In the first half of the eighteenth century the chief interest in the boroughs of East Looe and West Looe was in the Trelawnys. On the death of Governor Edward Trelawny in January 1754 the management and patronage of the two boroughs passed to his nephews the Bullers, while his cousin once removed, William Trelawny, ineffectively tried at times to reassert the Trelawny claim to them. In both boroughs the capital burgesses included, c. 1760, James, John and Francis Buller, and Charles and William Trelawny.2There were also families of local notables strongly entrenched in the corporations. The capital burgesses of West Looe in 1759 included three Puddicombes, two Bawdens, and one Hearle; moreover the mayor was a Bawden. Some further members of all these families appear among the free burgesses.

At West Looe the Puddicombes and Hearles tried in 1759 through their Member, John Frederick, to circumvent the Bullers;3 contested the mayoralty against them 1762-5 (repeatedly there was no election ‘owing to equal votes’); and in that struggle had the support and protection of William Trelawny. It was probably they who ran James Townsend against John Sargent, nominated by the Bullers on Grenville’s recommendation. Even the choice of Sargent was a concession to local feeling: Grenville had originally proposed John Bindley but was told by James Buller that as Bindley was supposed to have been the author of the cider tax (which Grenville denied) his candidature might be prejudicial to Buller’s interest both in the borough and the county.

The conflict between Trelawny and the Bullers may possibly have been composed after James Buller’s death and the advent of the Rockinghams—George Grenville wrote on 16 Sept. 1765 to John Buller jun., son of James Buller: ‘I know not the particulars of what has happened at West Looe since your father’s death, nor the present situation of the interest there.’4 About that time Trelawny was elected mayor of West Looe; the next year Joseph Bawden, of a family attached to the Bullers; and in 1768-9 two Puddicombes; and they and the Hearles frequently held the office during the next thirty years while the parliamentary patronage of the two boroughs remained uncontested with the Bullers. Some time about 1774 by a family arrangement the patronage of West Looe passed to John Buller jun., while that of East Looe remained with John Buller sen., and passed from him to his eldest son, another John Buller.