East Retford

Economic and social profile

Bounded on the north-east by Lincolnshire and on the north-west by Yorkshire, the hundred of Bassetlaw comprised more than two-fifths of the area of the county of Nottinghamshire, but only one-fifth of its population. Agriculturally diverse, the hundred contained over 200,000 acres, which were mostly arable and meadow, and produced wheat, barley, oats and turnips. The population of East Retford, a small market town traversed by the Chesterfield canal, were chiefly engaged in the manufacture of sailcloth, hats, shoes and paper. The hundred also contained the market town of Worksop, which by the beginning of the nineteenth century had superseded East Retford in the barley trade, and the smaller towns of Tuxford and Ollerton.1Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972) 261-2; W. White, History, gazetteer, and directory of Nottinghamshire (1832), 299-300; J.S. Piercy, The history of Retford in the county of Nottinghamshire (1828), 1-3. The first train reached East Retford in July 1849, served by the Sheffield and Lincolnshire Junction Railway, which ran between Sheffield and Gainsborough. Two months later the town was connected to the Great Northern Railway line from Doncaster.

Electoral history

In 1830 the franchise of the notoriously corrupt borough of East Retford was extended by Act of Parliament (1 Will. IV, c. 74) to include the 40s. freeholders of the hundred of Bassetlaw, the largest and northernmost hundred of Nottinghamshire. The measure had been the subject of fierce debate in the Commons and Lords, with the small, relatively insignificant borough becoming the focal point of the wider discussion concerning the merits of parliamentary reform.2R.A. Preston, ‘East Retford: last days of a rotten borough’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, lxxviii (1974), 94-103. The endemic corruption in the borough stemmed from the tightly controlled number of freemen, in whom the franchise was vested. It was reported that at election time, 20 guineas were paid to each voter by each candidate, or 40 guineas for a plumper.3HP Commons, 1830-1832, ii. 800-7. The extension of the franchise to the 40s. freeholders was intended to remedy this situation, though the 1830 and 1831 general elections saw the candidates spend heavily in their attempts to bribe voters, particularly the freemen.4Ibid.

Clause 34 of the 1832 Reform Act preserved the electoral rights of the constituency’s resident freemen and 40s. freeholders, to whom were added the newly enfranchised £10 householders.5HP Commons, 1820-1832, i. 51. Comprising around 70 per cent of the total electorate, the £10 householders steadily increased throughout the period.6In 1837 the £10 householders numbered 2,040; the freemen 120; and the 40s. freeholders 662: PP 1837-38 (329), xliv. 527. In 1852 the £10 householders totalled 2128; the freemen 102; and the 40s. freeholders 310: PP 1852 (8), xlii. 325. Although it had been feared that the widening of the franchise in 1830 would play into the hands of the ultra-Tory fourth duke of Newcastle, whose family seat at Clumber lay within five miles of East Retford, this proved to be unfounded.7J. Golby, ‘A great electioneer and his motives’, Hist. Jnl., viii (1965), 213. Newcastle’s territorial strength gave him the potential to control one of the borough’s two seats, but his influence was undermined by the uneven distribution of his estates in Bassetlaw, and the presence of other significant landowners.8A.C. Pickersgill, ‘Agricultural revolution in Bassetlaw’ (Nottingham Univ. unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 1979), 432-4. Earl Manvers, of Thoresby Park, who traditionally supported the Whigs, possessed a considerable interest, as did the 4^th duke of Portland, of Welbeck Abbey. A ‘family compact’ between Newcastle, Portland and Manvers had operated successfully for the county seats in the pre-Reform era, but after 1832 disagreements between the three major magnates over the extent to which their influence should be wielded was a constant source of tension. Other notable landowners who played a part in the hundred’s politics were the Liberals George Savile Foljambe, of Osberton, Lord Middleton of Wollaton, and John Evelyn Denison MP, of Ossington, and the Conservatives Sir Thomas White, of Wallingwells, and the 5^th viscount Galway, of Serlby Hall.

Despite the notable limits on Newcastle’s influence in Bassetlaw, 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 a tyrannical magnate, 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 ultra-Tory duke.9D. 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.10Ibid., 53-4.

At the 1832 general election Newcastle, who felt ‘betrayed, cajoled, tricked and deserted’ by the passing of the Reform Act, declined to spend money on electioneering in East Retford.11Unhappy reactionary: the diaries of the fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1822-1850 (2003), ed. R.A. Gaunt, 94. Keen to reach an accord with the troubled duke, Manvers, in an overt piece of political manoeuvring, offered to support the election of Newcastle’s eldest son, the earl of Lincoln, for Nottinghamshire South, in return for Newcastle backing Manvers’ eldest son, the Reformer Viscount Newark, at East Retford. Newcastle, who claimed in his diary to be ‘indifferent’ to the contest, acquiesced.12Ibid. Newark, who had sat for the borough since 1830, was far from an impressive candidate. He was perpetually dogged by poor health and the radical Nottingham Review thought little of his speaking abilities, commenting that he ‘ought to be aware that nursery tales are not always accounted as wit, nor is swearing to be taken for a sign of good sense’.13Nottingham Review, 30 Aug. 1830. The other sitting member, Granville Harcourt Vernon, also offered again as a Reformer. The son-in-law of the prominent landowner Anthony Hardolph Eyre of Grove Park, MP for Nottinghamshire North 1803-12, Vernon was a strong candidate whose re-election was deemed to be safe. Although a contest was not expected, on the eve of the poll, Sir John Beckett, a former judge-advocate general who had previously sat for the now disenfranchised Haslemere, came forward in the Conservative interest. Even though Newcastle refused to intervene on his behalf, Beckett mustered significant support, and ran Newark close, losing out by only 183 votes. Vernon comfortably topped the poll.14Morning Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1832.

