The representation of Cheshire, uncontested between 1734 and 1832, remained the preserve of a few county families in this period. The richest of them, the Grosvenors of Eaton Hall, played little part, concentrating their attention on Chester.
The combination of Pitt, the prime minister, and Lord Euston, son and heir of the chancellor of the university, the Duke of Grafton, had overpowered the Whig sitting Members in 1784. In March 1790 it became clear that the Whigs wished to avenge themselves: Lawrence Dundas canvassed the university, accompanied by Lord John Townshend, one of the victims of 1784, and encouraged by the Prince of Wales.
By an agreement made in 1787 between John Mortlock†, the banker who had acquired a political ascendancy in the town, and the 4th Duke of Rutland, who possessed an established interest there, Cambridge became a Rutland nomination borough. The duke’s death soon afterwards made no difference.
The two leading interests in the county, both ministerialist, were those of the Earl of Hardwicke and the Duke of Rutland. They had been opponents in an expensive contest in 1780 and their subsequent collaboration was uneasy, not least because they were hard put to it, if members of their families were not available, to find suitable candidates among the gentry.
In 1788 John Barker Church, a former bankrupt, who had made a fortune from his business activities in America during the revolutionary war, purchased Earl Verney’s property in Wendover, undeterred by the continued truculence of the mercenary element which had broken Verney’s careless hold in 1784, Unlike his predecessor, he was wealthy and assiduous enough to profit from his investment and returned himself as a Foxite Whig in 1790.
The principal interests at Marlow changed hands with the neighbouring property in the decade before 1790, but the borough retained its essentially venal character and continued to require attentive management.This account is based principally on letters from John Fiott to Sir William Lee between 1786 and 1796 (Bucks.
From 1754 to 1790 the representation of Wycombe was controlled jointly by the Waller family of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield and the Petty family of Temple Wycombe and Loakes House, whose head from 1761 was William, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. Their control derived from influence exerted within the common council, a self-electing body with the power of creating freemen, almost half of whom were non-resident by 1790.L.J. Ashford, Wycombe, 189-90.
Buckingham remained entirely under the control of the 1st and 2nd Marquesses of Buckingham, high stewards of the borough, who imposed their dictates on the corporation, a hand-picked body composed largely of their tenants and employees, from their nearby seat at Stowe.PP (1835), xxiii. 166. The only incident to ruffle the 1st Marquess occurred in July 1806, when his brother Lord Grenville arranged the return of Fremantle, who was to be appointed secretary to the Treasury, for a vacancy which Buckingham had created for his relative, Lord Percy.
The 1st Marquess of Buckingham, head of the Grenville family, gained a foothold at Aylesbury with the return of his private secretary Scrope Bernard at a contested by-election in 1789, when he defeated another local landowner, Gerard Lake, equerry to the Prince of Wales. Lake, who was supported by his fellow members of the Buckinghamshire Independent Club led by the Duke of Portland, continued to spend lavishly at Aylesbury, where venality was deep-rooted.
Amersham remained completely under the control of the Drake family, who were seated at Shardeloes about one mile away, and owned most of the property in the town.
