Plymouth

Plymouth’s population was estimated in 1676 to amount to somewhat less than 6,000 people. Compton Census, 279. In 1640, at the end of a 20-year period of stagnation in trade, there must have been far fewer inhabitants than that, but a recent growth in their numbers was that year noted even so. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/372. It was a smaller port than either Exeter or Bristol. Unlike Exeter, which depended very heavily on exporting the cloth products of nearby towns such as Tiverton, Plymouth sustained a greater variety of maritime trades, but on the eve of the civil war none was in the best of economic health. Plymouth exported cod to Catholic European countries from the Newfoundland and New England fisheries, but the industry had diminished in importance. The cloth trade improved after the damaging war years of 1625-9, but not to the heights it had scaled in the period before 1620. Some tin was exported from Plymouth, a trade it shared with the Cornish ports of Helston and Truro. Trans. Devonshire Assoc. ci. 125-6, 127, 128, 129, 131, 133. It was the exporting port for the pre-emptors of tin, lessees of the government, who included Simon Snowe* of Exeter among their number. As with other ports of south west England, the range of imported goods was wide, but grain, Spanish iron, particular varieties of French textiles such as canvas, and luxury foods featured strongly. E190/1036/16.

The governance of Plymouth rested on a charter of 1628, which confirmed the corporation as vested in a mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 common councillors. The borough returned two Members to Parliament, who throughout this period were reimbursed by the corporation, if at varying rates. Merchants dominated the corporation, as might be expected, but in 1641 15 Plymouth men were paying the subsidy assessed on their lands rather than goods, among them the burgesses returned to the Parliaments of 1640, Robert Trelawny* and John Waddon*. E179/102/486. During the 1630s, the corporation took legal advice from Alexander Maynard, father of John Maynard*, but feted its recorder, John Glanville*, with gifts of silver. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, ff. 221v, 222. It relied on its legal advisers to help address the challenges presented by external interests. In 1630 Plymouth was in dispute with the Eastland Company, and had to defend itself against a writ of quo warranto from the privy council. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 222. Councillors rode regularly to Exeter to represent the town before the county magistrates, including in 1637 on the question of Ship Money, which the town was evidently reluctant to pay. The town paid fee farm rent to the prince of Wales, and had to defend itself in London in 1637 against allegations of arrears. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, ff. 240, 243. By the standards of the 1630s, however, none of these disputes was exceptional. In 1640, there seems to have been no contest at either of the elections. The burgesses selected were both from the landed element among the Plymouth elite. Robert Trelawny was probably the borough’s wealthiest citizen, with a spread of business interests that included colonial development in New England. John Waddon was less wealthy, but his estate was entirely landed and he is not known to have engaged in overseas trade.

The borough had its own priorities and agenda for the Parliaments of 1640, which were probably assisted by the resignation of Glanville, Speaker in the Short Parliament and an advisor to the Lords in the Parliament that met in November, in favour of his ‘good friend’ John Maynard*. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/359/71; Cal. Plymouth Recs. 206. A dispute had developed between the corporation and the town’s vicar, Aaron Wilson, by 1637, over their respective property rights over the living. A decree in star chamber led to the king’s assuming the advowson to himself. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/373. It led also to the initiative to create a new parish from part of what had been until then the single Plymouth parish of St Andrew. Charles parish, as it was to be known, was to cater for what was perceived as a recent population increase, and the mayor and commonalty were to exercise patronage rights over the advowsons of both parishes. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/372, 373. The creation of Charles parish was codified in a private act of 1640, of the second of the two Parliaments to meet that year. In May 1641, the bill was said to be in Trelawny’s hands. Cal. Plymouth Recs. 243; PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1640/16 & 17 Chas I n 31; CJ ii. 153b. The local concerns did not crowd out a wider perspective. Late in 1641, the Plymouth commonalty petitioned the justices of Devon about the threat from the Turks and the rebels in Ireland to the fishing trade with Newfoundland and New England. The petitioners, who included Christopher Ceely* and Edmund Fowell*, linked what was really a respectfully-couched demand for a strong navy with a call to punish delinquents and redress ‘pressures and grievances’ in the church and commonwealth. Their petition was forwarded to the Commons and was topped off with a call for ‘ill-affected lords and bishops’ to be removed from the House of Lords. Barnstaple merchants joined the Plymouth men in their grievances. PA, Main Pprs. 1641, nd.

