In 1640, Shrewsbury was a borough probably of around 5,000 people. W.A. Champion, ‘The Frankpledge Population of Shrewsbury 1500-1720’, Local Population Studies, xci. 56, 59-60. The liberties of the town extended four or five miles beyond the centre, which gave local gentry more of a voice in the politics of the town than they would have been entitled to in many comparable corporations. Sir W. Brereton, Travels in Holland...1634-5 ed. E. Hawkins (Chetham Soc. i), 186. Shrewsbury was the upper terminus of a lengthy water-borne transport route of which Bristol was the focus and lower extremity. With much physical effort involving human feet as well as sails and specially-designed shallow-draught boats, the trows of the Severn brought a variety of goods, dominated by bales of woollen cloth, down from Shrewsbury to the Severn riverside towns below, and brought back upstream another range of goods in which the luxury imports from Bristol were the most striking in terms of value and choice quality. Manufactured goods were beginning to appear in the cargo manifests of boats in and out of Shrewsbury. M.D.G. Wanklyn, ‘The Severn Navigation in the seventeenth century’, MH xiii. 34-58; D. Hussey, Coastal and River Trade in Pre-Industrial England (Exeter, 2000), 69; T.S. Willan, ‘The River Navigation and Trade of the Severn Valley, 1600-1750’, EcHR viii. 68-79. The river trade developed in response to economic activity which made Shrewsbury much more important than its neighbouring market towns. It was the entrepôt for a trade in cloth which included most of mid- and north Wales. In this respect, as an eastern gateway to English markets, Shrewsbury’s main rival was Chester. The members of Shrewsbury’s drapers’ company exercised authority over the Welsh cloth trade in a number of ways. They exerted control over the supply of wool from counties as far west as Merioneth; they determined the pattern of sales at Oswestry, Shrewsbury’s satellite; they regulated markets and fairs in Shrewsbury itself by their influence in the corporation; and drapers’ company members finished the production of soft Welsh cottons and did what they could to maintain their monopoly over Welsh cloth sales in London. Shrewsbury was thus both a cloth-producing town, and a significant player in markets in London and beyond, such as the Low Countries. It has been calculated that exports of Welsh cottons from London were worth up to £30,000 a year by the early seventeenth century. HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Shrewsbury’.
During the 1620s, Parliaments were an important medium for challenges to the Shrewsbury drapers’ monopoly, notably from Welsh MPs who were keen to promote ‘free trade and traffic of Welch cloths’. L. Bowen, The Politics of the Principality: Wales, c. 1603-1642 (Cardiff, 2007), 58. Not so much in the formal proceedings of Parliaments but in the informal lobbying and negotiation occurring inside and outside the palace of Westminster, the interests for and against the Shrewsbury drapers’ monopoly were marshalled. Bowen, Politics of the Principality, 61-2. The upshot of challenges to the drapers illustrated the law of unintended consequences. The trade was indeed opened up to sales in Welsh market towns, and the Shrewsbury drapers agreed only to buy cloth in their own town. But the links between the drapers and the best markets were crucial, and the freeing of the trade damaged Oswestry and the Welsh woollen industry as a whole. Bowen, Politics of the Principality, 62-3. The Shrewsbury drapers survived the challenges to their power and economic reach to remain a powerful lobby group, and the government of the borough of Shrewsbury was necessarily a subordinate body. The constituent parts of the corporation included the trade guilds, and its active membership was made up mainly of those free of the guilds, but the drapers’ company was so pre-eminent that drapers’ interests tended to dominate corporation business.
