However, Henry Sydney, 1st Earl of Romney (1641-1704), colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, wanted to secure the seat for King, who was lieutenant-colonel in his own regiment.
Rooke visited Queenborough on 1 October, but Banks has died and Robert Crawford, the other MP, turned up late.
Rooke was accompanied by four members of the Navy Board, Edmund Dummer, Sir Richard Haddock, Dennis Lyddell and Charles Sergison, and by the Commissioner of Chatham, Sir Edmund Gregory, who was responsible for Sheerness Dockyard; but neither their presence nor the expenditure by Rooke of £200 could persuade King to withdraw.
(Major Winsley of Sheerness Castle was charged with the crime, but acquitted at an assize court in Maidstone, Kent.)
Withers relinquished the seat for the 1710 election, and King and James Herbert were returned "by the great majority of votes".
Jennings, the losing candidate, petitioned the House of Commons against the "gross bribery and other undue practices" of his opponents, but his complaint came to nothing.
He and his fellow candidate, John Lord Viscount Carmichell, filed a petition with the House of Commons alleging that the victors has won by "Bribery, and other unlawful Means"; but were later granted permission to withdraw it.
[1] During the 1696 election, Henry Sydney, his patron, called him a "blockhead"; and George Rooke, his opponent, said that he was of "shallow capacity".