Scarborough

Situated on a rocky cove some 35 miles north east of York, early Stuart Scarborough was the largest town on Yorkshire’s North Sea coast and the site of one of England’s most heavily fortified castles. J. Binns, ‘Scarborough and the civil wars 1642-1651’, NH xxii. 99. As a port it was dwarfed by Hull, and by the 1640s its smaller neighbours Whitby and Bridlington enjoyed a greater volume of maritime trade. B. Hall, ‘The trade of Newcastle and the north-east coast, 1600-40, BIHR xii. 57. Its economy was based largely upon shipping and related trades such as ropemaking and the salting of fish. E134/27ELIZ/HIL17, f. 19; T. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough (1798), 216, 218; J.B. Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough (1882), 320; P. Nash. ‘The maritime shipping trade of Scarborough, 1550-1750’, NH xlix. 208, 210-13. The town’s main import was coal – shipped down from Tyneside – which it exported to the continent along with Yorkshire kerseys, salt and grain. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough, 220; Hall, ‘The trade of Newcastle’, 57; Nash. ‘Maritime shipping trade of Scarborough’, 213-17. It also held regular markets and fairs and had several small-scale service industries. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough, 219; Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 312-15, 330; VCH N. Riding, ii. 553. In the mid-1640s, the corporation claimed that the town had no trade at all ‘for any merchandise but only having a few small barks trading with coals from Newcastle and some certain boats for fishing in summer time’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO Publications xlix), 267. The borough contained some 330 householders in the early 1640s – a figure that had risen to 523 by the early Restoration period, with 57 persons in receipt of ‘constant alms’. E179/216/461; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 272-8. This suggests an overall population of somewhere between 2 and 3,000 people.

Scarborough had been incorporated by the end of the twelfth century, making it one of Yorkshire’s oldest boroughs. Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 28. By its royal charter, government in the town was vested in a corporation consisting of two bailiffs, two coroners, four chamberlains and 36 ‘burgesses’ or common councilmen. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough, 116-17; Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 45, 195; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 28-9, 41, 127. The town also possessed a recorder by the seventeenth century, although he was not a member of the corporation. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 162. All the corporate officers were elected, or re-elected, on an annual basis by electors chosen by the retiring council. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO Publications xlvii), v; VCH N. Riding, ii. 551. The bailiffs acted as joint mayors, served as justices of the peace for the borough and were its returning officers. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. Ashcroft, v; Hist. of Scarborough ed. A. Rowntree (1931), 347-8. They presided over the town’s three regular courts – the court of pleas, the court of quarter sessions and the court leet or sheriff’s tourn. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. Ashcroft, v. The town had returned Members to Parliament regularly from the late thirteenth century, with the franchise apparently vested in the 44-strong corporation. Election indentures for the Tudor and early Stuart period usually cite the bailiffs, burgesses and ‘commons’, or ‘commonalty’, as the electorate – although these latter phrases appear to refer to the common councillors rather than to the freemen. VCH N. Riding, ii. 551; Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 220; HP Commons, 1558-1603; HP Commons, 1604-29.

Since the beginning of Charles I’s reign the town had lacked a single, dominant patron, and in the elections to the Short Parliament it was courted by four principal parties. Early in December 1639, Thomas Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, soon to be created earl of Strafford), the president of the council of the north, wrote to the corporation on behalf of his vice-president and friend Sir Edward Osborne*. Mindful of Wentworth’s great influence at Whitehall as well as in north, the office-holders duly agreed to elect Osborne to the senior place, only to receive a letter from him in February 1640, informing them that he was also standing at York and, in the event of his return there, recommending another of Strafford’s allies, George Butler. The second gentlemen to approach the corporation was the secretary of the council of the north, Sir John Melton*, whose candidacy was supported by Wentworth’s court ally Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, in his capacity as lord high admiral. In mid-December 1639, another would-be electoral patron emerged in the shape of Sir John Hotham* of Scorborough in the East Riding. As governor of Hull and one of east Yorkshire’s largest landowners, Hotham wielded considerable influence in the region. Nevertheless, he was careful not to tread on Wentworth’s toes. Writing to the corporation on 13 December, he recommended his friend and kinsman Sir Hugh Cholmeley* of Whitby (who had represented Scarborough in the 1624, 1625 and 1626 Parliaments), while at the same time endorsing Wentworth’s recommendation of Osborne for the senior place. However, he asked that if Osborne should be elected for another constituency (he presumably meant York) then the corporation might return Cholmeley and Hotham’s eldest son John Hotham*, ‘that my affection to your town might prove hereditary’. The fourth candidate, Sir Robert Napier*, who was lord of the nearby manor of Seamer (although his principal residence was in Bedfordshire), threw his hat in the ring on 19 March 1640, only a day before the election. In his letter of self-recommendation, he claimed to be standing at the urging of some ‘well-wishers’ in the town and ‘upon some encouragement and persuasion to believe your respects to me’. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. Ashcroft, 340-3; VCH N. Riding, ii. 485. In the event, his assurances of support proved delusory, for the next day (20 Mar.) the corporation elected, ‘with one will, mind and consent’, Sir Hugh Cholmeley and John Hotham. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. Ashcroft, 343. The election indenture was signed by six of the officeholders, and its returning parties was described as ‘the bailiffs, burgesses and citizens [‘civitatis’] of the town of Scarborough’. C219/42/2/97.

