Seventeenth-Century Newcastle was the metropolis of northern England and, in terms of population and wealth, was inferior only to London, Norwich and Bristol. Although not easily defensible, the town occupied a vital strategic site, commanding the intersection of the Great North Road as it crossed the River Tyne and the main east-west route between Tynemouth and Carlisle. It was also well-placed as a commercial centre, lying at the eastern end of the Tyne gap and near the heart of the northern coal field. From the late sixteenth century the town’s prosperity derived increasingly from the coal trade. The Tyne Valley collieries supplied London’s burgeoning population with much of its fuel, and large fortunes were made by the Newcastle Hostmen – the cartel of coal-shippers that dominated the region’s economy. Howell, Newcastle, ch. 1. As one local historian wrote in 1649
the city of London and other cities and towns growing populous made the trade for coal increase yearly, and many great ships of burthen built, so that there were more coals vented in one year than was in seven years, forty years by-past. This great trade hath made this part to flourish in all trades. W. Gray, Chorographia, or a Survey of Newcastle upon Tine (1649), 37.
But coal was by no means the only source of wealth in Newcastle. The town was a thriving outport and centre for maritime trades. Its merchants enjoyed a substantial share of English commerce with the Baltic and the Low Countries, with textiles probably forming the largest item of export. The Newcastle recruiter MP and merchant adventurer Robert Ellison evidently enjoyed a lucrative trade with Hamburg in commodities other than coal. Infra, ‘Robert Ellison’; E190/193/1, ff. 3v, 6v, 8, 9, 10v, 15v, 16, 16v, 17. A bad outbreak of the plague in 1636 may have carried off as many as 6,000 of Newcastle’s inhabitants. Nevertheless, the town’s population, including apprentices, probably numbered over 13,000 by the 1650s. Howell, Newcastle, 6-9.
Under successive royal charters, Newcastle was incorporated as a separate county and was governed by a 36-strong common council consisting of a mayor, sheriff, ten aldermen and 24 common councillors. The mayor, sheriff and common councillors were elected on an annual basis, but aldermen were appointed for life by means of a complex, and highly oligarchic, electoral procedure based on the 12 most important town guilds. The aldermen were drawn almost exclusively from the leading merchant adventurers and Hostmen. Between them, these two closely overlapping groups formed the ‘inner ring’ of the town’s political and economic life. The mayor was the presiding officer of the council and, with the aldermen, effectively exercised a veto over its decisions. Other municipal office-holders included a recorder, town clerk and eight annually-appointed chamberlains. SP16/245/32, ff. 70r-v; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 537; Howell, Newcastle, 35-47. Newcastle had returned Members to Parliament since 1283, and by the mid-seventeenth century the franchise was vested in the entire freeman body. HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; Howell, Newcastle, 125. The number of those voting in parliamentary elections seems to have varied considerably over the period. In the March 1647 election the figure was put at about 700. Perfect Occurrences no. 14 (2-9 Apr. 1647), 107-8 (E.383.25); The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 204 (6-13 Apr. 1647), 485 (E.384.2). In the December election it apparently dropped to 361. The Moderate Intelligencer no. 142 (2-9 Dec. 1647), 1051 (E.419.18). A poll in the 1659 election saw 1,239 freemen register their vote. Clarke Pprs. iii. 174. The returning officer was the sheriff.
