Gervase Benson and John Archer entered the government of the Cumbrian market town of Kendal in 1640. Once the royalists in south Westmorland had been neutralised by the Scots in 1644, the two men became increasingly important in Kendal corporation. Unlike a number of their corporation seniors, they did not support the king in the second civil war in 1648. Later they pushed to dismiss those royalists from the government of Kendal. Benson and Archer removed a third of the corporation, royalists and others, in a purge mounted through the imposition of the Engagement in 1650. At some point, Benson's religious opinions led him to sectarianism, eventually as a Quaker. Thus his old but more conservative ally John Archer assisted in his removal from the corporation in 1653. Their public disagreement in that year helped to ensure that a vitriolic quarrel in print and pulpit, street and jail, was carried on in Kendal. The corporation finally removed its last Quaker member in 1655, though Quakers remained in the town.

Two points emerged from this contribution to the history of Kendal. The first, which has been given little emphasis, is the relationship between local and central government. It was a concern recurrently prominent during the revolutionary decades: for example, the second civil war can be explained by the dissatisfaction of the localities with the policies of the London parliament; later, Cromwell's major-generals proved a centralising imposition on the localities, resented and thus unworkable.