Political division in St. Albans stemmed chiefly from two events at the end of Charles ii’s reign: first, the acquisition in 1684 by John Churchill†, later Duke of Marlborough, of the Sandridge estate, which included the manor of Holywell on the town’s outskirts; and second, the surrender the same year of the borough’s charter, induced by Churchill. Both developments threatened the interest of Sir Samuel Grimston, 3rd Bt., who owned the nearby Gorhambury estate and had been elected by the town in 1679 and 1681. Grimston was ousted in 1685 by Churchill’s nominees, including his brother George, who was to represent the borough for the next 20 years. The Churchills’ grip was tightened by an alliance with John Selioke, the mayor responsible for the surrender of the charter and the subsequent creation of over 50 non-resident freemen ‘to outvote all that were before made free’. The result of the 1684–5 revolution in local government was to foment a rivalry between the Churchill and Grimston interests, and to encourage the dominance of a group of aldermen centring upon Selioke. The mayor’s faction included the important local family of Gape and the clique’s power was boosted by the support of local gentry intruded into the borough as honorary freemen, including Henry Guy*, Sir Robert Marsham, 4th Bt.*, Thomas Halsey* and Sir Francis Leigh*. As the admission of such High Churchmen might suggest, a religious conflict also exacerbated friction between the inhabitants and the corporation. According to one source, 13 of the new honorary freemen admitted by Selioke were clergymen and the new charter had ensured a distinctly High Church aldermanic bench; yet the town contained a sizable Dissenting population. The Evans list estimated that there were 400 Presbyterians and 200 Baptists, 129 of whom were borough voters, compared to a ‘High Church’ vote of 226, and 158 ‘Low Churchmen’. Moreover, the Dissenters were given a strong political lead by Joshua Lomax, one of the original trustees of the Dagnal Lane meeting house and the successor in 1685 to an estate at Childwick Bury, which like both Gorhambury and Sandridge lay only two miles outside the borough.6

Although the 1664 charter was restored at the Revolution, and the aldermen nominated in 1685 ‘vanished’, the 1690 election brought to a head many of the jealousies aroused in the 1680s. Churchill, Grimston and Lomax contested the seat, and a pollbook shows that the contest was very much a three-cornered one. The most popular combination, attracting 228 votes, was Churchill and Grimston, a pairing supported by Selioke and his allies John Gape† and Archdeacon Cole of St. Albans Abbey; yet 110 voters polled for Grimston and Lomax, and 96 for Churchill and Lomax. Almost a fifth of the voters therefore voted for a pairing of Churchill, a High Church Tory with ties to the Court, and Lomax, a ‘profess’d Dissenter’, Whig and man of merely local status. Moreover, 49 voters (a tenth of the whole) plumped for Lomax, presumably nearly all Nonconformists since their number included Jonathan Grew, the preacher at the Dagnal Lane chapel. Despite the contest, the turn-out was relatively poor: 492 voters, as compared to ‘not less than 600 voices at every election’ before 1685, though, if that claim is correct, the electorate throughout the period 1690–1715 never reached its Restoration level.7

The remainder of the decade was relatively calm, with Churchill and Grimston sharing the representation, though Sir Samuel was still forced to spend over £300 expenses in 1695 to maintain his interest, and there may have been boisterous scenes in 1698, since the corporation footed the bill for the repair of the vestry pavement ‘broke at the election’, as well as paying for four books ‘for taking the poll’. In terms of the internal politics of the borough, the 1690s also witnessed a period of unity, though the mayoral elections were contested in 1690 and 1693, and five honorary freedom admissions were made two months before the 1698 election. The one factor disturbing the borough’s harmony was the litigation between John Gape and Thomas Richards, the town clerk, over the collection of taxes, though this dispute must have been settled by 1705 when Richards gave evidence to the elections committee on Gape’s behalf.8

