Aylesbury was squalid and venal, and without an established patron. Most of the neighbouring gentlemen preferred to leave the borough alone; elections were expensive; and rich outsiders were welcome. When Thomas Potter was appointed joint paymaster general in November 1756 he tried to conceal it from his constituents as long as possible, thus reducing the danger of a contested re-election. ‘I absolutely can’t afford above £500’, he wrote to his friend John Wilkes.
Amersham was a complete pocket borough of the Drake family of Shardeloes, one mile from Amersham, who owned most of the property in the town.
In 1790 the Selwyn control of Ludgershall was challenged for the first time since 1747. George Selwyn had long neglected ‘that beggarly place’, as he contemptuously termed the borough, and now Thomas Everett, a London banker of local origins, who owned a number of freeholds at Ludgershall and had purchased the Biddesden estate, put up his banking partners, John Drummond and his brother. They were not successful, but Selwyn realized that he would hand on a ‘diminished interest’ to his heir, Viscount Sydney.
In 1788 John Barker Church, a former bankrupt, who had made a fortune from his business activities in America during the revolutionary war, purchased Earl Verney’s property in Wendover, undeterred by the continued truculence of the mercenary element which had broken Verney’s careless hold in 1784, Unlike his predecessor, he was wealthy and assiduous enough to profit from his investment and returned himself as a Foxite Whig in 1790.
The principal interests at Marlow changed hands with the neighbouring property in the decade before 1790, but the borough retained its essentially venal character and continued to require attentive management.This account is based principally on letters from John Fiott to Sir William Lee between 1786 and 1796 (Bucks.
From 1754 to 1790 the representation of Wycombe was controlled jointly by the Waller family of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield and the Petty family of Temple Wycombe and Loakes House, whose head from 1761 was William, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne. Their control derived from influence exerted within the common council, a self-electing body with the power of creating freemen, almost half of whom were non-resident by 1790.L.J. Ashford, Wycombe, 189-90.
Buckingham remained entirely under the control of the 1st and 2nd Marquesses of Buckingham, high stewards of the borough, who imposed their dictates on the corporation, a hand-picked body composed largely of their tenants and employees, from their nearby seat at Stowe.PP (1835), xxiii. 166. The only incident to ruffle the 1st Marquess occurred in July 1806, when his brother Lord Grenville arranged the return of Fremantle, who was to be appointed secretary to the Treasury, for a vacancy which Buckingham had created for his relative, Lord Percy.
The 1st Marquess of Buckingham, head of the Grenville family, gained a foothold at Aylesbury with the return of his private secretary Scrope Bernard at a contested by-election in 1789, when he defeated another local landowner, Gerard Lake, equerry to the Prince of Wales. Lake, who was supported by his fellow members of the Buckinghamshire Independent Club led by the Duke of Portland, continued to spend lavishly at Aylesbury, where venality was deep-rooted.
Amersham remained completely under the control of the Drake family, who were seated at Shardeloes about one mile away, and owned most of the property in the town.
At George I’s accession the chief interest at Ludgershall was that of the Webbs of Biddesden, in the parish of Ludgershall. In 1715 the candidates were General John Richmond Webb, his brother, Thomas, and another Tory, John Ivory Talbot. General Webb was returned with Talbot, against whom Thomas petitioned on the ground that he had a majority of legal votes but that the bailiff had been prevailed upon to return Talbot. The petition was withdrawn.CJ, xviii. 37, 425-6. In 1722, when all three candidates were Webbs, the general and his son, Borlase, defeated Thomas.