Leominster

Economic and social profile:

‘A small town in a fertile valley’ situated on the river Lug, Leominster had a stagnant economy in this period.1Dod’s electoral facts, 1832-1853, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1978), 181. The municipal corporation commissioners reported in 1835 that ‘although the population has increased, the town is at best in a stationary condition’.2PP 1835 (116), xxv. 433. In 1849 the Daily News commented that ‘the town is a poor, dull place. It has no resident gentry whatever’.3Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. The local trade in wool had declined greatly and the only transport links were coaches that passed through from Hereford to Shrewsbury, and Worcester to Kington. The population was employed in the hop and cider trades in the surrounding county and the ‘manufacture of leather gloves and coarse cloth’ was carried on to a limited extent.4Dod’s electoral facts, 181. However, the glove-making industry had peaked in 1825, when over 32,000 pairs were manufactured, and went into steep decline after the trade was opened up to foreign competition in the late 1820s despite local petitions in favour of continued protection.5N.C. Reeves, The town in the marches: a history of Leominster & its environs (1973), 123; The Times, 30 Dec. 1831. However, the town became mildly prosperous after the opening of the Hereford to Shrewsbury railway in 1853.6G.F. Townsend, The town and borough of Leominster (1863), 201-4. The town was served by the two main county newspapers, the Hereford Journal, founded in 1781, and the Hereford Times, established in 1832, that espoused Conservative and Liberal politics, respectively. According to the 1851 religious census, the Leominster poor law union area included 22 Anglican churches, 8 Wesleyan and 13 Primitive Methodist chapels. ‘Old Dissent’ (Baptists, Independents/Congregationalists, Quakers and Unitarians) had a weaker presence.7PP 1852-53 [1690], lxxxix. 371.

Electoral history:

Leominster provides a rare example of what Norman Gash called an ‘incipient family borough’, in which a new controlling interest emerged after the 1832 Reform Act.8N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1949), 199. Previously distinguished by its venality, a rapidly dwindling electorate meant that by the early 1840s the Conservative Arkwright family, of Hampton Court, had assumed a preponderating influence. As the Daily News explained in 1849, the dying off of the old scot and lot electors meant that ‘the constituency has become less accessible by open or by covert bribe, but it has become more under the influence of family and of individuals’.9Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. In 1841 John Arkwright, lord of the manor and the major local landowner, denied that he had ‘made Leominster a sort of pocket borough’.10Hereford Journal, 7 July 1841. But others had few doubts about the extent of his family’s influence, such as the defeated Liberal candidate in 1857, who complained that ‘this borough is now an appendage to Hampton Court’.11Hereford Journal, 25 Mar. 1857. Issues generally seem to have been of secondary importance to bribery and influence. A significant exception was the repeal of the corn laws as after 1846 even candidates with protectionist inclinations ruled out any immediate re-imposition of import duties on foreign grain in deference to local free trade opinion.

The shift from the politics of bribery to the politics of influence led to a profound change in the borough’s electoral culture. Between 1780 and 1831 there had been twelve contested elections; from 1832 to 1868 only four out of sixteen elections went to a poll. As in other small towns with venal electorates, such as Newcastle-under-Lyme, corruption had encouraged high levels of political participation, and a vibrant political culture, expressed through colours, music bands and rituals that included the whole community. Much of this traditional culture was still in evidence in the 1830s, but it declined as the borough became increasingly closed. Previously elections had been pitched battles between various candidates, encouraged by electors who sought to extract maximum value for their votes, but by the late 1840s an observer commented that ‘there is rarely even a skirmish’ at election time.12Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. Furthermore, although candidates remained rich outsiders, their money was no longer diffused ‘through the whole town’. Instead they made one large payment to an agent or local attorney, apparently as much as one hundred or two hundred guineas, to facilitate their return.13Ibid. In Politics and the people (1993) James Vernon argued that the rise of modern party organisation, the growth of press and legislation, notably the introduction of the secret ballot, closed down the vibrant culture of popular politics traditionally associated with elections. The example of Leominster suggests that changes in local politics could be just as important in shutting down a participatory election culture in constituencies.

