s, Mores, Oglethorpes, Onslows, Evelyns; and some of its
elections were highly irregular. One of the most successful pieces of
jobbery stands to the credit of the year 1754, when the Tory sitting
members, General Oglethorpe and Peter Burrell, were opposed by two
Whigs, James More Molyneux and Philip Carteret Webb, a London lawyer.
Molyneux and Webb were elected by 73 votes to 45, but some at least of
the 73 (perhaps also some of the 45) would not have borne strict
investigation. Eight of the winning votes were faggot votes manufactured
out of the Cow Inn, of Haslemere, which inspired Dr. William King,
Principal of St. Mary Hall, Oxford, to a ballad of forty-two verses,
entitled _The Cow of Haslemere, or The Conjurer's Secretary at Oxford_.
Dr. King liked politics in poetry to be hot and strong, thus:--

"No Man could hear,
But he must fear
Her loud infernal Roar,
Such horrid Lies,
And Blasphemies
She bellow'd out and swore.

But what must make
The stoutest quake,
And all with Horror gape,
At one strange Birth,
This Cow cast forth
Eight Calves in human Shape.

For in this Cow
Each did somehow
A Tenement possess,
How big this Beast
Must be at least
From hence, Sirs, ye may guess.

The Crew march'd out,
An horrid Rout,
No Bear's Cubs could be bolder!
Each calf did vote,
And swear by Rote
He was a good Freeholder."

One, at least, of Haslemere's members was more than a mere party
politician. General James Edward Oglethorpe, who was defeated on the
occasion of the Cow's remarkable parturition, was the son of a former
member, Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, and sat for Haslemere from 1722 till
he was beaten at the poll. He was the great philanthropist of his day;
he was the generous and active friend of imprisoned debtors; he was the
founder of the colony of Georgia, and a general who held a position with
650 men against 5,000 Spaniards. It was General Oglethorpe who obtained
an inquiry by Parliament into the management of the Fleet and Marshalsea
prisons. A friend of his named Castell had been thrown into the Fleet
for debt, and because he could not pay the warder's dues had been shut
in a house where the small-pox was raging: he took the disease and died.
Oglethorpe was thoroughly roused, and the inquiry held into the gaol
system of the country was the beginning of his work for debtors and
prisoners. Later, he got Pa