The corporation fought battles of its own during the 1630s. Some of these were internecine struggles, in which the issues blurred into one another. One of these was over the governance of the town’s imposing, successful, ‘well-ordered’ grammar school. Brereton, Travels in Holland, 186. In 1628, the corporation sought confirmation in Parliament of the school’s privileges, and the following year it backed the curate of St Chad’s, Peter Studley, in his efforts to recover tithes which had been impropriated for the use of the schoolmaster. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 1 Dec. 1628, 16 Sept. 1629. This resolution was a milestone on a long road of struggle in Shrewsbury over religion, in which corporate privileges were in fact only a symbol. The Laudian Studley, on the pretext of analysing motives behind some particularly gruesome axe murders near Bishops’ Castle, committed his attacks on puritans to print, singling out those in Shrewsbury as possessed of ‘wandering fancies’. P. Studley, The Looking-Glasse of Schisme (1635), 175. Studley’s contribution did nothing to assuage religious tensions in the town, or suppress the puritan group. Among this grouping were Humphrey Mackworth I* (the retained counsel of the town), Thomas Hunt* and Thomas Nicholls. Their clerical hero was Julines Hering, lecturer at St Alkmund’s parish in the town, who had been driven out ‘by the violence of bishops’. Add. 70106, f. 92. On the opposite side of the argument to Mackworth was the town clerk, Thomas Owen*, and ideological differences between the two deteriorated into personal abuse which in 1638 was aired in the Court of Chivalry in London. Cases in the High Court of Chivalry 1634-1640 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xviii), 175. Much of the conflict between Arminians and puritans was fought out within the corporation. Some there were in favour of a ‘preaching ministry’ in Chirbury, another place whose tithes were impropriate to Shrewsbury school. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 30 Mar., 30 Apr. 1632, 4 Feb. 1633. In 1636 there was a drive, inspired by Laudian notions of recovering what was the church’s property, to restore these tithes to Chirbury. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 27 June 1636. Curate Studley was a vigorous practical proponent of Laudian views, and ensured that St Chad’s was ‘beautified’ according to the archbishop’s edict. When Sir William Brereton* visited St Chad’s soon afterwards, he was disgusted at how it had been ‘gaudily painted, wherein you may find many idle, ridiculous, vain and absurd pictures, representations, and stories, the like whereunto I never saw in England’. Brereton, Travels in Holland, 187. Efforts by Laudians in London to recover the tithes lost to the town led to quo warranto proceedings against the town by April 1637. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 21 Apr. 1637. The corporation fought back, however, vigorously defending to the privy council Shrewsbury’s privileges and asking for a new charter. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 10 June 1637. In January 1638, the contents of the desired new charter, so far as they related to residence qualifications for aldermen, were canvassed among the burgesses, and later that year the new charter was secured, justifying the debts the corporation had incurred in lobbying for it in London. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 14 Oct. 1637, 17, 19 Jan., 30 July 1638.
Under the terms of the new charter, Shrewsbury was to have a mayor (replacing the two bailiffs of the former dispensation), 24 aldermen and 48 ‘assistants’. The assistants were the common council. There were a named recorder, steward and town clerk, the latter two posts filled by Edward Jones, father of William Jones II*, and Thomas Owen* respectively. Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 407-9. Other lesser offices were established, but the new charter added nothing to earlier privileges on the subject of parliamentary representation. When the first Parliament in 11 years was announced in 1639, there was a high level of interest among the gentry in the seats for the shire and for Shrewsbury. At a meeting on or about 10 March 1640, the gentry settled on the candidates for Shropshire, and decided that Sir Richard Lee* and Francis Newport should be the burgesses for Shrewsbury. This act of presumption displeased the townsmen, and Sir John Corbet* took advantage of their displeasure to test ‘the love and affection of [his] countrymen and kinsmen’ in Shrewsbury by standing himself. He persuaded one of his kinsmen, Thomas Mytton*, to ensure that the Shrewsbury election took place after 19 March, when the shire was to make its choice. Belvoir Castle mss, letters 1.23.
