Politics without Parliament: The Dispute about Muster Masters' Fees in Shropshire in the 1630s

The study of politics during the eleven-year intermission of parliaments between 1629 and 1640 poses problems for the historian' This paper offers an escape from the liinited perspective drawn from a longstanding preoccupation with confrontation between crown and people. It applies new data from specialized studies and new methods borrowed from other disciplines to a detailed examination of an incident at the Shropshire quarter-sessions in 1635.2 Techniques which anthropologists have applied in investigations of "local-level politics" in developing countries are particularly useful in examining political activities within the English governmental structure and especially in local communities.3 Sources disclose the process of administration and justice, not the politics. Thus, as in developing countries, institutions and personnel of government in early Stuart England combined many functions. Formal offices and official dignity reconfirmed and reinforced the personal status of the men who held them. Such men did not neatly categorize their responsibilities and fashion their conduct accordingly. They used the power and opportunities that were available to them to accomplish their business. When they acted, they did not ordinarily do so as part of a group organized for political purposes. They proceeded as individuals or as men who were loosely associated by a common interest or responsibility, such as that of the deputy lieutenancy or the commission of the peace. The men whose conduct is the focus of this paper held local offices. In assessing the significance of the events of the quarter-sessions in Shropshire, what they did in their official capacities as well as in their pursuit of power will be analyzed. At the quarter-sessions held at Shrewsbury on 7 April 1635, the grand jury presented the levying of charges to pay the muster master, which they regarded as a "needlesse office," as a Agreate greevance and oppression of all from whome the some ... shall be demanded or extorted."4 The presentment occasioned heated debate at the sessions, a subsequent inquiry by the Privy Council, the imprisonment of two justices of the peace, and in 1640 the impeachment of the earl of Bridgewater, who as Lord President of the Council of the Marches in Wales was Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire and thus responsi-