Abingdon was one of a number of English towns which had never been enfranchised during the middle ages because they had been dominated by a major monastic foundation. The Benedictine abbey at Abingdon had been one of the great monasteries of England and its mitred abbot had sat in the House of Lords. Its dissolution by Henry VIII had left the town without its principal source of wealth at a time when the main alternative, cloth manufacturing, was facing decline.
In common with the other three Berkshire parliamentary boroughs, Wallingford’s prosperity had always depended on its location on the Thames. It had been represented in Parliament since 1295. By the seventeenth century, however, it had long been outperformed by the neighbouring towns of Abingdon and Reading, and there was little doubt that it was now, by some margin, the least wealthy of the Berkshire boroughs. CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 251. The corporation consisted of a mayor, three aldermen, a chamberlain and 16 burgesses.
Berkshire was among the smaller English counties, but, with four borough constituencies, it could consider itself well-represented in Parliament. Several peers had interests in the county, but none was dominant and there was no shortage of gentry families willing to compete for the county seats. The Short Parliament election demonstrated how no single interest was likely to determine a result.
The principal interest at Windsor lay in the castle. From 1722 to 1761 the Beauclerk dukes of St. Albans, lords lieutenant of Berkshire 1714-51, who owned Burford House in the borough, always held one of the seats, the 2nd Duke being constable of the castle 1730-51. According to the Duchess of Marlborough, George II said at his levee in 1738, ’Lord Vere [Beauclerk] should have the seat in Parliament, for Windsor was his [i.e. the King’s] borough’.Mems of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, ed.
Wallingford’s importance as a settlement lay in its position adjacent to a ford across the Thames. Although the castle built to take advantage of this situation had been demolished in 1652, the site (together with the honor and manor of Ewelme) commanded a rental of £1,450 in 1700. The lessees of the castle were thus men of substance and two of them, Thomas Renda and William Hucks*, were parliamentary candidates in this period.
The right to vote in parliamentary elections at Reading had been settled by a decision of the Commons on 25 Mar. 1659 which invested the franchise in the mayor, aldermen and ‘commonalty’ of the borough, rather than in the freemen alone. In practice this ruling probably gave the vote to all male householders, making Reading one of the most open boroughs in the country with well over a thousand voters.
Contemporary visitors to Windsor, such as Celia Fiennes and Defoe, concentrated almost exclusively on the castle. Physically impressive, its legal jurisdiction encompassed the surrounding countryside (the borough only excepted), and the monarch was often in residence, Queen Anne more so than William. The influence which the crown could exert on the borough through its ministers, courtiers or officials, is difficult to determine. However, convention demanded a deferential demeanour at least from the corporation and would-be Parliament-men.