In the event, Corbet’s planning was to no avail. In Shrewsbury, the gentry secured only one of their nominees. Newport and the town clerk, Thomas Owen, were returned. Neither was a representative of puritan interests in his private or public life. Nothing is known of the size of the electorate, beyond the formula used in the return, ‘the aldermen and burgesses’. C219/42/2/6. The pair were presumably acceptable to the drapers’ company, however, which lost no time in March 1640 in naming a committee, including Richard Cheshire*, to identify grievances and work out a strategy ‘to see what good may be done for the company this Parliament’. Salop Archives, 1831, Shrewsbury Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, 1607-1740, f. 58. The petition that emerged from their deliberations remained undespatched, however, as the Parliament was dissolved within a few weeks of its assembling. The second Parliament of 1640 was elected on or around 27 October, when the undersheriff was paid by the corporation for returning the indentures to Westminster. Salop Archives, 3365/585/35. Owen was dropped in favour of William Spurstowe, a victory for the reforming party. Spurstowe, a Salopian by birth and ancestry, was a senior figure in the London cloth retail trade, a trusted and experienced advocate of Shrewsbury’s trading interests, a supporter of the puritan preaching ministry and ‘the Dick Whittington of the Shrewsbury drapers’. Salop Archives, 1831/6 f. 5; T.C. Mendenhall, Shrewsbury Drapers (Oxford, 1953), 92. The drapers’ company must have been behind his election, but the drapers did not rush to mobilise a team to frame a petition or list any grievances. With Spurstowe in place and a longer Parliament ahead of them than the last, perhaps they thought they had plenty of time.
Between the summoning of the Long Parliament and the outbreak of civil war, a number of old scores from the 1630s were settled or at least revisited. Humphrey Mackworth I, who maintained his post as retained counsel to the town despite the provocations of the Laudians, was active in May 1641 in considering on the corporation’s behalf an investment in a new cloth-making scheme, ‘jersey work’. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 13 May 1641. In May 1642, Mackworth and a number of other Shrewsbury men led by William Rowley, petitioned Sir Robert Harley* with a view to securing parliamentary approval for the return of Julines Hering to England and his appointment to the living of St Alkmund’s. Add. 70106, f. 92. Around them, however, other members of the corporation were more alarmed than invigorated by the political climate. In January 1642, the normally combative drapers’ company cancelled its forthcoming Easter feast, used the money to buy arms and help the poor, in the ratio of two thirds to one, citing the ‘dangerous time’. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 60v. Late in August, the corporation echoed the sentiment, proclaiming resistance to unlawful forces, banning the wearing in Shrewsbury of party favours and insisting that if the king came to Shrewsbury he should be entertained. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 30 Aug. 1642. In June and September the corporation was in active correspondence with William Spurstowe (although not, it seems, with its other Member, Newport) about parliamentary orders, but any close links between the town government and the Parliament were short-lived. Salop Archives, 3365/586/23, 24. When the king did come, at least near enough to the town to issue a proclamation, it was to proclaim Mackworth, Thomas Hunt* and Thomas Nicholls traitors. The corporation’s response was to displace them as aldermen (16 Nov.) on the grounds first that they were non-resident and only secondly because they were proclaimed traitors. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 16 Nov. 1642.
The civil war disrupted trade in Shrewsbury completely, and the drapers’ company held no meetings between 6 April 1643 and 19 April 1644. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 61v. The corporation continued to maintain some semblance of normality during the civil war, but payments to engineers and gunners appeared in the civic accounts instead of payments to stonemasons and carpenters. Salop Archives, 3365/586/38. Even in 1643, the accounts of the fund used to fight for the new charter continued to be maintained, with payments noted by Edward Jones, father of the MP of 1656, William Jones II. Salop Archives, 3365/587/3. Francis Newport withdrew from London to Shropshire in the summer of 1642, and once the royalist garrison was established at Shrewsbury under the command of Sir Francis Ottley, no further communication was possible between the corporation and Spurstowe in London. Effectively Shrewsbury was without parliamentary representation between 1642 and the ‘recruiter’ election of October 1645, save for the brief sojourn by Newport at the Oxford Parliament, which earned him disablement from sitting at Westminster (22 Jan. 1644) for being in the king’s quarters at Oxford. The royalist occupation of Shrewsbury engendered resentment among the drapers, who broke their abstinence from meetings in April 1644 to assert to themselves that they would henceforth reduce their sponsorship of soldiers back to the two that was the historic norm, and at the traditional rate of one shilling a day rather than two it had become. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 61v.
