When the 1626 parliament began in February, election complaints poured into the Committee on Privileges, and among several well-documented protests, there was one from Canterbury. It must not have been a compelling case. Only in June did the committee finally consider it, and it never reached a decision before the session ended. This otherwise murky incident prompted a freeman to compose Canterburie cittizens for the parliament, presenting a true relation of…the injustice and disorders at the Canterbury elections. Although the author wrote it for ‘the honourable howse of Commons’ and ‘would willingly now publish, if I might’, he knew either step would have been unwise. Few in Westminster would have endorsed the author's habit of interjecting his own comments into royal proclamations. When James I announced ‘we do hereby admonish our loving subjects that have voices in the Elections’, the author added ‘or should have, if Lords, Deputy Lieutenants, Mayors, Aldermen, Sheriffs, Town Clerks and other Commanders would permit it’. Likewise, when James I issued a proclamation, apparently violating statute law, the author lamented ‘Oh God, be mercifull to us.’ Even more troubling was the author's fondness for insulting descriptions. Henrietta Maria was described as ‘our Popish Queene’; and the lord lieutenant, who had little, if any, land and leaseholders in the county, was repeatedly referred to as ‘Lord lieuTenant’. Parliament itself was ‘a den…[of] Court or other forren usurpers and Robbers’, eager to ‘undoe all our lawes, give way all our right, and brings us into as grievous Bondage as that of Isreal and Babylon’; and the parliament-men were ‘a dreadfull and damned crew of hungry, servile and vile Companions’, who made the country ‘much dishonored, abased, slaved and unhappie’.Footnote 1 Understandably, this document never left Canterbury.
Its extreme language notwithstanding, this document is of fundamental historical importance. Admittedly, we cannot corroborate most of the testimony in Canterburie cittizens because the Corporation's Hallbook is lost. Nevertheless, it certainly presents the most vivid depiction of a contested borough election in early Stuart England. Only in 1978 did Peter Clark first draw attention to this manuscript, then in private hands and subsequently deposited in the Canterbury Cathedral Archive.Footnote 2 This discovery came too late to appear in Alan Everitt's 1966 study of Kent, Derek Hirst's 1975 monograph on early Stuart elections, or even in Clark's 1977 county study.Footnote 3 Clark's announcement did not begin a scholarly stampede to Canterbury, even after Richard Cust in 1988 hailed this document as ‘surely the most graphic account of an election in early Stuart period’. Aside from stray references to Canterburie cittizens in John Gruenfelder's 1981 book on Stuart elections and in The House of Commons, 1558–1603, scholars have ignored it.Footnote 4 Even if the scholars had made the journey, they would have found the document awkward to use, because until very recently, any reproductions of the lengthy manuscript were prohibitively expensive. Consequently, while scholars have slowly become aware of Scott's other works in Maidstone and Oxford – Richard Cust, Nicholas Tyacke, and David Underdown have discussed these items – precious few used Canterburie cittizens. Aside from Cesare Cuttica and Richard Cust, the only extended discussion of it can be found in Andrew Thrush's excellent, if necessarily terse, accounts of the author and Canterbury in the History of Parliament volumes for 1604–29.Footnote 5 Plainly, the document merits a much fuller analysis, given its historiographical importance.
In 1986, with characteristic bravura, Mark Kishlansky reminded us that contested elections were the exception, not the rule, in early Stuart England. He was challenging Derek Hirst's 1975 book, which had maintained that ‘the number of contested elections rose fast’ in the early seventeenth century. Kishlansky, after noting Hirst's misinterpretations, scoffed at ‘contest counting’, which he dubbed ‘a mug's game’.Footnote 6 Yet more recently, the History of Parliament Trust accepted the odds, and its splendid study of the early Stuart elections confirmed that contests were indeed irregular events. More problematic, however, is his suggestion about why contests occurred in the first place.
‘Most’, Kishlansky maintained, ‘arose accidentally because of a failure of communications or the tardiness of one entrant or another.’ Furthermore, ‘in all but a handful of instances, most of which are extremely well documented, before 1640 ideology was absent from the process of parliamentary selection’. Kishlansky effectively based his argument on several well-documented county elections – and with good reason. Evidence of disputed borough elections is scarce – and hard to find, scattered as it is across several dozen archives. A lone scholar understandably went for the low hanging archival fruit and focused on a few illustrative borough elections, most from printed items. Notwithstanding Clark's announcement, Kishlansky never went to Canterbury. Instead, he simply announced that ‘studying the history of individual towns and corporations reveals that squabbles over rates, markets and outlivers – owners of borough property who were no longer residents – were the real impetus for election contests and disputes, rather than any burgeoning political consciousness among the excluded’. Likewise, any canvassing before the actual election and any intimidation was ‘both unsystematic and ineffectual’.Footnote 7
Canterburie cittizens fits uneasily with these judgements. While highlighting local issues, the document plainly reflected a ‘burgeoning political consciousness’; and it revealed that voter intimidation was extensive and effective. In the process, this work casts a floodlight on the otherwise shadowy political world in boroughs. Scholars have long studied contested county elections in which gentlemen jockeyed for support in hopes of frightening rivals into withdrawing rather than risking humiliation at the poll.Footnote 8 Yet this strategy sometimes failed, leaving voters, bellowing out candidates’ names, standing on hillsides together or slowly trooping past a clerk who recorded their votes. Whether decided by the shout, the view, or the canvass, these county contests were dramatic events, which attracted national attention. In contrast, borough contests were generally shadowy affairs. When recording details of parliamentary elections, tightlipped town clerks often simply recorded the names of the two new burgesses. Occasionally by noting that someone was returned by ‘the most’ or ‘the many’ voices, they implied that a contest took place. In 1626, for instance, the clerk in Great Yarmouth simply recorded that the Corporation returned Sir John Corbet ‘with one intire voice and without anye opposition’ and Thomas Johnson only with the assent of ‘most voyces’. Rarer still is solid information on competing candidates and actual votes. Sometimes, historians can work backwards from the local records to reconstruct local factions – if enough evidence has survived.Footnote 9 Needless to say, the lobbying before the election, the scene at the hustings, and the immediate aftermath are generally left in the shadows. We can see precisely how sketchy our understanding of these urban contests is once we turn to the sharply drawn and richly detailed account of the Canterbury contest in 1626.
This article begins the long overdue process of evaluating Parliamentary selection, which aside from a few querulous reviews and sceptical articles immediately after its publication, has never been revisited. There is arguably no better place to begin that task than in Canterbury in 1626. What plunged the town into turmoil was not a late letter or a ratings dispute. Rather, it was what some regarded as an effort ‘to over throw the liberties and Priviledges of the Commons of England, in taking from us free and lawfull elections’.Footnote 10 After introducing the author and the immediate background in Canterbury, this article will examine the contest itself and then the broader question of contested parliamentary elections in early seventeenth-century boroughs.
