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Vote for Epsom and Ewell
Slavery was an accepted way of life in Surrey from the time of the Celts to the twelth century. The first population survey, in Domesday book, shows that 14% of Epsom's population had no independent rights as human beings. The other villagers were constrained by manorial custom, which bound them to work for their masters - the abbots of Chertsey and Merton. The rules of the manor also controlled the distribution of land - part of the Hogsmill open space was divided up as Ceorlmannes Mede, 'the meadow of the peasant community'. But with time the distribution of land became inequitable, and by the fifteenth century the resources of the villages had been split into four or five large farmholdings, with the other peasants earning money as their labourers. All the free men of the neighbourhood had a right to sit in the regional or Hundred court at Motscameles, 'the moot seats', on Epsom Downs. In practice only the more important members of the community attended, and their decisions were felt to be binding on the rest. Meetings such as this were brought together, not to represent a diversity of opinions, but to discover (or receive from their superiors) the right course of wisdom, which they could take back to the communities that sent them. The same ideas lay behind the early Parliaments, and many individuals - like John atte Churchgate from Epsom, who represented Surrey in 1340 - were sent to attend on the king, not to influence his decisions, but to return as a messenger with news of them. Unable to control the decisions being made for them, many people opted out of village life altogether. In 1500 Epsom Common was a home for those who had evaded manorial control by building illicit cottages on the waste lands. The security offered by manorial government was limited: villagers at Cuddington were displaced, and their homes pulled down, in the construction of Nonsuch Palace. Only the Lord of the Manor received formal compensation. Over the next hundred years, heaths and commons developed communities free from church or manorial ties and were able to provide a safe haven for tramps and others who wished to avoid being bound as servants or wives. The population had grown steeply, so that by the time of the Civil War, Surrey contained many such people without local ties who enlisted as soldiers. The triumph of Cromwell's New Model Army brought them into power, and gentry families such as the Evelyns of Woodcote Park resented receiving orders from men who might once have been their servants, or hearing their favourite preacher being heckled by a wandering Quaker. The soldiers themselves were conscious of having overthrown the power of an arbitrary government, and proposed that future parliaments should be chosen by popular election. Mutiny was held at bay in 1647 when members of the governing elite met representatives from the army at Putney church to hear their demands: but action on them was aborted by further developments in the war. The Levellers, as the radicals called themselves, had lost their chance. After the Restoration in 1660, political self-determination was tightly controlled. The mediaeval distribution of parliamentary seats was retained, because it favoured rural gentry and small urban corporations. Despite persecution, it proved impossible to reintroduce uniformity in religion, and independent congregations which had grown up under the Commonwealth were tolerated: this included Mr. Batho's hearers at Epsom, who grew to become the Congregational Church in Church Street. The principle of toleration was extended to splinter groups such as the Bugby Chapel, who left the Congregational Church to pursue a purer line in theology, and who built a small chapel and minister's house in the working-class district off East Street. For a time they were enrolled as followers of William Huntington, a charismatic figure who had flitted from job to job as a coal-heaver, hearse-driver and market gardener before settling in Mortlake, where he had a vision of Christ in 1775 and began preaching to his former associates. People such as this, who had no access to the formal channels of power, were able to influence thousands as religious leaders. Ewell had its own spiritual guide in Mary Wallis, a servant girl who through faith and self-denial was able to raise enough funds to build a branch chapel for the Bugby in West Street. This later became the nucleus of the Congregational Church, and the business of church life accustomed generations of villagers to speaking their minds and voting on decisions at a time when they had no other forum where they could practice these skills. The Church of England did not allow popular participation on religious issues, but as the established church it also had a political role. Since the fourteenth century, the contribution made by parishioners to the maintenance of the church fabric had been recognised by the appointment of two churchwardens, one to represent the clerical interest and one the popular. Under the Tudors, when the old Hundred moots were regarded as obsolete, the parish authorities were called on to regulate the care of the poor and the maintenance of the roads: these had once been holy works of mercy, but they were now looked on as the chores of local government. The parish was represented by its principal inhabitants, a self-appointed group known as the Vestry because they usually met in the robing area of the church. In St. Marys this room, formerly a chapel, was fitted out with seats and a fireplace to make it more snug. In Epsom they usually met at an inn. They preferred to settle problems by mutual agreement rather than by vote, and to co-opt