The most important local family at Northallerton were the Lascelles; but the involvement of Francis Lascelles in the trial of Charles I meant that for most of the period their interest had to be exercised covertly. After the return of the episcopal estates, the bishop of Durham became lord of the manor, and the bailiff, who acted as returning officer, was chosen in his manorial court. This interest could not be exercised in the general election of 1660, when Lascelles and his brother Thomas were returned, nor at the by-election held after he was discharged from sitting. There was a double return of the stranger Sir Francis Holles, the son of the leading Presbyterian in the Commons, and a local squire George Marwood, who had sat for Malton in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament but was probably a moderate Royalist. Marwood’s indenture was attached to the precept, but Holles’s bore 20 signatures against 15. No proceedings are recorded in the Journals, and there is no evidence that either candidate ever took his seat.1

In 1661 Bishop Cosin’sson-in-law Gilbert Gerard was returned with a local Cavalier, Roger Talbot. Gerard went over to the Opposition under Danby, and stood with Sir Henry Calverley in the Exclusion elections as a country candidate. In February 1679 (Sir) Thomas Crew was nominated by his brother, who had succeeded Cosin as bishop of Durham, while Marwood’s son Henry depended on the interest of his brother-in-law, William Metcalfe, who lived in the town. Thomas Lascelles, who was rather surprisingly acting as the bishop’s bailiff, wrote on 3 Feb. to Sir William Frankland:

I have not failed to make Sir Gilbert Gerard’s and Sir Henry Calverley’s interest as strong as I can. I hope they will carry it, though Mr Marwood, by his brother Metcalfe’s interest, puts in to give us some trouble; my lord of Durham also hath recommended his elder brother with some earnestness, and a kind of little threatening, but obstinate tempers will not be wrought upon by any impressions but such as they like.

Whether these candidates stood is not known, but Gerard and Calverley were returned at both elections of 1679. On 14 Jan. 1681 Thomas Lascelles and 60 of the Northallerton electors wrote to the sitting Members:

We have no better way (now left us) to express our gratitude and the high resentments of your actions before and in your last sessions of Parliament than to manifest our approbation thereof by an assurance that if a dissolution of this present Parliament happen ... we are now resolved, if you are pleased to comply with us, to continue you as our representatives, and we do therefore beg your acceptance thereof, and further, that you will continue your station during this prorogation, faithfully assuring you that none of us desire to give or occasion you the expense or trouble of a journey in order to your election ... being so sensible of the too great expense you have been at already in the careful discharging the trust and confidence reposed in you.

‘After some consult’ among the electors, Gerard and Calverley were returned unopposed.2

On the accession of James II the ‘gentlemen and free burgesses’ signed a congratulatory address. The writ for the 1685 election was sent to Lascelles’s successor as bailiff, and two Tories were returned, Marwood and Sir David Foulis. The royal electoral agents reported in September 1688 that William Robinson of Newby would be chosen, but that Gerard’s eldest son declined standing, expecting to be elected for Durham City. ‘Mr Thomas Lascelles, that hath the interest of the place, will take care another good man shall be chosen.’ At the general election of 1689 Lascelles was himself returned with Robinson, a moderate Whig.3