Cambridge

Cambridge had been a town of some importance since Anglo-Saxon times. When James I and the prince of Wales visited the town in 1615, the recorder, Francis Brakin†, had gone so far as to claim in his speech of welcome that the town ‘was builded before Christ’s incarnation, with a castle, towers, and walls of defence, by Duke Cantaber, the son of the king of Spain, who was entertained in England by King Gurguntius’. Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 69. The reality of its origins was more prosaic. The hill on which the castle stood was one which, by East Anglian standards, counted as a strategic promontory. At its foot was the bridge over the Cam which gave the town its name; several major roads, built originally by the Romans, converged on this crossing. To the south of the town lay good quality arable lands; to the north the featureless expanse of the Fens. Visiting in 1662 William Schellink was told ‘there is nothing lacking but better air, which, because of the vapours from the bog lands, is somewhat unhealthy, especially in summer time, when it is rather heavy and murky’. The Journal of William Schellinks’ Travels in England 1661-1663 ed. M. Exwood and H.L. Lehmann (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. i), 150. The town’s excellent communications with the rest of East Anglia, the midlands and London had allowed the Stourbridge fair, held each September on the eastern outskirts of the town, to flourish into an event of national importance. The university, founded in the early years of the thirteenth century, now dominated the life of the town and the Cambridge corporation had often fought with the dons to prevent its civic affairs being overawed by the colleges. These tensions were to resurface during the 1640s. By 1676 the inhabitants of the town (excluding members of the university) numbered 3,200. Compton Census, 165-7.

The status of the Cambridge corporation had long been anomalous. Although the town had been granted privileges by the crown at regular intervals since the reign of Henry I, the corporation’s existence had only been formally recognised by a charter of 1605. Even then, its exact composition had remained unspecified. The Charters of the Borough of Cambridge, ed. F.W. Maitland and M. Bateson (Cambridge, 1901), 116-37; VCH Cambs. iii. 31-3. It had taken a further charter, granted as recently as 1632, to confirm that there should be a mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 common councilmen. Charters of Cambridge, ed. Maitland and Bateson, 136-69. The town had returned two MPs since the end of the thirteenth century, long using a cumbersome procedure by which the mayor and aldermen on the one hand and the common council on the other each chose a selector, who then in turn named eight electors, who then withdrew to pick the two nominees. This was abandoned by 1625 in favour of a more conventional freeman franchise.

More has been said about the elections at Cambridge in 1640 than about most other parliamentary elections in the seventeenth century. The idea that, by electing Oliver Cromwell, the town had set in train the course of events which led to the regicide surfaced within decades. After 1660, as memories of the precise details of these contests faded, writers eager to denigrate the reputation of the late lord protector stepped in to supply the colourful anecdotes their readers wanted. Claiming that Cromwell owed his election to luck or trickery could be used to confirm the image of him as an upstart who had violated the natural order of things. Typically, these writers did not distinguish between the two elections held that year and their confident assertions can often be disproved or questioned. Cromwell’s supposed opposition to the draining of the Great Level, which Sir William Dugdale would claim was the reason why he was elected, is now considered questionable. There is no real evidence that Cromwell was opposed in principle to the drainage schemes and, in any case, apart from ensuring that the Cam and the Ouse remained navigable, this issue was not central to the concerns of the Cambridge corporation. W. Dugdale, A Short View of the Late Troubles (Oxford, 1681), 460; Warwick, Mems. Charles I, 277-8; J.L. Sanford, Studies and Illustrations of the Gt. Rebellion (1858), 249-56; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 95-6; J. Morrill, ‘The making of Oliver Cromwell’, 37-8, in Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution ed. J. Morrill (1990); A. Barclay, Electing Cromwell: the Making of a Politician (2011), 75-96. A claim first made in 1677 that the future royalist poet, John Cleveland, had campaigned against Cromwell while an undergraduate at St John’s may be true; the remark attributed in that source to Cleveland that Cromwell was elected with a majority of only one is almost certainly not. If Cleveland did say, ‘That single vote had ruined both church and state’, he was probably referring to the election itself, rather than the margin of victory. Clievelandi Vindiciae (1677), sig. [A6v].

