Source

Pamphlet, A collection of the debates and proceedings in Parliament, in 1694 and 1695. Upon the inquiry into the late briberies and corrupt practices, published anonymously in 1695.

Corrupt MPs

This pamphlet tells the tale of the large-scale corruption practised by the East India Company in the 1680s and 90s. But it opens with a caustic preface reminiscing about the heady days of corrupt Parliamant in the 1670s under Charles II, when MPs were more or less openly treated and paid for their votes:

Then was the time when an hungry Member was sure of a dinner at one or other of the public tables kept about Westminster to feed the betrayers of their country. The Practice was, that besides a dinner, when they had done any eminent piece of service, every one found under his plate such a parcel of guineas as it was thought his day's work had merited. p. iv

In the case of political payments in the 1690s, it was found that the Company's chief Sir Thomas Cooke had regularly been entrusted with large sums in gold coin without any need to provide details of what he was going to do with it. He was paying political bribes, and as was customary he did so through an imtermediary, a kind of broker, who would see that relevant people received their gratuities.

Of the disposal of which money, the Committee say they have been able to obtain no further account than that the same is made paid in the Company's books, in general terms for Special Service, and that a great part thereof was, as they are informed, put into the hands of Sir Basil Firebrace. p. 8

Background on Firebrace

From his History of Parliament biography:

Basil was the second son of Sir Henry Firebrace, a steadfast companion of Charles I in his last years. Basil became a vintner and through patronage was very successful, gaining the monopoly of supplying French wines to Charles II’s court.

Despite their close connexions with James’s court, Firebrace and his father did not suffer unduly at the Revolution: Sir Henry, accepting the new regime, retired voluntarily from the Green Cloth with a pension, and Basil, though he had been superseded as an alderman of London by the restoration of the old charter in October 1688, was still an active and prosperous merchant. One of a group of Tory citizens considered likely to ‘put . . . forward’ a proposed loan in March 1690, he personally lent some £5,000 to the crown between 1690 and 1692.

Successful at a by-election for Chippenham in December 1690 against another City figure, the Dissenter Sir Humphrey Edwin, Firebrace was unseated on petition a year later, when the House found both candidates guilty of bribery and declared the election void. ... At the ensuing by-election he again defeated a Whig, Hon. Thomas Tollemache, and was again ejected on petition, after wholesale bribery and treating had been proved. The Tories tried in vain to prevent this resolution being printed, because, as they put it, ‘the gentleman, being a citizen, this vote would much reflect on him and blast his reputation’.

In the same year [1694] he made a final effort at Chippenham, in a third by-election. This time, however, he was defeated, and his own petition was dismissed in January 1695, without a division, in committee or in the House.

Firebrace’s subsequent career was shadowed by scandal and a descent into penury