I
Thomas Scott, then about sixty, wrote Canterburie cittizens. Because he claimed descent from FitzAlans, Herberts, Howards, Nevilles as well as ‘Royall Plantaginetts’ and even Alfred the Great, some mocked his pretensions and modest wealth by calling him ‘meane and contemptible’ and ‘Goodman Plantagenet’. Yet his father had been a local magistrate, and his ancestors had frequently served monarchs as councillors, diplomats, household officials, and even as lord warden of the Cinque Ports. Boldness ran in the family; a cousin, Reginald Scott, had challenged the contemporary obsession with witches, and his grandfather, Sir Thomas Wyatt, had led a revolt against Queen Mary in 1554.Footnote 11
Wyatt was the key to Scott's worldview. Although well versed in Latin and Greek classics, he brooded over the Bible, which gave his prose its distinctive quality. Consider his call for parliamentary reform:
now seeing Now the time for it, to reforme the whole State Ecclesiastical and Civill, and in Parliament elections…Such is this time: Proved by Prophesies …All the Elect and Happie shall now understand, receyve and obey the truth, and none contynue blind and hardened, but Reprobates
Rhymes, alliterations, and puns litter his work. The Canterbury elite, for example, did not just bully; they ‘tattle and babble, crake and threaten, promise and perswade’. While Scott modestly described himself as a ‘peaceable and quiet spirit’ who was ‘religious, grave, learned, wise and honest’, others were less flattering. They clocked him as a turbulent member of the Church of England, and in his manuscript, he attacked bishops as ‘the most carnall beasts in the world and ever false to Christ’, praised the ‘Archpuritans’ and Separatists, and rejected vestments, asking if ‘Christ or his Apostles did ever ordayne…Crossings, Copes or Surplices?’ Characteristically, his closest friends were godly. He composed a dense tract ‘against sprinkling the face with water in stead of baptizing the infant’, and he opposed Arminianism as well as Catholicism. With ample justice, Scott described himself as a ‘conscientious puritan’.Footnote 12
Given the recent scholarly emphasis on moderate Calvinists, it is a little startling to discover a puritan radical. Scott certainly fits the definition with his devotion to ‘Christian liberty’, a powerful concept, which, Nicholas Tyacke has argued, led to repeated calls for extensive reform in church and state. The deep entanglement of Calvinist belief and political practice is captured in Scott's term for corrupt MPs – ‘counterfet and Idoll Knights, or Burgesses’ and ‘Idoll Parliament-men’. Not content with modest changes, Scott insisted that ‘it is time now to rip up, and redresse, all disorders … and to reforme the whole State Ecclesiactical and Civill’ and to amend ‘the evill constitution of our church and common wealth’. The fascination of Canterburie cittizens partly stems from its vivid presentation of puritan politics in action before the Civil War.Footnote 13
A mayor, twelve aldermen, and twenty-four common councillors presided over the Corporation, assisted by a chamberlain, a recorder, a clerk, and a sergeant, and as an autonomous ‘county’ within Kent, Canterbury had its own sheriff. In elections, 400 to 500 freemen could vote, and although they elected Scott in 1618 to the common council, he was mysteriously ejected from office in the following year. Mounting problems vexed the town. The local cloth trade and the city's income were both depressed, and several legal cases brought mounting legal fees. In 1626, for example, £41, a fifth of the town's annual income of £207, went to lawyers in one case.Footnote 14 No wonder the mayor and aldermen scrambled to find influential patrons, even conceding them one of the city's two seats in parliament.
In 1626, the Herbert brothers, the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, encouraged the parliament-men to attack George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. While many applauded the siblings for their boldness, Scott did not, even though he was distantly related to them. The explanation is simple. While he disliked Buckingham, his eyes were fixed on another problematic duke – James's cousin, Ludovic Stuart, the duke of Lennox. Thus, he feared someone would eventually sell the country's ‘honor, libertie and wealth’ to ‘any Ludovic, or George, or Pope’.Footnote 15
The reason why Scott added this otherwise anodyne Scottish peer to this fearsome trio is directly related to the new charter James I granted the city in 1608, which removed its militia from the city's control. This oversight allowed Lennox, the lord lieutenant of Kent, to exert pressure on Canterbury. Hence in 1618, the mayor and alderman could only follow orders when Lennox's deputy lieutenant warned about the need to ‘avoide all aspertions if not displeasure at owr Lord Liftenants hands’. After Lennox's death in 1624, Montgomery became lord lieutenant, and the quickening pace of military activity made him an increasingly important local figure. The mayor and aldermen sent delegations to wait on Montgomery, and when he arrived at night in 1625, they sent torches to light his way. Such deference had occasional rewards; sometimes the mayor and aldermen bite into venison, courtesy of Montgomery. Yet the taste soured somewhat after the earl declined to let the city appoint its own deputy lieutenant.Footnote 16 Even worse, he lobbied for his clients in parliamentary elections. His presumption enraged Scott: ‘what hath my Lord of Montgomerie to doe with the choice of Knights, Cittizens and Burgesses? Lett him doe his dutie in the Upper Howse. The Commons neede not his Counsaile’, which was invariably ‘for some lordly or Courtly end, and little for our good’. The new charter explains Scott's denunciation of ‘this new invention of Lords [Lieutenant], and a multitude of needie, or aspiring, or ill affected Deputie Lieutenants…devised I am afraid for no other end, so much, as to bring us, the Commons of this Kingdome into bondage’. His position was not unique. In 1603, for example, a puritan petition to James I called for the abolition of the lords lieutenant and their deputies who ‘carrie a great and extraordinarie Command over the rest of the Justices of Peace’ and who use ‘great parciallitie…as they favor or mislike’.Footnote 17
Scott scorned the urban elite. Notwithstanding his distinguished relatives, Scott was never knighted or appointed to the bench. In 1611, he moved to Canterbury. He fitted in awkwardly in a city where ‘an upstart…is more esteemed and countenanced then hee that is honorably descended and not degenerated’. In 1617, when he was made a freeman, he did so with glaziers, bakers, cooks, grocers, sadlers, tailors, drapers, many apprentices – and a soi-disant gentleman who was in fact a joiner's son. Although Scott sported the title of esquire, which placed him above a gentleman and below a knight, he wanted to rise in the Corporation, a desire the city's ‘Grands’ consistently thwarted. In response, he mocked the Corporation, dominated by a ‘faction of Brewers and Alehouse keepers and Alehouse hunters, Papists, Atheists, Nonresident Priests and Dumbdogs such as rob the poore of theire right, and oppresse the Commons’. To maintain their control, this group kept the number of freemen low. Naturally, Scott dreamed about when ‘drovers, Brewers, Tiplers and base Mechanicks shall for ever be spurned out of all Civil Government’, so that ‘onely Knights, Gentlemen and men of honest Trades shall be Mayors, Sheriffs, Aldermen and Common Councillors’. Naturally, he condemned the ‘government of Brewers, victulers, Proctors, and such as rob the poore, oppresse the freemen and Inhabitants; and disorder the Cittie’.Footnote 18