Newcastle’s common council controlled admission to the freedom of the town, and the municipal interest weighed heavily in parliamentary elections. Because of its size and wealth, the town was virtually impregnable to carpetbaggers and local gentry interlopers. All of Newcastle’s MPs since the early seventeenth century had been prominent Hostmen. In the 1620s Parliaments, the town had been represented by just three past or serving aldermen – Sir Henry Anderson*, Sir Peter Riddell* and Sir Thomas Riddell. HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, a similar pattern emerged. The places at Newcastle were contested by three men –Riddell, his half-brother Thomas Lyddell* and the secretary of the council of the north Sir John Melton*. None of these candidates would have displeased the Caroline court – Riddell had Arminian sympathies, Lyddell was a future royalist and Melton was a pronounced Straffordian. Infra, ‘Thomas Lyddell’; ‘Sir Peter Riddell’; ‘Sir John Melton’. But whereas Riddell and Lyddell were established members of the inner ring and probably stood together, Melton, by Newcastle standards, was a rank outsider. Although a Hostman like his rivals, he had been a peripheral figure in the town’s affairs. His interest at Newcastle was based largely on his lease of a major colliery at Newburn, just to the west of the town, and the patronage of the lord high admiral and lieutenant of Northumberland, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. Infra, ‘Sir John Melton’. Both Northumberland and the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) wrote Melton letters of recommendation to put before the common council or the freemen. But as he informed Northumberland’s northern steward Hugh Potter*, he made no use of Strafford’s letter, ‘for I resolved either to stand or fall there upon my lord admiral’s letter only and the friends I have of my own [in] that town’. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, bdle. v, Melton to Potter, 6 Mar. 1640. These friends did not include the inner ring, it seems, for as he complained to Potter ‘there is much underhand working against me by some of the aldermen’. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 12, bdle. k, same to same, 27 Feb. 1640. He was further handicapped by his absence from the field of battle – his duties as secretary to the council of the north detaining him in York. Nevertheless, he was guardedly optimistic about his chances: ‘I must confess, I hold the business somewhat doubtful. Yet I have not been wanting in doing my part and doubt not but I have...a strong party amongst the commons [freemen]’. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, bdle. v, same to same, 6 Mar. 1640. In the event, however, the municipal interest proved too powerful for him, and on or about 11 March the freemen returned Riddell and Lyddell. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, bdle. v, same to same, 13 Mar. 1640. A mis-transcription in the Calendar of State Papers of ‘Riddell’ for ‘Liddell’ has led some authorities to state that it was Sir Thomas Riddell’s son and namesake who carried the junior place. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 601; ‘Sir Thomas Riddell’, Oxford DNB. But the original documentation confirms Lyddell’s return, as does a list of Short Parliament MPs compiled by the common council’s solicitor John Rushworth*. SP16/449/36, f. 67; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1109.
In the wake of the Short Parliament election at Newcastle, Melton fumed at ‘the opposing’ of Northumberland’s letter of recommendation
the disrespect done to my lord admiral in a place where his lordship had a double tie upon them as lord lieutenant of Northumberland and lord high admiral of England ... I hope his lordship will not pass it by, but in his lordship’s good time will think of it and meet with them too and that roundly ... For my part in the business, although I think I might upon very good grounds question the election and should be likely enough to carry it upon a new choice, yet seeing it cannot be brought about without some hazard and without much trouble and charge, I have the less reason to undergo either of them in regard of the ... doubtfulness of my health. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, bdle. v, Melton to Potter, 27 Mar. 1640.
His mistake, as he saw it, was his over-reliance on his friends in the town: ‘I was made believe that my business was sure at Newcastle, which indeed it had been if I had been there. But I doubt my going thither would have endangered my health’. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, bdle. v, same to same, 27 Mar. 1640. Shortly after the election, Sir Peter Riddell expressed surprise that he and Lyddell were given no directions for their proceedings at Westminster, which prompted some of the town’s puritans to petition the common council for instructions enjoining Riddell and Lyddell to declare against Laudian innovations and ‘to stand out for the liberties and freedom of the subject’. Infra, ‘Sir Peter Riddell’; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 601-4; Howell, Newcastle, 113-15. But the petitioners were ignored by the council, and neither Riddell nor Lyddell made any appreciable impact in this Parliament.
The king’s defeat in the second civil war, and Newcastle’s capture by the Scots, temporarily undermined the power of the municipal oligarchy. Having supported the king’s Scottish and ecclesiastical policies, the mayor and most of the aldermen fled the town after the battle of Newburn, and when they returned a month or so later were imprisoned by the victorious Covenanters for refusing to loan them money. Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, John Nevay to presbytery at Irvine, 14 Sept., 9 Oct. 1640; same to John Baird, 19 Sept. 1640; J. Fenwick, Christ Ruling in the Midst of His Enemies (1643), 3, 10-11 (E.74.24). None of the three candidates who are known to have stood for Newcastle in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn – Sir Henry Anderson, John Blakiston and Melton – were part of the ruling clique on the common council. Anderson had long since retired from municipal politics, and by 1640 his main source of income was his landed estate in Yorkshire. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Anderson’. Blakiston was a mercer and Hostman, but he had progressed no further in the office-holding hierarchy than the office of chamberlain. Infra, ‘John Blakiston’. Melton based his interest largely upon Northumberland’s patronage and his own party among the freemen. The weakness of the aldermanic interest is further emphasized by the fact that Anderson and Blakiston were known opponents of Laudian innovations. Indeed, Blakiston was a leading figure among the Newcastle puritans. Infra, ‘John Blakiston’; Howell, Newcastle, 88-9. And though Anderson was deemed lukewarm on the issue of further reformation in religion, he was strongly anti-Catholic. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Anderson’; Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 14 Oct. 1640.
