‘For the space of 80 years, no such thing as a contested election has been heard of in this borough; nor can the oldest inhabitant remember to have ever seen the face of any one of its Members’.Morning Chron. 2 June 1796. For the last generation Camelford had been managed, on behalf of administration whose friends they returned, by the Phillipps family.
George, 3rd Earl of Orford, as Baron Clinton in his mother’s right, was the nominal patron of Callington, where he owned the majority of the 62 burgages, the rest belonging to the Buller (of Downes) and Coryton (of Crackadon) families.
Since 1754 the 3rd Earl of Bute (in the right of his wife) and Lord Mount Edgcumbe had by a pact returned one Member each for Bossiney, a hamlet of 16 houses in the parish of Tintagel. The disfranchisement of revenue officers reduced the electorate to ten in 1783 and throughout this period it formed a ‘self-created corporation’ or oligarchy which expected about £1,000 to be distributed among its members by prospective candidates at elections, or according to another source £150 a vote, and £500 to be divided among them at by-elections.
The active element in Bodmin elections was the competition of the local gentry to control this decaying corporation borough. The corporation had a negative capability: to quote John Wilson Croker, who canvassed them in 1820:
one third are in the rank of gentlemen, the rest trades-people. Their patron is rather their agent than their master: he has no other hold on them than good offices and goodwill ... they jealously elect their own fellow-corporators, who must be resident, so that the patron can never get his own private friends into the corporation.
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:
In 1715 Tregony was a venal open borough. Its principal customers were the Treasury, who usually bought one seat, and wealthy London merchants, who competed for the other. The chief local interests were in Hugh Boscawen, created Lord Falmouth 1720, lord of the manor and chief government election manager in Cornwall; and John Trevanion of Carhayes, three miles away, also a government supporter. Another electoral factor was the Rev.
The patronage of St. Mawes was shared between John Knight, who became lord of the manor by purchasing the Tredenham estates c.1710,W. P. Courtney, Parl. Rep. Cornw. 92. and Hugh Boscawen, later Lord Falmouth, governor of its castle and the Government’s electoral manager in Cornwall, who had much property in the vicinity.
St. Germans was the pocket borough of the Eliots of Port Eliot, who as lords of the manor appointed the returning officer, placing the seats not occupied by themselves first at the disposal of the Administration and from 1734 at that of the Prince of Wales. Thomas Pitt wrote in 1740: ‘the borough is at the disposal of Mr. Eliot, without opposition’,
The chief interests at Penryn in 1715 were those of the Boscawen, Trefusis and Godolphin families. Till 1734 the borough was represented by members or nominees of these families without opposition.
The Morices of Werrington, as lords of the manor, appointed the two returning officers or vianders of Newport, which was represented exclusively by them and their relatives between 1715 and 1754. Their hold was unchallenged until just before 1748, when the Duke of Bedford purchased the Newport burgages of the Manatons of Kilworthy,HMC Fortescue, i. 132-3. who had a ‘considerable interest’ in the borough.Sir Nich. Morice to Humphry Morice, 22 Oct.
