In the second half of the eighteenth century Bridport was a seaport with a thriving West Indian trade. The Pinneys, West Indian planters, with considerable property near Bridport, possessed an interest in the borough. So did other families, but no one interest was predominant. That of Lord Coventry, whose family had represented the borough for several generations, was described by Rockingham in 1765 as ‘very good’, and Thomas Coventry held one seat 1754-80. The Sturt family too had considerable influence there, and, according to Oldfield in 1792, Charles Sturt had ‘sufficient to have one Member returned, while the corporation assert the right of the other’; it is described by him as ‘composed of independent characters’ and seems throughout to have had the largest single influence in the borough. But the position was not clear-cut, and Robinson in his electoral survey of July 1780 wrote: ‘Bridport is in a very dubious state’; and in 1784 that it was ‘very uncertain who will be returned’.