Northamptonshire South

Economic and social profile

Northamptonshire was a remarkably flat county (its highest point, at Daventry, was a mere 800 feet). Its predominantly agricultural economy benefitted from a climate free from extremes (owing to its distance from the sea and being surrounded by eight other counties) and a variety of soils. These geographical circumstances allowed for a proliferation of dairy and corn farming in the south of the county, which was also famous for its breeding of short horn bulls, and its farmers enjoyed a thriving export market to the surrounding counties and London. The southern division contained the market towns of Northampton, Towcester, Daventry and Brackley where some manufacturing also took place. Northampton, the largest of the four, was famous for its shoe manufacturing, Towcester had some silk stocking manufacturers, and Daventry was known for its production of horse whips. Some freestone mining also took place around the outskirts of Northampton and Brackley.4S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831), iii. 396-407; S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), iii. 423-33; Anon, Henson’s History of the County of Northampton (1871), 61-4. All four towns contained non-Anglican places of worship throughout the period – Northampton had Baptist, Quaker, Huntingtonian, Independent, Methodist and Roman Catholic chapels, Brackley a Methodist chapel, Daventry, Methodist and Independent chapels, and Towcester, Baptist, Independent and Methodist chapels.5Lewis, Topographical Dictionary (1831), i. 223, ii. 12, iii. 305, iv. 329; S. Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848) http://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-dict/england/, [accessed 7 Oct. 2016].

The division was covered by two weekly partisan papers from 1832, the Liberal Northampton Mercury and the Tory Northampton Herald. Stamp returns suggest that the Mercury maintained a weekly circulation of around 1,700 copies between 1837 and 1850, and that the Herald’s weekly circulation rose from around 1,200 in 1837 to 1,700 by 1850.6PP 1852 (42), xxviii. 524-5. The politically neutral Northampton Advertiser was established in 1851, and was published every fortnight.7Anon, The Literary and Educational Year Book for 1859 (1859), 119 At the start of the period the division was well served by road connections to London, Manchester, Chester and Holyhead, as well as the Grand Junction Canal, which cut through the centre of the division and was connected to Northampton via a railroad.8Lewis, Topographical Dictionary (1831), 401. The London to Birmingham Railway opened in 1838 with stations at Roade, Blisworth and Weedon.9Northampton Mercury, 9 Mar. 1839. Northampton’s topography meant that it had to wait until 1845 before it was connected to the railway, via the Northampton to Peterborough line, which started at Blisworth.10Northampton Mercury, 3 Jan. 1846; I. Petticrew, Notes and Extracts on the history of the London and Birmingham Railway (2014) http://gerald-massey.org.uk/Railway/c11_stations.htm [accessed 3 May 2016] A line connecting Towcester with Blisworth was opened in May 1866 as part of the Northampton and Banbury Railway.11Northampton Mercury, 5 May 1866.

Electoral history

Due to the place of election remaining at Northampton, electoral culture in Northamptonshire South retained many of the characteristics of the undivided pre-reform county of Northamptonshire. Nominations in the division took place at Northampton County Hall; the Whig and emerging Liberal interest operated out of the George Hotel; and the Conservative interest was based at the Angel Hotel. Two Conservatives represented the division for all but three years during the period, thanks largely to the local party’s aptitude for organisation and the enduring popularity of their Protestant, pro-agricultural message. The Conservatives – who were not without their periodic internal squabbles – also benefitted from the reluctance of the division’s Whigs and Liberals to imitate their opponents’ ‘unfeeling and ungentlemanly’ approach to registration.12Northampton Mercury, 18 Dec. 1847. Through to the late 1850s, Liberals explained their consistent failures via complaints about the registration system. They subsequently blamed their poor performances on landlord intimidation. Conservative candidates consistently polled well in the three mostly agricultural districts of Daventry, Towcester and Brackley, where their numeric influence outweighed Northampton’s usually pro-Liberal, borough freeholders.

