New Windsor

Seventeenth-century Windsor was a company town: the castle dominated it economically as much as it did physically. The court and its courtiers remained the principal reason for its existence. (Being the town that had grown up centuries before around the castle walls, it was ‘New’ only in the sense that there was an ‘Old Windsor’, the original village located about a mile to the south east.) Many royal servants seeking a second home away from London settled there or in the vicinity. Then there were the park and the forest, the royal hunting grounds that almost surrounded the town to the south, west and east and which were subject to special royal jurisdictions. Substantial quantities of urban property were owned by St George’s Chapel, an institution not formally part of the court but certainly closely allied to it. There was even the beginnings of a tourist trade. All this meant that Windsor was the constituency in which the court had the best chance of being able to sway the outcome and in some seventeenth-century elections that influence proved to be decisive.

But the castle interest was never undisputed. The townsmen could be wary of it and, in any case, that interest need not be monolithic. Much might depend on the attitude taken by the corporation. First incorporated by Edward IV, the town corporation consisted of a mayor, two bailiffs and the ‘brothers of the hall’ or burgesses, the number of whom was not to exceed 30. Usually they had seen the advantages in cultivating potential courtly patrons. That was why, since about 1634, their high steward had been the king’s groom of the stool, the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†). Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 58v.

The first of the 1640 election results at Windsor was a straightforward victory for the court interest. On 9 December 1639 the earl of Holland recommended to the corporation Sir Arthur Ingram*. Ingram was a client who had long been associated with the earl and the following year his daughter Elizabeth married Holland’s son and heir. HMC Var. viii. 53. The corporation took the hint and duly elected Ingram on 6 March. He was joined by Sir Richard Harrison*, a Berkshire gentleman with his own strong links with the court, being a close friend and neighbour of one of the secretaries of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*. C219/42, pt. 1, f. 59. The previous December Harrison had told Windebanke that he had no wish to stand for the forthcoming Parliament, but he is known to have discussed plans for the elections with Sir Edmund Sawyer† soon after that and it is quite possible that it was Sawyer and Windebanke who had persuaded him to change his mind. CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 153, 162. Ingram and Harrison each paid 6s 8d to the corporation as their fine on being chosen. Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 57v.

The election later that year was to be a much messier affair. Neither Ingram nor Harrison stood again. That allowed four new contenders to compete for the two seats. The most distinguished, Sir Thomas Rowe*, the much-travelled diplomat and recently-appointed privy counsellor, had been chancellor of the Garter, with lodgings in the castle, since 1636. He also owned a country house at Cranford, nine miles to the east of the town and about halfway to Westminster. He now allied himself with the corporation’s understeward, Thomas Waller. On 20 October Rowe and Waller were returned by the mayor and the corporation. But the rest of the inhabitants had other ideas. The courtier they favoured for the senior seat in opposition to Rowe was Cornelius Holland*, a career clerk in the royal household, a client of Sir Henry Vane I*, and since 1638 the paymaster and clerk of the greencloth to the prince of Wales. They wished to elect him with another court officeholder, the acting clerk and surveyor of the works in the castle, William Tayleur alias Domville (the older of that name: for reasons explained below it is his son who is represented by a biography in these volumes). It may be – although this is unclear from the surviving evidence – that the inhabitants believed that, despite their court offices, Holland and Tayleur would take a more critical line against the king in the Commons; a return nominating them was drawn up on 22 October.

The resulting dispute was heard by the committee for elections during the opening weeks of the Long Parliament. The mayor and some other members of the corporation travelled to Westminster to appear before the committee, incurring expenses of £3 17s 6d which were paid by the town. Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 58. Two developments helped simplify the matter. Rowe had also been elected as one of the MPs for Oxford University and so he readily surrendered his Windsor seat. Meanwhile, Tayleur died within days of his election: he was buried on 27 October. New Windsor par. reg.; CJ ii. 47a. With two candidates remaining, a possible third then entered the field. Anticipating another election, Rowe’s friend and patron, the king’s sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, wrote to him from The Hague on 5 November recommending her servant Sir Richard Cave* as his replacement, and suggesting Rowe should communicate this to the earl of Holland. CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 248. Whether anything came of this is not known. It is possible that Cave and his supporters were discouraged by what Parliament then decided to do.

