Ludlow

Ludlow was a regional capital of government until 1641, a town which though remote was a honeypot for lawyers and others looking for patronage. Its population has been estimated to have been around 2,600 in 1641. M.A. Faraday, Ludlow (Chichester, 1991), 160. The council in the marches was long established at Ludlow castle, and its lord president controlled the supply of legal posts. John Milton was perhaps the most celebrated beneficiary of the cultural life encouraged by the quasi-courtly outlook sustained by the council; his Comus was performed there in 1637. Ralph Goodwin, MP in two Parliaments in 1640, was a minor writer who found life in Ludlow at least tolerable. It was perhaps because of the power of the lord president and his retinue that the corporation of Ludlow guarded its privileges jealously in this period, and came to its own conclusions about who should represent the borough in Parliament. The government of Ludlow rested on a charter of 1461, which had been modified in four further concessions to the town between 1554 and 1627. Authority was vested in the burgesses, who formed a common council divided into two bodies called the Twenty-Five, from whom were recruited another body of aldermen, called the Twelve. At the annual elections, held in October, two bailiffs were elected, the high bailiff by the Twenty-Five from the Twelve, and the low bailiff by the reverse arrangement. Vacant places among the Twelve were filled by co-option, the eligible candidates being those who had served as low bailiff. The office of churchwarden at Ludlow was regarded as a first step along the civic cursus honorum. Faraday, Ludlow, 28-9, 31, 39-40.

In this period, all the elections were conducted, apparently without unmanageable controversy, by the chamber of Ludlow, involving the burgesses but not the wider body of townsmen. It had become customary for those elected to be well-enough fêted by the corporation, but to attend Westminster at their own expenses and not at the charge of the corporation. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 150. It was also the custom that those sent to represent the borough in Parliament should be burgesses of the town themselves, although this was suspended in 1621 and 1624, and may not have applied to Job Charlton in 1659. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 ff. 131, 142. Nevertheless, there must have been stirrings within the borough in 1640 when the elections to the Short Parliament were organised. The lord president of the council, John Egerton†, 1st earl of Bridgewater, attempted to persuade the corporation to elect his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Napier*, but was rebuffed. Letters of Brilliana Harley, 86. Bridgewater or his agents may have sought to challenge the franchise, which would account for the introspection of the burgesses. They consulted statutes, their own charters and former orders before unanimously electing Ralph Goodwin, a secretary at the council, and Charles Baldwin, an obscure local gentleman whom they had taken to themselves as a burgess in 1638. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 214. Baldwin took a few faltering steps along the town’s cursus honorum, strongly suggesting that in rejecting Napier, the corporation was placing a premium on the need for one of its own to be sent to Westminster.

The burgesses showed sufficient confidence in their selection in March 1640 to repeat it on 10 October that year. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 216. There seems to have been even less controversy about this decision. The following month, a meeting of clergy was convened in the town, to protest against the hasty summoning of Convocation without due notice given. HMC Portland, iii. 69-70. But this did not presage a capture of the town by the godly Protestant interest. As the political conditions deteriorated in the country at large during 1641-2, Ludlow, because of its character as a proxy royal court, became uncomfortable for those who supported Parliament or the godly cause. Members of the Harley family of nearby Brampton Bryan were among these, and Brilliana, wife of Sir Robert Harley*, reported how puritans in the town were abused and were affronted by maypole dancing there. She reported to her son, Edward Harley*, with a touch of satisfaction how a gentleman making his way from church, had had ‘roundhead’ barked into his face by a townsman; the offended puritan seized a cudgel from a bystander and used his undoubted social superiority as his warrant to beat up his assailant. Letters of Brilliana Harley, 167, 172. But this was a minor incident against the grain of the religious and political trends in the region. Ludlow was a royalist stronghold throughout the civil war. In September 1642, John Aston*, one of the puritan minority in the borough, found himself examined by his colleagues on a letter alleged to have been sent him. The letter advised him in urgent tones that ‘ere many nights the town in supposed defence will be at our dispose and you freed from your fears’. HMC Portland, iii. 97. It seemed to be a plot exposed, but nothing happened to Aston, and the whole missive has the air of a fabrication. Far from being on the brink of a parliamentarian coup, Ludlow seemed solidly for the king; part of the town plate was given to Charles when he was at Shrewsbury in October 1642. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 224v.

Ludlow’s parliamentarians appear not to have left the town in a diaspora during the civil war. In October 1643, John Aston and William Botterell* were listed with Goodwin and Baldwin as members of the corporation, presumed present on the civic election day. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 227. Soon afterwards, Goodwin was summoned to the king’s Parliament at Oxford. Preparing to leave Ludlow on 9 January 1644, he claimed parliamentary privilege against a suit being brought against him in the town court. Salop Archives, LB7/386. The journeys of Goodwin and Charles Baldwin to Oxford were quickly followed by a response from Westminster; both were disabled from sitting there, on 5 February. CJ iii. 389b. Only when Ludlow came under parliamentarian control, in May 1646, was it possible for Parliament seriously to contemplate issuing fresh writs. The corporation moved swiftly to placate its new masters, ringing the bells when the town surrendered, and plying the governor, Samuel More*, with the wine that had been the usual gift for the lord president. Salop Archives, LB8/1/166/3. On 13 July the churchwardens and constables of Ludlow carried to the castle a pile of Books of Common Prayer, in a symbolic surrender to the county committee of the old order of corporation and established church. The writs for parliamentary elections were duly authorised by the Commons on 23 July. Salop Archives, LB7/1941; CJ iv. 624b.

