Chichester

As one Lieutenant Hammond noted in 1635, Chichester was a ‘sweet little city’, standing ‘in a pleasant fertile level’. Restricted Grandeur ed. T.J. Maclean (1974), 6. A walled city of Roman origins, it lay on the far western edge of Sussex, on a coastal plain below the Downs, only a few miles from the Hampshire border, and some seven miles from the sea. R. Morgan, Chichester (1992), 1. The most important single borough in the county, and a focal point for trade, administration, and ecclesiastical affairs, Chichester was recorded as having 500 households in the 1670 hearth tax, and in 1642 had over 2,500 inhabitants. W.D. Cooper, ‘Former inhabitants of Chichester’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiv. 78; West Suss. Protestation Returns. Nevertheless, its peripheral location meant that some of its administrative functions were shared with Lewes in the east. In terms of trade, Chichester was an important centre for the cloth industry, and for the manufacture and export of malt. Morgan, Chichester, 41-3. Although a 1596 petition from one local merchant claimed that the city ‘doth so fast decay and run to ruin’, the port continued to thrive, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout the seventeenth century. Maclean, Restricted Grandeur, 4.

First incorporated by a charter of 1135, Chichester had received its most recent charter from James I in 1618, confirmed in 1621. Its government lay in a mayor (the returning officer), aldermen, and a recorder. The former was elected by the common council, although he was, in effect, the nominee of the high steward; after 1618 this was the earl of Arundel. F.W. Steer, Chichester City Charters (1956), 5, 19-20; VCH Suss. iii. 99. The right of parliamentary election lay in the inhabitants who paid scot and lot, as was confirmed in 1660, following the rejection of a return based solely on the freemen’s votes. CJ viii. 9b, 40a, 44a.

The western half of Sussex did not share the notable Protestant godliness of the eastern rapes, and its major gentry were to provide the bedrock of royalism in the county. Nevertheless, although there was a sizeable recusant community in Chichester, the city itself was otherwise exceptional. E179/191/377a. At the episcopal visitation in 1635 Sir Nathaniel Brent noted that the aldermen were ‘puritanically addicted’. Fletcher, Suss. 237; CSP Dom. 1635, p. xliii. This fuelled conflicts with the authorities in the cathedral close, where there was a long history of Arminian churchmen. Richard Neile served as cathedral treasurer between 1598 and 1610; Samuel Harsnett held the bishopric from 1609 to 1619; and William Juxon was appointed principal steward of the dean and chapter properties in 1630, on his way to becoming bishop of London. Anti-Calvinist influence was particularly strong after 1628 with the successive appointments to the see of Richard Montagu, a controversial supporter of William Laud who sought to establish a strong Arminian party in the diocese, and of Brian Duppa. A. Foster, ‘The Dean and Chapter 1570-1660’, in Chichester Cathedral ed. M. Hobbs (1994), 91, 94; Fletcher, Suss. 78-81. Chichester effectively became a model for such a process in other cities.

Conflict between the city and the church became particularly acute from the mid-1630s, centring on jurisdiction over the close, which the city claimed under the terms of the 1618 charter. In 1635 the church complained of having received Ship Money assessments from both the sheriff of Sussex and the town’s corporation. When on 17 January 1636 the privy council ordered that the close, as part of the county, should pay the former and not the latter, the corporation challenged the decision through their recorder, Christopher Lewkenor*, who then obstructed plans for a new charter reflecting the conciliar decision. Bodl. Tanner 148, ff. 12-13, 18-19, 25-26v; 149, ff. 20-2; SP16/311, f. 158; SP16/325, ff. 171-4, 198; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 542; 1636-7, p. 215-6; W. Suss. RO, Chichester J/3. Lewkenor was also counsellor to the dean and chapter, and surveyor to Bishop Richard Montagu, but he was above all a client of and retained counsel for the Percy family, seated some 15 miles away at Petworth, and he had acquired the recordership in 1630 through the influence of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland.Acts Dean and Chapter Chichester, 1545-1642, 241, 243; Alnwick, U.I.4, U.I.5, U.I.6, all unfol.;CSP Dom. 1630-1, p. 371. The dispute was still live in December 1639, and may not have been settled until after the Restoration. Bodl. Tanner 148, ff. 67-67v; PC2/51, ff. 92v-93v.

