When “Comoners Were Made Slaves by the Magistrates”

I

In 1627, John Kettle, a man so “refractory to all gov[er]ment” and “so unworthy of a place of magistracy so rude and incivil as he [i]s not fitt for comon society” very nearly became sheriff of one of England’s largest and most powerful cities. ¹ Kettle, the son of Robert Kettle of Norwich, had started life modestly, ² but by 1609 he had bought his freedom as a basket maker, ³ and by the 1640s owned several properties in St. Peter Mancroft in Norwich, and the Norfolk villages of Mulbarton and Hingham. ⁴ Kettle may well have owed his social climb to the patronage and protection of Norfolk landowner and former Member of Parliament, Sir Charles Cornwallis. ⁵ After receiving a knighthood in 1603 and becoming an MP for Norfolk in 1604, Cornwallis became ambassador to the Spanish court in Madrid in 1605. Cornwallis owed his social rise to the patronage of Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk and Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton. Despite Cornwallis’s turbulent relationship with the Crown, ⁶ there is no doubt that Kettle would have benefited from his connection to one of the most powerful families in the country. Kettle might have passed through life in relative obscurity had it not been for one thing: his outspoken and frequently contemptuous attitude toward Norwich’s government. This article tells the story of John Kettle, and an incident in his life that provides a window into the social, religious, and political culture of early seventeenth-century Norwich.

II

Thanks to the work of historians such as Patrick Collinson, Michael Braddick, Mark Goldie, Richard Cust, and Tim Harris, it is well known the Britain’s seventeenth-century urban middling sorts fulfilled many roles in local government, ⁷ and had a sophisticated level of political awareness at a time where, as Peter Lake, Steve Pincus, Michael Questier, and others have argued, an identifiable public sphere was emerging. ⁸ As Phillip Withington points out, there were several different public spheres available—“a governmental public sphere,” a “legal public sphere,” and a “discursive public sphere” ⁹ —all of which offered avenues for the middling sorts to become part of an identifiable political culture. The rise of these “public spheres” was intrinsically connected to the increasing availability of cheap printed material, such as newsletters and “separates”—especially during the 1620s—in combination with a rise in literacy. ¹⁰ The urban middling sorts—the lawyers, tradesmen, retailers, merchants, and their families—were well placed to access the emerging print market, and by association, the “discursive public sphere.” They had disposable income, access to education, and could take advantage of the trade in printed literature that flowed through towns and cities. The “expanding network of news” offered a “sense of the integration of local and national” issues, critical to the development of political narratives and discourses at a regional level. ¹¹ Furthermore, the urban middling sorts were the backbone of urban government.

The city’s freedom was the basic qualification for a civic post, like constable or tax collector, but it was usual for certain families to dominate the top offices in urban politics. In Norwich, the Gleane, Hyrne, Cory, Cocke, Lane, Anguish, Sotherton, and Parmenter families, for example, formed a governing class that bordered on minor gentry; indeed some gained knighthoods and roles in county and state government through long service, devotion to the Crown, and good connections. ¹² The proliferation of printed news and civic roles provided the middling sorts with a way into discursive, governmental, and legal public spheres, and the chance to explore and shape “broad issues of political principle.” ¹³ Nowhere is evidence of contemporary engagement with a variety of publics more explicit than during contested elections.

This article argues that micro-studies of provincial elections should remain of paramount importance to the historiography of early-Stuart social and political culture. ¹⁴ First, regional elections provide firsthand insight into the evolution of the public sphere outside of London, a city that was in many senses, unique. Second, elections are windows through which we can readily view a “variety of ‘publics’ . . . being addressed, invoked, appealed to and performed” during everyday life. ¹⁵ As James Scott has argued, the politics of the everyday can illuminate more than the study of exceptional events. ¹⁶ Building on Noah Millstone’s argument that “problems of constitutional change and tyranny formed a critical part of early Stuart political thought; in other words, they were native categories”; ¹⁷ contested elections offer an opportunity to explore the confluence of national and local issues, and the relationship between ordinary people, local government, and the Crown. Moreover, it is through micro-studies that historians are granted a close lens into emerging political narratives.

