ELVINES, Edward (d. 1665), of St Nicholas parish, Worcester.

Although the baptism date of Edward Elvines cannot be ascertained, there were several of his name at the end of the sixteenth century in St Nicholas parish, Worcester, a populous part of the city at its northern end, near the Foregate and away from the cathedral.25St Nicholas par. reg.; I. Roy, S. Porter, ‘Population of Worcester in 1646’, Local Population Studies, xxviii. 40; Hearth Tax Collectors’ Bk. for Worcester 1678-80 ed. Meekings, Porter, Roy (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xi), 2. It has been conjectured that Elvines was a clothier, from the evidence that it was probably his eldest son, Edward, who was the clothier allowed a loan of £25 from a city charity in 1648.26Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 419; Styles, ‘City of Worcester’, 241. However, there is no independent evidence that Elvines was a member of the Worcester clothiers’ company, which controlled entry to the trade; nor did he apparently belong to the company of glovers, whittawers, tanners etc., which regulated nine city crafts.27Worcs. Archives, b705:232/BA 5955/4b; Worcester city records, box 2, shelf c9, records of glovers etc. He is more likely to have been the baker granted letters of administration in 1610.28Worcs. Archives, consistory ct. admin. 1609/166, Thomas Elvines. The clothiers’ company provided an important dimension to the cursus honorum of Worcester’s MPs in the Long Parliament, John Cowcher and John Nashe; for Elvines, without this social ladder, a patient working up the civic hierarchy from near the bottom served as his training for high office. Elvines’s natural working environment was the parish; and indeed, despite the vicissitudes of the civil war and his own elevation to the apex of the city hierarchy faute de mieux, he was in May 1649 still playing a leading part in the affairs of St Nicholas.29Worcs. Archives, 850/BA 3696/1, unfol. Having served as constable three times between 1613 and 1622, he was rewarded in 1627 for his willingness to serve his community with a place on the Forty-Eight, Worcester’s larger body of the governing chamber.30Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 123, 160, 180; Worcs. Archives, Worcester city mss, shelf 18, box 4, town clerk’s bk. unfol.

From 1633, Elvines often served the chamber as a viewer or surveyor of its property, and took at least one lease himself of the very many messuages and closes which the chamber had at its disposal.31Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 280, 305, 317, 318, 329, 338, 339. After his period as chamberlain, he continued to be called upon in this way, sometimes riding out of the city to view outlying civic property, and he once assessed the cost of repaving a city lane.32Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, vol. ii. city accts. 1633-9, f. 195v; Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 342. In March 1640 he was one of the 46 signatories to the election indenture of John Nashe and John Cowcher to the Short Parliament.33C219/42/2/4/80. It was thus as one with experience of estate management and as a participant in electoral politics that he was part of the delegation from the chamber to the dean and chapter in December 1640, when the citizens aired their grievances about city-cathedral relations in the cathedral churchyard and the school. The committee of which he was a member was instructed to draw up heads of grievances to present to the city’s MPs. Elvines must have acquitted himself well enough on this occasion to progress to become one of the three Worcester men who were requested on 18 November 1641 to confer with Dean Christopher Potter about the articles preferred against him in the House of Commons. At some point in 1642 before the outbreak of the civil war, Elvines went with the more senior Daniel Tyas, lately mayor, to Oxford to talk with the dean, with whom relations stayed cordial enough to warrant a gift of wine; and Tyas and Elvines received their expenses from the grateful city chamber.34Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, city accts. 1640-69, unfol., undated 1642; Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 342, 349. Although in 1636 Elvines had contributed 5 shillings towards the cost of a lectureship in the city (John Nashe* and John Cowcher* had contributed 10 shillings each), there is no evidence that he played any part in the war of attrition between the chamber and the dean and chapter over the lectureship and the seating arrangements in the cathedral.35Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 307. On 28 February 1642 Elvines was in St Nicholas to take the Protestation.36PA, Main Pprs. 1641-2: Protestation Returns, Worcester.

