Saltash

The borough of Saltash, on the west bank of the River Tamar and the edge of Plymouth Sound, was a town of some commercial and strategic importance, established by the duchy of Cornwall within the manor of Trematon in the thirteenth century.1 Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 170-6. According to the antiquarian Richard Carew, writing at the turn of the seventeenth century, Saltash ‘compriseth between 80 and 100 households’ – a number that had apparently declined by the time of the Hearth Tax survey of the 1660s, which listed only 66 households.2 Cornw. Hearth Tax, 4. The population may have been between 300 and 400 people during 1640-60. Carew said that the town was governed by a mayor and ten burgesses, and that its prosperity rested on ‘sundry large privileges over the whole haven, to wit a yearly rent of boats and barges appertaining to the harbour, anchorage of strange shipping … and other admiral rights’, while the town merchants operated seven or eight ships from the port.3 Carew, Survey, 112v. Plymouth, just across the water, was jealous of Saltash’s privileges, and in 1625 a concerted effort was made by the Devonians to wrest some of the rights from their smaller neighbour, although the duchy interest successfully defended the status quo.4 CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 437, 462-3, 465. Despite this, the duchy of Cornwall was not the dominant patron of the borough during the parliamentary elections of the 1620s, as Sir Richard Buller* of nearby Shillingham had become recorder by the beginning of the decade, and, with a few exceptions, it was the Buller interest that ruled the roost.5 HP Commons 1604-1629.

The Short Parliament elections confirmed the supremacy of the Bullers. The duchy nominated the courtier Henry Wynn*, but the request was ignored and Sir Richard’s sons George Buller and Francis Buller I were returned instead.6 DCO, ‘Letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 44v. The elections for the Long Parliament that autumn saw the return of Edward Hyde – at that time considered to be a critic of the Caroline regime – alongside George Buller; again, the duchy nominee was passed over.7 DCO, ‘Letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 67. At the onset of civil war in the summer of 1642 the Bullers became leading parliamentarians in Cornwall, and Saltash was the focus for much military attention – not least because it could be used to defend or threaten parliamentarian Plymouth. It was at Saltash that Sir Richard Buller and his allies first organised resistance to the king in August 1642, but when Sir Ralph Hopton* forced the parliamentarians to flee to Devon in October, Saltash was garrisoned by the royalists.8 Coate, Cornw. 36-7. In late December the town was bombarded from the Devonshire side of the river and also by three ships ‘in the river over against the town’, and it swiftly changed hands once again, the parliamentarians erecting earthworks in front of the main gate as well as deploying a 16-gun ship in support of the town. Saltash held out defiantly after the parliamentarian defeat at Braddock Down in January 1643, but was retaken by the king’s men after a three-hour fight.9 Bellum Civile, 28-31; Coate, Cornw. 41, 45. The effect on the town of military occupation, bombardment and assault is unclear, but at the very least trade must have been severely disrupted. Worse was to follow. Saltash had again fallen to the parliamentarians during the advance into Cornwall of the parliamentarian army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, but it was soon retaken for the king. According to the royalist Joseph Jane*, Sir Richard Grenvile’s successful assault was followed by war crimes, as ‘[Grenvile] hangs many in cold blood against whom changing sides could not be objected’; the town was subsequently plundered for supplies.10 Bodl. Clarendon 26, f. 165; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 436, 503; Coate, Cornw. 156, 164. In October 1644 the sheriff of Cornwall, Sir Francis Bassett, reported the ‘sad news’ that Saltash had once again been taken by the parliamentarians, although later reports suggest that this latest occupation was brief.11 Cornw. RO, B/35/235; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 12, 36-7. When Sir Thomas Fairfax* invaded Cornwall at the head of the New Model army in the spring of 1646, Saltash was among those towns abandoned by the royalists as they retreated back to Truro.12 Coate, Cornw. 206-9.

The end of the war in the south west brought recruiter elections. As Hyde had been disabled to sit in Parliament in August 1642, and George Buller had died in 1646, on 12 August of the latter year the Commons ordered that a writ be issued to elect two new burgesses for Saltash.13 CJ iv. 642a. The election indenture, dated 14 December, includes the signatures of the mayor (John Radford) and 20 burgesses and inhabitants – suggesting that the right of election now rested in the inhabitants as well as the corporation.14 C219/43/58-9; Coate, Cornw. 17. The MPs returned were not Bullers, but they were almost certainly elected on the Buller ticket, and both were moderate Presbyterians. Henry Wills was a Saltash alderman and ally of the Bullers, while John Thynne was a Shropshire gentleman. Both were secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.15 Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 387, 389.

There is very little evidence for the condition of Saltash after the regicide. In August 1650 the mayor and burgesses bought the fee-farm rents of their own town, which suggests a pragmatic reaction to recent events; but there remained a small number of royalists among the inhabitants, and one John Hunkins of Saltash was registered as a suspected person when he visited London in 1656.16 Coate, Cornw. 272; Add. 34014, f. 13v. For their part, the Bullers refused to collaborate with the commonwealth regimes, and could not prevent the disenfranchisement of Saltash during the early years of the protectorate, but in January 1659, as the old rules governing elections were reintroduced, new writs were issued. The borough election was held on 11 January, and once again the indenture was signed by the mayor (Stephen Eustis) and twenty others.17 C219/46/28. Two-thirds of those named in 1659 had also signed the indenture in 1646, suggesting that the social and political structure of the corporation had remained fairly stable during the revolutionary years. It is no surprise that the MPs elected – John Buller (recorder of Saltash) and another moderate Cornishman, Edmund Prideaux II – reflected the wishes of the Buller interest. John Buller, who was also returned for East Looe, waived his election for Saltash on 24 February 1659, and a new writ was ordered to be issued although there is no evidence that a by-election was held.18 CJ vii. 607a.

In 1660-1 Saltash remained in the hands of the Bullers, with the MPs elected for the Convention and the Cavalier Parliament all being members of that family. The decline of Buller fortunes, with the successful prosecution of Francis Buller I for sedition in 1661, was followed by the ousting of John Buller as recorder of Saltash in August 1662, and the patronage of the borough had passed into other hands by the time that new elections were held in 1679.19 HP Commons 1660-1690; Parochial Hist. Cornw. iv. 170; Antony House, Carew-Pole BO/21/18.