Canterbury

One of the most populous cities in the country, with over 4,500 communicants in 1676, Canterbury was the most important city in Kent, not least as the seat of the country’s senior archbishop. Given its place at the heart of the Church of England, however, it is interesting that Canterbury also boasted a sizeable non-conformist population – some 40 per cent of its communicants in the late seventeenth century. Compton Census, 19. In part this reflected the presence of a significant community of Huguenot refugees, who constituted a significant element of the local cloth-working industry from the late sixteenth century. The local French-speaking church came under pressure from Archbishop William Laud in the 1630s, however, and in the 1640s and 1650s internal strife resulted in interventions from the Committee for Plundered Ministers. F.W. Cross, Hist. of the Walloon and Huguenot Church at Canterbury (Hug. Soc. xv), 99-118, 119-34, 229-31; Compton Census, 11-12. Although Canterbury was a decayed trading city by the 1620s, the presence of the cathedral and a sizeable population ensured that it remained relatively wealthy, and it received the largest assessment for Ship Money in the county in 1635 (£500). That it paid somewhat less than Dover in the years which followed may have reflected recognition of its relative decline, as well perhaps as a reassessment of the city boundaries. M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of Ship Money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS 3rd ser. iv. 158. It may have been about such issues that the sheriff of Canterbury, Richard Juxon, was dispatched to the privy council in relation to Ship Money in November 1636. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 120v.

Canterbury was incorporated under Henry I, and granted county status by Edward IV, although its boundaries with Kent were never adequately defined, and remained the subject of dispute during the early seventeenth century. C.R. Bunce, Translation of the Several Charters (1791), 7. By the charter of 1609 its corporation consisted of a mayor, 12 aldermen (one of whom acted as chamberlain), and 24 common councillors (one of whom was deputed as sheriff). Other officers included a coroner, town clerk, and sword-bearer. The charter also prescribed that aldermen were to be nominated by the mayor from the common council, and chosen by a majority of the aldermen. Common councilmen were nominated by the sheriff and recorder. The town’s former mayors made up its justices of the peace, who presided over the local sessions of the peace and gaol delivery. Bunce, Translation, 156-85. The right of election, however, resided in the commonalty of freemen, of which there were as many as 500 in the early seventeenth century. P. Clark, English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution (1978), 311.

The Canterbury election for the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 was contested between two local men and two candidates with powerful court connections. The courtiers were William Dell*, Archbishop Laud’s personal secretary, and Sir Roger Palmer*, the future royalist and cofferer to Charles I, who was nominated by the lord chamberlain (Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke). Add. 11045, f. 99v. Both men were admitted as freemen of the corporation on 3 March. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 151v. The local candidates were John Nutt and his father-in-law, Sir Edward Masters, both of whom were, or had been, commanders of the city’s trained bands, and both of whom were freemen before the writs were issued. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 121v, 158. Masters was not a typical opponent of the crown: as sheriff he had willingly collected Ship Money, and also helped provide troops for the first bishops’ war. HMC 5th Rep. 570; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 265; Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 158.

Nevertheless, the Canterbury election witnessed tumultuous scenes which provoked comment throughout and beyond the local area, and during which verse libels were ‘cast abroad’. CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 561-2. One of these ran ‘if you choose Dell, you do well / But if you’ll do your king and country good / I hope I’m understood’. Add. 11045, f. 99v. In a later pamphlet, written in 1644, the notorious local non-conformist minister Richard Culmer included an account of the Short Parliament election, in which he claimed that

the proctors, fiddlers, tapsters, and other friends of the cathedral and the prelatical party at Canterbury were for the archbishop’s secretary to be burgess there, who came down before the day of election for that purpose, and prepared his foresaid friends to vote for him.

