Oxford

By the 1630s the population of Oxford probably exceeded 10,000, and had thus already reached levels estimated in 1667, when it was the eighth largest town in England. VCH Oxon. iv. 75–6. Seemingly sometimes overwhelmed by its powerful university, the city none the less had a strategic importance in its own right owing to its position on the Thames and road-trade routes, and had significant connections with London. VCH Oxon. iv. 114. Nor was its electorate easy to dominate. By 1640 ‘there may have been over 800 freemen’, all enfranchised, and the custom of according chamberlains and former bailiffs superior status to members of the secondary common council of twenty-four swelled the full council to as many as 120; between 1643 and 1651 the quorum of the latter was three times set at 59 or 60, described as a moiety. VCH Oxon. iv. 129-31; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 116, 123, 187. As a result, contested elections were relatively common. On the other hand, choice was limited by tradition and the fact that nominations were usually the preserve of the élite. In the early seventeenth century a candidate for the senior seat was habitually named by the city’s high steward, while the junior seat was earmarked for the recorder. HP Commons 1604-1629; VCH Oxon. iv.151. Any departure from this was, and remained, in the hands of the mayor, the four aldermen and eight assistants, and a handful of other officeholders. Although often recruited from outside the city in Oxfordshire and adjacent counties, before the civil war ‘the thirteen’ could act cohesively. Unlike their colleagues they met weekly. The need of colleges for supplies and the absence of significant local specialised industries concentrated their occupations: mercers and those engaged in the food, drink and distributive trades predominated. But while it was difficult to escape some level of economic interdependability, unlike a good many of their social inferiors who had dual status, few of ‘the thirteen’ tended to belong to the sizeable group of ‘privileged’ persons who were directly under the university’s wing and thereby potentially exempt from fiscal and other burdens. VCH Oxon. iv. 109, 132-3, 135, 138; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665; Oxon. RO, city archives, L.5.02 and 03, M.4.02 and 03; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford (1786), iv. 111-12; Bodl. Oxford Univ. archives, NEP/supra/Reg. R. pp. 108-9 Competing interests created perpetual tensions between city governors and the institution in their midst.

The failure in 1621 of the corporation’s attempts to gain a new charter amplifying its rights in the face of resistance by the university must have seemed even less palatable when in 1636 the university itself was successful in the same endeavour. HP Commons 1604-1629; VCH Oxon. iv. 158; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford iv. 114-15. Insofar as its chancellor was Archbishop William Laud, closely associated with the more unpopular fiscal and religious policies of Charles I’s personal rule, grievances were eventually compounded and confrontations became more bitter. Compared with puritan Banbury*, inspired by the formidable William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Oxford was not notably behindhand with Ship Money and other impositions; there was some co-operation between town and gown on poor relief and other issues, and representatives of both sat together on the commission of the peace. Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, ff. 9, 13; Bodl. Oxford Univ. archives, NEP/supra/Reg. R. pp. 157v-61; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 229; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 77; C181/5, ff. 79, 123; C231/5, p. 251. . But by early 1640 simmering resentments probably approached boiling point.

