Derbyshire

Seated near the middle of England, but inclining towards the north ... [Derbyshire] is bounded on the east with the River Erewash, which severeth it from Nottinghamshire; on the south-east with the River Trent and on the south with the River Mease, which said rivers divide it from Leicestershire; on the west with the Rivers Trent and Dove, which separate it from Staffordshire as doth the River Goyt from Cheshire; and on the north by Yorkshire. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 74.

Lowland Derbyshire, or in other words the southern and eastern parts of the county, was given over mainly to arable farming, while the upland region to the north and west – an area of the southern Pennines known to contemporaries as the Peak Country – were used for raising sheep and cattle. Blome, Britannia, 74; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 8. The Peak Country also supported Britain’s largest lead mining industry, which by the eighteenth century was well on its way to becoming ‘the pre-eminent international supplier of lead’. A. Wood, The Politics of Social Conflict: the Peak Country, 1520-1770 (1999), 72; J.R. Dias, ‘Lead, society and politics in Derbys. before the civil war’, MH vi. 39. Perhaps as many as a tenth of the county’s population, which stood at roughly 70,000 in 1660, were involved in the mining, smelting and selling of lead, with a further 10,000 or more dependent upon the industry. D.G. Edwards, ‘Population in Derbys. in the reign of King Charles II’, Derbys. Arch. Jnl. cii. 110; VCH Derbys. ii. 331; Wood, Social Conflict, 74-5. The number of those voting at county elections was somewhat smaller, varying from 1,566 in 1640 to 2,441 in 1661, and doubtless excluded most of the mineworkers. Derbys. RO, D258/34/5/2, 4.

The dominant electoral interest in Derbyshire during the 1620s had been that of the county’s greatest landowners, the Cavendishes of Chatsworth, created earls of Devonshire in 1618. Sir William Cavendish† had taken the senior seat for the county in every parliamentary election between 1620 and 1626, when he had succeeded his father as 2nd earl of Devonshire. HP Commons 1604-1629. The 3rd earl of Devonshire’s appointment as lord lieutenant of Derbyshire in 1638 ensured that with the calling of the Short Parliament late in 1639 he was well placed to become the county’s principal electoral power-broker – and sure enough, two of the three candidates for the shire places, Sir John Curzon* and Sir John Harpur, were either his family’s clients or allies. Add. 64921, f. 60; HMC Cowper, ii. 246; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 71, 72. The Curzons and Harpurs were among the oldest gentry families in Derbyshire and had supplied several of the county’s MPs since Elizabethan times. Infra, ‘Sir John Curzon’; HP Commons 1604-1629; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 71-2. Harpur, a future royalist, also enjoyed what by 1640 was the dubious distinction of holding office at court, having been appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber to the prince of Wales. Harpur owed this appointment to the prince’s governor – and Devonshire’s cousin – the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire magnate and future royalist general, William Cavendish†, 1st earl of Newcastle. ‘Sir William Cavendish II’, HP Commons 1604-29; Bodl. Nalson XIII, f. 74. The third candidate, John Manners*, who had represented Derbyshire in the 1626 Parliament, was one of the region’s greatest landowners and lead industry entrepreneurs. Infra, ‘John Manners’. He and his family’s long-running dispute with the Peak Country ‘free miners’ probably made him an object of both resentment and admiration in the county. He was urged to stand by his gentry neighbour, and ally against the free miners, (Sir) John Gell of Hopton (father of John Gell*). Add. 6682, f. 33; Derbys. RO, D258/10/9/69; Wood, Social Conflict, 23. ‘If the country please to make choice of me to be one of them’, Manners informed Gell, ‘I will serve them willingly and freely; if not, the election ought to be free and the people not laboured one ways [sic] nor other’. Derbys. RO, D258/10/9/69; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 391.

It has been argued that the Short Parliament election for Derbyshire saw Curzon and Harpur stand together on the Devonshire interest against Manners. Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 72. In fact, however, it was Curzon and Manners who were electoral partners and who stood against Harpur. B.W. To the Faithfull and True-Hearted Covenanters (1644), 3 (E.257.6). The two men shared a friend and political ally in (Sir) John Gell, who was also Curzon’s half-brother and business associate in the lead industry. Infra, ‘Sir John Curzon’; Derbys. RO, D258/7/20/29; Dias, ‘Lead, society and politics’, 49. Harpur was the odd-man-out among the candidates in that he had few links with the lead industry and was apparently obliged to spend a considerable amount of time out of the county attending his office as a gentleman of the prince’s privy chamber. Some of Derbyshire’s freeholders certainly objected to him as a courtier, a non-resident and as a former Ship-Money sheriff – although this last objection could also have been made against Curzon. HEHL, Hastings corresp. box 16, HA 5557.

