Leicestershire

Situated in the east midlands, Leicestershire enjoyed relatively good connections with London and the rest of the country via Watling Street and the Fosse Way, which intersected close to the county’s south western border with Warwickshire. It was noted during the Stuart period for being ‘exceedingly fertile for all sorts of grain’, producing ‘great abundance of peas and beans, more than any other country [i.e. county]’. The south east of the county was particularly ‘rich ground, yielding great increase of corn in abundance of all kinds and affordeth many good and large sheep pastures, breeding a sheep to that height and goodness so that ... neither Leominster [in Herefordshire] nor [the] Cotswolds can exceed them’. E. Leigh, England Described (1659), 114 (E.1792.2); R. Blome, Britannia (1673), 137. According to the 1670 hearth tax returns, Leicestershire contained almost 14,000 households, suggesting an overall population of approximately 60,000. J.D. Chambers, ‘Three essays on the population and economy of the midlands’, in Population in History: Vol. 1 ed. D.V. Glass, D.E.C. Eversley (New Brunswick, 2008), 322. Elections usually took place in Leicester Castle, and the electorate numbered somewhere in the region of 1-1,300 and would exceed 3,000 by the late 1670s. The Faithful Scout no. 192 (11-18 Aug. 1654), 1519 (E.233.5); HP Commons 1604-1629 HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Leicestershire’.

Leicestershire’s electoral politics were dominated for much of the late Tudor and early Stuart period by the Hastings family, earls of Huntingdon. All but one of the ten men who had represented the county in the Parliaments of the 1620s were either kinsmen or clients of Henry Hastings, 5th earl of Huntingdon, the lord lieutenant of both Leicestershire and Rutland. The earl’s support for the policies of the personal rule of Charles I, however, and for Ship Money and the first bishops’ war in particular, had significantly undermined his popularity and electoral interest in the county by the time campaigning began late in 1639 for the shire places in the Short Parliament. HP Commons 1604-1629; T. Cogswell, Home Divisions (Manchester, 1998), 255-61; G.K. Gruenfelder, ‘The electoral influence of the earls of Huntingdon 1603-40’, Trans. Leics. Arch. and Hist. Soc. l. 22-4. Huntingdon nominated his second son, Henry Hastings, and his protégé Sir Henry Skipwith – a former Ship-Money sheriff – and directed the Leicester corporation to ‘send your constables in their several wards to the freeholders to signify my desire unto them that as for my son in the first place so for Sir Henry in the second’. Leics. RO, BRII/18/21, f. 552; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 261-2. So confident was the earl in the outcome of the election that he ordered his son to join him in London and to cease troubling himself with canvassing. But Hastings refused to leave Leicestershire, warning his father that there was a campaign afoot to rouse the county against the earl and his clients as court stooges.

Heading this anti-Hastings interest were the family’s two most high profile opponents in the county – the godly Leicestershire peer Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford and Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, who was a member of the national puritan network associated with John Hampden* and John Pym*. Infra, ‘Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; D. Fleming, ‘Faction and civil war in Leics.’, Trans. of the Leics. Arch. and Hist. Soc. lvii. 29-30. Between them, Stamford and Hesilrige were said to have ‘laboured almost every man through the whole country [sic]’... and received promises’ of support. HEHL, Hastings corresp. box 16, HA 5558; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 262. One Leicestershire gentleman, a self-declared defender of ‘slandered authority’ against the forces of ‘popularity’, claimed that Stamford had ‘sent messengers to divers towns’ in the county ‘to request the freeholders to choose Sir Arthur Hesilrige a knight of the shire’. SP16/458/110, f. 213v. On election day, 19 March 1640, the rivalry between the Hastingses and the Stamford-Hesilrige interest obliged the county sheriff to draw up two elections indentures, possibly after holding a poll. The election indenture that the Commons evidently accepted returned Hesilrige and Henry Grey, Lord Grey of Ruthin, in that order. C219/42/1/146. This indenture was signed by at least 30 gentlemen, among them the future parliamentarians Thomas Beaumont* and William Quarles*. The second indenture, which may not have been submitted – the Journal makes no reference to a double return for Leicestershire – returned Henry Hasting and, once again, Grey of Ruthin. HEHL, HA parliamentary box 3 (17). It was signed by approximately 34 gentlemen and purported to have the endorsement of ‘many other persons...the greater part of the whole county’. The leading signatories to this indenture included a number of the Hastingses’ allies and, in most cases, future royalists – namely, Sir John Bale, Sir Erasmus de la Fountaine, Sir Thomas Hartopp, Richard Halford and John Pate. Cogswell, Home Divisions, 293-4. Grey’s appeal with the voters probably lay in the fact that he was the eldest son of a peer (the 9th earl of Exeter) who had long resided in the county and that he not allied closely to either county faction. Infra, ‘Henry Grey, Lord Grey of Ruthin’.

