Kingston-upon-Hull

Hull was the most prosperous and strategically important of the Yorkshire boroughs and the county’s largest urban community after York. Situated on the north bank of the Humber at the point where the River Hull entered the estuary, it ranked fourth among the kingdom’s outports, with Hull merchants enjoying a substantial share of English trade to the Baltic and the Low Countries. The town’s emergence as a major port was closely linked to the rapid expansion of the West Riding cloth industry between 1560 and 1640. By the early seventeenth century almost all of the West Riding’s vast output of kerseys and dozens passed through Hull, which exported more cloth than any other outport. The town also exported sizeable quantities of lead from the mines in Derbyshire and Yorkshire. On the import side, Hull merchants brought in a wide variety of commodities, from flax and grain from the Baltic, to wine and dried fruits from Bordeaux and Spain. By the end of the seventeenth century, Hull’s import trade in raw materials from the Baltic closely rivalled that of London. Inevitably, the town’s economy was dominated by the mercantile and shipping sectors, although Hull market also sustained a lively trade in the exchange of local and imported produce. Manufacturing on the other hand constituted only a small part of the town’s commercial activity. VCH E. Riding, i. 134-53; HP Commons 1604-29; W.B. Stephens, ‘Cloth exports of provincial ports, 1600-40’, EcHR ser. 2, xxii. 236-7, 241, 242-4, 246.

The civil war and subsequent years of unrest caused a severe downturn in the port’s overseas and local commerce, although many Yorkshire parliamentarians were convinced that Hull was the only place in the county to have profited from the war. Lansd. 890, ff. 132v, 141-2; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, ff. 669-71; The Hull Lttrs. ed. T.T. Wildridge (Hull, 1887), 75, 79, 83, 87, 116, 119; VCH E. Riding, i. 138. Economic decline and a bad outbreak of the plague in 1637 had had an adverse effect upon the town’s population, which slumped from between 7,000 and 8,000 to around 6,000 in the mid-seventeenth century. VCH E. Riding, i. 161; Hull’s Managing of the Kingdoms Cause (1644), 2 (E.51.11). But as economic conditions began to recover during the 1650s so the number of inhabitants seems to have increased, and by 1673 the town contained 1,370 households, suggesting an overall population, including servants and apprentices, of between 6,900 and 7,600. VCH E. Riding, i. 161.

By its charter of incorporation, granted in 1440, Hull was given its own jurisdiction independent of the East Riding and was governed principally by a mayor and 12 aldermen, who held office for life and served as justices of the peace for the borough. Other municipal officers included a sheriff, two chamberlains and a recorder. VCH E. Riding, i. 29, 35, 38. Unusually for a town of Hull’s size, there was no common council or second chamber – the mayor and aldermen conferred directly with the leading freemen on important matters. The town had first sent Members to Parliament early in the fourteenth century, and the right of election was vested in the freemen, or ‘burgesses’, who may have numbered as many as 1,000 by the mid-seventeenth century. VCH E. Riding, i. 20, 36. In practice, however, the role of the freeman body in parliamentary elections was limited both procedurally and numerically. By custom, the corporation nominated two candidates for each seat from which the assembled freemen chose one. VCH E. Riding, i. 39; HP Commons 1604-29. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, the voters numbered somewhere between 325 and 651. HP Commons, 1660-90. The returning officer was the sheriff who was elected annually from the freemen. VCH E. Riding, i. 39.

The dominant interest at Hull by 1640 was undoubtedly that of Sir John Lister, who was the town’s wealthiest merchant and one of its longest serving aldermen. Lister had been returned by the freemen to every Parliament during the 1620s, and though he played little part in municipal affairs during the 1630s he was able to consolidate his position as Hull’s leading inhabitant through sizeable loans to the corporation and by his diligence as a lobbyist on the town’s behalf. His most valuable service during the 1630s was in spearheading the town’s defence against an exchequer suit brought by three courtiers in 1634 over title to lands assigned to the corporation for maintenance of Hull’s castle and blockhouses. Lister spent a considerable amount of time in London during the later 1630s soliciting for this case, and by 1638 he had managed to force a stalemate. Infra, ‘Sir John Lister’; HP Commons 1604-29. However, it required the intervention of Sir Henry Vane I*, the treasurer of the king’s household (and secretary of state from February 1640), to secure the dismissal of the case – a favour that he performed for the town at around the time of the calling of a new Parliament, late in 1639, and possibly with the deliberate aim of establishing an electoral interest at Hull. HP Commons 1604-29; V.A. Rowe, ‘Sir Henry Vane the younger as MP for Hull’, N and Q, cciv. 22.