One anecdote which may contain elements of truth, but which has until recently been taken least seriously, is that first told in the 1665 revised edition of James Heath’s debunking biography of Cromwell, Flagellum. [J. Heath], Flagellum (1665), 18-22. (As Heath had died in 1664, it is unclear how far the new material was actually his work.) Several of Heath’s circumstantial details inspire distrust, not least that Richard Timbs* was not yet a common councilman of the borough. Nevertheless, the bones of the story are intriguing. According to Heath, Timbs began promoting Cromwell as a possible candidate at Cambridge after hearing him preach at a secret meeting of religious nonconformists somewhere in the Isle of Ely. Consulting with other Cambridge residents, draper William Welbore (‘Wildbore’) and chandler Robert Ibbot, Timbs discovered that only a freeman could serve as an MP. The trio then persuaded Bryan Kitchingman, brother-in-law of the mayor, Thomas French*, to convince French to use his powers as mayor to appoint Cromwell as a freeman, which he duly did. At the subsequent election meeting, Cromwell won the nomination, whereupon French realised that he had been duped. Heath’s account of the actual election is very confused and seems to bear more relation to the Long Parliament contest. How all this is supposed to fit together with Heath’s earlier claim that Cromwell’s election was organised by his cousin, John Hampden*, and by Hampden’s close friend, Arthur Goodwin*, is also not made clear. J. H[eath], Hist. of the Life & Death of Oliver Cromwell (1663), 6-7; J. Heath, Flagellum (1st edn. 1663), 18. Neither Hampden nor Goodwin had any known connections with the town.

Yet some of the claims made by Heath about Cromwell’s admission as a freeman do stand up to scrutiny. Cromwell was indeed granted his freedom on the recommendation of French as mayor and was admitted on 7 January 1640, well in advance of the issue of the writs on 20 February. Heath, Flagellum (1665), 20-1; Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 308. Most telling of all is the minor detail that French was reluctant to nominate Cromwell as a freeman because he had already agreed to use his right in favour of ‘the king’s fisherman’. Kitchingman apparently promised that he would make sure that this royal servant would still receive the freedom of the town. Heath, Flagellum (1665), 20. The corporation records confirm that Archibald Jackson, a London fishmonger, was admitted as a freeman immediately after Cromwell at the meeting on 7 January. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 309, 319. Jackson was almost certainly French’s agent in London, helping to supply the royal household with the regular consignments of fish that French as the king’s yeoman purveyor of freshwater fish sent from Cambridge. Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 40-1.

From Cromwell’s point of view, the Cambridge seats were probably his only option. Ever since the Mountagus had succeeded his uncle, Sir Oliver Cromwell†, as the dominant influence in Huntingdon and had, in effect, forced Cromwell out of the town, he stood no chance of regaining his old seat from the previous Parliament. Morrill, ‘Making of Oliver Cromwell’, 24-33. Election as a knight of the shire for either Huntingdonshire or his adopted county, Cambridgeshire, was also out of the question. King’s Lynn, the only other borough constituency which could be considered close to Ely, preferred to elect two of its own aldermen. This left Cambridge. It is not clear why the freemen should have favoured someone who was at best a mere gentleman and a nephew of a bankrupt landowner from a neighbouring county, unless the main thrust of Heath’s account is correct after all. His source evidently knew something of what had happened in Cambridge in 1640. Even the claim that Cromwell preached at conventicles, which otherwise seems the most sensational element of the story, finds support from a number of other early sources. J. Hacket, Scrinia Reserata (1693), pt. 2, 212; Harl. 991, f. 13; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 61-74. Timbs and his friends named by Heath probably were the Cambridge residents most opposed to the religious policies of the local bishop, Matthew Wren of Ely. That they sought out Cromwell as a kindred spirit now seems very plausible. Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 137-41.

