Much Wenlock

Much Wenlock had enjoyed a parliamentary franchise since the charter of 1468. VCH Salop, x. 203. That charter had defined the borough as co-extensive with the parish of Holy Trinity, Much Wenlock. VCH Salop, x. 202. The right to elect a Member of Parliament had been one of a number of privileges typically bestowed on newly incorporated boroughs, such the right to hold sessions of the peace and to maintain a gaol. An anomaly marking Much Wenlock was that the bounds of Holy Trinity were legally ill-defined. In 1468 the draughtsmen of the charter probably meant the area comprising the town and the manor of Much Wenlock, even though they were separate territorial entities, but earlier charters, never explicitly cancelled by successive later ones, had stated that all the lands of the Cluniac priory of Much Wenlock were a single parish. A new charter of 1631 acknowledged the jurisdiction of Much Wenlock manorial court leet, but other active courts leet were not mentioned.

However ambiguous the charters of 1468 and 1631 were about territory, there was no doubt that the parliamentary borough extended over a wide geographical area, the liberty of Much Wenlock, which included the hundred of Bourton and its various manors. By virtue of this extensive territory, many gentry families found themselves easily able to exercise influence within the parliamentary borough, which was known as the ‘franchise’. In 1641, the franchise included 13 parishes or townships, with a resident population of around 1480 adult males. PA, Protestation Returns, Wenlock liberty. In 1634, government of Much Wenlock borough itself was said to consist of ‘bailiffs, peers, burgesses and commonalty’. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 654; VCH Salop, x. 204. In 1468 the prior was ‘chief burgess’, and after the dissolution this role was taken by the lords of Much Wenlock manor, from 1600 onwards members of the Lawley family. Each October, the chief burgess nominated an individual, as did the retiring bailiff, and these four met with an oligarchy of ‘six men’ to co-opt five burgesses. The electoral college or jury of 13 then elected a new bailiff for the year. The charter of 1631 bestowed on the borough the right to four magistrates, one of whom was the recorder. The whole government structure gave pre-eminence to the bailiff’s ‘peers’, those who had served in that office before. The annual election of burgesses to fulfil the stipulations of the charter with regard to municipal office, together with the large territory covered by Wenlock liberty, created a large and amorphous freeman class with a potential to turn itself into an unpredictable electorate.

The instincts of the borough’s officers were to restrict participation. Before 1640 there was concern that too many freemen were involving themselves in borough elections. In 1618 the recorder, Sir Edward Bromley†, expressed unease that ‘the franchise is become poorer and of less reputation than in former times’, and a few months later, new rules were introduced. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 452. Among these was an order to exclude from the annual election of the bailiff all but ‘such householders as are resident in the franchise and do pay scot and lot and all manner of taxations’. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 474. In the 1620s, annual Michaelmas dinners in the borough were attended by between 27 and 40 men, swollen in 1628 to 115, including servants, at a gaol delivery. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 584. Meetings took place in the guildhall or court house located at the edge of the churchyard of Holy Trinity. VCH Salop, x. 206. Built around 1540, it was refurbished in 1624 to include an ‘election house’ with table and benches, partitioned from the council chamber; the common gaol underneath was plastered ‘to keep … the smoke and nasty smell out of the election house’. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 537.

The majority of Members returned from Much Wenlock between 1640 and 1660 were local gentry with full proprietorial status in the liberty of the borough. Further information on the conduct and pattern of elections is rare, not least because of the absence of any surviving legible indentures. The election to the first Parliament of 1640 appears to have been typical. Thomas Littleton was the eldest son of Adam Littleton, who had been elected recorder for life in February 1636. From 1581, the Littletons had owned the demesne lands and manor house of Stoke Court, the principal residence in Stoke St Milborough, a manor within the liberty of Much Wenlock, although nearly 20 miles away from the court house. Littleton’s colleague was Richard Cressett of Upton Cressett, another place within the liberty. Nothing is recorded in the borough minute book of any particular concerns that the burgesses might have impressed upon their representatives as they set out for Westminster.

In the elections for what was to become the Long Parliament, held later in 1640, Littleton was chosen again. Cressett was not, although he was present at a meeting of the burgesses on 29 September, when a replacement was chosen to a recently deceased magistrate appointed to office for life by the charter of 1631. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 680; VCH Salop, x. 204. Cressett’s successor in the parliamentary seat was William Pierrepont, who had served as knight of the shire in the Parliament of the previous April. The core of Pierrepont’s estates lay in Nottinghamshire, but his wife was the heiress of Tong Castle, Shropshire. This lay outside even the elastic Much Wenlock liberty, however, and it is difficult to see what recommended him to the electors there beyond his social standing, which was more elevated than that of most of the Wenlock gentry. In 1641, Pierrepont took a sufficiently active interest in his constituency to organise on behalf of Parliament the taking of the Protestation by all adult males in the liberty. PA, Protestation Returns, Wenlock liberty.

Like the rest of Shropshire, Much Wenlock stayed under the control of the king for most of the civil war. The borough’s MPs diverged in their allegiance. Littleton supported the king, while Pierrepont was faithful to Parliament. Littleton’s attendance on the king at the rival Oxford Parliament in January 1644 cost him his Westminster seat, and on 5 February he was disabled from sitting further. The more exotic Pierrepont, a major Westminster politician, had nothing to fear from his colleagues and continued to sit through the mid-1640s. The parliamentarian county committee had established a first toe-hold at Wem in the north of the county in 1643, but Bridgnorth, a town near Much Wenlock, was not surrendered to Parliament until 26 April 1646. This marked the decisive defeat of the royalists, and it became safe in Shropshire to hold ‘recruiter’ elections to Westminster. On 27 June 1646, Sir Humphrey Brigges was returned in Littleton’s place. Like Littleton, Brigges was a proprietor in Stoke St Milborough, and had no history of vigorous support for Parliament. Given that Pierrepont by this time was by this time an eminent figure in the Commons, his inability or reluctance to intervene in this by-election is remarkable. Brigges was probably a neutral, but was elected by ‘all and singular’ the 28 freemen at the meeting. Richard Cressett was one of them. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 700. In September, Brigges was elected a burgess of Much Wenlock, months after his return to Parliament, and the town clerk was removed from office as a royalist delinquent. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 pp. 701, 712.

On 29 September 1647, Humphrey Mackworth I* was elected recorder of Much Wenlock, in succession to Sir Adam Littleton, who had died. This marked the high point of parliamentary influence in the borough, but it was a short-lived ascendancy. Brigges probably stayed away from Parliament after 1647, and Pierrepont withdrew after the coup by the army on 6 December 1648. This left the borough unrepresented in Parliament for over a decade, as there were no further by-elections during the supremacy of the Rump Parliament, and Much Wenlock was disenfranchised by the Instrument of Government under the Cromwellian protectorate. On 17 January 1659, after the old franchises had been restored, Sir Francis Lawley and Thomas Whitmore II were made burgesses. This may also have been the date of their election to Westminster to sit in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 792. Lawley had an estate at Spoonhill, within the liberty. Like Brigges, Lawley had been in effect a neutral during the civil war, but his family had represented the borough in six Parliaments between 1604 and 1629. He was accompanied by Thomas Whitmore II, a local lawyer and, like Lawley, a political neutral of the stripe which the Much Wenlock electors in this period generally seemed to favour.