Robert Peake the Elder

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Portrait of Prince Henry Frederick ...
Robert Peake the elder, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m very much enjoying my current research into the life of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia as a child. A particular delight has been the work of Robert Peake the Elder who died in 1619 and who was commissioned to paint several portraits of Elizabeth as well as her brothers, Henry Frederick and Charles .

Peake was an apprentice of the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard. He became a freeman of the Company of Goldsmiths in 1576. By the 1590s he was a fashionable portrait painter at the court of Elizabeth I.

In 1607 he was appointed sergeant-painter to King James I having already been appointed, in 1604, as picture maker to Prince Henry. It was his task to paint the portraits that were sent as gifts to foreign kings and princes. And when not required to do that he was responsible for making sure that the royal collection was up to scratch and if the queen wanted some scenery for a masque that was his job as well.

After Henry’s death in 1612, Peake moved to the household of Henry and Elizabeth’s younger brother, Charles. He died in 1619, the same year as Anne of Denmark. His death and the death of Nicholas Hilliard (1619) saw a change in the way portraits were painted. The style would become increasingly baroque rather than full of the detail viewers often associate with the works of Holbein, Hilliard and Peake – but they also became more fluid. The pictures of Princess Elizabeth, lovely as they may be, as quite stiff in comparison to the work of later artists.

Auerbach, Erna. Tudor artists; a study of painters in the royal service and of portraiture on illuminated documents from the accession of Henry VIII to the death of Elizabeth I. (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1954)

Strong, Ro., The Elizabethan Image.

Nottinghamshire before 1066 and a Friday afternoon meander across my bookshelf.

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By Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12966437

I’d forgotten how wonderful the Ordinance Survey historical maps and guides can be. The Ancient Britain incarnation of the map reminded me about the Anglo-Saxon Church at Carlton in Lindrick. It also reassured me that I hadn’t missed anything of national significance, listing as it does only Cresswell Crags (prehistoric) and the Anglo-Saxon Cross in Stapleford Churchyard as items of interest.

There’s not a lot above ground from Ancient Nottinghamshire’s past – many settlements have been constantly inhabited, but at Carlton in Lindrick, near Worksop, within there is a church that dates from about 860AD. Not much of the original church remains. It was certainly extended during the tenth century and the west tower is, apparently, a good example of a Saxon west tower. Someone listed it as one of the top three west church tower (the Saxons did other varieties of tower) – though true to form I can’t find the source of my quote…an unfortunate habit that’s tripped me up for several decades now, you’d think I’d have learned.

Inevitably I did some more digging about and there are 400 or so churches in Britain which have some Anglo-Saxon fabric or which sixty or so come in the form of late Saxon church towers. This is a little complicated by the fact that when it came to church building after the Conquest, it may have been the Normans who gave the orders but it was the Saxons who did the building. And let’s not forget all those later additions stuck on various churches by patrons determined to ensure a) their place in Heaven, b) that everyone should know how wealthy they were and c) because keeping up with the Joneses isn’t a new phenomena.

Anyway back to Carlton in Lindrick’s tower – which may have served as a look out tower and place of refuge as well as part of the church. It’s the only tower of its kind in Nottinghamshire although places like Littleborough also contain fragments of their Saxon past. Both places contain distinctive Saxon herring-bone brickwork.

Part of the reason behind Carlton’s prestigious appearance may lay in a clue provided by the Domesday Book. Before 1066, six thegns each had a hall at Carlton, or at least nearby. A thegn was somewhere between a freeman and a member of the nobility. The thegns worked together to build their church but there were also two mills at Carlton. But who the six thegns were and what happened to them is another matter entirely.

I’m still wading around Saxon cross shafts in Nottinghamshire and the tympanum at Southwell. Not to mention trying to remember which churches I’ve visited in the county with the distinctive narrow faces with rounded, or even triangular, tops. So far I’ve got Southwell on my list and Carlton – which isn’t entirely helpful. A quick google revealed All Saints Church at Babworth which I know I’ve never been to. All of which means, I think, a delve into Arthur Mee’s King’s England for Nottinghamshire which is fortuitous in its own way – he’s a Nottinghamshire lad, who I am very much looking forward to writing about.