Based on estimates for 1831, the 1832 Reform Act increased the division’s electorate by 45% from 13.4% to 19.4% of the adult male population of the division. Between 1832 and 1868 15% to 20% of adult males became registered to vote in the county, with adult male enfranchisement at its peak in 1832 at 19.4%. This had reduced to just 15.5% by 1851 before rising again to 16.5% in 1861. Based on the voterate at major contested elections, turnout fluctuated between 72% and 85% during this period. In 1839, the county’s electorate consisted primarily of forty-shilling freeholders (73.6%) and £50 tenants-at-will (22.36%). This remained fairly stable until the late 1850s, when there was a notable increase in the number of 40s. freeholders, primarily due to an increase in the number of borough freeholders from 11.59% (528 of 4,556) of the registered electorate in 1851 to 16.25% (839 of 5,162) in 1861. This raised the electorate to over 5,000 in 1859, and was probably caused by the death of men qualified under the ancient householder franchise in the borough of Northampton, and the transfer of their property to their sons or new inhabitants who qualified for the county as forty-shilling freeholders, but not as £10 householders. In terms of outvoters, in 1831 26% of freeholders who polled for the constituent parts of Northamptonshire South were non-resident, but by 1857 this had reduced to 14% of the registered electorate.13Compiled from: Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the county of Northampton which commenced at Northampton (1831); PP 1833 (189), xxxvii. 21; PP 1836 (190), xliii. 363; PP 1837-8 (329), xliv. 553; PP 1840 (579), xxxix. 187; PP 1846 (284), xxxiii. 145; PP 1852 (4), xlii. 303; PP 1854 (280), liii. 211; PP 1859 (140), xxiii. 139; PP 1862 (410), xliv. 703; PP 1865 (448), xliv. 549. Population data outside of census years has been modelled using trends from the 1831, 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 total figures for England and Wales, and adult male ratios are based on census data for males aged over 21 (extracted and modelled from census data of males aged between 20 and 24), PP 1833 (149), xxxvi. 12-13; PP 1843 (496), xxii. 8; PP 1852-3 (1691), lxxxviii. 206; PP 1863 (3221), liii. 278; PP 1873 (872), lxxi. 12.

Northamptonshire’s fiercely contested 1831 election upset a longstanding compromise agreement between the county’s leading families, which had been in place since a similarly expensive and lengthy contest in 1806.14HP Commons 1820-32, ii. 744-50. Under this arrangement, the Tory stalwart, William Ralph Cartwright, and the leading Whig, Viscount Althorp, had shared the representation of the county. Both men enjoyed an esteemed reputation in the locality as active magistrates, agriculturists and sportsmen. Althorp and Cartwright had hoped this agreement would remain in place ahead of the 1831 election, but at an eventful hustings dominated by the issue of parliamentary reform, the Whig, Viscount Milton, and the Tory, Charles Knightley, were unexpectedly nominated late in proceedings. Thirteen days of polling, characterised by intense partisanship – 80% of voters cast their two votes along party lines – and questions of gentlemanly honour – stemming from the accusation that both parties had covered up their intention to field two candidates – had resulted in the return of Althorp and Milton.15Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the county of Northampton which commenced at Northampton (1831); HP Commons 1820-32, ii. 749; F. O’Gorman,Voters, Patrons, and Parties (1989), 339; D.C. Moore,The Politics of Deference (1976), 113; P. Salmon,Electoral Reform at Work (2002), 122. Nevertheless, Cartwright’s enduring popularity in the county and Knightley’s potential future prospects were underlined by the fact that in an election that decimated all but four Tory county members nationally, the former was only 100 votes shy of Milton, and the latter polled strongly without ever having conducted a canvass.16J. Phillips, The Great Reform Bill in the Boroughs (1992), 297. In the long run, the election proved significant as it galvanised Northamptonshire’s Tories – election funds were being collected to support Cartwright’s future return as early as August 1831. The Northampton Herald was established ‘to advocate High Tory Principles’ under the patronage of, amongst others, Cartwright and Knightley, and in May 1832 canvassing commenced for a Cartwright candidacy in the new southern division of the county.17Northants. RO, Gotch mss GK 347, Milton to Gotch, 14 May 1832. An initial attempt to establish the paper in late 1831 was mired by poor financial management, however, Knightley, Cartwright, Robert Gunning and William Willes bailed out the paper in November 1832 to ensure the office’s press did not fall ‘into the enemy’s hands’: E. G. Forrester, Northamptonshire County Elections and Electioneering 1695–1832 (1941), 149-50.

As recommended by the boundary commission in February 1832, the county was divided by the 1832 Boundary Act into a northern and southern division, the design of which had been the work of John George Shaw Lefevre, the Spencer family’s land conveyancer and Althorp’s occasional election agent. In a manner befitting the disinterested, scientific ambitions of the commission Lefevre divided the county via its hundreds in the most equal manner possible according to population, area and voters.18M. Spychal, ‘Constructing the electoral map: parliamentary boundaries and the 1832 Reform Act’ (PhD thesis, University of London, forthcoming). The resultant southern division contained Cartwright’s Aynho estate, Knightley’s Fawsley estate and the house and park of the Spencer family estate, the rest of which spread into the northern division.

