Maidstone

Maidstone had been a small manorial market town dominated by the archbishopric of Canterbury until the sixteenth century, but a century later it was one of the most important towns in Kent. W. Lambard, Perambulation of Kent (1656), 229; P. Clark and L. Murfin, Hist. Maidstone (Stroud, 1996), 1-2, 20-39. Maidstone evidently made an impression upon visitors. In 1636 the poet and traveller John Taylor described it as ‘a fair, spacious, sweet, pleasant, rich and populous market town’, and his views were echoed by later topographers. J Taylor, Honourable and Memorable Foundations (1636), sig. A8v. Richard Kilburne called it ‘a sweet, large and populous town’, while Thomas Philipott noted that it was ‘an elegant town’, with ‘uniform and regular building’, and a ‘healthful situation’. R. Kilburne, Topographie (1659), 177; T. Philipott, Villare Cantianum (1659), 227. Maidstone’s size is evident from the number of communicants – 3,000 – living in the town in 1676. Compton Census, 35.

Maidstone was not only the most important market town in the county, it was also a major centre for weaving and brewing. Russell, Hist. Maidstone, chap. 13; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 44; W. Newton, Hist. and Antiq. Maidstone (1741), 100. The former had been introduced by religious refugees from the Low Countries in the late sixteenth century, and by the early decades of the seventeenth century thread-making was acknowledged to be the town’s leading industry, employing as many as 50 families among the Walloon community alone. Recs. Maidstone, 97; Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 100-1; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 2, 43-5, 48. By 1605 the town was able to support its own Drapers Company – one of four trading companies to which all merchants and artisans were required to belong. Recs. Maidstone, 61, 63, 68, 80. The brewing industry was also well-established by the late sixteenth century, and some of its leading practitioners became prominent civic officials, and in the case of Thomas Stanley†, Members of Parliament. Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 45, 48. As well as trade, Maidstone enjoyed the status of the county town for Kent. Since at least the eleventh century Maidstone and nearby Penenden Heath had provided a venue for disputations and the enforcement of justice, and as Kilburne wrote, ‘in respect of the situation and conveniency of receipt, [it] hath been accounted the fittest place for public meetings of the county’. Kilburne, Topographie, 178-9; Lambard, Perambulation, 235. From 1549 the town boasted a grammar school, which was managed by the corporation, and by the seventeenth century was the venue for the county assizes, as well as the home of the county gaol, both of which ensured a strong local community of lawyers. Penenden Heath, meanwhile, hosted elections for the knights of the shire. Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 104; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 2, 50-1, 59; Russell, Hist. Maidstone, chap. 8; Kilburne, Topographie, 179.

Maidstone had a long tradition as a focal point for dissent, whether violent or peaceful, political or religious. It was the home town of Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasants’ Revolt, and later supported Sir Thomas Wyatt’s† rebellion. Kilburne, Topographie, 179; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 34. The town continued this tradition into the seventeenth century, becoming the scene of protests against unparliamentary taxation during the reign of James I. Staffs. RO, D593/S/14/60/1; APC 1613-14, p. 576; 1614-15, p. 52. Townsmen also displayed reluctance, if not direct opposition, in response to Ship Money, for which Maidstone was asked to pay £300 in 1634, and sums between £54 and £180 in the years which followed. E. Kent RO, Do/AAm2, f. 144v; Add. 47788, f. 43; M.D. Gordon, ‘Collection of Ship Money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS 3rd ser. iv. 158; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 61. The arrival of Dutch refugees in the late sixteenth century, and the establishment of their church in the town, began Maidstone’s long association with religious dissent and nonconformity. Kilburne, Topographie, 177; Russell, Hist. Maidstone, chap. 6; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 2, 41. The closure of the Dutch church by Archbishop William Laud in 1634 reflected its strength in the town, and many local puritans frequented the sermons at Otham of Thomas Wilson, who was suspended over the Book of Sports, and who refused to lead prayers against the Scots during the bishops’ wars. Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 44, 60, 63, 64. Various leading townsmen were brought before the court of high commission in 1635 for allegedly usurping the ecclesiastical authority. Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 64. Later, in 1676, over 10 per cent of the town’s communicants were recorded as being nonconformists. Compton Census, 35.