It is likely that Vane had already succeeded in ingratiating himself with the town by 10 December 1639, when his friend, the lord admiral and future parliamentarian grandee Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, wrote to the corporation requesting that ‘as other ports and sea towns of England have heretofore done the favour to other lord admirals in giving them the nomination of one of the burgesses for those towns, so now you would at my entreaty make choice of Henry Vane esq’, Secretary Vane’s son, as yet a plain gentleman. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/290. The letter itself was a circular, and duplicates were sent to several other major ports. Rowe, ‘Sir Henry Vane the younger’, 22. The mayor and aldermen’s response to this heavy-handed piece of electoral patronage was predictably unfavourable. They questioned the lord admiral’s assertion that the nomination of one of the town’s MPs was ‘a right belonging to his place’ and declared that ‘Henry Vane esq.’ was a gentleman entirely unknown to them. Alnwick, Y.V.1d, bdle. 1: Francis Thorpe* to Sir John Melton*, 3 Jan. 1640; X.II.6, box 23B, v: Melton to Hugh Potter*, 6 Mar. 1640; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 568. It seems that the elder Vane had over-played his hand, choosing to bolster his own newly-acquired influence among the freemen with Northumberland’s pretended interest at Hull as lord admiral – a presumption that the corporation, jealous of the town’s independence, naturally resented. Northumberland’s electoral agent in Yorkshire, Sir John Melton*, had received reports by mid-January 1640, that most of the freemen favoured Vane II’s candidacy, but that ‘if his father write [to the corporation], as is intended, it will doubtless give a good help to the business, especially when he shall write as the principal secretary of state’. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, v: Melton to Potter, 17 Jan. 1640. On receiving Vane I’s letter, in which he made clear that ‘Henry Vane esq’ was his son and reminded the corporation of the favour he had performed for the town, the mayor and aldermen declared themselves ‘very sensible of our deep engagements and very desirous to further the business to the utmost’. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 568. Consequently, on 30 January 1640, the corporation ordered that Vane II be made a freeman for the ‘better enabling’ him to be elected an MP ‘in respect of divers favours this town hath lately received from ... Sir Henry Vane concerning a suit in the exchequer ... against this town’. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, f. 522. On 16 March, the freemen, with ‘full consent’, returned Lister and Vane II to the Short Parliament. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 568.

The corporation sought to strengthen its interest at court in June 1640 by offering another of Northumberland’s court allies – and Yorkshire’s most powerful politician – the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), the office of high steward of Hull. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, f. 528. Strafford accepted, and early in September 1640 the corporation sent two townsmen to York to confer with its new high steward and Secretary Vane concerning ‘the proceedings of the Scottish army and this country’s expedition’ in the second bishops’ war. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, pf. 531, 532.

On 26 October 1640, in the elections to the Long Parliament, Hull again returned Lister and Vane the younger, who in the interim had acquired a knighthood like his father. C219/43/3/100. When Lister died less than two months after his election, the town, on 18 January 1641, returned another leading Hull merchant, Peregrine Pelham, who was one of Lister’s trustees and a man of pronounced puritan sympathies. Infra, ‘Peregrine Pelham’; C219/43/3/102. One of Pelham’s first acts following his election was to secure an order from the corporation for allowing him 6s 8d a day from the town funds, establishing a precedent for payment of ‘knight’s pence’ that endured until 1679. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, f. 541; VCH E. Riding, i. 127.

