The representation of Lancashire was usually shared without a contest by the Earls of Derby, with the local gentry each choosing one Member. Apparently owing to the 10th Earl’s reluctance to intervene in county elections this practice was interrupted in 1713 and 1715 when two Jacobites, Sir John Bland and Richard Shuttleworth, were returned unopposed.

Owing to the proximity of Chatham dockyard the Admiralty was the largest employer at Rochester, usually nominating both Members, one of whom was always an admiral. Opposition took the form of demanding that the town should be represented by two admirals. In 1734 Admiral Sir John Norris was put up unsuccessfully without his consent against Newcastle’s brother-in-law, David Polhill, who wrote to Walpole, 5 Sept. 1733:

The chief interest at Queenborough was that of the Admiralty, on whom the inhabitants depended for employment. Elections were managed by the corporation through their power of creating new freemen. Under George I all the Members returned were government supporters, but it was not till the next reign that the Administration gained complete control of the borough.

Maidstone, the 2nd Lord Egmont wrote in his electoral survey, c.1749-50, ‘is a perplexed interest’. The chief interests in 1715 were those of the Finches, earls of Aylesford, Tories, and the Marshams, later Lords Romney, Whigs; but for nearly 30 years after the 1st Lord’s death in 1724, his successor took no part in local politics.

In Canterbury, one of the nineteen cities and towns being counties in themselves, the returning officer was a sheriff, appointed by the corporation.

The selection of candidates for Kent county elections was governed by a convention that one of them should be an East Kent and the other a West Kent man. The chief Whig families were the Sackvilles of Knole, dukes of Dorset, and the Fanes of Mereworth, earls of Westmorland. The Government had an interest based on the Chatham docks and the Cinque Ports.

Huntingdon was dominated by the earls of Sandwich, who lived at Hinchingbrooke within the town, nominating both Members, usually without opposition. The only contest that occurred between 1715 and 1754 was in 1741, when the 4th Earl of Sandwich, who on coming of age in 1739 had joined the Opposition, put up two anti-government candidates, Wills Hill and Edward Montagu, against two government candidates, Roger Handasyde and Albert Nesbitt.

Traditionally, the Huntingdonshire elections were controlled by the great Whig family of Montagu, represented by the Dukes of Manchester at Kimbolton and the Earls of Sandwich at Hinchingbrooke. There were other families with considerable electoral influence. The Probys of Elton, John Dryden, M.P., followed by his nephew Robert Pigott of Chesterton, the Bernards of Brampton, Coulson Fellowes, though a newcomer, of Ramsey Abbey, all had established claims to be considered as representatives for the county.

At the accession of George I the chief interests in St. Albans were those of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, derived from the estate of Sandridge, close to the borough, of the Grimstons of Gorhambury, two miles away, and of the corporation from the mayor’s power of creating honorary freemen. The Lomax and the Gape families, whose estates lay near the town, also had some electoral influence. The Grimstons and the Lomaxes were government Whigs; the Duchess soon became bitterly opposed to Walpole; the Gapes were Tories; the corporation sided alternately with the two major interests.

Hertford was always represented by members of the local landed families, mostly of comparatively recent origin, descended from London lawyers, merchants and bankers, who had bought estates in the county. There was a large nonconformist vote, which supported the Whigs, except for the Quakers, who even before the Spencer Cowper case in 1699 appear to have voted Tory.CJ, x.