In Canterburie cittizens, Scott's neighbours often emerge as sharply drawn characters. Mayor William Whiting was invariably portrayed paraphrasing Ephesians 5:15 about the importance of ‘walking wisely’. Half of the aldermen, according to Scott, were either brewers or wine merchants. While the local godly scorned these men for owning ‘five or six score Alehouses’, Canterbury's ‘notable Alehouse haunters and wine bibbers’ supported them. John Watson was ‘one of the Ancientest Alderman’, while William Watmor and George Clagget had twice served as mayor. Scott found Alderman Hunt to be ‘the stirringest man in this Cittie’, and Clagget, a hatseller, ‘unlearned and Childish’. In 1626, the chamberlain was Avery Sabin and the town clerk Ralph Groves, a respected man who ‘can doe much with the moste and Greatest Cittizens’. Mr Pepper, an alderman, was ‘an Alehouse keeper and hostler’ who was, Scott explained, ‘now commonly knowne by the name of Beaten Pepper, because Sir John Hippesley [captain of Dover Castle] did lately Beate him, for telling him a ly or two; about pepper’.Footnote 19
Scott, ‘a freeman, and inhabitant, for the most part of the year, for many yeares’, opposed them. In 1624, he was elected to parliament, and although ‘it had cost mee already 100li, and gayned mee much ill will, and little thanks, even from them that then laboured for mee’, he sought re-election in 1625. Because the ‘Grands’ then only narrowly blocked his efforts, many thought him the obvious candidate in 1626. His friends were diverse – Captain Parker; Mr Clarke, a mason and ‘a great man’ in elections; John Lee the hatter, ‘a right honest and discreete Cittizen’; Mr John Philpot, perhaps related to a herald in the College of Arms; and Mr Fox, a barber surgeon. John Lee the recorder also inclined to Scott's side. His strongest support came from several ministers – Richard Culmer and Richard Inge, both city lecturers; Dr John Simpson, a cathedral canon; and Edward Aldey, the rector of St Andrew's Canterbury. Together, they were determined to see that the Corporation made ‘a free and legall and quiet choice’ for its next parliament-men.Footnote 20
Local voters generally followed James's proclamations of 1604 and 1620 and returned local residents. Proudly, Scott noted that ‘howsoever some Counties of this kingdome, and many Cities and Burrow Townes have, too much neglected, and betrayed their Freedome and Right’, Kent and Canterbury ‘have always held fast, or at leste stoode stiffly, for our Freehould’. Until 1625, Kent had ‘never…so much as heard of any Forerunner, Nonfreeholder or Non-Resident’, and Canterbury's only exception occurred in 1572 when the city returned George Carey, the future Lord Hunsdon, ‘her Maiesties neere kinsman a knowne and renowned Protestant and Patriot and the heire apparent of a Great Baron’. Afterwards, the city tightened its ordinances, ensuring a candidate ‘must be not onely free, of Canterburie, but free before the Parliament is summoned, and a Resiant [Resident] freeman, dwelling in Canterburie’.Footnote 21
This regulated world ended on 9 November 1620 when Lennox wrote to the mayor. ‘In case you elect any that is not of your societie and corporation (because, as King James saith, meete men may not be had within your societie and corporation)’, he would be ‘behoulding unto you’ if they elected his secretary, John Latham. Because Lennox asked ‘modestly’, some aldermen supported Latham, but the majority opposed the outsider. Hence, the Corporation had no need for Latham because ‘such are to be had within our Corporation’. In 1624, Lennox again suggested Latham, and again some ‘puffed and sweatt, and swaggered and even stunke’ for him. Nevertheless, Alderman Claggett, whom Scott thought ‘a more honest and discreete man’ than many of his colleagues, argued against ‘unlearned men, Or Children; that cannot speake when there is cause’, men like Latham who were ‘slowe of speach and of a slow tongue’.Footnote 22 Instead, a majority of voters returned Scott and the city attorney Thomas Denne.
After Lennox died in 1625, Montgomery, the new lord lieutenant, continued the pattern, asking the town to return John Fisher, the city's muster master. Scott dismissed Fisher as ‘the rover’, adding the sneer of a deeply rooted gentleman: ‘I knowe not that he hath any certayne dwelling.’ This time, however, all the aldermen and common councillors backed Fisher and Sir Thomas Wilsford, another non-resident. At the election, the sheriff refused a poll, although, according to Scott, most voters supported two freemen, George Newman and Scott himself. The same pattern determined the county election. Buckingham and Montgomery backed Mildmay Fane, later the earl of Westmorland, and Sir Albertus Morton, the secretary of state. Others supported two local candidates, Sir Edwin Sandys and Edward Scott, Thomas Scott's cousin. At the hustings, the sheriff, Sir Thomas Hammon, initially agreed to a poll, but he simply returned Fane and Morton after viewing the size of their supporters. His decision generated several protests, all of which insisted that Hammon could not justly have done so because eligible freeholders were mixed with ‘divers hundreds of Serving men’ and ‘other strangers’. Thomas Scott and his son signed a similar protest and two years later, Scott was still proclaiming Hammon's ‘never dying infamie’.Footnote 23
II
The year began hopefully with Edward Scott's election as the Knight of the Shire. The optimism spread to Thomas Scott who wrote to his cousin on 18 January 1626 that he might join him in Westminster ‘if I be called to Parliament (as many now mightily indevour, without my request, though not without my consent, which I may not deny unto them)’.Footnote 24 For several days, he dithered before events finally swept him forward.
This time, Montgomery backed James Palmer, his client and a groom of the bedchamber, and the Canterbury ‘Rule-alls’ agreed to make him a freeman. There was a complication; Palmer ‘could not, or would not come’ to Canterbury for the ceremony. Instead the mayor sent Chamberlain Sabin to London to administer the oath on 24 January 1626 after the election writ had arrived. Because this ceremony customarily took place in Canterbury, Scott insisted that Palmer was ineligible to be a Burgess. Further muddying the waters, the Mayor and Alderman refused to make Sir John Wylde free, even though he was ‘a neere neighbor, a freehoulder; and one who hath dwelt divers yeares and (some say) was borne in this Cittie, and the sonne of a free Resiant [Resident]…and a verie well knowne, beloved and worthie Gentleman and greate friend to this City’. Scott neatly explained this decision; Wylde was ‘greatly hated of the oppressing and dishonest faction’ dominating the Corporation. Alderman Watson, however, had a different explanation: the Corporation needed assistance, and Palmer knew the king and Montgomery, who ‘hath promised them much kindnesse’. Consequently, the Corporation which ‘had great enemies and neede a great friende’ decided it ‘durst not deny’ the lord lieutenant. The aldermen then began repeating the mayor's old saying ‘Lett us walke wisely quoth William Whiting.’Footnote 25 Along with Palmer, they backed Sir John Finch, Canterbury's former recorder and a rising London lawyer.
