About the middle of this term (December 26, 1765) Burke was returned to Parliament for the borough of Wendover, by the influence of Lord Verney, who owned it, and who also returned William Burke for another borough.

Lord Verney was an Irish peer, with large property in Buckinghamshire; he now represented that county in Parliament.

It was William Burke's influence with Lord Verney that procured for his namesake the seat at Wendover.

Burke made his first speech in the House of Commons a few days after the opening of the session of 1766 (January 27), and was honoured by a compliment from Pitt, still the Great Commoner.

A week later he spoke again on the same momentous theme, the complaints of the American colonists, and his success was so marked that good judges predicted, in the stiff phraseology of the time, that he would soon add the palm of the orator to the laurel of the writer and the philosopher.