Staffordshire

‘Situated much about the midst of England’, Staffordshire lies on the south-western edge of the Pennines and is bounded by Cheshire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire. In the seventeenth century, the northern parts of the county, a hilly region, were full of ‘great heaths and moors’, which afforded ‘good pasturage and breed very good cattle’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 201. The River Trent and its tributaries dominate the county’s central plain, and here there was a largely arable economy. D. Palliser, ‘Dearth and disease in Staffs. 1540-1670’, in Rural Change and Urban Growth 1500-1800 ed. C.W. Chalkin, M.A. Havinden (1974), 55. Southern Staffordshire is an upland zone with poor soil, ‘but by the industry of the husbandman in manuring it with lime and marl they reap great store of corn’. Blome, Britannia, 201. The county’s population by the mid-seventeenth century stood at around 90-100,000 and was concentrated in the lowland regions in and around the vale of Trent. Palliser, ‘Dearth and disease in Staffs.’, 55. The only known occasion on which the county electorate went to the polls in this period was during the 1646 ‘recruiter’ election, when the number of those voting stood at somewhere between 1,077 and 2,154. Perfect Occurrences no. 34 (14-20 Aug. 1646), sig. Ii2v (E.513.5).

The dominant electoral interest in Staffordshire during the 1620s was that of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, the county’s lord lieutenant; and his influence seems to have increased during the 1630s as he turned from national politics and military service overseas to the management of his estate – the bulk of which lay in Staffordshire. HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Staffordshire’; V.F. Snow, Essex the Rebel (Lincoln, NE, 1970), 202. In the Staffordshire election to the Short Parliament on 26 March 1640, the county returned two of Essex’s deputy lieutenants – Sir Edward Littleton and Sir William Bowyer. C219/42/2/12. The Littleton family had been closely associated with the Devereux interest since the Elizabethan period; Littleton had even named his second son, born in 1637, Devereux. However, it is likely that he also enjoyed a strong electoral interest of his own as the proprietor of a substantial estate in the county, comprising at least nine manors. Infra, ‘Sir Edward Littleton’. Bowyer’s estate and connections were largely confined to the north of Staffordshire; his family apparently enjoying a strong interest among the ‘moorlanders’. Infra, ‘Sir William Bowyer’; ‘John Bowyer’. He had represented Staffordshire in the 1621, 1624 and 1626 Parliaments and has been described as a ‘compromise candidate’, not connected to any particular faction in the county. HP Common 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Bowyer’. However, he, too, was evidently part of Essex’s circle by 1636 at the latest, when the earl had named him, Sir Hervey Bagot* and Thomas Crompton† (father of Colonel Thomas Crompton*) as trustees to secure his wife’s jointure. Infra, ‘Sir William Bowyer’. The Short Parliament election indenture was signed by 15 of the county’s senior gentlemen, including Compton and Sir Richard Weston†. C219/42/2/12.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Essex let it be known that he was leaving the county free to make its own choice of knights of the shire. But this did not prevent one prominent Staffordshire gentleman making inquiries as to the earl’s preferred candidates. HMC 2nd Rep. 47. In the event, Littleton and Bowyer were returned for Staffordshire on 8 October 1640. The indenture is too damaged to make out more than a handful of the signatories, of whom the first was Sir Hervey Bagot. C219/43/2/176. Following Bowyer’s death in March 1641, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued to hold a new election for Staffordshire; and at some point before mid-May, the county returned yet another of Essex’s deputy lieutenants, Bagot, who had represented the county in 1628. Infra, ‘Sir Hervey Bagot’; CJ ii. 104b. The indenture has not survived.

At the outbreak of civil war, Littleton sided with Parliament while Bagot emerged as one of the king’s leading supporters in Staffordshire. Infra, ‘Sir Edward Littleton’; ‘Sir Hervey Bagot’. The county itself became a battleground between the contending parties, with Stafford and most of northern Staffordshire under the sway of the Cheshire-based parliamentarian army commanded by Sir William Brereton* (assisted by the pro-Parliament moorlanders), and Lichfield and the more southern parts of the county dominated by the royalists. During the second half of 1643, as the Essexians’ grew increasingly sceptical about the possibility or desirability of a total victory against the king, Littleton fell away from Parliament, and he, like Bagot, was disabled from sitting by the Commons. Infra, ‘Sir Edward Littleton’.

