Stockbridge’s limited importance rested on its location on the main route from Winchester to Salisbury, at the point where it crossed the River Test. A parish of some 600 adults in 1676, it was not a significant centre for industrial activity and had been granted its market only in 1593. VCH Hants, iv. 483-4; Compton Census, 95. James Young described it as a ‘small pitiful place, whose great advantage of late is choosing burgesses’. Journal of James Yonge, ed. F.N.L. Poynter (1963), 154. Part of the duchy of Lancaster, it was a mesne borough without charter; its inhabitants elected the bailiffs and other municipal officers (constable, serjeant at mace) at the annual court leet. VCH Hants, iv. 484 Enfranchised only in 1563, its electorate consisted of inhabitant householders paying borough rent, of whom there were 28 in 1624. Add. 18597, f. 124; HP Commons 1558-1603. By the mid-seventeenth century it had already acquired notoriety for the electoral corruption which in 1689 prompted a private bill for its disenfranchisement, Young observing that the inhabitants ‘invite and encourage any man that will spend his money, and at last the choice is in him they think will die soonest, that they may choose again’. HP Commons 1660-1690; Journal of James Yonge, ed. Poynter, 154. Before the late 1620s the duchy had exerted some patronage, but especially as its landed base diminished there was no dominant electorate influence. HP Commons 1604-1629.
In both elections of 1640 the borough chose William Jephson* and William Heveningham*. C219/42ii/142; C219/43/153. Jephson, from Froyle in the north east of the county, belonged to an established Hampshire family also prominent in the Anglo-Irish community. His uncle Sir William Jephson† and his father, Sir John Jephson†, had both sat for Hampshire seats earlier in the century. Given this pedigree, Jephson’s return as an MP was unsurprising, but it is not clear why or how he was elected at Stockbridge. Possibly he owed his seat to Sir Thomas Jervoise* or Sir Henry Wallop*, both of whom were prominent members of the county community with estates nearby. Heveningham, whose roots were in Suffolk and Norfolk, was a son-in-law of Wallop, and was almost certainly returned on his family interest.
Like Jervoise and Wallop, both Jephson and Heveningham proved to be active in the parliamentarian cause during 1640s. However, whereas Jephson was secluded at Pride’s Purge, Heveningham aligned himself with the Independents and participated in the high court of justice for the trial of the king in January 1649. Although he declined to sign the death warrant, he was subsequently an active Member of the Rump, and a councillor of state.
Stockbridge was disenfranchised under the terms of the Instrument of Government, and thus unable to send Members to the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656. When the parliamentary constituency was restored in 1659, in circumstances that remain somewhat obscure, there were three candidates for the two seats: Robert Reynolds*, who had served as solicitor-general under the Rump and who would return to the same position in the summer of 1659; Richard Whithed II* of West Tytherley, a few miles south-west of Stockbridge, whose grandfather had represented the borough in 1628, and whose father, Richard Whithed I* sat in the Long Parliament until his seclusion at Pride’s Purge; and Francis Rivett* of Kings Somborne, the parish adjoining Stockbridge, Wallop’s former steward. C54/3460/32; C54/3642/9; Hants Hearth Tax, 274; Hants RO, 5M58/25-30. While Robert Wallop*, who had secured a county seat for himself, seems to have sought to reassert his family’s local interest to secure the return of Reynolds, an opponent of the Cromwellian regime, Whithed (with the possible support of his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Fiennes I*) and perhaps also Rivett appear to have been court candidates.
On 18 January 1659, three weeks after the election, Richard Cromwell* wrote that Rivett had been chosen ‘after the dispute of Mr Whithed and Reynolds’ but that this was ‘conceived to be the better election than either the other two, and ought to be returned for that it was a general and free choice of the electors of that place’. Cromwell expected that Whithed would challenge the election of Reynolds, ‘which hath a ground to be disputed’. BL, RP 2573(ii). However, the Commons Journal offers a different perspective: two indentures were returned, one naming Whithed and Rivett and the other Reynolds and Rivett. On 31 January the Commons was informed that the sheriff of Hampshire had detained the return made by the bailiff of Stockbridge, and that he had certified instead a second indenture ‘to the wrong of the gentlemen that were returned first’. It is not clear which indenture was which, for although the matter was referred to the committee of privileges, it does not appear to have been resolved. CJ vii. 595b. Presumably, Rivett took his seat for the constituency, although he made no discernible contribution to proceedings. Both Reynolds and Whithed sat, although since both were also returned elsewhere (respectively at Whitchurch and New Lymington) their status at Stockbridge is unknown. Rivett sat again in the Convention, while members of the Whithed family represented the seat after the Restoration. HP Commons 1660-1690.
