City Government and Politics
The Restoration had a dramatic effect on the political landscape at Gloucester. The
government and royalist landowners moved decisively to bring to an end the city's
fiercely defended autonomy, its extensive jurisdiction over the inshire, and the
puritan ascendancy on the corporation. The Crown was motivated not just by a desire
for revenge against a community which had so thwarted royalist designs in 1643, but
by fears that Gloucester might serve as a focus for future risings by old, incorrigible
supporters of the parliamentary cause. In October 1660 there were reports that
Edmund Ludlow was at Gloucester and that an uprising was being planned. (fn. 1) The
city figured in further rumours of radical sedition and agitation in November 1661 and
in January 1664. (fn. 2) Francis Topp wrote from Gloucestershire in May 1662 that 'every
day there is preaching and rumour', which he hoped would be over soon after 'the
dismantling of our neighbour the city of Gloucester and others in the west that
withstood the late king'. (fn. 3)
Most of Gloucester's town walls were demolished in 1662 under the supervision of
Lord Herbert, the lord lieutenant. (fn. 4) In 1661 a bill was introduced into parliament
providing for the return of the inshire to the county. (fn. 5) The corporation spent over
£160 defending its powers, and twice petitioned the king, but the measure was
enacted in May 1662. (fn. 6) The same year the whole governing body of the city came
under attack. Since 1660 a number of former parliamentarians like Alderman Thomas
Pury and Edward Nourse had left Gloucester, mainly for the greater safety of the
capital. (fn. 7) In July 1662 Lord Herbert and a contingent of county landowners,
commissioners under the Corporations Act of 1661, visited the city and proceeded to
eject 22 members of the corporation; nine more were dismissed in October 1662 and
four more the following March. (fn. 8) The purge of three quarters of the ruling body
appeared all the more drastic because during the 1640s and 1650s few members of the
corporation had been deprived. Moreover 1662 and 1663 saw only the first wave of
removals; there was further replacement of personnel in 1672, 1683, and under James
II.
The Restoration saw a marked increase in the influence and involvement of county
landowners in city politics, matching their mounting importance in the urban
economy and society. The new power of the gentry in Gloucester's government
continued after the purges under the Corporations Act. A new charter granted in 1664
merely confirmed earlier royal grants to the city, apart from ratifying the loss of the
inshire and giving the king power to control the appointment of the recorder and town
clerk. (fn. 9) However, another charter which replaced it in 1672 appointed a clutch of
county landowners to the ruling élite, including Sir Duncombe Colchester of
Westbury-on-Severn, William Cooke of Highnam, Henry Norwood of Tuffley, and
William Selwyn of Matson. (fn. 10) Gentry became mayors in the years 1672–5, 1688, and
1690. (fn. 11) In 1686 leading members of the corporation went out to Badminton to hear a
royal message from the duke of Beaufort. (fn. 12) Again, whereas parliamentary elections
before and during the English Revolution had almost invariably returned Gloucester
men as the city's M.P.s, a high proportion of those chosen between 1660 and 1715
were gentry from the shire. (fn. 13) During election contests after the Revolution of 1688 the
city was riven by party feuding between Whigs and Tories, led by county landowners.
The growth of electoral conflict was only one aspect of the recurrent political
instability and factionalism which was evident in post-Restoration Gloucester. The
purges of 1662 and 1663 had drawn only some of the teeth of the old parliamentary
party, which retained a considerable following. In the late 1660s there was a
groundswell of hostility to the new political order, fuelled by the persecution of
dissenters. (fn. 14) In 1668 Nicholas Haines, a hosier, denounced parliament saying, 'one
half of them [were] feathermen and the other half of them were whoremasters and
drunkards… and that the times would turn and honest men would rule again'. (fn. 15) By
1670 the old parliamentarians and dissenters were again asserting themselves on the
corporation. That year, according to Sir William Morton, the recorder, the 'Presbyterian party' sought to prevent the election of the royalist Henry Fowler as mayor,
choosing instead William Bubb, a man who had reportedly promised that once 'in
power he will crush the royal interest' at Gloucester. (fn. 16) The king's order for the
corporation to elect Fowler was opposed by five dissenting aldermen, 'ringleaders of
the faction'. (fn. 17) Fowler's mayoralty was stormy. The dissenting aldermen blocked the
filling of vacancies on the bench with men of loyalist sympathies, and plotted to get
Bubb elected as the next mayor. (fn. 18) When Bubb was in fact chosen in 1671, the
conservatives complained of improper proceedings and the king overturned the
election and gave Fowler authority to continue in office. (fn. 19) In November 1671 the
Privy Council decreed that the city had forfeited its privileges and ordered the
surrender of the charter. (fn. 20) The new grant in April 1672 brought many changes. A
majority of the members of the old corporation was removed and a cadre of royalist
gentry appointed. County justices were given authority to act in the city and the
