March, 1640 Short Parliament election

 Reflecting on the county election for the Short Parliament in Essex in March, 1640 

 

“Sr Wm Masham motioned yt ye countees might have freedom in yr election of Burgesses, and Lords or Justices not intermeddle in it” (British Library. Harleian Ms.4931, fol.47r. 16 April, 1640)1 

 

The election of Members of the House of Commons in March, 1640 is well known from the surviving accounts of Sir Humphrey Mildmay of Danbury in his diary2, from the protest made by William, Lord Maynard, the county’s joint Lord Lieutenant3, to Sir Thomas Barrington of Hatfield Broad Oak, one of the victorious candidates, shortly after polling day, and from the observations of Henry Nevill of Cressing Temple, who had been defeated in the contest, just over two weeks later4. All of them were unsympathetic to the patron of the victorious candidates, Sir Thomas Barrington and Sir Harbottle Grimston, namely, Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, and shared concerns over the behaviour of the freeholders present in Chelmsford, over their apparently low economic and social status, and over the campaign Warwick and his allies had organised, including pressure by Warwick on the trained bands’ captains to ensure wider support for Barrington and Grimston, and the mobilisation of Puritan ministers and preachers across Essex to the same end. According to Nevill, a firm supporter of Charles I’s regime and of Laudian practices in the Church of England, freeholders from the county’s corporations – Colchester, Harwich and Maldon – had not only voted for their own representatives in the House of Commons but in the county’s elections too. Clive Holmes and William Hunt discussed these events in their respective 1974 and 1983 works.5 

 

This makes Masham’s remarks on 16th April, 1640 difficult to explain straightforwardly. As Sir Thomas Barrington’s brother-in-law and M.P. for Colchester, he was linked by his family connections and his own political and religious affiliations to the Earl of Warwick. It therefore seems unlikely that he was criticising the exercise by the Earl of Warwick of his electoral patronage in the county of Essex in mid-1640. What did Masham mean when he objected to Lords and Justices of the Peace intervening in the county election? It is possible that he was referring to the two peers known to have been present in Chelmsford on polling day as apparent supporters of Henry Nevill, in other words, to James Hay, 2nd Earl of Carlisle, and to William, Lord Maynard, the county’s joint Lord Lieutenant.6 The other possibility is that he was referring to the Privy Council whose members were often referred to by contemporaries as ‘Lords’ of the Council. Some very tentative, indirect support may have been lent to this latter suggestion in Lord Maynard’s letter on 19th March, 1640 to Sir Thomas Barrington where he stated that he would not “for any respect absent myself from any assembly how great soever whither my duty to the service of my King & Country doth call me”. This suggests that he regarded the county election as an example of sush a call to the service of his sovereign but not conclusive. Even so, it leaves Masham’s remarks on the involvement of Justices of the Peace, presumably in support of Henry Nevill, to be explained. If the Privy Council had been engaged in trying to secure Nevill’s return with the help of local J.P. s, then for the second successive county election – in 1628 and the spring of 1640 – the Caroline regime had not only failed but been electorally humiliated in Essex by the Earl of Warwick and his allies.