Lichfield

Seventeenth-century Lichfield lay at the intersection of major roads between London and Carlisle and from Bristol to York, about 15 miles north of the small but growing manufacturing town of Birmingham. H. Thorpe, ‘Lichfield: a study of its growth and function’ (Collns. Hist. Staffs. ser. 3, 1950-1), 162. According to Richard Blome, writing in the 1670s, the city was ‘well built, indifferent large, containing three parish churches, besides its cathedral ... and is a place much frequented by the gentry’. R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 204. The growth of the Birmingham manufacturing zone to the south of the city resulted in a contraction of its own output of manufactured goods during the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, Lichfield remained a thriving market centre for agricultural produce, with a growing trade in livestock and grain, as well as brewing and malting. The presence of the cathedral had also established the city as a centre for learning, and that trend evidently continued during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Blome, Britannia, 185-6. Among the native sons of Lichfield were the antiquary Elias Ashmole, the political economist Gregory King and the author and lexicographer Samuel Johnson.

Lichfield contained 296 taxable and 242 non-taxable households by the mid-1660s, with a further 35 or so households in the cathedral close – suggesting a population of about 2,500. Thorpe, ‘Lichfield’, 183; ‘Hearth tax for Lichfield’ ed. P. Laithwaite (Collns. Hist. Staffs. ser. 3, 1936, pt. ii), 143-77; VCH Staffs. xiv. 39. Under successive royal charters, Lichfield was incorporated as a separate county and was governed by a sheriff and two bailiffs (elected annually) and a 21-strong common council. The bailiffs were chosen from the common council, with the bishop of Lichfield nominating the senior bailiff. VCH Staffs. xiv. 76. The city had first sent Members to Parliament in 1305, but this privilege had lapsed after 1353 and was not restored until 1547. VCH Staffs. xiv. 92; ‘Lichfield’, HP Commons 1509-1558. The franchise seems to have been vested in the corporation, which would constitute an electorate of about 30 voters. ‘Lichfield’, HP Commons 1509-1558. The returning officer was the city sheriff.

The dominant electoral interest at Lichfield since the 1620s had belonged to the county’s most prominent peer, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, the city’s recorder and the owner of its fee farm rent. ‘Lichfield’, HP Commons 1509-1558; Harwood, Lichfield, 437. In the elections to the Short Parliament on 26 March 1640, the city returned the earl’s illegitimate half-brother Sir Walter Devereux and its steward (the corporation’s chief legal adviser) Sir Richard Dyot. There were 29 named parties to the election indenture and 19 signatories, including the town clerk and coroner Michael Noble*. C219/42/2/17. In the elections to the Long Parliament on 8 October 1640, the city returned Devereux again, but on this occasion the junior seat went to Noble. It is not known whether Dyot contested the seat or simply failed to seek re-election. Certainly as an associate of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) and a probable Laudian sympathiser, he would have found the political tide running against him in the aftermath of king’s defeat by the Scots in August 1640. Infra, ‘Sir Richard Dyot’. The election indenture has survived, but has faded to the point of illegibility. C219/43/2/180.

The death of Sir Walter Devereux in July 1641 created a vacancy at Lichfield which, in a by-election on 12 August 1641, was filled by the elector palatine’s man-of-business Sir Richard Cave. It has been suggested that Cave – an obvious carpetbagger – was elected through the influence of the elector’s younger brother Prince Rupert. Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlty Hist. ii. 85. But given that the prince was incarcerated in Austria at the time and had no appreciable impact on Staffordshire politics before the autumn of 1642, this is clearly out of the question. In fact, it is almost certain that Cave was returned on the interest of the same man who had secured Devereux’s election – Cave’s former regimental commander, the earl of Essex. Infra, ‘Sir Richard Cave’. On this occasion there were 42 named parties to the election indenture and 24 signatories, including Dyot, Noble and Thomas Minors*. C219/43/2/182. This apparent increase in the number of voters may indicate that the franchise was beginning to extend beyond the corporation.

