Cheshire

County

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Number of Qualified Electors:

unknown

Number of voters:

rising from at least 2,747 in 1690 to at least 6,171 in 1710

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
17 Mar. 1690Sir John Mainwaring, Bt.2216
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt.2075
 Sir Philip Egerton1203
27 Nov. 1695Sir John Mainwaring, Bt. 
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt. 
27 July 1698Sir John Mainwaring, Bt. 
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt. 
8 Jan. 1701Sir John Mainwaring, Bt. 
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt. 
10 Dec. 1701Sir John Mainwaring, Bt.1995
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt.1898
 Sir George Warburton, Bt.1812
 Sir Roger Mostyn, Bt.15591
5 Aug. 1702Sir George Warburton, Bt.2597
 Sir Roger Mostyn, Bt.2559
 Sir Willoughby Aston, Bt.2095
 Sir Robert Cotton, Bt.20522
23 May 1705John Crewe Offley3165
 Hon. Langham Booth3088
 Sir George Warburton, Bt.2878
 Sir Roger Mostyn, Bt.26653
19 May 1708Hon. Langham Booth 
 John Crewe Offley 
24 Oct. 1710Sir George Warburton, Bt.3274
 Charles Cholmondeley3270
 Hon. Langham Booth2879
 John Crewe Offley2918
16 Sept. 1713Sir George Warburton, Bt. 
 Charles Cholmondeley 

Main Article

The conflict that was the dominant feature of Cheshire elections in this period had its roots in two phenomena. The first was the superabundance of significant gentry families. Defoe commented that ‘there is no part of England, where there are such a great number of families of gentry, and of such ancient and noble extraction’, and the large number of families of sufficient standing to aspire to parliamentary service were confronted by the fact that the county returned only four Members in all, leading to a mismatch between aspiration and opportunity. Prior to the Restoration this conflict had been resolved through the regular rotation of seats between these families, with only the Cholmondeleys of Cholmondeley providing more than one county Member before 1660. However, such an amicable arrangement did not survive the Restoration period due to the second development contributing to electoral disputes, the growth of deep partisan division within the county. The Exclusion crisis, Tory reaction, policies of James ii and Revolution had all divided Cheshire’s political class, causing a bitterness that permeated county politics throughout the Augustan period. Party identity became the crucial factor. However, these parties were not monolithic, and distinct groupings can be identified. Cheshire’s Whig interest embodied two distinct traditions, Country Whigs who looked to the leadership of the 1st Earl of Warrington (Henry Booth†), and his son and heir Hon. George, and those more inclined to the Court Whig tradition, who from the mid-1690s looked to the Whig the Earl Rivers (Richard Savage*) for leadership. At the same time Cheshire Toryism was divided between those prepared to take an active role in county administration and who from 1701 were generally Hanoverian Tories, and the ‘backwoods squires’ unwilling to take the oaths, a number of whom were prepared to be open in their Jacobite sympathies. The Duke of Shrewsbury appears to have infrequently exercised a small influence on Cheshire elections, and of more consequence was the crucial role played by Hugh, Viscount Cholmondeley [I]. Though Cholmondeley has been described by one modern historian as an ‘assiduous courtier’, he had formed strong links with Cheshire’s Tories before the Revolution. This attachment, perhaps allied to a realization that owing to the esteem in which the earls of Warrington were held he could never aspire to be sole head of the county’s Whig interest, led to Cholmondeley supporting Tory candidates in most of the elections in this period. The substance of political conflict was predictable given Cheshire’s partisan division; the county’s Whigs were sceptical of the dynastic loyalties of Cheshire’s Tories, a concern no doubt heightened by the county’s proximity to Ireland, while the county’s churchmen appear to have united against the dubious loyalty of the Whigs to the established Church, perhaps unsurprising in a county which in 1718 was thought to include over 1,000 Dissenting freeholders. The rotation of the county seats between the leading gentry families that had marked the pre-1660 period had therefore become untenable. Tory weakness in the aftermath of the Revolution led to only one election being contested before December 1701, but even in the 1690s party identity was important and from the turn of the century it was the key determinant of the conduct of county elections. One of the most significant consequences was the startling rise in electoral participation, with the number of freeholders appearing at the poll more than doubling in two decades, a phenomenon that prompted frequent allegations of the creation of ‘faggot’ votes. Modern psephological analysis suggests, however, that more important than such practices was the increasing efficiency of the rival interests in mobilizing their electoral support, so that the rising number of freeholders polling in contested elections was primarily due to increasing turnout.4