Third, this article builds on Richard Cust’s argument that seventeenth-century political change began long before the turbulent 1640s, ¹⁸ and in contrast to Mark Kishlansky, shows how preserving political traditions, such as seniority and selection, were hotly contested issues in provincial politics. ¹⁹ Both James and Charles I made many attempts to curtail the autonomy of local corporations, including restricting freemen’s voting rights and privileges. It is true that some early-Stuart electoral disputes were focused on reasserting traditional rights, rather than, for example, introducing new electoral freedoms. This was partly the case in Norwich in 1618–1620 when James I ordered that freemen’s rights to nominate a mayoral candidate be terminated. Norwich’s freemen objected on the basis that their rights had been granted in Norwich’s 1404 charter of incorporation. However, during the course of the 1620s, Norwich’s Assembly were to debate the inclusion of additional rights, which had not been prompted by deference to tradition. As we shall see, the election of 1627 also reveals much more than a defense of traditional rights.

Finally, this article builds on recent literature that suggests that many aspects of early-modern life have been interpreted unnecessarily within a binary framework. ²⁰ Surviving records about elections, usually from the perspective of a dominant faction or factions, have lent an air—and frequently an adversarial language—of opposition that shines through the record of events, often to the detriment of other factors. The competing interests in contested elections are easy to configure in black-and-white terms, such as “Puritan” or “popular.” Nevertheless, the binary model obscures the real interests behind the scenes and leaves little room for the discussion of the middle ground, which “could provide its own framework for conflict.” ²¹

The article will take shape around the following sections: a discussion of Norwich’s immediate social, economic, and political background; the story of the election and its main protagonists; an exploration of their motives and hidden agendas; a discussion of the adversarial language employed in reporting the election; and finally, some concluding remarks with regard to early seventeenth-century provincial political culture.

III

Norwich’s population had grown rapidly since the 1580s, reaching around twenty thousand souls by the 1620s. ²² Its growth was due to the pull of economic success, buoyed by the city’s strategic position on a main trade route between northeast England, the continent, and London and the large number of Stranger settlers (around four thousand) who had invigorated the city’s weaving industry. From 1620, however, the city’s growth faltered as England fell under a nationwide depression, compounded by a series of bad harvests over 1621–1623.

The situation in Norwich worsened during 1625–1626 when outbreaks of plague brought the city to a standstill. Many commercial and industrial activities were suspended, supplies of cloth (the city’s staple industry) to and from the city were prohibited, and there was widespread unemployment. ²³ In 1625, a total of 1,431 people died between July and September alone, and the sheriff, Robert Powell, had to divert funds from civic events to help the poor. Over a two-year period, an estimated 3,500 inhabitants died, that is, around one-sixth of the population. ²⁴ The death toll created a financial burden for the richer inhabitants, who were responsible for contributing funds for the poor and infected, over and above the rapidly increasing poor rate. The aldermen, sheriffs, and councilmen, for example, were all expected to make emergency contributions in line with their income and status. ²⁵ So, when news reached the city in July 1626 that the King had ordered the collection of a Forced Loan, Norwich’s impoverished citizens were understandably dismayed. ²⁶ Only two months later, in September 1626, the Crown demanded money for two new war ships required for renewed attacks on Spain. At this point, the city was forced to plead poverty. Mayor Basingbourn Throckmorton wrote a petition to the Crown to the effect that “although in the time of their prosperity they had been called upon to bear a tenth or twelfth part of such charges, they were then so distressed as to be unable to maintain their poor.” ²⁷

Then, during the summer of 1627, the Crown became embroiled in a war with France. News of the Duke of Buckingham’s ill-fated expedition to the îlle de Rhé reached the city in the midst of collections for the unpopular Forced Loan. The Loan, levied over 1626–1627, raised fundamental questions about the balance between English liberties and absolute monarchy. In Norfolk, this debate found a figurehead in the shape of Norfolk man Sir John Corbet, one of the five infamous knights to question the Loan’s legality. ²⁸ At the same time, Buckingham’s poor planning and strategy reflected badly on the Crown, and the incursion into France in the midst of a war with Spain was a turning point for many stoic supporters of the king. ²⁹ The military campaigns also meant more unpopular impressments and the forcible billeting of soldiers in Norfolk: two hundred of whom were posted to Norwich in July 1627. ³⁰ Many of these soldiers were Irish, and they arrived at a time of particular paranoia about suspected Catholic plots in the area. ³¹