When on 3 March 1640 freemen gathered in the Guildhall court for elections to the forthcoming Parliament, Mayor John Smith* announced that four nominations had been made within the council house: Charles Howard*, Viscount Andover; John Whistler*; Thomas Cooper*; and John Nixon*. In the ensuing poll, the return for the senior seat of Andover, who was son and heir of the city steward, the 1st earl of Berkshire (Sir Thomas Howard†), may have been a foregone conclusion: at this juncture citizens could not lightly overturn tradition and spurn a potential advocate at court. The significance of the contest between the other three candidates is more difficult to discern. According to a note in the council minutes, ‘the commons’ were told before making their preferences known how many votes each nominee had already garnered at the pre-selection; whether this had a positive or negative influence on their choices is beyond the record. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 74. Whistler, recorder and Member for Oxford in the four previous Parliaments, was a proven supporter of the city and critic of government impositions, and might reasonably have expected to take the second seat easily, but in the final poll, if not before, received fewer voices than Cooper. HP Commons 1604-1629. That Whistler’s opponents were both members of ‘the thirteen’ could indicate factionalism within that body, but it is equally possible that pressure came from the outer ring of councillors or that the key decision was made outside in the courtyard. Cooper, recently made an alderman, was the sole privileged person on the mayor’s council and a steward of All Souls, where Gilbert Sheldon was warden; during his mayoralty Laud had found him remarkably co-operative. Reg. Univ. of Oxford, ii, pt. i. 404; Oxon. RO, city archives, F.5.8, p. 452; CSP Dom. 1631-2, p. 21. As such he may have represented a university interest and appealed to those concerned to have friends and customers within that institution, especially those with dual status. A plausible supporter among ‘the thirteen’ may have been Alderman John Sare, who in 1642 was sufficient of a sacramentalist to give a silver chalice for use at the altar of St Michael at the North Gate. A. Wood, The Antient and Present State of the City of Oxford ed. J. Pershall (1773), 24. In contrast Nixon, who soon emerged as an opponent of Laudian innovation and the pretensions of the university, conceivably received the endorsement of men like the similarly pious Alderman Henry Southam and assistant Martin Wright. PROB11/301/297 (Henry Sowtham); HP Commons 1660-1690, s.v. ‘William Wright’. The stance of Mayor Smith, who as a brewer was subject to close university regulation without attendant privileges, is at this point opaque, but he and a critical mass of councillors must have accepted the final poll. s.v. ‘John Smith’. On 22 April a meeting of the full council decided that ‘some of this body do strive in Parliament to alter the election’ and resolved that, should the mayor or victorious candidates be questioned at Westminster, they should have full access to relevant local documents to uphold the status quo. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 75. No petition of disgruntled freemen appears in the Commons Journal, but covert lobbying cannot be ruled out.

A combustible mix of national and local irritants developed in the city over the summer. Ten days after councillors had complained to the government of the university’s invasion over their privileges regarding alehouses, disorder in the surrounding area among soldiers raised to fight the Scots caused Mayor Smith to set a night watch. Laud, Works, v. 273-4. When on 23 June 1640 the university proctors imprisoned and fined the constable involved, asserting that he had breached their privilege, the corporation sought the earl of Berkshire’s assistance and secured a summons to the privy council of both the proctors and the vice chancellor, Christopher Potter, who had allegedly sanctioned the watch. It was an opportunity to air other grievances, including the release by proctor Peter Allibond of a prisoner committed by Alderman Nixon, and it inevitably drew in Recorder Whistler. Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 421-2; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 340-1.

Jurisdictional disputes were unresolved by 12 October, when freemen again gathered to elect burgesses to Westminster. Cooper, inconspicuous in the Short Parliament, was dead, replaced among ‘the thirteen’ by another ‘privileged person’, Ralph Griffin. Reg. Univ. Oxford, ii, pt.i, 405; Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 70v. John Smith, now simply an assistant like his elder brother Thomas, had been succeeded as mayor by Humphrey Whistler, perhaps a distant relative of the recorder. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 94. This time in a contest for the senior seat Recorder Whistler defeated Viscount Andover, whose parliamentary contribution had been little more noticeable than Cooper’s, by a narrow margin of 23 in a poll of over 650. Perhaps on the strength of his father’s actions, Andover won the second seat convincingly, however, with 463 votes to the 296 accorded to John Smith. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 85. Nonetheless, six weeks later, following Andover’s summons to the Lords and a new writ issued on 21 November, Smith was chosen as the substitute burgess ‘by general consent’, suggesting that his leadership in the city’s ‘cause against the university’, for which it voted further funds on 20 November, had rendered him a popular candidate throughout. CJ ii. 30b; C231/5, p. 414; Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 86v; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 98. It was thus Whistler and Smith who received the justificatory documents promoting that cause, sent by the unanimous agreement of 81 councillors at a meeting on 1 March 1641 for their representatives to forward to the Lords. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 99.

