however, the name was transferred to the county constituency in which the town was placed, formally called the eastern (or cirencester) division of gloucestershire. this was a substantially-sized constituency fairly similar in its boundaries to the modern cotswold district council, with a strong rural element but including a number of small towns apart from cirencester - chipping campden, fairford, moreton-in-marsh, tetbury and stow-on-the-wold among them. in character it proved more liberal than cirencester borough had done, though this may have been as much from the dilution of the bathurst influence as from political factors - consequently instead of being a safe conservative seat it was generally a knife-edge marginal. arthur winterbotham, the liberal who had won the constituency by 700 votes at its first election, in 1885, was re-elected unopposed when he became a liberal unionist in 1886, but when he switched back to the liberals at the next general election his majority fell to 153. winterbotham died later the same year, and the by-election was decided in favour of the conservative candidate, colonel thomas chester-master, by just 3 votes; but his defeated opponent petitioned against the result and after further scrutiny of the ballots the result was revised and declared to be tied. it was impossible at this stage to give a casting vote to the returning officer (the usual solution to a tied election at that period), so the election had to be run again.