HARTNOLL, George (1585-1664), of Tiverton, Devon.

The name Hartnoll was a common one in early modern Tiverton. Various families of that name were settled too in other parts of Devon, including the Barnstaple area, where a George Hartnoll of the right dates flourished in the first half of the seventeenth century.7Georgeham par. reg. The survival of an account book of George Hartnoll of Tiverton provides confirmation, by its references to Hartnoll’s brother, Valentine Hartnoll, that he was a native of the town which he later represented in Parliament.8Devon RO, 1131A/PZ 1. Hartnoll’s father was a butcher, who married a woman apparently from outside the town. They had at least six children from around 1580, of whom George was the second or third son but probably the fourth child. Both his parents, together with one of their servants, were among the 33 victims of the fire that swept through Tiverton on 3 April 1598. In 1591, one of the Hartnoll household servants had died of the ‘pestilence’ which claimed many more lives in the town than the fire, so that George was fortunate to survive.9Tiverton par. reg.; Dunsford, Tiverton, 179.

George Hartnoll (as was his usual spelling) did not follow his father into the butcher’s trade.10Devon RO, 1131A/PZ 1. Instead he was apprenticed, probably in Tiverton, to a clothier. He married Joan Goddard in 1617, so was probably by then financially independent, established in business on his own account. By 1621 he was keeping the surviving memorandum and account book of his business activities, in which he recorded dealings of various kinds with business colleagues, friends and relations. Occasionally his business took him to London, as in 1622 and 1629, and he employed a number of workmen, presumably to operate his looms in Tiverton. Hartnoll was a tenant of ‘Mr Shapcote’, probably Henry Shapcote, father of Robert Shapcote*, but owned enough freehold property in his own right to be a subsidy payer by 1625.11Devon RO, 1131A/PZ 1. Occasional glimpses of Hartnoll’s rise to a degree of prosperity are offered by his memorandum and account book. He could afford a 19-ounce gilt tankard in 1632, and was able to summon the Exeter physician, Robert Vilvayne (uncle of Simon Snowe*) to a family bedside in Tiverton in 1635.12Devon RO, 1131A/PZ 1.

Hartnoll was substantial enough in his business career to secure a place as a burgess in Tiverton corporation. The absence of a civic archive frustrates efforts to pinpoint the key dates in Hartnoll’s public career in the town, but he was churchwarden in 1627 and had become mayor by November 1633, when the town contributed rents of £8 towards the expenses of his mayoral year. In 1626, after the death of his first wife, a Tiverton woman, he married for the second time. His bride was Mary Potter, the daughter of Christopher Potter, a gentleman from the nearby village of Silverton. George and Mary Hartnoll were married in the wealthy Exeter parish of All Hallows, Goldsmith Street, indicating how Hartnoll’s fortunes had been raised by his business success and his civic career in Tiverton. His father-in-law was able to bequeath cash legacies of over £500 when he drew up his will in 1642.13PROB11/197/63.

Hartnoll owed his seat in the Long Parliament to the failure of Sir Peter Balle*, who had represented the borough in the first Parliament of 1640, to retain his place in the second assembly of that year. It may have been Balle’s disobliging commentary on the legality of mayors serving as parliament-men that lost him the favour of the Tiverton corporation. In any event, Hartnoll was returned as the only member of the Tiverton business community and the only active corporation burgess to find a seat in this period. He kept a low profile throughout. He was in the Commons on 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation, but on 16 June 1642 he was not present at a call of the House.14CJ ii. 133b, 626. On 12 November 1642 he was ordered with a number of other west country Members to be brought to Westminster in custody, but there is no evidence that Hartnoll was in fact arrested.15CJ ii. 845b. We must infer from the order that he had joined with the other prominent figures connected with Tiverton, Sir Peter Balle and Peter Sainthill*, to implement the king’s commission of array as civil war broke out.

Hartnoll’s brother-in-law, Ambrose Potter, was a commissioner for the king who enjoyed the benefit of Exeter Articles after the surrender of that city to Sir Thomas Fairfax* in 1646.16CCC 1384; CCAM 1198. Despite the evident suspicions of his colleagues at Westminster, Hartnoll’s own conduct during the civil war is opaque. He never compounded for delinquency, nor was he ever assessed by the Committee for Advance of Money. The likelihood must be that he absented himself from Parliament at some point before June 1642, made his way back to Tiverton and never went to Westminster again during the duration of this Parliament. On 9 May 1643 he was enjoined to attend the House, on pain of a fine.17CJ ii. 626; iii. 77b. On 22 January 1644, when his fellow parliament-man Peter Sainthill was disabled from sitting because of his attendance at the king’s rival Parliament at Oxford, Hartnoll’s case was ‘respited’, doubtless because there was no evidence that he had gone to Oxford, and because of a lack of information about his allegiances.18CJ iii. 374a. The Thomas Hartnoll of Tiverton who was active on the king’s behalf in the royalist garrison of that town was a cousin.19CCC 418; CCAM 1283. Not until October 1646 was Hartnoll finally declared to be disabled from sitting further, and a new writ issued for both Tiverton seats.20CJ iv. 683b.

Hartnoll remained active in Tiverton civic affairs despite the disruptions of civil war and interregnum. He handled funds for the repairs and maintenance of the church there in the early 1650s, and was among the burgesses who ordered the repair of the Tiverton ‘town house’.21Chalk, Hist. Church St Peter, 206, 207; Devon RO, R4/1/C 303. In the disputed 1654 election, Hartnoll seems to have kept out of the controversy, but the following year two of his cousins, Thomas Hartnoll and Aquila Skinner, formerly active for the king, were turned out of the corporation by Major-general John Disbrowe*.22SP18/74/1-2; Dunsford, Tiverton, 191; Devon RO, 1131A/PZ 1. At the Restoration of the monarchy, Hartnoll and other former mayors were pardoned by the king for acting in the corporation without taking the test and corporation oaths, but this was a minor inconvenience in a long and uninterrupted career as a Tiverton burgess.23[W.] Harding, Hist. Tiverton (2 vols. Tiverton, 1845), i. 50. He drew up his will in June 1662 and left a bequest of £50 to the corporation to buy land for an annuity for ‘honest poor husbandmen’ of the town. His property consisted of various closes in and around Tiverton, and a fulling mill there. His largest cash bequest was of £200 to one of his granddaughters.24PROB11/314/347. Hartnoll died in 1664. He was buried in Tiverton on 1 April in the south aisle of the church where there was once an inscribed stone in his memory.25Polwhele, Devonshire, ii. 354. None of his descendants is known to have sat in later Parliaments.