Cambridgeshire

Cambridgeshire was a county of two halves divided by the River Ouse. The southern half, centred on Cambridge, had good-quality soil (variously chalk or clay-based), was largely woodless, and provided excellent opportunities for arable farming. Wheat, barley and oats were produced in large quantities. Peter Munby in 1639 found this part of the county to be ‘wonderful corn country, as might be judged by the tillage and plenty of good ale and beer generally here to be had’. The Travels of Peter Mundy, ed. R.C. Temple (Hakluyt Soc. 2nd ser. lv), 32. Cambridge was only about 50 miles from London and the proximity of the Great North Road provided good access to the capital; the London-Cambridge journey was usually reckoned to take a day. The court, particularly under James I, had been a regular visitor to the area for hunting at Royston and horseracing at Newmarket. To the north of Cambridge the landscape was very different, with the fens stretching without interruption all the way beyond the county boundaries to King’s Lynn and the sea. The few settlements there, such as Ely or Wisbech, had formed wherever the land rose much above sea level. The draining of the Great Level, which the 4th earl of Bedford (Sir Francis Russell†) had started in 1631, had begun the transformation of this whole area, but, as yet, the Isle of Ely remained isolated and backward.

In terms of wealth and population, the southern half of the county had all the advantages and there was no gentry family based in the Isle of Ely whose importance came close to that of the major families in the south. The dominant presence in the Isle was instead the bishop and, in Matthew Wren, the diocese of Ely had an uncompromising supporter of Archbishop William Laud. However, the enthusiasm with which Wren enforced the Laudian agenda throughout the county undermined what electoral influence he may have had and in 1640 he wisely concentrated his attentions on the elections for the Cambridge University seats. It was only much later in the century that the earl of Bedford’s descendants gained an interest in the Cambridgeshire elections and then it was only in part a result of their forebear’s investment in the Great Level scheme. This left five great families in the southern half of Cambridgeshire who could aspire to provide the knights of the shire. Each had an estate about ten miles from Cambridge close to one of the county boundaries. To the east of Cambridge, there was Dudley North, 3rd Baron North, the only resident peer, at Kirtling; to the north east, Sir William Russell† (no relation to Bedford) at Chippenham and Sir Edward Peyton† at Isleham; to the west, Sir John Cutts* at Childerley; and to the south west, Thomas Chicheley* at Wimpole. The Norths, the Peytons, the Cuttses and the Chicheleys were established county families, whereas Russell, the very wealthy treasurer of the navy, had only recently acquired the Chippenham estate. Sir Edward Peyton, a passionate opponent of the court, would presumably have played a more significant role in Cambridgeshire politics in the 1640s had it not been for his severe financial difficulties and the family never again matched the local prestige he had enjoyed in the 1620s. Although in Essex, Audley End, the vast seat of the 2nd earl of Suffolk (Theophilus Howard†), also lay about ten miles from Cambridge and, as he had been lord lieutenant of the county since 1626, Suffolk’s influence could not be discounted. There had long been a convention among these families that the nominations should balance an MP from the south east of the county with one from the south west.

The election to the Short Parliament saw the first attempt by the Norths in almost two generations to exploit their interest on behalf of a member of their immediate family. Lord North himself had succeeded to his peerage in 1600 at the age of only 18, and there had as yet been no need to seek the election of his eldest son, Sir Dudley, for in 1628 he had been able to rely on the patronage of Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel, to get elected for Horsham in Sussex. By 1640, by which time Lord North was approaching his sixtieth birthday, there must have been a strong case for promoting Sir Dudley as the candidate for the senior Cambridgeshire seat simply in order to underline his position as heir to the North interest and as a potential future head of the county community. The misgivings which Sir Dudley and his father had about the king’s policies, which caused both to side with Parliament during the civil war, may already have been common knowledge. The other candidate who came forward, Sir John Cutts, had stood for a county seat in every election between 1604 and 1626 and, apart from the election in January 1624 which was declared void, he had been returned every time. He was also Lord North’s nephew. In 1640 some may have supported him because of the dispute the previous year in which Bishop Wren had tried to suppress the unlicensed chapel in the grounds of his estate at Childerley. However, it would be unwise to assume that Cutts himself was claiming to be the anti-Wren candidate. He may well have preferred to view one of the seats as his by right. North and Cutts were elected together, apparently without opposition, at the election meeting at Cambridge on 26 March. C219/42, pt. 1, no. 53. The traditional requirement that there be an east-west split between the two MPs was thus fulfilled. The elections for the proctors for the Ely diocese for the Convocation to sit simultaneously with this Parliament were held in St Michael’s, Cambridge, the same day. Add. 5825, f. 38v.

