Middlesex

As in other periods, Middlesex was a county open to court influence, though at times its Members could be strikingly independent. Some of them had estates there, others just qualified as residents, bearing in mind that Middlesex then included Westminster and much of what is now London.

The two 1559 Members had both had a spell in the Tower in Mary’s reign for signing letters in favour of Lady Jane Grey. Under Edward VI Cholmley had been a judge and Wroth a courtier; the former was indifferent to the state religion, the latter was a puritan. Wroth sat again in 1563, and his son Robert, who had accompanied his father into exile during Mary’s reign, and who married an heiress, represented Middlesex in every Elizabethan Parliament from 1572 and in the first Parliament of James VI. He was the most independent of the Middlesex MPs, one who lost no opportunity to defend the liberties and dignity of the House. Sir William Cordell (1563), master of the rolls under both Mary and Elizabeth, was a former Speaker of the Commons and a Marian Privy Councillor. The 1571 MPs were Francis and John Newdigate, uncle and nephew. Here again Middlesex produced the unusual—a family taking both county seats at the same election. Francis had married the widowed Duchess of Somerset, whose servant he had been; John had recently become the head of the senior branch of the family, but still took junior place, deferring to Francis’s higher social status. Two lieutenants of the Tower represented Middlesex in this period, (Sir) Owen Hopton (1572, 1584) and (Sir)John Peyton I (1597). William Fleetwood III (1586, 1589) had two Middlesex addresses, but his claim to a county seat was really his marriage into the Clifton family and his relationship to his namesake the recorder of London. Francis Bacon (1593) was another who could just qualify as a Middlesex property owner, but he owed his election to Burghley. It was while he represented Middlesex that Bacon ruined his prospects under Elizabeth by his speech on the subsidy. (Sir) John Fortescue I (1601) was a Privy Councillor who had represented Buckinghamshire in the three previous Parliaments but had now moved to Middlesex so that his eldest son Francis might take over his senior seat in the former county.