The election at Newcastle to the Long Parliament was held on 14 October 1640, and according to one Scottish observer it was a confused affair in which there was a ‘great contest betwixt those that voiced for … Mr Blakiston … and Sir John Melton … made burgess [freeman] for the purpose and recommended by the earl of Northumberland’. It is likely that this contest turned primarily on national political issues, and in particular attitudes towards the earl of Strafford and the Scots. Blakiston and Anderson were strongly anti-Straffordian, whereas Melton was very much part of the lord lieutenant’s northern political network, as was his patron Northumberland. In the event, Melton carried the contest by 60 voices and was duly returned with Anderson. Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 14 Oct. 1640. The fact that Melton had been made a burgess specially for the occasion suggests that he now enjoyed the backing of the common council – the majority of whom would have shared his and the earl of Northumberland’s hostility towards the Scots. The Scots were initially hopeful that Melton would ‘side with the better part’ at Westminster, but later referred to him as ‘the man whom the mayor and aldermen factiously made choice of’ and implied that Blakiston should properly have been returned in his place. Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to the presbytery at Irvine, 16 Nov. 1640; same to Lady Loudoun, 18 Jan. 1641 Blakiston’s supporters petitioned Parliament against Melton’s election, and according to one authority they sent up a rival return with Blakiston’s name on it – although this is conjectural, as none of the town’s election indentures for 1640 have survived. Keeler, Long Parl. 59. Later allegations that Blakiston’s candidacy had been promoted ‘by the Scottish garrison’ are almost certainly groundless. A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648, 669 f.12.103); R. Howell, Puritans and Radicals in Northern Eng. 53. When fears were expressed in the House in 1645 about army influence upon ‘recruiter’ elections, Blakiston insisted that ‘when the Scots army was in Newcastle at the choice of the burgesses of this Parliament, their commander gave order that no soldier should come near the place of election’. Add. 18780, f. 107.
The petition against Sir John Melton’s election was still being investigated by the committee of privileges when Melton died in mid-December 1640. Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 120. On 17 December, it was moved that a writ be issued for electing a new member in place of Melton – but to do so would have implied that Melton had been improperly elected, and since the committee had yet to determine this question the motion was rejected. CJ ii. 53a. The committee had evidently decided against Melton by 18 January 1641, when the Scots reported that the Commons had declared Blakiston ‘the burgess lawfully chosen’ and had admitted him to the House. Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 18 Jan. 1641. However, it was not until 30 January that the House ordered the sheriff of Newcastle ‘to amend the indenture of return for one of the burgesses’ in Blakiston’s favour. CJ ii. 76a. The reluctance of the sheriff, a future royalist, to do as he was ordered is perhaps further evidence that the inner ring had backed Melton against Blakiston. CJ ii. 90a, 93a.
Newcastle was garrisoned for the king during the summer of 1642, and early in September the common council made the commander-in-chief of the northern royalist army, the earl of Newcastle, a freeman. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 92. Most of the coal-merchant grandees became committed royalists, but at least 35 leading inhabitants – among them Henry Dawson*, Robert Ellison*, Thomas Lilburne* and Henry Warmouth* – withdrew from the town and were disenfranchised by the council in October 1643 for their ‘disaffection to the king and the present government of Newcastle’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 110, 113; Extracts from the Newcastle upon Tyne Council Min. Bk. 1639-56 ed. M. H. Dodds (Newcastle upon Tyne Recs. Cttee. i), 28. On 5 December 1644, seven weeks after the fall of Newcastle to the Covenanters, the Commons issued a series of orders for removing the town’s royalist governors and installing leading puritan townsmen in their place. Warmouth was appointed mayor, Blakiston an alderman and Ellison the town sheriff. CJ iii. 714b-715a.
