Ilchester was a venal borough, with an electorate described by Francis Fane in 1756 as ‘poor and corrupt, without honour, morals, or attachment to any man or party’.Add. 32867, f. 474. The election of 1774 was declared void because of bribery, and John Harcourt was unseated in 1786 because of ‘gross and illegal’ malpractices by the returning officer. For most of this period its patron was Thomas Lockyer, but by 1774 his hold on the borough seems to have become less complete.
Basically Milborne Port was a scot and lot borough, but the choice of returning officers was the result of a complicated procedure which invited contention. There were nine capital burgesses or bailiffs, the holders of ancient tenements, two of whom in rotation appointed returning officers. In 1754 four of these tenements were owned by Thomas Medlycott and five by Edward Walter: together, therefore, they controlled the returning officers, and since each owned a good deal of property in the borough, in effect they controlled its representation.
In 1761, when William Pitt was returned a second time for Bath, he paid tribute to ‘a city ranked among the most ancient and most considerable in the kingdom, and justly famed for its integrity, independence, and zeal for the public good’.Pitt to the corporation of Bath, 12 Apr. 1761, Chatham mss. The corporation consisted for the most part of country gentlemen and substantial tradesmen, proud of their independence and integrity; and the Members had either strong local connexions, or were national figures.
George Bubb Dodington sat for Bridgwater 1722-1754 on an interest inherited from his uncle, George Dodington, who had represented the borough 1708-1713 and 1715-20. The Pouletts of Hinton St. George held one seat 1741-52, 1741-52, when, owing to divisions in the family, they lost it to Robert Balch, whose grandfather and great-grandfather had represented Bridgwater in the 17th century. From about 1750 Lord Egmont began to cultivate an interest. These were the chief forces in the politics of Bridgwater at the general election of 1754.
The chief interest in the borough 1754-90 was in the Forester family; but the Bridgemans, too, had a certain influence, exercised in alliance with the Foresters.
There was no one dominant aristocratic interest in the county, and the knights of the shire were invariably chosen from among the leading country gentlemen. Of the two Members elected in 1754, Thomas Prowse had sat since 1740, and Sir Charles Kemys Tynte since 1747. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, returned on Prowse’s death in 1767, refused to stand in 1768, and Tynte now stood on a joint interest with Richard Hippisley Coxe, while the third candidate, John Trevelyan, turned especially against Tynte (he seems to have made approaches to Coxe). Lord Westmorland wrote to Tynte on 5 Oct.
In 1754, and again in 1761, the Whitmores of Apley held undisputed sway at Bridgnorth, the other two families with property near or in the borough, the Actons of Aldenham and the Weavers of Morval (succeeded by the Blayneys) having become inactive. John Grey, brother of Lord Stamford, was a Whitmore nominee, but had the additional advantage of residing eight miles from Bridgnorth and of being a brother-in-law of Richard Acton.
Ludlow was entirely under the patronage of Henry Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, till about 1770 when he sold to Lord Clive his estate of Oakley Park, adjoining the borough. But the two families closely co-operated, and on 7 May 1784, the 2nd Lord Clive married the sister of the 2nd Lord Powis, whose estate she inherited on his death in 1801. Their joint interest in the borough was challenged in 1780 by Thomas Beale (probably of Heath House, Salop, some seven miles from Ludlow): that the threat was treated as serious is evidenced by the correspondence extant in the Powis mss.
Before 1722 the number of freemen exceeded 1,300. But by 1747 the corporation, allied to the Whigs, managed to reduce it to about 300, first by a decision of the House of Commons in 1723 which greatly narrowed down the boundaries of the parliamentary borough, and next by restricting admission to its freedom. The opposite interest was aided in its lawsuits against the corporation by neighbouring Tory country gentlemen whom it supported in parliamentary elections. The Dissenters, mostly Presbyterians, formed a third interest in the borough.
Since the death in 1734 of Henry, 3rd Earl of Bradford (his heir, the last Bradford of this creation, was an imbecile), there was no dominant aristocratic influence in the county, and the choice of the knights of the shire lay with the Tory country gentlemen, after 1747 on the tacit understanding that they in turn left Shrewsbury to the Whigs headed by Lord Powis. In 1762, when Powis remained with the new court, one section of his group left him. Moreover about that time a powerful Clive interest was established in the county.
