Such importance as the town of Orford had once possessed had been due to its royal castle and its port, but by the seventeenth century both of these former advantages had long since become irrelevant. The castle had been in private hands since the fourteenth century and Orford Ness, the shingle bar off the Suffolk coast, had steadily extended itself southwards, inexorably causing the town’s decline as a port. Whereas at one time Orford had been positioned at the mouth of the River Ore (or the Alde) and the Ness had provided shelter, its advance meant that the town was now, in effect, about three miles from the sea and wholly inaccessible to large ships. J.A. Steers, ‘The Suff. coast: Orford Ness’, Procs. of the Suff. Inst. of Arch. xix. 117-40; W. Camden, Britannia ed. E. Gibson (1772), i. 369; ‘Glimpses of a Norwich expedition in 1634-5’, E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 330. In the mid-1630s a large group of mariners operating along the North Sea coast petitioned the king arguing that fires should be maintained on the Ness each night because too many men were being lost in shipwrecks on its sands. Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609-35 ed. G.G. Harris (London Rec. Soc. xix), 143-4. Under a charter of 1579, its mayor, eight portmen and 12 capital burgesses provided government within the borough. British Borough Charters 1307-1660 ed. M. Weinbaum (Cambridge, 1943), 110-11. Ironically, it was only in 1512, when the town was long past its heyday, that the town had first exercised its right to return its two Members to Parliament.
In 1640, the leading landowner in the area was Sir William Withypoll† to whom, as a son-in-law of Sir Michael Stanhope†, the manor of Sudbourne (on the outskirts of the town) and the castle had passed almost 20 years before. Suff. RO (Ipswich), HB83/988/6; Orford Ness: A Selection of Maps (Cambridge, 1960), plates 7-17; Copinger, Manors of Suff. v. 150. Having sat once in 1625, Withypoll had preferred to nominate his close associate, Sir Charles Le Gros*, rather than serve himself, to each of the subsequent Parliaments. Withypoll had never really recovered from a manslaughter conviction and debts forced him to live abroad. Despite these problems he still secured Le Gros’s re-election to the senior place in the spring elections of 1640. The second place was filled by Edward Duke, one of the other major landowners in the immediate vicinity of the town, who had become one of its freeman four years previously. C219/42, no. 23; Harl. 298, f. 148; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/2/2, f. 191v.
In the election for the Long Parliament held on 22 October 1640, Le Gros was re-elected. He was now joined, not by Duke, but by Sir William Playters, who, as a baronet, took the senior place. C219/43/2, no. 173; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/8/5. Although the latter’s connection with the town is not clear, he was distantly related to Sir Lionel Tollemache†, who (as Sir Michael Stanhope’s nephew) had sat for this constituency in 1621 and 1628, but had died suddenly in September 1640. If Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel could be shown to have exercised an influence over the outcome in this borough, he would be a much more plausible patron behind the election. Alternatively, Playters may have been backed by Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. The earl, as lord high admiral, had appointed him as his deputy in Suffolk just two days before the election. Vice Admirals of the Coast comp. J. C. Sainty, A. D. Thrush (L. and I. Soc. cccxxi), 44. Although both were inactive, Playters and Le Gros continued as the Orford MPs until they were included among the victims of the army’s purge of the Commons in December 1648.
Its relative unimportance as a borough ensured that Orford lost both its seats in 1653 under the Instrument of Government and it was not until 1659 that these were restored. Le Gros had since died, as had his patron, Withypoll. The heir to the Withypoll interest was Withypoll’s son-in-law, Leicester Devereux, 6th Viscount Hereford, who had as little difficulty as Withypoll in securing the return of his approved candidate. Hereford may already have obtained for Thomas Edgar the town’s recordership and it was probably with Hereford’s backing that Edgar subsequently became one of the leading residents of Ipswich. Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/5. The second MP returned in 1659 was Jeremiah Copping, a post office official in London who was a native of the town and brother of its current mayor, John Copping. Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/2/2, ff. 223v-225; EE5/8/6-7; C219/48: Orford election indenture, 14 Jan. 1659. In both cases, this would be their only Parliament. During the following decades Hereford used his patronage on behalf of his brother, Walter Devereux†, while the Tollemache interest reasserted itself.