Opposition to their plan arose almost immediately. Shortly after Sabin left for London, the mayor asked for authorization to send him at the city's expense ‘to give the oath of a Freeman, unto James Palmer’. While the aldermen agreed, most common councillors refused, and one objected, ‘shall I subscribe a Lie? Mr. Chamberlayne is gon already.’ With a contest increasingly likely, the ‘Rule-alls’ tried to stiffen their nerve to employ dubious electoral measures by repeating that ‘wee will be honest men agayne, when it shall serve our turne’, and to forestall any opposition, they announced that the sheriff would not poll the voters.Footnote 26
News of the ‘Aldermans plot’ and Palmer's ‘uneligibiltie’ made some think of Wylde as an alternative until ‘the faction…getting Mr. Palmers freedome, denied Sir John Wyld his’. Afterwards, ‘the greeved Common Councellors and Commons’ turned to Scott because ‘no other eligible man could be gotten’. While Scott remained undecided, Mr Aldey began advocating for him, ‘modestly and discreetely, like himselfe: and not factiously and contrary to religion, and the dutie of a minister’. As others joined Aldey, Scott ‘never so much Stirred out of his doores, in this businesse’ except ‘to prevent unquiett Stirring’. On 28 January 1626, Wylde privately asked Scott to join him on a ticket. Yet Scott who still opposed non-residents, replied that ‘if you had beene made a freeman (on the Tewsday laste) I had been free from this competition’. But after the ‘Grands’ blocked Wylde, he privately accepted Sir John's proposal. The two agreed that Scott would stand for the first place, and if need be, his supporters could cast ‘double votes’, i.e. to plump, for him. Seeing ‘he must now play, an after game, and upon many and great disadvantages’, Scott ‘durst not refuse the Commons theire reasonable, though unseasonable request’ and promised to use ‘his best skyll’. Scott then resolved ‘to stand if the Commons do not fall off’, and that day ‘he began to stirre in it’.Footnote 27
On 29 January, at ‘the Preaching place, before the Sermon’ at St Andrew's, he met Aldermen Watmor and Claggett. ‘If I might have my will’, he told them, ‘wee would have two Alderman our Burgesses, whether they were willing or not.’ Yet with four candidates standing for election, Scott warned ‘if the Sheriffe did not grant the Pole, wrong would be done, and trouble come of it’. Furthermore, he was amazed that the aldermen had made Palmer free when he ‘is not knowne to many of us’ and refused the same privilege to Wylde, ‘a freeholder, borne and heretofore dwelling in the Citie, now and alwayes a neere neighbour, that knowes and loves us well, and is well knowen and loved of us’. Finally, Scott reminded them that Palmer's election would ‘affront’ Archbishop Abbot, who could do the city more good than Montgomery could. His assessment left Watmor and Cleggett ‘blushing’, and muttering ‘Are we not in a hard case’. After the sermon, he collared the town clerk, explaining that ‘I no more desired to be a Parliament Cittizen, then to be a Constable or Churchwarden’, and he took pains to let Groves see that ‘he spake most peaceably and gently unto him’ in hopes ‘to provide stirrs.’ Agitated by this exchange, Groves reported it to the mayor and the aldermen.Footnote 28
Meanwhile, the sheriff insisted ‘hee would not Pole’. Although he maintained that ‘if he had a thousand voyces, Mr Scott should not have one’, he eventually relented somewhat: ‘if by his eye and the cry, he perceyved Mr Scott in his judgement, had more voyces than Finch or Palmer, he would do him right’. Wylde could not expect such generosity, and the sheriff vowed that ‘how many soever did gyve Sir John Wylde theire voyces, he could not returne him’. Alderman Peerse heard a slightly different statement; the sheriff had not said ‘I will not Pole’, but rather ‘I neede not Pole.’ With a contest imminent, the aldermen pondered ‘The Mayors Booke’, which recorded how each eligible voter would likely vote. The numbers were sobering; a majority backed Finch and Scott. Consequently, the ‘Grands’ decided to avoid a poll at any cost.Footnote 29
Over 30 and 31 January, as Scott ‘perswaded such as stood and stirred for him, to be also for Sir John Wylde’, the conversation turned to electoral law. After some insisted ‘no man now is ineligible, if he can gett voyces enough’, Scott admitted that Sir Edwin Sandys, who sat for Penryn in 1625 and 1626, ‘had never seen Penryn, nor know the name of it, nor was a freeman there, nor chosen there, but by Sir Robert Killegrew, at London, who…brought up a Blanke in his Pocket’. Nevertheless, he was reluctant to vote for Wylde and would never support Palmer. In fact, had he been sheriff, he insisted he would not return either of these non-residents. But ‘seeing you must needes have one of them, is not Sir J. Wylde best knowne to you’. Besides Wylde ‘be not for your Oppressors’, and Sir Dudley Digges and Archbishop Abbott supported him. His logic was persuasive, and ‘by joining unto Sir John Wylde, Mr Scott did almost double his voyces’, putting him well ahead of Palmer, Finch, and Wylde.Footnote 30
Still uncertain on 30 January, he told his cousin Scott, ‘How it will goe, I cannot divine’, adding ‘if I may honestly avoid it, assuredly I will, for my health and wealthes sake’. Earlier, when Inge and Lee pressed him to stand, he had said he would wait ‘untill the night before the Election’. On 31 January, when asked if he would attend the hustings, Scott wondered if Finch would be there. But in the end, Scott agreed to stand, telling Inge, Aldey, Lee, and Fox that ‘if the Commons, which are not for Finch and Palmer, goe one way, and desire my presence I will be there’.Footnote 31
On 1 February, a day before the election, the town hummed with activity. Rejecting the idea that ‘I seeke to be a Parliament man’, Scott sent Mayor Whiting his notes to Edward Scott and John Wylde about his vacillation about standing for election. That morning, after rehashing with Aldermen Clagget and Watmor their conversation on Sunday, Scott told his supporters that he might win ‘if he might have had faire play’ and if Sir John Finch attended the election. Consequently, Scott ‘was verie sorrie’ to learn that this distinguished lawyer would be absent because Finch would ensure ‘wee should have the Pole graunted us, and faire play’.Footnote 32
As Scott's hopes sank, the mayor and aldermen began ‘to stirre exceedingly’, and they walked ‘and send aboute, from that hour, even until midnight, almost intreating, perswading, threatning’. Their subsequent exchanges with Scott's supporters are a little hard to follow because his friends often appear without introduction. Fortunately, most of Scott's friends paid the 1641 poll tax, and since that tax had five income bands, we can see their place in local society and Scott's support among humbler citizens.Footnote 33
At 4pm Mayor Whiting and Sergeant Middleton met Thomas Harrison. Later assessed in the 1641 poll tax at the fourth lowest of the five ranges, Harrison was a churchwarden of Scott's parish, St Alphege. First Groves taunted him: ‘Mr Scott I see is your man for the Burgesship, but he shall not have it.’ Then he attempted to persuade him: ‘Goodman Harison, you are the Churchwarden of St Alphage and you know Mr Scott is behinde’ in his payments for plague victims. Finally, when Harrison refused to shift his support, Whiting ridiculed Harrison as ‘an unfaithfull dishonest man to choose such a man for your Burgesse’. Harrison would not be bullied. Because Scott had moved to the country during the plague, ‘I should never demaund it of him, because he was never here.’ Besides, the mayor had failed to write to Scott about this matter, as he had promised Harrison. Consequently, since Scott would ‘either pay or gyve a reasonable answere…I know not whie this should hinder that I may gyve my voyce unto him.’Footnote 34
