Newton

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in the burgage-holders

Number of voters:

about 60

Elections

DateCandidate
c. Apr. 1660RICHARD LEGH
 WILLIAM BANKS I
23 Apr. 1661RICHARD LEGH
 JOHN VAUGHAN
24 June 1661SIR PHILIP MAINWARING vice Vaughan, chose to sit for Cardiganshire
24 Oct. 1661RICHARD GORGES, Baron Gorges, vice Mainwaring, deceased
28 Feb. 1679SIR JOHN CHICHELEY
 ANDREW FOUNTAINE
11 Sept. 1679SIR JOHN CHICHELEY
 ANDREW FOUNTAINE
1 Mar. 1681SIR JOHN CHICHELEY
 ANDREW FOUNTAINE
23 Apr. 1685SIR JOHN CHICHELEY
 PETER LEGH
 Thomas Brotherton
11 Jan. 1689SIR JOHN CHICHELEY
 FRANCIS CHOLMONDELEY

Main Article

Although their chief residence was in Cheshire, the Leghs of Lyme enjoyed the principal property interest in Newton throughout the period, and in 1661 Richard Legh acquired the borough and manor from Sir Thomas Fleetwood. Thus not only were most of the burgages held by him, but the steward, who acted as returning officer, was chosen in his court leet.1

Legh’s royalist and Anglican sentiments are unquestionable, but he had sat for Cheshire under the Protectorate, and was therefore eligible at the general election of 1660. His colleague William Banks had married into another branch of the Legh family, and presumably sat on the same interest. Before the next election Legh himself married the daughter of (Sir) Thomas Chicheley of Cambridgeshire, who probably recommended the distinguished lawyer John Vaughan for the junior seat. When Vaughan chose to sit for his county, he was replaced by Sir Philip Mainwaring, the younger son of a Cheshire family who had sat in five Parliaments before the Civil War. Mainwaring died a few months later, and Chicheley was doubtless responsible for recommending another Cambridgeshire landowner, Lord Gorges.

Legh had seldom shown much enthusiasm for Westminster, and he retired at the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament, though for the remainder of the period his brother Thomas Legh acted as returning officer. In the name of the ‘burgesses and commonalty’ he returned the patron’s brother-in-law, Sir John Chicheley, and Chicheley’s brother-in-law, Andrew Fountaine, to all three Exclusion Parliaments. Chicheley opposed the bill, but Fountaine voted for it, and was dropped in 1685 in favour of Legh’s 15-year-old heir Peter. This was almost too much even for so docile a constituency. Thomas Brotherton, a Tory lawyer of Gray’s Inn whose family had held the Hey estate since at least 1573, was nominated by the free burgesses, though the Legh interest felt little alarm at his candidature: ‘he is likelier to be made lord mayor of London without ever leaving his borough of Newton as he calls it’. Local sportsmen, possibly unacquainted with the hurdles at Westminster, thought otherwise; odds of five to one were laid that Brotherton would be Member for Newton by the end of the session. He duly petitioned, presumably on the ground of Peter Legh’s age; but, like most petitions in James II’s Parliament, his never emerged from committee. Richard Legh died in 1687, and his son was too loyal to the Stuarts ever to stand after the Revolution. Chicheley had no such scruples, and he was accompanied in the Convention by Francis Cholmondeley, another younger son from Cheshire. Cholmondeley proved as staunch a Jacobite as Legh, and sought in vain to resign his seat after the transfer of the crown, since he could not take the oaths to the new regime. 2

Author: Irene Cassidy

Notes

  • 1. E. C. Legh, Lady Newton, House of Lyme, 165; VCH Lancs. iv. 136.
  • 2. Legh, 330-1; Rylands Lib. Legh mss, Peter to Richard Legh, 23 Apr. 1685, Bowdon to Legh, 29 May 1685; VCH Lancs. iv. 134-5; C.J, ix. 718; x. 143, 325, 328.