Nottinghamshire North

Social and economic profile

A Midland county traversed by the River Trent, Nottinghamshire contained 535,680 acres, of which the vast majority was arable and meadow.1Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 236-7. Agriculturally diverse, the land in the northern division produced wheat, barley, oats and turnips. In 1837 the Nottinghamshire Agricultural Association was established to promote the superior cultivation of the soil and all ‘meritorious inventions and discoveries’.2Quoted in J.R. Fisher, ‘The Nottinghamshire Agricultural Association’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 94 (1990), 62. The west of the division, on the Derbyshire border, possessed an abundance of coal, and the mining industry expanded continuously in the nineteenth century. In contrast, the framework knitting industry, a notable employer at the beginning of the nineteenth century, declined steadily throughout the Victorian period.3H.H. Swinnerton, Nottinghamshire (1910), 49-53. The chief polling town was Mansfield, a busy market town which was home to cotton doubling, hosiery manufacture and iron founding.4White’s history, gazetteer and directory of Nottinghamshire (1885), 175. After staunch opposition from the Nottingham Canal Company and the Trent Navigation Company, the first train reached Nottingham in May 1839, though only via a branch line from Derby.5R. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town (1996), 170-3. Mansfield was connected to the main Midland Railway’s Leen Valley line in 1849.

Electoral history

In the century preceding the 1832 Reform Act, Nottinghamshire’s major magnates completely dominated the county’s parliamentary elections. According to the reformer Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield in 1816, the representation was ‘entirely under the influence of the nobility’.6T.H.B. Oldfield, The representative history of Great Britain and Ireland (1816), iv. 315-17. For The Times, little had changed by 1851, when the newspaper declared that Nottinghamshire was ‘the most aristocratic county in England’.7The Times, 17 Feb. 1851. The historiography of the county has tended to perpetuate this view, with one author insisting that the trends established in aristocratic influence before 1832 ‘hardly changed thereafter’.8J.V. Beckett, ‘Aristocrats and electoral control in the East Midland, 1660-1914’, Midland History, 18 (1993), 77. However, while the heads of the main households continued to take an active interest in post-Reform politics, there were significant limitations to their influence.

Created by the 1832 Reform Act, the northern division was home to the vast estates of the county’s three major landowners: the dukes of Newcastle under Lyne, Portland, and Earl Manvers. The earl of Scarbrough, resident at Rufford Abbey, near Mansfield, also had significant holdings.9Dod’s electoral facts, 236-7. The freeholders comprised the largest portion of the electorate. In 1837 they accounted for 69 per cent of the voters, a figure that remained steady throughout this period. The next largest body were the £50 occupying tenants, who made up approximately twelve per cent of the electorate.10PP 1837-38 (329), xliv. 567-8; PP 1852 (8), xlii. 313. The fourth duke of Newcastle, a troubled ultra-Tory whose vehement opposition to reform had prompted a crowd to burn to the ground his mansion, Nottingham Castle, in 1831, was certainly the most active patron, and although the Reform Act diminished his electoral resources, they were far from destroyed.11Unhappy reactionary: the diaries of the fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1822-1850 (2003), ed. R.A. Gaunt, xxv; J. Beckett, ‘The Nottingham reform bill riots of 1831’, in C. Jones, P. Salmon and R.W. Davis (eds.), Partisan politics, principles and reform in Parliament and the constituencies, 1689-1880 (2005), 114-38. The isolated Newcastle had an uneasy relationship with the fourth duke of Portland, whose family had traditionally held one seat in the Whig interest, though after 1832 Portland persisted in his attempts to secure the return of one of his Conservative sons for the northern division. Manvers was generally sympathetic to the Whigs. A ‘family compact’ between Newcastle, Portland and Manvers had operated effectively during the pre-Reform era, but after 1832 the successful candidature of Thomas Houldsworth, a self-made cotton entrepreneur, hampered their ability to return their own man, and disagreement between the three leading landowners over the extent to which their influence should be wielded was a constant source of tension. This tension was finally broken by the succession of a new generation to the dukedoms in the 1850s, who were not only less confrontational in their approach to the county’s electoral affairs, but also generally sympathetic to the Liberal cause.

