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Fen Drainage, the Central Government, and Local Interest: Carleton and the Gentlemen of South Holland*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Mark E. Kennedy
Mark E. Kennedy
Affiliation:
University of Missouri-Columbia
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Extract

In 1591 Julius Caesar, then judge of the High Court of Admiralty, initiated ‘ an important experiment…in the Admiralty court's continuing quest for greater respect and authority’. Despite high expectations on the part of Caesar, however, the experiment, a circuit of the west and southwest of England undertaken ‘in hopes of forcing the local authorities in those regions to submit to the supremacy’ of the Admiralty, was abortive. Caesar, beset by corrupt local officials and profiteering inhabitants, abandoned his circuit when only half completed and after obtaining results far less than he had anticipated. Caesar's failure, according to Lamar Hill, the historian of the ill-fated experiment, was not merely that of one Westminster bureaucrat unable to impose his authority in the provinces.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 15 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Hill, L. M., ‘The Admiralty Circuit of 1591: some comments on the relations between central government and local interests’, Historical Journal, xiv, 1 (1971), 3–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, quotations at pp. 3, 14. In a later article Hill has strengthened his conclusion that the failure of the circuit was due to ‘the strength of the local communities and their ability to preserve their own interests’ (Hill, Lamar M., ‘Continuity and discontinuity: Professor Neale and the two worlds of Elizabethan government’, Albion, ix, 4 [1977], 351).Google Scholar

2 Hill, ‘Continuity and discontinuity’, pp. 343–58, quotations at pp. 347, 355, 351, 350, 353.

3 See Hill, ‘Continuity and discontinuity’, pp. 347, 353–4.

4 SeeSmith, A. Hassell, County and court: government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974). PP. 157–342.Google Scholar

5 Public Record Office El 12/23/25; British Library Lansdowne 41/52; Acts of the Privy Council, 1580–1581, pp. 68–9. The spelling, capitalization, and punctuation of all quotations has been modernized.

6 P.R.O. SP12/219/73 (primed in Darby, H. C., The draining of the fens [Cambridge, 1956], pp. 16–17 note); B. L. Lansdowne 41/52.Google Scholar

7 B.L. Lansdowne 41/49; The records of the commissioners of servers in the parts of Holland, 1547–1603 (Lincoln Record Society, LXIII [1968]), edited by Owen, A. E. B., 131–59Google Scholar; The records of the commissioners of sewers in the parts of Holland,1547–1603 (Lincoln Record Society, LXXI [1977]), edited by Owen, A. E. B., 69–72.Google Scholar

8 P.R.O. E112/23/25; A.P.C., 1581–1582, p. 353.

9 The statute of sewers, 23 Henry viii, c. (printed in The records of the commissioners of sewers in the parts of Holland, 1547–1603 [Lincoln Record Society, LIV (1959)], edited by Kirkus, A. Mary, 8).Google Scholar

10 No copy of the commission has been found. The commissioners who executed it are named in P.R.O. E112/23/25 and P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24.

11 See above, p. 17.

12 See Records, LIV, pp. 1, liv-lv, lxxi-lxxii, lxxviii-lxxix, lxxx.

13 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; P.R.O. E112/23/25; B.L. Lansdowne 41/50; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24; B.L. Lansdowne 51/87.

14 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24: P.R.O. E112/23/25.

15 P.R.O. E112/23/25; B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24.

16 Records, LXXI, 72–3.

17 B.L. Lansdowne 41/50.

18 B.L. Lansdowne 41/51; P.R.O. E112/23/25.

19 B.L. Lansdowne 41/50; B.L. Lansdowne 41/49; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24; B.L. Lansdowne 41/46. See also Records, LXXI, 107–8.

20 Records, LXXI, 37–45.

21 B.L. Larsdowne 41/52; Records, LXXI, 73–5.

22 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; Records, LXXI, 73–5. According to Carleton, it was these two provisions of the law of October 1582 which were added to the law of April 1584 (B.L. Lansdowne 41/50).

23 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52. Carleton and his supporters also joined with the gentlemen of South Holland in establishing the gauge, a fact which Carleton later tried to gloss over (Records, LXXI, 74: B.L. Lansdowne 41/52).

24 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; Records, LXXI, 52, 54.

25 Carleton appears to have believed that the authority of the commission was necessary to cut his new drain. See B.L. Lansdowne 41/52.

