Winchelsea

Winchelsea, one of the ancient towns added to the Cinque Ports, had been prominent in the middle ages as a Templar centre and its port was initially more important than its near neighbour, Rye. It obtained a charter in 1191. On the east side of an estuary at the mouth of the rivers Rother, Brede and Tillingham, it was destroyed by the sea in thirteenth century, but then rebuilt on a new site in the nearby parish of Icklesham. By the end of the sixteenth century, however, it was a ‘decayed’ port, with diminished trade and population. Visiting in 1652, John Evelyn the diarist commented on its ‘ruin’, and on ‘the remains and ruins of ancient streets and public structures’, which ‘discovers it to have been formerly a considerable and large city’. Nevertheless, Camber Castle, which had been built to protect the haven, was still garrisoned during the 1620s. What little trade survived – dominated by wine – was largely undertaken with continental ports, as was more typical of the ports of east than west Sussex, but fishing was the main occupation for the townsmen. VCH Suss. ix. 62, 68-70; W.D. Cooper, ‘Further notices of Winchelsea’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiii. 20-35; W.D. Cooper, ‘Notices of Winchelsea in and after the fifteenth century’, Suss. Arch. Coll. viii. 211.

The town’s corporation consisted of a mayor and 12 jurats as well as various other officers, who were elected from the freemen at the hundred court by the mayor, jurats and freemen. Evelyn noted that ‘this place being now all in rubbish, and a few despicable hovels and cottages only standing, hath yet a mayor’, although the decline in the population meant that, by 1621, it was no longer possible to find 12 jurats to serve the borough, or more than a handful of freemen qualified by residence. Since the reign of Edward III, resident freemen had been entitled to vote in parliamentary elections, although only 19 were recorded as having voted in 1624. W.D. Cooper, The Hist. of Winchelsea (1850), 5, 6, 29, 182, 192, 194, 241; Cooper, ‘Notices of Winchelsea’, 211. By 1676 the population of the town was recorded as comprising 88 conformists and three non-conformists. Compton Census, 151.

By the 1620s electoral influence was shared between the Finch family, lords of the manor of Icklesham, and the lord warden of the Cinque Ports. VCH Suss. ix. 71. A Finch secured a seat at every election between 1621 and 1628, either in person or for kinsmen. Their interest was challenged in 1624 by another prominent gentry family from the area, but Sir Alexander Temple†, who sought election on the basis of his own estate and his brother Peter Temple’s past service as captain of Camber Castle, was unsuccessful in two polls. Meanwhile, the lord warden controlled the other seat during the early seventeenth century, his influence largely unchallenged. HP Commons 1604-1629.

This pattern was repeated in both the elections of 1640. In the election to the Short Parliament, on 11 March, the Finch family was represented by John Finch, an Inner Temple lawyer, who was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, father and uncle. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, f. 49v. Finch was recommended to the borough by letters of 25 February from his uncle Francis Finch† and his kinsman, Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch II†), and probably from the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†) as well. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, ff. 47v, 49. To a degree this rendered him a ‘court’ candidate, like crown creditor Sir Nicholas Crisp, who enjoyed the patronage of the current lord warden, Theophilus Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk, although he also had his own property and business interests in the area. Speciall Passages no. 28 (14-21 Feb. 1643), 232-3 (E.90.12); E. Suss. RO, Win 56, f. 398; Sloane 206A, ff. 89-90. Crisp, a tax farmer and monopolist, survived calls for such men to be excluded from the House. Procs. Short Parl. 235.

It seems likely that the same interests were brought to bear in the election on 20 October 1640, when Finch and Crisp were once again returned. The latter wrote to the corporation in mid-September, having almost certainly secured the support of the new lord warden, James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond and Lennox. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, ff. 53, 53v. This time, however, he fell foul of the campaign against monopolists; ‘accused for a projector’ on 16 November, and the subject of hostile petitioning and lengthy committee deliberations, he was finally expelled from the House on 2 February 1641 and, with others, obliged to pay thousands of pounds in compensation for activity pronounced illegal. Procs. LP i. 224-5, 230, 241, 254, 257, 283-4; ii. 62, 65-7, 342, 346; iv. 643, 648; E214/548; CJ ii. 60a, 67a, 77a. Following the prompt issue of a writ, a replacement was elected on 13 February in the shape of William Smyth*, a member of the Middle Temple, whose only visible connection with the borough was his membership of the household of Frances Stuart (née Howard), dowager duchess of Richmond and Lennox. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, ff. 55, 55v, 56; Arch. Cant. xi. 250.

