Warwick

But if the benefit of the corporations were duly weighed and balanced it would produce better opinions of them, for where hath true religion without faction been better supported or where like civil government witnessed? Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 283.

The opinion of the town clerk of Warwick, Edward Raynford, recorded in the borough minute book at some point in the 1640s, was voiced against a background of turbulence in the affairs of the town. With a substantial population – between 2,500 and 3,000 in the mid-seventeenth century – and with its status as the seat of shire government, Warwick was well-placed to embody the virtues of civic life. Warws. Hearth Tax Returns: Michaelmas 1670 ed. Arkell and Alcock (Dugdale Soc. xliii), 63; VCH Warws. viii. 418. At their best, corporations might have been mini-commonwealths, but the constituent parts of Warwick’s government were subject to significant internal strain. The points of contention were between the greater and lesser chambers, and between the corporation and its recorder. The principal burgesses were 12 in number; the lesser burgesses, ‘commoners’ or assistants, had been 24 under the 1554 charter, but a new charter of 1613 settled that there should be 12 of them. VCH Warws. viii. 490, 493, 494. There was a history of conflict over recruitment to the principal burgess-ships. The 1613 charter provided that vacancies in the senior chamber could be filled from beyond the ranks of the assistants, from the commonalty as a whole, but in 1639 as a concession to critical opinion, it was agreed that if there were suitable assistants, the principal burgesses should be selected from their number. Naturally, this begged the question of suitability, and did little to address conflicts over inclusiveness. In 1659, the assistants were still made to wait outside the door while the principal burgesses deliberated on an election to fill a vacancy among them. VCH Warws. viii. 493. In the view of the town clerk, the corporation fell victim to the ambitions of the local gentry, who sought to stir up the commonalty, ‘all their troubles and suits proceeding from distastes proudly and causelessly taken by neighbouring gentlemen ... who make no other use of them but as they do of their stirrups to mount to their horse’. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6 p. 269.

Disputes about narrow or wide government in the town spilled over into the conduct of parliamentary elections. Early Stuart elections were marked by legal hearings over the franchise, in which the corporation defended itself against the gentry who promoted the widest notions of an electorate. A parliamentary resolution of 31 May 1628 fixed the right of election in the commonalty, those who paid church and poor rates. CD 1628, iv. 38. For its part, the corporation feared the voices of ‘persons to whom they gave alms, and ... every mechanic, and ... all sorts of ill-conditioned people’. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 270. The burgesses also had to accommodate themselves to the wishes of successive recorders, the Lords Brooke. The Greville family had come to dominate the town since Warwick castle had been acquired by Sir Fulke Greville† in 1604. He had spent £20,000 on refurbishments, and was chosen recorder, to the unhappiness of the town clerk, who considered that a local gentleman would have been a better choice. He was undoubtedly tracing the history of his own dispute with the next recorder, the 2nd Baron Brooke (Robert Greville†). In Edward Raynford’s view, Brooke’s antipathy to him arose from tithes to the borough that the town clerk had discovered unpaid by the Warwick castle estate, and worsened during the conduct of the parliamentary election of 1641.

The elections for the Short Parliament seem to have attracted little comment, beyond providing us with a vignette of electoral practice in the borough. The proclamation made in the presence of the bailiff and a number of burgesses called on them to move immediately to the Shire Hall for the election. After proceeding to the hall by way of the High Pavement (High Street), the choice was made in what seems to have been a rather peremptory fashion, though the indenture has not survived. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 144. In the context of the corporation’s disputes with the castle and with the inhabitants, the election of William Purefoy I and Godfrey Bossevile on 24 March 1640 must have represented a victory for Lord Brooke’s interests. Purefoy was a minor gentleman from the north of the county, with no interest in the borough, and Bossevile was a Yorkshireman, Brooke’s half-brother, who lived on a rented estate at Wroxall or at the castle. Both were among the godly Warwickshire gentry whose social circle was centred on the Brooke household. Add. 23146, ff. 44v, 47, 81, 85v, 88. The critical town clerk offered no comment on this election, but in the second election of the year would surely have approved of the return to Parliament of Sir Thomas Lucy on 27 October: the venerable knight, ‘a gentle man of an ancient family’, had showed favour to the corporation in the past, including his interventions to ensure that grain reached the market in times of dearth. C219/43/5/3; Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 269.

