The chief interests at Callington in 1715 were in two Tories: Samuel Rolle, who as lord of the manor appointed the returning officer, and Sir John Coryton, who had much property in the borough and resided in the neighbouring parish. On the death of Rolle in 1719, Thomas Copleston, a Whig who was a trustee of the Rolle estate, was returned against a Tory. In 1724 Samuel Rolle’s heiress, Margaret, married Walpole’s eldest son Robert, later 2nd Earl of Orford, and in 1734, according to a well-informed account of the borough drawn up in 1772, ‘Sir John Coryton came over to the interest of the Walpole family by means of a place Sir Robert Walpole gave to the late Mr. Tillie, who paid one moiety of it to Sir John Coryton’.2 In 1741 Hugh Boscawen, 2nd Lord Falmouth, then in opposition, wrote:

At Callington our friends have the majority but will not have the return in their favour, the mayor being one that will in all probability act as Lord Walpole shall direct.3

The Walpoles retained control of both seats in 1741 and 1747, despite opposition supported by the Prince of Wales’s party.4