Cromwell may not have been the only local gentleman who took steps in early 1640 to make sure that he was qualified for the Cambridge seats. On 26 February the future royalist Sir Robert Hatton*, who had been granted his freedom in 1613, finally took his oath as a freeman, but did not then stand. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 310. The candidacy of Thomas Meautys* was better organised. A clerk of the privy council, Meautys had sat for the borough four times between 1621 and 1628. On 27 February 1640 the new lord keeper, Lord Finch (John Finch†) wrote to the mayor recommending him as a man who ‘wants neither abilities nor affection either for the service of the public or that corporation in particular as there shall be occasion’. Finch added that their cooperation would be ‘willingly remembered upon any good occasion wherein I may be useful to you or your corporation’. Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 296. Meautys was very much the court-sponsored candidate. Finch, it must be remembered, had been the controversial Speaker in the last Parliament and had become notorious for his support for Ship Money in 1637. Yet in Cambridge the aldermen had been happy to overlook these facts when, as recently as three weeks before, they had asked him to succeed the late Lord Coventry (Thomas Coventry†) as their high steward. Evidently, the aldermen were more concerned with maintaining the tradition, dating back to the time of Lord Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton†), that the office of high steward of Cambridge should be held by the lord keeper. The day before Finch wrote his letter of recommendation, the aldermen had agreed that fish worth £11 should be sent to him to mark his acceptance of the stewardship. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 309, 310. It was probably at about the time when the election was held that they wrote to him requesting the lifting of the ban on the holding of the Stourbridge fair, imposed for the past two years because of the plague. CSP Dom. 1640, p. 93. The aldermen at least must have felt under some sort of obligation to follow Finch’s advice.

Any other outside influences are difficult to discern. The theory that Cromwell benefitted from his supposed links with the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†), whose younger brother, the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), was chancellor of the university, while interesting, remains unsubstantiated. Morrill, ‘Making of Oliver Cromwell’, 44; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 128-32. Another possibility is that Cromwell had connections with some of the opposition peers via the Cambridge resident and former manciple of Emmanuel College, Gualter Frost. Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 132-4. An unknown factor is the attitude of the recorder, Talbot Pepys†, who was a brother-in-law of Sir Sidney Mountagu†, from the family whom Cromwell may at this stage have regarded as his worst enemies. Possibly Pepys’s position would have given the Mountagus some indirect leverage within the Cambridge corporation.

At a meeting on 25 March the freemen elected Meautys and Cromwell as the new MPs. There were probably no other candidates. The indenture was signed by nine of the aldermen and nine of the common councilmen. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 313; C219/42, pt. 1, no. 55. The latter included Edward Almond, the grocer with whom, if Heath is to be believed, Cromwell was then lodging and with whom he certainly lodged in early 1643. Heath, Flagellum (1665), 20; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 49. The one obvious omission from the list of signatures was the mayor, Thomas French. Perhaps he did after all have some objection to Cromwell’s election.

Both Meautys and Cromwell allowed their names to be put forward again in October 1640. That summer Meautys had already courted the corporation by sending venison so that they could feast at his expense. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 319. That October he once again relied on the support of Finch. The lord keeper had visited Cambridge in September on his way north for the great council at York and the aldermen had received him in suitable style. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 325; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 122. His letter of nomination on behalf of Meautys, sent out on 2 October with the election writ, thanked them for ‘that expression of your love and respect unto me which I found at my being with you’. Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 303. Finch also ventured to propose for the second place his own brother, Sir Nathaniel Finch*, although he recognised there might be a preference to elect ‘one of your own corporation’ for that place. If so, he still wanted Meautys to be chosen. Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 303-4.

At the election on 27 October 1640 the assembled freemen, ‘the greatest part of the burgesses of this town being present in the hall’, did indeed pick a member of the corporation for the junior seat. John Lowry*, a local chandler and one of the common councilmen, was chosen to serve along with Cromwell. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 329. If Meautys’s name had been put to them at all, it had been rejected. Also rejected, or at least disputed, seems to have been the name of the town’s longest-serving alderman, Richard Foxton†. That is known only because that same day seven aldermen signed a rival indenture naming him (and no one else). C219/43, pt. 1, f. 135.

Interpreting the brief entry in the corporation’s common day book and the single surviving indenture is difficult. Heath’s account provides some further clues but his conflation of the two 1640 elections reduces its usefulness on specific details about the respective election meetings. Most likely, the contest had exposed a split within the corporation. The indenture confirms that most of the aldermen favoured Foxton, but most of the other freemen, comprising the more junior members of the corporation, evidently preferred Cromwell and Lowry. Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 124-6, 142-3. The split may partly have been over whether Finch was a desirable ally, but may also have been about religion. The support of the godly had probably secured Cromwell his previous election and this probably now extended to Lowry.

