Evesham

Evesham grew up as a community clustered around the medieval abbey, and had acquired the characteristics of a town by the late twelfth century. This section relies heavily on Evesham Borough Records ed. S.K. Roberts (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xiv), pp. xi-xiv. By that time the streets and their names familiar to seventeenth-century residents were in place, the topography of the town shaped and confined by the bend in the Avon. In 1640 the main part of the town, on the north bank of the river, comprised the two parishes of All Saints and St Laurence, whose churches nestled side-by-side in the shadow of the ruinous abbey. All Saints was the more prestigious, and included Bridge Street, leading down from the town hall to the river, where the merchants lived. St Laurence, the more western parish, had a greater population. Across the river lay Bengeworth, more populous still, a busy industrial parish. Bengeworth was specifically incorporated into the town by charter, and had its own church, but always seemed to be considered the third parish. It was a town of 2-3,000 people. There were more poor in Bengeworth than elsewhere in the borough. The cloth trade was the single most important industry, but the town benefited from its strategic location on the main road from Oxford to Worcester. Its inns, fairs and markets were of great importance, being considered second only to those of Worcester. In taxation, as well as in trade, Evesham was Worcestershire’s second town.

The parliamentary representation of Evesham dated only from the charters of 1604 and 1605. Before that the town was governed by a borough court in session every three weeks, and a court leet which met twice a year. This structure was at breaking-point by the 1580s, when there were clashes between the lord of the manor, Sir Edward Hoby, and the crown over the authority for summoning the court leet. The incorporation of the town, evidently the result of local petitioning, clarified these matters of dispute and endowed the town with a range of privileges. The charter of April 1605 provided the form of government from its enrolment down to November 1682, when it was surrendered to Charles II. A third charter was granted in June 1684, replaced with a fourth by James II in 1688. Shortly afterwards the 1605 charter was restored and prevailed until 1835.

The very first charter of 1604 provided for the parliamentary representation of the borough, by two burgesses. The right of election was prescribed by the charter as residing in the mayor, aldermen and burgesses. G. May, Hist. Evesham (Evesham, 1834), 314. The government of the borough was vested in the common council: seven aldermen, 12 capital burgesses, a recorder and a chamberlain, who formed the electorate for the annual choice of mayor. Outside the ranks of the common council was a more amorphous body of 24 assistant burgesses, from which vacancies in the common council were filled. For most men the essential qualification for entering the ranks of the assistants was freedom of one of the town’s four guilds. It was a self-perpetuating oligarchy of the kind ubiquitous in early modern English towns. Two offices of the borough lent themselves to outside influence. The position of recorder was to be filled by someone ‘learned in the laws of England’, while that of high steward was filled with the assent of the corporation by distinguished individuals with political influence which might be useful to the townspeople. Lord Keeper Coventry (Sir Thomas Coventry†) became high steward in March 1631; after his death in 1640 the title passed to his eldest son, Thomas Coventry†, 2nd Baron Coventry. Even during the interregnum, when Coventry was sequestered as a royalist, the corporation did not replace him, and his son, George, succeeded as high steward in November 1661.

The electoral influence of Lewis Bayly, chaplain to Prince Henry and a prime mover for Evesham’s charters of 1604 and 1605, may have persisted down to 1621, but by 1614, elections were managed by the corporation, with the freemen of the borough, ‘the burgesses’, excluded. In elections of the 1620s, the corporation mainly chose regionally important figures to represent them, but there is no evidence that any family had the townsmen in its pocket. In April 1640, the selection of William Sandys of Fladbury, near the town, and William Morton of Winchcombe, only a little further away, was uncontested. The return indicates that the franchise lay with the ‘mayor, aldermen and burgesses’. C219/42 ii. 76-98b. The precise meaning of this phrase, quoting the borough charter, was later to become an issue, and was likely to arise when elections were contested. Elections to the Long Parliament were the first held during the stewardship of the borough of the second Lord Coventry, and Evesham offered an alternative means to the Commons for his younger brother, John, if none of his strong Somerset connections delivered a seat. Divisions over selection must have been appearing in the borough in the autumn of 1640, as three candidates, John Coventry, William Sandys of nearby Fladbury and Richard Cresheld, serjeant-at-law and the borough’s recorder, were returned on two writs. Coventry and Cresheld were returned on one dated 16 October; the one bearing Sandys’s name has not survived. C219/43/5/5/82. Coventry appears to have had the backing of some of the most prominent capital burgesses, including Samuel Gardner*, who was to leave Evesham to fight with 2nd Baron Brooke (Robert Greville†) on the outbreak of civil war in 1642. C219/43 iii. 82. Of the three candidates returned, only Sandys seems immediately to have taken his seat. The double return was referred on 9 November to the committee of privileges, of which Sandys was a member. Before the case was considered, however, on 21 January 1641 Sandys had been declared a monopolist by the committee on monopolies, and ruled to be unfit to sit. Sandys himself believed that Coventry had been orchestrating a campaign against him. The same day, the writ was moved for a by-election, and Coventry was duly elected on 2 February. CJ ii. 22b, 71a; Procs. LP i. 84. Cresheld’s standing in the House was untouched by this tussle: although there is no mention of it in the Journal, his election was evidently judged good.

