Hereford

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 1,400

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
3 Feb. 1715THOMAS FOLEY787
 JAMES SCUDAMORE, Visct. Scudamore777
 Herbert Rudhale Westfaling575
 Nicholas Philpott550
12 Mar. 1717HERBERT RUDHALE WESTFALING vice Scudamore, deceased634
 Timothy Geers421
27 Mar. 1722HERBERT RUDHALE WESTFALING 
 WILLIAM MAYO 
2 Apr. 1723JAMES WALWYN vice Mayo, deceasedmajority c.400
 John Price 
22 Aug. 1727HENRY BRYDGES, Mq. of Carnarvon 
 THOMAS GEERS 
 John Kyrwood 
1 May 1734THOMAS FOLEY693
 SIR JOHN MORGAN555
 Herbert Rudhale Westfaling jun.522
11 May 1741EDWARD COPE HOPTON506
 THOMAS GEERS WINFORD504
 Herbert Rudhale Westfaling jun.479
 Henry Cornewall420
 William Brydges25
3 July 1747HENRY CORNEWALL742
 DANIEL LEIGHTON451
 Herbert Rudhale Westfaling337

Main Article

Hereford was an independent borough, usually represented by local country gentlemen. Owing to the size of the electorate the borough was regarded by the Duke of Chandos as ‘extravagantly expensive’. In 1727 he reckoned that it would be necessary to pay at least 500 voters 5 or 6 guineas a head to secure the return of his candidates.1

After George I’s accession Chandos, then Lord Carnarvon, who as James Brydges had shared the representation with Thomas Foley, a Tory, in the previous reign, proposed a renewal of the compromise, recommending his cousin, Nicholas Philpott, as his successor. The Tories, however, put up a second candidate, who with Foley defeated Philpott and another of Chandos’s cousins, Herbert Rudhale Westfaling.2

In 1722 Chandos arranged a compromise between Foley’s son and Westfaling. This attempt to dispose of the seat antagonized the local gentry, who put up William Mayo, a Whig, ‘under pretence of opposing Africanus’,3 i.e. Chandos, a director of the Royal African Company. In Foley’s words:

My election was thought to be out of danger, and had been so had not some gentlemen, who professed themselves my friends and appeared with me at first, thought fit to set up a third man in opposition (as they pretend) to Mr. Westfaling, but the storm must necessarily fall upon me, at least a great many ill-consequences.4

Foley withdrew before the poll, leaving Westfaling and Mayo to be returned unopposed.

In 1727 both sides agreed to a compromise under which Chandos’s son, Lord Carnarvon, and a local Tory, Thomas Geers, were returned, despite the last minute intervention of an independent candidate. In 1734, Chandos’s interest having ‘quite gone’,5 the Tories won both seats as they did again in 1741; but in 1747, when they appear to have been unable to find a local candidate,6 the borough returned Henry Cornewall, a government supporter, and Daniel Leighton, a Leicester House Whig.

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

  • 1. Chandos to Capt. Oakeley, 12 July 1727, to H. R. Westfaling, 8 Aug. 1727, Chandos letter bks.
  • 2. Brydges to Thos. Foley, 16 Sept.,to mayor and corporation of Hereford, 18 Oct., Carnarvon to Westfaling and Ld. Coningsby, 31 Dec. 1714, ibid.
  • 3. Chandos to Major Crosbie, 22 Dec. 1721, ibid; HMC Portland, vii. 318-19.
  • 4. 17 Mar. 1722, Portland mss.
  • 5. Chandos to Sir R. Walpole, 19 Aug. 1727, to Westfaling, 27 Oct. 1733, Chandos letter bks.
  • 6. Duncombe, Herefs. iii. 169.