The 1620s also witnessed increasing tension between the city’s aldermen during the incumbency of the anti-Calvinist, pro-Arminian Bishop Samuel Harsnet. ³² Harsnet came to Norwich in 1619 where he enthusiastically pursued an anti-Puritan agenda, promoted outward signs of devotion, and scaled down corporation-sponsored nonconformist lectureships. ³³ Harsnet made enemies among the city’s godly faction early in 1622, when he acted against the wife of alderman Thomas Shipdham—an important Norwich Puritan—in a case heard at the King’s Bench. ³⁴ Following the publication of two scandalous pamphlets, Vox Populi and The Double Deliverance: Spain and Rome Defeated, both penned by lecturers who had at one stage been sponsored by the corporation, Harsnet removed all but one of the city’s lectureships. The Godly aldermen, championed by Robert Craske, began a petitioning campaign to reinstate the lectures in 1623, eagerly assisted by aldermen Shipdham, Christopher Baret, George Birch, Thomas Cory, and councilmen Augustine Scottowe and Thomas Atkin. In 1624, Craske authored a petition requesting that Harsnet’s activities be investigated, which to avoid passage through Norwich’s Assembly, was presented at Westminster by Sir Edward Coke and Sir John Corbet. ³⁵

Across this economic and religious background, there were also worrying signs that certain rights and privileges enjoyed by the city’s freemen were being eroded. Norwich’s 1404 charter of incorporation had set out the city’s basic rights and governmental structure, and revisions in 1417 established freemen’s rights to nominate candidates for mayor, ward aldermen, one of the sheriffs, and the common councillors. ³⁶ Norwich had an unusually wide franchise: estimated at 20–30 percent of the adult male population, ³⁷ and the freemen numbered around one thousand five hundred in the early 1620s. ³⁸ Indeed, Mark Knights has argued that Norwich’s governmental structure offered inhabitants many opportunities for participation in local politics. ³⁹

Convention dictated the selection of the most senior candidate in corporation elections, but the freemen had the ability, theoretically at least, to elect any suitable candidate of their choice. On most occasions, nominations followed convention, but the retention of this right often led to conflict, and there were contested mayoral elections in 1610, 1611, 1613, 1616, 1617, and 1618. ⁴⁰ In 1618, the freemen had proposed two mayoral nominees from the bottom of the seniority ladder: Richard Rosse and Henry Fawcett. Of the two, Fawcett was the most senior, but Rosse was elected. Then, in 1619, the freemen elected three young and inexperienced men as aldermen. ⁴¹ The recurrent breaches of the seniority convention reached the ear of the king, who urged the corporation to follow London’s precedent, where only the most senior aldermen progressed to the position of mayor, thus eliminating the element of choice. James’s order met with much opposition, led by no less a man than Mayor Rosse. The corporation dragged their heels and an official investigation was set up, headed by the chief justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Henry Montagu, and two circuit judges. ⁴² After almost a year of delays, a by-law was passed through Norwich’s Assembly (by a majority of only two votes), formalizing the seniority principle and delivering the right of nomination to the councilmen, not the freemen. ⁴³ Subsequent elections complied with the spirit of the royal demand, but the affair was not forgotten.

Six years on, hopes that this right might be restored were dashed as Charles I embarked “on a policy of prerogative government.” ⁴⁴ In Norfolk, the reality of the shift became apparent when a bill was proposed to tighten county electoral procedures, ⁴⁵ and two of Norfolk’s notable politicians were sidelined from parliament. Charles manoeuvred Norfolk nobleman Edward Coke away from the 1626 parliamentary elections by appointing him as High Sheriff for Buckinghamshire, and Norfolk landowner Thomas Howard was excluded from the House of Lords. By 1627 then, Norwich’s inhabitants had many grievances.