Spare the rod and spoil the child…and the importance of godly parents

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Eleanor Hay – Lady Eleanor Livingston, Countess of Linlithgow

Well it’s a bit different but it’s almost inevitable that the raising of sixteenth and seventeenth century children should bring me to this point. Fletcher records that there are 22 printed guides for parents, often drawing on the Bible, advocating physical punishment. One went so far as to say that it purged corruption from the child – always good to find a Puritan viewpoint (forget Romantic images of children trailing clouds of glory), the Stuart period was definitely more into the sinfulness of infants. And let’s be clear this was applied to girls as well as boys.

Not that beating was the first recourse of a Protestant household. It was essential to bring a child up in fear and obedience. This meant that manners were an essential part of childhood education, as they had always been. Silence could be added to the list – seen and not heard was an essential during church services. Mothers and nurses were expected to teach young children their prayers, to read their Bible and the correct behaviour in a place of worship. In an age associated with cheap print, catechisms of questions and answers were readily available for the authoritative mother.

For Elizabeth Stuart born at the end of the sixteenth century and raised by her governess Lady Eleanor Livingston there was the additional problem of Eleanor’s faith. She was known to be a Catholic. The Presbyterian Church were alarmed by the way she raised her own five children, accusing her of keeping them from attending services at one point. The thought that a royal princess might be indoctrinated with Catholic beliefs was a source of friction between king and Church.

Even worse, Elizabeth, a girl, was expected to learn obedience and Eleanor Livingston was not obedient. Her husband, Andrew Livingston, 7th Lord Livingston was Protestant so it seemed to the Scottish Church that his wife ought to accept his faith. They even arranged for a chaplain from Stirling to teach her. She ended up being accused of obduracy. Eleanor was not a good role model for obedience, especially as she challenged male superiority of thought and mind in her continued refusal to accept Presbyterianism. Whatever else she might have been Princess Elizabeth’s governess was neither weak nor passive.

And for whatever reason, James VI concluded that the Livingstons were the best people to raise his daughters. The nursery at Linlithgow was closer to Dunfermline than Stirling, so although it was difficult for Queen Anne to visit her son it was much easier for her to visit Elizabeth, and a short lived sister Margaret. Anne was also firm friends with Eleanor and while James would not permit his wife to oversee the royal nursery he did care for her at the start of their marriage. He might not have expected that in 1601 Anne would become Catholic, further complicating the business of raising the royal brood.

Interested in the Winter Queen? Block of seven Zoom classes about the life and times of Elizabeth Stuart beginning 20 January 2025.

The formation of the Anglo-Scottish border – part three.

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Smailholm

My last post saw Henry II ascend the throne in England and David I die in Scotland. David was predeceased by his eldest son, Henry Earl of Northumberland. His son, Malcolm the Maiden inherited the throne. The nickname has nothing to do with unknightlyness- think more poor health, religious fervour and an early death before marriage. He was succeeded by his brother, William the Lion. Ultimately William, who spent time at Henry II’s court and who backed Henry’s sons in their rebellion against their father, was forced to recognise Henry as his feudal overlord thanks to various unfortunate occurrences in Scotland, including a rebellion in Gallowegians. William was even forced to pay Henry for the English army in Scotland and had a bride selected for him.

As an aside Ermengarde de Beaumont was part of the extended Plantagenet family thanks to Henry I’s sizeable illegitimate family. The terms of the wedding were agreed according to the Treaty of Falaise. And while we’re on the subject William’s mother was Ada de Warenne whose father was one of William the Conqueror’s most trusted advisers while her mother who had something of a scandalous past was descended from the kings of France – the House of Dunkeld was looking decidedly normanised one way and another.