Next, Whiting, Groves, and Alderman Hunt visited Edward Aldey, the rector of St Andrew's, someone ‘very earnest and fierce’, for Scott and Wylde. They spoke bluntly: ‘They were sorrie…that he kept company with such factious or refractious men.’ Scott, they alleged, had deceived both Digges and Wylde and manipulated the 1624 parliamentary election. Above all they asked, ‘Whie did he meddle in Civill busynesse? He did contrarie to religion in it.’ Aldey was not intimidated. It was, he insisted, ‘a false and malitious slaunder’ that Scott had evaded the plague levy. After all, Scott ‘payes that which he is sessed’, and if Whiting could prove that he had not, he should sue Scott. Furthermore, after observing that Scott was not the one using ‘threatning words’, the minister asked the mayor, ‘what a Stirre doe you now keepe?’ It was also a ‘filthie slander’ that in 1624 Scott had joined the ticket with Mr Latham, Lennox's candidate, because Scott ‘did ever abjure, to joine with Mr Latham, a needie, instrumental and suspected Courteour and by lawe uneligible man’. Finally, Aldey maintained that Scott had no ‘desire to crosse the Alderman, for his desire was to have two Aldermen chosen’. Indeed, if two aldermen were elected, Scott would pay £20 towards their expenses. In contrast, the ‘Grands’ rejected ‘resiant and right Cittizens, and desire Noblemens Servants and Courteours, which neither know nor care for Canterburie’.Footnote 35
Thanks to his clerical living, Aldey could resist such pressure, but others had a harder time doing so. That day, Whiting summoned John Lee the hatter. His assessment later placed him in middle of the five ranges of the 1641 poll tax, and he subsequently rose to be mayor in 1652. In 1626, however, Whiting called him ‘a very dishonest man, and no good Townsman’, part of ‘a Companie…that doe alwayes oppose the Government of the City and the Magistrates’, and he promised to tell Palmer and Finch of his behaviour. Later in the day, Whiting and Groves collared Lee at the Lion tavern where the mayor ‘kindly intreated and perswaded him, to joyne with him selfe and the Aldermen’. Whiting only desired ‘some notable good maybe wrought for this Cittie, and this wee hope now to obtain by my Lord of Montgomerie, of whose honourable favour wee have greate neede’. Lee, however, backed Finch and Scott, splitting his votes between the two rival pairs. In response, Groves announced ‘Oh I know from whome you had this, you had it from Mr. Scott.’ Lee corrected him; the idea came from Sir Edwin Sandys, a leading county figure.Footnote 36
On Whiting went. He cornered John Reader, also later rated in the middle range of the 1641 poll tax, urging him ‘to be for him whome my Lord of Montgomerie recommended, alledging what great good might come to the Towne by it’. When Reader questioned this strategy, Groves implored him, ‘lett us trie this once more’. The same logic brought Robert Brett into line: ‘he did thinke the Commons were bound by theire othe, to be ruled and directed by the Magistrates or superiour powers’. Richard White eventually came around too, but only after considerable pressure, and given his modest income – the 1641 poll tax placed him in the fourth of the five bands – it is remarkable he supported Scott as long as he did. Twice the mayor visited White's house and twice he was ‘was not within’. Whiting eventually cornered him at the White Hart tavern where he harped on past favours: ‘wee stood to you when tyme was and now you must stand to us. Sir John Finch and Mr Palmer, must have your voices.’ White offered to vote for Finch – and Scott. But Whiting refused: ‘there must be no distraction; they must have both his voyces’. White surrendered – ‘he durst not deny the Mayor’ – and although ‘contrary to his owne minde and conscience’, he agreed to vote for Palmer. Suspicious, the town clerk later questioned White, and after finding him still inclined to Finch and Scott, Groves emphasized that ‘wee must have both’ Finch and Palmer. White could not do so because he had promised Richard Inge, a lecturer in the town, to vote for Scott. Agitated by this report but unable to find White, the mayor dispatched Sergeant Middleton, who discovered White seeking solace at the White Hart. After reporting that the mayor wanted to see him, the sergeant told him ‘what the matter is. The Magistrates…have beene your friends, else you had beene pressed, and they may againe doe you the like friendship.’ He added ‘you may find that it will not be good for you, to oppose them in this choyce’. Still White supported Scott, and again the sergeant explained ‘that may not be’. White then surrendered: ‘Well then, be it as Mr Mayor will.’Footnote 37
White's agony was not over. Although upset to go ‘agaynst his owne minde and for feare’, White was also afraid, begging Scott ‘that this which he now acknowledged may doe him no hurt’. In the process, he voiced the cri de coeur of many others. White ‘is sorrie the freemen, may not give theire voyces freely to freedwellers, but must agaynst their owne mindes, to strangers’. The blatant intimidation enraged him: ‘if Mayors, Aldermen and Sheriffs may thus conspire and beforehand determine who shall be, it is in vayne for freeman that are not of theire minde, to come to the Elections, where they are such to be overborne and to incurre displeasure’. White's case was not unique for ‘truly this is now almost everie mans saying’. It would be much simpler, he grumbled, just to ‘aske the Aldermen whom they will have, for so it must be’. In the circumstances, the absence of a poll was a blessing. Given the relentless pressure – and the prospect of foreign impressment – many freemen would use what White called ‘a softlie voyce…so as the Aldermen did not perceyve them’. White ended by proclaiming ‘the Aldermen are such Tyrants as many will choose rather to belie them selves, then to offend them’.Footnote 38
White's experience was common in 1626 when the ‘Grands’ systematically nobbled voters: hence ‘there are few freemen…whome they have not thus sollicited, with intreatie, or terror, or command, or perswasion’. Desperate for votes, they even freed a prisoner ‘upon his promise that he would be for Finch and Palmer’. Resistance, they reiterated, was futile. They told Mr Jackson ‘why doe wee [Scott's friends] labour for voyces; the Burgesses are chosen alreadie’. They informed Mr Young, after cornering him – where else? – at the White Hart, ‘the Burgesses were pricked the night or morning before the Election’. Groves tried to persuade Mr Philpot by ‘Alleadging my Lord LieuTenants letters and promises and what great good his Lordship would doe the Towne if, at his request, they did choose Mr Palmer, who,…is of the Kings Bed Chamber and hath also promised them mountaynes’. Philpot responded by insisting that Palmer was ‘no freeman, nor freedweller’. And when Groves explained that Sabin had gone to London to administer the freeman's oath to Palmer, Philpot asked a searching question – ‘Can the Chamberlyne…make any man free, if he be not in the Cittie? What authoritie hath a Chamberlayne of Canterburie to gyve an oath at London or any where else but in Canterburie?’ Under constant pressure, Philpot offered to split his votes between Finch and Scott. Groves quashed the idea by reminding Philpot of his promise to vote for Finch and Palmer. He then added the kicker: ‘and accordingly his [Philpot's] name is enterd in the Mayors booke’.Footnote 39
Such energetic lobbying had its reward. At the hustings, the sheriff began by saying ‘Syrrah, be you silent and let your betters speake’ and then read Montgomery's letter recommending Palmer before he read the election writ. The order of these actions, Scott maintained, was not lost on the electors. Nevertheless, Scott was still somewhat confident, because he thought he had the numbers. To his ‘7 to 8 maybe 9 score lawful voices’, Finch and Palmer had many illegal voters, whom he likened to ‘a greate chatter of magpies, or a cry of swine or shoute of Rebells and usurpers’.Footnote 40 But he had not foreseen that some of Scott's fans were suddenly afflicted with the ‘softlie voice’ and could scarcely be heard. As he had always maintained, the sheriff refused to poll, and after a shout, he returned Finch and Palmer as the city's parliament-men.
