FORTH, Hugh (1610-76), of London.

Forth’s family had settled at Wigan after his great-grandfather had moved to the borough, probably some time in the first half of the sixteenth century.15Bridgeman, Wigan, 260. His father, variously described as a brazier and a potter, owned several properties in Wigan and two closes in nearby Parbold, but does not appear to have scaled the heights of municipal office.16Lancs. RO, WCW, will of Robert Forth 1622; Bridgeman, Wigan, 294. Forth’s grandfather and uncle, on the other hand, both served as aldermen and mayor of Wigan during the early seventeenth century.17Wigan Archive Service, Wigan ct. leet roll 2; Bridgeman, Wigan, 213, 218, 259-60, 294. During the 1610s, Forth’s grandfather, father and uncle were closely involved in the town’s quarrel with its parson, John Bridgeman (the future bishop of Chester), for reasserting his authority as ex officio lord of the manor of Wigan.18Bridgeman, Wigan, 259-60; ‘John Bridgeman’, Oxford DNB.

In 1629, Forth was apprenticed to his uncle (and an executor of his father’s will), the London mercer Robert Gardiner.19Recs. of London’s Livery Companies Online; Lancs. RO, WCW, will of Robert Forth 1622. Having ‘contracted’ and obtained a licence to marry a Lancashire woman in 1641, Forth changed his mind and married in relatively quick succession the daughters of two London merchants.20Archdeaconry of Chester Mar. Lics ed. W.F. Irvine (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. lxi), 101; HMC 6th Rep. 64. The day before he secured his freedom of the Mercers’ Company of London, in September 1642, he was admitted to the Levant Company, serving as one of its assistants in 1649-50.21Recs. of London’s Livery Companies Online; SP105/150, f. 31v. Unlike his uncle, he was not deemed ill-affected to Parliament; but nor did he distinguish himself in the parliamentary cause. In 1643, he petitioned the East India Company to secure possession of his uncle’s shares – which had been sequestered – but was told that he would have to seek approval from the Committee for Sequestrations*, and there is no evidence that this was forthcoming.22Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1640-3, ii. 356. By 1646, he had at least managed to free his uncle’s house from sequestration; and with his own commercial ventures apparently prospering, he was granted arms that year by the Lancashire herald as Hugh Forth of London.23CCC 45, 1070; Grantees of Arms (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 92. He was evidently a man of considerable wealth by 1655, when he and two other merchants petitioned the protector for a licence to export 10,000 dollars (probably silver Dutch rix dollars) and goods to the East Indies.24C6/118/38; C6/132/66; Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. 1655-9, 69.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Forth was returned for his native Wigan, where it is likely that he or his family still owned property. However, it was probably not his proprietoral interest (assuming he possessed one) that recommended him to the voters so much as the fact that he lived in London and was presumably familiar with the workings of central government. Moreover, as a Londoner he would have required little from the town by way of remuneration for travel and accommodation.25Supra, ‘Wigan’. That he received no committee appointments and made no recorded contributions to debate in this Parliament did not deter the town from re-electing him to the 1660 Convention, along with his cousin and fellow London merchant, William Gardiner. Both men were listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as likely supporters of a Presbyterian church settlement.26G. F. T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 337. But they had secured their seats only after a double return arising from what appears to have been a quarrel over the franchise between the ‘burgesses’, who enjoyed the vote by right of prescription, and the ‘freemen’; and on 31 July, the House quashed the election, and Forth’s brief and inglorious parliamentary career came to an abrupt end.27‘Wigan’, ‘Hugh Forth’, HP Commons, 1660-90. There is no evidence that he stood for election again.

Forth died early in 1676 and was buried at St Mary Aldermanbury on 20 February.28St Mary Aldermanbury, 189. He died intestate, and the administration of his estate was granted to two of his creditors.29PROB6/51, f. 54. His widow, a daughter of the godly Suffolk squire John Gurdon*, married the eminent Presbyterian divine, Thomas Jacombe.30Calamy Revised, 293. Forth was the first and last member of his family to sit in Parliament.