County

There was no dominant aristocratic interest in the county; the choice of Members lay with the country gentlemen. Sir Cordell Firebrace and John Affleck, returned unopposed in 1754, ranked as Tories, and so did Rowland Holt. When Affleck declined to stand again in 1761, the Rev. Sir William Bunbury, who had inherited the Suffolk estates of his uncle Sir Thomas Hanmer, M.P. for Suffolk 1710-27, put up his son, Thomas Charles, who was not yet of age and ‘then upon his travels’;Hist. Four Last Elections for Suff. 1772. Sir John Rous was another candidate.

In 1753 the two outstanding Staffordshire families, the Leveson Gowers of Trentham (Whigs) and the Bagots of Blithfield (Tories), came to a compromise about the forthcoming general election. ‘I am glad to hear Staffordshire is agreed’, wrote Henry Pelham to Newcastle, 27 July 1753,Add. 32732, f. 36. ‘a contest would have cost a great sum of money, and I believe not ended better than it will now.’ There was no contest 1754-90; one seat was always conceded to the Leveson Gower interest and the other usually went to a country gentleman.

There was no one dominant aristocratic interest in the county, and the knights of the shire were invariably chosen from among the leading country gentlemen. Of the two Members elected in 1754, Thomas Prowse had sat since 1740, and Sir Charles Kemys Tynte since 1747. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, returned on Prowse’s death in 1767, refused to stand in 1768, and Tynte now stood on a joint interest with Richard Hippisley Coxe, while the third candidate, John Trevelyan, turned especially against Tynte (he seems to have made approaches to Coxe). Lord Westmorland wrote to Tynte on 5 Oct.

Since the death in 1734 of Henry, 3rd Earl of Bradford (his heir, the last Bradford of this creation, was an imbecile), there was no dominant aristocratic influence in the county, and the choice of the knights of the shire lay with the Tory country gentlemen, after 1747 on the tacit understanding that they in turn left Shrewsbury to the Whigs headed by Lord Powis. In 1762, when Powis remained with the new court, one section of his group left him. Moreover about that time a powerful Clive interest was established in the county.

Three families dominated Rutland politics: the Cecils, Earls of Exeter; the Noels, Earls of Gainsborough; and the Finches, Earls of Winchilsea.

Between 1710 and 1754 there was no contest in Oxfordshire; but the electoral peace was broken in 1754 when Sir Edward Turner and Lord Parker, supported by the Duke of Marlborough and Lords Macclesfield and Harcourt, stood on the new or Whig interest, against the Tories, Lord Wenman and Sir James Dashwood.

‘The idea I gave Lord Rockingham of this county’, wrote Sir George Savile in 1769,Rockingham Mems. ii. 138. ‘was four dukes [Newcastle, Portland, Kingston, and Rutland], two lords [Willoughby and Howe], and three rabbit warrens [Nottingham, East Retford, and Newark], which I believe in fact takes in half the county in point of space.’ And Oldfield in 1792:Boroughs, ii.

In 1754 the Whig-Tory antagonism in Northumberland politics was beginning to break down. ‘The Whig interest ... is now established for ever in this county’, wrote the Earl of Northumberland to Newcastle on 5 July 1753.Add. 32732, ff. 174-5. ‘Sir William Middleton and Sir Harry Grey were this day unanimously declared joint candidates by the greatest number of gentlemen that ever appeared at any meeting for this county.’ They were returned unopposed, and subsequent elections until 1774 were not contested.

Northamptonshire was free from aristocratic control and its representation was securely in the hands of the country gentlemen. No election went to the poll during this period and expenses were small: Sir Edmund Isham in 1768 paid just over £180, most of which went in drink for the freeholders.Election accounts, Isham mss, Northants. RO. Until 1784 political issues played little part in elections.

There was no dominant aristocratic interest in Norfolk, but the choice of the knights of the shire was made from a few leading families. At the beginning of the period Whigs and Tories compromised the representation, and in 1754 and 1761 Sir Armine Wodehouse, a Tory, and George Townshend, a Whig, were returned unopposed. On Townshend’s succession to the peerage in 1764 three candidates came forward: George Hobart, Thomas de Grey, and Sir Edward Astley; and de Grey, with the support of the Townshend and Walpole interests, was returned unopposed.