Two successive Bertie earls of Abingdon strove to maintain hegemony in Oxfordshire’s electoral politics during this period. They saw themselves as standard-bearers of Toryism, heading a county elite in which Tory gentlemen predominated. The Whig interest on the other hand was inherently weakened by the fact that its chief representatives tended, with few exceptions, to be gentlemen resident outside the county. In elections the Abingdon earls usually controlled nomination to one county seat, while their approval of the second candidate, put forward by the gentry, was equally essential. An important adjunct of their county-wide authority was the operation of their interest in the boroughs of Oxford and New Woodstock, and beyond the county boundaries, in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire; but their principal seat being in Oxfordshire, at Rycote, they continued to buttress their interest in the county throughout the period with further acquisitions of landed property. Their political pre-eminence had originated during the decade before the Revolution with the 1st Earl’s advancement at court. The Earl was both brother-in-law to, and an ally of, Lord Treasurer Danby (Sir Thomas Osborne†), and had quickly established his usefulness as an electoral manager in Oxfordshire and elsewhere. The 2nd Earl, succeeding in 1699, proved himself tenacious of his father’s electoral achievements. As their political fortunes fluctuated, both earls in turn were forced to preserve their personal supremacy from the electoral ambitions of front-rank politicians: Lord Wharton (Hon. Thomas*), whose electoral empire was based in Buckinghamshire, and the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†), whose political involvement in the county derived from the nation’s gift to him of Blenheim Palace, near Woodstock.

An acrimonious campaign developed in the county in 1690. The candidates were Abingdon’s son Lord Norreys, who was also attempting to retain his seat for Berkshire, and Sir Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Bt., whose close friend the 2nd Earl of Clarendon (Henry Hyde†) had commended him to Abingdon at the previous year’s election. Their Whiggish opponents were Sir John Cope, 5th Bt.*, the outgoing Member for the county, and Thomas Wheate* of Glympton Park, who had already been returned for Woodstock when the county went to the poll. The campaign was fraught with the bitter resentments engendered by the Revolution. One Tory gentleman and magistrate, Sir Edmund Warcupp, observing a general impression, declared to an Oxford acquaintance that the Tory candidates would be ‘highly opposed by the Dissenting party’ despite the fact that ‘the Church of England men’ promoted the Toleration Act, ‘which makes all sober men amazed here’. Tories were stigmatized indiscriminately as Jacobites. Abingdon, in particular, was prominently exposed to such censure, even though, as Warcupp maintained, he was ‘so early and zealous in their Majesties’ service’. Clarendon observed on 1 Feb. that Abingdon was ‘much dissatisfied’ and had to be dissuaded from resigning the lord lieutenancy of the county. The political partisanship in Oxfordshire appears to have been fuelled at least in part, by the appearance of a printed listing of members of the Convention who had opposed the transfer of the crown in February 1689, implying that they were still auxiliaries of King James. The inclusion of Norreys’ and Jenkinson’s names produced a broadsheet attack on them by an anonymous native of the county. A counterblast in their defence was immediately issued which stressed inter alia Abingdon’s role in the Revolution, and attested to the superior character of the Tory candidates with the observation that though ‘so notoriously’ abused, they had themselves refrained from replying. The Tory candidates were returned after more than a day and a half of polling, yet, as suggested by the numbers polled in 1698, the 1690 poll was hardly exhaustive and realized little more than a half the county’s overall voting potential, a possible indication that the Whigs had been forced to yield to an early superiority by the Tories. With the onset of the next election, in September 1695, it was thought that any opposition to the existing Members was most likely to come from Cope, though Clarendon expressed to Abingdon his hope that it would not be in his power to mount a campaign against the outgoing Members. At the election no one in fact stood against Norreys and Jenkinson, and Anthony à Wood noted that all was over in a quarter of an hour.3

