[Footnote 732: Hence the complaints of the northern rebels late in that year (_L. and P._, xi., 1143, 1182 [15], 1244, 1246); these are so to speak the election petitions of the defeated party; the chief complaint is that non-residents were chosen who knew little about the needs of their constituents, and they made the advanced demand that all King's servants or pensioners be excluded. The most striking instance of interference in elections is Cromwell's letter to the citizens of Canterbury, written on 18th May, 1536, and first printed in Merriman's _Cromwell_, 1902, ii., 13; he there requires the electors to annul an election they had made in defiance of previous letters, and return as members Robert Derknall (a member of the royal household, _L. and P._, xv., pp. 563-5) and John Brydges, M.P. for Canterbury in 1529-36, instead of the two who had been unanimously chosen by eighty electors on 11th May (_L. and P._, x., 852). The Mayor thereupon assembled ninety-seven citizens who "freely with one voice and without any contradiction elected the aforesaid" (_ibid._, x., 929). These very letters show that electors did exercise a vote, and the fact that from 1534 to 1539 we find traces of pressure being put upon them, affords some presumption that before the rise of Cromwell, when we find no such traces no such pressure was exerted. The most striking exception must not be taken as the rule. See p. 317 _n._]