Since the remaining October candidates, Cornelius Holland and Waller, had been elected by different franchises and by separate returns, the fact that there were only two of them for two seats did not solve the problem. On 8 December John Maynard* reported to the Commons from the committee for elections. Three issues required resolution. On the first, entitlement to exercise the franchise, Maynard advised that the mayor, bailiffs and burgesses had done so during the reign of Henry VIII, but that more recently it had been the inhabitants. The Commons then ruled that elections should be made by all the inhabitants. CJ ii. 47a-b; Procs. LP i. 511, 518; Northcote, Note Bk. 40; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 89. That seemed to favour Holland. The second issue was whether sufficient notice of the election had been given to the electors. The allegation seems to have been that the senior members of the corporation who supported Rowe and Waller had stitched up the result on 20 October without announcing the election in advance. Procs. LP i. 511-12, 518. The second return had therefore been a protest against unscrupulous tactics, something which ought to have further strengthened Holland’s position. This was the gist of at least one intervention in debate, made by Sir John Culpeper*, and Rowe himself appeared to acknowledge something of it, but in a long speech which Sir Simonds D’Ewes* misleadingly dismissed as ‘all of little moment’, he then appears to have questioned Holland’s return on other grounds. Before he sat down he had moved for a new writ, almost certainly for both seats. Procs. LP i. 518; Northcote, Note Bk. 40. Rowe had picked up on reservations already expressed in Maynard’s initial report, that Holland and Tayleur had tried to ‘pretend’ that they had been returned. CJ ii. 47a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 89. The problem was their indenture had not been signed by the mayor and had been returned only by the undersheriff. Procs. LP i. 512. Attempts by Sir Walter Erle* to defend it during the debate got nowhere and a number of MPs, including D’Ewes, agreed that it was invalid. The Commons then spent half an hour debating whether they should vote on the validity or the invalidity of Holland’s election, before deciding on the former. The ‘noes’ won, thereby forcing a new election. The new writ was ordered. CJ ii. 47b; Procs. LP i. 511-12, 518; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 89. But finally the issue arose as to whether it should be sent to the existing sheriff of Berkshire, George Purefoy*, or to his successor, Peregrine Hoby*, who had only just been nominated. Unsure whether Purefoy had formally been discharged from the office, the Commons decided to send it to him. CJ ii. 49a, 50a; Procs. LP i. 565, 580.

Predictably perhaps, when the new election was held on 16 December, the Windsor inhabitants endorsed their previous decision. Holland was again elected and, with Tayleur no longer available, the inhabitants turned to the next best thing, his son, also William Tayleur alias Domville*. Forty ‘burgesses and inhabitants’ signed the indenture, having made their choice with ‘diverse other the burgesses and inhabitants’. Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 70a. But the enemies of Tayleur senior soon got their revenge on the son, helped in a large part by the son’s naivety. On 27 May 1641 the Commons heard allegations that young Tayleur had accused them of judicial murder in passing the attainder against the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). Those who gave evidence against him included Waller and the mayor of Windsor, John Hall. Tayleur was expelled from the Commons, disabled from sitting as an MP in the future and, briefly, imprisoned in the Tower. CJ ii. 158b-159a, 172b, 173b; Procs. LP iv. 605, 609-13; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 278.