By the end of the 1690s, however, disagreements within the corporation were becoming more frequent. In January 1700 the aldermen were divided about pulling down the town’s clockhouse, and although the split was not yet politicized it was soon to become so. The choice of Selioke as mayor coincided in the autumn of 1700 with the death of Grimston, two factors which destroyed the delicate balance of interests in the borough, and provoked a clash between John Gape jnr. and Joshua Lomax, men who represented different political and religious extremes. Although Selioke spent 4s. ‘in the morning before the election upon the candidates about settling the poll’, the contest on 15 Jan. 1701 proved bitter. Selioke was forced to spend a further £5 obtaining counsel ‘to advise about the return of the burgesses, there being a dispute about the sum of £1 4s. 9d. paid and expended for a sessions dinner the 20th of January 1700–1’. Corruption was one of the themes of the controversy, for although Gape petitioned the House on 13 Feb. 1701 against Lomax’s return, each man claimed that the other had resorted to treating the electorate. According to one witness, 40s. of drink had been drawn ‘for Mr Thomas Lomax, the sitting Member’s brother, who was a candidate at the said election’, but that the supplier ‘did not know that Mr Thomas Lomax made an interest for his brother’, perhaps because the brothers had earlier disputed their father’s inheritance. Lomax countered that Gape’s nephew John Fothergill, a schoolteacher, had bribed potential voters with the promise of corporation charity money, and on 27 Feb. the House ordered the town’s charity books to be inspected. At the same time, the committee of elections called for the freemen books, since the franchise was also contested. Gape insisted that the vote lay in the freemen and householders paying scot and lot, but Lomax claimed that all householders were eligible. Finally, the election had witnessed a clash between Churchmen and Dissenters: Fothergill claimed that

the mob were so rude they were ready to pull off his gown; and threatened the mayor, pasting verses on his house that warned

If you return Lomax we’ll be still as a mouse,
if you return Gape then down comes your house.

Marlborough was present at the poll, but did not intervene in the squabble for the second seat, though it seems likely that his brother George was responsible for encouraging Admiral Henry Killigrew, who owned a manor near the town, to plan to take over the seat, should Gape be declared incapable of standing for re-election. On 6 Mar. Killigrew wrote that he was told by Gape’s friends that they would back his candidacy, and that he had ‘as much encouragement as can be’. He believed Gape’s interest was ‘the best’, but nevertheless found himself in

great amazement to find Mr Gape touched with bribery and Lomax to be free; ’tis certain where Gape was guilty one shilling, Lomax as I am told at least 15 . . . the committee reforming the elections is a great quiet and ease to the town and an encouragement to the magistracy of the town who were really oppressed by their insolencies . . . Mr Wittewrong [the recorder] is doing what he can, [but] he is an extraordinary person [and] may do more harm than good.

On 3 Mar. the elections committee resolved in favour of voiding Lomax’s election and a week later the Commons confirmed this decision, but although Gape was not seated he was also not disqualified from standing again, a decision which frustrated Killigrew’s ambitions. A second election was therefore held on 19 Mar., with Marlborough absenting himself from the town ‘until the election is over’. On 7 May Lord Godolphin (Sidney†) nevertheless sent Lady Marlborough the votes of the House of Commons relating to the election at Great Grimsby so ‘that the town of St. Albans may take warning against bribery’, and Gape may have taken the hint, for the petition which Lomax submitted against him on 8 Apr. referred only to the illegal qualification of a number of Gape’s voters, a charge backed by a petition from several freemen and householders paying scot and lot. The petition was never heard, and the franchise question was unresolved.9

