Ormonde Pickard 'The Little Freemen of Dunwich': Sir George Downing's defeat in the 1715 General Election, when he stood as one of the two Tory candidates for Dunwich, could have been the result of collusion between Whigs and the general body of freemen. 'The success of the plot shows how, only a few years after first setting foot in Dunwich, Sir George Downing had failed to win the goodwill of the resident freemen…. 'It was only to be expected that Sir George Downing, with his recent large investment in property in Dunwich, would fight back. He soon showed that he would stoop to any petty action to vent his wrath on the freemen, and was particularly vengeful towards William Collett, who had been a bailiff at the time of the 1715 election. Even before then Downing seems to have been behind false accusations that Collett had misappropriated the borough's funds. After the election these allegations were pressed to the point of bringing Collett to the assizes, where at the last minute the case against him was abandoned.' [pp.43-4]