Borough

Newton was a small township in the south of Lancashire ‘consisting of about 150 houses’. The lordship of the manor of Newton had been held by the Leghs of Lyme, in this period headed by the non-juror Peter Legh†, since 1661, and the lord of the manor dominated the borough. The borough’s sole administrative body was the court leet which was held by the authority of the lord of the manor, and the court’s presiding officer, the steward, was directly appointed by him and held the post at his discretion, a fact of some importance as the steward also acted as the borough’s returning officer.

Prior to 1660 Liverpool’s elections had been dominated by the influence of the Mores of Bank Hall, who were the largest landowners in the borough, the Catholic Molyneuxs of Sefton who were the the lords of Liverpool Castle, and the earls of Derby, but during the Restoration period the corporation became the dominant interest. Local patrons played a diminishing role in elections, which became dominated by rival groups within the corporation. Following the recall of the 1685 charter in October 1688, the borough was governed by a charter of 1677.

Under the 1684 charter Lancaster was governed by a mayor, seven aldermen, from whom the mayor was chosen on a rota system, and a common council, with vacancies being filled by co-option. The franchise lay in the freemen. Browne Willis* was informed that there were only 400 houses in the town, and a comprehensive freemen list from 1693 shows only about 520 freemen at the beginning of this period. By 1715, however, the swearing of large numbers of non-resident freemen, many created in election years, had swelled the electorate to over 1,000.

Situated in the remote Pendle valley, Clitheroe was, according to Browne Willis*, ‘an ancient town consisting of about 200 houses built of limestone and plastered over’. Anglican provision was particularly poor and, though Presbyterianism was weak in the area, Quakers and Catholics formed significant minorities, and the presence of these groups worried local Anglicans, particularly when they attempted to exercise electoral influence in the early 1690s. Clitheroe was essentially a small market village, and its economy was dependent upon agriculture and small-scale weaving.

The representation of Rochester was often shared between a local landowner and an Admiralty nominee. The key to the Admiralty’s influence lay in the importance to the economy of the town of the adjacent Chatham dockyard. Rochester itself was somewhat wary of the economic power of its newer neighbour; in particular, efforts were made in 1689 and 1710–11 to suppress Chatham’s market. The borough’s chief concerns related to matters such as the financial outlay in maintaining the important bridge over the Medway.CSP Dom. 1689–90, p. 18; F. F. Smith, Hist. Rochester, 93.

A small port on the south-west point of the Isle of Sheppey, Queenborough was described by Defoe as ‘a miserable, dirty, decayed, poor, pitiful, fishing town’. Even worse from Defoe’s point of view, it was one of a number of rotten boroughs ‘who send up gentlemen to represent beggars, and have had more money spent at some of their elections, than all the land in the parishes would be worth if sold at a hundred years’ purchase’.

Maidstone was the county town of Kent and continuous vigilance was expected from its MPs to keep it so. Thus in 1695 Sir Thomas Taylor, 2nd Bt., wrote to Lord Chief Justice Sir George Treby*, who had been appointed to the Home Circuit, to ensure that the assizes were held in Maidstone as ‘it is the most convenient place and has good accommodation [and] assizes have been generally held there at least 50 times to once elsewhere’. Convenient it certainly was, for although it staged the quarter sessions for west Kent, it was centrally placed to serve the whole county.

Canterbury was probably the largest town in Kent in the later 17th century, boasting a population of about 7,000 in 1670. It was a county in its own right, the lord lieutenant usually being given jurisdiction over the city by virtue of his patent of office. The large freeman franchise made it difficult for any one interest to control, although there were many groups enjoying some say in elections.

Huntingdon was a pleasant but inconsiderable town, physically overlooked and politically overawed by Hinchingbrooke House, the ‘noble’ and ‘ancient’ seat of the Montagus, earls of Sandwich. Such electoral contests as occurred in this period arose from divisions within the Montagu interest itself rather than any challenge from outside. The extent of the franchise, though giving scope for bribery and intimidation, did not render the borough wholly corrupt and thus offered comparatively little encouragement to strangers.

Political division in St. Albans stemmed chiefly from two events at the end of Charles ii’s reign: first, the acquisition in 1684 by John Churchill†, later Duke of Marlborough, of the Sandridge estate, which included the manor of Holywell on the town’s outskirts; and second, the surrender the same year of the borough’s charter, induced by Churchill. Both developments threatened the interest of Sir Samuel Grimston, 3rd Bt., who owned the nearby Gorhambury estate and had been elected by the town in 1679 and 1681.