In the late 1650s, the minister of Tavistock estimated that he had cure of 2-3,000 souls there. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 1647-1669 ed. S. Hardman Moore (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xvii), 322. This figure, though doubtless inflated for polemical reasons, is not incompatible with the total of 750 adult males in the parish and town who assented to the Protestation in 1642, or with the estimate later in the century that put the population at a little under 2,000. Devon Protestation Returns, ii. 418; Compton Census, 278. On a populace of this order of magnitude, the epidemic in 1626, which claimed nearly 600 lives in Tavistock, was devastating. H.J. Hopkins, ‘Thomas Larkham’s Tavistock: Change and Continuity in an English Town, 1600-1670’ (Univ. of Texas at Austin, PhD thesis, 1981), 15, 18. The economy of the town was far from secure. It was one of the four Devon stannary towns, on the edge of Dartmoor, but the tin industry was in a steep decline by 1640. Even so, in 1642 18 Tavistock people presented tin at a coinage, the official process for selling tin, a far higher number than from any of the other towns. T. Greeves, ‘Four Devon Stannaries’, in Tudor and Stuart Devon ed. T. Gray, M.M. Rowe, A. Erskine (Exeter, 1992), 44-5, 69. More important than tin production to the mid-century economy was cloth production, particularly the weaving of the heavy Devon kersies. The cloth market at Tavistock was noted in the region, but by the early 1640s kersey manufacture, like tin mining, was suffering contraction. T. Westcote, A View of Devonshire in 1630 ed. G. Oliver, P. Jones (Exeter, 1845), 61; PA, Main Pprs. [1641], petition of inhabitants of Tavistock.
Tavistock before 1640 had a strongly-entrenched puritan minority in positions of influence. Alexander Maynard, father of John Maynard*, was a justice of the peace, and helped foster the ministry of George Hughes, who became vicar in 1638 before migrating to Exeter and then Plymouth four years later. Bodl. Walker c.2, f. 294. Hughes was appointed by Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, as vicar of Tavistock following a request by John Maynard’s mother. E. Calamy, An Account of the Ministers (1713), 223; Calamy, A Continuation of the Account (1727), 253; Calamy Revised, 281. The efforts of Alexander Maynard in subduing the ‘sons of wickedness’ were recognized by the godly. DWL, J. Quick, ‘Icones Sacrae Anglicanae’, 500, 503. The Russells were the dominant landowners. Since the dissolution of the monasteries, they had owned the manor of Tavistock and the advowson. Even though the town had returned Members to Parliament as long ago as 1295, and regularly sent them since the mid-fourteenth century, there was no charter, and the institution which determined the government of the town was the court leet of the manor. The steward of the lord of the manor presided over some aspects of the leet’s work, and for much of the 1640s and 50s the steward of the earl of Bedford was a Totnes man, Gilbert Eveleigh*. The authority of the steward, notwithstanding, however, it was the portreeve in whose name parliamentary indentures were made out. When an incumbent portreeve died in office in 1622, he was replaced on the determination of four ‘electors’. Hopkins, thesis, 161. By the early years of the century, however, there was a body of ‘eight men’, alternatively known as the ‘masters’ in existence, which even the earl of Bedford recognized as an important group in electoral politics. Beds. RO, R3/9. In 1642, the masters described themselves as ‘magistrates’, but their authority was derived from the court leet, not from the commission of the peace. During the turbulence of the 1650s associated with the ministry of Thomas Larkham, the vicar’s supporters challenged the pretensions of the eight men, arguing that it was ‘the silly people’ of Tavistock who reckoned ‘the eight men that take accounts by custom, to be masters of the town’. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 323. Even so, it was the eight men who, in the early 1650s at least, appointed the parish officers including the churchwardens. There was a town hall in Tavistock, and this is likely to have been the venue for election meetings. T. Larkham, The Wedding-Supper (1652), 124.
