STEPHENS, James (d. 1683), of Gloucester

Although no record exists of James Stephens’s apprenticeship in Gloucester, it seems likely that he was from one of the various tradesman families of that name in the city. No convincing link can be traced between him and the numerous gentry families of Stephens in the county. As a tanner, he began taking apprentices into his household in 1623, and took many more after he had married in St Nicholas parish in 1626. During the 1640s and 50s, in addition to working as a tanner, he was in business as a maltster, but towards the end of his life reverted to tanning alone.18A Calendar of the Registers of Apprentices of the city of Gloucester 1595-1700, ed. Jill Barlow (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xiv), 58, 66, 73, 86, 95, 99, 118, 122, 134, 216. The apparent expansion of his business is less likely to betoken prosperity than to reflect the problems faced by Gloucester citizens during the total disruption of their economy during the civil wars.

After being admitted to the common council in 1631, Stephens moved along Gloucester’s cursus honorum in the usual way, taking on offices connected with the administration of hospitals, and becoming sheriff for the first time in 1639. He was not among the city elders who served in one or other of the city regiments after the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, but in April 1643 was named to the committee for taking accounts of citizens who had supported the soldiers. This was effectively the committee for the garrison. On 15 June he was appointed to a city committee empowered to enter the property of any tenant of the council’s who refused to contribute to the upkeep of the garrison.19Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 250, 263. Later that year he was appointed sheriff for the second time. In May 1644, he was given a precinct of the city to scour in search of billets for the garrison soldiers, and in January 1646, he was awarded £50 from the corporation for his own contributions towards their upkeep.20Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 31v; B3/2, p. 368. By this time Stephens had twice served as sheriff, and was awaiting elevation to the mayoralty. It was thus as a leading citizen, though without office, that he was the first on the panel of jurors that made presentments to Serjeant John Wylde* at the summer assizes in 1646. This was the occasion on which Wylde described Gloucester’s citizens as ‘conservators of the Parliament of England’: Stephens’s jury concluded that the cost of defending the city had been £26,000.21Glos. RO, GBR/H2/3, pp. 136-7, 215. Later that year, Stephens travelled to London with another councillor to pursue the interests of the city in the exchequer by pressing the case for civic appropriation of fee farm rents due to the king. He became an alderman in October 1647.22Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 384; F4/5, f. 337.

Stephens’s elevation to alderman meant, in the Gloucester tradition, that he would become mayor within two years.23Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxvii. 66. By the time he took up the office in the winter of 1649-50, he had been awarded leases of city lands, and was active in the city committee to secure Gloucester’s interest in royalists’ estates.24Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 494, 495, 499. With Thomas Pury I*, Stephens re-established the city militia that year, and continued to serve as a militia commissioner throughout the 1650s.25Glos. RO, GBR/H2/2, pp. 47, 63; H2/3, p. 246. When he left the office of mayor, the address of the town clerk, John Dorney, to the citizens dwelt on the mysteries of Providence. Among the dispensations of Providence he naturally included the regicide: ‘the English monarchy itself is fallen down and broken into pieces’.26Dorney, Certain Speeches, 61-2. The enemies of the government had been forced to flee

So many wise politicians and great soldiers of the anti-parliamentary party have so often not found their heads nor hands, and they and their party have been so often constrained to find their heels.27Dorney, Certain Speeches, 62.

Dorney went on to commend the achievements of the Gloucester corporation during Stephens’s mayoral year: religious observance ‘without restraint and disturbances’, the implementing of good new laws ‘by the supreme power residing in Parliament’, improved city revenues as a result of the purchase of fee farm rents, and a better market building. Dorney remarked on the amicable relations between citizens and soldiers; but nowhere in his speech was there any reference to the virtues of a republic as such.28Dorney, Certain Speeches, 66.

Stephens had no difficulty in conforming to the protectorate. Gloucester had invited Oliver Cromwell* to be its high steward immediately after the battle of Worcester in September 1651 – Stephens had supported the invitation – and so there existed a bond between the city and the house of Cromwell.29Glos. RO, GBR/H2/3, p. 115. In Gloucester, Stephens supported the ‘reformation of manners’, and in October 1655 implemented the 1650 legislation against fornication and adultery.30Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 73. His election to the second protectorate Parliament was as a conforming city burgess, but he made very little impact on the House. He sat on two committees of minor importance, both in February 1657. One dealt with a wreck off the Sussex coast, another on a petition against James Chadwicke*. Neither committee had anything to do with Gloucester, but Stephens was the only one of his surname in the House during that Parliament, so it seems certain that he was the ‘Mr Stephens’ named.31CJ vii. 486a, 490b. He was also listed as having voted for kingship on 25 March, suggesting that loyalty to Cromwell was an enduring feature of his career.32Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). His performance during Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament was even more inconspicuous, as he was not named to any committees, and nothing he said or did was recorded by the various diarists.

On the eve of the Restoration, soldiers and citizens clashed in Gloucester when Edward Massie* reappeared in the city. Massie had been governor of the garrison during the first civil war, but since then had been notoriously tainted in the eyes of Independents and republicans. The conflict arose over control of the militia. The Gloucester soldiers remembered Massie’s support for Charles Stuart in 1651 – one vowed he would spill Massie’s ‘heart-blood’ – but the corporation was more circumspect, and on 1 April 1660 made Massie a freeman.33A Letter from an Eminent Person in Gloucester (1660), 6 (E.1019.20); Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 131. As part of the local settlement, the city militia was re-formed, and on the day Massie became a burgess, Stephens was given a commission to head one of three companies.34Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, ff. 85v, 87. It was thus as a mediator between cavaliers and dyed-in-the-wool republicans like Thomas Pury I that Stephens came to represent the city in the Convention. In September 1660, he was rewarded explicitly for his parliamentary service with a grant of a city meadow, soon augmented with another lease on preferential terms.35Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 148, 160.

By June 1661, the political tide had turned sufficiently against all who had supported Parliament during the civil wars for Stephens to be asked to hand over public money he was thought to hold, and to finalise his account with the city for parliamentary wages. Even so, he continued to serve as an alderman, surviving the visit of the commissioners for regulating corporations in July 1662.36Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 186, 235-6, 246. He was less lucky in 1672 however, when the corporation was remodelled, and no place was found for him in the new charter.37Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 498. He continued to trade in Gloucester, taking his last apprentice as a tanner in 1680.38Apprentices, ed. Barlow, p. 216. He was buried in 1683 in the churchyard of the city parish with which he had long been associated.