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 POLITICAL HISTORY collectors endeavoured to distrain.*'' The lord-lieutenant of the county. Lord Herbert of Raglan, arrived on the scene, cashiered the town company, and committed the offenders to prison. ^'"' The defeat of the Exclusion Bill and the rout of the Whig party in 1 68 I was followed by an attack on the charters of the parliamentary towns with a view to rendering them more amenable to the influence of the crown. Hereford had received a charter of incorporation from Elizabeth in 1597 and a regrant from James I in 1620. This charter was resigned on 14 March, 1 68 1-2, and a new one received on 28 April. In this charter Charles II reserved to himself the confirmation of the appointment of chief steward, aldermen, and town clerk, thus encroaching upon the ancient privileges of the city.^"^ On 1 5 May the mayor and council of the city sent a strong address to the king in support of his opposition to the Whig party.""^ On 15 January, 1685, Charles II, in pursuance of this policy of con- trolling the House of Commons, also issued a new charter to Leominster reducing the burgesses from twenty-four to fifteen. His measures, however, proved insufficient for the purposes of James II, who in 1688 three times removed officers of the borough and appointed others likely to be more subservient.^"^ Shortly before his abdication, however, James II restored to these two places their ancient charters. At the time of the Revolution, although Sir Edward Harley raised a troop of horse to assist William of Orange,'"* and occupied Worcester with the assistance of his eldest son, Robert, afterwards the famous Tory leader and earl of Oxford, while his second son, Edward, met the prince at Salis- bury, yet Herefordshire as a whole again showed itself attached to the hereditary succession. In December, 1689, the earl of Shrewsbury was informed by Sir John Morgan, the governor of Chester, that there were a large number of malcontents in the county, a state of things which Morgan attributed to the spread of false reports.'"' In consequence Shrewsbury wrote on 26 December, 1689, to the mayor of Hereford instructing him to make an example of some of the seditious newsmongers and incendiaries,'"' and several were committed to prison.'"^ Somewhat later, in July, 1693, the mayor was commended for his zeal in detecting and securing such persons as disturbed the government.'"' Between 1689 and the Reform Bill of 1832 the majority of parlia- mentary representatives returned by Herefordshire and its boroughs was decidedly Tory. Even the great Robert Harley, when he began parlia- mentary life as a Whig, was obliged to seek a seat at Tregony and New Radnor, and was never throughout his career politically connected with the county, though he was buried at Brampton Bryan and took one of his titles, that of Baron Harley of Wigmore, from the shire. '^H. Muddiman to John Witty, 24 Nov. 1666, S.P. Dom. Chas. II, clxxix, 41 ; John Fitzherbert to Williamson, I Dec. 1666, ibid, clxxx, 5 ; John Allen to Williamson, 3 Dec. 1666, ibid, clxxx, 41. '""Fitzherbert to Williameon, 5 Dec. 1666, ibid, cbcxx, 88. '" Richard Johnson, Jnct. Customs ofHeref. (1882), p. 59. ™ Ibid. 216-18. '■'^Townsend, Hist. o/Leominsier, IS 1-4.. '"Ibid. 173. ""Shrewsbury to Morgan, 26 Dec. 1689, S.P. Dom. William and Mary, Home Office Letter Book (Secretaries), i, 219. ™«Ibid. i, 220. '"Shrewsbury to mayor, 30 Jan., I, 4 March, 1689-90; ibid, i, 249, 279, 2S3. ""Sir J. Trenchard to mayor, 26 July, 1693, ibid, iii, 125. I 401 51