Anyway, when Richard the Lionheart came to the throne there was a shift in power. he just wanted to go on Crusade so he accepted 10,000 marks from the Scots in return for The Quitclaim of Canterbury – which basically meant that the Scots were inn charge of themselves and that Richard agreed that he wasn’t their overlord. For a time the status quo was maintained. It was bad form to attack the kingdoms of monarchs who were away on holy war and if good manners weren’t sufficient, the threat of excommunication carried more weight.

However, the reign of John and his son Henry III saw a continuation of the tensions on the northern border of England. Where exactly did one kingdom end and the other begin? In 1200, for instance William claimed Northumberland as part of Scotland when they met at Lincoln. The Treaty of Norham followed in 1203 and in 1209 when John arrived on the border with an army, William submitted before an invasion took place. In 1210, William’s heir, Alexander, gave John an oath of loyalty at Alnwick – but in England the political situation was becoming more tense.

Alexander became king in 1214 but the following year saw the First Barons War and Magna Carta in England. In the north, barons like Eustace De Vesci, Lord of Alnwick (The one who is famously said to have substituted a sex worker for his wife in the bed of King John. The said wife being Margaret of Scotland, an illegitimate daughter of William the Lion.) chose to offer their allegiance to the Scottish king rather than John. It was 1216 before John was able to drive the Scots from Northumbria. And that’s all without mentioning Carlisle which found itself under siege.

Alexander II came to terms with Henry III’s regency government while Alexander III married Henry’s daughter Margaret. Their respective ages were 10 and 11. Henry III began plotting to seize overlordship of Scotland – the young king and his wife were kept apart, seized by opposing factions and Margaret wrote that she hated Scotland. Eventually though, Alexander attained his majority and the couple went on to have three children who all predeceased their father.

Alexander spent the decade after Margaret’s death as a widower but without an adult male heir to succeed him he was urged to take a new bride. So, he married Yolande de Dreux in 1285. He died following a fall from his horse the fallowing year on his way to visit her. The new queen of Scotland was his granddaughter the Maid of Norway who died before she arrived in Scotland.

There were various claimants to the crown and Edward I claimed that he should choose by right of being overlord of the Scottish monarchs – just let’s not go there – these last three posts have demonstrated that it all depended on who had the most stable kingdom and the biggest army – and yes I know that the Earl of Huntingdon owed feudal duty to the English king and no this isn’t the time to get into that kind of discussion. And it was Edward I who gave orders for the boundary to be identified by 6 Scottish knights and 6 English knights – who were required to travel its length, not once but twice.

Ultimately the thirteenth century ended with armies crossing the border one way or the other. While the border was established the next 300 years saw national armies on occasion but on a regional level there were raids, looting and kidnappings…in which became a way of life.

The formation of the northern borders -part deux.

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Carlisle Castle

The kingdom of Northumbria did not enter Norman rule placidly but Gospatric, who was related to Malcolm Canmore was eventually stripped of his power and died in Scotland. The Scottish king had given him Dunbar Castle and his eldest son became the Earl of Dunbar. Another, Dolphin, ruled Carlisle on Malcolm’s behalf.

We had arrived at the Treaty of Abernethy in 1072.

1079 The Normans invade Scotland to remind Malcolm not to keep raiding Northumbria and to reinforce the Treaty of Abernethy.

1092 William II, better known as William Rufus, drives Dolphin out of Carlisle. Malcolm doesn’t immediately respond to this.

13 November 1093 Malcom III killed with his eldest son by Margaret of Wessex at the Battle of Alnwick on his way home from a spot of light raiding. It is said that Margaret died from a broken heart three days later. Malcolm’s brother Donald Bane took the throne as Donald III but was driven from it six months later by Duncan – who had been handed to William the Conqueror as a hostage at the signing of the Treaty of Abernethy. Rufus accepted Duncan II’s homage – however, despite the political expedient, it wasn’t long before Donald regained the throne. The turmoil in Scotland was matched by the dispute in England between William Rufus and his elder brother Robert Curthose who was Duke of Normandy but who wanted his brother’s crown as well.

