Haslemere

Haslemere was an unincorporated small town 13 miles south west of Guildford near the borders of Surrey with Hampshire and Sussex. Its market dated from at least the early thirteenth century and it enjoyed modest continuing prosperity from the iron and woollen industries in the neighbourhood. Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 657; VCH Surr. iii. 45–6; E.W. Swanton, Bygone Haslemere (1914), 140-52. Forty-six householders in the borough, of whom two were women, were pronounced chargeable for hearth tax in 1663. Swanton, Bygone Haslemere, 163. Members had been returned to Parliament by the freeholders or burgage-holders from 1584, a right confirmed in a 1596 charter obtained by Sir William More†, whose son Sir George More† bought the manor in 1601. HP Commons 1558-1603. Since the manor was co-terminus with the parliamentary borough, and since its bailiff acted as returning officer, thereafter the Mores exercised a controlling influence over at least one seat and often gave it to one of their extended family. Sir George’s grandsons, Poynings More* and Francis Carew†, sat on three successive occasions in the 1620s. Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 657-8; HP Commons 1604-1629.

However, by 1640 Poynings More was in financial difficulties and living near Chichester; distance and loss of prestige probably eroded his electoral clout. Surr. Hist. Centre, LM/COR/5/13. At the poll on 11 March the freeholders returned Sir John Jaques*, a London-born baronet with high-placed patrons who had recently acquired a house in Haslemere, and Sir William Ellyot*, a hard-working justice of the peace and deputy lieutenant, who lived ten miles away. Surr. Hist. Centre, LM/984. More, who like his grandfather had a long-running feud with Ellyot, had evidently been confident of success and complained ten days later that, whereas ‘it is already known that by a direct course I have secured ... that place ... now I am outed by an indirect course’. Surr. Hist. Centre, LM/COR/5/11. Whether his support was real or illusory is unknown. There is no record of an appeal; nor did Jaques and Ellyot leave any trace of activity in the Parliament.

Although Ellyot was active in local affairs over the summer, there is no sign that he stood again in the autumn; he turned down an opportunity to contest Guildford in 1641. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 206, 287; Harl. 382, ff. 88, 89, 90, 95. Jaques was a candidate, and was returned on 17 October in an indenture which named him alone, but does not seem to have formally protested against a double return of two others on the same day. Swanton, Bygone Haslemere, 182. These were More and rising Surrey lawyer John Goodwyn*, who had taken their seats respectively by 3 May and 8 February 1641. Procs. LP ii. 391; CJ ii. 133a.

While Goodwyn proved to be an active MP and in time a staunch parliamentarian who sat on through the Rump, More’s commitment both to the institution and the cause was very lukewarm. Through the 1640s he lived mainly in London, but attended the House only rarely. CJ ii. 783b; iii. 77b, 256b, 319b, 374b, 391b; iv. 559b, 735b; v. 543b; HMC 7th Rep. 677; Add. 18777, f. 142; Surr. Arch. Colls. lxi. 58; LJ viii. 578b. His death on 11 April 1649 occasioned a by-election, for which a writ was issued on 7 July and which took place within the next ten days. CB; CJ vi. 239a, 262a; C231/6, p. 157. It may have been contested by Francis Dorrington†, a London clothworker who was to be finally elected for the constituency 30 years later, but the successful candidate on this occasion was, Carew Ralegh*, a cousin of Francis Carew; Ralegh had in 1644 acquired from the Carew family an estate at West Horsley, 19 miles from Haslemere. J.S.T. Turner, ‘Surr. politics in Later Stuart England’ (Newcastle Univ. MLitt. thesis, 1969), 29; HP Commons 1660-1690; VCH Surr. iii. 354; Evelyn, Diary, ii. 545n.; JRL, NP/39, NP/43, NP/48. His engagement with Haslemere was possibly slight, his parliamentary service being driven, at least initially, by a quest to regain lands forfeited at the attainder of his father, Sir Walter Ralegh†.

Haslemere was disenfranchised under the Instrument of Government. In elections for the 1659 Parliament Goodwyn and Ralegh found seats elsewhere, respectively at Bletchingley and Guildford. (Sir) Poynings More’s heir, William More†, was still a minor and the senior representative of the family interest locally was his uncle, James Gresham†, who lived on the outskirts of the borough. Certainly guilty of fraudulent creation of votes at some point before the Restoration, he may have attempted to manipulate the poll in 1659, although as a strong royalist he was probably not himself a candidate. ‘James Gresham’, ‘Haslemere’, HP Commons 1660-1690. All three men involved in a double return had some claim to be protectorate loyalists. Henry Fitzjames* a former parliamentarian officer settled 13 miles away at Stoke, near Guildford, was a friend both of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* and Protector Richard Cromwell*. John Westbrooke*, resident six miles away at Whitley, was a militia captain and known friend of county grandee Sir Richard Onslow* (Lord Onslow), while John Hooke*, a Hampshire man with lands in Surrey, had also been active in public life locally.

Initially an indenture returning Fitzjames and Hooke seems to have been the one accepted, and both took their seats – the former by 2 February. CJ ii. 597b. However, following a petition from Westbrooke, on 17 February the privileges committee reported its investigations, having sat, according to diarist Thomas Burton*, ‘most assiduously’. The dispute lay between Westbrooke and Hooke. Westbrooke was found to have had support from ‘15 capable electors’, but while Hooke supposedly had more, on closer examination only 14 of these were deemed eligible. Votes from a minor (probably William More, or his uncle as a proxy), from the miller (not an inhabitant), from the bailiff (neither a freeholder nor an inhabitant) and possibly also from others in these categories, were ruled void. Burton’s Diary iii. 325. On 3 March the Commons resolved that Fitzjames was ‘duly elected’ but, having heard the committee’s opinion that only freeholders who were also inhabitants were enfranchised, determined that Westbrooke had a majority and ought to have been returned, while Hooke’s election was void. CJ vii. 618b. On 31 March the bailiff of Haslemere answered a summons to attend the House and, at the bar, scored out Hooke’s name in the indenture, inserting that of Westbrooke. CJ vii. 622a.

Goodwyn and Ralegh, both of whom had been active in this Parliament, returned with the Rump as Members for Haslemere in May 1659. After the Restoration the More interest soon re-asserted itself.