Malton

Malton straddles the River Derwent some 15 miles north east of York on the southern edge of the Vale of Pickering – the region of the North Riding between the Yorkshire Moors and the northern boundary of the East Riding. VCH N. Riding, i. 529. In the early Stuart period, the greater part of the town lay in the manor and quondam borough of New Malton – so-called to distinguish it from the original manorial settlement of Old Malton. R. Carroll, ‘Yorks. parliamentary boroughs in the seventeenth century’, NH iii. 100. Situated in a rich arable and pasture area, the town’s economy was based largely on the exchange and processing of agricultural products. Its market was reportedly ‘very great’ for corn and ‘one of the best in all the county for horses, living cattle, provisions and most country commodities, especially utensils for husbandry’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 250; N.A. Hudleston, Hist. of Malton and Norton, 118-19. Milling, malting and brewing were the town’s principal industries. VCH N. Riding, i. 531. Malton was said to have contained some 300 families in 1624, a figure which may well have risen by the early Restoration period, when the hearth tax commissioners listed 273 paying householders and 106 exempted on grounds of poverty. E179/216/461, mm. 43-4, 48; Hudleston, Malton and Norton, 120. This suggests a population by the 1660s of approximately 1,700. Malton was never incorporated, being governed through its manorial court. The town’s chief officer was the manorial bailiff, who was appointed annually at the lord of the manor’s court leet. VCH N. Riding, i. 531.

Malton had sent Members to the Parliaments of 1295 and 1298, but its franchise had then lapsed until it was restored by order of the Long Parliament late in 1640. VCH N. Riding, i. 531. A motion to restore the franchise of Malton and another Yorkshire town, Northallerton, was made on 5 December and referred to the committee of privileges. CJ ii. 45b. Six days later (11 Dec.), the House ordered that the franchise of both towns be restored. CJ ii. 49b. It is not known who was responsible for securing Malton’s re-enfranchisement. In the case of Northallerton, it was very probably its soon-to-be MP, the godly Yorkshire squire Henry Darley and his friends at Westminster, who included Robert Greville†, 2nd Baron Brooke, John Pym and other members of the parliamentary ‘junto’. Supra, ‘Northallerton’. The objective where Northallerton was concerned was almost certainly to secure the return of Members who were friendly to the reform process – and the same was probably true in the case of Malton. This may help to explain why the writ was sent specifically to New Malton, thus circumventing the influence of the town’s principal landowner, the arch-recusant, William Eure†, 4th Baron Eure. C219/43/3/109; Carroll, ‘Yorks. parliamentary boroughs’, 100. Although Eure was lord of both Old and New Malton, his influence appears to have been stronger in the former. VCH N. Riding, i. 533, 537; Mems. of the Verney Fam. iii. 444-5; Carroll, ‘Yorks. parliamentary boroughs’, 100.

On 8 January 1641, New Malton returned the East Riding barrister Thomas Heblethwayte and another local gentleman Henry Cholmley, both of whom had close links to the ‘northern men’ – a contemporary term for the more reform-minded Commons-men. Heblethwayte was returned on his own interest as the owner of several properties in New Malton and in nearby Norton, where he had his residence. Infra, ‘Thomas Heblethwayte’. Cholmeley (who was to be knighted within a year of his election) also owned property in the Malton area, but he may have owed his return to the influence of his elder brother Sir Hugh Cholmeley (MP for Scarborough) and Sir John Hotham (MP for Beverley), the leaders of the ‘disaffected’ gentry in the East Riding. Infra, ‘Henry Cholmley’. The election indenture is badly damaged, but was signed by at least 50 residents of New Malton. The returning officer was the manorial bailiff. C219/43/3/109. The restored franchise was apparently vested in the ‘burgesses’ of New Malton – a term that seems to have referred to the owners of burgage-tenements. VCH N. Riding, i. 531.