Encouraged by the defeat of Lomax, Selioke took the opportunity to assert a more aggressive High Church policy. On 7 May 1701 it was ordered that two aldermen, the town bailiffs and two assistants should ‘constantly every Sunday in respective turns attend on the mayor to the church and home again’, or else face a fine; the same day an assistant was fined £10 for ‘obstinately condemning and despising the government of the corporation’ and refusing to serve, and an alderman was also penalized for having ‘uttered false and base reports and reflections on the mayor’ and his colleagues. On 2 July, 11 freemen were admitted and five officials were fined for failing to attend the mayor to church. Selioke’s victory was nevertheless short-lived, for he was replaced in September 1701 by Edward Seabrooke, who had previously held the post in 1687–8 and might therefore have been sympathetic to James ii’s appeal to the Dissenters. Although Churchill and Gape were returned in November 1701, ‘having a great majority over Joshua Lomax, Thomas Lomax and James Wittewrong’, Joshua Lomax again petitioned, on 13 Jan. 1702, and was supported by the inhabitant householders, who complained that ‘several foreigners’ had been permitted to poll ‘contrary to the custom of the said borough’. Conflict was also internalized within the corporation in January 1702 when one of the aldermen died, necessitating an election for his replacement. Seabrooke, supported by Aldermen George Cooke and John Tisdall (the latter probably being the ‘Mr Tinsdale’ who had given evidence on Lomax’s behalf to the elections committee in early 1701), opposed the choice of the majority of aldermen. Although a similar election occurred with no division the following month, the semblance of unity was shattered at a meeting of the corporation on 29 Apr. Although ‘after mature deliberation’ the mayoral court ‘resolved to make no freemen of the borough’ and the meeting was adjourned, Seabrooke and his allies, Tisdall, Cooke and a lawyer named John Leigh (who had plumped for Lomax in 1690 and was therefore probably a Dissenter) were said to have stayed behind to create ‘about three score’ freemen ‘in an arbitrary and illegal manner’. Evidence submitted to the committee of elections in 1705 put a different gloss on the story: 34 men desiring their freedom waited outside the courtroom’s closed doors, but when Seabrooke went to speak to his son, the other aldermen

cried ‘adjourn, adjourn’ and accordingly the serjeant attending adjourned the court without calling any of these 34 . . . [the reason] why they were not to be made free, was because they would not vote for Mr Gape.

Gape however claimed that

the meeting was carried on in a riotous manner by 150 or 200 people as well as such as had a right to their freedom as others; and for that reason, as well as for that Admiral Churchill had given his opinion that it was not convenient to make such a great number free just before an election, they were not then made free.

Although Selioke had himself manipulated freedom admissions in 1685, he, Gape and the other aldermen, accompanied by Churchill (whose favour with the new Queen was undoubtedly advantageous) immediately complained to the government and the matter was referred to the attorney-general. On 20 June 1702 the Queen authorized the prosecution of Seabrooke, Tisdall and Cooke, and Seabrooke paid Leigh over £30 in expenses to defend the three aldermen, a sum that presumably constituted part of the £44 which, it was claimed, the mayor had overcharged the corporation. The general election in July saw Churchill and Gape returned, with Thomas Lomax petitioning against Gape on 27 Oct. but without success. When Gape’s friend Henry Dobyns became mayor in September 1702, the aldermanic court registered a formal protest against his predecessor, ordered him to be sued, and arranged for a public reading of the borough’s ‘constitutions’, the set of bye-laws drafted in 1667. In retaliation Seabrooke refused to hand over the corporation plate, which had been in his custody during his year of office. In December 1702 the dominant aldermanic faction ordered him to surrender this on pain of fine, but Seabrooke held his ground. In July 1703 his son was hauled before the court and forced to acknowledge himself guilty of a breach of good behaviour for insulting the mayor, who had come to serve a mandamus on Seabrooke snr. for the corporation plate. In December of that year the corporation sent another delegation, but Seabrooke remained defiant, and on 29 Nov. 1704 the court voted to remove him as an alderman, although Tisdall, Cooke and Thomas Crosfield all objected; indeed in July 1705 Cooke was prosecuted for telling Gape’s brother-in-law William Marston in open court ‘that Mr Seabrooke was as much an alderman as he was mayor’. A vote of censure was also passed against Seabrooke, again opposed by Cooke, Tisdall, Crosfield and a new alderman, Charles Loft (the kinsman of an alderman dismissed in 1685), while another warrant was despatched demanding the return of the plate.10

While this local dispute rumbled on, preparations were being made for the next election. As early as August 1704 Killigrew was planning to attend the poll,

there being no avoiding it unless I give up that matter which I cannot with my credit do, having positively declared I will stand. I together with my friends are now making the best efforts we can and with good hopes believing there will be a new Parliament.

