Berkshire

Berkshire was among the smaller English counties, but, with four borough constituencies, it could consider itself well-represented in Parliament. Several peers had interests in the county, but none was dominant and there was no shortage of gentry families willing to compete for the county seats. The Short Parliament election demonstrated how no single interest was likely to determine a result.

In mid-December 1639, at the prompting of Lord Cottington (Sir Francis Cottington†), the local gentleman and exchequer official, Sir Edmund Sawyer† told Robert Reade* what he knew about the preparations for the election on the assumption that Reade would pass this on to his master and uncle, the secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke*. What they were doing was assessing what support any pro-court candidate might gain. Sawyer seems to have been reasonably optimistic. He expressed the hope that they would receive votes from the tenants of William Craven, 1st Baron Craven, in the Vale of the White Horse, of the 2nd earl of Suffolk (Theophilus Howard†), and of the dowager countess of Banbury (Suffolk’s sister) and Sir Henry Pratt of Coleshill in the Abingdon area. He also thought that Sir Robert Pye II* might prove useful. Sawyer further reported that the only possible challenges might come from John Fettiplace* and Henry Marten*. CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 161-2. He was right. Fettiplace and Marten stood and were both elected. Their future careers – as a royalist courtier at Oxford and as a republican hardliner – could not have been more different. But in 1640 Fettiplace and Marten were allies. The former had something of a local reputation as an opponent of the more questionable fiscal levies of recent years, having been slow to pay his knighthood fine, doubtful about the legality of Ship Money and opposed to giving money for the king’s Scottish campaigns. Marten’s credentials as a likely critic of the king were perhaps less evident at this early date. It is doubtful that Sawyer and his friends were, after all, able to put up any candidates against them. The Long Parliament election, held on 26 October 1640, seems to have been simply a re-run of the previous election.

Such were the strains created by the civil war that by early 1644 Marten and Fettiplace had both been expelled from Parliament, although for very different reasons. The first to offend was Marten. As early as 1642 he had established a name for himself as one of the more radical MPs. On 16 August 1643 he overstepped the mark. Anti-monarchical comments he made during a Commons’ debate resulted in his being sent to the Tower and expelled as an MP. Harl. 165, f. 180v; CJ iii. 206n. While Marten readily expressed his view that Parliament was not going far enough in its conflict with the king, Fettiplace had apparently concluded that they had already gone far too far. By the autumn of 1643 he had evidently ceased to attend and he then failed to obey a summons from the Commons demanding that he explain himself. Before long he had joined the king at Oxford. On 22 January 1644 the Commons therefore disabled Fettiplace from sitting. CJ iii. 256b, 374a; Harl. 165, f. 280.

These two vacancies were not addressed until in 1645 the Commons began authorising recruiter by-elections to replace expelled and deceased MPs. The first Berkshire vacancy was filled in a very unorthodox way. When a by-election was was held at Abingdon in October 1645, Marten stood and was elected, his supporters effectively expressing their disapproval of his expulsion 17 months earlier. The Commons took the hint. On 6 January they voted to re-admit Marten and he was allowed to take his seat as MP for the county rather than sitting for his new constituency. Infra, ‘Henry Marten’; CJ iv. 397b; Add. 31116, p. 504.

Six months later, with Oxford on verge of surrender and the county at last completely secure for Parliament, the Commons allowed the other county vacancy to be filled. The new writ was ordered on 5 June 1646 and sent out eight days later. CJ iv. 566a; C219/43, pt. 1, f. 68. The new MP, Sir Francis Pile*, had taken his seat by 4 August. CJ iv. 633a. Pile had been a particularly active supporter of Parliament locally since 1642, not least as the county’s sheriff during the previous year, when Berkshire had still been in the front line of the civil war. Pile served until December 1648, when he was among those MPs secluded in the army’s purge, by which time he may already have been ill. He died several weeks later. Marten survived the purge, signed the king’s death warrant and flourished under the republic.

