Wendover

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in inhabitant householders

Number of voters:

about 150

Population:

(1801): 1,387

Elections

DateCandidate
16 June 1790JOHN BARKER CHURCH
 HON. HUGH SEYMOUR CONWAY
7 Mar. 1795 LORD HUGH SEYMOUR re-elected after appointment to office
25 May 1796JOHN HILEY ADDINGTON
 GEORGE CANNING I
26 Mar. 1799 CANNING re-elected after appointment to office
5 June 1800 CANNING re-elected after appointment to office
13 Dec. 1800 ADDINGTON re-elected after appointment to office
5 July 1802CHARLES LONG
 JOHN SMITH II
19 May 1804 LONG re-elected after appointment to office
8 Feb. 1806 LONG re-elected after appointment to office
29 Oct. 1806PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Visct. Mahon
 GEORGE SMITH
4 May 1807PHILIP HENRY STANHOPE, Visct. Mahon
 GEORGE SMITH
20 July 1807 FRANCIS HORNER vice Mahon, chose to sit for Kingston-upon-Hull
5 Oct. 1812GEORGE SMITH
 ABEL SMITH
17 June 1818HON. ROBERT JOHN SMITH
 GEORGE SMITH

Main Article

In 1788 John Barker Church, a former bankrupt, who had made a fortune from his business activities in America during the revolutionary war, purchased Earl Verney’s property in Wendover, undeterred by the continued truculence of the mercenary element which had broken Verney’s careless hold in 1784, Unlike his predecessor, he was wealthy and assiduous enough to profit from his investment and returned himself as a Foxite Whig in 1790. According to Oldfield, there was ‘a feeble opposition’ from two candidates sponsored by the Marquess of Buckingham, but it evidently did not go to a poll.1 The Prince of Wales acted as intermediary to procure the other seat for his friend Hugh Seymour Conway, but it is not clear whether he dealt directly with Church. It was an application to Carlton House in March 1792 from the nabob Richard Smith*, who had sat for Wendover by purchase from Verney in the 1780 Parliament, ‘for 1,500 guineas of the money’ which Seymour Conway was to have paid for the seat, that prompted the Prince to request payment. Seymour Conway himself saw no objection to meeting the demand, but his father, the Earl of Hertford, claimed that the Prince had released him from his original engagement to pay £2,000 for Hugh’s seat when it had turned out that the election had ‘unexpectedly cost nothing’, and he paid up with a bad grace.2

The Times of 25 June 1794 reported that Church had disposed of his property in the borough to Lady Fermanagh, Verney’s niece and heir, but by 1796 it was in the possession of Pitt’s friend Robert Smith*, created Lord Carrington the same year. Carrington, who transferred his allegiance to Lord Grenville on Pitt’s death, controlled both seats for the rest of the period and returned political friends and members of his family. A threat of opposition in 1812 from Andrew Cochrane Johnstone* ‘turned out to be a mere gasconade’.3

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

  • 1. Verney Letters of 18th Cent. ii. 292-3; Oldfield, Boroughs, i. 37.
  • 2. Prince of Wales Corresp. ii. 659-61; Egerton 3260, f. 76.
  • 3. VCH Bucks. iii. 23, 25; Fortescue mss, Carrington to Grenville, 8 Oct. 1812.