The circumstances of the 1698 contest were closely shaped by major political developments that had occurred in the county since the previous election. Abingdon’s drift away from the Court was in large part determined by the Whig attack in 1695 on his brother-in-law Danby, since created Duke of Leeds. An associated factor in this situation was the emerging Country sentiment, in or by 1696, of those Oxfordshire Tory MPs closely associated with Abingdon: Norreys and Jenkinson for the county, Sir Edward Norreys and Thomas Rowney for Oxford, and his son Hon. James Bertie for Woodstock. Abingdon’s reluctance to subscribe the Association in 1696 led to his dismissal in the spring of 1697 from the lord lieutenancy and the chief justiceship in eyre, a fall from favour which was no doubt aggravated by his replacement in both offices by his bête noire, Wharton. The two men, despite being at daggers drawn, were brothers-in-law, each having married a daughter of Sir Henry Lee, 3rd Bt.†, of Quarendon, Buckinghamshire. The animus between them dated back to the 1680s when they clashed over the inheritance of the Lee estates, while in April 1695 Wharton had played a leading part in the Commons impeachment proceedings against Leeds. Wharton’s estate lay at Winchenden, near Aylesbury, across the Oxfordshire– Buckinghamshire border. He possessed no propertied interest of his own within the county, relying instead upon the support of Oxfordshire-based friends such as the Duke of Shrewsbury and the relatives of his own deceased first wife. Wharton’s endeavours to entrench himself in the county were first seen in the 1695 election when he gave backing to the candidacy of Sir Thomas Littleton, 3rd Bt.*, at Woodstock. Following his appointment as lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum in May 1697 Wharton began to prepare for a country-wide assault on Toryism in the forthcoming election. It was probably at his instigation that the commission of the peace was remodelled. Though only four gentlemen were removed who had initially withheld their signatures from the Association, two, the MPs Lord Norreys and Sir Edward Norreys, were Abingdon’s relations. In the first months of his lieutenancy, however, Wharton encountered a good deal of resistance among the gentry. Warcupp was informed by acquaintances, for example, ‘that my Lord Wharton, not meeting that respect and application from the gentry of this county, as his quality and qualifications merited, had or would desire his Majesty to dispense with him for not intermeddling here’. Similarly, in October, it was reported that Abingdon and the Oxfordshire gentry were ‘much discontented’. By the time Parliament was dissolved in July 1698, however, Wharton was more confident in his determination to supplant Abingdon in the control of the county seats. Against the sitting Members he fielded the two Whig candidates who had been defeated for the county in 1690, Cope and Wheate. As indicated by the poll, the campaign was energetic and well organized on both sides. The Whig cause received considerable assistance from the Dissenters; a few days before the polling began Dr Arthur Charlett, the master of University College, had to admit that ‘everywhere [they] unite with great zeal, and are much commended for their diligence and industry’. There was no small anxiety among Tories that Abingdon’s interest in the county might not hold out. The closeness of the contest, as the poll drew near, frayed the tempers of leading protagonists; a bitter confrontation took place between Abingdon and Cope. However, once polling began, the Tories soon established a comfortable lead and finally outmatched the Whig candidates by some 450 votes. The result was seen in high political circles as a personal political set-back for Wharton.4

The death of Abingdon in May 1699 removed from the county stage at a critical moment an important symbol of Tory solidarity. Politically, Dr Charlett found the news ‘afflicting’ but took heart from the likelihood that Abingdon’s successor Lord Norreys would quickly succeed to his father’s honours and interests, and that the Bertie influence would continue without the risks attendant on a long hiatus. Though still only in his mid-twenties, the new Earl was already an experienced parliamentarian and, under his father’s tutelage, steeped in county affairs. The scale of the recent Tory victory reliably indicated that however fiercely the Whigs might wish to contest the seat vacated by Norreys, their chances were remote. Among the Tories, the choice of candidate was widely discussed, even before the late Earl was interred. In some quarters it was felt that the young Sir William Glynne, 2nd Bt., would have been a good choice for the county had he not been returned for the university in the last election. Other influential Tory gentlemen, such as Simon Harcourt I*, favoured Francis Norreys*, the son of Sir Edward Norreys, and a distant cousin of both the deceased and new lords Abingdon. However, another Tory, Sir Robert Dashwood, 1st Bt., who had lost his seat at Banbury the previous year, wasted no time in putting himself forward and sending out circular letters. It is possible that Dashwood’s action was premature and perhaps conceived to pre-empt Abingdon’s naming his own choice. None the less, Dashwood’s suitability, which was quickly established, rested upon both his previous parliamentary experience, his prodigious wealth and natural interest in the county and the fact that he would have to endure a long campaign before the by-election writ could be issued. Charlett wrote early in June: ‘’Tis thought £6,000 per annum and £40,000 in specie will at this juncture very powerfully recommend a resident country gentleman to freeholders.’ Moreover, Dashwood was renowned as a loyal Churchman. To the Whigs, the passing of Abingdon offered the opportunity to challenge the family’s influence in the county. Accordingly, one of the Junto leaders, Lord Chancellor Somers (Sir John*), was set up as a rival to the young Earl for the high stewardship of the city of Oxford. Large numbers of gentlemen ‘voluntarily’ attended this election early in June to signify their approbation of Abingdon, whose election to the office was unanimous. For the by-election the Whigs set up Wheate, who almost immediately came under pressure from the resourceful campaign initiated by Dashwood. Wheate persevered throughout the summer and autumn months, though by late November it was presumed everywhere that Dashwood’s superior interest would carry the day. However, this confidence was not apparent in the poll itself, for although the individual figures have not been traced, Dashwood emerged as victor by a mere 129 votes, the outcome of what one Oxford undergraduate reported had been ‘a great struggle’.5

