Petitionary Negotiation in a Community in Conflict: King’s Lynn and West Norfolk c.1575 to 1662 Peter Smith Submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History University of East Anglia School of History 2012 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived therefrom must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. 2 Abstract This study examines petitions which originated in Norfolk during the first half of the seventeenth century. It asks three questions: How and by whom were petitions used? What do those petitions reveal about power relations and social values? What was the impact of the civil war and the interregnum on petitionary negotiations? Detailed research focuses on Norfolk in general and King’s Lynn in particular. Petitioners sought places and advancement, as well as redress for ills and injustices. Petitions were indicators of where authority and responsibility were perceived to lie, but also of the status of the petitioners and their right to be heard. Petitions also helped to reflect and generate socio-political expectations and values. The persistence of petitioning, even in times of greatest conflict, indicates the high value placed on this form of interactive negotiation. The background to individual petitions is shown by a review of the political environments of petitioning and the process of petitioning examined for the period c.1600-1640. The study identifies a network of Norfolk arbitrators to whom the crown and petitioners turned for assistance. Petitions to Norfolk Quarter Sessions from 1629 to 1660 provide evidence of social values and accountability, while a study compares the varied impact of the civil wars on petitioners to Quarter Sessions in Norfolk, Warwickshire and Essex. Two printed petitions are put into a local context. The first, called here the Merchants’ Manifesto, was published on behalf of the Borough of King’s Lynn in 1642 and reflects the concerns of the borough over the previous ten years. This is followed by an exploration of the town’s continued use of petitioning in its negotiations with Parliament in the years to 1662. West Norfolk women who signed a national anti-tithe petition, published in 1659, are identified and the impact of the petition on the Norfolk political community is discussed. A further case study looks at the complex issues underlying a comparatively straightforward petition against marshland enclosure. 3 Acknowledgements I acknowledge with gratitude the helpful advice, practical assistance and encouragement given me by so many people during the time I have been researching and writing this thesis. My especial thanks go to my supervisor Dr. Victor Morgan, his predecessor, Dr. Mark Knights, and my second supervisor, Dr. Paul Warde. Thanks too to Drs. Michael and Diane Honeybone; to Rosa Ramos, Elvie Hurd, Nancy Ives, the late Diana Mansell, and the staff of Norfolk Record Office. I could not have undertaken any of this work without the support and encouragement of my wife, Gill Smith, and I dedicate the result to the memory of my brother, the historian John Holland-Smith, 1932-1975. Peter Smith, 2012 4 Abbreviations # Item. Blomefield Francis Blomefield, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk. CAM M.A.E. Green, Calendar of the Committee for the Advance of Money, 1642-1656 (London, 1888, 1967). Coventry Docquets Jan Broadway, Richard Cust & Stephen K. Roberts (eds.), A Calendar of the Docquets of Lord Keeper Coventry, 1625-1640 (Kew, 2004). CCC M.A.E. Green (ed.), Calendar of the Committee for Compounding, 1643-1660 (London, 1892, 1967). CJ Journal of the House of Commons, on-line edition accessed through URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk. CSPD [plus year] Calendar of State Papers Domestic Series of the Reign of Charles I: Preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty’s Public Record Office (London, 1858-93); Calendar of State Papers: Domestic Series [during the Commonwealth] (London, 1875-86); Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles II: Preserved in Her Majesty’s Public Record Office (London, 1860-1972). Digest Registers Quaker Digest Registers: Births, Marriages and Burials, England and Wales, 1650-1837: Norfolk, Reel 6, Friends House Library. Hall Books King’s Lynn Hall Books, NRO KL/C7/8-11, King’s Lynn Hall Books 6-9. HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission. LJ Journal of the House of Lords, on-line edition accessed through URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk. NRO QS Norfolk Record Office, Norfolk Quarter Sessions rolls. 5 ODNB on-line Oxford Dictionary of National Biography accessed on-line at www.oxforddnb.com SP The National Archives, State Papers. TNA The National Archives. 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 3 Abbreviations 4 Chapter One: Introduction 10 1.1: Three Questions 10 1.2: Definitions, Principles and Historiography 13 1.3: Defining King’s Lynn and its Country 17 Chapter Two: Ubiquity 23 2.1: Petitioning Environments 23 2.2: Bureaucratic Residues: Evidence for Ubiquity. 