For the next year or so, the town’s new governors worked together in settling a godly ministry in Newcastle and generally consolidating the parliamentarian municipal interest. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 130, 133, 144, 155, 164, 171; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 9, 21, 22-3, 25, 26. However, by early 1646 the ruling clique had begun to split into rival Presbyterian and Independent factions. The immediate cause of contention between the two groups centred on the timing of the parliamentary election to replace Sir Henry Anderson, who had been disabled by the Commons in 1643. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Anderson’. A writ for holding a new election at Newcastle had been issued in October 1645 and re-issued in December, but it had then been detained by the town’s new mayor, John Blakiston. CJ iv. 262b; C231/6, pp. 28, 33; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 124. Blakiston, a leading Independent, was anxious not to hold the election while the town was still being garrisoned by the Scots. The Newcastle Presbyterians, on the other hand, were eager for the election to proceed for exactly the same reason. In January 1646, it was reported that Newcastle was ‘much divided [between] Presb[yterian] and Indep[endent], and many side with the garrison against their friends ... No burgess chosen, but the mayor fears he shall not prevail, and he hath no more discretion then to make that the ground of not proceeding to election’. Mercurius Academicus no. 12 (2-7 Mar. 1646), 115, 116 (E.325.16). This factional unrest soon spread to the common council, sparked by a Commons’ resolution for appointing Henry Dawson (a leading figure among the Newcastle Independents) deputy-mayor while Blakiston returned to his duties as Westminster. CJ iv. 495b; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 62-3. According to the Presbyterian polemicist Thomas Edwards, this resolution was procured by the Newcastle Independents in order to retain executive control in Blakiston’s absence. T. Edwards, Gangraena [pt. 3] (1646), 89 (E.368.5). When the resolution was put before the council on 6 April, Alderman John Cosins, Robert Ellison and six other councillors gave it their assent only insofar as it agreed with their municipal oaths to defend the town’s liberties. Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 62. Cosins and Ellison were friends and prominent Presbyterians, and their expressions of concern for the town’s liberties were largely a pretext for opposing Dawson’s appointment. Infra, ‘Robert Ellison’.
The rivalry between the town’s Presbyterians and Independents intensified in the autumn of 1646. On 11 September, Blakiston was ‘vehemently charged’ in the Commons for withholding the Newcastle election writ, and a committee was set up to investigate the matter. Harington’s Diary, 36; CJ iv. 666b. He defended himself on the grounds that the town was full of ‘malignants’, and it was generally agreed that no election should be held while the king was at Newcastle (where the Scots had taken him after he had fled to their army in May). Harington’s Diary, 36. In the elections for the common council in October, the Presbyterians suffered another setback when both Cosins and Ellison lost their places and Dawson was appointed mayor. Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 64. Edwards claimed that the Independents had procured Dawson’s election by threats – charges repeated by the town’s Presbyterians, who complained to Parliament that Dawson and his confederates had suppressed a petition for the election of a new MP. Edwards, Gangraena [pt. 3], 89; The London Post no. 1 (14-31 Dec. 1646), 4 (E.369.7). In October and apparently again in December, Cosins, Ellison and other leading Presbyterians travelled to Westminster to make good these allegations. The London Post (14-31 Dec. 1646), 4; Perfect Occurrences no. 52 (18-25 Dec. 1646), sig. Eee3 (E.368.2). Meanwhile, the London Presbyterians wondered ‘why the Scots would suffer in Newcastle the Independents to domineer so and abuse the godly orthodox ministers, and not teach them better manners’. Edwards, Gangraena [pt. 3], 89. But the Scottish garrison commander in Newcastle was being careful to keep his soldiers on a tight leash for fear of alienating the townspeople. The London Post (14-31 Dec. 1646), 6; Edwards, Gangraena [pt. 3], 89.
The feud between the town’s Independents and Presbyterians came to a head on 31 March 1647 – two months after the Scottish garrison had departed – when the recruiter election at Newcastle finally took place. Not unexpectedly, it produced a fierce contest, with an intensity of factional rivalry that one commentator thought unprecedented
The election of a burgess for the town and county of Newcastle having lain long under an expectation, and it being of late carried on with so much heat and resolution, that in my remembrance there hath fallen out nothing in the like nature more remarkable since the first beginning of the Parliament. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 204 (6-13 Apr. 1647), 485 (E.384.2).
