Cirencester

Cirencester was an important wool town, situated on the southern slopes of the Cotswolds. Its glory was the Friday wool market, in this period still counted the greatest in England. A Monday market in provisions, cattle and grain provided an important focus for trade with the rich agricultural hinterland. Glos. RO, P86/1/IN6/3, f. 80. It was not an incorporated borough. Instead, the town was a hundred of Gloucestershire of itself, and was divided into seven wards, with two high constables and 14 wardsmen appointed at the court leet. The daily life of the town was also regulated by a vestry, which elected two churchwardens, four sidesmen, four overseers of the poor and four supervisors of the highways. Cirencester elected a bailiff (the equivalent of a mayor) and enjoyed the services of a town clerk. Moreover, there were separate groups of feoffees for individual parcels of lands given to the town for charitable purposes, so in every respect it was as rich in participative self-government as any borough with a charter. Glos. RO, P86/1/VE2/1, ff. 57, 58, 59. The parish book contained an order of 1624 that where no custom or charter existed, the franchise for parliamentary elections should lie in the householders, and elsewhere the book confirmed that every householder not receiving alms could vote, suggesting an electorate of between 600 and 700 males. Glos. RO, P86/1/IN6/3, f. 80. This in a population considered in 1643 to be of 2,000 communicants; in 1650 to consist of 700 families, and in 1676 to comprise 1,910 Anglican and nonconformist worshippers. J. Washbourne, Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis (Gloucester, 1825), 163; LPL, Comm. XIIa/9/129; Compton Census, 541.

In the two elections of 1640, Cirencester returned local men. John George was a leading gentry figure in the town, and one of its feoffees. On 8 March 1640, he signed a vestry order with 28 others dismissing the schoolmaster, Henry Topp, after many warnings had been given him. Whether this issue in the town relates to George’s threat to a Cirencester elector in the Gloucestershire election on the 21st of that month is unclear. George constructed a link between the election and poor relief in Cirencester; that the controversy arose over the county election, rather than over that for the borough, suggests that civic conflict may have been displaced to the shire. Glos. RO, P86/1/VE2/1, ff. 56v, 58; Aston’s Diary, 155. George’s colleague in the Short Parliament was Henry Poole, another gentleman from a nearby parish, with significant property interests in Cirencester, including tolls on fairs and markets there. Glos. RO, D2525, Acc. 2614, T box 9, bdle. 1. He made no impression on the assembly, and seems contentedly to have handed over what would have been his seat in the Long Parliament to Sir Theobald Gorges, his brother-in-law.

Cirencester was the object of attempts at seizure by Prince Rupert in January and February 1643. In the second attempt, the gardens of both the town’s MPs were occupied by defending troops, and John George was associated by the townsmen with opponents of the king such as Nathaniel Stephens* and Sir Robert Cooke*. ‘A Particular relation of the Action before Cirencester’, Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis, 163, 164, 172. The second attempt by Rupert on the town was successful. In the immediate aftermath of the storming of the town, the inhabitants rather abjectly petitioned the king, but the consequences for Cirencester included a marked reduction of activity in the town’s vestry. There was only one meeting recorded in the whole of 1643 (29 Oct.), two in 1644, two in 1645 and one in 1646. Only from the spring of 1647 was there a noticeable recovery in the frequency of meetings. The Petition of the Inhabitants of Cyrencester (Oxford, 1643); Glos. RO, P86/1/VE2/1, ff. 61v-65. The House of Commons inevitably acted against the town’s MPs, both of whom had drifted into the royalist camp after Cirencester had fallen to the king. Gorges was disabled from sitting on 22 January 1644, after attending the Oxford Parliament. John George also attended the Oxford Parliament, but only in November 1646 did the Commons get around to disabling him from sitting at Westminster. CJ iii. 256b; iv. 712b. The writ for the Cirencester by-election was moved at the same time.

It was a further eight weeks before the election took place, on 2 January 1647. The day chosen was a Saturday. Two local men, Isaac Bromwich and John Gifford, stood against two New Modellers of discrepant rank and standing, the lord general himself, Sir Thomas Fairfax, and Colonel Nathaniel Rich, a prominent Independent. The sheriff of Gloucestershire, the returning officer, supported Bromwich and Gifford. Disorder at the hustings prevented the bailiff of Cirencester from taking the poll. It was alleged by pro-parliamentarian sources that Fairfax and Rich had the greater number of voices, and that many disbanded cavaliers from the king’s army voted for Bromwich and Gifford. Many electors were tenants of Anne Poole, widow of Henry Poole*, who was certainly sympathetic to royalists. She was alleged to have offered money to the bailiff to adjourn the poll. The royalist elements in the town obstructed the poll and caused it to be adjourned for two days (the sabbath intervening), but more rioting broke out on the Monday, when weapons were reported to have been drawn. The sheriff was evidently sympathetic to the opponents of the army candidates, retorting in response to a threat of complaint to the Commons, ‘do it when you will ... we have as strong a party in the House as ye’. Perfect Occurences no. 2 (8-15 Jan. 1647), 12-13 (E.371.5). This rejoinder raises doubts as to how strong royalism really was in the town, the newspaper accounts notwithstanding, as there was no longer any royalist presence as such at Westminster. It is more likely that the royalist element at Cirencester was played up by commentators seeking to explain the difficulties that evidently lay in the way of a clear victory by Fairfax and Rich.

