Prelude

The first poll book transcribed here dates from 1685. To understand it properly, the deep political divisions that surfaced in the last years of Charles II's reign must be looked at. Underlying these were the, as yet, unhealed wounds of the trauma of the Civil War and the Commonwealth. For one side the bogey of a monarch acting without Parliament could be paraded to stiffen the resolve of the faithful. For the other side the judicial murder of Charles I, the destruction of the Anglican Church and the rule of nonconformists had a similar effect. On both sides was a deep hatred of Roman Catholicism. Louis XIV, the autocratic and expansionist King of France, crystallised Bedfordshire people's fears. This underlying anti-Roman Catholicism was to surface in the Gordon riots in London a century later but was always in the background.

The later years of Charles II intensified these tensions, as it became clear that his heir was going to be his brother, James Duke of York, a convert to Roman Catholicism in the late 1660s. This was made public by his resigning his post as Lord High Admiral, because he was unwilling to take communion in the Church of England as was required by the Test Act of 1673 of all office-holders. In the same year he married Mary of Modena, an Italian Roman Catholic.

The actual size of Roman Catholic support in Britain was tiny, estimated by W.A. Speck at 2 percent of the population. In Bedfordshire, the proportion was probably even less, with the only prominent family being the Conquests of Houghton Conquest, some of whom were Roman Catholics and some Anglican. There were a few Roman Catholics at Turvey on the Mordaunt estates and others at Shefford.

The Stuarts’ main support came from the remnants of the Cavaliers and others who wanted the dynasty to be the main bulwark of the Church of England. They were nicknamed ‘Tories’. They favoured the legitimate succession of James, as long as he protected the Church of England's privileges as the established Church and the exclusion from national and local power of all those who did not conform to it, namely, nonconformists.