After Smith and Brand Hollis topped the poll, Beckford and Calthorpe petitioned against the result. The committee declared the election void, and recommended that all four candidates should be prosecuted for bribery; the House accepted the committee's report, and ordered that the Attorney General should prosecute and that no writ should be issued for a new election, so the borough's representation was suspended. Furthermore, a bill was introduced which would have disfranchised 190 of Hindon's 210 voters (listed by name), and thrown the borough into the hundred. This was no longer unthinkable: the same punishment had been visited on the Sussex borough of New Shoreham for corruption three years earlier, and in the following decade was applied in Wiltshire to remedy the misdemeanours of Cricklade. In this case, however, the proposal met considerable opposition and was eventually dropped, so Hindon survived again and a writ for a new election was issued.