Divisions within the political community were evident at the 1690 election. The Whigs Sir John Mainwaring, 2nd Bt., and Sir Robert Cotton, 1st Bt., had been returned unopposed to the Convention, but as early as January 1689 Lord Cholmondeley had been preparing the ground for himself and Sir Philip Egerton†, a Tory who had yet to take the oaths, to stand at a subsequent election. Cholmondeley’s elevation to the English peerage in April 1689 in no way diminished his determination to oppose the Convention Members, and his support for Egerton’s return was augmented in February 1690 by the interest of the 9th Earl of Derby, a noble of diminishing political influence in Cheshire but who nevertheless remained chamberlain of Chester until his death in 1702. Aware of the need to bolster Egerton’s electoral prospects by finding him a partner, Cholmondeley attempted to pair Egerton with the Whig Sir Willoughby Aston, 2nd Bt. This foundered upon Aston’s unwillingness to ‘forsake Sir R. Cotton who stood by us in the worst of times, to the hazard of life and his own estate’, and the proposal that Cholmondeley’s brother Hon. George* join with Egerton fell when the former secured a seat at Newton. Egerton therefore stood alone, but at the county meeting held at Northwich on 13 Mar. Cholmondeley clearly stated his preference for Egerton to be returned with Mainwaring, as he claimed that Cotton had ‘voted so ill in the House that he was not worthy . . . I mean incapable to serve the country’, an allegation based upon the claim that contrary to the best interests of the shire Cotton had voted for raising the land tax by a pound rate. It is unclear whether Cholmondeley’s specific hostility to Cotton pre-dated the failure to find a partner for Egerton, but Cotton furiously denied the allegations. The heated debate this prompted saw Egerton claim that Cotton’s alleged vote had been reported to him by Mainwaring; Cotton produced ‘a paper he had proposed for that purpose to the contrary’; and some ‘young justices’ demanded that Egerton take the oaths. Following a short recess Egerton agreed to take the oaths, only to be prevented by the lack of a suitable text. The obvious rancour of this meeting demonstrated that compromise between the rival candidates was impossible, and polling began on the 18th. Egerton’s claim that Mainwaring had passed on the account of Cotton’s alleged vote on the land tax clearly created tensions between the two Whig candidates, as on the second day of polling Mainwaring informed Cotton of the importance of his support to the latter’s interest and that he could have been returned at little expense had he agreed to join with Egerton. Despite the obviously strained relationship between the Whig candidates, which prompted Aston to write of his ‘fear [that] those interests will never more be united’, Cotton and Mainwaring emerged victorious, the latter’s place at the head of the poll partly attributable to his receipt of many of the second votes of Egerton’s supporters.5