38 Chapter Three: Power Relations and Social Values 58 3.1: A Norfolk Network of Arbitrators: Bacon and the Circularity of Benefit 58 3.2: Norfolk Quarter Sessions: Challenging Decisions, Setting Values 87 Chapter Four: Petitions and the Impact of War 131 4.1: War, Continuity and Change 131 4.2: A Merchants’ Manifesto 141 4.3: Siege and Aftermath 174 4.4: Justice and Grace and the Court of Parliament 191 4.5: War’s Impact on Quarter Sessions: An Inter-county Comparison 207 7 Chapter Five: Case Studies 211 5.1: Polyphony and Petitioning: the Case of the Fishermen of Burnham Marshes 211 5.2:. Handmaids of the Lord in King’s Lynn and West Norfolk 225 Chapter Six: Conclusion, Towards an Understanding of Petitioning 243 References and Bibliography 260 Primary Sources 260 Secondary Publications 273 Appendices Appendix 1.1 King’s Lynn and its ‘Country’ 302 Appendix 1.2 Parishes in the Study Area 303 Appendix 1.3 Early Modern King’s Lynn and The Wash 304 Appendix 1.4 Restoration King’s Lynn 305 Appendix 2.1 Petitions, 1629-1662 306 Appendix 2.2 Petitions to King James I 313 Appendix 2.3 Petitions in the Papers of Sir Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey 316 Appendix 3 Petition of the Fishermen of Burnham 319 Appendix 4 Petitions to Quarter Sessions 332 Appendix 5 A Network of Norfolk Arbitrators 348 8 List of Figures Figure 2.1: Debt, Land and Family in Norfolk Petitions 45 Figure 3.1: Arbitrators as JPs 61 Figure 3.2: Arbitrators with Additional Status 62 Figure 3.3: Petitions Handled by Bacon by Year 65 Figure 3.4: Petitions Referred to Bacon 66 Figure 6.1: Frequency of Petitioning 252 9 Petitionary Negotiation in a Community in Conflict: King’s Lynn and West Norfolk “Much of what in the past has been treated as discrete phenomena, such as parliamentary petitioning, was simply part of a continuum and arose from a long- standing background of experience”.1 1 Victor Morgan, “Introduction” in The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey IV 1596-1602, Victor Morgan, Jane Key & Barry Taylor (eds.), (Norfolk Record Society, 64, Norwich, 2000), p.xlii. 10 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1: Three Questions Mid-seventeenth century English communities were constructed and maintained by negotiation. The negotiations were carried out by many different means in many different forums, from the informality of the alehouse to the complexities of the royal court. Channels included conversation, letters, pleas and addresses and, increasingly, news sheets and pamphlets. Among these processes, petitions made a distinctive legal and quasi-legal contribution. Petitions were ubiquitous, used by or on behalf of most sections of the community. Described once as “the small change of government”,2 petitions were valued and turned to in times of difficulty and ambition alike. Petitions declared seriousness of intent. Whether printed and published or handwritten and narrowly circulated, petitions were more likely to be placed on record; they wrote negotiations into the public transcript, and they declared the status, equally, of petitioned and petitioner. In this thesis I ask three main questions: How and by whom were petitions used? What do those petitions reveal of power relations and social values? How did the civil war and interregnum impact on petitionary negotiations? I will explore the use of petitions in three main areas of interaction: between individuals and national institutions; between individuals and the county level of government as represented by the Quarter Sessions; and between the chartered Corporation of King’s Lynn and the national government. The chronological focus will be weighted towards the years of Charles’s personal rule, the civil war, the interregnum years of search for constitutional stability and the immediate years of the Restoration. This focus will be balanced by a study of an earlier period during which the processes and patterning of petitioning illustrate aspects of political negotiation otherwise absent from this account. This will also provide evidence of the familiarity with petitioning as a normal part of political and social life well before the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century. The 2 R.W. Hoyle, “Petitioning as Popular Politics in Early Sixteenth Century England”, Historical Research 75 (2002), p.389. 11 geographical focus will be on Norfolk and in particular on King’s Lynn and West Norfolk; an area that embraces both a mercantile town and agricultural countryside, and which during the civil war period was, according to Gordon Blackwood, at best politically ambivalent.3 This close geographical focus will enable examination of how the petitioning process worked in detail and was embedded in the particularities of time and place.