At George I’s accession the representation of Bere Alston was shared by Thomas Grey, 2nd Earl of Stamford, who was lord of the manors of Bere and Landrake, and Sir Francis Drake, 4th Bt., of Buckland Abbey, three or four miles from the borough. On Stamford’s death in 1720 his interest passed to his nephew, Sir John Hobart.Trans. Dev. Assoc. xli. 155-6.
On 20 Jan. 1721 Drake wrote to Lord Chief Justice King, a former M.P. for Bere Alston:
There was no single predominant interest at Barnstaple, which usually returned members of local families without a contest. The most important of these were the Rolles of Stevenstone, originally Tory, who went over to the Government in 1739, and Hugh Fortescue, Lord Clinton, an opposition Whig, whose house dominated the approach to Barnstaple. At the by-election in 1748, when the Rolles, supported by the Government, and the Fortescues, supported by the Prince of Wales, each put up candidates, Lord Clinton wrote to the Prince’s election manager:
In 1715 Ashburton was controlled by two Whigs, Roger Tuckfield of Raddon Court, who owned a moiety of the manor of Ashburton, and Richard Reynell of East Ogwell and Denbury, near the borough. They shared the representation till 1734 when Reynell was ousted by Sir William Yonge, standing jointly with Tuckfield, with the support of the Drake family, who owned the other moiety of the manor.Letter of John Dipford, 19 Feb.
The Devonshire country gentlemen were accustomed to return the heads of three Tory families, the Courtenays, Bampfyldes, and Rolles, who were ‘chose in their turn’
From 1715 to 1748 the Cavendishes, dukes of Devonshire, and the Stanhopes, earls of Chesterfield, each usually returned one Member for Derby, joining interests. But when, on the death of John Stanhope, they recommended his kinsman, Thomas Stanhope, a total stranger, with the concurrence of the corporation,
The leading Derbyshire families were the Curzons, Tories, and the Cavendishes, Whigs. At each of the first three general elections two Tories, one of them a Curzon, were returned unopposed, but in 1734 the Cavendishes gained one seat, after which they shared the representation with the Curzons without opposition.
At the accession of George I the chief interests in Cockermouth were in the Duke of Somerset, Lord Wharton, and the Lawsons of Isel, each of whom owned estates near the borough. The Duke of Somerset, as lord of the manor, controlled the appointment of the returning officer.
Carlisle lay between the estates of two Whig families, the Howards, earls of Carlisle, who traditionally recommended one Member, and the Lowthers, Viscounts Lonsdale, who normally refrained under George I and George II from competing with the Howards in Carlisle, for fear of reprisals in county elections. The frequent contests arose from the rival claims of three lesser families, the Stanwixes, the Aglionbys, and the Musgraves, to the other seat.
Cumberland politics were dominated by three Whig families, who owned the principal baronies: the Lowthers, Viscounts Lonsdale, the Howards, earls of Carlisle, and the Seymours, dukes of Somerset. Each of these families had its own sphere of influence, the Lowthers normally recommending at least one Member for the county, the Howards one for Carlisle, and the Seymours one for Cockermouth.
Both the Truro seats were controlled by Hugh Boscawen, 1st Lord Falmouth, and after him by his son Hugh, 2nd Lord Falmouth, whose seat at Tregothnan lay near by, and who had much property in the town. The only contest occurred in 1722, when two local candidates stood unsuccessfully. The 2nd Lord Falmouth wrote to the Prince of Wales, 12 May 1741:
