Honiton was a venal borough with a wide franchise. The principal interests were those of the Tory Courtenays of Powderham, lords of the manor since the fourteenth century, who appointed the portreeve, the returning officer of the borough, and the Whig Yonges of Colyton, near Honiton, who held the estate of Batishorn in the town, and commanded the popular vote.CJ, xx. 348; A. Farquharson, Honiton, 8-9, 37. After an uncontested by-election in 1724 a number of the inhabitant householders not paying scot and lot petitioned the Commons, claiming the right to vote.

At Exeter candidates were put up by the corporation, a strongly high church body, who nominated local Tory gentlemen. Two Tories were returned unopposed in 1715, and after a contest in 1722; but in 1727 one seat had to be conceded to the Whigs, who in 1734 captured both seats. Before the next general election the corporation created 240 honorary freemen, ‘composed of the most zealous gentlemen, clergy, and attorneys of the Tory party’,Sir Hen. Drake to Pelham, 16 Sept.

Dartmouth passed under government control owing to dissensions between the leading local Tory families, three of whom contested the borough in 1715.Russell, 144. In 1716 Arthur Holdsworth, a leading Newfoundland merchant, was first elected mayor; by 1719, when he completed his second term of office, the Holdsworths and allied Whig families had a majority on the corporation; and from 1722 until 1754 the borough was managed locally for the Government by the Holdsworths under the direction successively of Lord Chancellor King,

At George I’s accession the representation of Bere Alston was shared by Thomas Grey, 2nd Earl of Stamford, who was lord of the manors of Bere and Landrake, and Sir Francis Drake, 4th Bt., of Buckland Abbey, three or four miles from the borough. On Stamford’s death in 1720 his interest passed to his nephew, Sir John Hobart.Trans. Dev. Assoc. xli. 155-6.

On 20 Jan. 1721 Drake wrote to Lord Chief Justice King, a former M.P. for Bere Alston:

There was no single predominant interest at Barnstaple, which usually returned members of local families without a contest. The most important of these were the Rolles of Stevenstone, originally Tory, who went over to the Government in 1739, and Hugh Fortescue, Lord Clinton, an opposition Whig, whose house dominated the approach to Barnstaple. At the by-election in 1748, when the Rolles, supported by the Government, and the Fortescues, supported by the Prince of Wales, each put up candidates, Lord Clinton wrote to the Prince’s election manager:

In 1715 Ashburton was controlled by two Whigs, Roger Tuckfield of Raddon Court, who owned a moiety of the manor of Ashburton, and Richard Reynell of East Ogwell and Denbury, near the borough. They shared the representation till 1734 when Reynell was ousted by Sir William Yonge, standing jointly with Tuckfield, with the support of the Drake family, who owned the other moiety of the manor.Letter of John Dipford, 19 Feb.

The Devonshire country gentlemen were accustomed to return the heads of three Tory families, the Courtenays, Bampfyldes, and Rolles, who were ‘chose in their turn’Thos. Care to the Pretender, July 1739, Stuart mss 216/111. till 1741, when the Rolles dropped out on going over to the Court.

From 1715 to 1748 the Cavendishes, dukes of Devonshire, and the Stanhopes, earls of Chesterfield, each usually returned one Member for Derby, joining interests. But when, on the death of John Stanhope, they recommended his kinsman, Thomas Stanhope, a total stranger, with the concurrence of the corporation,

The leading Derbyshire families were the Curzons, Tories, and the Cavendishes, Whigs. At each of the first three general elections two Tories, one of them a Curzon, were returned unopposed, but in 1734 the Cavendishes gained one seat, after which they shared the representation with the Curzons without opposition.

At the accession of George I the chief interests in Cockermouth were in the Duke of Somerset, Lord Wharton, and the Lawsons of Isel, each of whom owned estates near the borough. The Duke of Somerset, as lord of the manor, controlled the appointment of the returning officer.