On election day, 26 March 1640, the contest for the Derbyshire places went to a poll. After ‘long debating of the matter, the town [of Derby] being not so convenient’, Curzon and Manners rallied their supporters on ‘a piece of ground called the Hulmes, and after some time spent there, it growing towards dinner time, and great dinners provided, they began to draw away…’. At this point, a local godly minister approached the two candidates – or so he later claimed – and requested three things of them:

First, that they would not leave us till such time as we had made them sure [of their election]. Secondly, that proclamation might be made that all those that were for Sir John Curzon and Master Manners would repair unto them into the Hulmes. Thirdly, that Robert Bennet, who kept the records of convicted papists, might bring them thither and, as the papists came to give their votes, we would reward them according to their deserts and send them away. B.W. True-Hearted Covenanters, 3.

The two men agreed to these requests, and when the poll was taken, ‘papists that came to vote for one man [Harpur]… fled out of the town as fast as they could’. At the poll’s conclusion, Manners emerged the victor with 1,479 votes and took the senior place, Curzon was returned in second place having polled 1,286 votes, while Harpur trailed in third with 1,077. The total number of voters polling was 1,566. C219/42/1/80; Derbys. RO, D258/34/5/4. It appears that Harpur’s links with the court and the backing he received, whether sought or otherwise, from the county’s Catholics fatally weakened his candidacy. He may also have suffered as a result of his association with the earl of Newcastle, who was not a popular figure with the Derbyshire miners. Curzon, by contrast, had been a leading opponent of the crown’s similarly unpopular lease of the Dovegang mine to the attorney-general Sir Robert Heath, and he had doubtless boosted his interest among the voters by treating them copiously with free wine, sherry and sugar. KB27/1677, m. 1381; Dias, ‘Lead, society and politics’, 47, 49-51. Whether Devonshire exerted his influence in the election is not clear. But it seems unlikely that he would have backed Curzon and Manners against his cousin Newcastle’s court-client, Harpur. Neither Curzon nor Manners made any notable impression on the proceedings of the Short Parliament.

Only two candidates are known to have stood for Derbyshire in the elections to the Long Parliament – Curzon and Sir John Coke* the younger, who was the son of former secretary of state Sir John Coke†. Writing to Coke senior two days before the election (3 Nov.), Thomas Withring* was under the impression that Coke junior’s return was a foregone conclusion. HMC Cowper, ii. 262. Yet the care and expense that Coke junior went to in mobilising and treating his supporters among the freeholders suggests that the shire places were keenly contested, and therefore that there was at least one other candidate in the running – possibly Manners. Coke’s accounts reveal that he spent almost £260 in lodging and feeding 1,147 of the freeholders at Derby both before and after the election, which took place on 5 November. C219/43/1/94; HMC Cowper, iii. 138-41; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 73-4. Why the election was held so late – the Long Parliament having already assembled – is not clear. The preciseness of the number of freeholders recorded in Coke’s accounts, and his worry that his return would be questioned in the House, may well be further evidence that the Derbyshire election had been contested and had gone to a poll. HMC Cowper, ii. 263.

At the outbreak of civil war, Curzon sided with Parliament and emerged as a leading member of the Derbyshire county committee, while Coke attempted to reconcile his role as a Parliament-man with a tenacious neutralism at local level. Infra, ‘Sir John Curzon’, ‘Sir John Coke’; HMC Portland, i. 78-9; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 113. As for the county they represented, it was largely royalist in sympathy, especially in the north and west, with the majority of its nobility and gentry siding with the king and contributing large sums to his war chest. But its only significant town, Derby, was garrisoned for Parliament by Sir John Gell and would remain under his control despite repeated incursions into Derbyshire by royalist armies and bitter faction-fighting among the county’s parliamentarian leaders. Infra, ‘Thomas Gell’; ‘Thomas Sanders’; G. Turbutt, Hist. of Derbys. (1999), iii. 1060-1; Wood, Social Conflict, 269-76; J.T. Brighton, Royalists and Roundheads in Derbys. 8-11, 95-6; Dias, ‘Lead, society and politics’, 52-3.

Curzon, a Presbyterian, was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, and Coke retired to the continent after the regicide (dying in Paris in 1650), leaving Derbyshire without formal representation in the Rump. The county was given two seats in the Nominated Parliament, where it was represented by Nathaniel Barton and Alderman Gervase Bennett of Derby – both influential figures in county government under the Rump. If Barton can be credited, he was Cromwell’s personal choice as one of the Members for Derbyshire; and it was possibly Barton who, in turn, recommended his close political associate Bennett. Infra, ‘Nathaniel Barton’; ‘Gervase Bennett’.

Derbyshire was awarded four parliamentary seats under the Instrument of Government, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament, on 12 July 1654, it returned Barton in first place, his old regimental commander Colonel Thomas Sanders in second, and the Derbyshire gentlemen Edward Gill and John Gell (son of Sir John) in third and fourth. The indenture specified that the four men ‘so chosen shall not have power to alter the government as it is now settled in one single person and a Parliament’. C219/44/1, unfol. The first three candidates were ‘publicly assented to without question’. But there was a contest for the fourth place between Gell and a leading member of the parliamentarian faction that had opposed his father in the 1640s, Sir Samuel Sleigh*.

