In both boroughs the most influential parliamentary patrons were the lord lieutenant of the county the 2nd Earl of Bedford, and the first two earls of Pembroke, stewards of the royal manor of Weymouth, of the encompassing manor of Wyke and of the manor of Portland. In the later years of this period Bedford’s son-in-law the Earl of Warwick, (Sir) Walter Ralegh and Viscount Bindon all exerted some influence.
Poole ‘with its suburbs’ had, in 1568, a constitution modelled on that of Southampton. It was ‘a county, separate from the county of Dorset’ and so, whereas the 1559 election indenture, for example, was made between the sheriff of Dorset and the corporation, the known election writs in this period from 1572 were directed to the sheriff of the town and the indenture made between the sheriff of the town and the corporation.CPR, 1566-9, pp. 166-8.
The borough of Shaftesbury, granted to William Herbert I, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1553, was governed by a mayor and council of burgesses. It did not receive a charter of incorporation until the early seventeenth century.Shaftesbury Recs.
Lyme Regis was incorporated in 1559, and a new charter obtained in 1591.Weinbaum, Charters, 30-31. The general pattern of elections was one outsider (named first of each pair in the above list until 1601) and one local man, though in 1563 both MPs were outsiders. Until his death in 1585 the patron was the 2nd Earl of Bedford, whose letterLyme Regis recs. N23/2/19. to his ‘very loving friends the mayor and his brethren of the town of Lyme’ nicely illustrates relations between a great man and a dependent borough at this time:
Dorchester, governed by two bailiffs, two constables and a council of burgesses and other officials, received a charter confirming its existing liberties in 1559.Weinbaum, Charters, 29; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 345 seq.; Dorchester Recs.s The 2nd Earl of Bedford, who owned a small property in the borough, and later William Paulet, 3rd Marquess of Winchester, obtained nominations there, but Dorchester was less susceptible to patronage than some other west country boroughs.
Bridport was governed by two bailiffs, two constables and a council of burgesses. It was not incorporated until 1619.Weinbaum, Charters, 28; Bridport mss. red bk. passim. The first seven elections of the reign were dominated almost entirely by the influence of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, whose estate at Berwick lay 4¼ miles south-east of the borough.G. S. Thomson, Family Background, 202. William Page (1559) and Hugh Vaughan (1581) were both Bedford’s servants.
Corfe Castle first sent Members to Parliament in 1572. Almost certainly, enfranchisement was requested by Christopher Hatton who in 1571 or thereabouts received a grant whereby he became lord of the manor of Corfe, constable of the castle and vice-admiral and lieutenant of the Isle of Purbeck. Hatton, who exercised his offices by deputy, never lived in Corfe and this presumably explains why his patronage at elections there did not become fully established until 1586.
The Russell family owned the manor of Tavistock, and the and Earl of Bedford was responsible for the return of the Elizabethan Members until 1586, with the exception of Thomas Williams (1559), who owed this and his earlier elections for the borough to Sir Richard Edgecombe. Edmund Tremayne (1559), a returned Marian exile, had entered Bedford’s service during Mary’s reign. Richard Cooke I (1563) was the brother of Bedford’s daughter-in-law, though pressure to elect him may have come from Cecil.
Totnes was incorporated in 1505, and received confirmations of charters in 1547, 1554 and 1559 showing the usual arrangement of a mayor (who acted as returning officer at parliamentary elections), recorder, and council of burgesses. However, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century the more prosperous merchants embarked upon a campaign to restrict effective power to themselves, and, after a struggle which rent the town, they succeeded in reconstituting the corporation in the hands of 14 of the ‘more substantial burgesses’ and a wider body of lesser burgesses.
