Essex North

Economic and social profile

The flat maritime county of Essex, comprising 981,120 acres and traversed by the Thames, Colne and Blackwater rivers, was overwhelmingly agricultural, with nine-tenths of its lands arable, pasture or meadow. Wheat, barley, potatoes, oats and beans were the chief produce.1Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 111. Local agriculture recovered slowly from the depression following the Napoleonic Wars, finally returning to prosperity in the 1850s. Agricultural wages, though, remained depressed, and many farm workers moved from the county’s northern villages to east London in this period.2K. Neale, Essex in history (1977), 159-61. The northern division contained the county’s largest urban centre, Colchester, whose silk industry had been declining since the 1820s, though it remained an important market town for the surrounding agricultural areas. The re-establishment of the Colchester barracks in 1855 acted as a valuable stimulus to the local economy.3VCH Essex, ix. 179-98. In the wider division, the market towns of Braintree and Coggeshall produced crape and silk respectively, while shipbuilding continued to grow at the port of Wivenhoe in this period.4VCH Essex, x. 1-8. The railway reached the northern division in 1843 when the Eastern Counties Railway extended its line from London as far as Colchester. The rival Eastern Union Railway built its line from Ipswich south to Colchester three years later. In 1848 the opening of the Braintree to Maldon line further improved local communication.5VCH Essex, ix. 233-7. The Anglican church was the dominant house of worship, with over 400 church and chapels of ease in the county, though Colchester, Coggeshall and most notably Braintree contained a significant Dissenting community, with a number of Independent, Wesleyan and Baptist chapels.6D. W. Coller, A people’s history of Essex (1861), 191-3.

Electoral history

Essex North was created by the 1832 Reform Act, which split the county into two divisions. From 1774 until 1830, a compromise between the leaders of the Tory and Whig interests had ensured Essex remained unpolled, save for between 1810 and 1812, when the reformer Montague Burgoune of Mark Hall had tried unsuccessfully to break the compact.7HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 370-74. At the 1830 general election the radical attorney Daniel Whittle Harvey, bête noire of local Whigs, had provoked a contest by putting up William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley, the duke of Wellington’s wastrel nephew. Long Wellesley was defeated, but came in at the following year’s general election, alongside the Whig Charles Callis Western.8HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 372. The Reformers, however, were unable to sustain this success in the post-reform era. The enfranchisement of tenants-at-will, who accounted for twenty per cent of the northern division’s electorate in 1832, was felt by observers to have benefitted the Conservatives.9HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 373-4. The local Conservative registration society also proved far more effective than their lacklustre Whig counterparts in the aftermath of reform.10Essex Standard, 28 Sept. 1833. These two factors were especially important as there was no overriding influence in the newly-created division. Over half of the landlords who held 3,000 acres or more resided outside the county, including the prominent Whig 20^th Baron Dacre.11K. Neale, ‘The Essex gentry at the general election of 1865’, in K. Neale (ed.), Essex: full of profitable thinges (1996), 399. The leading resident aristocratic landowners were the Tory 3rd Viscount Maynard, of Eaton Lodge, who served as lord lieutenant of the county, and the 3^rd Baron Braybrooke, who had supported reform, but from 1834 sided with the Conservatives.12HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 370-1.

In 1832 the voters of the northern division polled at Colchester, Saffron Walden, Thorpe and the election town of Braintree. Castle Hedingham, Dunmow and Witham were added as polling districts in 1847. The composition of the electorate did not change dramatically between the First and Second Reform Acts. The freeholders accounted for 62 per cent of the registered voters in 1837-38, a proportion that had fallen to 59 per cent by 1852. The next largest body were the £50 occupying tenants, who made up 21 per cent of the voters in 1837-38 and 24 per cent by 1852.13PP 1837-38 (329), xliv. 558; PP 1852 (8), xlii. 311. That same year, ten per cent of the county electors were also registered for property in the boroughs of either Colchester (493 voters) or Harwich (72 voters), a fairly low proportion for borough freeholders in a county.14PP 1852 (4), xlii. 305.