In 1644, the parliamentarian interest in Staffordshire fractured again, when John Swynfen* and other members of the county committee joined Brereton in denouncing Essex’s ally Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh – commander of Parliament’s west midlands association – as lukewarm against the king and generally politically suspect. Infra, ‘Sir William Brereton’; ‘John Swynfen’. Ranged against this ‘war party’ faction was a group of committeemen and local army officers headed by Colonel Edward Leigh* and Colonel Simon Rugeley. Infra, ‘Edward Leigh’. In September 1644, this pro-Denbigh group engaged the services of a local lawyer Thomas Richards ‘to and for the framing and preferring of divers and sundry petitions in and to both the honourable Houses of Parliament touching and concerning certain grievances under which the said county [Staffordshire] did then suffer and which were by them though fit to be discovered and made known’. In lobbying against the Brereton faction, Richards presented ‘divers’ petitions to Parliament and to ‘several committees of one or both Houses’, disbursing £433 ‘for advice and fees of counsel and to divers officers for several orders and ordinances of Parliament’ and for bringing down to London and maintaining witnesses. C6/136/129; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 60, 62, 151. The main solicitor at Westminster for the anti-Denbigh group was apparently Swynfen. Infra, ‘John Swynfen’.

Staffordshire’s pro-Denbigh group formed the core of the Essexian interest that helped to secure Edward Leigh’s election at Stafford in October 1645 and then contested the county recruiter election the following summer. Supra, ‘Stafford’. A few months before his election at Stafford, early in September 1645, Leigh had written to one of his Staffordshire kinswomen to ask that she move her husband – the firm but non-‘Scottified’ Presbyterian MP Sir Simonds D’Ewes – to support calls in the House for ‘the new choosing of knights for our county ... because I doubt not then to be one’. In this letter, Leigh had claimed that

There is a petition coming up from the justices and gentlemen and freeholders generally to desire it [a writ for holding new elections]. To which it will perhaps be objected [in the House] that there cannot be a free election in regard the king hath three garrisons in our county [Dudley Castle, Lichfield and Tutbury Castle]. Which may be thus taken off: two of those garrisons are in the skirts of other counties, Worcester[shire] and Derbyshire; secondly, as many may now come to the choosing of the knights as usually in time of peace did come ...; three, the election of knights may be as free as that of burgesses in garrison towns, since those which sway the garrison will also so awe the towns as they will give their votes accordingly. Harl. 6711, f. 12.

In the event, the House had ordered that a writ be issued for holding a new election at Stafford – where Leigh secured one of the places – but it would hold off making a similar order for the county until 31 July 1646. CJ iv. 630b.

Having helped to secure the election of his close ally Swynfen at Stafford – alongside Leigh – Brereton began to consider suitable candidates (among them, the man who would preside at Charles I’s trial, John Bradshawe*) for the vacant county places. Supra, ‘Stafford’; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 378. In the spring of 1646, he wrote to the Staffordshire nobleman William Paget†, 6th Baron Paget, and to Sir Charles Egerton* and Sir William Bowyer’s son (and one of Brereton’s officers) John Bowyer* in support of the candidacy of Sir Richard Skeffington*. Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 176, 192. He evidently continued to canvass support for candidates of ‘known integrity and most approved ability’ until within a few days of the election – by which time, four front-runners had emerged: Bowyer, Skeffington, Rugeley and the Staffordshire parliamentarian officer Colonel Thomas Crompton. Staffs. RO, D793/23.

The Staffordshire recruiter election, which was held at Newcastle-under-Lyme, seems to have begun on 12 August 1646, apparently with a ‘shout’ in which Bowyer emerged as the strongest candidate and Rugeley the weakest, whereupon he was eliminated from the contest, leaving Skeffington’s and Crompton’s supporters to battle it out for the second place. Staffs. RO, D793/23; Perfect Occurrences no. 34 (15-21 Aug. 1646), sig. Ii2v (E.513.5). According to a purported eye-witness, Crompton

was thought clearly to have it, but afterwards the other [Skeffington] had more voices. Many of Colonel Crompton’s men had more mind to make hay [it being harvest-time] and save a night’s charges than to pleasure their friends or for the country and therefore went home the first night; and when he [Crompton] had need of them they were absent and when all had passed [they] came in. Perfect Occurrences no. 34, sig. Ii2v.