The death of Pile gave the Rump its first opportunity to hold a by-election. The new writ was ordered just five days later on 19 February 1649. CJ vi. 145b. The Commons was still at this point in the process of legislating the abolition of the monarchy and ordering redrafts of standard official documents to reflect this momentous change. The text of the Berkshire writ, approved by the Commons on 8 March, set a precedent for the republican wording. CJ vi. 158b-159a. Moreover, this Berkshire by-election was to be innovatory in another way. The act confirming the abolition of the House of Lords, which explicitly allowed peers to stand for election to the Commons, became law on 19 March. That laid the way open for the candidature of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke and 1st earl of Montgomery, only recently appointed constable of Windsor Castle and keeper of Windsor Great Park. Sydney Pprs. ed. R.W. Blencowe (1825), 68-9. It is not clear whether anyone opposed his election. The first holder of a current English peerage to sit in the English House of Commons took his seat on 16 April 1649. CJ vi. 187a. However, he may already have been ill and by the following January he was dead. His seat in the Commons then remained unfilled.

Three seats were allocated to Berkshire in the 1653 Nominated Assembly. That June the gathered churches of Abingdon and Reading wrote to Oliver Cromwell* and the council of officers, calling on them to ‘eye God in all your counsels’ and indicating that the churches were submitting nominations of men they considered ‘godly and able’, apparently for membership of the Assembly. The letter, without the names, was printed in a newsbook. Severall Proceedings of State Affaires (16-23 June 1653), 3082 (E.215.3). Possibly these were the men who were subsequently summoned. Of those three, only Samuel Dunch*, who had sat in 1624, would ever serve in another Parliament and Thomas Wood* seems to have been particularly obscure, although, like the other two, he was at least already a local justice of the peace.

Berkshire’s overall representation in Parliament was reduced under the Instrument of Government. The total of nine seats it had possessed under the old franchises was cut to just seven. As Abingdon and Reading retained one seat each, there were five seats available in 1654 for the county MPs. All the latter went to local men. The elder statesman among them was Edmund Dunch*, nephew of Samuel, who had first represented the county 30 years before and who was a cousin of the new lord protector. Another of his cousins, John Dunch*, whose wife was Richard Cromwell*’s sister-in-law, was elected alongside him. Sir Robert Pye II could also claim kinship with the Cromwells, in his case through his wife, a daughter of the late John Hampden*. John Southby*, in contrast, seems to have been a most reluctant supporter of the protectorate, while the fifth MP, George Purefoy*, was a landowner of considerable wealth whose political views at this time remain unclear. The election took place on 12 July 1654 and over 100 inhabitants (including the governor of Windsor, Christopher Whichcote*) signed the return. C219/44: Berks. indenture, 12 July 1654.

However, Pye faced a further obstacle before the Parliament met on 3 September. On 19 August he was arrested for debt by the undersheriff of Middlesex. This raised a fundamental issue of parliamentary privilege: there was no doubt that MPs enjoyed immunity from arrest from their creditors, but it was less clear was how far in advance of the Parliament this immunity took effect. The immediate problem seems to have been solved by Pye’s release, as he was able to take his seat by 18 September. CJ vii. 368b. Later in the session the Commons ruled that the arrest had indeed been a breach of privilege and so reprimanded the undersheriff. CJ vii. 373b, 376a, 382b, 398b-399a; Burton’s Diary, i. p. xlviii. The issue was later discussed by the judges in the Michaelmas term the following year when the debt case came to court; Lord Chief Justice Glynne (John Glynne*) thought that the immunity should apply up to 15 days before Parliament assembled, although his colleagues thought that the few precedents were far less clear. Gray’s Inn, MS 33, p. 225.

The 1656 Berkshire election gave rise to one of the most notorious election disputes of the whole seventeenth century. Some of those involved were still arguing about it in public four years later. Yet, although the subsequent controversy was recorded in considerable detail, those arguments shed little light on what actually happened at the polls on 20 August. Almost everything that is known about the election itself derives from a highly partisan pamphlet supporting the cause of Henry Neville* as the losing candidate. His opponents would doubtless have interpreted those events rather differently. Yet that pamphlet, written by ‘an eyewitness’ in the days immediately following the contest, gives an invaluable sense of how confused those events are likely to have been. A True and Perfect Relation of the Manner and Proceeding, held by the Sheriffe for the County of Berk. (1656, E.891.8).

