Cornwall

Truro was the centre of the Cornish tin industry and the seat of the stannary courts. Celia Fiennes thought it second only in importance to Launceston and Browne Willis* commented on its ‘great inland trade’, which redounded to the benefit of the corporation. Despite the claims of the freemen, Truro was a corporation borough much influenced by local families. Chief among these were the Boscawens, whose seat at Tregothnan lay a short distance down the River Fal, and the Vincents of Trelavan, five miles from St. Austell.

Defoe described Tregony as: ‘a town of very little trade . . . but what is carried on under the merchants of Falmouth, or Truro; the chief thing to be said of this town is that it sends Members to Parliament’. Browne Willis* concurred, noting it was ‘a poor market town’. The most important interest was that of Hugh Boscawen I*, recorder and lord of the manor, but the Trevanions of nearby Carhayes also had an influence.Defoe, Tour ed. Cole, 239; Bodl. Willis 5, ff. 144, 156.

The right of election at Saltash was in the holders of the local burgages and in the corporation, whose members had to be burgage holders in the borough. The chief interests were those of two neighbouring landowners: the Bullers, tenants in chief under the duchy of Cornwall, and the Carews of Antony, who together owned most of the burgages. Both families suffered minorities during this period, making it difficult to determine which person exercised the predominant interest.

A borough by prescription, St. Mawes was described by Browne Willis* as ‘a small hamlet’ whose inhabitants depended on the fishing trade. The dominant interest was that the Tredenham family, who, as lords of the manor, appointed the portreeve (sometimes called mayor), who was the returning officer. The Court was able to exercise some influence through its nomination of the captain of the castle, a post worth £80 p.a.Ibid. 166–8.

At the beginning of the period the principal interests at St. Ives were those of the Praeds of Trevethoe, a local family who held two of the lesser manors and who assiduously treated the voters, and Sir John Maynard*, who had taken over the Nosworthy interest in the impropriation of the local church and with it the great tithes on pilchards and herrings, which could be manipulated for political purposes. The Powletts, dukes of Bolton, were lords of the principal manor of Ludgvan Lese and as such received an annual rent from the corporation.

Thomas Tonkin* wrote of St. Germans:

as to the choice of Members of Parliament, all the inhabitant householders have votes, that have lived a year within the borough, the bounds of which do not extend very far, and only comprehend about 50 or 60 houses lying near the church, and not the whole vill of St. Germans, great part of which is without the borough, as is the rest of the parish.

Earlier in the 17th century, the lord of the manor, the bishop of Exeter, held an important interest in Penryn, but with the corporation now holding the manor, even a man of Bishop Trelawny’s calibre could not exert any influence in elections for the borough. The corporation consisted of a portreeve (mayor), 11 aldermen, 12 common councilmen and a recorder, and even though the charter of 1684 vested the franchise in the corporation alone, only in 1685 is there evidence that it was so limited.

Newport was in effect a suburb of Launceston, and suffered under a rudimentary form of manorial government. The lords of the manor were the Morices of Werrington, at whose court leet were chosen the two vianders, who acted as returning officers. For most of William iii’s reign the lord of the manor was Sir Nicholas Morice, 2nd Bt., a minor, and the patronage was exercised by his uncle and trustee Nicholas Morice†, a Whig, who continued to control the interest until his nephew’s coming of age.