In Warwickshire there continued a strong preference among the gentry for deciding elections in advance through general meetings. The infrequency with which polls were held during this period in itself testifies to the general acceptability of this manner of proceeding. None the less, it was always appreciated how easily the ‘unanimity’ of the county might be disturbed by dissentient or ambitious spirits. At the beginning of 1702, for example, Sir Charles Holte, 3rd Bt.†, a former shire knight, worried that recent instances of interest-making and the espousal of parties were likely to lead to unsavoury divisiveness in future elections: ‘I shall be heartily sorry this proves true, because it was not only the honour but interest also of our county to support and maintain a good agreement among the gentlemen.’ The ‘gentlemen’ could also be taken to include peers, for there were no predominant aristocratic interests. The seven or so resident peers who usually busied themselves in county affairs, including the Tory lord lieutenant, the Earl of Northampton, tended to take their place in electoral matters alongside the gentlemen. Most of the peers and the senior gentry were of a Tory mind, and throughout the period their choice of candidates was invariably returned, usually without challenge. When put to the test, Whiggery proved a minority force among the freeholders. But there was growing complaint in Whig quarters by the later years of Queen Anne’s reign that the nomination of candidates was no longer an open affair and had become the preserve of a small Tory clique.3

Four candidates stood in 1690. At an early stage in the election preparations it became clear that Sir Richard Newdigate, 2nd Bt.†, one of the Whiggish outgoing shire knights, would attempt to retain his seat. However, there soon surfaced a strong current of determination among the Tory gentry to prevent the continued Whig occupancy of the county seats. Even before the gentlemen met to choose their candidates, Lord Digby (William*), one of the county’s Tory dignitaries, was writing to Viscount Weymouth (Thomas Thynne†) to inform him of the general resolution taken ‘to oppose Sir R[ichard] N[ewdigate] with the utmost of our power’. Newdigate was partnered by an untried local Whig, Sir John Burgoyne, 3rd Bt. of Wroxall Abbey. Meeting on 14 Feb., a mainly Tory gathering of gentlemen set up William Bromley II of Baginton, the future Speaker and secretary of state, who though comparatively new to county affairs had already the reputation of ‘a very good man’, and Andrew Archer of Umberslade. After three days of polling, apparently not without violence, both Tory candidates were returned. Newdigate lost by a reported ‘500 voices’. During the election proceedings he came off worse in an unseemly scuffle involving Archer and Bromley, complained that an expensive cravat he was wearing had been torn, and swore that he would personally inform King William of the incident. It was probably he, rather than Burgoyne, who instigated the freeholders’ petition, which alleged that the high sheriff had not acted to prevent them from being attacked and beaten, and that Newdigate’s life had also been hazarded. Though referred to the elections committee, the case was never reported. Newdigate’s chances of regaining his seat never prospered, but for the duration of William’s reign he continued to feature in Warwickshire elections at the forefront of the Whig interest. In 1695 he stood singly against Bromley and Archer but was ignominiously defeated. Despite, or perhaps because of, this further setback, he ‘and his party’ threw themselves energetically the following year into the promotion of the Association in the county. Newdigate may well have seen it as an ideal opportunity to re-establish his credentials as leader of the Whig interest. The Association roll compiled under his direction was a hastily contrived affair, albeit signed by many thousands, and was presented by him at Kensington on 8 Apr. He was clearly anxious that his own endeavours should benefit from royal notice before the ‘official’ Association was received from the county. This second document was much longer, containing the signatures of all the chief county officials, and was prepared at a more leisurely pace under the direction of a Tory gentleman, Sir Charles Shuckburgh, 2nd Bt., who presented it at the end of April. The Duke of Shrewsbury later commented that such zeal ‘was not expected from that county’. This vast display of unanimity was tempered, however, by the open dissent of several senior Tories, who renounced their lieutenancy commissions a few months later. These included Bromley, Lord Digby, a Member for Warwick, and two former county Members, Sir Charles Holte and Robert Burdett*.4

