Peterborough’s governors did not constitute a corporate body. The dean and chapter of the cathedral were lords of the manor and the city officials were elected annually at a court leet held at the town hall. The city’s ‘chief gentry’, with the addition of some merchants and principal tradesmen, formed a body of ‘feoffees’ responsible primarily for administering the various charities and guild properties, but they also oversaw other matters of a municipal character.
Visitors to Northampton towards the end of the 17th century were impressed by its wide streets and well-appointed stone buildings. The town had been almost entirely rebuilt following the devastating fire of 1675, and its appearance was an undoubted source of pride to its civic masters. In 1701 a gentleman tourist, Sir John Perceval†, remarked on the many gentrified families living within the town and its outlying districts who were a vital ‘support’ to the local economy, and they, rather than leading townsmen, supplied the candidates for the borough seats.
The disposal of the single Higham Ferrers seat lay chiefly in the hands of whoever controlled the manor, the lordship of which belonged to the duchy of Lancaster. It had been granted by Charles II to his consort, Catherine of Braganza, with reversion to the 2nd Earl of Feversham, the Queen’s chamberlain from 1680 until her death in 1705. Feversham seems to have shown no interest in nominating candidates except in 1689 when he put forward his heir, his sister-in-law’s husband, Hon. Lewis Watson†, who in a short while succeeded his father as 3rd Lord Rockingham.
Brackley’s governing body, in whom the right of election lay, was a corporation by prescription consisting of a mayor, six aldermen, sometimes called ‘capital burgesses’, and 26 ‘burgesses’. Its lord of the manor, the Egerton earls of Bridgwater, commanded at least one of the parliamentary seats throughout the period. The Wenman family had formerly enjoyed greater electoral influence, but this interest was silenced in 1690 with the death of Viscount Wenman (Richard†), followed by the long minority and later political apathy of his son. From the early 1690s, however, Hon.
Although susceptible to aristocratic influence, and with a tincture of party politics, the Thetford corporation in this period was characterized more by venality. Bribery was often a feature of elections, and no interest could for long be maintained there without some substantial gifts to the corporation or benefactions to the town.
Norwich was still the second city in the kingdom, with a population of some 30,000. Celia Fiennes found it ‘a rich, thriving, industrious place’. There was a very large Dissenting interest: ‘every sect is represented here’, wrote another visitor. This, coupled with the fact that the weavers, by far the most numerous body among the freemen, were predominantly Whig, ensured that the High Tory faction in the city, although it had regained control over the corporation by 1690, could not monopolize parliamentary elections.
Politics in King’s Lynn were dominated by the Turners, a local family of merchants and lawyers, who provided the corporation with five of its mayors between 1691 and 1707. Sir John Turner, then a Tory, was returned in 1690 with another local Tory, Daniel Bedingfield, the recorder. However, Sir John’s nephew, Charles Turner, had in 1689 married the daughter of Robert Walpole I* of Houghton, and the Turners soon aligned themselves behind this powerful new connexion, supporting the Walpoles locally and the Whigs nationally. In 1695 Charles Turner took the place of Bedingfield.
The Members for Yarmouth were expected to work for the borough in the House and to follow the corporation’s instructions on local matters: after each session they were presented with a sum of money or a quantity of wine ‘as a token of thankfulness for their good services’. The town was described by Defoe as ‘very rich’ and also ‘very well governed’. The electorate numbered only some 600 in 1660, but had risen to about 800 by the 1720s. As one modern historian has noted,
Castle Rising had been a pocket borough of the Duke of Norfolk, who as lord of the manor controlled most of the burgages. However, the Duke was in financial difficulties and the two Members he returned in 1690, both of them Whigs, each coveted it for themselves: Hon.
The franchise in Monmouth had been determined by a decision of the House in 1680, which admitted two out-boroughs, Newport and Usk, but excluded two others, Abergavenny and Chepstow. This was confirmed by the practice in the elections of 1689 and 1690. On the other hand the restriction of voting rights to resident freemen, which had been a subsidiary element in the Commons’ judgment, was almost certainly ignored throughout this period.