Maidstone had first been incorporated in 1549, since when it had been governed by a mayor, 11 other jurats, and the commonalty of freemen. Although the town’s support for Wyatt’s rebellion led to the loss of the charter, its privileges were restored in 1559, when it was also granted the right to return burgesses to Westminster. Kilburne, Topographie, 178; Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 16, 17, 19; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 41; Russell, Hist. Maidstone, 184; Recs. Maidstone, 8-9; W. Roberts James, The Charters… of Maidstone (1825), 1-48. An attempted clarification of the town’s government, in a charter granted in 1604, left ambiguities, and subsequent years saw clashes between the senior members of the corporation and the commonalty over the number of freemen permitted to attend burghmote (council) meetings; between the corporation and local gentry families, concerning the attempt to make the latter liable to hold civic office; and between the town and the wider community, regarding the jurisdiction of the county bench over the town. Such issues were not resolved when another charter was granted in 1619, or in the supplementary charter of 1621. Recs. Maidstone, 10, 60, 65, 74, 78, 86-90, 92; Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 24-5; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 58-9; Roberts James, Charters, 61-96. Given such tensions, it is perhaps surprising that the borough tended to return as its MPs members of the local gentry, rather than townsmen, and in the early seventeenth century this often meant that the freeman franchise ensured the election of members of the Fane and Barnham families. The notable exception to this pattern in the early seventeenth century came in 1625, when two townsmen were returned. Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 21; Russell, Hist. Maidstone, chat. 9.

In the Short Parliament elections in March 1640, the town predictably returned Sir George Fane, one of the county’s elder statesmen, who first sat in Parliament in 1601 and had represented Maidstone since 1624. The second seat went to another local veteran, Sir Francis Barnham, who was already in his sixties, and who had represented the borough in four previous Parliaments. Roberts James, Charters, 121. The death of Fane in June 1640 appears to have created something of a power-vacuum, as the Long Parliament election later in the year witnessed tensions almost without precedent in the town’s history. Shortly before the election, Sir John Sedley of St Clere in Kemsing sought to secure admission as a freeman, prior to announcing his candidacy, but found himself blocked, in what he regarded as an ‘unmannerly affront’ orchestrated by Barnham. Procs. in Kent 1640 ed. Larking, 12-14. The two men had found themselves at odds in the county election in the previous spring, when Sedley canvassed for Sir Edward Dering* while Barnham backed Sir Henry Vane II*. Bodl. Rawl. D.141, p. 4. At Maidstone in October, Sedley claimed that Barnham displayed ‘malice’ towards him, and that he engaged in ‘hourly machination’, and ‘seduced and persuaded’ the townsmen, turning them against anyone who might oppose Vane, all in a concerted attempt to secure ‘revenge’ for events earlier in the year. Procs. in Kent 1640 ed. Larking, 12-14. Having apparently out-manoeuvred Sedley, Barnham then faced a rather different form of competition, following the admission of Sir Humfrey Tufton and Richard Beale* as freemen, on 23 October. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/2, f. 179. By this stage, Barnham sought a seat for himself, since Vane had secured a place elsewhere, but having defeated Beale, he became involved in a dispute with Tufton over who should take the senior place, and their rivalry caused ‘much strife’. When it became apparent that ‘they two gave one another the lie’, the men came to blows during a row in the town’s schoolhouse. Bodl. Rawl. D.141, p. 7. Nevertheless, the outcome of the election was the return of both men, with Barnham as the senior burgess. Roberts James, Charters, 122.

It is unclear whether the dispute between Barnham and Tufton reflected political and religious divisions, rather than merely a clash of personalities and a desire for precedence; both men were later lukewarm supporters of Parliament during the civil war. However, the years after 1640 clearly witnessed the growth of factionalism within the town, not least over clerical appointees and the mastership of the grammar school. Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 104; Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 2, 59; Russell, Hist. Maidstone, chap. 8. Such tussles resulted in attempts to purge the corporation of puritan members in 1642, their reappointment in 1643, and the subsequent removal of nine suspected royalists in 1644. Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 67. The ascendency of the parliamentarian faction may also have resulted in the removal of the schoolmaster, Thomas Elmestone, in June 1642, following accusations not merely of being illegally appointed, but also regarding his conduct in the office. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/2, ff. 179, 198v. In 1643 this politicisation of local affairs certainly seems to have brought about the ejection of the minister, Robert Barrell, following complaints from within the town, and a provocative sermon against Parliament. Clark and Murfin, Hist. Maidstone, 67; Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 65-6. Barrell was replaced by Samuel Smith, who was appointed by the Committee for Plundered Ministers, although he in turn was succeeded by Thomas Wilson, who was made free of the town in May 1646. Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 66-7; Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 15.

