‘Of mean plight’, St. Ives was governed in this period by a portreeve and 12 other councilmen. The portreeve was chosen by a wider body of 24 burgesses. First enfranchised in 1558, probably through the agency of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, St. Ives, until the last Parliament of the reign, returned only outsiders, with the sole exception of John Newman (1571), and he, though resident in the borough, was a local official who may have owed his return to a patron. Bedford was responsible for the return of (at least) both the 1559 Members, one in 1572 (Thomas Randolph) and John Harington I (1563). On Harington’s preferring to sit for Caernarvon Boroughs a new writ was issued for St. Ives, 13 Feb. 1563, but no evidence of a by-election has been found. Although Bedford was the dominating influence in the early days of the constituency, the ‘lords of the borough’, as they were frequently styled, were the joint owners of the manor of Ludgvan Lese, James Blount, 6th Lord Mountjoy, and John Paulet, Lord St. John, who succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Winchester in 1572, and their respective successors. From 1584 the returns usually make the point by including a phrase indicating that the MPs were returned by the portreeve and other burgesses ‘with the consent of the Lord Marquess of Winchester and Lord Mountjoy, chief lords of the borough’. In practice, however, the Blounts concentrated more on Bere Alston, another borough owned jointly by the same two families, while St. Ives was left to the Paulets.

William Glasier (1563) was a servant of Sir Robert Dudley, soon to be Earl of Leicester, who must have asked one of the patrons for the seat. Similarly, one of the Knollys family must have acted as intermediary to secure the return of the London lawyer Edward Williams (1572). Thomas Clinton (1571) was related to the 6th Lord Mountjoy, whose second son Charles sat for the borough in 1584, when a separate return was made for each Member. Thomas Colby (1586) and Mark Steward (1589) were returned by the 3rd Marquess of Winchester. With the return of John Morley I (1586) a new patron emerges, Lord Burghley, no doubt by arrangement with the borough owners: he was responsible for the return of Henry Hobart (1589); Nicholas Saunders I less certainly (1593); Vincent Skinner (1597), and possibly Nowell Sotherton (1593, 1597). Morley, Skinner and Sotherton were Exchequer officials. The two 1601 MPs were local men, though Thomas Breton’s return states that it was made ‘with the consent of’ the 4th Marquess of Winchester.3