Prince Maurice was feted by the corporation on 4 February 1645. Salop Archives, 3365/591/8. A little over two weeks later, Shrewsbury was re-taken for Parliament on the night of 22-23 February. On the 23rd, once the town was secure, the corporation brought out wine, cakes and biscuits for the committee ‘for king and Parliament’, and for Sir William Brereton*; on 2 March the same courtesy was extended to Sir Thomas Myddelton*, who was marching through to attempt to reduce North Wales to obedience to Parliament. Salop Archives, 3365/591/6. To the chagrin of Thomas Mytton, the governorship of the town was bestowed by the committee on one of its own leaders, Humphrey Mackworth I, who had acted as steward of Coventry. By early May, the Shrewsbury drapers’ company felt confident enough to order that all cloth from Wales should be bought in Shrewsbury, except for flannel which could be traded at Wrexham: the démarche was a blow against Oswestry. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 62v. In a return to an earlier pattern of commercial politics, the drapers were moving to head off the activities of interlopers at Oswestry and quickly brought in further measures to prevent one interloper in particular, Richard Bagot, from undermining the company. Bagot, a member of the drapers’ company, had denounced his colleagues in Drapers’ Hall itself: Richard Cheshire was named in August to the committee charged with putting a stop to Bagot’s buccaneering. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 63.
On 12 September 1645, the Commons ordered a fresh election at Shrewsbury to replace Francis Newport. CJ iv. 272a. It may have been timed to coincide with the mayoral election on 2 October. The town accounts record the preparations in the civic buildings. Prisoners were turned out of the old hall, and the three rooms known as the chamber of concord, the election house and the exchequer were cleaned, as was the new hall. Salop Archives, 3365/591/15. The choice of the corporation fell on Thomas Hunt, a stalwart of the county committee, godly activist and distinguished senior politician in Shrewsbury. Hunt was a member of the drapers’ company by patrimony, and thus satisfied every criterion that a cautious corporation, seeking to recover its commercial and civic self-confidence, might advance. Hunt was a long-standing associate of Humphrey Mackworth I, who was appointed recorder on 17 November. Infra, ‘Thomas Hunt’.
The death of William Spurstowe in January 1646 unexpectedly created another vacancy. The election took place at some point between late January and 24 April, when the city’s new MP, William Masham, was first noticed in the House. The selection of Masham represented the only intrusion by an outsider into Shrewsbury politics in this period. Masham had no known Salopian connections. His father-in-law was Sir John Trevor*, who certainly enjoyed estates in north-east Wales and influence further afield. Many years ago it was suggested that Oliver Cromwell* may have had a hand in Masham’s advancement, because Cromwell and Masham’s father, Sir William Masham*, were cousins and, indeed, parliamentary associates. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, xii. 212. While personal connections between Sir William and his son, Cromwell and the Shrewsbury civic leadership are not evident, it is quite likely that the context of Masham’s selection lay more in the metropolis than in Shropshire. Spurstowe had been of greater standing in London than in Shrewsbury, and had been known to Cromwell. While in religion Spurstowe had been a Presbyterian, he was certainly on friendly terms with the Independents among the London merchant community. It is therefore possible that the Shrewsbury men had appealed to their late burgess’s friends and colleagues for advice on a successor and that the name of Masham had emerged in a climate in which Independent interests were in the ascendancy.