It was perhaps to counteract Killigrew’s influence that on 13 Sept. 1704 members of the Hertford corporation faction led by John Dimsdale, as well as their parliamentary champions, Charles Caesar* and Richard Goulston* (who had the previous year acted as a teller against the return of Killigrew’s brother-in-law, Thomas Jervoise*), were admitted as freemen by Gape’s allies. Gape’s support for the Tack in November 1704 lost him the backing of the Churchills: the contest in 1705 was thus not a clear division between Whig and Tory, but pitted non-Tackers Churchill and Killigrew against the Tacker Gape, who at one stage seemed likely to be joined by Alderman Henry Dobyns. Surprisingly, Lomax did not stand, perhaps because he saw advantage for himself in the Duchess of Marlborough’s intent to break Gape’s corporation interest. She wrote to influence one voter on behalf of Churchill and Killigrew, using her husband’s name and emphasizing his family’s adherence to ‘the true interest of the Church’. In fact she ‘lost what she contended for at St. Albans (to wit) the bringing in of two Members (it proving that she could bring in but one)’, and so offered an occasion for High Churchmen to exploit. As Marlborough lamented to his wife before the matter had even come before the House, ‘be assured if they can say anything that may vex you or me they will do it’. Killigrew petitioned on 2 Nov. 1705 against Gape and the case was the first to be heard in the new Parliament and therefore became a trial of strength for the new ministry. Lord Halifax (Charles Montagu*) duly assured the Duchess that he was ‘heartily vexed at the foul play’ she had met with and thought

that they who admit the freemen that were made by King James’ charter, and reject those made in the Queen’s reign, would carry that distinction farther if they durst . . . what makes it sit the lighter in my spirits is the reasonable prospect we have that they will pay dear for this ill-treatment.

Although Gape was indeed unseated, after a late-night vote of 198 to 126 at the committee of elections on 20 Nov., the report made to the committee four days later contained damaging evidence against both sides. Gape claimed that the corporation had the power to create freemen at its own discretion, and that they were fully qualified to vote; Killigrew therefore called Seabrooke and Crosfield to declare that no honorary freeman had been known before the introduction of the 1685 charter. A combination of the Whigs and Court Tories in the House upheld Killigrew’s case, with the effect, as Sir Thomas Cave, 3rd Bt.*, pointed out, of revoking ‘King James’ charter; otherwise to bring in Killigrew, tho’ the Duke of Marlborough procured the grant of this charter, was by it made Lord High [Steward] and his brother made a freeman of St. Albans’. As a result of the ruling against honorary freemen a line was drawn in the corporation’s minute book through 43 admissions in September 1705, which had been made by the dominant two thirds of the aldermen against opposition from Loft, Tisdall, Crosfield and Cooke; the creations had probably been in favour of Gape, to boost his vote should the election be declared void, since they included neighbouring Tory gentry such as Sir Samuel Garrard, 4th Bt.*, and Ralph Freman II*. Having lost the franchise question, Gape queried the qualification of the 34 freemen admitted by Seabrooke, most of whom appear to have voted for Killigrew, a fact suggesting that there had been an alliance of anti-Gape interests; but the most sensational accusations came when Gape defended himself against the charge of bribery and illegal practices used on his behalf by the mayor and the town clerk. Gape called a number of witnesses who exposed the Duchess of Marlborough’s heavy-handed pressure on voters. Electioneering on behalf of both admirals, she had used her relationship with Queen Anne to overawe voters, telling one man that ‘it was the Queen’s desire that no such men [as Gape] should be chose[n], for such men would unhinge the government, and the papists’ horses stood saddled day and night, whipping and spurring’. She had told another that she had ‘nothing to say against Mr Gape; but Tackers would be injurious to the government and were for the French interest, and upon that occasion she read over to him King Charles ii’s speech against tacking’. She had threatened a third that ‘his goods should be taken out of his shop and tor[n]’; spent 20 guineas on a fourth; and had argued ‘pro and con as to several points of state’ with another. The committee’s resolutions against honorary freemen and against Gape were accepted only after four divisions, and then because Robert Harley* made it a special concern to bring in the Court Tories, who otherwise supported Tackers in disputed elections, to vote with the Whigs. Sir William Simpson observed that the House was

