Lying ‘in the centre and heart of the shire ... in a most rich, delicate and pleasant soil and delicious air (it wants only a navigable river)’, Leicester was ‘one of the ancientest and greatest towns’ belonging to the duchy of Lancaster and the only borough constituency in Leicestershire. E. Leigh, England Described (1659), 115 (E.1792.2); HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Leicester’. Its economy was based primarily on its role as the county’s administrative centre and the trade generated by its wide variety of crafts, the processing of agricultural produce and by its markets, which were ‘well served with corn, provisions and country commodities’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 138; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 240; VCH Leics. iv. 78, 99, 104; L.A. Parker, ‘Enclosure in Leics. 1485-1607’ (London PhD thesis, 1948), 6-7; Y. Kawana, ‘Trade, sociability and governance in an English incorporated borough: ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ worlds in Leicester, c.1570-1640’, Urban History, xxxiii. 328-9. About a quarter of the freemen were involved in the leather working trades during the early Stuart period, but this proportion fell dramatically during the later seventeenth century, when victualling and the textile crafts (tailoring etc.) emerged as the largest sectors in the town’s economy. VCH Leics. iv. 78. Leicester’s population grew from about 3,500 in 1600 to approximately 4,000 by the early 1660s. Ibid., 76; Leicester and its Inhabitants in 1664 ed. H. Hartopp, 4.
By its 1589 charter of incorporation, the town was governed by 24 aldermen – from whom a mayor was elected annually – and 48 councilmen. The aldermen were elected from among the councilmen; and the councilmen were elected by aldermen from among the freemen. A further charter in 1599 gave the aldermen the right to appoint a steward, recorder and other municipal officers, which until then had been duchy appointments. VCH Leics. iv. 57; Leicester Bor. Recs. iii. 247-52; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Leicester’. Leicester had first sent Members to Parliament in 1275, and the franchise was vested in the corporation. VCH Leics. iv. 18, 28; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. p. lv; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Leicester’.
Leicester’s municipal leaders had long been subject to the demands of influential patrons when it came to electing the borough’s MPs. Despite the charters of 1589 and 1599, the duchy of Lancaster continued to exercise a powerful electoral interest in the town – not least because several of the principal duchy offices in Leicestershire, including that of steward of the honour of Leicester, had customarily been held by members of the Hastings family, earls of Huntingdon, who exercised considerable influence in the affairs of both county and borough. Henry Hastings, 5th earl of Huntingdon was not only steward of the town and honour of Leicester, but also lord lieutenant of Leicestershire. VCH Leics. iv. 60; HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Leicester’; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. R. Somerville, 179, 182, 184.
Shortly after the announcement in December 1639 of the summoning of a new Parliament, the chancellor of the duchy, Edward Barrett†, 1st Lord Barrett of Newburgh [I], recommended the Derbyshire gentleman Simon Every*, the duchy’s receiver-general, to the corporation. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 548. In February 1640, Huntingdon seconded the duchy nomination, describing Every as ‘a gentleman well known unto me and not far distant from the place [of] my abode [the earl’s Leicestershire seat at Ashby-de-la-Zouch]; one very able and fit to do you service’, although he added that his recommendation was a work of supererogation, for that of the chancellor was sufficient, ‘in respect of ...[his] power to do the corporation may honourable courtesies and daily favours upon all occasions’. HEHL, Hastings corresp., box 16, HA 5551; Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 551; HMC Hastings, iv. 218. However, the earl had already reached what he thought was an understanding with the town fathers – that they would lend their support in the county elections to his son Henry Hastings and the earl’s protégé Sir Henry Skipwith of Cotes; and that if Henry failed in his bid for one of the county places, the corporation would return him for the borough. HEHL, Hastings corresp., box 16, HA 5550; Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, ff. 550, 552; J. Thompson, The Hist. of Leicester, 359; T. Cogswell, Home Divisions (Manchester, 1998), 261-2. Huntingdon was apparently untroubled by the fact that in mid-January, the dowager countess of Devonshire – who lived in Leicester and whose family held property in and around the town – had written to the corporation on behalf of another Derbyshire gentleman, Thomas Coke*, the son of the recently retired secretary of state Sir John Coke†. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 549; Thompson, Leicester, 359; HMC 8th Rep. i. 436; VCH Leics. iv. 58, 353, 435, 452; HP Commons 1604-1629; G.K. Gruenfelder, ‘The electoral influence of the earls of Huntingdon 1603-40’, Trans. Leics. Arch. and Hist. Soc. l., 25. At some point in the months preceding the election a third candidate emerged, the Leicestershire barrister Roger Smith, who had no known connexions with the earl of Huntingdon or the countess of Devonshire – and partly for that reason, perhaps, was attractive to the corporation.
