Okehampton

Okehampton, on the northern slope of Dartmoor, was one of the poorest Devon towns. It had not benefited from the best days of the region’s tin industry, located further south, and was merely a local centre for the wool trade. Even so, such wealth as it enjoyed came from wool, and the period when it was ‘almost suddenly prosperous’, the late sixteenth century, happened to coincide with the break up of the Courtenay family’s control over the town. R.L. Taverner, ‘The Corporation and Community of Okehampton, 1623-1885’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1969), 2-4. The Courtenay interest descended to four heiresses, and the townsmen, led by a portreeve, claimed rights to markets and pasturage that in due course were challenged in the court of wards. The Okehampton men turned for help to the powerful (Sir) John Glanville*, whom they made their recorder around 1612 on the basis of their ancient prescriptive privileges bestowed probably in the thirteenth century. It was Glanville, a critic of the crown who in turn came not to be trusted by the monarchy, who secured Okehampton its charter in 1623. Devon RO, 3248A/1/9/1, narrative by Sir John Glanville; Taverner, thesis, 4-6; ‘John Glanville’, HP Commons 1604-29. It provided for a corporation consisting of a mayor and seven principal burgesses, eight assistant burgesses, a town clerk and a recorder. The borough was given a court of sessions, with right to try non-capital felonies. The equal size of the two bodies of burgesses, the ‘first eight’ and ‘second eight’, was perhaps to recognize the relatively small pool of individuals from whom the town government could realistically be drawn. Devon RO, 3248A/1/9/1, annals by John Rattenbury. Glanville continued as recorder, but only until 1630, when he was succeeded by John Doidge, presumably an attorney and one of the family of minor gentry living in Milton Abbot, near Tavistock. W.B. Bridges, Some account of the Barony and Town of Okehampton ed. W.H.K. Wright (Tiverton, 1889), 82; [E.H. Young], Okehampton (Devonshire Assoc. Parochial Histories of Devonshire, i. [1931], 67. There was no mention in the charter of parliamentary representation.

John Mohun, 1st Baron Mohun, bought up enough of the former Courtenay interests in the town to own half of it by 1630. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 82; Taverner, thesis, 9. The population of the town was 800 in 1676, with another 400 living in the wider parish, a large outlying area. Some 318 adult males over 18 in town and parish subscribed Parliament’s Protestation of 1641, a figure broadly consistent with the evidence from 1676. Compton Census, 278; Taverner, thesis, 12, 69. Mohun evidently enjoyed a major interest in the town, but it was not a controlling interest. Glanville had recommended that the townsmen should buy off Mohun and other predatory gentry who claimed rights to the Okehampton market. After the assizes had ordered a meeting at Launceston between Glanville and George Peard*, as counsel for the parties, a fine of £200 was paid to Mohun, plus an annual rent of £12 which continued to be handed over during the 1630s. As Glanville himself put it, the settlement was ‘although at a dear rate, yet for their quiet and good’. Devon RO, 3248A/1/9/1. The town appears not to have taken puritan values to its bosom. A lecture established in 1630 was not well supported, and an annual sermon set up in 1632 on St George’s Day was to be followed by a dinner, hardly an institution that would have recommended itself to the godly. The vicar of Okehampton complained in 1636 to his bishop of the poor turn-out for services at the chapel-of-ease, and of the neglects of his curate. At around the same time, the town rid itself of its schoolmaster for neglect and for teaching elsewhere. Devon RO, 3248A/1/9/1; M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter, 1994), 211-2.

John Maynard* and John Pym* are known to have expressed views on the re-enfranchising of Devon boroughs, but the case of Okehampton was not explicitly mentioned in the surviving record of debate. The order late in 1640 to re-enfranchise Ashburton and Honiton (26 Nov.) encouraged talk of other comparable cases. CJ ii. 37a. On 7 December, Sir Samuel Rolle*, who had not found a seat at the general election, spoke of Torrington and Lydford as possible new constituencies where he felt confident of success. Buller Pprs. 29. Some time before mid-December, Rolle was sufficiently sanguine about an election at Okehampton to have held discussions with Sir Shilston Calmady of Bridestowe, who had also intended to stand at Okehampton. Rolle claimed privately that he had the support of the mayor and ‘most others’ at Okehampton, and that Calmady had promised to withdraw if Rolle stood. Buller Pprs. 31. The writ was said to have been procured by Lord Mohun, but was granted after a report by the committee of privileges on a petition from the mayor and burgesses (12 Dec. 1640). It thus restored a privilege the town had enjoyed ‘in ancient times’. CJ ii. 49b; Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 92.

