Eye

The small town of Eye was situated in the north of Suffolk, just off the London-Norwich road, in that part of the county known as High Suffolk. When Sir Philip Skippon† (son of Philip Skippon*) visited the area in 1669, he observed that ‘it consists chiefly of pasture which affords very good butter and indifferent cheese’.1 Cent. Kent. Studs. U951 F15, unfol.; Norf. Arch. xxii. 168. To Bulstrode Whitelocke* in 1660, when he referred to its ‘poor corporation’, the town probably seemed a rural backwater.2 Whitelocke, Diary, 611. Since 1538 the major landowner in the borough had been the crown: the honor of Eye had, in recent years, been held by Charles I when prince of Wales and was in 1640 held by his wife, Henrietta Maria, as part of her jointure lands.3 Copinger, Manors of Suff. iii. 259, 263. The town had perhaps been incorporated as early as the reign of King John, but it was only in 1571 that it began to return Members to Parliament and its right to do so was not established beyond question until a new charter was granted in 1575. That charter provided for the town to be governed by a corporation made up of two bailiffs, 10 other principal burgesses and 24 common councilmen. As the equivalents of a mayor, the bailiffs performed the duties of the returning officer in parliamentary elections.4 Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/B/2; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 514-16.

From the early years of its enfranchisement, elections in the borough been open to influence by the crown. The town had regularly been represented by at least one court nominee and it was initially with the backing of the council of the prince of Wales that outsider Francis Finch† was successful in all four elections between 1624 and 1628. The basis for Sir Roger North’s unassailable interest in the borough, which had returned him in the senior place in four of the five elections of the 1620s, is less clear. The town must have had a more compelling reason for choosing him with such regularity than that he owned some estates more than ten miles to the south west. It was enough to ensure North’s election at Eye for a fifth and a sixth time in 1640.

One development in 1640 since the previous election in 1628 was that Sir Frederick Cornwallis*, whose estates at Brome lay just to the north of the town, had come of age. Quite apart from his personal interest in the town, Cornwallis was steward of the honor of Eye and therefore controlled what influence the queen could bring to bear.5 Cornwallis Corresp. 258. Despite North’s lengthy service as their MP, Cornwallis was given the senior place when the freemen met on 24 March 1640, relegating Sir Roger to the junior seat. There is nothing to suggest that this election was contested.6 C219/42/2, no. 20; Harl. 298, f. 148. The same is true of the election held later that year to select the MPs for what would become the Long Parliament. On 26 October 1640 Cornwallis and North were again returned at Eye.7 C219/43/2, no. 171.

Cornwallis soon emerged as one of Charles I’s strongest supporters and at an early stage of the civil war (23 Sept. 1642), after it became known that he was raising forces for the king in Holland, the Commons resolved to ban him from sitting among them as MP for Eye.8 CJ ii. 779b. Having refused to recognize the validity of his removal, Cornwallis later took his seat in the royalist Parliament at Oxford in January 1644.9 Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. Eye was one of the first constituencies to benefit from Parliament’s decision to hold recruiter elections in 1645 to fill the vacancies created by the disablement of royalist MPs.10 CJ iv. 262a. A new writ was issued by the clerk in chancery on 6 September, only four days after it had been approved by the Commons.11 C231/6, p. 17. Maurice Barrowe, the very wealthy local landowner who sat on the parliamentarian county committee for Suffolk, was elected some time before 22 November, probably without facing an opponent.12 CJ vi. 350b. Although it may be relevant that Barrowe was related to Cornwallis (his aunt had been married to Cornwallis’s late uncle Sir Charles Cornwallis†), his estates at Westhorpe, only six miles away, gave him a strong claim to the seat. In any case, Cornwallis was at Exeter, attending the prince of Wales, at the time the election was held.13 CCC 1390. North and Barrowe both sat in the Commons until it was purged in December 1648 and North briefly resumed his seat in July 1649.

Eye was too insignificant to remain enfranchised after the overhaul of the electoral system implemented in 1654 under the 1653 Instrument of Government. It did not regain its two seats until the restoration of the old franchises in 1658. However, as a result of one important development during the 13-year gap between Barrowe’s election and the summoning of Richard Cromwell’s only Parliament, the 1659 election did not follow the traditional pattern. In 1650 the honor of Eye, together with the manor of Eye Hall, had gone on sale as part of Parliament’s disposal of the crown estates and been purchased by the serjeant-at-arms to the council of state, Edward Dendy*.14 E317/Suff/15; E320/Q16; E304/6/Q16; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HB18/51/10/19.6; EE2/T/4; HA85/3144/12. Using the electoral patronage once claimed by the queen (and with the influence of the royalist Cornwallis still eclipsed), Dendy had no difficulty in securing the senior place in the election held on 30 December 1658. The other place was given to Joseph Blissett, an army officer (like Dendy), who was probably a newcomer to the town but who had nevertheless risen to become one of the principal burgesses on the corporation.15 C219/48: Eye election indenture, 1 Jan. 1659; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/O3/1/9; EE2/I/1, ff. 13v-22.

At the Restoration Dendy was excluded from the 1660 act of indemnity and his lands, at Eye and elsewhere, were confiscated by the crown. From the 1660 election onwards the Cornwallis family was able to reassert its former control, while the main challenge to them was provided by the Reeves of Thwaite, a local royalist family which hitherto had exercised little influence in the borough’s parliamentary elections.