Leominster elections in the unreformed period had been frequently contested and distinguished by their venality. A system developed in which the local banker Thomas Coleman lent out money to electors, with the debt called in at election time. Coleman’s notes acted as electoral pledges which enabled him to ensure the return of any candidate who contracted with him.14Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. The collapse of Coleman’s banks in 1826 led to a more open system of bribery, although the candidates remained rich outsiders.15HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 479-86.

The 1832 Reform Act created a new electorate of 779 voters in Leominster.16PP 1833 (189), xxvii. 169. Although this was slightly higher than the unreformed ‘voterate’ of around 700, Leominster’s scot and lot voters declined from 343 in 1836 to only 65 by 1858.17PP 1836 (248), xliii. 434; 1840 (579), xxxix. 194; 1860 (277), lv. 94. The town’s poor trade and largely stagnant population meant that these were not replaced by new £10 householders. By 1842 the electorate numbered 553 and twenty years later the figure stood at just 360.18PP 1844 (11), xxxviii. 433; 1864 (149), xlviii. 230. The increasingly influential position of the Arkwright family was closely correlated with the declining size of the electorate. As landowners, benefactors, charitable patrons and wealthy customers, the Arkwrights occupied a pre-eminent position in a small, economically moribund town.

Beaumont Hotham, Lord Hotham, an Irish Tory peer, and the Reformer Thomas Bish, of Cornhill, London, who had been returned for the borough in 1826 before being unseated, were returned unopposed at the 1832 and 1835 general elections. On both occasions, Merryweather Turner, a barrister on the Oxford circuit, challenged as a second Reformer but withdrew before the nomination.19Hereford Times, 15 Dec. 1832, 29 Nov. 1834.

In three respects, electoral politics in Leominster in the 1830s continued much the same as before. Firstly, bribery remained central to the borough’s politics. Even though they were returned unopposed, Bish and Hotham’s record of paying bribes underpinned their popularity. As the Liberal Hereford Times euphemistically noted, his lordship had long given satisfaction to the electors and had ‘paid them that attention they like’.20Hereford Times, 15 Dec. 1832. Bish apparently spent £20,000 on three elections (1826, 1832, 1835) at Leominster.21W.R. Williams, The parliamentary history of the county of Hereford (1896), 148. His unwillingness to pay the necessary head money (a customary bribe paid to all electors) in 1835 forced his retirement at the subsequent general election in 1837. In his retirement address, alluding to his past generosity and the candidate who had ousted him, Bish told electors that ‘from him, as yet, you can have but promises – from me you have had deeds’.22Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849.

Secondly, bribery was a key factor in ensuring that Leominster remained a dynamic and open constituency. Unless candidates were willing to pay, they were vulnerable to challenge and defeat, as Bish found out. As the Reform MP for Hereford city Edward Bolton Clive noted before the 1835 general election, ‘I think that Leominster will be open for money’.23Edward Bolton Clive to Sir John Broughton, 23 Nov. 1834, Add. 47227, f. 69. Money proved to be stronger than party in determining electoral preferences. For example, before the 1832 general election, 660 electors had apparently pledged support for Reform candidates, but due to Hotham’s popularity there was no likelihood of the Reformers carrying both seats.24Hereford Journal, 3 Oct. 1832. Significantly, colours at election time were associated with particular candidates, rather than parties, for example, Hotham with Waterloo blue, Bish with orange and green, Greenaway with scarlet and blue and Wigram with light blue.25H. Stooks Smith, The register of parliamentary contested elections (2nd edn., 1842), 83-4. It was equally revealing that cross-party voting was marked at the rare contested elections.

Thirdly, elections at Leominster in the 1830s continued to be colourful affairs, characterised by music bands and widespread participation in rituals, including by women. The chairing of the MPs was a popular focus for the town. In 1832 it was reported that:

Every window in the various houses was thronged with the fair sex, wearing the colours of their favourite candidate, but those of Mr. Bish greatly preponderated, as he has always paid great attention to the ladies, and is with them a great favourite.26Hereford Times, 15 Dec. 1832.