Until overtaken by the peculiar local consequences of war, the Gray’s Inn lawyer and the Oxford brewer forged an apparently harmonious working partnership and achieved something for their constituents. However, despite Berkshire’s and Whistler’s efforts at mediation between town and gown in the autumn of 1641 and a positive result in response to a Commons order of January 1642 to the vice chancellor to co-operate with Mayor Leonard Bowman and Alderman Nixon in searching for arms, dissension persisted. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 102, 364-5. In February 1642 Whistler gave Bowman the probably welcome advice that he could not compel 62 unwilling townsmen to accompany him to the university church of St Mary the Virgin in the annual act of humiliation when the city expressed contrition for the fourteenth-century massacre of scholars on St Scholastica’s day – a deliberate challenge to university claims to superior authority. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 105. The addition to the mixed city commission of the peace of seven exclusively university men on 1 March was doubtless designed to control independent-minded citizens, but on 4 April Mayor Bowman reported that, through the efforts of Smith, Whistler and Berkshire, a minor but valued concession had been secured: letters patent enabling the mayor to take his oath in the Oxford Guildhall instead of in the exchequer. C231/5 p. 509; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 106. This was to have unforeseen consequences.

The effect of the king’s raising of his standard at Nottingham was to widen existing rifts in Oxford and expose new ones. As the vice chancellor, Robert Pinke, a close associate of Laud, joined with the earl of Berkshire in what seems to have been a high-handed manner to muster men and initiate works for the defence of the city, an indeterminate number of citizens refused to participate; university archivist Brian Twyne noted that ‘some say that the town was forbidden by their burgesses to train lest they should seem to do it for the king’ and Smith and Whistler claimed later to have objected that a military posture would invite attack. Wood, Life and Times, i. 52–6; HMC Portland i. 56–8. Although councillors of various persuasions contributed towards defensive arms at a meeting on 15 August, it may be that the majority sentiment was for neutrality. Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 32v. Following the occupation of the city on 28 August by a contingent of royalist troops under Sir John Byron, however, a minority of the local élite felt unable to accommodate themselves and sufficiently intimidated to flee to Abingdon. Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 445. Among them were not only Nixon and several bailiffs and chamberlains but also the two MPs, who in early September hastened to denounce to Parliament the cowardice of Mayor Bowman in caving in to Pinke’s and Byron’s impositions. HMC Portland, i. 56-60; CJ ii. 754a. Yet while Nixon chose to stay away, and subsequently to testify at Laud’s trial, the MPs returned to the city: Smith apparently voluntarily, perhaps during the period in mid-September when Saye and Sele briefly controlled it; Whistler under duress, captured at his Oxfordshire home by soldiers en route from Edgehill, and brought in a prisoner that December. Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 36v; Wood, Life and Times, i. 73

In early October resident members of the corporation reportedly united under the new mayor, Thomas Dennis, to fortify the town to keep out Prince Rupert. However, when the king entered the city at the end of the month and established it as his capital and headquarters, there was evidently little they could do but acquiesce to whatever extent was prudent or congenial; Parliament’s orders of December and January forbidding all communication with Oxford made their choice the more stark. Wood, Life and Times, i. 67; CJ ii. 898b, 929b; A. and O. A list of citizens contributing to £250 to be presented to the king on his arrival included moderates like Southam, Humphrey Whistler and Walter Cave as well as Bowman, Arminian sympathiser Sare, and Laud’s friend William Chillingworth, father of the apologist of the same name. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 111, 379. Disarmed, taxed, made to dig trenches and burdened with playing host in cramped conditions to visiting courtiers, lawyers and soldiers, citizens responded variously to each new imposition. Wood, Life and Times, i. 70-3; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 113, 370, 373-4; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford; I. Roy and D. Reinhart, ‘Oxford and the civil wars’, Hist. Univ. Oxford, 687-732. The university, as the old enemy, perhaps fared worse than the king. Defiantly the council decided on 17 February 1643 not to appear any more at the university church on St Scholastica’s day unless under legal compulsion, because ‘the original was superstitious and besides they are often jeered by the scholars that the mayor wears a halter about his neck on that day’, while in June town and gown both claimed the right to assess privileged persons and call on them to contribute to their respective quotas of soldiers. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 112; Wood, Life and Times, i. 102. On 7 April, on an occasion probably designed to inspire obedience, all freemen and privileged were summoned to the court at Christ Church, where ‘the thirteen’ were taken in to meet the king. Wood, Life and Times, i. 96. MP Smith was almost certainly among them since he attended the mayor’s council ten days later. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 373. By the summer there was a general outbreak of absenteeism from conciliar gatherings, however, and Wood alleged that on 14 July only Mayor Dennis and his mace-bearer appeared to greet another arrival of the king and queen. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 113; Wood, Life and Times, i. 103.