so balanced that the Whigs cannot carry a vote but when the Court joins with ’em. Upon occasion of a petition about an election at St. Albans the party that endeavoured to charge some indirect practices upon my Lady Marl[borough] were ran down. Somebody said (among the witnesses) that Tackers were Jacobites, and a majority of the House J.J.etc. [sic], so that it was apparent it would have been carried if it had been put to the question.

The heated language which the debate produced also included a speech in which William Bromley II* likened the Duchess to Edward iii’s domineering mistress Alice Perrers, ‘and said many other virulent things against her; for indeed she was looked upon by the whole party as the person who had reconciled the Whigs to the Queen’. The Churchills had eventually forced their candidates into both seats, but in doing so had overreached themselves.11

With Seabrooke by now an old man barred from participation in borough affairs, the Whigs lacked a figurehead on the aldermanic bench; local politics therefore diverged from the national shift towards the Whigs. The mayoralty of George Cooke in 1706 prevented further Tory creations of freemen, but his term of office was evidently an unhappy one, for he followed Seabrooke’s precedent by refusing to return the corporation’s plate. Moreover, although in November 1707 the corporation issued a public order for ‘Mr Seabrooke’s pretended freemen to come and make out their just rights and claims’, and these were subsequently admitted, 26 more freedoms were made in March 1708, including Henry Dobyns’ son, presumably in preparation for the imminent election. The Gape faction also benefited from the damage done to the Churchill interest during the last election and its aftermath, and by the diversion of Marlborough’s patronage to the Blenheim estate after 1704. With the next election approaching in May 1708, the Duke thought the best thing was ‘to meddle as little as possible’ and advised his wife to ‘spend no money and oblige my brother to go down three or four days before the election’ although he sought to remove Gape from the commission of the peace, ‘for should they be so ungrateful as not to choose my brother it will vex me’. Although the Duchess informed her husband that George would not stand, a poll shows him to have been defeated by Lomax and Gape. Killigrew failed to contest the seat again, though he cast his vote, for he was later said to have been the only honorary freeman allowed to do so. Marlborough was furious that Gape had not been dismissed from the bench as he had requested, and blamed ‘the ignorance of Lord Essex’, the lord lieutenant who had canvassed on Killigrew’s behalf in the previous election. Having regained his seat, Lomax decided to revenge himself on Dobyns and two other aldermen by what the mayor called ‘a malicious prosecution’.12

In the summer of 1710 the borough produced a Tory address which abhorred the ‘schismatical, anti-monarchical and republican principles’ afoot, proclaimed the doctrine of passive obedience and promised to ‘curb and suppress all irreligious, immoral, seditious and rebellious tenets’. Oldmixon commented that ‘there were never so many falsehoods, so much sophistry in so few words’, and reminded his readers in 1711 that

a leading man at elections among these burghers, a blockhead with Greek and Latin [possibly a reference to Fothergill, the schoolmaster and Gape’s nephew] is as noted for atheistical principles and language as the vilest republican . . . full of grimace and rhetoric against the fanatics and Whigs, zealous for that Church to which he never goes, and that government for which he never had anything better than a leer.

The address reflected a further shift in the internal balance of the corporation. Three days before the election 12 more freemen were admitted, and Gape and William Grimston were returned unopposed; the mayor had polled the honorary freemen ‘in a by-book, to see if he should want them for Mr Gape; but there was a majority without them’. Grimston, the heir to Sir Samuel’s estate, had nevertheless found it necessary to bribe at least 24 voters, perhaps because he was unsure about the position of the Churchills: when he had approached the Duchess she had given him an evasive answer, stating that she could do nothing without the permission of her husband. Marlborough had persuaded her to give up thoughts of assisting Lomax, writing in August 1710 that

as things are now, I believe there will be no real opposition to the same Members that served them in the last Parliament. And really as violencies run, I would beg of you not to be at St. Albans neither before nor at the election, fearing you may meet with some insult which would be a mortification to me.

