Commons 1715-1754

The principal Whig families in Cheshire were the Cholmondeleys of Cholmondeley, who held the lord lieutenancy, the Booths of Dunham Massey, and the Cottons of Combermere. The majority of the country gentlemen were Tory, including the Cholmondeleys of Vale Royal, the Warburtons of Arley, and the Grosvenors of Eaton, who represented Chester.

Till 1727 Cambridge University, like Oxford, returned Tories. At the only contested election, in 1720, a strong Whig candidate, Henry Finch, a fellow of his college, whose father, Lord Nottingham, carried much weight with the church party, was defeated.

Cambridge elections were controlled by the corporation, a Tory body, who were able to manipulate the franchise by creating honorary freemen. At George I’s accession the dominant interest in the corporation was that of Sir John Hynde Cotton, the head of the Cambridgeshire Tories, who had shared the representation since 1708 with Samuel Shepheard, a Hanoverian Tory, who had gone over to the Whigs. On 6 Sept. 1714 a Cambridge Tory reported that ‘we are preparing here to throw out Shepheard by promoting Mr.

At George I’s accession the leading Cambridgeshire Tories were Sir John Hynde Cotton of Madingley, who sat for Cambridge, and Lord Oxford’s son, Lord Harley, who had recently acquired Wimpole by marriage. The sitting Members, John Bromley, classed as a Whig who would often vote with the Tories, and John Jenyns, classed as a Tory who might often vote with the Whigs, were re-elected, defeating a Jacobite, Granado Pigot.G. Pigot to Ld. North and Grey, undated, Bodl. North mss c. 9, f. 116.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Whig family of Hampden, who held the manors of Wendover Borough and Wendover Forrens, carrying the right to nominate the returning officers, controlled both Wendover seats. In 1715 Richard Hampden was able to bring in Richard Grenville under an agreement whereby the latter withdrew from the county in favour of Hampden.See BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. At the 1722 election Hampden, who had been dismissed from his office of treasurer of the navy for peculation, returned himself for Wendover with Sir Richard Steele, the Whig essayist.

The principal interests at Marlow were those of the neighbouring Whig landowners. Lord Shelburne, followed by Edmund Waller of Beaconsfield, occupied one seat from 1715 to 1741; the other was usually controlled by the successive owners of the manors of Marlow and Harleyford, Sir James Etheridge, M.P., a Tory, 1691-1719, the Guises, 1719-35, and the Claytons, 1735-87, Whigs. Two property owners on the Berkshire side of the river were able to take one seat between 1732 and 1754.

The franchise at Wycombe was controlled by the corporation, a close body, with the power of creating freemen. At George I’s accession the patron of the corporation was Thomas, 1st Marquess of Wharton, the head of the Whig interest in the county, whose nominees were returned unopposed shortly before his death in 1715. In 1722 the Wallers of Beaconsfield made an unsuccessful bid for a seat, with the support of the mayor, who was deposed by a meeting of the freemen for illegally attempting to create new freemen ‘to overthrow the interest of the late Marquess of Wharton’.L. J.

Both Buckingham seats were controlled by the local Whig families of Temple, afterwards Grenville, of Stowe, and Denton of Hillesden. The Temples were the lords paramount of the borough, receiving a quit-rent from the corporation; the Dentons held the Prebend End manor within the town.VCH Bucks. iii. 481, 483. After 1715, when a Tory single was defeated, there were no contested elections.

There was no predominant interest at Aylesbury, where the principal qualification for success was, as the 2nd Lord Egmont wrote in his electoral survey, c.1749-50, to be ‘a moneyed man’. In 1727 Philip Lloyd estimated his expenses at £900;Lloyd to Walpole, Aug. 1727, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. in the same election an agent of Sir William Stanhope’s spent £541, chiefly at public houses, including £173 on the election day.Gibbs, Hist.

Both seats at Amersham were controlled by the Drakes of Shardeloes, one mile from the borough, who as lords of the manorVCH Bucks. iii. 147. appointed the returning officer, nominating Tories at every election. During the long minority of William Drake, who held one seat for 50 years, single anti-Drake candidates were put up at three elections between 1728 and 1735 but their voting strength was only about half that of the Drake candidates.