John Heaven was a relative of a family of yeomen settled at Minchinhampton in Gloucestershire, born in 1723, pursued the trade of a turner on the Bedford Charity estate in Holborn, joined the Moravians in 1748, was elected a freeman of Bedford in 1759, common councilman and burgess in 1767 (when he took the Test), mayor for the year beginning at Michaelmas 1768, became receiver of the Charity estates in 1787, and died in 1794.

The custom of Bedford then was that anybody who had once served as mayor was an aiderman for life unless he left the town; the common council consisted of the mayor, aldermen and bailiffs (called the court of aldermen) and 13 common council-men, sitting together; the mayor and bailiffs were elected by all the freemen at a meeting called a common hall from six candidates, three named by the court of aldermen and three by the thirteen; and the thirteen were similarly elected at a second common hall, from 26 freemen named by the court of aldermen. The common halls were held on the first Monday in September and the Wednesday before St. Matthew’s Day, and the persons so elected came into office on Michaelmas Day.

This method made it easy for any political party, once it had a majority in the court of aldermen, to control the council by nominating only their own partisans for mayor or bailiffs and to the thirteen, when the thirteen could also nominate members of the same party. The corporation were trustees of one or two small charities and had a majority on the board of the recently enriched Bedford Charity and so had considerable patronage, and also were able to create enough freemen to ensure a majority at a parliamentary election. The fluid nature of party politics in the 18th century and the desirability of keeping on good terms with the recorder (who might belong to the ousted party, and considered himself entitled to dispose of one of the borough seats), kept this system short of that perfection which it might be thought to have attained, but another custom, informally observed, sometimes gave the opposition an unexpected victory which might last for years.