County

Although faction flourished in Northumberland, especially under the inept lieutenancy of the 2nd Duke of Newcastle, only one contested election is known. Sir William Fenwick was returned as senior knight of the shire in 1660, and he and his son held one seat until the Revolution, while his junior colleague, Ralph Delaval, was almost as successful. Both families had supported Parliament in the Civil War, and in 1661 Delaval had to give way to Lord Mansfield, son of the Cavalier general in the north.

‘Northampton, a town and country of very eminent disaffection to the King throughout the war’, could only be induced to return court candidates with extreme artifice throughout this period. For the general election of 1660 the gentry selected two Presbyterians, John Crew and Richard Knightley. But as early as 5 Apr. it was reported that ‘Northamptonshire hath resolved to choose none of the Long Parliament’.

The general election of 1660 was principally a trial of strength between the two knights of the shire in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, Sir Horatio Townshend, a key figure in royalist conspiracy, and Sir William Doyley, an opportunist who was equally ready to return to his former allegiance. Townshend was partnered by Lord Cramond, whose father had died in a parliamentary prison early in the Civil War.

The Restoration came early to Monmouthshire, Sir Trevor Williams inducing the militia to declare for the King even before the general election of 1660, when Lord Herbert, the effective head of the Raglan family, was returned with William Morgan, the heir to the Tredegar estate. There was probably no contest then or in 1661, but the remainder of the period was dominated by the uneasy relation between the Raglan interest and the county gentry.

Thanks to the diary of Samuel Pepys no period of London history is better known than the years of the Restoration, which had indeed come about through a tax-payers’ revolt against the Rump, in alliance with the well-disciplined forces of George Monck.

Although Middlesex was too large and popular a constituency to allow for its being amenable to patronage, it is clear that the protection provided by the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Grey of Warke was an important factor in the exclusionist successes in 1679-81. The conduct of the elections by the elected sheriffs of London also favoured radical candidates. But the results in 1660 and 1689 suggest that there was normally a majority for more cautious policies.

Lincolnshire was the only county constituency in England for which one Member sat continuously throughout the period and beyond. Lord Castleton certainly did not owe his success in nine consecutive general elections to intense parliamentary activity or to a particularly clear-cut political line, although his attempt to hold the balance between court and country evidently appealed to the electorate. One of his assets was that his family, through genealogi cal accident, had no Civil War record to repel voters on either side.

A county like Leicestershire, with only one parliamentary borough, might have expected to experience severe competition for the honour of knight of the shire. But only in 1679, at the height of the Exclusion crisis, was there a serious contest. Perhaps the territorial prestige of the Earl of Rutland and the personal reputation of Lord Sherard, who represented the county in six Parliaments from 1679 to 1695 deterred potential rivals. It fell to George Faunt, a strong Royalist, to conduct the general election of 1660.

For most of the period Lancashire politics were dominated by the rivalry between the Stanleys and the Gerards. Both families had suffered for their ardent royalism; the 7th Earl of Derby was executed in 1652, while Lord Gerard of Brandon (later the 1st Earl of Macclesfield) was in exile throughout the Interregnum. Political differences between them were slight, but until Hon.

There was no one dominant family in Kent; during this period the gentry observed the conven tion of returning one Member from the eastern part of the county and the other from the western part. In 1660 at a meeting of the gentry, under the leadership of the Earl of Winchilsea at the Star in Maidstone, ‘all the Royalists and moderate men in the county’ agreed upon Sir Edward Dering and Sir John Tufton, although the former was scarcely qualified under the ordinance.