Commons 1690-1715

The estates of the earldom of Caithness had passed in 1672 into the hands of the absentee Earl of Breadalbane, but ‘considerable parts’ had subsequently been alienated to the local gentry. The relative prosperity of these lesser barons (in a county where the fertility of the land, the profits from fisheries and the cheapness of provisions enabled many proprietors to save at least part of their rental income), and the corresponding feebleness of the Caithness and Breadalbane interests, effectively emancipated the electorate from any aristocratic direction.

The county of Buteshire, comprising Bute itself and some smaller islands nearby, was under the control of the hereditary sheriff, who at the beginning of this period was James Stewart of Ardmaliesh, created Earl of Bute in 1703. He and his brother Dougal, whom the Earl returned to the first Parliament of Great Britain, were men of cavalier sympathies but drawn to the Court, and in particular to the Duke of Queensberry, with whom they had long co-operated.

The 1702 election to the Scottish parliament was fiercely contested in Berwickshire, with eight candidates competing for the four available seats. One of these, George Baillie, wisely took the precaution of also obtaining his return for Lanarkshire, eventually opting to sit there, despite being comfortably returned in the first three commissions for Berwickshire, together with Sir John Hume, 2nd Bt., of Blackadder and Sir Robert Sinclair, 3rd Bt., of Longformacus.

The influence that James Ogilvy, Earl of Seafield, derived from membership of successive Scottish administrations was more than sufficient to enable him to fill the power vacuum in Banffshire created by the non-juring scruples, Jacobite indiscretions and financial misfortunes of the other barons. Not only did Seafield hold high office from 1696 to 1708 as either secretary of state or lord chancellor for Scotland, he was also granted the hereditary sheriffdom of Banffshire in 1692.

Although Ayrshire had a recent history of controverted elections to the Scottish parliament, the county remained relatively untroubled by political strife in the aftermath of the Union. The strong popular opposition to the treaty had been largely Presbyterian in origin, from an extreme covenanting element, but Presbyterians became reconciled to the Union in due course, on contemplation of the Jacobite alternative.

Despite the fact that Argyllshire possessed over a score of freeholders at the time of the Union, its representation was held in an iron grip by the Duke of Argyll. As chieftain of the Campbells of Argyll the Duke could claim the clan loyalty of about half the electorate, and as the principal landed magnate in the county he could expect to command his tenants and dependants. In the last resort, as hereditary sheriff, he was at liberty to make whatever return he saw fit. There was no temptation, however, to exercise his power corruptly.

Unlike the majority of Scottish counties, there was no hereditary sheriff in Aberdeenshire, the 1st Marquess of Huntly having resigned his grant under pressure from the crown in 1629. Thereafter appointment had been made either at pleasure or for life. In 1705 the Earl of Mar, a rising star of the Scottish Court party, obtained a grant of the sheriffdom during pleasure, but as reward for successfully managing the Union this was converted into tenure for life in April 1707.

Although New Radnor itself exceeded in size any of the other out-boroughs the disparity was not so great as to afford it an easy dominance within the constituency; nor did the fact that its bailiff acted as returning officer give the corporation the power to control parliamentary elections. There was an alternative focus of influence in the person of the steward of the crown manors in the county, who admitted freemen to three of the four remaining boroughs (the exception was Cefnllys) at his courts leet.

Sir Rowland Gwynne* of Llanelwedd had in 1689 re-established the dominant interest his family had long enjoyed in Radnorshire, and which had only been interrupted by his flight at the time of the Rye House Plot. He and his ally Richard Williams of Cabalfa had taken both the county and the Boroughs seats in the Convention, Gwynne being returned unopposed as knight of the shire. Nor was there any opposition at first in 1690.

The Owens of Orielton had controlled the Pembroke Boroughs constituency almost without interruption since 1626, their influence centring upon the county borough, which provided both the venue for the poll and the returning officer. Until Queen Anne’s reign they were also the dominant power in Tenby, like Pembroke itself an ‘agreeable town’. The second and smaller of the out-boroughs, Wiston, was the manorial preserve of an impoverished branch of the Wogan family, which as yet had played only an insignificant part in elections.