From the outset of the second election that year Cutts made it clear that he did not intend to stand, perhaps to make way for his nephew, Thomas Chicheley. But pressure was applied to Cutts by some of his supporters to reconsider this decision simply in order to block Chicheley. It is not clear why Chicheley was considered unacceptable: the most likely explanation is resentment over the part he had played as sheriff in the collection of Ship Money in 1638. Faced with this appeal from his supporters, Cutts was said to have ‘declined it utterly’, but he did not close off this option entirely, using the conventional formula that he might stand if ‘the importunity of his neighbours prevail with him’. Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 164. It was assumed that, if North and Cutts stood together again, they would easily defeat Chicheley. Chicheley in the meantime wined and dined the commission of the peace in lavish fashion when they met for the Cambridge quarter sessions on 15 October. Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 164. With Cutts unwilling to stand, Chicheley making all the right moves to secure the nomination and no other declared candidate, apart from North, the obvious compromise was to allow North and Chicheley to sit together for the two seats. The justices of the peace seem to have gathered at Cambridge Castle on 15 October in the expectation that the election would also be held there that day. But the election writ had failed to arrive, necessitating a wait until the new Parliament had met and then a request that a new writ be issued. CJ ii. 21a. It was therefore not until 12 November that the Cambridgeshire election could be held. In the event, the delay made no difference to the outcome and the election meeting seems to have been a formality. Cutts’s supporters had failed to persuade him to change his mind, and North and Chicheley were probably the only two names presented to the assembled voters. C219/43, pt. 1, f. 138.

Chicheley’s response to the impending crisis in 1641 and 1642 was to stay away from Westminster and by August 1642 his colleagues in Parliament were viewed his absence with suspicion. A summons to him to attend the House was ignored, and, by the time the deadline fixed for his return (23 Aug.) had passed, the king had raised his standard at Nottingham. This made Chicheley’s absence all the more suspect. On 16 September 1642 the Commons agreed to expel him. CJ ii. 626n, 726a, 769a. He later joined the king at Oxford. The order of 16 September included the instruction that a new writ should be issued for his Cambridgeshire seat, but, although the clerk of the crown in chancery remained loyal to Parliament for the time being, this was never implemented. It was therefore not until October 1645, as part of the general move to recruit new MPs to fill the numerous other vacancies, that this oversight was remedied. CJ iv. 309b. Francis Russell, eldest son of Sir William, now put himself forward as a candidate. A former colonel in the army of the Eastern Association and a veteran of Marston Moor, Russell was clearly linked to the Independents at Westminster. In May of that year the Committee of Both Kingdoms had nominated him as governor for the Isle of Ely, only for this proposal to be narrowly defeated in the House of Lords. (Oliver Cromwell*, a close friend of Russell, had been given temporary authority over the Isle while the parliamentary stalemate over this appointment lasted.) It had been as recently as August 1645 that the Lords had backed down, allowing Russell to take up this office. Russell may not have been entirely popular in the Ely area – one argument the Lords had used against his appointment was that there were

great factions and divisions amongst the gentry and inhabitants of that island (though all may be of good affections to the Parliament, but differing in opinions in point of church government, which may make them differ among themselves in affection, and thereby hinder the progress of public affairs). LJ vii. 373a.

It was no doubt these divisions which lay behind the decision by Cutts to stand for Parliament once again. Cutts had been a key figure in the mobilisation of the county for Parliament but he could plausibly be presented as a moderate and quite possibly pro-Presbyterian alternative to Russell. A further consideration may have been a conviction among Cutts’ neighbours that there should not be a second MP from the eastern half of the county. The resulting contest was hard-fought. A newspaper report claimed that the two candidates ‘grew to blows, and some mischief was done’, adding the moralising commonplace that ‘it is a sad thing, that we should so much seek our own wills, as to contend in such things as these, wherein all should agree in one for the public good’. The Scotish Dove no. 112 (3-10 Dec. 1645), 884 (E.311.19). In the end Russell saw off the challenge from Cutts, apparently winning the election (which took place on 28 November) ‘by a considerable number of voices’. C219/43, pt. 1, f. 140; Return of Members; Scotish Dove, no. 112, 884. North, but not Russell, was secluded from Parliament in December 1648, although Russell then absented himself from the Commons and was only re-admitted in June 1649.

