Weymouth and Melcombe Regis

The borough of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis was on the south coast of Dorset, mid-way between the rival trading ports of Poole and Lyme Regis. The borough was important for three principal reasons: as a thriving port, both in its own right, trading with France and Newfoundland in a variety of commodities, and as the out-port of the Dorchester woollen industry; as a strategic centre commanding the natural harbour formed in the lee of Portland Bill; and as a double-borough, from 1571 by act of Parliament with Melcombe Regis returning four burgesses as Members of Parliament to Westminster. All these factors contributed to the town’s prosperity, and attracted much interest in its affairs from local landed families. In the early seventeenth century Sir John Browne, John Bond and his son, Denis Bond*, and Giles Grene* all owned land in Weymouth.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 106-7; Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 12-14, 41. Among the most important was Sir John Strangways*, whose house was at nearby Abbotsbury, and who commanded considerable influence in the borough.Weymouth Min. Bks. 32. His client, Richard King*, was elected recorder of the borough in 1629.Weymouth Min. Bks. 15. During the 1620s, Strangways and Grene were repeatedly elected to represent the borough in Parliament; the town’s other MPs included county figures as well as Weymouth burgesses, and this suggests an amicable relationship had developed between the town and the wider network of gentry families in the county.HP Commons 1604-29.

Although the corporation seems to have courted the gentry, the burgesses were less enthusiastic about encroachments from rival boroughs, especially Dorchester, which lay some eight miles inland. A group of Dorchester merchants caused constant trouble for the Weymouth customs farmers in the 1630s.CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 147. Petitioning the privy council, one Weymouth shipwright said that the Dorchester merchants were so wealthy and influential that he had no hope of redress locally – hence his recourse to the board.CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 379. Similarly, in 1632 the mayor of Weymouth complained to the privy council that the local merchants were decayed, while those in inland towns who used the port were the ‘greatest merchants’ in the area.CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 344. The port books of the mid-1630s suggest that these claims were essentially true, with Dorchester merchants such as John Whiteway* and James Gould*, and Poole burgesses such as the father of George Skutt*, dominating trade at Weymouth.E190/876/11; Weymouth Min. Bks. 21, 34, 51.

Trading rivalry was compounded by a lack of religious sympathy between Weymouth and puritan Dorchester. The extent of ‘godliness’ among the burgesses of pre-civil war Weymouth is uncertain, but it is clear there was no strong godly leadership exercised by the parish ministers. Indeed, in 1621 the rector of Melcombe, Richard Marwell, was arrested for after-hours tippling, and accused of berating the constable and bailiff as ‘puritans’.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 196. As in Dorchester, the corporation was keen to punish profanity – a new pillory and cucking stool were purchased in 1634 – but it was less successful in preventing the townsmen from indulging in gambling, drinking, blasphemy and absenteeism from church, as the borough records show.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 53-75, 113. The relationship between Weymouth’s corporation and the crown was also equivocal. Certain schemes, such as the transport of Portland stone to St Paul’s Cathedral in London, protected the town’s mariners from press-ganging, and no doubt had other economic benefits.CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 3, 42, 79, 82, 113-14, 140, 272; 1635-6, p. 235; 1637, pp. 6, 201; 1637-8, pp. 298, 318. Others, especially Ship Money, added considerable economic burdens: the borough was rated at £100 in 1635, £40 in 1636, £85 in 1637.CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 331, 502;1636-7, p. 542. Ship Money was made harder to bear by the ineffectiveness of the royal fleet in protecting Weymouth’s traders against pirates from north Africa: a constant source of worry in the 1630s.CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 99; 1635, p. 389; 1636-7, pp. 111, 155; 1625-49, pp. 546-7; 1637-8, pp. 605-6. Although there was discontent in Weymouth, resistance to the Caroline government in the later 1630s seems to have been passive. Press-gangs were evaded rather than directly opposed, and the bishops’ wars of 1639 and 1640 saw a degree of cooperation from the borough, which sent a small number of gunners and sailors to assist the king against the Scots.CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 222-3, 336-7, 477-8; 1638-9, p. 629; 1640-1, p. 103.

Both parliamentary elections in 1640 show Weymouth’s moderate opposition to the Caroline government, which contrasted with the militancy displayed in Poole and Dorchester. The traditional pattern of gentry influence was again evident: in March 1640, when only one townsman, Thomas Giear, was returned; the other three places went to Sir John Strangways, his son Giles Strangways and their lawyer, the town’s recorder, Richard King. In the following October election, Sir John Strangways and Richard King were joined by another Strangways ally, Gerard Naper, and a long-standing government critic, Sir Walter Erle.