The anonymous author of the pamphlet claimed that, in the weeks prior to the election, he and his friends had begun to organise support for Neville, who was at first unaware of this. To choose Neville sent out an unmistakable message, for the former Abingdon MP was well-known as a vociferous republican critic of the protectorate. Initially reluctant to allow himself to be put forward, he agreed to stand only at the last minute. Their opponents had, in the meantime, held a series of prayer meetings at which was agreed a list of ‘major-generals, captains and governors’ to back for the five available county seats. The implication was that this group was pro-army and thus willing to favour military men with only tenuous connections to the county. They may well have had in mind the local major-general, William Goffe*. This group reportedly soon recognised their mistake, abandoned that list and instead adopted the five men who would eventually win. No one could accuse those five of having insufficient local connections. Three (the two Dunches and Southby) had sat for the county in the previous Parliament and the other two, William Trumbull* and William Hyde*, were equally well-established Berkshire gentlemen. Pye and Purefoy seem to have made no attempt to get re-elected. Neville’s supporters were not equally hostile to those five who stood. There was some discussion of Neville combining with Trumbull, before Neville quashed the idea. He himself looked on Southby with more favour and recommended to his supporters that they should not oppose him. True and Perfect Relation, 2-4.

The poll on 20 August took place at Reading, the location itself controversial, as parliamentary elections had traditionally been held at Abingdon. Proceedings opened at 11 am with the reading of the writ. The first round of voting involved a contest between Neville and Trumbull, the two men presumably thought to be the strongest candidates. As polling by voice was unable to distinguish between them, the rival groups of supporters were told to stand on either side of the field. According to the pro-Neville ‘eyewitness’, Trumbull then conceded, only to be overruled by the man who now emerged as Neville’s nemesis, the sheriff, William Strowde of Ruscombe. Strowde insisted on a headcount. The central charge later made against him was that he had intended everything about that count to bias any result against Neville. Allegedly, Neville’s supporters were told to go to one of the local churches, probably St Lawrence’s, which proved to be too small to contain them; the opening of the church was deliberately delayed; some of Neville’s supporters were prevented from voting on spurious grounds; and some were threatened by Strowde and the captain of the local militia. In the end, Strowde claimed that Trumbull received 800 votes and Neville just 580. Strowde then moved on to fill the other four seats. The uncontroversial Southby was elected unanimously. Neville’s supporters then also voted for Edmund Dunch. Thereafter, Strowde instructed Neville’s supporters to move to another field, the King’s Mead, seemingly in order to allow them to be polled against the remaining candidates. About three-quarters of those present therefore moved. This (allegedly) turned out to be a trick, for, in their absence, Strowde then attempted to elect John Dunch and William Hyde. Realising this, Neville objected and demanded to be polled against Edmund Dunch. Strowde refused, but offered to allow him to stand against Hyde. Neville was having none of this. Strowde therefore had the two Dunches and Hyde declared elected. True and Perfect Relation, 5-9. The indenture returning them was completed that same day. CP40/2703, rot. 560; CJ vii. 598b-599a.

By the time the anonymous pamphlet appeared in print, Neville’s supporters were organising a petition to Parliament, and it was doubtless published to aid that campaign to overturn the result. True and Perfect Relation, 9. But Neville was not the only candidate who now found himself cheated of his electoral victory. By the time Parliament assembled, Southby and Hyde had been excluded from sitting by the council of state, although Hyde was allowed to take his seat soon afterwards. CJ vii. 425b, 444b. Had he been elected, Neville, who was no friend of the protectorate, would almost certainly have been excluded too. He nevertheless pursued his efforts against Strowde. His petition seems to have been presented to the Commons and in 1659 it was claimed that the committee for privileges in the 1656 Parliament had decided that the election was void. Nevill versus Strood. The State of the Case [1659]; Burton’s Diary, iii. 498. If so, the Commons was never asked to confirm that decision and the result was never overturned. It might have been expected that the dissolution of this Parliament in February 1658 would be the end of the matter.

