Marlborough

According to Wiltshireman Edward Hyde*, by the mid-seventeenth century Marlborough was ‘a town the most notoriously disaffected of all that county’. Clarendon, Hist. ii. 403. Mentioned in Domesday Book, it was situated on the north bank of the river Kennet at the crossroads of major routes from London to Bath and Salisbury to Swindon. VCH Wilts. xii. 199, 201. Like other Wiltshire towns it suffered economic distress in the wake of the collapse of the clothing industry in the mid-1610s, but it was less dependent on such manufacture for its prosperity, having considerable numbers of tanners and glovers, pin-makers and wire-drawers, and makers of clay pipes. A centre for the sale of local cheese, its chief strength was as a market town – manifested in the construction in 1630 of a market house – and it had many inns. As a result, in many respects it seems to have overtaken Devizes in importance from the mid-sixteenth to the later seventeenth century – the difference being manifested in the Compton census of 1676, which listed about 3,200 householders for the former as against less than 1,000 for the latter. VCH Wilts. xii. 201, 209; A.R. Stedman, Marlborough and the Upper Kennet Country (1960), 132-3; Compton Census, 121, 126. Like Devizes it hosted quarter sessions once a year. Wilts. RO, A/160/1.

Relative wealth in a time of economic depression doubtless encouraged self-confidence. The borough’s frequently confrontational relationship with its lord of the manor, William Seymour, 3rd earl and then 1st marquess of Hertford, did not improve in the 1630s. Its allegations that John Martin, appointed by the earl in 1633 as master of the grammar school, had preferred the children of country gentlemen over those of townsmen, led to a chancery suit which resulted in 1638 in new orders and a new master. Stedman, Marlborough, 150–3; Wilts. RO, G22/1/205/2. Thomas Profit, rector from the early 1630s of one of the borough’s two parishes, was later described as a ‘powerful preacher’, and he contributed much to the development over several decades of a strong puritan tradition. Stedman, Marlborough, 135. Resistance to government fiscal and military policies, already manifested in the 1620s, continued through the decade of Charles I’s personal rule. In 1633 the sheriff reported that the assessment of the town at £100 for Ship Money – higher than that for Devizes, although warrantably so – had provoked much dissatisfaction, but it was not reduced. Stedman, Marlborough, 133-4, 150; HP Commons 1604-1629; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 345. The town had long been a somewhat restive rendezvous for trained bands, and although it benefitted from provisioning soldiers, it is probable that tension was already mounting early in 1640 as troops were once again mustered to go north. CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 229; 1639-40, p. 356.

In this context it is not surprising that the parliamentary election on 18 March was contested. The two ultimately unsuccessful candidates, identified in the corporation records only as ‘Po’ and ‘Pa’, appear to have been the most popular, gaining especially the votes of freemen not on the council. Their rivals, Sir William Carnabye* and Francis Baskerville*, must thus have had powerful and irresistible backing. Wilts RO, G22/1/21, pp. 28-9. Why this should be so is puzzling. Carnabye was a Yorkshireman who combined a lack of prior connection to the borough with a record of determined collection of Ship Money. Baskerville was a youthful local gentleman with no experience at all. Since Hertford (with whom Carnabye did have a connection) had forfeited trust in the borough, perhaps their promotion is at least partly attributable to the influence of the earl’s brother Sir Francis Seymour* of Marlborough castle, whose record on representing country grievances was exemplary. Whatever the case, while Seymour himself fulfilled any such expectations as a knight of the shire, Baskerville had only one committee appointment in the Parliament and Carnabye none; it seems neither spoke in debate.

