The city and liberty of Westminster presented a significant contrast: a prestigious constituency with a plebeian, often violent, electorate. Encompassing the seat of both monarch and Parliament, the borough was frequently contested by ministers, who recognized its potential impact on elections throughout the country, and took advantage of the Court’s influence over local tradesmen and victuallers. The propinquity of the palaces of Whitehall and St.
Politically, Stamford was dominated by two neighbouring Tory families, the Berties of Uffington and the Cecils of Burghley, each of whom usually took one seat. The lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, the 3rd Earl of Lindsey (Robert Bertie†), described Stamford’s corporation to James II in 1688 as ‘steady in their loyalty’, and indeed some of its members refused to support the Revolution with the result that a serious riot occurred on the day of the coronation, 13 Apr. 1689. Information was sent to the Earl of Stamford that,
Since the Restoration the representation of Lincoln had been dominated by the local gentry families of Monson and Meres. However, the non-juring stance of Sir Henry Monson, 3rd Bt.†, allowed other Lincolnshire gentlemen with longstanding borough connexions to challenge for a seat, most notably Sir John Bolles, 4th Bt., of Scampton, and Sir Edward Hussey, 3rd Bt., of Caythorpe. The town was hardly in a position to obstruct such outside interference, having yet to recover from its Civil War upheavals.
One of the most venal boroughs in the country, Grimsby was no more than ‘a little poor town, not a quarter great as heretofore’. Intensive electioneering clearly pushed up the price of the seats, which increasingly became the preserve of London merchants of somewhat doubtful reputation. Not surprisingly, following one of the most notoriously corrupt elections of the period, calls were made to disfranchise the town, led by John Toland’s Art of Governing by Partys (1701), but to no effect.
A small market town situated on the Great North Road, Grantham’s franchise was restricted to its freemen, and influence over the corporation, consisting of an alderman, 12 senior comburgesses and 12 junior comburgesses, who elected the freemen, was therefore a priority for would-be representatives of the borough. During this period three interests predominated; that of the 9th Earl of Rutland (John Manners†), of Belvoir Castle only seven miles distant, and, moreover, recorder of the borough; the Brownlows of Belton; and the Ellyses of Nocton. All three families had Whig sympathies.
In 1690 one of two strong interests at Boston belonged to Sir William Yorke, a Whig and Presbyterian, who had first been returned in 1679 with the support of fellow Presbyterian and Whig, Sir Anthony Irby† and the town’s sizable Dissenting community, and henceforth had represented the borough in every Parliament, except for that of 1685.
In 1682 Thomas Baskerville had bluntly described Leicester as ‘an old stinking town, situated upon a dull river, inhabited for the most part by tradesmen, viz.: worsted combers and clothiers’. Celia Fiennes, visiting in 1698, was more complimentary, noting the spaciousness of streets and market-place and the presence of ‘a great many Dissenters’. In fact the town’s Nonconformist community was small in comparison with other midland centres of Dissent, and accounted for approximately 100 parliamentary votes.
Situated in the heart of the south-west Lancashire coalfield, Wigan was an expanding, early industrial town. The Haigh mines, the most important in the district, were owned by the Bradshaighs of Haigh Hall, whose prominent role in corporation affairs during the Restoration had allowed them to establish a dominant interest in the borough, being always strong enough to command one seat in this period and frequently both.
By 1690 Preston was well on its way to realizing its eventual status as a ‘stylish Georgian provincial capital’, having replaced the county town of Lancaster as the ‘focal point of county social life’. Preston owed its rise to the concentration of duchy of Lancaster administration, and the presence of duchy courts, in the borough, so that, as Defoe noted, ‘the town is full of attorneys, proctors and notaries’. These clerks and lawyers were joined by an ‘abundance of gentry’ attracted by the town’s county-wide prominence and by the stirrings of the ‘urban renaissance’ in the borough.
