Pontefract

Like Knaresborough, Pontefract was renowned for its castle, which dominated the Aire Valley to the south west of Leeds and the Pennine clothing district. The town lay close to the dividing line between the Pennines and the lowlands of southern Yorkshire and was thus an important market for the exchange of produce between the arable lands to the east and the pastoral and clothing region to the west. Its economy was based primarily upon its ‘very great market for corn, cattle, provisions and divers country commodities’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 258. Indeed, Pontefract was described in 1621 as ‘one of the greatest and best market and fair towns in the north parts’, although this was hyperbole. A.J. Fletcher, ‘Sir Thomas Wentworth and the restoration of Pontefract as a parl. bor.’, NH vi. 95. The borough contained approximately 346 households by the early 1670s, suggesting an overall population of around 1,500 – although this figure would almost certainly have been substantially lower 20 years earlier as a result of the devastation the town suffered during the civil wars. E179/262/13, mm. 94-5.

From its incorporation in the reign of Richard III, Pontefract was governed by a mayor, twelve other aldermen or ‘comburgesses’ and two sergeants-at-mace, one of whom acted as borough sheriff. The mayor was elected annually by and from among the aldermen, who served for life and filled vacancies in their number by co-option from among the leading inhabitants. By 1640, the municipal officers also included a recorder and 16 ‘burgesses’, who were to assist the mayor and aldermen in governing the town. The corporation held regular courts, with the mayor and aldermen also serving as justices of the peace for the borough. The returning officer was the mayor. G. Fox, Hist. of Pontefract (Pontefract, 1827), 20-2, 24, 40-1; British Bor. Charters 1307-1660 ed. M. Weinbaum (Cambridge, 1943), 129.

Pontefract had sent Members to three Parliaments in the reign of Edward I, but its franchise had then lapsed until 1621. CJ i. 576a; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Pontefract’. The re-enfranchisement of the town was largely the work of the Yorkshire grandee Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford), who succeeded in capitalising on the shortage of parliamentary boroughs in the West Riding to advance his own political interest in the county. Fletcher, ‘Wentworth and the restoration of Pontefract’, 97. Duly grateful, the borough consistently returned his friends and allies throughout the 1620s. The franchise was vested initially in the inhabitant householders, but by 1660 it was restricted, officially at least, to the owners of designated burgage properties. Fox, Pontefract, 61-2; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Pontefract’. The number of voters had been at least 60 in 1624. HP Commons 1604-1629.

Strafford remained Pontefract’s principal electoral patron in 1640, and in the elections to the Short Parliament the borough returned his friend and political ally Sir John Ramsden (who had represented the borough in the 1628 Parliament) and the earl’s younger brother Sir George Wentworth I. The indenture, dated 26 March 1640, was signed by the mayor, 11 of the aldermen and at least 20 other inhabitants. C219/42/2/91. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, the town again returned Strafford’s younger brother, but this time the senior place was taken by the earl’s cousin, and another of his political allies, Sir George Wentworth II. The indenture for this election, dated 18 October 1640, was signed by at least 15 of the senior office-holders. C219/43/3/112. Sir John Ramsden may have forfeited Strafford’s goodwill – and with it his seat at Pontefract – for having joined the county’s ‘disaffected’ gentry in their petitions to the king of July, August and September, in which they complained about the cost of military charges and pleaded poverty in the face of royal efforts to mobilise the county’s trained bands against the invading Scots. To Strafford, these petitions had seemed ‘mutinous’. Infra, ‘Sir John Ramsden’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215.

Both Sir George Wentworths sided with the king during the civil war, and consequently they were disabled from sitting by the Commons on 6 September 1642 and 22 January 1644 respectively. CJ ii. 754b; iii. 374a. Pontefract was garrisoned for the king at the beginning of the civil war, and many of the town’s inhabitants appear to have shared the royalist sympathies of their MPs. At Vacant Hours: Poems by Thomas St Nicholas and his Fam. ed. H.N. Davies (Birmingham, 2002), 20, 25; J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars (Pickering, 2004), 36. During the first and second parliamentarian sieges of Pontefract Castle in 1644 and 1645, the mayor and nine of his fellow aldermen served in the royalist garrison under Ramsden and Sir George Wentworth II. With the exception of the aldermen, however, few of the castle’s defenders appear to have been inhabitants of Pontefract. The Sieges of Pontefract Castle 1644-8 ed. R.H. Holmes (Pontefract, 1887), 20-1, 23, 33.

Despite the royalist leanings of the senior office-holders, Pontefract returned two of the West Riding’s leading parliamentarians – Colonel William White and Henry Arthington – as ‘recruiters’ to the Long Parliament. Both men were carpet-baggers and were returned on the interest of the commander-in-chief of Parliament’s northern army the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), who had been appointed high steward of the honor of Pontefract in August 1644. Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 318-19; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R. Somerville, 149. White was Fairfax’s principal man-of-business in London, and Arthington was Fairfax’s son-in-law. Fairfax’s influence in the borough was doubtless strengthened as a result of the appointment of his son Sir Thomas Fairfax* – the commander of the New Model army – as governor of Pontefract Castle in July 1645. CJ iv. 216b. Lord Fairfax wrote to the corporation on White’s behalf, but this was mere politeness on his part, for the result was a foregone conclusion. Bodl. Top. Yorks. C.41, p. 63. The election indenture returning White, dated 23 October 1645, was signed by the mayor and four aldermen (all of whom had served in Pontefract’s royalist garrison). C219/43/3/114.

