Cockermouth

Situated some 25 miles south west of Carlisle, close to the confluence of the rivers Cocker and Derwent and also to the dividing line between the Cumbrian Mountains and the lowlands along the coast, seventeenth-century Cockermouth occupied an important position both topographically and economically. The town’s economy was based largely on its markets and fairs and the trade they served between the arable lands to the west and the pastoral region to the east. W. Camden, Britannia ed. E. Gibson (1695), 822; R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 70; Fleming-Senhouse Papers ed. E. Hughes (Cumb. Rec. Ser. ii), 35; Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 65-6; M. Mullett, Politics and Religion in Restoration Cockermouth (Cumb. and Westmld Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. xxiv), 1-3. Cockermouth’s population by the early 1640s may have been as high 1,000, although the 1674 hearth tax returns reveal that it contained 146 households (including 50 exempt poor), which suggests a figure of about 650. E179/90/76, m. 62; Mullett, Restoration Cockermouth, 2. The town was not incorporated, being governed through the court leet of the honor of Cockermouth. The chief administrative officer was the bailiff, who was elected annually by the leet jury. Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 66; C.M.L. Bouch, G.P. Jones, A Short Economic and Social Hist. of the Lake Counties 1500-1830 (Manchester, 1961), 166. The franchise was vested in the ‘burgesses’ – that is, the owners of burgage tenements – and the returning officer was the bailiff. Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. ii. 65.

Cockermouth had previously sent Members to Westminster only in 1295, its parliamentary representation having then lapsed until early 1641, when it was one of several boroughs re-enfranchised at the instigation of the lord of the honor of Cockermouth – the future parliamentarian grandee Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. Northumberland used the antiquarian researches of William Hakewill to justify the town’s historical right to send Members. Kent Archives, De L’Isle Ms U1475/A98: Cartwright’s acct. (for the earl of Northumberland) to Jan. 1641. Hakewill, ‘versed in Parliament records, gave his lordship notice that Cockermouth and Egremont had about Edward III’s time sent burgesses, whereupon his lordship ordered [an unnamed servant, possibly Hugh Potter*] to prosecute the restoring them’. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107, unfol. (notes [aft. 15 Feb. 1641]); E. de Villiers, ‘Parliamentary boroughs restored by the House of Commons, 1621-41’, EHR lxvii. 192. It was presumably Northumberland who prompted the inhabitants of Cockermouth to petition Parliament early in January 1641 for a restoration of their franchise. CJ ii. 61b. This petition was referred to the committee of privileges, and on 15 February the Commons ordered that a warrant be issued for the election of two burgesses for the town. CJ ii. 61b, 86a. Shortly after the re-enfranchisement, William Pennington, Northumberland’s ‘lieutenant’ in the honor, conveyed the news to the freeholders of Cockermouth, 55 of whom duly responded with a petition to the earl, thanking him for his ‘great and noble favour’ in securing a restoration of the franchise and inviting him to nominate the two Members who were to sit for the borough. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107: Cockermouth burgesses to Northumberland [c.Feb.-Mar. 1641]; de Villiers, ‘Parliamentary boroughs’, 192-3. A writ for a new election at Cockermouth was issued on 22 March, and at some point between then and June the borough returned two men closely associated with the Percy interest – Sir John Hippisley and Sir John Fenwick. Infra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’; ‘Sir John Hippisley’; C231/5, p. 438; CJ ii. 164b.

Fenwick was elected knight of the shire for the county of Northumberland in January 1642 and opted to resign his place at Cockermouth in favour of the more prestigious county seat. CJ ii. 414b. The resulting by-election for the Cumberland borough provoked a two-way tussle which may be read either as a reflection of incipient royalist versus parliamentarian divisions within the borough or as an attempt by the voters to prevent the return of a carpetbagger instead of a local man. The candidates were the London goldsmith Francis Allein – later one of the treasurers of the New Model army – who was Northumberland’s nominee, and the Westmorland baronet and future royalist Sir Thomas Sandford. Infra, ‘Francis Allein’; ‘Sir Thomas Sandford’.

