Devon

Of the counties in England, only Yorkshire and Lincolnshire were incontestably larger than Devon in the seventeenth century. Seventy-five miles from north to south and 73 from east to west, Devon was diverse in its land use and social structure. The regions of the county were clearly delineated in terms of topography and land use. East Devon was the most populous, and manors there were large and valuable, even if field sizes were small. The South Hams, the hinterland behind Dartmouth and Totnes and north east of Plymouth, was the most fertile and productive region agriculturally. Behind the South Hams loomed the land mass of Dartmoor, thinly populated and with poor soils; continuing westwards the far west of Devon into Cornwall was characterised by extensive tracts of moorland and farm holdings had to be larger than in the east in order to sustain the population, which was far less densely concentrated than on the borders with Somerset and Dorset. North Devon was hilly pasture country, except in the river valley of the Taw. According to the antiquary John Aubrey, Oliver Cromwell* is said to have considered Devon agricultural practice the finest in England, although the lord general’s travels in the county were limited to the rich river valleys of Culme, Creedy and Exe. W.G. Hoskins, Devon (1954), 95, 540.

Whatever the condition of its agriculture, Devon was in any case an industrial county. The foremost industry was cloth weaving, and every part of the county had mills and looms. Sheep farming was the ubiquitous staple behind the cloth industry, and every Devon town was a market for cloth production, whether the coarse, heavy cloth of kerseys, or the lighter specialised fabrics available in the east Devon towns. The merchants of Devon ports exported cloth to France and Spain, bringing back a wide range of basic commodities such as iron and salt, as well as the specialist fabrics of those counties for distribution over the country. Fishing was an important industry on Devon’s north and south coasts, and included the more capital-intensive, migratory and dangerous Newfoundland cod fishing trade, focused on, and regulated by, the merchants of the Devon corporate towns. More widely, it has been estimated that there were at least 5,000 mariners in the county in the 1620s. Tin mining completes the list of the county’s major industries, but it was an inherently unstable part of the economy, and in this period was probably often a part-time employment for those on the rim of Dartmoor, with the stannary courts and stannary parliament more a reminder of a once great industry by 1640 in serious decline. M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter, 1994), 13-18; S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County (Exeter, 1985), pp. xv-xvii.

On the eve of the civil war, Devon was a county of around 72,000 adult males, with an estimated total population of 234,000. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality, 21; M. Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War (Exeter, 1997), 4. To judge from the plentiful evidence of the returns made to Parliament of those taking the Protestation early in 1642, between 600 and 700 men considered themselves gentlemen or above in social standing. This was a figure far above the estimate made by those antiquaries and heralds who concerned themselves with defining gentility. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration, p. xviii. The figure of a freeholder class of about 8-9,000 entitled to vote in the 1660-90 period seems scarcely to have increased by the early nineteenth century. HP Commons 1660-1690; Hoskins, Devon, 74. Though one might assume that in the 1640-60 period the number of eligible freeholders was smaller, it is impossible to say by how much and what exactly would be the impact of disqualifications on political grounds during the 1640s and 50s. County elections were held at Exeter castle, the centre for assizes and quarter sessions. The fixed location probably encouraged a static ‘voterate’ consisting of the gentry, their dependants and freeholders within an easy ride of Exeter. It may also have encouraged a pre-election agreement which may have been in place in 1640. Certainly nothing is heard in Devon of the controversies which marked elections in such counties as Somerset and Gloucestershire. Thomas Wise had sat in three Parliaments before 1640, Edward Seymour was the heir of Sir Edward Seymour†, who had sat in six. And evidence of electoral pacts is found in the case of Bere Alston borough, where in the contest for seats in the Short Parliament, William Strode I* was assured by the electors that a seat was his so long as Thomas Wise and Nicholas Slanning* were returned as knights of the shire. CJ ii. 14b. In the second election of the year, some 21 electors signed the indenture for Wise and Seymour, among them some well-known county gentry. C219/43/1.