The election sent shock waves through the city. From their pulpits, Inge, Simpson, and Culmer ‘hath notably begun to admonish and repoove us’ over the election. Inge's sermon would have been impressive if ‘he had spoken out a little more playnly’. Culmer let the Apostle Luke speak for him, specifically Chapter 19, verses 41–4: ‘he beheld the City and wept over it…for the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall…lay thee even with the ground,…and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation’. Culmer then lamented ‘Oh Canterburie and Kent and other Corporations and Shires of England.’ Simpson was even less inhibited, announcing ‘God will destroy them that follow such unhonest, unnaturall and unwise counsells: yes they destroy themselves.’ Because they had ‘made themselves slaves to home Tyrants and expose themselves to forren invasion’, Simpson chillingly argued that ‘England and the Church of God in England cannot long subsist if free Parliaments be lost.’Footnote 41
Scott himself was even more apocalyptic. He wanted ‘the Ringleaders’ of the faction ‘hanged, drawne and quartered’ as a ‘warning unto others’, and he mocked those who had timidly backed Palmer because ‘wee dare not deny my Lord of Mountgomerie his request’. They ‘must have a Courteour or a Servingman, to worke some wonders for them’ because ‘they have great enemies…and have neede of great friends’. In this vein, he imagined how the ‘Grands’ trembled because Montgomery's ‘letter may not be refused; they dare not displease him, and woe, woe, woe…my Lord lieuTenant would not take it well at theire hands’. This imperative made the urban elite
abandon the right and freedome and dutie of Cittizens, altogether; treade downe all lawe and rason under their feete; resigne up theire Charter, and freehould, to the Lust of the Lords and Greate Men and yeelde themselves unto pure slavery and bondage. They are no longer a free and honourable Cittie, but a conspiracy of Captives and sillie sheepe, driven before them that meane to make Mutton of them, to the Shambles.
Canterbury in his analysis was inexorably moving to a political Golgotha:
you see where wee are: without the Cittie; under the Crosse; Neere crucifying; no better than dead men, because condemned. No longer a free or honorable Citty, but a Wretched Captive, in the Iron hands and bands of a tyrannous Mayor, Aldermen and Sheriffe, to sell us unto what Lord or Lords man or dependant, they please;…the dead and stinking carcasse of a free Corporation, now miserably slaved.Footnote 42
Since parliament was packed with corrupt clients and unable to reform itself, Scott proposed his own schemes. Just as ‘The Upper house swells, mee thinks, a greate deale’ so too the Commons ‘might swell faster’ to include a thousand representatives, proportioned by hundreds and lathes. Naturally, his plans called for strict residence requirements: ‘A kentishman, that is not a free dweller in Canterburie, hath no more right to represent us, in Parliament, then a yorksire or Cornish or Welchman,…then a fleming, Frenchman, Spaniard, Italian, Jewe, Turke, Virginian or other Barbarian.’ But such stringent rules would deprive the Commons of
the service of so many notable lights and Guides; Sir Edward Cooke, Sir Francis Seimor, Sir Francis Barrington, Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Nathaniel Rich, Sir Dudley Digges, Sir John Savill, Sir William Spencer, and the rest of that name, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Robert Phelips and Sir Matthew [Walter] Erle, Sir Thomas Hobbie, Mr Noy, Mr Alford, Mr Wentworth, Mr Glanvile, Mr pimme and peerhaps two hundred more.
First came the rhetorical question – ‘Shall all these be…thrust out of the house?’ – and then Scott's answer: ‘Yea verily.’Footnote 43
Scott's struggle against Montgomery and the ‘Rule-alls’ did not end when he finished Canterburie cittizens on 19 March 1626. By early 1628, the Corporation had received tangible rewards from the lord lieutenant, who helped resolved a vexatious lawsuit. Nevertheless, the citizens then rejected Montgomery's nominees and returned Scott and Finch. Retribution soon came in the guise of four infantry companies, billeted in Canterbury, and to add insult to injury, the troops were Irish Catholics. By this point, the situation become personal, and in response to complaints from Canterbury, Montgomery reportedly remarked ‘let Mr. Scot take them [the soldiers] off’. The resulting turmoil brought Scott before the privy council and ultimately to confinement, even though as a parliament-man he was immune from prosecution. In August 1628, harsher punishment seemed imminent until Lieutenant Felton unexpectedly ‘sets Mr. Scott free’ by assassinating Buckingham. Charles I's decision to begin ruling without parliament in 1629 left Scott's feud with the lord lieutenant unresolved, a feud which informed Scott's last public act. Although scrupulous about paying taxes, he refused in 1632 to pay his militia assessment, Montgomery's tool for controlling Canterbury. He died in 1635.Footnote 44
While several friends soon followed him to the grave – Simpson died in 1630 and Inge in 1641 – others ran true to form in the Civil War. New election writs in March 1640 brought tensions to a boil. Although a visitor to Sandwich was shocked to see ‘factious nonconformists’, he consoled himself with one thought; at least, the dissidents were not ‘as tumultuous as they were in Canterbury’. There, the citizens who had earlier supported Scott stoutly opposed Archbishop Laud's secretary, and they knew what to do. First, they challenged his eligibility, arguing he was not a freeman, and when it appeared that he was, thanks to his membership in the local weavers’ company, they shouted him down, crying ‘a Weaver, a Weaver, a Priested Weaver, in a Canonicall coate’. A year later, the city had not calmed down when the earl of Arundel visited it. Then escorting Charles I's mother-in-law to Dover, he was appalled when the mayor and aldermen refused to welcome her, and after a citizen spoke insolently to Queen Marie, Arundel hurried her out of town before a riot erupted, complaining ‘I never saw people more tumultuary [sic] then they are here.’Footnote 45
The ensuing conflict periodically highlighted stock characters in Canterburie cittizens. In 1645, Avery Sabin became mayor, and seven years later, John Lee, Scott's loyal supporter, was elevated to that office. In 1642, a Scott veteran, Edward Aldey, testified on behalf of another, Richard Culmer, who was then in trouble. Notwithstanding a youthful devotion to football and swimming, Culmer eventually became such a strict sabbatarian that he tried to stop local boys from playing cricket on Sunday. In 1637, after refusing to read the Book of Sports to his parishioners, Laud deprived him of his living, and Culmer later returned the compliment by testifying in the archbishop's impeachment. His most celebrated moment came in 1644 near St Thomas Beckett's monument in Canterbury Cathedral. As many protested, some calling for his blood and a woman begging him to ‘save the childe’, Culmer climbed a sixty-foot ladder and used a pike to smash a stained-glass window commemorating the martyr and a medieval sculpture of Christ in the manger. Then, to illustrate the ordinariness of the allegedly sacred space, Culmer culminated a day of iconoclasm by urinating ‘in the open Chuch, and at noon-day’.Footnote 46 Had he been there, Scott, who loathed the church's ceremonial trappings, probably would have approved of his protégé’s actions. Indeed, he might even have joined him.
