Buckinghamshire

At George I’s accession, Buckinghamshire was represented by two Tories. The head of the Tory interest was the lord lieutenant, Lord Cheyne, who was replaced by a Whig before the general election; that of the Whigs was Lord Wharton, who died soon after it. To make certain of securing one seat at the 1715 election Wharton arranged for what he called a ‘shameful compromise’Wharton to Rich. Hampden, 9 Oct. 1714, Glynde mss, E. Suss. RO. with the Tories, under which a paper signed by 21 leading men of both parties was sent round the county in support of John Fleetwood, a Tory, and Richard Grenville, a Whig. This was not accepted by Richard Hampden, who, having been narrowly defeated in 1713, was determined to stand ‘on his own legs’ as a second Whig. In the end a new compromise was negotiated, under which Grenville took one of Hampden’s seats at Wendover, leaving Hampden to be returned with Fleetwood unopposed. By 1721, when Wharton’s son, the young Duke of Wharton, had gone over to the Tories, the leadership of the Whigs was passing to Lord Cobham, the former Sir Richard Temple, M.P., of Stowe. Montague Garrard Drake, the projected Tory candidate, wrote to another Tory, Ralph Verney, Lord Fermanagh, November 1721, that as

Lord Cobham etc. design us a strong opposition, I think we should lose no time in concerting our measures. The Duke of Wharton, Lord Abingdon and Mr. Fleetwood have thought it proper that we have a meeting.

This produced another compromise, about which Lord Fermanagh wrote to his steward, 27 Feb. 1722:

You made interest rightly for Mr. Drake and Sir Thomas Lee. Lord Cheyne told me where you can get but one vote it must be for Mr. Drake, though all endeavours must be used to get the other for Sir Thomas Lee. Hampden has declined and surely Mr. Dormer will do so too.

Drake and Lee, a Whig supported by the ministry, standing jointly, defeated Dormer, standing single as an independent Whig.Francis Sheldon to Sir John Pakington, 1721, Pakington mss 111/23.

In 1727, after a further compromise had been mooted, two Whigs, Sir William Stanhope and Hampden, joined interests successfully against a Tory, William Gore.

The populace never were so mutinous and exasperated against the great Mr. Drake, [whom] they apprehended the chief promoter of the compromise and against the rights of the freeholders, so that many Tories joined with the Whigs for Stanhope and Hampden.Verney Letters of 18th Cent. i. 317-20; ii. 91, 94, 100-1; see HAMPDEN, Richard.

In 1734 Stanhope and Lee defeated Richard Lowndes, a Tory single, who was returned unopposed in 1741, holding his seat till 1774. The other seat went to Richard Grenville, who moved to Buckingham in 1747, when Stanhope was re-elected without opposition.