Suffolk

Economic and social profile

The fact that ‘the Sudburians’ were regarded as ‘a beggarly and mercenary sort of people’ often attracted wealthy outsiders to put up, but in 1690 the borough’s representatives were both local Whig country gentlemen, Philip Gurdon of Assington and John Robinson, son-in-law of one of the knights of the shire, Sir Gervase Elwes, 1st Bt., who had sat for Sudbury in Charles II’s reign and still enjoyed a strong interest there.

The bitter party strife that overtook Orford in this period, and transformed its electorate from a corporate oligarchy into a much larger body of freemen, arose from interference by country gentlemen, to whom such ‘decayed’ boroughs were a tempting prey.

There were no significant outside interests at Ipswich, the state of parties within the corporation proving generally the determining influence in parliamentary elections. The town itself, though well situated as a port, had the appearance of being ‘a little disregarded’: commerce was ‘entirely neglected’ and there was no industry to speak of.

The powerful interest of the Cornwallises of Brome, which had lain dormant since the defeat of their candidates in the 1681 election, revived in 1690, when the Whig Thomas Davenant, a nominee of the 3rd Lord Cornwallis, was returned, albeit with a Tory colleague, Henry Poley. At the next election, Cornwallis was able to secure both seats, his eldest son, Hon. Charles, replacing Poley. This domination was to be maintained throughout the period.

At the beginning of this period Dunwich was already ‘manifestly decayed by the invasion of the waters’ and ‘in danger of being swallowed up’: ‘as the Church of England is semimortua and semisepulta, so is this corporation half-eaten up by the sea’. In 1702 St. Peter’s parish church had to be demolished; not long afterwards a similar fate befell the town hall. Yet Defoe noted that the town, ‘however, ruined, retains some share of trade’, and there remained enough inhabitants to make a residence qualification for the parliamentary franchise a serious proposition.

A notable beneficiary of the late 17th-century ‘urban renaissance’, Bury St. Edmunds was predominantly a ‘leisure town’, ‘the Montpellier of Suffolk’ in Defoe’s memorable phrase, whose most visible industry was the recreation of polite society. Its resident ‘pseudo-gentry’ and upwardly mobile professionals, like the apothecary Thomas Macro, owner of the finest house in the town, formed a comfortable and pretentious oligarchy, who kept the parliamentary franchise firmly within their grasp.