The 1698 election saw both Bromley and Archer retire from their seats. Both had given negative initial responses to the Association and it is conceivable that the gentry continued to bear a certain animus against them, obliging them to stand down. That this was the chief consideration at the pre-electoral consultations for new candidates is given further substance by the fact that one of the Tories adopted in their stead was Shuckburgh, who had been the chief promoter of the official Warwickshire Association. The other candidate chosen was Sir John Mordaunt, 5th Bt., and both were returned unopposed. Their hopes of an uncomplicated re-election at the beginning of 1701 were briefly threatened by Newdigate’s renewed machinations, this time on behalf of his son. While Mordaunt was detained in London by illness at the end of 1700, Shuckburgh began canvassing the gentry, but was alarmed to find Newdigate set on a determined course to oust Mordaunt. Newdigate had gone so far as to prevail with the high sheriff to summon a meeting ‘of all the gentlemen in the county’ at Kenilworth on 30 Dec., pointedly avoiding Warwick, where the sessions were in progress, which was the usual venue for ‘Tory’ meetings. Shuckburgh informed Mordaunt that the matter made ‘great noise’ and that he dared not attend, fearing that Newdigate should interpret his presence without Mordaunt as implying an agreement to join with Newdigate’s son Richard. As a way of encouraging this arrangement Newdigate had unscrupulously spread reports that Mordaunt’s health would not allow him to serve as knight of the shire for another term. The projected Kenilworth meeting never took place: Shuckburgh or some other may have persuaded the sheriff of the unreasonableness of holding the meeting with Mordaunt still absent in London. In any event, bailiffs were sent round to ‘all the great of the county’ to countermand the previous notices and advise of a new meeting set for 2 Jan. 1701. This duly took place at ‘the Swan’ in Warwick, where, the candidatures of Shuckburgh and Mordaunt were endorsed and an end was made to Newdigate’s schemes.5

The sitting Members stood again at the end of 1701. Originally Shuckburgh had decided not to stand, but changed his mind shortly after the dissolution was proclaimed, explaining to Mordaunt, ‘I think in honour, we can’t lay it down at this time’. His change of heart was primarily due to Newdigate’s further efforts to displace Mordaunt; it was not hard to divine that the withdrawal of either Member at this juncture, necessitating the setting up of an untried Tory candidate, would have allowed the Whigs some advantage. Indeed, such an impression was certainly possible, given that Whig magistrates had been more than usually active in the county earlier in the year in defiantly collecting hands to a petition, after the Kentish prototype, urging the Commons to provide supplies to enable the King to pursue a more bellicose foreign policy. Shuckburgh, addressing Mordaunt as he invariably did as ‘dear brother’, felt that ‘if they should promise a majority against, it will never to be got of again’. There was a concerted effort by Whig elements to fill the county meeting scheduled for 25 Nov. with gentlemen who normally absented themselves from such gatherings, hopeful of breaking what had become a Tory monopoly over the nomination of candidates and of fielding at least one Whig. An anonymous invitation to the meeting, apparently sent to all gentlemen, was restrained though clear in its condemnation of the Tory hold on the county seats:

I believe ere this comes into your hands you will have notice of a general meeting of the gentlemen of your county for the proposing two knights to the freeholders according to the custom where you will do well to appear with others of your friends. But take notice some gentlemen of your county who act least in all public affairs, except in recommending of Members to serve in Parliament, have already pitched upon their late Members whom I hear have accordingly resolved to stand. It’s not so much your business to recommend as to approve. You will be better able to judge how far these measures may preserve unanimity amongst the gentlemen of the county, answer the end of your address [a reference to the Warwickshire petition about the war], the expectations of the whole kingdom and the Protestant interest in Europe, than your unknown friend and servant who only is acquainted.