Four Cambridgeshire representatives were called to the Nominated Parliament in 1653. Nothing is known of the process of local consultation prior to the selection. The four men selected were Robert Castell, Thomas French, Samuel Warner and John Sadler. Castell and French were more obviously qualified to represent the county. The head of one of the lesser Cambridgeshire gentry families, Castell had risen to local prominence in the 1640s as one of the most assiduous parliamentarian officials in the county. His position a chairman of the Eastern Association committee at Cambridge from 1643 onwards had then elevated him into a figure of some importance throughout East Anglia. French may have been chosen mainly because he was the current mayor of Cambridge, an office he had previously held in 1640 at the time of Cromwell’s election as MP for the town for the Short Parliament. He served on the major local commissions appointed by Parliament in Cambridgeshire during the 1640s. The other two were new arrivals in the county. As recently as 1648 Warner had bought Downham Palace, the former country seat of the bishop on the outskirts of Ely. Before then he had been a grocer and a prominent member of the Independent faction in London, particularly while serving as an alderman between 1643 and 1645. In the five years since he had settled in Cambridgeshire he had made no discernible impact on local politics, so his political activity a decade earlier is more likely to underlie his selection. Similarly, Sadler’s connections with Cambridge only really dated from his appointment as master of Magdalene College in 1650. There is no evidence that he was included among the four Cambridgeshire MPs as the representative of the university (as Jonathan Goddard* was in the Oxfordshire contingent); his standing as a scholar, as a lawyer and as a member of the commission for law reform (chaired by Matthew Hale*) was sufficient to justify his summons in his own right. Cromwell was presumably among those consulted about the choice of these four, although none was an obvious crony of the commander-in-chief. Castell, Sadler and Warner, but not French, were said to have disapproved of measures for the maintenance of a preaching ministry in the parishes, although in Sadler’s case, his known support for tithes during this Parliament suggests otherwise. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 412, 418, 426, 430.

As elsewhere, the number of county seats for Cambridgeshire was increased by the 1653 Instrument of Government. The peculiarity in this case was that the county was also split into two. The ancient liberty of the Isle of Ely, which comprised that half of the county lying to the north of the River Ouse, was hived off to form a new county for the purposes of elections. What remained of Cambridgeshire was allocated four seats, being in effect a redistribution of the one seat each which had been lost by Cambridge borough and Cambridge University. A. and O.

Although Cromwell was a local man, the new lord protector had built up no direct electoral interest in Cambridgeshire. In truth, the attention he now paid to the county was minimal. Since June 1647 (when he had been at Cambridge while the king was being brought to the army at Newmarket), he had only once visited Cambridgeshire – in June 1650 when he passed through on his way north to Scotland. Thereafter he never visited East Anglia again. P. Gaunt, The Cromwellian Gazetteer (1987), 226-7. The major land grants made to him by Parliament, mainly from the forfeited estates of Henry Somerset, 1st marquess of Worcester, lay elsewhere and he made no attempt to use his new-found wealth to buy up any of the local lands which had flooded on to the market. By the 1650s the Cromwells’ estates in East Anglia were as meagre as they had been in the late 1630s.

By this time, the direct electoral interest which large local land holdings would have brought him was unnecessary to Cromwell. As lord protector he had potential influence in any number of constituencies throughout the country. As it happens, Cromwell seems to have taken scrupulous care to avoid interference in individual contests, but influence did not need to be exercised directly to be effective. There was certainly no shortage of constituencies willing to elect one of his sons. Moreover, Cromwell now had one relative in Cambridgeshire who did have electoral interests of the more traditional sort. In 1653 (Sir) Francis Russell had strengthened his connections with Cromwell by marrying his daughter Elizabeth to Cromwell’s second son, Henry Cromwell*. There were other allies in the area on whose support Cromwell could rely. Several of Cromwell’s brothers-in-law – John Disbrowe*, Valentine Wauton* and John Sewster – were also local men, although none was a landowner on any great scale. In addition, his trusted secretary of state, John Thurloe*, had some tenuous family links with Cambridgeshire, but, more importantly, he was carefully building up for himself an interest in the Isle of Ely, particularly in and around Wisbech, and he kept a watching brief on Cromwell’s affairs in Cambridgeshire. Separately some of these various interests seemed rather slight, but combined they had the potential to be effective, particularly if they could draw on the lord protector’s personal popularity.

