Stockbridge was a borough by prescription. Its only officials were a bailiff (elected annually in the court leet of the crown manor), a constable, and a serjeant-at-mace. Perhaps as the consequence of a particularly sensational incident in 1614, it enjoyed a reputation for electoral malpractice, and only narrowly escaped setting a precedent for disfranchisement.
The corporation of Southampton consisted of the mayor, two bailiffs, and an indefinite number of ‘select burgesses’or freemen. There were also the aldermen, supposed to be six but in practice variable in number, the recorder, the town clerk, and the sheriff, who had acted as returning officer in parliamentary elections since Southampton had been granted county status in 1447. All the candidates in the period were court supporters, and only three contests are known; but the form of the indenture varied.
Under the charter of 1627 the corporation of Portsmouth consisted of the mayor and 12 aldermen. This body controlled the freeman roll, and hence the composition of the electorate; but their attitude can hardly be described as restrictive. It is true that in 1661 Mayor Lardner drew the line at granting the freedom to the junior member of the navy board; but Samuel Pepys was successful on his second application only a year later, and found the charge very moderate. ‘It cost me a piece of gold to the town clerk, and 10s.
Petersfield flourished on the trade of the Portsmouth road. Its municipality consisted of a mayor, bailiff, and two aldermen, elected annually in the court leet. The mayor was the returning officer, and the burgage-holders held under the lord of the manor, Thomas Hanbury of Buriton, who, however, does not appear to have intervened in parliamentary elections. The strongest natural interest was held by Sir John Norton of Rotherfield Park, but as a Cavalier he was debarred by the Long Parliament ordinance from standing at the general election of 1660.
Newtown alias Frankville consisted, by one account, of only three or four thatched cottages; but it was a borough by prescription. The corporation consisted of a mayor, whose name was drawn out of a that every year, and 12 ‘chief burgesses’ or aldermen, who had to be chosen from the burgage-holders. There was also a body of ‘free burgesses’ whose qualifications are uncertain.
The corporation of Newport alias Medina, consisting under the charter of 1608 of a mayor and 24 ‘capital burgesses’, many of them substantial men, succeeded in retaining one seat, and sometimes two, for the Isle of Wight gentry. The Dillingtons, a parliamentarian family, represented the borough in every Parliament except that of James II.
The Lymington salterns had produced bay-salt since the 12th century, and the borough remained sufficiently prosperous to lay out £220 on a new town hall in 1684. The proximity of the New Forest attracted younger sons of such recognized county families as the Bulkeleys, the Buttons and the Whitheds to settle in the town. The rudimentary corporation consisted of mayor, recorder (though there were no borough courts), and an unspecified number of ‘burgesses’ or freemen.
The corporation of Andover, which had monopolized the franchise since it had been restored in 1586, consisted of the bailiff, who acted as returning officer, the ‘steward’ or recorder, ten ‘approved men’ and 12 ‘burgesses’. Rulers of a market town of only moderate importance, they greatly coveted the revenues of Weyhill fair, the largest and most celebrated in the south of England, to which their Elizabethan charter gave them some claim. There was no dominant interest in the borough, but all the Members in this period except Robert Phelips were Hampshire landowners or local residents.
Whitchurch was owned by the dean and chapter of Winchester, to whom the inhabitants paid a yearly rent of £10. A mayor and bailiff were elected annually. It is not clear how or why enfranchisement was secured—perhaps the Kingsmills had a hand in it. They were a local landed family with long-standing connexions with the diocese of Winchester. At any rate the 1584 and 1586 MPs were John Cooper, a courtier, nephew of John Kingsmill, chancellor of the bishop of Winchester, and Henry Audley, an official of the diocese.
Winchester’s principal officials in this period were a mayor, recorder, aldermen, two bailiffs, two coroners, two constables and the major’s ‘assistants’, known as the ‘24’ although their number varied. Sir Francis Walsingham, high steward of Winchester since 1588, procured a new charter for the city in 1588.