Robert Lord Brooke was drawn into conflict with the corporation in the by-election of 18 February 1641, after Lucy’s death on 10 December 1640. He promoted his half-brother as Lucy’s successor in the vacant seat, but Spencer Lucy, heir of Sir Thomas, wished to succeed his father. Brooke had secured the votes of the ‘better sort’, but on this occasion more voices were heard for Lucy. The contest exposed the various conflicts within Warwick political life, and no fewer than three indentures were returned. One was returned by the bailiff with the names of two burgesses in it, one came to Westminster blank, with the bailiff’s name attached and one was filed by the commonalty with a third man’s name in it. The first must have recorded the names of Bossevile and Purefoy, and the third that of Spencer Lucy. A fourth, blank, indenture survives, suggesting that the electoral process was manipulated to produce a contest. BRL, MS j.101. On this occasion, as in previous contests, the local gentry were able to call on a wider constituency than the corporation. The bailiff’s confusion must have been induced at least in part by the competing factions, and in part by the unfortunate intervention of Raynford, who tried to help him. It was left to the House to pronounce, after an indignant speech by Sir Simonds D’Ewes, that Bossevile’s election was valid so long as no-one could prove it illegal. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 276; Procs. LP, ii. 477-8.

When Brooke heard of the corporation’s unhelpfulness, and specifically the role played by Raynford, he had himself voted recorder. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6 p. 276. On his untimely death at Lichfield in March 1643, the Warwick castle interest, including John Bryan, minister of Barford and future preacher to the Warwick garrison, persuaded William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford, to take the place of recorder, without reference to the citizens. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 148; P. Styles, ‘The Corporation of Warwick, 1660-1835’, Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. lix. 24. During the years when Warwick was garrisoned for Parliament, which coincided with the minority of Francis Greville, 3rd Baron Brooke, the castle was the centre of power in the town and surrounding region. Not only was the military presence an obvious source of authority, but also the estate stewards, like John Bridges* and his sons, and Joseph Hawkesworth*, ran the castle estate, collected rents and presided over courts leet. Warws. RO, CR 1886/Box 411. The effect of this concentration of power was to create stability in the politics of the borough. Only one exclusion was recorded in the minute book, the blocking of the progress to principal burgess of one for being ‘refractory to the Presbyterian government and forbearing to come to the public assembly for worship of God in the public congregation’. VCH Warws. viii. 496.

With its reduced representation under the Instrument of Government, the borough returned Richard Lucy as sole Member to the first protectorate Parliament, on 9 July 1654. The proclamation called upon inhabitants ‘qualified to give votes’ to attend the election, but there is no evidence of a contest. The Black Book of Warwick ed. T. Kemp (Warwick, 1898), 412. When Lucy chose to sit as knight of the shire, his Warwick seat was taken by Clement Throckmorton on 12 December 1654. Black Book of Warwick, 412. The Warwick castle accounts show that Clement Throckmorton had a working relationship with the Greville household before he was elected. Black Book of Warwick, 412. By contrast, the names of the Lucys do not appear in the castle accounts, and so it is plausible that elections of the 1650s were the product of agreement between the Lucys, who had an interest of their own and enjoyed the loyalty of the corporation, and those candidates who were at least acceptable to the castle, to put it no more strongly. The presence of the garrison meant that Warwick was spared any interference by visiting major-generals in 1655-6, and so local patterns of representation continued unimpaired: Throckmorton was returned again to the second protectorate Parliament, on 26 August 1656. Black Book of Warwick, 413. In both elections to Oliver Cromwell’s* Parliaments, it was the county sheriff, rather than the bailiff of the borough, who was the returning officer. Edward Peyto*, a friend of Throckmorton’s and a client of the 2nd earl of Denbigh (Basil Feilding), helped him to his seat in 1654; Thomas Willughby*, a former stalwart of the Warwickshire county committee, returned the indenture in 1656. Black Book of Warwick, 412. In the latter case, it was unlikely that there was any significant collaboration between the returning officer and the corporation, as there had been in 1641.

When elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament were held, on the traditional franchise, there is evidence of a slightly wider electorate than the bailiff, principal burgesses and assistants. C219/48. By this time, the Warwick castle and garrison interest had reduced in scale and in active interest in politics, during the minority of Francis Greville, 3rd Baron Brooke, who died late in 1658. Even so, the 34 electors on 5 January 1659 were hardly a wide-open body of voters, and their choices were another representative of the Lucys and Thomas Archer, son of Sir Simon Archer* and who was an associate of the 4th Baron Brooke (Robert Greville). The Archer family had been friendly with the Throckmortons of Haseley over several generations. Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 37/vol. 48, f. 30. A change of lordship at Warwick coincided with the advent of the restoration of the monarchy. On 19 March 1660, William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford voluntarily resigned the recordership to Lord Brooke, and a month later Joseph Hawkesworth handed over the garrison to him. Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6; E. Carey-Hill, ‘The Hawkesworth Papers, 1601-60’, Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. liv. 19. The history of the constituency after 1660 saw no revival in the capacity of the townspeople to choose their own Members: the castle and the gentry continued to dominate electoral politics. HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Warwick’.