Cirencester was controlled by two Tory families, each returning one Member: the Bathursts, who as lords of the manor appointed the returning officer, and the Masters, who had property in the borough. Normally their nominees were unopposed but in 1722 the Duke of Wharton, having quarrelled with Bathurst, promised to pay the poet Edward Young for opposing Bathurst’s brother, which he did unsuccessfully, never recovering his expenses from Wharton.1 The only other contest occurred in 1727, when Lord Bathurst, hoping to obtain an earldom from George II, substituted his brother Peter, who had not previously been in Parliament, for his brother Benjamin, a strong Tory, who was put up for Gloucester. In revenge the two Whig candidates for Gloucester, Mathew Ducie Moreton and Charles Selwyn, attempted to make trouble for Bathurst at Cirencester by

bringing two strangers into the town, only to make a disturbance, without the least probability of success; infusing a notion into the people that I was ill at court, that they could protect the town from being oppressed with soldiers, but that I could never serve them in that nor anything else ... that there would be money issued out of the Treasury to support an interest against me.2

The intruders were defeated; a projected petition, claiming that the result was influenced by a riot engineered by their opponents,3 was never presented; and thenceforward the Bathurst and Master candidates were returned unopposed.