Hindon

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

in inhabitant householders

Number of voters:

about 120

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
25 Jan. 1715GEORGE WADE86
 REYNOLDS CALTHORPE68
 George Wilcocks58
 Richard Lockwood13
6 May 1720JOHN PITT vice Calthorpe, deceased 
24 Mar. 1722HENRY LUDLOW COKER 
 ROBERT GRAY 
16 Aug. 1727GEORGE HEATHCOTE62
 TOWNSEND ANDREWS62
 George Fox55
 Henry Fox55
 Solomon Ashley0
27 Apr. 1734STEPHEN FOX 
 GEORGE FOX 
28 Feb. 1735HENRY FOX vice Stephen Fox, chose to sit for Shaftesbury 
22 June 1737HENRY FOX re-elected after appointment to office 
4 May 1741HENRY CALTHORPE 
 WILLIAM STEELE 
27 June 1747VALENS COMYN 
 BISSE RICHARDS 
4 May 1751FRANCIS BLAKE DELAVAL vice Comyn, deceased 
 Simon Fanshawe 

Main Article

Hindon was a notoriously venal borough. The chief interest was that of the Calthorpes of Elvetham, who as lessees of the manor of Hindon from the bishop of Winchester nominated the returning officer. Until 1734 all Members were elected as supporters of the Administration.

The hardest and most violent contest was in 1727, when Henry and George Fox, standing as Tories, were narrowly defeated by George Heathcote and Townsend Andrews, who had the support of the returning officer. On petition Heathcote and Andrews were confirmed in their seats, though their opponents were ‘generally supposed to have the fairer right’.1 Before the next election Henry Fox had been brought over to the Government by Lord Hervey, who wrote to him, 13 Sept. 1733, that ‘in my last conference with Sir Robert I insisted on nothing but the returning officer [at Hindon] being secured to you’.2 In the event Henry’s elder brother, Stephen, was returned unopposed with George Fox, but elected to sit for Shaftesbury, putting up Henry for the vacancy. An opposition was threatened by Lord Perceval, whose father, Lord Egmont, notes on 17 Feb. 1735 that

Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Weymouth, Mr. George Heathcote and Mr. [Philip] Bennet ... design to give him letters to the voters, who are 113 in all, and my son counts upon 70 of them.

But two days later he wrote:

My son being informed that Hindon is a more mercenary borough than he at first imagined and that the returning officer is under the direction of a government man, wisely resolved to quit his intention of standing there.3

In 1745 William Beckford bought the nearby Fonthill estate and began to develop an interest in Hindon rivalling that of the Calthorpes. In the 2nd Lord Egmont’s electoral survey, c.1749-50, it is described as ‘to be bought’.

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xxi. 24; HMC Egmont Diary, i. 27.
  • 2. Ilchester, Lord Hervey and his Friends, 173.
  • 3. HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 150-1.