Sir Richard Sackville of Buckhurst, lord lieutenant of Sussex, was made Privy Councillor at Elizabeth’s accession and took the senior county seat in the first two Parliaments of the reign. He died in 1566, but since his son and heir Thomas was created Baron of Buckhurst in 1567, the family did not represent Sussex again until his grandson Robert came of age. Letters survive from Sir Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Anthony Browne^† 1st Viscount Montagu, to Walter Covert, sheriff at the time of the 1584 elections, inviting him to support Robert Sackville and (Sir) Thomas Shirley I rather than Herbert Pelham and George Goring I. Possibly on account of this intervention, the matter was settled before the election in favour of Sackville and Shirley. Robert Sackville continued to take the senior county seat in 1593 and 1597, but in 1601 conceded it to Charles Howard II of Effingham, Surrey, while he himself took the junior seat. Although Howard was only 22 years of age in 1601, he had already represented his home county of Surrey in 1597.

The remaining Sussex MPs were country gentlemen who took turns as knights of the shire. John Caryll of Warnham (1559) and John Jeffrey of Chiddingly (1572), were also lawyers. William Dawtrey of More House, Petworth, was prevented by his religion from representing the county after 1563. John Pelham of Laughton (1571) was related by marriage to the Sackvilles, and his younger brother Thomas, who eventually succeeded to the family estates, was elected junior knight of the shire in 1586, when his rival, Thomas Shirley I, was in the Netherlands. Thomas Palmer I of Angmering, was elected twice for Sussex (1571, 1589), and was made deputy lieutenant of the county in 1585, despite having served a term in the Fleet for slandering the 12th Earl of Arundel, the lord lieutenant. Jeffrey was made Queen’s serjeant between the 1572 and 1576 session, and, as such, received a writ of assistance to the Lords, but the Commons ordered that he might nevertheless retain his ‘voice’ and ‘attendance’ in the Lower House. He was raised to the bench soon after the end of the Parliament, and died in 1578, being replaced at a by-election by the aforementioned Walter Covert of Slaugham, who sat again in 1586, having been made joint deputy lieutenant of the shire with Thomas Palmer I and Thomas Shirley I of Wiston (1572, 1584, 1593). In 1589, when he sat for Sussex, Henry Neville had not yet succeeded to his father’s estates in Berkshire, but he had married Lord Burghley’s niece and he was resident on his father’s estates in Sussex. Sir Nicholas Parker of Ratton (1597) was a cousin of Robert Sackville, his fellow MP, and a deputy lieutenant of the shire. The remaining MP, John Apsley, who replaced Sir Richard Sackville at a by-election in 1566, has been identified as the John Apsley of Thakeham, a country gentleman known to the 12th Earl of Arundel.