IV

Shortly before the eighth of September 1627 (the day of the annual election for sheriff), the aldermen announced their nominees: Thomas Atkin and Henry Lane. Both men were eminently suitable. Atkin had been a common councillor since 1612 and, in 1627, held the posts of city clavor and commissioner for the Forced Loan. ⁴⁶ Lane came from a family background of local politics. His father, Thomas Lane, had been mayor in 1603, and his wife was the daughter of Sir Peter Gleane, mayor in 1615 and one of the city’s wealthiest men. ⁴⁷ Lane had been a common councillor since 1618 and, in 1627, was serving as an auditor and commissioner for the Forced Loan. Both men had adequate financial resources at their disposal to bear the requirements of the sheriff’s office. ⁴⁸

When it came to religion, however, Atkin and Lane could not have been more different. Atkin was one of the city’s leading Puritan voices, kinsman to County Puritan John Corbet, and a tenant of the Puritan Edward Coke. ⁴⁹ Atkin was a neighbor and good friend of alderman and Puritan Robert Craske (also Coke’s tenant) and joined Craske as a member of the Trustees for Religion of Norwich and Norfolk, a group set up to sponsor Puritan preaching. ⁵⁰ Lane, on the other hand, was a religious conservative and staunchly anti-Puritan. Lane and Atkin’s joint nomination should have satisfied Puritans, moderates, and political convention; so there was some surprise when a number of the freemen exercised their right to propose an alternative to Atkin: John Kettle.

Kettle had never held a city office and had not seen eye-to-eye with the corporation for at least ten years. During 1617–1618, Kettle had ignored three court orders, and his contempt toward the mayor had led to his temporary disenfranchisement. ⁵¹ In 1620, Kettle refused to pay his river tax and poor rate, ⁵² and in 1624 he failed to pay toward the annual corporation feast, saying that “he doth not knowe whether he shallbe able to doe yea or noe, for . . . he shalbe undone before that tyme by the subsidy.” ⁵³ By 1625, Kettle still owed outstanding debts but told the sheriffs that “he did owe neither sute nor service to the city” because he only came to Norwich to “serve one of the Lieutenants of the Shire [Cornwallis].” ⁵⁴

Kettle’s recalcitrance toward the corporation was not limited to his finances. In 1623, he alleged that the sheriff’s court was ruled by bribery, in 1624 he told subsidy commissioners “that when he came before them he must be Caped,” ⁵⁵ accused the aldermen of making “by lawes to oppresse the poore comoners,” ⁵⁶ reproached an unnamed Justice of the Peace for receiving “a hundred pounde a yeare by his place,” and accused ex-sheriff John Lyng of being “a theife to the kinge, A[n] oppressor of men, A rascall, A Jack and a peremptory fellowe.” ⁵⁷

Despite Kettle’s obvious unsuitability as a candidate, he was so convinced of an election win that his friends rented a house “wherein to kepe his Shrevalty” and purchased beer for a celebratory party. ⁵⁸ On election day, Steward Denny had a tough time counting the results because the Guildhall was so crowded with Kettle’s friends pushing their way in, and the air was filled with “loude cryes [of] (Kettle Kettle).” ⁵⁹ However, Denny finally announced one hundred and seventy-six voices for Kettle and one hundred and eighty-six for Atkin. ⁶⁰

Kettle was furious. He accused the aldermen of electoral malpractice, raving that “the Comoners were made slaves by the magistrates, And that hee would indevor to right it.” ⁶¹ He called a public meeting, declaring that “[I]f any citizen did find himselfe grieved to the wronge to him done in the . . . Election That they should repayre at one of the clock that daie to . . . the maydes head . . . And there they should be heard, or otherwise the Comons of the city should not hereafter have their freedom of choice.” ⁶²

The magistrates later spun the meeting’s forty participants as a “discontented” rabble, but the Maid’s Head was one of Norwich’s oldest and largest coaching inns, and a stopover for the county’s most influential gentry. ⁶³ According to Kettle, Sir Thomas Hyrne ⁶⁴ had promised that “Twenty of the best of them should come downe in the afternoon,” though sadly, there is no record of who attended. ⁶⁵ Mayor Francis Cocke and sixteen aldermen, fearing “some further Tumult” by the “dangerous faction” who “go about in disordered manner, pretending that they had wrong in the election,” wrote to the Privy Council for help. ⁶⁶

