WHITMORE, Thomas (1711-73), of Apley, nr. Bridgnorth, Salop.

Returned on the family interest for Bridgnorth soon after coming of age, Whitmore spoke against a place bill in 1735, but voted against the Spanish convention in 1739, having been ‘got within the last hour by the Prince’ who ‘was the whole while in the House, applauding all abuse and canvassing the Members’.1Harley Diary, 22 Apr. 1735; Coxe, Walpole, iii. 609. He did not vote on the place bill in 1740. In the next Parliament he was put down in the Cockpit list of October 1742 as ‘Pelham’, voted with the Administration in all recorded divisions, and was classed in 1746 as Old Whig. During the 1745 rebellion he enlisted in Lord Powis’s (H. A. Herbert) regiment of militia.2Owen and Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 507. He was one of the group of Shropshire Whigs led by Lord Powis, who in 1748 unsuccessfully applied to the Duke of Newcastle on Whitmore’s behalf for the office of governor of North Carolina for his younger brother George.37 June 1748, Add. 32715, f. 174. In 1753 Whitmore himself wrote to Newcastle asking that he would place his brother ‘in some post, as he has nothing but the small younger brother’s fortune to live upon’.41 Apr. 1753, Add. 32731, f. 324. After his retirement from Parliament in 1754 the struggle for George’s preferment was brought to a successful conclusion by his other brother William.5Namier, Structure, 249-52. He died 15 Apr. 1773.