Nottingham

is seated on a hill, which hill is almost of one stony rock, or a soft kind of penetrable sandy stone. It hath very fair buildings, many large streets and a spacious market-place. A great number of the inhabitants (especially the poorer sort) do dwell in vaults, holes or caves, which are cut and digged out of (or within) the rock. So that if a man be destitute of a house it is but to go to Nottingham ... and work himself a hole or a burrow for him and his family, where, over their heads the grass and pasture grows and beasts do feed; fair orchards and gardens are their coverings and cows are milked upon the tops of their houses. J. Taylor, Part of This Summers Travels (1639), 11.

The town was also notable for its ‘strong and defencible castle, but now much ruined, yet still there are many fair and sumptuous rooms in reasonable reparation and estate’. Taylor, Part of This Summers Travels, 12. Dominated by the leather, tanning, malting, hospitality and victualling trades, Nottingham’s economy was sustained by its roles as a large market town, a county administrative and social centre and as an inland port on the Rivert Trent. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 184; C. Deering, Nottinghamia Vetus et Nova (1751), 92-5; Wood, Notts. 4-5; A. Henstock, S. Dunster, S. Wallwork, ‘Decline and regeneration: social and economic life’, Centenary Hist. of Nottingham ed. J. Beckett (Manchester, 1997), 141-54, 157-8, 161. Its population in the 1640s has recently been estimated at about 4,200 – a thousand lower than had previously been thought. S. Wallwork, ‘Population estimates before the Census: Nottingham, 1570-1801’, East Midlands Historian, ix. 37-9; Wood, Notts. 3; Henstock, Dunster, Wallwork, ‘Decline and regeneration’, 134.

Nottingham had been granted county status and full corporate rights in the mid-fifteenth century, and by 1640 it was governed by a mayor, six aldermen and a 24-man common council. The mayor was chosen annually from the aldermen, who were elected from the common council. All the corporate office-holders were elected by the governing body with the exception of the common councillors, who were chosen by the freemen. The corporation controlled admission to the freeman body, which numbered between five and six hundred. Deering, Nottinghamia, 103; P.A. Lloyd, ‘Politics, Religion and the Personnel of Politics in Nottingham, 1642-88’ (Nottingham Univ. MPhil thesis, 1983), 18-25, 27. Nottingham had first sent Members to Parliament in 1295, and the franchise was vested in the freemen. OR; CJ xiii. 611; HP Commons 1604-1629. However, the custom when choosing MPs was for the corporation to select two candidates whose names were then presented to the voters, or some of them, for rubber-stamping on election day. The returning officers were the two sheriffs. HP Commons 1604-1629; Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 55, 58.

In the weeks preceding the 1628 general election, the corporation had agreed to return two ‘strangers’ – Sir Charles Cavendysshe (brother of William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle) and Henry Pierrepont (the eldest son of Viscount Newark) – ‘in the hope that the town, yielding to their request touching their elections hereafter to this Parliament ensuing ... may gain the friendship and favour of those two noble families and have their assistance to the town when any occasion shall [be] offered’. Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 129. This policy of seeking MPs from among the county’s most influential families was apparently still in operation during the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, which saw the return of Cavendysshe again and Gilbert Boune. The indenture, which was signed by at least 28 townsmen, clearly named Cavendysshe and not – as some authorities have stated – his young nephew Charles Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield*. C219/42/1/170; P. R. Seddon, ‘The Notts. elections for the Short Parliament’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. lxxx. 67. Boune was a leading local lawyer and a long-time resident of Nottingham. Infra, ‘Gilbert Boune’. However, one of his patrons was Cavendysshe’s brother the earl of Newcastle, which raises the possibility that in electing him the corporation had at least one eye on gratifying the earl (the county’s lord lieutenant). It is also possible that Cavendysshe’s election (perhaps Boune’s also) was part of a complicated series of trade-offs by which Nottinghamshire’s electoral power-brokers divided up the county’s six parliamentary seats in the Short Parliament elections. Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’.

The convention at Nottingham of selecting MPs in order to curry favour with county grandees may have broken down in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640. Between the end of September 1640 and the election day on 12 October, the corporation created 60 new freemen – 41 on 12 October alone, including the two successful candidates, William Stanhope and Gilbert Millington. Notts. RO, CA 3415, p. 91; Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 58. This large enrolment may indicate that the election was contested and that the corporation was attempting to create a majority in favour of the municipal candidates in the event of a poll. Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 58, 61. Although Stanhope and Millington were members of local gentry families, Stanhope had resided in the town for at least a decade, and both men enjoyed close links with the municipal elite. Infra, ‘Gilbert Millington’; ‘William Stanhope’.

The civil war divided the town’s MPs, with Stanhope becoming a quiescent royalist and Millington emerging as one of the ‘fiery spirits’ at Westminster. Most of the municipal elite aligned with Parliament, although the presence of a parliamentarian garrison in the town may partly explain why there was relatively little overt support for the king among the inhabitants. M. Bennett, ‘Turbulent centuries: the political history of Nottingham, 1550-1750’, in Centenary Hist. of Nottingham ed. Beckett, 169, 170; Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 82-3, 91. What Lucy Hutchinson, wife of Nottingham’s parliamentary governor Colonel John Hutchinson*, perceived as royalist disaffection was largely, it seems, a case of the inhabitants putting the town’s best interests before those of the garrison. Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 70, 76, 84-5. Only one of the aldermen was removed (in 1644) for disaffection, and only 15 burgesses were disenfranchised for having borne arms against Parliament. Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 93, 100.