The civil war divided the town’s MPs, with Noble remaining at Westminster and siding with Parliament, and Cave following Prince Rupert into the king’s camp. Most of Lichfield’s inhabitants seem to have inclined towards the king’s party at the outbreak of war, which at least one observer put down to the lack of a strong puritan tradition in the city.

The Lord Paget [William Paget, 6th Baron Paget] and his followers have gathered 3 or 400 of the scum and refuge of the country and billetted them in Lichfield, a place more pliable to yield to wicked men’s designs than most other places by reason of the cathedral, debauched fellows that have infected the town and the want of powerful preaching ever since the Reformation; where the cavaliers and their scums have disarmed every man in the town (Master Noble, a Parliament-man, and the two bailiffs and sheriffs not excepted). Remarkable Passages from Nottingham, Lichfield, Leicester, and Cambridge (1642, 669 f.6.75).

However, the fact that Lichfield was garrisoned by the royalists for much of the war, and received three visits from the king in 1645, probably made it appear more unambiguously loyal than it actually was. Harwood, Lichfield, 19-30; Thorpe, ‘Lichfield’, 180-1. In fact, there is evidence that the city’s leaders were reluctant to contribute to Charles’s war-chest in the autumn of 1642 and that they chafed under royalist military government. Harwood, Lichfield, 36.

Lichfield’s importance in securing southern Staffordshire for the king repeatedly put it in harm’s way during the war. It was besieged and captured by the parliamentarians in March 1643 (although not before Robert Greville†, 2nd Baron Brooke, had been shot dead by a royalist sniper), recaptured by Prince Rupert the following month, and surrendered to Parliament in July 1646 after a third and final siege. C.J. Harrison, ‘Lichfield from the Reformation to the civil war’ (S. Staffs. Arch. and Hist. Soc. xii), 127; VCH Staffs. xiv. 17-18. During the course of these various actions the cathedral close was ‘very much defaced and spoiled, the cathedral much ruined’ and many of the city’s records – including, it seems, the corporation minutes – destroyed by the parliamentarian soldiery. Harrison, ‘Lichfield’, 128; Harwood, Lichfield, 361; N. Ellis, I. Atherton, ‘Griffith Higgs’s acct. of the sieges of and iconoclasm at Lichfield cathedral’, MH xxxiv. 238-40, 241. On 26 November 1646, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for holding elections at Lichfield to replace Cave, who had been disabled from sitting, and on 24 December the voters returned Michael Biddulph – a local gentleman whose family had been associated with the city for over a century. Infra, ‘Michael Biddulph’; CJ iv. 729a; C219/43/2/183. There were 25 signatories to the election indenture, but it is too damaged to determine the number of named parties. C219/43/2/183. Biddulph was excluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648 and Noble died the following year, leaving the city without formal representation in the Rump.

Lichfield retained one of its seats under the Instrument of Government of 1653, and in the elections to the first and second protectoral Parliaments the city returned Thomas Minors, who had served as city sheriff in 1642-3 and junior bailiff in 1648-9. Infra, ‘Thomas Minors’. Unfortunately, neither election indenture has survived. The city regained its two seats in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, which saw the return of Minors and the rising Staffordshire lawyer Daniel Watson. Watson, who seems to have taken the senior seat, had been appointed recorder of Lichfield by 1663 at the latest, and it is likely that he was returned in 1659 on the corporation interest. Infra, ‘Daniel Watson’; A Perfect List of the Lords and Burgesses now Asssembled in this Present Parliament (1659). Only a fragment of the election indenture has survived, but enough to establish that the election occurred on 13 January. C219/47, unfol.

The honour of representing Lichfield in the 1660 Convention was contended for by Minors, Watson and Biddulph’s son Michael. Biddulph and Watson were returned on election day, but Minors petitioned the Commons, complaining of sharp practice, and Watson was unseated by order of the House and Minors returned in his place. All the candidates who stood for Lichfield in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament the following year were royalists. HP Commons 1660-1690.