Neville had other ideas. Two lawyers, John Maynard* and John Alleyn†, advised him to sue. Ludlow, Mems. ii. 35. In the Trinity term of 1658 Neville brought a case against Strowde in the court of common pleas, arguing that the sheriff had deprived him of his seat in Parliament and claiming damages of £2,000. Robert Hyde* represented him. Strowde, represented by Evan Seys*, opposed the suit. The court, headed by Lord Chief Justice St John (Oliver St John*), referred the case to jury trial. On the day of the jury hearing, several of Neville’s friends, including Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Sir James Harington*, Thomas Scot I* and Edmund Ludlowe II*, attended to give him their support. Perhaps swayed by St John’s summing-up, the jury decided that Strowde was guilty and so awarded Neville £1,500. CP40/2703, rot. 560; CJ vii. 598a-599b; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 35-6. Yet, just when it seemed that Neville was about to win, wider events intervened. The new lord protector, Richard Cromwell*, had called a Parliament, news which caused St John and his colleagues to get cold feet. On 26 January 1659, the day before the new Parliament assembled, they ordered that the case be referred to the Commons. CJ vii. 599b.

The doubt was whether the court of common pleas should be considering the case at all. In the eyes of some, the outcome of Goodwin’s case in 1604 had created a precedent that only the Commons could sit in judgment over election disputes (unless it had specifically delegated the case to a lesser court). On that basis, almost all such cases thereafter had been heard by the Commons. But the 1604 case had represented a tactical withdrawal by the crown and, without a definitive ruling on the issue, there was still scope to exploit the remaining ambiguities. D. Hirst, ‘Elections and the privileges of the House of Commons in the early seventeenth century’, HJ xviii. 851-62. One point that was particularly unclear was whether such cases could be heard by the courts between Parliaments. Neville’s friend, Daniel Blagrave*, had already attempted to use the law courts to challenge the 1656 Reading election result.

In anticipation of the hearings before the Commons, Strowde published a broadsheet setting out the counter-arguments. Knowing that the court of common pleas had already found against him, he wanted the Commons to reassert as definitively as possible its sole jurisdiction in election cases. Nevill versus Strood. Beyond any personal concerns about the Berkshire election, this was now about the rights and privileges of Parliament itself. That Neville, the arch republican radical, was now championing the rights of the courts against Parliament was no irony at all: part of the reason why he had brought the case was that, as an opponent of the Instrument of Government, he refused to recognise that the 1656 assembly had been a valid Parliament. Ludlow, Mems. ii. 35. For all these reasons, ‘Nevill v. Strowde’ seemed on the verge of becoming one of the landmark legal cases in English constitutional history.

Neville cannot have viewed the result of the 1659 Berkshire election with much pleasure. The re-election of John Dunch, the close kinsman of Richard Cromwell, could only have been seen as a signal of support from the county for the new lord protector and indeed, Dunch proved to be one of his most loyal supporters in this Parliament. The return of Pye may have carried the same significance. The two were elected on 27 December 1658. C219/46: Berks. indenture, 27 Dec. 1658. Two days later, Neville was elected, along with Blagrave, as MP for Reading, a point which he could use to his advantage once his case came to be considered by the new Parliament.

The debates in the 1659 Parliament on Neville’s case were never simply about the technical legal issues. Neville was too notorious a figure for that and the arguments almost certainly divided the House along ideological lines. To Neville’s friends, those MPs who were against the protectorate, Strowde could be seen as emblematic of the worst aspects of Cromwellian rule. To others, the case could be used to re-assert what they saw as traditional constitutional proprieties. They were aware that the electoral arrangements which had applied in 1656 had since been swept away. What everyone could agree on was that this was a perfect opportunity for constitutional grandstanding. This was just the sort of case lawyer MPs always relished.