The Liberal-supporting Nottingham Review (weekly circulation 2,100 in 1841) with its editorials indulging in anti-landlord rhetoric, perpetuated the misleading picture of a constituency whose electorate was completely dominated by tyrannical magnates, whereas the Nottingham Journal (weekly circulation 1,923 in 1839), whose editor was close to Newcastle and zealously committed to checking ‘the spread of such democratical and irreligious doctrines’, gave staunch backing to the Conservative ducal households.12D. Fraser, ‘The Nottingham Press, 1800-1850’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 67 (1963), 51-2. The Journal was initially opposed to repeal of the corn laws, but in April 1846 switched position, calling protection ‘a mockery’ and ‘delusion’. Outraged by this apparent treachery, the county gentry established the Nottinghamshire Guardian in May 1846, though even at its peak (weekly circulation 1,850 in 1851), it never outsold the Journal.13Ibid., 53-4.

The 1832 general election highlighted the limitations of proprietorial influence in post-Reform Nottinghamshire. John Savile Lumley, the son of the seventh earl of Scarbrough, who had sat for the county since 1826, came forward as a Reformer. An uncontroversial figure who enjoyed the unanimous backing of his father’s tenants and the support of Manvers, Lumley’s return was practically assured. The dukes of Newcastle and Portland were responsible for bringing forward the Conservative candidate, but even this modest ambition proved problematic. The efforts of Portland to quietly determine whether his son, Lord George Bentinck, wished to vacate his seat at King’s Lynn to offer for the northern division floundered when Lumley, ‘guilty of his usual indiscretion’, made the duke’s intentions public.14Nottingham Univ. Lib. Portland mss PwH 359. Amidst the uncertainty, the political vacuum was filled by Thomas Houldsworth, a Nottinghamshire-born cotton entrepreneur, now based in Manchester, and owner of Sherwood Hall. Although he came forward as a Conservative, his candidature was lamented by Newcastle, who recorded in his diary:

He is a loyal and sound man, but as a fit representative of the landed interest, it is not a little burlesque [that] not many years ago he was a common thread spinner at Nottingham. Now certainly he is a most wealthy man possessing probably £30,000 a year or even more – all made by spinning which he carries forward to a great extent at where he lives (Manchester), but yet representing a part of Notts! What a change in affairs! Where are the gentry and where are their means?15Unhappy reactionary, 46-7.

The first parliamentary contest in the county for over a century was triggered when Colonel John Gilbert Cooper Gardiner, of Southwell, insisted that he would go to the poll. A key figure in the Nottinghamshire reform movement who had proposed Lumley at the 1831 general election, Gardiner stood as a radical candidate, and at the nomination defeated Houldsworth in the show of hands.16Sheffield Independent, 22 Dec. 1832. Houldsworth, whose agent had caused controversy by asking for special constables to be enrolled to protect him, cut an unpopular figure, and on the first day of polling his supporters were violently attacked at Mansfield, prompting the early closure of the poll and the reading of the Riot Act.17W. Houldsworth Macleod, The beginnings of the Houldsworths of Coltness (1937), 117-8. Houldsworth, however, persevered. On a turnout of 88 per cent, he was elected in second place, 201 votes ahead of Gardiner. Lumley topped the poll with a commanding majority. Although Newcastle remained wary of the self-made Houldsworth, his return was reluctantly accepted by the duke, who noted that ‘we have thus partially redeemed our character’.18Unhappy reactionary, 99.

