Borough

As a result of the extension of the franchise to freeholders in neighbouring hundreds in 1782, Cricklade came to resemble a county seat, with the local gentry jockeying for its representation.Materials for a Hist. of Cricklade ed. Thomson, ch. vi. Thus in 1790 two local gentlemen pledged to independence were again returned, sponsored by the two county Members, who lived within the hundreds. They had been adopted at Marlborough, well outside the constituency, on 17 June and this was deplored by their opponent Samuel Petrie, who had applied to Pitt for support, 13 Mar.

Chippenham escaped the fate of most burgage boroughs and never became a close borough, thanks to the vigilance of the local clothiers, who, however, controlled the corporation, with ‘an effect little short of what in other places has been attributed to the ipse dixit of some lord’.J.A. Cannon, ‘The Parl. Rep. of six Wilts. Boroughs 1754-90’ (Bristol Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1958), 30; J. Britton, Beauties of Wilts. ii.

The 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, who as Lord Shelburne had been prime minister (1782-3) but had retired from active politics in 1784, was sole patron of Calne, where he had been the principal property owner since the 1760s and had thenceforward named both Members unopposed. He brought about ‘a marked improvement’ in the quality of the Members, for which he was quizzed by the satirists who dubbed him

James, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, and Sackville, 8th Earl of Thanet, had agreed in 1773 to be joint patrons of Appleby for their lives, an arrangement made by their forebears in 1725 and uneasily renewed after a disastrous collision in 1754. Before he died in 1786, Thanet had the edge on Lonsdale by the purchase of additional burgages, but his heir Sackville, Lord Tufton, being in his 17th year, did not seek to take advantage of this at first, any more than his father had.

‘Lord W[arwick] has friends enough to bring in one Member provided this Member is of his own family, but he cannot bring in two ...’A.L. Ruoff, ‘Landor’s Letters to his Family 1802-25’, Bull. Rylands Lib. liii. 476. This was the basis of stabilization in the borough elections reached in 1802.

With over 2,500 electors, of whom some 30 per cent were outvoters, Coventry was an expensive constituency, difficult to manage.This article is based on T. W. Whitley, Parl. Rep. Coventry, 202-52. Contests had long arisen out of conflict between the corporation (and its allies) and the commonalty, among whom the largest group were the journeymen weavers in the silk factories. The wealth of Lord Eardley, whose colleague his brother-in-law Wilmot had local connexions, carried the day in 1784 when they stood as Pitt’s friends.

Distinct in their parliamentary interests, Steyning and Bramber were territorially interwoven. The franchise had been much disputed in the early 18th century. Oldfield blasted the two boroughs as ‘enveloped in the dark cloud of legal quibble and intricacy ... irregular in their districts, unintelligible in their constitutions, indefinite in their rights, corrupt in the exercise of their functions’.Rep. Hist. v.

After the extension of the franchise to the neighbouring freeholders in 1771, the constituency became a county in miniature vied for by Sussex country gentlemen, and elections were conducted with ‘constitutional decorum’.Oldfield, Boroughs, ii. 160. In 1784 the sitting Members Sir Cecil Bisshop and John Peachey had warded off the challenge of John Clater Aldridge, a friend of the 3rd Duke of Richmond, who was one of Pitt’s cabinet.

George O’ Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, purchased the controlling interest at Midhurst from the trustees of the 7th Viscount Montagu for 40,000 guineas in 1787.W. D. Cooper, Parl. Hist. Suss. 28; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. v. 52. At the next election he returned his brothers. In 1795 he sold out to Robert Smith, afterwards 1st Baron Carrington, who tried but failed in the same year to exchange Midhurst for the borough of Gatton.Camden mss C260, Smith to Camden, 15 (? or 25) Oct.

‘Perfect quietness’ was not to be expected at elections for Lewes, where the electorate more than doubled in this period.Add. 33109, f. 71; 33129, f. 359; The Times, 21 July 1802; Town Bk. of Lewes 1702-1837 (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxix), 221. Thomas Pelham, Baron Pelham (created Earl of Chichester in 1801) had since 1774 been content to return one Member and found it prudent to recommend one of his family.