Kettle was ordered to London, where he appeared before the Lords at Whitehall. He was fined forty pounds and spent just over a month at the Fleet Prison, during which time Atkin and Lane were confirmed in office. ⁶⁷ A condition of Kettle’s release was that he should make a public apology at Norwich’s Guildhall, and a date was set for early December. The event was a fiasco. Kettle’s “humble submission” began with the public announcement of his charges (which do not survive) but, true to character, Kettle apparently uttered “allegacions & undue speeches,” ⁶⁸ declaring that “[i]f he would have made a mutiny or a second Ketts campe [i]t would never have come to this.” ⁶⁹ Cornwallis, who was present, insisted publically that Whitehall’s charges were false, and his grandson Henry Cornwallis, also present, slandered Mayor Cocke saying “he was as good a man as the mayor and would do as good a job.” ⁷⁰ After some persuasion from Cornwallis, Kettle finally made his apology, effectively ending the dispute by withdrawing from the contest.

V

In order to better understand the political culture of 1620s Norwich, it is necessary to consider in more detail the themes behind the contested election. It is possible to infer from two letters sent by the mayor and aldermen to the Privy Council—informing them about Kettle’s behavior—that factional interests were at play. Notably, aldermen Sir Thomas Hyrne, George Cocke, Edmund Cocke, Lionel Claxton, Roger Ramsey, Richard Rosse, William Browne, and William Bussey did not sign the letters. George and Edmund Cocke both died in 1627, ⁷¹ but Hyrne, Rosse, and Claxton can be linked to a political agenda. Hyrne’s rise to power in Norwich had caused a stir when he had bypassed his seniors to become sheriff and alderman in 1597, only one year after gaining his freedom. ⁷² As we have already seen, Hyrne was involved with the meeting at the Maid’s Head, and, according to Kettle, had apparently declared that if “the commons did not assist [Kettle] . . . they should never have any free election.” ⁷³ Rosse, like Hyrne, had been nominated above his seniors to the position of mayor in 1618 and was the central opponent of the 1620 seniority law. ⁷⁴ Lionel Claxton had been a junior freeman’s nominee for councilman on five occasions, and his brother, Thomas, had stood with Rosse in opposition to the passage of the seniority law. ⁷⁵

The promotion of an inexperienced candidate in 1627 could be read as an articulation of the continuing debate for political rights first denied in 1620. The election coincided with a local Assembly debate on freemen’s rights to nominate aldermen from the whole body of previous sheriffs, which would effectively drop the seniority convention. ⁷⁶ After Kettle’s challenge, however, and faced with the possibility of a contested shrieval election every year under the current system, the aldermen wrote another letter to the Privy Council requesting that the freemen be deprived of their right to nominate future sheriffs. ⁷⁷ The request was swiftly agreed by the Earl of Salisbury and Edward Coke, with the added proviso that anyone disrupting elections in future would be severely dealt with. ⁷⁸ Nonetheless, the next election by-law to be passed through Norwich’s Assembly on March 21, 1628, was the culmination of the debate over freemen’s rights in aldermanic elections, and made no mention of changing freemen’s nomination rights for sheriff. The passage of a new by-law required the agreement of the full Assembly, so it is possible to suggest that a majority of the Assembly, perhaps under the tutelage of Rosse, had voted against further restrictions. If so, this suggests that support for restrictive changes to freemen’s rights were limited to some of the current serving aldermen and their allies, not the whole freemen body. Certainly, the 1620 seniority law had only been passed by two votes, and Kettle’s election only lost by ten: suggesting the Assembly (made up of freemen) was split roughly down the middle.

Support for Kettle could also be read as a protest about the Forced Loan, then being collected by Lane and Atkin, which would have affected many of the freemen electorate. Kettle, as we have seen, was an outspoken opponent of many taxes, ex-mayor Peter Gleane describing how “for the most part [Kettle] refuseth to pay any duties to the kinge to the city and to the parishe where he dwelleth unless he be by legall proceedinge compelled thereunto.” ⁷⁹ Kettle had spoken out twice against James I’s 1624 subsidy and had repeatedly evaded paying extraordinary fines and taxes.