William IV’s controversial replacement of the Whigs in November 1834 with a Conservative ministry under Peel was applauded by Newcastle, who recorded in his diary that ‘I wish that no succeeding parl[iament] may perpetuate such indelible mischief as had been committed by this vile parl[iament]’.19Ibid., 104. Newcastle and Portland’s attempt to bring forward the latter’s son (and Manvers’ nephew) Lord Henry Bentinck in opposition to Houldsworth at the 1835 general election, however, came to nothing when it became clear his return was far from assured.20Ibid., 100. At the nomination Lumley mocked the new Conservative government, declaring that ‘the Christmas gambols in Downing Street are so badly got up, that I really believe they cannot last through the holydays’. He questioned the political abilities of Wellington, and dismissed Peel’s leadership qualities, arguing that ‘it does not become him to be nominated premier of the man of Waterloo’.21Parliamentary test book (1835), 100. In response, Houldsworth attacked Lumley’s unwillingness to back the ministry and insisted he would give them a ‘fair trial’, though he warned that ‘if they do not please me, I will not support them’.22Ibid., 84-5. Both men were re-elected without a contest.

In February 1835 Lumley succeeded as eighth earl of Scarbrough when his father was killed almost instantly after a fall from his horse. The only candidate to offer for the vacancy was Henry Gally Knight, a poet and writer on architecture who had inherited the Warsop estate, near Mansfield. Although Gally Knight had sat as a Reformer for Earl Fitzwilliam’s pocket borough of Malton, 1831-32, he came forward as a supporter of Lord Stanley, declaring that he would ‘throw my mote into the scale of that middle party ... for the purpose of, on the one hand, securing good measures for the country, and, on the other, of repelling those assailants who are tempting to carry the citadel by storm’.23Sheffield Independent, 4 Apr. 1835. Having previously been described by Newcastle as a ‘good natured but changeable man’, Gally Knight’s unopposed return was cautiously welcomed by the major magnates, though his political allegiance to the Conservatives was only confirmed in 1837.24Unhappy reactionary, 102; Gally Knight to Peel, 19 Aug. 1837: BL Add Mss 40424, ff. 87-8.

The 1837 general election exposed the frustrated efforts of the major landowners to reclaim their previous dominance of county elections. In the face of a Liberal challenge from George Savile Foljambe of Worksop, who had served as high sheriff of the county in 1826, Newcastle, Portland and Manvers agreed to work together to ensure the return of Houldsworth and Gally Knight. The success of the ‘family compact’, however, was far from guaranteed. Gally Knight’s agent, who had canvassed the earl of Scarbrough’s tenants, reported to Newcastle that ‘although his lordship did not wish to influence his [tenants] unduly, he hoped that they would support Mr. Foljambe if they could do so conscientiously’.25Quoted in Becket, ‘Aristocrats and electoral control’, 81. Houldsworth also warned Newcastle that Foljambe was strongly supported ‘both from radical principles and from good fellowship as a foxhunter and landlord’.26T. Houldsworth to Newcastle, 23 July 1837, quoted in Ibid., 81. Moreover, Newcastle had little control over the two candidates, and recorded in his diary that the return of two Conservatives was ‘made more difficult by the foolish and selfish conduct … of Houldsworth’s party’.27Unhappy reactionary, 108.

Nevertheless, following what Newcastle described as ‘a very close contest’ with a turnout of 81 per cent, Houldsworth topped the poll. Gally Knight came in second, 94 votes ahead of Foljambe. A breakdown of the poll reveals that Foljambe secured 40 per cent of the vote in the Retford polling district, home to his Worksop estate, but trailed in the Nuttal, Mansfield and Nottingham districts.28Morning Post, 7 Aug. 1837. However, his respectable share of 31 and 21 per cent of the vote in the Nottingham and Mansfield districts respectively indicate that, even with the combined efforts of the ‘family compact’, a significant proportion of the division’s freeholders remained free from the major magnates’ influence.

