Norfolk

Economic and social profile

Although susceptible to aristocratic influence, and with a tincture of party politics, the Thetford corporation in this period was characterized more by venality. Bribery was often a feature of elections, and no interest could for long be maintained there without some substantial gifts to the corporation or benefactions to the town.

Norwich was still the second city in the kingdom, with a population of some 30,000. Celia Fiennes found it ‘a rich, thriving, industrious place’. There was a very large Dissenting interest: ‘every sect is represented here’, wrote another visitor. This, coupled with the fact that the weavers, by far the most numerous body among the freemen, were predominantly Whig, ensured that the High Tory faction in the city, although it had regained control over the corporation by 1690, could not monopolize parliamentary elections.

Politics in King’s Lynn were dominated by the Turners, a local family of merchants and lawyers, who provided the corporation with five of its mayors between 1691 and 1707. Sir John Turner, then a Tory, was returned in 1690 with another local Tory, Daniel Bedingfield, the recorder. However, Sir John’s nephew, Charles Turner, had in 1689 married the daughter of Robert Walpole I* of Houghton, and the Turners soon aligned themselves behind this powerful new connexion, supporting the Walpoles locally and the Whigs nationally. In 1695 Charles Turner took the place of Bedingfield.

The Members for Yarmouth were expected to work for the borough in the House and to follow the corporation’s instructions on local matters: after each session they were presented with a sum of money or a quantity of wine ‘as a token of thankfulness for their good services’. The town was described by Defoe as ‘very rich’ and also ‘very well governed’. The electorate numbered only some 600 in 1660, but had risen to about 800 by the 1720s. As one modern historian has noted,

Castle Rising had been a pocket borough of the Duke of Norfolk, who as lord of the manor controlled most of the burgages. However, the Duke was in financial difficulties and the two Members he returned in 1690, both of them Whigs, each coveted it for themselves: Hon.

In 1754 Norwich was the third largest city in England and the fourth largest urban constituency, a cathedral city of great dignity and antiquity and the centre of the Norfolk woollen industry. Its municipal constitution resembled that of London, with a court of aldermen and a court of common council; and municipal politics were fiercely contested. There was a large body of Dissenters; and since the franchise included freeholders as well as freemen, a considerable rural vote.

Euston Hall, seat of the Dukes of Grafton, is four miles from Thetford, and during this period the borough was under Grafton’s control.

The corporation was a power in Yarmouth politics, and the corporation was controlled by the Walpole and Townshend families, who each filled one seat. But there was always an anti-corporation party and in 1754 this found a leader in John Ramey, an attorney who had acted as agent for the Townshend-Walpole interest and had been disobliged by them.

From 1754 to 1774 one seat at King’s Lynn was held by Sir John Turner and the other by a member of the Walpole family. In 1765 Turner quarrelled with one of his principal supporters, and an opposition developed against him which soon assumed a political character. Turner, who had held office under the Grenville Administration, remained with Grenville in opposition; his opponent, Crisp Molineux, was a friend of Wilkes and admirer of Chatham; while the Walpoles preserved their neutrality.