Appleby

Situated at a crossing on the upper River Eden some 30 miles south east of Carlisle, Appleby was relatively small for a county town and, indeed, was ‘so slenderly inhabited, the buildings … so mean and the inhabitants generally so idle (having no manufacture of note among them)’, that were it not for the fact that the Westmorland assizes and quarter sessions were held there ‘it would be little better than a village’. W. Camden, Britannia ed. E. Gibson (1695), 807, 813; Fleming-Senhouse Papers ed. E. Hughes (Cumb. Rec. Ser. ii), 17. The town’s economy was based almost exclusively on its fairs and markets, which saw a modest trade in cattle and other agricultural produce. Fleming-Senhouse Papers ed. Hughes, 19. Appleby town, including Bongate and Scattergate, contained 161 households in 1675, suggesting a population of about 725. Westmorland Hearth Tax ed. C. Phillips, C. Ferguson, A. Wareham (British Recs. Soc. cxxiv), 289.

Although never granted a charter of incorporation, the borough of Appleby was a town corporate by prescription and was governed by a mayor, 12 aldermen, a recorder, a 16-man common council and a host of lesser officials. Cumb. RO (Kendal), WSMBA/2/1, Appleby Corporation Min. Bk. 1, unfol.; Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 310. Appleby had first sent Members to Parliament in 1295, and the franchise was vested in the owners of the town’s burgage properties, which appear to have numbered about 85 in 1639. Determining the size of the electorate is complicated by the fact that the burgage-owners were scattered among three overlapping groups listed in the municipal records – the ‘freeholders’, the ‘free burgesses’ and the freemen – who numbered about 140 in all and may also have had a voice on election day. The returning officer was the mayor, who was elected annually from the aldermen. Cumb. RO (Kendal), WSMBA/2/1, Appleby Corporation Min. Bk. 1 (entry for 23 Oct. 1639); T.H.B. Oldfield, Hist. of the Original Constitution of Parliaments (1797), 79; HP Commons, 1386-1421, ‘Appleby’; M. Mullett, Patronage, Power and Politics in Appleby in the Era of Lady Anne Clifford, 1649-89 (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. xxv), 1.

Appleby was dominated both politically and topographically by its castle, which was one of the many residences of the Cliffords, earls of Cumberland and hereditary sheriffs of Westmorland. The Cliffords also owned many of the town’s burgage properties. Francis, 4th earl of Cumberland formally controlled eight voices in the election of the town’s mayor, but his influence was much more extensive – the mayor of Appleby in 1640-1, for example, was described as his ‘servant’. Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey mss, box 1, I.110; HP Commons 1604-29; HP Commons 1690-1715; Mullett, Appleby, 20-1. In the elections to the Short Parliament on 13 March 1640, the burgesses returned the Irish peer Richard Boyle, Viscount Dungarvan and the Gray’s Inn lawyer Richard Lowther. C219/42/2/54. Dungarvan was a son-in-law of Henry Lord Clifford, who would succeed as 5th earl of Cumberland in 1641. Infra, ‘Sir Richard Boyle’. Lowther was a native of Westmorland and belonged to a family that had strong ties to the Cliffords. A freeman of Appleby, he was the corporation’s man-of-business in London. Despite his local connections, he probably would not have secured election without Cumberland’s approval. Infra, ‘Richard Lowther’; G.C. Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, 190. Both Dungarvan and Lowther belonged to families with that were closely associated with the Dublin administration of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). Infra, ‘Sir Richard Boyle’.

In the elections to the Long Parliament on 22 October 1640, Dungarvan retained his seat, but Lowther was replaced by the Lincolnshire carpetbagger Sir John Brooke. C219/43/3/51. Brooke almost certainly owed his return to the backing of the Cliffords, although the nature of his connection with the family is not entirely clear. He was a kinsman and, it seems, either an acquaintance or friend of William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, whose sister had married Henry Lord Clifford – which suggests that Brooke had been returned on the Clifford interest as a favour to Salisbury. Infra, ‘Sir John Brooke’; ‘William Cecil’. One of the earl of Cumberland’s local agents attended both elections at Appleby in 1640 and was paid for work in communicating his lordship’s wishes ‘to divers and sundry persons about that business’. Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey mss, bk. 271 (disbursements for ‘errands’ at Appleby Castle, 1640).

