Leeds

Situated at an important crossing on the River Aire some 25 miles south west of York, seventeenth-century Leeds lay close to the dividing line between the Pennine clothing district and the arable lowlands of the Vale of York. Although Leeds was described in 1628 as ‘an ancient market town’, a large proportion of its inhabitants were engaged in the cloth trade, either as clothworkers, clothiers or merchants, and by the Stuart period the town’s economy was dependent to a very large degree on the woollen clothing industry. M.W. Beresford, ‘Leeds in 1628’, NH x. 135; G. Rimmer, ‘Evolution of Leeds’, Thoresby Soc. l. 109-110. The town of Leeds, as distinct from the much larger parish, had between 5,000 and 6,000 inhabitants by the 1620s, while Leeds borough, which comprised Leeds high town, Kirkgate and the Mainriding, contained 740 householders in 1672, suggesting an overall population of about 3,300. E179/210/421, mm. 14-16, 21v-22, 27-32; Add. 21422, f. 296; Add. 21427, f. 188; Rimmer, ‘Evolution of Leeds’, 118.

The town was governed by a corporation – established by royal charter only 16 years before the outbreak of civil war – that consisted of an upper chamber of ten principal burgesses, a lower chamber of 20 assistants, and a recorder and various executive officers. The mayor, or ‘alderman’, was elected annually from among the ten principal burgesses. [Anon.], Leeds Corp. and the First Charter 1626-1661 (Leeds, 1952), 7-10; J.W. Kirby, ‘A Leeds elite; the principal burgesses of the first Leeds corporation’, NH xx. 90. The alderman and principal burgesses were the most powerful figures in the town’s government, serving as ex officio magistrates for the borough and supervising the manor courts, which had jurisdiction over the bulk of the town’s property. Leeds Corp. and the First Charter, 9; Rimmer, ‘Evolution of Leeds’, 123; Kirby, ‘Leeds elite’, 89, 102-3. The one area of the town where the corporation did not exercise near complete authority seems to have been the manor (so-called) of Kirkgate. The steward of Kirkgate court leet was appointed not by the corporation but by the owner of the manor and was responsible for appointing constables within his jurisdiction. Add. 21424, ff. 81, 85; Add. 21426, f. 268; Beresford, ‘Leeds in 1628’, 137. The franchise, which was determined according to the county qualification under the Instrument of Government of 1653, lay with those who possessed a real or personal estate worth £200 or more. The alderman was the returning officer and was ‘judge of the voices’ at elections. Add. 21422, f. 327.

During the civil war period, Leeds, like the other clothing towns of the West Riding, was widely regarded as a bastion of parliamentarianism. R. Howell, ‘Neutralism, conservatism, and political alignment in the English Revolution: the case of the towns’, in Reactions to the English Civil War ed. J. Morrill (1982), 67-8. Edward Hyde* (the future earl of Clarendon), described Leeds, Halifax and Bradford as ‘three very populous and rich towns (which, depending wholly upon clothiers, naturally maligned the gentry)’. Clarendon, Hist. ii. 464. But though there is evidence of considerable popular support for Parliament in all three towns, and particularly in Bradford and Halifax, an anti-royalist pamphleteer acknowledged in 1643 that Leeds, for one, was dominated by the ‘malignant humour’. Supra, ‘Halifax’; The Rider of the White Horse (1643), 1 (E.88.23); Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 28-9, 33; J.W. Kirby, ‘The rulers of Leeds: gentry, clothiers and merchants, c.1425-1626’, Thoresby Soc. lix. 45. There can be no doubt that a significant proportion of the town’s merchant-clothier elite was sympathetic to the king’s cause. Almost all the principal burgesses were tainted with delinquency or obliged to compound for their estates after the war, and when the corporation was reconstituted in 1646 and purged of its royalist members, none of the old burgesses were re-appointed. G. Gill, Innocency Cleared (1651), 3; Kirby, ‘Leeds elite’, 93-4, 98, 103-4.