1095 Duncan II murdered.

1097 Edgar, the fourth son of Malcolm, takes the Scottish throne. He has received English support.

1100 William Rufus killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest. His brother Henry ascends the throne as Henry I and marries Edith of Scotland – the daughter of Malcolm III and Margaret of Wessex. As well as helping to secure his northern border, it also helps to stabilise his throne. Edith changes her name to Maud when she marries.

1107 Edgar dies and his younger brother, Alexander the Fierce, became king in his stead – with the approval of King Henry I. This accord was cemented by Alexander’s marriage to Sybilla of Normandy who was one of Henry’s illegitimate daughters.

Henry is able to cement his control of the north and establish lordships to rule Cumbria and the borders on his behalf – e.g the de Hottons of Hutton.

1124 Alexander died without children and was succeeded by his brother David who becomes King David I.

King Henry I died on 1 December 1135. He had wanted his only legitimate child, the Empress Matilda, to rule after him but despite having made his barons agree to the plan, its actually his nephew Stephen of Blois who nabs the crown. In 1138 a civil war known as the Anarchy erupts between supporters of Stephen and Matilda.

King David I had already seized the opportunity to extend his kingdom south once more on the pretext of supporting Matilda’s claim. The local militia and baronial retinues of Yorkshire and the North Midlands  fight back against the Scottish incursion to the West and south. In Northumbria the castles at Bamburgh and Wark  hold out against the Scots

January 1136 Treaty of Durham – King Stephen cedes Cumberland to the Scots – Carlisle is part of Scotland once more. The earldom of Huntingdon and its associated land is transferred to David’s son Henry.

22 August 1138 •The Battle of the Standard on the Great North Road – north of Northallerton. The Scots are defeated but retreat in good order they regrouped in Carlisle. There is another meeting and another treaty at Durham. Cumberland would remain part of Scotland for the next 20 years and Northumberland was ceded to Earl of Huntingdon as a fief.

It was King David I who built the first stone castle at Carlisle and where he died on 24 May 1153. He had extended his rule to both the north and the south and through the Second Treaty of Durham he was an independent king who did not have to take oaths of vassalage to the English… which brings us to the end of the Norman period.

The Plantagenets in the form of King Henry II, son of Empress Matilda and Geoffrey of Anjou, ascended the throne in 1154. Obviously Henry had other plans for the north but for the time being Scotland held the upper hand in the matter of the borders.

The evolution of border reiving

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By Forman Armorial (produced for Mary, Queen of Scots) – This image is available from the National Library of Scotland under the sequence number or Shelfmark ID Adv.MS.31.4.2, fol.5r., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1409450

Given the borders gave us the words blackmail and bereaved it’s perhaps not surprising that the culture of the borders was on occasion lawless or that people who lived in the marches may not have regarded themselves either as Scottish or English – ties of kinship were much more important than nationality.

Let’s begin with the geography of the post-Roman world. The kingdom of Benicia was established by 547AD. When it unted with Deira in 603AD – ok, I’m underplaying it – there’s a marriage followed by a series of assassinations – the kingdom of Northumbria was formed.

By the ninth century Northumbria was one of England’s dominant kingdoms while the concept of Cumberland only really appeared as a political entity from the tenth century onwards. Saxons, Vikings, various wars, rebellions and the incorporation of Cumberland into the kingdom of Strathclyde by Malcolm I are all recorded in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and bring me to the start of my chronology. I am not tackling King Edwin or the various political manoeuvrings of the heptarchy in this post. Let’s just stick with the borders for the time being.

1005 Malcolm II crowned king of Alba. He allied himself to Owain Foel of Strathclyde.

1006 Siege of Durham – results in the defeat of Malcolm by Uhtred of Bamburgh who later became both the earl of Bamburgh and York.

1018 Battle of Carham – the Northumbrians defeated and an eastern border between England and Scotland created.

1031 King Cnut invades Alba.

1034 Malcolm II dies. His grandson Duncan inherits the throne. At this time Scotland – which holds Cumbria on the west side of the country, possibly now extends so far south as the River Lune in Lancashire.