At a common hall held on 27 March 1640, the corporation elected Smith and Every, in that order. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 579. But Smith’s ‘conscience being stricter than other men’s’ (he may well have harboured puritan sympathies), he refused to take the freeman’s oath, ‘whereof I never heard nor dreamed before, whereto I cannot assent’, and thereby disqualified himself from election. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 578; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 299; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 146, 262. In his place, Smith endorsed the return of Coke, who, ‘being the next in election’, was returned accordingly. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, ff. 579, 584; C219/42/1/110; HMC Cowper, ii. 252. After the election, Newburgh and the countess of Devonshire both thanked the corporation for returning their respective candidates. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, ff. 592, 596. The corporation’s rejection of Huntingdon’s patronage when it came to replacing Smith was a symptom of the resentment his close association with the court and the policies of the personal rule of Charles I had engendered in the county. Indeed, Leicester itself had apparently been a hotbed of gentry and popular agitation against the earl and his clients during the election campaign. Huntingdon’s determination that summer to mobilise Leicestershire during the second bishops’ war resulted in the impressment of 26 Leicester men for the county levy – an act that probably lost him what little support he had left in the town. Cogswell, Home Divisions, 266-8, 271.
With the summoning of the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Newburgh again wrote to the corporation on Every’s behalf – possibly seconded by Huntingdon – while the countess dowager of Devonshire renewed her nomination of Coke. Leics. RO, BRII/18/22, ff. 3, 9; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 271; Gruenfelder, ‘Electoral influence’, 25. The godly Leicester preacher John Angell informed Coke’s father that his son’s ‘wise, generous carriage in this place that won him a great deal of respect from divers that knew him not before’, adding that ‘his personal presence in the solicitation of the business [of the election] will sooner expedite the same’. HMC Cowper, ii. 261. Once again a third candidate emerged – namely, Thomas Lord Grey of Groby*, who was the son of Huntingdon’s most eminent opponent in the county by 1640, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford. Residing at Bradgate Park, five miles north west of Leicester, Stamford ‘thought fit in respect of my neighbourhood to your town to commend unto you my eldest son to be one of your said burgesses’. He mentioned that Grey had been offered places elsewhere but that he was ‘more desirous to do service herein to your corporation to whom he is like to be a neighbour, than to any other corporation’. Leics. RO, BRII/18/22, f. 8. At a very full common hall on 23 October, the corporation re-elected Coke but, preferring Stamford’s teenage son to a crown nominee and ‘stranger’, rejected Every in favour of Grey of Groby. Leics. RO, BRII/18/22, ff. 10, 16. The result apparently caused consternation among some senior members of the corporation, who apologized to Newburgh, claiming that they had nominated Every at the common hall
but it so falls out that neither your lordship’s expectation, nor our own – that be the ancients of the company – was any whit answered, being overswayed with the greater part of voices, which we humbly desire your lordship not to interpret as an act of disrespect to your lordship, whom so many obligations bind us to observe. Leics. RO, BRII/18/22, f. 16; Thompson, Leicester, 361.
This election was the first since the early years of James’s I’s reign in which no Hastings or duchy nominee had been returned for the borough. HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Leicester’.
Leicester was the scene during the summer of 1642 of a series of clashes between the king (who visited the town in July and August) and his adherents and Leicestershire’s nascent parliamentarian interest, headed by Stamford, for propaganda advantage and possession of the county magazine. That the parliamentarians generally had the better in this struggle and had succeeded by early 1643 in garrisoning Leicester, seems to have owed relatively little to Alderman William Stanley* and other puritans in the corporation. The predominant desire among the municipal officeholders, it seems, was to avoid having to choose sides for as long as conveniently possible. Hastings claimed in January 1643 that most of Leicester’s inhabitants were ‘well affected to the king’, and certainly popular parliamentarianism was not as marked in the town as it was in Northampton, Birmingham or Coventry. Bodl. Add. C.132, ff. 42v, 53; Nichols, Leics. iii. app. iv. 28-9; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 312-21; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 283-9; S.C. Osborne, ‘Popular religion, culture and politics in the Midlands, c.1638-1646’ (Warwick Univ. PhD thesis, 1993), 176, 177, 193, 253-4, 278, 322-3.
Of the town’s two MPs, Grey of Groby became a staunch parliamentarian, while Coke emerged as a royalist and was disabled from sitting in January 1644. Leicester suffered heavily when it was stormed by the king’s army in May 1645, prompting a parliamentary ordinance, possibly drafted by Grey of Groby, to provide a public benevolence for the town’s relief. CJ iv. 221b, 232a, 248a, 263b; Osborne, ‘Popular religion’, 200, 206, 211, 350. On 30 September, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for holding a new election at Leicester to replace Cook; and on 17 November, the corporation returned the Leicestershire county committeeman Peter Temple, who was an ally of Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Stanley. Infra, ‘Peter Temple’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; CJ iv. 295b; C219/43/2/25. Both Grey of Groby and Temple were regicides and would sit in the Rump.