The Conservatives, or ‘True Blues’ dominated the representation throughout this period, enjoying complete electoral supremacy over the Whigs, known locally as ‘Yellows’, until the return of a Liberal in 1865. Despite this Blue hegemony, the northern division of Essex was home to a vibrant political culture. The local clergy vigorously joined in at election time, with those attached to the established church mostly canvassing for the Conservatives, while, according to one contemporary, ‘the dissenters ... almost to a man adopt one line of politics; they are all of the Yellow party’.15Quotation taken from N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 175-6. Dissenters in Braintree were particularly active in campaigning against the levying of church rates, and in 1837, under the leadership of the silk manufacturer and prominent Dissenter Samuel Courtauld, they established the Anti-Church Rate Committee, with the object of defending those taken to court for non-payment.16W.F. Quin, History of Braintree and Bocking (1998), 118-9. During the county’s reform agitations there had been a discernible, radical dynamic, including a prominent role played by women in Coggeshall, and after 1832 non-electors continued to feature in the division’s politics.17English history from Essex sources, 1750-1900, ed. A.F.J. Brown (1952), 203. On the five occasions that the Yellows failed to muster a candidate in a general election, the Braintree silk workers, through constant interruptions and dogged questioning of candidates, provided a visceral opposition to the Conservatives, while Richard Cobden’s tour of the region in July 1843 attracted considerable support from the county’s labourers. Unsurprisingly, agricultural questions, particularly the corn laws and the much detested malt tax, dominated election discourse; the defence of the established church in the face of a perceived threat from popery and a possible abolition of church rates was also a recurring theme. Partisan rivalry was further fostered by the Conservative-supporting Essex Standard, owned by the arch-Protestant John Taylor, while the Liberal Essex Telegraph was established in 1858.18Neale, ‘Essex gentry’, 398.

The 1832 general election in Essex North strained rather than galvanised the county’s Reform movement, which had always been an uneasy union between radicals and moderate Whigs. Western’s decision to stand in coalition with Dacre’s young nephew Thomas Brand outraged Whittle Harvey, who complained that as the inexperienced Brand had professed himself an adherent of the Whig Western, the division had ‘in effect but one representative’, which was ‘a striking and serious defect’.19Speech of D.W. Harvey, esq. MP ... in vindication of his conduct regarding the county and boroughs of Essex (1832). The animosity between Western and Whittle Harvey was palpable: the radical attorney had never forgiven Western for combining with the Tory John Tyrell against Long Wellesley in 1830; Western had previously noted that Whittle Harvey ‘hates the Whigs in his heart’.20Barrett Lennard MSS C60, Western to Lennard, 21 Dec. 1831. Whittle Harvey gained the endorsement of the fledging Associated Reform Committees of the Northern Division of the County of Essex, but it soon became apparent that he did not have sufficient support across the division to mount his own candidacy, and he declined to come forward. Unsurprisingly, he refused to endorse the two Whig candidates, dismissing them as ‘a bantling in the arms of an antiquated wet-nurse’.21Morning Post, 17 Nov. 1832.

Western and Brand also had their own problems. Western’s health was clearly in decline (‘at my age ... no joke’), and he cut an aged and sickly figure on the hustings.22Barrett Lennard MSS C60, May to Lennard, 9 Aug., Western to same, 12, 19 Aug.; The Times, 20, 24 Dec. 1832. His attempts to offset his age with the youth of Brand, meanwhile, appeared misguided. Extremely nervous when appearing before a crowd, Brand’s addresses were described as ‘painful’, and after one particularly embarrassing speech at Colchester, he was forced to apologise for his ‘failure in public speaking’.23Essex Standard, 3 Nov. 1832. A series of satirical dialogues titled ‘canvassing for young Brand’, published in the Essex Standard, poured further scorn on his inexperience and reliance on Western.24Ibid.

In the face of an enfeebled opposition, the two Conservative candidates were belligerent on the subject of reform. Sir John Tyrell, who had sat briefly sat for Essex between 1830 and 1831, described the Reform Act as a ‘violent attack’ on the constitution, and boasted that the still ‘powerful’ Tories would unite against the revolutionary pretensions of the Reformers.25Essex Standard, 10, 17 Nov. 1832; Morning Post, 19 Dec. 1832. Alexander Baring, the leading international financier who had previously represented Taunton, Callington and Thetford, described reform as ‘dangerous to every interest of the country’.26Morning Post, 16 Nov. 1832. They were attacked, though, for political inconsistency. Given his intimate involvement with the county’s ‘True Blue’ club, Tyrell’s claim that he was ‘not a party man’ was roundly mocked by his opponents, while his fellow candidate was derided as ‘see-saw Baring’ for his former Whig allegiances.27Essex Standard, 10 Nov. 1832; P. Ziegler, The sixth great power: Barings, 1762-1929 (1988), 59. Following a raucous nomination, however, Tyrell was elected at the top of the poll, while Baring came in second, just 36 votes ahead of Western. A breakdown of the poll revealed that the Conservatives had received the majority of the vote in Braintree and Thorpe, but trailed the Whigs in Saffron Walden. The vote in Colchester had been particularly tight, with Tyrell coming first, but Western gaining 21 more votes than Baring. Brand consistently polled less than Western in every district, reflecting the widespread doubts concerning his youth and inexperience.28Essex Standard, 29 Dec. 1832.