Bromley, the former county Member now sitting for Oxford University, emerged for the first time in this election as a co-ordinator of Tory support in the county, a role which he later performed additionally in other midland shires. By this time he was a rising Tory star in the Commons and regarded with particular respect among the squires of his native county. In November 1701 Shuckburgh and Mordaunt relied on him to persuade acquaintances along to assist in outflanking Newdigate at the adoption meeting. Four peers and 45 gentlemen gathered at ‘the Swan’ in Warwick on the 25th and chose Shuckburgh and Mordaunt. The importance attached to this meeting is indicated by the existence of a full list of attenders among Mordaunt’s surviving papers. Newdigate acquiesced in the decision, penning an assurance to Mordaunt next day that he and Shuckburgh ‘need not trouble yourselves to make any interest at all this time . . . for I find you will have no opposition’, and promising to ‘send in with your assistance a thousand men’ should there be any appearance of opposition. The candidates were not prepared to take Newdigate at his word, however, and canvassed extensively in the days remaining before the election. Shuckburgh, and presumably Mordaunt, aimed to bring in as many freeholders as could be mustered so that it might not be said ‘as some people already maliciously report, that the election is made without them’. In spite of a fleeting but unfounded rumour of opposition from Captain George Lucy of Charlecote, the old Members were returned without a contest. Barely a month after Queen Anne’s accession the county’s political activists were once more ‘bustling very strongly . . . in many parts for Members of the next Parliament’. There was much activity on behalf of Lucy and Burgoyne, but in conveying these tidings to Mordaunt, (Sir) Henry Parker (2nd Bt.*) was quite unconcerned about who the opponents were likely to be: ‘Old friends, and persons of whom we have had experience, I think are always to be valued.’ Little more is known about the 1702 election, the sitting Members securing their return with minimal difficulty. Lucy contested at Warwick instead, but lost.6

In 1705 Lucy felt that his chances of election had much improved as a result of the sitting Members’ differing responses to the Tack. Mordaunt had voted for it, while Shuckburgh, whose political leanings had lately inclined him towards the Court, had missed the division through genuine illness, though he was portrayed as a ‘sneaker’. Lucy probably surmised that the topicality of the Tacking issue would bring out many more Whig voters at a polled election in Warwickshire. In February he was elaborating plans to detach Shuckburgh, as the more moderate of the two Tories, and to form an electoral partnership with him. But Lucy’s grasp of electoral possibilities was invariably fanciful and over-optimistic. Although he may have infused some vigour into the languishing Whig interest in the county, he too easily conveyed the impression of a maverick whose ambitions were not hard to discern and who consequently inspired little respect. He first pinned his hopes, somewhat tentatively, on the fact that his neighbour, Lord Willoughby de Broke (Richard Verney†), who was Shuckburgh’s father-in-law, was ‘much out of conceit’ with the Tackers and might be prevailed upon to recommend him when the gentlemen met to decide on candidates. He also hoped it would be possible to ‘rivet’ such an arrangement by taking advantage of Shuckburgh’s connexions at court, and in particular his intimacy with Prince George:

so that the least hint from any of his highness, his court or the Duchess of Marlborough or any other person of quality in that interest, for him [Shuckburgh] to join with me would be of that influence to him and my Lord Willoughby that he would find when he comes into the country so great a probability of succeeding by joining with me without joining so much upon Mr Bromley and the high-flyers’ interest that he would be at liberty upon such a choice to vote in the House without looking upon himself to be anyways accountable to that interest on which he both hitherto so much depended.

A series of letters was to be despatched to the controllers of key Whig interests around the county applying for assistance, though they were to be sworn to secrecy about Lucy’s intentions until a suitable opportunity presented when he could ‘at one instant alarm the whole county’ and set in motion a vigorous campaign, though this would not be until the gentlemen were resolved upon candidates:

I am satisfied I shall have many gent[lemen] vigorous for me if well managed, but if the gentry of the other interest come to have any real grounds of suspicion they will be all on their guard and engage the interest, or set up a fresh man of the same principles with a Tacker, which will be harder to remove than the present Tacker.

Above all he counted on the Earl of Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*) to broach the matter with Shuckburgh. Lucy was already in the process of cultivating an acquaintanceship with Sunderland over the forthcoming elections in Warwickshire. He appears to have hoped to rouse the Earl into taking a more positive interest in the Whig cause in the county, and thereby to advance his own parliamentary ambitions. To begin with, Lucy unfolded his present scheme to Sunderland’s man of business, but on 17 Mar. reported on the current state of affairs in Warwickshire directly to Sunderland himself. Several informal meetings of gentlemen in Lucy’s neighbourhood had caused ripples of apprehension among supporters of the sitting Members, but there had been little response to his ‘applications’ to strategic Whig interests. He believed a propitious moment to declare would be the time of the assizes on 26 Mar., ‘when most of the gent[lemen] will be confined on the grand jury that is in the interest of the present knights’. The scheme involving Shuckburgh was not mentioned, evidently having fallen through. Instead, Lucy enlarged to Sunderland upon a new and even more far-fetched design. This depended wholly upon Sir Francis Dashwood, 1st Bt.*, being sufficiently incensed by the ‘ill-usage’ his son-in-law, Sir Orlando Bridgeman, 2nd Bt.*, had received from the Tories in the Coventry election to prevail upon his other Warwickshire son-in-law, Sir Fulwar Skipwith, 2nd Bt.*, to stand for knight of the shire jointly with Lucy. Lucy’s optimism for the scheme was boundless:

