Tiverton

Tiverton was one of the larger industrial centres in the south-west, and was notable for the manufacture of serge and kersey. Although the town possessed a population of over 8,500 by the late 17th century, its electorate was restricted to the 25 members of the corporation. The preoccupations of this merchant oligarchy were clearly reflected in a petition of 26 Feb. 1707:

the combinations or clubs into which the labourers in the woollen manufactures have of late formed themselves is a growing complaint at Tiverton and, after a great deal of forbearance from their masters are become so insolent as to oblige them to comply with whatever their clubs shall determine and assemble themselves when they please in a riotous manner, abusing their masters, insulting justice and denying all authority that opposes them.1W. Harding, Hist. Tiverton, i. 88, 92–94.

The Whigs predominated in the early part of this period, and their hold on the corporation was confirmed by the new charter of 1692. Local Whigs such as Samuel Foote, Thomas Bere and Robert Burridge were usually returned for one of the seats, with the other going to eminent outsiders like Sir Anthony Keck and Lord Spencer. In 1701 the Tory electoral magnate, Jonathan Trelawny, bishop of Exeter, saw ‘little hope at Tiverton for our friends’. Not until 1708 was a Tory returned: Richard Mervin, a legal adviser to a number of local landed families. At the 1710 election Mervin, Bere and John Worth, a local merchant and Tory, received 13 votes each. All three were returned with the proviso that the House should determine the result. The election was declared void, however, and three Tories and one Whig (Bere) contested the ensuing by-election. By the narrowest of margins two Tories were returned: Worth himself and an influential outsider, the attorney-general, Sir Edward Northey. One London newspaper reported that ‘the Whiggish and Presbyterian interest is clearly overthrown’ and claimed that the Tory majority would have been greater ‘had not one of the Church party proved a false brother, being seduced by a Dutch trade and Presbyterian money’. It was also alleged that ‘diverse others of the corporation had the temptation of £300 a piece . . . but they had the courage and honesty to resist’. In May 1713 the change in political climate was reflected in the Tiverton address congratulating the Queen on a glorious peace concluded ‘against all the artifices of factions and ill-designing men’. Northey and Worth were unopposed at the general election of that year.2Ibid.; Devon RO, Exeter dioc. archs., Trelawny to Adn. Cook, 4 Jan. 1701; Trans. Devon Assoc. lxvii. 344; Post Boy, 21–23 Dec. 1710; London Gazette, 19–23 May 1713.