At the beginning of December 1700, as the next election approached, Wheate was preparing ‘as good a party as he can’ to make yet another stand against the Tories. But in the next few weeks, and with the announcement of the dissolution, it became clear that in Oxfordshire the tone of this election would be decidedly low key. Of particular note is the absence of any evidence that Wheate was actively aided by Wharton. The most surprising development, however, came at the close of the year when Dashwood announced that he declined to stand again owing to an unexplained ‘misunderstanding’ with Abingdon. Instead, Abingdon’s kinsman Sir Edward Norreys transferred from the city to stand with Jenkinson. They were both returned unopposed. It had become obvious by this stage that Wharton had failed dismally to realize his electoral ambitions in the county. In February Warcupp recounted at length to Charlett a discussion he had had with Lord Keeper Wright upon the subject:

we had so beaten him out of the pit in our county that none durst pretend to stand, at the last election on his bottom, in county, city or other corporation. Some wonder seemed at such a declination of a man’s interest, so countenanced at Court; but upon consideration, that he had no lands in the county, did not pay debts, did publicly maintain women . . . His lordship did not wonder at the lessening of his [Wharton’s] interest in our county: and these things were so fully discoursed that he asked me whether Lord Ab[ingdon] would accept the lieutenancy there. And I believe a good improvement from Churchmen on this occasion would easily bring this about, and certainly ’tis the concern of all our friends to support this K[ing] who is entirely in our interest, and perhaps wants advice and correspondence from our Churchmen and their friends.

The next three elections, in the winter of 1701, in 1702 and in 1705, aroused no discernible signs of opposition in Oxfordshire. Whig morale evidently plunged in the absence of an active figurehead, while the appointment of Abingdon as lord lieutenant shortly after Queen Anne’s accession was undoubtedly popular with the county’s Tories. The loyal address on the Blenheim victory drawn up at the Oxford quarter sessions in October 1704 was redolent of a High Tory mood among the gentry in the early years of the new reign; praise was heaped not only on the victorious Marlborough, but also more pointedly upon the Tory hero, Admiral Sir George Rooke*. After the 1705 election, however, the Abingdon interest was confronted with a new aristocratic rival. In January 1705 the Queen had granted Marlborough the royal manor of Woodstock as a mark of the nation’s gratitude. While this did not provide the Duke with a major political interest based on landed property, at county level it implied the necessity of accommodating the Duke in any future electoral ambitions he might have, and thus posed a threat to Abingdon’s own position. With the readmission of Whigs to the ministry, Abingdon was one of many Tory casualties and among his various offices was deprived of the county lieutenancy in October. It was speculated that Wharton might be reinstated, but other expectations in Marlborough’s favour were fulfilled in February 1706. Inevitably, Marlborough announced in February 1707 his son-in-law Viscount Rialton’s candidature for a county seat at the election due in 1708. Almost immediately, however, a challenge materialized when Chamberlayne Dashwood, the son of the former county Member Sir Robert, declared an intention to stand in opposition on the Tory interest, probably in place of the elderly sitting Member Norreys, and in so doing seems to have attracted much support. On 12 Mar. Shrewsbury, recently returned to reside in the county again after a five-year absence in Italy, remarked to James Vernon I* that Rialton ‘will meet with a greater opposition than I could have imagined an heir of the Duke of Marlborough recommended by him could have found, but there is such a strange spirit in this county; his friends are much divided whether he shall stand alone or join with Sir Thomas Wheate’. It was intended to clear the ground for the ineffectual Rialton at an assize meeting at Oxford on 13 Mar. Two days before, Lord Guilford wrote to Dashwood urging upon him the desirability of allowing Rialton to be elected unopposed, and offering him the Banbury seat in recompense:

considering how dubious the event of the election will be, and the great merit of the Duke of Marlborough and how serviceable it would be to us, and the nation in general, if on this occasion of serving his son, we could oblige him in our interest, and thereby make the whole county more easy, and Sir Robert Jenkinson more secure, I take the liberty to propose to you the accepting my interest in Banbury instead of the county.