The growing strength of parliamentarian sympathies within the corporation was reinforced by attempts by the common council to consolidate their power at the expense of the freemen and the local gentry. This probably explains the outcome of the town’s recruiter election, held following the death of Barnham in September 1646 and upon a writ which was ordered to be issued on 11 November 1646. CJ iv. 719a. The town duly returned Thomas Twisden, who had taken his seat in the Commons by 3 December. CJ iv. 736a. Twisden had been employed as recorder, steward and town clerk since February 1642, and who had recently been made a bencher at the Inner Temple. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/2, f. 195; Md/FCa1/1642/2; Md/FCa1/1645. It is also possible that the growing influence of the common council reflected political tension in the borough, and a determination to undermine royalist influence in the area. What is clear is that a protest was made by 39 freemen in October 1647, claiming that the attempt by the mayor, jurats and common council to monopolise the burghmote represented a breach of the charter. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 16v. This protest was dismissed by the common council, who ordered it to be obliterated from the corporation records, but such tension probably helped to ensure that the town became one of the focal points for the royalist uprising in Kent in 1648. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3 f. 19; Bloudy Newes from Kent (1648), 1 (E.445.36); Designes of the Rebels in Kent (1648), 4 (E.446.18); Lord General’s Letter (1648, E.446.8).

In the months following the Kentish rising, an increasingly radical parliamentarian faction consolidated its grip on the corporation. This can be seen in the decision to elect as mayor the radical figure of Andrew Broughton (2 Nov. 1648), only weeks before he was appointed as clerk of the high court of justice for the trial of Charles I. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 22v. In the aftermath of the king’s execution and the establishment of the republic, the corporation enthusiastically adopted the iconography of the new regime, and in March 1649 ordered Broughton to oversee the replacement of the old ‘little white mace’ with something more grand. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 24. In fact, the new mace cost £47, said to be £43 more than the value of the old one. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 28v. The radicalism of the corporation may also have resulted in a further local purge in January 1651, when three common councillors and one jurat were dismissed as delinquents. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 44v-5. Having preached a sermon against the regicide, another victim of Broughton and his friends was the schoolmaster, Thomas Wilson. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 44v, 49, 50v, 51, 53, 54, 60v; Newton, Hist. and Antiq. 135-6. Political motives almost certainly lay behind the removal of Thomas Twisden as recorder and town clerk in January 1650. Although this decision was ostensibly made on the grounds that Twisden was no longer resident, given his growing prominence in the law courts of Westminster, it actually reflected resentment that he had supported continued negotiations with the king in 1648, and had been removed from Parliament at Pride’s Purge. By encouraging Twisden to resign, it proved possible to appoint as his replacement Lambarde Godfrey* in July 1650. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 29, 32v, 100v; FCa1/1657; FCa1/1660; FCa1/1660.

Godfrey had been a zealous parliamentarian in Kent, especially as solicitor for sequestrations, and during the 1650s he exerted a powerful influence over the town, most obviously seen in his involvement in the management of its school. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 64v, 76v. Godfrey was responsible for overhauling the school’s orders and constitution, and for providing instructions for its schoolmaster (Dec. 1650). Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 40, 40-3. He was also involved in the selection of a new schoolmaster in 1651, joining a panel of local ministers (including Thomas Wilson, Freegift Tilden, John Barton, Thomas Elmeston, John Crump, and John Turner) who were to assess applicants. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 46, 49-v. Although the evidence is somewhat opaque, this process appears to have been beset by difficulties, and perhaps some controversy between Presbyterians such as Wilson and Crump, and Congregationalists such as John Barton. Calamy Revised, 33, 153; E. Calamy, Nonconformists Memorial (1802), ii. 318-9, 332-3. After initially appointing one Daniel Peake in June 1651, Wilson subsequently sought to promote a different candidate, Patrick Heyburne, in the following July, whom Godfrey was ordered to examine. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 50-1. In September, however, another meeting was held to examine a third man, Nathaniel Hassard, ‘in the grounds of religion and in grammar, rhetoric and poetry in the Latin and Greek tongues’, and he was duly approved, although in the following month the town seems to have changed its mind, once again choosing John Turner. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 53, 54, 60v.

