Both the tables below raise the vexed question of how one determines tory strength in the eight Parliaments elected between 1715 and 1761. Some historians would argue that it is impossible and invidious to distinguish between mid-century tory and non-tory opposition M.P.s. One can only answer that most informed contemporaries could and did make that very distinction. Certainly a few M.P.s, especially in the 1750s, pose problems: the Abingdon M.P. John Morton for instance, and (an example which Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke cherished and returned to again and again) Sir William Maynard, a reputed Essex tory who was returned for that county in 1759 under whig auspices. Since Morton championed the cause of the tory candidates for Oxfordshire in 1754 (something which no recognised whig M.P. is known to have done), since he corresponded with tory notables, and since his voters lauded his commitment to the Anglican Church, I classify him as a tory. Maynard and men of his ilk have been omitted from these tables, and it needs to be emphasised that such hybrids achieved contemporary notoriety precisely because they were exceptional. For the rest, I have drawn on tory correspondence, on die membership lists of the various tory societies, and on the parliamentary lists described by David Clayton and Clyve Jones (eds.), A Register of Parliamentary Lists 166O-1761 (Leicester, 1979), 103-18. As yet no lists have been found for the 1722 Parliament, but a tory friend informed Lord Gower in May 1722 that ‘by a modest computation’ there would be ‘about a hundred and seventy Tories’ in the new House: a calculation which accords with my own researches.