Wendover

In 1754 Lord Verney, a large property owner at Wendover, was the patron of the borough. According to Oldfield, his tenants lived rent-free ‘on condition of giving their votes to such gentlemen as his Lordship should nominate’. Verney was careless and easy-going, and in 1768 an opposition was declared against him. Here is the story as told by Oldfield:

A Mr. Atkins, a considerable lace manufacturer in this place, had undertaken, by a coup-de-main, to carry the election against his Lordship’s interest, and conducted his measures with such secrecy, that no opposition was expected until the day of election. At this moment, to the astonishment and confusion of Earl Verney and his agents, Sir Robert Darling ... was proposed, and immediately returned by a considerable majority.1Boroughs, i. 40-41.

Verney is then stated to have ejected the voters from their houses, and only reinstated them ‘on a promise of good behaviour in future’. The story sounds credible but there are difficulties about it: no details of the poll have been discovered; the correspondence of Edmund Burke, the successful candidate on Verney’s interest, contains nothing about the election; nor is the name of Verney’s other candidate known. So much is clear, however, that Verney lost one seat, largely through neglect.

On Darling’s death in 1770 an opposition was again threatened, but not pressed to a poll. ‘Things are now put in better order’, wrote Edmund Burke (to Charles O’Hara, 9 Aug.), ‘and I trust there can be no further danger.’ Still, in 1774 (9 Oct., to Rockingham) Burke wrote about Wendover: ‘I am extremely anxious about the fate of Lord Verney and that borough. It is past all description, past all conception, the supineness, neglect, and blind security of my friend in that and everything that concerns him.’ However in 1774 and 1780 Verney’s candidates were returned without opposition.

In 1784 he lost both seats. ‘The electors’, writes Oldfield, ‘well knowing the deranged state of his Lordship’s private affairs would oblige him to sell, very shortly, his property in the borough, took the opportunity of again putting up their suffrages to the highest bidder.’ £6,000 is said to have been asked for the two seats. In 1787, when Verney was trying to sell, he had not regained control of the borough. ‘We have not a day to lose’, wrote John Philipps, Verney’s attorney, to the Rev. Luke Heslop, one of his trustees, 5 Sept. 1787, ‘to break a combination which has been so well formed amongst the independent electors that it threatens to defeat the principal end of the purchase.’2Verney, Verney Letters of 18th Cent. ii. 292-3. Wendover was sold in 1788 to J. B. Church, an adventurer who had made a fortune in American land speculations.