The borough of Shaftesbury, granted to William Herbert I, 1st Earl of Pembroke, in 1553, was governed by a mayor and council of burgesses. It did not receive a charter of incorporation until the early seventeenth century.4

Sir John Zouche (1559), warden of the nearby forest of Gillingham, was a close friend and neighbour of the 1st Earl of Pembroke. He was also a relative of his fellow 1559 MP, Henry Coker, regarder of Gillingham forest, who held considerable Dorset estates. Henry Iden (1563), who lived in Islington where Pembroke had property, was acquainted with several of the Earl’s servants. William Jordyn I was the Earl’s secretary.

The second Earl succeeded to the title in 1570. John Long (1571) had been steward to the 1st Earl, and came from a well-connected Wiltshire family. Thomas Morgan I was a soldier and a protégé of the 1st Earl. Both the 1572 MPs had been retained in the family service: Charles Vaughan had been the late Earl’s treasurer and Robert Grove his comptroller. Their names were entered on a ‘blank’.5 Grove died in 1580 but no record of a by-election has been found. A ‘blank’ was again employed in 1584.6 Thomas Cavendish owed his return to the influence of Walter Ralegh as a close friend of the 2nd Earl. No direct connexion with the Pembrokes has been found for Bartholomew Kemp, the civil lawyer, except that like Henry Iden, he lived in Islington and may possibly have been a tenant of the 2nd Earl. Francis Zouche (1586) was the son of the 1559 MP and appears to have been a servant of the 1st Earl of Pembroke. The name of his colleague Gregory Sprint was entered on a ‘blank’.7 Sprint’s family came from Bristol where Pembroke had interests, and he was the cousin of Michael Hickes, Burghley’s secretary, who represented Shaftesbury in 1589 and 1593. He may have been acquainted with the Pembroke entourage through Ralegh, whose agent he became. Hickes also came from Bristol and later lent money to the 2nd Earl of Pembroke, but doubtless owed his return to his court connexions. Thomas Crompton I (1589), if he has been correctly identified for this constituency, was the brother-in-law of Arthur Massinger, the 2nd Earl’s confidential servant, who himself represented the borough in 1601. Arthur Atye (1593) was Massinger’s neighbour in London and a member of Pembroke’s Wilton circle. John Budden (1597) had family ties with the Groves, and, as feodary of Dorset, had administrative dealings with the 2nd Earl, who was presumably responsible for the election (also in 1597) of the lawyer John Davies, a protégé of (Sir) Edward Coke. The 2nd Earl died before the 1601 election, when the MPs returned were Budden and Massinger.