The purchase by the Wallops in 1636 of Hurstbourne Priors, which became their principal residence, did not give them immediate control of the neighbouring borough of Whitchurch, but by 1660 it had become established. They used their interest tactfully, never claiming more than one seat for the family, and allowing the other to be occupied by a neighbouring gentleman of similar religious and political outlook. It was reported that Robert Wallop intended to put up two republican outsiders, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Henry Neville, for the Convention; but in fact he was returned himself with Giles Hungerford, who had married the widow of a former Member. When Wallop was disabled for the part he had taken in the trial of Charles I he was succeeded by his son Henry. The sitting Members were re-elected in 1661, and in June Lord Treasurer Southampton wrote to the dean and chapter to admit his nephew Henry Wallop as tenant of the manor, a request with which they presumably complied. However, when Wallop died in 1674 no member of the family was of age, and his seat was taken by a resident, Richard Ayliffe, of a minor gentry family. Two indentures were sent up, but there is no sign of a contest.1

Hungerford moved to Wiltshire on his second marriage before the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament, and in the Exclusion Parliaments he was replaced by Henry Wallop II, who was just of age. Despite his great wealth and ancient lineage he courteously yielded the senior seat to the more experienced Ayliffe in two of the three Parliaments to which they were returned together ‘withthe whole assent and consent ... of the burgesses and freeholders’. Ayliffe’s death in 1682, and the Tory reaction, produced in 1685 one of the few electoral contests in the history of Whitchurch. Wallop was of course re-elected, despite his support of exclusion, but John Deane stood as court candidate for the other seat against James Russell, a younger son of the 5th Earl of Bedford, who had married a local widow. Although Deane might have expected a sympathetic hearing in James II’sParliament, his petition was not reported. The King’s electoral agents reported in April 1688 that Wallop and Russell ‘design to stand here as in the late Parliament’, adding that ‘if [Sir] John Collins lose his interest at Andover, he may be supported here, perhaps with success’. But later in September they wrote: ‘Mr Wallop and Mr James Russell will be elected here. Mr James Russell, who had been desired to quit his interest here, and stand at Andover, does decline it.’ Wallop and Russell were duly returned to the Convention, without a contest.2