Coventry did not remain in the House for long. He withdrew to the country in June 1641, only four months after his election, and began to be associated with planned mobilization on behalf of the king. None of Coventry’s activism was in Evesham or Worcestershire, and when on 12 August 1642 he was disabled from sitting, the borough lost one of its MPs for over four years. CJ ii. 511b, 685b, 716b. The election of Samuel Gardner in January 1647 came after a period of instability in the borough as a result of the impact of the civil war. The town lay on the Worcester to Oxford road: its strategic location as a crossing point on the Avon, and its noted fairs and markets, made it a desirable place for the opposing forces to hold. Control of the town was disputed particularly in 1644-45. The king himself was there with his army in June 1644, en route from Stow-on-the-Wold to Worcester and back, breaking bridges as he passed through. The town became a royalist garrison, under the command of Sir John Knotsford. Symonds, Diary, 8. Sir William Waller* was in pursuit, launching raids on the royalists apparently within a mile of the town. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 206, 214, 220, 244, 245, 247. The Committee of Both Kingdoms saw Evesham as a staging point between Oxford and the north west and important as a means of securing Worcestershire as a whole. In July it was decided to garrison Evesham as soon as it could be occupied, and the Committee informed Sir Edward Massie* of its intention. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 383, 386. In the winter of 1644-5 the Committee was still considering whether to garrison Evesham. CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 42, 70, 90. The royalists had made these plans more difficult to bring to fruition by building up the defences of the town that winter, and fortifying Campden House, at Chipping Campden, at the same time. CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 255. On 9 May 1645 the rendezvous between Charles and the 3,300 foot of Lord Astley (Jacob Astley) took place at Evesham; ten days later the Committee of Both Kingdoms ordered Massie to take Evesham, and hand it over to the gentlemen of Worcester, among whom Nicholas Lechmere* was prominent. Symonds, Diary, 165, 167; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 502; ‘Nicholas Lechmere’ infra. On 26 May Massie took the town by storm with a force of about 1,400 and set up a garrison for Parliament, maintained by troops from Gloucester and artillery from Warwick. A True Relation of the Manner of the Taking of...Evesham (1645, E.286.14); CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 533, 538, 541, 564.

Evesham quickly became the headquarters of the county committee for Parliament, which had begun work at Warwick even before the taking of the town. During the period of royalist occupation, the civic government of the town had continued, with men who were to take military rank in the new parliamentary garrison being elected to be capital burgesses as they would have been in more normal times. Evesham Borough Records ed. Roberts, 43 (Edward Pitway, Edward Field). The new county committee avoided summoning townsmen to answer for allegiance to royalism; those making compositions, handing over tithes and advancing money to the committee were from neighbouring parishes and further afield in the county, not from the borough itself. SP28/138 pt. 16. Nevertheless, there was more of a blurring between the civic government and the military than had apparently been the case under the royalists. Edward Field, for instance, was in the pay of the committee in June 1645; in August 1645 he appears as a capital burgess, and in March 1646 as ‘Captain’ Field. Edmund Young, who had gone through the usual cursus honorum to become mayor in 1637, but who played no part in borough government between August 1642 and August 1645, was one of the first agents of the committee in June 1645 and had become Captain Young by 1646. SP28/138 pt. 16 pp. 54, 55, 61, 84; Evesham Borough Records, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 42-3 (Young); 43 (Field). The town’s leading parliamentarian soldier, Samuel Gardner*, returned briefly in August 1645 from service in Waller’s army to be elevated to alderman. Evesham Borough Records, 43.

While the committee at Evesham began to tighten its grip on the town and on the countryside, the accounts of Nicholas Lechmere make it clear that there was little sense of security among the parliamentarian leaders. In June 1645 the Committee of Both Kingdoms signalled to the committees at Coventry and Stafford that the garrison could not withstand a considerable enemy force, should one attack; and there was nervousness when the king’s army was reported to be on the move. While Worcester remained under royalist control, these anxieties were bound to persist. Captain Edward Pitway, later to be expelled from his position of capital burgess for his Quaker sympathies, was reimbursed for building up the town’s defences, and large numbers of men – as many as 85 on one occasion – were standing watch at night early in 1646 under the supervision of Evesham’s soldier-burgesses. CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 567, 577; SP 28/138 pt. 16 pp. 78, 85.

