Commons 1690-1715

At the beginning of this period the principals in the county were the Whig Sir Henry Hobart, 4th Bt., of Blickling and the Tory Sir Jacob Astley, 1st Bt., of Melton Constable. The other leading interests were in eclipse or decline: among the Whigs the Townshends were represented by a minor, while Sir John Holland, 1st Bt.†, of Quidenham, the veteran Parliamentarian, had by now retired from politics; on the Tory side Lord Yarmouth (Hon. William Paston†) had refused the oaths and was in any case sinking under his debts.

The franchise in Monmouth had been determined by a decision of the House in 1680, which admitted two out-boroughs, Newport and Usk, but excluded two others, Abergavenny and Chepstow. This was confirmed by the practice in the elections of 1689 and 1690. On the other hand the restriction of voting rights to resident freemen, which had been a subsidiary element in the Commons’ judgment, was almost certainly ignored throughout this period.

An unusually high relative concentration of Catholics in its northern quarter had made Monmouthshire a cockpit of religious and party political animosities in the 1670s and 1680s, but at the 1690 general election the Whig and Tory interests, in the form of two of the three leading magnate families, the Morgans of Tredegar and the Somersets, dukes of Beaufort, respectively, shared the county representation.

The city and liberty of Westminster presented a significant contrast: a prestigious constituency with a plebeian, often violent, electorate. Encompassing the seat of both monarch and Parliament, the borough was frequently contested by ministers, who recognized its potential impact on elections throughout the country, and took advantage of the Court’s influence over local tradesmen and victuallers. The propinquity of the palaces of Whitehall and St.

Although Middlesex was described by Defoe as ‘a county made rich, pleasant and popular by the neighbourhood of London’, its politics were not dominated by the influence of the capital. The ever-spreading metropolitan suburbs had already swallowed up many villages in the east of the shire, but nearly all the successful candidates could boast a substantial rural interest. Moreover, even though the shrievalty was determined by the City liverymen, the county quarter sessions at Hicks Hall remained a key political platform, and retained an independent voice.

Politically, Stamford was dominated by two neighbouring Tory families, the Berties of Uffington and the Cecils of Burghley, each of whom usually took one seat. The lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, the 3rd Earl of Lindsey (Robert Bertie†), described Stamford’s corporation to James II in 1688 as ‘steady in their loyalty’, and indeed some of its members refused to support the Revolution with the result that a serious riot occurred on the day of the coronation, 13 Apr. 1689. Information was sent to the Earl of Stamford that,

Since the Restoration the representation of Lincoln had been dominated by the local gentry families of Monson and Meres. However, the non-juring stance of Sir Henry Monson, 3rd Bt.†, allowed other Lincolnshire gentlemen with longstanding borough connexions to challenge for a seat, most notably Sir John Bolles, 4th Bt., of Scampton, and Sir Edward Hussey, 3rd Bt., of Caythorpe. The town was hardly in a position to obstruct such outside interference, having yet to recover from its Civil War upheavals.

One of the most venal boroughs in the country, Grimsby was no more than ‘a little poor town, not a quarter great as heretofore’. Intensive electioneering clearly pushed up the price of the seats, which increasingly became the preserve of London merchants of somewhat doubtful reputation. Not surprisingly, following one of the most notoriously corrupt elections of the period, calls were made to disfranchise the town, led by John Toland’s Art of Governing by Partys (1701), but to no effect.

A small market town situated on the Great North Road, Grantham’s franchise was restricted to its freemen, and influence over the corporation, consisting of an alderman, 12 senior comburgesses and 12 junior comburgesses, who elected the freemen, was therefore a priority for would-be representatives of the borough. During this period three interests predominated; that of the 9th Earl of Rutland (John Manners†), of Belvoir Castle only seven miles distant, and, moreover, recorder of the borough; the Brownlows of Belton; and the Ellyses of Nocton. All three families had Whig sympathies.