Proceedings began at eight o’clock in the morning, when Mayor Dawson secured the common council’s approval to read a paper to the assembled freemen reminding them that delinquents had no right to vote. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 132. The Independents were clearly hoping to thin the ranks of their opponents by this ploy, and several Presbyterians objected that it was ‘illegal and impertinent’ and ‘contrary to the nature and freedom of suffrages or free voices’. The candidates were Ellison and Alderman Henry Warmouth, a leading Independent, and when they were presented to the freemen it quickly emerged that Ellison was much the more popular, having about 600 voices to Warmouth’s 80. But the mayor, sheriff ‘and divers eminent men’ – in other words, most of the common council – adhered to Warmouth, and when they saw that he had lost the shout they withdrew to the council chamber and ordered the freemen to disperse on pain of punishment. They then drew up an indenture returning Warmouth. Ellison’s supporters demanded a poll, and when that was refused 400 of them subscribed a paper on his behalf and resolved to petition Parliament against Warmouth’s return. Within days of the election, a Presbyterian delegation – reportedly including Ellison himself – had left Newcastle to put their case to Parliament. On 6 April, the Commons received a petition from ‘divers of the inhabitants of Newcastle in the behalf of Mr Ellison, declaring that he was rightly chosen and praying that therefore he might be received in the House’. But it was then objected – almost certainly by Blakiston and other Independent MPs – that Warmouth had been duly returned by the sheriff and the mayor. The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 204 (6-13 Apr. 1647), 485-7, 492; Perfect Occurrences no. 14 (2-9 Apr. 1647), 107, 109 (E.383.25). Aware that this was a highly charged issue, the House set up a committee for the specific purpose of investigating the rival claims, prompting the Dawson group to send down its own delegation, led by one of the aldermen, to ‘justify and avow’ Warmouth’s ‘free and lawful election’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 239; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 143-4; CJ v. 133a; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 204 (6-13 Apr. 1647), 487. The town was described as ‘still divided, the magistrates and other freemen high in differences’, in May, when ‘above 100 of the Presbyterian party, who stand for Mr Robert Ellison’, fêted Henry Grey*, earl of Stamford – a political and personal rival of Newcastle’s future governor, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*. Perfect Occurrences no. 21 (21-28 May 1647), 135 (E.390.7). By June, ‘the two divided parties, the Presbyterians and Independents’, were each preparing delegations to Westminster. Perfect Occurrences no. 22 (28 May-5 June 1647), 142-3 (E.515.16).
Despite the disputed nature of his election, Warmouth took his seat in the Commons and was soon making ‘insolent’ speeches in support of the army agitators. Infra, ‘Henry Warmouth’. The committee to examine the Newcastle election had been appointed at the height of the Presbyterian ascendancy at Westminster, and it is unlikely that Warmouth’s views endeared him to many of its members. On 23 July 1647, the committee reported its findings, whereupon the House declared Warmouth’s election illegal and ordered that a writ be issued to elect a new Member. CJ v. 133a. Warmouth’s removal from the House and the prospect of another by-election did little to dampen the flames of factional rivalry at Newcastle. In September, the common council imprisoned five of the chamberlains for refusing to pay the expenses of the delegation sent to Westminster to uphold Warmouth’s election. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 239, 244-5; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 189-90. The October common council elections, which saw Ellison restored to his place, seem to have weakened the Independent interest, however, and in November the Presbyterians narrowly won a council vote for sending one of their own supporters (the town clerk, Edward Man) to assist Blakiston at Westminster. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 206-7; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 81. The by-election, which was held on 1 December, was again a bitterly contested affair. The candidates the second time round were Ellison and the town’s new mayor Thomas Ledgard, another member of the Dawson group. ‘After much labouring’ the contest went to a poll in which Ellison received 300 votes and Ledgard 61. The Moderate Intelligencer no. 142 (2-9 Dec. 1647), 1051 (E.419.18). The Independents disputed the result on the grounds that Ellison’s supporters allegedly included freemen who had borne arms against Parliament and were therefore disqualified from voting. But in the end the sheriff apparently had no choice but to declare Ellison the winner. The indenture returning Ellison was signed by over 250 freemen – the signatures of Dawson, Warmouth and other leading Independents being conspicuous by their absence. C219/43/2/97.
The Presbyterians’ triumph in the December by-election heralded no lasting change in Newcastle’s political life. With Ellison’s departure for Westminster (where he seems to have worked readily with Blakiston) and the appointment late in 1647 of the staunchly Independent Sir Arthur Hesilrige as the town’s governor, the Dawson group seems to have tightened its grip on the common council. Infra, ‘Robert Ellison’. During the spring of 1648, the council fêted Hesilrige, confirmed an earlier order for removing Alderman Cosins from office for his ‘seditious carriage’, and had both the vote and the declaration of no further address to the king publicly read in town. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 254, 260, 265-6; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 209, 212, 223, 227; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 83, 87-8; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 17-18. At the outbreak of the second civil war in the spring of 1648, the council voted unanimously to strengthen the town’s defences and to disenfranchise any freemen or apprentices who defected to the Engagers. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 252, 253, 257, 261. The town’s request for first refusal on the purchase of the manor and collieries of Whickham and Gateshead – the so-called ‘grand lease’ – was well received at Westminster, and in gratitude the council offered to undertake the work of strengthening South Shields fort ‘as a testimony of their love and due respects to the Parliament for the great favours which they have vouchsafed this corporation’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 258-9; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 217, 220, 230, 253, 313; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 84. Although Hesilrige deemed Newcastle ‘exceedingly disaffected’, only about 30 freemen and apprentices deserted to the royalists that summer and were duly disenfranchised. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 289; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 271, 282, 287, 288; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 174. On 25 September, the council ordered that every freeman should serve Parliament to the best of his ability and estate – if necessary by bearing arms. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 274; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 95. Ellison, who abandoned his seat at Westminster in September, lost his place on the common council in the October municipal elections. Infra, ‘Robert Ellison’; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 95-6.