Accordingly, Dashwood notified the assize gathering that he would ‘quit his pretensions’, thus leaving the way clear for a peaceful accommodation between Rialton and Jenkinson. Prior to this meeting there had taken place in London a ‘reconciliation’ between Abingdon and Marlborough, occasioned presumably by Marlborough’s need to request Abingdon’s interest, without which Rialton stood virtually no chance of success. The deal had been effectually sealed with Abingdon’s reception by the Queen to kiss hands. It was these proceedings which made it imperative that Dashwood be made to bow out. High Tory opinion was not enamoured of the arrangement, Thomas Hearne observing that Abingdon had ‘turned about and cringed to the Whiggish interest’. None the less, it was learned shortly afterwards that the Earl was ‘displeased’ that Dashwood had been prevailed upon to withdraw. A spirit of accord had been distinctly lacking at the assize meeting, and it may have seemed uncertain whether the accommodation would survive until the election. By 22 Mar. Shrewsbury had ascertained that ‘all who were at the Oxford assizes agree, that the two parties there looked sourly on each other’, although there was little inkling that the ‘dispute’ had been ‘adjusted’ beforehand, ‘for nothing was known of it in the county that ever I could learn’. When at the beginning of June a rumour sprang up that Jenkinson had died, Henry St. John II* could not forbear expressing to Marlborough his relief on finding that it was false ‘since it would have occasioned some new disturbance in Oxfordshire’. As the election approached, there was a good deal of preparatory activity on Rialton’s behalf since the possibility of opposition had not lifted. A ‘great distemper’ affecting horses threatened to disrupt the logistics of conveying large numbers of freeholders to the poll at Oxford, many of whom desired to be excused from the journey unless a poll was commenced. Marlborough was sent a long account of the election proceedings by his surveyor-general at Blenheim, Samuel Travers*, of which the keynote, with some understandable bias and relief, was the feebleness of Abingdon’s efforts. By the time of the election Abingdon had resigned himself, at least temporarily, to the change of circumstances forced upon him. But it is also clear from Travers’ account that most Tory gentlemen refused to rouse themselves in favour of the compromise candidature.

My Lord Rialton was attended to Oxford by five or six hundred horse, among whom were Sir Thomas Reade [4th Bt.*], Sir John D’Oyley [1st Bt.†], Sir Thomas Wheate [1st Bt.], Sir Thomas Tipping [1st Bt.*], Sir Thomas Crisp, Sir Edmund Warcupp, Sir Henry Ashurst [1st Bt.*] and a great many more gentlemen in the commission of the peace and others of note. Sir Robert Jenkinson with 30 or 40 freeholders joined his lordship [Rialton] at Woodstock, but not one of Lord Abingdon’s party appeared, as they were immediately chosen unanimously; yet the whole cry in the hall was Rialton and the name of Jenkinson hardly heard. I mention not this to reflect on Sir Robert who has acted very honourably in this whole matter, but only to take notice that my lord has by his courtesy and prudent behaviour very well seconded your Grace’s inclinations, and gained such an esteem as will enable him to maintain the post you have assigned him. So that the recorder of Oxford, whom I take to be much the best judge of that county, tells me all opposition to your Grace’s interest is now cut up by the roots.

Of Jenkinson, Travers added, ‘it was in his interest to stick with your Grace, for had there been any competition, ’tis believed all the high fliers would have voted against him’, an indication of how much his association with Marlborough and Rialton had isolated him from his fellow Tories.6

