Commons 1558-1603

Elizabethan Barnstaple, dependent for its wealth on the enterprise of its merchants and seamen, was a prosperous and fast-growing town. An ancient borough, it was first incorporated in 1557, when Queen Mary’s charter placed the government of the town in the hands of the mayor and a common council of 24 capital burgesses, two of whom were to be called aldermen. This body was dominated by the wealthier merchants. There was also a recorder, an honorary official whose duties were performed by deputy.

It is possible to establish a connexion between a number of Derbyshire Members and the lady known to posterity as Bess of Hardwick, who was building up her dynasties there during this period. Thomas Kniveton (1559) was the husband of her half-sister and confidential woman of business; Sir William St. Loe (1563) was her third husband; Gilbert Talbot, later 7th Earl of Shrewsbury (1572) and Henry Talbot (1584, 1586), her stepsons, Henry Cavendish (1572, 1584, 1586, 1589, 1593) her son, and George Manners (1593) married her granddaughter.

Little is known about the government of Derby before James I’s charter of 1612 By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, however, there were certainly two bailiffs, a recorder and chamberlain. The office of steward has not been found before the 1590s, but the absence of local records makes it impossible to say when it first appeared. Members of Parliament were chosen by the freemen and, judging by the surviving returns for the Elizabethan period, the bailiffs acted as returning officers.

The Dacre family monopolized the Cumberland county seats in the first Parliament of Elizabeth’s reign. William, 3rd Lord Dacre, was the father of Leonard Dacre, the senior knight of the shire and the maternal grandfather of William Musgrave of Hayton, the junior knight of the shire. Leonard Dacre took the senior seat again in 1563 when he was accompanied to Parliament by Henry Curwen of Workington, the head of a family which had represented Cumberland in Parliament since the fourteenth century.

According to an ordinance issued by the ‘commons’ of Carlisle in 1445 and confirmed by the charter of 1566, the city government was vested in the mayor and 11 other ‘worshipful persons’, who should choose 24 ‘able persons’ to join them in electing the mayor.

For centuries the lordship of Tregony had belonged to the Pomeroys, a Devon family. Hugh Pomeroy died in 1565 and was succeeded by an 11 year-old son, also Hugh, who became the ward of a local gentleman. Other neighbouring families included the Penkevells, who were later to acquire Tregony by marriage, and the Trevanions.Vis. Devon, ed. Vivian, 607; Vis. Cornw. (Harl. Soc. ix), 177, 240; CPR, 1558-60, p. 272; Wards 9/138, f.

Truro, a stannary town, was one of the more prosperous parliamentary boroughs in Cornwall. In 1589, when a charter of incorporation was received, government was vested in the mayor and 24 capital burgesses, four of whom were to be aldermen. Parliamentary election appears always to have been made by the mayor and burgesses.G. R. Lewis, The Stannaries, 126; Weinbaum, Charters, 18.

It is not known how St. Mawes came to return Members for the 1563 Parliament. Oliver Carminowe and Edmund Sexton, along with MPs from five other boroughs, were requested (22 Jan. 1563) to produce letters patent justifying their presence in the House. Whether they did or not is unknown.SP 12/27 no. 23; CJ, i. 63. Possibly the 2nd Earl of Bedford had a hand in the matter. He was certainly behind the return of Oliver Carminowe, one of his servants, to the 1563 Parliament.

A duchy of Cornwall borough, Saltash was enfranchised in the reign of Edward VI. According to the antiquary Richard Carew, the town prospered through ‘honest trade of merchandise’, and was ‘of late years well increased and adorned with buildings’. He added that ‘it was not long since that the neighbouring ministers successively bestowed their pains in preaching there on the market days, and the bordering gentlemen yielded their presence’.Carew’s Surv. Cornw. ed. Halliday, 181-2. In Elizabeth’s reign the town made more than one attempt to obtain a new charter.

Quite how St. Germans came to send MPs to Parliament has not been ascertained. A small market town, once the seat of the diocese of Cornwall, it had come into the hands of John Eliot, who in 1577 was succeeded as lord of the manor by his nephew Richard. The borough was not incorporated and its portreeve had a hand in choosing the Members. This official, appointed from the local family of Kekewick, was chosen annually at the court leet.