The patronage of St. Mawes was shared between John Knight, who became lord of the manor by purchasing the Tredenham estates c.1710,1 and Hugh Boscawen, later Lord Falmouth, governor of its castle and the Government’s electoral manager in Cornwall, who had much property in the vicinity. In 1722, according to a petition of the defeated candidates, an agent of Nicholas Vincent’s, Falmouth’s right-hand man in Cornwall, offered £50 a vote to the inhabitants.2 On Knight’s death in 1733 one seat passed under the control of his widow, who placed it at the disposal of Walpole in 1734.3 In 1737 she married Robert Nugent, with the result that, as Thomas Pitt wrote in October 1740,

the next election is secured to Mr. Nugent and a person to be recommended by Lord Falmouth. Mr. Edgcumbe [who had succeeded Falmouth as government manager] endeavoured to get the mayor by giving his son a living. The son has the living and Mr. Nugent has the mayor.4

The 2nd Lord Egmont noted, c.1749-50: ‘St. Mawes— in Lord Falmouth and Mr. Nugent’.