The choice of such veterans of politics in the 1620s as Strangways and Erle suggests that the town was keen to gain redress for its grievances at Westminster. There were certainly close contacts between constituents and MPs in the early months of the Long Parliament. On 16 November 1640 the town clerk, Francis Gape, rode to London to beg the help of the borough’s MPs in promoting a petition in Parliament.Weymouth Min. Bks. 49. This was probably the Weymouth petition against customs abuses considered by a parliamentary committee (which included three of the borough’s MPs) on 21 December 1640.CJ ii. 55a. In January 1641 another burgess, Matthew Allin*, was also sent ‘to solicit the House of Parliament concerning the grievances of the town’.Weymouth Min. Bks. 50. Recorder Richard King was probably motivated by his constituency’s concerns when he promoted measures against piracy and customs abuses, in 1641-2.See below, ‘Richard King’. Beyond these local measures, there was little appetite for opposition to the crown, and the efforts of ‘Pym’s junto’ to bring in far-reaching reform were not well received in Weymouth. By the summer of 1642, three of the town’s MPs (Strangways, King and Naper) had joined the king’s party, becoming commissioners of array in Dorset.Northants RO, FH133, unfol. Their actions received considerable support from the townspeople. When the borough’s one remaining parliamentarian MP, Sir Walter Erle, joined Sir Thomas Trenchard* in presenting the Militia Ordinance to the town in late August 1642, Francis Gape ‘hired a gunner there, to discharge a small piece laden with murthering shot’ at their party.CJ ii. 742b-743a. Gape was dismissed as town clerk in November, but a royalist element continued to cause trouble in the town throughout the 1640s, and it was considered by the local parliamentarians as ‘malignant’.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 113; Bayley, Dorset, 48, 53.

Weymouth changed hands several times during the first civil war. After initial successes locally, Parliament was forced to surrender the port in the late summer of 1643. The town welcomed the king’s men, giving up its stock of arms and ammunition and the use of its fleet of merchant ships, and the next few months saw the return of Gape and his allies to the corporation.Bayley, Dorset, 103; Weymouth Min. Bks. 51. Weymouth became an important port for the royalists: in November 1643 a regiment of Irish troops was landed there; and February 1644 arms and ammunition were landed there for the king’s army.Bayley, Dorset, 119; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 17, 20. As the 3rd earl of Essex marched west in June 1644, the corporation hastily sent four of its number to negotiate. They were refused and the town was forced to yield upon quarter.Bayley, Dorset, 195. Essex then put Weymouth under the care of commissioners mostly drawn from reliable local gentry, and made William Sydenham* its governor.Stowe 184, f. 107; Bayley, Dorset, 199. The lord admiral, the 2nd earl of Warwick, was also hostile to Weymouth, which he condemned in June as ‘most serviceable to the enemy’s designs’ and in July he complained that the inhabitants were unwilling to manufacture carriages for his fleet’s cannon.CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 251-2, 301. In February 1645 Weymouth was surprised by royalist forces under Sir Lewis Dyve†, who trapped the parliamentarian garrison in Melcombe for several weeks until relieving forces arrived.Bayley, Dorset, 237-43. Peter Ince, the garrison’s Presbyterian minister, alleged that the royalists had been aided by the townsmen, who had ‘a long time been hatching a conspiracy with Sir Lewis Dyve and the Portlanders’.P. Ince, A Brief Relation of the Surprise of the Forts of Weymouth (1645), 3 (E.274.7). Sydenham took revenge by hanging two of the ringleaders.Bayley, Dorset, 243-4.

Such suspicions exacerbated existing splits within Weymouth’s ruling elite. Prominent burgesses, such as George Churchey (brother-in-law of Francis Gape) were routinely accused of having royalist sympathies, although Churchey later protested that he was ‘in great trouble and fear as well in the time when the garrison was for the late king as when it was reduced for the Parliament’.Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xxii. 41; C22/729/54; Bayley, Dorset, 316, 318-20. James and Thomas Giear* were long-term associates of Thomas Waltham, who, as mayor in 1646, was eager to recruit Ince as minister.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 197, 199. He was apparently aided in this by the Presbyterian-inclined county committee, which in January 1647 issued orders forbidding lay preaching at nearby Radipole parish church, because it caused ‘great disturbance and hazard of the garrison at Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, through the flocking of the officers and soldiers out of the town’.Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 130-1. Ranged against Waltham and his allies was a group which was more sympathetic to the New Model garrison, under its governor, William Sydenham. Various garrison officers, including Lieutenant Peake, Captain Harding and Captain John Arthur were openly hostile to the Waltham interest and to the crypto-royalist George Churchey.Bayley, Dorset, 317-20. They were joined by townsmen such as Robert Saunders (who denounced Peter Ince and his assistant, Henry Way, as papists) and Matthew Pitt (who was himself denounced as a religious Independent).Bayley, Dorset, 317. Both the Saunders and the Pitt families were to become dissenters after the Restoration.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 201. Most prominent of this group was Mathew Allin*, who had supported the garrison from the beginning of the war: when Portland fell in May 1643, it had been Allin and Henry Michell who had joined the parliamentarian governor in signing the surrender terms.Bayley, Dorset, 48, 71-2. In June 1644 a similar group of burgesses, including Henry Michell, Henry Cuttance and Mathew Allin, joined more prominent county figures as the new parliamentarian commissioners to take care of the town.Stowe 184, f. 107.

