Tregony

In 1715 Tregony was a venal open borough. Its principal customers were the Treasury, who usually bought one seat, and wealthy London merchants, who competed for the other. The chief local interests were in Hugh Boscawen, created Lord Falmouth 1720, lord of the manor and chief government election manager in Cornwall; and John Trevanion of Carhayes, three miles away, also a government supporter. Another electoral factor was the Rev. William Bedford, vicar of Tregony, who acted as broker for the voters.

There was no contest till 1727 when a Treasury agent reported to Walpole

that parson Bedford has secured one hundred and fifty votes at Tregony (for one vote) at £5 each vote; I find he has been tampered with and some overtures have been made to him by a merchant in London, who proposeth to disburse the money, make his wife a present of plate, and prefer his son Thomas Bedford to the command of a ship of 40 guns; this proposition is so far agreeable, I see he is fixed in this single resolution (viz.) if his son Thomas Bedford cannot be by you made a lieutenant of a man of war, you must put an equivalent into his hands, in lieu of the lieutenancy; otherwise as he has been by Mr. [Nicholas] Vincent deceived by promises, he will not now trust to any man’s honour and this he tells me he wrote to you about.1J. Wolrige to Walpole, 1 July 1727, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.

The Treasury secured one seat but the other was contested between two merchants, both government supporters: James Cooke, who had been returned in 1722, and John Goddard, probably the London merchant who had ‘tampered’ with Bedford. On 14 Aug. Richard Edgcumbe, returning from an election tour in Cornwall, informed Newcastle that ‘every election will go as desired, Tregony excepted, where Jack Trevanion is in danger of losing Mr. Cooke; he has written to Boscawen to help him’.2SP Dom. 36/1, ff. 147-8. Cooke was defeated.

On 28 Nov. 1732 Goddard, then in Spain on a government mission, wrote to Sir Charles Wager, first lord of the Admiralty, that he had heard that Lord Falmouth

is very busy ruining all he can my interest in the borough of Tregony, which he would I believe find very difficult to effect, if I was at home, as I humbly apprehend it more in my way than his Lordship’s to serve the town, a great part of whose inhabitants depend on the woollen manufacture.3Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.

In 1734 Goddard was returned unopposed with his son-in-law, Henry Penton, another government supporter.

In October 1740 Thomas Pitt, the Prince’s Cornish election manager, reported that the 2nd Lord Falmouth, whose younger brother had unsuccessfully contested the borough at two by-elections in 1737, ‘declares he will carry the election if it costs him £5,000. The success seems to be certain, but the expense will be great’. In the event Falmouth gained one seat for the Opposition by a compromise with Penton,4Chatham mss. retaining it at a by-election in 1742. But in 1747 two candidates put up by the Prince of Wales at a cost of £10505HMC Fortescue, i. 119-21, 127. were defeated by two ministerial candidates supported by Lord Falmouth, who had returned to the Administration and was ‘soliciting votes in person ... publicly going about from house to house for that purpose’.6CJ, xxv. 449. In the 2nd Lord Egmont’s electoral survey, c.1749-50, Tregony is described as ‘in Lord Falmouth and Trevanion’.