Oxfordshire was a Tory stronghold, always returning Tories unopposed. The only hint of opposition occurred at a by-election in 1717, when Dr. Stratford of Christ Church reported to his former pupil, Lord Harley:
Sir John D’Oyly is put up by the Whigs for the county and Sir Robert Bankes Jenkinson by our friends. I fancy Sir John D’Oyly will make nothing of it; it is hoped he will see it so plainly himself that he will desist.
A few days later he wrote
Sir John D’Oyly seems resolved to stand it out, and the Duchess of Marlborough has sent orders to their agents to make interest for him, but we doubt not but he will lose it by a prodigious majority ... Lord Harcourt appears in this election with a zeal he never was known to do, and rather against D’Oyly than for Jenkinson. He told D’Oyly he would oppose him with all his might, as he would any one else, even his own son, if he were set up by Lord Parker or the Duke of Marlborough.
D’Oyly finally desisted.
On a by-election in 1721 Stratford wrote:
We shall have no opposition in our county election. The Duke of Chandos ... has brought over over the Marlborough interest to his nephew Perrot. I know not how the Whigs will take it, they can do nothing without it, nor could they have done much with it.
HMC Portland, vii. 229-30, 297.
Perrot, a Tory, was returned, and Tories continued to represent the county unopposed until 1754.
Number of voters: about 4000