Norfolk

County

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

Background Information

Number of voters:

about 6,000

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
18 Feb. 1715THOMAS DE GREY3183
 SIR JACOB ASTLEY3059
 Sir Ralph Hare2840
 Erasmus Earle2635
11 Apr. 1722THOMAS COKE 
 THOMAS DE GREY 
23 Aug. 1727SIR JOHN HOBART 
 SIR THOMAS COKE 
26 June 1728HARBORD HARBORD vice Coke, called to the Upper House 
26 June 1728 SIR EDMUND BACON vice Hobart, called to the Upper House 
22 May 1734SIR EDMUND BACON3224
 WILLIAM WODEHOUSE3153
 William Morden3147
 Robert Coke3081
23 Mar. 1737ARMINE WODEHOUSE vice William Wodehouse, deceased 
13 May 1741EDWARD COKE 
 ARMINE WODEHOUSE 
1 July 1747GEORGE TOWNSHEND 
 ARMINE WODEHOUSE 

Main Article

At George I’s accession the chief Norfolk families on the Whig side were the Townshends and Walpoles, on the Tory, the Wodehouses and Astleys. The sitting Members, Sir Jacob Astley and Sir Edmund Bacon, were Tories, but before the general election of 1715 Walpole won over Astley, who joined with a Whig, Thomas de Grey, to defeat two Tories. A petition by the defeated candidates, alleging that they had a majority of legal votes but that a majority for their opponents had been obtained by allowing great numbers of unqualified persons to vote, was referred to the elections committee, where it remained unheard.1 At the next two elections Whigs were unopposed, but in 1734 the Tories put up Sir Edmund Bacon and William Wodehouse, who defeated both Walpole’s candidates by a majority of six, after a contest so expensive that the next four general elections were compromised, each side taking one seat.

Author: Romney R. Sedgwick

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xviii. 38; Account of Norfolk county elections, 1713-68, Norwich City Central Lib. N.R.S. 13686, 28D4.