Till 1727 Cambridge University, like Oxford, returned Tories. At the only contested election, in 1720, a strong Whig candidate, Henry Finch, a fellow of his college, whose father, Lord Nottingham, carried much weight with the church party, was defeated.
Cambridge elections were controlled by the corporation, a Tory body, who were able to manipulate the franchise by creating honorary freemen. At George I’s accession the dominant interest in the corporation was that of Sir John Hynde Cotton, the head of the Cambridgeshire Tories, who had shared the representation since 1708 with Samuel Shepheard, a Hanoverian Tory, who had gone over to the Whigs. On 6 Sept. 1714 a Cambridge Tory reported that ‘we are preparing here to throw out Shepheard by promoting Mr.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the Whig family of Hampden, who held the manors of Wendover Borough and Wendover Forrens, carrying the right to nominate the returning officers, controlled both Wendover seats. In 1715 Richard Hampden was able to bring in Richard Grenville under an agreement whereby the latter withdrew from the county in favour of Hampden.See BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. At the 1722 election Hampden, who had been dismissed from his office of treasurer of the navy for peculation, returned himself for Wendover with Sir Richard Steele, the Whig essayist.
The principal interests at Marlow were those of the neighbouring Whig landowners. Lord Shelburne, followed by Edmund Waller of Beaconsfield, occupied one seat from 1715 to 1741; the other was usually controlled by the successive owners of the manors of Marlow and Harleyford, Sir James Etheridge, M.P., a Tory, 1691-1719, the Guises, 1719-35, and the Claytons, 1735-87, Whigs. Two property owners on the Berkshire side of the river were able to take one seat between 1732 and 1754.
The franchise at Wycombe was controlled by the corporation, a close body, with the power of creating freemen. At George I’s accession the patron of the corporation was Thomas, 1st Marquess of Wharton, the head of the Whig interest in the county, whose nominees were returned unopposed shortly before his death in 1715. In 1722 the Wallers of Beaconsfield made an unsuccessful bid for a seat, with the support of the mayor, who was deposed by a meeting of the freemen for illegally attempting to create new freemen ‘to overthrow the interest of the late Marquess of Wharton’.L. J.
Both Buckingham seats were controlled by the local Whig families of Temple, afterwards Grenville, of Stowe, and Denton of Hillesden. The Temples were the lords paramount of the borough, receiving a quit-rent from the corporation; the Dentons held the Prebend End manor within the town.VCH Bucks. iii. 481, 483. After 1715, when a Tory single was defeated, there were no contested elections.
There was no predominant interest at Aylesbury, where the principal qualification for success was, as the 2nd Lord Egmont wrote in his electoral survey, c.1749-50, to be ‘a moneyed man’. In 1727 Philip Lloyd estimated his expenses at £900;Lloyd to Walpole, Aug. 1727, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. in the same election an agent of Sir William Stanhope’s spent £541, chiefly at public houses, including £173 on the election day.Gibbs, Hist.
Both seats at Amersham were controlled by the Drakes of Shardeloes, one mile from the borough, who as lords of the manor
Wallingford was an independent borough, ‘in the hands of the lower people’. There was no predominant territorial influence; the corporation were divided, half for and half against the Administration;John Hervey to Ld. Hardwicke, 10 Jan. 1753, Add. 35592, ff. 6-7. every election was contested. The most important interests were those of wealthy business men, such as William Hucks, the King’s brewer, who carried the borough for the Government from 1715 till his death in 1740, except in 1727 when he appears to have compromised with a Tory, George Lewen.
Reading was an independent borough with a comparatively large electorate, which was not controlled by any outside influence. The principal interest seems to have lain in the corporation, who on 22 Oct. 1705 passed a resolution that it is the opinion of the board that for the time to come, the mayor, aldermen and burgesses in their common council, in case of members to serve in Parliament for this borough, do first determine and resolve amongst themselves who shall be deemed fit representatives for that purpose.HMC 11th Rep.
