Gloucester

As the ‘principal grain port on the River Severn’, Gloucester was an important city, albeit one with an economy in transition. VCH Glos. iv. 77. Its previous mainstay had been the weaving of heavy broadcloth, but this industry had collapsed. A weaver in 1634 marvelled at how over 100 looms had been reduced to just six or seven, and other clothing trades were badly affected. Capping had gone, too, and the city’s weavers showed no ability or inclination to turn their hands to producing the ‘new draperies’ for Mediterranean markets, which had breathed new life into the industry in the south west of England. Like Tewkesbury, Gloucester was home to various trades arising from the transport of grain through the city, notably brewing and baking. The metal trades – pin-making and pewter manufacture – were buoyant, but were serving a mercantile and artisan community, not a luxury market. Gloucester before 1640 was not an important or fashionable social centre. VCH Glos. iv. 75-80.

The population of the city was in 1640 probably somewhat under 5,000, although the exigencies of the civil war brought great fluctuations associated with the movement of troops, prisoners and refugees. Compton Census, 532; VCH Glos. iv. 73, 95-6. Disease accounted for significant downturns in population levels. There were three major outbreaks of plague between 1600 and 1640, at least one of which led to the removal of law courts to another town in Gloucestershire. VCH Glos. iv. 74; SP16/500, f. 68. The city had been granted four charters before 1640. The most recent, of 1627, had confirmed the right to send two burgesses to Parliament. The government of the city rested with a common council of 40, including 12 aldermen. The common council co-opted new members to itself, out of a body of 400-500 freemen. One of the aldermen each year was chosen mayor, by an electoral college of 24. The 24 comprised the aldermen, the senior of the two sheriffs, and senior councillors, and in their hands rested the right of election to the most important civic offices. J.K.G. Temple, ‘Civil government of Gloucester, 1640-1660’, Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxvii. 64; VCH Glos. iv. 84-5. Movement up through the ranks of the hierarchy of office was heavily regulated by custom, and aspirants to the office of alderman had to have served as steward and sheriff. The effect was to limit this most important of offices to the elite of the city merchant community when they were well into middle age. A compensation was that aldermen received preferential treatment in the allocation of leases of city property, but this tradition served to enhance the oligarchic tendencies within city government. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, 3 passim.

The parliamentary franchise in Gloucester lay with the freemen, although control of the electoral process lay with the aldermen, who had won the initiative in city government from the common council over a long period. The mayor was the returning officer, and elections were held in the Booth Hall. C219/43/190. During the 1630s, the city had become entangled in legal cases over what it asserted was its right to appoint lecturers, and Thomas Pury I, the city’s advocate, first acquired prominence during this dispute. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 121-2, 227. It became a running battle between the corporation and Archbishop William Laud, in which the bishop of Gloucester, Godfrey Goodman, managed to retain the respect and loyalty of the citizens. This alliance seems to have been born out of the shared antipathy of bishop and corporation towards Laud. In other respects, the crypto-Catholic Goodman and the puritan-inclined burgesses were far apart. VCH Glos. iv. 89-90. Like so many other corporations, Gloucester made representations to the privy council over Ship Money. Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, f.42v. The city’s relations with its neighbouring Gloucestershire parishes, the ‘inshire’, were difficult. Sir Robert Cooke*, of the inshire parish of Highnam, was granted a commission in 1624 to sit on the city bench of magistrates, but his appointment was resisted by the corporation. The terms of the 1627 charter seem to have assuaged the conflict, which grew heated again in the later 1630s. VCH Glos. iv. 87-8; A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Glos. (Woodbridge, 1997), 9, 22.

