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Lewes
Borough
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Background Information
Right of Election:
in inhabitants paying scot and lot
Number of voters:
about 200
Elections
Date | Candidate | Votes |
---|---|---|
28 Jan. 1715 | THOMAS PELHAM of Lewes | |
JOHN MORLEY TREVOR | ||
23 July 1717 | PELHAM re-elected after appointment to office | |
21 Apr. 1719 | PHILIP YORKE vice Trevor, deceased | |
30 Mar. 1720 | YORKE re-elected after appointment to office | |
24 Mar. 1722 | HENRY PELHAM of Stanmer | 116 |
THOMAS PELHAM of Lewes | 109 | |
John Spence | 62 | |
27 Jan. 1726 | SIR NICHOLAS PELHAM vice Henry Pelham, deceased | |
14 Aug. 1727 | THOMAS PELHAM of Lewes | |
THOMAS PELHAM of Stanmer | ||
27 Apr. 1734 | THOMAS PELHAM of Stanmer | 84 |
THOMAS PELHAM of Lewes | 83 | |
Nathaniel Garland | 75 | |
Thomas Sergison | 70 | |
13 Feb. 1738 | JOHN TREVOR vice Pelham of Stanmer, deceased | |
2 May 1741 | THOMAS PELHAM of Crowhurst | 156 |
JOHN TREVOR | 154 | |
Thomas Sergison | 117 | |
6 Dec. 1743 | SIR JOHN SHELLEY vice Pelham, deceased | |
6 Dec. 1743 | SIR FRANCIS POOLE vice Trevor, deceased | |
27 June 1747 | SIR FRANCIS POOLE | |
THOMAS SERGISON |
Main Article
Both Members for Lewes were returned by the Duke of Newcastle, whose interest was based on his property in the town, on his own and his cousins’ seats at Halland, Bishopstone and Stanmer, and on traditional regard for the Pelham family; but it was a troublesome borough requiring constant attention. When in 1733 Thomas Sergison, a local landowner, with property in Lewes, joined Nathaniel Garland, ‘a rigid Dissenter’, in ‘a sort of compromise between the Dissenters and the Tories’, Newcastle’s candidates, two Thomas Pelhams, only scraped through by ‘having the constables’,1 i.e. the returning officers, chosen annually at the court leet held alternately by the Dukes of Dorset and Norfolk and Lord Abergavenny. Sergison stood again unsuccessfully in 1741, and again in 1743, when he withdrew before the poll, till in 1747 Newcastle solved the problem by adopting him as his own candidate. In 1749 James Pelham congratulated his cousin, Thomas Pelham of Stanmer, on having been provided with a seat at Rye which would put him to ‘no trouble or expense’, instead of having to ‘stand a contest within five miles of your own house, amongst a populace of the most ungrateful rascals in the kingdom’.2