Division of the electors being made in the market-place [in Derby], the majority appeared to be so clearly on Mr Gell’s side that both the sheriff and other indifferent spectators were fully satisfied. Yet the poll being desired [?by Sleigh], was by the sheriff forthwith yielded to and proceeded upon ... [Sleigh] lost it by about forty voices and had lost it by many more had he not been well befriended by the town[smen] of Derby, many of whom came in at the last to help. N. Barton, The Representation or Defence of Collonel Nathaniell Barton (1654), 2.

Sleigh petitioned the House against Barton’s return on the grounds that he was in holy orders and therefore disqualified from sitting in the Commons. Barton, Representation, 1-2; CJ vii. 375a. The House referred the case to the committee of privileges; and as this body was still considering the matter when the Parliament was dissolved early in 1655, both men were disappointed of a seat. CJ vii. 375a. The inclusion of Sleigh among the Members returned for Essex in at least one contemporary list of MPs for this Parliament probably stemmed from two mistakes by the compiler – firstly, the assumption that Sleigh had beaten Gell to fourth place; and secondly, a clerical error arising from the fact that Essex often followed immediately after Derbyshire in such publications. P. Gaunt, ‘Cromwell’s purge? Exclusions and the first protectorate Parliament’, PH vi. 8. Barton and Sanders probably owed their return to their reputation as Derbyshire’s most celebrated parliamentarian soldiers. Infra, ‘Nathaniel Barton’; ‘Thomas Sanders’. Gill too had served as a parliamentarian officer, but mainly in south Yorkshire where he had strong family connections. Indeed, he was returned for the West Riding as well as Derbyshire in 1654, and given that he does not appear to have specified which seat he intended to relinquish, may in fact have sat for both. His return for Derbyshire is something of a mystery, for although he was a member of several local commissions, the bulk of his estate apparently lay in Yorkshire. Infra, ‘Edward Gill’; Derbys. RO, D258/9/5/23; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 401. Gell was returned as one of Derbyshire’s gentry elite and as a member of its most well-known parliamentarian family. He himself, however, had sat out the civil war quietly in London. A religious Presbyterian, with strong reservations about the constitutional propriety of the Cromwellian regime, he apparently refused to take his seat in this Parliament. Infra, ‘John Gell’. Sanders, too, appears to have stayed away from Westminster and may well have shared Gell’s reluctance to take the Recognition, pledging to be true and faithful to Cromwell and the protectoral government, that had been prescribed in mid-September as a condition for admission to the House. However, he was aligned not with the protectorate’s Presbyterian opponents but with republican elements in the army and their civilian allies, who regarded the Instrument as inimical to the cause of establishing a ‘free state’ and a sovereign Parliament. Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’; B. Taft, ‘The Humble Petition of Several Colonels of the Army’, HLQ xlii. 20.

The four shire places were contested by at least six men in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament on 20 August 1656. Gell’s high profile opposition to the Cromwellian government seems to have played well with the Derbyshire freeholders, for on this occasion he topped the poll with 1,059 votes. The other three successful candidates were Sleigh with 992 votes, Sanders with 980 and German Pole, the scion of one of Derbyshire’s leading gentry families, with 836. The total number of voters was 1,574. Derbys. RO, D258/34/5/1, 5-7. The two defeated candidates were the Cromwellian officer Colonel William Michell* of Morthen, near Rotherham, and Wingerworth in Derbyshire (who was returned for Aberdeenshire), and Mr Stanhope – possibly Arthur Stanhope†, the youngest son of the 1st earl of Chesterfield. E307/14/M2/3; Derbys. RO, D5557/2/195; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 554; Jones, ‘War in north’, 393; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 334. The election indenture has not survived. Of the four successful candidates two – Gell and Sanders – were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the Cromwellian settlement and in particular, no doubt, the rule of the major-generals. Infra, ‘John Gell’; ‘Thomas Sanders’.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Derbyshire reverted to its customary two seats and the traditional 40 shillings franchise. The county election, which took place on 6 January 1659, was contested by the familiar duo of Gell and Sanders, representing Derbyshire’s Presbyterian and republican interests respectively, and by at least one other candidate, a ‘Mr Gilbert’, probably Henry Gilbert of Lockow, a royalist. The number of voters on this occasion was apparently a mere 691 – less than half the figure that had polled in 1640 or 1656 and less than a third of the 2,441 freeholders who were to register their vote in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661. Derbys. RO, D258/34/5/2. Either the 1659 poll-book is incomplete, or there was a low turnout, or some of the voters were disqualified by a partisan or over-rigorous sheriff. Although Sanders received four more votes than Gell on the poll, the senior place went to Gell as the son of a baronet. C219/46, unfol. For the first and probably only time in his parliamentary career (such as it was), Gell actually took his seat at Westminster. But there is no evidence that Sanders overcame his distaste for the Cromwellian regime and did likewise. The fall of the protectorate in April 1659 deprived the county of parliamentary representation until the royalists Henry Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield and John Ferrers were returned to the 1660 Convention. HP Commons 1660-90. Among the defeated candidates on this occasion was Gell, who was regarded by the local royalists as the ‘most rigid Presbyterian’ in the county. Infra, ‘John Gell’.