The manor and borough of Downton was leased by the earls of Pembroke from the bishops of Winchester. The borough was administered by the bailiff for the borough and hundred, who was the returning officer. The franchise was vested in the owners of the burgage tenements. The advowson, which belonged to Winchester College, was leased to the Queen, and by her to Thomas Wilkes in 1582. Electoral patronage was divided between the bishops of Winchester and the earls of Pembroke. Towards the end of the period the bishop of Winchester’s patronage was exercised by Archbishop Whitgift.

The two 1559 MPs were returned by the Marian bishop of Winchester, John White, who was to be deprived in the following year. One was his servant, the other the John Story who made a desperate speech against Elizabeth in the 1559 Parliament, and whose Catholicism was to bring him to a bloody end some years later. By the time of the elections for the 1563 Parliament White had been replaced by Home, who brought in Henry Kingsmill. The other man, Tristram Mathew, may have been a servant of the 1st Earl of Pembroke, either was or was to be a borough official (and sopersona grata with bishops of Winchester) and held land at Downton. In 1571 the 2nd Earl of Pembroke brought in Sir George Penruddock, a country gentleman, formerly servant of the 1st Earl, and Henry Cocke, Penruddock’s stepson. The two 1572 men were Edward St. Loe, who had connexions both with Pembroke, and with his fellow-Member, William Darrell, a Wiltshire country gentleman, two of whose kinsmen had married Bishop Horne’s daughters. St. Loe died in 1578 but no evidence has been found of a by-election for the 1581 session. In 1584 the lessee of the parsonage, Thomas Wilkes, and Whitgift’s vicar general Richard Cosin were returned. Wilkes came in again in 1586, with Thomas Gorges, a courtier whose house at Longford was two miles from Downton, and it may have been Wilkes who brought in Lawrence Tomson in 1588. Cosin was returned again in 1588, and both Paule (1597) and Barker (1601) were Whitgift’s nominees, but John Goldwell (1593) was the bishop of Winchester’s man. The other 1593 MP may have been nominated by Wilkes, but his identification is doubtful. So too, in the case of Robert Turner (1597): whoever he was it may be assumed that the 2nd Earl of Pembroke brought him in. Thomas Penruddock’s seat was close to Downton and he probably enjoyed the support of the 3rd Earl of Pembroke.2