Westmorland

Westmorland was described in 1671 as for the most part ‘barren, being full of great moors and high mountains (called the North Fells [the modern Lake District]), yet there are many fruitful valleys in it, abounding with good arable, meadow and pasture grounds and commended for plenty of corn and cattle’. Fleming-Senhouse Pprs. ed. E. Hughes (Cumb. Rec. Ser. ii), 3. The county was divided into two parts – the barony of Kendal in the south, comprised mainly of crown estates, and the barony of Westmorland (also known as the barony of Appleby) in the north, which was dominated by the Clifford earls of Cumberland. The baronies formed distinct administrative units, operating independently of each other in terms of quarter sessions, subsidy rating etc. W. Camden, Britannia ed. E. Gibson (1695), 805; Fleming-Senhouse Pprs. ed. Hughes, 3-4, 7, 8. The county’s economy was based largely on pastoral farming and wool production. Kendal, the largest town in Westmorland (though unenfranchised), was an important centre for cloth making. Westmorland Hearth Tax ed. C. Phillips, C. Ferguson, A. Wareham (British Rec. Soc. cxxiv), 13-14, 50. The county capital, Appleby, was ‘little better than a village’. Supra, ‘Appleby’. Using the 1675 hearth tax returns and other sources, it has been calculated that Westmorland’s population in the 1670s stood at approximately 34,500. E179/195/73; Westmorland Hearth Tax ed. Phillips et. al. 11, 68. The electorate in the 1650s numbered at least 536. HMC 7th Rep. 687.

Westmorland’s wealthiest gentleman by 1640 was Sir John Lowther† of Lowther, who, with his father (since deceased), had represented the county in the 1628 Parliament. Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 118, 154-5, 181. With the calling of the Short Parliament late in 1639, Lowther hoped to regain his seat as a knight of the shire, but found his way blocked by two of the county’s foremost gentlemen, Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Henry Bellingham. Bellingham, who hailed from the south of Westmorland, had sat for the county in the 1625 and 1626 Parliaments, before giving way to Lowther in 1628. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Bellingham’. However, it was Musgrave – Bellingham’s junior by over ten years and a newcomer to parliamentary elections – who seems to have been the driving force in their partnership (if such it was) and Lowther’s main rival. Musgrave, like Lowther, was from the north of the county. Musgrave had distinguished himself in defending Cumberland against the threat of Scottish invasion during the first bishops’ war in 1639, which probably raised his profile in the county and gave him a platform from which to challenge Lowther. He may also have enjoyed the backing of Westmorland’s most influential peer, and Musgrave’s ‘noble and dearest kinsman’, Henry Lord Clifford†, the future 5th earl of Cumberland. Infra, ‘Sir Philip Musgrave’. The issue was decided at Appleby on 12 March 1640 with the return of Musgrave and Bellingham – Musgrave taking the senior seat. C219/42/2/53. There is no evidence that Lowther’s challenge was strong enough to force a poll. Nor is it clear whether the rivalry between Musgrave and Lowther was primarily political or personal in nature. It is worth noting that Lowther was to become a focus for localist, perhaps in some cases crypto-parliamentarian, opposition to Musgrave’s command of the king’s forces in Cumberland and Westmorland during the civil war. Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 288-94.

Undeterred by his defeat in the spring, Lowther tried again in the elections to the Long Parliament, but on 22 October the county re-elected Musgrave and Bellingham. C219/43/3/48. Again, there is no evidence that the contest went to a poll. Neither Musgrave nor Bellingham made much of an impression at Westminster and apparently showed little interest in the House’s drive to reform the perceived abuses of the personal rule of Charles I. Musgrave abandoned his seat in the spring of 1642 and reportedly attended the king at York that summer. Infra, ‘Sir Philip Musgrave’. Bellingham’s last committee appointment was late in January 1642, but he does not appear to have returned home from London until July. Infra, ‘Sir Henry Bellingham’. Both the county’s MPs accepted military commands under the general of the king’s army in the north, William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle – Musgrave as commander-in-chief of Cumberland and Westmorland and Bellingham as a ‘reluctant’ colonel of foot. Infra, ‘Sir Philip Musgrave’; ‘Sir Henry Bellingham’. The Commons disabled them from sitting on 15 March 1643 and 11 October 1645 respectively. CJ iii. 1b; iv. 304a.

