Wiltshire

In certain respects, seventeenth century Wiltshire was a county of contrasts. The cloth-making districts of the north and west had a very different economy to that of the open and in parts depopulated country to the south and east, especially Salisbury Plain. The north appeared to nurture more families of substantial gentry, most notably Hungerfords, Bayntuns and St Johns; the south to be dominated by fewer landowners, whether aristocratic – like the Herberts, earls of Pembroke, seated at Wilton, or the Catholic Arundells of Wardour – or ecclesiastical, in the form of the bishop of Salisbury. But reality was complex. Cloth-making continued on a spur down towards Salisbury. Several royal forests – Chute, Clarendon, Savernake, Selwood, even the New Forest in the extreme south east – impinged on the agricultural map. The Seymours, earls of Hertford, whose influence rivalled that of the Herberts, were a force in industrialised towns of the west, as in the south west were the Ludlowes and particularly the Thynnes, by this period perhaps the wealthiest commoners in England. VCH Wilts. v. 80-110; Ramsay, Wilts. Woollen Industry, frontispiece; D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion (1985), 73-105.

The existence within the county of 16 parliamentary boroughs, each disposing of two seats, may both have encouraged the gentry to engage in Westminster politics and reduced competition to sit as a knight of the shire. It has been suggested that, in the early seventeenth century, ‘there may have been an informal agreement to rotate the shire seats among the leading families’, which led to largely uncontested elections. HP Commons 1604-1629. Such an understanding may well have been in operation again in the spring of 1640. A decade of accumulated grievances arising from the policies of Charles I’s personal rule appeared sufficient to overcome the personal rivalries which undoubtedly existed. Long-term irritants including government attempts to control saltpetre works and the cloth industry, compounded by successive writs of Ship Money and demands for coat and conduct money, fostered a resistance which ranged those of a more radical or quarrelsome cast like Walter Long*, Sir Henry Ludlowe* or Sir Edward Bayntun* alongside usually more moderate men like William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, and his brother Sir Francis Seymour*. VCH Wilts. v. 80-110, 132-4; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 188; 1634-5, pp. 3-4, 306; SP16/345/99, f.191; SP16/357/20, f. 29; Ramsay, Wilts. Woollen Industry, 85-100; Bodl. Clarendon 16, f. 126. Among those refusing a loan for the bishops’ wars was not only Seymour, but other leading gentry like Sir Thomas Thynne†, Sir Edward Hungerford*, Sir John St John† and Sir John Danvers*; the list included several deputy lieutenants. Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912, 914. Notwithstanding his office as chamberlain of the royal household, the lord lieutenant, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, was also identified with those critical of central government.

In the spring of 1640, therefore, candidates from traditional ruling families were well-placed to galvanise support from the disaffected as well as the deferential. John Nicholas wrote from the county on 30 March to his son, the clerk of the council, Edward Nicholas†, that Pembroke’s eldest son, the under-aged and politically untried Philip Herbert*, Lord Herbert, and the experienced Sir Francis Seymour were returned to Parliament ‘without any opposition’. CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 604. The election indenture, dated a few days earlier, contained only about 16 signatures – among them William Ashbournham* and Sir Edward Hungerford – but there is no reason to suppose that Nicholas misrepresented the situation. C219/42, pt. ii, no. 56.

Since, once at Westminster, Seymour proved every bit as staunch a champion of local interest against central encroachment as might have been anticipated, his election for Marlborough rather than for the county that autumn tends to uphold the theory of habitual rotation. After a summer in which Wiltshire experienced its share of disorder from soldiers mustered for the war in the north, voters on 3 October turned to another partnership combining a newcomer from a pre-eminent family, in this case Sir James Thynne*, with a local notable with a record of opposition to the court, in the shape of Sir Henry Ludlowe. CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 281, 292-3. This time more than 40 men signed the election indenture; most, like Henry Danvers* and Edmund Ludlowe I*, were not in the front rank of gentry. C219/43, pt. iii, no. 29.