At the following election the chairing ceremony, which, as in many constituencies after 1832, saw the members driven through the town in carriages rather than raised up on chairs by a crowd, lasted three hours. Again, women were visible from every window ‘wearing the colours of their favourite candidate - and in several instances the same persons were for both’.27Hereford Journal, 7 Jan. 1835.

The 1837 general election was an important turning point in Leominster’s electoral history. Although the Hereford Times remarked that ‘party feeling runs high’, the election was far from a conventional straight party fight.28Hereford Times, 15 July 1837. Rather than standing in harness with Bish, the new Reform candidate, Charles Greenaway, of Barrington Park, Gloucestershire, effectively ousted him. Having built up an interest at great expense, Hotham was alarmed to see his position jeopardised by a second Conservative. This was James Wigram, a barrister who had married into the Arkwright family. The election signalled the growing influence of the Arkwright family over the borough’s representation. Revealingly, Wigram was seconded by John Arkwright, of Hampton Court, at the nomination.

Greenaway, styling himself as an ‘independent Whig’, declared his support for Irish municipal reform. Hotham professed his independence, while Wigram voiced the Tory views of the Arkwright family. Although he claimed to be ‘friendly to the reform of all proved abuses’, he criticised the Reform Act as ‘delusive and visionary’ and argued that fewer interests were now represented in the House of Commons than before 1832.29Hereford Journal, 26 July 1837. Hotham and Greenaway won the show of hands, prompting Wigram to demand a poll, amidst allegations that the canvass had been ‘conducted most corruptly’.30Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. Hotham topped the poll, thirty votes ahead of Greenaway, who was elected in second place. However, Wigram retired from the poll and had he continued Hotham would ‘in all probability have been thrown out’.31Ibid.

The Conservative Hotham’s total of 395 was almost equally divided between shared votes with the other Conservative Wigram (199) and split votes with the Liberal Greenaway (184). When taking into account the 21 votes split between Greenaway (Liberal) and Wigram (Conservative), this means that 42.6% of electors who polled cast cross-party votes, an extremely high figure underlining the weak hold of party attachments on Leominster. Greenaway benefited from 117 plumpers, while Wigram was too reliant on shared votes with Hotham, which accounted for three-quarters of his votes.32Stooks Smith, Register of parliamentary contested elections, 83-4. The election was marked by high levels of political participation, with a turnout of 87.9% and non-electors involved through the traditional election customs.33Ibid.; Hereford Journal, 26 July 1837.

The electoral politics of Leominster had altered significantly by the time of the next general election in 1841. There was now no question of resisting the Arkwright influence and when Wigram offered again, Hotham transferred to the East Riding of Yorkshire.34Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. Greenaway and Wigram were returned unopposed at the nomination. Greenaway had avoided pledging on the fixed duty on corn proposed by the Whig government at a public meeting prior to the election.35Hereford Times, 19 June 1841. Distancing himself from free trade was probably politic given the town’s agricultural connections and the past opposition to imported foreign gloves. He did defend other measures of the Whig ministry, including the penny post, while Wigram made a strongly partisan speech. However, with no contest ‘there was little of that zeal and animation which usually distinguished elections here manifested’.36Hereford Times, 3 July 1841.

The authority of the Arkwright family was underlined by the 1842 by-election, caused by Wigram’s appointment as a judge. The vacancy was filled by the late member’s brother-in-law George Arkwright, a staunch protectionist Conservative, who emphasised the ‘name and character of my family’ in his address.37Hereford Journal, 10 Nov. 1841. The nomination was enlivened by the eccentric candidature of John Nicholson, the proprietor of Nicholson’s Weekly Register of Useful Knowledge, who stood on a radical platform. He won the show of hands and offered to resign after three months as an MP in favour of Arkwright, but did not go to the poll.38Hereford Times, 12 Feb. 1842.