Both of Malton’s MPs sided with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, but by mid-1643, Heblethwayte had defected to the king and was disabled from sitting on 29 November 1644. Infra, ‘Thomas Heblethwayte’. On 17 September 1645, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for the election of a new burgess at Malton, and by the end of December 1645 the borough had returned the godly East Riding gentleman Richard Darley – the younger brother of Henry Darley and son of Sir Richard Darley of nearby Buttercrambe. CJ iv. 277a, 393a. The election indenture has not survived. It is possible that he was returned on his own interest as the son of a prominent local landowner, or as treasurer for the East Riding parliamentary committees. But according to the author of the 1649 pamphlet, The Countrey Committees Laid Open, he owed his election primarily to his ‘associate’, a Mr Blackwell, who was the leaseholder of the sequestered estate of Lord Eure. The Countrey Committees Laid Open (1649), 6 (E.558.11); CCC 2242. Darley’s alleged patron was almost certainly John Blackwell senior, a prosperous London grocer and probable religious Independent, who invested heavily in bishops’ lands and apparently in sequestered property also. Aylmer, State’s Servants, 242-3. The anonymous author of The Countrey Committees alleged that Darley had ‘combined’ with Blackwell to have himself returned for New Malton, although, in the author’s view, it was ‘the clear right of Old Malton to elect … having the mother church and priory belonging to it. Neither hath there been any burgess served in Parliament this 350 years for Malton before this present Parliament, which was 200 years before any of New Malton was builded’. The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 6. The implication here is that Darley had ridden roughshod over the legitimate rights of Old Malton, whereas, in fact, his election was entirely in accordance with the precedent set by Parliament in January 1641, when the writ had been sent to New Malton. A petition against Darley’s return (presumably from the inhabitants of Old Malton) was received by the committee of privileges in November 1645, but either the case was not heard or Darley’s return was upheld. Derbys. RO, D258/9/5/11. Darley retained his seat at Pride’s Purge, but Sir Henry Cholmley, a prominent Presbyterian, was secluded.

Malton was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, but regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. With Lord Eure’s heirs (the widow and daughters of the royalist officer Colonel William Eure) restored to the family’s estate and residence in Old Malton by 1659, they were able to mount an effective challenge to the ‘right to elect’ of New Malton. VCH N. Riding, i. 533; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Malton’. The resulting contest culminated in a double return in which Old Malton elected the Cromwellian or crypto-royalist Philip Howard* and another opponent of the army and the sects, George Marwood*, whilst New Malton returned the former deputy major-general Colonel Robert Lilburne* and the Yorkshire republican Luke Robinson*. CJ vii. 611a. The Howards enjoyed a strong proprietorial interest in the Malton area, owning the manor of Thorpe Bassett, just three miles to the west of the borough, the manor of nearby Hinderskelfe and the rectories of Old and New Malton. Infra, ‘Charles Howard’; C142/774/15. However, Howard probably owed his election not to his family’s local landed influence but to his Eure kinswomen (Colonel William Eure’s widow was Howard’s aunt). Infra, ‘Philip Howard’. Marwood was elected on the interest of his royalist son-in-law (Sir) Thomas Heblethwayte†, the son of the parliamentarian turncoat. Lilburne and Robinson, on the other hand, were carpet-baggers, whose appeal to the voters of New Malton lay partly, perhaps, in their radical religious sympathies. There were evidently a number of ‘Independent professors’ in Malton (including, it seems, the minister of New Malton) and possibly a sizeable Quaker meeting by the later 1650s. Depositions from York Castle ed. J. Raine (Surt. Soc. xl), 9; Jnl. of George Fox ed. N. Penney, i. 25.

At Westminster, the double return for Malton sparked a protracted and heated battle between the commonwealthsmen (republican MPs), who backed the return of Lilburne and Robinson, and their Cromwellian and Presbyterian opponents, who supported Howard and Marwood. Throughout February 1659, the election was hotly debated in the committee of privileges, with the commonwealthsmen arguing that Old Malton had no right to join with New Malton in parliamentary elections, and the Cromwellians insisting that the Old Malton had a joint interest with its larger neighbour. Burton’s Diary, iii. 33, 296, 502. After ‘much labour and sweat’ the Cromwellians prevailed, and the committee resolved (by 26 votes to 16) not only that Old Malton had a joint interest with New Malton, but that Howard and Marwood were the rightfully elected Members. Mems. of the Verney Fam. iii. 476; Burton’s Diary, iii. 33, 296, 502. When the committee reported its decision on 7 March, the commonwealthsmen managed to force a division on the issue, in which the Cromwellians Sir Richard Temple and Thomas Bayles defeated the Yorkshire republicans and army officers Matthew Alured and Adam Baynes by 173 to 142 votes, whereupon the House upheld Howard’s and Marwood’s return. CJ vii. 611a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 42-6. This represented a serious defeat for the republican interest and probably heightened the army’s fears that Parliament was dominated by its Cromwellian and royalist enemies – an important factor in its decision to bring down the protectorate.

The Eures and Heblethwaytes consolidated their interest at Malton after the Restoration, with the borough returning a Heblethwayte and a nominee or relation of the Eures to the 1660 Convention and the Cavalier Parliament. HP Commons 1660-1690.