Maldon

In 1715 the sitting Members for Maldon were two Tory lawyers, both local men: Thomas Bramston, whose family held the high stewardship of the borough, and John Comyns, who had sat for it in every Parliament but one in the previous reign. Both were re-elected after a contest but on petition the House of Commons unseated Comyns ‘for want of a qualification’, awarding the seat to one of the defeated Whig candidates, Samuel Tufnell.

In 1722 Comyns, this time standing with the support of the Administration, was again returned with Bramston, a petition against him by the defeated Whig candidate, Henry Parsons, being withdrawn at Walpole’s instance.1Comyns to Hardwicke, 3 Jan. 1735, Add. 35585, f. 309. On Comyns’s elevation to the bench in 1727 he was succeeded by Parsons, who established a strong pro-government interest by the wholesale creation of honorary freemen, the customs and excise patronage, and the expenditure of ‘a great deal of time, liquor and money’.2Robt. Colebrooke to Newcastle, 30 June 1761, Add. 32924, f. 350; A. Pickersgill, ‘Parl. elections in Essex 1759-74’ (Manchester Univ. M.A. thesis), 124-7. In 1734 Bramston was defeated by Martin Bladen, a placeman, and when Parsons died in 1740 his seat was filled by Benjamin Keene, also a government servant. On 14 Dec. 1740 John Lawton, an agent who managed Maldon and Orford for the Government, reported to Walpole that both boroughs were ‘safe against the world in your hands’.3Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. In 1741 Bladen and Keene were succeeded by Robert Colebrooke, a wealthy merchant, and Sir Thomas Drury, a local landowner, both government supporters, without a contest. In 1747 a member of the corporation wrote to Drury informing him that the Tories were setting up Bramston’s cousin, Edmond Bramston; that the corporation had decided that the only way to secure the Whig interest in the borough was to replace Drury by Sir Richard Lloyd, a wealthy lawyer, who had ‘made a very considerable interest’; and that ‘the Whigs in truth have no other card to play in your absence but to agree to this junction, or let in a friend of the Tories to break the interest now and as a natural consequence be master of the corporation’.4HMC Lothian, 162. Lloyd and Colebrooke were returned against Bramston.