The selection of candidates for Kent county elections was governed by a convention that one of them should be an East Kent and the other a West Kent man. The chief Whig families were the Sackvilles of Knole, dukes of Dorset, and the Fanes of Mereworth, earls of Westmorland. The Government had an interest based on the Chatham docks and the Cinque Ports.
Traditionally, the Huntingdonshire elections were controlled by the great Whig family of Montagu, represented by the Dukes of Manchester at Kimbolton and the Earls of Sandwich at Hinchingbrooke. There were other families with considerable electoral influence. The Probys of Elton, John Dryden, M.P., followed by his nephew Robert Pigott of Chesterton, the Bernards of Brampton, Coulson Fellowes, though a newcomer, of Ramsey Abbey, all had established claims to be considered as representatives for the county.
Throughout the reign of George I, Hertfordshire was represented by two Tories, Ralph Freman and Sir Thomas Sebright. In 1727 Freman, after representing the county for 30 years, was ousted by his brother-in-law, Charles Caesar, who had stood unsuccessfully in 1722. Although Freman was a Hanoverian Tory, on both occasions Caesar, a Jacobite, was supported by leading local Whigs, such as William Plumer; in 1727 Freman complained that ‘the Government’s officers to a man opposed him in favour of Mr.
Throughout the reigns of George I and George II Herefordshire returned Tories at every general election. The only contest occurred in 1722, when Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, a Whig, who had been returned at a by-election in 1717, stood with the backing of his uncle by marriage, the Duke of Chandos, lord lieutenant of the county. Chandos instructed his agent
to wait upon as many of the gentlemen as are in the neighbourhood, and in my name to desire their favour on his [Hoskyns’s] behalf, and also you’ll endeavour to engage as many of the freeholders as you can.
From 1715 to 1734 the representation of Gloucestershire was monopolized by local Whig families. In 1715 Thomas Stephens of Lypiatt and Matthew Ducie Moreton were returned unopposed. Stephens died in 1720 and Moreton was made a peer in the same year. In the uncontested by-elections which followed, two other Whigs, Henry Berkeley of Berkeley and Edmund Bray of Great Barrington replaced them.
In the 1715 Parliament one seat was held by Sir Richard Child, later Lord Castlemaine, a Tory who went over to the Whigs, the other successively by two Whigs, Midleton and Honywood. From 1722 the representation was divided between a Whig and a Tory till 1734, when two Tories were returned after a contest with Castlemaine’s son, standing as a Whig. At the county meeting before the 1741 election Martin Bladen reported, 17 July 1740:
At George I’s accession the sitting Members for Durham County were a country gentleman, John Eden, Tory, and a wealthy Sunderland coal owner, John Hedworth, Whig, who were re-elected unopposed. They were returned again in 1722 after a contest in which a second Whig candidate, Lord Vane, was defeated owing to ‘a difference’ between him and Hedworth, causing them
to throw their loose votes on Sir John [Eden], who without this accident could have had no share in the election.E. Hughes, N. Country Life in 18th Cent. 280 n.
Tories were returned for Dorset without opposition except in 1727, when George Pitt, an ex-Tory, defeated one of his former party at a by-election, only to change sides again before the ensuing general election, when he gave his interest to the Tory candidates,
The Devonshire country gentlemen were accustomed to return the heads of three Tory families, the Courtenays, Bampfyldes, and Rolles, who were ‘chose in their turn’
The leading Derbyshire families were the Curzons, Tories, and the Cavendishes, Whigs. At each of the first three general elections two Tories, one of them a Curzon, were returned unopposed, but in 1734 the Cavendishes gained one seat, after which they shared the representation with the Curzons without opposition.