Cholmeley was very much the borough’s natural choice – a local gentlemen with a proven record in the town’s service at Westminster. Hotham was to some extent a carpet-bagger, but the corporation clearly elected him in the hope of currying favour with his father. Strafford’s influence at Scarborough was apparently good for only one seat, and even then his nominee had to receive his personal backing and be a man of sufficient ‘quality’ in the county. George Butler seems to have lacked both these requirements. Melton’s candidacy had foundered on the townsmen’s resentment that Northumberland should presume to claim the nomination of one the town’s MPs as lord admiral. Alnwick, X.II.6, box 23B, v: Melton to Hugh Potter*, 6 Mar. 1640; same to same, 27 Mar. 1640.

A compromise of the kind the corporation and the Strafford and Hotham interests had been willing to entertain in the Short Parliament elections proved to be impossible in the elections to the Long Parliament. During the summer of 1640, Sir John Hotham and Sir Hugh Cholmeley had broken completely with Strafford and made common cause with Yorkshire’s so-called ‘disaffected’ gentry. They had personally drafted several petitions to the king from this group, complaining about military charges and other grievances – petitions that the earl had denounced as ‘mutinous’. Infra, ‘Sir Hugh Cholmeley’; ‘Sir John Hotham’. These divisions among the county’s political leaders put the corporation in a difficult position in which they had to choose between the electoral patronage of Strafford or that of Sir John Hotham. If the corporation obliged Strafford by returning one of his nominees it ran the risk of offending Hotham, who would now be satisfied with nothing less than the re-election of his son and Cholmeley. On 24 September 1640, Strafford wrote to the corporation recommending his cousin Sir George Wentworth II* of Woolley, in the West Riding. A few days later, another man closely allied with Strafford, Sir William Sheffield (the son of Scarborough’s chief patron in the Jacobean period, the earl of Mulgrave), offered his services to the corporation. But either from a genuine desire for the redress of the county’s and the nation’s grievances or simply fear of offending Hotham, the corporation, on 9 October, re-elected Cholmeley and Hotham junior. Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. Ashcroft, 347, 349. The election indenture has not survived.

Scarborough’s vulnerability to attack on its landward side meant that there was inevitably a good deal of trimming among the townspeople during the civil war. Cholmley Mems. ed. J. Binns (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cliii), 148, 154. Thus the corporation acquiesced in Cholmeley’s garrisoning of the castle for Parliament in the autumn of 1642. Similarly, it offered no protest when he carried the garrison and, with it, the town over to the king in March 1643. Nevertheless, there are signs that many Scarborians, including the town’s most powerful family, the Thompsons, inclined towards the royalists. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 15, 16, 17, 53, 258; Cholmley Mems. 141; Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 106-7; Binns, ‘Scarborough and the civil wars’, 103-4. The town’s parish minister, a declared opponent of Parliament and the puritans, was in no doubt that he had ‘the hearts of most in the parish’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 101-2. Cholmeley alleged that only four Scarborough families had abandoned the town after it became a royalist garrison, and certainly the majority of the office-holders were willing to support his efforts to hold not only the town but also the castle for the king. Cholmley Mems. 144; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 36, 41-2. In 1646 the Commons acknowledged the existence of at least a hard core of royalist sympathisers in the corporation by ordering the disenfranchisement of six leading office-holders, four of them members of the Thompson family. CJ iv. 528a. Yet Parliament was by no means bereft of support in the town, even in the corporation. Cholmley Mems. 145. The apparent opposition of a third or more of the office-holders to Cholmeley’s defence measures may be evidence of parliamentarian feeling among the civic elite. Moreover, in 1645 the corporation claimed that many of its members had ‘suffered in their persons and estates’ for their good affection to Parliament. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 53. Not long after Cholmeley’s surrender in July 1645, the ‘well-affected’ sent a petition to Parliament in which they appear to have requested, among other things, the removal of ‘malignant’ office-holders. CJ iv. 283b. This petition was referred to the Northern Committee*, which recommended that an ordinance be brought in for the disenfranchisement of six of the office-holders. CJ iv. 301a; Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 281. The committee’s recommendations were approved by the Commons on 30 April 1646, and although there is no evidence that any such legislation was drawn up, it is clear that the six office-holders (and possibly others) had either been purged or de-selected from the corporation by October 1647 at the very latest. CJ iv. 528a; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 105-6.