The ease with which Wise and Seymour were apparently returned in the two elections of 1640 should not be interpreted as a sign of political indifference in the county. The regime of Archbishop William Laud touched a raw nerve in a county where many of the gentry were puritan in outlook. A Devon petition against the oath in the 1640 Canons was sent to Parliament, and this was followed in 1641 by petitions on 17 March and 16 July 1641 on stannary law and the privileges of tin miners. Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 1207; PA, Main Pprs. 17 Mar., 16 July 1641. John Bampfylde, father of John Bampfylde*, was excited in January 1641 by the prospects that lay ahead for reform in Parliament, writing to knight of the shire Seymour: ‘For ever be this Parliament renowned for so great achievements, for we dream now of nothing more than of a golden age’. Devon RO, 3799-3, John Bampfylde to Edward Seymour, 9 Jan. 1641. Against this background, electoral competition in this county seems to have been displaced to the boroughs. The newly re-enfranchised constituencies of Honiton, Ashburton and Okehampton attracted men like Sir Samuel Rolle, who was eager to sit in the Long Parliament and was willing to court any borough that might adopt him. Rolle entertained hopes that Lydford and Great Torrington might be added to the number of boroughs that recovered the parliamentary franchise, and it was the chance of contributing to reform at Westminster that drove him to pursue a seat. Antony House, Carew Pole BC/24/2 ff. 58, 63, 69. In the event it was the death of Thomas Wise that offered Rolle the opportunity he had been seeking, and he was elected as knight of the shire around April 1641, after the writ was moved on 20 March. CJ ii. 109b.

Devon and its constituent boroughs sent a number of petitions to Westminster during the build-up to civil war. In January 1642 there was a round of petitioning against popish plotting and faction from the city and county of Exeter and from the smaller boroughs of Dartmouth and Totnes. PA, Main Pprs. 25 Jan. 1642. By August the tone of the petitions framed in Exeter castle, at assize meetings and in the name of the shire, had become more conciliatory and anxious about the outbreak of civil war. PA, Main Pprs. 16 Aug. 1642; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 369; I. Palfrey, ‘Devon and the Outbreak of the English Civil War, 1642-3’, Southern Hist. x. 30-4. When war did break out, Edward Seymour took the king’s side, while Sir Samuel Rolle stood staunchly for Parliament. Seymour was suspended for not attending the House as early as 2 September 1642, and was disabled from sitting on 16 January 1643. He served as military governor of Dartmouth, near his home at Berry Pomeroy. Only with the military intervention by the New Model army from 1645 was there any prospect of fresh elections in Devon. By November 1645 some elections were being arranged in Dorset boroughs. John Ashe* encouraged Speaker William Lenthall* to look ahead to contests in Devon as the army advanced into the peninsula of the south west, naming Sir John Bampfylde*, Anthony Nicoll* and Sir Samuel Rolle as important fixers of future elections: ‘they have more places than men to supply them’. Bodl. Nalson V, f. 29. Not until June 1646 was an election held for Seymour’s forfeited seat, at a time when the Devon county committee, backed by the army, was the most stable agency of parliamentary rule in the county. The MP returned on that occasion was Sir Nicholas Martyn, who evidently enjoyed a strong electoral interest in the county, although its source remains unclear.

The election of William Morice in August 1648, to fill the vacancy left by the death of Sir Samuel Rolle, was another victory for the committee, or at least the dominant group on it, which was Presbyterian in politics and supportive of attempts to re-establish a county militia along traditional lines to supplant the New Model. Even in 1645, Sir Samuel Rolle had been criticized by John Ashe for his ambivalence towards the advancing professional army: ‘he that was so eager to have the army come into Devon is now as willing to be discharged of them, at least of the charge and burden of them’. Bodl. Nalson V, f. 29. Rolle’s dislike of the increased tax burden was widely shared among the Devon gentry and yeomanry, and partly accounts for the Devon men’s sympathy towards Edward Massie’s* brigade, which under the command of Sir Francis Drake included the re-formed elements of the Plymouth regiments which had withstood the royalists during the long siege. Morice’s election came during a period when many Members sitting for Devon boroughs had withdrawn from Westminster in the face of the waxing strength of the Independents. At its home in the house of the former dean of Exeter, the Devon committee planned in the summer of 1648 to relaunch the county militia and augment its own membership, but it was clear by November that they were finding it difficult to maintain the momentum and were dwindling into inactivity: ‘There are so few of the committee that they have not sat constantly but as much as their occasions would permit’. Add. 5494, ff. 99, 100.

During the Rump, Devon went largely unrepresented, except for the presence of a few borough Members such as Thomas Boone* and Philip Skippon*, and of the Devonian Edmund Prideaux I* whose seat was outside the county. The Members selected for service in the Nominated Assembly had little or no active connection with the Devon gentry, who as justices of the peace sustained the government of the county. George Monck, born into a Devon gentry family and an erstwhile royalist, was inactive in the politics of his native county and was included because he was an important army officer and a general-at-sea. Francis Rous was notably godly and highly respected but came from Cornwall, as did John Carew, a godly regicide and Rumper, who was close to Oliver Cromwell. Carew brought with him his cousin, James Erisey, whose obscurity demonstrates the difficulty that the council of state faced in recruiting Members from the armigerous families of Devon. Richard Sweete was a godly Exeter merchant, and Thomas Saunders was an active Devon magistrate. Only Christopher Martyn, albeit from a minor gentry background, represented continuity as a former recruiter to the Long Parliament and a Rumper for a Devon seat.

