Middlesex

Although Thomas Fuller dismissed the county as ‘but the suburbs at large of London’, mid-seventeenth century Middlesex still maintained the characteristics of a rural community, supplying grain, dairy produce and fruit to the capital, and its principal industry was also land-based: the manufacture of bricks and tiles. Fuller’s Worthies, ed. R. Barber, 241; M. Robbins, Mdx. (1953), 32-3, 49. It was thus appropriate that the landowning families from the northern fringe of the county – from Ruislip to Enfield – dominated socially and politically. The construction of fortifications around London and Westminster after the outbreak of the civil war only served to highlight their distinctiveness from rural Middlesex, and in terms of parliamentary elections, the county continued throughout the period to return Members whose base in the county lay without the lines of communication.

The temporary success of two court candidates in 1628 broke Sir Gilbert Gerard of Harrow’s otherwise constant representation of the county during the 1620s, but in the spring of 1640 he was again one of the favoured candidates, alongside Sir John Francklyn of Willesden and Sir Edward Spencer of Boston Manor, both of whom had also previously served for the county. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 235. In the election, held at Brentford on 5 March, Gerard and Francklyn were returned, and on the same day Gerard, as principal knight of the shire, was presented with a petition against military charges and in favour of annual Parliaments, which he delivered to the Commons on 17 April. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 236; CJ ii. 5b; Procs. Short Parl., 157, 234. Gerard’s continued hostility to illegal taxation and Francklyn’s less than enthusiastic response to the collection of coat and conduct money during the summer helped them to secure re-election in October, with Spencer once again coming third. CSP Dom. 1640, p. 157; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 334. The freeholders took the opportunity to present another petition to the Commons, listing among other grievances, abuses in ecclesiastical courts. Add. 11045, f.128. There were hints of irregularity in the conduct of this election, with William Hawkins telling the 2nd earl of Leicester on the day of the contest that the late arrival of the writs ‘did breed doubts in many’; and a month later Sir Henry Spiller†, one of the 1628 court candidates and a Middlesex JP, was arrested ‘for dealing roughly with a constable’ during the election. HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 342. Spiller had also conducted an investigation of the supporters of the county’s petition to the Short Parliament, and was evidently a marked man. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 164-5. Giving evidence against him, Gerard accused Spiller of saying that ‘it was a foolish thing to petition for a Parliament ...[but] that now the rebels were come into Parliament it was a simple thing’. D’Ewes (N), 539.

The majority of Middlesex’s inhabitants remained opposed to the Caroline regime in the first eighteen months of the Long Parliament, presenting a petition with 4,000 signatures demanding the ejection of popish lords and bishops from the upper House in January 1642. LJ iv. 539a; Three Petitions Presented unto the High Court of Parliament (1642), 7-8 (E.134.21). Yet, as in Westminster, there were fears of a royalist fifth column. In May, after the Middlesex trained bands had mustered on Tuthill Fields, Gerard vigorously denied allegations that half of their number had refused to turn out. PJ ii. 372, 378. Any such doubts were short-lived, however. In June, when the commission of array for the county was delivered, the undersheriff agreed to read it only after a considerable delay, while the Militia Ordinance was greeted with some enthusiasm. Fletcher, Outbreak, 297, 348. In the early stages of the civil war Middlesex played an important role in funding the parliamentary army and providing it with recruits and supplies. In late October 1642, with the threat of a royalist attempt on London, the local trained bands were ordered to be ready to mobilise at an hour’s notice. Add. 31116, p. 7. The following month saw the only serious fighting in the county, at Brentford and Turnham Green. CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 417. In February 1643 Middlesex began raising assessments in conjunction with London and Westminster, and from March the county also contributed towards the fortifications around the capital. Add. 31116, pp. 53, 61. In July cavalry were recruited from Middlesex, and the following month those who refused to contribute horses were prosecuted amid complaints that some horses had been taken illegally. Add. 31116, p. 145; LJ vi. 180a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 477. In June 1644 Gerard boasted to the Commons that there were 4,000 fresh recruits available in Middlesex, awaiting the order to begin training, and in the same month his own regiment, drawn from the county, marched out to join the forced under Sir William Waller*. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 265, 274. In October an ordinance for regulating the county’s trained bands, and putting them ‘in a posture of defence’, was passed by the Commons. LJ vii. 32b, 35a-38b, 46a. Enthusiasm waned with the creation of the New Model army in the spring of 1645, however. Such was the local resistance to the new force that in April of that year the gentlemen of Middlesex were given permission to refuse free quarter without official warrants. CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 441. By the late 1640s the inhabitants were weary of the effects of war. Some joined in the riots in July 1647 that led to the ‘forcing of the Houses’, with one resident allegedly saying that they ‘would force the Parliament by shutting them up until they should grant what they petitioned for’. Mdx. Co. Recs. iii. 100. Middlesex petitioned against free quarter in December 1647, and joined a general petition on the same issue, published in the new year of 1648. CJ v. 375b; LJ ix. 556a, 564a, 571a; The Petition of… the Inhabitants… of… Mdx., Essex and Kent… against free Quarter (1648). This rebelliousness may have contributed to Sir Edward Spencer’s success at the by-election in May 1648, on Francklyn’s death. CJ v. 527b. There had long been doubts as to Spencer’s loyalties. He had been named a commissioner of array by the king in 1642 and threatened with arrest for his refusal to comply with the Militia Ordinance, and Spencer’s home had been searched for arms only days before the battle at Brentford. He was never an active royalist, however, and his election was certainly popular, being greeted by ‘general applause’ and the hope ‘that a gentleman of such extraordinary parts and probity as also of such mature judgement should be chosen to serve the public’. J Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae (1840), 547.