As more soldiers were raised in May and June, disorder erupted in Marlborough. Troops broke open the prison to free refusers of coat and conduct money who had been committed there, and even when this was peaceably resolved a local minister was reported to be stirring up further trouble by preaching against popery. CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 203, 258; 1640, pp. 281-2, 309, 493. In October the parliamentary election was convincingly won by a significantly more robust pair – Seymour, with a resounding vote of confidence, and the town clerk, John Francklyn*, with a respectable majority which probably owed something to his defiance of military impositions in the 1620s. Once again there were other candidates, but with much reduced backing and none obviously the same as those of the spring. Wilts RO, G22/1/21, pp. 36-7; C219/43/3, no. 13. For three months Seymour resumed his eloquent career in the Commons, but in February 1641 he was called to the Lords as Baron Seymour of Trowbridge, his opposition neutralised. That some in Marlborough viewed this as a betrayal is suggested by the fact that at the by-election on 12 March he was replaced by Philip Smythe*, a well-connected local lawyer who proved a reliable conduit of the borough’s petitions (as on 6 May) and a staunch critic of non-parliamentary government. However, Smythe’s margin of victory over a candidate identified only as ‘H’ was narrow, with slightly more councillors preferring the latter. Wilts RO, G22/1/21, p. 39; CJ ii. 137a.

By the summer of 1642 Francklyn and Smythe were rallying support for Parliament in the borough. By 11 June the Commons had learned that it had already collected £600 towards a loan. CJ ii. 619b. On 11 July Francklyn and exchequer auditor Sir Robert Pye I* were instructed to write to the Wiltshire assessment commissioners seeking sympathetic rating for Marlborough on account of its ‘forwardness’ in contributing towards the relief of Irish Protestants. As Smythe and Francklyn relayed receipts to their constituents, in a clear sign of confidence the mayor was licensed to take charge of the magazine in the town. CJ ii. 664b; 668b. He did so promptly, as Smythe reported at Westminster, earning formal thanks. CJ ii. 695a.

Subsequently parliamentarian commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, sent one Ramsey, a Scot, to establish a garrison; Francklyn, according to a later account, was despatched by Parliament to assist him. Edward Hyde thought that they rapidly assembled five or six hundred men but reckoned that the borough was ‘very unfit for a garrison’. CCC 1539. Certainly, only limited progress seems to have been made with defensive works by late November, when royalist forces under Henry Wilmot* and George Digby*, Lord Digby, arrived. While on Hyde’s account parliamentarian activist Sir Neville Poole*, who happened to be in the town, was willing to parley, Francklyn and Ramsey gathered all available men (including many attending the weekly market) and not only successfully barricaded the streets for a few days but also took captive Digby’s chief negotiator Vincent Goddard (probably a kinsman of Vincent Goddard*) and Seymour’s wife and daughter. On 7 December the Commons heard a five-day-old letter from Francklyn detailing resistance. CJ ii. 879a; Harl. 164, ff. 243v-244; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 403-4; A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages no. 22 (1-8 Dec. 1642), 1-2 (E.244.5); England’s Memorable Accidents (5-23 Dec. 1642), 111-12 (E.244.9). The House ordered assistance from Wiltshire officials, but on the 5th the town had been overwhelmed. The destruction by fire and pillage was extensive, but perhaps worse from a propaganda standpoint was the taking of many prisoners and substantial ordnance; among those route-marched to the king’s headquarters at Oxford was Francklyn. Clarendon, Hist. ii. 405; Waylen, Hist. Marlborough,160-4; A letter from a country gentleman concerning the taking of Marlborough (Oxford 1643); England’s Memorable Accidents (12-19 Dec. 1642), 116 (E.244.16); A Perfect Diurnall no. 27 (12-19 Dec. 1642), sig. Dd 1v (E.244.15). A relief force sent by Essex arrived on the 10th, but stayed only briefly. For more than two years the town was sometimes garrisoned by royalists and subject to periodic visits by the king, his nephews and other leading commanders. Stedman, Marlborough, 136; Waylen, Hist. Marlborough, 213; Wilts RO, G22/1/205/2; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 342, 343, 440; CJ iii. 699a.

