Knaresborough

Knaresborough before the civil war was notable chiefly for its castle, which commanded a strong position on the River Nidd where it flowed from the Yorkshire Dales into the vale of York. Although traditionally a market town, a sizeable number of Knaresborough’s 1,000 or so inhabitants had come to depend on the manufacture of linen by the seventeenth century, and the town’s economy undoubtedly suffered as a result of the disruption to the West Riding textile industry during the 1640s. Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.4, f. 79; E179/210/393, m. 30; E179/210/400, mm. 37-40; Hist. of Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. B. Jennings (Huddersfield, 1970), 89, 207, 213-14. The war also discouraged the ‘great resort’ of people to the town during the summer to take the waters at nearby Harrogate. Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons, 330. It was probably not until after the Restoration that Knaresborough returned to the level of prosperity it had enjoyed before the civil war.

The town was not incorporated, being governed mainly through the honor court of Knaresborough and the borough court, presided over by the steward of the honor (or more usually his deputy) and the bailiff of the borough respectively. DL4/70/8; Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2, unfol.; Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. Jennings, 166. The bailiff was ex officio returning officer and was able to set the date for the election and to ‘judge and distinguish of the voices’. Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2. Knaresborough first sent Members to Parliament in 1553, the borough franchise resting in the owners of between 82 and 88 burgage tenements. Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.4, f. 26v; Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2, 30, unfol.; M. Calvert, Hist. of Knaresborough, 86. The owners of multiple burgages were only allowed one vote at the hustings. According to local custom, no women, Catholic, feeble-minded or absentee burgage-owners could vote. Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2.

Although Knaresborough was part of the duchy of Lancaster and was included in the jointure of Henrietta Maria, the crown interest in the borough had lapsed by the early seventeenth century. Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 155; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Knaresborough’. The dominant electoral interests by 1640 were those of Peter and his son Henry Benson* – wealthy Knaresborough yeomen – and Sir Henry Slingesby*, head of the leading gentry family in the area. The Bensons’ emergence as borough patrons suggests that there was some measure of electoral influence through the ownership of burgage tenements – Peter Benson having acquired 16 burgages, the largest individual holding. Bodl. Firth, b.2, f. 181v; Top. Yorks. c.4, ff. 5v-15. However, a more important electoral advantage in this period was control of local office. Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. Jennings, 139. Having taken over from his father as bailiff of the borough, Henry Benson was able to pass the office on to his stepson William Dearlove* in about 1630. Infra, ‘William Dearlove’. The Slingesby interest seems to have relied mainly on a strong deference vote, for although Sir Henry Slingesby was the largest landowner in the district, he held only one burgage-tenement. Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.4, ff. 5v-19, 29-34v; Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Slingesby stood against Benson and his electoral partner Sir Richard Hutton†, who had represented the borough in the 1620s. Whether this contest went to a poll is not clear, but it resulted in the return of Slingesby and Benson, in that order. Slingesby did not attend the election in person, relying instead on his most trusted servant, Thomas Richardson, to manage his interest and defeat his opponents’ ‘subtle plots’. C219/42/2/95; Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 50-1. Slingesby and Benson were returned for the borough again that autumn after another contested election involving Hutton. C219/43/3/103. Slingesby recorded in his diary that on 13 October

I went to the election of burgesses of Knaresborough with intention to stand, and, coming thither, I found Sir Richard Hutton and Henry Benson to be competitors with me. When it came to polling I carried it – but with some difficulty – and [so did] Henry Benson. Sir Richard Hutton laboured all he could to carry it by the industry of his father’s man ... who dwells in the town, and I likewise by the diligence of my man, Thomas Richardson, who took great pains to bring the burgesses together whom he knew would give their votes for me ... There is an ill custom at these elections to bestow wine in all the town, which cost me £16 at least and many a man a broken pate. Slingsby Diary ed. Parsons, 63-4.

During the spring of 1641, Benson attempted to organize a petition to Parliament from the inhabitants of Knaresborough, complaining about the local administration of military charges by the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), who would command Parliament’s northern army during the civil war. Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 108, 112. Benson held a long-standing grudge against Fairfax, although by 1641 their quarrel was probably as much political as personal. Both at Westminster and Knaresborough, Benson was suspected of being a Catholic sympathiser and a supporter of the queen. Infra, ‘Henry Benson’.