The main political divide in civil-war Nottingham was not between royalists and parliamentarians, but between the parliamentarian supporters and opponents of Colonel Hutchinson. At the root of this feud – which divided the committeemen, the leading townsmen and local parliamentarian officers – was disagreement as to the extent of Hutchinson’s powers in relation to the garrison and attendant military units and therefore to the defence of Nottingham itself. Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 107-8, 111, 112, 116-18, 132-59; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 227-32; P.R. Seddon, ‘Col. Hutchinson and the disputes between the Notts. parliamentarians, 1643-5’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xcviii. 71-9. Heading the faction that sought to vest military authority in the committee rather than the governor were Millington, James Chadwicke*, John Mason* and Charles White*. In the governor’s camp were Gervase Pigot*, Colonel Francis Thornhagh* and – on the rare occasions he visited Nottingham – Henry Ireton*. Religious tensions among the Nottingham godly may well have exacerbated this conflict. Lucy Hutchinson accused Chadwicke, Mason, White and their confederates of ‘having engaged the persecuting priests [orthodox puritan ministers] and all their idolaters [against Colonel Hutchinson] upon the insinuation of the governor’s favour to separatists’. Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 131, 132, 143, 146, 148, 149.

Although Millington was part of this Presbyterian interest in Nottingham, at Westminster he was a leading political Independent, and it was probably as such that he wrote to the corporation in September 1645, urging it to petition the Commons for a writ to hold a ‘recruiter’ election to replace Stanhope, who had been disabled in January 1644. However, the corporation replied that ‘the town reposeth that trust in him [Millington] that whilst he is at the Parliament they conceive they have no need neither do they desire to petition for another burgess for our town’. Notts. RO, CA 3419, p. 50. Nevertheless, the Commons ordered on 12 November 1645 that a new writ be issued for Nottingham, and the following month the Northern Association committee at York wrote to the corporation, recommending one of its leading members, Francis Pierrepont*, for the vacant seat. CJ iv. 340a; Notts. RO, CA 3420, p. 19. Pierrepont was the younger brother of the man who had represented Nottingham in the 1628-9 Parliament, Henry Pierrepont (now the earl of Kingston) – owner of Nottinghamshire’s largest landed estate – and of the Independent grandee William Pierrepont. In addition, the Pierreponts’ family seat at Holme Pierrepont lay just a few miles to the east of the borough. Infra, ‘Francis Pierrepont’; HP Commons 1604-1629. According to Lucy Hutchinson, the corporation had intended to elect her husband – whom it had made a freeman on 23 November – but Francis Pierrepont had written to the colonel promising to support his return for Nottinghamshire if Hutchinson would do the same for him at Nottingham. Hutchinson duly ‘employed his interest in the town to satisfy this gentleman’s desire and, having very many that had voices in his regiment [deployed in the siege of Newark], sent for them all home the night before the day of the election’. Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 164; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 239. That Hutchinson took the unusual, not to say risky, course of withdrawing troops from active service in order to participate in an election, suggests that Pierrepont’s return was by no means a foregone conclusion and that he faced at least one competitor, possibly from among the senior office-holders. In the event, Pierrepont was returned for the town at some point in late December 1645 or early 1646 and Hutchinson for the county the following March. Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. The election indenture for the Nottingham election has not survived.

Both Millington and Pierrepont survived Pride’s Purge to become active Members of the Rump, although the corporation relied principally upon Millington to look after its interests under the commonwealth. Notts. RO, CA 3423, pp. 31, 61, 65; CA 3424, p. 27; CA 3425, p. 29; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 278. Presbyterian church government was formally established in Nottingham during the early 1650s and apparently commanded widespread support among the leading inhabitants. St Mary, Nottingham par. reg. (Apr. 1651, Mar. 1652); St Peter, Nottingham par reg. (Sept. 1652); Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 152, 160-1, 165-70. Indeed, in 1656 Chadwicke, Millington and Pierrepont were involved in setting up a Presbyterian classis for Nottingham and the surrounding area. Infra, ‘James Chadwicke’; ‘Gilbert Millington’; ‘Francis Pierrepont’; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Hi2 M/1, ff. 2v, 5, 6v, 7v, 8; B. Carpenter, Some Acct. of the Original Introduction of Presbyterianism in Nottingham (1862), 29. Yet despite the strength of Presbyterianism in the town, only two men left the corporation following the introduction under the Rump of the Engagement abjuring monarchy and the Lords. Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 123.