William IV’s controversial dismissal of the Whigs in November 1834 was applauded by Tyrell, who, in his subsequent election address, asserted that they had forfeited the confidence of the agricultural portion of the country. He also argued that Peel’s Tamworth manifesto had successfully dealt with the accusation that opponents of the Reform Act could not address acknowledged abuses in the country.29Essex Standard, 2 Jan. 1835; Morning Post, 12 Jan. 1835. His views were echoed by Baring, who insisted that he had always been anxious for ‘reform and improvement in all branches of our institutions’.30Essex Standard, 2 Jan. 1835. The Whigs, yet to recover from the internecine battles that had plagued them in 1832, struggled to organise a candidate, and a last minute effort to bring forward Henry Tufnell, of Cavendish Square, London, a defeated candidate at Colchester, ultimately came to nothing.31Morning Post, 12 Jan. 1835. At the nomination Tyrell and Baring voiced their zealous attachment to the agricultural interest. With many prominent Whigs choosing to stay away, Whittle Harvey provided the only semblance of opposition, save for a smattering of yellow cockades, delivering a short speech in which he attacked Baring for vacillating on the malt tax question, before declining to ‘lend himself to a factious opposition’.32Ibid. The two Conservatives were duly re-elected without a contest.

The Whigs did manage to muster a candidate four months later when Baring’s elevation to the peerage as Lord Ashburton created a vacancy. Their chosen man was John Disney, of Hyde, Ingatestone, a successful barrister who had finished bottom of the poll at Harwich in 1832. He was a firm supporter of the appropriation of Irish church revenues.33Essex Standard, 1 May 1835. The Conservatives brought forward John Elwes, of Grove Hill, who presented himself as an unwavering friend to the agricultural interest and an unflinching defender of the established church, ready to combat ‘that restless spirit of Popish agitation’. Although a popular figure in county life, he was far from a skilled public speaker, prompting the Conservative-supporting Essex Standard to reassure the electorate that Elwes was ‘one of the good old John Bull school – plain speaking and sincere’.34Essex Standard, 24 Apr. 1835. Tyrell, speaking in support of Elwes, returned to this theme at the nomination. Comparing the Conservative candidate’s succinctness to Disney’s loquacious performances on the hustings, he warned that if Disney should ‘by any chance, find his way into the House, he is not likely to diminish these long speeches’. Elwes, meanwhile, gave a short, prosaic address, asserting that what he lacked in ‘oratory’ he made up for in the strength of his support for the Essex farmer. As if to prove his distinct lack of grandiloquence, when pressed by Disney’s supporters on the causes of agricultural distress, he simply responded ‘I cannot answer the question’.35Essex Standard, 1 May 1835. Nevertheless, he was returned by a commanding majority, reflecting the diverging fortunes of the Blues and Yellows since the 1832 general election.

The outlook for the Yellows remained similarly bleak at the 1837 general election. A succession of possible candidates were approached, including Thomas Barrett Lennard, former Member for Maldon, and Thomas Robert Dimsdale, 4^th Baron Dimsdale, but with little hope of success, all declined.36Essex Standard, 28 July, 4 Aug. 1837. Local Whigs attempted to make political capital out of Elwes’s surprise decision to retire at the dissolution, mischievously distributing handbills which suggested that he had been pushed out by the local Blue hierarchy, but he was seamlessly replaced by Charles Gray Round, of Birch Hall.37Essex Standard, 4 Aug. 1837. Any suspicion of a schism in the Conservative ranks was put to bed at the nomination when Elwes spoke glowingly about his replacement.38Ibid. An active president of the Colchester and East Essex Auxiliary Bible Society, Round, who spent £500 on his campaign, made clear his staunch support for the established church, as well as agricultural protection.39W.R. Powell, John Horace Round (2001), 2; Essex Standard, 14 July 1837. Tyrell, meanwhile, questioned the Whigs’ loyalty to the new queen and attacked the ‘harsh’ provisions of the new poor law.40Essex Standard, 4 Aug. 1837. Both men were returned unopposed.

