County

The contention between the Earls of Marchmont and Home for the county representation, which had given Berwickshire elections their bite for more than a generation, ended ostensibly in 1784. Thereafter, with Marchmont disdaining to take an interest and Home a minor, only echoes of it remained. Patrick Home of Wedderburn, the sitting Member returned by Henry Dundas who, with the Duke of Buccleuch, assumed the management of Lord Home’s interest, was warned in January 1788 that ‘the independent friends ... mean to try Sir Alexander Don against you’. His informant added:

Banffshire was dominated in the mid 1780s by James Duff, 2nd Earl Fife, whose family had enjoyed supremacy for some 60 years. Fife himself had won the Elginshire seat in 1784, turning over Banffshire to his illegitimate son Sir James Duff of Kinstair; as his influence extended also to Aberdeenshire and Elgin Burghs he was a major electoral force in north-east Scotland, where his chief rival was the 4th Duke of Gordon.

With one of the largest county electorates in Scotland, owing to competitive enrolment after 1779, Ayrshire was also one of the most keenly contested seats, even when the fictitious votes fell away after 1790. The Earl of Eglintoun retained the major interest, but he needed allies to carry the county, in which the Earls of Cassillis, Glencairn and Dumfries, Sir Adam Fergusson and Sir John Whitefoord also had considerable interests; but in which election contests were nevertheless decided by the ‘non-declarants’, the independent freeholders who might be swayed either way.

The 5th and 6th Dukes of Argyll maintained their family’s complete dominance in the county, which was not challenged in this period.

Under the terms of the electoral truce, negotiated in 1787 by Henry Dundas, between the 4th Duke of Gordon and the 2nd Earl Fife, who had been contending fiercely for supremacy in Aberdeenshire, the seat was allocated for the next general election to Dundas’s friend James Ferguson of Pitfour, the beaten candidate at the by-election of 1786.SRO GD51/1/198/1/2-4; NLS mss 5, ff. 16, 41; PRO 30/8/157, ff. 53, 59; H.

Since 1780 Thomas Johnes, who had succeeded his father to the county seat, had held it without any further opposition from his principal rival, Walter Wilkins, the nabob purchaser of the Maesllwch estate. The fact that the lord lieutenant, Edward Harley, 4th Earl of Oxford, had fallen out with Wilkins reinforced Johnes’s position.Based on D. R. Ll. Adams, ‘Parl. Rep. Rad. 1536-1832’ (Univ. Wales M.A.

The county representation had long been in dispute between the two leading interests, the Owens of Orielton and the Philippses of Picton Castle, popularly styled the Orange and Blue parties respectively.R. D. Rees, ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830 (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), i. 279. Sir Hugh Owen, 5th Bt., who had ousted his rival Lord Milford, died in 1786 leaving an infant heir, whereupon Milford obtained the lord lieutenancy and resumed his seat unopposed, strengthened by his alliance with Lord Kensington, whom he returned for Haverfordwest.

The clash between the two leading landed interests in the county, those of the Earl of Powis and the Williams Wynn Family of Wynnstay, had led in 1774 to the return of William (Mostyn) Owen on the Powis interest. Subsequently, however, his politics displeased his patron and if Owen held his seat undisturbed until his death it was because his politics pleased the Williams Wynns and Lord Powis wished to avoid another expensive contest. Having thus gained the upper hand, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn and his allies secured the return of Francis Lloyd by compromise in 1795.

Such was the primacy of the ancient family of Vaughan of Corsygedol that they held the county seat for 85 years of the 18th century.P. D.G. Thomas, Merion. Hist. Soc. Jnl. (1957), 129. Prestige, based on continuous residence and respectable alliances, gave them this hold, for in point of property Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was the leading landowner; and his family ‘always looked to a seat for that county’, according to the Marquess of Buckingham, 2 Aug.

Flintshire was represented by members of the Mostyn family of Mostyn almost throughout the 18th century. Sir Roger Mostyn, 5th Bt., held the seat unchallenged until his death in July 1796, just after being returned a ninth time. Opposition to him had been advertised in 1796, but it was apparently a stunt of the friends of (Sir) Robert Williams I in Caernarvonshire to prevent Mostyn from supporting Lord Penrhyn there, and it ‘had the desired effect, as he left Caernarvonshire’.