In the early months of the Long Parliament Finch fulfilled any expectations placed on him by his family through his efforts on their behalf, especially in vain attempts to protect the interests of the beleaguered lord keeper. Northcote Note Book, 84; Procs. LP i. 658, 660, 662-3, 670, 672; ii. 5, 7; CJ ii. 94a. Thereafter, however, he was little in evidence in the House. Apparently a very moderate parliamentarian, he was killed by a fall from his horse late in 1642. ‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Jnl.’, Arch. Cant. ii. 193; CJ ii. 825a. On 11 February 1643 the House ordered the issue of a new writ for an election to him, but none was held during the first civil war. CJ ii. 963a. Meanwhile Smyth, in contrast, had at first expressed views opposing the policies of personal rule during the 1630s, but then distanced himself from Westminster and eventually raised forces for the royalist cause. Wood, Athenae ed. Bliss, iv. 669; D’Ewes (C), 44-5; [W. Smyth], An Honourable and Worthy Speech (1641, E.199.8); The Diurnall Occurrences (1641), 395-9 (E.523.1); HMC Dartmouth i. 129; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 202, 208, 211, 216-7, 220; SP23/203, p. 491. In consequence, on 16 January 1644 he was excluded from Parliament. CJ iii. 369b.

As part of its recruitment of new Members, on 3 September 1645 the Commons ordered the issue of a warrant for the election of two burgesses at Winchelsea. CJ iv. 263a. There was by this date no lord warden, since the previous incumbent, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, had been disabled by the Self-Denying Ordinance, but he may have exerted indirect influence, as at Rye. His deputy, John Boys of Fredville, constable of Dover Castle, who despatched the election writs, wrote to the corporation at Winchelsea in late September 1645. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, ff. 83, 83v. Following receipt of the letter, the mayor, three jurats, and nine other freemen elected Henry Oxinden* unanimously, and Samuel Gott*, against whom two freemen objected. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, ff. 83v-84. Boys may have recommended Oxinden, a fellow Kentishman. In mid-September, after ‘consultation’, the latter had withdrawn his candidature for a county seat in Kent, giving up his interest to Captain John Boys* of Betteshanger, a kinsman of the constable of Dover. CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 138; Add. 28001, f. 35. The vacuum of influence created by the eclipse of the Finch family may well have been filled by Sussex’s Presbyterian grandees, led by Sir Thomas Pelham, seeking to bolster the ‘peace party’. Gott, a lawyer recently settled at Sedlescombe, five miles from Winchelsea, had extended an inherited interest in the local iron industry through marriage to a daughter of Peter Farnden, a close friend and political associate of Pelham.

Both Oxinden and (after a more complex beginning) Gott were associated with Presbyterians at Westminster, the latter being more visibly active than the former. Both were secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December 1648, leaving Winchelsea once again unrepresented in Parliament during the Rump. Oxinden claimed to have received an invitation to return to the Commons in 1649, but he seems to have declined it. Add. 28002, ff. 95, 117.

Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Winchelsea was disenfranchised, and thus did not return Members to the protectoral Parliaments in 1654 and 1656. In 1659, however, when the electoral arrangements prior to 1653 were revived, it once again returned two burgesses. Since the powers of the lord warden had been assumed by the council of state, it is likely that any electoral patronage was held by Thomas Kelsey*, lieutenant of Dover Castle since May 1651, who had also served as major-general for Kent and Surrey. He and one Captain Wilson sent letters regarding the election which the corporation received on 28 December 1658. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, f. 144v-45. On 4 January 1659 the mayor, four jurats and six other freemen returned John Busbridge and Robert Fowle. E. Suss. RO, Win 58, f. 145v. It is unlikely that either Busbridge or Fowle was amenable to Kelsey. Although Busbridge had been a loyal servant of Parliament and the Rump in the 1640s and 1650s, he had displayed concerted hostility to the protectorate, and had clashed with the Sussex major-general, William Goffe*. Fowle, from a long-established if relatively minor local gentry family with iron-manufacturing interests, was another son-in-law of Peter Farnden of Sedlescombe, and may have benefited from his connection with Samuel Gott. Fletcher, Suss. 19, 104, 127, 132, 257, 295, 326, 338, 341, 354.