County

Northumberland elections in the 1690s were dominated by the county’s Tory interest, no Whig being returned until 1701. The strength of Toryism lay in the widespread support it enjoyed among the county’s gentry, Northumberland being regarded by many contemporaries as a hot-bed of Jacobitism. The two aristocratic families who could have been expected to provide leadership of the Tory interest, the earls of Derwentwater and lords Widdrington, became non-jurors following the Revolution and have left no evidence of activity in county elections.

‘This is certainly the greatest fanatical and Whig county in England, and now the contrary party have bestirred themselves the Whigs have lost it prodigiously.’ However, the writer of this verdict on the decisive Tory victory in Northamptonshire of December 1701 appears to have overstated the pervasiveness of Whiggery in the shire during the preceding decade, since what is much more apparent is an even balance between the parties. The second election of 1701 saw a rather more adversarial climate in county politics which continued to intensify in the next two elections.

At the beginning of this period the principals in the county were the Whig Sir Henry Hobart, 4th Bt., of Blickling and the Tory Sir Jacob Astley, 1st Bt., of Melton Constable. The other leading interests were in eclipse or decline: among the Whigs the Townshends were represented by a minor, while Sir John Holland, 1st Bt.†, of Quidenham, the veteran Parliamentarian, had by now retired from politics; on the Tory side Lord Yarmouth (Hon. William Paston†) had refused the oaths and was in any case sinking under his debts.

An unusually high relative concentration of Catholics in its northern quarter had made Monmouthshire a cockpit of religious and party political animosities in the 1670s and 1680s, but at the 1690 general election the Whig and Tory interests, in the form of two of the three leading magnate families, the Morgans of Tredegar and the Somersets, dukes of Beaufort, respectively, shared the county representation.

Although Middlesex was described by Defoe as ‘a county made rich, pleasant and popular by the neighbourhood of London’, its politics were not dominated by the influence of the capital. The ever-spreading metropolitan suburbs had already swallowed up many villages in the east of the shire, but nearly all the successful candidates could boast a substantial rural interest. Moreover, even though the shrievalty was determined by the City liverymen, the county quarter sessions at Hicks Hall remained a key political platform, and retained an independent voice.

Although having few serious rivals as the most powerful interest of the county, the Berties of Grimsthorpe did not dominate the representation of the shire. They held the lord lieutenancy for the whole of the period, but successive earls of Lindsey had to rely on the boroughs for returning their kinsmen to the Commons. The eclipse of Viscount Castleton by 1702 bolstered their position, and they were fortunate that the earls of Exeter and the earls (later dukes) of Rutland did not seek to extend their electoral influence further than Stamford and Grantham respectively.

Many of Leicestershire’s freeholders were engaged in what Defoe termed ‘country business’, centring on the county’s market towns. Beyond the borough of Leicester, pockets of Dissent and Whiggish opinion were particularly well entrenched in areas about the shire’s eastern flank, in the north centring on Melton Mowbray, and in the south around Market Harborough; in the latter area many were said to frequent ‘conventicles’, and another correspondent advised a prospective Tory candidate to canvass the area thoroughly in order that the Dissenters be ‘laid asleep’.

The extensive remodelling of Lancashire’s bench and the county’s corporations by James II and his agents created bitter divisions in the county, and these were exacerbated in 1689 when Lord Brandon was appointed lord lieutenant in the place of William Stanley, 9th Earl of Derby, who had refused this place when he was denied the lord lieutenancy of Cheshire.

Although Kent had numerous resident peers, none had sufficient estates to domineer their gentry neighbours. Indeed, what differentiated the Kentish aristocracy from the greater gentry was merely their access to estates and wealth drawn from outside the county’s borders.

In terms of its landowning elite, Huntingdonshire was a small pond containing two very big fish, both of them Montagus, the Earl of Manchester at Kimbolton and the Earl of Sandwich at Hinchingbrooke House, which lay adjacent to the county town itself. Yet there was always sufficient independence among the greater gentry and the freeholders to prevent either or both of the magnates from engrossing the representation had they been able to attempt it.