Althorp realised that if he was to retain his leading role in county affairs he would have to stand for the southern division. Anything else would, he acknowledged, be ‘running away from my natural position’.19E. A. Wasson,Whig Renaissance: Lord Althorp and the Whig Party, 1782-1845(1987), 249. Nevertheless, he remained fearful of a contested election, not only due to expense, but because of the Reform Act’s enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will, which he felt would favour the Tory interest in the division.20Ibid, 249. When Althorp heard in September 1832 that a meeting of freeholders had selected the earl of Euston to stand as a second Whig, he informed his father that he would rather resign and stand elsewhere than be ‘compelled to go to an absurd expense [to represent the division], because some wrong-headed people choose it’.21D. Le Marchant, Memoirs of Viscount Althorp (1876), 442-3; Northampton Mercury, 1 Sept. 1832. Days later, however, at Althorp’s request Euston retired his candidacy.22Wasson, Whig Renaissance, 250. At the same time, the leading Tory Charles Arbuthnot, who sensed the potential for two Tory candidates to be returned in a contested election, tried to convince Cartwright to stand on a joint ticket, probably with Knightley. Nevertheless, like Althorp, Cartwright had little stomach for an expensive contest and repeatedly rejected Arbuthnot’s machinations.23N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel (1953), 245. As a result, the aristocratic compromise that had been in place in Northamptonshire between 1806 and 1831 was resurrected, and Althorp and Cartwright (who was nominated by Knightley) were returned uncontested for Northamptonshire South at the division’s first reformed election.

Conservative attention to voter registration in the two years that immediately followed the passage of the Reform Act, and Althorp’s succession to the peerage in November 1834, left Cartwright and Knightley in a position of complete control over the division ahead of the 1835 election.24Northants. RO, Cartwright mss C (A) 8204, E. J. Burton to Cartwright, 16 June 1833; 8205, E. J. Burton to W. Grant, 20 June 1833. In January 1835 the Liberal Northampton Mercury bemoaned the futility of a potential Euston candidacy, as it reported that due to the ‘undisputed allowance of doubtful Tory votes and … the rejection, upon purely technical grounds, of the claims of Liberal electors, the Conservative party have gained from 4 to 500 votes’. Liberal inaction over registration was so marked that even Althorp and Euston had reportedly been struck off the register.25Northampton Mercury, 3 Jan. 1835. As a result Knightley, who had already completed a successful canvass of the county ahead of a potential by-election following Viscount Althorp’s succession to the peerage, was elected uncontested alongside Cartwright at the 1835 general election.26It has been incorrectly stated that Knightley was returned at a by-election in November 1834, however, no by-election took place between Althorp’s succession to the peerage and the general election, C. Dod, Electoral Facts, from 1832-1853 (1853), 232; J. Vincent & M. Stenton (eds.), McCalmont’s Parliamentary Poll Book, British Election Results 1832-1918 (1971), 218. Both MPs advocated a protectionist stance on the hustings.27Northampton Mercury, 17 Jan. 1835.

Knightley and Cartwright continued to cultivate their status and reputation among Northamptonshire’s agriculturalists during 1835 and 1836 through their involvement with the Banbury Agricultural Association, the Northamptonshire Association for the Protection of Agriculture, and their attendance at Conservative dinners, where they proved more than willing to provide rousing speeches in defence of the Protestant constitution.28Northampton Mercury, 24 Jan. 1835, 21 Nov. 1835, 5 Dec. 1835, 8 Oct. 1836. After waking up to the realities of voter registration, south Northamptonshire’s Liberals became a little more bullish over their future chances. In October 1835 the Mercury congratulated the work of Liberal agents in the registration courts that autumn, stating that it had led to ‘a very considerable accession of strength to the liberal cause’.29Northampton Mercury, 24 Oct. 1835. Nevertheless, the continued perception of Conservative hegemony in the division meant that no Liberal candidate had come forward within a fortnight of the death of William IV in June 1837. Calls for the nomination of the fourth Earl Spencer’s brother, Frederick Spencer – who had been without a seat since 1835 and eventually chose to stand for Midhurst in 1837 – were never answered.30Northampton Mercury, 1 July 1837, 8 July 1837. As a sign of the extent to which Knightley and Cartwright’s return was considered a formality in 1837, discussion at the hustings focused on the more exciting matter of the election in the northern division of the county, which was due to take place in Kettering a week later. Cartwright was too unwell to be chaired in the procession that followed, so his long-time proposer, Thomas Thornton, took his place.31Northampton Mercury, 29 July 1837.