Divisions within the borough can also be seen in two elections at the end of 1645. The first, on 18 October 1645, was to replace the royalist Richard King as recorder of the borough. Of the two candidates, Dr John Bond* (Denis Bond*’s son) was supported by Thomas Waltham, Thomas Giear, John Lockyer and other possible Presbyterians; Bond’s opponent, William Savage, was supported by Mathew Allin and (rather oddly) the former royalist, George Churchey.Weymouth Min. Bks. 55. Churchey’s decision to side with Allin may indicate nothing more than that they were both enemies of the Waltham faction. On 3 November 1645 elections were held to fill the three parliamentary seats vacated by the disablement of King, Sir John Strangways and Gerard Naper. Seven candidates were nominated. The town’s governor, William Sydenham, and its new recorder, Dr John Bond, were returned with 87 and 71 votes respectively, but the third seat was hotly contested.Weymouth Min. Bks. 55-6. John Ashe* reported there had been ‘so many speeches made against strangers and unknown persons that if three townsmen had stood they had carried it against all that interposed; for they rejected four able men and chose a poor simple townsman’.Weymouth Min. Bks. 55-6; Bayley, Dorset, 294. The townsman chosen was the Mathew Allin*, who received 51 votes. His rivals were Robert Coker* (35), John Fry* (29), John Sadler* (14) and John Hill (32) – the last being the candidate backed by a group of moderate burgesses headed by Allin’s enemy James Giear and the Dorchester merchant, John Whiteway*.Weymouth Min. Bks. 56. Allin’s success contrasts with the failure of his candidate in the recorder elections barely a month before, and suggests that the factional balance in Weymouth remained finely poised.

As the first civil war drew to a close the situation in Weymouth did not improve markedly. There were still tensions within the corporation, with the influential Captain John Arthur making two attempts – in February and September 1646 – to prosecute George Churchey for customs fraud.Weymouth Min. Bks. 57, 59. During this period Henry Rose (the bailiff) was attacked as ‘a cavalier and two-faced knave’ and his friend Thomas Waltham (the mayor) was also denounced as a traitor, while Churchey was imprisoned by the garrison for objecting to the new quartering arrangements.Bayley, Dorset, 317-20; Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 76-8. Peter Ince had moved to a Wiltshire parish in February 1646 and he was replaced at first by Edward Buckler and then James Strong, ‘an able orthodox divine’; but by January 1647 there were complaints of unauthorized preaching, especially in the garrison.Bayley, Dorset, 317; Dorset Standing Cttee. 2, 130-1. By this time there was trouble of a different kind growing among the soldiery. In November and December 1646 the county treasurer paid out money to the soldiers ‘upon their discontent for want of pay’ and to provide beer for them.Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 30v, 31. The Weymouth officers were owed nearly £3,000 in back-pay in January 1647, and in the spring the county committee borrowed money to meet the immediate demands of the garrison.Dorset Standing Cttee. 161-2. During the unrest at Westminster in July 1647, the garrison mutinied, and marched on Dorchester demanding the payment of arrears.Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 350. Further demands for pay were made in December 1647 and February 1648.Dorset Standing Cttee. 313, 348.

Relations between the parliamentary authorities and the corporation remained strained in the late 1640s. Storms in 1647 had breached the harbour walls, with disastrous consequences for the town’s trade, and Parliament granted £1,000 for repairs.Weymouth Min. Bks. 62-3. This gesture was largely empty, however, as the money was to come from the customs at Weymouth, which had been correspondingly reduced by the collapse of trade. The mayor wrote letters to Giles Grene* and others, protesting that it was impossible to rebuild the harbour with the customs money alone.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 180-1. During and after the second civil war, Weymouth was seen as politically unreliable. In May 1648 there were reports that mutinous sailors had landed in the town and taken the surrounding castles for the king; in June the arms and ammunition held by the mayor were put into the custody of the garrison commander; and fears of an attempt on the town were again voiced in August.CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 85, 248; Dorset Standing Cttee. 400. On 21 September that year the corporation reacted to an attempt to elect the royalist Henry Rose as mayor with an unsuccessful attempt to purge his supporters, including Rose himself, Churchey, James Giear and John Hodder, under an ordinance banning former royalists from holding municipal office.Weymouth Min. Bks. 73.

