In the seventeenth century Horsham, located on the river Arun and on the edge of St Leonard’s Forest, was one of the wealthiest and most prominent Sussex towns; as a centre of the Wealden iron industry, and as the nearest to London, it attracted merchants from the capital to its market. Its accessibility led to its becoming one of the main administrative centres in the county, providing a venue for both assizes and quarter sessions, as well as the home of the county gaol.
Horsham was a pre-Conquest manor, enfranchised since the reign of Edward I. The right to vote lay in burgage holders, who paid rents directly to the lord of the manor; they traditionally numbered 52, but there were only 27 in 1628 and possibly 33 in 1650. According to a system of government confirmed by letters patent in 1617, the returning officers were the two bailiffs, chosen annually at the manorial court by the steward, who selected from four candidates presented by the burgesses.
This context – and perhaps also a reaction to the crypto-Catholicism of the Howards – allowed Horsham to become something of a puritan stronghold in the early seventeenth century. Edward Haughton, who held a lectureship, subsequently appears to have become a Fifth Monarchist.
In the spring elections in 1640 the Howard interest seems again to have been relatively weak. While doubtless the more acceptable to Arundel because of Catholic kin and associates, Thomas Middleton, like his deceased father John Middleton before him, appears to have owed his return to Parliament to his own local standing and record of public service; there is no evidence of the earl’s involvement. Middleton’s partner, Hall Ravenscroft, was a family friend, the son of a clerk of the peace, and a burgage holder in the borough.
Despite making no visible impact on the Parliament, the pair retained their seats in the autumn’s elections to what became the Long Parliament. For the next two years their respective contributions to its proceedings were negligible, but in the autumn of 1642 both signalled their support for the parliamentarian cause. On 19 December the Commons considered a petition from Horsham, to which both its Members were signatories, objecting to the royalism and the personal shortcomings of the vicar presented by Archbishop William Laud earlier in the year; they gave it a sympathetic hearing, but referred it on.
Thereafter, both Middleton and Ravenscroft were more active in county affairs than they were at Westminster. As a deputy lieutenant and member of the county committee, Middleton combined a high profile locally with political moderation, thus drawing the fire of the war party at Westminster. Accusations advanced in August 1644 that he had encouraged papists and delinquents, and discouraged resistance to royalist troops failed to unseat him, and he survived to become a central figure among Sussex Presbyterians.
Since Ravenscroft, who had been somewhat more visible at Westminster in the mid-1640s, and who had pursued a middle course in politics, was also excluded at the purge, Horsham was unrepresented in the Rump. Like many boroughs, it was disenfranchised in the Nominated Parliament and under the Instrument of Government. In the 1650s, however, it became a focal point for the Quakers, attracting George Fox, who noted that in 1655 he attended ‘a great meeting’ at the house of Bryan Wilkinson.
Horsham regained its right to send representatives to Westminster for the 1659 Parliament, although confusion surrounded the election. On 7 February it was reported to the Commons that writs had been issued without naming the bailiffs, whereupon three men had been returned by three indentures. The first of these, Henry Chowne*, Middleton’s son in law, was a merchant who was suspected of royalism, and who in 1658 had been approached to become involved in the plot organised by John Stapley*.
Right of election: in the burgage holders
Number of voters: 33 in 1650