Colchester

Colchester was an open, corrupt, and expensive borough, usually represented by wealthy London merchants who had purchased Essex estates. Five of them— the two Rebows, Du Cane, Houblon and Olmius— were of Flemish or Dutch descent. Elections turned largely on the mayor, who was the returning officer, and without whose consent no new freemen could be created. Up to 1728 the Whigs monopolized the mayoralty and the representation of the borough. From 1728 to 1740 the Tories held the mayoralty, creating 83 freemen in 1728 and more in 1729.1T. Cromwell, Hist. Colchester, ii. 271-2; Essex Rev. vi. 186; CJ, xxiv. 98-100. In spite of this both seats remained Whig till 1735, when a Tory was returned at a by-election.

In 1741 the Whigs regained ascendancy by using secret service money on prosecutions ‘with a view of influencing the election, and to turn the borough, and to get out the mayor, and get the returning officer’. Two government supporters were returned by disallowing the votes of the freemen created by the Tories in 1728 and 1729; but the return was reversed by the anti-Walpole majority of the House of Commons, and the corporation was dissolved as a result of legal proceedings successfully instituted in the court of King’s bench by one of the Tory candidates against the mayor and aldermen on the ground that they had ‘been chosen into their respective offices in a manner not exactly consonant to the directions in the ... charters’.2CJ, xxiv. 128, 293. In 1747 the seats were shared by a Whig and Tory.