Abingdon

Abingdon was an open borough, subject to no predominant influence. The mayor and corporation were Tory, but though they put the strongest pressure on their tenants1Elizabeth Pevvy to Walpole, 10 Apr. 1734, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. they could not prevent the return of Whigs, in the persons of Hucks and Wright, from 1722 to 1747. Only candidates with local interests were returned; ‘as to a stranger’, an authority on Berkshire boroughs warned the Duke of Bedford when he was thinking of intervening and 1753, ‘they only want such a person to pluck and defeat him’. Of the two Tories returned, Jennings was the son of a former headmaster of Abingdon school, where Morton, also a Tory, was educated; Morton’s chief supporter was his old headmaster, while the opposition to him was organized by the local parson, a Whig.2R. N. Aldworth to Bedford, 2 Apr. 1753, Bedford mss.