Chipping Wycombe

Chipping Wycombe, also known as High Wycombe, was one of the larger and more important Buckinghamshire towns, rivalling even Aylesbury. Located on the London-Oxford road, it had long benefited from the extensive commercial traffic along that most important of routes from the capital to the west. Its other source of wealth was the cloth trade, although for much of this period that was stagnating, with adverse consequences for the general prosperity of the town. This would be the root cause of much of the discord that divided the town in the 1650s.

The town returned MPs to Parliament from the reign of Edward I. Since 1558, when it had been incorporated with a corporation comprising a mayor and 12 aldermen, the right of election had rested with the burgesses. The First Ledger Bk. of High Wycombe ed. R.W. Greaves (Bucks. Rec. Soc. ii. 1947), xi; Charters and Grants relating to the Borough of Chepping Wycombe in the County of Buckingham (Wycombe, 1817), 15, 21; VCH Bucks. iii. 118. The principal landowners in the town were the dean and canons of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, but they played no visible role in the elections in this period and, in any case, the chapter would be dissolved later in the 1640s. Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 640; VCH Bucks. iii. 124. Of the four candidates who stood in the Short Parliament elections, it was Thomas Lane*, the corporation’s recorder, who had the closest existing ties with the town. He was elected by the burgesses with Sir Edmund Verney*, the king’s knight marshal and head of one of the leading Buckinghamshire families. Given that the Verneys’ estates lay in the northern half of the county, they did not have a natural interest in this constituency, so it was probably Sir Edmund’s court connections that did most to recommend him to the 53 burgesses present at the poll. Verney and Lane, however, faced two rivals in the form of Henry Bulstrode and Adrian Scrope*. Bulstrode, whose estates were in the south-east corner of the county, and Scrope, an Oxfordshire gentleman related by marriage to the Wallers and the Hampdens, had connections with the area at least as strong as Verney’s. There can be little doubt that their challenge was based on the perception that Verney and Lane were too closely associated with the king’s recent policies. In Lane’s case, he had probably been the person who had encouraged the privy council to investigate the obstructions to the collection of Ship Money in the town. But Bulstrode and Scrope had a problem. The burgesses solidly backed Verney and Lane, so Bulstrode and Scrope were forced to rely on the other inhabitants. As there was no doubt that the 1558 charter limited the franchise to the burgesses, this was a desperate move always unlikely to succeed. The sheriff refused to accept this second indenture. Mems. of the Verney Fam. i. 329-30. Bulstrode and Scrope do not seem to have pursued the matter any further. The following October Verney and Lane were re-elected, apparently without a contest.

In what may have been an early indication of the later tensions within the corporation, the election of a new mayor in September 1642 was contested. This almost certainly reflected wider political divisions, for the crux of the dispute appears to have been differences between the rival candidates in their willingness to support Parliament’s military mobilisation. The pro-parliamentarian inhabitants petitioned the Commons for a ruling, with the result that on 15 October 1642 it ordered that John Shorter be installed as mayor. CJ ii. 788b, 810b. Subsequent events are unlikely to have eased relations within the town. Standing as it did in an area often contested by the two armies, controlling Chipping Wycombe was a matter of some military importance. The 1642 decision in favour of Shorter seems to have given the parliamentarians in the town the upper hand, but they clearly regarded some of their colleagues as suspect. It was only later that they got the chance to gain complete control of the corporation.

The recruiter election there in 1645 confirms that the parliamentarian burgesses had an edge over their rivals. Verney, as the standard bearer to the king, had died a famous death on the battlefield at Edgehill on 23 October 1642. Chipping Wycombe was among the constituencies for which by-election writs were ordered by the Commons on 25 September 1645. CJ ii. 287a. The contest there, held on 9 October, was an excellent example of how these recruiter elections were used to bring army officers into Parliament, for the man chosen to succeed Verney was the governor of Abingdon, Richard Browne II*. A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament no. 15 (6-13 Oct. 1645), 916 (E.264.26); The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 121 (7-14 Oct. 1645), 969 (E.304.24); Perfect Passages of Each Dayes Proceedings in Parliament no. 51 (8-15 Oct. 1645), 404 (E.266.2); The Scotish Dove no. 104 (10-17 Oct. 1645), 822 (E.305.6). According to one report, 500 horse and 500 dragoons, who happened to be on their way to join up with Sydenham Poyntz, stopped off in the town on the day of the election. Perfect Occurences no. 42 (3-10 Oct. 1645) (E.264.25). Neither Lane nor Browne sat in the Commons after the purge of December 1648. By late 1651 Lane had resigned or been dismissed as recorder, being replaced by Edmund Petty†.