Registration remained a sore point for the division’s Liberals between 1837 and 1841, proving that the hope expressed around the issue in 1835 had been a false dawn. In 1839, the Liberal Mercury accused the Conservative Herald of not sharing the dates for the registration courts in order to subversively manipulate the register. Owing to its alleged higher circulation (which the Mercury also accused it of having doctored through excessive stamp purchasing in 1838), the Herald was the only paper to have received notice from the revising barrister of that year’s intended schedule in the courts. The notice was not published or forwarded to the Mercury, and as a result the first day of the court had to be delayed due to a lack of overseers. More significantly, a number of potential Liberal voters were disfranchised on account of not knowing the day that they had to attend to prove their entitlement.32Northampton Mercury, 12 Oct. 1839. Although the Herald was undoubtedly devious in not publishing the dates of the court, the episode suggests continued Liberal inattention to the issue of registration as well as a lack of communication between Liberal agents, the Mercury and sympathetic overseers, as the proposed schedules for the registration courts were also required by the Reform Act to be published annually in a ‘public and conspicuous Situation’ in Northampton.332 Will IV., c. 45, clause XLI. It is evident that little was done to resolve these issues in subsequent years, as ahead of the 1841 election the Mercury bitterly castigated the registration clauses as ‘the most defective part of the Reform Bill’ owing to the electoral advantage they provided to well-resourced parties.34Northampton Mercury, 7 Aug. 1841.

The 1841 election proved more raucous than previous reformed elections on account of the last minute nomination of the earl of Euston. Euston had been elected temporarily on a double return in Thetford’s 1841 election at the end of June, which prompted an anonymous address in the Mercury calling for electors to adopt him and effect the ‘emancipation’ of Northamptonshire South ‘from the coalition of Conservatives’.35Northampton Mercury, 3 July 1841. It was unclear whether Euston had anything to do with the notice, and his lack of a canvass and failure to attend the hustings, which was ‘crowded to suffocation’, suggested to those present that he had not. As a result another uncontested election was expected, but just before the return of Cartwright and Knightley, and with ‘not a country gentleman on the Liberal side’ present, Benjamin Lee of Bradshaw Street in Northampton nominated Euston as a free trade candidate. William Collier seconded him, and when both Collier and Lee, ‘two respectable, firm, noble-minded shoe-makers’, insisted on a contest they confirmed that they were aware that it was they, not Euston, who was liable for the expenses of the election. When pressed, they also refused to state whether Euston had consented to the nomination.36Northampton Mercury, 10 July, 4 Dec. 1841.

Euston polled poorly in the ensuing contest, scoring 16% of the total vote. Knightley and Cartwright were returned with 41% and 43% of the total poll respectively. Euston did poll proportionately better in the Towcester division where his property lay (23%), and in Northampton (24%), whose borough freeholders in particular proved more amenable to Liberal candidates throughout the period.37Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the southern division of the county of Northampton, on the 8th and 9th days of July, 1841 (1841), 83. Although Knightley and Cartwright’s return was never in doubt, it did not stop an angry Herald from accusing Northamptonshire’s Whigs and Liberals of trying to outflank Knightley (now reportedly the paper’s primary benefactor) with a surprise nomination. Following his defeat Euston expressed his continued support for Melbourne’s government over the sugar, corn and timber duties, and in a sign that his candidacy may well have been planned, he thanked those who had nominated him (rather than apologising to his fellow candidates for the unnecessary expense of a contest), citing the status of his election in Thetford as the reason for his non-attendance in the division during the election.38Northampton Mercury, 17 July 1841. Northampton’s Liberal MP, Robert Vernon Smith, was also accused of having orchestrated the contest, which he denied, though he did admit to funding Euston’s candidacy and having purchased a £4 holding in the county to allow him to vote in the division.39Northampton Mercury, 4 Dec. 1841.

The activities of the Anti-Corn Law League gained some coverage in the county from late 1840 and protection was a prominent feature of the candidates’ hustings speeches in 1841. Nevertheless, it was not until November 1843, when Earl Spencer advocated free trade at that year’s dinner to the mayor of Northampton, that the issue really exploded in the county.40Northampton Mercury, 5 Dec. 1840, 26 Dec. 1840, 24 June 1843. Spencer’s speech prompted the resignation of a number of Northamptonshire’s prominent farmers from the previously apolitical Northamptonshire Farming and Grazing Society and the establishment of the Northamptonshire Agricultural Protection Society (NAPS), as well as a prolonged war of correspondence in the local press.41Northampton Mercury, 2 Dec. 1843, 9 Dec. 1843, 16 Dec. 1843, 6 Jan. 1844, 20 Jan. 1844, 27 Jan. 1844, 10 Feb. 1844, 17 Feb. 1844, 24 Feb. 1844, 29 June 1844.

The NAPS became the focal point for Conservative politics in the division over the next two years, and Knightley and Cartwright were in attendance at the George Hotel at its formation in January 1844. Knightley provided a particularly memorable speech, in which he vilified the League as ‘the most pestiferous society that ever was formed’ and repeal as a ‘most diabolical conspiracy’ dreamt up by ‘ragamuffins’, who sought to ‘starve their own people to feed foreigners’. He also assured his audience that Peel had no intention of entertaining the League’s demands, and that ‘if the farmers would rise as one man, and act as one man, they could not be beaten’.42Northampton Mercury, 12 Mar. 1842, 27 Aug. 1842, 10 Dec. 1842, 20 Jan. 1844, 27 Jan. 1844. Knightley attended the lavish first anniversary dinner in January 1845, where entertainment was provided by four professional singers and refreshment from a 130lb baron of beef. Illness prevented Cartwright attending both this and a further dinner of the society in December 1845. Nevertheless, his son, Colonel William Cartwright, informed the latter meeting of his father’s continued commitment to protection. Knightley also warned Peel at the December 1845 meeting that he would ‘lose caste as an English gentleman’ if he introduced total repeal.43Northampton Mercury, 11 Jan. 1845, 25 Jan 1845; Northampton Mercury, 3 Jan. 1846.