If the 1841 and 1842 elections revealed the influence of the Arkwright family, the 1845 by-election led to the establishment of a system whereby candidates dealt with a single agent, usually a lawyer, rather than the electorate at large.39This paragraph is based upon Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. In some respects this resembled the role performed by Coleman the banker in the unreformed period. The cause of the vacancy was the retirement of Greenaway, although the reason for it was a ‘mystery’. The Conservative candidate Henry Barkly, a West India merchant, of Sparrows Herne, Hertfordshire, who had apparently been sent down by the Carlton Club, chose to ‘put himself into new hands at Leominster, selecting agents who had not previously been very influential’.

Barkly declared his support for the Maynooth grant, but refused to be drawn on the corn laws.40The Times, 26 Apr. 1845. He was returned unopposed, but not before the Anti-Corn Law League had briefly agitated the borough. Their candidate, James Harvey, a Liverpool merchant, was withdrawn, but the League did succeed in making free trade more popular than hitherto. Forty to fifty electors were said to have become reliable supporters of free trade and radical opinions as a result.41Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. An alternative radical candidate, George Hampden Whalley, of Plas Madoc, Denbighshire, was briefly in the frame, but arrived too late to have any chance of success.42Hereford Times, 26 Apr. 1845; Hereford Journal, 30 Apr. 1845. There was ‘no chairing, and no public dinner’ apparently because Barkly wished to ‘avoid even the appearance of the slightest approach to bribery’.43Hereford Journal, 30 Apr. 1845. Having already paid a large sum to local agents to secure his return, he also had no need to spend additional money that would be spread more indiscriminately. The effectiveness of Barkly’s stratagem was copied by later candidates, with the upshot that agents or solicitors assumed a key role in facilitating the return of MPs. Their leverage came from their local influence and judicious use of candidates’ money when required.44Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849.

The rise of the Arkwright family influence on the one hand, and the practice of candidates paying local lawyers rather than the wider community on the other, meant that the borough was notable for its ‘political lethargy’ at the 1847 general election.45Hereford Times, 10 July 1847. Arkwright and Barkly stood for re-election, the former as a protectionist and the latter as a Peelite. Barkly’s support for free trade meant that he could count on the support of local Liberals.46Hereford Times, 17 July 1847. The incumbents were returned unopposed at the nomination, when Arkwright reaffirmed protectionist and Protestant opinions, in particular his support for the corn laws and opposition to the poor law commission, the Maynooth College Act and further Roman Catholic relief. By contrast, Barkly followed a Peelite line.47Hereford Times, 31 July 1847.

When Barkly was appointed governor of British Guinea in early 1849, his place was taken by another Liberal Conservative, Frederick Peel, the son of the former prime minister. Writing to Sir Robert Peel, Barkly advised that if his son followed his course:

I see no reason why he should fail to secure the vacant seat at Leominster, where party feeling has never run very high, provided he can secure a Whig agent whom I retained, & thereby prevent any united opposition being offered by that party. My colleague’s friends I feel pretty sure will wisely rest content with the seat they have got.48Qu. in Gash, Politics in the age of Peel, 198-9.

Peel was joined in the field by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the writer and former Reform MP for Lincoln, and John George Phillimore, of Shiplake House, Oxfordshire, a Liberal barrister. Lytton sought to appeal to protectionist sentiment by proclaiming the repeal of the corn laws a ‘hazardous experiment’, but this alienated local Liberals.49Hereford Journal, 20 Dec. 1848. Both he and Phillimore withdrew before the nomination, leaving Peel to be returned unopposed. Peel employed the same agents as Barkly, the firm of Bedford, James and Herbert.50Hereford Journal, 13 Dec. 1848. Just like Barkly, Peel made a virtue of declining to spend any money treating or bribing the electors, while making ‘considerable payments for legal assistance’ that were ‘neither more nor less than legalised bribes’ to local solicitors and agents.51‘Our representative system’, Daily News, 30 Aug. 1849. In keeping with the character of Leominster elections after 1841 there was ‘little public excitement’.52Hereford Times, 10 Feb. 1849.

