The borough of Stafford, associated for a long time with the family of the same name, may not have had a clearly defined municipal organisation in the sixteenth century. Though the town was incorporated by Edward VI in 1550, it was not until 1605 that the composition of the common council was laid down by charter.J. Bradley, Stafford Charters, 79-132; CPR, 1550-53, p. 21; J.
The borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme was governed by a mayor, two bailiffs and 24 capital burgesses throughout this period, and was incorporated by a royal charter in 1590. MPs were elected by the bailiffs and capital burgesses, the mayor having a casting vote. In 1597 the borough minute book records that the MPs were made freemen of the borough on being returned and swore to be true ‘to the wealth and worship of the town’. The manor of Newcastle belonged to the duchy of Lancaster.
In 1547 Lichfield began once more to send burgesses to Parliament, as it had done on a few occasions in earlier times. The city was incorporated in the following year and in 1553 was granted the status of a county. The corporation leased the lordship and manor of Lichfield from the bishop, in whom remained the right to approve the city’s choice of its two bailiffs, who governed in conjunction with 24 assistants, a recorder and a steward.
In his report to the Privy Council on the justices and other principal gentlemen of Staffordshire made in 1564 by Thomas Bentham, the radical bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Simon Harcourt of Ellenhall and Ronton Abbey appears, with his father-in-law, Sir Edward Aston, and another knight, as ‘a knot hurtful to justice and great maintainers’.Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 42. It is round these names, and particularly the name of Harcourt, that the story of the early Elizabethan county elections in this shire revolves.
The borough of Wells was dominated by the bishops of Bath and Wells. The town had received its first charter from a twelfth-century bishop and successive bishops resisted all attempts by the townsmen to increase their privileges. It was not until 1589 that the borough was incorporated. Before 1589 the principal officer in the town had been the master of the guild of merchants, elected annually, but under the new charter a corporation was established consisting of a mayor and 23 common councilmen, from whom seven were chosen as ‘masters’.Wells City Charters (Som. Rec. Soc.
The borough, castle and manor of Taunton, owned by the diocese of Winchester, were sequestered by the Crown in 1559, on the deprivation of the Marian bishop, White, leased to Sir Francis Knollys in 1561, and returned to the see of Winchester by 1575. The borough was not incorporated in this period, and was administered by the court leet of the lord of the manor. Returns were made by the constables of the borough and the burgesses.R. G. H. Whitty, ‘Taunton under the Tudors and Stuarts’ (London Univ. Ph.D.
Minehead was dominated by the Luttrells of Dunster castle, who no doubt were responsible for obtaining the 1559 charter and the enfranchisement of the borough. The government of the borough was placed in the hands of a common council consisting of a portreeve and 12 principal burgesses. Although the charter made no reference to Parliament, Minehead returned Members in 1563, the first possible occasion after the charter had been granted. Along with other boroughs sending MPs for the first time in 1563, Minehead’s right to return was challenged in the House of Commons.
Bridgwater’s charter, confirmed in 1554, placed the town in the hands of a mayor, recorder and two bailiffs. By a charter of 1587 it was re-incorporated as the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of Bridgwater. During Elizabeth’s reign the principal landowner in Bridgwater was the Crown.Weinbaum, Charters, 102; Collinson, Som. iii. 75, 81.
Returns were made by the ‘mayor and citizens’ of Bath, but the constitution of the borough was not clearly defined until the charter granted by Elizabeth in 1590, which set up a corporation of a mayor, alderman and council of 20. With one known exception, the country gentleman Edward St. Loe (1559), and one possible exception (John Gwynne III, 1566), all the Bath Members in this period were townsmen and/or borough officials.
The Somerset gentry took turns as knights of their shire throughout this period, amicably so far as is known, except for one contest, in 1571, the details of which can be learned from a letter of advice sent by Edward Phelips of Montacute to his son in 1614, when the son was facing a contest in the county. The 1571 candidates were Amias Paulet, heir to Sir Hugh; George Rogers of Cannington, whose father, the comptroller of the Household, had represented Somerset in 1559, and who had died in 1568; and John Stawell of Cothelstone. Phelips explains that the electors assembled in ‘Mr.
