Leominster

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in inhabitants paying scot and lot

Number of voters:

about 300 in 1717;1 over 400 in 1747

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
1 Feb. 1715THOMAS CONINGSBY, Baron Coningsby219
 EDWARD HARLEY155
 Henry Gorges138
19 Mar. 1717GEORGE CASWALL vice Coningsby, called to the Upper House190
 Richard Gorges38
 Henry Gorges20
  Election declared void, 30 May 1717 
17 June 1717GEORGE CASWALL 
 Henry Gorges 
24 Mar. 1721WILLIAM BATEMAN vice Caswall, expelled the House 
27 Mar. 1722SIR ARCHER CROFT253
 SIR GEORGE CASWALL205
 Edward Harley92
 James Clarke30
 — Raby16
22 Aug. 1727SIR GEORGE CASWALL265
 WILLIAM BATEMAN, Visct. Bateman262
 Sir Archer Croft109
29 Apr. 1734ROBERT HARLEY303
 SIR GEORGE CASWALL262
 Sir Robert de Cornwall137
8 May 1741JOHN CASWALL339
 CAPEL HANBURY330
 Robert Harley152
 Bryan Crowther7
29 Mar. 1742ROBERT HARLEY vice Caswall, deceased210
 Sir Robert de Cornwall101
 George Hanbury5
 John Bach 0
30 June 1747SIR ROBERT DE CORNWALL391
 JAMES PEACHEY291
 Sir Charles Hanbury Williams127
 Richard Gorges8

Main Article

Leominster had a reputation for venality. In 1717 George Caswall’s agent was paying up to 20 guineas a man;2 in 1721 Edward Harley, then M.P. for the borough, said that it had ‘become mercenary, and the best bidder will have the best interest to be served’;3 and all that the 2nd Lord Egmont could say for it in his electoral survey, c. 1749-50, was that he did ‘not think it so venal as to be carried by the best bidder’. During most of the period 1715-54 one of the seats went to ‘the best bidder’ in the persons of the Caswalls, father and son, and of James Peachey, a nabob, and the other to one of the neighbouring gentry. All the Members, except Capel Hanbury, had estates in or near the borough, and all but Hanbury, who, however, was a connexion of Lady Coningsby’s, and Peachey, came from long established local families. In 1745 Velters Cornewall told Henry Pelham that ‘Lady Coningsby, Lord Oxford, and Sir Robert Cornwall ... have the love and almost all the votes of that town [Leominster]’.4

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xviii. 525.
  • 2. Ibid. 573.
  • 3. To the Duke of Chandos, 21 Dec. 1721, Portland mss.
  • 4. 16 June 1745, Newcastle (Clumber) mss.