Marlborough conceded that the town was, at least for the time being, too hostile, and the Duchess decamped from St. Albans for the election; but although the Duke advised her to give up thoughts of assisting Lomax, she may have been unable to resist blocking Gape, since a newspaper reported that she had ‘given express commands to her servants and all her agents there’ to back Lomax’s candidacy ‘in opposition to Mr Gape’. Effectively, however, the Churchills had abandoned attempts to influence the borough until after the Hanoverian succession.13

The war of the Spanish succession produced boom years for St. Albans corporation: although rentals from the borough’s property had fallen into arrears by 1700, the revenue from the market tolls was rising as the town’s large wheat market became a centre for the malt trade. In 1709–10, with prices artificially buoyed by the war, the corporation received £326, over £250 of which came from toll revenues, the highest figure for the period 1685–1835. In purely economic terms the cessation of hostilities was thus not in the borough’s interest, and led to a sharp drop in wheat tolls. Politically, however, peace was promoted by the Tory-dominated corporation with great vigour. Throughout 1709–10 the borough spent lavishly on celebrating military victories and proclaiming the peace; it also sent up an address of thanks, which expressed the hope that the Queen’s care at home and abroad would ‘for ever extinguish the hopes of the disaffected, whose interest alone makes them delight in the war abroad and whose principles stir them up to faction and endless sedition at home’. This High Tory outburst was nevertheless tempered by confidence in the Protestant succession of the Hanoverians. Another congratulatory address, presented by Gape, in May 1713, abhorred those who ‘spurn a happiness which they possess in spite of themselves’, and repeated praise of the ‘illustrious house of Hanover’. Preparations for the next election were by then already advanced. In the two months after the 1710 election another 44 freemen were created, and a week before the 1713 poll a further 24 admissions were made, presumably designed to bolster Gape’s support, since their number included his son William. Gape was again challenged by Grimston, who bribed over 30 electors with notes for money marked ‘to be remitted when he gives me a vote’. Although Grimston had the tacit support of the Churchills – the Duke ordered his agent Charles Middleton to give Grimston his backing – such expense was necessary to ensure victory over Gape’s powerful corporation interest, and also because a new challenger threatened to buy himself a seat. The Whig William Hale, the owner of an estate at King’s Walden which lay south of the borough towards Watford, saw that the borough had become more open and more openly venal, and ‘said if his hat-crown full of guineas would not procure the election, he would fill it brim-full and try what that would do’. Hale’s candidacy may also have won approval from the Churchills, since his sister had been recommended by the Duchess as a maid of honour to Queen Anne. The election itself was close-run, and Gape was forced to poll honorary freemen, most of whom plumped for him, though their number was still not quite enough to ensure his return. The Tory Post Boy confidently predicted that Gape would be seated on petition, having ‘in so numerous [an] election lost it only by 14 votes’; and the paper reported the following month that ‘an information is made against a certain Whig alderman of the borough of St. Albans for speaking scandalous and reflecting words against the Queen, the present ministry and the last Parliament’. The campaign in favour of Gape and against the Whigs proved successful. Despite his own earlier abuses, Gape’s petition, presented to the House on 3 Mar. 1714, centred on Hale’s blatant corruption of 100 voters, though Hale tried to turn the accusation back on his accuser, suggesting that the appropriately named clergyman Mr Whip had marshalled Gape’s vote by means of the purse, and also by disputing the legality of Gape’s honorary freemen. However, on 7 Apr. 1714 the committee of elections decided by 11 votes in favour of Gape, a decision the House upheld on the 27th. Perhaps to celebrate their victory, which had renewed ambiguity over the position of the honorary freemen, the Tory majority on the corporation spent over £11 in May on a portrait of the Queen; yet within three months Anne was dead, and the new reign brought with it the end of Gape’s parliamentary career and another reversal for local Tory fortunes.14