County

Sir John St. Loe (1559) of Tormarton, who had been under house arrest in the previous reign for his opposition to the government, was elected senior knight of the shire for the first Parliament, but no evidence of a by-election to replace him has been found. His fellow MP, Sir Giles Poole, of Sapperton, had on the contrary been regarded as a ‘safe Catholic’ during Mary’s reign, and yet continued on the Gloucestershire commission of the peace under Elizabeth until his death in 1589. He was related through his mother to the Brydges family and represented the shire a second time in 1571.

Essex was one county where conditions were right for a turbulent electoral history in this period, but for a variety of reasons including the proximity of court and government, the Privy Council managed to keep matters under control. Their intervention began with the first election of the reign, when the two candidates were Sir William Petre and Sir Anthony Cooke. Petre had been one of Thomas Cromwell’s servants and secretary to Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary; so moderate and capable a statesman that Queen Elizabeth retained him in her Privy Council and her favour.

Both the 1559 MPs, Sir Giles Strangways and Sir John Rogers, had already represented Dorset on several occasions in previous reigns. Sir Henry Ashley, a Dorset landowner and an active county official, was elected senior knight of the shire in 1563. Thomas Howard was sponsored by his father, the 1st Viscount Bindon, so that he might protect the family’s interests in the 1563 Parliament, when two bills concerning them were due to be considered.

A tightly knit group of powerful county landowners, all protestant and close associates of the and Earl of Bedford, monopolized both county seats in the first four Parliaments of the reign. Bedford was lord lieutenant of the county and Sir Peter Carew of Mohun’s Ottery (1559), Sir John St. Leger of Annery in Monkleigh (1559), Sir Gawain Carew of Exeter (1563) and Sir John Chichester of Great Torrington (1563) were all at one time his deputy lieutenants.

It is possible to establish a connexion between a number of Derbyshire Members and the lady known to posterity as Bess of Hardwick, who was building up her dynasties there during this period. Thomas Kniveton (1559) was the husband of her half-sister and confidential woman of business; Sir William St. Loe (1563) was her third husband; Gilbert Talbot, later 7th Earl of Shrewsbury (1572) and Henry Talbot (1584, 1586), her stepsons, Henry Cavendish (1572, 1584, 1586, 1589, 1593) her son, and George Manners (1593) married her granddaughter.

The Dacre family monopolized the Cumberland county seats in the first Parliament of Elizabeth’s reign. William, 3rd Lord Dacre, was the father of Leonard Dacre, the senior knight of the shire and the maternal grandfather of William Musgrave of Hayton, the junior knight of the shire. Leonard Dacre took the senior seat again in 1563 when he was accompanied to Parliament by Henry Curwen of Workington, the head of a family which had represented Cumberland in Parliament since the fourteenth century.

John Trelawny of Menheniot (1559, 1563) was descended from an old Cornish family and closely related to the Courtenays, earls of Devon. Richard Chamond of Launcells (1559, 1563, 1572) had already represented the county twice in previous reigns. As sheriff (1562-3) he was unable to stand at the general election in 1563, but came in at a by-election in 1566 caused by Trelawny’s death. Chamond’s being sheriff enabled Peter Edgecombe to win his first county seat in 1563.

The chamberlain of Cheshire (the county palatine of Chester) was responsible for conveying the election writ to the sheriff. During this period the chamberlain were the 3rd Earl of Derby (1559-65), the Earl of Leicester (1565-88), the 4th Earl of Derby (1588-93) and Lord Keeper Egerton (1593-1603). They do not appear to have exercised undue influence on the county elections, which followed the usual pattern of the period, with the leading landowning families taking their turn as knights of the shire.

Throughout this period Cambridgeshire was dominated by Sir Roger North, and Baron North from 1564, and lord lieutenant from 1569 to his death in 1600. North was himself the senior knight of the shire in the first Parliament of the reign and the first session of the second; his first son John occupied the senior seat in 1584, 1586 and 1589; and his third son Henry did so in 1597. His three deputy lieutenants also had county seats: Sir John Cutts of Childerley in 1584, 1586 and 1601; John Cotton in 1593 and 1601; and John Peyton II in 1593.

Only three Buckinghamshire gentlemen obtained a county seat on more than one occasion during Elizabeth’s reign. The first of these was Sir Henry Lee, who at Elizabeth’s accession was a young man of about 25, of good pedigree and with powerful friends. He had sat for the county in Mary’s last Parliament as junior knight of the shire; in the Parliaments of 1559, 1571 and 1572, he assumed the senior seat, and did not stand for election again.