Commons 1690-1715

Although having few serious rivals as the most powerful interest of the county, the Berties of Grimsthorpe did not dominate the representation of the shire. They held the lord lieutenancy for the whole of the period, but successive earls of Lindsey had to rely on the boroughs for returning their kinsmen to the Commons. The eclipse of Viscount Castleton by 1702 bolstered their position, and they were fortunate that the earls of Exeter and the earls (later dukes) of Rutland did not seek to extend their electoral influence further than Stamford and Grantham respectively.

In 1682 Thomas Baskerville had bluntly described Leicester as ‘an old stinking town, situated upon a dull river, inhabited for the most part by tradesmen, viz.: worsted combers and clothiers’. Celia Fiennes, visiting in 1698, was more complimentary, noting the spaciousness of streets and market-place and the presence of ‘a great many Dissenters’. In fact the town’s Nonconformist community was small in comparison with other midland centres of Dissent, and accounted for approximately 100 parliamentary votes.

Many of Leicestershire’s freeholders were engaged in what Defoe termed ‘country business’, centring on the county’s market towns. Beyond the borough of Leicester, pockets of Dissent and Whiggish opinion were particularly well entrenched in areas about the shire’s eastern flank, in the north centring on Melton Mowbray, and in the south around Market Harborough; in the latter area many were said to frequent ‘conventicles’, and another correspondent advised a prospective Tory candidate to canvass the area thoroughly in order that the Dissenters be ‘laid asleep’.

Situated in the heart of the south-west Lancashire coalfield, Wigan was an expanding, early industrial town. The Haigh mines, the most important in the district, were owned by the Bradshaighs of Haigh Hall, whose prominent role in corporation affairs during the Restoration had allowed them to establish a dominant interest in the borough, being always strong enough to command one seat in this period and frequently both.

By 1690 Preston was well on its way to realizing its eventual status as a ‘stylish Georgian provincial capital’, having replaced the county town of Lancaster as the ‘focal point of county social life’. Preston owed its rise to the concentration of duchy of Lancaster administration, and the presence of duchy courts, in the borough, so that, as Defoe noted, ‘the town is full of attorneys, proctors and notaries’. These clerks and lawyers were joined by an ‘abundance of gentry’ attracted by the town’s county-wide prominence and by the stirrings of the ‘urban renaissance’ in the borough.

Newton was a small township in the south of Lancashire ‘consisting of about 150 houses’. The lordship of the manor of Newton had been held by the Leghs of Lyme, in this period headed by the non-juror Peter Legh†, since 1661, and the lord of the manor dominated the borough. The borough’s sole administrative body was the court leet which was held by the authority of the lord of the manor, and the court’s presiding officer, the steward, was directly appointed by him and held the post at his discretion, a fact of some importance as the steward also acted as the borough’s returning officer.

Prior to 1660 Liverpool’s elections had been dominated by the influence of the Mores of Bank Hall, who were the largest landowners in the borough, the Catholic Molyneuxs of Sefton who were the the lords of Liverpool Castle, and the earls of Derby, but during the Restoration period the corporation became the dominant interest. Local patrons played a diminishing role in elections, which became dominated by rival groups within the corporation. Following the recall of the 1685 charter in October 1688, the borough was governed by a charter of 1677.

Under the 1684 charter Lancaster was governed by a mayor, seven aldermen, from whom the mayor was chosen on a rota system, and a common council, with vacancies being filled by co-option. The franchise lay in the freemen. Browne Willis* was informed that there were only 400 houses in the town, and a comprehensive freemen list from 1693 shows only about 520 freemen at the beginning of this period. By 1715, however, the swearing of large numbers of non-resident freemen, many created in election years, had swelled the electorate to over 1,000.

Situated in the remote Pendle valley, Clitheroe was, according to Browne Willis*, ‘an ancient town consisting of about 200 houses built of limestone and plastered over’. Anglican provision was particularly poor and, though Presbyterianism was weak in the area, Quakers and Catholics formed significant minorities, and the presence of these groups worried local Anglicans, particularly when they attempted to exercise electoral influence in the early 1690s. Clitheroe was essentially a small market village, and its economy was dependent upon agriculture and small-scale weaving.

The extensive remodelling of Lancashire’s bench and the county’s corporations by James II and his agents created bitter divisions in the county, and these were exacerbated in 1689 when Lord Brandon was appointed lord lieutenant in the place of William Stanley, 9th Earl of Derby, who had refused this place when he was denied the lord lieutenancy of Cheshire.