The ruinous impact of the second civil war on the region seems to have pushed the Newcastle Independents in a decidedly radical direction that autumn. In October, the mayor and about 80 of the freemen petitioned the Commons, requesting that before any personal treaty was concluded with the king ‘full and exemplary justice be done upon the great incendiaries of the kingdom, the fomenters of, and actors in, the first and second war and the late bringing in of the Scots’. The Moderate no. 14 (10-17 Oct. 1648), 115-16, 120 (E.468.2). In addition, Oliver Cromwell* and his victorious soldiers were sumptuously entertained by the mayor. The Moderate Intelligencer no. 188 (19-26 Oct. 1648), 1714 (E.469.1); no. 189 (26 Oct.-2 Nov. 1648), 1724 (E.470.1); Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 429; After the regicide, a letter from the town expressed the view that Charles I had ‘died like a desperate ignorant Roman; nothing we can see in him tending to a true Christian or the power of godliness’. The Moderate no. 30 (30 Jan.-6 Feb. 1649), 295-6 (E.541.15). Parliament’s triumphs against the Scots and the Irish in 1650-2 were lavishly celebrated – the common council making sure it received up-to-date intelligence by feeing Cromwell’s secretary, Richard Hatter. Tyne and Wear Archives, 543/30, unfol.; 543/31, ff. 5, 13; 543/3, ff. 198v, 207v, 208, 208v, 209; 543/35, f. 231v. In July 1651, when the council finally got round to replacing the royal arms on the Tyne bridge with those of the commonwealth, it decided to have a republican sentiment engraved in Latin on the new escutcheon. Among the four tags it considered was Principatus ac libertas dissociabiles anno domini MCDLI – ‘Princedom and liberty are things incompatible in 1651’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 30. The common council was scrupulous in tendering the Engagement (abjuring monarchy and Lords) and even asked Hesilrige and Sir William Armyne* to move the Rump for a resolution clarifying the terms of subscription. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 376-7. Only one office-holder openly questioned whether the Engagement was compatible with the Covenant, and his reservations about taking the former were quickly overcome. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 375. When the common council agreed to the request of the St John’s vestry for the provision of a ‘peaceable-spirited’ Presbyterian minister, it was careful to ensure that the nominee ‘be satisfied in his judgement concerning the Engagement and affected to the present government’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 107, 113; Howell, Newcastle, 238.
The death of Blakiston in 1649, and the fact that Ellison had abandoned his seat, meant that the town was not formally represented in the Rump. Nevertheless, the common council retained several powerful friends in the House, most notably Hesilrige and the Northumberland lawyer Sir Thomas Widdrington. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 21; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 14, 29, 53, 319, 337, 437; MD.NC/1/3, f. 11; 543/32, f. 208; 543/37, f. 186; 543/38, f. 198. The council also laid out considerable sums to ensure that the town’s interests were well tended at Westminster. Blakiston alone seems to have disbursed at least £500 concerning the town’s ‘suits, business and affairs’ in the House and the central law courts. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 197, 268, 305, 339; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 141, 262, 273, 360. In addition, the council employed John Rushworth as its solicitor and intelligencer in London at a salary of £30 a year. Infra, John Rushworth’. In 1656, Samuel Hartlib junior, the secretary to the council of trade, was added to the corporation payroll as the town’s political and parliamentary agent, with a salary of £40. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 264v; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 168, 337. He was recommended for the post by Widdrington and Rushworth, ‘being a gentleman well known to persons of interest, which qualifies him the more for the town’s service’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 337. The common council’s instructions to one of its men-of-business are revealing of its concerns
You are, during your abode in London, as much as in you lies to observe all our friends in their motions, methods and ways of serving us – their desire, diligence and capacities of doing us good – that we may be fully instructed against another day what ways to take in our business and whom respectively to own for favourers and friends. And as you are to mind those that are for us, so to cast an observant eye upon those that are against us – the ways they walk in, the instruments they employ and such persons of power and quality as forward their designs – that we may better know how to behave ourselves in those concernments. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, unfol. (back of vol.).
