Cambridgeshire

To the doctors and ‘actual’ masters of arts at Cambridge, who comprised the university’s senate and its parliamentary electorate, the ‘Church interest’ naturally made a powerful appeal, and High Toryism flourished no less than at Oxford. Indeed, half as many fellows and scholars again were ejected from Cambridge at the Revolution as from the other university, and some non-jurors continued in residence there under the protection of sympathetic heads of house, notably at St. John’s under its master, Humphrey Gower.

For a freeman borough Cambridge was furnished with a relatively small electorate, amenable to management by an entrenched oligarchy of aldermen and senior common councilmen, who were, however, generally content that the parliamentary representation should be left in the hands of neighbouring squires. Such political passions as did occasionally arise stemmed from squabbles within this civic elite or between the country gentlemen who were jockeying for the corporation’s favour. Rarely is there evidence of plebeian involvement in elections, or in borough politics generally.

In 1754 the politics of the university of Cambridge were those of its chancellor, the Duke of Newcastle. Newcastle devoted special attention to Cambridge affairs, concerned himself with the details of university administration and appointments, and employed the ecclesiastical influence of the Crown to strengthen his position in the university. Cambridge was the Whig university, and as far as its parliamentary representation was concerned little better than one of Newcastle’s boroughs.

The corporation, an oligarchical body, self-recruiting under a set of intricate rules, listed under the banners of neighbouring landowners. About 1754 the dominant parliamentary influence was with the Bromleys of Horseheath; and from about 1760 with the Yorkes of Wimpole, till Mortlock and the Rutland family captured the borough in the 1780’s. Between 1737 and 1774 elections were uncontested, and the 1st and 2nd Lord Montfort, for a time with the help of Lord Dupplin, managed the borough for the Government.

The combination of Pitt, the prime minister, and Lord Euston, son and heir of the chancellor of the university, the Duke of Grafton, had overpowered the Whig sitting Members in 1784. In March 1790 it became clear that the Whigs wished to avenge themselves: Lawrence Dundas canvassed the university, accompanied by Lord John Townshend, one of the victims of 1784, and encouraged by the Prince of Wales.

By an agreement made in 1787 between John Mortlock†, the banker who had acquired a political ascendancy in the town, and the 4th Duke of Rutland, who possessed an established interest there, Cambridge became a Rutland nomination borough. The duke’s death soon afterwards made no difference.

Till 1727 Cambridge University, like Oxford, returned Tories. At the only contested election, in 1720, a strong Whig candidate, Henry Finch, a fellow of his college, whose father, Lord Nottingham, carried much weight with the church party, was defeated.

Cambridge elections were controlled by the corporation, a Tory body, who were able to manipulate the franchise by creating honorary freemen. At George I’s accession the dominant interest in the corporation was that of Sir John Hynde Cotton, the head of the Cambridgeshire Tories, who had shared the representation since 1708 with Samuel Shepheard, a Hanoverian Tory, who had gone over to the Whigs. On 6 Sept. 1714 a Cambridge Tory reported that ‘we are preparing here to throw out Shepheard by promoting Mr.