Stamford

Situated on the Great North Road where it crossed the River Welland, seventeenth-century Stamford lay close to the dividing line between the fenlands of Lincolnshire and Huntingdonshire to the east and the pastoral uplands of Rutland and Northamptonshire to the west. J. Thirsk, ‘Stamford in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in The Making of Stamford ed. A. Rogers (Leicester, 1965), 62, 66-7. Its economy was based largely on its markets, the leather-working industry, the manufacture of hemp and related products and stonemasonry. R. Butcher, The Survey and Antiquitie of the Towne of Stamford (1646), 11 (E.364.12); C. Davies, Stamford and the Civil War (Stamford, 1992), 11; Thirsk, ‘Stamford in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, 63-9. By the mid-1660s, the town contained 282 households, suggesting an overall population of about 1,300. E179/140/754, mm. 2-3. Stamford was governed by a corporation consisting of 12 ‘comburgesses’ (one of whom served annually as ‘alderman’, or mayor), 24 ‘capital burgesses’ – who were referred to by the 1650s as ‘the common council’ – and a host of lesser officers. Stamford Town Hall, Charters 1B/3; Hall Bk. 1, f. 444; Butcher, Towne of Stamford, 9. The comburgesses held office for life and, with the alderman, served as justices of the peace for the borough. Stamford Town Hall, Charters 1B/3. Although the town had first sent Members to Parliament in 1295, it was not represented at Westminster on a regular basis until the second half of the fifteenth century. J. Drakard, Hist. of Stamford (Stamford, 1822), 136-7. The right of election was vested in the ‘alderman and burgesses’ – that is, the freemen paying scot and lot (municipal tax) – with the alderman acting as returning officer. C219/42/1/135; Drakard, Stamford, 154.

The dominant interest at Stamford by 1640 – indeed, throughout much of the seventeenth century – lay with the Cecil family, whose great mansion at Burghley lay only two miles away. The Cecils, earls of Exeter, owned extensive property in and around the town, and in addition to this proprietorial interest they were able to exercise influence through their tenure of the recordership. Drakard, Stamford, 68, 106, 140, 147-9; Holmes, Lincs. 35-6. On 24 March 1640, in the elections to the Short Parliament, the borough returned Sir Thomas Hatton – a carpet-bagger and kinsman of William Cecil†, 2nd earl of Exeter – and Thomas Hatcher, whose estate lay a few miles to the north of Stamford. C219/42/1/135; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 402. According to the election indenture, the two men were returned ‘with one whole and full assent and consent’. C219/42/1/135. However, seven gentlemen, including Hatton, Hatcher and Sir James Harington*, obtained their freedom of the town in the weeks preceding 24 March, and it is likely that most of them were motivated by the prospect of standing for the borough. This was certainly true of Harington, who had informed the corporation in February of his electoral pretensions at Stamford. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, ff. 400v, 401v, 402; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 491-2.

In the elections at Stamford to the Long Parliament on 6 October 1640, the voters returned the Northamptonshire lawyer Geoffrey Palmer and Hatcher. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 404v. The corporation had appointed Palmer the town’s deputy-recorder on 1 September 1640 ‘at the special instance and request’ of David Cecil*, 3rd earl of Exeter, and it was upon the earl’s interest that Palmer was elected a month later. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 404. In January 1641, the town sent Palmer and Hatcher a list of its legislative requirements, which included measures for making the Welland navigable and the reconstitution of Stamford as a shire town by adding to it the county of Rutland and parts of Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 406; Holmes, Lincs. 33. Two months later, Stamford joined Huntingdon and other nearby towns in a petition to Parliament ‘touching the excessive and innovating fees demanded by his Majesty’s officers’. In the summer of 1639, when the king had passed through Stamford on his way north to confront the Covenanters, his servants had demanded £40 in customary fees from the townspeople, and the memory of this unwarranted levy still rankled. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 407.

