Commons 1690-1715

Contemporary visitors to Windsor, such as Celia Fiennes and Defoe, concentrated almost exclusively on the castle. Physically impressive, its legal jurisdiction encompassed the surrounding countryside (the borough only excepted), and the monarch was often in residence, Queen Anne more so than William. The influence which the crown could exert on the borough through its ministers, courtiers or officials, is difficult to determine. However, convention demanded a deferential demeanour at least from the corporation and would-be Parliament-men.

Our view of Abingdon’s political history is partially obscured by the absence of a clearly defined parliamentary franchise. On 23 May 1660 the Commons ruled between two rival interpretations, deciding that the franchise was vested in the inhabitants of the borough not receiving alms, rather than in the corporation alone. Although the House did not define the term ‘inhabitant’, it seems likely from later disputes that householders were meant, as the questions at issue revolved around the payment of scot and lot, residency and ownership.

In 1695 James Bertie, 1st Earl of Abingdon, maintained that it was ‘the ancient custom of the county to have one [Member] in the forest and the other in the vale’, and, indeed, there are clear signs that electioneering in Berkshire took account of the basic geographical division between the western vales of White Horse and Kennet and the Forest of Windsor in the east. However, by 1690 the amicable agreement of the gentry to share out the county representation according to tradition had broken down under the pressure of political conflict.

The ‘large, populous and thriving’ town of Bedford was encompassed by numerous landed interests, though not entirely dominated by them. ‘There is pretty many gentry about the country near neighbours’, reported Celia Fiennes, ‘and many live in the town.’ The bowling green by the River Ouse was ‘well kept with seats and summer-houses in it for the use of the town and country gentlemen, of which many resort to it’.

In the terms of the political sympathies of its greater gentry, Bedfordshire was a strongly Whiggish county, ‘the least addicted to Jacobitism of all England’ according to the 2nd Earl of Ailesbury (Thomas Bruce†), who in later life reflected on his own and his father’s inability to command widespread respect there even when holding the lord lieutenancy under Charles II and James II.