Spencer was excluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648 and Gerard, by that time clearly identified with the Presbyterian faction, was imprisoned for a short time. Middlesex remained without representation until the Nominated Assembly of 1653, when the county shared three Members with the borough of Westminster. Of the chosen MPs, Arthur Squibb was a Fifth Monarchist preacher in Westminster and the only religious radical; the other two were more typical of Middlesex county members. Sir William Roberts was Francklyn’s first cousin and held land in Willesden and Kilburn which exceeded the holdings of the Francklyn family. Religiously moderate, he had served Parliament both locally and nationally, and was a firm supporter of Oliver Cromwell*. Augustine Wingfield of Ruislip was a lower social standing than Roberts, though he had been at the forefront of a county petitioning campaign against tithes in April 1652 and had publicly supported the dissolution of the Rump a year later. Worden, Rump Parl., 298. Wingfield was a lawyer but his loyalty to Cromwell apparently over-rode the council of officers’ hostility to that profession. CJ vii. 128b.

Under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, Westminster regained its separate status and the county’s membership increased to four. Neither Squibb nor Wingfield sought re-election, and Roberts was joined as a government candidate by Colonel Edmund Harvey I, who represented the first real outside influence on Middlesex elections of the period. Harvey was a London tradesman who had risen through the ranks of the army to political prominence. He had previously served in Parliament for constituencies in the regions of his military successes, but was resident in Middlesex by 1654, having recently purchased confiscated ecclesiastical estates. Also elected were Sir James Harington, previously MP for Rutland, who had acquired land in Middlesex through his wife, and Josias Berners of Clerkenwell. Perfect List of the Members Returned and Approved (1654, 669.c.19.8). The last two moved in the republican circle around Harington’s cousin, James Harington, which included Henry Neville*, Thomas Challoner* and Sir John Thorowgood†. Both Harington and Berners refused to sign the recognition oath and were excluded from Parliament.

Berners and Harington re-appeared as candidates in 1656 as members of the anti-government group led by the Fifth Monarchist, Edmund Chillenden, which included the lawyer and royalist councillor Chaloner Chute I, his son Chaloner II, and a Mr Browne, possibly Richard Browne II*, elected in the same year in London, or John Browne of Twickenhan who was named a commissioner for Middlesex in a number of ordinances from 1649. Chillenden dismissed assumptions that he would only fight an election on religious grounds saying, ‘Pish let religion alone, give me my small liberty’. It was reported that Chillenden planned to arrive at Brentford on the morning of the election with seven or eight hundred supporters and to use his influence with his brother-in-law, an under-sheriff of the county, to defeat the three Cromwellian candidates: Roberts, the major-general of the county John Barkstead, and the prominent Baptist preacher, William Kiffen of Bethnal Green. Kiffen received prior warning of Chillenden’s plans. TSP v. 286. The election, held at Brentford on 20 August, did not go smoothly. After Roberts, Barkstead and Chute I were elected a dispute developed between Kiffen and Chute II. Many believed Chute to be elected but when the result was declared in favour of Kiffen there was a disturbance, during which ‘the Anabaptists take away the justices’ swords and bear them miserably’, and when troops were sent in to break up the ensuing riot, 20 people were injured. TSP v. 337; Clarke Pprs. iii. 70. Chute I was initially prevented from sitting in the session and his name was included in the probably spurious remonstrance of the excluded Members, although he took up his seat in the second session. Barkstead and Roberts were called to Cromwell’s Other House in December 1657.

The return of two Members for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament on 13 January 1659 was more peaceful, but still contested. Francis Gerard, son and heir of Sir Gilbert, was easily elected, but the contest between the remaining candidates lasted long into the evening, and when Chute I was finally returned it was against the expectations of some that Harington would ‘carry it’. Clarke Pprs. iii. 174. When the elections for the Convention were held in April 1660 Sir Gilbert Gerard failed to win a seat, although his ally Sir William Waller was returned alongside the royalist, Lancelot Lake, while the Cromwellian candidates, Roberts and Harington, made a poor showing in the polls. CCSP iv. 644; HP Commons 1660-90 .