In late 1838 the Chartist movement made inroads into the northern division of Essex. In December a large Chartist meeting was held at Colchester, a town with a history of working-class radicalism: in 1832 the local working-men’s association had pressed the Metropolitan Political Union to call for a ‘People’s Charter’.41M. Chase, Chartism: a new history (2007), 8. Unlike the southern division, however, where the ‘Tolpuddle Martyr’ George Loveless had been instrumental in spreading the movement to rural areas, in the northern division Chartism remained largely wedded to urban Colchester. Moreover, the local movement began to wane after 1839, a year which had witnessed only a marginal increase in the number of Essex signatures to the Chartist petition.42Ibid., 264. In 1848, after years of decline, the Colchester branch of the National Charter Association, whose secretary was the teenage Henry Clubb, brought the region’s branches into a single Essex and Suffolk Chartist Union. Clubb, who later became a Michigan state senator, died in 1921, and came to be known as the ‘last Chartist’.43Ibid., 285, 315.

Despite the emergence of the Chartist movement in the region, it was agricultural issues that continued to dominate the local political agenda. The strength of local feeling towards maintaining protection was made stark in February 1839, when Charles Callis Western, now Lord Western, put aside his usual Whig sympathies, and attacked Lord John Russell for appearing to favour free trade in corn, a policy which he felt to be ‘a most rash and hazardous experiment’.44Essex Standard, 8 Feb. 1839. Unsurprisingly, at the 1841 general election Tyrell and Round issued addresses giving their unequivocal support to ‘the great cause of British agriculture’.45Essex Standard, 25 June 1841. At the nomination a pugnacious Tyrell asserted that the electors would not be fooled by ‘the clap-trap of the day about the big and the cheap loaf’. He also warned that any alteration in the corn laws would depress the wages of agricultural labourers. His views were echoed by Round, who declared that the removal of protection would bring ‘ruin and misery’ upon British farmers.46Essex Standard, 9 July 1841. Tyrell and Round were again elected without a contest.

Thereafter the local movement to maintain the corn laws gained momentum. Under the leadership of Robert Baker, of Writtle, an Essex Protection Society was formed, raising nearly £5,000 by public subscription.47People’s history of Essex, 185-6. The Commons votes of Tyrell and Round, meanwhile, were closely scrutinised by the society. In April 1842 members of the Braintree farmers’ club attacked both Members for backing Peel’s sliding scale on corn duties. As the county’s leading agriculturalist in the Commons, Tyrell attempted to reassure farmers that it was in their best interests to keep Peel’s ministry in power, but they remained unconvinced. At a particularly stormy meeting of the Chelmsford farmers’ club, George Bawtree, president of the East Essex Agricultural Society, reprimanded Tyrell for putting his faith in Peel.48Essex Standard, 8 Apr. 1842. The following year Tyrell clashed with Baker over the Canadian corn law bill, which the latter felt was the thin end of the wedge of a total loss of protection. An exhausted Tyrell lamented to his audience that ‘when I get to London I am considered a bigoted man for protection, and when I come here some of you think I am a Liberal’.49Essex Standard, 12 May 1843. In the end, the strength of local pressure told, and Tyrell duly voted against the Canadian corn bill, 22 May 1843.