Under the 1653 Instrument of Government, Leicester continued to send two representatives to Westminster. Although the municipal interest was now dominant and the same candidates would be returned to all three protectoral Parliaments, the fact that each election was contested suggests that a divide had emerged within the corporation – probably representing a split between a radical minority that supported Grey of Groby and a more conservative majority that favoured the oligarchical republicanism and puritan orthodoxy epitomised by the Leicestershire parliamentarian grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige*. This division may have been informed by religious differences, for some of the leading inhabitants acknowledged in 1657 that they were ‘a poor divided people’ as a result of a perceived design to establish a gathered congregation in the town. Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 436, 437.
A lack of unanimity among the officeholders is also suggested by the fall in the number of voters during the 1650s – most notably in the election to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654. Six candidates contested this election: Hesilrige, Alderman William Stanley, Grey of Groby (who in 1649 had been appointed steward of the honour of Leicester), the Leicestershire soldier and regicide Francis Hacker*, the borough’s ambitious recorder James Winstanley, and Cornelius Burton, a lawyer from Oakham, Rutland. Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 179; VCH Leics. iv. 430; Vis. Rutland (Harl. Soc. lxxiii), 23; PBG Inn, i. 381. At a common hall on 12 July, 46 members of the corporation cast 41 votes for Stanley and 35 for Hesilrige, and they were returned accordingly. Grey of Groby came a distant third with 11 votes; Hacker and Winstanley received two votes; and Burton just one. Leics. RO, BRII/18/27, ff. 748, 751-3; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 419-21. Both Stanley and Hesilrige were included on the list of Members approved by the protectoral council early in September, but Hesilrige preferred to withdraw from Parliament rather than subscribe the Recognition, acknowledging the validity of the protectoral settlement. Stanley received no appointments in this Parliament, and it would appear that he, too, had preferred to withdraw from Parliament rather than subscribe the Recognition. Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘William Stanley’; Severall Procs. of State Affaires, 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22). In November the corporation wrote to the earl of Stamford and to Thomas Beaumont*, requesting that they represent the town’s interests at Westminster ‘in regard we have not burgesses present in Parliament’. Leics. RO, BRII/18/27, ff. 761, 777. In June 1656, the corporation petitioned the protector, requesting assistance in augmenting the town’s parish ministry and thereby preventing a ‘famine of the Word’ that would lead to ‘extreme ignorance and profaneness’. SP18/128/79, f. 222; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 380.
Of the four candidates who contested the election at Leicester to the second protectoral Parliament in 1656, Hesilrige and Grey were known to be out of favour with the government. Nevertheless, in a poll on 20 August, 59 members of the corporation cast 53 votes for Hesilrige and 42 for Stanley, while Grey doubled his 1654 tally with 22 votes, although he still trailed in third place. That Winstanley received only one vote implies that he had been ‘put up’ by a friend without consultation. Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, ff. 193-5. Hesilrige was excluded from Parliament by the protectoral council, which the corporation admitted ‘we cannot but lay to heart’. Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, f. 215. And Stanley came close to abandoning his seat in protest at the exclusions, ‘but some worthy friends and Members that are both within and out of the House adviseth me yet to stay and continue in hoping there will be an expedient tendered to incite all, or most, of those eminent Members to come in’. Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 433-4. Although the corporation looked to Stanley to promote its various concerns at Westminster, including the obtaining of an act for maintenance of the town’s parish ministers, it again requested the assistance of Thomas Beaumont. Infra, ‘William Stanley’; Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, ff. 215, 241, 322; Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, f. 520.
In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Hesilrige and Stanley were returned for the borough again, on 3 January 1659. On this occasion, 65 members of the corporation cast 55 votes for Stanley; 51 for Hesilrige; 21 for the Leicestershire Cromwellian, Thomas Pochin*; and just two for the town’s deputy mayor (the elected incumbent having died in office) and ‘senior justice’ Richard Ludlam, who had been an active committeeman during the civil war and had supported Hacker’s candidacy in 1654. Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, f. 687; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 452. Leicester was represented in the restored Rump by Temple, Grey of Groby having died in 1657.
The republican element among the aldermen was strong enough in January 1660 to resist pressure for the corporation to join a group of the county gentry in petitioning General George Monck* for a free Parliament. Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 459; HMC 8th Rep. i. 438. But in the elections at Leicester to the 1660 Convention, the corporation bowed to gentry intimidation by withdrawing its support for Hesilrige and acquiescing in the return of Stamford’s son John Grey – even though Stamford had declared for the king during Sir George Boothe’s* uprising the previous summer. Infra, ‘Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford’; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Leicester’. The corporation interest had collapsed to the extent that Hesilrige received just 20 votes in this election and Stanley a mere two. Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, ff. 896-8. As a result of the contested election at Leicester to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, the Commons ordered that the franchise be extended to include all the inhabitants paying scot and lot. In the autumn of 1662, the corporation commissioners removed Stanley and 39 other members of the corporation from office. HP Commons 1660-1690.
