| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| Leicestershire | 1741 – 1747, 25 Mar. 1762 – 1774 |
On 6 Aug. 1740 Cave addressed a letter to the Leicestershire freeholders setting out the terms on which he was prepared to stand:
My father had the honour of representing you long in Parliament and I believe with great fidelity, nor am I less zealous for the general interest of the county than he was, but his elections ... were attended by a very great expense to this family. On this account, therefore, I cannot pretend to place myself in the same situation he was in and declared the same to you as one of my objections, when you nominated me for a candidate. This you were pleased to over-rule by assuring me of your effectual support in a free subscription, and by ascertaining a fixed expense on my part which you not only expected I should not exceed, but as friends to me I would not enlarge.
Edward Smith the other Tory candidate, wrote to him three days later that ‘the subscription is enlarged a good deal to support us, and I can now only add that I hope you’ll be no longer uneasy’. As he was ‘by frequent returns of gouty and rheumatic disorders, disabled to undertake any strong exercise’, his friend, Wrightson Mundy, canvassed the county on his behalf. Returned after a contest, he was absent from the division on the chairman of the elections committee in December. His only recorded votes were against the Hanoverians in 1742 and 1744. In 1747 he wrote to the freeholders:
my attendance in town has increased my disorders, and it is the advice of physicians and surgeons I have consulted and the general request of all my friends in private life that ... I shall lay aside all thoughts of being again in Parliament,
and recommended Mundy as his successor.2Braye mss, City of Leicester Mus. 23D57/3025, 3026, 3027, 3033, 3126. He did not stand again until the next reign. He died 7 Aug. 1778.