Culmer also claimed that

at the day of election [Dell] came into the guildhall of Canterbury and there produced to the citizens letters written to them in his behalf from his lord and master the archbishop, and from the then lord keeper and then the secretary made a speech to the citizens to choose him burgess, in which oration he said ‘there is a picture hanging before you of a great benefactor to this city, the same man was the founder of the college in Oxford where I lived’. The citizens, hearing this, cried out aloud, ‘no pictures, no papists, no archbishop’s secretary, we have too many images and pictures in the cathedral already’, and after this they would not hear him speak a word more, but hissed him down, and presently cried up others, whom they then chose burgesses for that city. R. Culmer, Cathedrall Newes from Canterbury (1644), 18-19 (E.52.10).

A response to Culmer’s tract, published in 1645, was unable to deny that the ‘proctors, fiddlers and tapsters’ had supported Dell, but added that Laud’s secretary secured much broader support, by claiming that ‘the then mayor, all the aldermen but one, most of the common council, besides divers prime citizens and freemen … gave, or were ready to have given their voices for the gentleman’s election’. Dell was defeated, on this account, merely by the ‘rude and uncivil’ behaviour of ‘the opposite party’. Antidotum Culmerianum (1645), 28, 29 (E.279.13). Whatever the veracity of such claims, which cannot be tested against documentary evidence from the borough records, there is no indication that such scenes were repeated in the autumn elections, although it is interesting that once again the town showed faith in local men, by re-electing both Masters and Nutt, despite the fact that neither had made any recorded impression on the Short Parliament.

During the early months of the Long Parliament the corporation displayed support for those who sought to undermine the authority of the church. In March 1641, therefore, the burghmote – the borough court or meeting – petitioned the Commons regarding ‘the liberties of this city, invaded by the cathedral, priories and other pretended privileged places’. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 159v. This was followed by a second petition, in April 1642, ‘for the settling of the privileges and liberties and extent of the county of this city, and to get some remedy against the encroachments of the cathedral’, in which they claimed that, as laymen, they had privileges ‘in as ample manner as the popish priests, friars and others in time of popery enjoyed the same’. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 168. In June 1642 the burghmote indicated its willingness to send two or three of its members as a delegation to Parliament to defend their claims. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 169. The godly inclinations of the burghmote were also evident from the fact that throughout the 1640s and 1650s the corporation consistently promoted sermons to commemorate the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, whether in local churches or in the Guildhall. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 148v, 235, 292v, 346. Indeed, they were probably responsible for drawing the attention of their MP, and thus the Commons, to a scandalous sermon against Parliament preached on 5 November 1642. Add. 18777, f. 52v.

More broadly, the city authorities lent their support to the parliamentarian war effort. Having assisted in attempts to disarm recusant households, they subsequently despatched arms to Dover and some £2,600 to London in the early weeks of the conflict, although they sought to use this to justify a claim for an abatement of the demand for 1,000 foot and 100 horse imposed in October 1642. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 164, 172v. The corporation was nevertheless willing to expend money for the defence of the city during the winter of 1642-3. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 173, 173v-4. It also ordered the dismantling of the market cross in May 1645, as it may earlier have sanctioned the destruction of stained glass in the cathedral windows by Richard Culmer in December 1643. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 203v; Bunce, Translation, 247; Culmer, Cathedrall Newes, 22. Nevertheless, Canterbury inevitably harboured a significant community of traditionalists who resisted the puritan zeal of the corporation and county committee, and it was in reaction to orders proscribing observance of Christmas in 1647 that there occurred the riots which instigated the Kentish rebellion. Sparked by orders from the mayor forbidding trading, rather than by support for the king, the riots rapidly rendered the city a rallying-point for local malcontents, and the affair became much more obviously royalist in tone. As the county committee prepared for what looked like a siege of the city, however, the rebels capitulated in early January 1648, after which they faced retribution and trial by court martial. Everitt, Community of Kent, 231-5; Bodl. Clarendon 31, f. 96. Nevertheless, Canterbury remained a focal point for royalists during the following spring, and one of the strongholds of support for the Kentish rising. Everitt, Community of Kent, 240.