Huntingdon’s unflinching endeavours that summer to mobilise Leicestershire during the second bishops’ war would lose him what little support he had left in the county. Cogswell, Home Divisions, 262-71. On 22 October 1640, the freeholders returned Ruthin and Hesilrige to the Long Parliament, apparently in that order (the election indentures is now too faded to read). C219/43/2/23; Return of Members, 482. It has been argued that Hesilrige’s failure to retain the senior place may be evidence that he faced an opponent on election day (if so, it was almost certainly a member of the Hastings faction) who attempted to beat him by attracting plumpers and splitting Grey’s second choices. D.R. Costa, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige and the Development of the Civil War in England (to 1645)’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1988), 46. After the election, one of Huntingdon’s deputy lieutenants was driven to complain that in electing Hesilrige the voters ‘had chosen a man...who had more will than wit and that it was to the disparagement of the county’ – remarks for which the Commons sent him to the Tower. CJ ii. 43a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 38; Cogswell, Home Divisions, 272.

According to Sir Edward Hyde* (the future earl of Clarendon), the people of Leicestershire took sides during the civil war in accordance with the long-standing ‘animosities between the two families of Huntingdon and Stamford, between whom the county was divided passionately enough, without any other quarrel’. Clarendon, Hist. ii. 473. In fact, the majority of the county’s gentry were either anxious to avoid openly committing themselves or were lukewarm royalists. Moreover, although most of Huntingdon’s militia officers lined up behind him and Henry Hastings in support of the king, so too did a number of the earl’s leading pre-war opponents. The traditional rivalry between the Hastings and Grey families certainly did not translate straightforwardly into wartime allegiances in the county. Cogswell, Home Divisions, 293-5; Fleming, ‘Faction and civil war in Leics.’, 32, 34. On the parliamentarian side, the strains of war undermined the alliance between Stamford and Hesilrige, provoking a bitter dispute between the two men and between Hesilrige and the earl’s son, Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby*, that divided the county committee and fed into the factional conflict at Westminster between the Essexian peace party (with which the Greys were aligned) and the war party (of which Hesilrige was a leading member). Infra, ‘Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford’; ‘Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; VCH Leics. ii. 114. The regular passage of armies and raiding parties through Leicestershire probably did more to leave the county wretched and divided than its inhabitants’ adherence, passionate or otherwise, to the king or to Parliament. Cogswell, Home Divisions, 289; S. Osborne, ‘The war, the people and the absence of the Clubmen in the Midlands, 1642-6, MH xix. 88-9, 91-3, 96, 97.

Ruthin succeeded his father as 10th earl of Kent in November 1643, but the issue of electing his replacement had to wait until the autumn of 1645. On 30 October, the Commons ordered that a writ be issued for holding new elections in Leicestershire, whereupon Hesilrige and Grey of Groby resumed their rivalry during canvassing for the vacant seat. In the event, it was Hesilrige’s interest that prevailed on election day (20 Nov.), with his nominee, Henry Smyth, defeating Grey of Groby’s, Thomas Beaumont. Infra, ‘Thomas Beaumont’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Henry Smyth’; Bodl. Rawl. D.116, pp. 18-19. Smyth was a regicide in 1649, and both he and Hesilrige were Rumpers.

Of the three gentlemen selected to represent Leicestershire in the Nominated Parliament in 1653, D’Anvers and Pratt had been active members of the county committee during the civil war and were connected with puritan networks that stretched down to London and up into Yorkshire. Infra, ‘Henry D’Anvers’; ‘John Pratt’. Smith, on the other hand, was too young to have taken part in the war and apparently had no experience of public office when he was selected in 1653. Infra, ‘Edward Smith’. Why the council chose such a relative nonentity is a mystery. Pratt was one of 19, generally obscure, men who appear to have been nominated at a later stage than the majority of Members, which may well indicate that they were chosen because some of the original nominees had been considered politically unreliable, or, more likely, because they had refused to sit. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139-40.

