Taunton has been represented in Parliament since the late 13th century. Three especially important Taunton MPs, from the Tudor and early Stuart period, are Thomas Cromwell, Francis Bacon and John Donne.
Thomas Cromwell was born in obscurity around 1485, but by 1523 he had worked his way into the service of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII’s chief minister, and through this he entered Parliament. While it is not known which seat he represented, he wrote in a letter that he had ‘endured a Parliament which continued by the space of 17 whole weeks’.
On Wolsey’s downfall, Cromwell managed to get returned in November 1529 for the new Parliament, though the circumstances of his ‘election’ for Taunton are somewhat murky. Cromwell, who later formally became Henry’s chief minister, wielded great influence in this important ‘Reformation Parliament’ which ran until 1536. Cromwell sat for a different seat, possibly in Kent, in the short 1536 Parliament, but became a peer shortly before its dissolution. He fell from favour in 1540, and was executed on Tower Hill on 28 July.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the son of a very high legal and political official under Elizabeth I, so he was familiar with the ways of government. He first sat in the House of Commons in 1581 when barely twenty – he himself later boasted, slightly inaccurately, that ‘I was a Parliament man when I was but 17 years old’. He remained in the Commons until his elevation to the peerage in 1618, sitting for seven different constituencies from Bossiney, Cornwall in 1581 to Cambridge University from 1614.
His success was partly due to his ability to secure patronage. For example, for the 1586 Parliament, he switched from his existing seat at Weymouth to one at Taunton, which was under the patronage of his former tutor, Archbishop Whitgift. Bacon was fairly active in that Parliament, supporting, in November 1586, Mary Queen of Scots’ execution, both in a speech and on a committee drawing up the relevant petition. However he had no attachment to Taunton, and in the next Parliament in 1589 he moved on to the constituency of Liverpool. His influence and fame as a politician and philosopher came later.
Our final member of this Taunton trio is the poet John Donne (1572-1631). In 1597, he was made secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. Through him, he obtained a seat for Brackley, Northamptonshire in the 1601 Parliament.
His political career was cut short when he secretly married 16-year-old Ann More, a relative of Egerton. He was dismissed, and even briefly imprisoned. Donne summarised his fall from grace in a note to his new wife: “John Donne – Ann Donne – Undone”. He was sufficiently rehabilitated to be offered several seats when a new Parliament was summoned in 1614. He chose to accept nomination for Taunton, through the patronage of Sir Edward Phelips of Montacute.
This very short Parliament passed no legislation, and became known as the Addled Parliament. Donne did not speak at all, though he secured five appointments to committees, largely relating to matters between the two Houses.
It was as Dean of St Paul’s that he delivered a sermon in November 1622 commemorating the anniversary of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, in which he described Parliament as “that house, which is the hive of the Kingdome, from whence all her honey comes.”
© JB Seatrobe (Barry K Winetrobe & Janet Seaton) 2018. A version of this article was published originally in the Nov 2016 issue of the Somerset Leveller, #19.