Tensions between the constituent parts of Cheshire’s Whig interest were again evident in the 1695 election. By early September Aston was writing of his fear that a number of the county’s Whigs intended ‘to set aside Sir R[obert] C[otton]’, a design which, though formulated by ‘old friends’, Aston thought would only serve to ‘gratify those . . . who are no friends to the government since they refuse to swear to defend and support it’. Though Aston thought this plan ‘long formed and largely spread’, his fears initially appeared to be exaggerated. A Cheshire Whig wrote to Cotton that the latter had his support due to his steadfast service to the Whig interest since the 1680s, and by the end of the month Mainwaring was said to have despatched ‘a message of concord’ to Cotton. However, the well-founded nature of Aston’s concern became apparent the following month, when the divisions between the two strands of Cheshire Whiggery came to the surface owing to the intervention of the Lords Macclesfield (Charles Gerard*) and Rivers. Lords lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire respectively, both men had become associated at Westminster with the rising Junto and the consequences of this development for the county election became apparent at a meeting of the Cheshire lieutenancy on 4 Oct. Macclesfield approached Aston to join Mainwaring in opposing the return of Cotton, claiming that Cotton was ‘an altered man’ who had ‘voted ill in the House’, and citing Cotton’s dismissive attitude to the Lancashire Plot, in the investigation and prosecution of which Macclesfield had invested a great deal of time and political credibility. Macclesfield’s concerns were, however, more broadly based. Mainwaring had also expressed hostility to the manner in which the Lancashire Plot had been investigated and it would seem that Macclesfield’s opposition to Cotton was based more upon the baronet’s willingness to pursue an independent line on a wide range of issues, with his opposition to the King’s proposal to grant the lordships of Denbigh, Bromfield and Yale to the Earl of Portland perhaps being particularly significant. Aston’s dismissal of Macclesfield’s concerns led the Earl to state that another candidate would be found to oppose Cotton, and on 20 Oct. Rivers and Mainwaring visited Aston to inform him of their intention to support Hon. George Cholmondeley, a courtier, in opposition to Cotton. The hostility of the county’s Whigs to replacing one of their own with a man whose partisan loyalties were either not apparent or non-existent quickly became evident, however, aided by the support Cholmondeley enjoyed from the county’s Tory and non-juring gentry. Macclesfield’s proposal was rejected at a county meeting on 22 Oct., and in consequence Cholmondeley abandoned the contest before the poll. The return of Mainwaring and Cotton in 1698 passed with little comment or controversy and, despite reports of local discontent with Mainwaring’s alleged support for the window tax, the first election of 1701 was similarly uneventful.6

The electoral calm which Cheshire enjoyed in the second half of the 1690s was due in large part to the unwillingness of the Tories to put forward candidates. Local government was largely in the hands of the Whigs and the Tory interest was further hampered when Lord Cholmondeley distanced himself from the county’s Churchmen following the Assassination Plot. The resultant Whig ascendancy was clearly demonstrated by the county’s address of May 1701 instructing their Members to support preparations for war and the voting of an ample supply, but the second election of the year saw two Tories enter the lists to challenge Cotton and Mainwaring. The challenge of Sir George Warburton, 3rd Bt., and Sir Roger Mostyn, 3rd Bt., appears to have gained impetus from two main sources, Cotton’s increasingly pro-Court behaviour since his appointment in 1699 as custos rotulorum in Denbighshire, and Mainwaring’s involvement in the financial scandal surrounding his wife’s cousin Morgan Whitley. As receiver of taxes for North Wales and Cheshire Whitley had accrued substantial debts and Mainwaring had acted as Whitley’s surety. The combination of the whiff of financial scandal and alleged Court influence over Cotton led one Tory to ask ‘if such men as these are not opposed what will become of England’, giving the county’s Tory interest a Country platform upon which to oppose the sitting Members. Mostyn and Warburton received support from both Lord Cholmondeley and the Earl of Derby, though whether the revived interest of these two peers in Cheshire elections preceded the emergence of the Tory candidates is unclear, and it was even rumoured that the Country Whig Lord Warrington had abandoned Cotton and Mainwaring. Such reports proved to be untrue and Cheshire witnessed a fiercely contested election fought along party lines, with the lord lieutenant Rivers placing his interest squarely behind the Whig candidates. Cotton and Mainwaring were urged to ensure that the oaths be put to the voters, a proposal which one of their supporters freely admitted was based upon ‘the advantage it will bring to your election’ as well as ‘the safety of the country’. The Whig Aston was keen to ensure ‘that the country might see that the non-juring interest support Sir George Warburton’, a not unreasonable accusation given that the Cholmondeleys felt it necessary in November to investigate whether Warburton had yet taken the oaths and to ensure that if he had not that this was remedied immediately. The question of Tory allegiance raised by the Whig interest was combined, in a note supplied by Mainwaring, with an attempt to counter the concerns over the links of their candidates to the Court. The note pointed out that supporters of Mostyn and Warburton such as Peter Legh†, Sir Philip Egerton and Francis Cholmondeley† had all received the support of the Court in the 1685 Cheshire election, thereby demonstrating both the loyalty of the Tories to James ii and their acceptance in elections of Court support. Determined Whig canvassing, assisted in part by the decision of the Tory Peter Shakerley* to instruct his tenants to support his brother-in-law Mainwaring in return for Mainwaring’s support for Shakerley’s return in Chester, saw Cotton and Mainwaring returned at the head of the poll.7