The extent of continuing resistance to royal policies in Wiltshire may be seen in the remodelling of the commission of the peace between late 1641 and 1642. Not only Sir Henry Ludlowe but also leading borough Members Bayntun, Hungerford and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* lost their places. SP16/491, f. 349. Meanwhile, the lord lieutenant, the earl of Pembroke, was dismissed as chamberlain of the royal household. Clarendon, Hist. i. 345. While Thynne and the Seymour brothers remained on the commission and duly supported the king in August 1642, a large majority of the political elite of Wiltshire followed Pembroke and adhered to Parliament. Northants. RO, FH133; Waylen, ‘Falstone Day Bk.’ 343. However, although sessions at Marlborough on 4 October attracted magistrates of varied allegiances, the relative cohesion which had characterised this group thus far soon broke down. Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, f. 19. Enthusiasm for the war varied markedly and co-operation in prosecuting it imploded following the disastrous feuding of Bayntun and Hungerford, who contended early in 1643 for local command, and a series of military reversals. s.v. ‘Sir Edward Bayntun’, ‘Sir Edward Hungerford’; VCH Wilts. v. 139-41; Ludlow, Mems. i. 439-81. It was only in the summer of 1644 that Parliament produced robust plans for maintaining forces in Wiltshire and defending its chief garrison at Malmesbury on a level to counter effectively the stream of commissions emanating from Oxford authorising the earl of Hertford to raise troops and money. CJ iii. 67b, 532a, 532b, 547b, 552b, 586b; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 16, 21, 27-9, 67-8, 73-4, 86, 90, 94, 101, 103, 106, 130, 141, 142, 152, 218. Even then, there were rival sheriffs operating concurrently and Malmesbury became too vulnerable to house the parliamentarian county committee, which by the spring of 1645 (and perhaps well before) had moved south to Falstone House, near Wilton. Waylen, ‘Falstone Day Bk.’ 344-5. Furthermore, once installed, the committee, of whom Alexander Thistlethwayte* emerged as the most active member, had a difficult relationship with the one notably successful commander in the area – whom it had itself funded – Edmund Ludlowe II*. s.v. ‘Edmund Ludlowe II’. Thistlethwayte, simultaneously in October 1645 elected as Member for Downton and chosen by Parliament as its sheriff of Wiltshire, conducted several recruiter elections over the next few months in a still insecure area. LJ vii. 628a; CJ iv. 323b, 324a; The Scotish Dove no. 119 (21-29 Jan. 1646), 941-2 (E.319.17); no. 120 (28 Jan.-4 Feb. 1646), 953 (E.120.16).

By 12 May 1646, when Thistlethwayte presided over an election to replace Thynne, now a delinquent, and Sir Henry Ludlowe, now deceased, in the county seats, a calmer military situation pertained. Nonetheless, political tensions and anxiety about potential disorder remained. Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, f. 47. The Presbyterians, among whom Thistlethwayte and his older friend Sir Edward Hungerford should be numbered at this juncture, must have been frustrated by the appearance at the poll of what, judging by the indenture, seems to have been a preponderance of Independents. Among the 18 to 20 signatories was Edward Tooker, sufficiently solid to be appointed sheriff in 1647 though generally a moderate, but he and his ilk look to have been outnumbered by more radical figures like John Dove*, his brother Francis Dove, and others who were to be activists in the county during the 1650s. The upshot was the election of James Herbert*, another son of the earl of Pembroke (who after some vacillation was back in the parliamentarian camp), and Edmund Ludlowe II. C219/43, pt. iii. no. 31; Wilts. RO, A1/160/1-2, passim. It is possible that an alliance of convenience between different shades of Independency was at work. Ludlowe’s Memoirs claim that Pembroke, detecting that there would be a groundswell of popular support for Ludlowe, doubtless based on his military success locally, sought to jump on the bandwagon with an undertaking that his young son would ‘vote honestly for the commonwealth’. Ludlow, Mems. i. 133.

Neither Herbert nor Ludlowe were in the running for the Nominated Parliament, the former having chosen not to sit after Pride’s Purge, the latter being on military service in Ireland and having a tense relationship with some army grandees. The nominees in 1653 reflected on the one hand the interest of those among the traditional elite who had come to terms with the republic and on the other the emergence of new men. Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, not known for his zeal for godliness or social regulation, belonged to the former, while Colonel Thomas Eyre*, although the grandson of a man of some standing in the county, had essentially made his own way through army service. Nicholas Greene*, like Eyre, had had no university or inns education; he had risen through marriage and business, had made his name in county administration and was connected to the influential Ashe family of wealthy clothiers.