There seems no reason to doubt Elvines’s later narrative of how he had to leave Worcester for opposing the king’s commissioners of array. This must have happened in the late summer of 1642, during the bids by the newly-appointed commissioners of array on the one side, and by John Wylde* and Humphrey Salwey* on the other, to win over the people of the county and the city to their points of view.37‘Humphrey Salwey’, ‘John Wylde’ infra. Elvines was on 25 August requested to collect contributions from St Nicholas parish for the defence of the city. Opinion in Worcester was by this time dividing bitterly. On 24 September, the troops of Parliament’s lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) entered the city. Henry Ford, the mayor, was arrested, and Elvines returned.38Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 355; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 141; ‘Letters from a Subaltern Officer of the Earl of Essex’s Army’, Archaeologia, xxxv. 326. The attempts he tells us that he made to win Worcester people over to Essex’s army must have been short-lived, as the troops left on 19 October, and from November 1642 to July 1646, the city was in royalist hands.39Styles, ‘City of Worcester’, 224. Elvines fled again, and this time was unable to return: he later described how he became ‘an exile from his own family’ for nearly four years.40SP18/71. The man of his name appointed as an additional constable in St Peter’s parish was possibly his son.41CSP Dom. 1654, p. 141; Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 379. After Sir William Russell arrived on 2 March 1643 to become governor for the king, Elvines’s name was on a list given him of absentees. The initiative for this naming of defectors probably came from the military government and not from the chamber, to judge by the slow pace of civic action against Elvines and other partisans of Parliament. On 19 February 1644, Elvines and two others were told to appear at the next quarterly meeting of the chamber or face expulsion from the Forty-Eight; it was 12 June 1645 before this threat was carried out, and by then Evesham was in the hands of the Worcestershire parliamentary county committee, and the position of the royalists was looking shaky.42Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 378, 395.

Elvines returned to Worcester in July 1646, his property there, as he put it, having been ‘exposed’ to the royalists during his absence. He came back after Col. Thomas Rainborowe* and the county committee had negotiated the surrender of the city, and on 6 August he was restored by the committee, over-riding whatever views the chamber might have had, to the Forty-Eight. The same day Elvines was made sheriff, seemingly with the assent of the chamber. At the end of the month he was sworn mayor.43Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 414-5, 417. The account of Nicholas Lechmere* of Hanley Castle of how ‘honest’ Elvines came to be mayor describes a turbulent period when after the imprisonment of Elvines’s predecessor there was an interregnum until he stood in.44HMC Portland, ii. 146. Rainborowe evidently disapproved of the proceedings by Lechmere and the committee against William Evett, the former mayor, who was put under house arrest and prevented from making his composition.45SP23/207/261. Elvines later claimed that he was persuaded to take the mayoralty on the understanding that he would be reimbursed for his outlay in the execution of it, but Rainborowe was soon called away, and the committee was wound up in 1647. Elvines, the former parish constable, was left as the principal representative of civil authority in Worcester.46CSP Dom. 1654, p. 141. Not only did he assume the mayoralty and the shrievalty, but resumed also a leading role in the administration of St Nicholas parish, where in September 1646 he collected poor rates, and in May 1649 audited accounts.47Worcs. Archives, 850/BA 3696/1, St Nicholas poor bk. 1632-50, unfol. He was active, too, in supporting the county committee, whose treasurer until July 1646 was Nicholas Lechmere. While he was never a member of the county committee proper, being confined to the militia and assessment commissions from December 1648, Elvines nevertheless played an important role on the local committee for taking the accounts of the kingdom, in auditing its accounts. Of the 19 surviving audited accounts, 11 were signed by Elvines; another 8 were signed by Robert Sterrop, his successor as mayor and a colleague in St Nicholas parish poor administration from 1632. 48SP28/187, 188, 216; Worcs. Archives, 850/ BA 3696/1, St Nicholas poor bk. 1632-50; Styles, ‘City of Worcester’, 242 and n. 180.

There was evidently concern among the local supporters of Parliament that no successor to Elvines as mayor would emerge. On 9 September 1647, an order of Lords and Commons authorised Elvines to carry on as mayor beyond his annual term. That he did not in fact need to do so suggests that the chamber was anxious to avoid further encroachments on its authority.49LJ ix. 430b; CJ v. 292a, 297a. In February 1648, Sterrop, Elvines and members of the county committee were ordered as an ad hoc committee by Parliament to dismantle and sell the cathedral leaden steeple, in order to make good the destruction of almshouses, three county churches and the poor stock of the city. Elvines kept the accounts of the sales, which raised over £600, and even as late as August 1654 he was still active in the committee, then describing itself as ‘for the county and city of Worcester’, and still making payments out of surpluses from the lead sales.50Worcester Cathedral Lib. mss D247, D223, D224a, D224b, D225, D303, D606. He was an energetic servant of Parliament and of the city. At some point in 1648 Elvines quartered a brigade of horse in the city, and the following year, as alderman, journeyed to London to lobby Parliament in the interests of city highway repair and of the free school, where he was by this time one of the Six Masters, or governors.51Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, city accts. 1640-69, unfol., undated 1648, 1649; Docs. Illustrating Early Education in Worcester 685 to 1700 ed. A.F. Leach (Worcs. Hist. Soc. 1913), 283. He was made treasurer of the school in 1649, further confirmation that he had financial skills that were acknowledged.52Worcs. Archives, b261.1/BA 3617, f. 117v. Down to the arrival of the Scots in 1651, he continued his civic activities, acting in a senior capacity on various Worcester chamber committees.53Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 447, 449, 453, 454, 456, 458.

