Parliament and King – Part Four

In 1645, John Harvey, the town’s sitting M.P., died.  Faced with the necessity of choosing a new man, the corporation wrote for advice to the parliamentary County Committee, which was based at Aylesford. They had not apparently had qualms about upsetting the king’s cousin, but were concerned about the opinion of the Committee.  The Committee declined to make a recommendation for the seat, but reminded the assembly about the importance of choosing well.  ‘for aught you know, you yourselves may be the men, nay, may be the man, who with a breath crying ‘Aye’ or ‘No’ may so turn the scale as may raise or forever sink a tottering kingdom. Be wise for God, for a bleeding nation, for yourselves and your posterity, let nothing sway you but truly pious and public aims.’

It was stirring stuff, and thus inspired the jurats chose Thomas Westrow, a member of the Committee and friend of Oliver Cromwell.  He represented Hythe until his death in 1653.

That same year the jurats elected Thomas Bedingfield  as their mayor for the second time. His family was well-to-do and influential in the Hythe and Dymchurch areas.  His brother Peter became the local Collector for yet another parliamentary committee, for ‘the Sequestration of Delinquents’ Estates.’. Essentially, they confiscated and sold the estates of Royalists who had fought against parliament. The ‘delinquents’ could, however, pay a fine instead. One of these was the Earl of Thanet, who had taken part in the failed plot in 1642.  Peter Bedingfield seized his goods, but the earl offered to pay £5000, which was accepted. He raised the money by selling Bodiam Castle.

By now, things were going badly for the king. Archbishop Laud, despite his great old age and a lack of evidence against him, was executed in 1645. Parliament had set up the New Model Army, whose troops served anywhere and received regular pay. They re-took Bristol for parliament in July 1645 and the Royal army was annihilated at the Battle of Naseby.  Although the war dragged on for another year, Charles surrendered to the Scots in Newark 1646. He was offered peace terms but rejected them.  Parliament voted £400,000 to the Scots in return for their departure which they accepted and handed Charles over to parliament.

Over the next couple of years, while Charles and parliament engaged in a futile round of negotiations, there were no further battles or bloodshed, but in 1648, the fragile peace was shattered by a series of local rebellions against parliament which comprised the Second Civil War.

One of these was in Kent. By that time, king was confined in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight, where he plotted, negotiated and prevaricated.  In January parliament, exasperated by his equivocation, voted to break off negotiations with him. This appalled those in the country who supported the king and those moderate parliamentarians who still hoped for a peaceful outcome.  The tense situation was compounded by a growing dislike of the power of the County Committees, now comprising more merchants and lawyers than local gentry, ‘tradesmen committees’ as they were sometimes sneeringly called by their social superiors.

In Kent, a petition was raised addressing these issues, and the movement gathered strength until an armed uprising, led by Sir William Brockman of Beachborough near Hythe, attacked the parliamentary troops at Maidstone. It was a brave but doomed attempt. The Kent movement had suffered from the attentions of a fervent but inept Royalist Roger L’Estrange, who alienated many moderates, and had failed to identify a single strong leader. After Maidstone they could not command enough support to strike again, the rebellion fizzled away and L’Estrange escaped abroad calling the men of Kent ‘thankless peasants’. Local rebellions elsewhere in the country failed, too.

In November that year, the New Model Army presented a Remonstrance to parliament calling for the trial of the king and a republic. Parliament rejected it, so the army sent soldiers to the House of Commons and removed any M.P. who did not support them. Both Hythe’s M.Ps, Heyman and Westrow, kept their seats in this new parliament, called ‘The Rump’.

Thus purged, the Rump decided it did, after all, have the right to try the king on charges of treason. Despite the Royalist rebellion only months before, there were plenty of men in Kent who supported this decision. A radical petition from the county, which called not only for the trial of the king, but his execution was presented to parliament.  It was signed by over a thousand men, including the jurats of Sandwich, Canterbury and Hythe.  One of Hythe’s two  M.P.s, however, Henry Heyman, did not wish to be associated with the trial, and did not sit in the Commons while it was underway. The other, Thomas Westrow had no such misgivings.

The king was executed on 30 January 1649.

The execution of Charles I

 

Parliament and King- Part Two

Hythe, like the rest of Kent, was under parliamentary control throughout the first Civil War. The king’s lands were mostly in the west and north of the country.  None of the major battles  were fought in Kent and it was spared the horrors of Englishmen slaughtering each other and the inevitable looting and that retaliation that followed each confrontation.  Most of Kent, although moderately parliamentarian until the war broke out, was thereafter moderately royalist but never effectively challenged the status quo.  Some towns, particularly the Cinque ports, were notably parliamentarian. Dover and Sandwich were two, Hythe was another. In its choice of representatives for parliament, its welcome of a radical Puritan minister, in its support of the execution of the king, it was as firm a supporter of parliament as any town in Kent.

However, there was a mixture of loyalties in Hythe, as in most places. There were those who  were firecely for parliament, or for the king, and those who were moderate in their opinions either way, and those who just wanted to get on with making a living or raising a family and wished things would get back to normal and stop changing so often.

There was a lot of change to assimilate. In 1642, parliament set up county committees, composed of local gentry, to run each county.  Their authority was based not just on their commissions from parliament but also on their powers as deputy lieutenants and JPs. The Cinque Ports argued that their special rights and privileges meant that they should not be governed by the county committee of Kent. Sandwich acted as their mouthpiece, strongly arguing that any attempts by the committee to interfere were contrary to their ‘liberties, customs and freedoms’.  But by 1643 some of the ports were beginning to cave in. Lydd, Folkestone and Hythe were the first. The King’s army was at this time advancing through Sussex and it must have seemed that these ports might be overrun. They chose the protection of parliament instead.

A Royalist plot had been hatched at Beachborough, the seat of Sir  William Brockman, a mile or so north of Hythe.  The king sent him a Commission of Array, entitling him to muster local forces and the Earl of Thanet was sent to assist him, marching eastward from Sussex. Unfortunately, a letter about the plot fell into parliament’s hands, Brockman was arrested and the earl surrendered,  ignominiously requesting ‘an accommodation’, which was refused. His estate became forfeit to parliament.

The county committee was concerned with the raising of taxation and the provision of armed forces. Another committee was set up to in 1643 to seize the estates of royalists and Catholics. Then an accounts committee was set up with separate membership to audit the accounts of the first two committees.  The sheer size of Kent necessitated ‘a numerous offspring’ of sub-committees and there were separate committees to run Canterbury and Rochester. By the mid-1640s there were twenty or so committees or sub-committees operating in the county at a number of sites, including Hythe.

 

Sir William Brockman of Beachborough