Commons 1558-1603

A borough by prescription, Appleby was subject to the Cliffords, earls of Cumberland, whose castle dominated the town; the mayor and two bailiffs had no influence on elections. Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland, himself a Catholic, returned two others of that religion to the first Parliament of the reign: Christopher Monckton, a Yorkshire country gentleman, and John Eltoftes, an Inner Temple lawyer whose services had been employed by the family and who had already represented Appleby in the previous reign.

In the first three Parliaments of the reign all the Westmorland knights of the shire were local gentry. Lancelot Lancaster (1559) of Stockbridge was related to Gerard Lowther I (1563) of Lowther, who came from one of the oldest county families and was related to both the Cliffords and the Dudleys. Lowther represented Westmorland while still a student at Lincoln’s Inn.

Warwick was incorporated in 1545, and, according to a charter of 1554, was governed by a common council comprising a bailiff, 12 assistants (or principal burgesses) and a recorder. By 1570, 24 secondary burgesses were appointed, to be ‘the mouth of all the commoners’, but these could be dispensed with at the discretion of the principal burgesses, and their number was soon reduced to 12. In this period, with one exception, the common council chose the MP, and paid the wages.

Coventry was a city, incorporated early and granted the status of a county in 1451. Accordingly it received a separate writ, addressed to its two sheriffs, for parliamentary elections. The electorate consisted of all the freemen.

Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and Privy Councillor, held estates in Warwickshire and had no difficulty in obtaining the senior seat in the first two Parliaments of the reign. He died in 1568. His fellow MPs were Thomas Lucy of Charlecote and Clement Throckmorton of Haseley, both of whom were of sufficient standing to represent the county on more than one occasion. After being junior knight to Cave in 1559, Lucy was knighted in 1565 and achieved the senior seat in 1571 and 1584. Clement Throckmorton was junior knight in both 1563 and 1572.

The borough of Steyning formed part of the honour of Petworth, of which the 12th Earl of Arundel was steward, and elections necessarily came under Howard influence in the early part of the reign. Election returns were made by the constable and burgesses.

The manor of New Shoreham was owned by the dukes of Norfolk. The borough, which formed part of the manor, was governed by a constable chosen at the court leet of the lord of the manor.Dallaway, W. Suss. ed. Wright, ii(2), pp. 50, 52.

Throughout the Elizabethan period, and for 200 years afterwards, the lords of the manor and borough of Midhurst were the Browne family, Viscounts Montagu. The first Viscount, though a Catholic, remained loyal to the Crown and was a prominent figure both at court and in Sussex. His grandson, who succeeded him in 1592, was not so judicious in the exercise of his religion and was later implicated in the Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes had, in fact, been one of the 1st Viscount’s servants at Cowdray, the family seat adjoining Midhurst.

By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the ownership of Lewes was divided between Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk; Edward Stanley, 3rd Earl of Derby; Lord Bergavenny, and a Mary Everard of Lewes, who married twice, her husbands being Richard Bellingham (father of Edward Bellingham, the 1572 MP) and George Goring I, the 1559 and 1563 Member, whose son, George Goring II, sat in 1593 and 1601. Goring’s cousin, the lawyer Edward Fenner, sat in 1571.

The manor of the borough of Horsham formed part of the larger manor of Horsham, owned by the Duke of Norfolk. It was held by the bailiff and burgesses as mesne land, directly of the lord of the manor. Local government was in the hands of the bailiffs and burgesses. The two bailiffs were chosen annually at a court leet by the lord’s steward. Election returns were made by the bailiffs, burgesses and commonalty. In 1586, 17 burgesses and 17 commoners were named on the original return.W. H. Albery, Horsham, 39-43, 50-58; C219/30; PCC 42 Woodhall.