Borough

At the dissolution of the monasteries ‘the burgh and town of Tavistock and all the burgages thereof’ passed into the hands of the Russells, and throughout the period one seat was held by the family except for the opening session of the Cavalier Parliament and in 1685. The other seat was occupied until his death by George Howard of Fitzford, just outside the town, and afterwards by Sir Francis Drake of Buckland Abbey, a local magnate whose political attitudes made him a natural ally of the Russells.

Plympton, ‘a stannary town and parcel of the duchy of Cornwall’, was exposed to government influence, but except for Sir Christopher Wren in 1685 all the Members in this period were Devon residents. There may have been a contest in 1660, for Lord Wharton noted William Strode, a passive Royalist, and Christopher Martyn, an obscure Rumper, as returned on only one indenture. But if there was a double return, nothing is known of the rival candidates. Strode was re-elected in 1661 with Thomas Hele, son of a prominent Royalist.

Plymouth’s corporation consisted of mayor, recorder, 12 aldermen, and 24 assistants. Until the Restoration the franchise was restricted to this body, and even after the decision of 9 June 1660 to extend it to the ‘commonalty’, corporation interest was strong enough to secure the return of the recorder, Serjeant Maynard, at four of the next six general elections.

Under James I’s charter the corporation of Okehampton consisted of eight ‘burgesses’, eight assistants, the recorder and town clerk. The franchise was restored in 1640 on the initiative of Lord Mohun, who took his title from the town; but the family was royalist in the Civil War, and the borough was deprived of both seats in the Instrument of Government. At the general election of 1660 there were three candidates, and, with little experience of parliamentary elections, some of the voters seem to have believed that there was only one seat to be filled.

Honiton, which was restored as a parliamentary borough in 1640, had no municipal institutions. It was a market and postal town, and the centre of the English lace industry. The returning officer was the portreeve, appointed by Sir William Courtenay as lord of the manor. Courtenay owned the market and the principal inn, but the Yonges of Colyton were the leading property owners in the borough, and rivalry between the two families was unhelpful to the country interest.

As the entrepôot of the Devonshire cloth trade Exeter ranked third or fourth among provincial towns in population and wealth. The city had long been established as a fulling centre; but mill-owners were second in economic standing to the larger merchants, who profited from the great expansion of the port after the extension of the Exeter ship canal in 1676.

As a port, Dartmouth was vitally interested in the Mediterranean, West Indies and Newfoundland trades; of the 17 Members elected during this period, six were merchants. There was a strong inclination to religious dissent; four Members seem to have been nonconformists, seven more showed dissenting sympathies, and none, with the possible exception of the Herne brothers, could be described as strong churchmen. It would have been a difficult constituency for court candidates to fight but for the urgent need of the merchants, especially in wartime, for government favours.

Serjeant Maynard, the great lawyer, bought the borough of Bere Alston together with the manor of Bere Ferrers from the Cavalier Earl of Newport in or before 1654. The portreeve, who acted as returning officer, was chosen in his court leet, and he controlled one seat throughout the period. In 1660 and 1661 his candidates were involved in contests with the Drake interest; but, having established the burgage franchise, he was willing to lease some of them to Sir Francis Drake, 3rd Bt. and share the patronage.

Since Elizabethan times the Chichesters of Raleigh had claimed one seat at Barnstaple; but until 1679 the other was usually reserved for a townsman, although there were no other borough seats available to the North Devon gentry. No strangers from outside the county were elected in this period, nor is there evidence of the rampant venality that characterized the borough in the following century, probably because the corporation, consisting of the mayor, recorder, two aldermen, and 22 ‘capital burgesses’, insisted on removing non-residents from the roll of freemen.Ibid. i. 223.

Ashburton was restored as a parliamentary borough in 1640, but the franchise was left undefined until 1708. The returning officer was the portreeve, appointed by the joint lords of the manor and borough. Until the new charter of 1684 he signed the indentures in the name of the ‘burgesses’, varying in number from 40 in 1661 to 12 in February 1679.