In early 1839 it was the threat of Chartist violence, rather than parliamentary politics, which focused the energies of Newcastle and Portland. Alarmed by the prospect of a Chartist uprising at Mansfield, the two dukes called for an ‘armed association for defence’.29Portland to Newcastle, 8 Mar. 1839, Nottingham Univ. Lib, Special Collections, Ne C 6135. However, following Newcastle’s refusal to pay for such an association, his relationship with Portland soured. At the height of the Chartist threat in March 1839, Newcastle recorded in his diary that ‘Portland is acting very unpleasantly towards me. I have felt it incumbent upon me to remind him that he is not the only wise man in existence’.30Unhappy reactionary, 113. Newcastle, in his capacity as lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, pressed Lord John Russell, the home secretary, to allow the establishment of armed associations of citizens, but Russell insisted that any action had to be within the existing laws, a response which Newcastle dismissed as ‘drivelling folly’.31Lord John Russell to Newcastle, 23 Feb. 1839, Nottingham Univ. Lib., Special Collections, Ne C 5065; Unhappy reactionary, 113. Russell did, though, grant the Mansfield magistrates the power to create new special constables. Although the magistrates subsequently reported that local Chartists ‘have in great numbers provided themselves with guns, pistols, pikes and other weapons’, a series of well-attended meetings at Sutton and Mansfield ‘passed off quietly’, though Newcastle maintained that the Chartists’ inflammatory rhetoric ‘ought not to be permitted by any government desiring the peace and order of the country’.32Deposition from Nottinghamshire Magistrates to Newcastle, 27 Feb. 1839, Nottingham Univ. Lib., Special Collections, Ne C 5067; Unhappy reactionary, 113. Although the Chartists enjoyed significant support in the borough of Nottingham, the feared uprising in the county never materialised. Newcastle remained wary, but in his capacity as a landowner rather than lord lieutenant: in April 1839 he was dismissed from the post over his altercation with the lord chancellor following the appointment of two Nonconformists as county magistrates.33Ibid., 115-6.

Faced with the prospect of both Gally Knight and Houldsworth retiring at the next dissolution, Newcastle, Portland and Manvers struggled to maintain their uneasy alliance. Gally Knight’s unwillingness to undertake the expense of another contest was easily resolved: Portland, according to Newcastle, offered to ‘assist him most magnificently and liberally’.34Ibid., 122. However, Houldsworth’s private declaration, made in December 1839, that he would not stand again exposed the conflicting positions which the major magnates held on the legitimacy of political influence. Manvers, who according to Newcastle believed that ‘the aristocracy ought not to endeavour to force a second member down the throats of their opponents’, initially refused to find a replacement for Houldsworth, arguing that as they backed the Conservative Gally Knight, the second seat should be held by a Liberal.35Ibid., 123. The belligerent Newcastle, in contrast, balked at this position, writing to Manvers that ‘I would have no compunction at forcing any thing down the throats of my opponents’.36Ibid. After further discussions with Portland, Manvers, who Newcastle felt was ‘an awkward man to deal with, wants humouring and tickling a little’, became more amenable to bringing forward a second candidate, although Houldsworth’s subsequent decision to stand made the matter academic.37Unhappy reactionary, 124. Nevertheless the whole affair underlined the fault lines running through the ‘family compact’.

The 1841 general election proved to be an uneventful affair. Unsurprisingly for an agricultural constituency, the corn laws were the dominant issue. At the nomination Houldsworth, in a perfunctory address, attacked the Liberal ministry’s proposal for a fixed duty on corn, arguing that it would ‘seriously injure’ agricultural interests, and be of no advantage to manufacturers. Knight, who spoke elaborately and at great length, attacked the government for setting ‘county against town’, and denounced the ‘fallacies’ propagated by the Anti Corn Law League.38The Times, 8 July 1841. Both men were returned unopposed.