The townspeople of Appleby gained a reputation during the civil war for being ‘firm in their attachment to the royal cause’, and it was therefore fitting that both of their MPs – although carpetbaggers – were disabled as royalists. Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 310, 315; CJ iv. 287a; Mullett, Appleby, 11, 16-17. On 25 September 1645, the Commons ordered that a warrant be issued for electing new Members for the town, and on 27 October, the borough returned Oliver Cromwell’s* soon-to-be son-in-law, Commissary-general Henry Ireton, and the London-based Independent activist Richard Salwey. C219/43/3/53; CJ iv. 287a. The election of two parliamentarian ‘strangers’ almost certainly ran counter to the political sympathies of the majority of the townsmen, and it was only secured through the adept management of the northern peer and Independent grandee Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton. J. Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647), 2 (E.391.9); D. Scott, ‘The Barwis affair: political allegiance and the Scots during the British Civil Wars’, EHR cxv. 855-6. Wharton appeared in person to supervise proceedings, and by election day he was ensconced in Appleby Castle, which was now garrisoned for Parliament. SP28/138, pt. 4, ff. 15-15v; Mullett, Appleby, 7. Wharton’s task at Appleby was made easier by the fact that the county sheriff was his factional ally Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, who held the office ‘in right of his wife’ – namely, Appleby’s chatelaine Lady Anne Clifford. Wharton was himself a kinsman and trustee of Lady Anne, previously countess of Dorset and now countess of Pembroke, who had inherited Appleby Castle and the Cliffords’ other properties in Westmorland on the death without male heirs of Henry, 5th earl of Cumberland in 1643. With the electoral writ and Pembroke’s precept at his disposal, Wharton could time the election to coincide with his stay in Appleby Castle and command of local parliamentary forces. List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 151; Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, 191; Mullett, Appleby, 11. Between them, Wharton and Pembroke may have prevailed upon Lady Anne – who was probably royalist in sympathy – to command her tenants in Appleby accordingly. Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, 187-8.

To what extent the mayor and burgesses were coerced into signing the 1645 recruiter indenture is not known. Nevertheless, the corporation’s acquiescence on this occasion throws doubt upon later reports that the leading townsmen refused to have anything to do with the Rump’s 1649 proclamation denouncing Charles Stuart and heroically resisted the imposition of a new town charter (for which there is no corroborating evidence) under the protectorate. Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 315-16; Mullett, Appleby, 18, 25. Whatever its political temper, Appleby was not receptive to radical religion, as one Quaker evangelist made clear in 1655

woe, woe, woe unto thee Appleby. How often hast thou been warned and called to repentance? And there is not one in thee of thine inhabitants that fear the Lord ... ye drunkards, whoremongers and filthy adulterers, blasphemers; you filthy, unclean persons who lie wallowing in your filthy lives, as the sow lies wallowing in the mire and dirt, so little of the fear of God there is among you. C. Taylor, The Whirl-Wind of the Lord Gone Forth (1655), 11 (E.853.6).

Disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, Appleby regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659. Lady Anne Clifford – now the dowager countess of Pembroke – spent the winter of 1658-9 at Appleby Castle, and it was at her behest that the burgesses returned the Yorkshire republican and former army officer Adam Baynes and the Inner Temple lawyer Nathaniel Reading. The Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford ed. D. J. H. Clifford, 139. Baynes secured the countess’s patronage on the recommendation of her steward, and his friend and kinsman, Richard Clapham. Infra, ‘Adam Baynes’; ‘Christopher Clapham’; Add. 21425, ff. 18, 127; Cumbria RO (Kendal), WDHOTH/3/44/6/108. There is therefore little basis for claims that the town was ‘coerced’ into electing Baynes or that the countess had to wait until 1660 to re-establish ‘an historic Clifford electoral control over the borough’. R. S. Ferguson, Hist. of Westmld. 152; Mullett, Appleby, 17, 21. The nature of Reading’s connection with the countess is not clear, although it was not unknown for her to reward her legal advisers (assuming that Reading was employed in some capacity about her ‘law business’ in London) with a seat at Westminster. Indeed, she was to do precisely that in the elections to the 1660 Convention, when she secured the return for Appleby of her kinsman and northern man-of-business during the 1650s, the Yorkshire knight Sir Henry Cholmley*, and of one of her legal team, Christopher Clapham*. Infra, ‘Henry Cholmley’; ‘Christopher Clapham’; Diaries of Lady Anne Clifford ed. Clifford, 144; Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, 212-14; Mullett, Appleby, 21-2.

The townspeople of Appleby celebrated the Restoration in lavish style, and in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament the countess was persuaded to approve the return of two leading local royalists. Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 316; HP Commons 1660-90; Mullett, Appleby, 25-6. Yet in spite of the town’s reputation as a bastion of royalist feeling, the corporation commissioners found it necessary to remove four of the aldermen in January 1663. Cumb. RO (Kendal), WSMBA/2/1, Appleby Corporation Min. Bk. 2, unfol.; Mullett, Appleby, 31.