Borough

‘The people mostly subsist by woollen manufacture. The best broadcloth in England is made here.’ So wrote Rev. Thomas Cox in 1700. Worcester’s prosperity was based on this type of textile production, much of it intended for London and the export market. However, structural shifts in the economy, which led to the disappearance of the industry by 1750, were already causing severe dislocation and hardship. The problems besetting the trade no doubt explain the eagerness of the clothiers’ company to petition Parliament in the hope of influencing legislation in ways beneficial to the industry.

After a brief hiatus under the charter of 1684 when the borough’s parliamentary representatives were elected by the corporation, Evesham returned to its freeman franchise for the elections to the Convention of 1689. The lack of an indigenous elite capable of engrossing the representation to itself ensured that the borough fell prey to outsiders, helped no doubt by the custom whereby members of the eight companies could all be admitted to the freedom of the borough, and the power of the corporation to create freemen (including non-residents).

Droitwich was synonymous with salt. This useful commodity had been boiled from the lime located in the manor since the 8th century. King John had incorporated the burgesses in 1215 in return for an annual fee farm rent of £100. The two bailiffs and the burgesses (freemen) were empowered to control the organization of the industry. To qualify as a burgess one had to own at least a quarter share in a ‘fat’ (vat). However, there were only three routes open to obtain a burgess-ship: inheritance, adoption or unanimous election by the existing freemen.

The representative history of Bewdley in these years revolved around the rivalry of the Herbert and Winnington families. The Herberts owned property at Ribbesford and Dowles, each within a mile of the borough, and as a consequence Henry Herbert (like his father Sir Henry Herbert†) had sat for the town during the Restoration period and again in the Convention of 1689. They had not been beyond challenge, however, as Thomas Foley†, the great ironmaster, and his third son, Philip Foley*, had both represented Bewdley before 1689.

Two related families, the St. Johns of Lydiard Tregoze and the Pleydells of Midgehall, had traditionally exercised a preponderant interest at Wootton Bassett, and by the beginning of this period Henry St. John I had established an ascendancy. However, the lords of the manor, the Hydes, earls of Rochester, also enjoyed some influence, and the very composition of the electorate occasionally encouraged an outsider to come and spend money. One such was Thomas Richmond Webb*, who stood in 1690 against the two outgoing Members, St.

Wilton, originally the county town, now made little impression on the traveller. ‘A place of no great notice’, wrote Defoe, and Macky was even harsher, describing it as ‘poor, paltry [and] mean’. The Earl of Pembroke’s (Thomas Herbert†) ‘very fine house’ seemed to dominate the small ‘village’ at its gates, but in electoral terms Pembroke was not a dominant figure. Though powerful, he only rarely succeeded in returning both Members in this period.

‘A mean town’, in Browne Willis’* recollection, Westbury was none the less a centre for woollen manufactures, especially ‘medley’ or ‘mixed’ broadcloth, much of which was exported to Spain and Portugal or formed a part of the African trade. There was a borough corporation, comprising a mayor and 13 ‘aldermen’ or ‘capital burgesses’, with the mayor acting as parliamentary returning officer.

Defoe found ‘a great deal of good manners and good company’ among the 7,000 or so inhabitants of Salisbury, ‘gentlemen’ as well as ‘citizens’. There was also a considerable clerical element in the population, which despite the Whig occupancy of the episcopal throne probably gave a weighty moral and, indirectly, electoral support to the Tory cause, and helped to balance the influence of the flourishing clothing industry, in which Dissent was strong.

By this time quite uninhabited, Old Sarum was the archetype of the ‘decayed’ borough: ‘it may be truly said of it, that “corn grows now where Troy town stood”’. Elections were held under the ‘parliamentary tree’ in the ‘electing acre’, the field ‘where the last houses are supposed to have stood’. By the Revolution the burgages had come to be concentrated in a few hands, and the electorate, which in 1660 had numbered over 50, had shrunk to about a dozen.

With the former Seymour estates at Tottenham and Savernake, which came into their possession in 1678 on the marriage of the 2nd Earl of Ailesbury (Thomas Bruce†), the Bruce family had acquired the lordship of the manor of Marlborough and a predominant influence over elections there. From at least 1698 onwards this position was under strenuous challenge as the 6th Duke of Somerset, aided by the ‘Whigs and Dissenters’ in the town, and exploiting the cupidity of many leading ‘burgesses’, resurrected a Seymour interest.