In the year 1790 at the express desire of government, and totally contrary to every wish of my own, I came forward as the only person who was thought likely to rescue the county from what was called the Constitutional Club, which was then endeavouring to establish the Duke of Bedford’s interest, an interest, which had it once prevailed, would probably never have been eradicated; I had the pleasure upon that occasion of feeling, that I had not only succeeded myself but was the means of bringing in another Member friendly to government, by which the opposition interest was entirely defeated.
This was what Heathcote wrote to Pitt on 29 May 1805, adding:
In making such a sacrifice of my whole plan of life, I could not help feeling, that when a sufficient length of time had proved the sincerity of my attachment to the cause I wished to serve, that I might presume to ask for a peerage and indeed that idea was not confined to myself.
He admitted that there was ‘only one male heir’ between him and the Macclesfield peerage, entailed on his family over 80 years before when his grandfather declined an Irish peerage, but that the reversion was unlikely to occur in his lifetime.
Heathcote placed a ceiling of £1,000 on his expenses in the Hampshire election of 1790.
In August 1806 Lord Grenville’s nephew Earl Temple approached Heathcote with the suggestion that the ministry would not oppose his re-election if he dissociated himself from Chute, who had opposed them. Heathcote would give no pledge, saying merely ‘that he was more for than against [Lord Grenville] and that he would not go into opposition’. Temple assured Fremantle at the Treasury:
You are mistaken in your idea of Heathcote’s having invariably supported government. He is a very shabby dog and generally stays away. On Lord Melville’s question he voted for and against the then government; on all our pressing questions he stayed away. He is completely under the control of G[eorge] Rose and is now busily employed by him in counteracting the government in Hampshire.
Fremantle mss, Temple to Fremantle, Sat. [Sept. 1806].
Having thus compromised himself and been obliged by Temple to disavow the version of their negotiation imposed by Rose on the County Club, Heathcote proceeded to throw up the sponge, with reference to his ill health. He made ‘a bad return to Chute’ for his alliance in 1790 by doing nothing for him in the ensuing contest, ‘having always wished it to be supposed that Chute came in by his assistance’.