Since the reign of James I the town’s economic difficulties had been slowly reducing the revenues available to the corporation. W.H. Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter, High Wycombe’, Recs. of Bucks. vii. 512-13. The dislocations of the civil war only compounded this. By 1649 some of the inhabitants had become openly concerned by the manner in which the corporation was spending their modest resources. The overseers of the poor sued the corporation, claiming that the money raised from the local tax on corn, which had hitherto been used for poor relief, was being diverted to other purposes. Much of the discontent was focused on the unpopular mayor, Nicholas Bradshaw. In September 1649 200 people protested over the issue by rioting on the market day, seizing the corn from the traders in the market. CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 316; Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter’, 513-14. Bradshaw complained to the council of state, which proceeded to investigate. They instructed Bradshaw to refrain in the meantime from using force. CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 327, 340, 341; Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter’, 514-15. A year later the mayoral election again gave rise to a dispute requiring outside intervention. A delegation, headed by Bulstrode Whitelocke*, was sent by the council to mediate. The result was that on 9 October 1650 Parliament, acting at the behest of the council, ordered that Stephen Bates, ‘a discreet religious person’ and the man supported by ‘the well-affected’ in the town, should be appointed as the mayor. CSP Dom. 1650, p. 371; CJ vi. 480b. This provided the crucial context for their next choice of MP.

Under the 1653 Instrument of Government, the town retained one parliamentary seat. When the first elections were held on that basis the following year, Chipping Wycombe chose the most obvious man for that seat. During the civil war Thomas Scot I* had been one of the leading parliamentarian administrators in Buckinghamshire and he had gone on to play a very prominent role in Parliament under the Rump. He had also been one of the councillors to whom the council of state had delegated the town’s disputes in October 1649 and October 1650. CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 327, 340; 1650, p. 371; CJ vi. 480b. Even more than Whitelocke, he was probably responsible for securing Bates’s appointment as mayor. Bates and his friend had then sought to repay his efforts on their behalf by appointing Scot as the town’s high steward in October 1651. That appointment was confirmed on 13 March 1654, when the opportunity was also taken to admit Scot’s son, William Scot, as one of the burgesses. First Ledger Bk. 144, 147. It was natural, therefore, that they should settle upon Thomas Scot as their choice for the town’s MP in the first protectoral Parliament that summer.

But Scot’s election did not go unchallenged. A group among the townsmen favoured an alternative candidate, the Chipping Wycombe draper Samuel Guy, who was one of the three overseers of the poor who had sued the corporation over the non-payment of the revenues from the corn tax. Shortly before the election, Guy’s supporters allegedly ‘sent for foreign burgesses, some dwelling many miles hence’, which prompted the town’s mayor, John Gibbons – who had re-opened the dispute over the corn tax revenues – to create six new burgesses who would support Scot. According to Guy’s supporters, these new burgesses were chosen privately in Gibbons’s house. But Scot’s faction insisted that they had been enfranchised publicly and with the consent of the mayor, aldermen and the greater part of the burgesses. On election day, 14 June, ‘there appeared’ – or so Scot’s faction claimed – ‘47 burgesses-electors, whereof 40 chose Mr Scot and two or three named Samuel Guy’. Guy’s supporters demanded that Gibbons disqualify the ‘new-made’ burgesses and hold a poll. But the mayor refused and then he and his group allegedly withdrew to a local inn to sign the indenture returning Scot – a document that Scot’s supporters claimed was ‘signed and sealed with 40 hands and seals’. The Weekly Post, no. 185 (20-27 June 1654), 1454 (E.229.43); Mercurius Politicus no. 213 (6-13 July 1654), 3616-8 (E.745.22); Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter’, 515-16, 519.

Any sense that peace had been restored to the corporation’s affairs was wrecked later that year when Bradshaw was re-elected as mayor. This re-ignited the old problems. In April 1655 the corporation minuted its disapproval of the fact that

lately divers ill affected members and persons of loose and rude behaviour have seized and by violence taken all the rents of the … shambles and disposed of the same as they have thought fit for some years past and whereas the same or the like litigious persons being of an unbridled and turbulent disposition endeavour to raise new troubles within this borough by claiming the whole rent of the said shambles to belong to the poor… First Ledger Bk. 150.

Several weeks later the sergeant-at-mace and the town clerk were replaced. First Ledger Bk. 151.