Crown reserved the power to deprive civic rulers at will and to approve future
officials. (fn. 21) With the city on the defensive the dean of Gloucester, Robert Vyner,
exploited the opportunity to reclaim the jurisdiction over the close which the dean and
chapter had yielded to the corporation in 1584; the bishop, dean, and two
prebendaries also became J.P.s for the city. (fn. 22)
The charter of 1672 imposed a royalist hegemony in Gloucester politics which
lasted until James II's reign. Apart from a minor political disturbance in 1679, (fn. 23) the
city remained loyal to the king throughout the Exclusion Crisis. In 1681 the ruling
body presented the king with an obsequiously loyal address and two years later when a
Whig prebendary, Edward Fowler, later bishop of Gloucester, preached against the
Popish Plot in the cathedral the magistrates protested and refused to attend his
services. (fn. 24) The Tory ascendancy on the corporation was underlined in 1683 when
three loyalists were elected at the insistence of the duke of Beaufort. (fn. 25) During the
Exclusion Crisis the city's over-zealous persecution of local dissenters caused concern
even to the government, (fn. 26) and between 1681 and 1685 there was a spate of
prosecutions of dissenters at the assizes and quarter sessions. (fn. 27) In 1685 the Whig Sir
John Guise was deprived of his rights as a freeman. (fn. 28)
Under James II, however, the Tory-dominated magistracy encountered growing
problems. In 1686 the king dispensed John Hill, a Catholic, from the oaths under the
Test Act on his election to the mayoralty. (fn. 29) The following year Anselm Fowler,
apparently also a Catholic, was enfranchised and appointed to the aldermanic bench
by royal directive. (fn. 30) The civic elections in the autumn of 1687 merely confirmed the
king's nomination of Hill for a second term as mayor. (fn. 31) During James's visit to the
city in August 1687 (fn. 32) he used a Catholic chapel that Hill had fitted up in the Tolsey, (fn. 33)
and in November 1687 13 of the leading Tories on the corporation were purged,
together with the recorder, by the king's order. (fn. 34) They were replaced with a motley
group of dissenters and Catholics led by the unpopular new recorder Charles
Trinder. (fn. 35) The remaining Tories appear to have seceded from council meetings. (fn. 36) In
March 1688 the corporation, not surprisingly, gave its support for the repeal of the
penal laws. (fn. 37) By the summer, however, there was growing unrest at the Jacobitism of
the city's leaders. (fn. 38) In October 1688 Anselm Fowler was elected mayor, (fn. 39) but within a
few weeks, after William of Orange's invasion, the political situation deteriorated. A
panic broke out over the report of an Irish attack; (fn. 40) the Tolsey chapel and Catholic
houses were assailed; (fn. 41) Fowler was forced to resign and was replaced by the Tory
landowner William Cooke; (fn. 42) and the Williamite Whig, Lord Lovelace, then in prison
in Gloucester, was released to command troops to quell the disorder. (fn. 43) Over the
following months the Jacobite sympathizers lost their seats in the council on one
pretext or another. (fn. 44) In 1690 Sir John Guise, who had been in exile with William III,
was chosen mayor. (fn. 45)
During the 1690s the city's governing body was fairly evenly divided between
Whigs and Tories, with the former coming to dominate the aldermanic bench. There
were fiercely fought contests in elections to civic office and also to parliament. In 1690
there was a complaint that one of the candidates for parliament, William Trye, a
Tory, had mobilized the support of poorer freemen and secured his own return,
although not enfranchised himself. (fn. 46) Conflict accelerated after the turn of the
century. Five contests occurred in the seven parliamentary elections between 1701
and 1715. (fn. 47) Hundreds of freemen were created in 1702, 1708, and afterwards to swing
the large freeman electorate (about 1,400 strong) behind one party or the other. (fn. 48) In
1703 the Whigs pushed through the election of Nicholas Lane as mayor despite the
vociferous opposition of the Tories, and the Tories absented themselves from other
civic elections. (fn. 49) With the Tory resurgence in national politics in the last part of
Anne's reign, however, the Whig aldermanic caucus was under pressure. (fn. 50) In 1710
the city, unlike numerous other Gloucestershire towns, aligned itself against the rabid
Tory Dr. Sacheverell, (fn. 51) but two years later Whig aldermen were being investigated
by the authorities for their alleged obstruction over the impressment of troops. (fn. 52) In
1712 the Whig bishop, Edward Fowler, exclaimed 'that popery and slavery are
coming in upon us, that we are undone'. (fn. 53) In 1715 the large Tory following in the
freeman body returned two likeminded M.P.s. (fn. 54) Party conflict continued into the
1730s. (fn. 55)
The upsurge of political instability in the post-Restoration city was partly a
reflection of growing national party conflict, especially after 1688. It was also linked
with local factors: the growing intervention of county gentry in city politics, the
continuing importance of dissent, and the survival of Civil War loyalties and
antagonisms. At the same time, party conflict should not be exaggerated in its impact
on city government. There was no breakdown of public order. Only briefly in 1672
and 1688 did political feuding spill over into social disorder or administrative
instability.