Kettle saw corruption rife in the sheriff’s court, and more widely within the corporation. It is possible that he had genuine grievances that he wished to amend by his own candidacy. Certainly he had promised the freemen he would “end the supression of the commons” and assist the poor. Given the dire social and economic straits of the city’s poor that decade, it is not inconceivable that Kettle was responding to the complaints of the city’s inhabitants. According to the magistrate’s letters, Kettle had promised that if elected “he would take noe Amercements of the Comons . . . lay that open for the Citizens that hath not formerly [been] layd open . . . none of the Citizens should be oppressed as they have bene . . . [and he] would ease the poore of Burdens w[hi]ch they had formerly borne.” ⁸⁰ It is easy to see how Kettle’s rhetoric would have held wide appeal among ordinary inhabitants suffering from plague and economic depression. Indeed, if the aldermen’s account is to be believed, many of Kettle’s supporters were “forrainers and strangers” and “mechanicall men . . . of [the] meanest quality”: ⁸¹ precisely those people who would have suffered most from the financial hardships of the 1620s.

Economic and political concerns were paramount issues for the freemen and nonvoters in this election, but religion was also a significant factor for the aldermen. An investigation of the religious proclivities of those who signed, or did not sign, the letters to the Privy Council is revealing. Those who signed were mayor Francis Cocke and aldermen Sir Peter Gleane, Basingbourn Throckmorton, Thomas Blosse, George Birch, Francis Smalpiece, Robert Craske, Thomas Cory, Thomas Shipdham, Robert Hornsey, Christopher Barret, Thomas Spendlove, John Anguish, Nathanial Remington, Robert Debney, Richard Harman, and councilman Augustine Scottowe. ⁸²

Birch, Smalpiece, Craske, Scottowe, Shipdham, Cory, and Barret were well-known Puritans. Craske, for instance, patronized many of the city’s Puritan preachers and, at his death, left a bequest for the continuance of Puritan preaching at St. Peter Hungate. Significantly, Craske was also great friends with Thomas Atkin, and during the 1624 parliament, Craske, Atkin, Shipdham, Cory, Scottowe, Baret, and Birch had led the vanguard in the campaign against Bishop Samuel Harsnet. ⁸³ Scottowe, notably the only councilman on the list, was a member of the Trustees for Religion in Norwich and Norfolk, along with Atkin and Craske. ⁸⁴ A corporate triumvirate of Atkin, Lane, and Cocke would have given the Puritan faction a political edge, one they would have lost if Kettle had joined Lane as sheriff.

There is no evidence to suggest that Kettle, ⁸⁵ Rosse, Ramsey, Bussey, Hyrne, or Claxton (the absent signatories) were anything other than religious moderates. Browne (like Lane) was a staunch supporter of Bishop Harsnet and responsible for the circulation of a scurrilous verse libel against Craske entitled Howe nowe proud scismatique. ⁸⁶ It seems rather too much of a coincidence that none of the absentee signatories were Puritans.

It is worth noting that concurrent to the contested election in Norwich, Yarmouth’s aldermen were fighting similar ideological battles over the principle of a “free” election versus the seniority principle under the direction of Samual Harsnet’s ally, Alderman Benjamin Cooper. ⁸⁷ However, there was a major difference. In Norwich, the seniority principle was supported by the Puritan faction, whereas religious moderates and anti-Puritans were keen to push for “free” elections. In Yarmouth, the situation was reversed. One has to question why this was so. Perhaps, support for “free” elections was based less on a liberal agenda than on who was next in line for top office, that is, which faction would gain the upper hand from a “free” election, or from seniority. If so, it is possible to argue that although the argument was framed in ideological terms—echoing concerns voiced by the Crown with regard to loyalty and conformism—each side appropriated the center ground to further their own agenda. Thus, it is hard to equate (as Cust rightly argues was the case in Yarmouth), Puritanism in Norwich with disorder, and religious moderation with obedience to the Crown. ⁸⁸