III
This article has, if nothing else, underscored Scott's importance. His various works, fragmentary though many of them are, illustrate how little we know about what contemporaries actually thought about politics. As late as 1990, there was apparently so little evidence of serious discontent and criticism that Conrad Russell maintained ‘the polity of pre-Civil War England was not on the point of collapse’. He might, however, have been more cautious about this conclusion if he had examined Scott's texts. Admittedly, a few contemporaries occasionally critiqued the regime, and for their boldness, they sometimes ended up explaining themselves to the privy council. Scott himself ended up there in August 1628. He recalled Sir Dudley Digges's advice: ‘take heed you be not caught’, and he responded warily, noting ‘I said not one word lest, I should fall into a trap.’ Granted, caution sometimes overcame him. Once he set down his pen, vowing ‘I say no more now’ and ‘I shall not willingly hereafter’; and in another passage, he prayed to God, ‘Hide me from the privie Counsell.’Footnote 47 Yet to the delight of modern scholars, he ultimately did not interrupt the flood of inflammatory prose, repeatedly defaming mayors, aldermen, bishops, peers, lords lieutenant, privy councillors, parliament-men, and monarchs, brooding over James I's poisoning and even imagining Charles's execution in 1626. So far as we know, he was the only person in the early seventeenth century who was so consistently audacious. His works will be of great interest to social historians studying urban culture, but in particular, Canterburie cittizens represents a potent variety of scholarly catnip for political historians pondering the early Stuart electoral practices.
This frondeur’s portrait of a city election is particularly arresting on several accounts. Consider, for example, the repeated references to ‘the Mayors book’, which appears to have been a poll book, which became reasonably common later in the century. Yet before then, they were, Jason Peacy noted, ‘extremely rare’ – and generally found only in county elections.Footnote 48 Yet here one was in use in a borough contest in 1626. Equally fascinating is Mr White's reference to the ‘softlie voice’, a shout of affirmation reduced to a whisper, lest it irritate patrons backing other candidates. This understandable human response to intense pressure explains why elections decided by the shouts often ended in controversy. An even greater surprise was Scott's harsh view of Lennox and Montgomery.
Lords lieutenant do not generally appear as early Stuart heavies. Yet their power sometimes enflamed counties, witness the political conflagrations in Norfolk in the 1590s and in Leicestershire in the late 1620s. Furthermore, Scott's refusal to pay his militia assessment in 1632 was part of a wave of similar refusals across the country. Impressment, not taxes, got Mr White's attention, and having witnessed chaotic impressments for the Mansfelt and Cadiz expeditions, he was loath to find himself at the sharp point of Buckingham's next overseas adventure. This fear underscored Sergeant Middleton's threat: ‘the Magistrates you know have beene your friends, else you had beene pressed, and they may again doe you the like friendship’. Consequently, pending a new charter, Canterbury's citizens often tried, as a contemporary put it, to avoid ‘the indignation of a lord Lieutenants letter whoe underhand stickes not to threaten them with the chardge of a Muskett or a horse’.Footnote 49
Scott's account also vividly illustrates the importance of ‘Christian liberty’, whose followers pursued in Tyacke's analysis, not just further church reforms, but ‘a much more all-embracing puritan political vision’. Cust has shown how ministers played a leading role in the opposition to the Forced Loan later in 1626. But here earlier in the year, Simpson, Culmer, Inge, and Aldey were in action, acting as electoral agents notwithstanding Mayor Whiting's objection that they ‘did contrarie to religion’. Given the rapidly mounting religious tensions, no wonder these ministers were passionately concerned about the elections, and no wonder the triumph of Finch and Palmer drove Culmer to preach on Luke 19:41–4.Footnote 50
Scott's forthright prose allows us to see the practical application of the ‘Puritan paradigm’ of politics. His anxieties centred on Henrietta Maria, ‘our Popish queen’ who in part ‘hath brought our Royal Navie to this shame and makes us even afraid of them to whome we were terrible’, a plain reference to the disaster at Cadiz. Likewise, Scott's contempt for Lennox and Montgomery soon expanded to include Buckingham, ‘the mightie (I had also said Almightie) Admirall and Lord Warden’ and ‘Achitopells, [and] Hamans’, biblical references to the royal favourite.Footnote 51 ‘The Pope and Poperie had longe before this day beene driven out of England and in a manner forgotten’, Scott believed, if the privy council had not been riddled with ‘Papists, Adiaphorists, Armenians and Atheists’, eager ‘not to doe, for religion and agaynst Poperie, as wee ought, but agaynst religion and for poperie as much almost as wee can, oppressing and suppressing true religion, many gyving way to the continuance and increase of heresie, superstition and Idolatrie’. For these grave lapses, God ‘whipps us with the scourge of our owne frenzie; and (if speedie repentance and redress prevent it not) kill us with the sword of our owne wilfull madnesse’. Hence, Scott fervently prayed: ‘O Lord…turne the counsell of Achitophel…into foolishnesse, that this may bringe him to the gallowes.’ But absent divine intervention, Scott had little hope since
Kings and Counsellors have lost their right witts, in tollerating and cherishing Poperie, in harkening unto Spanish and French alliances, in robbing the Commons of their Priviledges…and in harkening unto such as gyve them the worst advice, either because they are ignorant fooles, or because they are cunning Traytors…and by corrupting theire Parliaments in procuring or suffering wicked elections and returnes, contrary to the lawe.Footnote 52
‘Christian liberty’ therefore allowed Scott to entwine parliament, foreign affairs, court politics, and warfare with religious policy and ultimately to adopt a truly revolutionary position. Scott's work, Clark argued in 1978, ‘indicates a greater degree of political consciousness and sophistication in county towns’ than scholars had hitherto appreciated. Yet this assessment is too cautious. Scott knew the possible application of Libnah's revolt after King Jehoram of Judah had abandoned the true religion, and he knew that Theodore Beza, the early Calvinist Reformer, had specifically approved this example for use against godless rulers. He not only possessed a copy of Vindiciae contra tyrannos, the controversial 1579 Calvinist resistance tract, but later in 1626, George Eglisham's Forerunner of revenge prompted him to consult it, anxious that the lesser magistrates might have to seize the state to punish Buckingham – and possibly Charles I – for James's murder. ‘Yf kings will not doe iustice’, he wrote, ‘other Justices and iudges may and ought, yea though the king forbid them.’ It is hard, in fact, to see how Scott's political consciousness could have been more advanced. As Tyacke recently observed, the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 ‘would not have surprised the late Thomas Scott of Canterbury, who as early as 1626 prophesied such a conflict between the godly and those who sought to reduce England into a condition of ‘miserable bondage’.Footnote 53
When confronted with only some of Scott's prose, Conrad Russell immediately wondered ‘how typical’ he was. Admittedly, it is impossible to say if anyone in Canterbury shared his views. His audacious ideas were largely confined to his commonplace-book, and publicly Scott preferred to wrap up his meaning ‘in many allegories and obscure phrases’. Yet while many listeners were confused, ‘the intelligent and sentient [sic]’, Scott thought, ‘will understand’.Footnote 54 Beyond that, we can say nothing definitive – except that many citizens in Canterbury regularly joined Scott in challenging parliamentary candidates advanced by the lord lieutenant and the urban elite in 1621, 1624, 1625, 1626, 1628, and 1640, and they sometimes defeated them. While more work needs to be done comparing Scott with other forthright contemporaries such as Robert Woodforde and Walter Yonge, one thing is already abundantly clear; Laudians were not entirely paranoid when they insisted some of the puritans were intent on fundamental regime change.