When Peel transferred to Bury at the 1852 general election, Phillimore once again took the field. He followed Barkly and Peel’s tactic of employing Bedford, James and Herbert as agents, while emphasising his free trade opinions to curry favour with local opinion.53Hereford Journal, 17 Mar. 1852, 10 July 1852. He faced two Conservatives, Arkwright, and John Pollard Willoughby, a former East Indian civil servant, of Baldon House, Oxfordshire. Both Arkwright and Willoughby professed Protestant and protectionist principles, including opposition to the grant to the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, but they conceded that the corn laws could not be reinstated without a change in public opinion in their favour.54Hereford Journal, 25 Feb. 1852, 10 July 1852. Although their platforms were essentially identical, Arkwright declared that he was ‘altogether unconnected with any other party’.55Hereford Journal, 10 Mar. 1852. Phillimore easily won the show of hands, with Willoughby deemed to be the other favoured candidate. Arkwright demanded a poll which he won comfortably, while Phillimore beat Willoughby to be elected in second place by fifteen votes. Shared votes with Arkwright comprised 87% of Willoughby’s total. However, Phillimore’s plumps and splits with Arkwright gave him the edge in the battle for second place.56Leominster poll book (1852), 19. While cross-party voting had declined since 1837, 22% of electors who polled split their votes between the Liberal Phillimore and one of the Conservative candidates. Although the town had experienced its first contest for fifteen years, there was ‘little of that bustle and excitement’ associated with an election.57Hereford Times, 10 July 1852.

Arkwright’s death in February 1856 prompted another by-election. John Hungerford Arkwright, heir to Hampton Court, who had recently came of age, declined to stand, citing his inexperience.58Hereford Journal, 13 Feb. 1856; Hereford Times, 16 Feb. 1856. Two candidates emerged: Gathorne Hardy, of Eaton Square, Middlesex, a Conservative barrister, and the Liberal James Campbell, son of Sir James Campbell, K.C.B.59Hereford Times, 16 Feb. 1856. On the day of the nomination, the Hereford Journal observed that the town ‘presented a strong contrast’ to ‘scenes of political contests in days gone by’. The distribution of large coloured posters by Hardy’s supporters was the only throwback to the older electoral culture.60Hereford Journal, 20 Feb. 1856. Campbell expressed the fashionable cry for administrative reform, in addition to advocating the ballot and the extension of the franchise. Hardy was at pains to emphasise his free trade credentials, and drew attention to the progressive stance of Conservatives such as Fitzroy Kelly and Sir John Pakington in furthering law reform and popular education. He objected to a £5 borough franchise, the ballot and an extensive redistribution that would concentrate power in the main urban centres.61Ibid.

Campbell won the show of hands, but the poll resulted in an easy victory for Hardy. Although there had been a contest, the Hereford Times remarked that the election had ‘excite[d] very little interest’, while Hardy wrote in his diary that ‘the whole thing was conducted in the quietest and most inexpensive way’.62Hereford Times, 23 Feb. 1856; Hardy diary, 22 Feb. 1856, qu. in Lord Cranbrook, Gathorne Hardy, first earl of Cranbrook: a memoir, ed. A.E. Gathorne Hardy (1910), i. 99.

After 1857 the Conservative retained both seats until the end of the period. At the general election that year Hardy was returned unopposed with Willoughby, whose candidature forced the retirement of Phillimore. This added spice to an otherwise dull election. Phillimore had used his parliamentary position to assail the East India Company and resented his ousting by a former Company director and ‘monopolist’. In Phillimore’s view, this episode demonstrated that Leominster was a rotten borough in the pocket of the Arkwrights.63Hereford Journal, 25 Mar. 1857. It also seems, however, that Phillimore ‘had lately lost ground with his party, owing to the inconsistency between his votes and his speeches in the House’.64Ibid. This perhaps included his support for Cobden’s Canton motion that defeated Palmerston’s government.65Ibid.

