Commons 1690-1715

Two related families, the St. Johns of Lydiard Tregoze and the Pleydells of Midgehall, had traditionally exercised a preponderant interest at Wootton Bassett, and by the beginning of this period Henry St. John I had established an ascendancy. However, the lords of the manor, the Hydes, earls of Rochester, also enjoyed some influence, and the very composition of the electorate occasionally encouraged an outsider to come and spend money. One such was Thomas Richmond Webb*, who stood in 1690 against the two outgoing Members, St.

Wilton, originally the county town, now made little impression on the traveller. ‘A place of no great notice’, wrote Defoe, and Macky was even harsher, describing it as ‘poor, paltry [and] mean’. The Earl of Pembroke’s (Thomas Herbert†) ‘very fine house’ seemed to dominate the small ‘village’ at its gates, but in electoral terms Pembroke was not a dominant figure. Though powerful, he only rarely succeeded in returning both Members in this period.

‘A mean town’, in Browne Willis’* recollection, Westbury was none the less a centre for woollen manufactures, especially ‘medley’ or ‘mixed’ broadcloth, much of which was exported to Spain and Portugal or formed a part of the African trade. There was a borough corporation, comprising a mayor and 13 ‘aldermen’ or ‘capital burgesses’, with the mayor acting as parliamentary returning officer.

Defoe found ‘a great deal of good manners and good company’ among the 7,000 or so inhabitants of Salisbury, ‘gentlemen’ as well as ‘citizens’. There was also a considerable clerical element in the population, which despite the Whig occupancy of the episcopal throne probably gave a weighty moral and, indirectly, electoral support to the Tory cause, and helped to balance the influence of the flourishing clothing industry, in which Dissent was strong.

By this time quite uninhabited, Old Sarum was the archetype of the ‘decayed’ borough: ‘it may be truly said of it, that “corn grows now where Troy town stood”’. Elections were held under the ‘parliamentary tree’ in the ‘electing acre’, the field ‘where the last houses are supposed to have stood’. By the Revolution the burgages had come to be concentrated in a few hands, and the electorate, which in 1660 had numbered over 50, had shrunk to about a dozen.

With the former Seymour estates at Tottenham and Savernake, which came into their possession in 1678 on the marriage of the 2nd Earl of Ailesbury (Thomas Bruce†), the Bruce family had acquired the lordship of the manor of Marlborough and a predominant influence over elections there. From at least 1698 onwards this position was under strenuous challenge as the 6th Duke of Somerset, aided by the ‘Whigs and Dissenters’ in the town, and exploiting the cupidity of many leading ‘burgesses’, resurrected a Seymour interest.

Until 1689 the franchise at Malmesbury had been confined to the alderman (the chief magistrate) and the 12 other capital burgesses, the top tier of the corporation, but the indenture returning the two Whig Members to the Convention was signed by the other members of the corporation, the ‘assistants’ (24 in number), and by representatives of the two other orders in the hierarchy of the borough, the ‘landholders’ (52 strong) and ‘commoners’ or ‘free burgesses’.

Local landowners and London merchants jostled with each other in Ludgershall elections. Despite the presence of strong proprietory interests, the venality of the electorate and the importance to the town’s economy of the clothing industry meant that any outsider prepared to spend money and with the appropriate trading connexions would have a chance. A significant part in this kind of campaign might well be played by the clothiers of Newbury, Berkshire, who enjoyed influence at Ludgershall as they did at Great Bedwyn.

Hindon shared with Stockbridge the undesirable distinction of having been the subject of an attempt at disfranchisement, provoked by the flagrant bribery practised at the elections of January 1701 and 1702. The comparatively lowly social status of many of the electors was tendered by contemporaries as an explanation for their susceptibility.

Both seats at Heytesbury were controlled by William Ashe I, the lord of the manor, who owned most of the burgages and also appointed the returning officer, his bailiff. Generally the borough was used to provide for his own family. Ashe returned himself, his sons Edward and William II, his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Ernle, 3rd Bt., and his son-in-law Pierce A’Court: all were Whigs. Occasionally an outside Whig was nominated.