The Whig majority of December 1701 was small, however, and though in April 1702 Rivers secured a Whiggish address upon Queen Anne’s accession, praising her commitment to continue William’s foreign policy and ‘confirm the succession in the Protestant line’, the new reign saw Cheshire’s Whig interest temporarily eclipsed. A commission of the peace issued in July saw a third of the county’s justices removed. The majority of these were active Whigs and in their place the new commission established an overwhelming Tory majority, an alteration that augured ill for the Whigs at the imminent election. Such a setback was, in fact, merely the latest in a series of Whig difficulties. The first of these had involved Mainwaring who, having initially played down the implications of the Whitley affair and declared his intention to stand with Cotton, declared in May his unwillingness to let his name go forward. Mainwaring’s withdrawal led to Sir Willoughby Aston standing with Cotton, but the Whig campaign was handicapped by the unwillingness of Lord Warrington, probably on the grounds of Cotton’s growing links to the Court, to do more than ask his tenants for one vote for Aston, though Warrington did refuse to endorse either Tory candidate. This problem was compounded by the apparent difficulty which Rivers, a committed supporter of the Whig pairing, found in marshalling his tenants to vote en bloc for Aston and Cotton. The interest of the Earls of Macclesfield, now exercised by the 3rd Earl (Hon. Fitton Gerard*) was also partially lost to Aston and Cotton as Macclesfield, though a Whig partisan, was unable to offer any support to the Whig candidates owing to the difficulties he was placed in by the will of his brother, the 2nd Earl. The Tories, again supporting the candidacy of Mostyn and Warburton, faced few such problems, being bolstered by the new commission of the peace and by the continuing support of Lord Cholmondeley, and, as Aston recorded, diligent applications to freeholders. The substance of the election revolved around familiar issues. The irreconcilable differences between the two interests led the sheriff to inform Warburton that he did not intend to call a county meeting before beginning the poll, and the accuracy of this judgment was demonstrated when the two sides met to determine arrangements for polling. Aston and Cotton demanded that all voters be tendered the oaths, but the weakness of their position is indicated by Cotton’s backing down from this request following ‘great heats and disputes’, agreeing, as Aston recorded, that this question be left to ‘the discretion of the supervisors to tender them to those suspected’. Reports of the poll saw Aston claim that Mostyn and Warburton had received the support of Catholic tenants of Lord Cholmondeley and of Anglican clergy who had not been required to swear to their freeholds, while Shakerley informed Secretary Nottingham (Daniel Finch†) that the Whig candidates had enjoyed the support of ‘all that could be wrought upon by the Dissenting preachers and teachers’. Mostyn and Warburton emerged clear victors, a defeat which Aston attributed to the appearance of only half of Warrington’s tenants and the willingness of those who did attend to register split votes; the inability of Rivers to exert sufficient influence over his tenants; and the polling of large numbers of unqualified Tory supporters.8

The Tory success of 1702 mirrored the national trend and for the following two years they maintained their dominant position in the county’s politics, with a further regulation of the commission of the peace in favour of the Tories taking place in November 1702 while the following year saw Cholmondeley replace Rivers as lord lieutenant. However, as the Tory influence in the ministry began to recede in 1704 Cheshire’s Churchmen suffered a series of setbacks. In the summer of 1704, 14 Whigs were restored as justices and, after Mostyn and Warburton had voted for the Tack, the following April saw a further five Whigs added to the bench. Cholmondeley’s appointment as lord lieutenant also proved a mixed blessing for the Tory interest. Having declared his support in December 1704 for ‘Sir George Warburton and such other as the gentlemen agree shall stand with him’, by the following month Cholmondeley was bemoaning the decision of ‘the gentlemen of Cheshire’ to support the return of Mostyn with Warburton. Cholmondeley now informed his agent that he had previously told Warburton of his opposition to Mostyn, that he regarded the joint interest as a personal slight, and that his inclination was not ‘to stir in it’, though he professed his ‘desire’ to do his ‘friends . . . as little hurt as may be’. Cholmondeley’s slight shifting of position is probably attributable to pressure from the Court following Mostyn’s and Warburton’s vote for the Tack, but the reason for his greater hostility to the former is obscure. It may be that Mostyn’s higher parliamentary profile, marriage to Lord Nottingham’s daughter, or failure to obtain a bill on behalf of the county’s button-makers (see Mostyn, Sir Roger, 3rd Bt.) played some part in Cholmondeley’s decision, but Warburton stood by his joint interest. The two Tories were faced by two Whigs: Hon. Langham Booth, brother of Lord Warrington, and John Crewe Offley, whose family had estates in both Cheshire and Staffordshire and whose mother had supported the Whig candidates in the 1702 election. The animus between the rival interests was evident as early as March 1705, when a complaint of Mostyn and Warburton led the Commons to condemn one man for ‘misrepresenting their voting and acting in this House, to the freeholders of the said county’. Both sides campaigned vigorously, with false reports reaching London of a duel between Warburton and Crewe, and the unity of the Whig interest at this election demonstrated by the support Booth and Crewe enjoyed from the Lords Warrington, Rivers and Mohun, the last of whom had come into possession of the Macclesfield estates in the county. The poll itself was both protracted and eventful. A subsequently published broadside claimed that Crewe

