Tiverton

Tiverton was the most industrialized of the Devon towns, with a successful cloth industry that fed the export trade of Exeter and the other ports of southern Devon and Cornwall. The population around 1660 was put at 7,000, but the minister there thought that a gross under-estimate. To judge from his remark, and from the evidence that there were about 3,500 persons in Tiverton in 1642, the town grew rapidly in size, doubtless stimulated by industrial expansion, once the economy had recovered from the effects of civil war. Compton Census, 269, 274; W.B. Stephens, Seventeenth-Century Exeter (Exeter, 1958), 158-9. The economy of Exeter was significantly shaped by the productivity at Tiverton of kerseys, the serge cloth for which the county of Devon was famous. By 1650 Tiverton was ‘a thriving centre of rich clothiers’. Stephens, Seventeenth-Century Exeter, 51. The town was governed by a charter of 1615, which provided for a mayor, 12 capital burgesses and 12 assistant burgesses, together known as the common council. There was a recorder and a town clerk. The latter office was bestowed on Henry Newte in 1615, with a reversion to his son. The writ for the election of two Members of Parliament was to be directed to the mayor and burgesses. Dunsford, Tiverton, 411-6. There was no dominant landowner in the town, and by the 1630s the manor was divided into no fewer than 40 parts. Harding, Hist. Tiverton, i. 110. Ecclesiastical patronage was also fractured, shared in a complicated rotation between minor proprietors in a four-fold division of the parish of St Peter’s into districts known as Tidcombe, Pitt, Clare and Prior’s Portions. Dunsford, Tiverton, 273; E.S. Chalk, Hist. Church of St Peter Tiverton (Tiverton, 1905), Appendix, vii. Perhaps it was the very absence of a controlling family interest that encouraged the townsmen to be disobliging towards the Caroline government: in 1634 they refused to pay Ship Money on the grounds that they were owed money for billeting soldiers. CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 424.

In general, the mayor and burgesses preferred to send local gentlemen to Westminster on their behalf, usually selecting men with significant legal experience. Peter Balle had represented the town in two Parliaments of the 1620s. He personified the close links between Tiverton and Exeter, where he was recorder. A distinguished lawyer, he had acted as legal counsel for Tiverton in the early 1630s, thus reinforcing the links between himself and the common council. His estate lay at Mamhead, south of the city, but he was connected with property in Somerset that may have helped him gain an influence in Tiverton. Coventry Docquets, 720. As queen’s attorney-general he would in any case have cut a sufficiently powerful figure to secure election without need of a voting tenantry. Balle was returned to the Parliament of April 1640 with Peter Sainthill of nearby Bradninch, who like Balle also had Somerset connections. Som. RO, DD SF/1242, DD SF/2/119/40. Balle and Sainthill were related, and they were probably returned without any serious competition from alternative candidates. PROB11/231/288. Both men travelled to see William Piers, bishop of Exeter about the church in the Tiverton suburb of Cove, a rare example of Parliament-men of this period working actively on behalf of the corporation. Chalk, Hist Church of St Peter, 205.

In the Short Parliament, Balle offered no assistance to the Exeter chamber when its irregular election of the city’s serving mayor was debated. Coupled with his forthright support for the king, this stance probably alienated him from the corporations of both Exeter and Tiverton, and he did not find a seat in the second Parliament of 1640. Instead, for the first and only time in this period, the mayor and burgesses selected one of their own number to accompany Sainthill to Westminster. George Hartnoll was a native of the town and a former mayor. His profile in Parliament was slight, and whatever criticism of the government may have been implied in the town’s rejection of Balle quickly dissipated once civil war broke out. Despite some early support for Parliament in nearby towns such as Cullompton and a promise from the countrymen to keep out Sir Ralph Hopton*, the town fell to him without a struggle in June 1643. Certain Information from Devon and Dorset (1642, E.114.24); Certain Informations no. 21 (5-12 June 1643), 164 (E.105.27). When not at the king’s headquarters in Oxford, Sainthill was active in and around Tiverton on his sovereign’s behalf, and Hartnoll, though less fathomable in his allegiances than his colleague, made no effort to remain in London to contribute to the proceedings of Parliament.

