Hertfordshire was described in 1819 as ‘a county, in which there is no certainty’.Fitzwilliam mss, box 99, Lamb to Fitzwilliam 24 Oct. 1819. James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury, who aspired to predominance, discovered this in 1790. He had procured the return of Viscount Grimston, a fellow supporter of Pitt, in the contest of 1784; but now the Whigs turned the tables on him.
Since 1754 the Thynne family, who in 1789 obtained the marquessate of Bath, had established complete control over Weobley by buying up all the vote houses.
Leominster had been thrown open by 1784, but neighbouring magnates continued to burn their fingers there until 1802 and the borough teemed with electioneering attorneys. The corporation, which was reluctant ‘to rate any inhabitant who was adverse to their own party’, were chiefly influenced by John Bateman, 2nd Viscount Bateman, high steward until his death in 1802, and Thomas Harley, recorder since 1780.
The hold of the Whig 11th Duke of Norfolk on a borough with such a large freeman electorate from 1784 until his death in 1815 was a remarkable phenomenon. His marriage to the heiress of the Scudamores of Holme Lacey was at the bottom of it; their kinsmen the Scudamores of Kentchurch provided one Member from 1764 until 1818, while Norfolk stood behind Walwyn and Symonds, two other county gentlemen.
There was ‘no rumour even of opposition’ to the sitting Members, representatives of the county’s established parliamentary families, in 1790.Malmesbury mss, Cornewall to Malmesbury, 28 June 1790. Harley supported Pitt and Cornewall the opposition. There had been no contest since Harley’s election in 1776; and the contest of 1796 was directed not against him, but against his turncoat colleague. Cornewall had gone over to government with the Portland Whigs and was now subjected to a vendetta.
By a compromise agreement which had operated since 1774, Rev. Leonard Holmes (formerly Troughear, heir to Thomas Holmes, 1st Baron Holmes) and Jervoise Clarke Jervoise named a Member each. Their pact involved the gradual elimination of the free burgesses by natural wastage, so that Yarmouth became, in effect, a close corporation borough with 13 capital burgesses.Oldfield, Boroughs, i. 281. This alliance discouraged any opposition, even when, as in 1790, both patrons supported the Whig interest.
Since 1774 Winchester had been a close borough under the joint patronage of Henry Penton, whose father established his interest in 1747, and James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos, who from 1784 returned his brother-in-law Richard Gamon. On Chandos’s death in 1789, his interest passed to his heiress Anne Elizabeth, suo jure Baroness Kinloss [S]. In 1796 Penton retired. His wish to do so had been known to the 3rd Duke of Portland, whose line he followed, and Portland solicited his seat, 28 Jan.
Since 1774 Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, had assumed unchallenged control of Whitchurch. His nephew George Brodrick, 4th Viscount Midleton [I], whom he returned in that year diverged from him politically from 1784 until 1793, but was regarded as co-patron and was succeeded, on obtaining a British peerage in 1796, by his brother William until 1818. Sydney returned his heir, and he, on succeeding to the title, his two brothers in turn.
Stockbridge had a reputation for venality and no patron had ever succeeded in establishing a lasting interest there. By 1788 the Luttrell interest had vanished and a state of virtual anarchy prevailed. With no patron to manage affairs, direction of the voters was assumed by two of themselves, Christopher Bishop, a plumber and glazier, and one Horner, each of whom had grouped around himself a party of electors. The two coalesced with a combined following of 84 and contact was established with John Cator with whom a satisfactory understanding was reached for the return of two Members.
In August 1789, ridiculing a suggestion that he should stand for Southampton, where he knew only one member of the corporation, Charles Philip Yorke added:
and in order to be a candidate for Southampton it is not only necessary to be known, but to be known sub modo; namely to be a rich man, at least one well disposed to spend money.
He disliked the prospect of patronage ‘jobs’—‘almost as many as for Dover’—and concluded:
