Wareham

The borough of Wareham occupied a peninsula created by the convergence of the Rivers Frome and Piddle as they approached Poole Harbour, and had been a defensible site since the dark ages. The town walls were erected by Alfred the Great after Danes sacked Wareham Priory in the ninth century, a stone castle was built after the Conquest, and the town acted as the port for the royal stronghold at Corfe Castle during the middle ages. But by the mid-sixteenth century Wareham’s economy was in decline, with John Leland saying that it was ‘now fallen down and made into gardens for garlic’. Historic Towns in Dorset, 105-11. William Camden saw the reasons for Wareham’s decay as manifold: ‘by occasion partly of wars, and partly by sudden casualty by fires, by reason also that the sea by little and little withdraweth the commodity of a haven’. Bayley, Dorset, 119. In the early seventeenth century the town experienced something of a renaissance, with John Coker commenting on its ‘fair houses inhabited as much by gentlemen almost as tradesmen’, and in the Ship Money assessments of the 1630s Wareham was rated between £25 and £30 – an amount which suggests wealth only slightly lower than that of Poole (rated at £24 to £60). Hutchins, Dorset, i. 79; Bayley, Dorset, 3-4.

Under its Elizabethan charter, Wareham was governed by a mayor, six burgesses and two constables, while the franchise extended beyond them to freeholders and all who paid scot and lot. In practice the borough was controlled by a handful of influential local landowners, many of whom owned property in the town. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 82, 84, 124. The dominance of the gentry was apparent in the elections of the 1620s, which saw the return of members of the Pitt, Trenchard, Naper and Lawrence families. HP Commons 1604-1629. In the elections for the Short and Long Parliaments a similar pattern emerges.

The elections to the Short Parliament saw the return, on 20 March 1640, of John Trenchard and Dr Gilbert Jones. Trenchard combined membership of one of the most influential Dorset families with a personal interest, as the landlord of Bestwall manor, immediately outside the town. Jones was connected with Trenchard’s brother-in-law, Sir Edward Rodney*, and presumably owed his election to the same interest. C219/42/90. In November 1640 divisions within the gentry community were becoming more apparent, and four candidates contested the seat. John Trenchard was once again returned without difficulty, but his running mate, Thomas Erle, seems to have been more controversial, possibly because of his recent match with a daughter of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. The writ returned by the mayor omitted Erle, naming instead the future royalist, Edward Lawrence†, and the result was reversed only by order of the Commons on 1 February 1641. A second potential challenger was another later royalist, Edward Pitt†, who owned property in the town and the region, and who instructed his agent in Wareham to ‘make choice of some to employ in the town’ to lobby on his behalf, ‘that I may prevail for one of the burgess places’. He counted among his ‘known friends’ his relatives in the area, the mayor of the borough and the rector of All Saints and St Michael’s, William Wake. Add. MS 29974, f. 319. Pitt probably missed the election, however, as the indenture was signed on 2 October – the same date as his letter from Hampshire announcing his decision to stand for the borough. C219/43/172. The decision of both Lawrence and Pitt to stand against Erle – with support from within the borough – suggests that the Long Parliament election had become a focus for party politics.

During the first civil war, the inhabitants of Wareham seem to have been undecided in their loyalty. In August 1642 Edward Lawrence was commissioned by William Seymour†, 1st marquess of Hertford, to garrison the town for the king, only to be arrested by the locals; but the town was in turn scandalised by the treatment of their rector, William Wake, at the hands of the parliamentarians who took over. Bayley, Dorset, 45-6; Hutchins, Dorset, i. 120-1. Both sides recognised the strategic importance of Wareham, which guarded the approaches to royalist Corfe Castle and parliamentarian Poole, and there was a fierce struggle to retain control of the town during 1643-4, when it changed hands four times. During this time the townspeople acquired a reputation for favouring the royalists. When Parliament finally took the town in August 1644 the articles of surrender guaranteed the inhabitants against plunder, but Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* later recommended destroying the place completely, to prevent it being held by royalist forces in future, saying that ‘there can be no argument against the demolishing it, being extremely mean-built, and the inhabitants almost all dreadful malignants’. Perfect Occurrences no. 34 (9-16 Aug. 1644), Sig. A3 (E.254.19); Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 69-70. Such drastic action was never taken, but with the fall of Corfe in March 1646 Parliament ordered that Wareham’s defences would also be slighted. Bayley, Dorset, 305. There is little evidence for the inhabitants’ political views in the later 1640s and 1650s, although there seems to have been some local opposition to the puritan ministers sent to replace Wake as rector. In November 1646 the inhabitants successfully petitioned the county committee for the removal of Thomas Whitrow for ‘his insufficiency and scandalous life’, and his eventual replacement, Thomas Chaplin, was challenged by some of his parishioners, who refused to pay their tithes in 1649. Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 67, 92, 500.

Wareham was disenfranchised under the first two protectorate Parliaments, but in 1659 the old constituencies returned, and the borough elected two MPs. The first, James Dewy I, was a radical supporter of the army interest, and only sat for Wareham when turned down for a seat at Shaftesbury. The choice was unfortunate, as Dewy had been instrumental in persecuting Wake for use of the Prayer Book only a few years before. The second MP was Elias Bond, younger brother of Denis Bond*, who owned land in the area and a house in the town; in addition, his mother was a member of the Pitt clan, and it may have been in Bond’s favour, rather than his own, that George Pitt† wrote to Bulstrode Whitelocke* ‘about the election at Wareham’ on 7 January 1659. Whitelocke, Diary, 505.

At the Restoration, the royalist gentry took charge. Chaplin was ejected and Wake was reinstalled as rector of All Saints and St Michael’s; in the Convention of 1660 George Pitt was elected with another local gentleman, Robert Culliford†; and in 1661 the two were again returned, despite a challenge from the crypto-papist, Humphrey Weld. Dorset RO, D/WLC/C2, no. 3; HP Commons, 1660-1690. The town itself may have suffered considerable damage during the civil wars, and in 1662-4 there were only 143 houses eligible for hearth tax, although the presence of a dozen substantial properties owned by local gentlemen again suggests that Wareham was still under the control of ‘gentlemen’ rather than ‘tradesmen’ in the later seventeenth century. Dorset Hearth Tax, 74-5; Dorset RO, D/BOH/X2.