declared in court, that he was for the Church of England, as it ought to be by law established, and the shouting party of ’em cried down with the Church, down with the Church, both in the streets and hall, and were so insolent, publicly to affront the clergy, calling them dark lanthorns, and that they ought to have their gowns pulled off their backs.

Such examples of Whig partisanship were, according to a Whig diarist, mirrored by the Tories. This diarist recorded that the clergy, having arrived at the poll en masse, ‘cried out a Church a Church and waved their hats at the Tackers’ party . . . and cried down with the Presbyterians’ and the tensions evident from these accounts led to disturbances throughout polling. Though Mostyn and Warburton were initially confident of success, by the second night of the poll the realization that they trailed by over 400 votes led to frantic attempts to bring in additional freeholders, but by lunchtime on the third day Mostyn had left Chester and Warburton had conceded defeat. Mostyn and Warburton had gained more votes than in 1702 and yet they had been defeated by over 200 votes, a result which led disgruntled Tories to complain of bribery and ‘the making of 1,000 fraudulent freehold leases’, with Shakerley bitterly noting that ‘for 30 years last past, and in those great contests he that had 2,000 votes carried it for one’ and querying the large number of freeholders from a township where Warrington was the dominant landowner. Warburton petitioned against Booth’s return on the grounds of the latter’s minority at the time of the election, but on 10 Nov. 1705 the motion to set a date for the election committee’s sitting on this petition was lost by 147 votes to 121. No report was made and when Warburton renewed his petition in the following session the elections committee resolved that, despite Warburton’s counsel producing an extract from a parish register clearly demonstrating that Booth was 12 days short of his majority when the Cheshire return was made, Booth had been duly elected. The House confirmed this decision, without a division, on 10 Feb. 1707. The 1708 election passed off far more peacefully. Though it seems that the county’s Tories considered nominating the non-juror Peter Legh and John Egerton, the Tory brother-in-law of Lord Cholmondeley, to contest the election, it was decided, perhaps in light of the addition of a number of notable Whigs to the commission of the peace and possibly because of the appreciation that in the aftermath of the threatened Jacobite landing a non-juror was unlikely to gain election, not to oppose Booth and Crewe.9

