Commons 1690-1715

Browne Willis* thought Fowey ‘very commodious for shipping’, and Defoe mentioned the ‘great many flourishing merchants in it, who have a great share in the fishing trade, especially for pilchards’. Other observers noted the old trade of wrecking, which after the pillaging of an East Indiaman which went aground near the port, led to a bill being brought in to prevent Cornishmen stripping English wrecks. Corporate affairs were in some disarray following the Revolution and on 4 Feb. 1690 the corporation and inhabitants petitioned the crown for a new charter to replace that granted in 1685.

The franchise at Camelford was in the mayor, who acted as returning officer, eight aldermen or capital burgesses, a recorder, and an indeterminate number of freemen. In 1690 the Manatons, two Tories whose family reputedly owned two-thirds to three-quarters of the borough, retained both seats. At the next general election, Robert Molesworth, a Country Whig, was able to use his cousin, Sir John Molesworth, 2nd Bt.*, who had an estate at Pencarrow, to secure his return with Ambrose Manaton.

The chief interests at Callington were those of the Rolles of Heanton Satchville, Devon, who held the manor and lordship under the duchy of Cornwall, and the Corytons, whose seat at Newton Ferrers was only two and a half miles away, and who owned land in the borough. Both families were Tories and it seems that they were able to return themselves or their nominees without any contests during the period.Ibid. 171–4; W. P. Courtney, Parlty Rep. Cornw. 267–8.

Thomas Tonkin* wrote that Bossiney, also known as Tintagel, ‘is a very small village, and contains scarcely 20 houses, and those not better than cottages’ which with the ‘equally mean’ hamlet of Trevenna made up the whole borough. Bossiney was a duchy manor leased by the townsmen and ‘whoever has free land in the borough and lives in the parish is a freeman’. The mayor was chosen at the court leet. The advowson was owned by the dean and chapter of Windsor, and the lessees of the ruined Tintagel Castle also had an interest.

The corporation, consisting of 12 aldermen (including the mayor) and 24 common councilmen, possessed a strong interest at Bodmin. Its income from tolls and corporate lands was said to be worth £200 p.a. However, the corporation had to share electoral power with the 2nd Earl of Radnor (Charles Bodvile Robartes†), whose seat at Lanhydrock lay in the adjacent parish to the south. The Glynns of Glynn in the neighbouring parish of Cardinham to the east also had an interest, as did the Hoblyns, who held the manor of Bodmin Francis.

Following the return to the Convention of two veteran Whigs, Hugh Boscawen I and Sir John Carew, 3rd Bt., the Tory interest reasserted itself in 1690. Carew retreated to Saltash, while the new bishop of Exeter, a Cornish landowner in his own right, Sir Jonathan Trelawny, 3rd Bt., attempted to raise an opposition to Boscawen. His circular letter to his clergy urged support for Hon. Francis Robartes and John Speccot based on their parliamentary record as

When Chester was incorporated in 1506 it was granted the status of a county in itself. Only the city’s castle remained within the jurisdiction of the county palatine of Cheshire, and consequently the borough not only possessed a large governing assembly, consisting of a mayor, 24 aldermen and 40 common councillors, but two sheriffs, elected annually and who served as the borough’s returning officers in parliamentary elections.

The conflict that was the dominant feature of Cheshire elections in this period had its roots in two phenomena. The first was the superabundance of significant gentry families. Defoe commented that ‘there is no part of England, where there are such a great number of families of gentry, and of such ancient and noble extraction’, and the large number of families of sufficient standing to aspire to parliamentary service were confronted by the fact that the county returned only four Members in all, leading to a mismatch between aspiration and opportunity.

To the doctors and ‘actual’ masters of arts at Cambridge, who comprised the university’s senate and its parliamentary electorate, the ‘Church interest’ naturally made a powerful appeal, and High Toryism flourished no less than at Oxford. Indeed, half as many fellows and scholars again were ejected from Cambridge at the Revolution as from the other university, and some non-jurors continued in residence there under the protection of sympathetic heads of house, notably at St. John’s under its master, Humphrey Gower.

For a freeman borough Cambridge was furnished with a relatively small electorate, amenable to management by an entrenched oligarchy of aldermen and senior common councilmen, who were, however, generally content that the parliamentary representation should be left in the hands of neighbouring squires. Such political passions as did occasionally arise stemmed from squabbles within this civic elite or between the country gentlemen who were jockeying for the corporation’s favour. Rarely is there evidence of plebeian involvement in elections, or in borough politics generally.