Leeds was one of two West Riding towns (the other was Halifax) that were enfranchised under the Instrument of Government. The Instrument’s scheme for the distribution of parliamentary seats was taken more or less in its entirety from the Rump’s bill for a new representative, which in turn was based on the second Agreement of the People as amended by the army in 1648-9. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 371-2. Given that Leeds was listed for enfranchisement in the Agreement, it is possible that the town was not quite as indebted to the Instrument’s architect, Major-general John Lambert*, for its creation as a parliamentary borough in 1653 as has sometimes been supposed. A Petition from His Excellency Thomas Lord Fairfax (1649), 13-14 (E.539.2); D. Hirst, ‘The fracturing of the Cromwellian alliance: Leeds and Adam Baynes’ EHR cviii. 872-3. Nevertheless, there was a widespread perception in Leeds that it was Lambert’s principal man-of-business Captain Adam Baynes* who had been ‘the first wheel which made it a town electable’, and he quickly emerged as the leading contender to represent the town in the first protectoral Parliament. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’; Add. 21422, f. 248; Add. 21426, f. 97. Only the senior municipal office-holders seem to have been in two minds at the prospect of Baynes serving as the town’s MP. Add. 21422, f. 256. Mindful of his intimacy with Lambert – the West Riding’s most powerful political figure by 1654 – and of the influence Baynes enjoyed as a commissioner for regulating the excise, they wrote to him on several occasions in the spring and summer of 1654 assuring him of their backing. Add. 21422, f. 296; Add. 21426, f. 97; Add. 21427, ff. 188, 189. At the same time, however, they were worried that once elected he would support calls from the clothiers of the parish for the reform of the town’s government. Add. 21422, ff. 286, 296; Add. 21427, f. 188; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 874-5. Furthermore, they were uneasy about his unorthodox religious views. Baynes, a Quaker sympathiser, would emerge as the de facto leader of those at Leeds who were hostile to the authoritarian brand of Presbyterianism favoured by most of the municipal elite. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’. Their concerns at the prospect of Baynes’s election were reflected in their desire to confine the franchise to eligible voters within the borough, fearing that if the wider parish was involved – as Baynes’s friends wanted – it would encourage the clothiers’ reformist agitation. Add. 21422, ff. 296, 325, 414; 21427, f. 188; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 881.

While continuing to court Baynes, therefore, the municipal leaders approached two local gentlemen, George Gill and John Stanhope*, about standing for the town, and when this idea was abandoned as unfeasible, they apparently opted in secret to back one of their own number, Francis Allanson. Add. 21426, f. 97. Allanson, for his part, was said to be ‘exceedingly desirous’ to serve as the town’s MP, but appears to have been dissuaded from putting in a serious challenge by the strength of Baynes’s constituency among the ‘best of the parish and clothiers’. Add. 21422, ff. 286, 325. A similar consideration seems to have deterred the corporation from taking up the town’s recorder, John Clayton, on his offer to stand. Add. 21422, f. 331.

Yet despite the strength of Baynes’s interest, the election at Leeds, held on 14 July 1654, was by no means the formality that his supporters had expected. After hearing three clear shouts for Baynes, the alderman (an ally of Baynes), ‘unadvisedly fearing nothing by these words’ asked if the voters wished to propose any other candidate. Add. 21422, ff. 343, 349. Seizing on this opportunity, Baynes’s enemies put forward Allanson’s name which was then ‘unexpectedly cried up again and again’, although not in the same numbers that Baynes had received. Add. 21422, f. 349; Add. 21426, f. 125v; Add. 21427, f. 149v, 199. The alderman asked Allanson whether he would stand and, when he declined, declared Baynes duly elected, ignoring calls from Allanson’s supporters for a poll. Add. 21422, ff. 343, 424; Add. 21427, f. 149v, 199. Baynes’s electoral agent Anthony Devereux then ‘obliged’ Allanson to sign the election indenture and claimed later that although Allanson had been ‘very modest to deny the nature of a Parliament-man upon the first intimation of his party, yet in the close would have accepted it’. Add. 21422, ff. 343-343v. In all, about 35 men signed the indenture, including Allanson and his municipal confederate Martin Iles. Add. 21427, f. 200; C219/44, pt. 3, unfol. According to his correspondents, Baynes had been supported by most of the merchants, clothiers and the ‘best of the parish’, while his opponents had been drawn largely from the corporate elite (of the ten principal burgesses, only three, including the alderman, had given their voices for Baynes) and the clothworkers or the ‘poorer sort’. Add. 21422, ff. 348, 349v, 358, 381, 414, 495; 21427, f. 211.

The contested election at Leeds in 1654 was both fuelled by and exacerbated deep-seated tensions within the borough. Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 874-8, 880-1. Opposition to Baynes’ return continued for several months after the election and was spearheaded by Allanson, Clayton, Iles, Robert Todd – the staunchly Presbyterian minister of the recently-built town church of St John’s – and their allies in the corporation. Add. 21422, ff. 361, 373. This group overlapped to a great extent with the leadership of the town’s Presbyterian, or ‘new church’, faction and was regarded by Baynes and his friends as ‘disaffected’ both to the protectorate and the army. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’; Add. 21422, ff. 358, 361, 384, 388, 406, 414, 419, 431, 453; Add. 21424, ff. 46-46v, 212; Add. 21426, f. 115v; Add. 21427, f. 211. Devereux claimed that Baynes’s enemies at Leeds were worried that the ‘new kirk must down all over England’ because he had been elected and were hoping, by his removal, to strike a blow for ‘the zeal and rigid design of the presbyter’ at Westminster. Add. 21422, ff. 361, 384. The majority of Baynes’s supporters were drawn largely, it seems, from the ‘west church’ – that is, the old parish church – where his friend, William Stiles (a signatory to the 1654 indenture), a ‘non-Scottified’ Presbyterian, was vicar. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’.