It was not a foregone conclusion that the Russell interest would prevail in the first of the elections of 1640. On hearing of the king’s intentions to summon a Parliament, Thomas Wise* embarked on a plan to have himself elected to it, and included Tavistock among the boroughs he chose to court. He declared himself ‘no way doubtful of the place’, but recognized that a place might be bestowed on ‘Mr Maynard’, meaning either Alexander or John. Antony House, Carew Pole BC 26/18/10. In the event, John Maynard found two seats elsewhere, and in both the elections of 1640 the Russells were successful in their choices for Tavistock. William Lord Russell was the eldest son of the 4th earl of Bedford, and John Pym* had already benefited from Bedford’s patronage in the seat in four elections of the 1620s. The single indenture of 4 March 1640 was made in the name of the ‘bailiff and burgesses’. C219/42/1A/4. The indenture for the Parliament that met in November has not survived. The individual who held the office of bailiff or portreeve was still occupying the post in June 1641, when a by-election was held on a writ ordered on 24 May, after William Russell, following the death of his father, was called to the Upper House as the 5th earl. C219/43/2/1. His younger brother, John Russell, succeeded him in the seat.
At some point during 1641, 60 of the inhabitants of Tavistock petitioned the Devon magistrates, requesting a remedy for poor trade, especially the decline of kersey sales. Like other Devon boroughs, whose petitions of the same year were forwarded to Parliament, the Tavistock men blamed the depredations of north African pirates for the loss of confidence in the economy, but also singled out the plotting by papists. They approved of the measures taken by the House of Commons, but considered that these were being frustrated by the actions of Catholics among the lay peers and by bishops. Their analysis would not have been contradicted by John Pym, but no evidence of Pym’s direct involvement in it has been found. During the civil war, the troubles of the town only intensified. Tavistock is said to have changed hands six times, between royalist and parliamentarian control. J.J. Alexander, Tavistock Parish Church (3rd ed. Gloucester, n.d), 31. The first of these changes of control, in the early months of the war, precipitated the departure of the puritan minister, George Hughes. Bellum Civile, 24; Bodl. Walker c.2, f. 294. The arrival of the royalists early in November 1642 was recorded by John Syms, the puritan minister of Sheepstor, who noted their ‘wasting and spoiling many houses and imprisoning some persons’. Add. 35297, f. 19. Life in the town was badly disrupted by the civil war. It was afflicted by further epidemics in 1643 and 1644, and according to Thomas Larkham, the royalists herded people in the town hall and in nearby Lydford castle, where they starved. A townsman left money in 1645 for the ‘godly poor and not the begging people’. Hopkins, thesis, 11, 24; Larkham, Wedding-Supper, 124-5; PROB11/194/523.
By May 1646, Devon was under parliamentary control, and on 8 July, writs were ordered for a by-election at Tavistock to replace Pym, who had died in 1643, and John Russell, who had been disabled from sitting further. CJ iv. 609a. The date of the election has not been discovered, but it must have occurred between mid-July and late October 1647, when one of the town’s new MPs was first recorded as present in the Commons. No indenture has survived and it is therefore unclear which of the new Members was the senior. The outcome strongly suggests that the influence of the Russells had by this time been eclipsed. Edmund Fowell, the Plymouth town clerk, must have been helped to electoral success by John Maynard, whose legal associate he was. Ellis Crymes was seated at Buckland Monachorum, three miles or so south-east of Tavistock, and was a brother-in-law and gentry neighbour of Sir Francis Drake*, an officer in the western brigade of Edward Massie*. Both Drake and Crymes were Presbyterians in politics, unsympathetic to the New Model army, and their careers in the Long Parliament did not survive Pride’s Purge.
