From 1701 to 1730 the Northamptonshire seats were held by two Tory country gentlemen, Sir Justinian Isham of Lamport and Thomas Cartwright of Aynhoe, after 1705 without opposition. The first contest occurred on Isham’s death in 1730, when a Whig candidate, William Hanbury, appealed to the freeholders ‘to assert their ancient and just rights of election’, of which it was suggested, they had been deprived for over 20 years by an unholy compact between the great local landowners ‘to preserve the peace of the county’. He also announced that, in implied contrast with his opponents, he ‘gives his tenants free liberty to vote and solicit (if they please) against him’.1 He was narrowly defeated by Isham’s son and again, on Cartwright’s death in 1748, by another Tory squire, Valentine Knightley, who shared the representation with the Ishams till his death in 1754 when he was succeeded by another Cartwright of Aynhoe.