When the supporters of the commonwealth government were forced to abandon Worcester to the Scots and English forces of Charles Stuart in August 1651, Elvines had to leave the city for a third time, in the company of the county committee, whose members wrote to Speaker William Lenthall from Gloucester that he had been one of only three members of the chamber to dissent from the decision to let in the enemy.54Bodl. Tanner 54, f. 176. Elvines was quickly back, however, upon Oliver Cromwell’s* victory. As in 1646, Elvines again had to stand in the breach when other reliable men were scarce, and on this occasion he found himself not only mayor but may for a few days have been military governor as well.55Styles, ‘City of Worcester’, 251; ‘John James’, infra. It fell to him to represent the city in its petitions to the Rump Parliament for relief after its sacking. Disease in Worcester was rife, and there were severe difficulties in collecting assessment contributions. A troop of Col. Matthew Thomlinson’s* regiment was quartered there without means of support, and the principal inhabitants had left.56Add. 34326, f. 54. The council of state looked favourably on Elvines, and ordered a repayment of money advanced to the city by the county militia commissioners. On 27 February 1652 the council confirmed Elvines as one of eight city magistrates appointed as a temporary solution to Worcester’s problems of order.57CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 158, 166. He made various journeys to London to advance the interests of the city. In February 1653, he, William Collins* and the Worcester minister Simon Moore were awarded over £290 a year by the trustees for the sales of dean and chapter lands for support of the free school, relief of the poor and repair of the roads.58AO1/361/ 2. In April 1653 he was awarded £10 from the fund accumulating from the sales of cathedral lead, for having solicited in London, presumably successfully, for the cathedral (‘college church’) to be kept open for public worship.59Worcester Cathedral Lib. ms D607. Shortly after 30 September 1653 he travelled to London to try to reduce the level of the city’s assessment contributions, and seems to have lobbied the Nominated Assembly on his own behalf.60Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, city accts. 1640-69 (vol. 3), 1653 unfol.; A14, chamber order bk. 1650-68 f. 12v. Unfortunately for him, the committee for petitions ordered Alderman John Ireton* to report his petition to Parliament on 7 Dec. 1653, a few days before the Assembly resigned its power.61CSP Dom. 1654, p. 141.

On 2 May 1654, Elvines petitioned the council again. He provided a narrative of his own sufferings for Parliament, and declared himself unable to carry on any longer in public service without financial support. His complaint was taken seriously. On 19 June 1654, the council of state authorised an ordinance to provide Elvines with relief, which went through its successive stages in August and was published on 8 September. He was awarded £600 from the estates of those in the county who had helped the Scots. 62CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 141, 214, 285, 296, 300, 596. The high profile he enjoyed with the council of state and his exceptional status in Worcester as an unambivalent supporter of successive republican regimes made him the obvious choice to represent the city in the first protectorate Parliament. Usually an unfailing attender at the city sessions, Elvines was not present on 10 July, and may then have been involved in preparations for his move to London, as the county election took place on the 12th.63Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A13 box 1, sessions bk. 1632-55, unfol.; C219/44/3. Once at Westminster, he played only a small part in proceedings, being named only to one committee (12 Dec. 1654), that for the enumerating of damnable heresies, where he was in the company of Nicholas Lechmere and Col. John Bridges, the Members for Worcestershire.64CJ vii. 399b.

On his return to Worcester, Elvines received the gifts customary for the city’s MPs, but never again stood for Parliament. He was far from hostile to the Cromwellian protectorate, however. He resumed a full part in the civic life of Worcester, surveying property on its behalf as he had done earlier in his career, and attending every sessions meeting as a magistrate down to 9 July 1660.65Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A14, chamber order bk. 1650-68, ff. 20, 21, 26; shelf A13, box 1, sessions bk. 1656-73, unfol. He must have withdrawn voluntarily from the city government at that point, and on 14 September he was one of 12 expelled from the Twenty-Four and Forty-Eight by the chamber. John Wylde* was at the same time removed as recorder and replaced by the royalist Sir William Morton*: the initiative for the expulsions came from 7th Baron Windsor (Thomas Windsor alias Hickman).66Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A14, chamber order bk. 1650-68 fo. 38. In 1661 he gave an account to the city chamberlains of money received for the sale of the leaden steeple of the cathedral, and then retired to private life in the city.67Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, city acct. bk. 1640-69, unfol. His will, drawn up on 29 October 1664, suggests that he enjoyed the modest prosperity of a minor gentleman with property and leases – one from the dean and chapter – in several important city streets. He was buried on 8 April 1665 in St Nicholas, the parish which he had served so conscientiously, and to which he left a small annuity.68Worcs. Archives, Worcester consistory ct. will of Edward Elvines, 1665; Worcester St Nicholas par. reg. None of his family sat in later Parliaments.