These conflicts and the national political climate ensured that Gloucester’s election to the first Parliament of 1640 was warmly contested. The city’s recorder since 1638, William Lenthall*, received assurances from the aldermen that he would succeed in representing them, but he was astute enough to realise that the corporation was large and the expected interest so great as to make the outcome uncertain. Lenthall hedged his bets by leaning on the corporation of Woodstock to adopt him. He declared to Woodstock his intention of resigning his recordership at Gloucester if he were not successful in the city. He stood against two aldermen, the attorney Thomas Pury I and William Singleton, Pury’s senior among the aldermen by a few years. Singleton was respected for his work as mayor during a plague year. The fourth candidate, Henry Brett, had civic connections by virtue of his marriage, and enjoyed close links with the church as a farmer of a Westminster Abbey manor in the county. Popular though the contest may have been, the choice of Singleton and Brett suggests a conservative and cautious electorate, preferring local men to outsiders, and holding gentry in higher esteem than lawyers. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 582.

William Lenthall sought a seat as burgess for Gloucester in elections to the second Parliament of 1640. He was again unsuccessful in persuading the corporation to back its recorder, and was even unable to force the mayor to poll the voters. CJ ii. 43b; Procs. LP i. 426. Again the choice of the electors fell on a pairing of an alderman with a local gentleman with church connections, and returned Thomas Pury I and Henry Brett. Once the Parliament assembled, Lenthall, from the Speaker’s chair, raised the denial of the poll. It was referred to the committee of privileges, and it was intended that witnesses be summoned to give evidence, but nothing further was done, probably because Lenthall had no further interest in pursuing the matter. CJ ii. 43b. For its part, the Gloucester corporation was satisfied in its choices. It continued to pay Pury for his legal work on its behalf, including in 1640 preparing a defence against charges by the attorney-general that the city had breached the terms of its charter: probably a twist in the affair of the city’s lecturers. Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, f. 132. The council sometimes sent emissaries to Parliament independently of the city’s MPs, but remained confident enough in Pury and Brett – and in their disappointed recorder – to send each of them gifts of lamprey pies. In 1642, Pury opened the long campaign to reorganize the city’s churches. Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, ff. 175-6.

Pury remained as Gloucester’s MP throughout the sitting of the Long Parliament and the Rump, and played a dominant role in the parliamentary committee for Gloucester, in forming the parliamentarian city garrison in the civil war, and in the Gloucestershire county committee. Henry Brett’s allegiance to Parliament in the civil war continued only under pressure from Pury, and after Brett’s disablement from sitting, a warrant for a fresh by-election for his seat was ordered on 25 October 1645. The election took place on 25 November, and seems to have been restricted to the electoral college that annually chose the civic officers. C219/43/192: CJ iv. 322a. The common council’s choice of John Lenthall was plainly a recognition of the importance of his father, the Speaker and their recorder. The day before his election, using his new style of deputy recorder, John Lenthall signed a council order with Mayor Lawrence Singleton* to relieve a Protestant minister who had fled Ireland. Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 38v. William Lenthall remained on cordial terms with the corporation, and returned his fee as recorder for the use of the poor in 1644. Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, f. 239. The city’s gifts of wines, sweetmeats and pies to its MPs continued throughout the decade. Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, ff. 175, 365, 368v. It was a small investment to maintain the harmonious and active relationship between the city and Parliament. Among the matters on which the corporation sent delegations to Parliament in the 1640s were money due for billeting soldiers, support for Edward Massie* as military governor, nominations for the Gloucestershire and Herefordshire parliamentary committee, and the deputy lieutenancy. There were other unspecified matters on which journeys to London were made. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 226, 295, 327, 367, 370, 384.

Gloucester accepted the regicide without any obvious qualms, and appointed Lord General Oliver Cromwell* its high steward (30 Sept. 1651), shortly after the battle of Worcester. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 639. This close relationship with the house of Cromwell continued into the protectorate, when the city appointed the lord protector’s son, Henry Cromwell* to succeed him in that position in February 1654. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 755. In elections to the first protectorate Parliament, William Lenthall was at last returned for the city, along with Thomas Pury I. Lenthall wrote a gracious letter to the corporation expressing first his intention to have retired, ‘having been thoroughly wearied with what I have already undergone’, and then an appreciation of their confidence in him: ‘when I found myself so freely elected it was not a little rejoicement to me to perceive that I lived in the memory of so grateful friends’. GBR/H 2/3, p. 157. The council copied his touching sentiments into their letter book, but in the event, Lenthall chose instead to sit as knight for Oxfordshire. C219/44, pt. 1; CJ vii. 381b. There was a by-election on 13 December, which seems to have been an uncontested nomination of Alderman Luke Nourse. C219/44, pt. 1.

