Sandwich

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Elections

DateCandidate
13 Jan. 1559ROGER MANWOOD
 JOHN TYSAR
1562/3ROCER MANWOOD
 RICE PERROT
1571ROGER MANWOOD
 JOHN MANWOOD
1572ROGER MANWOOD
 JOHN BOYS
17 July 1576 (new writ)EDWARD PEAKE vice Manwood, became a judge
[?14] Nov. 1584EDWARD PEAKE
 EDWARD WOOD
1586EDWARD PEAKE
 EDWARD WOOD
1588/9PETER MANWOOD
 EDWARD PEAKE
1593PETER MANWOOD
 EDWARD PEAKE
22 Oct. 1597PETER MANWOOD
 EDWARD PEAKE
1601PETER MANWOOD
 EDWARD PEAKE

Main Article

Sandwich was governed by a mayor, nine jurats and a common council. The two MPs were chosen by the freemen from four candidates recommended by the jurats. The townsmen MPs were paid 2 s. a day, doubled in 1576. The Sandwich lawyer, Roger Manwood, was returned as senior Member to the first four Parliaments of the reign, being accompanied by a jurat in 1559 and 1563. Before the 1571 election he requested that his brother John, also a jurat, be elected as the junior Member. However, on hearing that the lord warden had nominated his secretary John Vaughan, Manwood switched his support from his brother to Vaughan. But although Sandwich was willing to return the non-resident Roger Manwood, it was determined that the second MP should be a townsman, and to the annoyance of the warden, whom the town had crossed recently in other matters, chose John Manwood to accompany his brother, without even putting Vaughan’s name before the assembly.

After this rebuff, the warden is not seen to have intervened in the following year, and the recorder, John Boys, was elected. When Roger Manwood became a judge, his cousin Edward Peake, a jurat, was returned in his place. Even in 1584, when, encouraged by instructions from the Privy Council, the warden was active in other Cinque Ports, Sandwich nominated four of its own jurats, from whom Edward Peake and Edward Wood were ‘chosen by pricking’. In 1586 Sandwich received a letter from the warden containing the Privy Council’s recommendation that the 1584 Members should be re-elected, and also a letter from Manwood asking for a seat for his son Peter, who was probably still a minor. Both letters were read out to the assembly:

whereupon by common pricking Mr. Peter Manwood was not elected to be one, but by common consent and most voices of the whole commonalty, Mr. Edward Peake and Mr. Edward Wood, the burgesses of the late dissolved Parliament, were of new nominated and elected burgesses of this town.

At the next election, however, Sandwich ‘with one free assent and consent of the whole assembly’ returned Peter Manwood and Edward Peake. Both were re-elected in 1593 and 1597. On the latter occasion there is reason to believe that the new lord warden, the 11th Lord Cobham, asked for a nomination, but it was stated that his letter arrived too late. Next time he was quicker off the mark, and the assembly ‘fully agreed that his honour’s request be granted unto, according to his lordship’s letters written to his lieutenant [and election manager] (Sir) Thomas Fane, in that behalf for nomination of one burgess in every Port’. Sandwich now returned, as the lord warden’s candidate, their own Peter Manwood, to whom, as it happened, the lord warden was related, and Peake was chosen for the other seat ‘according to the ancient custom of pricking’. Sandwich therefore just survived the period without having to accept a stranger.

D. G. Gardiner, Historic Haven, passim; W. Boys, Sandwich, 402; K. M. E. Murray, Const. Hist. Cinque Ports, 93, 96; Add. 33512, ff. 12, 14, 19; Sandwich red bk. and year bks. passim.

Author: M.R.P.

Notes