The strongest interest at Cirencester belonged to the Earls Bathurst, whose house and park adjoined the town and who, as lords of the manor, appointed the steward and bailiff, the returning officers. Their influence was all-pervading, but it fell considerably short of total electoral control of a borough where a sizeable proportion of the adult males had the vote. They commanded the return to one seat only, while the other usually went to local men or neighbouring landowners.
By the end of the 18th century Bristol had lost its position as the second largest city and second most important port in the kingdom, but it remained one of the most prestigious and demanding constituencies. Despite its large electorate, of which a significant proportion was non-resident, control was securely in the hands of the long-established political clubs, led by a comparatively small number of men from the propertied and mercantile classes.
The electoral pact of 1783 whereby the 5th Duke of Beaufort, a Pittite, and the 5th Earl of Berkeley, a follower of the Prince of Wales, had agreed to end their long rivalry and settle for the nomination of one Member each, remained in force in this period. The aristocratic monopoly provoked considerable resentment among the gentry, the lesser freeholders and the wealthy clothiers of the Stroud area. Opposition was frequently threatened, but did not materialize until 1810.
The majority of the corporation of Maldon had been ousted by quo warranto in the 1760s and the charter of the borough thereby undermined; the electorate diminished steadily from about 800 in 1768 to about 150 in 1790. The sheriff of Essex acted as returning officer, a symbol of the success of the neighbouring country gentlemen in their endeavours, since 1754, to make Maldon ‘a county, not a borough interest’.PRO 30/8/181, f. 112; Add. 38739, f. 171; Essex RO, Strutt mss micro. T/B 251, Strutt to Addington, 27 July 1802.
A corporation borough long controlled by the Treasury through the Customs House and Post Office patronage, Harwich characteristically returned two superannuated secretaries of the Treasury in 1790: one of them, John Robinson, having represented the borough since 1774, was by now patron and although the Treasury regarded the borough as ‘open’, no difficulty was made for him. Early in 1796 Robinson, who had not found it possible to satisfy applications for patronage, was obliged to quell a ‘schism’, as he called it, at Harwich.
‘Colchester without a contested election could hardly be Colchester in Essex’: only one election (1802) and two by-elections (1812, 1817) did not proceed to a contest in this period. With less than half of the large electorate resident in Colchester, such contests proved discouragingly expensive, because of the cost of transporting voters rather than because of venality.
A compromise between the leading interests of the two opposite parties was maintained in the county from 1774 until 1810. Bramston was the Member inclined to government, and Bullock the representative of the ‘old Whig’ interest, though he rallied to ministers during the French revolutionary war.
Durham had been represented by members of the Lambton family of Lambton and of the Tempest family of Wynyard, both owners of extensive and lucrative coal mines, since 1734 and 1742 respectively, the only brief hiatus in this record being the episode in 1761-2 when the corporation, backed by the church, had created over 200 honorary freemen to secure the return of Ralph Gowland over John Lambton at a by-election. The result had been reversed on petition and the ‘Durham Act’ subsequently passed to prevent honorary freemen from voting until they had held the freedom for 12 months.
The strongest territorial interests in Durham belonged to the Vanes of Raby, earls of Darlington, and to the church, headed by the bishop of Durham and the diocesan officials. The leading gentry families, though often divided by personal rivalries, tended to be Whig in politics. The Wearside and Tyneside shipping and commercial interest were important, but with many of the old landed families having a stake in the coal trade, protection of which was obligatory on all Durham Members, the frontier between land and trade was blurred.See E.
In 1802, when there was a contest for the boroughs for the first time since 1735, The Times commented that ‘Weymouth and Melcombe Regis have always been considered as close boroughs’. In June 1789 Gabriel Steward, who had acquired by marriage the predominant influence of the Tucker family, which conceded two seats to government in exchange for the disposal of patronage, sold his property.
