After the county capital itself, Boston was the largest and wealthiest town in early Stuart Lincolnshire. Lying on the River Witham at the northern corner of The Wash, it had been a major international port in the medieval period, and although its commercial horizons had narrowed considerably by the 1630s, it retained a lively trade in the import of goods from the Netherlands and the Baltic and the export of grain and other produce from its agricultural hinterland. P. Thompson, Hist. and Antiquities of Boston (Boston, 1856), 347; Port Bks. of Boston 1601-40 ed. R.W.K. Hinton (Lincoln Rec. Soc. l), xxxvii-xli; Holmes, Lincs. 13-14. Additional wealth was generated by wool spinning and the town’s markets and fairs. Thompson, Boston, 343-7. Boston contained approximately 540 households after the Restoration, suggesting an overall population of about 2,400. E179/140/754, mm. 1-4. It had been incorporated in 1545 and was governed by a mayor, 12 aldermen, 18 common councilmen, a recorder and assorted minor officials. M. Weinbaum, British Borough Charters (Cambridge, 1943), 69-70; Boston Corporation Mins. ed. J.F. Bailey (Boston, 1980), i. app. 1; HP Commons 1509-58, ‘Boston’. The town had first sent Members to Parliament in 1547, and, since 1628, the right of election had been vested in the freemen. HP Commons 1604-29. The returning officer was the mayor, who was elected annually from the aldermen.
The dominant interest at Boston by 1640 lay with Sir Anthony Irby* – the gentleman whose efforts to secure election in 1628 had led to the widening of the franchise and, as an apparent consequence of this, the ascendancy of the town’s puritan group in electoral politics. Infra, ‘Sir Anthony Irby’; HP Commons 1604-29. Irby was a long time inhabitant of Boston, the owner of its largest residence, and the area’s wealthiest gentleman. Infra, ‘Sir Anthony Irby’; E115/223/42; E179/140/754, m. 2. In the elections to the Short Parliament on 23 March 1640 (28 March according to the corporation minute books), the freemen elected Irby and the town’s recorder, William Ellys of Nocton, near Lincoln. C219/42/1/133; Boston Corporation Mins. ed. J.F. Bailey (Boston, 1983), iii. 39. Ellys was returned on the corporation interest and, like Irby, was a trenchant puritan. Infra, ‘William Ellys’.
Irby and Ellys were returned for Boston again in the elections to the Long Parliament on 10 October 1640, and both were to side with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war. C219/43/2/26; Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 48. The majority of the town’s leading inhabitants appear to have shared their MPs’ parliamentarian sympathies – a not surprising fact given Boston’s well-earned reputation as a hotbed of religious nonconformity. Exceeding True Newes from Boston (1642), 3 (E.116.10); Thompson, Boston, 81-2; A. A. Garner, Boston and the Great Civil War (Hist. of Boston Ser. vii), 4; Holmes, Lincs. 148, 150, 158, 159, 161. The episcopal authorities had regarded the Bostonians as ‘a factious people’, and this view was evidently shared by the Lincolnshire commissioners of array when they referred to ‘that seditious town of Boston’. Holmes, Lincs. 95; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 305. It is significant that not one of the office-holders was removed for disaffection to Parliament and only six Bostonians were penalised as delinquents throughout the civil-war period. Garner, Boston and the Great Civil War, 28.
Boston’s sheltered location ensured that it was spared the worst of the fighting, and there is nothing in the corporation minute books to suggest that its economy was badly hit during the 1640s. A.A. Garner, Boston Politics and the Sea (Hist. of Boston Ser. xiii), 7. However, the town’s connection to Westminster was weakened in December 1648, when both Irby and Ellys were secluded at Pride’s Purge as opponents of the army and the radical Independents. Ellys was allowed to resume his seat the following year but played a negligible role in the Rump’s proceedings. The corporation was mystified as to why the army had targeted Irby, and it wrote an open letter to him in praise of his service to the town and fidelity to the parliamentarian cause. A Letter Written to an Honourable Member of the House of Commons (1648, 669 f.13.58). Boston suffered further setbacks under the Rump, when its trade was damaged by the ‘great wars now at sea between the English and the Dutch’, and its charter was called in for renewal ‘under the authority of the commonwealth’. Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 208, 212.
The town lost one of its seats under the Instrument of Government in 1653, and it was obliged in 1654 to seek advice from London on the correct form for electing its remaining Member. Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 246. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, the town returned Ellys, whose support for the Cromwellian settlement had been rewarded with the office of solicitor-general. Ellys was returned for his local constituency of Grantham (where he also served as recorder) to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, while Boston plumped once again for Irby, presenting him with presents of wine and sugar on his election. Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 277-8. At about the same time, the corporation entertained Irby’s fellow Presbyterian grandee Sir William Waller*. Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 278. It was reported that the friends of Sir Henry Vane II* had ‘laboured much to procure him chosen at Boston’ – Vane having taken up residence at Belleau, about 20 miles north of the town, in the mid-1650s – but finding little or no support ‘did not openly appear for him’. TSP v. 299. The Bostonians’ high opinion of Irby was not shared by the council of state, which excluded him from the House as an opponent of the protectorate. Irby’s crime was probably that of opposing the rule of the major-generals.
Boston regained its second seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, which saw the return of Irby and the town’s deputy recorder, Francis Mussenden. Mussenden almost certainly owed his election to the goodwill of the corporation, although he did own a little property in the area. Infra, ‘Francis Mussenden’. The Restoration seems to have encouraged the growth of royalist sentiment among the ‘commonalty’ in Boston, but the municipal godly interest remained powerful until September 1662, when the corporation commissioners removed nine of the aldermen, including the mayor and eight common councilmen. HP Commons 1660-90; Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 353, 386.