If the Shrewsbury townspeople had high hopes, or indeed any hopes, of Masham, they were to be disappointed. No record of any customary gifts by the corporation to him has survived, and the civil leaders seem rather to have taken to their bosom John Corbett*, Member for Bishop’s Castle, who was sent choice food and drink by them in 1647, 1649, 1651, 1656 and 1659. Salop Archives, 3365/594/52, 596/20, 597/21, 603/8, 606/35. In 1647 the corporation prepared a petition to Parliament and paid fees to the Speaker’s clerk, and an agent on its behalf attended the Committee of Revenue, strongly implying that the subject of the appeal involved the town’s fiscal burden. Salop Archives, 3365/593/19. The modest recovery in the town’s customs and traditions in the late 1640s was aided by the bequest of William Spurstowe, which was spent on acquiring a mortgage of a meadow in order to provide the poor with bread. Salop Archives, 3365/593/20, 594/1, 58. The drapers’ company, meanwhile, confined itself to reaching a rapprochement with the interlopers at Oswestry, making no attempt to lobby the Shrewsbury MPs in the pre-civil war tradition. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, ff. 65, 65v.
Thomas Hunt had probably returned from London to Shrewsbury before Colonel Thomas Pride* purged Parliament in December 1648. As an Independent, Masham conformed to the purge, so Shrewsbury retained representation in the Rump Parliament after the regicide. Mackworth remained in post as both recorder and governor; his standing in the inns of court could only enhance his reputation as Shrewsbury’s dominant figure. Mackworth’s pre-eminence is suggested in the gifts that the corporation gave his son, Thomas Mackworth, Member for Ludlow, in 1649. Salop Archives, 3365/595, not numbered; 596/20. When Mackworth junior was married in 1652, the corporation made a particular fuss of him, paying not only for sugar, cakes, sack and claret but for the ringing of nine bells. Salop Archives, 3365/598/50. Shrewsbury seems to have faced the inauguration of the commonwealth with more confidence than many other towns. In July 1649, the ceremonial officers were kitted out with new swords and halberds, and fine silks and scarlet serge were bought for the council chamber. Salop Archives, 3365/595, not numbered. A variant on the customary trials of strength between drapers and the Welsh suppliers came in that year when the godly of Merioneth petitioned the drapers’ company to alter market days to aid sabbath observance. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 69v. The year 1652 witnessed the apogee of Shrewsbury’s attempts to capitalise on legislative opportunities afforded by the Rump Parliament, even though Thomas Hunt stayed away from it, and William Masham was by no criteria a Salopian. In February 1652, the aldermen and assistants turned out in scarlet robes and gowns to commemorate the taking of the town by Parliament back in 1645. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 20 Feb. 1652. The corporation paid for a petition to Parliament in the hope of securing an act for augmenting the livings of the town, following precedents elsewhere, and sought to activate a clause in the town charter that would have permitted a devolved court of chancery to be established. This would have created in Shrewsbury something of the honey-pot for lawyers formerly evident in Ludlow. There was even talk of a new charter, which would have halved the number of aldermen and assistants, indicating that there was no drive towards inclusivity to be found in the corporation’s agenda. Salop Archives, 3365/598/46; 6001/290, 12 Aug., 14 Nov. 1652. None of these aspirations was fulfilled, however, and it was not the case that everyone in Shrewsbury was an enthusiast for the commonwealth. Thomas Paget addressed a pamphlet urging acceptance of the republic’s Engagement on the mayor and citizens of Shrewsbury, and while as far as men like Mackworth were concerned he was probably pushing at an open door, the refusal of others like Edward Phillips, who fined off being steward of the drapers rather than take the oath, suggested a degree of resistance even among non-royalists. T. Paget, A Faithfull and Conscientious Account (1650); Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 72v.
