Launceston

Originally a Saxon manor owned by the bishops of Sherborne, Launceston (or Dunheved) developed as the most important town in Cornwall during the middle ages, and its many privileges reflected the status of its castle as the headquarters of the duchy of Cornwall and a vital strategic stronghold, guarding the crossing of the Tamar from Devon. The town was the centre of tin production in eastern Cornwall, hosted the assizes and the county gaol, and enjoyed regular markets and fairs, which encouraged the growth of the cloth industry which, by the early seventeenth century, had eclipsed tin as the most important trade in the region. R. Peter and O.B. Peter, Histories of Launceston and Dunheved (Plymouth, 1885), 2-9, 68-188; C. Henderson, Cornish Church Guide (Truro, 1925), 137, 198; HP Commons 1604-1629. Richard Carew recorded ‘a new increase of wealth’ in the town at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and the population of the borough was certainly growing at this time. Carew, Survey, 116. In 1599 it was recorded that there were around 250 householders in the borough (and thus around 1,000 or 1,250 residents in all) but the Protestation returns of 1641-2 listed nearly 300 names, perhaps indicating a total population of as many as 1,500. Peter and Peter, Histories, 222; Cornw. Protestation Returns, 222-3. The later Hearth Tax lists show that by the early 1660s Launceston could boast a large number of substantial houses, with over 30 properties having six or more hearths, and nine having ten hearths or more. Cornw. Hearth Tax, 27-9. The borough was governed by a mayor and eight alderman, assisted by an unspecified number of freemen or burgesses, and had a local reputation for civic pride, both in defending its privileges through the courts and also in conducting its affairs with a grandeur unusual in Cornwall, with the mayor ‘and his scarlet-robed brethren’, presiding at the weekly borough court, the twice-weekly markets, and the quarterly fairs. Peter and Peter, Histories, 189, 191, 195-6, 291; HP Commons 1604-1629; Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 280-1; Carew, Survey, 116.

The Jacobean elections had returned mostly duchy candidates, but during the 1620s the Grenvile family grew in influence in the borough. The Short Parliament elections saw the culmination of this process. The duchy nominee, Thomas Fotherley†, was ignored, and instead the borough returned its former MP, Sir Bevill Grenvile, alongside another veteran of the 1620s, Ambrose Manaton, who had been recorder since 1622. DCO, ‘Letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 44v; Peter and Peter, Histories, 406. It may have been no coincidence that both men, having sided with Sir John Eliot’s† faction in the earlier decade, were now gravitating towards the court, although any such influence in Launceston was clearly independent of the duchy interest. This pro-royalist stance continued in the elections for the Long Parliament later in the year, when Launceston brushed aside the duchy candidate, Sir William Beecher†, and elected Manaton once again, this time alongside the notorious turncoat, William Coryton. DCO, ‘Letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 67. Such was Coryton’s unpopularity among MPs, that his part in the irregular election at Bossiney was used as an excuse to remove him from the Commons altogether on 18 August 1641, and a new writ for a by-election was ordered the same day. CJ ii. 261b-262a. The new MP, elected in November of that year, was the local landowner, John Harris I of Hayne in Devon. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/345.

During the first civil war, the strategic position of Launceston meant that it saw regular military action, although most of this was modest in scale, perhaps reflecting the inadequacy of the town’s defences. In September 1642 Sir Richard Buller* and his parliamentarian supporters began to fortify Launceston against Sir Ralph Hopton* and the royalists at Bodmin, but it only took an advance in strength for the defenders to lose heart and retreat to Plymouth. Hopton ‘found the gates of Launceston open, and entered without resistance’ a few days later. Bellum Civile, 19, 22. In the winter and spring of 1642-3, the corporation raised money and men for the king’s army, kept in close contact with Manaton and Coryton, and sent wine to Grenvile. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/179/2/3. In the same period the defences were strengthened, with a new wall being built ‘in the back lane’, and the town successfully held out against an attempt on it by Major James Chudleigh and a force of Devon parliamentarians, until relieved by Hopton. Coate, Cornw. 59; Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/179/2/3. In the early months of 1644 it was at Launceston that the Cornish recruits gathered before reluctantly marching into Devon to serve under Prince Maurice. Bodl. Clarendon 26, f. 164. When the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, advanced into Cornwall in July 1644, Launceston was immediately abandoned by the king’s forces, and, in a repeat performance, at the end of the month Prince Maurice was able to enter the town, ‘all Essex his army being gone thence, and no resistance’. CSP Dom. 1644, p. 407; Coate, Cornw. 139-40; Symonds, Diary, 45.

During 1645 Launceston became the headquarters of the prince of Wales and his council, but after the final defeat at Torrington, and the advance of Sir Thomas Fairfax* in February 1646, the town was hurriedly evacuated once again. Coate, Cornw. 179, 181, 205-6; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 46-7, 367. According to one parliamentarian account, the royalists had originally ‘resolved to maintain the town against our forces’, but at the first approach their resolve crumbled and the main force was withdrawn, ‘and left it only to some few of the trained bands, they after some resistance retreated, our men entered, took some prisoners and killed only two, it being now dark the rest escaped’. It was also claimed that ‘the inhabitants seemed generally much revived at our coming, being sensible that they were formerly but deluded by the blandishments of the king’s party’, and the New Model soldiers were ordered not to plunder the town, ‘so that our courtesy is likely to have a more powerful influence upon the Cornish than the enemy’s cruelty’. Sir Thomas Fairfax His Victorious Proceedings in the Taking of Launceston (1646), 4-5 (E325.26). The borough records suggest that the corporation was more than happy to go along with this favourable analysis of recent events. On 24 February 1646 – before the town had fallen – they hedged their bets by sending out two messengers, one to Hopton, the other to Fairfax; and after the town had changed hands prominent local parliamentarians, including Thomas Gewen, Colonel Robert Bennett and Nicholas Trefusis*, as well as their estranged MP, John Harris I, were presented with wine, sugar and other gifts, and were entertained as lavishly as their royalist counterparts had been three years before. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/180. In a further demonstration of their new loyalty, on 19 September 1646 the corporation sacked Manaton as their recorder, ‘having deserted the Parliament and adhered to their enemies’, and chose Gewen to replace him. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/350. The change was celebrated with eight quarts of sack, burnt claret and white wine. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/181.

