Oxfordshire

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

In the mid-seventeenth century two factors gave Banbury a prominence beyond its size and wealth: its geographical position and its religious reputation. Not only was it at the centre of a topographically distinct region comprising parts of three counties but, standing at the junction of major routes, it had considerable commercial significance in time of peace and military significance in time of war. VCH Oxon. x.

Centrifugal and centripetal elements affected elections to Oxfordshire seats throughout this period. Although Oxford provided an unrivalled focus for judicial, administrative and ecclesiastical life in the county, and a critical point of access to riverborne communications with London, its position close to the border with Berkshire and its status as a university city always had potential to complicate public life in the area. M.S. Gretton, Oxon. Justices of the Peace in the Seventeenth Century (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xvi), p.

If a primary motive behind the enfranchisement of the universities in 1604 had been to supply them with the means to state their case for special treatment in national legislation, then this facility was needed more than ever in the mid-seventeenth century. Beyond the particular, potentially destructive, issues raised by parliamentary visitation was the incidental fall-out of reforming legislation such as that curbing pluralism (a perennial threat to academics dependent on an outside income) or abolishing dean and chapter lands.

By the 1630s the population of Oxford probably exceeded 10,000, and had thus already reached levels estimated in 1667, when it was the eighth largest town in England. VCH Oxon. iv. 75–6. Seemingly sometimes overwhelmed by its powerful university, the city none the less had a strategic importance in its own right owing to its position on the Thames and road-trade routes, and had significant connections with London. VCH Oxon. iv. 114. Nor was its electorate easy to dominate.

A modest market town dominated by distributive and victualling trades, by the reign of Charles I Woodstock was overshadowed by the adjacent royal park. VCH Oxon. xii. 361-3, 369-71, 373. A custom whereby the councillors and other freemen (who by 1627 numbered respectively 23 and 46, and may have totalled around 80 by mid-century) made their choice of one Member of Parliament, usually the recorder, while bowing to the wishes of the high steward of the manor with regard to the other, was disregarded in the later 1620s.

The Jacobites looked on Oxford University as one of their strongholds. When its Jacobite chancellor, the Duke of Ormonde, was attainted in 1715, another Jacobite, his brother, Lord Arran, was elected as his successor, holding the post till his death in 1758. All the Members returned were Tories, the only question being whether they should be moderates or extremists. At Oxford the King did not possess the power of creating honorary doctors, by which a Whig majority was secured at Cambridge.