A few months after Cholmeley’s defection in 1643, John Hotham had also declared against Parliament, and both men had subsequently been disabled by the Commons (Hotham and his father were subsequently executed for treason). On 12 September 1645, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for new elections at Scarborough, and a few days later the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*, father of Sir Thomas Fairfax*, the commander of the New Model army) wrote to the corporation, recommending his kinsman James Chaloner* of Guisborough in Cleveland. CJ iv. 272b; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 42. Chaloner also had the backing of another senior northern parliamentarian, Francis Pierrepont*, the chairman of the Northern Association Committee based at York. Early in October, Chaloner and Fairfax’s electoral agent, a certain Captain Harrison, attended the corporation in person, bringing with them (or so it would seem) the electoral precept. After presenting a second letter from Fairfax in support of Chaloner, they reminded the office-holders of Lord Fairfax’s and Sir Thomas’s ‘great services’ to the parliamentarian cause and their ‘tried integrities’. Clearly, Chaloner was hoping to secure election on the back of his kinsmen’s’ illustrious reputations. His canvassing was interrupted, however, when a messenger delivered a letter from a local parliamentarian squire and zealous puritan, Luke Robinson*. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 43, 49-50. In what was clearly a challenge to Lord Fairfax’s interest, Robinson urged the corporation not to be ‘biased by the favour of great men’.

You may perchance fear the displeasure of some men if you answer not their requests. Be confident, they which have so far vindicated the liberty of the subject know it to be of that tenderness that they will not entrench so much upon it as to deny you that they fought for, which were to destroy their own principles ... Waive all influence and power which letters or any other respects or solicitations may have amongst you. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 44-5.

Chaloner and Harrison declared that it was ‘strange that any man should write anything so much reflecting upon’ Fairfax’s honour, and they demanded that the corporation proceed to election immediately – a request that the office-holders denied on the reasonable grounds that they were not sufficiently prepared. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 49-50.

Robinson’s letter signalled his intention to stand, and by mid-October 1645 a third candidate had emerged. The godly North Riding parliamentarian Henry Darley* wrote to the corporation on 15 October in very discreet support of his friend Sir Matthew Boynton* of Barmston, whose son, Colonel Matthew Boynton, was governor of Scarborough Castle. Darley was careful not to recommend Boynton by name but reminded the corporation that its grievances, particularly as a result of the quartering of the Scots army upon the region, could only be redressed by the diligence of those who ‘by their birth ... cohabitation and subsistence among you are engaged to advance the happiness of that county’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 46. This was disingenuous on Darley’s part, for Boynton had a far greater local interest than Chaloner, who resided largely in London and Buckinghamshire and whose Yorkshire estate lay well to the north of Scarborough. Infra, ‘James Chaloner’. In case the corporation needed any further hint, Darley added that it would be dishonourable for them to elect any man who had not been ‘eminent for acting and suffering in the common cause of religion and liberty both at home and abroad’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 46. Again, this was a coded reference to Boynton, whose ‘suffering’ under the Laudians and emigration to Holland in 1638 were common knowledge. Infra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’. Darley had good reason to be discreet, for it seems that Boynton and Robinson were standing together and therefore open support for Boynton could well serve to undermine Chaloner’s candidacy, and Darley had no wish to offend the Fairfaxes, his friends and political allies. He would have been particularly anxious to distance himself from Robinson’s heavy-handed attempts to discredit Lord Fairfax’s electoral patronage, which even included sending the corporation a copy of the Commons’ order of 10 December 1641 against ‘lords interposing in elections of burgesses’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 46, 47-8. By 25 October, the corporation had made up its mind, and after granting Boynton and Robinson their freedom it elected them with ‘one will and mind’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 48. According to the election indenture, the two men were returned by the ‘bailiffs and major part of the burgesses and commonalty’ of the borough. C219/43/3/125. Thanking the office-holders for returning him, Boynton referred to ‘the freedom of your election in the general concurrence of all your voices’. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 50.

