the lobby or the Court of Requests, and hear who had spoken, and how and what were the numbers on the division.  He lived in a region of coffeehouses, of booksellers’ shops, of clubs, of pamphlets, of newspapers, of theatres where poignant allusions to the most exciting questions of the day perpetually called forth applause and hisses, of pulpits where the doctrines of the High Churchman, of the Low Churchman, of the Nonjuror, of the Nonconformist, were explained and defended every Sunday by the most eloquent and learned divines of every persuasion.  At that time, therefore, the metropolitan electors were, as a class, decidedly superior in intelligence and knowledge to the provincial electors.

Montague and Secretary Vernon were the ministerial candidates for Westminster.  They were opposed by Sir Henry Colt, a dull, surly, stubborn professor of patriotism, who tired everybody to death with his endless railing at standing armies and placemen.  The electors were summoned to meet on an open space just out of the streets.  The first Lord of the Treasury and the Secretary of State appeared at the head of three thousand horsemen.  Colt’s followers were almost all on foot.  He was a favourite with the keepers of pot-houses, and had enlisted a strong body of porters and chairmen.  The two parties, after exchanging a good deal of abuse, came to blows.  The adherents of the ministers were victorious, put the adverse mob to the rout, and cudgelled Colt himself into a muddy ditch.  The poll was taken in Westminster Hall.  From the first there was no doubt of the result.  But Colt tried to prolong the contest by bringing up a voter an hour.  When it became clear that this artifice was employed for the purpose of causing delay, the returning officer took on himself the responsibility of closing the books, and of declaring Montague and Vernon duly elected.

At Guildhall the junto was less fortunate.  Three ministerial Aldermen were returned.  But the fourth member, Sir John Fleet, was not only a Tory, but was Governor of the old East India Company, and had distinguished himself by the pertinacity with which he had opposed the financial and commercial policy of the first Lord of the Treasury.  While Montague suffered the mortification of finding that his empire over the city was less absolute than he had imagined, Wharton, notwithstanding his acknowledged preeminence in the art of electioneering, underwent a succession of defeats in boroughs and counties for which he had expected to name the members.  He failed at Brackley, at Malmesbury and at Cockermouth.  He was unable to maintain possession even of his own strongholds, Wycombe and Aylesbury.  He was beaten in Oxfordshire.  The freeholders of Buckinghamshire, who had been true to him during many years, and who in 1685, when the Whig party was in the lowest state of depression, had, in spite of fraud and tyranny, not only placed him at the head of the poll but put their second votes at his disposal, now rejected one of his candidates, and could hardly be induced to return the other, his own brother, by a very small majority.