26 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52.

27 Carleton stated that he had obtained the lease upon a special suit (P.R.O. E112/23/25), possibly to the lord treasurer. According to the statute of sewers, the lord treasurer was one of the officials who nominated the commission of sewers {Records, LIV, 10).

28 See Thirsk, Joan, Economic policy and projects (Oxford, 1978), p. 33.Google Scholar

29 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1547–1580, p. 19; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, 1553–1554, pp. 36–7; Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, 1554–1555, pp. 109–10; B.L. Lansdowne 87/4.

30 B.L. Lansdowne 41/50. For the proposals, see B.L. Lansdowne 41, fos. 179V-180. For the commissioners’ response to Carleton, see B.L. Lansdowne 41/46; see also B.L. Lansdowne 41/49.

31 B.L. Lansdowne 41/51.

32 B.L. Lansdowne 41/49.

33 W. J. Shiels, The puritans in the diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610 (Northamptonshire Record; Society, xxx [1979]), 105–6; A.P.C., 1580–1581, pp. 157–8; CSPD, 1547–1580, p. 681; Collinson, Patrick, The Elizabethan puritan movement (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 142–5, 325Google Scholar; Neale, J. E., The Elizabethan house of commons (London, 1949), pp. 197–8; CSPD, 1581–1590, p. 494.Google Scholar

34 Records, LIV, pp. lxvi-lxvii; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24; B.L. Lansdowne 41/47.

35 See Northamptonshire Record Office Exeter (Burghley) Papers 75/31. In 1601 Irby chaired; the committee of the house of commons to which the fen drainage bill sponsored by Burghley1! heir, Sir Thomas Cecil, was committed (Sir Simonds D'Ewes, The journals of all the parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth [London, 1682], p. 677).Google Scholar

36 B.L. Lansdowne 41/47; Records, LIV, pp. lxiii-lxiv. Stamford was virtually the private fief of the Cecils (Clive Holmes, Seventeenth-century Lincolnshire [Lincoln, 1980], pp. 35–6).

37 B.L. Lansdowne 41/52; B.L. Lansdowne 41/51; B.L. Lansdowne 41/49; Records, LIV, pp. 1, liv-lv, lv, lxxii, lxxvii, lxxix; B.L. Lansdowne 41/50.

38 See B.L. Lansdowne 41/49.

39 Records, LIV, p. lxvii.

40 Somerville, Robert, History of the Duchy of Lancaster (London, 1953), pp. 580, 583Google Scholar; Smith, Alan G. R., ‘The secretariats of the Cecils, circa 1580–1612’, English Historical Review, LXXXIII (1968), 485Google Scholar; Barnett, Richard C., Place, profit, and power: a study of the servants of William Cecil, Elizabethan statesman (Chapel Hill, 1969), pp. 127–32, 108–9; CSPD, 1547–1580, pp. 19, 42, 46; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Salisbury manuscripts, x, 82, xi, 438–9, xvi, 353, xix, 104. See also Records, Liv, pp. lxxi-lxxiii, lxxvii.Google Scholar

41 B.L. Lansdowne 41/47.

42 B.L. Lansdowne 44/57; Lincolnshire Archives Office Spalding Sewers 461/7/81–8; P.R.O. El 12/23/25; B.L. Lansdowne 46/56; Records, LXXI, 104–5.

43 P.R.O. SP12/187/79; A.P.C., 1586–1587, pp. 41–2. The petition of Rowland Holford (Pulvertoft's servant) states that the assault took place in July last twelve month, or, as the petition was presented sometime during the winter of 1586, July 1584. However, there is no record of any conciliar letters or instructions between February 1584 and June 1585. The wording of the petition must be mistaken and the assault presumably took place in July 1585. For Pulvertoft's support of Carleton, see Darby, Draining of the fens, p. 17 note and P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24.

