The borough seat at Caernarvonshire, like that for the county, was under the undisputed control of the leading Tory interests for most of this period. Sir Robert Owen, the outgoing Member in 1690, was safely re-elected twice, dying shortly before the dissolution of the 1695 Parliament. His successor, Sir John Wynn, 5th Bt., was similarly untroubled by a contest, and graduated to the county representation in 1705, whereupon he was replaced by one of the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill, Anglesey, emerging now as the dominant force on the Tory side.

Until the last Parliament of Queen Anne, elections in Caernarvonshire were controlled by a nexus of powerful Tory families, among whom the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill, Anglesey, were increasingly prominent. Sir William Williams, 6th Bt., of Vaynol, was re-elected in 1690, probably with Bulkeley support, and after his death in 1697 (which incidentally marked the eclipse of the Vaynol interest), Hon. Thomas Bulkeley, a senior representative of the Baron Hill family and the owner himself of a large Caernarvonshire estate, succeeded without opposition.

The corporation of Brecon was controlled by a close oligarchy of 15 common councilmen, who annually elected from their number a bailiff and two aldermen as magistrates, and who were solely responsible for the admission of freemen. There were no out-boroughs, though claims were later advanced for the rights of inhabitants of such places as Hay, Llanywern, Llywel, Talgarth and Trecastle. The franchise was settled in the freemen at large, but not without the possibility of dispute.

In the later 17th century three families dominated Breconshire politics: Jeffreys of Brecon Priory, Jones of Buckland, and Morgan of Tredegar. The first two were Tory in sympathy; the last, Whig. Of these the Morgans had their principal base in Monmouthshire, while the Jeffreys showed more concern for the borough of Brecon than the county. Edward Jones was therefore returned unopposed in 1689.

‘Neat and well built’, and the only place of note to be seen in the Isle of Anglesey (according to Defoe), Beaumaris was effectively a pocket borough of the Bulkeleys, whose seat at Baron Hill overlooked the town. The 3rd and 4th Viscounts Bulkeley held the office of constable of Beaumaris Castle successively throughout this period, and so dominated the corporation that Bulkeley nominees, almost always kinsmen, were returned at every election, bar one. Indeed, the 3rd Viscount (Richard Bulkeley*) served as mayor, and thus as returning officer, in 1690, when his uncle (Hon.

At the beginning of this period the Bulkeleys of Baron Hill were by far the largest landowners in a county in which, even by Welsh standards, armigerous families were scarce.Unless otherwise stated, this article is based on the account of Anglesey politics by P. D. G. Thomas in Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. 1962, pp. 35–47. The 3rd Viscount Bulkeley’s rent-roll of £4,000 p.a. dwarfed all other estates with the exception of the Bagenals of Plas Newydd, who in any case had interests elsewhere and were generally inactive in Anglesey politics.

Even by contemporary standards Winchelsea’s privilege of sending representatives to Parliament was regarded as an obvious anachronism. Defoe identified the town as one of the worst examples of a decayed borough. ‘What can the Members who have served for the town of Winchelsea answer’, he wrote, ‘if they were asked who they represented; they must answer they represent the ruins and vaults, the remains of a good old town, now lying in heaps?’ In The Art of Governing by Partys, John Toland also saw Winchelsea as exemplifying the iniquities of the electoral system.

In 1671 the Commons had determined that the right of voting in Seaford lay in ‘the populacy’, those who presumably paid scot and lot, but unless the leading local influences found themselves in conflict, the formalities of election were completed behind closed doors by the corporate assembly, an elite comprising a bailiff, two jurats and up to 17 freemen. Only twice in this period was the electorate called upon to vote. Nomination was exercised by two Whiggish pro-government influences in the locality, those of Sir William Thomas, 1st Bt., and of the Pelham family.

During this period Sandwich was eclipsed in terms of economic activity by Deal. To Celia Fiennes, Sandwich was ‘a sad old town, all timber building’, whereas Deal had new buildings and ‘looks like a good thriving place’. It was Deal’s prosperity that enabled the port books of Sandwich to show a healthy trade, and which no doubt prompted Deal’s agitation in 1699 for its own charter. Economic stagnation saw Sandwich fall prey to the political influence of outsiders, chiefly that of neighbouring gentry and merchants.

In the 1690s Rye was beginning to feel the effects of decline from its former prominence as a port. The corporation could still boast in 1701 that it was the only harbour on the long coastline between Dover and Portsmouth large enough to accommodate ships, though it was by now heavily silted and only suitable for fishing vessels. The town’s governors attached great importance to restoring the harbour to its ‘ancient goodness’, which they saw as the key to a rejuvenated local economy, but though there was much discussion of the subject, little headway was made.