Pelham was far more active on the town’s behalf at Westminster than was Vane II, whose time in the House was largely taken up with national affairs. Infra, ‘Peregrine Pelham’; ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Rowe, ‘Sir Henry Vane the younger’, 23. Hull’s most diligent servant after Pelham was its recorder, Francis Thorpe*, who continued to work enthusiastically on the town’s behalf even after his election as a ‘recruiter’ for the Yorkshire borough of Richmond in October 1645. Infra, ‘Francis Thorpe’; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 277-8 and passim. Among Hull’s other friends – or potential friends – at Westminster during the early 1640s, the most prominent were the town’s former governor Sir John Hotham* and his son Captain John Hotham*. Both men, however, were primarily concerned not with protecting the town’s interests, nor even with promoting the parliamentarian cause, but in advancing their own authority and influence within Hull and the East Riding – as they were to demonstrate on numerous occasions following Sir John Hotham’s appointment as parliamentary governor of the town in January 1642. Infra, ‘John Hotham’; ‘Sir John Hotham’.

Hull’s strategic importance as a major port and as the site of one of the kingdom’s two principal magazines made it an immensely valuable prize for both the king and Parliament. I.E. Ryder, ‘The seizure of Hull and its magazine Jan. 1642’, Yorks. Arch. Jnl. lxi. 139-48. Caught in the middle of this struggle were the townsmen, whose deeply held desire to preserve their chartered privileges was often mistaken by both royalists and parliamentarians as evidence of political ill-affection. VCH E. Riding, i. 102. In January 1642, the leading townsmen resisted attempts by the king and Parliament to garrison Hull, preferring instead to re-assert their own ancient right to exercise military authority within the walls. Ryder, ‘Seizure of Hull’, 141-2, 144. The mayor and aldermen sought help from Pelham in attempting to keep the town free of the ruinous charge and threat to municipal authority that a garrison would entail, and it was probably at his instigation that a motion was made in the Commons on 20 January 1642 that he return to Hull ‘to accommodate things so as the town should readily obey the orders of Parliament’. Sir John Hotham, however, insinuated that Pelham’s loyalty to Parliament’s interests was compromised by his freeman’s oath to preserve the town’s liberties, and Pelham’s offer was rejected. PJ i. 116. It was only as a result of Captain Hotham’s ‘well management of threats and treaties’, and after Parliament had summoned the mayor and two of the aldermen to answer for their disobedience, that Hull admitted a parliamentary garrison – and even then the decisive factor was probably the strength of the Hothams’ military and political interest in the East Riding. Infra, ‘John Hotham’.

Yet behind the townsmen’s immediate concern to preserve their own liberties, it is possible to detect the emergence of national political allegiances during 1642. Estimates differ as to the relative strength of royalist and parliamentarian support in Hull, although there is considerable evidence to suggest that the majority of leading townsmen were sympathetic to the ‘orthodox’, magisterial puritanism favoured by the aldermen and were broadly aligned with Parliament. Hull was not without a royalist element, but it is significant that only one of the aldermen was removed from office for adhering to the king. Lansd. 890, ff. 114, 114v, 132-132v; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/309; C BRB/3, f. 626; Hull’s Managing of the Kingdoms Cause, 9, 17; VCH E. Riding, 103-4, 106; B.N. Reckitt, Charles the First and Hull (1952), 16; Ryder, ‘Seizure of Hull’, 145. Parliament felt no need to make changes in the Hull bench until the early 1650s, when four aldermen were removed for disaffection (probably Presbyterian rather than cavalier in nature) to the commonwealth. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, ff. 842-3, 844; C BRB/4, f. 18; VCH E. Riding, i. 106, 117-18. Despite this purge, the corporation seems to have remained a bastion of support for Presbyterianism. Add. 21418, f. 145; R. Raikes, The Unjust Dealings of the two Corporations of Hull and Headon (1659), 1-2 (E.989.14).

Hull found itself at the centre of the national political stage once again in April 1642, following Hotham’s refusal to admit the king into the town – a decision that he seems to have taken only after consulting with Pelham. Infra, ‘Peregrine Pelham’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 567. Thereafter, the town had to endure two prolonged royalist sieges, the second of which was not lifted until the autumn of 1643. Inside the town the most dramatic conflict was not between royalist and parliamentarian but between the proud and authoritarian Sir John Hotham and the mayor and aldermen, led by Pelham, who, while accepting the need for a parliamentary garrison, wished to set limits upon the governor’s authority. Infra, ‘Peregrine Pelham’.