The Scarborough ‘recruiter’ election seems to have hinged largely on the strength of the respective candidates’ local interest. In political terms there was little to choose between them, with all three men supporting the anti-Scottish, Independent interest at Westminster. Darley’s letter to the corporation, with its reference to the ‘heavy pressure’ of the Scottish army upon the region, suggests that the removal of the Scots from Yorkshire may have been an issue in the election. Yet because of its relative isolation, Scarborough probably suffered far less in the way of Scottish ‘oppressions’ than most of the towns inland. Ultimately, it was not attitudes towards the Scots which decided the contest but simply the fact that Boynton and Robinson possessed stronger local ties than Chaloner. Robinson had many friends among the town’s ‘well-affected’ – in particular Captain John Lawson (the future vice-admiral), who was an important figure in Scarborough politics by the mid-1640s – and had been soliciting its interests at Westminster even before his election. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough, 106-7; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 42, 53-4, 57, 63-4, 66-7, 68-9, 71-2, 75. Boynton was one of the largest landowners in the Bridlington-Scarborough area and no doubt derived considerable advantage from his son’s command of the castle and garrison. That he was sheriff of Yorkshire may also have worked in his favour, allowing him to time the election to his own benefit.

Assisted by their newly-elected MPs, the bailiffs and the ‘well-affected’ of the corporation petitioned Parliament for relief in November 1645. They claimed that the loss of trade and shipping which the town had suffered during the war amounted to at least £3,000, and they asked for an order allowing them to compound with delinquents in the borough. In addition to Boynton and Robinson, the corporation looked to support at Westminster from Lord Fairfax and several other Yorkshire MPs, including Darley, Sir Henry Cholmley, Sir William Constable, Thomas Hoyle, Peregrine Pelham, Sir Philip Stapilton, Sir William Strickland and Sir Thomas Widdrington, who chaired the Northern Association Committee at Westminster*. But it was Boynton and Robinson, assisted by John Lawson, who were the town’s most assiduous lobbyists. When piracy threatened to cripple Scarborough’s already weakened maritime trade early in 1646, Boynton and Robinson attended the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports* and managed to obtain assurances from the lord admiral (the earl of Warwick) that the town would be compensated if the North Sea naval squadron proved negligent in its defence. They also lobbied the Northern Association Committee and the Committee for Revenue* during 1646 for a discharge of the town’s substantial fee farm rent arrears. With the assistance of Darley and the town’s recorder, the influential Yorkshire lawyer Francis Thorpe*, they obtained an order to this effect from the Committee for Revenue in February 1647 – a testament to their hard work but also to the fact that Boynton, Darley and Thorpe were on intimate terms with the two of the committee’s most powerful members, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and the earl of Northumberland. Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; infra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; ‘Henry Darley’; ‘Francis Thorpe’; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 52-4, 57-9, 61-4, 66-9, 70-3, 75, 83, 86, 90, 92, 98, 267.

Boynton died early in March 1647, and on 19 May the corporation elected his son-in-law, the godly East Riding gentleman John Anlaby. CJ v. 120b; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 94-5, 97, 98. The election indenture employed the same formula as its 1645 predecessor, referring to Anlaby’s return by the ‘bailiffs and major part of the burgesses and commonalty’ of the borough. C219/43/3/127 His election, like that of his father-in-law before him, probably owed much to his kinship with Scarborough’s governor, Colonel Boynton. However, Anlaby and Boynton parted political company during the second civil war, when Boynton, like his predecessor, declared for the king. It has been alleged that Boynton’s defection received the full backing of the corporation. Baker, Hist. of Scarbrough, 108. Yet it is possible that the corporation’s approval of Boynton’s suggestions for the town’s defence owed as much, if not more, to self-interest than royalist feeling. It is worth noting that while the corporation was willing to raise money for its own defence, it refused Boynton a loan for the garrison, pleading poverty. On the other hand, it agreed to raise £100 for the parliamentarian forces which besieged and, in December 1648, recaptured the castle. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 118-21.

