Guildford, situated on the River Wey 30 miles south of London, received its first recorded charter in 1257. This confirmed it as the county town and as the location of assizes. VCH Surr. iii. 247; Hist. and Description of Guildford (2nd edn., ?1800), 4, 6. Incorporated in 1488, it was ruled by an oligarchical body composed of the mayor and ‘approved men’, the name given to those who had served as bailiff (between about 25 and 30 in the early seventeenth century). In 1603 it was also granted a separate annually-appointed commission of the peace, comprising the current and previous mayors, two others chosen by the ‘approved men’ from their own ranks, and a fifth man ‘learned in the law’ who was to act as recorder. This position was held between 1639 and 1641 by Christopher Lewkenor* (who was also retained counsel to Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, one of Surrey’s lords lieutenant), and then until 1655 by John Glynne*. Guildford Bor. Recs. ed. E.M. Dance (Surr. Rec. Soc. xxiv), p. xxiiii; Add. 6167 (Symmes coll.), f. 206v; Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OC/1/2, ff. 117v, 119v; Alnwick, Northumberland MSS, U.I.5, U.I.6. The office of high steward was unoccupied between the death in 1624 of Charles Howard, 1st earl of Nottingham, and the appointment of another Howard in 1663. Hist. and Description of Guildford, 6; ‘Guildford’, HP Commons 1604-1629.
In the seventeenth century Guildford was described as ‘a market town well-frequented and full of fair inns’. W. Camden, Britain (1637), 295; E. Leigh, England Described (1659), 187 (E.1792.2). However, Archbishop George Abbot, the son of a local clothier, recognising that its all-important textile industry was in decline, initiated measures in 1614 and 1628 to encourage linen and allied manufacture. Although he named as his agents local or local-born gentry and merchants like Alderman Robert Parkhurst (father of Robert Parkhurst*), Sir George More†, Nicholas Stoughton* and George Duncumb*, his schemes awaited full implementation at his death in 1633. But his practical benevolence, his foundation of a hospital (1619), and the elaborate tomb erected by his family in Holy Trinity church (1640) all ensured that the Abbot interest in the borough outlived him. Hist. and Description of Guildford, 26, 29; Hist. and Antiqs. of Guildford, 11-20, 54-7, 83-4. Meanwhile, the borough itself, in an effort to recapture former prosperity, promoted a project to render the Wey navigable between the town and the Thames, introduced as a bill in the Parliament of 1621. HP Commons 1604-1629, 'Guildford'. New impetus was injected with the establishment in 1635 of a commission whose members included Robert Parkhurst* and Nicholas Stoughton. T. Rymer, Foedera, ix. pt. 1, p. 19.
The borough had been represented regularly in Parliament since 1295, although the extent of the franchise remained fluid. Hist. and Description of Guildford, 37. The mayor and ‘approved men’ were always party to indentures; often there was also reference to burgesses or freeholders; before 1655, and the inauguration of ‘freemen’s books’, there was evidently some uncertainty as to who qualified under that category. HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629; Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OC/1/2; Guildford Freemen’s Bks. ed. H. Carter (1963), 4. Between 1604 and 1629 surrounding gentry, including temporarily resident courtiers, claimed the vast majority of the seats. Five times out of six one seat had gone to a member of the More family from nearby Loseley, although Robert Parkhurst, who sat three times in the 1620s and was made a freeman in 1625, could perhaps be counted as a borough man despite the fact that his country residence was seven miles away at Pyrton. Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OC/1/2, f. 95; VCH Surr. iii. 432; Aubrey, Nat. Hist. Surr. iii. 197.
By early 1640 Poynings More*, who had been one of the borough’s MPs in 1628, was experiencing financial difficulties and living outside the area; his sights were set, if anywhere, on election at Haslemere. Surr. RO (Guildford), LM/COR/4/82; LM/COR/5/11, LM/COR/5/13. Nicholas Stoughton, who lived just outside the town at Stoke, and who had been twice a candidate (once unsuccessfully, against Parkhurst) in the 1620s, may have been somewhat disadvantaged by memories of his year as sheriff of the county in 1637-8, when he was obliged to collect Ship Money. SP16/389, f. 265. Mayor Richard Budd of Guildford was chased more than once in 1639 for arrears incurred on 1637 assessments. SP16/413, f. 142; SP16/420, f. 180; SP16/422, f. 177. Parkhurst, who had been looking after family interests in Ireland and was knighted in Dublin in 1638, escaped unpopular responsibilities at home, and was re-elected by the borough on 16 March 1640. SP63/290, f. 265; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 205; Lismore Pprs. ser. 2, iv. 9. His junior partner was his exact contemporary at Balliol College, Oxford, and presumed long-term friend, George Abbott I*, nephew of the beneficent archbishop and a scholar turned London merchant. The perfunctory nature of the indenture makes it impossible to tell whether or not the choice was unanimous, or indeed to cross-check participants, but nearly 50 years later an elderly resident testified to the Commons that on that occasion, and subsequently, he ‘and all the freemen without distinction’ had been polled. C219/42, pt. ii/130; CJ x. 100a-b.