This struggle for supremacy between Hull’s civilian and military leaders continued on and off throughout 1642 and the first half of 1643 and was not fully resolved even with the arrest of the Hothams late in June 1643 for treason to Parliament. On 13 July, the mayor and aldermen wrote to Pelham, expressing their dismay at a Commons resolution appointing the godly East Riding knight Sir Matthew Boynton* as governor of Hull in place of Sir John Hotham. CJ iii. 152a, 154b; LJ vi. 119a. The corporation objected to Boynton’s appointment largely on the grounds that he was a religious Independent, their fear being that he and his friend, the Independent divine, Philip Nye, would endeavour to undermine the town’s orthodox puritan ministry. Infra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/313. Ideally, the corporation would have liked the governorship vested in the mayor, but recognising that this was wishful thinking it proposed that it be held in commission between the mayor and the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), who had fled to the town after the defeat of his northern parliamentarian army at Adwalton Moor in June. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/313-14. Parliament thought otherwise, however, and conferred the governorship upon Fairfax and his ‘ministers’ – that is, any deputies or lieutenants he thought fit to appoint to help him run the garrison. The corporation submitted to Parliament’s wishes but (as it confided to Pelham)

not without some reluctancy in ourselves and much discontent in the townsmen, many of whom could very well have liked to have stood upon their guard and not have parted upon such terms from those things which they had got with the hazard of their lives and fortunes [in seizing the Hothams] – they not receiving so much as thanks for their pains – and now to prostrate themselves and all they have not only to the will and pleasure of my Lord Fairfax (whom we much honour) but of every common soldier that comes under the name of his minister. And ... we assure you, we fear he may have such ministers about him as will be willing to put him upon actions that may too much trench upon our liberties. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/316.

In the event, the bench succeeded in securing the appointment of a committee for managing the town’s affairs that was independent of Fairfax and included Pelham, the mayor and several of the aldermen. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/318.

As Pelham’s and Thorpe’s numerous letters to the corporation reveal, Hull’s interests were ably served at Westminster. To be represented by the younger Vane, one of the most influential figures of the civil-war period, was undoubtedly a great advantage for the corporation. However, because he was active on such a broad range of fronts at Westminster he was able to perform only occasional favours for the town, leaving the bulk of the constituency work to be shouldered by Pelham and Thorpe. Pelham was assiduous in broaching the town’s business with the chairmen of various standing committees – notably, Miles Corbett and Laurence Whitaker, who headed the Committee for Examinations*, John Wylde, chairman of the Committee for Sequestrations*, and John Blakiston and John Goodwyn, chairmen of the committee for petitions. Thorpe handled most of the corporation’s legal affairs, although he too was involved in lobbying various parliamentary committees, including the Northern Committee* and the Committee for Revenue*. Infra, ‘Peregrine Pelham’; ‘Francis Thorpe’; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, passim. The two men were apparently able to draw liberally upon town funds to help smooth the passage of the corporation’s various businesses through the Commons. Pelham, for one, was given a handsome entertainment budget by the corporation, and he assured the bench that ‘you need not fear any committee to do you any prejudice. I do not spend £500 per annum here for nothing’. Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 292. With these kind of resources at their disposal, Pelham and Thorpe were able to build up an impressive network of support for Hull at Westminster, principal among them being Sir Thomas Widdrington (chairman of the Northern Committee and the Northern Association Committee*), Sir William Strickland, Robert Goodwin and John Wylde. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, ff. 645, 684, 728, 782, 812; C BRB/4, ff. 12, 15, 44, 84; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 278, 280, 302. As well as treating the town’s friends himself, Pelham urged the corporation to send gifts to the Speaker and several other influential Members, including the prominent Commons lawyer Samuel Browne. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, ff. 645, 709; Hull Lttrs. ed. Wildridge, 110, 115; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 279-80, 291, 292, 305, 309, 311, 317. However, it was precisely this kind of largesse which helped to alienate many of Hull’s neighbouring Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Members, confirming them in their mistaken belief that the town had profited from the war while the region as a whole had been ruined. Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 295, 297, 298, 299-300, 309, 310, 331.