For the third time in less than a year there was a vacancy to be filled. Once again the result was to be disputed. The first poll took place on 15 June 1641 at the town’s market cross. Of two candidates, Richard Braham† and Richard Winwood*, it would later be claimed that Braham polled the most votes. The mayor then adjourned the poll to the guildhall for that afternoon, only to adjourn it again on finding that Braham was still ahead, resuming it at the market cross on 22 June. Despite the fact that Braham continued to prevail, the mayor then declared that Winwood had been duly elected. Procs. LP v. 517, 521. Winwood had taken his seat in the Commons by 5 July when he took the Protestation. CJ ii. 199b; Procs. LP v. 504. The following day, however, Sir Thomas Bowyer* delivered a petition to the Commons on behalf of the Windsor inhabitants protesting against Winwood’s return. This was referred to the committee for privileges. CJ ii. 200a-b; Procs. LP v. 517, 521. A year later the issue was still unresolved, although Winwood had been allowed to remain in the Commons in the meantime. On 28 June 1642 the Commons halted a lawsuit which had brought against the mayor over the issue on the grounds that they had yet to rule on the election case. CJ ii. 643b. Rather surprisingly, the prompt to do this came from Cornelius Holland, who had been so keen to uphold the rights of the inhabitants in 1640. PJ iii. 147. But by this time Holland presumably preferred Winwood to Braham because he seemed willing to side with Parliament against the king. So strong was the castle interest in the town that extending the franchise had not necessarily weakened it. Nothing more is heard of this election dispute. It was either resolved in Winwood’s favour or quietly forgotten.

The corporation seem to have been happy with the upshot and with their MPs. In 1644 they presented Holland and Winwood with a hogshead of ale each to show their appreciation. Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 58v. In the years following the king’s defeat Winwood lost interest in Parliament and increasingly distanced himself from it. He was purged from it in December 1648. Holland, in contrast, survived the purge, sat in the Rump and signed his ex-employer’s death warrant.

The war and the regicide had obvious effects, for Windsor ceased to be the location of a major royal residence and instead became a garrison town. The parliamentarian governors, first John Venn* and then from 1645, Christopher Whichcote*, became the most important – and most powerful – local figures. The military presence remained strong throughout the 1650s and, in contrast to Whitehall and Hampton Court, the castle never became a protectoral residence. Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, the town ceased to be a parliamentary constituency. For the most part, the town and more especially the corporation seem to have adjusted to these changing circumstances – the latter loyally proclaimed Oliver Cromwell*’s second installation as lord protector in June 1657 and the accession of Richard Cromwell* in September 1658. Bodl. Ashmole 1126, f. 59.

Richard’s accession also meant the restoration of the old parliamentary franchises, so Windsor was once again represented in the 1659 Parliament. On 30 December 1658 the mayor and 20 members of the corporation assembled in the guildhall to agree the two names they would recommend to the inhabitants. The first was the governor, Christopher Whichcote, while the other was their understeward and the steward of the castle court, George Starkey*. The poll took place on 3 January at the market cross between 10 am and noon. The First Hall Bk. of the Borough of New Windsor 1653-1725 ed. S. Bond (Windsor, 1968), 8; Bodl. Ashmole 1115, f. 37. There were probably no other candidates. In one sense the upheavals of the past two decades had made remarkably little difference to the town’s electoral politics, with the desire to win favour with the castle remaining as strong as ever.

That pattern certainly reasserted itself after 1660 and some of those later contests also oddly echoed the conflicts of earlier elections. Winwood tried without success to regain his old seat in April 1660. Braham, his opponent from 1641, who had since been knighted for his royalism during the civil war, supported him and then took one of the seats the following year. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 708. The losing candidates in 1661 included Tayleur. Winwood was finally re-elected in 1679 in two hard-fought contests, standing along with Starkey’s son, Samuel†. To do so, he and Starkey had to claim to be upholding the right of the inhabitants to elect their MPs, citing the 1640 ruling in the process. The Case of Richard Winwood and Samuel Starkey [1679]. It is not known whether anyone pointed out that his concern to defend that right had been rather less evident in 1641.