Fowey

Fowey’s relative prosperity was based on its harbour, which provided a safe and generous anchorage on the otherwise forbidding south Cornish coast. According to Richard Carew†, writing at the turn of the century, the harbour entrance was ‘guarded with blockhouses … as is also the town itself, fortified and fenced with ordnance’. Carew, Survey, 134; Parochial Hist. Cornw. ii. 23-4 A later account echoes this, recording that the haven as ‘very good and commodious for the greatest ships, [and] is strongly defended both by nature and art, having a fort with two blockhouses’. Cornw. RO, R/5508. These defences no doubt encouraged Fowey’s growth as a trading centre – handling tin and cloth and fish – as did its position as the out-port of the duchy of Cornwall’s main tin entrepot of Lostwithiel. The growth of Plymouth from the sixteenth century reduced Fowey’s national importance, but it remained a centre of the coastal trade, although suffering greatly from piracy during the 1630s. J. Keast, The Story of Fowey (Exeter, 1950), 15, 26, 36, 44, 47-8, 55-6. Throughout this period the town remained small, having no more than 400 inhabitants in the mid-seventeenth century, and the houses were mostly unimpressive, with only six boasting more than 4 hearths. Cornwall Hearth Tax, 52-3. Its governmental structures were equally modest. Although not formally incorporated until 1685, Fowey’s townsmen enjoyed a measure of autonomy, and its government had centred on a portreeve and burgesses since the middle ages; but these were inevitably prey to outside influences. In the early seventeenth century the main landowners were the Treffrys of Place (who held the ‘burgage manor’ of Fowey), the duchy of Cornwall (which had acquired the rival ‘borough manor’ when nearby Tywardreath Priory was dissolved in the 1540), and the Rashleighs of Menabilly, who owned most of the freehold properties in the town and a large mansion nearby. When it came to parliamentary elections, the duchy was able to secure its own candidates only intermittently, with the seats being controlled by the Rashleighs and Treffrys between 1604 and 1628, and by the end of the 1620s the Rashleighs had emerged as the most powerful interest in the borough elections. Keast, Fowey, 49-51, 71-5, 78; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Fowey’.

The Short Parliament elections confirmed the dominance of the Rashleighs. In February 1640 the duchy nominated Richard Lane, attorney-general to the prince of Wales, but the request was ignored. DCO, ‘letters and warrants, 1639-43’, f. 44v. Instead, when elections were held a month later, Jonathan Rashleigh was returned with Edwin Rich, who may have been sponsored by Rashleigh at the request of his cousin, the 2nd earl of Warwick. C219/42/9. In the elections for the Long Parliament in October 1640, Rashleigh was again returned, alongside the prominent east Cornwall landowner and critic of the crown, Sir Richard Buller. C219/43/19. Buller’s election was called into doubt soon after the opening of Parliament, and it was objected on 14 November that a blank indenture had been sent to London, which Buller had then filled in himself. Buller protested that ‘he was chosen by the town’ in the proper manner, although he admitted that ‘he had the indentures sent up to put in his own name’. This was irregular, but not unheard of, and it was only when a committee reported back on 20 November with further allegations that Buller’s fate was sealed. In fact, it was alleged, ‘one Trefoile’ (?John Treffry) was designed’ for the place, and the blank had been intended for him; but ‘in the interim Sir Richard Buller was put in’, and thus ‘there was no election made’. CJ ii. 32a-b; Procs. LP i. 145-6, 148-9. Buller was exonerated, ‘as it appeared not to be with his privity’, and within a week he was in the running once again. CJ ii. 32b. On 27 November Richard Trevill, writing from Saltash, informed Sir Richard that the new writ had reached Fowey, ‘which I heartily wish your good success, yet I had rather it had not been questioned at all, but however there was no other remedy, I rejoice that you came off so fairly’. Cornw. RO, BU/1230. The date of Buller’s second election is not known, but probably took place at the beginning of December 1640.

At the onset of civil war in the summer of 1642, Fowey’s MPs took different sides, with Rashleigh joining the king and Buller leading the local parliamentarian party. The town itself was firmly in royalist hands until the parliamentarian army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, marched into Cornwall in August 1644. Trapped in Lostwithiel, Essex could command only a strip of land adjacent to the Fowey River, and Fowey harbour was his only hope of relief or rescue. The town was of vital strategic importance in the fighting that followed. According to Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon, the royalist capture of strong points above the town to the east ‘made Fowey utterly useless to Essex, save for the quartering of his men, not suffering any provisions to be brought in to him from the sea that way. And it was exceedingly wondered at by all men that he, being so long possessed of Fowey, did not put strong guards into those places’. Clarendon, Hist. iii. 398-9. George Lord Digby* concurred, seeing the decisive moment as the capture of ‘an old tower which so commands the harbour of Fowey’ as a crucial move, as the parliamentarians could no longer ‘avail themselves by the river from thence’. Cornw. RO, RS/1/1058. The last stand of Essex’s infantry, abandoned by both its commander and the cavalry, took place in an ancient earthwork above the town, and the whole episode soon became known to parliamentarians as ‘the late disaster at Fowey’. HMC Portland, i. 184. The town of Fowey suffered considerably during the brief parliamentarian occupation. Both the Rashleighs and Treffrys were prominent royalists, and a number of the lesser inhabitants were also known to be ‘in arms for the king’, and the soldiers took out their frustrations on the fabric of the town, defacing the Great Hall, wrecking the church, plundering the inhabitants, damaging the defences, and causing many thousands of pounds worth of damage at the Rashleigh houses at Fowey and Menabilly. Oddly, the Treffry house at Place was largely untouched, perhaps thanks to the intervention of parliamentarian relatives such as John Trefusis or the puritan divine Hugh Peter (himself a native of Fowey). CCAM 1299; Coate, Cornw. 148-9, 153-4; Cornw. RO, R/5508.