Thereafter Tyrell, working closely with the Essex agricultural protection society, became the county’s leading voice against any further alterations to the corn laws, beginning with a public, open-air debate against Richard Cobden at Colchester in July 1843.50Essex Standard, 14 July 1843. Following Cobden’s two-hour speech, which drew enthusiastic support from a crowd of over 5,000, Tyrell offered a staunch but largely uninspiring defence of agricultural protection, interspersed with ill-tempered exchanges with his opponent over the tactics of the Anti-Corn Law League, which, under the leadership of local free trader James Hurnard, had been a vocal presence in Colchester for over a year.51English history from Essex sources, 196-7. Their efforts had clearly been successful: Cobden’s resolution in favour of free trade was passed by an overwhelming majority.52Essex Standard, 14 July 1843. Once Peel’s intention to repeal the corn laws became public knowledge in December 1845, Tyrell staged a mass meeting of the Essex agricultural protection society at Chelmsford, declaring it to be the first step in creating throughout the county ‘the nucleus for such a general opposition the boldest minister would hardly dare to face’.53M. Lawson-Tancred, ‘The Anti-League and the Corn Law Crisis of 1846’, Hist. Jnl., iii (1960), 174; Morning Post, 6, 13 Dec. 1845. His hopes were never realised. Both he and Round were in the minority when the Commons passed the third reading of the bill to repeal the corn laws, 15 May 1846.

At the 1847 general election the issue of free trade was superseded by an almost hysterical alarm over the threat posed by the Roman Catholic church. The debate was driven by the staunchly Protestant Essex Standard, whose editorials gave effusive praise to the recently-formed National Club.54Essex Standard, 9 July 1847. With Round deciding to contest Oxford University as a ‘high-church’ candidate in opposition to Gladstone, the Blues brought forward William Beresford, chief whip of the protectionist party at Westminster, who had sat for Harwich since 1841. A highly-strung Irishman given to profanity, Beresford’s zealous attachment to the defence of Protestantism was well-known, though his Irish heritage was seen as a potential weakness.55N. Gash, ‘Beresford, William Marcus Joseph (1797/87-1883)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. Emboldened by the settlement of the corn law question, the Yellows put up John Gurdon Rebow, of Wivenhoe Park, a leading figure in north Essex Liberalism. Rebow made great play of Beresford’s Irish roots, arguing that such an outsider could not be trusted to represent the county. In response, an address from Tyrell and Beresford’s election committee painted Rebow as a Catholic sympathiser who would ‘endow the Popish church out of money raised from a Protestant people’.56Essex Standard, 23 July 1847. With religious issues dominating the contest, Rebow had to perform a delicate balancing act: reaching out to local Protestants by stressing his support for the established church, while appealing to the division’s numerous dissenters resident in Colchester, Braintree and Witham.57Essex Standard, 6 Aug. 1847.

With Tyrell’s re-election never in doubt, the contest was essentially between Beresford and Rebow, and at the nomination the two men traded insults over Beresford’s ‘Irish acres’ and Rebow’s inconsistency on religious questions. Tyrell also reserved most of his fire for Rebow, declaring that his Liberal opponent was a ‘piratical schooner’ for claiming to be a supporter of the established church and the agricultural interest.58Ibid. Amidst these heated exchanges, an air of levity was provided by the eccentric Fyske Goodeve Fyske Harrison, of Copford Hall, a former high sheriff of the county, who was ostensibly standing on the grounds that Round should be replaced by a local man.59Essex Standard, 23 July 1847. Having issued an address that, apart from a call for religious toleration, was noticeably light on principles, Harrison did little to illuminate the electors about his political allegiance, claiming that he had been taken ‘by surprise’ at the early nomination date.60Essex Standard, 23 July 1847, 6 Aug. 1847. At the end of what had been a particularly bitter campaign, Tyrell, as expected, was re-elected at the head of the poll, with Beresford defeating Rebow by over 700 votes. The Conservative victory was comprehensive: Rebow, whose votes came overwhelmingly from plumpers, was outpolled in every single district.61Chelmsford Chronicle, 13, 27 Aug., 3 Sept. 1847. Harrison, whose candidature was never taken seriously, finished bottom with a mere 36 votes.62Chelmsford Chronicle, 13 Aug. 1847.

