Wallingford remained essentially venal, but during the first half of the period it was virtually in the pocket of Sir Francis Sykes, a rich nabob, who was said to have bought up most of the property in the borough. In April 1789 it was reported that his colleague, Thomas Aubrey, returned in 1784 on the declining interest of the 4th Earl of Abingdon, the high steward, would have to look elsewhere at the dissolution, despite his willingness to pay the going rate.
The absence of a dominant landed or manufacturing interest left Reading open, but only men with strong local connexions were likely to succeed. Earlier the borough had been notoriously venal, and after an apparent interlude of comparative respectability in the 1780s and 1790s, corruption, in the form of lavish treating, ostentatious municipal beneficence and widespread commercial racketeering, grew rife again.
Charles Knight, editor of the Windsor Express, described ‘Royal Windsor’ in the early 19th century as
a country town of the narrowest range of observation, and the tiniest circle of knowledge. The people vegetated, although living amidst a continual din of royalty going to and fro ... The ‘loyal’ or the ‘independent’ voters ... were fierce in their partisanship, but there was no real principle at the root of their differences.
In 1796 Charles Abbot, a native of Abingdon, described its electoral composition as follows:
The electors ... are about 240 scot and lot; about 70 of them take money. About half of the 240 go with the corporation. The dissenters, headed by the Tomkiss’s [Tomkinses] and Fletchers, are the next best interest. Child, the brewer, and his friends, have also considerable weight. If all three sets can agree, they carry the place in defiance of all opposition.
There was no commanding aristocratic presence in Berkshire; large landowners were few, and there was a comparative absence of propertied and traditional influence. The 6th Lord Craven, a Whig, had had a major say in the disposal of one seat until 1784, when the Coalition sitting Members were ousted by two ministerialists. He died abroad in 1791 and there is no indication that his successor sought to restore the family interest to its former strength.
The influence of the Russell family at Bedford, overpowered by Sir Robert Bernard and the corporation in 1769, had only been strong enough, since the death of John, 4th Duke of Bedford in 1771, when Bernard became recorder, to supply reinforcement to the interest established by Samuel Whitbread I, the wealthy brewer, who became a staunch supporter of Pitt.
At the dissolution of 1790 the influence of the 5th Duke of Bedford was paramount in Bedfordshire. His cousin, Lord Upper Ossory, occupied the seat which was customarily filled by a Woburn nominee. The other Member, St. Andrew St. John, sat nominally on the interest of his brother, Baron St. John, with the support of the county’s lesser Whig elements, later described as being ‘not amongst the gentry, but amongst the middle classes and more particularly the dissenters’,Add. 51662, Bedford to Holland, 11 Aug.
In 1790 George III had reigned for 30 years and had apparently fully recovered from the bout of insanity which, only a year before, had precipitated a political crisis over the question of a Regency. His prime minister, William Pitt, was in his seventh year of office and at the zenith of his political career following his triumph over opposition, who, under the leadership in the Commons of Charles James Fox, had espoused the ‘reversionary interest’ of the Prince of Wales during the regency debates.
The arrangement of these volumes is based on that of the 1754-90 section of the History.