The return of Arthington for Pontefract in 1646 was contested by the West Riding gentleman and army officer Lionel Copley*, who was a prominent political client of the Presbyterian grandee Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. Copley reportedly indulged in some sharp practice to win over the voters, providing ‘bountiful entertainment’ for the townspeople and producing evidence that the borough’s first recruiter, White, had neglected its interests. Copley’s candidacy was supported by Colonel-general Sednham Poynts, the commander of the Northern Association army and another leading political Presbyterian. Arthington, for his part, was said to have behaved very discreetly, ‘without threat or promise or any entertainment until the election was past [and he had been returned], and then he spared no cost, nor wanted other expressions, to give a real testimony of his utmost desires to do them service’. His principal backer, after Lord Fairfax, was the radical army officer Colonel Robert Overton, whom Sir Thomas Fairfax had appointed deputy-governor of Pontefract Castle Infra, ‘Lionel Copley’; Bodl. Top. Yorks. C.41, p. 64; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 318-19. The indenture returning Arthington, dated 24 September 1646, was subscribed by at least 13 of the leading inhabitants ‘who gave our voices for the said Henry Arthington’. C219/43/3/116. Both Arthington and White were broadly aligned with the Independent interest at Westminster during the late 1640s and thus retained their seats at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.

Although Parliament, early in 1647, ordered that Pontefract Castle be rendered untenable in February 1647, it was still functioning as a garrison when it was surprised and secured for the king in June 1648 by the parliamentarian turncoat Colonel John Morris. CJ v. 99a. In taking the castle, Morris appears to have had the assistance of at least two of the aldermen. Sieges of Pontefract Castle ed. Holmes, 238, 242, 247. The third siege of Pontefract lasted almost ten months, and just prior to its conclusion, in March 1649, the mayor, aldermen and the ‘well-affected’ of the town petitioned Parliament that the castle be ‘wholly raised down and demolished’. The petitioners claimed that the town had been ‘greatly impoverished and depopulated through the settling and continuing a garrison in that castle’, which had led to three sieges, the destruction of 200 houses, ‘the incredible decay of trading and commerce’ and ‘the total undoing of many well-affected persons and families’. The Bk. of Entries of the Pontefract Corporation ed. R.H. Holmes (Pontefract, 1882), 27-8; Sieges of Pontefract Castle, 230-1. Major-general John Lambert*, the commander-in-chief of the forces besieging the castle, endorsed this petition, which was probably carried up to Westminster by the army lawyer Thomas Margetts*. A true Copy of the Articles agreed upon the Surrender of Pontefract Castle (1649), 3-5 (E.548.25); Pontefract Corporation ed. Holmes, 28; Sieges of Pontefract Castle, 23. On 27 March, the Rump declared its approval of the Pontefract petition and resolved that the castle be totally demolished. CJ vi. 174a.

The town apparently recovered quickly from the destructive effects of the sieges, for the corporation was able to raise £812 in 1650 to purchase Pontefract’s fee farm rents from the commissioners for the sale of crown lands. W. Yorks. Archives (Wakefield), Pontefract Bor. Recs. R1. By this time, many of the town’s royalist senior office-holders had either died or been removed and been replaced by parliamentarians, of whom the most prominent by the late 1650s was the town’s godly recorder John Hewley*. Infra, ‘John Hewley’; Pontefract Corporation ed. Holmes, 9-10. It was perhaps through his influence that Pontefract was among the first boroughs to present an address acknowledging Richard Cromwell* as protector in September 1659. Mercurius Politicus no. 435 (23-30 Sept. 1658), 884.

Pontefract was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government of 1653, but regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Lambert and Hewley on 12 January 1659. Add. 21425, f. 5. The election indenture has not survived. Hewley was presumably returned on the corporation interest, and Lambert – who had stood for Pontefract only after suffering defeat in the county elections – had been closely associated with the town under the Rump as the commander of the siege of the castle in 1648-9 and as the owner of considerable property in the borough during the early 1650s. Moreover, in 1654 he had helped to secure an ordinance for the repair of the town’s court-house, which had been destroyed in the wars. Infra, ‘John Lambert’. But despite his ties with the town, he was a controversial figure by 1659 – the government’s most high-profile opponent – and great efforts went into persuading the voters ‘that he is of no Quaking principles, amongst which [were] the testimonies of some ministers that his children are baptised’. In the event, he was returned only after ‘much contest and pains’ and the timely intervention on his behalf of the locally-influential Colonel John Bright* and of Lambert’s kinsman Martin Lister*. Only five of the aldermen supported his candidacy. Add. 21425, f. 5; Notts. RO, DD/SR/221/96/4.

At the Restoration, the townspeople were able to seize much of the electoral initiative from the dominant godly faction, and the result was the return of local royalist gentry during the early 1660s. HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Pontefract’. The godly interest in Pontefract was further undermined by the removal of six of the aldermen by the corporation commissioners in 1662. Pontefract Corporation ed. Holmes, 77-80.