Appointed secretary at war by Derby in February 1852, Beresford swiftly secured an unopposed return the next month, when he gave his staunch backing to the new premier and called for a moderate fixed duty on corn. With no Yellow candidate forthcoming, the only semblance of opposition at the nomination was provided by raucous Braintree factory workers, male non-electors who Beresford dismissed on the grounds that they did not have the vote. For the cabinet minister, his duty ‘was to the freeholders, and not to the rabble’.63The Times, 10 Mar. 1852. The hot-tempered Beresford returned to this theme at the general election four months later when, faced by constant interruptions at the nomination from Braintree’s non-electors, he hissed ‘I despise you from my heart as the vilest rabble I ever saw’. Tyrell was barely more controlled, declaring that he wished those causing the uproar ‘had a cheap loaf at that moment in every one of their mouths’.64Daily News, 14 July 1852. The oppositional spirit of the Braintree non-electors, however, was not matched by the leaders of the Yellows, who were distinctly lacklustre in their efforts to bring forward a candidate. At the eleventh hour they put up Thomas Barrett Lennard, who had just lost his seat at Maldon, but his failure to appear at the nomination encapsulated the half-hearted nature of his belated candidature. Speaking on his behalf, Joseph Hardcastle stated that Lennard would support the abolition of church rates, a popular cry amongst the division’s dissenters, and saved his invective for Beresford, whose ‘name is one that stinks in our nostrils’.65Essex Standard, 16 July 1852. United by their insistence that, with the re-introduction of the corn laws unlikely, the agricultural interest deserved an alleviation of their burdens, Tyrell and Beresford were re-elected by an overwhelming majority. Hardcastle, who had erroneously received three votes at Colchester, was added to the return by the high sheriff. At the declaration Samuel Courtauld delivered a defiant speech, highlighting how Lennard, despite being defeated heavily elsewhere, had polled the highest number of votes at Braintree. He conceded, though, that the Liberals had ‘entirely neglected’ the register, and called for a renewed effort on that front.66Essex Standard, 23 July 1852.

For the next two general elections, however, the northern division’s Liberals remained largely impotent. When Tyrell announced in 1856 that he would retire from Parliament at the next dissolution, Charles Du Cane, of Braxted Park, who had sat briefly for Maldon before his election was declared void in March 1853, was swiftly lined up as his replacement. Du Cane’s Conservative credentials were beyond reproach. Presenting himself to the division at Saffron Walden in April 1856, he praised Derby’s leadership and announced his intention to resist ‘every attempt to unchristianise the British House of Commons’.67Essex Standard, 4 Apr. 1856. At the 1857 general election he criticised the bombardment of Canton as foolhardy, but backed Palmerston as the man to resolve the crisis.68Essex Standard, 27 Mar. 1857. Beresford, who had controversially abstained from Cobden’s motion on the issue, 3 Mar. 1857, took a different line. Addressing a Conservative meeting at Colchester, he asserted that it would have been ‘madness’ not to present a strong show of force towards the Chinese. On those grounds, he had felt it ‘would not be right’ to follow his Conservative colleagues into the division lobby in support of Cobden.69Essex Standard, 25 Mar. 1857. While this stance caused a small degree of disquiet in the Conservative ranks, the most vociferous opposition to Beresford came once again from the division’s non-electors, who repeatedly heckled him for his previous comments about local workers being a ‘rabble’ whom he despised. At the nomination an unusually contrite Beresford apologised for the insult, explaining, somewhat unconvincingly, that he felt the ‘utmost kindness’ towards the working classes.70Essex Standard, 1 Apr. 1857. Beresford and Du Cane were returned unopposed.

At the 1859 general election a contest was threatened not by the appearance of a rival candidate but by another Conservative, in the guise of Colonel Samuel Ruggles Brise, who opposed Beresford on the grounds that the Irishman was not a ‘proper country gentleman’.71Ipswich Journal, 16 Apr. 1859. At a meeting to resolve the dispute arranged by the county’s Conservative registration society, it was clear that Brise had significant support, reflecting the continued, albeit hitherto contained, Conservative unease with the Irish outsider.72Essex Standard, 20 Apr. 1859. The meeting ended in confusion, but after pressure from the Blue hierarchy, including Du Cane, who warned against the party indulging in the ‘horrors of civil war and suicidal warfare’, Brise stood aside, leaving the two Conservatives to be re-elected without a contest.73Essex Standard, 22 Apr., 4 May 1859.

