Doncaster Borough Charters of King James II, 25 March 1685 and 10 November 1688
King James II ruled for just over three years, from February 1685 to December 1688. Yet his brief reign produced two borough charters for Doncaster, the first a month after he became king and the second a month before he went into exile in France. Like the charter of 1664, and unlike the earlier charters, we know that the initiative lay with the king and not the corporation. Doncaster had not asked for the charter of 1685: the king had imposed his will on the borough.
The motive in issuing the charter was the desire of the Crown to strengthen its control over those who held office in local government. The most important feature of the new charter was that it created the right of the Privy Council (the forerunner of the Cabinet) to order the removal of any member of the corporation it chose to dismiss. However, James was merely continuing the policy introduced by his brother. It was Charles II who, in the closing months of his reign, put pressure on the corporation of Doncaster, as he was doing to other corporations, to surrender its charter so that he could substitute a new one with this provision in it. The corporation had fallen into line and, in January 1685, only weeks before the death of Charles II, it had surrendered its charter of 1664 to the king. It thus fell to James II to make the new grant.
To a considerable extent, the provisions of the new charter read much like those of the old. The crucial difference was the power it gave to the government to remove members of the corporation at will. The charter did, however, contain two minor measures to please local opinion. The corporation was allowed to take a pint measure of grain from every sackful brought to the market and the borough freemen were to be exempt from serving on juries outside the borough.
In August 1688, the king put his new powers into effect. He sent an order to the corporation to remove the mayor and four aldermen (as the most senior council members were called), replacing them with his own nominees. The new members, moreover, were to be excused from taking the usual oaths of office. The new mayor, Ralph Hansby of Tickhill, was a Roman Catholic, like King James himself, and could not have taken the oaths which were designed to prevent any but members of the Church of England from holding public offices.
Three years later, James was on the brink of exile but, still hoping to hold onto his throne, he issued a new charter to Doncaster. This second charter from James II, dated 10 November 1688, in effect restored the situation to what it had been under the charter of 1664. Doncaster's response was probably typical of all the boroughs that James had suborned. In the minute book of the corporation the high-handed order from the king was crossed through and on 8 December, John Elleker was elected mayor, replacing Hansby, the Roman Catholic mayor of just four months.