The first question, considered as early as 1 February 1659, was whether MPs should receive the papers on the case. Not used to acting as, in effect, a court of appeal, few were sure what to do. Moreover, the argument quickly got diverted by those who doubted whether they should consider the case at all. George Starkey*, who was probably already acting in concert with Strowde, was particularly provocative, expressing the incendiary view that the case should referred to ‘the Lords’ House’. Another traditionalist lawyer, Nicholas Pedley*, agreed. Both clearly had wider agendas to push. Others, like William Cartwright* and John Lambert*, wanted the case referred instead to the court of exchequer. Evan Seys, echoing the line that he had presumably taken as Strowde’s barrister, maintained that the Commons had a clear right to hear the case. Many considered the idea of sending for transcripts of the case completely unprecedented. Yet, in the end, the Commons voted to receive those papers. CJ vii. 596a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 18-21. In what cannot have been a coincidence, the House then moved on to consider the disputed return of Neville and Blagrave for Reading in the most recent election.

Two days later St John appeared before the Commons with the requested transcripts. CJ 597b, 598a-599b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 45, 51-2. Neville then ‘modestly enough’ moved that they fix a date to hear counsel from himself and from Strowde. Having lost the attempt to prevent the Commons hearing the case, he wanted them to proceed to a swift decision. Burton’s Diary, iii. 52-3; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 92. In a later intervention during the debate, Neville made the striking claim that, ‘If this curb, by the verdict, had not come in, it is likely you had not been here in such a free Parliament’. Burton’s Diary, iii. 54. In other words, he was suggesting that only the result of his common pleas case had dissuaded the government from attempting to manipulate the elections to this Parliament. His colleagues appear to have let this astonishing assertion pass without query. The other MPs who spoke, starting with Starkey, generally supported Neville’s motion, even if some still thought that such hearings would be unprecedented. It was therefore agreed to hold those hearings on 10 February. Burton’s Diary, iii. 53-55; CJ vii. 599b. They were subsequently postponed until 16 February. CJ vii. 601b. That day then produced a further delay, when, in a procedural dirty trick, John Bulkeley* distracted the Commons by accusing Neville of blasphemy. Burton’s Diary, iii. 305; CJ vii. 604b. Only on 26 February were the two teams of lawyers allowed to appear at the Commons’ bar. CJ vii. 605b, 608a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 346, 498; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 151. Those appearing for Neville included Heneage Finch†, the future lord chancellor. Both sides presented lengthy legal arguments for and against the claim that the Commons had the right to hear the case. The subsequent debate was probably short. Edward Turnor* suggested that they were ‘all full of the business’, moved that they adjourn the case until another day and evidently carried most of his colleagues with him; the Commons voted for a further postponement. CJ vii. 608a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 498-500; Derbys. RO, D 258/10/9/1, unf. The pattern was becoming predictable. Further hearings on the case had still not taken place by the time this Parliament was dissolved. CJ vii. 612b, 623a, 626b, 642b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 351, 465.

Yet this was not the end of the story. The reassembling of the Rump persuaded the judges of common pleas to try again. On 3 June 1659 the Speaker informed the Commons that the judges had repeated their request that the Commons rule on the case. CJ vii. 671b. The next day two of the justices appeared to present the transcripts. The Commons then voted on whether they should fix a day for a hearing. By 30 votes to 25, they agreed to do so and named 20 June. CJ vii. 672a, 672b. Evidently the case was becoming too tiresome: the Rump seems never to have revisited this before its own dismissal the following October.

When it was brought before them yet again in January 1660, the Commons finally gave up. On 27 January they remanded the case back to the court of common pleas, ordering its transferral from there to the court of exchequer chamber. The judges were given full powers to reach a final decision on the case. CJ vii. 823b-824a; Whitelocke, Diary, 564. Later that term they heard arguments from Strowde, represented by George Starkey, his former supporter in the Commons, and Neville, again represented by Finch. The same old arguments as to whether the case violated parliamentary privilege were rehearsed. The judges then adjourned the case and ‘Nevill v. Strowde’ finally fizzled out. Lansd. 1070, ff. 100-103; Le Second Part de les Reports du Thomas Siderfin (1684), 168-74. Even to Neville, it must have seemed quaintly irrelevant once the monarchy had been restored. He had achieved nothing of lasting significance. As nothing had ever actually been decided, no legal precedents were established. Perhaps the only result of the case was to help publicise a particular republican critique of Cromwellian corruption. That may well have been all that Neville had ever intended.