The influence in the borough of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, was apparent in the parliamentary election of spring 1640. In part Lewkenor may have owed his return for one of the seats to his own interest as recorder, but doubtless he had Northumberland’s approval. C219/42ii/28. The earl, who had held the seat himself in 1625 and 1626, secured the second place for Edward Dowse*, his former tutor at Cambridge and travelling companion in France, and a lifetime pensioner of the family, who had been returned at Chichester in a by-election in 1626. Alnwick, U.I.4; U.I.5, unfol.; Household Pprs. Northumberland ed. Batho, 93, 96, 141, 152; HMC 6th Rep. 230b-231a; HP Commons 1604-1629. Dowse was styled ‘secretary’ to Northumberland in June 1642, and occupied both a chamber at Syon House and a study at Petworth. PJ ii. 399; Household Pprs. Northumberland, 129; PROB11/204/156.

In elections to the Long Parliament, Northumberland’s patronage is less easy to detect. Lewkenor was returned again, but Dowse was elected at Portsmouth, in a by-election to replace the earl’s younger brother, Henry Percy*, who opted to sit for the county of Northumberland. CJ ii. 26b. It is unclear what role, if any, the earl played in the election to the second place at Chichester of Sir William Morley*, a former sheriff and zealous collector of Ship Money. Although his family was widely regarded as being Catholic, Morley was clearly a local man of some influence in the city. His father, Sir John Morley†, had sat twice for Chichester during the reign of James I, and the family belonged to a network of the courtiers in the western rapes of Sussex. HP Commons 1604-1629.

Chichester played a minor role in the early months of the civil war, although it was strategically important to both sides. Unlike both the cathedral close and much of the surrounding area, civic leaders were largely parliamentarian. The mayor, Robert Exton, published the king’s commission of array and then fled to join the king at York; he had returned and been arrested by 21 September 1642, when he was brought before the Commons and admonished. Surr. Hist. Centre, Loseley MS Corr. V(ii). 131; Fletcher, Suss. 258; CJ ii. 775a. With the exception of Lewkenor, other attempts to secure the city for the king were made by the local gentry rather than by members of the corporation. Already on 9 August Lewkenor and Sir William Morley, together with Thomas May*, John Alford*, and Sir Thomas Bowyer*, were summoned to attend the House for questioning regarding their signatures to a letter demanding the Chichester magazine for the king. CJ ii. 711a; Thomas-Stanford, Suss. in Great Civil War, 39. One newspaper reported that Bowyer, Morley, and May had demanded the magazine in Charles's name; with royalist cathedral clergy, including Stephen Goffe and Joseph Henshaw, they were alleged to have plotted to betray the town to Colonel George Goring*, governor of Portsmouth, and to have exerted pressure upon one of the most prominent local merchants, William Cawley I*, subsequently an MP and a regicide. An Exact Relation from Portsmouth (1642), sigs. Av-A2 (E.112.34); Exceeding Good News (1642), 5-6 (E.114.3).