Given the combination of the Sacheverell trial and the previously demonstrated ability of religious issues to inflame Cheshire politics, it was not surprising that the county’s Tory interest were unwilling to allow Booth and Crewe an unopposed return in 1710. Sacheverell’s triumphal progress took him through Cheshire, and while in Chester he was entertained by the bishop. The extent of the High Church fervour in the county town was apparent to an Irish visitor, the ‘thundering high flying sermon’ he heard in Chester Cathedral in September convincing him that the city population as a whole were ‘strong Sacheverellites’. Despite such obvious displays in favour of the Church interest, Cheshire’s Whigs were determined to fight their corner, and in August 1710 obtained a distinctly partisan address from the assizes to the Queen ‘joyfully acknowledging your undoubted title, without presuming to distinguish between parliamentary and hereditary right’, condemning the Sacheverell riots and expressing the hope that the Established Church would ‘never dictate to or be independent of the state’. Presented to the Queen by Crewe, such a blatantly Whiggish address was bound to provoke Tory anger and this was inflamed by a new commission of the peace in September which made few alterations in the Tory interest. By this time two Tory candidates had emerged, Warburton and Charles Cholmondeley, the latter the son of a non-juring Member of the Convention but himself a Hanoverian Tory, and the two men took it upon themselves to lobby Robert Harley* for further alterations to the Cheshire bench. Despite their claims that ‘the gentlemen of the other party here in charges upon the bench preach up resistance or anything to poison the people against an election’, and their willingness to provide Harley with a list of suitable new justices, their requests were not acted upon. This reverse was, however, of little consequence as correspondence dating from 1714 makes it clear that, in addition to its usual strength among the Cheshire squirearchy, the Tory interest had secured the support of Lords Cholmondeley and Rivers and the Duke of Shrewsbury. Cholmondeley’s stance was hardly surprising as the particular pressures of 1705 not to endorse Tory candidates no longer existed. Rivers’ desertion of the Whig interest and Shrewsbury’s support for the Tories were less expected, but are explicable in terms of their decision to throw in their political lot with Harley’s new ministry. It has been suggested by a modern historian that in addition to the partisan factors detailed above, the controversial plans for a bill to navigate the Weaver, initiated and falling in the 1709–10 session, had an impact upon the conduct of the 1710 election though, as Booth and Crewe joined some of the Tories who campaigned most vociferously against their return in 1710 in opposing the measure, its significance is difficult to gauge. The importance of the ‘Church in danger’ issue was, however, clearly demonstrated during the conduct of the 1710 poll. The animosity between the rival interests is indicated by the insistence that all freeholders take the oath of allegiance, the test and the abjuration before polling, a measure proposed by Booth and approved by the leading Tory Sir Francis Leicester, 3rd Bt.† A Tory newsletter described how

the high sheriff who was judge of the poll, rode between the two Whig candidates, shouting them up with the mob that attended him from his side of the county, and as he began so he ended by delaying the election by all artifice and by adjourning the poll daily sooner, than was agreed on, done on purpose to weary the countrymen with five days attendance . . . and then in the evening persons were employed to go among the freeholders and offer them money to change sides, but this and the many sham freeholders they made were overcome by the zeal and steadiness of the loyal Church party . . . [and when the poll was declared] the night concluded with a ball for the ladies with illuminations and bonfires, into which they threw with the utmost contempt the pretended address for the county, as they had done the Reviews, Observators and several other libels.

The intimidatory nature of the Tory mob is amply confirmed by a Dissenting minister, who confided to his diary that the ‘noise of elections’ prevented him preaching at a funeral held during polling, while a Whig squire complained that the ‘riot’ of the ‘S[achevere]ll mob’ had obstructed Whig freeholders from attending the poll, and described how the Tory crowd had carried at its head ‘the Doctor’s picture . . . upon the point of a sword’. The significant Tory majority registered at the 1710 election paved the way for that interest’s dominance of county politics for the remainder of Anne’s reign. Strengthened by a notable pro-Tory regulation of the commission of the peace in the winter of 1710–11, Tory hegemony was indicated by the county addresses of July 1712 and May 1713, presented to the Queen by Cholmondeley and Warburton, approving of the ministry’s peace policy, though the former address excluded any phrase in support of the Hanoverian succession so that Warburton and Cholmondeley were introduced to the Queen by Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St. John II*) rather than Lord Cholmondeley. Warburton and Charles Cholmondeley were returned unopposed in 1713, but the Hanoverian succession seriously undermined Tory dominance so that the county’s politics remained contentious until the mid-18th century.10

Authors: Eveline Cruickshanks / Richard Harrison

Notes

This account is based upon Challinor thesis, 161–73, 180–7, 194–224.