After years of seemingly inexorable decline, the northern division’s Liberals, under the leadership of Rebow and his solicitor John Barnes, party agent for Colchester, and with the assistance of Thomas Roberts, secretary to the Liberal Registration Association at Westminster, launched a concerted registration drive in 1864. After vigorously contesting that year’s registration revision, it was estimated that the Liberals had gained at least 500 voters.74Neale, ‘Essex gentry and the general election of 1865’, 399. The timing was apposite. Due to migration from rural north Essex to east London, the division’s registered electorate had been steadily declining since the 1852 general election, creating a potentially more competitive environment for the Liberals. On the eve of the 1865 general election there were 4,904 voters on the register, a decline of fourteen per cent since 1851.75Chelmsford Chronicle, 18 Aug. 1865. The Conservatives, meanwhile, were beset by troubles. Du Cane’s standing amongst his tenants was in jeopardy, following accusations that he unfairly protected his game at Braxted Park. The dispute momentarily caused him to search for an alternative seat at the dissolution, until the local party rallied to his defence. Beresford, to whom the local party had never completely warmed, had also threatened to resign, having been asked by a meeting of Conservatives at Faulkborne to pay his own election expenses.76Neale, ‘Essex gentry and the general election of 1865’, 395, 400-3. To oppose these potentially compromised Conservatives, the Yellows brought forward Sir Thomas Burch Western, of Felix Hall, cousin of the late Lord Western and a prominent and well-respected figure in the county’s political and agricultural life.77Essex Standard, 17 Aug. 1865.

With all three candidates giving general support to extending the franchise to ‘respectable’ working men and a repeal of the much-detested malt tax, it was their diverging positions on church rates that dominated the contest. Western, who called for their abolition, directly targeted the votes of the Dissenters who resided in the urban areas of the constituency, especially Colchester and Braintree. Although describing himself as a ‘sincere churchman’, he insisted that it was a grave injustice that Nonconformists were obliged to pay church rates, an assertion that won him the support of the influential Courtauld. Du Cane, in contrast, was unwavering in his defence of church rates, a position, which he admitted at the nomination, was like ‘holding the red flag in the face of the bull’ in Braintree. His views were echoed by Beresford, who painted Western as a danger to the established church. Beresford also attempted to capitalise on his Liberal opponent’s age (Western was sixty-nine years old) comparing him to ‘an ambling nag’ who, if returned to the Commons, would ‘not only break his legs, but break his neck’.78Ibid. Western appeared in public only sporadically during the campaign, but this was largely compensated for by the energetic canvassing of his son, Thomas Sutton Western, who had been returned for Maldon in 1857, and the Rev. Sir John Page Wood, his sitting tenant at Rivenhall Place.79Neale, ‘Essex gentry at general election of 1865’, 420.

Following an extremely bitter contest, Du Cane topped the poll, with Western elected in second place, 50 votes ahead of Beresford. Western became the first (and only) Liberal to sit for Essex North. A breakdown of the poll revealed that the Liberal strategy of targeting Nonconformist voters in urban areas had paid dividends. In the Braintree division, Western gained an impressive 452 votes, compared to 213 for Du Cane and 179 for Beresford. He also narrowly outpolled Beresford in Colchester and Witham.80Chelmsford Chronicle, 28 July 1865. Crucially, 148 voters split their votes between Western and Du Cane, compared to only 18 who split between Western and Beresford, a preference that helped to push the Liberal candidate over the finishing line.81Chelmsford Chronicle, 18 Aug. 1865.

Despite their new-found confidence, the Liberals declined to oppose Du Cane when he stood for re-election in July 1866, following his appointment as a lord of the admiralty in Derby’s ministry. At the nomination he asserted that the late Liberal government’s reform bill would have destroyed the representation of the landed interest in the counties and warned against making the working classes the ‘sole depository of political power’.82Essex Standard, 20 July 1866. He was re-elected unopposed.

The 1867 Reform Act abolished Essex North, dividing the county into three double-member constituencies: the new divisions of Essex East and West, and the redrawn southern division. From the abolished North, the hundreds of Hickford, Lexden, Tendring, Winstree, Witham and Thurstable were transferred to the East; Freshwell, Uttlesford, Clavering and Dunmow were transferred to the West.83PP 1867 (250), v. 605. The Conservatives dominated the two new constituencies. At the 1868 general election James Round (Charles Gray Round’s nephew) and Brise came in for the eastern division, while Lord Eustace Cecil and Henry Selwin-Ibbetson, both former members for Essex South, were returned in the west. All four men retained their seats in 1874 and 1880. After two Liberals had been elected for the southern division in 1868, Conservative hegemony was restored in 1874 and maintained six years later. The three constituencies were abolished in 1885, whereupon the county was split into the single-member divisions of Walthamstow, Romford, Epping, Saffron Walden, Harwich, Maldon, Chelmsford and South-East.