Barnstaple

The basis of Barnstaple’s wealth was the trade it conducted as seaport. On Devon’s north coast, at the western end of the Bristol Channel, its easy access to the Atlantic trade routes was compromised by the steady silting up of the River Taw, which allowed nearby Bideford to grow at Barnstaple’s expense. W.G. Hoskins, Devon (1954), 327-30. In the early 1630s, it seems that commercial life in Barnstaple followed a long-established pattern. The various kinds of Devon cloth were exported to ports in Ireland, Spain and France, while in the returning ships came miscellaneous cargoes of Spanish iron, Spanish and Irish wool, and edible goods. A significant but not overwhelming element of this mixture, compared with a port on the south Devon coast like Dartmouth, was the trade with Newfoundland. ‘Train oil’, a fish and whale product, and presumably fish itself, were imported in modest quantities and the American colonies themselves were supplied from Barnstaple, as in December 1631 when a cargo of goods worth £126 was sent there; and in 1633 when a sudden victualling of ships for Newfoundland and Virginia was predicted to result in a grain shortage. E190/947/8; N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 19. The cargo of beaver skins sold in the town in 1630 probably came from the New World, rather than Europe. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 13. Most of the merchants in Barnstaple’s commercial world were from the town itself, but there were occasional interlopers like Richard Sweete*, an Exeter man perhaps taking advantage of the fact that in terms of taxation, Barnstaple was but a sub-port or ‘creek’, to use the term of the customs service, of Exeter. The apparatus of trade in the town, the crane, wool-yard or scales, the quay and the quay hall, were leased annually by the council to a local proprietor, but with a proviso that the lease would be withdrawn if a visitation of plague critically affected the volume of trade. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 4. Despite the long-term decline of Barnstaple as a seaport in relation to Bideford, there was enough business confidence in the borough in the mid-1630s to justify a scheme to extend the quay and build a dock for the barques that put in there, and even after the upheavals of the civil war, it could be described as ‘a very fine, sweet town’. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 37; John Taylors wandering, to see the Wonders of the West (1649), 9 (E.573.12).

Some 731 adult males lent their names to Parliament’s Protestation in 1642, and in 1676 the population of Barnstaple was estimated to be 3,000. Devon Protestation Returns, 475; Compton Census, 291. This suggests a picture of the town’s size that seems rather static. The government of the town lay in a charter of 1610, which provided for a mayor, aldermen and burgesses, with 25 capital burgesses called the common council. Parliamentary and civic elections were generally held in the guildhall or town hall, although in 1646 Richard Ferris* was elected to the mayoralty on a marsh near the bridge, as a precaution against the spread of ‘plague’. J.B. Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple (Barnstaple, 1830), 259-60, 295. The parliamentary indentures were made out in the name of the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough and parish. Civic – but not it seems, parliamentary – elections were conducted in a distinctive way at Barnstaple. Balls, presumably of wood, were used to record ballots, and balls could be given to proxies, who were allowed to use their own discretion and were not necessarily mandated. This electoral system was extended in 1638 to include the annual choice of captain of the town militia. N. Devon RO, B1/613, B1/3305. The captain was always a prominent member of the town council, a subordinate, called the lieutenant, taking greater responsibility for the drilling of the men. In 1634, the town petitioned the privy council in defence of its militia privileges. SP16/266/12.