Most of the business that Pelham and Thorpe handled for the corporation at Westminster was local in nature – principally, the prevention of non-freemen trading in the town, rating disputes between the borough and the East Riding, securing maintenance for the town’s ministers out of dean and chapter lands, money for the repair of the walls and blockhouses, and reparations for decay of trade and the loss of Hull ships to pirates. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, ff. 652-3, 709; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, passim. The corporation was also particularly concerned to ensure that the governorship remained in the hands of someone it could trust and who was not likely to encroach upon municipal authority. When Lord Fairfax was obliged to resign as governor in the spring of 1645 following the introduction of the Self-Denying Ordinance, Pelham was able to secure the appointment of his son Sir Thomas Fairfax* (the commander of the New Model army) to replace him, on the understanding that Sir Thomas would continue Colonel John Mauleverer as deputy-governor. Evidently, the corporation did not feel threatened by an officer like Mauleverer, who lacked influential patrons in the region besides the Fairfaxes. Hull Lttrs. ed. Wildridge, 67-8, 70-1; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 292-3. But neither Vane, Pelham, Thorpe nor their friends at Westminster were able to prevail upon the Northern Committee to have Hull exempted from the Northern Association ordinance as desired by the corporation, which was fearful that its authority would be ‘trampled upon’ by the military and its revenues swallowed up by the East Riding. Add. 18780, f. 28; Hull Lttrs. ed. Wildridge, 70-1, 96; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 295, 296, 297, 298-300.

Although Pelham, Vane and Thorpe all retained their seats at Pride’s Purge, there are signs that Hull’s influence at Westminster waned under the Rump. In September 1649, Thorpe was obliged to relinquish his place as the town’s recorder by reason of his ‘weighty employments’ as a baron of the exchequer. Infra, ‘Francis Thorpe’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/3, f. 820. His replacement as recorder, the Hull lawyer William Lister*, although willing to do the town’s bidding in London, lacked the political influence and connections that Thorpe had possessed. Infra, ‘William Lister’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/517, 522, 537; C BRB/4, ff. 63, 208, 219. Pelham’s death in December 1650 removed another mainstay of the town’s parliamentary interest, forcing the corporation to rely more on Vane, who was among the Rump’s busiest politicians and administrators. Vane seems to have shouldered more of the town’s business during the early 1650s than he had previously, but he could not commit the time and effort to his constituents that Pelham had. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/513-14, 521, 540, 558; Rowe, ‘Sir Henry Vane the younger’, 23-4. Moreover, the town father’s conspicuous support of ministers who refused to take the Engagement (abjuring monarchy and the Lords) would not have pleased Vane – a republican and tolerationist to his core – which probably explains his apparent indifference to their quarrel with the incumbent of Hull’s main church, Holy Trinity, the influential Presbyterian divine John Shawe, whom the bench feared was aiming at a ‘superintendent power in the ministry’. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/511-13, 517, 519-25, 528; C BRB/4, f. 49; Mercurius Politicus no. 20 (17-24 1650), 327-8, 334-5 (E.615.6); CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 312; 1650, pp. 385, 399; 1651, p. 22; VCH. E. Riding, i. 108-9; H. Reece, The Army in Cromwellian England (Oxford, 2013) 117, 126.

The army and its supporters were highly mistrustful of Hull’s powerful Presbyterian interest; Lieutenant-colonel Edward Salmon* thought its leaders and inhabitants were ‘as much against the present government’ as those of any town in England. Add. 21418, f. 145. Oliver Cromwell* had prevailed upon Sir Thomas Fairfax to have the sectarian officer Colonel Robert Overton appointed the town’s deputy-governor late in 1647, thereby adding a religious dimension to the ill-feeling and suspicion that would generally characterise relations between the corporation and the garrison during the 1640s and 1650s. Sloane 1519, f. 169; Add. 21418, f. 145; Add. 21419, f. 169; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/485-8, 490, 494, 498-9, 506-7; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 226; VCH E. Riding, i. 106, 108; Reece, Army in Cromwellian England, 113-16, 119, 123-9, 177; ‘Robert Overton’, Oxford DNB; J.F. Wilson, ‘Another look at John Canne’, Church History xxxiii. 43. It also exacerbated the feuding between Presbyterian and Independent ministers and their followings that had been a feature of the town’s religious life since the end of the first civil war. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/491; Hull Lttrs. ed. Wildridge, 113, 122-3; Reece, Army in Cromwellian England, 126-7; ‘Two lttrs. addressed to Cromwell’ ed. C.H. Firth, EHR xxii. 314; Scott, ‘Hull lttrs.’, 278, 313. Having lost Pelham in 1650 and forfeited the goodwill of the Rump by its patronage of anti-commonwealth puritan ministers, the corporation was unable to prevent the garrison partitioning the chancel of Holy Trinity to make room for an Independent congregation under John Canne. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/514-16; C BRB/4, f. 59; VCH E. Riding, i. 108-9; Reece, Army in Cromwellian England, 127.