27 July 1054 The Battle of Dunsinane Wood also called the Battle of the Seven Sleepers. This was fought between the forces of King Macbeth, who is another of Malcom II’s grandsons, and Siward, Earl of Northumbria and his nephew, Malcolm Canmore, the son of King Duncan. Macbeth, who killed Duncan in 1040, was defeated. Malcolm remains in Scotland continuing his war with Macbeth. Siward returned to Northumbria…and as an aside Siward was rather hoping for a Scottish monarch on the throne who would support his claim to the kingdom of Cumbria.

1055 Siward, Earl of Northumbria died. He had gained control of Northumbria through judicious marriage and political manoeuvring. He supported Cnut, Harthacnut and then Edward the Confessor. He is replaced by Tostig Godwinson, a brother of Harold Godwinson (he of arrow in the eye fame). It was not a popular choice.

1058 Malcolm III (Canmore) began raiding Northumberland. Peace is eventually agreed but there are a successive series of raids resulting in the taking of slaves, cattle and tribute.

1065 Tostig booted out of Northumbria by its people who are fed up with his heavy-handedness. Morcar, the younger brother of the Earl of Mercia, is appointed in his place. It does not sweeten Tostig’s relationship with his brother Harold. Malcolm III welcomed Tostig into Scotland.

1066 Tostig returns from exile with the army of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway who is making his claim to the throne of England.

25 September 1066. Hardrada and Tostig are killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge outside York.

So far so good but in 1067, Copsi, who was Tostig’s man, submits to William the Conqueror and is sent to York as the new Earl of Northumbria. It’s a promotion which lasts five weeks before the Northumbrians murder him. Osulf, son of Eadulf, and a member of one of the region’s leading families – chase Copsi to a church near Ouseburn. Osulf sets the church on fire. Fleeing once more, Copsi was captured and beheaded. Osulf becomes earl but is murdered in his turn.

1068 Gospatric who is a relative of Uhtred of Bamburgh and Malcolm Canmore pays William the Conqueror to become Earl of Benicia He then joined in with a rebellion against the king fermented by Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his brother Morcar. Gospatric fled to Scotland and the north endured a harrying.

1069 Malcolm III takes his army south as far as Wearmouth. Gospatric submits to William the Conqueror and is sent to make was in Cumbria which is part of Malcolm’s kingdom.

Malcolm welcomes Saxon refugees from the Royal House of Wessex, including Margaret – who he married- which improves his claim to territory in the south, especially as he gave his sons English rather than Scottish names. Malcolm recognised that the Conqueror’s grasp on Northumberland was weak and was making a political play for the territory.

1072 Treaty of Abernethy. Terms agreed between Malcolm and William the Conqueror who had an army as well as a network of fortifications at Warwick, Nottingham and York which secured the south and the Midlands. According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Canmore became William’s man and gave him his son, Duncan, as surety. It wasn’t long before Malcolm was raiding again and Northumbrians revolting against Norman rule.

1080 another Norman army heads north, this time under the command of Robert Curthose, William’s eldest son. A new accord is reached and things went quiet for ten years or so.

Which is a good place to stop, because although it doesn’t take me to the end of the Norman period there have been a fair few dates in this post, several murders and some very dodgy dealings.

Getting to grips with 2025

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And a very happy new year to History Jar readers – let’s hope I’m a bit more organised in 2025! I’m not sure what happened to 2024 or to December for that matter.

And with that in mind I’m having a sort out of my computer files so that I can be more organised. I’ve already come across a rather helpful document from Leeds Library and Information Service that I forgot I had. It outlines Yorkshire battles from Saxon times onwards and can be found here: https://secretlibraryleeds.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/yorkshire-battles-research-guide-viewing-version-new.pdf. I think I’ll probably do something similar for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – not that it will contain so many significant battles but it will at least help me be a bit more organised as yet another writing deadlines approach.

And talking of which – I’m giving a talk on the border reivers via Zoom this Saturday for YAHS Medieval Section at 2pm. I usually focus on the Elizabethan period so there is a little tweaking of material going on presently and, of course, I am starting a series of History Jar zoom talks on Monday 20 January on the subject of the Winter Queen, Elizabeth Stuart the daughter of King James VI/I. A place can be book at the HistoryJar via PayPal.

