Commons 1690-1715

Cirencester was one of the nation’s principal centres of woollen cloth production and marketing. Defoe reported that wool was ‘sold here in quantities, so great, that it almost exceeds belief’. The town’s manufacturers, dealers and traders thus accounted for most of its leading townsmen. Unusually for a large town, Cirencester was governed, not by a corporate body, but by a manorial court, and all who were qualified to vote were known as ‘burgesses’. In the midst of the borough itself were two predominating interests, both of whom were Tory.

The life and politics of Bristol were inextricably bound up with its port, the largest outside the capital. The city’s governors were an oligarchy of merchants and manufacturing tradesmen, many from old and wealthy mercantile dynasties interlinked by bonds of marriage, and a strong sense of civic consciousness promoted the virtues of economic well-being. This ruling elite exerted a considerable hold over the city’s large ‘open’ franchise. Bristol could boast the largest urban electorate outside London.

Reflecting on the 1690 election in Gloucestershire, Viscount Weymouth (Thomas Thynne†), whose brother James* had just been defeated there, was struck by the infusion of ‘party’ into the campaign, observing that the only competitive element in previous elections had been ‘affection to the persons standing’. This observation is substantially borne out by Gloucestershire’s electoral history in the post-Restoration decades when candidates of like-minded Whiggishness appeared almost routinely in opposition to one another.

Described even by those who lived nearby as ‘a remote and almost forgotten corner of the kingdom’, Maldon was a small market town with some maritime trade, principally the importing of coal. One of the most prominent merchants involved in this trade, William Coe, was a Congregationalist who in 1696 leased property for a meeting house, and whose family championed the strong Dissenting presence in the town. According to an estimate made during the reign of George I, almost half the population (thought to be about 1,100 in 1700) were Presbyterians, of whom just over 100 voted in elections.

‘A town of hurry and business, not much of gaiety and pleasure’, Harwich was noticeably busier during war than peace. Its deep harbour, protected by Landguard Fort, made it ideal for shipbuilding and the transport of passengers and mail to and from the Continent. Considerable trade for the 22 inns in Harwich came from the soldiers and sailors stationed there, and from passengers detained by adverse winds.

Colchester experienced troubled times under the later Stuarts, both politically and economically. The population of the town itself (enough to rank it as one of the ten largest in the country), together with that of its hinterland, was mostly employed in the woollen industry. The area was still in 1720 ‘the most famous place in England for making of bays and says’, but this manufacturing base was in a state of gradual decline, and vulnerable to crises from the mid-1690s through to the disruption to its main market caused by the Spanish war in Anne’s reign.

The two contested by-elections and eight contested general elections during the period indicate the strong divisions that existed in Essex, which reached their height in the elections of 1695 and 1705. Differences of opinion were apparent even between the different branches of families, such as the Mildmays, with the Whig Henry Mildmay and the Tory Carew Hervey Mildmay representing different ends of the political and religious spectrum. It was not just the rage of party that maintained an atmosphere of almost continuous electioneering.

Throughout this period Durham consistently returned a combination of members of the local gentry and men from families with strong connections to the corporation. Many of the successful gentry candidates also had links to the borough elite, so that it seems that possession of corporate office, or ties to others who held such office, played an important role in Durham elections.

Durham elections were dominated by the influence of the county’s major gentry, many of whom possessed interests in the county’s coal industry in addition to their landed estates, with no single family having a dominant or pre-eminent interest. The county was contested only twice in this period, a fact which may point to a lack of political conflict within Durham but which probably also owed a great deal to the tendency of the county’s gentry to resolve their differences prior to the poll.

The right of election at Weymouth and Melcombe Regis lay with the freeholders. Since the boroughs had been united, thereby returning four Members, each elector had four votes. The size of the electorate increased rapidly towards the end of Anne’s reign, as party rivalry gave rise to the widespread practice of splitting freeholds. The nature of the franchise militated against the existence of any controlling interest.