8 - The Mutinous City 1679–81

Summary

THE SECOND ELECTION: BRAMBER AND AMERSHAM JULY–SEPTEMBER 1679

Given this second opportunity, Sidney and Penn were to produce a major improvement in the techniques, and extension of the range, of the 1679 electoral effort. There was a correspondingly spectacular result: ‘the most remarkable’, said William Harrington, of the whole election.

The lessons of Guildford had been learned, and they were applied on a number of levels. More care was necessary in the selection of seats, particularly the avoidance of boroughs in the grip of a hostile municipal corporation. It was equally preferable to run in two seats rather than one. By the beginning of the last week of July, Sidney's agents were at work in both Bramber and Amersham.

In both seats the franchise lay with all the ‘burgesses and inhabitants’, though there was room for argument about exactly what this meant. Bramber had no municipal institutions. In both boroughs the constable acted as returning officer, and both the seats had traditionally fallen under the sway of a local great family. In Bramber this was the Gorings of Highden; in Amersham (since 1637) the Drakes of Shardeloe. But the informality of such gentlemen's agreements – plus the attraction of two seats apiece – made them vulnerable to outside penetration at a time of political crisis. This crisis and its flurry of elections shook a number of seats out of a nineteen-year slumber.