In November 1641, after Benson had been expelled from the House for selling protections, Lord Fairfax’s son Sir Thomas Fairfax* wrote to Slingesby asking him to engage his interest in Knaresborough on behalf of Sir William Constable* of Flamborough, who had been a ward of Slingesby’s father. Slingesby then sent word to Henry Benson, requesting that he ‘use his means for electing a friend’ whom Slingesby would name. Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 35. On receiving what Thomas Stockdale* – a local landowner and friend of the Fairfaxes – called this ‘unadvised intelligence’, however, Benson began to ‘treat and work’ the burgage-owners for his stepson, William Dearlove*. Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 37; Fairfax Corresp. ed Johnson, ii. 262-3. On election day, 12 November, Constable was accompanied at the hustings by George Marwood*, Stockdale and Slingesby’s servant Thomas Richardson – but Slingesby himself refused to attend, pleading concerns about his wife and their forthcoming trip to London. Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 35. The contest went to a poll in which Dearlove received 33 votes and Constable a mere 13. Benson had done his work so effectively, claimed Constable, ‘that many who declared themselves the night before for me were now for Dearlove, so that my number upon the poll proved less than the lowest of our expectations and his number much exceeded’. Only two of Slingesby’s tenants voted for Constable, ‘whereas he expected above thirty voices of his dependents’. Constable’s supporters, led by Stockdale, protested that the poll was illegal because Dearlove was deputy-steward and bailiff, ‘so that none of them [the voters] dare give their voices freely against him, as many have declared, because he vexeth and oppresseth his opposites’ [i.e. opponents]. Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 35, 37; Fairfax Corresp. ed Johnson, ii. 260-3. When Stockdale’s demand that Constable be returned was refused, he and Constable’s supporters drew up their own indenture with the signatures of approximately 26 townsmen which they sent to the sheriff. C219/43/3/105; Fairfax Corresp. ed Johnson, ii. 260-1; Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. Jennings, 145. Writing to Lord Fairfax, Stockdale claimed that Benson and his confederates, as ‘officers by deputation’, held Knaresborough in ‘insufferable bondage’, committing many ‘abuses ... to the wrong both of the queen their mistress and the subjects’. Fairfax Corresp. ed Johnson, ii. 265 ‘Never was there seen a burgess in Parliament’, wrote Constable of Dearlove, ‘so raw, unexperienced and every way unworthy’. Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 37. For their part, Dearlove’s supporters branded Constable a puritan and alleged that he spoke against the Book of Common Prayer. Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 266.

On 7 December 1641, the godly Lincolnshire MP Sir William Armyne presented a petition to the Commons from Constable against Dearlove’s return, claiming that he had been the victim of a ‘confederacy’ by his opponents and that he had the support of the ‘better sort’ in the town. But though Sir Hugh Cholmeley and other Members moved for Constable’s return and admission to the House, the Commons confined itself to voting that Dearlove forbear to take his seat pending investigation of his ‘misdemeanours and offences’ by the committee for protections. CJ ii. 334b; D’Ewes (C), 242-3. With the help of Stockdale and Lord Fairfax’s son-in-law Sir Thomas Widdrington*, Constable presented evidence against Dearlove to the committee, which informed the House in mid-March 1642 that Dearlove, ‘a man of very mean or no fortune or condition’, had used his office to intimidate the voters. The House accepted the committee’s verdict that Dearlove’s return was ‘undue and void’, but it was not until 17 August, when most of the royalist Members had left Westminster, that Constable’s return was declared valid. Infra, ‘William Dearlove’; Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 53; CJ ii. 488b, 725a; PJ ii. 61, 63; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 295-6, 345, 349, 376; A Continuation of the True Diurnall of Passages in Parliament no. 7 (21-28 Feb. 1642), 54 (E.201.19).

Knaresborough’s MPs took divergent political paths after 1641. Slingesby was disabled as a royalist in 1642 (and would be executed for conspiring against the protectorate in 1658), while Constable became a prominent parliamentarian officer and, in 1649, a regicide. Infra, ‘Sir William Constable’; ‘Sir Henry Slingesby’. Knaresborough itself was garrisoned for the king in 1642 by a kinsman of Sir Richard Hutton, and it fell to Parliament’s forces late in 1644. Jones, ‘War in the north’, 322-3; W. Wheater, Knaresburgh and its Rulers (1907), 230-1, 234-6. The castle was demolished in 1648 by order of Parliament, regardless of a petition from the locality that it offered protection against marauders and was used as a courthouse. Harrogate and Knaresborough ed. Jennings, 150. Although the majority of the townspeople seem to have been royalist in sympathy, a number of the leading inhabitants and local gentry adhered to Parliament – chief among them being Thomas Stockdale, who had taken possession of at least 12 of the Bensons’ burgage tenements by the end of the civil war. Infra, ‘Thomas Stockdale’; Harrogate Public Lib. Atkinson ms 2; Wheater, Knaresburgh, 238-40. Lord Fairfax was apparently toying with the idea of putting forward either his brother, Charles, or his son-in-law, Henry Arthington*, as a ‘recruiter’ for Knaresborough in the autumn of 1645. Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 101. But on 9 October 1645, the town’s voters returned Stockdale in place of Slingesby, and he and Constable would continue to represent the borough until the dissolution of the Rump in 1653. C219/43/3/107.

Knaresborough was disfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, but regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Robert Walter, Stockdale’s son-in-law, and Slingisby Bethell, a nephew of Sir Henry Slingesby. Bethell, a London merchant and republican, had helped to purchase his uncle’s sequestered estate in the early 1650s, which he and Robert Stapylton* had then held in trust for Slingesby’s family. Infra, ‘Slingisby Bethell’; ‘Robert Walter’. Although there is no record in the Journal of a double return for Knaresborough in 1659, a correspondent of Adam Baynes*, writing to him late in January 1659 about election news, asked him ‘how the case stands with Mr Stockdale in relation to his place, for I perceive there have been endeavours to out him’; this was probably William Stockdale†, Thomas Stockdale’s son. Add. 21425, f. 11. William Stockdale and Bethell’s brother Henry were returned for Knaresborough to the 1660 Convention; and Stockdale and a nominee of Sir Henry Slingesby’s son Sir Thomas Slingsby† were returned to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661. According to report, only 48 of the town’s inhabitants were eligible to vote, and all were either tenants of Stockdale or Slingsby. HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Knaresborough’.