Whitchurch was owned by the dean and chapter of Winchester, to whom the inhabitants paid a yearly rent of £10. A mayor and bailiff were elected annually. It is not clear how or why enfranchisement was secured—perhaps the Kingsmills had a hand in it. They were a local landed family with long-standing connexions with the diocese of Winchester. At any rate the 1584 and 1586 MPs were John Cooper, a courtier, nephew of John Kingsmill, chancellor of the bishop of Winchester, and Henry Audley, an official of the diocese. Audley was returned a third time in 1588, along with Richard Fiennes, related by marriage to both the Kingsmills and the Paulets. The 1593 MPs were Robert West, still in his teens, son of the chamberlain of the Exchequer, and Richard Theakston, another Exchequer official. The Earl of Essex may have had a hand in the nomination of the 1593 men; they both moved in his circle. Thomas Henshaw (1597, 1601) was a London lawyer and Thomas Crompton I (1601) an ecclesiastical lawyer—of neither is the patron obvious. The only townsman to be returned in this period was Richard Carey (1597). The earliest extant return (1586) mentions the mayor, bailiff and burgesses. The bailiff’s name and those of the two MPs were inserted in a different hand from the rest of the document.5