After Henry VII quashed Scarborough’s short-lived charter of incorporation of 1485, the governing body of the town reverted to its earlier form, namely, two bailiffs, four chamberlains, two coroners, and 36 capital burgesses. The town also had a recorder and, in the last years of the sixteenth century at least, a high steward. Parliamentary returns were made by the bailiffs, burgesses and ‘communitas’.
Ripon, ‘a town within the liberty of the archbishopric’ of York, was governed during the Elizabethan period by a ‘wakeman’ and his assistants. The archbishop’s officer in the borough was the high steward of the liberty of Ripon. Sir William Mallory held the post probably from 1570 and certainly by 1598. The electorate was small.
Although Richmond had received writs in the fourteenth century, the borough made no returns in this period until 1584, the first general election after the granting in 1577 of its charter of incorporation, which gave the borough the right to return two Members, at its own ‘burden and cost’ The returns were made by the alderman (i.e. mayor) and 12 head burgesses, who constituted the corporation. The alderman was elected annually by all the inhabitants from two names put forward by the retiring alderman and the head burgesses.
Knaresborough, ‘no great thing and meanly builded’ and ‘a pretty town, but poor and of no force’ remained part of the duchy of Lancaster throughout the Elizabethan period. The voting right was in the owners of 88 burgage houses. The three surviving Elizabethan returns show between eight and fourteen burgesses. In 1628, 46 votes were cast in a disputed election. As might be expected, the electoral patronage was divided between the duchy of Lancaster and the local gentry families, though as usual in this period, the boundaries of influence and patronage cannot be defined with any precision.
Kingston-upon-Hull was expanding rapidly in the sixteenth century. Its prosperity, based for the most part on trade with Scandinavia and the Netherlands, helped to give the port a vigorous municipal life and a large degree of independence in the conduct of its affairs. Its principal charter was granted by Henry VI in 1440. This mentions a mayor, 12 aldermen (elected for life from the burgesses), a chamberlain, a coroner and other minor officials. It also made Hull a county in its own right, with a sheriff, to whom parliamentary election writs were sent, and an escheator.
The government of Hedon was based on a charter granted in 1348 and confirmed by Elizabeth in 1565, which provided the borough with a mayor, two bailiffs, a coroner and other officers. Municipal and parliamentary elections were conducted in a general assembly of the burgesses. It is not clear how many burgesses had the right to vote and the surviving Elizabethan returns shed no light on this problem. The returns are made out by the ‘mayor, bailiffs and burgesses’. In 1601 a separate ‘blank’ return was made out for each Member.
Boroughbridge, on the main road to the north, was quite prosperous in the Elizabethan period, but, with a large Catholic element in the population, suffered as a result of the collapse of the northern rebellion in 1569. Lying within the boundaries of the parish and manor of Aldborough, it was not a chartered borough. When it outgrew Aldborough, however, it was created a separate bailiwick with certain specified privileges. The honour of Knaresborough, of which it formed a part, had been granted to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and remained within the duchy until after the Tudor period.
Beverley, which had returned MPs to Parliament in the 14th century and subsequently allowed the franchise to lapse, first returned burgesses in this period in 1563. The borough’s right to parliamentary representation was confirmed by the charter of incorporation granted in 1573, which vested the government of the borough in the mayor, who was elected annually, 12 governors, holding office for life, and the burgesses. The town was also allowed its own j.p.s; the mayor and recorder held that office, together with two of the ‘governors’.
William Lambarde, the 1563 MP for Aldborough, said of the borough that it was ‘notable for no other thing than that it sendeth Members to the Parliament’. Aldborough was a duchy of Lancaster borough and election precepts were sent by the sheriff to a bailiff appointed by the duchy. The right to vote at parliamentary elections was vested in the owners of certain specified burgage tenements. The three surviving Elizabethan returns each contains the names of between six and eight burgesses.
Yorkshire in Elizabethan times had one resounding election contest, in 1597. For the rest, the sources are silent and we are left to speculate whether peace prevailed on all other occasions. Perhaps it did. Geographically the county was very large, and to get freeholders from distant areas to the county court at York by 8 a.m. must have presented great problems. And yet, once a candidate had committed his social prestige to the trial of a contested election, he was compelled to recruit every voter he could.