Having failed to seize Chichester, Lewkenor fled to Portsmouth shortly before the town was besieged by parliamentary forces. Learning of his overt involvement with royalists, on 2 September the Commons resolved to expel him from Parliament, and to issue a writ for the election of a replacement. CJ ii. 750a; C231/6, p. 19. In November a second attempt to seize Chichester, involving Lewkenor, the sheriff of Sussex (Sir Edward Forde) and Sir William Morley resulted in the expulsion of the latter as well (23 Nov.). CJ ii. 860b; HMC Portland i. 72-4; Add. 18777, f. 68b; C231/6, p. 19; A Perfect Diurnall no. 24 (21-28 Nov. 1642), no pagination (E.242.27). Both Morley and Lewkenor were in Chichester when it was besieged by Sir William Waller* in December, and when the city fell after eight days, it was Morley who surrendered the garrison, while Lewkenor was amongst those sent to London as a prisoner. The Latest Printed Newes (1642), 2 (E.83.8); Brave Newes of the taking of Chichester (1642, E.83.36); Add. 18777, f. 106v; A True Relation of the Fortunate Sir William Waller (1643), sig. A4 (E.84.22); CJ ii. 910b. Thereafter, Morley lived in retirement in Sussex, while Lewkenor joined the king in Oxford and eventually sat in the Parliament there. Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 573-4.

From July 1643 to May 1645 Anthony Stapley I* was the parliamentarian governor of the garrison at Chichester, although he became involved in acrimonious disputes with both Waller and Parliament’s commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. Fletcher, Suss. 275, 328. With the passing of the Self-Denying Ordinance, Stapley was replaced as governor by Algernon Sydney*, who was probably nominated by his uncle, the earl of Northumberland, in an attempt to reassert his influence in both the county and the city. LJ vii. 363b. Such effort was evident in the by-elections to replace Lewkenor and Morley. Following a Commons order on 3 September 1645 for issuing a new election writ, Sir John Temple* and Henry Peck* were returned as burgesses for Chichester. CJ iv. 262b. The election had taken place by 1 December, when Temple was first noticed in the House. He was a long-standing client of Northumberland’s brother-in-law the second earl of Leicester (Robert Sidney†), and a close friend of Algernon Sydney. Peck, on the other hand, although only a member of the minor gentry had served the parliamentarian cause zealously as commissary-general for Sussex, and his return probably represented a success for local war party activists like Stapley and Harbert Morley*. CJ vi. 11a; SP28/135, ff. 53-118, 247-93. Both Peck and Temple were excluded from Parliament at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.

Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Chichester returned only one Member to the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656. In 1654 the place went to Henry Peckham*, a local man. Dallaway, Hist. Western Div. Suss. (1815), i. 154. He had played no discernible part in the civil war, but had joined the commission of the peace in 1647, in what appears to have represented a resurgence by the Sussex royalists, including Chichester’s former MP, Sir William Morley. Although removed from the bench after January 1649, he remained active locally and was reinstated in April 1654. His election at Chichester the following September almost certainly reflected the opposition to the protectorate within the city and the county.

Appointed recorder of Chichester in July 1655, in January 1656 Peckham was chief promoter of a petition to the protector from the city requesting that the corporation replace the abolished dean and chapter as administrators of the hospital of St Mary’s, which gained endorsement from Harbert Morley and his close ally William Hay*, also opponents of the regime, if of a different stamp. CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 95-6; SP18/123, ff. 25-7. When he was returned to Westminster for a second time the following autumn, Peckham’s unacceptability to the government led to his exclusion (17 Sept.), under the terms of the twenty-first article of the Instrument of Government. C219/45i; SP18/130, f. 46; OPH xxi. 3-23; Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 156. He was included in the probably spurious declaration of the excluded Members, organised by Harbert Morley, among others, but he was re-admitted on or before 3 November, presumably because he was regarded as relatively inoffensive. Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 274-80; CJ vii. 449b.

The influence of both royalism and more radical opposition to the protectorate at Chichester during the 1650s is evident also in the part played by the city in the uprising plotted in 1658 by John Stapley*. TSP vii. 67, 77, 79; Fletcher, Suss. 313. Furthermore, at the elections for the protectoral Parliament of Richard Cromwell* in 1659, when Chichester was restored as a two-Member constituency, both the successful candidates had royalist sympathies. Peckham was joined by another local man, William Cawley II*, who was the son of the regicide William Cawley I, but who did not share his beliefs.