The corporation proclaimed Oliver Cromwell* as lord protector on 21 December 1653, and under the terms of the Instrument of Government the town retained both of its parliamentary seats. Late in May 1654, the protector summoned his first Parliament, which was to meet in September, and within a few weeks the first round of electioneering in Nottingham had begun. On 1 June, Alderman William Drewry* proposed that no corporation member should pre-engage their votes in the forthcoming parliamentary election. Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 281, 282. This motion was ‘well liked of’, and it was agreed that the corporation would ‘reserve their votes free until the election’. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 282. However, a second resolution was also made – not recorded in the corporation minutes – that ‘they would elect two inhabitants within the town (in regard they fear particular oppositions with the county of Nottingham)’. More precisely, the corporation was worried about outside interference in the election, for as Drewry and doubtless other senior-officeholders were aware, the town’s recorder – the parliamentarian peer John Holles, 2nd earl of Clare – was preparing to nominate his kinsman Arthur Stanhope (who was to represent Nottingham in the 1660 Convention and Cavalier Parliaments). Clare’s election-manager in Nottingham was his deputy James Chadwicke, who assured the earl that ‘nothing can sooner alter those votes or resolutions’ than a letter to the corporation recommending Stanhope. Chadwicke himself was a front-runner for one of the places and was so confident of his interest among the leading townsmen – whom he claimed backed him ‘una voce’ – and anxious not to arouse their suspicions of outside influence that he asked Clare not to recommend him to the corporation by name. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25; P.R. Seddon, ‘The Nottingham elections to the protectorate Parliaments of 1654 and 1656’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. cii. 94-5. The earl was to direct his letter on Stanhope’s behalf to Chadwicke, who would ‘procure a hall [a meeting of the corporation] to be called and to present it in the best manner I can’. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25. If Clare did recommend Stanhope it was to little effect, for on 11 July the corporation voted to return Chadwicke and another prominent townsman John Mason, who had commanded the town’s troop of foot during the civil war. Infra, ‘John Mason’; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 282-3. Of those present, only Chadwicke, Mason and Drewry did not vote, and the most likely explanation for Drewry’s abstention is that he, too, was a candidate. Notts. RO, CA 3427, p. 36; Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 131. Drewry was a friend of Chadwicke and also seems to have had connections with Clare, which may explain why the corporation rejected him in favour of Mason. Infra, ‘William Drewry’; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25. There is no sign that this contest – if such it was – turned on national political issues; all three candidates were well-disposed towards the protectorate. On election day, 12 July, Chadwicke and Mason were duly returned, in that order. C219/44, unfol.; Notts. RO, CA 3427, p. 36; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 282-3.

The dominant electoral interest in Nottingham, and indeed the county, by the time of the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656 was that of Major-general Edward Whalley*, whose authority extended across the east midlands. The corporation had been cultivating Whalley, the scion of a Nottinghamshire gentry family, since the early 1650s, and on 1 August 1656 it offered to make him a freeman and select him as one of the town’s MPs in the forthcoming elections. Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 276, 288. Whalley politely declined this offer, probably on the grounds that he was assured of a place to represent the county and that the borough would in any case return men conformable to the protectorate: ‘I have a great influence upon it [Nottingham]; they will not chose any without my advice’. TSP v. 299. The major-general’s interest with the leading townsmen was one factor in persuading Chadwicke to ask the earl of Clare whether he had a candidate to recommend for one of the places.

Your lordship was pleased the last time [in the 1654 elections] to lay your commands upon me, which I was not so well able to perform then as perhaps I may now, if I can but receive them in time ... I have had some conference with Major-general Whalley and shall not doubt of his concurrence and assistance. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/26.

It is not clear whether Clare did indeed nominate anyone, but he would probably have been happy with the town’s choice – made on or about 20 August – of Chadwicke and Alderman Drewry. The election indenture has not survived. Both men were firm supporters of the protectorate, although a number of their fellow municipal office-holders may have had reservations about the rule of the major-generals, if not necessarily Whalley’s authority in particular. The Nottingham address acknowledging Richard Cromwell* as protector was unique in requesting that he ‘keep the sword military in his own hand, but rule them by the civil sword’. A True Catalogue of the Several Places and Persons by whom Richard Cromwell was Proclaimed Lord Protector (1659), 44 (E.999.12); Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 133.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Nottingham returned Alderman John Parker II and Whalley’s son Captain John Whalley. Whalley had written to the corporation on 4 December 1659, almost certainly to request the return of his son for one of the places, and had received a ‘satisfactory answer’. Notts. RO, CA 3432, p. 35. Parker doubtless owed his election to the backing of the corporation. The indenture has not survived, but it is likely that Parker, as the older man and a senior office-holder, was returned in first place. He received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. Nevertheless, on 14 April, the corporation paid him £20 as a testimony of its gratitude for his ‘great pains and charge in attending the service of this town’ in Parliament. Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 303. With the restoration of the Rump in May, Hutchinson resumed his seat in the Commons but Millington stayed away from the House. The strength of Presbyterianism among the leading municipal officeholders is suggested by the proceedings of the corporation commissioners at Nottingham in 1662, which saw the removal of six of the seven aldermen and probably 17 of the 24 common councillors. Notts. RO, CA 3434, ff. 31-3; Lloyd, ‘Politics in Nottingham’, 210.