Northern Counties

The four northern counties of Westmorland, Cumberland, Northumberland and County Durham were briefly conjoined to form a single parliamentary constituency under the terms of the ‘new representative’ of May-June 1653 that formed the basis for the Nominated Parliament. There were a number of precedents, some of considerable antiquity, for yoking the four northernmost English counties together in this fashion. Traditionally, these counties had formed a marcher region along the Anglo-Scottish border and, as such, had enjoyed a number of ancient privileges, most notably exemption from parliamentary taxation. A.W. Foster, ‘The struggle for parliamentary representation for Durham, c.1600-1641’ in The Last Principality ed. D. Marcombe (Loughborough, 1987), 177. During the 1640s, both the royalists and the parliamentarians had issued commissions for the position of commander-in-chief of the four northern counties – usually as an adjunct to the office of military governor of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Infra, ‘Sir Philip Musgrave’; CJ v. 505b, 523a; vi. 144a, 297a; ‘William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle, Oxford DNB’. But a more immediate precedent for treating this region as a single jurisdictional unit had been set in March 1650 with the Rump’s ordinance for the propagation of the gospel in the four northern counties. CJ vi. 374a. This piece of legislation, which was drafted and steered through the House by the governor of Newcastle, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, was apparently inspired by the ordinance for propagating the gospel in Wales – and clearly both that province and the four northern counties were regarded by the godly as among ‘the dark corners of the land’. Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; CJ vi. 365b.

The birth of this new northern constituency can be dated to the end of May 1653. On 24 May, the newsletter writer Gilbert Mabbott informed Hull corporation that the council of officers had a list of agreed nominations and that ‘there are chosen eight for the county of York, six for Devon and four apiece for the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent, one for Rutland and two apiece for every county besides six for Ireland and the little number for Scotland’. Hull Hist. Cent. C BRL/571; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 134-5. That he made no specific mention of the northern counties or Wales as constituencies may simply be an oversight. But it is also possible that the northern counties constituency emerged from the round of further consultation and debate within the council that produced what was more or less the definitive list of nominated Members early in June. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 136-7. The pamphlet A Catalogue of the Names of the New Representatives, which appeared in mid-June and was apparently a garbled version of the official list, includes the constituency of ‘Northumberland C. W. Darsheire’ – in other words, as the annotations on a later copy make clear, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland and County Durham. A Catalogue of the Names of the New Representatives (1653, 669 f.17.15); A Catalogue of the Names of the New Representatives (1653, 669 f.17.14); Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 138. Wales, which would eventually have six Members, was apparently still evolving as a constituency, for it consisted at this stage merely of ‘North Wales’, which had been assigned only a single Member.

It is likely that the men nominated to represent the northern counties were selected before the constituency itself had been conceived. On 7 May 1653, Mabbott reported that Walter Strickland had been chosen for Yorkshire, Charles Howard for Cumberland and Robert Fenwick for Northumberland, ‘and so others for other counties’. Clarke Pprs. iii. 5. This formulation suggests that the council of officers was focused at this stage on the selection process and assigning Members on an individual county basis, and that it was only later that it set about aggregating the northernmost counties and generally firming up the overall constituency structure.

The council received addresses from several of the four northern counties during April and May 1653 that applauded the army’s dissolution of the Rump and touched upon the selection of new representatives, but there is no evidence that ‘the honest people’, ‘Saints’, or the ‘well-affected’ of the region (as they variously styled themselves) recommended anyone in particular. Perfect Diurnall, no. 183 (6-13 June 1653), 2768-70 (E.213.33); Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 90-1; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 114. Indeed, Howard and Fenwick had been chosen by the council a week before it began receiving lists of possible candidates from some of the nation’s gathered churches. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 116-17. Nor is there any evidence that the men chosen to represent the northern counties had been powerful figures on their region’s commission for propagating the gospel, as was the case with some of those nominated for Wales. Infra, ‘Wales, addenda’. In fact, Howard and Fenwick had not figured on the commission at all. Several Proceedings in Parliament no. 23 (28 Feb.-7 Mar. 1650), 312 (E.534.15). Moreover, it seems very unlikely that the region’s Saints would have recommended Howard – for although he was a native of Cumberland and its leading parliamentarian officer he was not a man of godly reputation. Infra, ‘Charles Howard’. As the captain of Oliver Cromwell’s* lifeguard, he almost certainly owed his nomination to the lord general or his supporters on the council. Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 123. Fenwick belonged to one of Northumberland’s oldest gentry families and was evidently a man of puritan sympathies – in 1658 he was alleged to have supported attempts to secure maintenance for the Congregationalist minister Thomas Binlowes in Northumberland. Infra, ‘Robert Fenwick’. But again, he probably owed his nomination primarily to his long association with the army and its political allies. Henry Ogle also belonged to an ancient Northumberland family. Infra, ‘Henry Ogle’. The evidence suggests that he, too, was a puritan of some kind. He was, at any rate, a close associate of Hesilrige during the early 1650s and a member of the commission for propagating the gospel. The last of the quartet nominated to the new northern constituency was the godly Newcastle alderman and coal-merchant Henry Dawson. Infra, ‘Henry Dawson’. Dawson, who was mayor at the time of his nomination, informed the Newcastle common council on 22 June that he had been summoned to Whitehall ‘as one of the supreme council of this commonwealth’, which summons was publicly read. Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 135. Of the four nominees, he was probably the least well known to the council of officers, and in his case it is possible that he was selected primarily on the strength of his godly credentials – and specifically, perhaps, his membership of Sidrach Simpson’s Independent congregation in London. Although not the most high profile gathered congregation in the capital, it evidently had a number of influential members. K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (Aldershot, 1997), 284; ‘Sidrach Simpson’, Oxford DNB.

That the constituency of the four northern counties was largely an artificial construct, lacking much in the way of unique institutional structures and political identities, is indicated by the fact that each of the four Members was nominated with apparent reference to particular counties within it. Thus Howard seems to have ‘represented’ Cumberland and probably Westmorland as well, while Fenwick and Ogle probably did the same for Northumberland and Dawson for County Durham, where he held several manorial offices. None of the four nominees made any great impact upon the proceedings of the Nominated Parliament, although all but one, Dawson, who died in August 1653, would go on to represent their respective counties in at least one of the protectoral Parliaments. The four northern counties would be conjoined again in the August 1654 ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers (the Cromwellian triers and ejectors), but never again as a parliamentary constituency. A. and O. ii. 969.