During the 1630s, the town found itself out of sympathy with some of the policies of Charles I. In 1637 there were 16 Ship Money refusers in the town, nine of them women. Among them were the vicar, Martin Blake, who insisted that he was exempt, and the widowed mother of George Peard*. SP16/376/138. The number withholding their Ship Money dues soon rose to 26, including George Peard himself by this time. SP16/407/54, SP16/415/111. From 1632 the town council paid a lecturer, William Crompton, to augment the ministry of Blake. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 17. Blake was the son-in-law of the dominant figure in Barnstaple’s civic life, John Delbridge, who sat in six Parliaments from 1614. Blake had come to Barnstaple at Delbridge’s invitation, but was evidently not as intent on radical religious reform as a certain element in the town, and Blake quarrelled with Crompton, trying unsuccessfully to terminate his appointment. The case went before the bishop, after which Crompton was removed. J.F. Chanter, Life and Times of Martin Blake (1910), 22, 39, 61-2, 63. During the period of Delbridge’s dominance, the town’s other leaders were seemingly content to follow his lead on political and religious matters. In 1633, the town council thanked Delbridge for his pains in Parliament, at court and in London generally by giving his family a curious 33-year lease of buildings in the town, which was to begin (unless the scribe was in error) in 1660. N. Devon RO, B1/202.

The town’s invitations to Edward Bourchier, 4th earl of Bath, to enjoy its hospitality seem to have been restricted and penny-pinching, but Henry, his heir as 5th earl, was welcomed when he inherited the title in March 1637. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 6, 34. When, however, the town council decided in December that year that it needed a new high steward, ‘the envy of others maligning the prosperity of the town’, it passed over the earl of Bath. Seeking the services of a ‘great man who is powerful at the court and council board’, it instead invested its faith in Edward Sackville†, 4th earl of Dorset, who had already defended the town against ‘patentees and pursuivants’; George Peard was asked to deliver Dorset’s patent. N. Devon RO, B1/612. The appointment may have sealed a relationship between Delbridge and Dorset that had existed in 1625 when the earl’s estates were subject to parliamentary legislation. ‘Barnstaple’, HP Commons 1604-29. Dorset and the town still enjoyed some kind of association in 1643, even when the former was a royalist and the borough determinedly parliamentarian in outlook. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 57.

There is no evidence to suggest that the election to the Short Parliament, held on 5 March 1640, was contentious, or that any outside influences were brought to bear on the outcome. Peard was returned in first place, followed on the indenture by Thomas Mathew. Peard was the more significant figure in terms of previous experience, while Mathew represented the interest in the town which had been built up by Delbridge, who had died in June 1639. They were elected ‘by a compact’. Gribble, Memorials, 349. This harmony did not prevail at the second election that year, on 17 October, when the assembled common council and freemen were presented by the mayor with three names, Peard and two former mayors, Richard Ferris and Richard Medford. In defiance of the mayor’s prior planning, which had included his contacting freemen to ascertain the likely voting pattern, the assembled freemen called for Peard and Mathew to be returned again. According to Mathew, the mayor objected to him as being not one of the town council. The mayor rejected a suggestion that supporters of Peard and Mathew should stand on one side of the hall to distinguish them from their opponents. Insisting on their choice, the freemen then declared ‘they had done the work they were called and came for’, and made to depart, only to find the door locked against them. The mayor then ‘invented a new form of election’, nominating Peard and Medford and asking the councillors to choose between them. The freemen were then asked one by one to give their voices in a poll for either man at a bar or table set up in the hall, and by this process Peard was elected. The names of Ferris and Mathew were then put forward in a repeat of this procedure. With a process of voting individually, as against the calling of voices, Ferris was elected, in Mathew’s view because of the persuasive efforts by the mayor and some of the councillors. Gribble, Memorials, 346-9.

Mathew petitioned the Commons about the election and what he construed to be his deliberate exclusion. The mayor’s subsequent account of the proceedings in fact largely corroborated Mathew’s narrative, except that the mayor insisted that on the day of the election Mathew had been satisfied with the outcome. In his own defence, the mayor pointed out that civic elections in Barnstaple involved the nomination of four or more individuals, voted upon in pairs. Gribble, Memorials, 349-50. The dispute had not turned on the franchise, which was clearly accepted by all parties to lie in the freemen, but on the method of election. Notwithstanding the mayor’s appeal to local precedent, the privileges committee of the Long Parliament evidently found Ferris’s election unsatisfactory, not least because the indentures were late coming in (they had not yet arrived at Westminster on 28 Nov. 1640) and on 6 August 1641 declared his election void. A new writ was ordered for a fresh election and it was issued on 14 August. CJ ii. 39a, 239b; C231/5, p. 475. Some mystery surrounds the outcome. No writ or indenture survives for a subsequent election, nor is there any evidence that Richard Ferris or anyone else sat for Barnstaple before the recruiter election of 1646.

