County

The 45 Members who took their seats in the first Parliament of Great Britain, in November 1707, had been chosen by the estates of the Scottish parliament in the preceding February, according to the terms of an act of the Scottish parliament, passed only a short time before, for settling the representation of Scotland in the united Parliament.

The largest English county, Yorkshire demonstrated over five contested elections that its political awareness was as keen in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as in the 1730s, 1770s and 1780s. The county grandees tended to be Whigs, with the exception of the Marquess of Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†), who had led the northern rising at the Revolution and in 1690 was chief minister to William III and lord lieutenant of all three ridings. However, many of the gentry appeared to favour Toryism. W. A. Speck, Tory and Whig, 66.

The greater gentry monopolized the representation of Worcestershire between 1690 and 1715, albeit in a series of bitterly contested elections. The same families had dominated the county in the Restoration period and were to retain their influence into the Hanoverian period, which saw most of them ennobled. The role of the largely absentee peerage seems to have been to exert influence in favour of one of these gentry families, rather than to impose one of their own relations, kinsmen or nominees.