The corn laws also dominated the by-election of March 1846 necessitated by Gally Knight’s death. With Portland’s son, Lord George Bentinck, leading the protectionist opposition to Peel over the corn laws, the timing of the by-election was critical. Newcastle recorded in his diary that Portland was ‘most anxious to beat all the free traders – I cordially join him’.39Unhappy reactionary, 140. The protectionist candidate was Portland’s younger son, Lord Henry Bentinck, described by Newcastle as ‘a shy and silent man – but very clever’.40Ibid., 143. However, John Evelyn Denison, Bentinck’s brother-in-law and Liberal MP for Malton, did not share Newcastle’s confidence, informing him that:

Not only had Ld Henry never in his life ever opened his lips to speak, but it so happens that he has never been in the way of hearing a speech from any other individual – so that he was utterly unacquainted with the conventional modes of addressing an assembled audience.41Ibid., 144.

The contest was given an extra edge by the events of the Nottinghamshire South by-election, which had taken place the previous month. In a dramatic contest, Newcastle’s eldest son, the Peelite earl of Lincoln, had been comprehensively defeated by a protectionist candidate.42J.R. Fisher, ‘Issues and influence: two by-elections in South Nottinghamshire in the mid-nineteenth century’, Historical Journal, 24 (1981), 155-65. Newcastle’s unequivocal denunciations of his son had given the county’s politics an indelibly bitter, personal dimension, which spilled over into the contest in the northern division.

In a shock move, Thomas Bailey of Basford nominated Lincoln as a Peelite, which prompted cries from the audience of ‘we won’t have him’, ‘send him back to the south’, and ‘turncoat’. Although the under-sheriff expressed doubt about whether Lincoln had sanctioned the nomination, his name duly went forward.43The Times, 2 Mar. 1846. In response, Bentinck delivered an effective and belligerent speech, accusing Peel of ‘general treachery and desertion’ and warning that the protectionists were ‘not dead beat yet’.44Ibid. After initially prevaricating over whether to accept the nomination, Lincoln finally confirmed that he would not stand, and at four o’clock on the first day of polling, Bailey issued an address asking Lincoln’s supporters to ‘altogether abstain from tendering votes for him at any of the polling places of the division, in order that as little excitement and trouble may be occasioned’.45Ibid., 3 Mar. 1846. Bentinck was subsequently elected by an overwhelming majority.

At the 1847 general election Houldsworth and Bentinck reiterated their support for protectionist principles. Although a successful Manchester-based cotton manufacturer, Houldsworth had voted against repeal of the corn laws, and at the nomination he insisted that he would ‘continue as far as possible to uphold protectionist principles’, and oppose innovation in church and state. Bentinck fiercely criticised the policy of free trade and echoed his elder brother’s call for an ambitious scheme of railway building in Ireland, though he stopped short of endorsing his proposal to endow the Roman Catholic Church, stating that he would only support the continuance of the Maynooth grant.46Morning Post, 4 Aug. 1847. Houldsworth and Bentinck were returned unopposed.

The following decade witnessed a realignment in the political sympathies of the northern division’s leading landowners. The succession of the earl of Lincoln as 5^th duke of Newcastle brought an end to an era of parliamentary representation coloured by the scheming of his troubled and increasingly isolated father. As a committed Peelite, the fifth duke had little time for the zealous protectionism of his father, and at the 1852 general election he brought forward his younger brother, Lord Robert Pelham-Clinton, in place of Houldsworth, who finally retired.47Nottinghamshire Guardian, 15 July 1852. Clinton, who was careful to dismiss the notion that he was his brother’s nominee, championed the benefits of free trade and stressed his ‘unflinching’ attachment to the established church. Bentinck, though, remained wedded to protectionism. He issued an address calling for the ‘re-imposition of a moderate duty upon untaxed foreign grain’ and at the nomination argued that free trade had led to an increase in capital punishment, transportation and imprisonment.48Ibid., 15, 22 July 1852. Following a contest in which ‘little interest seemed to be excited’, Clinton and Bentinck were returned unopposed. As both members were the sons of the county’s dominant landowners, proprietorial influence had seemingly been restored, though after 17 years of Conservative hegemony, the representation was now shared between the two parties.