Richard Cobden and John Bright, as well as the Chartist, Feargus O’Connor, attended a public meeting on the corn laws in Northampton’s market square in August 1844, but the county’s leading Whigs and Liberals remained reluctant to associate themselves with the League.44Northampton Mercury, 3 Aug. 1844, 10 Aug. 1844. While respectable liberal opinion in the county had supported the arguments of the League in principle since 1840, it had always distanced itself from the League’s tactics. Instead Liberals sought to appeal to the county’s farming population by positioning themselves between the radical tactics of the League and the pressure of landlords affiliated with the NAPS, in favour of gradual, but ultimately total repeal.45Northampton Mercury, 29 June 1844, 13 Dec. 1845. The ineffectiveness of this position was confirmed in February 1846, when Cartwright was forced to retire on account of ill health, and a Liberal candidacy was not even considered.

The events that followed Cartwright’s resignation also revealed the centrality of the NAPS to Conservative organisation in the division by early 1846. Although Cartwright had confirmed ‘his entire concurrence’ with the views of the society in his apologies to its second anniversary dinner on 3 Feb., Richard Hewitt, the society’s secretary, passed a motion demanding that Cartwright resign if he did not provide a formal pledge to ‘support the views of the society’. Cartwright then circulated a resignation letter two days later, which was also dated 3 Feb., leading to speculation that Hewitt’s motion had prompted Cartwright’s resignation. Hewitt subsequently published a letter in the Herald criticising Cartwright’s political integrity, which provoked Cartwright, his son William, and his long-term supporter Richard Gunning to quit the NAPS.46Northampton Mercury, 7 Feb. 1846, 14 Feb. 1846. It later transpired that Cartwright had already decided to retire on 29 Jan. as his health would have prevented him from being able to participate fully in debates on the government’s pending corn law legislation. The delay in announcing his retirement had been the result of Cartwright and Knightley’s inability to secure the new earl of Euston (whose ‘sentiments’ regarding protection reportedly ‘coincided perfectly’ with those of Cartwright and Knightley) as his replacement. Following this, and until their resignation from the NAPS, Cartwright had also briefly intended to announce his son William as his replacement. However, after Hewitt’s letter the Cartwrights reportedly wanted nothing ‘more to do with the county’.47Northampton Mercury, 7 Aug. 1847.

With Cartwright unable to secure his replacement through traditional aristocratic channels, the NAPS took it on themselves to identify a candidate. They initially asked Richard William Vyse, a notable Buckinghamshire Conservative who had recently redeveloped his Boughton estate in southern Northamptonshire, but he declined, instead offering his son, Richard Howard Vyse.48Northampton Mercury, 21 Feb. 1846. The proximity of the nomination meant Vyse was unable to complete a comprehensive canvass, but in the event he was elected without a contest. His tenuous connection to the county and his dependence on the NAPS did not escape the crowd at the hustings, where his proposer, Henry Dryden, the former high sheriff and a prominent member of the NAPS, was mockingly accused of not knowing who Vyse was.49Northampton Mercury, 21 Feb. 1846, 28 Feb. 1846.

The Morning Post noted that ‘more than ordinary interest’ surrounded the 1847 general election in Northamptonshire South on account of it ‘presenting a contest fought solely on the question of Protection versus Free Trade, in a county in which there are but few voters unconnected with the cultivation of the soil’.50Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1847. Lord Henley had been identified as a potential candidate by the Whig and Liberal interest in the division, and although he refused to ‘adopt the classification of the newspapers’ as either a Liberal or a Peelite, he disavowed protectionism and expressed a commitment to the ‘free exercise’ of ‘religious principles’.51Northampton Mercury, 31 July 1847, Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1847. Hopes of victory were high among his supporters, and the Mercury felt his success was ‘certain’ after he received the support of Cartwright’s eldest son, Thomas, and his grandson, as well as the former Whig dignitaries, Herbert Langham and Henry Sawbridge. In a letter to electors prior to the nomination, which was signed by all four, and at the hustings, much was made of Henley’s residence in the county in comparison to Vyse, as well as Vyse’s apparent dependency on the NAPS and Knightley.52Northampton Mercury, 31 July 1847, 7 Aug. 1847. In retaliation, Knightley denied that Vyse was his lapdog, and accused Thomas Cartwright of misleading the earl of Ellesmere’s tenants in Brackley, by suggesting that their landlord supported a Knightley and Henley joint ticket.

