Commons 1660-1690

Coventry, always an important industrial centre, had been separated administratively from Warwickshire in 1451, and held aloof from the county. Except in 1661 and (for one seat) in 1685 it invariably elected residents. Under the 1621 charter the corporation comprised the mayor, two sheriffs (who acted as returning officers), ten aldermen and 25 common councilmen. The franchise was in the freemen at large, although after the very confused general election of 1660 the Commons decision implied that it should be confined to the ratepayers.

Gentry meetings are mentioned before most of the Warwickshire elections of this period, though they did not always achieve their objective of avoiding the expense and ill-feeling of a poll, and were probably regarded with increasing suspicion by the freeholders. The enclosed and industrialized area north of the Avon predominated in the representation of the county; of the 11 knights of the shire in this period only George Browne, Thomas Mariet and Richard Verney came from the more conservative Fielden in the south.

Steyning was entirely dominated in this period by two local landowning families, the Faggs of Wiston and the Gorings of Highden. Henry Goring I, whose royalist sympathies had never brought him within the scope of the Long Parliament’s ordinance, came from a cadet branch of a well-established family. He was returned in 1660 with John Fagg, a Rumper who had become a Presbyterian Royalist. Although Fagg had acquired the Wiston estate only during the Interregnum and his title was not beyond question, he was successful for Steyning at every general election during this period.

New Shoreham, a borough by prescription, had developed no municipal organization, and the constable acted as returning officer. Although he was elected in the manorial court, there is no evidence in this period that the Howards exercised any parliamentary interest here as lords of the manor. More important were two local gentry families, the Gorings of Highden and the Faggs of Wiston. No warships were built at Shoreham between 1654 and 1690, but the Admiralty maintained an interest through shipments of timber through the port.

Midhurst was a borough by prescription in which the Viscounts Montagu of Cowdray, as lords of the borough, exercised a considerable interest. Their steward nominated the ‘homage’ or jury at the annual meeting of the capital court baron, and the homage in turn elected the bailiffs, the senior of whom acted as returning officer. As the Cowdray family was recusant its interest had to be discreetly exercised, and from Elizabethan times it was the Lewknors of West Dean who most frequently represented the borough.

Lewes was an ancient borough by prescription. The returning officers were the two constables, appointed annually by a group of prominent inhabitants called ‘the Twelve’, after 1666 ‘the Jury’, but elections to Parliament were evidently arranged by the local landowners, and only one contest is recorded during the period. In 1660 John Stapley of Patcham, a royalist conspirator, was returned with Nizel Rivers, a member of a puritan family, whose brother James Rivers of Combe had represented the borough in the Short and Long Parliaments.

As lords of the manor the Howards of Arundel Castle enjoyed a strong potential interest in Horsham. In their court the returning officers, the two bailiffs, were chosen, and the tenants admitted to the burgages from which they derived their franchise. The number of burgages fluctuated, but tended to increase slightly through splitting. Except in the by-election of 1669, there is no indication of patronage in this period, and in this political vacuum a number of minor gentry families resident in the town or the neighbourhood found seats.

In East Grinstead, a borough by prescription, the franchise was in dispute between the burgage-holders and the scot and lot payers. A rental of 1683 enumerates 48 burgages in the borough, held by 32 tenants. The returning officer was nominated by the Earl of Dorset as lord of the borough, who easily controlled the narrower franchise, especially since the establishment of a magnificent set of alms-houses under the 2nd Earl’s will; but the town valued its position as seat of the Sussex assizes, which gave the judges on the home circuit an interest.

In 1660 the ‘commonalty’ of Chichester elected two royalist sympathizers, Henry Peckham and John Farrington, both resident in the city. But the mayor sealed an indenture for Peckham and William Cawley, the son of a notorious regicide, on the grounds that they had the majority of the freemen. Cawley was seated on the merits of the return, but unseated on the merits of the election. The House found that the mayor had ignored 21 precedents in limiting the franchise to the freemen, and sent for him in custody for his wilful error.CJ, viii. 9, 40.

Bramber had no municipal institutions, the constable acting as returning officer. During this period the dominant interest passed from the Bishopp family of Parham to the Gorings of Highden. In 1660 John Byne and Edward Eversfield were returned. The former was the brother-in-law and the latter the cousin of Henry Goring I. In the double return of 1661 Byne was unopposed, but Percy Goring was returned by the constable and 13 ‘inhabitants and burgesses’ and John Parsons, an aspiring lawyer from Steyning, by 15 ‘burgesses’.