West Looe

West Looe (or Porthbyhan) faced its twin settlement of East Looe across the estuary of the River Looe on the southern coast of Cornwall. The two towns were (according to one contemporary) ‘united and knit together with a fair arched stone bridge’ and shared ‘a pretty little harbour’ which was a centre for the fishing of ‘this silly little fish’, the pilchard. Corporation Chronicles…of East and West Looe ed. A.L. Browne (Plymouth, 1904), 11. West Looe was the smaller of the two towns, with a population which remained about half of that of its neighbour throughout the seventeenth century. Cornw. Hearth Tax, p. xviii. It was also the less prosperous, being ‘of meaner degree’, and in the early years of the century had only ‘one street, and few scattered houses’. Carew, Survey, 128; Topog. and Hist. Sketches of the Boroughs of East and West Looe ed. T. Bond (1823), 59. In the 1660s the dwellings were much smaller than those of East Looe, and their occupants included far fewer ‘gentlemen’. Cornw. Hearth Tax, 97, 99. The earliest surviving mayors’ accounts, dating from the 1650s, show that the income of the corporation never exceeded £13 a year. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/32-6. Its charter, granted in 1574, put the government of the town into the hands of a mayor and a common council of 11 members, who also had the right to elect the two MPs for the borough. The capital burgesses throughout the 1640s and 1650s were drawn from a small number of families resident in the town, including the Bawdens, Harrells and Francises, and they took it in turns to serve as mayor. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/63/1, passim. Until the mid-1650s there was no sign of factionalism within the council, and even personal disputes were quickly forgotten. On 10 April 1644, for example, George Cloke was presented before the borough court ‘for laying of hands upon the mayor [William Gadgcombe] and for tearing of his clothes’; but it seems all was forgiven by October 1651, when Cloke was himself elected mayor, and Gadgcombe was re-elected the next year. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/63/1, ff. 13v, 39, 43.

Although the charter promised self-determination, in practice West Looe was dominated by landed interests, including the Arundells of Duloe, who leased the mill and pool from the corporation after 1621, and the Bullers of Morval, who were free burgesses of the borough from 1615. Corporations Chronicles ed. Browne, 185-7. The Trelawnys of nearby Trelawne were also important, and had a say in parliamentary elections in the early years of the century. The over-arching interest earlier in the century was that of the duchy of Cornwall, which owned the lordship of West Looe and the manor of Portlooe, and dominated parliamentary patronage in the 1620s. See HP Commons 1604-1629. The influence of the duchy had collapsed by the time of the elections for the Short Parliament, with the nomination of John Ashburnham* being ignored by the corporation. DCO, ‘Letters and warrants 1639-43’, f. 44v. Instead, two other men with court connections were returned: Anthony Mildmay (brother of the master of the jewel house, Sir Henry Mildmay*) and George Potter (brother of Hugh Potter*, servant of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland). In October 1640 the duchy did not even bother to field a candidate, and West Looe was left to return a local landowner, Thomas Arundell of Duloe and a courtier with Cornish links, Henry Killigrew. Killigrew was disabled in January 1644, and on 21 December 1646 the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for a new election. CJ v. 21a. His replacement (elected in Jan. 1647) was Thomas Arundell’s son, John II, who served until he was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.

The death of Thomas Arundell in the autumn of 1648 prompted an order from the Commons on 18 November for a new writ. But although this writ was issued three days later, this did not prompt a swift by-election. CJ vi. 80a; C231/6, p. 125. Indeed, it was only in October 1651 that his successor, Colonel Robert Bennett, took up his seat in Parliament. CJ vii. 31a. There is, however, evidence that the election itself had been held much earlier, perhaps in the summer of 1649. In a letter to Bennett dated 8 May 1649, the military commander in the south-west, Sir Hardress Waller*, indicated that Bennett was already sure of the seat.

For that which you specify touching the burgess-ship of West Looe I have in a great measure my end in your being chosen, for had it been otherwise I should not have rest[ed] satisfied till you had been in the same predicament, only I could wish my name had not been brought upon the stage … and therefore desire that all formalities touching the writ and indentures may be speedily and effectually accomplished. FSL, X.d.483 (37).

What the common council thought of the high-handed attitude of Bennett and Waller is unknown, and their resistance to such blatant interference may explain the delay in Bennett sitting in the Commons. Worse was to follow, as under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, West Looe was combined with East Looe to form a single constituency, returning one MP to Westminster. A. and O. The details of the elections in 1654 and 1656 are covered elsewhere, but they confirm that West Looe was the more conservative of the two towns, and, perhaps with gentry encouragement, the likelier to resist military interference in their affairs. The corporation cooperated with the commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in 1655-6, and surviving orders dealing with bastards, and the repair of the stocks, may reflect local sympathy with the government’s desire for the ‘reformation of manners’, but the protectorate was an unsettling period, not helped by the intrusion of a leading East Looe burgess, Thomas Clements, as steward of the West Looe court from 1654. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/187-8, 194-5; B/WLO/34; B/WLO/63/1, f. 52. It may be significant that in the spring of 1656, the mayor of West Looe paid £1 3s ‘for copying the charter’, apparently in an attempt to assert the traditional rights (and independence) of the borough. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/33. This attempt failed, and there are signs that the town was now divided into two factions. From September 1656 the mayoral election, previously a formality, became a contest, with the freemen being given a say for the first time, and the old consensual routine was not re-established until the end of the decade. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/63/1, ff. 61v, 66, 68v, 71, 73v.

Despite these disagreements over the mayoral elections, there are indications that an element of stability had been restored by the beginning of 1659. The elections for the third protectorate Parliament in January 1659 saw a return to the old franchise, and the electoral divorcing of East and West Looe. West Looe responded by returning two court nominees: William Whitelocke (son of the commissioner of the great seal, Bulstrode Whitelocke*) and Dr William Petty (secretary of Henry Cromwell* in Ireland). Whitelocke apparently secured election through the interest of the influential Cornish politician, Thomas Povey*, who gained the support of Francis Buller* and his brother, Colonel Anthony Buller*. Whitelocke, Diary, 504-5. Their task was no doubt eased by Francis’s son, John Buller*, who was the borough’s recorder. The 1659 elections thus saw a return to the situation before 1642, when government candidates, supported by local gentry patrons, were the usual candidates for West Looe’s seats. A further sign of this change was seen during the parliamentary session, when the corporation resumed its entertainment of powerful local families. In January the mayor paid for ‘two quarts of sack and tobacco when we were at Duloe’, and in March John Arundell II visited West Looe in return; in February further sums were paid ‘for sack when Colonel [Jonathan] Trelawny† was here’. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/35. This continued in later months. In December 1659 a gallon of wine costing 6s 6d was consumed ‘when we were at Morval’ with the Bullers, and in May 1660 news of the Restoration was greeted with an even grander celebration, with 16s being disbursed ‘when the king’s majesty was proclaimed’. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/36. The desire to return to normality culminated in the autumn of 1660, when the council’s approached Jonathan Trelawny, asking him to resume his place as recorder. It may be significant that Trelawny’s first action was to sack Thomas Clements as steward. He may also have protected West Looe from the purge of corporations in 1662, as the list of capital burgesses in 1664 still included the traditional leading families of the town: the Francises, Bawdens and Harrells. Cornw. RO, B/WLO/60; B/WLO/63/1, f. 89v.