Brackley

Lying in the south-western corner of Northamptonshire, close to the border with Buckinghamshire, early-Stuart Brackley was notable only for past glories. A staple for wool and major commercial centre in the medieval period, it had little more than its (small) weekday market and its corporate status to show for its former size and prosperity. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 178; Bridges, Northants. i. 143; Baker, Northants. i. 567. According to the 1670 hearth tax returns, the town contained 239 households, suggesting a population of approximately 1,000. E179/157/446, mm. 77r-d. Brackley was governed by a corporation that comprised seven aldermen, including a mayor, and 26 capital burgesses. The mayor was selected annually from the aldermen by the lord of the manor’s steward; and new aldermen were elected by the corporation from two nominees – one chosen by the steward, the other by the mayor – from among the capital burgesses. Bridges, Northants. i. 143-4. The borough had first sent Members to Parliament in 1547, and the franchise, by 1660 at the very latest, was vested in the corporation. HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Brackley’.

The borough’s principal electoral patrons during the early Stuart period had been John Egerton†, 1st earl of Bridgwater – the lord of the manor – and Sir Richard Wenman†, who had purchased a house, tithes and other property in Brackley in 1606. Northants. RO, E(B) 672; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Brackley’. In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, the borough returned Sir Richard’s eldest son Sir Thomas Wenman, who had sat for Brackley on four occasions in the 1620s, and his brother-in-law, Sir Martin Lister of nearby Radclive. There is no evidence that the election was contested or that Bridgwater attempted to influence its outcome. Wenman was returned for Oxfordshire in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, and his place was taken by John Crewe I, who had been returned for the borough in 1626 and resided just two miles away, at Steane. The election indenture, dated 28 October, was signed by what appears to have been 28 of the burgesses. C219/43/2/70.

Both the town’s MPs sided with Parliament during the civil war, although in Lister’s case with a great deal of hesitancy and, it seems, reluctance. Infra, ‘John Crewe I’; ‘Sir Martin Lister’. Brackley itself was briefly garrisoned by the royalists late in 1643, plundered by both sides, and its inhabitants were apparently divided in their allegiance. J. Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the church courts: the diocese of Peterborough 1603-42’ (Birmingham Univ. PhD thesis, 1989), 180, 283; ‘The war, the people and the absence of the Clubmen in the Midlands, 1642-6, MH xix. 93. Crewe and Lister were secluded at Pride’s Purge, leaving the town without formal representation in the Rump.

Having lost its seats under the 1653 Instrument of Government, the borough regained them in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Crewe’s eldest son Thomas Crewe and William Lisle on 30 December 1658. The election indenture bears the seal tags of approximately 33 individuals. C219/47, unfol. Lisle almost certainly owed his return to his uncle, who owned considerable property in and around Brackley. Infra, ‘William Lisle’. Ignoring an attempt by the 2nd earl of Bridgwater to revive his father’s electoral interest in the borough, the corporation returned Thomas Crewe and Lisle again in the elections to the 1660 Convention. Bridgwater had to wait until the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661 to assert his interest with any success. Northants. RO, Ellesmere (Brackley) MS 613; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Brackley’.