Although Newcastle, like other boroughs, was not assigned its own MP in the 1653 Nominated Parliament, the selection of Henry Dawson to represent the four northern counties – and specifically, it seems, County Durham – was the next best thing. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 135; A Catalogue of the Names of the New Reprsentatives (1653, 669 f.17.14). Dawson died in August, however, less than a month after the Parliament had assembled. In his will, he referred to his membership of Sidrach Simpson’s Independent congregation in London. Infra, ‘Henry Dawson’. Dawson’s demise came at a particularly unfortunate time as far as the common council was concerned, for a few months later the town’s stranglehold on the Tyne coal trade was challenged at Westminster by Ralph Gardner and his allies. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 224; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 168, 171. The controversy was referred to the committee (or council) for trade, where it rumbled on until at least 1658. R. Howell, Monopoly on the Tyne, 1650-8 (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1978); CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 280. The common council pulled out all the stops to defend the town’s monopoly, sending Ellison and other prominent townsmen to plead its case and spending large amounts of money on legal advice and treating potential friends. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 270v; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 255, 319, 333, 338; 543/33, f. 252; 543/34, ff. 212, 226; 543/35, ff. 248v, 245, 243v, 242, 241v, 235. With its privileges under attack at Whitehall it was careful to greet the establishment of the protectorate with a loyal address to Cromwell, which was presented by the protectoral councillor of state Walter Strickland*. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 197, 199, 201.
Under the Instrument of Government of 1653, Newcastle lost one of its parliamentary seats, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament on 12 July 1654, the freemen returned the town’s governor Sir Arthur Hesilrige. The election indenture was signed by 25 freemen, ‘with many others’ present. C219/44/2, unfol. On 11 August, Hesilrige ‘accepted of being chosen burgess’ for Newcastle, but subsequently opted to sit for Leicester, just a few miles from his seat at Noseley. Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 217. On the eve of the election, the council had voted to pay the town’s MP a salary of five shillings a day. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 213. But when Ellison petitioned the council in September for his salary as MP in 1647-8, he was ignored (he had to wait until 1660 for his arrears, though he was paid at the handsome rate of ten shillings a day). Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 227; MD.NC/1/3, f. 34. The council tended to reserve its money and gestures of goodwill for those it deemed useful to the town’s political interests. Thus in January 1656, it made Deputy Major-general Charles Howard* a freeman, ‘being a person of great honour and eminency in the government of the commonwealth’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 262v. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in August 1656, the freemen, doubtless at the common council’s prompting, chose another person of ‘great eminency’, the Cromwellian grandee Walter Strickland. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 361.
Strickland’s return for Newcastle in 1656 arose from the leading townsmen’s need for a patron to help them defend their monopoly on the River Tyne coal trade against the Gardner group. Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. Strickland had been on friendly terms with the town fathers since at least March 1654, when he had presented an address from the common council to the protector. Infra, ‘Walter Strickland’; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 199, 201. In January 1656, the council had been informed that Strickland had declared his ‘affection to the good of the town’ in connection with efforts to defend its commercial privileges. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 319. Before selecting Strickland, the council had ‘sent a compliment to Sir Arthur Hesilrige to let him know their respects unto him; but lest they bring both an inconvenience upon him and themselves, they intend to choose some other to serve for them’. TSP v. 296. By 1656, Strickland was a far more influential figure than the disaffected Hesilrige, and the council was eager to bind him closer to its interest.
It was Strickland who presented a letter from the council to Cromwell in December 1656, denouncing ‘busy agitators’ among the local Presbyterian ministry for endeavouring to ‘stir up the people to join with them in their addresses to his Highness and Parliament for the setting up of church discipline’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 117; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 224-9; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 362. Contrary to Edwards’ allegations that the Dawson group persecuted Presbyterian ministers, the ruling clique had consistently sought to preserve harmony between the town’s Presbyterian and Independent congregations. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 267; Edwards, Gangraena [pt. 3], 88-9; Mercurius Academicus no. 12 (2-7 Mar. 1646), 116; Howell, Newcastle, 224-31, 238-43. By the mid-1650s, however, relations between the two groups were becoming strained, with ‘each man labouring to please himself and his party than to advance that which was for mutual and common good’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/2, f. 267; MD.NC/2/2, p. 339. Calls for stricter Presbyterian church discipline in the region threatened the religious settlement not just in Newcastle, however, but throughout the country and provoked one of Cromwell’s most heart-felt addresses on the blessings of unity and mutual toleration among God’s people. Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 360-2. Following Strickland’s summons to the Cromwellian Other House in December 1657 he wrote to the town recommending William Jessop*, the clerk to the protectoral council, as a suitable replacement. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 466. The common council thanked Strickland for his many favours to the town, but had little time to consider his recommendation before the second protectoral Parliament was dissolved.