The Winter Queen was a rather cruel jest against Elizabeth’s husband, Frederick V of the Palatinate who was offered the crown of Bohemia but only ruled from 1619 until 1620. The problem was that the people of that kingdom were largely Protestant but their rulers were Catholic. In 1618 they rebelled against Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and then asked Frederick if he fancied the job. The nobles had their fingers crossed that if Frederick took the crown he would have the backing of his father-in-law, James VI/I. They also thought that the Protestant Union, which had been founded by Frederick’s father, would support him. Unfortunately for the Bohemians and for Frederick neither the king nor the union was prepared to back the new king. A year and four days after he was crowned Frederick lost the Battle of the White Mountain (which sounds as though it should be something in Lord of the Rings).

Elizabeth and her family was forced to flee into exile in The Hague while her husband became enmeshed in the Thirty Years War which had been heralded by his assumption of the Bohemian Crown. A kinder nickname for Elizabeth was the Queen of Hearts – mainly because everyone liked her.

On this day in December – An English pope

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Adrian IV depicted in the Chronicle of Casauria, second half of the 12th century

On 4th December 1154, Nicholas Breakspear was elected pope. he took the name Adrian IV. He died in 1159 but for five year’s there was an English pope. He is the only English pope to have ever been elected. Apparently he chose the name Adrian because he wished to honour Adrian I who supported St Alban’s Abbey, which was near the place of his birth.

It was Adrian IV who granted Henry II the papal bull known as the Laudabiliter which granted the king permission to invade Ireland to reform the Church there.

On this Day in December

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Let’s start the season with three, or so, kings!

Rather inconveniently I managed to bypass 1st December, and the death of King Henry I on 1 December 1135 – he’s the one who ate too many lampreys. He’d attempted to ensure his only legitimate child, Empress Matilda, would inherit his throne but in the event Matilda’s cousin Stephen nipped across the Channel, secured the treasury and claimed the throne, resulting in the so-called Anarchy.

On 2nd December 1804 there was another coronation. Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France. Pope Pius VII was apparently there to do the job but Napoleon preferred to do the job himself and make a statement about his relationship with the papacy. Most of the medieval crown jewels had been destroyed during the French Revolution including the Charlemagne’s coronation crown which was traditionally used. The monarchy had had several to choose from but they were all gone apart from the crown of Louis XV who ruled from 1643 to 1715. Napoleon had to have a crown made specially for the occasion. Napoleon called his new crown after the original and modelled it on a medieval style. The following year, Napoleon won the Battle of Austerlitz.

In 1546, Henry VIII, who was becoming old and increasingly paranoid about the future security of the Tudor throne, had Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey arrested and sent to the Tower. He had mentored Henry’s son, Henry FitzRoy, but was not a reformer or terribly keen on the new men who were promoted at court – in short he was something of a conservative as was his father the Duke of Norfolk. When Surrey quartered his own arms with those of Edward the Confessor it seemed to the king that Surrey intended to make a claim to the throne through his descent from King Edward I – and that, as they say, was that…Surrey was executed on 27 January 1547. The only reason that his father survived the whole experience was that Henry VIII died in the early hours of 28 January, saving the duke from the block.

Whigs and Tories – getting to grips with a market town in the 18th century

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By Unknown, style of Sir Godfrey Kneller – http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/displayRepro.cfm?reproID=BHC2648, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12055365

The two terms evolved towards the end of Charles II’s reign. The Cavalier Parliament which was dissolved in 1679 contained a loose grouping of MPs known as the Country party who were opposed to the king’s influence over parliament and the court’s attempt to secure the decisions it wanted through bribery and patronage. They weren’t very happy about religious policy either – in particular the way in which the Church persecuted Non-Conformists. Oh yes, and they didn’t want the Duke of York, who was known to be Catholic, to inherit his brother’s throne. In time this group became known as the Whigs – a somewhat derogatory term from the Gaelic meaning a horse thief.