Under the Instrument of Government of December 1653, Devon was entitled to 11 seats, at the expense of the boroughs which, apart from Exeter and Plymouth were reduced to one seat each. Bere Alston, Okehampton, Plympton Erle, Tavistock and Ashburton were completely disenfranchised. Overall, there was a reduction in the number of seats awarded to Devon, Exeter and the other boroughs. They claimed 26 seats in the Long Parliament, 20 in the Parliament of 1654. On the other hand, the election at Exeter castle on 12 July 1654 was a decisive reversion to an older pattern of representative politics. All the 18 electors who signed the indenture were gentry active in county government, and only three were not serving justices of the peace. C219/44, box 1; Devon RO, QS order book 1/9. The majority had regularly attended quarter sessions under the Rump; one or two, such as Richard Clapp and been active in sequestering royalists’ estates during the 1640s. The 11 men they returned to Westminster were mostly, like themselves, magistrates with a record of service under the Rump. Thomas Saunders and Henry Hatsell had distinguished themselves in local military service. John Hale was unusual in that he had not been born in the west country, and owed his place to a recent move to the county, former army service and his recent elevation by the lord protector’s council to the magistracy. Taken together, the lists of electors and elected provide a cross section of the group that ruled Devon in 1654, and no trace of active disaffection or closet royalism can be traced in them.

It is nevertheless apparent that when the first protectorate Parliament met in September 1654, a number of these MPs were able to endorse the stance taken by Thomas Reynell, ‘ready to act in the country as a justice of the peace, though he could not as a Parliament-man’. TSP iii. 140. Only the military men, Saunders and Hatsell, can be said to have been seriously active in the Parliament. The more obscure the origins of the Devon Member, the more likely he was to have participated with any degree of commitment: John Hale and William Fry sat on three committees each, while William Morice and William Bastard each sat on one. Rolle, Reynell, Upton, Northcote and Quicke played no part at all. This pattern was duly noted by the protector’s council. The episode of the major-generals enhanced the careers of Saunders, Hatsell and John Copleston*, but the electors for the second protectorate Parliament in autumn 1656 were minded not to modify the pattern of selection they had adopted in 1654. The indenture has not survived but there is no reason to suppose that the electors were significantly different in composition from those of 1654. Hatsell and Saunders, and to a lesser extent Hale, would to voters have continued to represent the military interest. Edmund Fowell was to prove an able and conscientious legislator in the 1656 Parliament, but the election of the Presbyterian John Doddridge, who chose to serve for Bristol where he had also been successful, probably reflected the outlook of the Devon electorate more accurately. On this occasion, the protector’s council intervened to prevent a pointed show of abstentions. Northcote, Morice, Yonge, Doddridge and from Plymouth, John Maynard*, were prevented from taking their seats, and John Hale was added to the list in a display of official ingratitude for his activity on the government’s behalf under the local major-general, John Disbrowe* in 1655-6. CJ vii. 425b.

The return of the old franchise to govern election proceedings for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659 allowed one of those excluded in 1656, Sir John Northcote, to take one of the two seats, the other going to Robert Rolle, a popular gentry figure. The electors were again a group of 20 gentry figures, but on this occasion they were from a more elevated layer of the armigerous class. Three were baronets and two were knights, even if the knighthood was an honour bestowed on John Copleston by Lord Protector Oliver. As in 1654, only a handful of these men were not magistrates, but they included a couple, Sir George Chudleigh, 2nd bt. and Josias Calmady, who had briefly served the commonwealth government in the early 1650s before leaving public life for the rest of the decade. C219/46; Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/9. There was no county Member to be involved in the revivals of the Rump in 1659, and neither knight of the shire in the Long Parliament was alive to reclaim his seat when the secluded Members of 1648 were allowed back in February 1660. The elections for Devon to the Convention of 1660 were doubtless conducted at Exeter castle within the same semi-official culture as they had been during the 1650s. The return of George Monck, now hailed as the principal architect of the restoration of the king, and Sir John Northcote, one of the petitioners in January 1660 for a free Parliament, was in the circumstances quite unremarkable.