Liskeard

The borough interest was in Edward Eliot, but his hold was not as absolute as at St. Germans. Thomas Jones, Lord Edgcumbe’s agent, wrote in June 1760: ‘Mr. Eliot rules there at present, though probably his interest is not so firmly established as to be impregnable from every quarter.’Add. 32907, ff. 461-2. Still, nothing more about the alleged vulnerability of Eliot’s interest appears during this period. But when in 1780 Eliot, disagreeing in politics with Edward Gibbon, refused to re-elect him, this was one of the arguments he used:Add. 34885, ff. 111-12.

The most zealous friends I have in Liskeard declare decidedly against choosing you again, so that if I were ever so desirous of prevailing on them it is out of my power.

Gibbon, on 8 Sept., replied with an ironic reference to the electors of Liskeard ‘whom you so gravely introduce’. And in his Autobiography he remarks: ‘the electors of Liskeard are commonly of the same opinion as Mr. Eliot’.