Buckingham remained entirely under the control of the 1st and 2nd Marquesses of Buckingham, high stewards of the borough, who imposed their dictates on the corporation, a hand-picked body composed largely of their tenants and employees, from their nearby seat at Stowe.1 The only incident to ruffle the 1st Marquess occurred in July 1806, when his brother Lord Grenville arranged the return of Fremantle, who was to be appointed secretary to the Treasury, for a vacancy which Buckingham had created for his relative, Lord Percy. When Buckingham protested about the interference with his practice of returning only relations, the arrangement was adjusted, but the marquess seems thereafter to have relaxed the rule. Neither Young nor Warren was related to the Grenvilles, and Fremantle himself was returned in 1812.2

The 2nd Marquess, who succeeded to the title in 1813, treated the corporation with an arrogance which provoked considerable resentment, particularly in George Nelson, a local banker, and his partner Edward Bartlett, whose family had a tanning business in the town. In 1817 both were publicly castigated by the marquess for their refusal either to vote for his nominee for a vacancy in the corporation or to resign in consequence. John Goodwin observed to Lord Grey, 5 Sept. 1817, that Buckingham was ‘taking the best of all possible ways to lose his influence in the borough’. The marquess was unrepentant, and in 1819 when Nelson, as bailiff, openly condemned his ‘gross and illiberal’ treatment of the corporation, he responded by trying, unsuccessfully, to secure from his fellow burgesses a vote of censure on Nelson’s ‘insult’.3