HATS off to the Conservatives of Richmond.

Marmaduke Wyvill would be proud. In fact, all the Marmaduke Wyvills would be proud.

Driving through North Yorkshire, it is hard not to be impressed by the sudden crop of “Vote for change” signs that has sprouted in the fields. North and west of Northallerton, from the farm tracks of Forcett to the byways of Bedale, there is a splendid spring bloom of political flowers.

Indeed, after turning the umpteenth corner to be exhorted to “vote for change”, the mischievous might wonder what precisely they were being begged to change from.

Because local MP William Hague has had an unassailably mountainous majority since 1989. Surely they don’t want to change him.

History books show that during the modern era of party politics, for 120 of the last 124 years, Richmond has elected a Conservative MP. Surely the signs don’t want people to vote to change that record.

But in the pages of those books, the marvellous Marmadukes come into view.

Richmond has been continuously represented in the Mother of Parliaments since 1584. Its first MP was Marmaduke Wyvill. He lived in Constable Burton Hall, where he entertained Queen Elizabeth. He obviously gave good B&B as she made him Sir Marmaduke Wyvill, 1st Baronet.

The 5th Baronet – also Marmaduke – was Richmond MP at the end of the 17th Century, as was in 1727 the 6th Baronet (you may, by now, be able to guess his name). This Marmaduke’s reign was brief and controversial.

More than a century earlier, Queen Elizabeth had decreed that only the 273 house-owners living in Richmond could vote. They were the “burgesses”.

As time wore on their Elizabethan properties were developed, demolished, converted, extended or split, blurring who was entitled to one of the 273 votes.

It was left to the returning officer to decide.

In 1727, that post was filled by William Daville, mayor of Richmond, and close friend of Marmaduke. Somehow, Mr Daville allowed 412 people to vote, and his friend Marmaduke was elected.

The House of Commons investigated, kicked Marmaduke out and decreed that the 273 voters of Richmond should be those whose properties gave them the right to graze sheep on the common pasture.

Wealthy families saw that if they could buy up 137 houses with grazing rights, they would have more votes than anyone else.

The Dundas family of Aske Hall won the race, buying their 137th vote in 1760. Richmond was now a “pocket borough”. Whoever they put up for election would be elected – it was in their pocket.

So it remained until the 1832 Great Reform Act restored a measure of democracy to Richmond.

It also restored another Marmaduke Wyvill – the fourth – as Richmond MP.

He was a Liberal and held the seat from 1847 to 1868. But it was not as a politician that he made his mark. Quite extraordinarily, it was as a chess player.

Marmaduke was one of the greatest chess players of his era. In 1851, he lost the final of the London Tournament – the first international competition and so the first world championship – to Karl Adolf Andersson.

But Marmaduke had the last laugh. His special attack, based on a phalanx of pawns, is to this day known as “the Wyvill formation”.

Will today’s posters help the Tories win “votes for change”, or are we heading for the stalemate of a hung parliament?