Early in September 1645, Tiverton was said to have declared for Parliament, and to have repulsed attempts by George Goring* to recover the town. The report may have been the work of over-optimistic newsmen. The royalists had certainly garrisoned Tiverton properly by 19 October. Kingdoms Weekly Intelligencer no. cxvi (2-9 Sept. 1645), 933 (E.300.11); The Weekly Account no. 36 (3-10 Sept. 1645, E.300.16). That day, the town was taken decisively by Sir Thomas Fairfax*, although Edward Massie* and Ralph Weldon* were also in the vicinity. The importance of the new garrison as a base for attacking Exeter and Plymouth was appreciated by Fairfax and John Rushworth*, who conveyed the news to Parliament. A Letter sent to the Honourable William Lenthall (1645, 669.f.9.46); Generall Fairfax’s Letter (1645, E.307.5). Massie remained billeted in the area for weeks afterwards, provoking one of his colonels, John Fitzjames*, to complain how after the excitement of the storming the soldiers were inactive and deprived of London newspapers: ‘we are barren of news still’. Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 10v. It has been argued that Tiverton was essentially parliamentarian in outlook through the civil war, and it was certainly the case that in November, soon after the town had been taken, Fairfax felt confident that early elections would be held for the boroughs recently occupied by the New Model. He tried to ensure that his brother-in-law, Sir William Selby, was placed in one of the seats. Fairfax was aware that there would be competition for ‘recruiter’ seats in the south west from locals: ‘every man’s affections ... engaged to their particular relations’. Fairfax Corresp. i. 258-9; M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter, 1994), 49-50. By late December, John Rushworth had identified Tiverton as the most likely place for Selby to be returned, and on 3 January he wrote to Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), that Tiverton was indeed the only borough suitable. Fairfax Corresp. i. 268-9, 273-4. Even this restricted prospect in Devon soon disappeared. Selby was seated in a double return at Ilchester, but the Commons ruled against him. Not until December 1646 did a by-election at Tiverton take place.

When the writ for the by-election was eventually moved, the mayor and burgesses resisted any attempts that might have been continuing to accept outsiders for their seats. Instead, they selected two Devon men to represent them at Westminster. The hand of the county committee was visible in their choice. John Elford was a barrister and the brother-in-law of Sir John Northcote*, a committee leader, while Robert Shapcote, like his predecessor Balle, a Bradninch lawyer, was the son-in-law of Henry Walrond, another committee stalwart and the head of a prominent gentry family in the Tiverton area. Shapcote could also boast a short-lived military career as a colonel of a county regiment. Neither man played any significant part in Parliament once elected. In the case of Shapcote, he was evidently inhibited from attending the House for fear of falling foul of rulings against those with compromised pasts, as he never escaped allegations that he had formerly been a royalist. Despite his failure to represent Tiverton in any active away, he considered himself accountable to the constituency. In one of his periodic self-exculpatory letters to the Speaker, Shapcote expressed himself anxious to clear his name to vindicate the trust placed in him by the Tiverton electors. Bodl. Tanner 57, f.5; Tanner 58, f. 551. It seems highly unlikely that either Elford or Shapcote was in London in December 1648. Had they been, both would undoubtedly have been secluded from the Commons in Pride’s Purge as inimical to the New Model and the Independents.

Tiverton was allocated only one seat under the Instrument of Government, which governed the summoning of the Parliament of 1654. At the election on 12 July, the protectorians fielded John Blackmore, a reliable New Model officer from Exeter, for the place. They were ‘overborne’ by supporters of Shapcote. On 1 August, before the Parliament assembled, Blackmore’s allies petitioned the lord protector’s council to complain. They presented themselves as having ‘given testimony of our hearty affection to the [commonwealth] in all the late changes’, and demanded their ‘rights’. They had been ‘debarred’ from these rights by the majority of the electors who had ‘so notoriously forfeited theirs by their actings’. By returning Shapcote, they had cut off ... the only defence of our privileges’. SP18/74/1-2. At the heart of the petition was an ad hominem attack on Shapcote as one who had only become persuaded by the justice of the parliamentary cause when the south west looked set to be lost to the king. To add to that, he was alleged to have been a gamer and a promoter of cock fights, attracting to his company a number of cavaliers. A further petition when Parliament assembled, to the committee for privileges, ensued. The two prime movers submitted a list of Shapcote’s voters which was evidently taken from their scrutiny of the election indenture. C219/44, box 1. They annotated the list with the misdeeds of the electors, which in ten cases included taking the protestation for the king. It was held against four that they had held office as constable ‘in the king’s time’. Two on the list were alleged to have been of particular service to the king. This left the majority of voters with nothing specific alleged against them, and most were undoubtedly burgesses of the town who would have turned out in any election.