On 19 January 1649 ten burgesses, including Rose, Churchey, Giear and Hodder, resigned their posts before new elections were held.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 116; Weymouth Min. Bks. 76. On 23 April Dr John Bond resigned the recordership in favour of his nephew, Samuel Bond*.Weymouth Min. Bks. 78. Even after this reorganization the corporation appears to have been lukewarm about serving the new commonwealth. The new mayor and bailiffs, John Browne I*, Henry Waltham and Robert Wall, elected in September, were Presbyterians who refused to take the Engagement, and were fined for their refusal.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 79. A royalist element remained active in the town. There were rumours of Weymouth being a target of royalist plotters in July 1649, when extra troops were requested ‘to master a number of malignants exceeding that of the soldiery’, and a number of conspirators were arrested in August.Bodl. Nalson XV(2), ff. 337-8v; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 279. Further plots were feared in 1650.CSP Dom. 1650, p. 153. After Charles Stuart’s defeat at Worcester, Weymouth seems to have submitted to the commonwealth regime. Their willingness to conform can be seen in a corporation order of 22 April 1653 – presumably passed before news of the dissolution of the Rump had reached the town – which gave generous funding to a town agent ‘for soliciting the common business’ and appointed Denis Bond, John Browne I, John Trenchard and William Sydenham as trustees for the town, vesting in them all the property belonging to the corporation ‘for the use of the town according to the order of the House’.Weymouth Min. Bks. 93.

During the early 1650s Weymouth’s economic difficulties continued. In August 1651 the poverty of the corporation was such that they had to borrow £50 from their own poor rates.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 143. There was a recovery of trade later in the decade but, despite pleas from Weymouth and Poole, the government refused to protect the key Newfoundland routes. In 1652 the council of state suggested, somewhat unhelpfully, that no ships should be sent to Newfoundland that year, and in 1656 an important burgess, George Pley, kinsman of John Pley*, complained that the town had been utterly abandoned to the pirates.CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 27, 249; 1655-6, pp. 229, 264. At the same time, the impressment of mariners reached new levels, and the Weymouth sailors continued to evade capture.CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 28, 226; 1655, p. 560; 1655-6, pp. 446, 488. Both problems bore marked similarities to Weymouth’s experiences under Charles I. In 1657, ten years after the problem first arose, the mayor of Weymouth petitioned the protector for £3,000 to repair the harbour, which had again become ruined, and was now silting up.CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 204. Once again, money was only granted from Weymouth’s depleted customs revenue.CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 27.

Under the Instrument of Government Weymouth and Melcombe Regis were reduced from four MPs to just one. In 1654 and 1656 the local grandee and loyal Cromwellian, Denis Bond, was chosen.C219/44, unfol. Bond had long-standing connections with the borough and his sons, John and Samuel, were successive recorders of the borough in the late 1640s and the 1650s.Weymouth Min. Bks. 78. Bond’s death in the autumn of 1658 caused an adjustment in factional allegiance, and the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, held shortly afterwards, were contested among seven candidates. The only townsman, Henry Waltham, was passed over in favour of the politically important John Trenchard*, the London merchant Peter Myddelton*, and two army officers with no connection with the town: John Clerke II* and Waldive Lagoe*. The other unsuccessful candidates were local former parliamentarians, Thomas Sydenham and Richard Burie.Weymouth Min. Bks. 105. Dr John Bond, though rumoured to be in the running, apparently did not stand.Mercurius Politicus no. 548 (30 Dec. 1658-6 Jan. 1659), 135 (E.761.2). Despite the influence of the military within Weymouth, in the closing weeks of 1659 the town supported the restored Rump against the army interest. George Pley told William Lenthall* on 31 December 1659 that the main threat to Weymouth was from Ostend pirates, and otherwise the town was ‘peaceably inclined’.Bodl. Nalson VIII, ff. 228-9.

The Restoration brought the formal rehabilitation, in the municipal elections of October 1662, of the royalist sympathizers who had been excluded from the corporation in 1649, and the years after 1660 saw the election of a series of former royalists as mayors.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 116; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 438. It was only in the early years of the Restoration period that essential structures such as the harbour and bridge were at last properly repaired.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 183-5. And it was not until March 1664 that Henry Rose delivered to the churchwardens the chalice and paten, two flagons, communion table cloth and carpet and other effects that he seems to have been hiding for the previous two decades.Weymouth Charters ed. Moule, 201.