The civil war divided Stamford’s MPs – Hatcher siding with Parliament and Palmer making common cause with the king, for which he was disabled by the Commons on 7 September 1642. CJ ii. 755b. The town seems to have changed hands several times during the war and suffered heavily from the continual passage of troops and the depredations of royalist raiding parties from Belvoir and Newark. CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 138, 200, 208; 1645-7, p. 79; Butcher, Towne of Stamford, 31; Davies, Stamford and the Civil War, 32-3, 36; Holmes, Lincs. 163, 167, 168, 173, 174, 176, 181. In September 1645, a writ was issued for the election of a replacement for Palmer, and perhaps because there was still a strong royalist presence in the region, the alderman called a common hall to take advice before proceeding further. CJ iv. 272b; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 419v. The freemen agreed with a ‘general and unanimous consent’ to comply with the writ, and on 4 November 1645 the borough returned John Weaver of nearby North Luffenham, in Rutland. C219/43/2/36; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 420. Weaver was returned on his own interest as a long-time freeman of the borough and one of the area’s most active parliamentarians. His election was made possible by the collapse of the Cecil interest in the borough following the death of the 3rd earl in 1643 and his succession by a minor. Davies, Stamford and the Civil War, 19. It was perhaps in response to Weaver’s election that the royalists, for at least the second time during the war, kidnapped the alderman and held him for ransom. CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 79, 111, 314-15; Davies, Stamford and the Civil War, 36.

The civil war divided not only the town’s MPs but also its leading citizens. Following the introduction of parliamentary legislation in the autumn of 1647 for purging malignant office-holders, the town’s ‘well-affected’ inhabitants submitted articles to the Committee for Indemnity* against four comburgesses and seven capital burgesses. SP24/77, unfol. (Stamford v. Corker et al.). These ‘malignant’ office-holders were accused of a variety of offences, from speaking ill of Parliament to taking up arms for the king. Their accusers, who included at least one of the comburgesses, may well have been encouraged in their proceedings not only by the apparent unwillingness of the corporation to purge itself of malignants but also by Weaver, who was a major figure on the Committee for Indemnity. Infra, ‘John Weaver’; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, ff. 424-6. Indeed, it was Weaver who chaired the meeting of the committee on 8 November at which the articles were read. SP24/1, ff. 69v, 70. Under pressure from the committee, the corporation between February and August 1648 removed the accused men (three more office-holders stood down), and among the comburgesses elected in their place were Weaver and Hatcher. SP24/1, ff. 147v-148; SP24/2, f. 116; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, ff. 427v-429v. It is worth noting that the purge saw the removal of a leading critic of the Cecil interest, Richard Butcher, and the subsequent appointment of John Balguy as deputy-recorder at the desire of John, 4th earl of Exeter. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 428v; Butcher, Towne of Stamford, 8; Holmes, Lincs. 36. Resentment at Cecil influence in the town was possibly stronger among the purged than the well-affected. Even the Engagement (abjuring monarchy and the Lords) failed to dislodge the Cecils’ grip on the recordership, for although the earl of Exeter resigned the place in August 1650, the corporation duly elected Balguy in his stead (in March 1661, Balguy effectively handed the recordership back to the earl). Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 435; Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 2, f. 8v. Perhaps because the purge of royalist office-holders had been such a messy affair, the corporation petitioned the Rump in February 1651 for a renewal of its charter. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, ff. 437, 438v.

Under the Instrument of Government, the town lost one of its parliamentary seats, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 it returned Weaver. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 444. All of the freemen voted for Weaver except one of the comburgesses, who preferred Balguy, and one of the capital burgesses, who opted for another local gentleman, Jeremy Cole. Nevertheless, soon after Parliament assembled the alderman was summoned before the committee of privileges to answer for his failure to secure a unanimous vote in Weaver’s favour. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 445. The corporation seems to have cooperated willingly with Major-general Edward Whalley* in his efforts to suppress unlicensed alehouse-keepers and victuallers early in 1656. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, ff. 448v-449. And in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, the office-holders, ‘with the whole commonalty of the said town there assembled, with full consent’ returned Weaver again, ‘not any man opposing’. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 450. However, Weaver was then excluded from the House as an enemy of the protectorate. CJ vii. 425b.

Stamford regained its second seat in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, and on 4 January 1659 the freemen returned Weaver and a local gentleman landowner, Christopher Clapham. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 2, f. 3v. After the Restoration, the Cecil interest re-asserted itself, only to face stiff competition for control of the town’s parliamentary seats from other local royalist families. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 2, ff. 8v, 9v; HP Commons 1660-90. The resignation and removal on writs of mandamus of several leading office-holders (including Weaver) in 1660 and 1661 meant that the parliamentarian interest in the borough had effectively collapsed well before August 1662, when the corporation commissioners removed two comburgesses, one capital burgess and ten of the freemen. Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 2, ff. 7, 10v, 13v.