From 1715 to 1748 the Cavendishes, dukes of Devonshire, and the Stanhopes, earls of Chesterfield, each usually returned one Member for Derby, joining interests. But when, on the death of John Stanhope, they recommended his kinsman, Thomas Stanhope, a total stranger, with the concurrence of the corporation,
Although Derby was the only parliamentary borough in its county, it was able to resist pressure from the gentry and return townsmen to both seats in 1660 and 1661. The senior Member, John Dalton, had served as alderman under every regime since 1645, and his social position was not less remarkable than his politics; no other provincial shopkeeper was returned at the general election of 1661.
Little is known about the government of Derby before James I’s charter of 1612 By the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, however, there were certainly two bailiffs, a recorder and chamberlain. The office of steward has not been found before the 1590s, but the absence of local records makes it impossible to say when it first appeared. Members of Parliament were chosen by the freemen and, judging by the surviving returns for the Elizabethan period, the bailiffs acted as returning officers.
A self-governing royal borough from an early date, with charters dating back to at least 1327, Derby had two bailiffs from 1337 and a recorder by 1446. The charters of 1511 and 1547 were merely confirmatory, and little more is known of the government of the town until 1612, when it was formally incorporated under the bailiffs, 24 ‘burgesses’, a recorder, town clerk and chamberlain.
Derby, situated in the open valley formed by the river Derwent, in 1377 had an estimated population of 1,569. Clearly somewhat smaller than its neighbour, Nottingham, the town was nevertheless comparable in size with Newark and Lichfield; and by 1428 it contained four parish churches. Perhaps the oldest most important occupation of the townspeople was dyeing; in 1204 they had purchased for 60 marks a monopoly of this industry within a radius of ten miles, although as the burgesses of Nottingham already enjoyed the same privilege, the effect was limited.
At the end of the sixteenth century Derby had a population of between 2,000-2,500 with clothworking as its staple industry.E. Lord, ‘Trespassers and Debtors: Derby at the end of the Sixteenth Century’, Derbys. Arch. Jnl. cxvii. 97. It was a royal borough before the Conquest, though its first surviving charter dates only from 1204. R. Simpson, Coll. of Fragments Illustrative of Hist. and Antiqs. of Derby, 28. Since 1337 the town had been governed by two bailiffs, chosen annually by the freemen.
Derby, ‘a medium town, between a manufacturing and a genteel one’, continued to prosper during this period, notably because of its iron, silk and porcelain production. As well as the Paving Act of 1825, improvements included such recent buildings as the gaol, although Colonel William Dyott in 1826 commented that it had ‘become a filthy, dirty place, particularly the new part’. R. Phillips, Personal Tour (1828), ii. 110-12, 155-6; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1829), 125; PP (1835), xxv. 445-6, 450-1; S. Glover, Hist., Gazetteer and Dir. Derbys.