Oxfordshire

Oxford University was the chief seminary of the Church and pre-eminent as a focus of Toryism. The intensity of Tory politics in the university sharpened during the 1690s as a growing sense of grievance took hold among the ordinary fellows. Much of this annoyance stemmed from the government’s oft-seen failure to include Oxford dons among the recipients of ecclesiastical patronage, thereby turning many of them against the religious moderation of William III and his ministries. Discontent was also nurtured by the increasing difficulty of obtaining clerical livings in the parishes.

A hotbed of party dissension during the 1680s and much of the 1690s, Oxford was emerging as a Tory stronghold by the end of King William’s reign. The city’s large body of freemen, entitled to vote in both parliamentary and corporation elections, constituted a potentially unruly electorate. None the less there were higher forces at work which kept them largely in check.

In the last decades of the 17th century Woodstock was a modestly sized market town of few charms and no special significance. Without a staple manufacture to sustain its economy, the town was, in the 1680s, considered to be ‘poor’. It was, however, beginning to feel some advantage as a social resort, as the local horse racing inaugurated by the 3rd Lord Lovelace (John†) in the later 1670s grew in popularity with gentry from the surrounding areas. The construction of Blenheim Palace nearby during the two decades after 1705 brought substantial economic benefit, and with it a new affluence.

Though Banbury’s franchise was restricted to its corporate body, none of the local landed families had found it possible to assume a controlling interest over the borough’s single seat before 1690. At elections since the Restoration the seat had passed, usually with little apparent competition, from one gentleman to another on prior agreement.

The traditional party alignments continued at Oxford long after they had vanished elsewhere. The old interest reigned supreme, and the university showed a preference for safe Midland squires. Several local noblemen had influence, and the Government carried weight through its disposal of clerical patronage and the regius professorships, but the university remained fiercely jealous of its independence. There was always considerable pressure to avoid the inconvenience of a contest, and the sitting Members were sure of re-election.

New Woodstock, ‘adjoining to the wall of Blenheim Park’,Oldfield, Boroughs (1792), ii. 390. was a complete pocket borough of the Duke of Marlborough.