Bishop’s Castle

Bishop’s Castle was a market town with no particular reputation for any other economic activity in this period. Its adult population in 1676 was said to be 653; in September 1630, a free and voluntary collection organised by the head burgesses to assist the townspeople of Shrewsbury battle against the visitation of plague there, elicited contributions from 80 heads of household. Compton Census, 259; Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk., reverse of vol. f. 30. There was doubtless a puritan strand in the Bishop’s Castle area, sustained by gentry laymen such as Humphrey Walcot, Sir Robert Harley* and Richard More*, but More took on himself the task of defending the town and district against the charges of the Laudian vicar of Shrewsbury, Peter Studley, that it was a region where Protestant separatism had taken a grip. In More’s analysis, the clergy of the area – among whom the vicar of Bishop’s Castle, Gervase Needham, was taken to be typical – were as conformist and well-disposed to the church hierarchy as the laity. The monthly lecture in the town was not a surrogate for puritan meetings, but was a well-established dispensation for the town, in which the pious and uncontentious spirit over the lectures’ founder, the much-respected bishop of Hereford, Augustine Lindsell, still prevailed. Lindsell’s reputation was relatively easy to sustain, since his reign at Hereford before his death in 1634 was measured in months not years. R. More, A True Relation (1641), 59, 69, 91-2.

The town throughout this period was governed by the charter granted 15 July 1573, which was confirmed but not apparently amended in 1618. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 7, 101. The corporation consisted of 15 capital or ‘head’ burgesses, including the bailiff, inhabitant burgesses, of whom there were 42 in 1598, and an amorphous body of ‘foreign’ burgesses who lived outside the town. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 1. In addition, there were a recorder, a town clerk and some minor functionaries, all chosen by the head burgesses. For much of the first half of the seventeenth century, the head and inhabitant burgesses defended their privileges against what they considered the encroachments of the foreign burgesses, who were the objects of various orders restricting their rights to participate in civic life. These orders touched directly on the parliamentary franchise in 1620, when immediately prior to the election to the 1621 Parliament, it was recorded in the order book that the foreign burgesses were to have no voice. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 43, 46, 47, 120v.

The 1626 election marked a crisis in relations between the inhabitant and foreign burgesses, when the latter challenged the order excluding them from participation, but were again barred from future involvement. At the same time as barring the foreign burgesses, the head burgesses pronounced that MPs would henceforth enjoy ‘full power to do and agree to all such things as by the common council of this kingdom shall be agreed upon’. This was probably a release of the parliamentary burgesses from having to account for themselves in detail while at Westminster, since it was accompanied by a formula that the Members for Bishop’s Castle should not expect reimbursement from the borough for their sojourn in London. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 146v, 147. The borough’s MPs all consented to this indemnity to the corporation, either in person or by proxy, in every election between 1640 and 1660.

Despite the apparent exclusion of foreign burgesses from the political process in 1626, by 1630 the fines and amercements on them were an attractive source of revenue both to the corporation and to the lord of the manor, Sir Robert Howard*. Arbitration at Ludlow followed, and Esay Thomas* rode over with the charter as evidence. The result was a partial rehabilitation of the foreign burgesses, who were to be sworn in a process of recognition. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 172. In 1637, Howard was again at the centre of a further relaxation of entry to borough privileges. Having lent the chamber £500, Howard’s wish to call in the debt was met by the cash-strapped head burgesses with an invitation to all who ‘shall be thought meet or desire to be burgesses’ to appear before them for scrutiny before being admitted to the corporation on payment of an entry fine. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 188.

The contests between resident and foreign burgesses, and the increase in the number of common burgesses, account for the apparent relaxation in participatory activity at parliamentary election time. Only head burgesses signed the order in March 1628 returning Howard and Sir Robert Fox to Parliament, but in March 1640, 30 signed. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 158, 197v. In Howard they were returning their lord of the manor to his fifth Parliament, and in Richard More they were electing a godly local gentleman who had been a head burgess since 1632 and whose term as bailiff had only ended a little over a year prior to his election to Westminster. This combination of lord and trusted corporation leader recommended itself again to the electors in October, when 26 signed the corporation order, and Samuel More* gave the undertaking to ‘save the town harmless’ on behalf of his father, Richard. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 199v.

During the civil war, the corporation sought where possible to protect itself from plundering – plans to protect property against incursions by soldiers were recorded in December 1642, March 1644 and April 1645 – and tried to maintain a neutral tone in the conflict. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 202v, 203, 205v, 207v. Richard More’s death in 1643 removed a moderate influence, and one of the triumvirate of godly magistrates who dominated the area. Of the other two, Sir Robert Harley became a parliamentarian enthusiast, while Humphrey Walcot was sequestered for royalism. Gervase Needham, the pious vicar of Bishop’s Castle, whom Richard More had respected, lost his benefice by the diktat of parliamentarian committee. Walker Revised, 306. The town was unrepresented in Parliament after More’s death, as the senior seat had been vacant since Howard’s disablement on 6 September 1642. The writ for the Bishop’s Castle ‘recruiter’ election to the Long Parliament was dated 20 November 1645, having been moved on 12 November. The influence of the More family was considerable in Bishop’s Castle after 1645. Samuel More*, governor of Montgomery parliamentarian garrison, was able to remind the burgesses in February 1646 of how his ‘dear father that is with God’ died in their service, but was careful not to ‘presume herein any way to hinder the freedom of your election’. His recommendations, of men who would not only ‘promote the good of the commonwealth in general and of your town in particular’, were his cousin John Corbett, whose marriage to Isaac Penington’s* daughter and good standing with the county committee were drawn to the burgesses’ attention, and his own brother Thomas More*, who was promoted with the assurance that ‘where ever he is, he will serve you the best he can’. The burgesses accepted More’s first nominee, but followed their earlier model of advancing one of their own by returning Esay Thomas, their town clerk, for the second seat. Some 45 burgesses signed the order book record of the election. CJ iv. 340a; Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 208v, 209.

Samuel More became bailiff of the town in September 1647, but Bishop’s Castle never became a parliamentarian stronghold. The burgesses maintained their independence, having no recorded correspondence with their publicly prominent MP, John Corbett, by rewarding Esay Thomas in 1650 for his efforts on their behalf when in Parliament he had battled the ‘threatened suspension of the liberties’ of the town. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. f. 217v. In 1651, they admitted to their number Job Charlton*, son of a royalist, even though they maintained a friendly relationship with Samuel More throughout the interregnum. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 218v, 219v, 220v. Bishop’s Castle went unrepresented in the Parliaments of Oliver Cromwell*, but when the traditional franchise was restored for the 1659 Parliament, the burgesses rewarded More with the first seat, and chose for the second the son of their late recorder, who had died in 1653. It was another relatively popular election, with 47 signing the order book, but when the election for the Convention was held on 14 April 1660, there was a reversion to the electoral pattern of the 1620s, and only the head burgesses participated. Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, corporation order bk. ff. 226, 228v.