A county in itself from the time of Edward IV, Canterbury had its own sheriff, tax assessors, escheator and justices of the peace. A charter of 1498 provided for a mayor, 12 aldermen and a common council of 24. The right of parliamentary election belonged to the freemen. Parliamentary writs were received and returned by the city’s sheriff.
December 1559 Maidstone obtained a new charter to replace one granted by Edward VI. The 1559 charter restored the corporation and gave the town, among other privileges, the right to send two burgesses to Parliament. Maidstone first returned Members in this period to the 1563 Parliament, but unlike most returns made for the first time, Maidstone’s return was not challenged in the Commons. The electorate consisted of the mayor, jurats and commonalty defined in the 1559 charter as persons dwelling in the town, having freehold lands or tenements.
Queenborough was one of the smallest boroughs enfranchised during Elizabeth’s period, its adult male population in 1585 amounting to only 35. By a charter of 1368, confirmed in 1559, the government of the town was in the hands of a mayor and two bailiffs. The mayor had to take an oath before the constable of Queenborough castle. This office was held from 1559 by Sir Robert Constable, who lived in the north and appears not to have involved himself in the borough’s electoral affairs.
Though there was a connexion with the duchy of Lancaster going back to the thirteenth century, it has not proved possible to associate more than one Huntingdon MP in this period with the chancellor of the duchy. Perhaps there were more—it has been stated that Sir Robert Cecil asked for a seat late in the reign, and some of the nominations attributed below to great men may have been contrived through the duchy—but no links have been established.
Throughout the Elizabethan period, Kent was represented by members of the leading county families. Sir Richard Sackville of Westenhanger, elected for both Kent and Sussex, chose to sit for Sussex and was replaced in Kent by Sir Thomas Kempe of Wye at a by-election on 6 Feb. 1559. The senior knight, Sir Anthony St. Leger of Leeds Castle, died before the end of the 1559 session but no evidence of a by-election to replace him has been found. From then until 1584 the Sidney family dominated the electoral scene in Kent, taking a seat in four successive Parliaments.
The town of St. Albans, much of which reverted to the Crown at the dissolution of the monasteries, received its first royal charter in 1553. The new corporation was to consist of a mayor and ten capital burgesses, who could nominate an unspecified number of ordinary burgesses to assist them.Clutterbuck, Hist. Herts. i. App. IV. According to a petition entered in the corporation court book in 1587, a common council of 24 men, drawn from the trading guilds, had been in existence since Edward VI’s charter, or even before.
During this period, Huntingdonshire county elections were dominated by the owners of three great estates, Leighton Bromswold, Hinchingbrooke and Kimbolton. In 1559 Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Leighton Bromswold was elected without opposition since Kimbolton was in the hands of a minor and Hinchingbrooke was owned by the Cromwellalias Williams family, recent additions to the county. Tyrwhitt had already represented the shire in 1554. Simon Throckmorton of Brampton took the junior seat.
After the dissolution of the monasteries Leominster became Crown property and various appurtenances were leased out. During Elizabeth’s reign the tithes were leased to Sir James Croft, and the site of Leominster priory to the Coningsby family. In 1554 Leominster had been granted a charter which placed the government of the town in the hands of a self-perpetuating corporation of 25 capital burgesses, who annually chose a bailiff from their number.
Throughout this period the senior Hertfordshire seat was monopolized by courtiers, and only three of the junior knights (Henry Capell I, John Brocket and Sir Philip Butler) can be regarded as independent. Sir George Carey and Henry Carey were to succeed to peerages; Henry Cocke obtained the lucrative office of cofferer of the Household in 1597; Rowland Lytton followed ‘his father in an hereditary dependence on’ the Cecils, eventually becoming captain of the gentlemen pensioners.
Herefordshire was represented by county landowning families throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Parliamentary elections were dominated by the Crofts of Croft Castle and the Coningsbys of Hampton Court, families of outstanding local importance. Humphrey Coningsby I, who had represented the county in 1553, was elected in 1559 along with Robert Whitney of Whitney. Coningsby died a month before the 1559 Parliament ended, but no evidence of a by-election has been found.