44 B.L. Lansdowne 46/56.

45 P.R.O. E112/23/25. Apparently the gentlemen of South Holland issued five warrants, the warrant of January 1586 being the fifth. At least two were countermanded by Burghley (B.L. Lansdowne 46/56; P.R.O. £123/12, fo. 78v). The fourth, which Carleton claimed was a warrant to distrain and sell his cattle, was countermanded by other commissioners. It was by virtue of the fifth warrant that the dykereeves distrained the goods of Carleton's tenants (B.L. Lansdowne 51/87). This last warrant, How ever, may have been granted with Carleton's complicity. Although Carleton claimed that Anthony Irby not only did not consent to the granting of the warrant, but also warned the dykereeves that it was illegal, the dykereeves specifically named Irby as one of the commissioners who signed the warrant (P.R.O. E112/23/25; B.L. Lansdowne 46/56; B.L. Lansdowne 51/87). Carleton apparently decided that his best means of overturning the proceedings of his opponents was to permit the dykereeves to distrain his goods and then to test the legality of the warrant before Burghley in the court of Exchequer.

46 P.R.O. E112/23/25; B.L. Lansdowne 51/88; P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich 24. See also B.L. Lansdowne 51/87.

47 B.L. Lansdowne 41/51.

48 Records, LXXI, 75–7.

49 P.R.O. E112/23/25.

50 According to the statute of sewers, only those laws which were returned by the commissioners into the Chancery and received the royal assent became permanent and irrevocable. Otherwise laws were to be valid only during the life of the commission [Records, LIV, 10). An act of parliament of 1571 (13 Elizabeth I, c. 9 ) extended the life of laws made by virtue of commissions determined by supe sedeas, but the laws were to be valid only if not repealed (Statutes of the realm, vol. iv, part 1, 543). Neither act, with the one above exception, restricted the right of commissioners to repeal either their own or former laws of sewers.

51 P.R.O. E123/13, fo. 36V; B.L. Lansdowne 51/87; P.R.O. E123/13, fo. 48V.

52 P.R.O. DL17/13.

53 B.L. Lansdowne 41/47. According to Conyers Read, Sussex was also Burghley's ‘old friend [and] one of his staunchest supporters in his long running fight with Leicester’ (Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth [New York, 1960], p. 181).Google Scholar

54 Barnett, Place, profit, and power, pp. 50–5. Cope's impartiality may have been compromised by the fact that he was Carleton's stepson (Collinson, Elizabethan puritan movement, p. 143) and possibly related to one of Carleton's tenants (P.R.O. E 112/23/25).

55 Records, LXXI, 80–4. See above, p. 19.

56 Records, LXXI, 80, 84.

57 Records, LXXI, 104–5. There is no direct evidence that the gentlemen of South Holland suggested the survey. However, Burghley implied in his letter to the commissioners that he was recommending an idea that was not his own. The commissioners supporting Carleton were so wary of the survey (see below, p. 31) it could not have been proposed by them. That leaves only the gentlemen as a likely source of the suggestion.

58 B.L. Lansdowne 57/9; Records, LXXI, p. 105.

59 John Gamlyn, of Fulney Marsh in Spalding, had been present at Whaplode on 30 May, but had not signed the law. Matthew Gamlyn was John's son (Records, LIV, pp. lx-lxi; Records, LXXI, 80, 84).

60 Records, LXXI, 84–6.

61 Records, LXXI, 86–8.

62 P.R.O. SP12/213/28. See also B.L. Lansdowne 57/10.

63 Records, LXXI, 105, 107–8. For a draft of the letter corrected by Burghley, see B.L. Lansdowne 57/11–12.

64 B.L. Lansdowne 57/9; Records, LXXI, 108.

65 A.P.C., 1588–1589, pp. 112–3. For Burghley's responsibility for the new commission, see B.L. Lansdowne 63/15. Burghley intended that the new commission would not only settle the dispute in South Holland, but would also act to reverse the general deterioration of the Lincolnshire and East Anglian fens. For the commission, see P.R.O. DL17/82.

66 Norfolk and Norwich Record Office, Bradfer-Lawrence Xb, fos. 3–3v.

67 Records, LXXI, 115–6; L.A.O. Spalding Sewers 485/25.

68 L.A.O. Spalding Sewers 485/25.

69 L.A.O. Spalding Sewers 485/25.

70 Except for the fact that a new drain was utilized, this was essentially Carleton's original plan of 1580.

71 The economic arguments against Carleton's project were made during the proceedings in the Exchequer (see P.R.O. E134/28 & 29 Eliz/Mich. 24).

72 For the importance of a local representative on the privy council, see Derek Hirst, ‘The privy council and problems of enforcement in the 1620s’, Journal of British Studies, xviii (1978), 58–9.Google Scholar

73 See Hassell Smith, County and court, pp. 157–342 passim.