The returning officer for Cockermouth was the bailiff, who was appointed in the court leet. Hence from the restoration of the borough in 1641 one of the seats was usually reserved for the nominee of the lords of the manor, the Percy earls of Northumberland and their heirs, who also held many of the burgages.
By the 17th century the corporation of Carlisle, consisting of 12 aldermen (from whom the mayor was elected) and a common council of 20, had come to control the freeman roll, and hence the franchise. The city retained a substantial garrison throughout the period, and the governor often exercised a decisive influence. The cathedral interest cannot have been negligible, especially under Dean (subsequently Bishop) Smith (1672-84), the step-father of Sir George Fletcher.
Although the freemen of Truro made repeated attempts to claim the franchise, all the elections in this period were decided on the votes of the corporation, consisting of the mayor, the recorder, four aldermen and 20 ‘capital burgesses’. This body also nominated the stannators of Tywarnwhaile. Until the surrender of the charter in 1684 the Presbyterian Hugh Boscawen dominated the corporation, which obediently returned his brother Edward to five Parliaments.
Under a charter of James I the corporation of Tregony consisted of the mayor, recorder and eight ‘capital burgesses’. The parliamentary franchise was very wide, being open to all householders. As lord of the manor Hugh Boscawen of Tregothnan might have been expected to dominate the borough. But, perhaps because he chose to concentrate on maintaining his interest at Truro and in the county, he was by no means secure from his rival Charles Trevanion of Caerhayes.
The corporation of Saltash, consisted of ten aldermen (all burgage-holders) from whom the mayor was elected every year. A substantial proportion of the burgage tenements was in the hands of the Buller family of Shillingham, who also owned the advowson. The size of the electorate precluded independence of spirit: when disaster struck the Bullers, the borough passed from their pocket to the Granvilles’.Luders, Controverted Elections, ii. 122-5; Gilbert, Paroch. Hist. Cornw. iv. 170-1.
St. Mawes consisted of a small fishing village and Henry VIII’s still serviceable castle. The returning officer was the portreeve or mayor, appointed at the court leet of Tolverne manor, which had recently been acquired by the Tredenhams. The franchise was in the ‘free and sworn tenants’. During this period Sir Joseph Tredenham acquired complete control of the manor by first worsting and then absorbing the older interest of the Vyvyans, hereditary captains of St. Mawes Castle since Elizabethan times.Gilbert, Paroch. Hist. Cornw. ii. 303-4, 307; iv. 74; W. P. Courtney, Parl.
St. Ives is one of the few boroughs which obtained a wider franchise at the Restoration. Under the Protectorate the corporation, consisting of the portreeve or mayor and 12 ‘burgesses’, had returned Members, but in 1660 the rights of the ‘freemen’, later defined as the inhabitants paying scot and lot, were successfully asserted.
Of all the Cornish constituencies in this period St. Germans came closest to the archetypal pocket borough. The Eliot family owned only one of the two manors into which it was divided, but they leased the other from the see of Exeter, and even after the return of the episcopal estates the bishops exercised no visible interest. The borough had never been incorporated; the returning officer was the portreeve, chosen annually at the Eliots’ court leet by a jury empanelled by their stewards. The franchise was wide, but the inhabitants poor.
The Penryn returns were made in the name of the ‘burgesses’, and only in 1689 is there clear evidence of a wider electorate than the corporation. This body consisted of 12 aldermen, one of whom was elected every year as portreeve or mayor, and 12 common councilmen, and was able to manipulate the scot and lot roll. The duchy of Cornwall normally exercised a considerable interest, since Penryn was a stannary town, and the bishop of Exeter was lord of the manor. With these interests in abeyance, the general election of 1660 was contested by four obscure candidates.
Newport, a suburb of Launceston, had no municipal organization. The manorial court every year elected two ‘vianders’, and it had been contended in 1628 that the freeholders could claim the poll in parliamentary elections only if the vianders disagreed on the choice of candidates. Normally only a couple of dozen voters attested the returns, but the indenture for the contested election of February 1679 carries 75 signatures.