On 16 December, the writ was issued for an election at Okehampton, ‘now newly restored’. C231/5, p. 418. The election was held on 27 January 1641. Mohun had recommended Laurence Whitaker and Edward Thomas. The latter had sat for West Looe and Grampound on previous occasions, and although no direct link has been traced between Mohun and Thomas other than the narrative of the Okehampton annalist, John Rattenbury, his west country credentials were evident. There seems to have been no connection between Whitaker and either Devon or Cornwall, although he had previous parliamentary experience. He was energetic and motivated by an anti-Catholic zeal that bordered on obsessive, and it seems likely that he recommended himself to Mohun, or used an intermediary to press his case for the seat. Sir Shilston Calmady had evidently thought better of surrendering his interest to Sir Samuel Rolle, and on the day appeared in person as a candidate. This provoked the remark by Rattenbury that Calmady was ‘not before heard of by the mayor and burgesses here’, a disingenuous comment, to say the least. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 92. Not only had Calmady the previous month expressed an intention to stand, but was also a local figure of great substance. As long ago as 1605 he had inherited the lands of one of the Courtenay heiresses, descended to him through his mother’s family. His inheritance consisted of manors and other properties in at least 20 Devon parishes. Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 372/5/2/3; 372/14/1/8. Many of these were to the south and west of Okehampton, and Calmady’s home parish of Bridestowe was a mere six miles from Okehampton. The snub to Calmady by the Okehampton burgesses came not because he was a stranger but because they knew him well, as a representative of the Courtenay interest which had been defied during the creation of civic institutions in Okehampton in the early years of the century.

The mayor and burgesses made out separate indentures for Whitaker and Thomas, with apparently the same individual electors, at least 35 in number, signing both. Among them were five former mayors, but also at least eight illiterate men. C231/43/1. A dissatisfied Calmady pressed the mayor to seal another indenture, presumably for himself and either Whitaker or Thomas, but the burgesses defied him. He subsequently petitioned the Commons, but without effect. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 92. Only days after Laurence Whitaker had arrived at Westminster, he was coming under suspicion as a monopolist, once the House had been reminded of his involvement in government projects of the 1630s, particularly the management of the trade in beaver hats. D’Ewes (N), 338, Two Diaries of the Long Parl. 6. Warwick Mohun, about to inherit the barony of Okehampton from his father, believed Whitaker would not survive in the seat, and asked the Okehampton corporation that the place be bestowed on him. The mayor and burgesses refused to oblige, but did at least promise Sir Samuel Rolle, Mohun’s cousin and still looking for a seat, notice of the election. Rolle did what he could to circumvent the influence of the corporation by asking his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Wise, knight of the shire, to obtain the writ personally and manage its despatch to the sheriff. Buller Pprs. 34. But against the balance of opinion, Whitaker’s tenure proved secure, and Rolle took the county seat after Wise died soon afterwards. Perhaps to create some kind of relationship with the people of his constituency, Whitaker sent 40s for the poor there in 1641, but this gesture proved his only known service to them. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 93. The long struggle with the Mohun family over the rights to the town market is enough to explain the townsmen’s resistance to their electoral pretensions.

Whitaker retained his seat until the end of the Rump Parliament in 1653, and Edward Thomas, while being inactive in Parliament, survived until he was removed at Pride’s Purge in 1648. There was therefore no by-election at Okehampton in this period. During the civil war, the town took no side voluntarily, and the annalist, former mayor and voter in 1641, John Rattenbury, stressed the ‘damage’ done by armies of both king and Parliament. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 94. The skirmish near Okehampton at Sourton Down (2 May 1643), which saw Warwick, 2nd Baron Mohun in arms for the king, was recorded in neutral terms by the chronicler. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 94; Bellum Civile, 38-9. The queen, Prince Rupert, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, John 2nd Baron Robartes and Sir Robert Pye I* all stayed at Okehampton on different dates in July 1644, but the fact that the mayor and constables were ‘very much troubled’ seemed to have made a greater impression on Rattenbury. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 95. In due course, Richard Mervin, the vicar, an arbitrator in civic affairs but later viewed as ‘a most bitter enemy to the mayor and burgesses’, was removed by the county committee for plurality. Devon RO, 3248A/1/9/1; Taverner, thesis, 64. In 1653 there was no-one to argue for the town to retain its privilege of sending burgesses to Parliament when the Instrument of Government was devised, and so Okehampton recovered its two Members only when the pre-1653 electoral arrangements were restored by the Humble Petition and Advice in 1657.

In the next election, on 3 January 1659, at least 21 electors signed two separate indentures for Edward Wise and Robert Everard. Wise was the son of Sir Thomas, and must have been returned on his own interest in west Devon. Everard was a classic carpetbagger. A great-uncle had sat in 1589 for East Looe, but no active connection between the Everards and the west of England has come to light. It is likely that Everard’s father, Sir Richard Everard*, sought the seat for his son, and that the Okehampton men, once again exhibiting a willingness to entertain strangers, obliged.

The election for the Convention (4 Apr. 1660) saw the Mohun interest revived. Lord Mohun preferred Robert Reynolds*, but why the royalist peer should have agreed to become patron of the republican Reynolds is unclear, unless Mohun set a premium on Reynolds’s long parliamentary experience and aversion to the house of Cromwell. Bridges, Okehampton ed. Wright, 99. At this election, Mohun attempted to mobilize his interest in the tenants of Okehampton manor, a much more extensive entity than the borough. The numbers involved in voting were at least double those seen in 1641, but the single indenture per candidate was a custom followed in this, only the third election held in the borough in the century. ‘Okehampton’, HP Commons 1660-90.