Chipping Wycombe

The franchise at Wycombe was controlled by the corporation, a close body, with the power of creating freemen. At George I’s accession the patron of the corporation was Thomas, 1st Marquess of Wharton, the head of the Whig interest in the county, whose nominees were returned unopposed shortly before his death in 1715. In 1722 the Wallers of Beaconsfield made an unsuccessful bid for a seat, with the support of the mayor, who was deposed by a meeting of the freemen for illegally attempting to create new freemen ‘to overthrow the interest of the late Marquess of Wharton’.1L. J. Ashford, Hist. High Wycombe, 173-4. The Wharton interest disintegrated after 1725, when Wharton’s heir had to sell his Winchendon estate and go abroad, where he joined the Pretender. At a by-election in 1726 the Wallers secured the seat on petition, after the mayor had twice returned a Wharton candidate by methods which led to his committal to Newgate by the House of Commons.2HMC Var. vi. 5; CJ, xx. 621-2; Wharton to Hay, 23 Mar. 1726, Stuart mss. In 1727 the Wallers compromised the election with the Lees of Hartwell; but after William Lee’s promotion to a judgeship in 1731 they nominated both Members without opposition till 1754.