Wareham

According to a survey in the Calcraft papers at Rempstone there were in 1753 about 500 tenements at Wareham, of which more than a hundred belonged to the Draxes, and above 50 to the Pitts. On 19 May 1750 John Pitt wrote to Henry Pelham1Newcastle (Clumber) mss. about a project on foot ‘for bringing about a reconciliation between me and Mr. Drax, which ... will secure me the constant nomination of a Member at Wareham’. It obviously failed; only after the election of April 1754 had been declared void2CJ, 19 Dec. 1754. was a compromise concluded, and each family returned one Member, 30 Dec. 1754 and 1761. But in 1763 John Calcraft started buying out smaller owners in Wareham. Thomas Erle Drax wrote to George Grenville, 26 Mar. 1764:3Grenville mss. (JM).

Though by what I can yet learn our Wareham matters are not in so dangerous [a] way as the enemy give out, yet the attack is not to be despised nor any method for defence neglected. They have bought a few lands and got together such of the inhabitants who are naturally for disturbance with a mercenary view. The corporation is my point.

But after George and John Pitt had sold their Wareham estate to Calcraft, Drax did likewise; and although the indenture of his sale of the manor and borough of Wareham for £10,000 is dated only 16 Aug. 1768,4Copy in Calcraft mss. the borough had passed into Calcraft’s hands at least a year earlier. On 2 Nov. 1767 he wrote to Lord Loudoun that Wareham would choose whomever he recommended, ‘let vacancies happen when they will’;5Loudoun mss. and the Government was in fact negotiating with him for John Pitt’s re-election.6Grafton, Autobiog. 181. In March 1768 Calcraft had the choice of both Members, and Wareham was henceforth a Calcraft pocket borough, never again contested in this period.