In what was to be the first of several purges of the corporation over the succeeding 20 years, at Charles I’s request on 14 September Nixon and 12 other councillors who had fled the city in the previous 12 months were removed and disenfranchised; according to the minutes this had unanimous agreement. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 114-5. MP Smith’s brother Thomas, elected alderman in Nixon’s stead, was then chosen as mayor. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 115-6. Thomas Smith, whose royalist sympathies had been suspected by Saye and Sele before the king’s arrival in the city, owned a fine house directly opposite Christ Church, where he was landlord to Lieutenant-general Patrick Ruthven, 1st earl of Forth; appropriately, it was he who proceeded to drill the city militia. Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 122-5. Meanwhile, the council agreed on 18 September that the city’s governor, Sir Arthur Aston, should join their body and ‘have a place upon the bench next to the mayor, and have a voice in all the affairs of this city’. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 115.

From the perspective of the king and the lords commissioners who oversaw Oxford on his behalf, the stage may have been set peacefully for the Parliament called to meet there in January 1644. But although both John Smith and John Whistler, released from prison, participated in that Parliament (and must have anticipated in so doing the risks they ran of retribution from Westminster), neither they nor the council were entirely quiescent. Names of the Lords and Commons assembled in the Pretended Parliament (1646), sig. A3; A Copy of a Letter from the Members (1643), 7-8 (E.32.3); CJ iii. 419a-b. Through the spring it was agreed to sell city plate to meet the earl of Berkshire’s request for money for the royalist cause, to lend strictly limited assistance to the governor in the construction of fortifications and (with provisos) to lease to the king the first hay crop from the commons at Port Meadow, but since the city could not pay fully tax already imposed, the council (of which Smith had resumed attendance) declined to pay an extra one for opening and shutting the city gates. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 117-8, 384-5, 387. Epidemic disease and a serious fire in early October 1644 may have further stiffened resistance. The death of some councillors and the departure for compounding of some others offered an opportunity for compliant freemen to occupy vacancies, but with a moiety of 60 the corporation would still be hard to control, and even royalist sympathisers were no passive stooges. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 123; S. Porter, ‘The Oxford Fire of 1644’, Oxoniensia xlix. 289-300. An order from the lords commissioners executed by Colonel Sir Nicholas Selwyn in mid-October for the raising of another round of pay for soldiers provoked a modest revolt. The council, who regarded Selwyn’s appointment as unofficial, recorded that he was a man of neither ‘will [n]or power to do this city any good office but only aimeth at his own ends’ who had ‘affronted the late mayor [Thomas Smith] by assaulting and striking him in his place and seat in the city office, a thing not to be forgotten by this house’, and proffered their objections. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 123-4. The lords commissioners promptly arrested Alderman Martin Wright and ex-mayors Humphrey Whistler and Thomas Dennis, then ordered hostile comment on this to be erased from the conciliar record, and thereafter continued the attempt to keep a close eye on proceedings. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 126, 392. But while Governor Colonel William Legge was given aldermanic status and voting rights in March 1645 and his, or his successor’s, secretary made a freeman and bailiff later that year, the council was not cowed, perhaps gaining in confidence or in desperation as Oxford came under siege. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 128, 130. ‘Considering that they had suffered for the city’, reimbursement was voted to Wright, Whistler and Dennis in December 1644 for the costs of their imprisonment Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 127. Faced with a taxation demand from the king in February 1646, the council concluded robustly that he was asking more than was due; replying affirmatively in March to his annual request for hay from Port Meadow, they unanimously put on record the condition that the agreement would be nullified in the event of peace or lack of need. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 132-3.