The poll ended in confusion. The affair was first aired in the Commons as first business on 14 January, and in the view of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, who spoke on the matter, the disorder was entirely the result of misbehaviour by New Model army soldiers attempting to steal the election on behalf of Fairfax. Harl. 484, f. 145v. Newspaper accounts of the election consistently reported that the townspeople were in favour of Fairfax and Rich, even though they had no connection with Cirencester. It also became clear that Fairfax did not want the seat, and asked the townsmen to excuse him from the burden. Perfect Occurences no. 2 (8-15 Jan. 1647), 16; Perfect Diurnall no. 181 (11-18 Jan. 1647), 1448 (E.513.34); Kingdom’s Weekly Intelligencer no. 183 (12-19 Jan. 1647), 394 (E.374.2). But despite his reluctance to serve, the townspeople petitioned the Commons to declare the army officers the victors. In fact, however, as no return had been received from the sheriff by 15 January, when the petition was read in the House, the matter was referred to the committee of privileges. D’Ewes attended the committee’s deliberations on various occasions in February, and stuck to his conviction that the election of Fairfax was fraudulent. Harl 484, ff. 41v, 44v. A final vote was taken at nearly midnight on 1 March, when the Independents won the day. Harl. 484, f. 46.

The opposition to Fairfax and Rich had come in the guise of two minor Gloucestershire gentry figures. Isaac Bromwich was from Bromsberrow in the far north west of Gloucestershire, where it joins Herefordshire. His family was long settled there, for eight generations before Isaac. He also held an estate at Frampton-on-Severn, close to Eastington, home of Nathaniel Stephens*, suggesting a possible promoter of his appearance in this by-election. Williams, Parlty. Hist. Glos. 158; Vis. Glos. 1623 (Harl. Soc. xxi), 29; VCH Glos. ix. 146. Bromwich had been a member of the parliamentarian committee in Coventry, and had suffered sequestration there for three years at the hands of the royalists. The Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane asserted (1650), 10 (BL 577.b.40); A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warwickshire (Cambridge, 1987), 11, 179. He also served on the county committees of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. John Gifford was of a family of Weston-sub-Edge, north-east Gloucestershire, and related to the Throckmorton family, although someone of his name signed the Cirencester vestry order in 1640 dismissing the schoolmaster. Williams, Parlty. Hist. Glos. 158; Vis. Glos. 1623, 250.

Bromwich and Gifford were not really beyond challenge local men, but they were Gloucestershire gentlemen, and it is clear that part of their motive in standing was to oppose two very obvious outsiders. Several years later, Bromwich described Rich as ‘a mere stranger to the relations and several interests of this country’. Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane asserted, 9. But if Bromwich and Gifford stood as local patriots, they failed to win support from the Cirencester townsmen, who petitioned for the army officers. It is likely that rather more than mere localism lay behind their candidatures. Neither was the contest a simple one between military and civilian interests. Bromwich had once been friendly with Edward Massie*, and later wrote that he had entertained army officers in London and had been asked by Massie to raise a county regiment, but decided against it, ‘the troublesome weather beginning to break up’. Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane asserted, 9. The inclement conditions Bromwich had in mind must have been the first civil war, and the improvement, the end of it. But Bromwich is also known to have quarrelled with Massie, in a string of conflicts between Massie and the county committee which reached a crescendo in October and November 1644. A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Glos. (1997), 66. Bromwich, like Massie, was an inveterate quarreller, most spectacularly with John Birch*, who had imprisoned him. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration, 84. Yet despite the chronic predisposition to feuding among the officers of Sir William Waller’s* command, among whom were Massie, Bromwich and Birch, there must be a suggestion that the Cirencester election played a part in the transition of loyalties from Waller’s army to the New Model. On this reading, the parties alluded to on the streets of Cirencester by the sheriff were not so much royalists and parliamentarians as Presbyterians and Independents.

