Shropshire

From the Restoration until beyond the end of the period Shropshire was dominated by Lord Newport, who followed the not uncommon evolution from Cavalier to Whig. No contests are known. At the general election of 1660 the Newport interest was unobtrusive, but the result was all that he could have wished. Indeed the senior knight of the shire, Sir William Whitmore, was probably disqualified under the Long Parliament ordinance as a Cavalier’s son. His colleague, Henry Vernon, had managed to avoid commitment in the Civil War, but his sympathies were not in doubt. Both Members moved down to borough seats in 1661. Newport, now lord lieutenant, wrote on 6 Feb.: ‘Sir Francis Lawley and Sir Richard Ottley are thought to be the two fittest persons to be knights of the shire for Shropshire’. Their selection was probably the result of a gentry meeting; Newport’s son Richard was under age, and it is not known whether his brother Andrew Newport was proposed. Ottley’s father had been royalist governor of Shrewsbury, while he was himself Newport’s most trusted friend and adviser, and Lawley, who had sat for Wenlock in the Convention, replaced his brother-in-law Whitmore. His political antecedents were less impressive, but he became a strong supporter of the Court. On Ottley’s death in 1670, he was succeeded by Richard Newport, who soon went into opposition.1HMC 5th Rep. 150-1; VCH Salop, iii. 257.

Lawley was so far identified with the Danby administration that he could not even hold his own borough of Wenlock. Newport was re-elected at both elections of 1679 with Sir Vincent Corbet. They were marked ‘worthy’ and ‘honest’ by Shaftesbury, but absented themselves from the division on the first exclusion bill. Corbet died shortly before the general election of 1681, and at a gentry meeting William Leveson Gower was agreed upon as his successor. There was some prospect of a contest, since Sir John Corbet of Stoke and Robert Leighton conducted a canvass, presumably as opponents of exclusion, but desisted before the election.2CSP Dom. 1685, p. 103; Duckett, Penal Laws (1883), 185; PRO 30/53/8, f. 69.

A gentry meeting was held on 20 Mar. 1685 at the sheriff’s house in Shrewsbury. Lawley reported to Sunderland that, at the request of the 30 gentlemen who attended, ‘Mr Newport desisted standing, and we have pitched upon Mr [John] Walcot and Mr [Edward] Kynaston of Oteley for our knights, two very loyal persons’. Leveson Gower had a safe seat at Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the two Tories were presumably elected unopposed. Lord Chancellor Jeffreys replaced Newport as lord lieutenant in 1687, but was obliged to confess in the following spring: ‘For knights of the shire I can propose none that will be for the King’s measures that will be likely to carry it’. Andrew Newport urged his niece’s husband, the Hon. Henry Herbert, to attend a gentry meeting at Shrewsbury on 27 Sept. 1688 in the hope that it would

contribute much to the composing the contents that may arise and render the election troublesome and chargeable to my nephew [Richard]; for if Sir John Corbet put in to be one, as he says he will, and Mr Kynaston of Oteley likewise (whom the gentlemen I conceive have a desire to choose with my nephew), all three must poll, though I hear not of any that will oppose my nephew.

There is no evidence that Corbet went to the poll in 1689, when the Tory Kynaston was re-elected with the Whig Newport.