In 1715 one seat at Castle Rising was controlled by Walpole, whose father had purchased 25 burgages there,2 the other by Lady Diana Feilding, the lord of the manor, which she had inherited from her first husband, Thomas Howard, M.P. On her death without surviving issue in 1732, the manor passed by entail to Henry Bowes Howard, 4th Earl of Berkshire and 11th Earl of Suffolk,3 with whom Walpole concluded a written agreement for securing to the two families ‘an equal interest and power to each ... to choose one representative for the borough’.4