The nature of the franchise made Cricklade a difficult borough to control, no single interest ever predominated, and the electorate was venal. Before 1754 most of its Members were local men or owned property in the neighbourhood. The chief interest was in the Gore family, who owned the lordship of the borough and hundred of Cricklade, and had the right of appointing the returning officer.
The county of Wiltshire was famous for its ‘independency’. The sons of peers were never elected, and although the nobility exercised considerable influence, they did it with discretion. The Bruces and Herberts held county positions similar to those of the Berkeleys and Beauforts in Gloucestershire, but whereas the latter dominated the representation of their county, in Wiltshire the peers were confined to their family boroughs.
In 1754 the leading interests at Calne were in Thomas Duckett, who owned the manor of Calne and Calstone, and William Northey, who owned the prebend manor of Calne. In January 1754 John, 1st Earl of Shelburne, acquired Bowood and with it a foothold in the borough, which he and his son proceeded to extend during the next ten years. In 1761 William, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, bought the estate of Bremhill for £57,000; in 1763 the manor of Calne and Calstone for £28,000; and in 1765 the prebend manor for £12,000.
Oldfield wrote about Westmorland in 1792:
This small county is as much under the command of an individual as the most rotten borough in the kingdom. The great estates which the Earl of Lonsdale possesses are sufficient to procure a passive obedience to the dictatorial authority of his Lordship.
In 1725 Henry, 3rd Viscount Lonsdale, and Sackville, 7th Earl of Thanet, made an agreement for their joint lives whereby each was to nominate one Member, the mayor in turn, and the aldermen and councilmen pari passu; neither to buy burgages without notice to the other. On Lonsdale’s death in 1751 Mrs. Lowther, mother and guardian of Sir James Lowther, 5th Bt., renewed the agreement.
Warwick was virtually a scot and lot borough. Oldfield wrote about it in 1792:Boroughs, iii. 80. ‘There have been frequent struggles here between the Earl of Warwick ... and the popular party.’ In 1754 its patrons were Lord Brooke (later Earl of Warwick) and Lord Archer. In 1774 both seats went to members of Warwick’s family; which led in 1780 to a revolt of the independent party and the loss of one seat to Robert Ladbroke, a London banker with an estate in Warwickshire.
The leading noblemen in the county of Warwick were Lord Craven, Lord Hertford, Lord Warwick, and Lord Aylesford. The representation was in the hands of the gentry, the leading family being the Mordaunts of Walton, who held one seat for 82 years between 1698 and 1820. The most significant feature of the county’s parliamentary history 1754-1790 was the growing influence exerted by Birmingham and the manufacturing districts of the north.
Coventry had a population of about 12,000 in 1754 and an electorate of about 2,500—one third of them non-resident. Its politics, generally conducted without much reference to national affairs, were on a corporation and anti-corporation basis; and elections were riotous and expensive. Lords Craven, Archer, and Hertford at different times concerned themselves with the borough; but it had an unsavoury reputation and the Warwickshire country gentlemen steered clear of it.
About the middle of the eighteenth century New Shoreham was notorious for its corruption. On 8 Nov. 1753 William Michell, one of the Duke of Newcastle’s agents in Sussex, wrote to him about a conversation Michell had had with Harry Bridger, one of the leading men in Shoreham:Add. 32733, f. 222.
On 6 Feb. 1767 Thomas Steele, sen., recorder of Chichester, wrote to the Duke of Newcastle about Steyning:Add. 32980, f. 55.