Shrewsbury enjoyed no separate representation from Shropshire during the life of the Nominated Assembly in 1653, and there was no equivalent of William Spurstowe to look after the town’s interests in London. Within the corporation itself, however, relations between the drapers and the civic government of Shrewsbury grew closer with the apotheosis of Richard Cheshire. Throughout the 1640s, Cheshire had been a senior figure among the drapers, and he became master of the company in April 1653, while serving as mayor. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 65. The Instrument of Government of December 1653 determined that a Parliament would assemble no later than September 1654. On 26 June 1654, the drapers’ company formulated a series of queries touching the legalities of local sales of cloth, and resolved to pay a solicitor to seek answers. On 5 July, the ‘mayor, aldermen, assistants and burgesses’ met on the summons of an assistant who was also a draper, described in the order book as their ‘speaker’, to elect Cheshire and Humphrey Mackworth II to Parliament. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 5 July 1654. The drapers’ adviser reported on 17 July, and the drapers with the consent of the mayor, aldermen and assistants drew up a by-law to restrict the sale of Welsh cloth in Shrewsbury to designated places, and to prevent sales in inns and alehouses. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, ff. 77v, 78v. This measure was evidently intended as a blow against local interlopers, but had surely been stimulated by the imminence of elections to the new Parliament. The selection of Cheshire, an alderman and former mayor, neatly avoided any issue of whether civic government or drapers’ company was the senior partner in the corporation of Shrewsbury. In choosing Humphrey Mackworth II, the town clerk and Cheshire’s partner in the second seat, the burgesses were making doubly sure that Shrewsbury’s interests were well looked after by insiders.
Shortly before Cheshire and Mackworth departed for London, a committee of the drapers drew up a list of issues to be pursued in Parliament on behalf of the company. They were headed as for the attention of Cheshire, not for both Shrewsbury Members, demonstrating that the company drew a distinction between its own man and the town’s representation as a whole. The drapers sought both clarification of the Welsh cloth act of 1624, touching the qualifications of those who could buy and sell, and, as usual, reinforcement of the privileges of the company. They asked Cheshire to search the Parliament rolls to discover whether the company had enrolled a charter during Edward IV’s reign, and hoped that he would persuade the Shrewsbury shearmen to petition Parliament to revive Elizabethan statutes repealed at the shearmen’s request. Finally, they wanted to know what was the legal basis of the ‘king’s rent’ they paid to the government. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 79. Thus Cheshire went to London heavily mandated by the drapers. For their part, the mayor, aldermen and assistants seem to have confined themselves to bestowing the usual delicacies on Cheshire and Mackworth as they set off. Salop Archives, 3365/601/15. Among other worthies favoured with the same courtesies in the mid-1650s were Thomas Mytton, the Salopian Alderman Thomas Adams* and of course Humphrey Mackworth I. Salop Archives, 3365/598/51, 601/15, 16.
The parliamentary aspirations of the drapers’ company were not confined to the eve-of-departure briefing of Richard Cheshire. On 6 December, the drapers wrote to Cheshire explaining that they had commissioned one Peters to lobby for their interests in Parliament, on a fee of £5 with 40 shillings a week more for every week he devoted to pursuing their cause. Peters was to seek renewal of the drapers’ charter, the latest tactic to commend itself to the company as a means of keeping competition at bay. Cheshire was asked to harness the support of Humphrey Mackworth I, since February a member of the lord protector’s council, to remove or reduce alnage payments on Welsh cottons. Later in December, Cheshire was delegated to treat with Peters or dismiss him if he saw fit. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 79v. The sudden death of Humphrey Mackworth I on Christmas Eve 1654 was a major blow for Shrewsbury, and the dissolution of the Parliament in January 1655, with nothing to show on the statute book for months of discussion, must have been a disappointment to the company. The corporation entertained Cheshire on his return regardless, on 26 February. Salop Archives, 3365/602/20.
