Bridport was governed by two bailiffs, two constables and a council of burgesses. It was not incorporated until 1619.3 The first seven elections of the reign were dominated almost entirely by the influence of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, whose estate at Berwick lay 4¼ miles south-east of the borough.4 William Page (1559) and Hugh Vaughan (1581) were both Bedford’s servants. John Hastings (1563) and Thomas Parry (1571) had court connexions with Bedford through their fathers. John Russell (1572) was Bedford’s second son. Richard Inkpen (1563), a Middle Temple lawyer, Miles Sandys (1572), brother of the archbishop, and Peter Turner (1584, 1586) were all known to Bedford as puritan sympathizers. George Trenchard I (1571) was a Dorset landowner, well known to Bedford and recommended by him as deputy lieutenant in 1585. After Bedford’s death in that year, it was presumably his son’s guardian, the Earl of Warwick, who secured the reelection of the Bedford nominee, Peter Turner, in 1586. The only exceptions to the pattern of Bedford patronage in the early years of the reign were Robert and Morgan Moone. Robert Moone was a Bridport merchant whose father was bailiff of the town and who was himself a burgess there by 1561. His nephew, Morgan Moone, was to succeed to his father’s office as cofferer in 1589. They were both returned by Bridport on the strength of the family’s local importance. The Moone family, however, had connexions with (Sir) Walter Ralegh and Morgan Moone was one of Ralegh’s servants. This association may explain Ralegh’s influence in Bridport between 1589 and when three of his nominees were returned: Gregory Sprint (1589), a neighbour and future follower of Ralegh; John Fortescue II (1593), whose family had long been associated with Ralegh; and Adrian Gilbert (1597), Ralegh’s half-brother and Sprint’s tenant. Ralegh shared the patronage at Bridport with William Paulet, 3rd Marquess of Winchester, new lord lieutenant of the county, whose nominees took the senior seat: George Paulet (1589) was his cousin; Christopher Lambert (1593) was the brother of his mistress; and Leweston Fitzjames (1597) was associated with many of his followers.

Winchester died in 1598 and Ralegh’s influence cannot be discerned in the election of 1601. Sir Robert Napier, a lawyer of some influence in the county, was probably able to secure his own return in that year. His colleague, Richard Warburton, a gentleman pensioner and servant of the Queen, may well have owed his election to Viscount Bindon, who secured nominations from several Dorset boroughs and offered them to Sir Robert Cecil.5 Blank returns were used by Bridport in 1572, 1586 and 1597.6