Intermixed with these religious rivalries was the more long-standing dispute over the town’s government. Since the granting of the charter of incorporation in 1626, many Leeds clothiers (and some merchants) had grown extremely resentful at the corporation’s drive to regulate the manufacture of cloth within the parish – particularly since their competitors outside the parish faced no such restrictions. Gill, Innocency Cleared, 3-4; Add. 21417, f. 68; Add. 21422, f. 456; Add. 21424, f. 75; Add. 21426, ff. 125-125v; Add. 21427, ff. 224, 250; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 181; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 869. Although the clothiers were divided as to how best to regulate cloth production, they were united in wanting this power removed from the established municipal elite – either by creating their own regulatory structures, remodelling the corporation, or abolishing it altogether. Add. 21422, ff. 296, 388, 400, 406, 453, 456, 495, 497, 500, 506; Add. 21427, ff. 150, 203, 210, 215, 218-218v, 220, 221, 224. The clothiers looked to Baynes as their champion in this cause and were doubtless pleased when he wrote to the town shortly after his election, urging it to prepare instructions for him at Westminster ‘in relation to your government civil or political’ and for the promotion of the clothing trade. Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, 91. Baynes’s championship of the clothiers went hand in hand with his antipathy towards the authoritarian Presbyterianism of Todd’s ‘high-kirk gang’. In the Baynes camp, certainly, the municipal elite’s intolerant Presbyterianism and economic oppression were seen as two sides of the same coin. Devereux was articulating this perception when he described the corporation as odious to both religious Independents and the ‘honest’ clothiers. Add. 21427, f. 150.

Angry that they had been denied a poll and probably anxious that Baynes’s return would lead to a remodelling of the corporation, Allanson and his faction petitioned the committee of privileges in August or September 1654, requesting a new election. Add. 21422, ff. 375, 410, 420, 450, 458. In response, Baynes asked his friends in Leeds to collect signatures to a petition endorsing his return, and by early October they had gathered between 700 and 1,000 hands from the most ‘sufficient’ men in the town and borough. Add. 21422, ff. 189, 431, 438v, 443, 456. Faced with such overwhelming support, which Baynes took care to lay before the committee of privileges, Allanson and his allies decided to accept the olive branch which Baynes had been holding out to them since late July. Add. 21422, ff. 367, 448, 450v, 453, 455, 460; 21426, f. 2. Early in October they withdrew their petition and formally recognised Baynes as the town’s MP. Add. 21422, ff. 448, 450, 457, 458, 460; Add. 21426, f. 106, 111; Add. 21427, f. 213. Tension was further reduced following a general meeting of the inhabitants in November at which the office-holders, by playing on the clothiers’ divisions and promising them some measure of self-regulation, largely succeeded in spiking their opponents’ guns. Add. 21422, f. 497; Add. 21427, ff. 218-218v, 220; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 878-9. Even so, argument over the town’s government continued in the interval between the first and second protectoral Parliaments, and it was heightened by the municipal elite’s efforts to pack the corporation with its own ‘creatures’, removing Baynes’s supporters and the enemies of the town’s Presbyterian ministry in the process. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’; Add. 21423, ff. 95, 162v; Add. 21424, ff. 46-46v, 61, 68, 81, 85; Add. 21427, f. 250; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 881.

Battle was joined in earnest following the summoning of a new Parliament in 1656. In July of that year, Recorder Clayton, another ‘rigid Presbyterian’, renewed the offer he had made in 1654 to stand against Baynes, pointing out to the corporation the wider implications if Baynes was re-elected: ‘The consequences may be great both for point of religion and liberties if no care be taken, but [we] suffer the active soldier and sectary to have the prevailing part in the House for to establish evil things by a law’. Add. 21424, ff. 62, 218. Although it would undoubtedly have endorsed such sentiments, the corporation preferred Allanson as its candidate, and on this occasion, with one of his own faction as alderman, he had no hesitation in openly challenging Baynes for the seat.