At the nomination, Willoughby jibed that Phillimore’s animus against the EIC had its root in being passed over for appointment as professor of law at the East Indian Civil Service College at Haileybury. Hardy, whose talents had quickly established him as a candidate for office in any future Conservative administration, offered a forthright critique of Palmerston’s conduct over Canton. He also expressed opposition to compulsory education, and like Willoughby reaffirmed his support for traditional institutions, especially the Church of England.66Hereford Times, 28 Mar. 1857.

Although electors were deprived of the bribes and treating that they had formerly enjoyed, they enterprisingly found other ways to extract money from their representatives. Hardy wrote that Willoughby’s weakness was in believing stories of pseudo-Leominster electors and their female relations, and giving them money or buying daubs [paintings] from them. I warned him never to believe any reference to me unless he saw my own writing, but nevertheless he used to greet me with “I gave this or that to the person you sent”, when the person had never been near me, and I had sent no message.67Gathorne Hardy, Cranbrook memoir, i. 108.

Mercifully for Willoughby’s finances he was required to vacate the constituency on his appointment to the Council for India in October 1858. His place was taken by Charles Spencer Bateman Hanbury, of Shobdon Court, formerly Conservative MP for Herefordshire, and brother of Lord Bateman. Rumours that James Wilde, formerly MP for Worcester, or the local lawyer J.H. James would stand in the Liberal interest proved to be ill-founded.68Hereford Times, 14 Aug. 1858; Hereford Journal, 6 Oct. 1858. Returned unopposed at the nomination, which was notable for a ‘very scanty’ attendance, Hanbury professed Liberal Conservative opinions and promised to give a general support to Lord Derby’s government.69Hereford Times, 23 Oct. 1858.

Hanbury and Hardy were returned unopposed at the 1859 general election, the latter defending Derby’s government, in which he held junior office.70Hereford Times, 9 Apr. 1859. Hanbury voiced qualified support for Derby’s reform bill as he disapproved of the disenfranchisement of urban freeholders and reducing Leominster to single member status.71Hereford Times, 30 Apr. 1859. Hardy was returned in second place behind another Conservative Arthur Walsh, of Warfield Park, Berkshire, at the 1865 general election, winning an easy victory over the Liberal challenger William Matthewson Hindmarch, a barrister, who was backed by local Dissenters.72The Times, 12 July 1865.

When the new Parliament met in February 1866, Hardy opted to sit for Oxford University, for which he had also been returned, creating a vacancy which was filled by Richard Arkwright, younger son of John Arkwright, and scion of Hampton Court. Returned unopposed at the nomination, Arkwright expressed his family’s traditional Tory opinions, and denied that there was any need for parliamentary reform.73Hereford Journal, 3 Mar. 1866. Another vacancy arose in April 1868 when Walsh resigned to contest Radnorshire. There was no challenge to Arthur Philip Stanhope, Viscount Mahon, heir to Earl Stanhope, who stood in the Conservative interest.74The Times, 26 Mar. 1868, 28 Apr. 1868.

The reform bills of the 1850s and 1860s all proposed reducing Leominster to single member status.75PP 1854 (17), v. 399; 1859 sess. 1 (49), ii. 710; 1860 (57), v. 605. The 1852 and 1866 bills proposed adding Bromyard and Ludlow respectively to bolster the electorate.76PP 1852 (48), iii. 380; 1866 (138), v. 45 The 1867 Representation of the People Act stripped the borough of one MP, but increased the electorate to 774. Leominster’s boundaries were unchanged. The new single-member constituency was represented by an Arkwright until 1875, when it was won by the Liberals, although the Conservatives recaptured the seat in 1880.77McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 171. In the 1884-85 redistribution, Leominster was absorbed into the county, which was divided into the Leominster (or northern), and Ross (or southern) divisions. Aside from narrow victories for the Liberals at the 1885 and 1906 general elections, the Leominster division remained a Conservative stronghold.78Ibid., pt. II, p. 112.