The Canterbury election in 1626 was only one of some 2,000 parliamentary elections held between 1604 and 1628, but it neatly illustrates one of the extremes in electoral practices, which has been somewhat obscured by Kishlansky's emphasis on uncontested ‘selections’. The Canterbury case also provides an excellent entrée into what is surely the greatest hitherto unrecognized development in early Stuart politics – the rise of contested parliamentary elections in boroughs. Kishlansky famously refused to count contests, arguing that the resulting data, fraught with so many uncertainties, ‘provides little guidance to the social and political changes of the early seventeenth century’, and in truth, every election cycle contains thorny cases in which it is now impossible to tell whether or not a contest had taken place. Yet there were also cases when one plainly had occurred. If we use the History of Parliament's recent study and consider only clear-cut cases in two member constituencies when voters were confronted with more than two candidates at the hustings, a clear pattern emerges. The number of disputed English county elections peaked at eight in 1614. Afterwards, the number steadily decreased from seven in 1621 and 1624, five in 1625 and 1626, and then to only two in 1628, a decrease that seems to prove Kishlansky's point about contests.Footnote 55 Yet the number of borough contests steadily rose from five in 1614, sixteen in 1621, and twenty-three in 1624. Then it sank down to sixteen in 1625 and eleven in 1626 before rising to twenty-six in 1628.Footnote 56 In short, county contests were trending downward, while the ones in boroughs varied up and down before ultimately ending in 1628 with a fivefold increase over fourteen years (Figure 1).
Contested elections, 1614–1628
It is vital to appreciate that these numbers are figured conservatively, and further research will likely increase the totals. For example, we cannot tell if contests actually took place in six counties and twenty-seven boroughs, and closer examination may clarify matters in some cases.Footnote 57 These figures also omit sixteen boroughs which made ‘double returns’ from 1614 to 1628, half of them occurring in 1628 alone.Footnote 58 In a few cases, a wilful returning officer ignored the collective desire of their colleagues and simply returned his preferred candidates. But more often, the confusion stemmed from a bitter contest. Moreover, these figures as a rule do not include those burgesses returned ‘by the most voices’, and closer examination of corporate culture reveals that this phrase often implied a contest took place. Finally, there is scattered but highly suggestive evidence of Corporations holding two elections; the first was a contest, held in private, involving multiple candidates, and the second, a ‘selection’ unanimously validating the victorious pair in public. In Maldon, for example, two documents have survived about the 1624 election; one simply notes the return of Sir Arthur Herries and Sir William Masham, while the other reveals that Masham only narrowly won the second seat by beating Henry Mildmay, 47 to 42. A two-stage process may not have been too unusual. In York in 1604, for example, after a hard-fought contest between seven candidates, the voters ‘did all ioyntlie together…give ther voices upon and elect’ the winning pair. Thus, Derek Hirst rightly observed, ‘the illusion of unanimity was being created, and the contest concealed’.Footnote 59 In short, further investigations may well add another county or two – and many more boroughs – to the list of disputed elections, further widening the gap between county and borough contests.
Plainly, we need to revisit Parliamentary selection and to unravel the mysteries surrounding the surging borough contests. Kishlansky dated ‘the transition’ from uncontested ‘selections’ to contested elections to the 1640s, and his overall analysis is largely correct. By reminding us that ‘history prefers the incipient to the vestigial’, he emphasized the vestigial fondness for ‘selections’. The value of his approach is indisputable. But so too is the need to understand incipient change in electoral practices, a change which was plainly already underway in the 1620s.
The timing is ideal for such an initiative. The History of Parliament staff has gathered together the fragmentary evidence about borough contests in their brilliant analysis of parliament, 1604–29. The interpretation of this evidence arguably is best conducted within a larger study of how Corporations made decisions about all kinds of matters, both great and small, and such a study fits neatly with the recent work by social historians interested in understanding urban civic culture. As Phil Withington has recently noted, ‘the intense light focused on those gentry who dominated the county's political and social institutions obscured the position of other sorts of places and persons, towns and their inhabitants included’. Indeed, ‘the political place and importance of towns…has been strangely neglected’. A broad-based effort to understand urban civic culture in general and voting in particular would also belatedly follow the research strategy that Cust outlined years ago in response to the Kishlansky thesis about elections. After using a perceptive analysis of Great Yarmouth elections in the 1620s to assess Kishlansky's larger argument, he called for more of ‘the sort of detailed study of local context attempted here’.Footnote 60 In short, by focusing on boroughs we will in time finally complete the long overdue assessment of Parliamentary selection.
While it will take years to complete this reassessment of elections and urban culture in early Stuart England, a few things are already abundantly clear. First and foremost, the surface calm in most Corporations can be deceptive. As we have seen in Canterbury, it can mask considerable turbulence underneath it, and that vital fact becomes clear once we appreciate the significance of ‘a peaceable and quiet spirit’ who owned well-thumbed copies of potentially explosive works such as The forerunner of revenge and Vindiciae contra tyrannos, who repeatedly organized a socially diverse coalition of neighbours to challenge the local magistrates and the lord lieutenant, and who imagined the trial and execution of Charles over two decades before it actually happened.Footnote 61 Thanks to the unique perspective that Canterburie cittizens afford us, we can only celebrate Thomas Scott's decision not simply to stand for election in 1626, but also to record such a vivid portrait of his experience at the hustings.
