Buckinghamshire

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 manorVCH Bucks. iii. 147. appointed the returning officer, nominating Tories at every election. During the long minority of William Drake, who held one seat for 50 years, single anti-Drake candidates were put up at three elections between 1728 and 1735 but their voting strength was only about half that of the Drake candidates.

The dominant interests at Ludgershall were enjoyed by the Roman Catholic Brownes, a cadet branch of the Montagu family, as lords of the manor, and the successive proprietors of the Savernake estate, the Seymours and Bruces. In 1660 these interests were exercised respectively in favour of the Presbyterian William Prynne and William Thomas, Lord Hertford’s agent. No opposition was made to Prynne, but his fellow-Presbyterian Sir John Evelyn, lord of the adjoining manor of Everley, stood against the staunchly Anglican Thomas, and his indenture was signed by the bailiff.

Wendover was a borough by prescription dominated by the Hampden interest. This family, more perhaps than any other, was identified with the country party, and they were always able to command one seat, but not until 1689 did they attempt to claim both. In 1660 Richard Hampden, a Presbyterian, was accompanied by John Baldwin, gentleman porter of the Tower since 1645, who as lord of the manors of Wendover Borough and Wendover Forrens appointed the returning officer.

Marlow was a borough by prescription, with the franchise enjoyed by the inhabitant householders, until a decision in 1680 restricted it to scot and lot payers only, and approximately halved the electorate. Many voters were bargemen, notoriously turbulent at election time. The main interests were those of the royalist Borlases and the Presbyterian Hobys.

Though the right of election was in the whole body of freemen, the franchise was, in effect, controlled by the common council, that is the mayor, bailiffs and aldermen, 15 in number, who had usurped the right to create freemen, granted by charter to the entire freeman body. But two gentry families particularly, Pye of Bradenham and Borlase of Bockmer, exercised a natural interest.L. J. Ashford, Hist. Wycombe, 155-6.