Seaford

Seaford was an ancient harbour on the south coast of Sussex, on the edge of the South Downs. By the thirteenth century the town’s location at the then mouth of the river Ouse gave it some local importance as both a port and a fort, although it was never a major mercantile centre. Recs. of the Corporation of Seaford ed. F.W. Steer (1959), 52; M.A. Lower, Memorials of Seaford (1855), pp. v, 1. It was the most eminent of the ‘limb’ ports – attached to the Cinque Port of Hastings – and the only one which sent Members to Parliament. From at least 1460 it was sufficiently prominent to be represented occasionally at the general brotherhood meetings of the Cinque Ports, but only when it was incorporated into the Ports in 1544 did its representatives attend more regularly. Cal. White and Black Bks. Cinque Ports (1966), 42, 183, 289-585; K.M.E. Murray, Const. Hist. Cinque Ports (1935), 1, 44. Ironically, this formal admission coincided with Seaford’s decline, as the accumulation of shingle at the mouth of the Ouse led to the development of a new trading centre to the west, at Newhaven. Although its fort retained some significance, by 1592 Seaford was described as a ‘decayed port’. Lower, Seaford, 8. Its assessment for Ship Money during the 1630s was among the lowest of all Sussex towns, reflecting also its small size. CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 196; 1637, p. 129; 1639, p. 305. The parish was recorded as having only 100 communicants in 1603, and 202 inhabitants by the Compton census of 1676. Compton Census, 149.

The government of Seaford lay in the bailiff, two jurats, and freemen, who increased in number through the first half of the century, until there were 23 in 1649. In June 1650, however, the corporation ordered that no more freemen were to be created until their number had fallen to 18, and thereafter that number was to be maintained. E. Suss. RO, SEA 6 (Court Bk. 1594-1654), p. 290. In the reign of Charles I the freemen included puritans who appear to have contributed to the town’s tense relationship with the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, exemplified in the 1637 dispute over the claims to property aboard The Rose, a Dutch ship wrecked off the town’s coast. Fletcher, Suss. 171-2; SP17/D/15. By 1613 the manor was in the hands of the Gratwyke family, who combined godliness with litigiousness, and who had a long-running conflict with the Seaford corporation over taxation in the 1620s. PROB11/121/614 (Sir William Grotewicke); CSP Dom. 1619-23, pp. 188, 265; SP14/121, f. 212. Roger Gratwyke*, a younger son who accumulated property in the borough (including by 1642 the lordship of the manor), clashed with the lord warden in the 1630s, became a jurat in October 1640, and was subsequently a leading parliamentarian during the civil war and an Independent MP. E. Suss. RO, QR/E95; SEA 6, pp. 5, 262; Cal. White and Black Bks. 477; J. Comber, `The family of Gratwicke', Suss. Arch. Coll. lx. 39-40.

In theory under the influence of the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Seaford had sent Members to 11 Parliaments between 1298 and 1399, but none thereafter until 1641, when its representation was restored. HP Commons 1386-1421. The Commons resolved on re-enfranchisement on 4 February 1641, following a report from the committee for privileges, and writs were issued on 11 February. CJ ii. 78a; C231/5, p. 428; C219/43iii/148. Perhaps John Maynard* and John Selden*, who promoted the move, hoped to increase the ranks of critics of crown policy in the House; perhaps there was pressure from local puritans like Gratwyke, alienated by the Laudian government of the church. However, Sir Walter Erle*, who opposed the enfranchisement, argued that Seaford’s ‘inhabitants were rude and some of them papists’. D'Ewes (N), 284n, 321-2; Lower, Memorials of Seaford, 17, 38; Recs. of the Corporation of Seaford, 27.

Of the Members then elected, Francis Gerard was the eldest son of Sir Gilbert Gerard*, an experienced MP and duchy of Lancaster official, who was a Providence Island Company member and belonged to the Essex godly. Gerard had no apparent connection to Seaford and, having received a committee appointment on 12 March 1641, a few months later disappeared from the Commons Journal, apparently absent until his father’s influence secured his readmission to the House in April 1645. CJ ii. 102b; iv. 99a. Thereafter he was occasionally apparent as a Presbyterian supporter until he was secluded at Pride’s Purge. Sir Thomas Parker, on the other hand, was a local man, whose seat, Ratton in Willingdon, was no more than ten miles from Seaford. One of the most prominent puritan gentlemen in the county, Parker had sat for Hastings in 1626, but he exhibited reluctance to take on the role of ‘opposition’ candidate prepared for him by others, and this may explain his otherwise surprising absence from the House in 1628, and in April and November 1640. HP Commons 1604-1629. Reform under way in the Long Parliament may have prompted his friends and kin who were spearheading it to create an opening for him; religious zeal perhaps induced him to take it. On 16 March 1641 he was added to the committee for the ‘popish hierarchy’. CJ ii. 108a. After a rather slow start, Parker played a modest but by no means insignificant part in affairs in the county and at Westminster, treading a Presbyterian path alongside Sir Thomas Pelham*. He did not sit after December 1648.

Seaford was thus unrepresented in the Rump. It was then disenfranchised in the Nominated Parliament and under the Instrument of Government. In elections for the 1659 Parliament the franchise generally reverted to the position in the 1640s, but when the House was called on 31 January, it was discovered that no writs had been issued for Seaford, and no Members had been returned; an order rectifying this produced a writ on 5 February. CJ vii. 596a; C231/6, p. 423. Of the two men eventually returned, George Parker was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Parker, and was almost certainly elected on the basis of his family’s interest. A covert royalist sympathiser, George Parker played little visible part in the Parliament. In contrast, the other Member elected in 1659 was William Spence, a radical Baptist who had displayed reforming zeal in the Nominated Parliament and then accommodated himself to the protectorate. While Spence consolidated his position among the godly gentry of Sussex from the 1640s to his death in 1671, his election here was something of an anomaly in a county where most Members were either disillusioned republicans or royalists; the fact that he was returned alongside Parker suggests a degree of division within the borough. Seaford retained its representation at the Restoration. HP Commons 1660-90.