the dread of the French King, the Pope, and the Pretender,
prevailed; and Sir John was at the bottom of the poll. Southwark
not only returned Whigs, but gave them instructions of the most
Whiggish character.

In the country, parties were more nearly balanced than in the
capital. Yet the news from every quarter was that the Whigs had
recovered part at least of the ground which they had lost.
Wharton had regained his ascendency in Buckinghamshire. Musgrave
was rejected by Westmoreland. Nothing did more harm to the Tory
candidates than the story of Poussin's farewell supper. We learn
from their own acrimonious invectives that the unlucky discovery
of the three members of Parliament at the Blue Posts cost thirty
honest gentlemen their seats. One of the criminals, Tredenham,
escaped with impunity. For the dominion of his family over the
borough of St. Mawes was absolute even to a proverb. The other
two had the fate which they deserved. Davenant ceased to sit for
Bedwin. Hammond, who had lately stood high in the favour of the
University of Cambridge, was defeated by a great majority, and
was succeeded by the glory of the Whig party, Isaac Newton.

There was one district to which the eyes of hundreds of thousands
were turned with anxious interest, Gloucestershire. Would the
patriotic and high spirited gentry and yeomanry of that great
county again confide their dearest interests to the Impudent
Scandal of parliaments, the renegade, the slanderer, the
mountebank, who had been, during thirteen years, railing at his
betters of every party with a spite restrained by nothing but the
craven fear of corporal chastisement, and who had in the last
Parliament made himself conspicuous by the abject court which he