The surrender of Oxford in June 1646 was succeeded by an influx of parliamentarian exiles and a second purge, although it was spread over many months and as in 1642-3 there were significant survivors, and thus potential for varied opinion. As early as 29 June the council repealed the 1643 order excluding Nixon and the others who had fled the city. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 134. On 14 September Nixon was chosen as mayor (his second stint). An indicator of the style to come, his oath-taking ceremony on the 30th was scaled down owing to its being a fast day. Notably absent on that occasion was Alderman Francis Harris, vintner and licensee of the Swindlestock Tavern at Carfax. The remainder of ‘the thirteen’ formally listed the next day included the godly Alderman Southam and the three former prisoners of 1644 (of whom Humphrey Whistler had succeeded the deceased Thomas Smith as alderman in May), but also Henry Silvester, mayor in 1645-6, royalist sympathisers Leonard Bowman and William Chillingworth (d. 1647), and MP John Smith. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 137. With Major-general Philip Skippon* installed as a councillor on 30 October, Nixon and his allies were apparently in a position of strength, however. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 140. Notwithstanding his official role in the negotiation of the surrender, Smith was disabled from sitting in Parliament, as was John Whistler (who had in the meantime compounded), and on 26 November a writ was issued for a fresh election. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 133; C231/6, p. 73. With the earl of Berkshire similarly disabled and unable to deploy his patronage as steward, there was for once no recorded contest. According to a letter from Oxford published in one of the newsbooks, ‘it was generally (by all) intended to have chosen Major-general Skippon for one [of the places], but there came letters out of the west that he was chosen a burgess for Barnstaple’, whereupon the voters, on 14 December, returned Nixon and the newly-admitted freeman John D’Oyly*, a member of the county committee and brother of a celebrated parliamentarian officer. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 173v; Perfect Occurrences no. 51 (11-18 Dec. 1646), sig. Ddd3v (E.366.13). John Whistler was still listed as recorder on 1 October, but his functions had long since been exercised by deputies, first Geoffrey Palmer, appointed with the approval of the lords commissioners, and then after the surrender Richard Boone or Bowne. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 133, 137, 159, 165. On 1 February 1647, through the efforts of Nixon, Bulstrode Whitelocke* was unanimously elected as Whistler’s successor as recorder. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 143-4; Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. ix. f. 123.

The assessment commissioners named for the city on 23 June 1647 – recorder, MPs, the tenacious though increasingly impoverished Dennis, and aldermen Southam, Whistler and Martin Wright (new to this office) – were doubtless pre-eminent locally at that date, but their rule did not go unchallenged. A. and O. In a summer which saw troubles within the parliamentarian garrison of around a thousand soldiers, it proved difficult to secure sufficient attendance to prosecute council business; attempts to punish absentees met resistance. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 147-9, 396-7; I. Roy, ‘The City of Oxford’, Town and Countryside in the English Revolution ed. R.C. Richardson (Manchester, 1992), 155. As the university prepared its defence against parliamentary visitation, on 20 September councillors took parallel rearguard action, electing as mayor Humphrey Boddicott, a vintner once apprenticed to Alderman Francis Harris. Within a week 28 ‘well-affected’ citizens petitioned Parliament that Boddicott and his two bailiffs were malignants who had taken the 1645 oath imposed by the king. Univ. Coll. Oxford, MS MA/30/3/MS/6 and 7; CJ v. 317b, 318b-319a. While the Commons acted swiftly to quash the election and (ignoring the charter) to prolong at pleasure the tenure of Mayor Nixon and the sitting bailiffs (28 and 30 Sept.), exclusion of delinquents took longer. CJ v. 320a-b; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 151. In the meantime the aldermen who had alienated plate to pay Berkshire were called to account and the councillors fell into ‘a great difference’, exacerbated by an inquiry by the county committee into royalism among their number. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 152-4; Roy, ‘City of Oxford’, 153-6. The admission as a bailiff of new governor Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Kelsey* must have seemed justified to some in the light of a royalist plot that August. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 154; Wood, Life and Times, i. 146. It was only in September that the parliamentary ordinance against officeholding by its former enemies mopped up lingering troublemakers. On 12 September, the same day the council resolved to seek sanction for a new mayoral election, Thomas Berry or Bury, who had joined Nixon in the 1642 exodus, was one of two men elected to ‘the thirteen’ instead of Boddicott and Henry Silvester (who had had the misfortune to be the mayor at the sharp end of the 1645 oath). By the 30th three more, including John Smith (who thus far had somehow survived exclusion from local office), had forfeited their places; their replacements, including the new mayor, Thomas Wickes or Weekes (another onetime exile) and Walter Cave (once Nixon’s apprentice), who succeeded him in 1649-50, were all among signatories to the petition against Boddicott. There was also an influx of former exiles and signatories to the full council. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 156-60; Roy, ‘City of Oxford’, 156; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 150-1.