In these circumstances, a parliamentary election was unthinkable, but the fall of Worcester in the summer of 1646 transformed matters. Evesham was disgarrisoned three days before the inevitable surrender of Worcester, Lechmere resigned as treasurer and the county committee removed to the city. Diary and Pprs. of of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy, 261. Of the Long Parliament Members of the borough, Richard Cresheld still sat and John Coventry had been disabled from sitting on 12 August 1642. CJ ii. 511b, 685b, 716b. The election to replace Coventry finally took place on 15 January 1647. Worcs. Archives, BA 228/77/19/7. The town had until recently been a garrison, the dignities of the corporation had to be preserved, and the Coventry family interest was broken. In these circumstances a candidate with military credentials and a high profile in civic government was a natural choice, and Samuel Gardner fitted the bill ideally. He was elected unopposed on a poll of 2 aldermen, 9 capital burgesses and 519 burgesses. It cannot be assumed that the lack of an opponent at the election meant that Gardner was everyone’s choice, however. Of the eight burgesses who voted to dismiss him as mayor in 1643, only two could bring themselves to sign his indenture in 1647, and the names of the resident Worcestershire county committeemen Edmund Young and Edward Field, and Edward Pitway the religious radical of Bengeworth, are also missing. The signatories included men not identifiable from tax lists of the period, and could be those of soldiers still in the town. Gardner’s indenture shows that the widest definition of what constituted a burgess was taken by those managing his election.

The later 1640s and 50s saw a modest recovery in the civic life of the town, but under the Instrument of Government the borough was disenfranchised. The politics of Evesham in the 1650s was shaped by attitudes towards the poor and towards religious radicalism. Once noted for its prosperity, the town was lampooned as ‘beggarly’ by the mid-1650s. J. Thirsk, The Rural Economy of England (1984), 289. It is clear that the developing ministry of George Hopkins, one of Richard Baxter’s Worcestershire Association of ministers, was energetic and involved an aggressive approach to the poor, considered by Hopkins to ‘wax wanton in this time of plenty’, who were denied bread by the parish vestry unless they attended his sermons. G. Hopkins, Salvation from Sinne by Jesus Christ (1655), sig. A3; Book of Orders and Agreements, All Saints parish, f.4 (penes Mr A.H. Fryer, Offenham, Evesham); G.F. Nuttall, ‘The Worcs. Association: its Membership’, JEH i. 199. The arrival of the Quakers in the town exacerbated tensions between better-off citizens and poorer ones, between the orthodox godly, like Gardner, and those who sought a form of worship free from the constraints of the parish vestry and the corporation. The leader of this group was Edward Pitway, who was dismissed from his place as capital burgess in a vote at the council chamber taken by former colleagues who were overwhelmingly men who had not supported Gardner’s election in 1647. Gardner’s personal fury at the Quakers must have been fed at least partly by the personal discomfiture this would have caused him. Worcs. Archives, BA 228/77/19/7; Evesham Borough Records, 51-2; S.K. Roberts, ‘The Quakers in Evesham 1655-1660: A Study in Religion, Politics and Culture’, MH xv. 64-85.

Apart from the bitterness and longevity of the quarrel in the town brought by the Quakers, its other feature was the degree of petitioning and publicity attending it. Humphry Smith, the leading visiting figure among the Evesham Quakers, wrote in his own name a number of accounts of sufferings, but his citizen colleagues joined with him on 29 August 1655 in an appeal to the lord protector for toleration. H. Smith, ‘The Sufferings, Tryals and Purgings of the Saints at Evesham’, in A Collection of the Several Writings and Faithful Testimonies of that Suffering Servant of God and Patient Follower of the Lamb, Humphry Smith (1683); The Cruelty of the Magistrates of Evesham (1655); Something Further Laid Open of the Cruel Persecution of the People called Quakers (1655); A Representation of the Government of Evesham (1655). In late September, the petitioning Quakers found themselves before the Evesham magistrates answering charges of libel against the corporation, and from 2 October the trials of 12 of them began at the borough sessions before the recorder, Robert Atkyns*. The Cruelty of the Magistrates of Evesham, 7-9. Their ambivalent responses to the demand to plead led Atkyns to take them as admissions of guilt, and he proceeded to sentence. In March 1656, on the initiative of Major-general James Berry*, the lord protector sent down an order by the broad seal removing the fines on the Quakers. Berry expressed himself unable to ‘understand ... either their faults or their fines’. TSP iv. 613.

The episode had seen the Quakers more able than the borough corporation to influence the protectoral government. In 1659 the mayor, aldermen and other members of the common council regained an opportunity for representation, when with the reversion to the old franchise they were able once again to send two Members to Westminster. Gardner was by this time something of a spent force, and his reputation may have suffered during the upheavals concerning the Quakers. In the event, the corporation played things safely by returning the recorder, Atkyns, and his deputy, Theophilus Andrewes. In April 1660, the election of John Egioke† and Sir Thomas Rous* was contested by Andrewes, by this time the recorder. A mixture of the mayor, eight capital burgesses, eight assistant burgesses, Edward Pitway (the Quaker dismissed in 1655), and two plain freemen supported Egioke and Rous. The Andrewes faction probably consisted of what was left of the authoritarian puritan camp of the 1650s, and its determination to stand at the election served to keep open the question of the franchise, which exploded at the bitterly-contested by-election of 1669. C219/50; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Evesham’.