In 1788 John Barker Church, a former bankrupt, who had made a fortune from his business activities in America during the revolutionary war, purchased Earl Verney’s property in Wendover, undeterred by the continued truculence of the mercenary element which had broken Verney’s careless hold in 1784, Unlike his predecessor, he was wealthy and assiduous enough to profit from his investment and returned himself as a Foxite Whig in 1790.
The principal interests at Marlow changed hands with the neighbouring property in the decade before 1790, but the borough retained its essentially venal character and continued to require attentive management.This account is based principally on letters from John Fiott to Sir William Lee between 1786 and 1796 (Bucks.
From 1754 to 1790 the representation of Wycombe was controlled jointly by the Waller family of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield and the Petty family of Temple Wycombe and Loakes House, whose head from 1761 was William, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. Their control derived from influence exerted within the common council, a self-electing body with the power of creating freemen, almost half of whom were non-resident by 1790.L.J. Ashford, Wycombe, 189-90.
Buckingham remained entirely under the control of the 1st and 2nd Marquesses of Buckingham, high stewards of the borough, who imposed their dictates on the corporation, a hand-picked body composed largely of their tenants and employees, from their nearby seat at Stowe.PP (1835), xxiii. 166. The only incident to ruffle the 1st Marquess occurred in July 1806, when his brother Lord Grenville arranged the return of Fremantle, who was to be appointed secretary to the Treasury, for a vacancy which Buckingham had created for his relative, Lord Percy.
The 1st Marquess of Buckingham, head of the Grenville family, gained a foothold at Aylesbury with the return of his private secretary Scrope Bernard at a contested by-election in 1789, when he defeated another local landowner, Gerard Lake, equerry to the Prince of Wales. Lake, who was supported by his fellow members of the Buckinghamshire Independent Club led by the Duke of Portland, continued to spend lavishly at Aylesbury, where venality was deep-rooted.
Amersham remained completely under the control of the Drake family, who were seated at Shardeloes about one mile away, and owned most of the property in the town.
Immediately after the hard-fought election of 1784, the friends and supporters of Lord Verney, a Coalition sympathizer, who had been narrowly ousted by John Aubrey, a Pittite, established the Buckinghamshire Independent Club.
Wallingford remained essentially venal, but during the first half of the period it was virtually in the pocket of Sir Francis Sykes, a rich nabob, who was said to have bought up most of the property in the borough. In April 1789 it was reported that his colleague, Thomas Aubrey, returned in 1784 on the declining interest of the 4th Earl of Abingdon, the high steward, would have to look elsewhere at the dissolution, despite his willingness to pay the going rate.
The absence of a dominant landed or manufacturing interest left Reading open, but only men with strong local connexions were likely to succeed. Earlier the borough had been notoriously venal, and after an apparent interlude of comparative respectability in the 1780s and 1790s, corruption, in the form of lavish treating, ostentatious municipal beneficence and widespread commercial racketeering, grew rife again.
Charles Knight, editor of the Windsor Express, described ‘Royal Windsor’ in the early 19th century as
a country town of the narrowest range of observation, and the tiniest circle of knowledge. The people vegetated, although living amidst a continual din of royalty going to and fro ... The ‘loyal’ or the ‘independent’ voters ... were fierce in their partisanship, but there was no real principle at the root of their differences.