Oxfordshire was a Tory stronghold, always returning Tories unopposed. The only hint of opposition occurred at a by-election in 1717, when Dr. Stratford of Christ Church reported to his former pupil, Lord Harley:
Sir John D’Oyly is put up by the Whigs for the county and Sir Robert Bankes Jenkinson by our friends. I fancy Sir John D’Oyly will make nothing of it; it is hoped he will see it so plainly himself that he will desist.
A few days later he wrote
The head of the Whig interest in Nottinghamshire was the lord lieutenant, Thomas Pelham Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who had inherited the estates there of his uncle, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle. In his old age he recalled how
In 1715 Lord Hertford, the Duke of Somerset’s son, a Whig, and Thomas Forster, a Tory, both of whom had held their seats since 1708, were re-elected without opposition. The chief Whigs in the county were the Duke of Somerset, through his marriage to the heiress of the Percy estates; the Earls of Carlisle and Tankerville; and the Liddells. The chief Tories were the Earl of Derwentwater, the Forsters, and the Blacketts, all of whom were Jacobites.
From 1701 to 1730 the Northamptonshire seats were held by two Tory country gentlemen, Sir Justinian Isham of Lamport and Thomas Cartwright of Aynhoe, after 1705 without opposition. The first contest occurred on Isham’s death in 1730, when a Whig candidate, William Hanbury, appealed to the freeholders ‘to assert their ancient and just rights of election’, of which it was suggested, they had been deprived for over 20 years by an unholy compact between the great local landowners ‘to preserve the peace of the county’.
At George I’s accession the chief Norfolk families on the Whig side were the Townshends and Walpoles, on the Tory, the Wodehouses and Astleys. The sitting Members, Sir Jacob Astley and Sir Edmund Bacon, were Tories, but before the general election of 1715 Walpole won over Astley, who joined with a Whig, Thomas de Grey, to defeat two Tories.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century control of the county was in the Whig Morgans of Tredegar and in the Tory dukes of Beaufort, by virtue of their Raglan estate. During Anne’s reign John Morgan of Tredegar twice attempted to carry both seats but although he himself always headed the poll, he failed to secure the second one.NLW, Tredegar mss 255. In the favourable circumstances of 1715, however, Morgan and a kinsman, Thomas Lewis, were returned without opposition.
In 1715, according to a Whig report, the Tories,
having got a great mob on their side at Brentford, where the election for the county of Middlesex came on, ... those who came for the Whig candidates, Sir John Austen and Henry Barker Esq., were so deterred by the insults of the rude unruly multitudes (who were encouraged and set on by several clergymen) that great numbers of them went away without giving their votes: by which means the high church candidates, viz. the Hon. James Bertie and Hugh Smithson Esq., carried the day.Pol. State, ix. 88.
The leading family in Lincolnshire was the Berties, lord lieutenants of the county, created dukes of Ancaster on George I’s accession. In 1715 the county returned one Whig, Sir John Brownlow, connected by marriage with the Duke of Ancaster, and one Tory, Sir Willoughby Hickman, without a contest. On Hickman’s death in 1720 the Duke’s brother, Albemarle Bertie, was put up against a Tory, Sir William Massingberd, who wrote a fortnight before polling day:
The chief interest in Leicestershire was in the country gentlemen, most of whom were Tory.Stuart mss 65/16. The heads of the Whigs were the Duke of Rutland, Lord Sherard, later Earl of Harborough, and the Earl of Stamford. In 1715 the sitting Members, two Tory country gentlemen, Sir Thomas Cave and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, were opposed by a Whig, Thomas Bird, who was said to be
supplied with money from above, for to be sure he has it not of his own, his interest is the Duke of Rutland’s and Lord Sherard’s so they must support him.
The representation of Lancashire was usually shared without a contest by the Earls of Derby, with the local gentry each choosing one Member. Apparently owing to the 10th Earl’s reluctance to intervene in county elections this practice was interrupted in 1713 and 1715 when two Jacobites, Sir John Bland and Richard Shuttleworth, were returned unopposed.