Finally, it is worth exploring the involvement of Charles Cornwallis. We do not know if Cornwallis had any hand in Kettle’s nomination, but we do know that “at the tyme of Election diverse of his fellows (servants to S[i]r Charles Cornwallis knight) intruded themselves into the hall and would not by any command or p[er]suasion be drawne to depart.” ⁸⁹ Cornwallis then defended Kettle during his “humble submission.” It seems odd that Cornwallis, who had never been involved in corporation politics before, chose 1627 as his year to start. The answer may simply lie in his friendship with Kettle, but might also have roots in court politics and by association, an anti-Puritan agenda. Cornwallis was a Protestant who had successfully negotiated the right of English exiles in Spain to practise the Protestant faith in private, during his service as Spanish Ambassador, ⁹⁰ but there is no evidence to suggest that he was a Puritan. Although he had spoken out against the worrying increase of papists in England in 1614, ⁹¹ he maintained close links with Catholics during his life, most notably, his father, uncle, and the powerful Howard faction at court. ⁹² Thomas Howard had converted to Protestantism, but the family were notoriously pro-Spanish and Catholic. The Howards’ clientage network also included Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset. In direct opposition to the Howards was the faction that rose up around Carr’s rival for the monarch’s affections: George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Kettle’s rival Atkin was a tenant of Edward Coke, a prominent Puritan who had married his daughter to Villier’s brother and had presided over Robert Carr’s trial for his part in the Overbury Affair of 1615. ⁹³ Coke was involved with Norwich’s Puritans and had helped Atkin and Craske bypass the moderate Norwich Assembly to present an anti-Harsnet petition to the Crown in 1624. Cornwallis’s links to an anti-Puritan faction at court are too much of a coincidence to be ignored, and although the evidence is circumstantial, it is possible that Cornwallis saw 1627 as an opportunity to limit the power of Norwich’s Godly. As Lake and Cust have argued, it was not uncommon for “local agents, having learned the polemical idiom current at the centre” to “attract the favourable attention of the regime” by operating against puritan cliques. ⁹⁴

VI

The letters written by the mayor and aldermen of Norwich to the Privy Council described the election in detail, but are not to be trusted. Perhaps keen to be seen as conforming in the midst of an emerging central rhetoric of anti-Puritanism, and disproval over Norwich’s perceived reluctance to pay recent levies, the aldermen wrote in stereotypes that would appeal to the King. They described Kettle as “rude,” “uncivil,” “not fitt for comon society,” and “addicted to rayling and drunkenness.” ⁹⁵ By contrast, they described Atkin as “a chief commoner . . . whose estate, gravity and sufficiency for such a place [i]s well knowne,” ⁹⁶ perhaps seeking to distance the Puritan from a rhetoric that equated religious nonconformism with potential disloyalty to the Crown.

We can assume that the letters would seek to discredit Kettle, and it is hard to tell how far Kettle’s reported speeches were his own words, or words put into his mouth by the magistrates. On every occasion, Kettle’s language had been adversarial, pejorative, and bordering on subversive. Indeed, Kettle’s words are so stereotypically that of a rebel or protestor that they appear contrived. ⁹⁷ As Ethan Shagan points out “when early modern writers employed the language of dualism . . . they were making a choice based upon the perceived suitability of a particular rhetorical strategy.” ⁹⁸ It is easy to conceive how Norwich’s aldermen might have deliberately employed this strategy for their own ends. Nevertheless, it is also possible to argue that Kettle had adopted the same rhetorical strategy in order to appeal to the public.

It is possible to draw some parallels with a case from Norwich from 1594. Then, the twenty-four rejected the nomination of William Peters as an alderman, claiming he had been elected by “many of the inferior sorte . . . who exceded the nombre of the most fytt and hablest men in the said warde.” Peters was not a bad choice of candidate; he had twice been a common councillor and sheriff. However, for reasons “best knowne to themselves,” the aldermen had refused his nomination. ⁹⁹