The contest on election day, 25 April 1642, was highly acrimonious. Allein was supported by the bailiff, while Sandford received the backing of his kinsman, the future royalist Sir Henry Fletcher, who was not only a leading local landowner and burgage-tenement holder but also sheriff of the county. De Villiers, ‘Parliamentary boroughs’, 193; Mullett, Restoration Cockermouth, 3. Fletcher apparently attempted to prevent Allein’s supporters from assembling, delivering his warrant to the bailiff to convene the burgage-holders at the house of one of Sandford’s partisans (an action that was later adjudged illegal by the committee of privileges) and employing ‘solicitations by his under-sheriff, his chaplain and clerk’ to muster support against Allein. The contest went to a poll which produced ‘an equal number on both sides’, but the sheriff then disqualified two of Allein’s supporters, claiming that one was a recusant and the other not a burgage-holder. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107 (notes on 1642 by-election at Cockermouth). On the basis of a contemporary list of the 45 inhabitants who voted against Allein, the Cockermouth electorate on this occasion was 90 strong, although Allein’s supporters alleged that many of those who voted for Sandford had either been ‘foreigners’, non burgage-holders, or, in two cases, ‘infants’. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107 (‘A perfect list of such burgesses as gave their votes against Mr Allein’); DLEC/107 (notes on 1642 by-election at Cockermouth). The Allein faction, on the other hand, claimed to represent the ‘major part of the inhabiting burgesses’. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107 (copy indenture, 25 Apr. 1642). The outcome was a double return, with one indenture signed by the bailiff and 31 burgage-holders in favour of Allein and another from the sheriff and his party returning Sandford. C219/43/1/106; Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107 (copy indenture, 25 Apr. 1642); CJ ii. 665a.

On 28 May 1642, the Commons – probably moved by members of Northumberland’s interest in the House – issued an order, clearly favourable to Allein as the challenger to the official (i.e. endorsed by the county sheriff) return, that the ‘pretender to the election at Cockermouth be not precluded or prejudiced by any elapse of time for not bringing in his petition within the designed time’. CJ ii. 590b. The fact that the dispute was still unresolved did not deter Sandford from taking his seat in the Commons, but by the end of June a deputation from Cockermouth had apparently arrived at Westminster to contest the validity of his election. Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Sandford’; CJ ii. 591b, 645b. Allein’s backers in the Commons suffered a setback on 30 June, losing a division as to whether the committee of privileges should examine the witnesses to the Cockermouth election. CJ ii. 645b. The tellers for the yeas were the ‘fiery spirits’ and political allies of Northumberland, William Strode I and Denzil Holles; the tellers for the noes were the future Cumberland royalists Sir Patricius Curwen and Sir George Dalston. This vote was reversed the very next day, however, when a petition from the inhabitants of Cockermouth (presumably Allein’s supporters) was referred to the committee of privileges, which was ordered to examine the witnesses to the election. CJ ii. 648b, 665a. Nevertheless, the outcome of the dispute would be one of the last victories obtained by the dwindling royalist interest in the House, for Sandford’s election was evidently allowed to stand and his return filed in chancery. CJ iv. 370b.

The civil war divided the town’s MPs, with Hippisley joining the earl of Northumberland in the parliamentarian camp and Sandford siding with the king, for which he was disabled from sitting in January 1644. Infra, ‘Sir John Hippisley’; ‘Sir Thomas Sandford’. On 1 September 1645, the Commons ordered Sir Robert Harley – a leading member of the committee of privileges – to make a report concerning the 1642 Cockermouth by-election, and on 23 September the House ordered that the committee of privileges ‘be revived, as to the election at Cockermouth’. CJ iv. 260a, 283a. A fortnight later (7 Oct.), a petition from the bailiffs and burgage-holders was referred to the committee of privileges and 17 Members were added to it, including a large number of Northumberland’s allies – notably, John Blakiston, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, Robert Scawen and Sir Henry Vane II. CJ iv. 300a. Thus augmented, the committee found for Allein, and on 3 December, after Harley had made his report, the House resolved that the sheriff’s election of Sandford was void, as the right to return for the borough was vested solely in the bailiff. CJ iv. 364b. On 9 December, the clerk of the crown in chancery came to the bar of the House and replaced Sandford’s return with that of Allein. CJ iv. 370b. Both Allein and Hippisley retained their seats at Pride’s Purge and became active Members of the Rump. Infra, ‘Francis Allein’; ‘Sir John Hippisley’.

Disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government in 1653, Cockermouth regained its seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. With the earl of Northumberland having retired from political life after the regicide, the borough had fallen under the sway of the influential local gentleman Sir Wilfrid Lawson*. Infra, ‘Sir Wilfrid Lawson’. On 4 January 1659, the day after Sir Wilfrid had been elected knight of the shire for Cumberland, Cockermouth returned his son Wilfrid and his son-in-law John Stapylton. CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 247. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Northumberland attempted to re-assert his interest at Cockermouth, nominating the Irish peer Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) for one of the seats. However, the bailiff suppressed the earl’s letters to the freeholders, and Boyle was defeated on a poll by Richard Tolson*, of nearby Bridekirk, and Wilfrid Lawson. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/169/1660: Potter to bailiff of Cockermouth, c.Jan. 1661; DLEC/107 (1660 poll lists); Mullett, Restoration Cockermouth, 9-11. The number of voters on this occasion was 108. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/107 (1660 poll lists). In the elections to the Cavalier Parliament, the borough returned Northumberland’s northern steward Hugh Potter and Sir Wilfrid Lawson. Cumbria RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/169/1660: Potter to Sir Patricius Curwen*, Mar. 1661; HP Commons 1660-90; Mullett, Restoration Cockermouth, 11-12.