  • 1. Liverpool RO, 920MD 174, Sir Willoughby Aston diaries, 12 Dec. 1701.
  • 2. Add. 29588, f. 122.
  • 3. Cheshire RO, Shakerley mss, state of the poll.
  • 4. Defoe, Tour ed. Cole, 472; VCH Cheshire, ii. 101–9, 114–22; G. Holmes, Pol. in Age of Anne, 226–8.
  • 5. Cheshire RO, Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss DCH/M/27, Richard Levinge* to William Adams, 16 Feb. 1689–90; Chester RO, Earwaker mss CR63/2/691/71, 73, 77, Aston to Sir John Crewe, 18, 26 Feb., 1 Mar. 1689[–90]; Bull. John Rylands Lib. lxiv. 364–5; 920MD 173, Aston diaries, 23 Feb., 13, 17, 18, 19 Mar. 1690; Some Queries Concerning the Election of Members (1690), 5.
  • 6. Earwaker mss CR63/2/691/174, 181, Aston to Crewe, 6 Sept., 22 Nov. 1695; 162, Crewe to Cotton, 20 Sept. 1695; Bodl. Eng. letters e.29, f. 114; Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 353, 355–7; 920MD 174, Aston diaries, 4, 18, 20 Oct. 1695, 28 Dec. 1700, 8 Jan. 1701; John Rylands Univ. Lib. Manchester, Legh of Lyme mss corresp., Thomas Cholmondeley to Peter Legh, 19 Oct. 1695.
  • 7. Add. 30000 E, ff. 173–4; Jnl. Architectural, Arch. and Hist. Soc. of Chester, old ser. i. 109–10; Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss DCH/L/42, George Cholmondeley to Adams, 22, 25 Nov., 11 Dec. [1701]; Cheshire RO, Arderne mss DAR/F/33, Warrington to Crewe, 25 Nov. 1701, R.S. to [?], 14 Nov. 1701, Warrington to [?], 6 Dec. 1701, [Sir] J[ohn] C[rewe] to [Cotton], 10 Nov. 1701, note, 1 Dec. 1701; 920MD 174, Aston diaries, 18, 21 Nov., 6, 10 Dec. 1701; Earwaker mss CR63/2/691/210, [John Arderne] to [Crewe], 27 Nov. 1701.
  • 8. London Gazette, 13–16 Apr. 1702; Liverpool RO, Norris mss 920NOR 1/169, Aston to Richard Norris*, 23 Apr. 1702; 920MD 174, Aston diaries, 17 Apr., 19 May, 6, 7 Aug. 1702; Arderne mss DAR/F/33, Rivers to John Banner, 25 May 1702, Samuel Daniell to [John Arderne], 31 July 1702; Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss DCH/L/42, John Eaton to Adams, 17 June 1702; John Rylands Univ. Lib. Manchester, Bromley-Davenport mss box 80 no. 21, John Davenport to Warburton, 28 July 1702 (ex inf. Prof. S.W. Baskerville); Add. 29588, f. 122.
  • 9. L. K. J. Glassey, Appt. JPs, 161, 184; Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss, Ld. Cholmondeley to Adams, 2 Dec. 1704, 16 Jan 1704–5; VCH Cheshire, 121; Add. 29588, f. 122; CJ, xiv. 556, 565; Bodl. Rawl. D.863, ff. 80–81; Yale Univ. Beinecke Lib. Osborn mss box 17/4, Sir Thomas Aston, 3rd Bt.’s diary, 22, 23, 24 May 1705 (Speck trans.); The Republican Bullies, or, a Sham Battel (1705), 5; Prescott Diary, 50–51; Shakerley mss, state of the poll, May 1705; Bull. John Rylands Lib. lxxiv. 167; Legh of Lyme mss corresp., Thomas Legh II* to Peter Legh, 24 Jan. 1707[–8].
  • 10. G. Holmes, Trial of Sacheverell, 245; Northern Hist. xxiii. 77; Boyer, Anne Annals, ix. 193–4; Glassey, 196, 206, 208; Add. 70026, f. 134; 36914, ff. 34, 36, 38, 44; 70421, newsletter 4 Nov. 1710; Grosvenor mss at Eaton Hall, pprs. of Sir Richard Grosvenor, 4th Bt.†, Shakerley to city of Chester, 2 Dec. 1714; Bull. John Rylands Lib. 139–68; G. Holmes, Pol. in Age of Anne, 202; T.S. Willan, Navigation of the River Weaver (Chetham Soc. ser. 3, iii), 1–12; Bodl. Eng. misc. e.330, f. 88; Arderne mss DAR/D/79/54, Crewe to Sir Samuel Daniell, 21 Nov. 1710, same to Mr Stephens, 22 Nov. 1710; London Gazette, 19–22 July 1712, 12–16 May 1713; Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley mss DCH/K/3/26, Ld. Cholmondeley to Adams, 24 July 1712.