The civic elite of Shrewsbury was changed significantly by the death of Mackworth, who had held the posts of recorder and governor, as well as an appointment in the Welsh judiciary and membership of the protector’s council. The inauguration of his successor as recorder, William Jones II*, was further recognition of an already renowned Shrewsbury family, and was marked by purchases by the corporation of law books doubtless for Jones’s use. Salop Archives, 3365/602/24-7. Shrewsbury became the centre of operations for Humphrey Mackworth II and William Crowne* in the spring of 1655 when they launched an offensive against enemies of the protectorate in Shropshire and eastern Wales. infra, ‘Humphrey Mackworth II’. By the end of the year, the leading townsmen were willing to view the arrival of Major-general James Berry*, in whose ‘canton’ the town lay, as an opportunity rather than a threat. A civic dinner of lavish proportions, costing £14 at a time when a typical dinner at mayoral election time cost £2-3, was laid on for Berry on 3 December. Salop Archives, 3365/603/13. The drapers’ company turned in on itself in the absence of a Parliament, regulating apprenticeships and defending itself against a challenge in the exchequer by William Crowne*, an entrepreneurial relation of the Mackworths, over ‘king’s rent’. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, ff. 82v, 84. The corporation, meanwhile, continued to count its friends. Although Major-general Thomas Mytton had been inactive as knight in the 1654 Parliament, the corporation’s courting of him during the 1650s evidently had some practical purpose, as when he and Thomas Hunt were approached in December 1655 for their help in securing coal supplies at advantageous rates. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 19 Dec. 1655.
It seems odd that Richard Cheshire was not selected again for the second Parliament of the Cromwellian protectorate in 1656. The drapers seem not to have focussed on opportunities in London, whether in Parliament or in the City, after the disappointments of the 1654 Parliament. Probably they were preoccupied with the conflict over ‘king’s rent’, and without the drapers’ determination, the corporation found itself with a freer hand when it met on 20 August 1656 to make its selection of burgesses to send to Westminster. Humphrey Mackworth II provided continuity, but the first seat went to Samuel Jones, a recently-returned Salopian with connections into the London business community. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 20 Aug. 1656. Jones was a cousin of Shrewsbury’s recorder and a scion of a well-known Shrewsbury family, but he proved unacceptable to the protector’s council, and never took his seat.
Oliver Cromwell’s acceptance of the Humble Petition of Advice led to a restoration of the historic franchises and constituencies as the basis for elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. Recorder William Jones II and Humphrey Mackworth II were returned, on 14 January 1659. Salop Archives, 6001/290, 14 Jan. 1659. The drapers’ company identified once again its goals as being first to clarify in Parliament what the 1624 act had to say about eligibility of individual merchants to enter the Welsh cloth trade channelled through Shrewsbury, and secondly to find ways of eliminating interlopers from the trade. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 94. The drapers thought they had identified an agent, one of their own number, to pursue their interests at Westminster, but the man they selected repudiated any agreement that might have existed between them. The closure of this Parliament was not followed by any collapse of confidence by the drapers, who resolved in June to erect a portrait of Edward IV, grantor of their charter and thus their benefactor, in their hall. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 96. The corporation continued to entertain John Corbett* but during the descent into near-anarchy late in 1659 was careful also to deal gingerly and respectfully with Edmund Wareing*, when he came to commandeer the ironically-named ‘chamber of concord’ as the barracks for the Shrewsbury guard in November. Salop Archives, 3365/606/35; 607/21. Wareing was acting for the committee of safety that provided the nearest approximation to stable government, but the restoration of the monarchy was only months away. When it was clear that the Convention was a Parliament whose continued existence was approved by Charles II, the drapers’ company resumed their campaign to win concessions there. In the cousins, Samuel and Thomas Jones, the corporation returned two safe pairs of hands; but the payments for ‘rails and ironwork about the hall’ when Members were elected to the Cavalier Parliament suggest both a widening of participation and a degree of defensiveness on the part of the corporation after 1660. Salop Archives, Drapers’ Company, Order Bk. 2, f. 98v; 6001/290, 17 Apr. 1660; 3365/608/57.
