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.
During its most prosperous period, from about 1345 to near the end of the 15th century, Coventry is said to have been the fourth largest city in England, and in 1523-7 its subsidy assessment was still higher than any save those of London, Norwich, Bristol and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. But the cloth trade was declining and the art of making blue thread, flourishing in the period and giving rise to the expression ‘true as Coventry blue’, seems to have been lost by the middle of Elizabeth’s reign.
Little is known about the size of the medieval population of Warwick. The lay subsidy roll of 1332 provides 92 names of the more affluent inhabitants, but these can represent only a fraction of the total number of householders. There can be no doubt, however, that the place was less populous and wealthy than its thriving neighbour, Coventry; there, the 134 taxpayers paid £47 2s., in comparison with Warwick’s £17 16s. The Avon was not navigable as far up as Warwick, and the town’s situation away from important roads denied it a share in long-distance trade.
Warwick’s strategic location on a ‘rocky ascent’ above the Avon made it an important military and administrative centre from Saxon times. As the county town of seventeenth-century Warwickshire, it played host to the quarter sessions and assizes, and housed the local militia’s magazine. However, although it possessed a thriving market in local agricultural produce, it lagged behind both Coventry and Birmingham in terms of commercial and industrial development. The growing population stood at around 3,000 in 1600, but poverty levels were relatively high. W. Dugdale, Antiqs.