Buckingham

Despite its name, Buckingham was not the major town of Buckinghamshire. That was Aylesbury. Like its old rival, Buckingham had been granted a charter of incorporation in 1554 as a reward for its loyalty to Queen Mary. That corporation, consisting of the bailiff and the 12 capital burgesses, had since then formed the electorate for the parliamentary elections. Three local gentry families – the Temples of Stowe, the Dentons of Hillesden and the Ingoldsbys of Lenborough – were the lords of the town’s main manors, and supplied four of the five men who represented this constituency in Parliament in this period. Sir Alexander Denton and Sir Peter Temple are unlikely to have encountered much opposition when they stood in the two elections in 1640. The surviving indenture for the first of those elections, dated 6 March 1640, makes it explicit that they were elected by the corporation. C219/42, pt. 1, f. 68. The same was probably true of the second return later that year.

Denton was expelled from the Commons on 22 January 1644. CJ iii. 373a, 374a; Harl. 165, f. 280. His colleagues had been suspicious about his loyalties since the outbreak of the civil war. The point of no return came when he attended the rival meeting of Parliament summoned to Oxford by the king. Subsequently captured during the siege of his house at Hillesden, Denton would die in January 1645 while still being held in custody on the orders of the Commons. Temple, in contrast, had continued to support Parliament throughout the war. Buckingham was more fortunate than some of the Buckinghamshire towns in that it largely avoided direct attacks from the royalist forces. Just as fortunately, it escaped the fates of nearby Aylesbury and Newport Pagnell which found themselves becoming garrison towns for the parliamentarian armies.

The decision by the Long Parliament to hold by-elections to fill its vacancies opened the way for a new Buckingham MP to be selected. The necessary writ was ordered by the Commons on 22 April 1646. CJ iv. 518b; Perfect Occurrences no. 17 (17-24 Apr. 1646), sig. [R4] (E.506.34); The Moderate Intelligencer no. 60 (23-30 Apr. 1646), 409 (E.334.18); A Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament no. 143 (20-27 Apr. 1646), 1146 (E.506.35). The subsequent selection of John Dormer* is something of a surprise. Dormer owned some land at Quainton, nine miles south of the town, but to date he had made more impact in the local politics of his wife’s native county, Worcestershire. Undoubtedly, however, he was a committed parliamentarian.

The search for constitutional reform in 1653 called into question Buckingham’s future as a parliamentary constituency. The county was overprovided with small borough constituencies and, if any were to be saved, Aylesbury had a much stronger claim. The bill for a new representative considered by the Rump in early 1653 originally omitted Buckingham from its list of proposed constituencies. This was changed on 9 March when the Commons agreed to re-enfranchise the town by giving it one of the six seats which the draft bill had allocated to the county. CJ vii. 265b. As Dormer was still sitting in the Commons, having obtained re-admission after initially being excluded in the purge of December 1648, he is the person most likely to have lobbied for this amendment. Later that year this concession was incorporated into the redistribution imposed by the Instrument of Government. Like Aylesbury and Chipping Wycombe, Buckingham was allowed to retain a single MP. A. and O.

An Ingoldsby was an obvious choice for that seat in the three protectoral Parliaments. The head of the family, Sir Richard Ingoldsby, was the other main landowner in the immediate vicinity of the town, holding the manor of Lenborough on its outskirts. VCH Bucks. iii. 484. Additionally, Sir Richard’s wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, was a first cousin of the new lord protector, Oliver Cromwell*. Since several Ingoldsbys had also fought for Parliament, their sons were well-placed to prosper during the 1650s. The electors of Buckingham now sought to exploit that connection. Their choice was simplified because Temple was now dead, while Dormer was probably rather less enthusiastic than the Ingoldsbys about Cromwell’s new role. In 1654 the town elected Sir Richard’s eldest son and heir, Francis*. There might have been an issue as to which of the Ingoldsby brothers should get this seat had not Richard*, the next but more prominent son, been chosen for one of the county seats. This pattern was repeated two years later.

The election for the 1659 Parliament saw Ingoldsby returned for a third time on 7 January and, as the second seat had now been restored, he was joined by Sir Peter Temple’s son, Sir Richard*. C219/46: Buckingham return. Sir Richard had his own connections with the Cromwells, having served as a carver in the protector’s household. The Temple electoral interest which he had inherited would allow Sir Richard to sit for the town in every Parliament except the first Exclusion Parliament of 1679 until his death in 1697. But famously this dominance did not go unchallenged. In time Sir Peter Tyrrell (son of Thomas*) and Sir Ralph Verney* would muscle in on it. But before then Dormer would return as the other MP in the Convention, defeating Richard Ingoldsby after a double return in which Dormer was supported by the corporation and Ingoldsby by the populace. HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.