Godfrey and Broughton may also have overseen attempts at moral reformation in Maidstone. In February 1653, therefore, the burghmote sought to overcome the ‘inconveniences’ which arose

by means of people congregating themselves together in a rude and unlawful manner in the streets and other open places of this town upon days commonly called Shrove Tuesdays and other days, playing football and cudgels, tossing of dogs and setting forth and throwing of libetts at cocks and other poultry in a cruel un-Christianlike manner.

They duly imposed fines on any who ‘bring forth any cudgels or football to be sported with in the said streets or open places’. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 64v-5v. In July 1654, they also approved of a motion for the minister, John Crump, who had replaced Wilson, and who would later be ejected in 1662, to deliver Sunday evening sermons in the schoolhouse, ‘unto those as shall from time to time desire to partake thereof and of other duties of piety’. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 72; Calamy Revised, 153. Such zeal extended to the punishment of witches, as well as Baptists and Quakers. Prodigious and Tragicall History of… Six Witches at Maidstone (1652, E673.19); Humble Petition and Representation of the… Anabaptists (1660); True Declaration of the Bloody Proceedings of the Men in Maidstone (1655), sig. A (E.843.2). Godfrey was particularly prominent in prosecuting the latter in 1655, and was styled by them as one of the ‘persecutors of the just’. True Declaration of the Bloody Proceedings, sig. A, p. 6. As such, it was likely to have been Godfrey who led subsequent attempts to take legal action against the activities of ‘diverse heady and turbulent persons’ who

wander up and down and sometimes intrude into pulpits and public meeting places … and sometimes in a confused and tumultuous manner gather together great assemblies and concourses of people in open streets and market places and other open places of concourse upon pretence of preaching and public teaching, whereas they have no lawful authority, approbation or allowance to be public preachers or teachers. And in truth their intent and aim is to vent their own giddy fancies, sometimes in railings and revilings against ministers, ministry and ordinances of God publicly owned and professed in this nation, and sometimes in horrid blasphemies to the great grief and trouble of spirit of all that bear any love or zeal to the truth, institutions and ordinances of Christ owned and professed as aforesaid, and oftentimes to the occasioning of open contradictings, contests, debates, wranglings and quarrelings, which sometimes proceed even to fightings and affrays and tumultuous breaches of the peace. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 84.

The transformation of Maidstone from an electoral borough dominated by local gentry to one monopolised by townsmen reached its peak in the protectoral Parliaments. The borough became a single-Member constituency under the terms of the Instrument of Government, although Godfrey represented the county in both 1654 and 1656, and to both Parliaments the borough returned John Banks, a member of a wealthy local merchant family, whose father and grandfather had both served as mayors. Banks, who had become a leading navy victualler in the 1650s, had himself been a freeman of the town since 1644. Unlike Broughton and Godfrey, however, Banks was a supporter of the Cromwellian regime, even if only for business reasons. Upon being restored as a two-Member constituency in 1659, the borough continued to place its faith in townsmen, by returning Banks alongside Broughton, who had recently been defeated in a mayoral election but made a local justice instead. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 97. The return of Broughton alongside Banks shows that Maidstone had not turned its back on radicalism altogether. Indeed, the town went on to reappoint Broughton as mayor in November 1659. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, f. 104; FCa1/1660. Broughton’s decision to flee England at the Restoration, however, rather than face a treason trial, forced the townsmen to dismiss him on 18 June 1660, acting on the advice of old recorder, and current MP, Thomas Twisden, as well as John Maynard* and Mathew Hale*. But even at this stage Broughton still had his supporters within the corporation, and was soon invited to return to the town to press his case. Cent. Kent. Stud. Md/ACm1/3, ff. 105v-11.