Surrey

At the Restoration the principal manor of Reigate was held in moieties by the regicide Viscount Monson and the scarcely less enthusiastic republican John Goodwin. The bailiff, who acted as returning officer, was chosen in their court leet. Other important property interests were in the hands of the royalist conspirator John Mordaunt, John Hele of Flanchford, and Roger James, who owned the Rectory manor. Most of the indentures bear the names and signatures of between 40 and 50 ‘burgesses’.

The Mores of Loseley were lords of the manor of Haslemere, and their bailiff acted as returning officer. Sir William More was under age at the first two elections of the period, and the family interest was managed by his uncle James Gresham, who lived outside the borough but within the tithing of Haslemere. In 1660 he stood as a Royalist with Roger Heath of Shalford, the recorder of Guildford, and obtained from the bailiff Yalden an indenture duly signed and sealed, and witnessed by seven other ‘burgesses’.

The ‘approved men’ or corporation of Guildford, from whom the mayor was elected, consisted of eight aldermen and up to 20 ‘bailiffs’, or common councilmen. The franchise was not determined until the end of the period, and the electors are variously described; but the dominant Onslow interest was never shaken. In 1660 Sir Richard Onslow and his son Arthur were declared elected by the mayor, aldermen, and other ‘burgesses’, 37 in number, the poll having been apparently postponed as an insurance policy against defeat in the county election.

Gatton, already a classic case of a ‘pocket borough’, was controlled by Thomas Turgis, the son of a London Grocer, who bought the manor in 1654 and sat for the constituency in 13 consecutive Parliaments. His cautiously country politics harmonized with those of the owners of Upper Gatton, which passed from the Oldfield family to the Thompsons during this period. The constable of the parish acted as returning officer, and the indentures were signed by some 15 or 20 ‘inhabitants’ and ‘burgesses’, many of them local gentlemen, others imported from London for the occasion.

From 1643 to 1677 the 2nd Earl of Peterborough was lord of the manor of Bletchingley, but he appears to have exerted little or no influence on the elections. All the Members represented local territorial interests, and three of them were past or present inhabitants of the parish. At the general election of 1660 the two representatives of the borough in the Long Parliament, Sir John Evelyn of Godstone and Edward Bysshe of Burstow, were opposed by John Goodwin, a resident, and Edmund Hoskins of Oxted, who had sat for Bletchingley in 1659.

Southwark, noted in this period for its playhouses and brothels, had a special relationship with the city of London, which appointed its steward and bailiff. In 1571 the instructions to hold the election were sent to Southwark by the common council of the city, and in 1584 the London recorder was present at the election. The right to vote at Southwark was vested in the inhabitants, 20 of whom signed the 1559 return, and 22 that of 1584.

The Howards of Effingham owned a moiety of the manor of Reigate and leased the other from the earls of Derby. Election returns were made in the name of the burgesses (usually about a dozen), and the other inhabitants.VCH Surr. iii. 231-7; C219/29/144.

Haslemere was a ‘tithing’ in the manor of Godalming, which came into the hands of the Crown in Edward VI’s reign. Anthony Browne Viscount Montagu was its steward from 1553 until his death in 1592. Though a Catholic, Montagu was trusted and rewarded by the Queen, being one of the commissioners for the trial of Mary Stuart in 1586, serving against the Armada in 1588, and entertaining the Queen at Cowdray in 1591.

Guildford had been incorporated in the middle ages and was governed by a mayor, ‘approved men’, and the guild of merchants. In 1559 Henry, 12th Earl of Arundel, held the office of high steward. On his death in 1580, Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln, was elected but died within five years. The corporation then chose Charles Howard I, Lord Howard of Effingham.

At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign the borough of Gatton was owned by the Copley family and patronage there was in the hands of Sir Roger Copley’s widow. Thomas Copley, her son, who had already represented Gatton in 1554 and 1558, returned himself in 1559 and 1563. It is not known how Thomas Farnham, a Leicestershire country gentleman and a court of wards official, came to be returned for Gatton in 1559. Sir Robert Lane (1563) was Thomas Copley’s brother-in-law from Northamptonshire.