County

Yorkshire in Elizabethan times had one resounding election contest, in 1597. For the rest, the sources are silent and we are left to speculate whether peace prevailed on all other occasions. Perhaps it did. Geographically the county was very large, and to get freeholders from distant areas to the county court at York by 8 a.m. must have presented great problems. And yet, once a candidate had committed his social prestige to the trial of a contested election, he was compelled to recruit every voter he could.

With the single exception of Sir Thomas Leighton in 1601, the Members for Worcestershire during this period were drawn from the leading county families. The Russell family of Strensham provided three Members: Sir Thomas Russell (1559, 1571), his son John Russell II (1584, 1586, 1589) and his grandson Thomas Russell (1601). Both Ralph Sheldon of Beoley (1563) and William Lygon of Madresfield (1589) were related to the Russells by marriage. Thomas Blount of Kidderminster (1559, 1563) came from an old-established county family.

In Elizabethan Wiltshire there were two noble families whose influence was felt in county as well as borough elections. The Herberts, earls of Pembroke, with their seat at Wilton were the more important. The 1st Earl was a man of great qualities, who had eased his way to fortune, first by marrying the sister of Catherine Parr, and later by a switch of loyalties from Protector Somerset to the Duke of Northumberland.

In the first three Parliaments of the reign all the Westmorland knights of the shire were local gentry. Lancelot Lancaster (1559) of Stockbridge was related to Gerard Lowther I (1563) of Lowther, who came from one of the oldest county families and was related to both the Cliffords and the Dudleys. Lowther represented Westmorland while still a student at Lincoln’s Inn.

Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and Privy Councillor, held estates in Warwickshire and had no difficulty in obtaining the senior seat in the first two Parliaments of the reign. He died in 1568. His fellow MPs were Thomas Lucy of Charlecote and Clement Throckmorton of Haseley, both of whom were of sufficient standing to represent the county on more than one occasion. After being junior knight to Cave in 1559, Lucy was knighted in 1565 and achieved the senior seat in 1571 and 1584. Clement Throckmorton was junior knight in both 1563 and 1572.

Sir Richard Sackville of Buckhurst, lord lieutenant of Sussex, was made Privy Councillor at Elizabeth’s accession and took the senior county seat in the first two Parliaments of the reign. He died in 1566, but since his son and heir Thomas was created Baron of Buckhurst in 1567, the family did not represent Sussex again until his grandson Robert came of age.

For most of this period the representation of Surrey was shared between two county families, both powerful at court, the Howards of Effingham and the Mores of Loseley. At the time of the elections for the 1559 Parliament the head of the More family, William More I, was sheriff. Unable to return himself, he supported the candidature of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Thomas Cawarden of Bletchingley, standing with Thomas Browne of Betchworth, who had recently succeeded to his estates and made a fortunate marriage into the Fitzwilliam family.

All the MPs in this period were Suffolk country gentlemen. The only man whose election as knight of the shire may partly have depended upon an official position outside the county was Thomas Seckford I, the master of requests. (Sir) Owen Hopton’s story is a little unusual, in that he was appointed lieutenant of the Tower between his first election for his native Suffolk in 1559 and his second in 1571, and it was no doubt because of his central office that he went on to sit for Middlesex, thus becoming one of the comparatively few men to sit for two counties.

In his report to the Privy Council on the justices and other principal gentlemen of Staffordshire made in 1564 by Thomas Bentham, the radical bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, Simon Harcourt of Ellenhall and Ronton Abbey appears, with his father-in-law, Sir Edward Aston, and another knight, as ‘a knot hurtful to justice and great maintainers’.Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 42. It is round these names, and particularly the name of Harcourt, that the story of the early Elizabethan county elections in this shire revolves.

The Somerset gentry took turns as knights of their shire throughout this period, amicably so far as is known, except for one contest, in 1571, the details of which can be learned from a letter of advice sent by Edward Phelips of Montacute to his son in 1614, when the son was facing a contest in the county. The 1571 candidates were Amias Paulet, heir to Sir Hugh; George Rogers of Cannington, whose father, the comptroller of the Household, had represented Somerset in 1559, and who had died in 1568; and John Stawell of Cothelstone. Phelips explains that the electors assembled in ‘Mr.