Lewes

By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the ownership of Lewes was divided between Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk; Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby; Lord Bergavenny, and a Mary Everard of Lewes, who married twice, her husbands being Richard Bellingham (father of Edward Bellingham, the 1572 MP) and George Goring I, the 1559 and 1563 Member, whose son, George Goring II, sat in 1593 and 1601. Goring’s cousin, the lawyer Edward Fenner, sat in 1571. The borough was governed by ‘a society of the wealthier and discreeter sort of townsman, commonly called the twelve’ who elected two constables annually. The only surviving return for this period, that of 1588, was made by the two constables and ten named burgesses. Adjoining Lewes was the manor and borough of Southover, which had the right to return an MP to every second Parliament. Southover belonged to Sir Richard Sackville and Sir Richard Baker, until, in 1581, it passed to Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst. The Crown Office list for 1586 notes that Francis Alford, the latter’s cousin, was returned ‘for Southover, a member of Lewes’. Thomas Saunder, the second 1559 Member, lived in Southover and was a close connexion of (and may have been in the service of) the Sackvilles. Other Sackville nominees at Lewes were Richard Browne I (1584, 1586), Robert Sackville (1589), Sir Henry Glemham (1593, 1597), Goddard Pemberton (1601) and (Sir) Percival Hart (1601, replacing Pemberton). Howard influence can be seen in only one return, that of William Cantrell (1563), a servant of the Duke of Norfolk. The other Lewes MPs came in through their local standing: William Morley (1571), John Shurley I (1572, 1589, 1597), and Thomas Pelham (1584), whose family was still representing the borough 200 years later.5VCH Suss. vii. 1-7, 31, 48: Bk. of John Rowe (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxiv), 120, 122, 123; C219/31; Horsfield, Lewes, ii. app. 5; OR, i. 420.