members rather than going through a process of election. They raised money by levying rates in direct proportion to the wealth of residents, which as local people they were well able to judge, and they felt that those who paid the most money should make the decisions about how it was spent. The vestry enforced the law by appointing its members as constables. It was understood that they would confine their influence to their social inferiors: when Lord Rochester was apprehended by an Epsom constable in the 1660s, he ran the man through with his sword In the eighteenth century, most English people felt themselves to be citizens of a free country, even though they did not have a say in the appointment of the government. They were content if it maintained laws against arbitrary injustice. When the ordinary public were outraged by a decision, they were likely to stage riots, such as the one in Epsom which met Martin Madan, the magistrate who tried to suppress the customary gambling in Derby week. His effigy was burned in the High Street, and he withdrew from the attempt. Since the police force for the town consisted of a businessman co-opted as constable, and the nearest secure prison was at Kingston, this was probably wise. Parliamentary elections were usually seen as a choice between personalities, and an uncontested election was to be preferred since it avoided either of the gentlemen in question incurring the embarassment of losing. The vote was confined to those who held property by freehold, and they had to gather at a single place for the poll even though the whole of Surrey combined in electing two Knights of the Shire. Normally the poll was held at Guildford, but in 1774 it took place at Epsom and Joseph Mawbey, the Lord of the Manor, was a candidate. Unfortunately his proposal to drum up support with musicians, accompanied by marrow-bones and cleavers, was not easily organised. The bones turned out to be in a van at the back of the procession, and by the time the band was ready, the supporters of the other two candidates had gathered together and formed a coalition. Political rights were confined to the Church of England, and this led Non-Conformists to build up a parallel organisation, with its own social organisations and schools. The Ewell Academy in Mongers Lane was intended for the bright sons of Dissenters, who would have to learn skills for trade since they could not have clerical or legal careers. Resentment over the disenfranchising of people who in all other respects qualified for the social elite found common ground with the feelings of injustice in towns which, because they had not been established in the middle ages, had missed out on the opportunity of parliamentary representation. The result was the Reform Act of 1832 which redistributed and extended the franchise. For the first time those who held property by copyhold, or manorial lease, were entitled to vote like freeholders. This was well received in Epsom, where the copyhold system was being retained as a way of controlling the land market. People could not buy or sell copyhold houses without consent, which involved a payment to the Lord of the Manor: in this way newcomers, who might increase the commercial life of the town, were kept at bay. The campaign against copyhold brought together a number of people who co-operated on other civic projects, including the restoration of St. Martins church in 1824 and the building of the Clock Tower in 1848. They were kept up to date by posters and literature printed by Henry Dorling, himself a newcomer to the town, who as a publisher of sales particulars had an interested in seeing a lively property market. The friends of reform were not happy with the existing government of the town by the manorial court and vestry, self-appointing bodies which seemed happy to let things stay as they had always been. Fortunately government legislation, aimed at alleviating the health problems of the new industrial cities, gave them their chance: any community could choose, by majority vote, to elect a board which could levy a rate to refray the cost of drainage and water supply. The professional classes of the town - doctors, solicitors, and some retired City types - prepared a report on the unsanitary state of Epsom. Having been granted local government by this rather roundabout means, they held their first election in 1850, with Harsant the chemist coming top of the poll, followed by the most respected traders of the town. Richard Digby Neave of Pitt Place, one of the few gentry to do well in the poll, was made the first chairman, to give the enterprise a more respectable look. Henry Dorling followed in later years. The wealthy inhabitants of Epsom's grand houses continued to receive appointment as Justices of the Peace, and this gave them an unelected role which could be used to counterbalance the Board of Health: besides, they had more influence on it, since the owners of land had up to twelve votes in proportion to its rateable value. The extension of the Metropolitan Police district to the town in 1848 brought in a professional force capable of suppressing public unrest. The middle classes were achieving representation by the vote, but the poor had lost their traditional means of protest. By the time of the second Reform Act in 1867, Epsom had 300 people able to vote for a Parliamentary candidate, about 10% of the population. In Ewell the proportion was less, since independence in the ownership of property (or anything else) was not encouraged amongst the villagers. It was hoped that they would continue to live in a paternal society under the leadership of the resident gentry - notably the Glyn family, whose head Sir George was both vicar and principal landowner. Attitudes