The death of the fourth duke of Portland in March 1854 caused another shift in the political loyalties of the major magnates. The fifth duke, an eccentric recluse who lived at Welbeck Abbey, took little interest in politics, though his sympathies lay with the Liberals. In 1857 Portland’s relationship with his younger brother became irrevocably strained. The source of the feud was a loan of £25,000 given by the two brothers to Disraeli in the late 1840s to help fund his purchase of Hughenden Manor, and thus cement his position as a country gentleman.49R. Blake, Disraeli (1966), 251. In 1857 Portland demanded repayment for the loan, much to the dismay of Bentinck, who subsequently sought to sever all ties with his reclusive brother.50Ibid., 267. Now resident at Tathwell Hall in Lincolnshire and determined to fully extricate himself from his brother’s influence, Bentinck issued a notably blunt resignation address:

Having ceased to be a resident in this county, holding no personal stake within it, and no longer in any manner whatever representing the family interest, it appeared to me that I was not now the fitting instrument to defend the Conservative interest in the division [and] that it would be morally wrong to place a large majority of my most zealous supporters in a false position with their landlord.51The Times, 26 Mar. 1857.

The unopposed return of two Liberals at the 1857 general election mirrored the shift in the political sympathies of the division’s principal proprietors. At the nomination Clinton defended his vote for Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, and urged ministers to turn their attention to domestic affairs. He called for an extension of the suffrage and claimed that voluntary aid was insufficient to improve education.52Ibid., 1 Apr. 1857. With Bentinck retired, John Evelyn Denison, who denied that he had received any communication from Portland, offered as a Liberal. A native of Nottinghamshire, Denison had sat for the southern division of the county, 1832-37, and Malton, 1841-57. He echoed Clinton’s comments on education and called for an extension of the franchise in ‘accordance with the growth of intelligence’.53Ibid. Both men were elected without a contest. On 30 April 1857 Denison was unanimously elected Speaker of the Commons, a position he held until his elevation to the peerage in 1872.54J.E. Denison, Notes from my journal when speaker of the House of Commons (1900), 31.

At the 1859 general election Clinton, who had been dogged by ill-health, insisted that he had not ‘wilfully neglected’ his duties. He attacked the timing of the dissolution and dismissed the Derby ministry’s reform bill, arguing that fancy franchises were ‘impracticable and unreasonable’.55Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1859. As Speaker, Denison refrained from indulging in party politics. Although in his private journal he recorded that ‘the dissolution of Parliament by Lord D. is a rash and mischievous act’, at the nomination he was more equivocal, suggesting that party leaders on both sides were culpable. Prefacing his statements with ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, he backed the extension of the franchise and warned against ‘extravagant or violent changes’.56Denison, Notes, 31; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1859. Clinton and Denison were again returned without a contest.

Clinton retired at the 1865 dissolution citing his continued ill-health.57Nottinghamshire Guardian, 23 June 1865. His nephew, Lord Edward William Pelham-Clinton, second son of the fifth duke of Newcastle, and a captain in the rifle brigade, offered in his place. Sharing his uncle’s support for a moderate extension of the franchise and his opposition to the ballot, the transition was seamless. He declared his intention to give ‘a cordial but independent support to any Liberal government’ and pledged to vote independently. The only cause for concern was his youth and lack of parliamentary experience, but his supporters charitably described him as a ‘young colt’.58Ibid., 21 July 1865. As was the case in 1859, Denison, in a speech heavy with generalities, refused to be drawn into ‘disputed questions of what I may call party politics’, though he warmly praised ‘Liberal policy’.59Ibid. Both men were returned without a contest, continuing the trend of unopposed returns under the new generation of the major landowners.

The 1867 Reform Act increased the division’s electorate by a quarter from 4,006 to 5,205. Shared representation was restored at the 1868 general election when Denison was re-elected unopposed alongside the Conservative Frederick Chatfield Smith. Following Denison’s elevation to the peerage in 1872, a Conservative by-election victory gave the party both of the division’s seats for the first time in two decades. The Liberals regained one seat in 1880 before the constituency’s abolition in 1885, whereupon the county was split into four single-member divisions.