Reigate

At George I’s accession the representation of Reigate was controlled by Sir John Parsons, a Tory who had bought the Reigate Priory estate in 1681, and Lord Somers, one of the Whig Junto, to whom William III in 1697 had granted the manor of Reigate, carrying with it the appointment of the returning officer. The sitting Members were Parsons himself and Somers’s nephew, James Cocks.

On Somers’s death in 1716 his estates were divided between his two sisters and coheirs, Mary Cocks, the mother of James Cocks, and Elizabeth, wife of Sir Joseph Jekyll, the manor of Reigate passing to Jekyll and his wife for their lives.1W. Hooper, Reigate, 32. When Parsons died in 1717 his son was defeated by a local Whig put up as a stop-gap by Jekyll, who could not stand himself, being already in Parliament. In 1722 Jekyll and his nephew, James Cocks, finally ousted the Parsons interest at the last contested election for Reigate till the reform bill.

On Jekyll’s death in 1738 his widow and Lord Hardwicke, whose wife was Lady Jekyll’s niece and James Cocks’s sister, brought in another stop-gap to hold the seat for Hardwicke’s eldest son, Philip Yorke, who was returned for it in 1741, on coming of age.2Add. 35586, ff. 100, 102, 130, 132, 160, 162. In 1745 the manor of Reigate passed by Lady Jekyll’s death to her nephew, James Cocks, who retired in 1747, nominating his nephew, Charles Cocks, as his successor.3Harris, Hardwicke, ii. 337.

Meanwhile Hardwicke was consolidating his position at Reigate by buying up the local houses, with the result that thenceforth the Yorkes shared the representation of the borough on equal terms with the Cocks family, each nominating one Member.4Add. 36232, ff. 19, 69; Hooper, 125 n. 20.