Gloucester returned the local major-general, John Disbrowe and Thomas Pury II, son of the alderman in the 1656 election. On 1 August William Lenthall wrote again to the city to assure the aldermen and council of his continuing affection and good intentions, but there is no evidence that he stood again as a candidate for Parliament. Glos. RO, GBR/H2/3, p. 206. Disbrowe’s first visit to the city took place on 26 December 1655 as part of his tour of duty in the region, and in January 1656, the chamber agreed to bear the cost of entertaining him. The delay and the discussion suggest that not aldermen and councillors were well-disposed. On 13 August 1656, he was made a burgess, which was most likely a prelude to his nomination by the chamber as MP. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 857, 876; G3/SO2, f. 76. When he chose to sit for Somerset, a new writ was issued (25 Sept.) and at the by-election on 12 November, the corporation opted in its accustomed way for an alderman, James Stephens. Some 73 signatures were made on the return, so the electorate was wider than the form of electoral college that had returned John Lenthall. CJ vii. 428a; C219/45, pt 2. Pury was clerk of the peace for the county, and was not a member of Gloucester corporation, but represented the continuing influence of his father.

Under Lord Protector Richard Cromwell*, the country returned to the former, traditional allocations of parliamentary seats, but Gloucester had retained two Members during the life of the Instrument of Government, so was unaffected. There is evidence of much wider participation in the election held on 11 January 1659 than had been the case during the Oliverian protectorate. On the damaged return, at least 80 signatures are visible, and probably twice that number at least signed the indenture. The text of the indenture records that ‘41 burgesses and divers others’ elected two aldermen, James Stephens and Lawrence Singleton. C219/46. An unsuccessful candidate in this election was Thomas Pury I, who might normally have expected to take the first seat. On this occasion the sheriffs were the returning officers, and in the opposite circumstances to those complained of by William Lenthall in 1640, they insisted on the poll. The poll was aided by the existence of freemen’s books, recording the names of eligible voters. One sheriff disrupted the poll by adjourning to another place and recommencing taking votes for both seats at the same time. According to Pury, he would have won first place if a poll for first place had been taken separately. As it was, votes for his two competitors were all taken at once. Pury calculated that 700 first and second votes were polled that way, to dwarf his own 280. He petitioned Parliament against the way the poll had been conducted, describing it as ‘destructive to the very being of elections’. Voters should not be made to cast their second votes before the outcome of the first poll was known. He produced a certificate from his voters to confirm that they had they gave their first votes for Pury and that by casting their second voices they had not intended to deprive him, but it was all in vain. Reasons inducing the Equity and Justice of Mr Pury’s Petition in Parliament (1659).

The 1659 opposition to Pury indicated that the hegemony of the elderly puritan ruling group in Gloucester was being challenged: the obstructive sheriffs were much younger men, beginning their civic careers. The victory of James Stephens, who also sat in the Convention, and Lawrence Singleton, suggests that their compromising instincts were appreciated. Both men had signed a 1649 petition in favour of Godfrey Goodman, Gloucester’s sequestered bishop. Pury’s support had been conspicuously withheld. Petition of Godfrey Goodman (1649). In a showdown between Pury and Edward Massie in April 1660, Pury came off the worse, and two months later Gloucester pitched upon James, duke of York as high steward. When William Lenthall was ‘removed and discharged’ as recorder on 23 November 1660, Gloucester corporation’s glory days as the ‘conservators of the Parliament of England’ were evidently numbered. Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 131, 134, 162; J. Dorney, Certain Speeches (1653), 23.