Note 435 — Chapter V

Strype mentions letters from the council to Mildmay, Sheriff of Essex, in 1559, about the choice of knights. Annals, v. i. p. 32. And other instances of interference may be found in the Lansdowne and Harleian collections. Thus we read that a Mr. Copley used to nominate burgesses for Gatton, "for that there were no burgesses in the borough." The present proprietor being a minor in custody of the court of wards, Lord Burleigh directs the Sheriff of Surrey to make no return without instructions from himself; and afterwards orders him to cancel the name of Francis Bacon in his indenture, he being returned for another place, and to substitute Edward Brown. Harl. MSS. DCCIII. 16.

I will introduce in this place, though not belonging to the present reign, a proof that Henry VIII. did not trust altogether to the intimidating effects of his despotism for the obedience of parliament, and that his ministers looked to the management of elections, as their successors have always done. Sir Robert Sadler writes to some one, whose name does not appear, to inform him that the Duke of Norfolk had spoken to the king, who was well content he should be a burgess of Oxford; and that he should "order himself in the said room according to such instructions as the said Duke of Norfolk should give him from the king:" if he is not elected at Oxford, the writer will recommend him to some of "my lord's towns of his bishopric of Winchester." Cotton MSS. Cleopatra E. iv. 178. Thus we see that the practice of our government has always been alike; and we may add the same of the nobility, who interfered with elections full as continually, and far more openly, than in modern times. The difference is, that a secretary of the treasury, or peer's agent, does that with some precaution of secrecy, which the council board, or the peer himself, under the Tudors, did by express letters to the returning officer; and that the operating motive is the prospect of a good place in the excise or customs for compliance, rather than that of lying some months in the Fleet for disobedience.

A very late writer has asserted, as an undoubted fact, which "historic truth requires to be mentioned," that for the first parliament of Elizabeth, "five candidates were nominated by the court for each borough, and three for each county; and by the authority of the sheriffs, the members were chosen from among the candidates." Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 225. I never met with any tolerable authority for this, and believe it to be a mere fabrication; not certainly of Mr. Butler, who is utterly incapable of a wilful deviation from truth, but of some of those whom he too implicitly follows.