The show of hands favoured Knightley and Henley, but Vyse demanded a poll.53Ibid; The Times, 5 Aug. 1847, 6 Aug. 1847. Knightley and Vyse were returned after two days of polling with 39% and 36% of the total vote respectively. Henley secured 25% of the total vote, trailing Vyse by 594. He polled around 20% of votes in the division’s three primarily agricultural districts, but came roughly equal with Knightley and Vyse in Northampton. The results of the election revealed a high incidence of straight voting for Knightley and Vyse, with Henley reliant primarily on Liberal plumpers.54Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the southern division of the county of Northampton, on the ninth and tenth days of August, 1847 (1847), 90.

Following the contest, a previously confident Mercury lamented that Henley’s defeat was due to ‘the wretched condition of the registry’, which had lacked ‘efficient supervision on the part of the Liberal interest’. It also blamed radical opposition to Henley, borne out of a belief that he did not go far enough in his views.55Northampton Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847. The paper demanded that Parliament legislate to establish a nationwide system of impartial registration, and repeated a call that it had been making since 1835 for more assiduous attention from Liberals in the division to the register. The Liberals excused their consistent failure over registration in the immediate aftermath of the election, and at a dinner to celebrate Henley’s candidacy held later that year, by explaining that Liberal honour had prevented them from approaching registration in the ungentlemanly, partisan manner of the Conservatives.56Northampton Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847, 18 Dec. 1847. This stance had become an entrenched aspect of the Liberal defeatist narrative in the division by 1851, when Conservative agents across the county were again accused of a campaign of unnecessary and ‘vexatious opposition’ to Liberal electors in the registration courts between 1847 and 1851.57Northampton Mercury, 21 Feb. 1852.

When Charles Knightley announced his retirement ahead of the 1852 election, it prompted a disagreement among the division’s Conservatives over his replacement. The Conservative association put forward William Cartwright, but Knightley preferred his own son, Rainald. The dispute, which seemed to support Liberal accusations that the division had fallen under the Knightley influence, was resolved in favour of Rainald.58Northampton Mercury, 19 June 1852, 3 July 1852, 10 July 1852. However, much to the surprise of those at the hustings, Mr. Smart, a Northampton-based upholsterer, nominated John Houghton, of Sunning Hill, Berkshire, as a free trade candidate, in protest at the Knightleys’ control of the division. William Collier, the Northampton-based boot maker who had nominated Euston in 1841, seconded Houghton’s nomination. Although the show of hands went in favour of Knightley and Vyse, a contest was demanded. As Houghton was unknown in the county, a deputation was then sent from the hustings to clarify his eligibility prior to a contest being officially announced.59Northampton Mercury, 17 July 1852, 24 July 1852.

In the ensuing contest Houghton secured only 164 votes.60Northampton Mercury, 24 July 1852. After the election, The Times published a letter from Houghton, in which he stated that he did not know Smart or Collier, and that he had only found out about his candidacy through the newspapers. He offered his apologies to Knightley and Vyse for the unnecessary expense of the contest and called for restrictions to be placed on local parties from nominating candidates without their knowledge in the future.61The Times, 20 July 1852. As a sign of growing Liberal discord in the county, particularly among the Liberal borough freeholders in Northampton, a Northampton clergyman wrote to the Mercury following the election to call for a cessation of the ringing of the bells of All Saints Church when county members were elected for the division. The practice, he wrote, ‘insult[ed] the majority of the townspeople of Northampton, who have so lately proved themselves to be not of “the Conservative Party”’.62Northampton Mercury, 31 July 1852.

A continuation of Conservative hegemony in the division seemed all but certain in 1855, when Lord Henley told those present at a dinner for Northampton borough’s Liberal MPs that the ‘Liberal Electors of the Southern Division had but up-hill work before them’, if they were ever to succeed.63Northampton Mercury, 14 Apr.1855. It came as a welcome surprise to the division’s Liberals two years later when a twenty-one year old Viscount Althorp – with the financial and organisational backing of his father, the fourth Earl Spencer – announced his candidacy ahead of the 1857 election.64Northampton Mercury, 21 Mar. 1857. In a further boost to Liberal chances, Knightley had refused to stand on a joint ticket with Vyse in order to distance himself from the latter’s decision to vote against Palmerston over the Chinese war. At the nomination, Vyse demanded a contest after the show of hands, but in the ensuing poll he could only muster 28% of the total vote. Althorp secured 37% of the total vote and Knightley came second with 34%. A triumphant Mercury termed Althorp’s triumph a ‘bomb shell’, and for a moment, the division’s Liberals forgot their grievances over registration.65Northampton Mercury, 4 Apr. 1857. The decisive element in Althorp’s victory, other than his family name, was undoubtedly the financial clout of his campaign – his election expenses amounted to £8,474, the highest of the period in the division, while Knightley and Vyse’s combined total was £3,005.66PP 1857 (332), xxxiv. 366.