In October 1642, the town was fortified against the depredations of civil war, and tacitly against royalist incursions, with George Peard heading the list of those advancing money for a defence fund. A number of aldermen gave their bonds for repayment of the loans. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 39. On the 17th of that month, a council of war was appointed, and within two months, Barnstaple had raised four foot companies and a troop of horse. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 38, 61. In January 1643 a force of 460 foot and 40 horse was set out against the king’s town of Torrington, and Barnstaple soldiers also saw action at Modbury, in the far south of county, and between May and August 1643 at Stratton, north Cornwall, South Molton and again at Torrington. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 61. In January 1643 a general rate was levied on the town to support this military activity, and on 30 May a beefed-up council of war included not only George Peard, who had left Westminster to direct the war effort in Barnstaple, but also the military figures of Robert Bennett* and Robert Rolle*. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 40, 41. The town surrendered to the king’s forces in September 1643 after the defeat of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, at Stratton, but Parliament recovered it during the summer of 1644 after a ‘a great change of the affections of the inhabitants of the country’. PA, Main Pprs. 18 Oct. 1643; Cotton, Barnstaple in the Civil War, 219, 222, 255-7. Colonel John Lutterell commanded the town garrison between July and September 1644, and the lifeguard of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, was present in Barnstaple at some point just before the town was for the second time taken by the royalists on 12 September. Cotton, Barnstaple in the Civil War, 327. This once again exposed the townspeople to danger, such as that in November when a cutler’s house was attacked by a raiding-party from nearby Ilfracombe. N. Devon RO, B1/46/455. This kind of treatment provoked the corporation to protest to Sir John Berkeley*, governor of Exeter, ‘to make known the manifold wrongs and injuries which of late have been and daily are done unto us and the great usurpations and intrusions daily offered unto us and put upon us’, in breach of the privileges of the charter. N. Devon RO, B1/2002. Despite these uncongenial affronts, the councillors continued to meet, in December 1644 even ordering a show of civic dignity in the wearing of ‘decent gowns’. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 53. The following month, the royalist governor, Sir Allen Apsley†, insisted on the usual annual election of the captain of the trained band by ballot. Richard Ferris* was one of the participants. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 54.

After Sir Thomas Fairfax* successfully besieged Barnstaple in February 1646, the way was clear to a by-election in December. Perfect Passages of Each Dayes Proceedings no. 70 (18-24 Feb. 1646), 548 (E.325.1), Moderate Intelligencer no. 51 (19-26 Feb. 1646), 314 (E.325.10). On the usual franchise, Philip Skippon and John Doddridge were returned in the places of Peard, by this time deceased, and Ferris, disabled from sitting. C219/43/1. The ban on Ferris’s taking his seat again was probably that of 1641, rather than a consequence of anything he might have done during the civil war to merit Parliament’s displeasure. Skippon was elected because he was military governor of Bristol, the nearest major port to Barnstaple by sea; Doddridge was the son of a prominent figure in the town before 1640. There is no evidence that this election was contentious. Weekly town meetings of 11 townsmen and the mayor and aldermen were instituted in October 1647. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 56. After the trial and execution of the king, the town maintained its relationship with Skippon, a councillor of state, petitioning him in 1649 about the town’s business. N. Devon RO, B1/2531. In 1650, the town asked John Tooker, a naval agent, to solicit the Rump and ‘the state’ for help with recovering the civil war outlay of the townspeople, and in response he proposed to ‘discover’ the estates of ‘malignants’ and papists: the sales of lands would fund a repayment scheme. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 60; N. Devon RO, B1/46/306. During the 1650s, the town council maintained its capacity for self-regulation, dismissing a councillor for non-attendance and tightening up on its ballot procedures, banning the use of proxies. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, pp. 69, 72.

Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, the borough lost one of its MPs, so the election of 7 July 1654 was for a single seat. John Doddridge was again returned, but the indenture was this time made out in the name of the burgesses and inhabitants. C219/44. It cost the corporation two shillings to fill it in. N. Devon RO, B1/2539. It was probably in connection with this wording that a paper was drafted by an unknown author within the town council on the question of the franchise. It dealt with a proposal that inhabitants who paid scot and lot should ‘give their voices as freely as the freemen’. The paper pointed out that towns were represented by burgesses in Parliament long before there were mayors, aldermen and capital burgesses, so Parliament-men must have been chosen by a group wider than the freemen who were created by town councils. By a similar logic it must be the case that town governing bodies had no powers to alter the manner of holding elections, which were by prescription. Equally, however, those with no rateable property anciently had no voice in elections and should have none now. The paper concluded with a list of possible franchises: in the freemen; in the freemen living within the borough; the freemen living within the parish; the inhabitants of the ancient borough paying scot and lot; the inhabitants of borough and parish; the inhabitants of borough and parish paying scot and lot. Finally, there was a question over the rights of those with freehold property in the borough but living elsewhere. The list seems to have been compiled to point up the complexity of the issue. N. Devon RO, B1/1116. The July 1654 indenture was signed by 43 individuals, but over three times as many had voted in the October 1640 election when the franchise was confined to freemen. In January 1640 a list of around 162 ‘burgesses and inhabitants’ exempted, by virtue of the charter, from jury service beyond the borough had been presented to the high sheriff. N. Devon RO, B1/1960. That 156 freemen had been able to vote in a parliamentary election that year may suggest that the number of propertied non-free inhabitants was in fact small. The relatively small number of participants in 1654 may probably be explained by the uncontentious choice of Doddridge for the seat.

In February 1656, Sir John Copleston, a leading Cromwellian military figure in Devon, was elected recorder. This was the nearest thing to a presence by the major-generals that Barnstaple witnessed, but after John Disbrowe* had written to the corporation, a common councillor resigned his place of his own accord. N. Devon RO, B1/4026. In the election in the summer of 1656 to the second protectorate Parliament, Copleston was returned, a victory for the military Cromwellian interest, but the indenture is lost so it is impossible to confirm whether the franchise continued to be extended to include inhabitants as well as freemen. During the later 1650s, certain continuities are visible in the way the corporation sought to retain the services of grandee lawyers with long careers, like Sir John Glanville* and John Maynard*. Even the gift of venison sent to the town by the parvenu Copleston came from the estate at Tawstock of the late 5th earl of Bath. N. Devon RO, B1/2541.

The election held on 6 January 1659 for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament was under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice. It restored the two Members and the traditional franchise, as the reference in the indenture to inhabitants was dropped. At least 75 freemen’s names appear as parties to the indenture, a far smaller number apparently signing it. C219/46. Copleston took the first seat, but the second seat went to Major George Walters, who in 1658, like John Tooker in the early 1650s, had been engaged by the town to address the problem of the town’s indebtedness, a legacy of the civil war. Walters had been born in the town and like Copleston had held a military commission. During the 1659 Parliament, the mayor, aldermen and burgesses drew up a petition against the exorbitancies of the excise farmers, and gave it to their MPs to pursue on their behalf. N. Devon RO, B1/620.

The election for the Convention took place on 7 April 1660. The indenture was made out in the traditional format of the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough and parish, and there were no signatures on it. N. Devon RO, B1/1118. On 8 September, Copleston was dismissed as recorder, having allegedly ‘presumed’ in his office, having released persons from gaol without permission of the mayor, and having ‘behaved himself in other things unfaithfully within this town’. N. Devon Athenaeum, HRD-HO54, p. 86.