I am persuaded that during the assizes it might be so managed that for £100 apiece expense in ticketing, which at 12d. apiece every ticket will engage 2,000 electors who will for double voices be entitled to 2s. each which pays horse hire from the remoter part of the county or otherwise buys ale which brings in all the little freeholders that otherwise will not appear. There is not above 3,000 electors in all in this county. I am persuaded if Sir Fulwood [sic] would take courage and our other friends engaged we should set the old Members very hard.

Skipwith had already evinced an inclination to stand, but had been easily warned off by Lord Brooke (Fulke Greville†), one of the county’s resident peers. It was for this reason that Lucy thought it ‘will be long ere they requite him by making him a tender of their services’ and that Skipwith would be willing to stand with him. However, this was both the first and last mention of Skipwith’s name in connexion with the 1705 election. Another Warwickshire gentleman, Sir Thomas Wagstaffe*, was reported in mid-March to be ‘hunting this country to get votes’ though not in concert, it seems, with Lucy. But he, too, soon disappeared from the electoral scene. Shuckburgh and Mordaunt were named as candidates ‘unanimously’ at a meeting of gentry and freeholders at Warwick on 18 Apr. However, this was soon followed by a circularized declaration ‘that the said George Lucy was proposed by diverse gentlemen and in all appearance by the majority of the freeholders then present as a candidate for one of the knights of the shire’. By this stage Lucy had resolved to stand singly and, as indicated on a printed notice given out to the freeholders, appealed to the electorate on the populist grounds that ‘their rights in the election of Parliament men’ had of late years been taken out of their hands. He had the active backing of only a handful of gentlemen but the good will of most Dissenters, including substantial numbers of Quakers; the bishop of Worcester apparently refused Lucy his interest on being informed that ‘a fanatic preacher is kept in his family’. There are almost no reports of the subsequent stages of the campaign: Tory acquaintances of Shuckburgh in adjacent counties were surprised to hear that he ‘should be so powerfully attacked’ and made arrangements to ferry in out-voters if needed. The contest was fought to a poll, the outcome of which saw Lucy trail the Tory victors by some 800 votes, and showed the extent to which Tory sentiment was ingrained among the county freeholders. It was not to be until 1774 that they were again called upon to poll for their representatives.7

News of Shuckburgh’s death early in September, so soon after a difficult election, caused fresh consternation, not least to such as Bromley who felt that ‘this may give some trouble’. In the weeks that followed a variety of names were canvassed among the Tory gentlemen, including Skipwith, Wagstaffe, Burgoyne and Archer. However, in the first week of October a meeting of gentlemen agreed unanimously to set up Archer, who had stood down from his county seat in 1698. An important factor in Archer’s favour was his previous parliamentary experience. The setting up of an untried candidate might have given the Whigs greater encouragement to contest, but after Archer’s selection Lord Digby doubted of any opposition, ‘for the captain [Lucy] knows it is in vain’. The possibility that Lucy might still spring an opposition did not altogether recede. On 7 Nov., some three weeks before the by-election was due, Archer chanced upon Lucy and the Burgoynes, father and son, ‘in a close consult’ in Warwick and inquired if any ‘disturbance’ was intended. Lucy’s reported answer was that ‘it was a shame that this county should be wholly governed by four gentlemen. No explanation was made of this enigmatical answer, so that we remain in the dark.’ He continued to keep the county notables on tenterhooks almost until the last moment. However, on the day itself, the 28th, Archer was declared elected amid ‘a very handsome appearance of gent[lemen] in town [Warwick] and a very considerable number of freeholders’, with Lucy, though present, offering no opposition. In 1708 the decision to readopt the sitting Members as candidates seems to have been taken by a much smaller body of leading county figures, which in some Whig quarters aroused disgust and annoyance. The Earl of Coventry, the Whig recorder of Coventry, wrote to his wife on this score:

