On this day … 3 October 1534

October 3, 2023October 2, 2023 ~ Peter Smith

Sir Richard Hoghton, who the Preston historian Henry Clemesha describes as that ‘turbulent knight’, attempted to force his choice of mayor on the town.

Sir Richard was the lord of the manor of both Hoghton and Lea, the family gaining Walton-le-Dale later in the century, and a powerful steward of the Duchy of Lancaster, an office which put him at odds with the people of Preston.

At that time the Preston mayor was chosen by the burgesses of the town, and Sir Richard gathered some thirty or forty of those burgesses at a meeting held late at night to vote in his man as mayor. He was unsuccessful, for the choice of the majority of the burgesses, James Walton, was elected.

Sir Richard’s dispute with James Walton, which stretched back several years, reveals how political squabbles in Preston in those days were settled by brute force. Each year, the mayor was chosen by a gathering of the burgesses (the free men of the borough), with two of the town’s priests declaring who had ‘the greater number of voices’.

The violent dispute is covered in detail in Henry Fishwick’s History of Preston, starting with a contested election in 1527, when James Walton, then the retiring mayor, fled the town in fear for his life:

‘Sir Richard Houghton, Knight, who was a man of great possessions and dwelt near the town, … sent Sir Thomas Bostoke his chaplain and Thomas Wood his servant to the greater part of the burgesses , commanding them to meet in the night at an alehouse where one John Fydeler lived, where they would be told whom he wished to have for mayor.

‘The burgesses being in great fear of Sir Richard did as they were told, and then John A’ Powell his servant and Henry Clifton who had married a near kinswoman of his, informed them that it was Sir Richard’s orders that Nicholas Banastre was to be mayor, John Kelet his tenant was to be bailiff, and Robert Grexon sergeant.

‘On the day of the election, Sir Richard came to the meeting to elect a new mayor “at his own pleasure,” and with a “heygh voyce and angry cowntenance” declared that Sir Thomas Bostocke should be one of the priests to examine the votes and desired those who support his chaplain to hold up their hands. Whereupon the plaintiff [James Walton] “for fear of murder” asked Sir Richard in the king’s name not to meddle or interrupt, but he answered ‘scornefully and yn dyrysion commandest thou me in the kinges name, gett the hom to thy soper,” and then he called him a “falles knave”.

‘The plaintiff fearing what the angry knight might do departed with about sixty burgesses who were amongst “the most substantial and honest people there”. The ex-mayor fled out of the town being in fear of his life, and the following evening Sir Richard with about eighty others elected Nicholas Banastre (at whose house they met) to be mayor, Richard Kelet bailiff, and Robert Gregson sergeant.

‘Whilst the ex-mayor was away the town clerk was removed from his office and John A’ Powell appointed in his place, which “was contrary to the law, he being a Welsh man born.” Thomas Typping a household servant of Sir Richard’s was made a bailiff, and John Hoghton “appointed to sit as mayor”.’

When the dispute came to court, Sir Richard denied everything alleged against him and said he was merely responding to the burgesses’ request to avert the ‘dissencion and debate which James had sparkled and sowen amongst them by his own neglygence and wylfulness’.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster ruled that both Sir Richard and James Walton should stop meddling in the choice of mayor, and found that Sir Richard ‘had committed divers affrays and breaches of the peace’.