Commons 1690-1715

No more than a seventh of the Much Wenlock electorate resided in the town, according to one estimate, and the two most powerful interests by far belonged to neighbouring country gentlemen: Sir William Forester, the lord of the manor of Little Wenlock, and the Welds of Willey Park, who, by an arrangement between them, jointly controlled the representation throughout this period. Forester, a Court Whig, and George Weld I, a Tory, were returned unopposed in 1690 and at every election thereafter until Weld’s death in 1701, when he was succeeded as Member by his eldest son George Weld II.

James II’s reversal in 1688 of his earlier policy towards the boroughs gave rise to confusion in Ludlow, and by 1690 there were two rival bodies each claiming to be the legal corporation, one holding by the ancient charter which had been surrendered in 1684 and the other by a new charter granted by King James in the following year in order to establish a Tory-controlled corporation.

Two families dominated elections at Bridgnorth: the Whitmores of Apley and the Actons of Aldenham. Both had property within the borough and estates nearby. The influence of the Whitmores was the greater. They owned more of the town and, although no Whitmore ever served as an alderman or a bailiff, the government of the corporation was usually in the hands of their supporters. The Weavers of Morville, another local family with property in the town and influence in the constituency, acted in concert with the Whitmores. There was also a sizable body of Dissenters in the borough. Ibid.

Bribery was usually an important factor in election contests at Bishop’s Castle, but the candidates were always either local men or the representatives of local electoral interests. In 1690 William Oakeley, a Tory, and Richard Mason, a Whig, were returned unopposed. Oakeley had sat for Bishop’s Castle before, and Mason was from a family with a particularly powerful interest in the borough. Mason died within a month of the election and was succeeded by Walter Waring, Oakeley’s nephew and also a Tory.

The Whig and Tory interests in Shropshire were evenly balanced, and the representation was shared between them at every general election in this period, except for 1708 and 1710. The various principals were all gentlemen with estates in the north of the county, in the vicinity of Shrewsbury. On the Whig side a predominant influence was exercised by the Newports, earls of Bradford, who held the county lieutenancy for most of the period. The Tories on the other hand did not have aristocratic leadership, the most prominent among them, the Kynastons, being wealthy squires.

Elections for England’s smallest county did not become occasions for open dispute involving its electorate until the middle of Anne’s reign. After the Convention Parliament, the Tory Sir Thomas Mackworth, 3rd Bt., of Normanton and the Whig Bennet Sherard of Whissendine were re-elected. On Sir Thomas’ death in 1694 his seat was taken by his son, the 4th baronet.

Oxford University was the chief seminary of the Church and pre-eminent as a focus of Toryism. The intensity of Tory politics in the university sharpened during the 1690s as a growing sense of grievance took hold among the ordinary fellows. Much of this annoyance stemmed from the government’s oft-seen failure to include Oxford dons among the recipients of ecclesiastical patronage, thereby turning many of them against the religious moderation of William III and his ministries. Discontent was also nurtured by the increasing difficulty of obtaining clerical livings in the parishes.

A hotbed of party dissension during the 1680s and much of the 1690s, Oxford was emerging as a Tory stronghold by the end of King William’s reign. The city’s large body of freemen, entitled to vote in both parliamentary and corporation elections, constituted a potentially unruly electorate. None the less there were higher forces at work which kept them largely in check.

In the last decades of the 17th century Woodstock was a modestly sized market town of few charms and no special significance. Without a staple manufacture to sustain its economy, the town was, in the 1680s, considered to be ‘poor’. It was, however, beginning to feel some advantage as a social resort, as the local horse racing inaugurated by the 3rd Lord Lovelace (John†) in the later 1670s grew in popularity with gentry from the surrounding areas. The construction of Blenheim Palace nearby during the two decades after 1705 brought substantial economic benefit, and with it a new affluence.

Though Banbury’s franchise was restricted to its corporate body, none of the local landed families had found it possible to assume a controlling interest over the borough’s single seat before 1690. At elections since the Restoration the seat had passed, usually with little apparent competition, from one gentleman to another on prior agreement.