County

Third in acreage among English counties, and with numerous small freeholders, Devon always seems to have held its county court at Exeter Castle, without adjournment to other local centres in this period. Polls were consequently exceptional and uncontested returns are frequently recorded. Monck, needless to say, was returned unopposed to the Convention, and his colleague Northcote, another Presbyterian, had worked his passage by taking a leading part in the Exeter disturbances of February 1660 in support of a free Parliament.

At the general election of 1660 the middle ground was occupied by Robert Eyre of Highlow, a recent convert to the Stuart cause, and John Ferrers, a loyalist who was too young to have taken part in the Civil War. On one flank they were opposed by John Gell, ‘the most rigid Presbyterian in the county’, on the other by Lord Mansfield, son of the Cavalier general in the north, and so debarred from standing under the last ordinance of the Long Parliament. A compromise was suggested, ‘though certainly that cannot consist with Mr Gell’s principles’.

Throughout the period the Howards of Naworth and Sir George Fletcher of Hutton played a major role in the county, but from 1665 Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven, despite the handicaps of constant ill health and long absences in London, steadily improved his interest, eclipsing the older families like the Curwens, Huddlestons and Dalstons, till by 1689 he had acquired a secure if tactful dominance. At the general election of 1660 the senior seat went to Charles Howard, a prominent figure at the Protector’s Court, but now a scarcely concealed Royalist.

The family of Robartes (ennobled in 1625) represented Cornwall in five of the seven Parliaments of the period. The traditional venue of county elections at Lostwithiel, within two miles of their principal residence, no doubt assisted their interest. They were originally Presbyterian in outlook, but Francis Robartes, the most active of the younger generation, became a churchman and a Tory.

The rising of Sir George Booth was, in all probability, a decisive influence on the Cheshire election in 1660. Booth himself and Thomas Mainwaring, one of his close friends and associates, were returned, apparently without a contest. In 1661 Booth had been raised to the peerage and Mainwaring did not stand. Two Cavaliers, Lord Brereton and Peter Venables were returned. But the election of Sir Fulk Lucy after Brereton’s death in 1664 probably represented a gain for the Opposition. When Venables died in 1670 his seat was contested by Thomas Cholmondeley and Sir Philip Egerton.

Cambridgeshire was a strongly political constituency throughout this period, and all but two of the elections are known to have been contested. In 1660 Sir Dudley North I, a Parliamentarian during the Civil War, and Sir Thomas Willys, who had held local office throughout the Interregnum, might have been returned unopposed if they would have pledged themselves for an unconditional restoration of Church and King.

The reputation of Buckinghamshire for political and religious radicalism applied more to the Chilterns than to the north of the county. Hence the rivalry between conservative Buckingham and radical Aylesbury as seat of the county court was of considerable political importance at elections. The only substantial aristocratic interests were held by the earls of Bridgwater, who acted as lords lieutenant for most of the period, and Lord Wharton, though this depended chiefly on the personality of his eldest son, who came of age only in 1669.

The ancient custom of the county was to elect one Member from the ‘Forest’, the other from the ‘Vale’, or the eastern and western sections of the shire, with Reading as the dividing line. Generally the custom was observed, except when political exigencies overrode geographical interests. Though Reading was a convenient central point, polling always took place at Abingdon, the county town, but poll figures do not survive for this period.

Lord Ailesbury, himself an unsuccessful candidate for Bedfordshire in this period, regretted that the device of a preliminary gentry meeting had not taken root in this small county, and three of the elections were certainly contested. In the second half of the period these ‘senseless and expensive animosities’ can be ascribed to the rivalry of the courtly Bruces of Ampthill and the Russells of Woburn, whose name was to become almost synonymous with Whiggery.

The representation of Radnorshire was divided between the two leading county families, the Prices of Monaughty and the Lewises of Harpton and Gladestry, except in 1572, when the election was successfully contested by Roger Vaughan of Court of Clyro. The sheriff in 1572, Edward Price, was a relative of Vaughan’s and an enemy of the unsuccessful candidate, Thomas Lewis. Vaughan also contested the 1597 election, but failed to be returned since this time the sheriff, Richard Fowler, was on his opponent’s side.Neale, Commons, 80-81. 94-96.