The election at Leeds for the second protectoral Parliament was held on 20 August 1656 and was even more controversial than its 1654 predecessor, although this time it was Baynes’s supporters who had cause to feel aggrieved. Despite the fact that Baynes apparently received

by view and voices six for one, yet the alderman proceeded to poll. That by polling it appeared (no man being denied that liberty) of Mr Allanson’s party ... could make up (as appears by the lists given in to the alderman) the number of 194, and there were polled ... for the said Adam Baynes 836 persons, besides many more sufficient men of the said borough who desired to poll but were denied by the said alderman. Yet notwithstanding, the said alderman indirectly gave judgment and returned Mr. Allanson as burgess by indenture to the sheriff of the county. Add. 21426, f. 268.

The polling figures strongly suggest that many of Baynes’s voters were residents of the parish; Allanson was returned in the name of the borough. After the election, Baynes’s supporters submitted their own indenture, replete with over 100 signatures, and petitioned the committee of privileges against Allanson’s return. C219/45, pt. 1, unfol.; Add. 21426, f. 268. In an effort to confirm his election, Allanson attended Parliament in person, but it was Baynes who was reported to be sitting in the House by the end of September. A week later, the Leeds Presbyterians were hailing Allanson as a ‘state martyr’, which suggests that his return had been rejected – although given the apparent absence of any official ruling to this effect, it is possible that rather than suffer a judgment against them at Westminster, Allanson’s supporters had withdrawn their indenture and whatever case they had presented to the committee of privileges (this would perhaps explain how Allanson was able to revive his challenge to Baynes at the beginning of the second session, early in 1658). Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’.

With Allanson’s faction in no mood to compromise, Baynes set about gathering support in Leeds and at Whitehall for remodelling the town’s government. Add. 21424, ff. 72, 82. Most of the merchants and clothiers were now keener than ever to remove the municipal elite from power, but as in 1654 they remained divided on how best to go about it – some favouring reform of the corporation, others its abolition and the town to be governed by two or three West Riding justices of the peace. Add. 21424, ff. 67-67v, 68, 75, 76, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 89, 98, 99, 113, 131, 140, 142, 143, 156, 162, 167, 176, 214, 217; Add. 21426, f. 98; Add. 21427, ff. 146, 150, 249, 250. Baynes and his closest supporters wanted to revive a pre-civil war scheme for vesting municipal government in the familiar form of a mayor, 12 aldermen and 30 common councillors, and early in December they petitioned the protectoral council for a new charter of incorporation to this effect. CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 181; Hirst, ‘Leeds and Adam Baynes’, 870. But although this petition referred to the members of this new corporation being ‘indifferently chosen’, Baynes and his confidants spent most of December choosing their ideal candidates for office – prominent among them being Lambert, Baynes himself and the York lawyer John Hewley*, who was selected to replace the ‘disaffected’ Clayton as recorder. Add. 21424, ff. 140, 143, 147, 150, 154, 164, 165v; Add. 21426, ff. 105, 371; Add. 21427, ff. 150, 249.

While Baynes and his faction looked principally to Lambert to further their cause, the corporation pinned its hopes on leading members of the West Riding Presbyterian interest – a group with close ties to Lambert’s main electoral rival in the region, the 3rd Baron Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*). Among the corporation’s leading friends were the recorder’s son, and gentleman usher to the protector’s wife, John Clayton*, the local gentlemen (and friends of Fairfax) John Stanhope and Henry Tempest – who had both been excluded from Parliament, probably as opponents of the major-generals – the south Yorkshire Presbyterian knight Sir Edward Rodes* and Tempest Milner, the sheriff of London. Add. 21424, ff. 83, 85, 99, 127, 132, 136, 165, 211, 218; Add. 21425, f. 68; Add. 21426, f. 108. However, the corporation’s biggest coup was in securing the favour of Sir Thomas Widdrington*, the Speaker in the second protectoral Parliament, who was able to engage the support of Fairfax, his brother-in-law. Add. 21424, ff. 131, 132, 136, 168, 169. In mid-January 1657, with the draft of a new charter ready for approval, Fairfax testified to the council as to the corporation’s good services, and at a stroke the Baynes faction’s proposals to remodel the town’s government were rendered ‘null and void’. Add. 21424, ff. 186, 194, 208; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 241. Within weeks, the Allanson faction had obtained a stay in proceedings on the new charter, and its victory was rendered complete in the summer when Lambert and Baynes quit the army in opposition to the new protectoral constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’; ‘John Lambert’; Add. 21424, ff. 208, 213, 220; Add. 21426, f. 115. In December 1657, the office-holders petitioned the council for a new charter of their own devising, which was doubtless intended to reinforce their hold on power, but nothing was done in the matter before the Restoration. Add. 21424, f. 239; Add. 21425, f. 62; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 225, 241; 1658-9, p. 11; J. W. Kirby, ‘Restoration Leeds and the aldermen of the corporation’, NH xxii. 125-6.

Leeds was disenfranchised in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659 and was to remain unrepresented at Westminster until the electoral reforms of the nineteenth century.