Coventry had a population of about 12,000 in 1754 and an electorate of about 2,500—one third of them non-resident. Its politics, generally conducted without much reference to national affairs, were on a corporation and anti-corporation basis; and elections were riotous and expensive. Lords Craven, Archer, and Hertford at different times concerned themselves with the borough; but it had an unsavoury reputation and the Warwickshire country gentlemen steered clear of it.
‘Lord W[arwick] has friends enough to bring in one Member provided this Member is of his own family, but he cannot bring in two ...’A.L. Ruoff, ‘Landor’s Letters to his Family 1802-25’, Bull. Rylands Lib. liii. 476. This was the basis of stabilization in the borough elections reached in 1802.
With over 2,500 electors, of whom some 30 per cent were outvoters, Coventry was an expensive constituency, difficult to manage.This article is based on T. W. Whitley, Parl. Rep. Coventry, 202-52. Contests had long arisen out of conflict between the corporation (and its allies) and the commonalty, among whom the largest group were the journeymen weavers in the silk factories. The wealth of Lord Eardley, whose colleague his brother-in-law Wilmot had local connexions, carried the day in 1784 when they stood as Pitt’s friends.
Up to 1734 Warwick returned Tories for both seats on the recommendation of William Greville, 7th Lord Brooke, recorder of the borough. At a hard fought by-election in November 1722 Lord Brooke, by gaining the support of a majority of the corporation, was able to secure the return of his nominee, Sir William Keyt, against a Whig opponent, Henry Delves, at great expense. His London agent was
The chief interest in Coventry was that of the corporation, which was dominated by the nonconformists,
Warwick was dominated by the castle, since 1605 in the hands of the Greville family, who usually also served as recorders of the borough. As the head of the family sat in the House of Lords throughout this period as Lord Brooke, they seldom claimed a seat in the Commons, though it is unlikely that the electorate readily defied their wishes. Sir Henry Puckering, who lived at the Priory, was the most prominent resident in the town, but like the Grevilles he had few relatives to provide for.
Coventry, always an important industrial centre, had been separated administratively from Warwickshire in 1451, and held aloof from the county. Except in 1661 and (for one seat) in 1685 it invariably elected residents. Under the 1621 charter the corporation comprised the mayor, two sheriffs (who acted as returning officers), ten aldermen and 25 common councilmen. The franchise was in the freemen at large, although after the very confused general election of 1660 the Commons decision implied that it should be confined to the ratepayers.
Warwick was incorporated in 1545, and, according to a charter of 1554, was governed by a common council comprising a bailiff, 12 assistants (or principal burgesses) and a recorder. By 1570, 24 secondary burgesses were appointed, to be ‘the mouth of all the commoners’, but these could be dispensed with at the discretion of the principal burgesses, and their number was soon reduced to 12. In this period, with one exception, the common council chose the MP, and paid the wages.
Coventry was a city, incorporated early and granted the status of a county in 1451. Accordingly it received a separate writ, addressed to its two sheriffs, for parliamentary elections. The electorate consisted of all the freemen.
Largely owing to its lack of good roads or a navigable river, Warwick during the period was a poor borough which was included in the Act of 1540 for the re-edification of towns westward (32 Hen. VIII, name known for c.19). The population was apparently not much over 2,000, and subsidy assessments for the town during the 1520s do not show it among the first 40 boroughs in England, at a time when Coventry was ranked fifth in the kingdom.