Northamptonshire

<p>Northampton had a very wide franchise, comprising about two-thirds of all resident adult males. The labouring class, except those in receipt of poor relief, were entitled to vote; and there was a large Dissenting element in the population. Yet its politics were mainly personal in character and subject to aristocratic influence. ‘I have always understood’, wrote the Duke of Newcastle in 1768, ‘that when my Lord Halifax and my Lord Northampton agreed ... their interest was secure’;<fn>Add. 32989, f.

<p>The most important interest at Peterborough was that of the Fitzwilliam family who owned large estates in the neighbourhood and almost invariably returned one Member. But it was ‘by no means ... a commanding interest’;<fn>Matthew Lamb to Ld. Fitzwilliam, 28 Dec. 1767, Fitzwilliam mss, Northants RO.</fn> it always required attention, and was expensive to maintain. Richard Terrick, bishop of Peterborough, wrote to Lord Hardwicke, 6 Oct. 1762:<fn>Add. 35607, f.

<p>Higham Ferrers was a pocket borough of the Marquess of Rockingham, and after his death in 1782, of his nephew and heir, Earl Fitzwilliam.</p>

<p>Brackley was always counted as a pocket borough of the Duke of Bridgwater. In 1754 Bridgwater, a minor, was on the grand tour, and his affairs were managed by his uncle the Duke of Bedford. At Brackley a complete stranger, Thomas Humberston, bribed a majority of the corporation into promising him single votes. Bedford, with Dickinson and Vernon, the Bridgwater candidates, went down to try and retrieve the situation.</p><blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Mr. Humberston and his agents had been so alert [wrote Bedford to Bridgwater on 29 Apr.

<p>Situated near Northamptonshire&#8217;s boundary with Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, Peterborough became enfranchised shortly after its former Benedictine monastery was reconstituted as a cathedral in 1541. The small town had no municipal authorities, and was run by the dean and chapter; it received no charter of incorporation until 1874, until which time the dean served as a quasi-mayor. Accordingly, it was the dean&#8217;s bailiff who received the sheriff&#8217;s precept for parliamentary elections.<fn> W.T.

<p>A small market town on the east bank of the River Nene, Higham Ferrers received a charter in 1556 which vested government of the town in a corporation consisting of a mayor, seven aldermen and 13 &#8216;capital burgesses&#8217;; it also conferred upon the borough the right to send one Member to Parliament.<fn><em>VCH Northants</em>. iii. 269-71.</fn> Before 1640 the franchise rested exclusively with the corporation.<fn> Northants. RO, FH3467; A.N. Groome, ‘Higham Ferrers Election in 1640’, <em>Northants. P and P</em> (1958), pp.

<p>Located at the southernmost point of Northamptonshire, about half way between Banbury and Buckingham, Brackley was a small agricultural town that in its medieval heyday had served as &#8216;a famous staple for wool&#8217;. However, by the turn of the seventeenth century, as William Camden noted, it could &#8216;only boast how great and wealthy it once was by its ruins&#8217;.<fn>Baker, <em>Northants</em>. i.

<p>A staple town, Northampton received its first charter in 1189, and sent Members to Parliament in 1283.<fn> <em>Northampton</em><em> Bor. Recs</em>. ed. C.A. Markham, i. 25.</fn> Elections were originally popular, but an Act of 1489 vested the government of the town in a mayor, two bailiffs, the ex-bailiffs (usually numbering about 12) and 48 &#8216;burgesses&#8217; chosen by the mayor and his brethren, and confined the franchise to this assembly.<fn> <em>VCH Northants</em>. iii.

<p>The pocket borough of Higham Ferrers remained under the complete control of the Whig 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam, who owned all but ‘five or six’ of its 171 houses and dominated the corporation of a mayor (the returning officer), seven other aldermen and 13 capital burgesses, which kept a tight rein on freeman admissions.<fn> Ibid. (1835), xxvi. 204.</fn> Fitzwilliam, the town’s recorder, continued to use the seat to accommodate friends or Members useful to the Whigs until the borough’s disfranchisement.

<p>Brackley, a small market town in an agricultural district, had little to recommend it to contemporary observers, one of whom commented that ‘its buildings have no pretension to uniformity or architectural taste’. Formerly ‘a great mart for wool’, by 1831 its ‘only manufacture’ was ‘that of lace’.<fn><em>Pigot’s Northants. Commercial Dir</em>. (1831), 156.</fn> The return of its Members was under the patronage of the 2nd marquess of Stafford, whose family had maintained an influence there for 200 years.