Bridport

<p>There was no predominant interest at Bridport, a small sea port,<a class='fnlink' id='t1' href='#fn1'>1<span><em>Travels of Dr. Pococke</em> (Cam. Soc. n.s. xlii), i. 96.</span></a> though three generations of the Strangways family of Melbury and Abbotsbury held the office of high steward till 1727. <a href="/landingpage/57653" title="William Coventry" class="link">William Coventry</a>, afterwards 5th Earl of Coventry, who succeeded <a href="/landingpage/58926" title="Thomas Strangways" class="link">Thomas Strangways</a> as high steward in that year, established a personal interest, which, except in 1747, enabled him and his son, the 6th Earl, to control one seat between 1708 and 1780. The Admiralty had an interest, which for a time was used by Newcastle to bring in his friends, and thereafter by the Grenvilles. There was also a dissenting element.</p><p>The only Tory returned for Bridport was John Strangways, who in 1715 was unseated on a petition alleging partiality by the returning officers in accepting some 50 unqualified votes for him and rejecting over 20 qualified ones for his opponents.<a class='fnlink' id='t2' href='#fn2'>2<span><em>CJ</em>, xviii. 39.</span></a> One of the Members was usually a government supporter but those put up by Lord Coventry either voted with the Opposition or, like <a href="/landingpage/57373" title="William Bowles" class="link">William Bowles</a>, took an independent line. Lord Coventry wrote to Newcastle, 28 June 1740:</p><blockquote><p>Mr. Bowles and self will wait on your Grace any, hour you shall appoint Wednesday morning [so that we] may talk over the Bridport transactions and justify measures which may have been misrepresented.</p></blockquote><p>At this time Lord Coventry and Thomas Brodrepp, father-in-law of <a href="/landingpage/58765" title="William Bowles" class="link">George Richards</a>, were actively engaged in promoting the construction of the new harbour at Bridport, for which they had signed indentures in January.<a class='fnlink' id='t3' href='#fn3'>3<span>Add. 32693, f. 420; <em>Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club Proc.</em> xxxiii. 187.</span></a> In 1741 the Coventry candidates, Bowles and Richards, aided by the corporation, won both seats at the general election, defeating <a href="/landingpage/57224" title="Solomon Ashley" class="link">Solomon Ashley</a>, who had the government interest and the dissenters. Bowles opted to sit for Bewdley, thus providing a seat for Thomas, Lord Deerhurst, whose father, Lord Coventry, asked Newcastle ‘not to encourage Mr. Ashley for a future choice ...’.<a class='fnlink' id='t4' href='#fn4'>4<span>Coventry to Newcastle, 30 May 1741, Add. 32697, f. 120.</span></a> On Richards’s death in 1746 <a href="/landingpage/57976" title="George Grenville" class="link">George Grenville</a>, then a lord of the Admiralty, put up his sailor brother, Capt. Thomas Grenville, on whose behalf he wrote to the Duke of Bedford, then first lord of the Admiralty:</p><blockquote><p>Your Grace has a very considerable estate in [the Bridport] neighbourhood which, as it gives the inhabitants of that town some dependence upon you, must give them the strongest desire of obliging you. Mr. John Way, attorney-at-law there and one of their returning officers at present is, I am told, a steward to your Grace. Would it be too much trouble for me to beg a line or two from you to him in favour of my brother, the captain, as a mark of your kind opinion and approbation of him?<a class='fnlink' id='t5' href='#fn5'>5<span>24 Nov. 1746, Bedford mss.</span></a></p></blockquote><p>Paying three guineas a man, Thomas Grenville defeated the Prince of Wales’s candidate, <a href="/landingpage/58389" title="Col. Martin Madan" class="link">Col. Martin Madan</a>, who had promised the same but failed to pay on losing the election.<a class='fnlink' id='t6' href='#fn6'>6<span>Nathaniel Down to Azariah Pinney, 20 May 1747, Pinney mss.</span></a> He was succeeded by his brother James, who, at the general election of 1747, was elected unopposed with a rich West India Tory, John Pinney. The 2nd Lord Egmont wrote of Bridport in his electoral survey c.1749-50: ‘May be carried by the weight of the Admiralty and West India merchants’.</p>