‘Men of Knowne Loyalty’: The Politics of the Lancashire Borough of Clitheroe, 1660–1689

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

IN THETHREEDECADES between the Restoration and the Revolution, the autonomy of the English municipal corporations underwent a major challenge from central government. In this period the boroughs also took part in the early development of party politics, and in the Lancashire towns in particular Toryism took root in the sixteen-eighties. This article sets out to examine the political, and especially the parliamentary, history of one of these towns between 1660 and 1689. The borough of Clitheroe in this period provides an example of gentry, aristocratic and government competition and co-operation for the control of a constituency with a small and manageable electorate. 1 Clitheroe was created a parliamentary borough in 1558. As the manorial proprietor, the Crown obviously exerted strong influence on the borough electorate. After its enfranchisement, Clitheroe returned to Parliament a succession of outsiders chiefly southern lawyers, and gentry dependent on the Court. Then from the early seventeenth century, there grew up the practice of twinning a local man with an outsider in the borough's parliamentary representation.2 In 1662 Charles II conferred on George Monck, Duke of Albemarle, the honor of Clitheroe.3 However, this grant, as we shall see, did not result in the automatic transfer to the Albemarles of the Crown's influence over Clitheroe's choice of M.P. 's. The small size of the electorate created intense competition for influence. The suffrage was in the burg age holders and selected freemen and even at its greatest extent it accounted for only about 10 per cent of what was, by any reckoning, a small population. 4 The possibility