Milborne Port

Originating as a Saxon ‘port’ or burgh, Milborne Port had flourished in the middle ages as a centre for the cloth trade on the Somerset-Dorset border, and had sent representatives to the Parliaments of Edward I. By the early seventeenth century, however, the town had declined, and, as one contemporary noted, ‘all these things being lost there remains nothing but a straggling town’. Gerard’s Description of Som. ed. E.H. Bates (Som. Rec. Soc. xv), 153. Milborne Port was never granted a charter, but it was governed by nine ‘capital bailiffs’, two of whom presided at the court leet by a rule of strict rotation. These, with nine ‘commonalty stewards’ (whose power derived from a medieval guild) made a ‘double corporation’, which acted as a town council, and controlled the conduct of elections to Parliament. Som. RO, DD/TB, box 20, FT 1, unfol.: acct. of Milborne Port borough; Collinson, Som. ii. 353. In 1628 there were 20 voters. C219/41/68. It is probable that there were fewer than one hundred householders in all, and the exact right of election was unclear from the start – a situation which led to bitter disputes in the eighteenth century – but in 1640 the franchise seems to have resided in the ‘corporation’ and the inhabitants paying scot and lot. S.G. McKay, Milborne Port in Som. (Milborne Port, 1986), 20-5, 117.

Despite the prominence of the ruling clique within the borough, Milborne Port’s electoral history was dominated by outside influences. The borough was re-enfranchised in 1628, at the behest of the local magnate, Sir John Digby†, 1st earl of Bristol, who was eager to increase support in the lower House for a bill to protect his Sherborne estates from the revocation claims of Carew Ralegh*. Bristol owed his continuing influence over Milborne to the borough’s proximity to Sherborne Castle, barely two miles away across the Dorset border; and his hegemony was reinforced by a political alliance with William Seymour†, 2nd earl of Hertford, who owned land at Kingsbury Regis, a tithing within the parish of Milborne Port. Som. RO, DD/AB 46, unfol.: Seymour leases, 1599-1640. This double interest explains the return of Edward Kyrton for the borough in the elections to the Short Parliament on 2 April 1640. Kyrton was Hertford’s steward, and acted as feoffee in his Kingsbury Regis and North Perrott estates from 1634. Som. RO, DD/AB 54, unfol.: deed of enfeoffment, 2 May 1634. Furthermore, he had been a political associate of Bristol since the 1620s. His fellow MP in the Short Parliament was Thomas Erle, the son of another veteran of the 1620s Parliaments, Sir Walter Erle*, who was on good terms with the Digbys and Seymours during the personal rule of Charles I. The same interest controlled the borough elections for the Long Parliament on 17 October 1640. Kyrton, and Bristol’s son, George Lord Digby, were originally chosen, and when the latter chose to sit as knight of the shire for Dorset, his brother, John Digby, was elected in his place. CJ ii. 25a.

The Digbys and the Seymours were staunch supporters of the king during the first civil war, and suffered political disgrace and the confiscation of their estates as a result. The removal of such powerful patrons brought great changes for Milborne Port. Digby and Kyrton were disabled as Members because of their royalist allegiances, and a writ for a new election was ordered in September 1645 and issued on 21 October. CJ iv. 287a; C231/6, p. 27. The subsequent ‘recruiter’ election, which seems to have been held in December 1645, became part of a wider dispute between the Somerset Independents, led by John Pyne*, and their Presbyterian opponents, who clashed in other recruiter elections at Ilchester and elsewhere. The Milborne Port contest was especially confused, and the only contemporary account comes from a pro-Presbyterian newsbook, which related how ‘there hath been a strange election at Milborne Port ... where a bailiff that is sequestered [as a royalist] set up two burgesses in a strange way of illegality, making votes by [releasing] prisoners’. The Scotish Dove no. 115 (24 Dec. 1645-1 Jan. 1646), 910 (E.314.2). The identity of the accused parties is unclear, but the result was the election of two members of differing political persuasions, William Carent and Thomas Grove. Grove, a native of Wiltshire, later came under attack by London sectaries for his strong Presbyterian views; Carent, a local man and one of the borough’s bailiffs, was an associate of Pyne and his Independent allies. Som. RO, DD/MDL, box C 934, unfol.: deeds, 1578-1634; D. Underdown, Som. in the Civil War and Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1973), 131; Add. 31116, p. 619.

The elections of 1645 reflected the divided loyalties of Milborne Port itself during the 1640s and 1650s. At least one inhabitant, Samuel Lambert, constable of the manor of Kingsbury within Milborne Parish, was indicted for royalism before the quarter sessions, possibly because of his loyalty to the Seymours. McKay, Milborne Port, 18. Other townsmen may have had sympathies with their episcopalian vicar, Henry Salkeld, who was not ejected before his death in 1645, and his replacement was another royalist, Walter Flea. Walker Revised, 183. There are accounts of locals recapturing by force a bible stolen from the church by Cromwellian soldiers, and of a plot to murder William Hopkins, the town’s godly minister in the 1650s, but these are highly dubious. Collinson, Som. ii. 355; McKay, Milborne Port, 190. There is more certain evidence of puritan sympathy within the town: John Pyne’s ally, William Carent, was one of the bailiffs, and seems to have been a religious Independent; and William Hopkins, minister from 1656, who, although ejected in 1662, remained in the town as a Congregationalist preacher. Calamy Revised, 275-6. The tensions between those of differing political and religious views within the town would resurface most dramatically in 1659.

The death of Oliver Cromwell* in 1658 heightened local tensions in Somerset, and political divisions emerged during the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in January 1659. The moderate Presbyterian party in the south west, led by the Dorset Members Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* and John Fitzjames*, tried to secure seats at Milborne Port for a local landowner, Robert Hunt*, and for Fitzjames’s cousin, Robert Coker*; but Coker was reluctant to stand. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 70. One reason for the moderates’ intervention was to prevent the ‘commonwealthsmen’ under John Pyne, from gaining control of the borough: as Fitzjames complained, ‘I am sure Colonel Pyne stickles hard for the place, which constrains me to stay here till Monday night, to dispatch the business if I can’. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 70. On 29 January Fitzjames told Hunt that he was hopeful that ‘I have 50 at least of the 85 that have voluntarily and freely subscribed to the person I shall nominate’, but feared rumours that ‘Pyne ... do offer to the poorer sort very liberally’. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, f. 71. Pyne’s influence was sufficient to secure the election of William Carent as one of the burgesses, but the other seat was taken by Fitzjames’s ally, Robert Hunt. Although Hunt was double-returned for Somerset as well as Milborne, he may have deliberately blocked Pyne by refusing to tell the Commons which seat he had chosen, thus preventing the issuing of a new writ. The Commons made the choice on Hunt’s behalf on 17 March, appointing him as MP for Somerset, and a new writ was sent, but Parliament was dissolved by the army before an election could be held. CJ vii. 615a.

After the restoration of the monarchy, religious and political tensions among the townsmen subsided, although there remained a strong Congregationalist, and later Quaker, lobby within the town. McKay, Milborne Port, 190-5. Political divisions also lessened during the later seventeenth century, despite the involvement of a number of townsmen in the Monmouth rebellion. McKay, Milborne Port, 18. From the 1660s, the electoral patronage of the borough once again came under the influence of local landowners, with the Seymour-Digby interest being superseded by prominent gentry families such as the Malets, Wyndhams, Hunts and Bulls. The borough lost its franchise in 1832.