Leominster

Leominster had a reputation for venality. In 1717 George Caswall’s agent was paying up to 20 guineas a man;2Ibid. 573. in 1721 Edward Harley, then M.P. for the borough, said that it had ‘become mercenary, and the best bidder will have the best interest to be served’;3To the Duke of Chandos, 21 Dec. 1721, Portland mss. and all that the 2nd Lord Egmont could say for it in his electoral survey, c. 1749-50, was that he did ‘not think it so venal as to be carried by the best bidder’. During most of the period 1715-54 one of the seats went to ‘the best bidder’ in the persons of the Caswalls, father and son, and of James Peachey, a nabob, and the other to one of the neighbouring gentry. All the Members, except Capel Hanbury, had estates in or near the borough, and all but Hanbury, who, however, was a connexion of Lady Coningsby’s, and Peachey, came from long established local families. In 1745 Velters Cornewall told Henry Pelham that ‘Lady Coningsby, Lord Oxford, and Sir Robert Cornwall ... have the love and almost all the votes of that town [Leominster]’.416 June 1745, Newcastle (Clumber) mss.