Boroughbridge

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in the burgage-holders

Number of voters:

64

Elections

DateCandidate
c. Apr. 1660HON. CONYERS DARCY
 HENRY STAPLETON
8 Apr. 1661SIR RICHARD MAULEVERER, Bt.
 ROBERT LONG
7 Nov. 1673SIR HENRY GOODRICKE, Bt. vice Long, deceased
 Sir James Long, Bt.
22 Oct. 1675SIR MICHAEL WARTON vice Mauleverer, deceased
 Sir James Long, Bt.
14 Mar. 1679SIR THOMAS MAULEVERER, Bt.
 SIR HENRY GOODRICKE, Bt.
22 Aug. 1679SIR THOMAS MAULEVERER, Bt.
 SIR JOHN BROOKES, Bt.
 Sir Henry Goodricke, Bt.
15 Sept. 1681SIR THOMAS MAULEVERER, Bt.
 SIR JOHN BROOKES, Bt.
18 Mar. 1685SIR THOMAS MAULEVER, Bt.
 SIR HENRY GOODRICKE, Bt.
8 Jan. 1689SIR HENRY GOODRICKE, Bt.
 CHRISTOPHER VANE

Main Article

Towards the end of the period it was asserted that ‘the queen dowager always recommends one to be chosen’ at Boroughbridge, the bailiwick forming part of her jointure. But the return in 1661 of Robert Long, surveyor to Queen Henrietta Maria, is the only one that can be certainly ascribed to this interest, and it is clear that the local magnate families were more important. The Stapletons of Myton may already have owned burgages in the borough, but after the Restoration they were eclipsed by the Mauleverers, who leased the mills, and Sir Henry Goodricke of Ribston. From 1661 elections were managed largely by a minor gentry family, the Wilkinsons, who lived at Boroughbridge Hall, and jointly leased the bailiwick. Boroughbridge formed a single parish with Aldborough, and the parliamentary histories of the two boroughs were closely connected, especially in the by-elections of 1673.1

At the general election of 1660 the Presbyterian Royalist Henry Stapleton was returned with his brother-in-law Conyers Darcy, who, as the son of a Cavalier, was ineligible under the Long Parliament ordinance. He moved up to represent the county in 1661, but Stapleton never stood again. They were replaced as Members for Boroughbridge by Long and Sir Richard Mauleverer, a former royalist conspirator. Long used his office to acquire considerable property in Yorkshire, which he bequeathed to his nephew Sir James Long, who stood for the borough as court candidate on his uncle’s death in 1673. He was opposed by Sir Henry Goodricke, while simultaneously Long’s great-nephew James was contesting Aldborough with Goodricke’s friend and ally Sir John Reresby. The country candidates won both seats, although a group of voters petitioned against Goodricke’s return, claiming that Long had received 29 votes and Goodricke only 13, and ‘ofthose but nine that pay to church and poor’. They alleged that Goodricke had coerced George Loupe, one of the joint bailiffs, into sealing his indenture, although he was not the proper returning officer. Another indenture in Long’s favour had been accepted by the deputy sheriff, but suppressed. Long also petitioned, and the case was referred to the elections committee, but no report was ever made. Long stood again after Mauleverer’s death in 1675; but he was opposed by Sir Michael Warton of Beverley, who was pressed upon Andrew Wilkinson, as ‘one of your own county, and so more capable of serving you’. Long’s candidature was promoted by Francis Calvert, another of the bailiffs and a Roman Catholic:

but promises of rewards and his meritorious settlement of the borough are all idle talk, false and illegal when made use of for such designs, and there are no machinators of this kind that will keep their word, having once attained their ends.

The day after the election the Hon. Thomas Fairfax wrote to Reresby that Warton had ‘carried it by nine votes’.2

At the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament, the interests of Goodricke and Mauleverer’s son Sir Thomas were deemed impregnable, and they were returned unopposed to the first Exclusion Parliament. Mauleverer abstained from the division on the bill, but Goodricke voted against it, sending ‘intelligence to some in that borough... that they voted for the innocent Duke’. This was received ‘even with a hissing among the neighbourhood’. Rumour swept round the borough that both Members were Papists, and in the autumn Goodricke was defeated by a local exclusionist, Sir John Brookes. Brookes was ‘in fear of being cast out’ at the next election, but he was re-elected with Mauleverer to the Oxford Parliament. His house was searched for arms after the Rye House Plot, and he became a fervent Tory, but did not stand again. Opinion in Boroughbridge seems to have generally moved in the same direction, and in March 1685 Goodricke and Sir Roger Strickland presented a loyal address from the borough congratulating James II on his accession and promising to elect those who abhorred ‘that execrable bill of Exclusion’. At the ensuing election Goodricke and Mauleverer were returned unopposed. In September 1688 the royal electoral agents reported that Boroughbridge would choose Mauleverer, whom they knew to be right, and Goodricke, of whom they were merely hopeful. If the King had any doubts of him, they suggested that the queen dowager should nominate another candidate. Goodricke took a leading role in the Revolution, and was returned to the Convention with Christopher Vane, one of the most prominent northern Whigs.3

Authors: Paula Watson / Virginia C.D. Moseley

Notes

  • 1. Duckett, Penal Laws (1882), 103; T. S. Lawson-Tancred, Recs. of a Yorks. Manor, 12, 200, 205, 213-14.
  • 2. Browning, Danby, i. 118; Sheepscar lib. Leeds, Mexborough mss 9/33; Lawson-Tancred, 204-8.
  • 3. Mexborough mss 1/72; 14/75, 150; HMC Astley, 41; Lawson-Tancred, 213; London Gazette, 12 Mar. 1685; Duckett, 103.