Following the death of Sir Edward Masters, on 3 August 1648, the Commons passed an order for the issuing of a writ for the election of his replacement (18 Nov. 1648), but no election was held before Pride’s Purge and the establishment of the republic. CJ vi. 80a. It is unclear why. The burghmote sought to increase the city’s representation, and sent a letter to Nutt in April 1651 in an attempt to secure another writ. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 320. Moreover, the corporation displayed willingness to accommodate the republic, passing an order in September 1650 for the alteration of its mace, albeit ‘with as little charge and addition of silver as may be’, and with an order ‘that the arms of this commonwealth shall be forthwith set up in the town hall, in a frame’. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 305. However, the city was no more successful in securing a second MP during this period than they were in renewing their charter, despite issuing a petition to Parliament in October 1650, and securing a hearing at the committee for corporations in February 1653. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 309v, 350v.

Given its size and status, Canterbury was allowed to remain a two-Member constituency under the terms of the Instrument of Government of 1653. Since all other boroughs in the county were granted only one MP, there was heavy demand for places in the first protectorate Parliament in 1654. Although evidence regarding the election is thin, the borough records indicate that no fewer than eight men were made freemen on 4 July, before the election. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, ff. 370v-1. These included a number of prominent figures from the county gentry. Thomas St Nicholas* of Ashe, who had recently settled in Kent, was probably nominated on the interest of the lord warden of the Cinque Ports, given that he was steward of the court of chancery and admiralty for the Cinque Ports, and was recommended by the constable of Dover Castle, Thomas Kelsey*, for election at Rye. CSP Dom. 1651, p. 47; Add. 32471, f. 12v; E403/2608, p. 8; E. Suss. RO, Rye 47/149/15. Sir Michael Livesay* was one of the regicides, and one of the county’s most prominent and controversial parliamentarians. He was almost certainly an opponent of the protectorate, and would be kept out of Parliament by appointment to the shrievalty in both 1655 and 1656. John Dixwell* and Henry Oxinden* of Deane, meanwhile, probably both sought election as a security against failure in the county election, where they were both eventually chosen. Like Livesay, Robert Gibbon of Rolvenden had played a prominent part the parliamentarian war effort in the county, and could claim an association with Canterbury, having assisted in regaining control of the city for Parliament in 1648. His religious sympathies, moreover, probably inclined towards the congregationalism of Canterbury’s John Durant, with whom he may have been friends. The final two candidates were Thomas Brodnax of Godmersham, and Thomas Foach of Monckton, both of whom had emerged as committeemen in the late 1640s. Everitt, Community of Kent, 151, 154; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 73, 49; Vis. Kent 1663 (Harl. Soc. liv), 27.

The status and power of such candidates notwithstanding, the freemen opted once again for men more closely linked with the borough. Thomas Scot III was a local resident and perhaps a member of John Durant’s Independent congregation, although he was a relatively minor political figure in the region. Francis Butcher, meanwhile, was a local merchant, who had been admitted as a freeman in 1639, following an apprenticeship with one of the city’s leading aldermen, and he was certainly a Congregationalist, and a member of the sister church to that convened by Durant. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 147. It seems clear that the choice of Butcher and Scot reflected a preference for local men as much as political or religious issues, on which these two men do not appear to have differed significantly from at least some of the other candidates.

Although the election for the second protectorate Parliament in 1656 does not seem to have witnessed such intense competition, the outcome was remarkably similar, and the freemen once again opted for two men from their own ranks. The first, Vincent Denne, was made free shortly before the election, by virtue of his marriage to a daughter of his cousin, Thomas Denne† (d. 1656), sometime recorder of Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 407v. The other seat went to Thomas St Nicholas, who had been unsuccessful when nominated on the Cinque Ports interest in 1654, but who had since been made the city’s recorder. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 444.

The remarkable consistency with which Canterbury’s voters returned local freemen rather than ‘outsiders’, whether courtiers or county gentry, was displayed once again in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659. On this occasion, Thomas St Nicholas, who remained recorder, and who had recently been elevated to the common council, was returned alongside the governor of Jersey, Robert Gibbon, who had been a freeman since 1656, and whose status as such had been confirmed in late December. Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 446v; AC/5, f. 9. The voters’ preference for local men continued after the Restoration, as did the influence of religious nonconformity. HP Commons 1660-1690.