Chipping Wycombe

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 the freemen

Number of voters:

about 160

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
24 Jan. 1715SIR THOMAS LEE 
 SIR JOHN WITTEWRONG 
8 Feb. 1722JOHN NEALE vice Wittewrong, deceased 
24 Mar. 1722CHARLES EGERTON 
 HENRY PETTY, Baron Shelburne 
 Harry Waller 
1 Feb. 1726CHARLES COLYEAR, Visct. Milsington vice Egerton, deceased49
 Harry Waller2
 Election declared void, 22 Feb. 1726 
3 Mar. 1726CHARLES COLYEAR, Visct. Milsington81
 Harry Waller80
 WALLER vice Colyear, on petition, 17 Mar. 1726 
17 Aug. 1727HARRY WALLER 
 WILLIAM LEE 
27 Jan. 1731SIR CHARLES VERNON vice Lee, appointed to office 
23 Apr. 1734EDMUND WALLER 
 HARRY WALLER 
17 Feb. 1735SIR CHARLES VERNON vice Edmund Waller, chose to sit for Great Marlow 
4 May 1741EDMUND WALLER 
 HARRY WALLER 
29 Dec. 1744EDMUND WALLER re-elected after appointment to office 
27 June 1747EDMUND WALLER sen. 
 EDMUND WALLER jun. 

Main Article

The franchise at Wycombe was controlled by the corporation, a close body, with the power of creating freemen. At George I’s accession the patron of the corporation was Thomas, 1st Marquess of Wharton, the head of the Whig interest in the county, whose nominees were returned unopposed shortly before his death in 1715. In 1722 the Wallers of Beaconsfield made an unsuccessful bid for a seat, with the support of the mayor, who was deposed by a meeting of the freemen for illegally attempting to create new freemen ‘to overthrow the interest of the late Marquess of Wharton’.1 The Wharton interest disintegrated after 1725, when Wharton’s heir had to sell his Winchendon estate and go abroad, where he joined the Pretender. At a by-election in 1726 the Wallers secured the seat on petition, after the mayor had twice returned a Wharton candidate by methods which led to his committal to Newgate by the House of Commons.2 In 1727 the Wallers compromised the election with the Lees of Hartwell; but after William Lee’s promotion to a judgeship in 1731 they nominated both Members without opposition till 1754.

Author: Romney R. Sedgwick

Notes

  • 1. L. J. Ashford, Hist. High Wycombe, 173-4.
  • 2. HMC Var. vi. 5; CJ, xx. 621-2; Wharton to Hay, 23 Mar. 1726, Stuart mss.