County

From 1715 to 1754 Warwickshire, ‘a county with hardly a Whig in it’,Stuart mss 65/16. was represented by Tory country gentlemen, who were all unopposed.

The Duke of Newcastle owed his pre-eminence in Sussex to his great estates, to the patronage which he could dispense as a member of the Government, and to his lavish personal expenditure.

The Onslows were the premier Surrey Whig family, with an almost prescriptive claim to one of the county seats. They did not attempt to gain control of the other, having learned by experience that the county ‘would not like it; would deem it an imposition, and taking too much upon ourselves, which is always unpopular’.HMC 14th Rep. IX, 519. Sir Richard Onslow, created Lord Onslow in 1716, ‘used always to talk to the Surrey country gentlemen as if he was nothing, and it was their interest and support only that he relied upon, which took with them extremely’.Ld.

In Suffolk the general meeting of the nobility, gentry, and freeholders usually chose two Tories without opposition. The only contest occurred in 1727, when the local Whigs, headed by the Duke of Grafton, the Earl of Bristol, and Lord Cornwallis, put up a candidate against the sitting Tory Members, who were re-elected.West Stow & Woodwell Parish Registers 1518-1850 (1903), p. 233. In 1747 the Whigs, meeting separately from the Tories, put up two candidates, who withdrew before the poll.Grafton to Newcastle, 20, 30 June, 2 July 1747, Add. 32711, ff.

The representation of Staffordshire was monopolized by four local families, the Leveson Gowers, Wards, Bagots, and Pagets, all Tories at George I’s accession except the Pagets, who had gone over to the Whigs. There were no contests till 1747, when Tory anger against the Leveson Gowers for going over to the Administration led to the first contested election for a hundred years, and the last before the reform bill. Lord Gower had expected that Bagot would ‘compromise the count’ for himself and William Leveson Gower,Ld.

The Somerset electors invariably chose local Tory country gentlemen, who were usually unopposed. Only twice was an attempt made by the Whigs to challenge Tory ascendancy. In 1715 George Speke and John Pigott stood in the Whig interest. Speke’s father circularized the freeholders on behalf of his son as follows:

In the early eighteenth century Shropshire was hotly contested between Whigs and Tories, drawn from a small group of families, the Tories being nearly all Jacobite sympathizers. The heads of the Whig interest were the Earl of Bradford and his son Henry, Lord Newport, supported by the Corbets of Stoke and Moreton Corbet; the chief Tories were Lord Gower, who had some interest in the north of the county, the Jacobite Kynastons and Robert Lloyd, and after 1740 Richard Lyster and Sir John Astley.

Rutland politics were dominated by the Finches, earls of Winchilsea and Nottingham, the Noels, earls of Gainsborough, and the Cecils, earls of Exeter.

From 1715 to 1747 the representation was monopolized by the Finches and the Noels, except in years when they ran out of family candidates. In 1734 Noels, with the concurrence of the Finches, who were all provided for, took both seats. When in 1741 Lord Winchilsea put up his brother, John Finch, Lord Gainsborough wrote to him that he was

Oxfordshire was a Tory stronghold, always returning Tories unopposed. The only hint of opposition occurred at a by-election in 1717, when Dr. Stratford of Christ Church reported to his former pupil, Lord Harley:

Sir John D’Oyly is put up by the Whigs for the county and Sir Robert Bankes Jenkinson by our friends. I fancy Sir John D’Oyly will make nothing of it; it is hoped he will see it so plainly himself that he will desist.

A few days later he wrote

The head of the Whig interest in Nottinghamshire was the lord lieutenant, Thomas Pelham Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who had inherited the estates there of his uncle, John Holles, Duke of Newcastle. In his old age he recalled how