At elections to the first protectorate Parliament on 12 July 1654 the sheriff presided over the choice of ten Members to represent the county, now deprived of most of its generous borough representation. On the face of it, the availability of a large block of county seats accommodated a variety of viewpoints. Among at least 41 parties to the indenture were representatives of prominent gentry families like the Thistlethwaytes and Eyres, a clutch of Salisbury activists of markedly varying degrees of radicalism (Humphrey Ditton*, Richard Hill*, Edward Tooker*, Francis Dove and veteran godly reformer John Ivie) and two pre-eminent Wiltshire ministers, John Strickland of St Edmund, Salisbury, and Adoniram Byfield of Collingborne Ducis. C219/44/pt. iii; s.v. ‘Salisbury’. These last two, loosely characterisable at this juncture as Presbyterians, may, however, have been instrumental in blocking the election of potentially the most radical candidate. According to a passage suppressed in the first edition of his Memoirs (probably because it reflected negatively on Ashley Cooper), there was a sizeable campaign to elect Edmund Ludlowe II (allegedly without his knowledge) which was then thwarted by hostility orchestrated by Presbyterians including Strickland and Byfield. The ministers in question denied the specific charge, but it seems very likely that they were circulating propaganda generally against those who might be construed as Baptists or sectaries. Ludlow, Mems. i. 388-91, 545; H. Chambers et al. An apology for the ministers of the county of Wilts. (1654), esp. 5-8 (E.808.9); The Copy of a Letter sent out of Wiltshire (1654). The cohort of Members elected contained a leaven of conservative parliamentarians like Alexander Popham*, Alexander Thistlethwayte and Francis Holles* (son of Presbyterian leader, Denzil Holles*), together with those of more ambiguous loyalties (Ashley Cooper, John Ernle* and Sir John Danvers’s steward William Yorke*). Only James Ashe* and Gabriel Martyn* looked genuinely committed to reform. The balance was only slightly redressed at a bye-election following Popham’s decision to sit for Bath. On 3 January 1655 John Dove, now sheriff, presided over a poll at Wilton which returned Colonel William Eyre II*, who had proved himself in the New Model army. There were about 25 signatories to the indenture, many of whom do not appear on that of the previous July. C219/44/pt. iii, no 4.

The fragility of the regime’s hold on Wiltshire was amply demonstrated in March 1655, when insurgents associated with the rebellion of Sir John Penruddock swooped on Salisbury and took Dove and the assize judges hostage. W.W. Ravenhill, ‘Recs. of the rising in the West’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xiii. 38-67. When it came to the 1656 parliamentary election, for which no indenture survives, two of the magistrates who had been most vigorous in identifying and rounding up those insurgents – Martyn and William Ludlowe*, cousin of Edmund Ludlowe II – were returned. So too was Thomas Grove, probably an attorney in the prosecution of Penruddock. But Grove, who was a kinsman of one of the rebels, was essentially a political Presbyterian and was noticeably critical of the regime, and the other successful candidates were little different. Apart from the slippery Ashley Cooper and Popham, whose election was announced late, there were old Presbyterian associates Thistlethwayte and Henry Hungerford* and brothers-in-law Sir Walter St John* and Richard Grobham Howe*. St John was a kinsman of protectorate grandee Oliver St John* and Grobham Howe was an active magistrate – when not omitted from the commission – but both proved to harbour royalist sympathies. There was also, it seems, John Bulkeley, who had been a leader of resistance to the powers of the protectorate in the last Parliament; he had recently added to his Hampshire estates land in Wiltshire and was apparently returned for both counties. On 19 September he, Ashley Cooper, Popham and Hungerford were excluded from the House. CJ vii. 425a.

Royalist sentiments were probably to the fore at the election for the 1659 Parliament. There had been a continuation of the drift back to the commission of the peace of those who had been omitted or who had disassociated themselves from local government. Wilts. RO, A1/160/2; C 193/13/3-6. The damaged election indenture names a small number of voters ‘and many other persons’; of about seven seals affixed, five remain, including those of Grobham Howe and Richard Hill. C219/48. Once in Parliament the successful candidates, Ashley Cooper and St John, worked in different ways to undermine the protectorate.