On the day that Bellingham was disabled, the Commons issued a writ for electing two new Members for Westmorland. CJ iv. 305a. The consequent ‘recruiter’ election was held on 1 January 1646 and saw the return of James Bellingham – Sir Henry’s 22-year old son – and the godly Huntingdonshire squire Henry Lawrence. The indenture was signed by at least 30 men, including Thomas Wharton*. C219/43/3/50. Bellingham’s election probably owed more to the strength of his family’s interest in the county than to his own standing as one of its leading parliamentarian gentlemen. Infra, ‘James Bellingham’. Lawrence, a friend of Oliver Cromwell*, owed his election to the Independent grandee and northern peer Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton. Infra, ‘Henry Lawrence’; [J. Musgrave], A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647), 2 (E.391.9). Wharton was a kinsman and trustee of Lady Anne Clifford, countess first of Dorset and then of Pembroke and Montgomery, who had inherited Appleby Castle and the Cliffords’ other properties in Westmorland on the death without sons of the 5th earl of Cumberland in 1643. G.C. Williamson, Lady Anne Clifford, 191; 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), 11. Lady Anne’s second husband was another prominent parliamentarian peer, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, who was a close political ally of Wharton. It was Wharton who had secured the return of two other ‘strangers’, Henry Ireton and Richard Salwey, for the Clifford borough of Appleby the previous November. Infra, ‘Appleby’.

Despite the fact that Lawrence was intruded upon the county’s voters, it was the election of Bellingham, a native of Westmorland, that drew criticism from the region’s most vocal commentator, the radical Cumberland pamphleteer John Musgrave. Musgrave denounced him as ‘so young as he hath not any hair of [sic] his face’. Bellingham had initially supported Musgrave’s accusations of royalist collaboration against Sir Wilfrid Lawson* and Richard Barwis*, but Musgrave claimed that after entering the House he had begun to ‘tread in his father’s track’. [Musgrave], A Fourth Word to the Wise, 18. This was written in 1647 – the following year Bellingham and his father threw in their lot with Musgrave and the Scottish Engagers under the duke of Hamilton. Bellingham was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, leaving the sectarian and southerner, Lawrence, to represent Westmorland in the Rump. Infra, ‘James Bellingham’.

Westmorland, like Cumberland, was not represented specifically in the Nominated Parliament of 1653. Instead, the council of officers selected four men to serve for the four northernmost counties, nominating the young Cumberland grandee, and captain of Cromwell’s lifeguard, Charles Howard, with particular reference to Cumberland and almost certainly Westmorland as well. Clarke Pprs. iii. 5; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 117. Under the Instrument of Government, Westmorland regained its two seats, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in July 1654, the county returned Jeremiah Baines and Christopher Lister. The indenture has not survived, and it is not known whether the election was contested. Baines, a religious Presbyterian and former parliamentarian officer, had been born in Westmorland and retained an estate and friends in the county. For the past 20 years or so, however, his main residence had been in Southwark, Surrey. Infra, ‘Jeremiah Baines’. Lister belonged to a West Riding family whose estate lay close to the Yorkshire-Westmorland border. Although he had acquired property in Westmorland through his wife, his return probably owed more to the fact that he was the brother-in-law of Major-general John Lambert* and a friend of several other influential officers in the northern army. Infra, ‘Christopher Lister’. The return of the non-resident Baines and interloping Lister attests to the weakness of the parliamentarian cause among the local gentry.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament during the summer of 1656, the county seats were contested by four candidates – Lister, Baines, Thomas Burton and John Archer. HMC 7th Rep. 687. Burton was a native of the county and, like many of the region’s minor gentlemen, was tainted by involvement with the royalist cause – in his case, probably during the second civil war. His past left him open to accusations of malignancy from John Musgrave and other northern radicals. On the other hand, it may well account for his evident popularity with the county’s conservative-minded electorate. Certainly his estate was too small to allow him a major proprietorial interest. Infra, ‘Thomas Burton’. By contrast, Archer (a Kendal mercer) was one of Westmorland’s few committed parliamentarians. C.B. Phillips, ‘Colonel Gervase Benson, Captain John Archer, and the corporation of Kendal’, in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, and B. Worden (Cambridge, 1998). The contest went to a poll, and although Burton and Baines emerged with the most voices (381 and 348 respectively), the sheriff opted to return Burton and the fourth placed man, Lister. Apparently Lister’s powerful connections at the Cromwellian court had weighed heavier in the balance than the strength of Baines’s local following. An indignant Baines petitioned the committee of privileges against Lister’s return, but the result was allowed to stand. HMC 7th Rep. 687.

With Lambert’s fall from power in the summer of 1657, Lister lost his advantage at court; and in the elections to the third protectoral Parliament early in 1659 his seat was taken by his neighbour, Thomas Wharton. Whether Lister stood as a candidate, or whether the election was contested at all, is not known. Wharton, a Westmorland-born lawyer, had made his name and fortune as a counsellor-at-law to the region’s royalist gentry in their dealings with the Committees for Compounding* and Advance of Money*. At the same time, however, he seems to have been on good terms with local parliamentarians such as Lister. Infra, ‘Thomas Wharton’. Burton and Wharton were candidates for Westmorland again in the elections to the 1660 Convention, but stood aside in deference to the resurgent Sir John Lowther and his running partner. Lowther Fam. Estate Bks. ed. C.B. Phillips (Surt. Soc. cxci), 164-5. According to Lowther, the county electorate on this occasion was more than 3,000 strong. Lowther Fam. Estate Bks. ed. Phillips, 164-5.