Warwickshire is like to be no less famed for an attempt made to govern that branch of the kingdom by seven electors who lately met in the shire town to choose Members for all the rest of the freeholders in the county, and have very imperiously and unanimously fixed upon Mordaunt and Archer; but so very few gentlemen appearing ’tis thought the tide is turned and that some person incog[nito] has secured the greatest part of the interest with an attempt to oppose, [even] if he does not carry the election.

No challenge was mounted, however, and Mordaunt and Archer were returned.8

Dr Sacheverell’s triumphant progress around the Midlands in the summer months of 1710 was a rousing Tory event. Nowhere else could this have been truer than in Warwickshire, a county with which, through family and other associations, Sacheverell was particularly connected. During the ten days he spent there in July he was fêted by the cream of Tory society, including Lords Craven, Denbigh, Leigh and Willoughby, Sir William Boughton, 4th Bt., and Bromley, and was greeted enthusiastically by huge crowds. Thus, when the likelihood of an election materialized in the latter half of August there was every prospect of Tory success. It was no doubt with this advantage in mind that the Earl of Northampton notified Bromley of his desire to put up his son Lord Compton, who only the previous year had completed a grand tour. Bromley discussed the situation with Mordaunt, whom he found anxious to continue in Parliament, though naturally prepared if necessary to stand aside in deference to the lord lieutenant’s son and heir. In the meantime, Archer’s intentions could not be ascertained as he was travelling in the Low Countries. Bromley seems to have preferred that Mordaunt be enabled to keep his seat, stressing to Northampton that he had ‘behaved himself on all occasions entirely to our satisfaction’. At the beginning of September the situation was clarified, however, when word filtered through that Archer would decline standing. He asked specifically to be succeeded by Lord Compton, which must suggest that news had reached him of Northampton’s wish to propose his son, and that his own move was out of consideration for Mordaunt’s position. It was deemed prudent by Bromley, Mordaunt and Northampton to keep Archer’s decision ‘as secret as possible’ until the meeting to approve the candidate, so as to prevent ‘caballing’. Archer, for his part, planned to remain abroad until after the election to avoid being ‘solicited to alter his resolution’. On 30 Sept. Mordaunt informed Northampton that the gentlemen at their meeting that day had ‘unanimously agreed to join Lord Compton with me in their recommendation for the choice of freeholders at the ensuing election’. Accordingly, he asked that Compton be available at the ‘sessions’ to meet his sponsors and to sign circular letters, it being ‘a constant custom on these occasions for the candidates to write circular letters to all the gentlemen who were not present at the meetings’. Hardly surprisingly on this occasion, the Whigs did not stir, and the election was conducted amid suitable panoply:

the candidates were only the Lord Compton and Sir John Mordaunt. Mr Craven, one of the Members of Parliament for the city of Coventry, rode from thence attended by about 200 horse, all with such favours in their hats as he had given after his own election, with the city-waits, and also by the gentlemen living in or near the said city. When met, the Lord Digby and Mr Archer, with another body of freeholders, and they, came into this town, the music playing before ’em, and the gentlemen and freeholders riding two and two through the town. About half a mile on the other side thereof they met the two candidates, with many freeholders and with the militia drums and trumpets before ’em; they joined together and returned with them, marching in order to the county hall where the Lord Compton and Sir John Mordaunt were unanimously elected to the universal satisfaction of that loyal county.

However, Compton sat for barely more than a session before being summoned to the Upper House following his father’s death in December 1711. Sir William Boughton, one of those who had lately entertained Dr Sacheverell, was selected to stand for the vacancy, and as preparations went ahead for the by-election in January 1712 there was again no sign of opposition. The 1713 general election was uncontested. Boughton stood down, and though his reasons for doing so are unclear, it would seem that he made way purposely for Archer who was now anxious to re-enter the House. Mordaunt retired from parliamentary service at the next election, while Archer carried on until 1722.9