Commons 1558-1603

Essex was one county where conditions were right for a turbulent electoral history in this period, but for a variety of reasons including the proximity of court and government, the Privy Council managed to keep matters under control. Their intervention began with the first election of the reign, when the two candidates were Sir William Petre and Sir Anthony Cooke. Petre had been one of Thomas Cromwell’s servants and secretary to Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary; so moderate and capable a statesman that Queen Elizabeth retained him in her Privy Council and her favour.

The manor and borough of Wareham, which had been granted to three of Henry VIII’s Queens, remained in the hands of the Crown throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Governed by a mayor and council of burgesses, the town obtained certain liberties under a charter of 1587.Hutchins, Dorset, i. 81 seq.

see WEYMOUTH AND MELCOMBE REGIS

In both boroughs the most influential parliamentary patrons were the lord lieutenant of the county the 2nd Earl of Bedford, and the first two earls of Pembroke, stewards of the royal manor of Weymouth, of the encompassing manor of Wyke and of the manor of Portland. In the later years of this period Bedford’s son-in-law the Earl of Warwick, (Sir) Walter Ralegh and Viscount Bindon all exerted some influence.

Poole ‘with its suburbs’ had, in 1568, a constitution modelled on that of Southampton. It was ‘a county, separate from the county of Dorset’ and so, whereas the 1559 election indenture, for example, was made between the sheriff of Dorset and the corporation, the known election writs in this period from 1572 were directed to the sheriff of the town and the indenture made between the sheriff of the town and the corporation.CPR, 1566-9, pp. 166-8.

The borough of Shaftesbury, granted to William Herbert I, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1553, was governed by a mayor and council of burgesses. It did not receive a charter of incorporation until the early seventeenth century.Shaftesbury Recs.

Lyme Regis was incorporated in 1559, and a new charter obtained in 1591.Weinbaum, Charters, 30-31. The general pattern of elections was one outsider (named first of each pair in the above list until 1601) and one local man, though in 1563 both MPs were outsiders. Until his death in 1585 the patron was the 2nd Earl of Bedford, whose letterLyme Regis recs. N23/2/19. to his ‘very loving friends the mayor and his brethren of the town of Lyme’ nicely illustrates relations between a great man and a dependent borough at this time:

see WEYMOUTH AND MELCOMBE REGIS

Dorchester, governed by two bailiffs, two constables and a council of burgesses and other officials, received a charter confirming its existing liberties in 1559.Weinbaum, Charters, 29; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 345 seq.; Dorchester Recs.s The 2nd Earl of Bedford, who owned a small property in the borough, and later William Paulet, 3rd Marquess of Winchester, obtained nominations there, but Dorchester was less susceptible to patronage than some other west country boroughs.

Both the 1559 MPs, Sir Giles Strangways and Sir John Rogers, had already represented Dorset on several occasions in previous reigns. Sir Henry Ashley, a Dorset landowner and an active county official, was elected senior knight of the shire in 1563. Thomas Howard was sponsored by his father, the 1st Viscount Bindon, so that he might protect the family’s interests in the 1563 Parliament, when two bills concerning them were due to be considered.