The indenture naming Foxton was also sent to London, but otherwise he seems not to have disputed the result. Cromwell and Lowry took their seats when the Long Parliament assembled, although in Lowry’s case this can only be inferred from the payments he received from the corporation the following year for his parliamentary wages. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 338; Downing College, Camb., Bowtell MS 5, ff. 345, 347; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 126. In May 1641 the pair wrote to the Cambridge corporation encouraging them to take the Protestation. CJ ii. 137a; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 311. Later Lowry and, of course, Cromwell strongly supported Parliament during the civil war. They continued as the Cambridge MPs until the Long Parliament was dismissed by Cromwell himself in 1653. Lowry would be paid at least £269 17s 8d by the Cambridge corporation as wages for doing so. As late as September 1652 he was still petitioning the Cambridge corporation for the full payments and his arrears were then paid only after he agreed to make no further claims. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 414, 419; Downing College, Camb., Bowtell MS 5, f. 380v; Bowtell MS 6, unfol.; Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 41. Apart from £15 which was jointly paid to the two MPs in 1641-2 and which may not have represented wages, there is no record of similar wages being paid to Cromwell. Downing College, Camb., Bowtell MS 5, f. 380.

The Instrument of Government in 1653 removed one seat each from the borough and the university, leaving the town arguably with representation more appropriate to its size. The same arrangement pertained at Oxford. A. and O. With the borough’s options narrowed when the next Parliament was summoned for 1654, the choice of Timbs, who had since served two terms as mayor, suggests a conscious decision to go for one of their own number rather than a prominent outsider. There probably now seemed little advantage to cultivating the latter when the lord protector was their former MP and current high steward. They had already presented Cromwell with a piece of plate to mark his elevation to the protectorate. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 52v. As high steward, Cromwell could have proposed his own favoured candidate, but he seems not to have done so. Timbs was, in any case, probably acceptable to him, whether or not he had played the crucial role in 1640. Thomas French, who had sat for the county in the Nominated Parliament the previous year, presided as mayor over Timbs’s uncontested nomination. Ninety-one of the ‘burgesses and inhabitants’ signed the indenture. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 56v; C219/44, pt. 1: Cambridge election indenture, 20 June 1654. The corporation later paid Timbs £14 (at the standard daily rate of 2s) for sitting in this Parliament. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day book, 1647-81, f. 69; Downing College, Camb., Bowtell MS 6, unfol.: Cambridge borough treasurers’ acct. 1654-5.

In early July 1656, just as it was becoming known that a Parliament would be summoned for 17 September, the deputy major-general for East Anglia, Hezekiah Haynes*, visited Cambridge. He reported to the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, that he ‘had but little occasion to discourse [with] any considerable persons there, for so many as was there, as I found to agree in this opinion, that the persons would mostly be the same as before’. TSP v. 187. Timbs was indeed re-elected for the borough, apparently unopposed, on 14 August. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 79. (The town clerk, John Harrison, was given 6s for drawing up the indenture. Downing College, Camb., Bowtell MS 6, unfol.: Cambridge borough treasurers’ acct. 1655-6.) A year later the corporation paid Timbs £28 6s in wages. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 93. In January 1658, several days before this Parliament reassembled, Sir James Whitelocke*, who lived close to Cambridge at Trumpington, asked his father, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, to try to nominate him as MP for Cambridge if a new Parliament was called. Whitelocke, Diary, 483.

The resumption of the old franchises in 1658 allowed the borough to regain its second MP. The seats for the 1659 Parliament were filled by the selection of the two members of the corporation with experience. Timbs was chosen for a third time in succession, while Lowry was recalled to serve alongside him. It was probably Lowry’s greater age and longer service on the corporation which determined that he be allocated the senior seat. Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 109v. If James Whitelocke planned to stand, he did not pursue the idea, and was elected instead for Aylesbury. The names of French and Kitchingman were originally included in the election indenture, but were then deleted, perhaps indicating that at the last moment they changed their minds and refused to sign. The 14 members of the corporation who did sign the indenture did so on behalf of the ‘greater part of the burgesses’. C219/46: Cambridge election indenture, 30 Dec. 1658. After the Restoration, the borough abandoned its practice of relying on men like Timbs or Lowry to be their MPs, invariably choosing members of the local gentry instead. In 1662 the corporation was thoroughly purged. That French, Kitchingman, Lowry and Timbs were all removed may well have been a faint echo of divisions dating all the way back to 1640. W.M. Palmer, ‘The reformation of the corp. of Camb., July 1662’, Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xvii. 75-136.