Under the 1653 Instrument of Government, the county representation was increased to four seats, and these became the subject of intense competition in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654. One observer discerned two parties among the seven candidates on election day – the first comprising Stamford, his son Grey of Groby and the Leicestershire gentlemen and committeemen Thomas Beaumont and Thomas Pochin*; the second made up of the army officer and regicide Francis Hacker*, John Goodman (a civil-war county committeeman) and Pratt. Beaumont and Pochin were neighbours as well as business associates of Grey of Groby. Infra, ‘Thomas Beaumont’; ‘Thomas Pochin’; C54/3820/13-14. The basis of the electoral alignment between Hacker, Goodman and Pratt is not clear. Beaumont was elected first, ‘with the advantage of one thousand voices above Colonel Hacker or any of his party that opposed him [Beaumont]’, whereupon Hacker’s interest ‘yielded to him [Beaumont] ... as being first chosen without dispute’. But when it looked likely that Stamford, Grey of Groby and Pochin would defeat ‘the three that opposed them’, Hacker called for a poll against Beaumont. The sheriff at first refused to put the voters to this ‘unnecessary trouble ... where the odds were so apparent ... as being six to one’ in Beaumont’s favour’. But Beaumont, ‘to make all clear, came with the electors and urged very much to go presently to poll’, at which Hacker, ‘seeing again the numbers much too great for him, went away ... pretending that his men were gone home, although it was not ... a full quarter of an hour after he had desired a poll’. After waiting for Hacker in the castle and for six hours in the town, the sheriff declared Stamford, Grey of Groby and Pochin duly elected alongside Beaumont. A few days after the election it was reported that ‘those which lost it have sent up a remonstrance against it, signed by their own party, which were not the sixth part of the electors’. The Faithful Scout (11-18 Aug. 1654), 1519. On 21 August, Hacker’s supporters petitioned the protectoral council, alleging not only that Beaumont and Stamford had been unduly elected, but also that they were disqualified according to the Instrument of Government for having ‘assisted the late king’s party’ and being ‘not of a good conversation’. No evidence was produced to support any of these allegations. SP18/74/100, ff. 214-15, 217; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 316. Stamford and Grey of Groby were not included on the list of Members approved by the council early in September. Severall Procs. of State Affaires no. 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22). Shortly afterwards, however, the French ambassador reported that Stamford and another, unnamed, Member, having been disqualified from sitting by the council, ‘declared that if their country had done them the honour of choosing them, they could not be prevented from serving ... and the same evening they had their tickets’ to sit in Parliament. PRO31/3/96, ff. 365v-366. On 20 September the committee for privileges approved the returns for Leicestershire. Severall Procs. of Parl. no. 260 (14-21 Sept. 1654), 4128 (E.233.5). Stamford, Beaumont and Pochin attended their seats at Westminster, but Grey of Groby was excluded – or so claimed Edmund Ludlowe II* – as a republican opponent of the protectorate. Ludlow, Mems. i. 390. There is certainly no evidence that Grey attended this Parliament.

Writing to the lord protector a few days before the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in August 1656, Major-general Edward Whalley* was concerned that Leicestershire voters might return the ardent commonwealthsman Sir Arthur Hesilrige for one of county places, which Whalley thought would ‘most blemish their choice’. TSP v. 299-300. In the event, Hesilrige was returned for Leicester while the county elected Beaumont, Hacker, another former civil-war county committeeman William Quarles, and Pochin – apparently in that order. A Perfect List of the Names of the Several Persons Returned to Serve in this Parliament (1656), 5 (E.498.5). None of the county’s Members were excluded by the council as enemies of the protectorate, but only Hacker would be listed among the ‘kinglings’: the supporters at Westminster of a monarchical settlement. [G. Wharton], A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5).

Reduced to its traditional two seats for the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, the county returned Beaumont and Hacker. A Perfect List of the Lords...Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses... Assembled in this Present Parliament (1659). There is no evidence of a contest. Hesilrige and Smyth represented the county in the restored Rump.