On 21 December 1646, nine months after Cornwall had been conquered by Parliament, the Commons ordered that new elections should take place at Fowey, as Buller had died in 1642 and Rashleigh had been disabled for royalism in 1644. CJ v. 21a. It is not clear when a writ for new elections was issued, but it was apparently not acted upon until the spring of 1648. On 3 April of that year the sheriff wrote to the portreeve and burgesses at Fowey informing them that he had now received instructions to hold the new election, and commanding them to prepare for it. It was presumably in the weeks afterwards that a London merchant, Nicholas Gould, was elected. Gould had no connection with Cornwall, and his links with the Rashleighs were probably through his close friend, Gregory Clement, who was his running mate in this election. Clement did not secure the other seat, however, perhaps owing to the foot-dragging of Rashleigh and others. His letter to Rashleigh, dated 30 May 1648, certainly hints at local opposition, for ‘you make mention that if it had not been for [Rashleigh’s servant] John Langdon I had been certainly chosen. I am heartily sorry it did so fall out that he should acquaint you I was glad I had it not and that I never desire it, it is very strange’. Clement said he had set his sights on Fowey ‘so soon as my Cousin Sparke acquainted me with therewith, which was in April last, whether I would accept of it for me’, and although Rashleigh had observed, perhaps pointedly, that there were other seats available, he remained determined to sit for Fowey. Ultimately the constituency was still controlled by Rashleigh, and Clement admitted ‘I have no acquaintance with the sheriff, wherefore I must rely upon you, and such friends as you can procure to draw the sheriff to do me this favour’, and pressed him for ‘a positive answer’. Cornw. RO, RS/1/906. Clement’s letter suggests that Rashleigh remained reluctant to give in to Clement, despite the efforts of a shared relative, Jonathan Sparke; and he was perhaps persuaded to give in by the fact that he owed money to Clement. Coate, Cornw. 246.

Rashleigh had certainly given ground by the time Clement wrote to him again on 6 June, saying that ‘it lies very much if not altogether in you to bring in the other burgess for Fowey. Be pleased then to have a further conference with the sheriff and labour by your self and friends for his assurance that I may be returned, for I resolve to get my friends to move the House for issuing forth the writ and as soon as I have it I will send my Cousin Sparke to attend you and the sheriff’. Cornw. RO, RS/1/907. This time, all went smoothly. On 14 June 1648 the Commons ordered a writ for a new election at Fowey, which was issued on 16 June; and on 5 July Clement was finally returned as MP. CJ v. 599a; C231/6, p. 117; Cornw. RO, R/5497/2. The surviving election indenture shows that this was a proper election, not the provision of a blank document, and 25 inhabitants and burgesses signed the document. C219/43/21. If the spectacle of a former royalist surrendering his constituency to two Independents (one of whom would become a regicide) is less than edifying, it is not much improved by the sequel: Clement was thrown out of the Commons, on charges of adultery, in 1652, and Gould effectively withdrew from the House thereafter, in solidarity with his disgraced friend. Once again, Fowey was left without representation.

During the 1650s, Fowey continued to be an important town. In part this was for reasons of security. On 16 September 1650 Major-general John Disbrowe* instructed Colonel Robert Bennett* to put his company at Fowey ‘into a state of alert’, for fear of an attempt on the Cornish ports by royalists on the Scilly Isles. FSL, X.d.483 (65). In April 1651 there were further reports that royalists in and around Fowey were to join in a general rising, intending to capture the roads into Devon. HMC Portland, i. 583. In the spring of 1656 the government was again anxious, and placed guards and watchmen at Fowey to secure it against an incursion by the forces of the exiled Stuarts. CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 302. Fowey had also re-established itself as an important port, and in particular as a base for privateers attacking enemy shipping in the wars against the Netherlands and Spain. In May 1653 the navy tried to press men from Fowey, and mounted an expedition to catch those who had fled the town ‘to the cliffs and rocks’. CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 338. In the early months of 1654, as the first Dutch war drew to a close, there were at least 4 privateers operating out of Fowey, and they continued their activities long after the peace had been signed, provoking squeals of protest from the Dutch ambassador. CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 564; 1654, pp. 93-4, 498; 1655, pp. 48-9, 575; TSP vi. 4. So successful were the men of Fowey that in April 1655 Henry Hatsell* at Plymouth complained that his navy sailors were deserted in droves, to join the privateers. CSP Dom. 1655, p. 135.

Despite its notoriety, nothing is known of the internal politics of Fowey during the 1650s, and the election of two Presbyterians – John Barton of the Middle Temple and Edward Herle of Prideaux – both apparently supported by the ‘country’ gentry, in the contest for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament in 1659, suggests that the Rashleigh interest was less in evidence than before. The number of Fowey men signing the indentures on 13 January was double that of 1648, although they included John Rashleigh† and Robert Rashleigh, as well as the leading merchants led by the portreeve, Philip Goodall. C219/46/8-9. In the elections for the Convention Parliament in April 1660, Herle and Barton were again returned, but from 1661 the Rashleigh influence could at last re-emerge with full force, with Jonathan Rashleigh once again being elected, alongside his cousin John, for the Cavalier Parliament. From 1679 the Treffrys were also able to exert their old electoral influence over Fowey, after an absence of 50 years. HP Commons 1660-1690.