No list of Blackmore’s voters seems to have survived, but two thirds of them were reckoned to have been firm adherents of Parliament’s throughout the wars; the rest ‘assisted’. SP18/74/1-2. The dispute was heavily influenced by religious controversy, which in Tiverton was encouraged by the complex patronage rights pertaining to the living. Blackmore’s supporters mobilized the help of the Independent minister of Pitt Portion, John Chishul, and requested authority from the elections committee to bring him before it to testify. Chishul deposed how his denunciation of Shapcote from the pulpit had evoked a furious threat from the MP. SP18/74/8; Calamy Revised, 115; Dunsford, Tiverton, 330-1. Another Independent minister, Lewis Stucley, who had been vicar of the Tidcombe and Clare Portions of Tiverton in 1651, testified that Shapcote was in Exeter when it was garrisoned for the king and took the king’s side in an alehouse argument. Stucley was careful to attribute the story that Shapcote had served as a major in the king’s army to another. Shapcote’s own religious loyalties were said to have inclined towards the ejected episcopalian, Richard Newte, a member of a family long prominent in Tiverton. SP18/74/1-2; Dunsford, Tiverton, 328-30.

Nothing came of the complaints against Shapcote, even though his detractors drew heavily on the support of Independent ministers, to whom the government might have been thought inclined to listen. Blackmore found a seat in Cornwall and despite the inauspicious reports of him from Tiverton, once at Westminster, Shapcote became a strong supporter of the Cromwellian government. Probably as a consequence of the 1654 controversy, Major-general John Disbrowe* intervened in the affairs of the corporation in March 1656 to remove five individuals from the common council. Dunsford, Tiverton, 191-2. Three of the five had supported Shapcote in the 1654 election. As a result of this tuning, the 1656 election seems to have passed without incident, but it ensconced Shapcote seemingly with the tacit approval of the Cromwellian regime. The 1659 election for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament was held on the old franchise, restoring the two seats. It was evident from the contest that the divisions of 1654 had not in fact dissipated. On this occasion, two indentures were returned to chancery. On both, the first seat was bestowed on Sir Coplestone Bampfylde. He was the son of a leading Devon committeeman of the mid-1640s, and the nephew of Exeter’s recorder, Thomas Bampfylde*. The second seat went to a different man on each indenture. On one the victor was recorded as Robert Shapcote; on the other, Alderman Francis Warner of London, who had no family connections anywhere in the south west, let alone in Tiverton. C219/46. The only link that has been traced between Warner and Devon was through the London Leathersellers’ Company. During Warner’s mastership of that Company, which coincided with his only known foray into parliamentary politics, its governing body was receiving legal advice from two powerful Devonians, Serjeant John Maynard* and the attorney-general, Edmund Prideaux I*. It is possible that either of these acted as a mediator between the briefly ambitious Warner and the Devon borough. Leathersellers’ Hall, ACC/1/3, f. 107.

The mayor and 12 other burgesses were responsible for the indenture returning Bampfylde and Warner, while a different 13 burgesses returned Bampfylde and Shapcote. Prominent among the supporters of Warner were Peter Beare and Henry Fitzwilliams, the deputy county clerk of the peace. Both men had been active in the campaign against Shapcote in 1654. The first name to appear in the list of burgesses supporting Shapcote was that of the Member recruited to the Long Parliament, George Hartnoll. Three other men supporting Shapcote had shown confidence in him in 1654. Only one of the dozen backers of Warner had voted for Shapcote in the earlier election, suggesting that attitudes towards Shapcote in 1659 were conditioned by a significant sense of there remaining unfinished business from 1654. This was no re-run of the 1654 dispute, however. Three of those who had been intruded by Disbrowe into the common council supported Warner, but two signed the indenture for Shapcote, suggesting that the Bradninch lawyer was no longer the obvious focus for political differences in Tiverton. Socially, those voting for Francis Warner were more likely to have estates in lands than the Shapcote supporters. Of the Warner voters who can be traced in subsidy rolls, seven paid on lands and one on goods, whereas for Shapcote, the comparable turn-out was made up of four who paid on lands and six on goods. E179/102/524; E179/172/4/3; E179/102/517. It seems likely therefore that Warner appealed to the better-off, the minor gentlemen of the borough, while the bedrock of support for Shapcote lay among the clothiers and tradesmen there.

After referral to the privileges committee, the House ruled on 10 March 1659 to recognize the indenture favouring Bampfylde and Warner. CJ vii. 612b. Bampfylde went on to play only a modest part in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, while Warner’s contribution was even less distinguished. Neither Sir Coplestone Bampfylde nor Francis Warner was a lawyer. In 1660, the corporation reverted to its usual practice of electing men from a legal background to Westminster, returning Shapcote and Thomas Bampfylde, although the latter chose to sit for Exeter instead. He was replaced in the seat by Roger Colman, who in 1659 had supported Shapcote against Warner, suggesting perhaps that interregnum political differences had at least temporarily been set aside in the interests of unanimity against outside interests.