The Tories, by contrast, believed that James should inherit the throne by right of his birth. They believed that the only way for society to be stable was to follow an order based on inheritance and birth. It should be added that they weren’t overjoyed that the Duke of York was Catholic. To start off with the Tories were more inclined to accept the concept of divine right – based on the premise of birthright.

However, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 both parties accepted the concept of a constitutional monarch with limited rights but the Tories still weren’t happy about religious toleration – they became aligned with the idea of Anglicanism. In the eighteenth century the Tories became associated with the Jacobite cause – which didn’t ultimately do them any favours at all.

It should also be added that even by the reign of George III there were two parties as such, there were connected groups linked by family, social class, and sympathy. They could perhaps be better described as factions. As the Eighteenth Century progressed, the Tories grew to be associated with the landowning classes while the Whigs tended to represent religious dissent, industrialists and those who sought electoral reform. However, it was increasingly apparent that the monarch could not rule without the support of a Whig or Tory leader who could raise sufficient votes from within their faction to pass laws or approve taxation. In time this leader would be known as the prime minister.

The French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century muddied the waters still further until the term Conservative, to which the term Tory still applies, and Liberal became the norm. The word ‘Whig’ ceased to have current political meaning. But that is an entirely different journey to the one I am making at the moment!

I’m still wandering around Colchester – which was a borough. The mayor was the returning officer who also controlled the creation of free burgesses or ‘freemen’, who had the right to vote…From the Glorious Revolution of 1688 up until 1728 there were Whig mayors and this meant that the members of parliament returned by the borough were also Whigs. The most important of Colchester’s political figures was Sir Isaac Rebow who served as the town’s mayor and MP. It was he, in pursuit of continued office, who began the practice of effectively selling free burgess status to political supporters from outside the town.

Inevitably things got nasty. There were court cases and contested elections which did nothing for Colchester’s finances at a time when its cloth trade was in decline. In 1712 the Whigs had to mortgage Kingswood Heath, or the Severalls Estate as it was called by then, to meet their costs. And it just so happened that the man who took out the 99 year lease on behalf of his daughter was none other than Daniel Defoe. For those of you who recall these things Moll Flanders had an eventful childhood until the age of 7 before being taken in by the Mayor of Colchester who raises her as though she was part of his family. Not that the writings of Defoe were any help to the mayor and corporation who continued to struggle with the borough’s finances.

From 1728 until 1740 the mayor was a Tory sympathiser. Colchester’s trade was still in decline and the Exercise Bill was not popular – five tories were elected by the disgruntled freemen as aldermen. Four of them starting with John Blatch in 1728, would become Colchester’s mayor. In order to ensure that in future Tories would represent the borough in parliament the mayor created new freemen in 1728 and more again the following year. In 1735 there was a by-election and a Tory was returned to Parliament.

The year I’m really interested in is 1741. Meet Jeremiah Daniel – Gent. He was the Whig mayor of Colchester and thus the borough’s returning officer. His appointment as mayor was not without its difficulties. In March 1741, an assembly was called to elect a mayor. Two of the town’s aldermen were dead, four were subject to legal proceedings, and one stayed away (and quite frankly who could blame him). The remaining five aldermen, all Whigs, refused to accept nominations of two Tories and chose Jeremiah Daniel as mayor.

The result was that one of the Tory candidates took Jeremiah Daniel to court along with Colchester’s aldermen. He argued that they had ‘been chosen into their respective offices in a manner not exactly consonant to the directions in the … charters’. This prevented the confirmation of Daniel to his office .  The result was that the court dissolved the corporation saying that none of them were properly elected. This meant that the town’s charter of 1693 ceased to function -there was no mayor and no town council until 1763 when Colchester regained its charter.

And just in case – the 1693 charter provided for 12 aldermen, 18 assistants, and 18 common councilmen, who together formed the assembly. One of the aldermen was nominated mayor. So far so good. The mayor was elected annually by the aldermen from two of their number, who had been nominated by the freemen of the borough.

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1715-1754/constituencies/colchester

Phillips, Andrew. Colchester a History.