The result of the 1654 election suggests most clearly that the name of Cromwell could count for something in Cambridgeshire. When the electors met at Cambridge Castle on 12 July they named Disbrowe, Russell, Henry Pickering and Castell (in that order) as their new MPs. C219/44, pt. 1: Cambs. indenture, 12 July 1654; Return of Members. The preference given to Disbrowe and Russell cannot have been entirely due to their kinship with Cromwell, for both were now major figures in their own right, but it must have played a part. (Disbrowe’s standing, not only as Cromwell’s brother-in-law, but also as a councillor of state, as a treasury commissioner and as an admiralty commissioner, was such that he was also elected as MP for Somerset and for Totnes. At the beginning of the session he informed Parliament that he would prefer to sit for the Cambridgeshire seat. CJ vii. 372b.) It is just possible that Pickering may also have benefitted from some tenuous connections with Cromwell. Originally from Northamptonshire, he was a cousin once removed to Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*, the lord chamberlain to the protector, and he may also have known Thurloe through some land transactions he had completed with Thurloe’s in-laws, the Lytcotts. His decision to settle in Cambridgeshire followed a successful business career as a London fishmonger and a marriage to a daughter of Sir Thomas Vyner, the wealthy City goldsmith. Since purchasing land in the south west of the county in the late 1640s, he had become active as a local official, making it likely that he was more successful at integrating himself into the local community than that other newcomer, Samuel Warner, had been. Castell completed this quartet of MPs, all of whom were unwavering supporters of the new regime.

The 1656 election was largely a re-run of 1654. The big difference was the absence of Disbrowe, who had even more seats to choose from this time and in the end decided to sit for Somerset. However, he did not ignore Cambridgeshire, for he made sure that a trusted deputy, Robert West, was elected there in his place. West, a younger son of a very minor Cambridgeshire family, was the bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge, but more importantly, was a kinsman of Disbrowe, who seems to have encouraged his involvement in local affairs. Castell, Pickering and Russell were again elected for the other three places. This neatly fulfilled the prediction made by the local deputy major-general, Hezekiah Haynes*, that in Cambridgeshire the same people would be elected as before. TSP v. 187. Unlike elsewhere in East Anglia, there was no evidence of a backlash against Cromwell and the major-generals.

Pickering, who had in the meantime been knighted by the late lord protector, was re-elected for Cambridgeshire in January 1659. However, he had to be content with the junior place (the old franchises having been restored), behind Sir Thomas Willys, a local landowner standing for the first time. (Willys’s baronetcy of 1641 no doubt trumped Pickering’s knighthood of 1658.) Until now, Willys avoided any involvement in politics. He had probably stayed neutral during 1640s: although the royalism of his two brothers had caused him to come under suspicion, he had remained a justice of the peace throughout the 1650s while giving no real indication that he supported the regime then in power. His appeal was probably as a moderate Presbyterian untainted by the events of either the 1640s or the 1650s. That his brother, Sir Richard, had been a leading royalist agent and was now busy betraying the Sealed Knot to Thurloe is unlikely to have had any bearing on his nomination. The election indenture was signed by, among others, Castell and John Lowry*. C219/46: Cambs. indenture, 6 Jan. 1659. The previous year there had been some discussions about getting Sir James Whitelocke* to stand, but these came to nothing. Whitelocke, Diary, 483.

In the elections for the Convention a year later Sir Dudley North, re-entering the fray for the first time since the 1640s, and Willys were unexpectedly defeated after refusing to endorse the calls for an unconditional Restoration. Thereafter the great families of the county – the Norths, the Chicheleys, the Cottons and both the Russell families – all attempted to control the county seats but, as a result, the competition between them was fierce and none of them ever achieved an automatic election.