The published poll book suggests that the level of partisan polling had increased considerably since the 1831 election. Only 12.5% of the electorate shared their votes between a Conservative candidate and Althorp in 1857, compared with 20% who had shared their votes in 1831. Approximately 45% of the electorate plumped for Althorp, with the majority of his remaining votes coming from the total electorate who split between Althorp and Knightley. These splitters proved crucial to Knightley as very few electors plumped for either Conservative candidate, or split their vote between Vyse and Althorp – the majority of both Vyse and Knightley’s votes derived from the 41% who voted straight for both Tories. Freeholders constituted just over 70% of the total voterate, of whom 60% voted for Althorp, 50% for Knightley and 40% for Vyse. The majority of the remainder of the electorate consisted of tenants-at-will, of whom 60% voted for Knightley, 52.5% for Vyse and 48.5% for Althorp.67Calculated from Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the southern division of the county of Northampton, on the third day of April, 1857 (1857).

The significance of Althorp’s reputation and finances to his eventual success were underlined less than a year later when he succeeded to the peerage, prompting a by-election in the division. Within days, Henley had been announced informally as his Liberal replacement. It was reported that Vyse and the former Rochester MP, Francis Villiers had declined offers to stand on the Conservative interest, and John Edward Severne, of Thenford Hall, who had proposed Cartwright in 1835, initially came forward.68Northampton Mercury, 2 Jan. 1858, 16 Jan. 1858. Days later, however, Cartwright’s seventh son, Colonel Henry Cartwright, entered the field, prompting Severne to resign his candidacy on the basis that the Cartwright name carried more chance of success.69Northampton Mercury, 9 Jan. 1858. Both candidates canvassed extensively throughout January 1858, and Henley’s supporters expressed continued confidence over his steady progress, whilst Cartwright’s campaign was notable for the attention it paid to publicity, distributing ‘reams of blue bills and clouds of circulars’ across Northamptonshire.70Northampton Mercury, 16 Jan. 1858, 6 Feb. 1858. The campaign also prompted an extensive war of correspondence, and Cartwright’s agents were criticised for using landlords to pressure tenant farmers who had split their votes at the previous election.71Northampton Mercury, 23 Jan. 1858, 30 Jan. 1858.

After six weeks of canvassing, an early morning brass band procession through Northampton, ‘more brassy than melodious’, took place before the nomination. The hustings was fit to bursting, prompting a failed petition from some freeholders to adjourn proceedings to the market square. The show of hands favoured Henley, but Cartwright demanded a contest, which he won by 85 votes. Henley’s supporters (whose final canvass had suggested victory) blamed their defeat on the intimidation of tenant farmers by small landlords and the clergy.72Northampton Mercury, 20 Feb. 1858, 27 Feb. 1858, 22 Oct. 1859. Whether undue influence had been used or not, the key to Cartwright’s victory proved to be his ability to gain a majority of two sets of voters - the 450 electors who had split their vote in 1857, and an additional 200 voters who had not polled the previous year (an increase best explained by a very busy train service from Euston to Northampton on the morning of the election).73Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the southern division of the county of Northampton, on the eighteenth day of February, 1858 (1858), 99; The Times, 16 Feb. 1858; Northampton Mercury, 27 Feb. 1858. Henley’s election expenses were £5,024, whereas Cartwright’s were £4,069, and the election proved damaging to both candidates’ finances.74Northampton Mercury, 29 May 1858. The division’s Liberals circumvented Henley’s gentlemanly pride to assist him with a series of ‘spontaneous donations’ amounting to £1,514 at his post-election dinner, and several of his election agents refused to request payment for their services.75Northampton Mercury, 15 May 1858. Cartwright’s election debts proved an enduring problem over the subsequent decade, causing increasing tension between himself and Knightley as the latter became wary of shouldering the burden of the Conservative interest in the division.

At the 1859 general election Henley had been expected to stand again, but the reality of a third costly contest in as many years prevented him, or any other Liberal candidate from coming forward. As a result Knightley and Cartwright were returned in what was considered to have been the quietest hustings in living memory, when the ‘sprinkling of Liberal electors’ in attendance ‘refrained from even manifesting their dissent’ following the speeches of both incumbents.76Northampton Mercury, 9 Apr. 1859, 23 Apr. 1859, 7 May 1859, 14 May 1859. Henley was returned later that year at a by-election for the borough of Northampton, and was forced to dispel rumours in 1863 that he would resign the borough representation in order to contest the southern division of the county at the next election.77Northampton Mercury, 28 Feb. 1863.