For the next decade Nixon, buttressed by his friends, was the most influential individual on the corporation, but its size, and the complexity of its relationship with the university, itself undergoing fundamental upheaval, ensured that this was no closed oligarchy. A succession of three able recorders in good standing with central government wielded significant authority. Equally, while Nixon was apparently happy to accept office as a justice of the peace and a commissioner, once his unprecedented two-year mayoralty was over he continued his practice of taking little if any part in Commons proceedings. A. and O.; C231/6, pp. 108, 172; C181/6, f.81. This decision to eschew the national stage was the more notable since D’Oyly’s exclusion at the purge of 6 December 1648 prompted by June 1649 a conciliar petition to Parliament for an election of new burgesses to replace the ‘citizen or citizens incapable to sit’. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 164. Representation at Westminster was especially desirable in the context of a renewed attempt in 1649 to obtain guarantees of the city’s liberties over against those of the university – a controversy ‘the citizens were the more eager to prosecute’, Wood observed sourly, ‘because they thought that all the old stock being ejected none were left to manage the conflict with them’. Wood, Life and Times, i. 150, 152; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 163, 165, 399; Bodl. Oxford Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, ff. 33, 35-7, 5, 78. On 19 June the unanimous election, by a much-reduced council of 61 members, of Bulstrode Whitelocke to replace the earl of Berkshire as steward was an important step in the campaign. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 164. With Whitelocke’s friend Bartholomew Hall as the new recorder (10 Sept.), deputy Bowne and the key new men of the corporation, the city pursued its case in London and Oxford through 1650; Nixon was not in the delegation to the Commons. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 165-6, 169, 171; Oxon. RO, city archives, K.13; CJ vi. 180b, 186b-187a.

Although the Oxford garrison experienced a serious mutiny in 1649, thereafter military presence in the city became steadily less obtrusive. Bodl. Tanner, ff. 99, 101, 111; CJ vi. 293a, 300a; C.H. Firth, ‘The mutiny of Colonel Ingoldsby’s regiment’, Procs. Oxford Arch. and Hist. Soc. n.s. iv. 235-46. The prospect of a Scottish invasion led to the temporary garrisoning of the dilapidated castle under the governorship of William Draper*, but he was a north Oxfordshire gentleman with experience of local administration rather than a career soldier. Men and money were required from the council while the scare lasted, but when it was over members, while taking the opportunity belatedly to exclude the suspect Alderman Francis Harris, soon turned their attention to such matters as the suppression of profane traditions and the rebuilding of the city; the castle, which proved untenable, was slighted. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 183-4, 186, 401-2; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 188, 295, 335-6, 343, 408, 416; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt. ii. 646.