Smythe, safe at the Inner Temple, almost certainly chaired the committee which in March 1643 considered a petition from those still detained in appalling conditions at Oxford and recompense for the charges incurred by Marlborough’s mayor. CJ ii. 992a. Parliament responded with aid but by August Francklyn had succumbed to mistreatment and died without benefitting from the exchanges of prisoners debated by the Commons. CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 649; Harl. 165, ff. 114b, 120a; E. Chillenden, The Inhumanity of the Kings Prison-keeper at Oxford (1643, E.63.17). A warrant for the election of his replacement was not issued until 12 November 1645 and a further six months elapsed before Colonel Charles Fleetwood* was returned on 8 May 1646. CJ iv. 340a; C219/43/3, no. 15. County committee members (including Thomas Eyre*) who had convened at Marlborough in January, probably for this purpose, were kidnapped by a party of royalist horse and had to be rescued by sheriff Alexander Thistlethwayte*. 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); CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 325. Fleetwood was a carpetbagger at Marlborough and probably owed his election to the army’s friends on the Wiltshire county committee.

The surrender of Oxford at last rendered Marlborough secure, but for a while Parliament’s soldiers were quartered there. Wilts RO, G22/1/205/2. A majority of the corporation were evidently loyal to the regime: rewarded with security for their loans in June 1649, they expended money on social regulation, on an Act for the Sabbath (1650) and on replacing the royal arms in the council house with state arms (1652); it was a safe place to send Dutch prisoners in April 1653. Wilts RO, G22/1/205/2; Stedman, Marlborough, 140; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 280. When a fire broke out in the borough on 28 April 1653, causing extensive damage and destroying the town hall, most of the south side of the high street and much of St Mary’s church, the privy council reacted promptly by authorising a relief collection under the auspices of a London committee, but while this was to become a model for the government response to other fires elsewhere, the upshot was not entirely satisfactory. It was reported that collectors proved reluctant to part with the sums they had received, administration costs were disproportionate and aid was distributed unevenly. A petition from Marlborough inhabitants of September 1658 sought a commission of enquiry involving, among others named, Lord Seymour, Alexander Popham*, Sir Walter St John*, John Ernle* and John Norden*. CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 336-7, 404; 1653-4, pp. 40, 108; 1655, p. 176; 1656-7, p. 172, 182, 366; 1658-9, pp. 142, 171; Stedman, Marlborough, 136-40; Wilts RO, G22/1/205/2. Meanwhile, the corporation sought in December 1656 and obtained the following spring a charter to replace the one confiscated by royalists during their pillage 14 years earlier. CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 208, 241, 245; Wilts RO, G22/1/22, p. 103; G22/1/205/2. With a more modest degree of success – even though their petition was endorsed by Richard Cromwell* – they secured some of the desired augmentation to the income of minister Nicholas Profitt, who had served on the Westminster Assembly and on the commission of triers and ejectors. CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 112, 181; A. and O.

It was probably on a calculation of his potential to assist the borough in its various aspirations that many freemen re-elected Charles Fleetwood* to the single available seat in Parliament on 26 June 1654 and 18 August 1656. On both occasions somewhat under a fifth of those with votes chose not to cast them, but there was no recorded rival candidate. C219/44/pt. 3; Wilts RO, G22/1/22, pp. 73, 95; G22/1/205/2. However, on both occasions Fleetwood was also returned elsewhere. In 1654 he is likely to have claimed Oxfordshire, albeit staying in Ireland, leaving Marlborough with no representation. In 1656 it looks as though a preference expressed by Fleetwood for Norfolk may have shoe-horned a substitute, probably Jerome Sankey*, into the Marlborough seat by the end of the year, although the process by which might have been achieved does not appear. CJ vii. 477b. There is no record either of action by the Commons or of endorsement from the borough.

By 23 December 1658, when voters gathered to choose two burgesses under the old dispensation, Fleetwood was otherwise occupied, but in Charles Grove* they found a not dissimilar alternative. Active in Dorset under the protectorate and previously a Member for Wiltshire, he had been involved in suppressing Quakers, also a concern in Marlborough. His partner was the lawyer James Hayes*, who had become recorder a few months earlier. In a poll where there were relatively fewer obvious abstentions than previously, Hayes refrained from voting for himself. C219/48; Wilts RO, G22/1/22, pp. 122-3; Stedman, Marlborough, 141; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 148, 150, 156, 169. While Grove proved fairly active at Westminster, Hayes’ public career did not take off until after the Restoration. That saw the reassertion in Marlborough of the Seymour interest. Wilts RO, 1300/225A, B; HP Commons 1660-1690.