Soon after the presentation of this petition, Robert Trelawny was disabled from sitting in the House (9 Mar. 1642). Two striking aspects of his case were the severity of his punishment and the unwillingness of any west country Members to support him. Direct evidence of a coup against him by his fellow-burgess, John Waddon, or by a faction in Plymouth is lacking, but the civic accounts contain no note of any activity by him on the corporation’s behalf during his time in Parliament. Two days after Trelawny’s fall (11 Mar.), a writ was issued for holding a new election at Plymouth. No indenture recording the election of Sir John Yonge – Trelawny’s successor – survives, but he had taken his seat in the House by 2 May 1642. He was the only burgess to be returned in this period who was not a Plymothian, but his brother-in-law was the firebrand William Strode I*, whose estate was near the town. Strode had acquired a greater notoriety as one of the Five Members that January. Trelawny’s dismissive remarks about the right of the House to defend itself had come to light after the king’s fateful visit to the chamber, so electing Strode’s relative must have been intended as conveying to the government a determined message of disapproval. On 2 February, the anniversary of the king’s coronation had been marked in Plymouth by ceremonial gunshot, but the townsmen made several journeys to Exeter and Tavistock to consult the Devon deputy lieutenants over their grievances. C231/5, p. 512; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 252.

In October 1642, after the outbreak of civil war, a number of Cornish deputy lieutenants, among them Sir Alexander Carew*, Francis Buller I*, John Trefusis and Richard Erisey*, used Plymouth as a receptive base from which to raise a force to oppose the royalist ‘malignants’. PA, Main Pprs. 29 Oct. 1642. The Plymouth men themselves were just as committed in their support of Parliament. John Waddon and the mayor, Philip Francis, drew up a list of grievances against Trelawny, who had been brought to London after refusing to lend on the ‘Propositions’. They instanced the way the disgraced burgess had dissuaded citizens from lending to Parliament; under his influence, the minds of citizens had been ‘suddenly altered’. Trelawny had favoured the king’s commission of array, and had failed to co-operate when the committee in support of Parliament had been established. Above all, Waddon and Francis feared his power over the townspeople through his ‘creatures and vassals’. Although they left the final judgement over Trelawny’s future to Parliament, it is clear that the Plymouth men, determined ‘to spend the last drops of our blood in this so just a quarrel’, wished him far away from their town. Bodl. Nalson II, f. 213.

Throughout the first civil war, Plymouth withstood sieges by the royalists, sustained by resources brought by sea. Thomas Wroth* gave a progress report to John Pym* in January 1643 on the building of the fortifications, describing the offshore fort of St Nicholas Island as ‘strong and impregnable’. Bodl. Nalson II, f. 288. The forces defending town and fort, together with the committee supervising them, nurtured the political skills of a number of future MPs, among them Henry Hatsell*, Timothy Alsop*, Christopher Ceely* and Charles Vaghan*. Among the army officers serving at Plymouth during or just after the first civil war were John Birch* and Ralph Weldon*. The town remained in regular contact with the outside world during its isolation, in 1643 supplying Parliament with detailed accounts of the treachery of Sir Alexander Carew, and that year entertaining visiting army leaders like Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, and William Ruthen, the Scots-born lieutenant-general of the associated western counties forces. Plymouth was also early in 1643 the venue for discussions held by a group of MPs on the treaty between Devon parliamentarians and Cornish royalists. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 255; I.R. Palfrey, ‘Devon and the Outbreak of the English Civil War, 1642-43’, Southern Hist. x. 38-41. This ‘cessation’ was actively disliked by a number of parliamentarians in the town, among them Thomas Gewen*, Charles Vaghan and Thomas Boone*, not least because it contained no references to ‘defending the privileges of Parliament’. Bodl. Nalson II, f. 332. In June the Plymouth committee, including Waddon, wrote to Yonge in London that the loss of Plymouth to the king would mean the loss of the whole county. Bodl. Nalson XI, f. 276.