The succession of Protector Richard in September 1658 was met by a loyal address from the council full of ‘flattering expressions’ and promising ‘honour, love and obedience’ to the new supreme magistrate. The Public Intelligencer no. 143 (13-20 Sept. 1658), 825-6 (E.756.24); Mercurius Politicus no. 435 (23-30 Sept. 1658), 885-6 (E.756.27); A True Catalogue of the Several Places and Persons by Whom Richard Cromwell was Proclaimed Lord Protector (1659), 47-8 (E.999.12). Newcastle regained its second seat in the elections to the third protectoral Parliament of 1659, which saw a four-way contest between the town’s recorder Mark Shafto*, Captain Thomas Lilburne, ‘Mr Blaxton’ and ‘Colonel Clarke’. Clarke Pprs. iii. 174. Shafto was clearly the common council’s candidate, and the same may have been true of ‘Mr Blaxton’, who was probably John Blakiston, the town clerk and son of the town’s former MP. Lilburne, though not exactly an outsider – he had been an apprentice of George Dawson, brother of Henry, and was a member of the Newcastle merchant adventurers – was not resident in the town nor intimately involved in its affairs. Infra, ‘Thomas Lilburne’. ‘Colonel Clarke’ was probably Colonel John Clerke II*, a Londoner and admiralty commissioner. Clarke Pprs. iii. 174; The Monethly Intelligencer no. 1 (1 Dec. 1659-1 Jan. 1660), 6 (669 f.22.51). The election, which took place on 18 January 1659, lasted most of the day. After ‘many high words and discontents on each party they came to a poll, and it was carried for Mr Shafto and Captain Lilburne with abundance of respect from the commons [freemen] in town, notwithstanding of several people ... who had put their proselytes abroad to hinder Captain Lilburne’. The ‘several people’ mentioned here were probably friends of Blakiston, who petitioned the committee of privileges against Lilburne’s return. Burton’s Diary, iv. 368, 389. It is not clear whether the common council supported this petition, though it did pay the sheriff’s clerk’s charges in attending the committee ‘to witness the taking the poll for electing two burgesses to sit for this town’. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 546; 543/39, f. 175.
National political divisions probably played a major part in the Newcastle 1659 election dispute, for whereas Thomas Lilburne was a staunch Cromwellian and, after the fall of the protectorate, would emerge as a supporter of General George Monck*, there are signs that John Blakiston was a commonwealthsman. Infra, ‘Thomas Lilburne’; Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 153; TSP v. 296. There was certainly an influential party in the town that leaned towards the commonwealth interest. In June 1659, for example, the mayor succeeded in persuading the common council to send what seems to have been an address acknowledging the restored Rump. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 526, 528; CJ vii. 687a. Moreover, in September a petition was presented to the Rump from the ‘well-affected’ of Newcastle, desiring that power in the town be exercised only by men who had manifested their loyalty to the commonwealth. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 537; CJ vii. 778b. In November, it was reported that Newcastle had declared for the army against Monck – Major-general John Lambert* referring to ‘those faithful citizens which in the three last wars have stood in the gap betwixt this nation’s peace and Charles Stuart’s party’. Clarke Pprs. iv. 118, 150; Mercurius Politicus no. 592 (27 Oct.-3 Nov. 1659), 844 (E.771.13). Certainly the common council extended every courtesy to Lambert, lavishing £114 on his entertainment during December. Tyne and Wear Archives, 543/39, ff. 190, 190v, 192. It was not nearly so profligate in entertaining Monck when he arrived at the town early in January 1660. Tyne and Wear Archives, 543/39, ff. 189v, 190v.
Monck installed Ellison as commander of the Newcastle militia, and it was therefore not surprising when the former recruiter was returned for the town again in the elections to the 1660 Convention. Infra, ‘Robert Ellison’. A puritan writing from Newcastle in May 1660 gloomily noted the return of maypoles, plays and jugglers in the town, and a spirit of ‘liberty and licentiousness’ among the people. The Lords Loud Call to England (1660), 24 (E.1038.8). During June and July, the common council sent a loyal address to the king, spent lavishly on celebrating his restoration and was careful to replace the royal arms on the Tyne bridge. Tyne and Wear Archives, 543/39, ff. 170, 180, 180v, 182, 183-182v, 183v; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 4. About eight of the aldermen, among them the leaders of the Dawson group, either resigned or were purged between late 1659 and May 1662, to be replaced in some cases by the royalists officeholders who had been removed from the council in 1644. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/3, ff. 35v, 43, 44, 45, 46v; Howell, Newcastle, 210-11.