Hull retained one of its seats under the Instrument of Government of 1653, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 the town returned William Lister, apparently without a contest. C219/44/3, unfol. This result was repeated in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament two years later. With Lister’s help, the townsmen made several approaches to Cromwell and Parliament for redress of their grievances, principal among which was the ‘insupportable burden’ of the garrison, but apparently received little in the way of relief. Lansd. 890, ff. 143v-45; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, ff. 208, 249-51.

Having regained its two seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Hull was the scene of a hard-fought contest between John Ramsden* (one of the aldermen who had been removed under the Rump for refusing to subscribe the Engagement), Vane II, Colonel Henry Smith (the governor), Andrew Marvell* (secretary to the protectoral council and son of Hull’s pre-civil war minister), and Thomas Strickland*, son of the East Riding parliamentarian grandee Sir William Strickland*. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, f. 277. Strickland’s attempt to impose his son upon the town was doomed from the start, but the other four candidates all seem to have had supporters among the freemen, with one onlooker pronouncing the town ‘so much divided’ that it was hard to predict who would triumph. The front-runners were evidently Ramsden and Marvell (who may have been standing together), although it was conceived that Vane – who was said to have had a ‘considerable party’ – might gain a seat ‘by the divisions of the rest’. Add. 21427, f. 262. This suggests that the other candidates were all canvassing, and thus threatening to split, the pro-Cromwellian vote. Vane and his friends would later claim that his return for Hull had been thwarted ‘through ... the influence of the [Cromwellian] court party’. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/635; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 51. On election day (10 Jan. 1659), the town sheriff was forced to call a poll, and Ramsden and Marvell duly received the ‘major vote’ of the corporation and freemen. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, f. 277. Ramsden was returned largely on the strength of his interest as a leading Hull merchant; Marvell’s victory was built on the ‘good service’ he had performed for the town at Whitehall in his capacity as assistant to Secretary John Thurloe*. The fact that Marvell’s brother-in-law was the town sheriff and returning officer may also have worked to his advantage. Perhaps Vane was alluding to chicanery by Popple when he laid some of the blame for his defeat at Hull to ‘the practices of some’ of the townsmen during the election. Infra, ‘Andrew Marvell’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/635.

The election at Hull for the 1660 Convention went to a poll in which Ramsden and Marvell defeated four other candidates – Edward Barnard (a local lawyer), William Lister, Francis Thorpe and the staunchly republican Colonel Matthew Alured* of Beverley. Ramsden and Marvell, and probably Barnard and Lister, stood on a pro-Restoration ticket, beating Thorpe and Alured into fifth and sixth place respectively. ‘William Lister’; HP Commons 1660-90. At the Restoration, the corporation desperately attempted to atone for Hull’s prominent role in Parliament’s defiance of Charles I. In June 1660, it surrendered to the crown the town’s fee farm rents which it had purchased under the commonwealth, and addressed a grovelling petition to the king, claiming that the townsmen had been forced by ‘armed power ... from that point of obedience to which their affections were naturally touched’. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, ff. 308, 309-11. Royalist sentiment among the freemen was reflected in the return of the town’s deputy-governor, Colonel Anthony Gilby, and Marvell to the Cavalier Parliament. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, f. 355; HP Commons 1660-90. But it required an order from the king before the corporation removed John Shawe as town minister and the three surviving aldermen who had been appointed under the Rump. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, f. 369; C BRL/660. In September 1662, the corporation commissioners removed two more aldermen for refusing to subscribe the declaration renouncing the Covenant. Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, ff. 457-8.