Parkhurst made little visible contribution to the ensuing parliamentary session, and Abbott none. Nonetheless, attachment to their families was sufficient to see both again returned at the poll on 19 October. Once again, Abbott was an apparently inactive Member. By spring 1641 his whole family faced financial ruin and his attention was elsewhere. On 11 June, when it was noted that he had ‘absented himself these two months’ from Parliament, Surrey grandee Sir Richard Onslow* moved that he should be ‘put forth’ unless he attended the following day. Procs. LP v. 98. On 6 July Onslow, who had apparently been acting on Abbott’s behalf, revealed that the latter wished to ‘decline his election’, but the Commons refused to grant his request, perhaps concerned at the implications of setting a precedent for a Member being permitted voluntarily to relinquish his privilege on account of indebtedness. CJ ii. 201a; Procs. LP. v. 516, 523-4.
While Abbott appears to have skulked at the margins of the Commons for four more years, Parkhurst became quite active in Irish affairs in the first few years of the Parliament and was added in March 1642 to the committee for the supply of gunpowder, of which (the now knighted) Sir John Evelyn of Surrey* was chair, and in which Guildford constituents had an interest. CJ ii. 302a, 342b, 401b, 453b, 476a, 498a, 536b; iii. 374b; iv. 292b. When war broke out and the county became the scene of several royalist incursions and sieges, Parliament was concerned for security of gunpowder mills near Guildford. LJ v. 640a; CJ iii. 420b. The corporation, which on 5 October 1641 had resolved to curtail presents to local gentry on account of its straitened resources and thereby to have cut itself somewhat loose of their patronage for a while, appears, on the surface at least, to have been generally loyal to Parliament. Surr. RO (Guildford). BR/OC/1/2, esp. f. 118v.
Parkhurst seems largely to have absented himself from Parliament after clashing with radicals in the House on 8 September 1643; excused attendance because of illness in 1647 and in 1648, he did not sit at all after Pride’s Purge. Harl. 165, f. 173, 173v; CJ v. 330a; vi. 34a. Meanwhile, the death of Abbott in 1645 occasioned a by-election. He was buried at St Stephen, Coleman Street, London on 12 November and a writ ordered the same day. St Stephen, Coleman Street, par. reg.; CJ iv. 340a. The election at first seemed likely to fall prey to a long-running power struggle between moderates and militants on the Surrey county committee. Nicholas Stoughton, a long-standing ally of Sir Richard Onslow (who conceivably had had him in mind for the seat in 1641 when Abbott attempted to resign), was the moderates’ candidate. Although Stoughton had a solid record as an administrator and militia commander, in 1644 he and Onslow had faced a parliamentary investigation into their conduct over the surrender of Farnham Castle, instigated by local war party leader Sir John Maynard*. CJ ii. 964b; A. and O.; J. Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, SH xix. 77-8; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 155; 1644-5, pp. 231, 240, 253, 272, 285, 297, 303, 309; SP21/8, f. 111. The pair had been exonerated in February 1645, but antagonisms persisted. Maynard’s propagandist, George Wither, erstwhile governor of the castle, was (according to his own account) approached by some members of the corporation at Guildford to stand against Stoughton because of ‘jealousies ... touching’ the latter’s ‘infringing the freedoms of the people’. However, having initially accepted the invitation, Wither then withdrew from the contest when he discovered that ‘the freemen had irrevocably passed their assents to vote for another man’. As he explained in a letter to the corporation on 28 November, he declined to ‘oppose myself to a needless affront and my friends to some disadvantage by appearing for me in vain’; in return for his ‘true affection’ to the town, he hoped for ‘civil respect’ from those who have worth or discretion, though some black dogs and their whelps have currishly [i.e. like curs] barked at me’. Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OC/5, f. 21; ‘George Wither’, Oxford DNB. Given Wither’s propensity for colourful language, the extent of the encouragement he had actually received can only be conjectured. Stoughton was elected apparently unopposed and had taken his seat in the House by 8 December. CJ iv. 368b.