On the second day, 13 August, a poll was called in which Bowyer emerged the clear winner with 920 votes, with Skeffington in second place on 621 and Crompton in third on 613, at which the sheriff returned Bowyer and Skeffington. Like his father before him, Bowyer probably owed his electoral success in part to his interest among the moorlanders in northern Staffordshire. Moreover, his position as governor of Leek had almost certainly strengthened his influence in the area. Infra, ‘John Bowyer’. Skeffington had stronger links with Warwickshire than Staffordshire and probably relied heavily on the support mustered for him by Brereton, who was one of the signatories to the indenture. Infra, ‘Sir Richard Skeffington’; C219/43/2/178. It is not clear to what extent the election turned on national political issues. Skeffington was certainly a friend and political ally of Brereton, who, in turn, was closely aligned with the Westminster Independents. Infra, ‘Sir Richard Skeffington’; ‘Sir William Brereton’. Bowyer was on close personal terms with Brereton, who was his commanding officer and uncle by marriage. However, he and Rugeley had been associated with the pro-Denbigh faction in the mid-1640s, and, like Crompton, they were apparently well thought of by Essex, who had emerged by 1645 as the leader of the Presbyterian interest at Westminster. Infra, ‘John Bowyer’; ‘Thomas Crompton’.

Skeffington died in June 1647, and on 23 October the House ordered that a writ be issued for holding an election to replace him. CJ v. 341b. Within the next four months, Crompton was returned for the county, but whether he had an easy ride as the previous election’s runner-up, or had to fight for his place, is not known. The indenture has not survived. Crompton had taken his seat by 23 February 1648. Bowyer, who aligned with the Presbyterians at Westminster, was among those secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648 and Crompton, although re-admitted to the House in May 1649, received only one committee appointment in the Rump and devoted himself largely to local affairs. Infra, ‘John Bowyer’; ‘Thomas Crompton’.

Staffordshire was assigned two seats in the Nominated Parliament of 1653, where it was represented by George Bellott and John Chetwode. Both men were relatively obscure figures, even within the confines of Staffordshire politics, and what precisely recommended them to the council of officers when it was selecting the membership of the Nominated Parliament is a mystery. That they appear to have been men of godly convictions is unsurprising. Overall, there seems little to distinguish them from any number of minor parliamentarian gentry in the county – with the possible exception of the fact that they were evidently willing to serve in the Nominated Parliament. Infra, ‘George Bellott’; ‘John Chetwode’.

Staffordshire was awarded three parliamentary seats under the Instrument of Government. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament on 12 July 1654 the county returned Sir Charles Wolseley, Thomas Crompton and Thomas Whitgreave – in that order. C219/44/2/14. Wolseley’s election holds no mystery – he came of a well-established Staffordshire family and was a leading member of Cromwell’s court and council. Infra, ‘Sir Charles Wosleley’. Crompton was returned as a one of the most experienced and high-profile members of the county’s governing circle, and it was probably through his influence that Whitgreave, his nephew, secured third place. Infra, ‘Thomas Whitgreave’. Certainly the Whitgreaves had not figured prominently in county affairs before the civil war, and nor had they distinguished themselves in Parliament’s service as the Cromptons had. The indenture has survived, but is too badly damaged to yield any useful information. C219/44/2/14. All three men were returned again, and in the same order, in the election for the county to the second protectoral Parliament on 20 August 1656. The influence of Major-general Tobias Bridge* upon the election was probably minimal – not least because he would have approved of all three candidates, as did the protectoral council. TSP v. 313; Mems. of the Verney Fam. iii. 283. The indenture was signed by eight men, including Bagot, Bowyer and Bellott. C219/45/1, unfol.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Staffordshire reverted to its traditional two seats. At some point over the winter of 1658-9, the county returned Whitgreave and Compton. Whitgreave’s knighthood meant that on this occasion he took the senior place. A Perfect List (1660). The indenture has not survived. Crompton sat in the restored Rump until August 1659, but the county then seems to have been bereft of parliamentary representation until the royalists Edward Bagot and William Sneyd I were returned to the 1660 Convention. Infra, ‘Thomas Crompton’; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Staffordshire’.