County

Defoe heartily approved of Wiltshire, its agriculture and industries, especially weaving, making it in his view ‘one of the most important counties of England’. The northern and western parts, ‘infinitely populous’ and ‘full of . . . manufactures’, where Dissenting interests were especially well entrenched, pleased him best, but it was in the south-east, at Wilton, that the knights of the shire were elected, and there ‘the clothing trade’ and Nonconformity were much less in evidence. For most of this period the Tories dominated county elections.

Electoral conflict in Westmorland stemmed from the influence of party which itself had two roots, the national prominence and political identities of the county’s leading political figures and the strong partisan sentiments of many of the other families and individuals possessed of significant electoral interests. The first of these factors was most clearly demonstrated by the disputes between Sir John Lowther, 2nd Bt.

In Warwickshire there continued a strong preference among the gentry for deciding elections in advance through general meetings. The infrequency with which polls were held during this period in itself testifies to the general acceptability of this manner of proceeding. None the less, it was always appreciated how easily the ‘unanimity’ of the county might be disturbed by dissentient or ambitious spirits.

In addition to the usual party divisions in Sussex, there was considerable rivalry between its eastern and its western sides which was exacerbated by the method of holding elections in the county. Each election was confined to the town where the county court was sitting, and by law the county court met alternately in Lewes and Chichester.

Although dominated by the Onslow interest, a perennial feature of Surrey politics since 1628, the unpredictability of the county electorate was testified by a long series of contested elections and several notable upsets at the polls. Even the apparent master of the shire, Sir Richard Onslow, 3rd Bt., displayed a profound respect for the wishes of his constituents, and his control of the county’s second seat was never certain.

The ‘slow proceedings’ of the Suffolk Tories were looked upon as one of the major causes of their defeat in 1690. After one of the sitting Members, Sir John Rous, 2nd Bt., had declined to stand, the way had been left clear for the two Whig candidates, Sir Samuel Barnardiston, 1st Bt., and Sir Gervase Elwes, 1st Bt. It was only in the last fortnight that their Tory opponents ‘appeared’: first Sir John Playters, 4th Bt., and then Sir Robert Davers, 2nd Bt., ‘set up by the Duke of Grafton and the gentlemen . . . at Bury’.

The marked absence of contested elections in Staffordshire was not a sign of exceptional political tranquillity, but rather testimony to the power of the county meeting. Traditionally the gentry met to agree upon candidates in order to avoid acrimonious and expensive elections. Such decisions were invested with the authority of the shire, and on more than one occasion the gentry threatened to combine their interests to compel dissidents to desist from forcing a poll or face the prospect of a humiliating public defeat.

In his History of Addresses (1711), John Oldmixon described Somerset as ‘the Attica of England, the seat of good sense, good manners, good politics, good English and good land’. How Oldmixon, himself a native of the county, reconciled his own distinctly Whiggish outlook with the dominant Toryism of Somerset’s gentry elite is not immediately apparent, but he would not have been alone in his belief that its uncomplicated politics, seen in the comparative absence of party acrimony, was undeniably to the county’s advantage.

The Whig and Tory interests in Shropshire were evenly balanced, and the representation was shared between them at every general election in this period, except for 1708 and 1710. The various principals were all gentlemen with estates in the north of the county, in the vicinity of Shrewsbury. On the Whig side a predominant influence was exercised by the Newports, earls of Bradford, who held the county lieutenancy for most of the period. The Tories on the other hand did not have aristocratic leadership, the most prominent among them, the Kynastons, being wealthy squires.

Elections for England’s smallest county did not become occasions for open dispute involving its electorate until the middle of Anne’s reign. After the Convention Parliament, the Tory Sir Thomas Mackworth, 3rd Bt., of Normanton and the Whig Bennet Sherard of Whissendine were re-elected. On Sir Thomas’ death in 1694 his seat was taken by his son, the 4th baronet.