Lewes

Both Members for Lewes were returned by the Duke of Newcastle, whose interest was based on his property in the town, on his own and his cousins’ seats at Halland, Bishopstone and Stanmer, and on traditional regard for the Pelham family; but it was a troublesome borough requiring constant attention. When in 1733 Thomas Sergison, a local landowner, with property in Lewes, joined Nathaniel Garland, ‘a rigid Dissenter’, in ‘a sort of compromise between the Dissenters and the Tories’, Newcastle’s candidates, two Thomas Pelhams, only scraped through by ‘having the constables’,1Newcastle to the bishop of Bangor, 4 Sept. 1733, Add. 32688, f. 257; to the Duchess of Newcastle [1733] and 7 Dec. 1733, Add. 33073, ff. 80, 84; CJ, xxii. 340. i.e. the returning officers, chosen annually at the court leet held alternately by the Dukes of Dorset and Norfolk and Lord Abergavenny. Sergison stood again unsuccessfully in 1741, and again in 1743, when he withdrew before the poll, till in 1747 Newcastle solved the problem by adopting him as his own candidate. In 1749 James Pelham congratulated his cousin, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer, on having been provided with a seat at Rye which would put him to ‘no trouble or expense’, instead of having to ‘stand a contest within five miles of your own house, amongst a populace of the most ungrateful rascals in the kingdom’.2Add. 33087, f. 15.