Wendover

Wendover was the third of the Buckinghamshire towns to have been re-enfranchised in 1624 as a result of archival discoveries by the local resident, William Hakewill†. As with Amersham and Great Marlow, it was a borough by prescription and had never been incorporated. The right of election was thus held by the inhabitants, although, as the town was small, this still did not make for a large electorate. The two constables acted as the returning officers. T. Carew, An hist. acct. of the rights of elections (1754), ii. 218-19. The principal manor of the town, that of Wendover Borough and Forrens, had been left in 1637 by its late owner, Mary Wolley, to her brother-in-law, Sir Henry Croke†, and her niece, Elizabeth Sanders, wife of Sir Walter Pye*. By buying out Croke’s share, Pye had consolidated his interest in the town, although the Crokes retained some influence as Croke’s wife had inherited Chequers two miles to the west of the town. VCH Bucks. ii. 336, iii. 25; N. Major, Chequers (1996), 34. The other manors within the limits of the constituency were owned by Robert Dormer, 1st earl of Carnarvon, and by Hakewill. VCH Bucks. iii. 26, 27. Although they did not, as yet, own any land within the town itself, the Hampdens were the most prominent family resident in the area and so were already a factor in its affairs. The marriage between Pye’s son Robert* and John Hampden’s daughter Anne would reinforce the links between the two families.

The Short Parliament election gave the Crokes and Pye their first chance to exercise their newly-acquired interests. The result confirmed the strength of that influence, with Pye securing one of the seats and Croke’s eldest son, Robert, the other. C219/42, pt. 1, f. 67. Pye had only acquired his Buckinghamshire interests through his wife, however; the bulk of his estates and his real power base were in Herefordshire. His election as knight of the shire for his native county provided him with what was clearly a far more prestigious seat and by choosing to claim that he could deploy his influence at Wendover in favour of a friend. Pye informed the Commons of his decision on 18 April. CJ ii. 6b. The choice by the Wendover electorate of another Herefordshire gentleman, Bennet Hoskins*, to fill the vacancy must indicate that Pye nominated his successor. Hoskins had no other known connection with the town or indeed with Buckinghamshire.

Pye’s decision not to stand in the elections held for the new Parliament later that year enabled the Wendover electors to think in more ambitious terms. The man they selected to replace him was John Hampden, by now one of the most famous politicians in the country. It is unlikely that they ever expected him to accept, especially as he had already been elected as one of the knights of the shire. That said, there is some evidence that a protest against the county result was being planned, so it was still possible that Hampden might be unseated and Wendover, as his local constituency, was the obvious place to seek a safe alternative. Procs. LP i. 511. Even if they did not think that Hampden would need it, the Wendover inhabitants might have seen advantages in flattering their powerful neighbour with the offer. In the event, the Buckinghamshire result remained undisputed and Hampden sat in the Long Parliament as the knight of the shire. Croke was re-elected for the other seat. That still left Hampden’s Wendover seat to be filled. A new writ was moved on 8 December 1640. CJ ii. 47b. Having failed to get Hampden, the electors went for someone much more obscure as his replacement. Thomas Fountaine* was a minor local gentleman who had sat for Aylesbury in the previous Parliament. He had taken his seat by 11 March 1641. CJ ii. 101a.

Following the outbreak of the civil war, Robert Croke sided with the king and withdrew from Parliament. The Commons therefore voted on 15 November 1643 to expel him from its ranks for non-attendance. CJ iii. 311a. He later sat in the royalist session of this Parliament at Oxford. As the Commons initially left all such vacancies unfilled, Wendover remained without a second MP until after the Commons decided in August 1645 to proceed with ‘recruiter’ elections. On 25 September, apparently prompted by Fountaine, they ordered a by-election to fill this vacancy. CJ iv. 287a; HCA30/864: E. West to T. Wyan, 4 Oct. 1645. It was held almost immediately, as Edmund West* was already the new MP by 4 October. HCA 0/864: West to Wyan, 4 Oct. 1645. He could count as a local figure as he lived at Marsworth, only five miles from the town, and he owned some land within the constituency. SP28/148, ff. 236v, 240, 249. Over the previous three years he had proved himself to be an active and effective champion of the parliamentarian cause in that part of Buckinghamshire. But West deliberately did not take his seat, so that he could stand in the county election a month later. HCA30/864: West to Wyan, 4 Oct. 1645. When he appeared in the Commons chamber on 6 November, it was as the new MP for Buckinghamshire. CJ iv. 335a, 337a, 351a.

