Clitheroe was one of northern England’s smallest and most isolated boroughs. Nestled in the Ribble Valley on the road from Preston into Yorkshire via the Craven Gap, it commanded (at that time) neither a crossing of the river nor a site of any great strategic importance. W.S. Weeks, Clitheroe in the Seventeenth Century (Clitheroe, 1927), 7; VCH Lancs. vi. 360. According to Richard Blome, writing in the 1670s, it was known only for its ‘white-lime’ and its castle. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 133. The town’s economy rested mainly upon quarrying and lime-burning and the sale and processing of agricultural produce, with a ‘good market on Saturdays for cattle, yarn and provisions’. Blome, Britannia, 133; VCH Lancs. vi. 361; Weeks, Clitheroe, 5, 36-7, 50-1, 55-7. According to the 1664 hearth tax returns, Clitheroe contained 117 households, which suggests an overall population of somewhere between five and six hundred. E179/250/11, pt. 3; Weeks, Clitheroe, 5, 6, 10.
A borough by prescription rather than incorporation, Clitheroe was governed by an ‘in-bailiff’ and ‘out-bailiff’, who were elected annually at an assembly of the burgesses (the owners of the town’s 102 burgage-tenements) and the freemen – that is, those who occupied burgages as tenants. The in-bailiff was chosen from among the in-burgesses – those residents who owned burgages – and the out-bailiff from the local gentry among the out-burgesses (non-residents who owned burgages). Assisting the work of the bailiffs were the ‘brethren’ – an informal body of 12 aldermen (i.e. former in-bailiffs), who were elected by the in-burgesses. The bailiffs held court leets twice a year and also presided over an annual court of inquiry. The jury of burgesses and freemen sworn at the court of inquiry exercised an important supervisory role over the town’s affairs, acting effectively as a common council. VCH Lancs. vi. 368; Weeks, Clitheroe, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13-15, 19-20, 21.
Clitheroe had first sent Members to Parliament in 1559, having been granted the franchise probably through pressure from the duchy of Lancaster. Weeks, Clitheroe, 220; R.C.L. Sgroi, ‘The electoral patronage of the duchy of Lancaster, 1604-28’, PH xxvi. 311. The franchise was vested officially in the burgesses, although in the election to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640 it seems (for reasons unknown) that the freemen were also admitted to vote, just as they did at the election of bailiffs. No burgess or freeman was allowed to vote before their status had been formally recognised by the borough jury. VCH Lancs. vi. 368; Weeks, Clitheroe, 10, 20, 298, 299. The borough’s affairs were dominated by the local gentry, who owned most of the burgage-tenements. Moreover, the out-bailiff took precedence over his residential colleague, the in-bailiff. Weeks, Clitheroe, 12; M.A. Mullett, ‘‘Men of known loyalty’: the politics of the Lancs. borough of Clitheroe, 1660-89’, NH xxi. 109; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 52-3. The returning officers were the two bailiffs. Weeks, Clitheroe, 230.
During the period 1604-29, Clitheroe generally accepted nominees of the chancellor of duchy of Lancaster for one of the town’s parliamentary seats and occasionally for both. HP Commons, 1604-29. This pattern changed, however, in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640. On 20 March 1640, the town returned two local gentlemen – Richard Shuttleworth II and Raphe Assheton I, in that order. C219/42/2/144. It is not known whether the duchy nominated a candidate in this election, but if so there is no evidence to suggest that it was either Shuttleworth or Assheton. Shuttleworth’s father, Richard Shuttleworthe I*, had narrowly missed out on securing a seat at Clitheroe in the 1628 election, in which he had stood in opposition to the duchy candidate. Weeks, Clitheroe, 227; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Clitheroe’. He may have owned the town’s mill and certainly at least one of the burgages, for he had been elected an out-bailiff in 1616, 1619 and, crucially, in 1639 – and was therefore one of the returning officers on 20 March 1640 and, as such, signed the indenture returning his son. Infra, ‘Richard Shuttleworthe I’; C219/42/2/144. Assheton was the son and heir of one of the Clitheroe area’s leading gentlemen, Sir Raphe Assheton, 1st bt. of Great Lever and Whalley and had represented the borough in the 1625 and 1626 Parliaments. Infra, ‘Raphe Assheton I’.