There is also evidence to suggest that Kettle was not simply a common railer, but that his speeches were deliberately provocative and considered. The scant evidence left by others about Kettle’s personality conflicts with the impression of a drunken railer given in the aldermen’s letters. Cornwallis, for example, referred to Kettle in their private correspondence as “honest John.” ¹⁰⁰ Also, a few days after the election, two men were arrested—Michael Medcalfe and Richard Puckell—for arguing about Kettle. Puckell had asserted that Kettle “was a rebell” but Medcalfe argued back saying that “Kettle was as honest a man as Mr Lane or any that hee came of.” ¹⁰¹ Furthermore, over the ten years that Kettle had been in and out of Norwich’s courts, he had slandered several of the corporation’s officials. The number included Richard Rosse. Perhaps for Rosse, the issue of freemen’s electoral rights outweighed potential personal grievance against Kettle for slander, but this might also imply that Kettle had not been as abusive as the magistrate’s reports suggest. Indeed, if Kettle was simply a drunken railer, it is not likely that Cornwallis would have risked his own reputation defending Kettle in 1625 and 1627.

VI

The divisions brought into the open in 1627 were to polarize in the 1630s. Lane, who had become an alderman in 1632, emerged as the leader of Norwich’s anti-Puritan faction and supported the Laudian Bishop Wren. By the 1640s, his political loyalties lay with King, not parliament. ¹⁰² He became mayor in 1640, but stepped down four months before his term was due to end, possibly as a protest against the Godly faction, and was purged from aldermanic office on March 18, 1642. ¹⁰³ Atkin became an alderman in 1629, sheriff of London in 1638, and MP for Norwich in 1640, later becoming an active member of the Rump Parliament. ¹⁰⁴ He continued his Godly work in Norwich and went head-to-head with Lane in a petition war against Wren’s reforms during the late 1630s, backed by Shipdham, Craske, Baret, and Cory.

As for John Kettle, the 1627 election ended his political aspirations, but neither prison nor his “humble submission” silenced him for long. In 1634, he was once again before the mayor’s court, charged with neglecting his city center properties; in 1636, he accused the corporation of taking more “Rate … than is due & shar[ing] the surplus amongst themselves”; in 1637, he was prosecuted for slander; ¹⁰⁵ and in 1642, he refused to pay Norwich’s Subscription to parliament. ¹⁰⁶ Kettle died in 1643 after a long career as one of the Norwich corporation’s most vocal opponents.

The election of 1627 provides much evidence of fundamental changes in political thought long before the civil wars. Indeed, it seems that many of the civil war narratives, with regard to religion, loyalty to the Crown, political freedoms, and rights, had already emerged by the 1620s. This development ran concurrent with the emergence of provincial public spheres, which helped shape and enhance the emergent strains of political rhetoric. There is much evidence that Norwich’s freemen had a wide appreciation and understanding of current events and political ideas, and actively incorporated this knowledge into local politics. Their sophisticated political agenda went beyond preserving the status quo of selection and prior service in government. Men like Rosse wished to make changes to enhance freemen’s rights, not simply by reestablishing rights that had been removed in 1620 but by quashing the seniority convention entirely, in pursuit of a governmental system that favored suitability over longevity. However, this agenda, though liberal, was not radical, and it is interesting to note that during the 1640s, Rosse supported the Crown. ¹⁰⁷

The 1627 election might easily be placed within a binary model of “Puritan” versus “moderate.” Certainly, this is the first impression we have from reading the letters and records of the mayor and aldermen, and exploring their religious backgrounds. It is clear that factionalism played a major part in the 1627 election, but it would be wrong to read this election in black and white terms. Despite the alignment of Puritan voices, concerns about the economy, taxation, and nomination rights crossed social and religious boundaries, and the issues at stake were not solely religious. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the religious element affected only the aldermen among whom a Puritan versus moderate/Arminian narrative is apparent. But these groupings did not conform to their stereotype of Puritan radical and political agitator, against religious moderate and Arminian (later Laudian) and political conformist. In Norwich at least, these roles had been reversed. Moreover, for the freemen majority, John Kettle, and the nonvoting public, the election’s key issues were not primarily religious but focused on electoral freedoms, economic dislocation, and extraordinary taxation. It is thus difficult to view this election in binary terms.

Through a close reading of provincial flashpoints, we gain a sense of the complexity and vibrancy of regional politics that filtered into the critical political narratives shaping the 1620s, 1630s, and 1640s. The 1627 election therefore demonstrates the importance of embedding local peculiarities into wider historiographical narratives of change and continuity and suggests that contested local elections under the early Stuarts deserve more attention.