By a determination of the House of Commons in 1661 the right of election was in the inhabitants, which was always understood to mean the resident freemen; and the borough was controlled by the corporation and the neighbouring gentry. Lord Strange, son of Lord Derby, had an estate around Preston and cultivated the borough; and in 1768, after one of the most violent elections of this period, wrested control from the corporation.W. Dobson, Parlty. Rep. Preston, 33-42.
The Members for Lancaster were usually neighbouring landowners—Abraham Rawlinson was the only merchant to sit for the borough during this period. The Reynolds family had considerable influence, and it was on an agreement with Francis Reynolds that George Warren was first returned in 1758. The Cavendish interest was based on the estates which the family had inherited from Sir William Lowther.
From 1754 to 1780 Clitheroe was a pocket borough of the Lister and Curzon families, who jointly held 53 out of its 102 burgages. But in 1780 Thomas Lister cheated his partner out of his share in the representation of the borough by refusing to agree to the conveyance of the joint burgages to nominal voters. Having thus set aside 53 of the burgages, Lister, who held 30 out of the remaining 49, was able to nominate to both seats; which he did, despite the protests of the Curzon family, for the remainder of this period.
There are a number of obscurities in the electoral history of Wigan, where the admission of freemen was regulated by a complicated municipal constitution. In-burgesses were chosen at the annual Michaelmas court leet from inhabitants paying scot and lot by the jury of the court, which was itself composed entirely of in-burgesses. The mayor had the power to create honorary freemen, generally known as out-burgesses, who had the right to vote in mayoral and parliamentary elections, but it would seem that only two such creations could be made by each mayor.See M.
In 1768, when the right of election was determined to be in ‘the inhabitants at large’ (subject to a six months’ residential qualification) rather than in the resident freemen, control of the parliamentary representation of Preston was wrested from the corporation by the 11th Earl of Derby, in alliance with Sir Henry Hoghton of nearby Hoghton Tower.
Newton was controlled by the Leghs of Lyme, who were lords of the manor and also owned most of the land in the borough. The head of the family until his death in 1792 was Peter Legh, and the Members returned in 1790 and 1796 were his nephew and heir, Thomas Peter Legh, and Thomas Brooke of Ashton Hayes, who was second cousin to Thomas Peter. The latter died in 1797, having bequeathed the family property to his eldest illegitimate son Thomas Legh, then about four years old.
As a port Liverpool was by now second only to London, enjoying a quarter of the country’s foreign trade and the largest share of its African trade. It gave employment to about 3,000 shipwrights, who, with ancillary trades, made up the majority of the electorate. Freemen qualified by birth or servitude and no longer by purchase, so the corporation was unable to command them; there was in any case a long-standing political conflict between that Anglican body and the dissenting freemen.
Lancaster was eclipsed by Liverpool as a port for the West Indian trade in this period. The consequent decline in the staple industries of shipbuilding and cabinet-making was never fully compensated by the developing cotton industry, though the town later enjoyed a revival of prosperity from the American, Russian and coastal trades. The freedom was obtainable by birth, apprenticeship, restricted gift of the mayor and two bailiffs and by purchase. A bye-law of 1796 set the minimum price of admission by purchase at ten guineas and in 1807 the practice was ended altogether.
The majority of the burgages at Clitheroe were owned by Thomas Lister of nearby Gisburn Park, a Whig, and Assheton Curzon, a ministerialist. Lister got the upper hand in 1780 and kept it in 1784, returning himself and a nominee on both occasions, but before 1790 he and Curzon came to terms and agreed to revert to their former practice of returning one Member each. Lister retired at the general election, his colleague John Lee was provided with a seat elsewhere and, probably at the behest of his friend the Duke of Portland, he brought in Sir John Aubrey, a recent convert to opposition.
The chief interests at Wigan in 1715 were in Sir Roger Bradshaigh, Member for the borough since 1695, whose estate was one mile away, and in Lord Barrymore, who had inherited the interest of his father-in-law, Richard Savage, 4th Earl Rivers, M.P. Wigan 1681, and bought that of George Kenyon, M.P. Wigan 1713-15, for £300.Note in Bradshaigh’s hand on copy of letter from Geo. Kenyon to mayor of Wigan, 11 Dec. 1714, Rylands, Crawford mss. Elections depended on the mayor, who not only was the returning officer but could create new freemen ex officio.