Stoughton’s death early in March 1648 led to a second by-election, probably also affected by continuing local dissensions and taking place in the context of royalist insurrection in the county. The writ was ordered on 6 May. CJ v. 552b. Henry Weston* of Ockham, a neighbour of the ailing senior MP Sir Robert Parkhurst and with a family connection to Stoughton, seems to have been Onslow’s preference, representing moderate political Presbyterianism. He was challenged by one John Glover, an obscure figure of whom there is no trace in the previous decade’s commissions for Surrey, but who was plausibly a more radical candidate. It is just possible that he was the ‘John Glover esquire’ appointed with other non-MPs in February 1644 to Parliament’s Committee of Accounts, but it was a relatively common name, and nothing has emerged to link this man with Guildford. A. and O. It is not clear exactly when the poll took place, but petitions relating to the return were referred to the privileges committee on 20 June; according to the Journal on 27 June, they were considered despite having been submitted outside the permitted limit of 14 days after the election. CJ v. 608b, 613b. Weston’s return was upheld on the 29th. CJ v. 615b.
The election dispute may have been one catalyst for the decision by the corporation on 4 September to seek clarification of the qualifications for admission to the ranks of freemen. On 2 October eligibility was defined in terms of those who had served apprenticeships, the eldest sons of freemen, and certain people who had paid fines. However, it seems to have taken until January 1655 to specify formally who the individuals concerned might be. Guildford Freemen’s Books, 4.
By this time the freemen had already exercised their rights at another election, on 14 July 1654, for one seat in the first protectorate Parliament. Their preoccupations were apparent in a petition of 5 April from the mayor, John How, and 26 others – most identifiable as leading members of the corporation – which appealed to the protector to guarantee the observation of clauses in the Wey navigation act of 1651. According to the signatories, contrary to the act, the ‘undertakers’ of the project had diverted the construction of wharves away from the borough itself to nearby Stoke, to the potential impoverishment of the former. SP18/69, f. 20. The election indenture, listing 29 ‘burgesses and inhabitants’ and containing 14 signatures (a majority of whom had also subscribed the April petition), recorded the return of one of their own number, Richard Hiller*, who although now resident at Stoke, had been twice mayor in the 1640s. C219/44; Guildford Freemen’s Books, frontispiece; Surr. RO (Guildford), BR/OL/1/2, ff. 107, 111-12, 117-20, 122-6; Hist. of Guildford, 232-3. He made no recorded contribution to proceedings in the Commons, but may have lobbied for the wharves behind the scenes.
By the time of the next election in 1656, Guildford leaders may have been hoping for a more powerful representative. Before early February 1655, the contractor for saltpetre in the counties of the south east complained that he had encountered obstruction from the borough, suggesting that there were wider concerns to protect local commercial interests. SP/25/75, ff. 675, 681. On 16 September 1656 Guildford chose Thomas Kelsey*, the radical major-general of Kent and Surrey, but on 4 October he signalled his desire to take up a seat at Dover, of which he had been governor. CJ vii. 434a. Following an order on the 13th for a fresh election writ, exactly a week later 16 burgesses and inhabitants voted for regicide and army officer John Hewson.* C219/45. Some kind of hasty deal looks likely, given the speed of the return, the successive selection of two military men, and Hewson’s lack of apparent previous connection with the borough. Originally a London cordwainer, he had sat twice for Irish seats, but was thwarted in his attempt to be re-elected there and clearly on the look-out for an alternative. Although he may have been known by repute in Surrey for his role in helping Southwark to let the army into London in 1647, probably more critical was the fact that the sitting mayor in Guildford, William Hill, was himself a former army officer, already engaged in petitioning for arrears of pay. J. Vicars, A brief review (1652), 23 (E.693.2); SP18/131, f. 137; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 269; 1657-8, pp. 116, 196-7. As well as potential support to Hill, Hewson may well have promised in advance to promote the cause of placing the Surrey probate registry in Guildford: on 1 December he was a teller in favour of the move. CJ vii. 462a.
The election for the third protectorate Parliament, as elsewhere, saw the re-emergence of more traditional representatives. The senior seat was taken by Carew Ralegh*, who lived a few miles away at Horsley and who had previously sat for Haslemere; his junior partner was Robert Parkhurst*, son of Sir Robert, taking up again the family interest. Both were probably covert royalists, but while Parkhurst made no visible contribution to proceedings, in Ralegh – for this brief session – Guildford almost certainly had its most energetic and able MP during this period.
With the re-assembly of the Rump in May 1659, Ralegh once again sat for Haslemere. Sir Robert Parkhurst was dead and there is no evidence as to whether or not Henry Weston resumed his seat when excluded Members of the Long Parliament came back to Westminster in February 1660.