Oxford had no representation in the 1653 Parliament. That autumn the election as mayor of haberdasher and milliner Thomas Williams, probably a Baptist, may have marked the apogee of influence by religious radicals; it provoked the republication of a poem inspired by a fire in his shop, satirising his ‘over-heated zeal’. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 199; T. W. Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery (1654), 21-7. The inauguration of the protectorate otherwise saw the return of a more traditional order. It accelerated the steady rise to prominence of the family of Unton Croke I*, who, in addition to good standing with Oliver Cromwell*, had a house in St Aldate’s in the city and another just outside at Marston, where the treaty of surrender had been signed in 1646. In December 1653 Richard Croke*, a lawyer who had joined the Oxford Mercers’ Company three years earlier (probably at Nixon’s instigation) and married Martin Wright’s daughter during the summer, was admitted a freeman and replaced Bowne as deputy recorder. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 201; Oxon. RO, Misc. Liddle II/iii, 1; city archives, G.5.4, ff. 18v-27; St Peter-in-the-East and St Martin’s, Oxford, par. regs. When the freemen again gathered for an election on 23 June 1654, this time for only one seat, Croke probably canvassed for Bulstrode Whitelocke, who had just taken his brother Unton Croke II* on embassy to Sweden: he certainly gave enthusiastic support to James Whitelocke* in his candidacy for the county and the commissioner of the great seal wrote approvingly that autumn of Croke’s expressions of loyalty. Whitelocke, Jnl. of the Swedish Embassy (1772), ii. 420; Whitelocke, Diary, 396. In what was a small poll by Oxford standards, Whitelocke duly received 155 votes, as against 85 cast for his rival, ‘Mr Berry’. This was almost certainly Thomas Berry, one of the exiles of 1642 and entrants to ‘the thirteen’ in 1648; a veteran of representations of the city’s case against the university and the first-named among local commissioners in the ordinance of 28 August 1654 setting up the triers and ejectors, Berry may have represented a more radical strand of opinion. Ambiguity in the wording of the conciliar record of the occasion leaves open the possibility that, in a departure from precedent, the nominations were made with all the voters present in the Guildhall court. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 114-5, 134, 156, 169, 203; A. and O.; Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 287; K.13. If there was a deep rift in allegiances on this occasion, it was not apparent when voters re-assembled in the autumn. Following Bulstrode Whitelocke’s decision to sit for Buckinghamshire instead, a new writ was issued on 8 November. C231/6, p. 300; CJ vii. 373a. This time the council and freemen, with Nixon in his third term as mayor, unanimously elected Richard Croke. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 293v.

Croke did not prove a particularly visible Member at Westminster, but he may have worked behind the scenes there for the settlement of differences with the university, of which his father Unton I was sub-steward. Owing to his and others’ efforts, a period of modest co-operation between the old antagonists ensued. In his capacity as deputy-recorder Croke was also very active in other local affairs. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 209; Roy, ‘City of Oxford’, 159-60; Bodl. Top. Oxon. c.265, f. 24. In spring 1655, while Unton II distinguished himself fighting royalist insurrection in Oxford, Richard sent loyal messages to central government in company with other commissioners like Draper, Wickes, Nixon and Berry. Bodl. Rawl. A. 36, ff. 340, 392. Anticipating a commission from the protector, the corporation raised a company to secure the city and made assessments to fund it. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 208. Another indication of relative harmony at this period was a compromise judgement settling the vexed question of Wright, Southam, Dennis and the city plate, which came just as Wright entered a mayoral year in September 1655. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 210.

Unusual local solidarity, strengthened by the fact that Croke was Wright’s son-in-law, may be the principal explanation for Croke’s re-election as Member for Oxford on 4 August 1656. On the other hand, that cohesion may itself have been a negative reaction to the rule of the major-generals. A potential rival having been removed by Lord Whitelocke’s decision to stand for Buckinghamshire, the other nominee was Major-general William Packer, who had received his freedom only that day, although he had been working with the leading members of the corporation on local commissions the previous spring. Whitelocke, Diary, 445. Once again, the minutes allow for nomination in the Guildhall court; no voting numbers were entered. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/003, f. 309v; Bodl. Rawl. A. 36, ff. 340, 392. Five weeks later Packer unsettled the corporation by seeking a copy of the last charter. The request was refused until a satisfactory explanation was advanced, or until Packer made good his privileges as a freeman, took his oath and inspected the charter in situ in the city office. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 214.