One buttress of governmental stability was the continuing dominance of civic
oligarchy. While major changes of personnel occurred in the years 1662–3, 1672, and
1687–9, only under James II is there any indication of a broadening of the
composition of the ruling élite and then on a minor scale. (fn. 56) All the major civic officers
were pre-elected by the aldermanic bench on nomination day, before the formal
elections. (fn. 57) Under the charter of 1672 the electoral college for civic posts was reduced
from 24 to 20, curbing the number of ordinary councillors and strengthening the
power of the aldermen. (fn. 58) The Friday court of aldermen at the Tolsey was by then an
established and important institution for dealing with much of the regular business of
city administration. (fn. 59) The aldermen as magistrates presided over quarter sessions,
which heard a great variety of cases concerning the poor, alehouses, trade, civic
improvement, nonconformity, and public order. (fn. 60) The old hundred court was
virtually defunct. (fn. 61) Deliberations of the common council were progressively given
over to more routine business, such as the awarding of town leases and the choice of
minor town officials. (fn. 62) In 1693 it was agreed that the mayor might only summon the
council with the consent of the aldermen. (fn. 63)
Administrative coherence was also aided by certain improvements in civic administration. Finance remained a serious problem at the Restoration, since the chamber
was heavily encumbered with large debts, some dating back to the Civil War and some
incurred more recently, including those for the defence of the inshire. (fn. 64) The
traditional system of four stewards, never a satisfactory one, disintegrated with
repeated refusals of councillors to serve, disputes among officials, and allegations of
fraudulent accounting. (fn. 65) The difficulties came to a climax in 1671 with the disputed
mayoral election. (fn. 66) The new charter of 1672 inaugurated a major reform of civic
finances: a single, salaried, quasi-permanent chamberlain was chosen to replace the
four stewards; (fn. 67) debts due the chamberlain were called in; (fn. 68) income was improved; (fn. 69)
in 1679 the city's lands in Ireland were finally sold for £1,300; (fn. 70) and charity funds
may have been diverted to pay off outstanding loans. (fn. 71) By the 1690s the city's finances
were increasingly in balance. (fn. 72)
The town clerk, already important before the Civil War, became a pivotal figure in
the administration. Two members of the Powell family, John and his brother
Thomas, occupied the post for virtually all of the last quarter of the 17th century and
provided invaluable continuity at a time of political flux. (fn. 73) In 1701 the town clerk's
offices at the Cross were extended, presumably because of the growth of business. (fn. 74)
With the decline of the traditional piepowder (sheriffs') and hundred courts,
Gloucester obtained in 1689 a statutory court of conscience to hear small debt cases,
particularly useful given the expansion of trade. (fn. 75) In addition, as noted above, a
corporation of the poor was established in 1703. Both new institutions had their
problems, however. (fn. 76) More vital for city government was the tightening up of
administrative procedures, as, for instance, over alehouse licensing. (fn. 77) Another
development was the growing power and effectiveness of parish vestries, select bodies
whose members were quite frequently recruited from the city's ruling élite. (fn. 78)
During the post-Restoration period Gloucester's civic leaders became steadily more
conscious of the need to promote urban improvement, not least to attract the
patronage of the county gentry. In 1694 the council sought to supplement the supply
of piped water from Robins Wood Hill by authorizing the erection of an engine below
Westgate bridge to pump river water into the city. (fn. 79) A fire-engine house was built
adjoining Trinity tower in 1702, (fn. 80) and the quay was enlarged in 1713. (fn. 81) By the early
18th century, following the London fashion, a variety of rather crude royal statues
gazed down on the streets to impress the gentry. (fn. 82) It was a time of positive advances
in urban government.