Cambridgeshire

<p>Cambridge was as devoted to Church and King in this period as the older university, but somewhat less prone to elect ‘gremials’, though all the successful candidates except George Monck and James Vernon had been educated there. Monck’s return in 1660 was due solely to the determination of the electorate to reject the unpopular Cromwellian chief justice, <a href="/landingpage/STJOHNOXXXX" title="Oliver St. John" class="link">Oliver St.

<p>Cambridge was an open constituency during this period. The only borough in the county, it chose its Members exclusively from the local gentry. The influence of the university was probably indirect, but helps to account for the failure of the country candidates during the exclusion crisis. It was at this time that manipulation of the freeman roll for electoral purposes began, and control of the corporation, consisting of the mayor, 12 aldermen and 24 common councilmen, became essential.<fn>C. H. Cooper, <em>Annals of Cambridge</em>, iii.

<p>All the Members for Cambridge in this period were townsmen, with the exception of the two North brothers, who were sons of the high steward, the 2nd Lord North, and Robert Shute the recorder, who lived outside the town. Indeed, an ordinance made in the fifteenth century to ensure that only inhabitants could be returned to Parliament, was modified in 1571 to provide for an exception in the case of the recorder. Shute had been chosen on 20 Mar., ‘resigned’ as MP on the 26th, and subsequently withdrew his ‘resignation’.

<p>The history of the town of Cambridge, particularly after the Peasants’ Revolt, is dominated by its long series of disputes with the university, often erupting into armed conflict.

<p>Cambridge was from its beginning a strategic centre and military base. Its castle, built later by the Normans on the outskirts of the town, remained a notable fortress and occasional royal residence until the late 13th century; thereafter it was used as a gaol and administrative centre for the shire as a whole, for Cambridge had by then been the county town for over 300 years. By our period Cambridge had long been one of the major market towns of the eastern counties, owing its economic importance largely to its geographical position.

<p>Cambridge became a royal borough under Henry I and returned Members to Parliament from at least 1295, but the town was not formally incorporated until 1605. The composition of the town assembly was not specified in the charter of incorporation, nor was the extent of the franchise.<fn>F.W. Maitland and M. Bateson, <em>Camb. Bor. Charters</em>, 116-37.</fn> Until 1625, when the corporation resolved that all freemen could vote, Cambridge had one of the most unusual election procedures in the country.

<p>During the early Stuart period Cambridge University consisted of 16 colleges and halls which, between them, housed 2,270 staff, students and servants. The largest college by far, with a population of 340 scholars and servants, was Trinity,<fn> Harl. 4017, ff. 26v.</fn> which alone was spacious enough to accommodate the Court whenever the king came to visit.<fn> C.H. Cooper, <em>Annals of Camb</em>. iii. 71, 84, 156, 170; LC5/132, p.

<p>When the municipal corporations commissioners took evidence in public at Cambridge in the autumn of 1833, <em>The Times</em> commented, 16 Nov:</p> <blockquote>Probably no judicial investigation into a public trust ever brought to light more shameless profligacy or more inveterate dishonesty, more bare-faced venality in politics, a more heartless disregard of the claims of the poor, in the perversion of the funds left for their benefit, or a more degrading subserviency to the views of the rich, when they appeared in the shape of patrons or distributors of pl

<p>The political compromise of 1812 remained undisturbed in 1820 when the sitting Members, Lord Palmerston, secretary at war and a Johnian, and the Whig John Smyth of Trinity, nephew of the 4th duke of Grafton, a former Member, were unopposed. Reports that Palmerston was to be called to the Lords and replaced by either Charles Manners Sutton, Speaker of the Commons, or Charles John Shore, son of the 1st Lord Teignmouth, were soon discounted.