This time Croke, while not neglecting his work as a magistrate in Oxford, was far more active in the Commons. It is plausible that he and his immediate circle were beginning to overtake the aging Nixon in local influence, although the latter’s foundation of a boys’ school in the later 1650s earned him much respect. William Wright succeeded his father as mayor in September 1656. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 215. A year later, as the adhesive Dennis set out on a second term in the office, Croke’s brother was admitted as a freeman and bailiff; in the minutes ‘Captain Unton Croke’ was listed directly after the recorder and his deputy rather than among the many bailiffs. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/004, ff. 2, 3. According to Anthony Wood, the Croke brothers were at the forefront when Richard Cromwell* was proclaimed lord protector in September 1658. Wood, Life and Times, i. 259. The lameness with which Dennis was afflicted by this time necessitated the substitution on at least one important occasion of his deputy, senior alderman Southam, of whom Richard Croke was a close friend and trustee, and William Wright a son-in-law. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/004, f. 19v; Bodl. MS ch. Oxon. 3027a, 3227; PROB11/301/297. By 23 September the council of state had got wind of the election of Humphrey Whistler as Dennis’ successor and hastened to halt proceedings. Southam, Richard Croke, Nixon and others rallied to defend him against a mistaken claim that he had been sequestered and, once Whistler had gone to London in person to satisfy Charles Fleetwood* to this effect, carried the day. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/004, f. 20; Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 233-5.

The closing of ranks was temporary. On 26 October the corporation unanimously agreed on a letter of congratulation to the new protector, but as winter brought the prospect of an election, fissures appeared, although it is not clear whether alignments were primarily political, religious or personal. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 236. On 15 December 1658 Whitelocke, who was exploiting his contacts to obtain for his son James a seat either for Aylesbury or Oxford, received a letter from Nixon disavowing any intention of his own to stand, but stating that ‘Captain Unton Croke would be the greatest opposite standing for himself’. The news, echoed the next day in a communication from Mayor Whistler, was the more disquieting since Unton was currently sheriff; although this technically made him ineligible, he was still in good odour with central government and local office, civil and military (especially in a time of renewed tension) undoubtedly gave him power. Confirmation that both Croke brothers had been nominated came on the 18th in a letter from Richard, which also referred unexpansively to ‘others’ in contention; the recipient noted that he ‘civily desires Whitelockes further directions, but no offer of himself or his brother to sit down’. Whitelocke, Diary, 502. When the election was finally held on 14 January 1659 in the presence of about 680 freemen, Nixon was proposed after all, but, despite his recent benefaction to the city, failed to gain a third of voices for the first seat in a poll against Richard. He then fared slightly worse in a run-off against Unton for the second. Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/004, f. 29. Whitelocke, who was ill and had already placed two sons in the Parliament, made no comment in his diary, but on the 21st received letters from the mayor and aldermen seeking his assistance to suppress disorders in Oxford. Whitelocke, Diary, 505.

Rumours of plots made the city restless in 1659, but on 14 March 1660 one of the chief local instigators, Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland, was admitted with James Huxley† and Sir Thomas Hampson to freedom. In a five-cornered contest for the two seats in the Convention, Richard Croke and John Nixon could only secure third and fourth places above Hampson. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 254-6. None the less, the shift of power in the city was slow and partial. Mayor John Lambe, aldermen Martin Wright, William Wright, John Nixon, Humphrey Whistler and Thomas Wickes, and 80 other councillors took the oath of allegiance to Charles II on 24 and 25 May and 1 June. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 260-1. Lengthy and complex discussions on 17 September led to the demotion of Wickes and others from ‘the thirteen’; Bowman, Harris and Silvester were all restored and Sampson White, a bailiff excluded in 1646, was elected mayor. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 265-6. It took death and the Corporation Act of 1662 to remove (respectively) Nixon and others like Walter Cave, but although the personnel of the council was considerably changed by that date, Dennis clung on and Richard Croke and William Wright survived to contest subsequent parliamentary elections. Oxford Council Acts 1626-1665, 297-300; HP Commons 1660-1690.