The dominant interests in Bridgnorth at the Restoration were the Whitmores and Actons, both seated within three miles of the borough and related by marriage. Their politics were in agreement in 1660, and, probably by arrangement, Sir William Whitmore stood for the county while John Bennet, his brother-in-law and Sir Walter Acton were returned for Bridgnorth. One observer reported that ‘such a spirit is there set up and so active in Bridgnorth, and even this whole county, that I am verily afraid there will scarcely be either knight or burgess chosen amongst us that is not a very high Royalist’. In fact, a week before the election General George Monck wrote to the bailiffs recommending John Thurloe, a person ‘of known ability and fidelity to public and national interests’, for one of the seats. However, Thomas Gilbert, the Congregational minister, returned the letter to Thurloe with a report of the borough’s mood. He wrote

Never was stone more impetuously hurried downward by the inward pressure of its own natural weight and the foreign impressed force of the strongest hand than the sevenfold greater part of Bridgnorth are by the native bent of their own inclination and overpowerful sway of their great landlords, meeting together, irresistibly carried on to an high Cavalier choice of both their burgesses.

He concluded

that the general’s writing would be so far from speeding your election that his standing would not have carried his own at Bridgnorth, except he would have declared himself absolutely for the King, without any such terms as they hear are about to be offered him.

It is possible that Acton attempted to keep his seat at the election the following year when Whitmore was returned with Bennet, but there is no record of a contest. In 1662 the commissioners dismissed one of the bailiffs and seven aldermen and disfranchised ten ‘burgesses’. The Whitmores continued to exercise some indirect control over the corporation, organizing the non-resident ‘outvoters’, and a large number of resident freemen were their tenants. There was a report of a ‘long contest’ at the by-election following Bennet’s death; 182 new freemen were admitted in six weeks, but Whitmore’s brother was successful, and held the seat until his death. At the first election of 1679 the Whitmore interest was challenged by John Wolryche, the recorder, whose petition ‘complaining of undue practices in the bailiffs’ was never reported. The two brothers retained their seats throughout the exclusion crisis, though their politics diverged, and it was not until the Rye House Plot that the corporation produced a loyal address.1

Sir Thomas Whitmore died in 1683, and in 1685 his brother was returned with the courtier, Captain Roger Pope, who stood with the support of, and perhaps at the invitation of, the crown, and who had recently built an impressive house at Bridgnorth. In June 1688 the King’s agents declined to recommend candidates for Bridgnorth for the proposed Parliament because the corporation had a ‘quo warranto depending’. Although the charter had been surrendered, James, unable to win support from the local dissenters, simply renewed it ‘at charge’ in September. Sunderland, however, wrote directly to Pope to order him to stand. In the election to the Convention Sir Edward Acton, Wolryche’s successor as recorder, reasserted his interest and represented the borough without interruption until 1705.2