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Liskeard
Double Member Borough
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Constituency Detail
Related Resources
Background Information
Right of Election:
in the freemen
Number of voters:
about 50
Elections
| Date | Candidate |
|---|---|
| 17 Apr. 1754 | Edmund Nugent |
| Philip Stanhope | |
| I Dec. 1759 | Philip Stephens vice Nugent, appoint to office |
| 30 Mar. 1761 | Philip Stephens |
| Anthony Champion | |
| 22 Mar. 1768 | Edward Eliot |
| Samuel Salt | |
| 11 Oct. 1774 | Edward Gibbon |
| Samuel Salt | |
| 12 July 1779 | Gibbon re-elected after appointment to office |
| 9 Sept. 1780 | Wilbraham Tollemache |
| Samuel Salt | |
| 5 Apr. 1784 | Edward James Eliot |
| John Eliot | |
| 6 Feb. 1786 | Edward James Eliot re-elected after appointment to office |
Main Article
The borough interest was in Edward Eliot, but his hold was not as absolute as at St. Germans. Thomas Jones, Lord Edgcumbe’s agent, wrote in June 1760: ‘Mr. Eliot rules there at present, though probably his interest is not so firmly established as to be impregnable from every quarter.’1 Still, nothing more about the alleged vulnerability of Eliot’s interest appears during this period. But when in 1780 Eliot, disagreeing in politics with Edward Gibbon, refused to re-elect him, this was one of the arguments he used:2
The most zealous friends I have in Liskeard declare decidedly against choosing you again, so that if I were ever so desirous of prevailing on them it is out of my power.
Gibbon, on 8 Sept., replied with an ironic reference to the electors of Liskeard ‘whom you so gravely introduce’. And in his Autobiography he remarks: ‘the electors of Liskeard are commonly of the same opinion as Mr. Eliot’.