In May 1864 the sitting MP for Thetford, and youngest son of the former earl of Euston and fifth duke of Grafton, Lord Frederick Fitzroy, announced his intention to stand as a Liberal candidate for the division at the next election, which was followed by an immediate joint address from Knightley and Cartwright also vowing to stand.78Northampton Mercury, 7 May 1864. All three confirmed their candidatures ahead of the pending dissolution of Parliament in May 1865.79Northampton Mercury, 20 May 1865, 27 May 1865, 3 June 1865, 10 June 1865. Fitzroy vowed to support Palmerston’s administration and committed himself to franchise reform, but refused to enter into specifics, prompting charges from his opponents that he was a radical sympathiser.80Northampton Mercury, 10 June 1865. As usual the Liberals expressed public confidence regarding their likely success, with the Mercury assuring its readers that Fitzroy could ‘storm and conquer the Tory quadrilateral in Northamptonshire’ if the division’s non-Conservatives made ‘an united and vigorous effort’.81Ibid.

On the morning of the nomination, Fitzroy journeyed in a two-hour procession from Althorp to Northampton County Hall, accompanied by 300 to 400 horsemen and hundreds of people on foot.82Northampton Mercury, 15 July 1865. As in 1858, complaints were made about the inadequacy of the County Hall for the hustings, which was so noisy that the candidates’ speeches were audible only to reporters. A show of hands was declared in favour of Fitzroy and Cartwright but a contest was demanded by Knightley. On polling day Fitzroy led at lunchtime, but by four o’clock was in second place, only 18 votes ahead of Cartwright. Such was the excitement by the end of the day, that when the Liberal messenger from Towcester returned with that district’s final results he was dragged from his horse by the crowd and carried to the Liberal committee rooms at the George Hotel. The official declaration of the result confirmed Fitzroy’s defeat in third place, 38 votes shy of Cartwright and 152 behind Knightley. After the announcement, a celebratory Tory mob ran riot through Northampton breaking the windows of predominantly Liberal shopkeepers, the assailants later occupying three weeks of petty sessions hearings.83Northampton Mercury, 29 July 1865, 5 Aug. 1865, 12 Aug. 1865, 22 Dec. 1866. The Mercury took heart from the closeness of the defeat, but as in 1858 blamed the Liberal loss on landlord influence, particularly in the district of Daventry, ‘the least prosperous and most landlord-ridden portion of the Shire’.84Northampton Mercury, 22 July 1865, 5 Aug. 1865. Whether undue influence had been exerted or not, Fitzroy’s failure was the result of his inability to beat either Conservative candidate in any of the division’s three agricultural districts.85Anon, A copy of the poll for two knights of the shire for the southern division of the county of Northampton, on the twentieth day of July 1865 (1865).

Following the Second Reform Act, the constituency’s registered electorate increased from 5,162 to 6,215.86PP 1872 (17), xlvii. 395. The lead-up to the 1868 election was dominated by an internal Conservative dispute over election funding, which had stemmed from Cartwright’s outstanding debts from 1859 and 1865, and Knightley’s unwillingness to support his candidacy. Knightley won the argument, forcing Cartwright’s withdrawal, and initially it appeared he would be elected uncontested alongside Fitzroy.87Northampton Mercury, 15 Aug. 1868, 22 Aug. 1868, 5 Sept. 1868, 12 Sept. 1868, 19 Sept. 1868, 26 Sept. 1868. Eventually, Fairfax Cartwright, the grandson of William Ralph Cartwright, came forward as the second Conservative. Knightley and Cartwright polled almost identically to beat Fitzroy into third place by 200 votes.88Northampton Mercury, 7 Nov. 1868, 14 Nov. 1868, 21 Nov. 1868. Fitzroy’s loss angered the fifth Earl Spencer, who had been providing £300 a year to support the Liberals in the division since his succession to the peerage in 1857. He viewed the defeat as evidence of entrenched Liberal incompetency in the division and reduced his annual contribution to £50.89P. Gordon, The Red Earl: The Papers of the fifth Earl Spencer, 1835-1910 (1981), i. 67-8.

1868 was the division’s final contested election. Knightley and Cartwright shared the representation of the county until Cartwright’s death in 1881, when he was replaced by another Conservative. The county was divided into four divisions in 1885 and Knightley retained his seat for the new southern division until his retirement in 1892. The Spencers proved successful in the new Mid Northamptonshire division of the county, which contained part of Daventry and the consistently Liberal stronghold of Northampton. The Northamptonshire Record Office holds a wealth of archival sources relating to the electoral politics of this period, including the Cartwright, Spencer and Knightley family papers.90Northants. RO, Cartwright mss; Althorp mss; Knightley mss.