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Eye

Double Member Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier, J. Brooke., 1964
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in inhabitants paying scot and lot

Number of voters:

about 200

Elections

DateCandidate
17 Apr. 1754Nicholas Hardinge
 Courthorpe Clayton
10 Dec. 1757Clayton re-elected after appointment to office
25 Apr. 1758Henry Townshend vice Hardinge, deceased
25 Jan. 1760Charles Cornwallis, Visct. Brome, vice Townshend, vacated his seat
30 Mar. 1761Charles Cornwallis, Visct. Brome
 Henry Cornwallis
4 Dec. 1761Henry Townshend vice Cornwallis, deceased
1 Dec. 1762Joshua Allen, Visct. Allen, vice Brome, called to the Upper House
 Richard Burton vice Townshend, deceased
18 Mar. 1768Joshua Allen, Visct. Allen
 William Cornwallis
14 Apr. 1770Richard Phillipson (formerly Burton) vice Allen, vacated his seat
22 Mar. 1774Francis Godolphin Osborne, Mq. of Carmarthen, vice Cornwallis, vacated his seat
10 Oct. 1774John St. John
 Richard Phillipson
29 Nov. 1775St. John re-elected after appointment to office
8 Sept. 1780Richard Phillipson
 Arnoldus Jones Skelton
3 Apr. 1782William Cornwallis vice Skelton, vacated his seat
2 Apr. 1784Richard Phillipson
 Peter Bathurst

Main Article

Eye was a pocket borough of the Cornwallis family, seated at Brome Hall, two miles away. Yet it required careful nursing, and Lord Cornwallis, when in residence, had to keep open house at Brome Hall. He wrote to a friend on 19 Sept. 1784: ‘I am now in the middle of the hurry and bustle of my month at Brome, which is not the pleasantest in the year.’ Though there were no contests during this period, Cornwallis’s control of the borough was by no means secure.1

Author: Sir Lewis Namier

Notes

  • 1. Cornwallis Corresp. i. 181; ii. 104.

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