Fountaine, who, unlike Croke, had backed Parliament, died during the late summer or early autumn of 1646. On 15 September the Commons ordered a new election at Wendover to replace him, and the necessary writ was issued on 24 October. CJ iv. 668a; C231/6, p. 66. The candidate elected was Thomas Harrison I*, an army major with no obvious local connections. Earlier that year his regiment, that of Charles Fleetwood*, had been operating in Oxfordshire, the neighbouring county. Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 92. It may therefore be that the choice of Harrison reflected the local electoral influence of the army that became so evident in the elections for the Buckinghamshire county seats the following year. Less likely, but not impossible, is that John Baldwin* had already acquired the lordship of the manor (although the earliest evidence for that dates from 1648) and that he had known Harrison from the period when Baldwin had been secretary to the late lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. Harrison took his seat in the Commons on 2 Nov. 1646. Perfect Occurrences no. 45 (29 Oct.-6 Nov. 1646), sig. Vv2v (E.360.13).

The status of the other seat had meanwhile remained unresolved. West had been elected as MP for Buckinghamshire in November 1645, but that return had been disputed. While it remained unresolved, no attempt was made to fill West’s Wendover seat in case he was unseated as the knight of the shire. The Commons did not rule on the Buckinghamshire case until 26 July 1647, when it found in West’s favour. West then informed the Commons that he wished to sit for the county seat. A new election at Wendover was ordered immediately. CJ v. 258a-b. The subsequent success of Richard Ingoldsby* could be evidence of a reassertion of the Croke interest, as he may already have been married to one of the Croke cousins. However, there were other factors that favoured him. A cousin of Hampden (and of Oliver Cromwell*), he was a Buckinghamshire native who had fought for Parliament during the civil war and who was now a colonel in the New Model army. Both Harrison and Ingoldsby sat after the Commons was purged in December 1648 and Wendover had the rare distinction of having both its MPs sign the king’s death warrant.

All three of the Buckinghamshire constituencies revived in 1624 were abolished by the Instrument of Government in 1653. A. and O. The justification for their revival had never involved their current importance so it was unsurprising that their relative unimportance now condemned them. However, all three had their parliamentary seats restored to them when the old franchises were re-introduced for the elections to the 1659 Parliament. By then the balance of electoral interests at Wendover had shifted. In the wake of his sequestration by Parliament, Sir Walter Pye had been forced to sell the manor of Wendover Borough and Forrens. It had since been bought by John Baldwin, who had been a trusted servant to Hampden before becoming Essex’s secretary. Bucks. RO, D/X 986/2; Lipscomb, Buckingham, ii. 475-6; VCH Bucks. iii. 25. Baldwin used his influence as lord of the manor to secure his own election as MP for the town in the 1659 and 1660 Parliaments. The other place in the first of those Parliaments went to William Hampden*, the younger son of Baldwin’s old employer. Under other circumstances, that seat would presumably have gone to William’s elder brother, Richard*, but he had been summoned to sit in the Other House. The 1659 indenture was signed by 40 of the inhabitants. C219/46: Wendover. In retrospect this result could be seen as the start of the long dominance by the Hampdens over this seat, as in 1660 Baldwin sold his manorial interests to Richard Hampden. VCH Bucks. iii. 25; Lipscomb, Buckingham, ii. 476. The Hampdens retained those lands – and the grip it gave them over the constituency – into the middle of the eighteenth century. By then Wendover was well on its way to becoming one of the most notorious ‘rotten’ boroughs in England.