Norfolk

<p>King&#8217;s Lynn was dominated by the Turners, a leading town family, in alliance with the Walpoles, each returning one Member.</p>

<p><b>Economic and social profile</b></p><p>The small borough of Thetford, which straddled the Suffolk border, was situated at the junction of the rivers Thet and Little Ouse. The most significant employer was Charles Burrell, who in 1836 took over the family agricultural machinery manufacturing firm and began building portable steam engines.<fn>W. G.

<p>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.</p><p>In 1690 there were still two rival corporations, one claiming authority under Charles II’s charter, the other asserting that the 1681 surrender had been illegal and holding to the ‘ancient’ charter of Queen Elizabeth.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.

<p>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.