Both Robinson and Anlaby retained their seats at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, although their presence in the Rump proved of little benefit to Scarborough. They were largely ineffective, for example, in securing much-needed financial relief for the town – the corporation claiming that Scarborough had been ‘almost utterly ruined’ as a consequence of Boynton’s revolt. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 125-6, 129, 146. In April 1649, the corporation felt it necessary to send two of its own members down to London to solicit the town’s business. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 132. Part of the reason for Robinson’s and Anlaby’s ineffectiveness in serving the town’s interests at Westminster was the fact that they spent a good deal of the early 1650s in Yorkshire. Infra, ‘John Anlaby’; ‘Luke Robinson’; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 148, 151. Indeed, in the spring of 1650 it was claimed that both Robinson and Anlaby were now residing in the town; which may partly explain the corporation’s apparent zeal in tendering the Engagement (abjuring monarchy and the Lords) to the leading inhabitants in August 1650. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 155-6, 171. In September 1651, Robinson was elected one of the bailiffs of the borough, as was Anlaby a year later. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 187, 201. Robinson’s term as bailiff saw the strict enforcement of the laws against illegal tippling and alehouses, and moves to establish a workhouse for the poor. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 189, 190, 196, 208.

Perhaps because of its strategic importance, Scarborough retained one of its seats under the Instrument of Government while several other North Riding boroughs were deprived of both of theirs. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, the town returned the former Leveller leader John Wildman of Westminster. OPH xx. 305. Wildman had no connection with the borough other than his friendship with his fellow republican Vice-admiral John Lawson, and it was almost certainly Lawson who secured his return. Once Wildman’s election was reported in the press, however, his enemies in Lincolnshire – where he had orchestrated resistance to the fen-drainage interest – presented a petition the protectoral council, in the hope that ‘a person guilty of such crimes’ would not be allowed to sit in Parliament. The council probably needed little encouragement to exclude Wildman under article XVII of the Instrument of Government, which stipulated that MPs must be ‘persons of known integrity, fearing God and of good conversation’. Infra, ‘John Wildman’; SP18/37/11, ff. 13-19; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 309-10; To the Parliament of the Commonwealth…The Great Complaint and Declaration of About 1200 Freeholders and Commoners (1654); Ludlow, Mems. i. 390; P. Gaunt, ‘Cromwell’s purge?: exclusions and the first protectorate Parliament’, History, vi. 3, 11.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Scarborough returned the republican officer Colonel Edward Salmon, who, as an admiralty commissioner and governor of Scarborough Castle enjoyed a powerful interest in the town. He was also returned for the Scottish borough of Dumfries Burghs but opted to sit for Scarborough. Infra, ‘Edward Salmon’. He was allowed to take his seat by the council – in contrast to the majority of Yorkshire MPs, who were excluded as opponents of the protectorate and the rule of the major-generals.

Scarborough regained its two seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, and on or about 9 January 1659 the corporation returned Salmon and Thomas Chaloner. The election had evidently been a hard fought affair, with Salmon and Chaloner having to fend off challenges from at least four other candidates – Lawson, Durand Hotham (Sir John Hotham’s son) and the local parliamentarian squires John Legard† and Richard Etherington†. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 251. Although Salmon had been replaced as governor of Scarborough Castle by 1659, his work as an admiralty commissioner ensured that he retained a strong interest in the town. Infra, ‘Edward Salmon’. Chaloner had been a major figure in maritime and commercial policy-making under the Rump and was almost certainly well-insinuated with Salmon and his fellow admiralty commissioners, who wielded considerable influence in the smaller borough ports. Infra, ‘Thomas Chaloner’. Nevertheless, it is hard to explain why the corporation had preferred a London-based carpetbagger like him to Lawson, who was a native of the town and a senior naval officer. Perhaps Lawson’s duties with the fleet had forced him to withdraw his candidacy or had made him seem a less attractive prospect as the town’s man-of-business at Westminster and Whitehall than the much more politically-experienced Chaloner. There was evidently some irregularity surrounding Salmon’s election, for on 28 January the House ordered the committee of privileges to examine the ‘mistake’ relating to his return. CJ vii. 595a. Doubts over the validity of his election appear to have kept him out of the House for well over a month. Infra, ‘Edward Salmon’. With the restoration of the Rump in May 1659, Robinson and Anlaby resumed their seats, and the corporation wrote to them in June to remind them of the ‘mischief’ caused by Ostend pirates in the North Sea. Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 254-5.

At the Restoration, Scarborough was described as ‘factious’ and in need of a royal garrison to secure it for the king, and it does appear that the corporation proved reluctant to dissociate itself from its parliamentarian past. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 21. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, for example, it returned two of Lawson’s nominees – namely, Robinson and John Legard – and this despite the fact that William Thompson†, the town’s leading royalist inhabitant, had beaten Legard on a poll. HMC 5th Rep. 199; CJ viii. 70b; HP Commons 1660-1690. Within the space of a year, however, Lawson’s interest in the corporation had apparently been extinguished, and the town returned Thompson and the royalist governor of the castle, Sir Jordan Crosland, to the Cavalier Parliament. HP Commons 1660-1690.