The Montagus of Hinchingbrooke, earls of Sandwich, remained parliamentary patrons of Huntingdon in this period, as they had been since the reign of Charles II. With only one house in the town, they owed their supremacy primarily to patronage, the 4th Earl having secured Admiralty and other places for the burgesses and he and his successors maintaining their ‘popularity’ by hospitality and grants of land around the town.Oldfield, Hist. Boroughs, i.
The leading interests were those of Lords Spencer and Grimston, who had returned a Member each since 1768. Earl Spencer’s was the stronger, based on his hold over the corporation and sustained by loans, the support of the local dissenters and superiority among the outvoters;H. F. C. Lansberry, ‘Politics and Govt. in St. Albans 1685-1835’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1964), summarized in I.H.R. Bull, xli.
Hertford was invariably represented by the local gentry, and as the corporation could not make more than three honorary freemen the competition was limited. In 1790 William Baker of Bayfordbury tried to regain the seat which he had won in 1780 and lost to John Calvert of Albury in 1784. The other candidate, Nathaniel Dimsdale, was the heir of the retiring Member and, like Calvert, well disposed to Pitt’s government, which Baker opposed.
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.
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.
