Commons 1690-1715

Lichfield had been made a county in its own right by a charter of 1553, hence the inclusion of a freeholder franchise. The government rested with two bailiffs, a sheriff and 21 brethren, although the cathedral close, effectively separated from the town by ‘pools’, was outside lay jurisdiction. Contemporary observers seem to have disagreed about its condition, Sir John Perceval, 5th Bt.†, noting in 1701 that little was manufactured there except for woollen caps, whereas Defoe detected a flourishing cloth trade 20 years later.

The marked absence of contested elections in Staffordshire was not a sign of exceptional political tranquillity, but rather testimony to the power of the county meeting. Traditionally the gentry met to agree upon candidates in order to avoid acrimonious and expensive elections. Such decisions were invested with the authority of the shire, and on more than one occasion the gentry threatened to combine their interests to compel dissidents to desist from forcing a poll or face the prospect of a humiliating public defeat.

The state of confusion surrounding the right of election in Wells had been exploited for political advantage in several post-Restoration elections and remained subject to intermittent dispute during the succeeding period. The central issue was whether the corporation franchise embraced a wide or narrow definition of the term ‘burgess’.

Taunton easily gave the impression of being one of the most Whiggish boroughs in England. The Somerset historian John Oldmixon wrote in 1711: ‘there are more fanatics in it than in any corporation in England, more Whigs than the ward of Breadstreet, more wealthy men than the whole shire of Cardigan’. But though the tradition of opposition and Dissent was deeply embedded in the town’s recent history, strong Tory influences had also held sway, and not least those represented by the Portman family, whose principal estate at Orchard Portman lay just two miles distant.

The controlling interest at the port of Minehead lay with the Luttrells of Dunster Castle, strong Tories, who, as lords of the manor, had the right to appoint the returning officers, the two constables. In 1690 Colonel Francis Luttrell, then head of the family, was returned with Nathaniel Palmer, a Tory landowner, who had represented Minehead since 1685. On Palmer’s choosing to sit for the county, his place was taken by another Tory, John Sanford, a wealthy merchant with estates in Somerset.

Milborne Port’s parliamentary seats came more firmly under the control of the owners of the town’s nine burgages or bailiwicks during this period, and as such took on the classic characteristics of a ‘pocket borough’. The right of election lay in the burgage holders, known as the chief bailiffs or capital burgesses, plus nine stewards and the inhabitants paying scot and lot.

Ilchester, despite its unprepossessing appearance, was an important political focus in Somerset, being the local field of influence of several of the county’s most prominent families, and also the venue for the election of knights of the shire. Four miles to the south was Montacute, belonging to the Phelipses, who had dominated the borough for much of the 17th century and had held the office of high steward on almost a hereditary basis.

The strong Dissenting interest in Bridgwater naturally produced intermittent bouts of political infighting between Whigs and High Churchmen, but parliamentary elections had largely ceased to be occasions for bringing these tensions into the open. The corporation of 24, which had the strongest hand in controlling a modestly sized scot-and-lot electorate, carefully cultivated links with members of the local gentry, but nevertheless maintained a jealous eye over the borough’s parliamentary seats, and during these years promoted the election of several of its senior members.

By the last decade of the 17th century Bath was already a popular place of resort, but the city’s political affairs and its government were firmly in the hands of men of local standing. The franchise was the preserve of the 30-strong corporation, with no aristocratic influence being exerted until 1710. The candidates were usually members of the civic elite or of the local gentry, and invariably it was from the latter that the city’s representatives were chosen.

In his History of Addresses (1711), John Oldmixon described Somerset as ‘the Attica of England, the seat of good sense, good manners, good politics, good English and good land’. How Oldmixon, himself a native of the county, reconciled his own distinctly Whiggish outlook with the dominant Toryism of Somerset’s gentry elite is not immediately apparent, but he would not have been alone in his belief that its uncomplicated politics, seen in the comparative absence of party acrimony, was undeniably to the county’s advantage.