Manaton had been disabled from sitting in Parliament as a royalist on 22 January 1644, but the Commons did not order a new election for the borough until 12 August 1646 (apparently in the teeth of ‘much opposition’, probably from the Independent interest), and a writ was not issued until mid-December. Harington’s Diary, 31; CJ iv. 642a; C231/6, p. 72. The election was held on 4 January 1647 and saw the return of the new recorder, Thomas Gewen, who was already a well-known Presbyterian. C219/43/30. Gewen went on to be imprisoned at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, although it was not until 1651 that Gewen was removed as recorder of Launceston, to be replaced by another local lawyer, Leonard Treise. Peter and Peter, Histories, 406; Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/353. In September 1652, in what may be another sign of division, one alderman refused to take his oath, and had to be replaced. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/354. By this time the duchy lands had been sold off, and, significantly, the purchaser of the castle and park was the radical army officer and Baptist, Robert Bennett. Parochial Hist. Cornw. iii. 87; FSL, X.d.483 (166). There was also now a permanent garrison at Launceston, drawn from Bennett’s own regiment of foot. FSL, X.d.483 (64). The political changes may not have been exactly to the taste of the corporation, but they again proved adaptable, and the early 1650s saw signs that the town was quietly confident for the future. New stocks were erected in January 1653, and the town gates were repaired; in April the town’s hospital was formally ‘viewed’ by the mayor and aldermen; in July the town clock was repaired; and in December the creation of the protectorate was celebrated by the corporation. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/184-5.

Bennett’s dominance in eastern Cornwall was reduced after December 1653, as his relationship with the newly created protectorate was tense; he was, nevertheless, returned as Launceston’s sole MP on 6 July 1654. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/185. The reasons for this are uncertain. Launceston may have shared Bennett’s wary reaction to the new regime, but for very different reasons, as the ruling clique continued to favour Presbyterianism, perhaps as a bulwark against the chaos of the sects, and the minister of the town, William Oliver (appointed by the corporation in 1656) was a prominent member of the Cornish Presbyterian classis. Coate, Cornw. 340-1, 343n. Residual Presbyterian sympathies no doubt underlay the reinstatement of Gewen as recorder, after Treise’s death on 30 March 1654, and it was Gewen who was elected in the summer of 1656 for the second protectorate Parliament, despite the efforts of the local major-general, John Disbrowe*, who came to the town in August to manage the elections across the south west. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/355; TSP v. 302. Gewen was excluded from Parliament by the protectoral council within a few days of the opening of the session on 17 September. CJ vii. 425b; SP18/130/29; Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 156.

The conservatism of the rulers of Launceston can best be seen in the persecution of Quakers in the mid-1650s. George Fox and his two companions had been arrested in Launceston and committed to gaol on the authority of Gewen as recorder, and went on to be indicted at the Launceston assizes in November 1655; three other Quakers were also convicted in August 1656. CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 262; G. Fox, The West Answering to the North (1657), 34, 44 (E.900.3). Fox’s writings made Launceston gaol (or ‘Doomsdale’) notorious among prisons, both for the cruelty of the gaoler and the conditions found in ‘this noisome, filthy stinking hole, where was a puddle of piss, and filth over their shoes, and the excrements of felons’. Fox, West Answering to the North, 34-5, 37. He also indicates that the townspeople were mostly hostile to the inmates, with ‘multitudes’ attending the court hearing; that the gaoler’s ‘consorts’ were three local men; and that the mayor, Philip Page, was in cahoots with Gewen. Indeed, Fox denounced the gaoler, the recorder and the mayor as ‘the threefold cord of their cruel persecution’. West Answering to the North, 15-16, 38, 65-7. Having said that, there were some among the townsfolk who tried to relieve the Quakers’ suffering, including ‘a maid of the town, a Friend’, and ‘Susanna Kemp one of the town of Launceston, the prisoners’ servant’, and this may indicate that there were already Quaker converts in the town. West Answering to the North, 45, 63. The Quaker threat may have united Launceston in the later 1650s, as both Baptists such as Bennett and Presbyterians such as Gewen agreed that serious measures must be taken against them. It was perhaps this basic agreement that lay behind the apparently odd compromise in which Gewen and Bennett were re-elected for the borough in the elections for the third protectorate Parliament on 13 January 1659.

There is no evidence for Launceston’s reaction to the fall of the protectorate, or to the successive commonwealth regimes that followed, although the civic round of entertaining and celebrating was apparently unaffected. The Restoration necessitated a further change of allegiance, and the corporation welcomed it with four hogsheads of beer and cider and a bonfire on 17 May 1660; further festivities were laid on for the thanksgiving day on 24 May, and on the same occasion two former members of the corporation were ‘restored to their places’. Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/186. Gewen lost his place as recorder to John Coryton† later in the year, and the corporation quickly became reconciled to the new regime. Peter and Peter, Histories, 406. In electoral terms, from 1660, Launceston was once again firmly in the grip of local gentry interests, with the duchy of Cornwall remaining on the sidelines, although the court interest had gradually re-established itself by the 1680s, through the influence of the 1st earl of Bath (Sir John Grenvile†). HP Commons 1660-1690.