Cricklade

Cricklade was a small town, consisting of two parishes. Although it was situated in Wiltshire, it was near the Gloucestershire border, and shared many of the characteristics of a Cotswold community, including the presence of a clothing and woollen industry. There had been signs of modest prosperity in the sixteenth century in the shape of a new market house (1569), but the town had never achieved a royal charter, and its governing institutions were simply manorial and parochial. It was a borough by prescription only, and the ‘bailiff’ who signed the indenture was merely the nominee of the lords of the borough, the Maskelyne family. Over the 20-year period covered in this survey, the same man, Richard Byrt, appears to have held the bailiff’s office. The Members returned for Cricklade were all landowners elected on their own interest and there is no evidence of any dispute in any of the three elections under consideration. According to the Compton Census of 1676, there was an adult population of 628 in the town at that time. Compton Census, 127. In 1643, the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex camped in the town. By 1646, poverty and economic distress were sufficient to provoke a petition from the townspeople to the Wiltshire quarter sessions, complaining of the poor people, ‘destitute of bread, destitute of money, destitute of employment’, a burden on the overstretched rates. Materials for a History of Cricklade ed. T.R. Thomson (Cricklade, 1948-52), chap. 1, pp. 12, 13.

Parliamentary elections in this period seem not to have been the cause of any disputes, and the town’s two seats were divided between local landed interests, without intervention by carpet-baggers. The Maskelyne family was the leading one, but no-one of that name took a seat in this period. In the elections for the Short Parliament, Robert Jenner of Wydhill and Thomas Hodges I of Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire, took the first and second seats respectively. C219/42/2/60. Wydhill was a manor in Cricklade, and gave its name to an aisle in the parish church of St Sampson, where Jenner was later to be buried. He had previously sat in the 1628 Parliament. Hodges held a lease of Abingdon Court, a Cricklade estate, from the dean and chapter of Salisbury cathedral. Most of the tithes of Cricklade belonged to Abingdon Court, so that both Jenner and Hodges could draw on their own respective interests to secure the parliamentary seats with the approval of the rudimentary town government. Materials for a History ed. Thomson, chap. 5, pp. 11, 13, 15, 19.

The same circumstances obtained in October 1640, when Jenner and Hodges were again returned. C219/43/3/41. Jenner was secluded at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, and Hodges withdrew. Both made reconciliatory gestures towards the Rump Parliament, by attending committees and appearing in the commission of the peace, so there were no by-elections at all in this period. As with many other small boroughs, Cricklade lost its separate representation under the Instrument of Government, recovering it after the death of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell*. When Protector Richard Cromwell* reverted to the traditional franchise, the way was open for two more Cricklade men to represent the town. In the election held in January 1659 – damage to the return makes the precise date impossible to discover – Edward Poole of Kemble and John Hawkins were returned in that order. C219/46, unfol. Jenner had by this time died; Hodges seems to have kept a certain distance between himself and the regimes of either of the Cromwells. Poole was of a family long-established in Wiltshire. His own estate interest was at Oaksey, but his father, Sir Neville Poole*, had sat for Cricklade in 1624. Hawkins had married the daughter of Nevil Maskelyne† of Purton, and thus represented the interest of the dominant family of the town, although he never sat again after 1659.