Assheton junior and Shuttleworthe senior had been adversaries in the 1628 election, their rivalry linked to a long-running dispute, involving a number of local gentlemen, over the management of Clitheroe grammar school. HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Clitheroe’. It is not clear whether Shuttleworth junior and Assheton were also rivals in 1640 and whether the election went to a poll, although the fact that Shuttleworth was given the senior place may be revealing, for he was junior to Assheton in both years and rank (his father was neither a baronet nor deputy lieutenant as Assheton’s was). One possible explanation for his seniority on the indenture is that the election had indeed gone to a poll and that he had received more votes than Assheton.
The election at Clitheroe for the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640 was certainly hotly contested. At least five candidates threw their hats in the ring – Shuttleworth, Assheton, Richard Lister, William White* and Guicciardini Ayloff. Lister was one of Clitheroe’s leading in-burgesses and had served as in-bailiff in 1638-9. White, who had married into the Talbot family of nearby Bashall, was a prominent out-burgess and had served alongside Lister in 1638-9. Ayloff was probably a government or duchy nominee (the two amounted to the same thing) and was certainly a carpet-bagger. Infra, ‘William White’; Weeks, Clitheroe, 229. On election day, which was at some point late in September, 57 of the burgesses and freemen gave one of their two votes to Assheton, 52 to Shuttleworth, 33 to Lister, 11 to White and three to Ayloff. None of the local candidates voted for themselves. Thus Assheton voted for Shuttleworth and White, Shuttleworth for Assheton and White, Lister for Shuttleworth and White, and White for Assheton and Lister. Lancs. RO, DDX/28/83; Weeks, Clitheroe, 229-30. The fact that Assheton’s father (a Lancashire deputy lieutenant) and the leading Catholic gentlemen Sir Thomas Walmesley† were among the three men who voted for Ayloff – who did not cast any votes and presumably was not present – supports the notion that he was the government-backed candidate. The poll-list, which is slightly damaged, reveals that either 82 or 83 of the burgesses and freemen cast their votes. HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Lancashire’. The indenture has not survived, but the evidence suggests that it was Assheton who took the senior place. C193/32, no. 18, unfol.
Both Assheton and Shuttleworth went on to side with Parliament in the civil war, and Clitheroe Castle was garrisoned by parliamentarian troops – apart from a brief period in 1644, when it was captured by royalists under Prince Rupert. Weeks, Clitheroe, 156-7. Unfortunately for Clitheroe, Assheton was excluded at Pride’s Purge, and Shuttleworth, who does not seem to have attended Parliament with any great assiduity, died in January 1649, leaving the borough without representation in the Rump. Infra, ‘Raphe Assheton I’; ‘Richard Shuttleworth II’.
Because Clitheroe was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653 and then omitted from the printed list of returns for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, several authorities have assumed that the town did not regain its seats until 1660. Weeks, Clitheroe, 231. However, there is no reason to suppose that the borough was not eager to reclaim its right to return Members, nor that it was in any way barred from doing so. Moreover, the other small Lancashire borough of Newton was likewise omitted from the 1659 lists of MPs and yet it certainly returned Members to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. Infra, ‘Newton’. The likeliest occupant of one of Clitheroe’s seats in 1659 is William White, who would be returned for the borough to the 1660 Convention (only to be unseated on petition). He certainly sat in the third protectoral Parliament, although the name of his constituency is not recorded. Infra, ‘William White’. His fellow Member in 1659 may have been Thomas Birche*, who had represented Liverpool in the Rump and in the first and second protectoral Parliaments and was Lancashire’s leading swordsman and republican by the late 1650s. He had enjoyed the patronage of the chancellor of the duchy under the Rump, John Bradshawe*, who had been restored to this office late in 1658 – in time to have exerted electoral influence at Clitheroe on Birche’s behalf. Infra, ‘Thomas Birche’,‘John Bradshawe’.
One of the central issues in the disputed return for Clitheroe to the 1660 Convention was the nature of the borough’s franchise. Both White and the man elected with him, Raphe (now 2nd bt.) Assheton, claimed that the franchise was vested in those of the burgesses and freemen who had been formally admitted by the borough jury – as distinct from the ‘freemen at large’ who had not been so admitted. The committee for elections, however, found in favour of White’s rival, who maintained that the franchise was limited to the burgage-holders. Infra, ‘William White’; Weeks, Clitheroe, 297, 298-9; HP Commons 1660-90; Mullett, ‘Borough of Clitheroe’, 112-13, 114. Granted the honour of Clitheroe in 1662, the duke of Albemarle (George Monck*) was able to establish a strong electoral interest in the borough at the expense of the duchy of Lancaster. HP Commons 1660-90.
