adjacent village of Longthorpe was doubtless augmented by his considerable influence at Whitehall. Infra, ‘Francis St John’. Peterborough regained its second seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, which saw the return on 4 January 1659 of Francis St John and Blake. There were 25 signatories to the election indenture, headed by Orme as city bailiff. C219/47, unfol.
In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Orme was returned unopposed, but there was a double return for the second seat between Charles Fane, Lord le Despenser, and St John. After receiving allegations that St John had secured his return only as a result of tampering with the voters roll and sharp practice by the bailiff, the Commons unseated him in favour of Fane. HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Peterborough’.