In November 1656 Bradshaw’s enemies counterattacked. The appointment of Bradshaw’s successor, Henry Elliott, had probably been the step too far. A petition was now submitted to the protectoral council by some of the inhabitants. On 14 November the council reacted by asking Tobias Bridge* to investigate. Bridge had only just been asked to deputise for Charles Fleetwood* in his capacity as major-general for Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with that decision having been taken earlier at the same council meeting. CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 20-1. Dealing with the Chipping Wycombe dispute would be the most conspicuous task Bridge would undertake in that new role.

On 19 December all the senior members of the corporation, including Elliot and Bradshaw, agreed to respect Bridge’s arbitration. First Ledger Bk. 305-6. Bridge reached his decision on 31 January 1656. It represented a complete victory for Bradshaw’s opponents. Bridge set out in detail the provisions that were to be made for the poor. He judged Bradshaw to be ‘a very contentious person and of an unquiet and turbulent spirit’; he was to be dismissed from the ranks of the burgesses. One of the bailiffs, John Sedgwick, was to be sacked for being ‘a common swearer and drunkard’, while the new town clerk, John Boutler, and the new sergeant-at-mace, George Howdaile, were also to lose their jobs on the grounds that they were royalist sympathisers. Bridge then recommended six men who were to be added to the corporation. Finally, he advised that the town’s charter be surrendered. First Ledger Bk. 306-11; Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter’, 517-21. On the advice of John Lambert*, the protectoral council endorsed Bridge’s recommendations on 20 February. First Ledger Bk. 304-5; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 173, 192-3. At a stroke this purged the corporation of those it deemed unsuitable and installed in their place men who could be trusted by the protectoral government at Westminster. The purge did not stop there because, once in control, the new men removed another of the aldermen, Michael Orlyn, on the pretext that he was embezzling the funds of the local hospital. The poor of the town subsequently brought a case in chancery against Orlyn to recover the money. Asked by the court to adjudicate on it, Recorder Petty found against Orlyn. Moreover, the man who replaced Orlyn as an alderman was Samuel Guy, the would-be candidate in the 1654 election. First Ledger Bk. 153-5.

As in 1654, the leading figures on the corporation used the 1656 election to reward their friend in power. Bridge was an even more obvious choice as MP than Scot had been. The one piece of unfinished business was the new charter. However, obtaining one was easier said than done. The protectoral council had begun to consider the matter by November 1656, but delays occurred, mainly it seems because of disagreements about how often the borough court should be required to meet. Nearby communities, such as Great and Little Missenden, were wary of Chipping Wycombe being given too much power. CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 149, 214, 224, 267; Summers, ‘Cromwell’s charter’, 523-7. The council had a draft ready by early February 1657. CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 267. A further complication then arose, which was that the corporation seems to have struggled to raise the money for the necessary fees. First Ledger Bk. 157-9. This delayed the granting of the charter until the summer of 1658, by which time Guy was serving as mayor. First Ledger Bk. 159.

The restoration of the old franchises for the elections for the 1659 Parliament meant that the corporation no longer had to choose between Scot and Bridge. Both men were elected when the burgesses met on 1 January 1659. But Bridge had also been elected at Newcastle-under-Lyme and so he had to inform the Commons on 24 February that he would prefer to sit for that constituency, rather than for Chipping Wycombe. A writ for a by-election was then ordered by the Commons. CJ ii. 607b. It may have been in anticipation of this that Sir James Harington*, who had failed to get elected for Middlesex, had got himself admitted as a burgess on 23 February. First Ledger Bk. 160. There is no evidence that the by-election had taken place by the time the Parliament was dissolved on 22 April.

In 1660 Scot tried to stand again, but lost out to Richard Browne†, the son of the recruiter MP, who was elected along with Petty. But even the successes of Browne and Petty soon looked dated. Unsurprisingly, the Restoration brought about another upheaval in the life of the corporation. On 25 May 1660, the same day that Charles II landed at Dover, 36 of the burgesses, including the mayor, George Timberlake, resigned. Five days later the process of reconstructing the corporation began when Richard Nelson was elected as the new mayor. First Ledger Bk. 162-3. On 2 June the pages containing the copies of Bridge’s 1656 adjudication were cut from the corporation records. First Ledger Bk. 165. But one final step was required to erase the official record of what the new corporation viewed as their own Cromwellian usurpation. They celebrated Charles II’s coronation on 23 April 1661 by ceremonially burning the 1658 charter. First Ledger Bk. 157-8.