Business interests also seem to have played a role in this election. Gifford later wrote that at Cirencester he had lost £3,000. Certaine reasons (by way of reply to some Objections) (1650), 7. This cannot refer to election expenses, simply because of the scale of the outlay. It is more likely that he was referring to the personal cost to him, over the three years between the election and his comment, of failure at Cirencester. It is difficult to capture completely the full meaning of two highly allusive pamphlets, Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane Asserted, and Certaine Reasons (by way of reply to some Objections), but it is clear from these that both Bromwich and Gifford entered the electoral fray to protect or advance their interests in the timber and iron industries of the Forest of Dean, even though the Forest lay remote from Cirencester. By 1 January 1650, when a number of votes were taken on the management of the state forests, Bromwich and Gifford were on opposite sides in a dispute over the forest management, which had been developing since the collapse of the cartel which included John Taylor*. CJ vi. 342a-b. By then, furthermore, the Cirencester election had been resolved in a declaration on 17 February 1649 in favour of Fairfax and Rich; the pamphlets are a mix of retrospective comment and up-to-the-minute polemic that are impossible to separate.

When in 1650 Bromwich described the ‘fancy and knack’ of the Cirencester election as issuing ‘out of the same shop as the election of Gloucester’, he can only have been referring to the by-election on 25 November 1645 when John Lenthall was returned for the city. Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane asserted, 9. The one person who links the Forest of Dean timber dispute, the Gloucester election of 1645 and the Cirencester election of 1647 is the leading Independent and Army Committee figure, Thomas Pury I*. He was Gloucester’s MP throughout the Long Parliament; his son, Thomas Pury II*, was active as a farmer of timber interests in the Forest, allegedly to finance a marriage portion; and it was the elder Pury who on two occasions in 1649 reported to the House on the Cirencester case. The Presbyterian Sir Robert Harley*, a patron of Bromwich, was required to hand over papers on it, but on 3 February, it was the Army Committee leading light, Thomas Pury I, who was asked to report from the committee of privileges on the election. After listening to his report, the House agreed with the committee that the return of Fairfax and Rich was valid (9 Feb.), a curious conclusion since a week later it became clear that the indenture for the army men had disappeared, or had perhaps never been returned, or was at any rate, ‘since embezzled’. CJ vi. 142a; A Modest Check to part of a scandalous Libell (1650), 8; Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane asserted, 2. On the 17th, Edmund Harvey reported from an ad hoc committee on the Cirencester election that on 28 January 1647, the clerk of the crown had certified that Fairfax and Rich had been duly elected, but by three separate indentures, one by the sheriff, one by the bailiff, and one by the townsmen. It was resolved that the writ should now be fixed to the indenture, but no more was said on which indenture, nor was it clear that any indentures had actually been seen after 1647. CJ vi. 131a, 136a, 142a, 144b, 145a. None of the indentures survives today. A possible effect of the by-election in the town itself may have been to revivify the quality of local participation, as on 30 December 1647 the vestry ordered a monthly meeting of the inhabitants, and in May 1649, a new schoolmaster was elected by ‘treasurer, minister, churchwardens, constables and six others the senior constables, with the consent of the greatest part of the feoffees’. Glos. RO, P86/1/VE 2/1, ff. 64, 65v.

Cirencester was unrepresented in the Nominated Assembly of 1653, and with most English boroughs, lost one of its two seats in the Commons under the Instrument of Government of December that year. The return of the London merchant, John Stone, in July 1654, seems to have been uncontested. Well over 130 electors signed the indenture, and many names are identifiable as those of men who held civic local office over many years. Overseers of the poor, supervisors of highways, churchwardens, feoffees, sidesmen, vestrymen and church pew lessees were typical Cirencester voters, and no obvious evidence of outside interference can be traced. C219/44 pt. 1. Stone may have been descended from the clergyman of that name who ministered to the town in 1581, leaving bequests for the poor, and who was perhaps one of the Stone family of nearby Lechlade. There was a member of this family of minor gentlemen living in Cirencester in the 1650s. Vis. Glos. 1623, 259; Glos. RO, P 86/1/IN6/3, f. 19; Cirencester par. reg. More immediately, Stone was a cousin of Edward Stephens* and John Stephens*. Vis. Glos. 1682-3 ed. Fenwick and Metcalfe, 174, 176. While Edward had been imprisoned at Pride’s purge of Parliament, and took no further part in public life until 1660, John Stephens returned to the Rump in 1651, and was content to serve in local government commissions during the protectorate. Furthermore, it was probably this John Stone who acted as agent for Sir William Waller in his negotiations with the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol when Waller farmed the prisage of wines there. Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, pp. 112, 124, 129, 148, 177. It is likely therefore that Stone acquired the seat, which he held for three Parliaments, through the Stephens interest, and that he was sympathetic to the Stephens family brand of political Presbyterianism, shared by Waller.

When under the protectorate of Richard Cromwell* the constituency recovered its second Member, Richard Southby was returned probably on his own interest. John George had participated in town government in the 1650s, signing an order in 1657 on the duration of the tolling bell and the fees payable at funerals. Glos. RO, P86/1/VE 2/1, f. 71. He was well placed therefore to recover his electoral influence when the monarchy was restored, and he contested the elections for both the Convention and the Cavalier Parliament. Between 1660 and 1690 the two seats were controlled exclusively by local landowning interests.