During 1644 and 1645, Plymouth settled into the defensive characteristics of a town under siege. The nearest the parliamentarian lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, came to Plymouth on his ill-fated march into the south west in 1644 was Tavistock, and the Plymouth corporation managed to send a gift to him there. The roll of Spanish tobacco they despatched to the Speaker contained a message that overseas trade in Plymouth was still somehow continuing. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 258. Once Sir Thomas Fairfax* had reached the town in January 1646 to raise the siege, the old pattern resumed of two-way traffic between the corporation and Westminster. Typical was the journey to increase supply to the garrison made by Robert Arundell, and the entertaining of grandees such as Fairfax, John Maynard and the high steward, John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 264. Both Yonge and Waddon were secure in their seats, and the latter was awarded over £200 in arrears of his allowance from the town for attending Parliament. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 264v. The issue of garrison pay at Plymouth reached crisis point in 1647. In August the governor, Ralph Weldon*, was faced with a mutiny which he and the mayor, Christopher Ceely*, tried to avert by allocating the product of excise collection in the town to the soldiers. As, however, Weldon put it to Speaker William Lenthall, Plymouth had ‘spent itself to skin and bone in the kingdom’s cause’, ‘now neither landlord nor soldier have bread to put in their mouths and the complaints of the poor are most lamentable and importunate’. Bodl. Tanner 58, ff. 209, 444, 448, 476; S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646-1670 (Exeter, 1985), 4-6. Weldon tried unsuccessfully to lay down his command, and briefed Edmund Prideaux I* to secure the attention of the Commons. To ensure that his voice was heard, he felt the need also to put Plymouth’s case to the City and the Committee of the West. Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 427. While the grievances of the Plymouth soldiery were eased somewhat in the last months of 1647, they could easily flare up again, as in February 1648. CJ v. 467b; Moderate Intelligencer no. 153 (17-24 Feb. 1648), 1174 (E.429.1). The long term consequence was a deterioration in relations between army and Plymouth’s Presbyterian MPs, neither of whom were still in London in December 1648 when the House was purged. Had they been, they would undoubtedly have found themselves secluded or imprisoned.

Plymouth remained unrepresented during the Rump Parliament and the Nominated Assembly. Under the Instrument of Government of December 1653 it recovered its two seats. In the first protectorate Parliament in 1654-5, they were filled by Christopher Ceely, a civil war veteran, and by William Yeo, the Plymouth town clerk. There is no evidence that the town had any particular agenda to pursue in this Parliament, but it was well placed to advance its interests in the second protectorate Parliament which convened in September 1656. Not only did the town field a stronger parliamentary team by advancing Recorder Maynard to take the first seat, and bestowing the second on the energetic former Plymouth committee treasurer, Timothy Alsop, but it could now also draw on the commitment of Edmund Fowell, a Plymouth man who sat for the county. Two pieces of local legislation passed the House on Plymouth’s behalf. One was an act for maintenance of the ministers, the other an act to build vicarage houses for the two parishes. The corporation reimbursed Alsop for his outlay in procuring the acts: £21 7s 6d for the ministers’ maintenance, and £20 17s 6d for that relating to the vicarage houses. A further small payment for the same purposes, to Fowell, soon followed. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, ff. 296v, 302. The original text on parchment of the second of these acts has survived among the Plymouth corporation records. Underneath the title it is annotated ‘Let this bill be presented to the lord protector for his consent’, and in the margin it is marked ‘The lord protector doth consent’. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/379. Perhaps it was removed from the destruction that befell interregnum parliamentary acts in 1660 by a Plymouth man on hand: if so, John Maynard was the most obvious possible agent.

When the former arrangements for parliamentary elections were restored under the terms of the Humble and Petition and Advice in 1659, they made no obvious difference to the pattern of Plymouth’s representation at Westminster. Alsop was returned again with Ceely, both men having played prominent parts in Plymouth’s straitened civil war experience. Both were awarded sums for their parliamentary service after Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament closed. Alsop remained in London afterwards at Plymouth’s request; he was reimbursed at the rate of 20s per day. John Waddon had been given something over three times that a day to sit in the Short Parliament, suggesting how impoverished the Plymouth corporation remained after nearly two decades of upheaval and disruption to commerce. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, f. 2v; 1/132, f. 250. During the period of the revived Rump in 1659, the minister of Plymouth, the Presbyterian George Hughes, joined with the mayor and a number of civic officers to repudiate the proclamation against the rebels who had joined Sir George Boothe* in Cheshire. A republican correspondent of the council of state wrote how ‘most great ones’ in Plymouth were ‘troubled’ at news of the rebellion’s failure. Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 125.

On the eve of the restoration of the monarchy, there was a double return for seats in the Convention. Three of the four returned were hardy survivors of the interregnum, of unambiguously Presbyterian outlook: Maynard, Fowell and William Morice*, who had oddly been put in charge of St Nicholas Island by his relative and political associate, George Monck*. The exception to this pattern was Samuel Trelawny, son of Robert, whose coolness towards Presbyterians might have been predicted. Maynard and Fowell were returned by the corporation; later this was overturned in favour of a wider electorate, the commonalty, which had preferred Morice and Trelawny. The fate of the interregnum stalwarts Ceely and Yeo was to be excluded by the corporation commissioners in 1662. HP Commons 1660-1690. Elsewhere, in a remarkable example of adaptation to circumstances, Timothy Alsop remained in London to become brewer to the king and a supplier of gossip to Samuel Pepys†.