There is no direct evidence of the size of the electorate in any of these elections. Nevertheless, the tendency towards oligarchy noted in the eight men is likely to have militated against a wide parliamentary franchise. In the sixteenth century the freeholders of inheritance living within the borough, or ‘abbot’s burgesses’ as they were known, enjoyed the parliamentary franchise, and no evidence has been found that this dispensation was challenged during the 1640s. HP Commons 1509-1558. The politics of Tavistock were galvanized after the Independent New Model army chaplain of Sir Hardress Waller* arrived in the town in April 1648. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 7. Thomas Larkham was a contentious, divisive figure, who split the ruling elite into factions for and against his ministry. He had no qualms about describing the leading townsmen as ‘monsters’, who had embezzled the public charitable stock. Larkham, Wedding-Supper, 121, 122. To his enemies, he was ‘a very invective and bitter spirit ... peevishly proud, an unaccountable railer in all his sermons’. Bodl. Walker c.2, f. 294. The struggle for control was punctuated by a court case for ‘riot’, an exaggerated description of an episode in May 1652 when Larkham’s supporters forced open the church doors which had been locked against him. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 18. The Nicholas Row or Rowe to whom Larkham attributed the case at quarter sessions and assizes was the clerk of the peace in Devon, appointed by virtue of an order from Edmund Prideaux I*, who was custos rotulorum. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 18, 71, 220. The dispute in Tavistock drew in a number of agents of the state such as the Committee for Plundered Ministers and John Disbrowe*, acting as military superintendent of the south west. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 313-4; Bodl. Walker c.2, f. 295. Larkham enjoyed at best strained relations with Gilbert Eveleigh* and John Hale*, acting in their official capacities as, respectively, the Bedford estates steward and receiver of Devon and Cornwall tithes. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 18, 98, 99, 178. Thomas Westlake* was, by contrast, an ally. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 62, 63. Although Tavistock's troubles drew in a number of the leading public figures in Devon, the borough remained unrepresented at Westminster through most of the 1650s, as it was not enfranchised under the Instrument of Government of 1653.
Only in 1659 did the town again send burgesses to Parliament, when the pre-1653 franchises were restored as part of the Humble Petition and Advice. The chosen day for the election was 7 January, a market day in Tavistock. Diary of Thomas Larkham, 191. The indenture, in English and in the name of the portreeve and burgesses, was sealed by seven named electors, with reference to ‘others’. The seven described themselves by their social designation: two gentlemen, a clothier, a merchant, a tanner and a yeoman, and this was also the order in which their names appeared on the indenture, rather implying a hierarchy. C219/46. The pair returned was Edmund Fowell and Henry Hatsell, the latter the energetic navy agent based in Plymouth. Hatsell was also elected at Plympton Erle, and opted on 11 March to waive Tavistock. CJ vii. 613a. A new writ was issued, and at some point before 13 April a fresh election was held. There was clearly either a contest, or at best a misunderstanding. The sheriff, (Sir) John Blackmore* sent up the writ, with an indenture, neither signed nor sealed by the portreeve, returning someone for the seat. Subsequently, the portreeve sent up a second indenture, signed and sealed, for a different person. The name of neither of these men is known. On 13 April the House elected to receive the signed and sealed indenture, and referred to the committee of privileges the matter of why Blackmore had sent up the writ with an incomplete indenture. CJ vii. 638a. There the matter rested: the Parliament was dissolved on 22 April, and it has not become apparent that any second burgess for Tavistock ever appeared at Westminster.
After the election of 1660 for the Convention, which produced a double return, Ellis Crymes argued that the franchise in Tavistock was restricted to the freeholders, but the House found that it should be extended to the inhabitants at large. In 1661, this ruling was reversed, and the electors were once again the freeholders or inheritance, which favoured the Russell family. HP Commons 1660-1690. Thomas Larkham resigned his living before he was made to leave it, leaving his episcopalian successor uncomfortable with ‘that factious turbulent spirit which the people had suck’d in’, suggesting that Larkham and his sympathisers had after all made some impact on Tavistock during the interregnum. Bodl. Walker c.2, f. 295.