A by-election was made necessary by the death of Jenkinson in January 1710. Marlborough showed he was no longer prepared to maintain what was only the semblance of accommodation with the Tories by putting forward his own candidate, Sir Thomas Reade, 4th Bt., of Shipton-under-Wychwood, ‘a staunch Whig’, in opposition to the late Sir Robert’s son and namesake, the 3rd baronet. Dr William Lancaster, the ambitious vice-chancellor of the university, who was known to be touting for a bishopric, caused a stir in placing his interest at Marlborough’s disposal. Only recently he had agreed, after seeking the Duke’s approval, to stand bail for Dr Sacheverell. Both sides engaged fiercely in the contest, the first since the 1699 by-election. While there are no indications that Abingdon was particularly conspicuous in the campaign, the Tories could not have won the election without his assertive mobilization of support. There can be no doubt that Whig–Tory animosity was intensified by the excitements provoked by the unfolding impeachment proceedings against Sacheverell. Polling began in the early afternoon of 22 Feb. and finished late the following evening. Over 2,600 freeholders were said by Hearne to have voted, with the probability that more would have done so but for a smallpox epidemic in Oxford. The totals polled by the two candidates have not been found, but several sources report that Jenkinson was ahead of Reade by only 170 or so votes. It would seem that despite ‘their utmost efforts’ the Whigs gave up, having exhausted all possible reserves of support yet finding still others were ‘upon the road for Sir Robert Jenkinson’. Commenting on the aftermath of the contest Hearne wrote that ‘the Whigs and Presbyterians are strangely nettled at Sir Robert’s gaining the point, it now being highly probable that the Lord Rialton . . . will be thrown out the next election’. In April, strong expectations of an election some time in the coming months induced the Tories to decide upon their candidates, and the practice was resumed of allowing one nomination from Abingdon. Initially, it was thought he would choose his cousin Hon. Charles Bertie II, who sat for Woodstock in the 1705 Parliament, to stand with Jenkinson. But the candidate adopted was another of the Earl’s kinsmen, Francis Clerke. Their prospects were considered promising; from Coleshill, Warwickshire, Thomas Carte wrote to his brother, assuming he had heard already that ‘my Lord Rialton is to be opposed in Oxfordshire, and (in spite of the opening of the floodgates of the Treasury, which his side threatened at the last poll) is in a fair way of being thrown out by Mr Clerke and Sir Robert Jenkinson’. Marlborough was not cheered, having his own pressing reasons for wishing to retain his foothold. On 19 Mar., at a time when the ministry’s future seemed increasingly insecure, he had written from The Hague to his wife that he was ‘more concerned at our interest in Oxfordshire . . . for I had much rather end my days quietly with my neighbours, than be great at Court, where I desire no more power’. During a triumphant visit to the county in July, Dr Sacheverell was extravagantly fêted by Abingdon and the Tory gentlemen, while Rialton and his Whig cohorts kept a low profile. By early September, with the dissolution of Parliament imminent, it seemed that any Whig challenge would be doomed to failure, so much so that Rialton and Reade decided not to stand. On the 12th Lord Treasurer Godolphin (Sidney†) notified Marlborough that he had just importuned Wharton about the election: ‘he and some other gentlemen of Oxfordshire would fain have Lord Rialton stand for the county, but I think it would be wrong to go about it at this time’. In consequence, Jenkinson and Clerke were returned in October unopposed. Although this further Tory success confirmed the restoration of Abingdon’s political fortunes in the county, it was not until May 1712 that he regained the lieutenancy in place of the Duke.7

A few months before the election of 1713, serious moves to set up Simon Harcourt III* ‘so alarmed’ Abingdon that ‘he spent money to oppose it’. In November 1712, Harcourt’s father, the lord chancellor, had completed the purchase of a considerable estate at Nuneham Courtnay, and was evidently desirous to extend his interest from the university to the county. Abingdon’s swift reaction to young Harcourt’s proposed candidature shows his determination to preserve a situation over which he had the controlling hand. One of the sitting MPs, Clerke, had signified his willingness to desist but, as was reported in June, ‘continues at the desire of the gentlemen that there may not be an opportunity of setting up Sim’. Jenkinson, for some unexplained reason, was vehemently averse to having the younger Harcourt as a partner, declaring ‘he would never join his hand with that fellow’. In the event, Jenkinson and Clerke met with no opposition in August. Abingdon was one of the lords justices who governed following Queen Anne’s death until the arrival of George I in September. Thereafter, he suffered the processes of Tory proscription, losing all his public offices in 1715. For the second time he was displaced in the Oxfordshire lieutenancy, this time in favour of the 2nd Earl of Godolphin, the former Lord Rialton. Though Tory gentlemen were invariably returned under the first two Hanoverian monarchs, Abingdon’s assertive leadership of the Tory interest in the county appears to have languished in the years after 1715.8