The corporation of Aldeburgh, consisting of two bailiffs (the returning officers), 12 aldermen, and 24 common councilmen, controlled the freemen roll, though the right of non-resident freemen to vote was questionable. The cost of defence made the little town susceptible to admiralty influence, and the Howards, as lords of the manor, claimed the right to nominate one Member.
In this period identical returns were made for Tamworth by the sheriffs of both Staffordshire and Warwickshire. The corporation consisted of 24 capital burgesses and two bailiffs, who acted as returning officers. Of the two important property interests, the castle took no part in elections after the death of John Ferrers in 1680; but throughout the period the owner of Drayton Park usually controlled one seat. Lord Paget, a Staffordshire landowner, also had a small interest; he used it consistently on behalf of his steward John Swinfen.C. R.
No polls are known to have been required at Stafford in this period. In 1682 the mayor wrote that ‘it has been usual here on all elections of Parliament men to accept for one such person as the high steward of the borough recommended’.
The Mainwarings of Whitmore, the Levesons of Trentham and the Bowyers of Knypersley exercised the principal interests at Newcastle. Two Parliamentarians, Samuel Terrick and John Bowyer, were returned to the Convention of 1660. It is possible that Edward Mainwaring, who had also supported Parliament in the early days of the war, was a candidate, since Mercurius Politicus gives him as Bowyer’s partner. In 1661 he was returned with Sir Caesar Colclough, an Anglo-Irish baronet who had influential cousins and a considerable number of tenants in the borough.
The corporation of Lichfield consisted of 21 ‘brethren’ of the common council, who elected two bailiffs and a sheriff annually. However, the bishop claimed the right, if in residence, to nominate the senior bailiff. The sheriff acted as returning officer. Canvassing the ten city companies formed an important part of the electioneering process, which was further aided by the number and excellence of the inns derived from Lichfield’s prominence on the stage-coach routes to Ireland and the northwest.
James II was told in 1687 that ‘the committee of elections have sometimes admitted Members chosen by the mayor, aldermen and burgesses only, and sometimes Members chosen by the whole town’. However, all the returns in this period are in the name of the mayor, the seven ‘masters’ or aldermen, and the 16 ‘burgesses’ of the common council. The corporation interest was very strong, and except in the Cavalier Parliament the recorder always filled one seat.
Taunton, as a result of its resolute defence in the Civil War, was notorious for its hostility to the Stuarts, a reputation that was confirmed by its cordial reception of the Duke of Monmouth in 1685. Dissent flourished, counterbalanced by the prestige and charity of the Anglican Sir William Portman, who lived just outside the town; though even his great wealth was not equal to the demands created (perhaps deliberately) by redundancies in the serge industry.J. Toulmin, Taunton, 278; CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 114; 1680-1, p. 515; J. R. Jones, Revolution of 1688, p.
Minehead was dominated by the Luttrells of Dunster Castle, who were returned for the senior seat at every general election of the period, usually with a colleague of their own choice. All the candidates came from Somerset gentry families. Since the forfeiture of the charter in 1604 elections were held in the court feet of the manor, with the two constables acting as returning officers. The indentures are very numerously attested, those for 1661 and 1673 bearing over 120 signatures.Ibid. 38-40, 429-38; Som. RO, Luttrell mss 59/1, 4.
By Jacobean times Milborne Port could be described by a local antiquary as the mere ‘carcase’ of a once flourishing town. Nevertheless it was restored as a parliamentary borough in 1628, and provided surprisingly easy seats for the neighbouring gentry. It seems to have been a perfect oligarchy controlled by the owners of the nine capital burgages, in whose court leet the two bailiffs, who acted as returning officers, were elected.
Ilchester was a decayed borough set amid a rich dairy-farming area but remarkable in this period only for housing the county gaol. It was governed by a corporation consisting of 12 ‘capital burgesses’ (as they liked to style themselves) and a bailiff who acted as returning officer. The representation of the borough had been restored in 1621 on the initiative of Sir Robert Phelips, and the Montacute interest dominated most of the elections in this period.
