There had been ‘burgesses’ and a guildhall in Dover before the Norman Conquest, and a charter was granted by Henry II.12 At a general assembly of the freemen, or ‘hornblowing’, in 1561, the franchise, both municipal and parliamentary, was conceded exclusively to the corporation, consisting of the mayor, ten jurats, and a self-perpetuating oligarchy of 37 commoners, and since 1581 the elections had been held in the principal parish church.13 The requirement that Members should take out their freedom was strictly enforced, though the £5 fee was invariably returned to them in consideration of past or future services to the town.14 From 1584 it had become customary for the senior seat to be conferred upon the lieutenant of Dover Castle, although in 1601 the lieutenant was too ill to serve and the place was bestowed upon his nephew instead.
By the time of the next election, in 1614, Sir Robert Brett was lieutenant of the castle. A Somerset man by birth, he had married the sister of Sir George Fane, who had succeeded his uncle, the late lieutenant, to the Burston estate and leased a house in the town.20 When Fane was rejected at Sandwich, Northampton was ‘upon the grounds of an extraordinary occasion’ compelled to ‘entreat’ Dover for both seats.21 The corporation made no difficulty, and apparently returned Fane as the senior Member,22 the only election in the period in which the lieutenant gave precedence to his colleague.
After these excitements the 1625 election passed off peacefully. Wilsford found a seat at Canterbury, while Cecil, Mainwaring and Young all pursued careers under Buckingham’s patronage, without further experience in the Commons. Sir John Hippisley, the new lieutenant of Dover Castle, took the senior seat in the first Caroline Parliament, and obtained from Buckingham a letter for the election of Sir William Beecher, his father-in-law’s first cousin and a clerk of the Privy Council. The corporation admitted him to the freedom, but pointed out that with the wider franchise it was not possible to guarantee his election.46 However, the corporation’s fears proved groundless, as both nominees were duly returned. It was a different story when they stood for re-election in the following year. Dover’s shipping had suffered heavy losses, and the Dunkirkers were so active in the Channel that the town’s fortifications had to be strengthened.47 Hippisley complained of the tardiness of the lord warden’s nominations, but admitted that he himself, trusting in the efficacy of the mayor’s good offices, ‘had no man busy’ canvassing the freemen, and that ‘a faction was made upon a sudden to put us out’. This time Monins, the only Member of the corporation to be styled ‘esquire’, offered himself as a candidate, and it may have been in the hope of dividing his supporters that John Pringle, another jurat and Hippisley’s colleague in the Dover prize commission, was persuaded to stand. If so, the stratagem failed; Beecher finished at the foot of the poll, and it was only by three votes that Hippisley avoided a similar failure.48 Pringle, a baker by trade, may have owed his success to the fact that he was then serving as master of Dover’s fellowship of lodemanage, the organization which provided pilots for the Channel crossing. As such he was well placed to speak for Dover’s maritime community, and once in the Commons he lost no opportunity in doing so.
1. Add. 29625, ff. 36-60.
2. Add. 29623, f. 5.
3. Add. 28036, f. 115v.
4. Add. 29623, f. 51.
6. Eg. 2120, f. 2.
8. Add. 29763, f. 79.
9. ‘A Relation of a Short Survey of the Western Counties’ ed. G. Wickham Legg, in Cam. Miscellany XVI (Cam. Soc. ser. 3. lii), 26. For the size of Dover’s fleet, see SP14/140/68; Eg. 2584, ff. 375-80v.
10. Hist. King’s Works ed. H.M. Colvin, iv. 756; SR, iv. 811, 854-6, 918, 973-4.
11. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 62; E351/3590.
12. S.P.H. Statham, Dover Charters, xv; A. Ballard, British Bor. Charters 1042-1216, p. 114.
13. J. Glanville, Reps. 64-5; E. Hasted, Kent, ix. 512-13.
14. Add. 29623, ff. 5, 82.
15. CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 25; HMC Hatfield, xv. 279.
16. Add. 29623, f. 4.
17. CJ, i. 241b, 986a, 994a-b; SR, iv. 1062.
18. Add. 29623, f. 5.
19. J.B. Jones, Annals of Dover, 99-100.
20. Add. 29623, f. 12.
21. Add. 28036, f. 115v.
22. The return does not survive, but Fane’s name appears before Brett’s in two contemporary lists: OR; Procs. 1614 (Commons), 464.
24. Add. 29623, f. 35; SP14/119/2.
25. SP14/118/20; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 192.
27. Add. 29623, f. 52; SP14/119/2.
28. Add. 29623, ff. 44-5, 49.
29. HMC 13th Rep. IV, 159.
30. CJ, i. 529b; CD 1621, ii. 284.
31. Add. 29623, f. 58.
32. CD 1621, ii. 202, 298; SP14/120/123.
34. Add. 29623, f. 64.
35. SP14/161/32. On Fowler, see E351/619-24; Add. 29625, f. 53v; PROB 11/154, f. 127.
37. Add. 29623, ff. 64-5; SP16/160/94.
38. Glanville, 66-70; CJ, i. 748a.
39. Life and Times of Sir Henry Mainwaring Vol. I ed. G.E. Manwaring (Navy Recs. Soc. liv), 127; SP14/161/32.
43. Eg. 2120, f. 2.
44. Add. 29623, ff. 65-6; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 245.
46. Add. 29623, f. 67.
47. CJ, i. 845a, 871b.
48. Procs. 1626, iv. 234-5; SP16/19/33.
49. CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 192.
50. Procs. 1628, vi. 145.
51. CD 1628, iv. 93.
52. Add. 29623, ff. 79-80.