A month earlier than this, Humphrey Mackworth I*, the governor of Shrewsbury and the mainspring of the Shropshire county committee, wrote to the burgesses of Ludlow to ask their favour by returning his eldest son to Parliament. Thomas Mackworth was under age, but his father sent him over to Ludlow for an interview before the burgesses, and pressed his case on the basis that Humphrey had ‘ever dedicated him in my thoughts to the service of the commonwealth’. Salop Archives, LB7/1942. Mackworth dangled before the burgesses the prospect that once in Parliament, Thomas would put the interests of the town first, and that Humphrey himself would continue to do what he could for the townspeople, having already spared them as far as had been possible the worst effects of warfare. The burgesses evidently were persuaded by Mackworth senior’s case, and returned Thomas Mackworth and Thomas More, the military governor’s brother, on 8 August, making the usual stipulation that they should attend Westminster at their own expenses. Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 f. 234v. More seems to have been made a town burgess at the same time as Mackworth, but the corporation later had to remind itself of the fact, and made him a burgess again in 1651. Salop Archives, LB8/1/166/4; LB2/1/2 p. 19.

The corporation of Ludlow did not rely only on its MPs to advance its business at Westminster. In December 1648, it was being served by a Gray’s Inn solicitor who advised the burgesses of little progress in their current concerns: the burden of central government taxation and the losses sustained by the town during the war. He reported that in the aftermath of the army’s purge, there were few in the House and the committees that had dealt with these matters were in suspension. Salop Archives, LB7/1708. In the Nominated Assembly of 1653, Ludlow went unrepresented, although William Botterell, one of its prominent burgesses, who had also been governor of Ludlow castle, sat for Shropshire and thus gave the town a better showing at Westminster than others in the county. Ludlow had one Member assigned to it under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, and instead of courting – or responding to – outside interests, chose one of its own for the first Parliament of the protectorate the following year. John Aston had been interrogated over the possibly forged letter of 1642, but had remained in Ludlow throughout the civil war. During the commonwealth he had played an active part in representing the town in its tussle with Richard Tomlins† and his executors over the fee farm rent. (Sir Robert Harley*, by this time a Ludlow resident by virtue of his continuing high standing in the eyes of the corporation, helped where he could.) Salop Archives, LB2/1/2 pp. 15, 24, 30, 40.

When Aston was elected on 8 July 1654, he was given an allowance of two shillings a day, and £12 in advance for his expenses in journeying to London. C219/44; Salop Archives, LB2/1/2 pp. 74, 76. On 10 October, the burgesses approved Aston’s scheme for setting the poor on work, and found a house in Ludlow suitable for the purpose. Salop Archives, LB2/1/2 p. 79. For his part, Aston proved to be a conscientious correspondent, reporting back to Ludlow on his efforts to free the town’s charities from tax, to hasten on a case the townsmen had in exchequer, to ensure that an augmentation to the church living was paid, and the progress with the hardy perennial of the fee farm rents. Salop Archives, LB7/388, 1714, 1716, 1717. As an advocate for Ludlow’s interests, Aston mostly worked in committees and in informal meetings, behind the scenes, but he evidently did his best to raise the profile of the borough in pursuing its case to be again a centre for criminal justice. Since the collapse of the council in the marches in 1641, the town must have suffered much loss of trade as the lawyers migrated elsewhere. Aston tried unsuccessfully to press the argument with Oliver Cromwell* personally that the council should be revived in some form, and was hardly more victorious in advancing the notion that Ludlow should be an assize town. Salop Archives, LB7/1715. Aston was still in London in April 1655, patiently waiting to see the lord protector. Salop Archives, LB7/389. He found some Gloucestershire clothiers who were willing to advance a scheme of woollen manufacture to set the poor of Ludlow on work, but in May 1655 the burgesses appeared to be reconsidering their commitment to his plans. Salop Archives, LB7/390, 391 Aston was responding to the problems of poverty that the town experienced. In 1655, Major-general James Berry* considered it ‘unruly’, and urged that the castle, which he reported to John Thurloe* was going ‘to rack most miserably’ should either be repaired or pulled down so he could build a new headquarters there, thus tacitly acknowledging its history as a regional capital. TSP iv. 237, 498, 742.

Whatever the disappointments may have been over the workhouse scheme, the Ludlow burgesses returned Aston once more to Parliament, on 16 August 1656, but this time without any allowance. Salop Archives, LB2/1/2 p. 115. Although he was listed among those excluded from this Parliament, he was not prevented from taking his seat, and went on to play a reasonably full part in proceedings, although there is no record of his correspondence with the Ludlow burgesses. When the old constitution was seized upon to give authority to the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, Ludlow had two seats at its disposal once more. It chose two practising lawyers, who thus embodied the most significant professional interest sustained in the town. In selecting Job Charlton, son of a royalist, and Samuel Baldwyn, the rising son of its obscure choice of the early 1640s, the corporation signalled its tendency to revert to a former model of representation. Salop Archives, LB2/1/2 p. 155.