like these were challenged throughout Surrey in 1889 by the creation of the County Council, in which for the first time an elected body replaced the rule of self-selected gentry. Five years later the principle was taken down to local level with Urban and Rural District Councils, the rural ones built out of the old parishes. In some communities the transition to democratic procedure was very sudden - Ewell eased the change by appointing a member of the Glyn family, Sir Arthur, as its first chairman - but in Epsom the new Council was able to maintain continuity with the earlier administration of the Board of Health. Epsom and Ewell came together to form a Parliamentary constituency for mid-Surrey in 1885. It seemed a safe Tory seat, but when Aston of Woodcote Grove stood as a Conservative in 1899 he was defeated by Keswick the Liberal. Seven years later, Aston stood again as a Radical, to derisory calls of 'Drop a vote in the slot and see him change colour'; but despite his flexibility, he was again defeated in a Liberal landslide. The new Urban District Council included women councillors - the first of them, Nora Willis, having earned the respect of her contemporaries by volunteeering as a postwoman in the wartime crisis of 1917. Local opinion responded much more favourably to this novelty than it did to the tragic death of Emily Davison, run down by the king's horse in the Derby of 1913 as she attempted to pin the Suffragette colours to it. Non-militant Suffragists held meetings at the town's Public Hall to promote their cause, while Emmeline Pankhurst appeared in the newspapers as the author of a bomb outrage at Walton-on-the-Hill. One of Epsom's magistrates, Basil Braithwaite of Hookfield, organised anti-suffrage meetings at garden parties, with sandwiches provided by his wife, until 1918 when women were given the vote. After the crisis of the war, the old culture of deference could no longer be reinstated. Memorials to the fallen were a particularly sore point. By 1920, when funds were available, many people had come to see the conflict as a mistake by the ruling classes which should be forgotten rather than celebrated. Lord Rosebery, who had retired to Durdans after a stressful career as the last successful Liberal Prime Minister, offered to provide a runic cross in central Epsom (pulling down the Clock Tower in the process). He was prevented by a campaign led by seven High Street traders, each of whom had lost a son, and who did not want a permanent reminder of it opposite their windows. Rosebery remembered rebuffs from the Council about recreational use of the land he had given for Rosebery Park, and retreated into a moody silence. In 1918 Epsom saw its first Labour candidate - a serious young man, James Chuter Ede, who had moved on from schoolmastering at West Street in Ewell to a role in the Epsom Urban District Council. Wartime service with the East Surreys had kept him out of local government, but in the excitement of the following khaki election he hoped to make his name with the people's party. Epsom was not ready for this, nor was Mitcham when he stood again in 1923, but attitudes were changing. Three years later, the General Strike found Epsom Urban District inclined to favour the cause of the workers, although it stood embedded in suburban and rural communities with a very different attitude. It was the Rural District, with its headquarters in Ashley House, which organised the middle classes in relief transport, and typed out government speeches as newsletters. Meanwhile Chuter Ede had made a name for himself, and in 1929 he was given the safe seat of South Shields and began a Parliamentary career in which he would oversee the reform of education and rise to be Home Secretary. It was unfortunate that his brother Noel should have joined the Communist Party, especially at a time when Epsom had its own branch of the British Union of Fascists, who put up candidates for the constituency in the 1930s. There were ugly scenes, involving fights at the foot of the Clock Tower, but these do not seem to have spoilt Chuter Ede's return in 1937 when, for a day, he held titular honours as the first Mayor of the newly-formed Borough of Epsom and Ewell. Among the photographs in this exhibition were: Sir George Glyn was the autocratic vicar of St. Marys, Ewell Henry Dorling was chairman of the Board of Health in 1855 Dorlings Printing Office gave the town an independent Press Magistrates met at the Albion, nicknamed the House of Lords Alfred Aston in front of his house at Woodcote Grove A less respectful view of Aston's political ambitions James Chuter Ede in 1937, wearing his mayoral robes Basil Braithwaite J.P., opponent of women's suffrage Lord Rosebery leads in his first Derby winner in 1894 Epsom's War Memorial, finally sited in Ashley Road Masters at Epsom College await the General Strike Crowds gather in East Street for election results, 1906 The ornate tomb of Elizabeth Evelyn, lady of the manor John Evelyn the diarist, who supported the Royalists Mary Wallis, Ewell's independent-minded servant girl The Calvinist Bugby Chapel was built near East Street The High Street in 1816, with its unhealthy town pond John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and menace to the law Summoning a prisoner to a mediaeval court of justice Manacles for slaves found at a Roman site in Ewell The arms of the de Cuddingtons, early MPs for Surrey Nonsuch, built on the homes of dispossessed villagers Re-enacting the Civil War in the park at Bourne Hall John Lilburne the Leveller wanted votes for the people Putney church, where the Levellers presented their case A petition addressed to Cromwell's New Model Army
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