The 1835 general election revealed both the strength and limitations of Newcastle’s influence. With Newark retiring due to poor health, Manvers and Newcastle agreed that the Conservative Arthur Duncombe, who had briefly sat for East Retford from 1830 to 1831 on Newcastle’s interest, should accept a requisition from 600 voters to come forward in Newark’s place, with the aim of restoring shared representation to the borough.15Unhappy reactionary, 100. Determined to avoid a contest, Newcastle had rebuffed an initial approach from local Conservatives to bring forward his second son, Lord Charles Pelham Clinton, but following the decision of the local Whigs to invite Henry Gally Knight to contest the seat alongside his brother-in-law Vernon, Newcastle consented to his son’s candidature.16Ibid., 100-1. However, with Clinton in the field, Gally Knight, in the words of Newcastle, ‘took fright’ and withdrew from the contest ‘with all possible speed’, leaving a three-cornered fight between Newcastle’s two candidates and Vernon.17Ibid., 102.

In his address Vernon was noticeably equivocal on his party loyalties, declaring that while he would watch the actions of the Peel’s recently-formed ministry with ‘a jealous eye’, he would not oppose ‘any government when its measures shall conduce to the welfare of my constituents’.18Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 162-3. Duncombe, who described himself as ‘an enemy of free trade’, gave his staunch backing to the Conservative administration.19Ibid. While Vernon and Duncombe were seasoned performers in public, Clinton was woefully inexperienced, and his first speeches of the campaign were an utter disaster. According to Newcastle, at a meeting of farmers in Retford, ‘he failed entirely and could hardly utter a word – it seems that he was much hurt and could hardly be brought to make another trail up the stairs’ to speak again. Thereafter he was ‘very much cut up and dispirited’.20Unhappy reactionary, 102. At the nomination Clinton failed once again, unable to muster ‘the nerve to give utterance to his thoughts and words’. This was in stark contrast to Vernon, who ‘made a very long speech’ and Duncombe, who ‘spoke exceedingly well’.21Ibid., 103. Following a bitter campaign in which the hundred’s Whig landlords were reported to have ‘despatched their stewards and other emissaries to their dependents, and positively compelled them to poll plumpers for Vernon’, Clinton was defeated in third place, with Duncombe returned in second.22Nottingham Journal, cited in Morning Post, 16 Jan. 1835. Vernon, who spent £1,500 and received 647 plumpers (50 per cent of his total), narrowly topped the poll.23Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 Dec. 1879. Newcastle’s lament that ‘all the gentry have opposed us and have behaved infamously’ was probably hyperbole, but it reflected the fact that the hundred contained a significant number of Whig landowners who, when working in concert, could severely curtail the duke’s influence.24Unhappy reactionary, 103.

The reform of East Retford’s municipal government in 1835 dealt a further blow to the Newcastle interest. The report of the municipal commissioners was completely damning. The aldermen, who were chosen exclusively from the burgesses and therefore excluded the gentry and members of liberal professions, were found to be ‘qualified neither in respect of mental endowment, nor in the no less important qualities of prudence, temper and personal dignity’. The report also found them to be corrupt and the ‘tools of an unconstitutional influence’.25PP 1835 (116), xxv. 453-64. This was undoubtedly a reference to Newcastle, who, as the report made clear, directly funded the efforts of the aldermen to secure the political allegiance of the voting freeman.26Ibid. 462-4.; Unhappy reactionary, xix. Following municipal reform, Newcastle resigned his position as high steward of East Retford, though at the borough’s first municipal elections, the Conservatives secured a majority on the town council.

The constituency’s politics assumed a new complexion at the 1837 general election when Vernon offered as a supporter of Lord Stanley. Following his rather ambiguous address at the 1835 general election, Vernon had voted with Peel on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and opposed Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835. Outraged by his disloyalty, the Liberal gentry brought forward William Mason, a former recorder of East Retford who had served as high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1823. Following a hard-fought campaign, Vernon, despite considerable local opposition, was narrowly returned in second place, 78 votes ahead of Mason, whose total of 1,234 votes ‘truly surprised’ Newcastle.27Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 Dec. 1879; Unhappy reactionary, 108. Duncombe topped the poll.

Vernon and Duncombe were united in their defence of the corn laws, with the former declaring in the Commons that repeal would throw ‘an enormous mass of the population’ into ‘the greatest misery’, 3 Apr. 1840. Newcastle also spoke at a large public gathering in East Retford, chaired by Sir Thomas White, in May 1841, to defend the existing legislation.28Unhappy reactionary, 127-8. Although Vernon was now fully committed to the Conservative cause, and followed Peel into the division lobby on all major issues, Newcastle, who had once dismissed him as ‘Venomous Vernon’, remained wary, and recorded in his diary that he was ‘very anxious’ to bring forward his fourth eldest son William for East Retford at the 1841 general election.29Ibid., 128. However, with little appetite for a contest, Newcastle refrained from intervening, leaving Duncombe and Vernon to be ‘quietly returned’ unopposed.30Ibid., 130. Following his appointment as a groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, Duncombe was again returned without opposition at a by-election in October 1841, when he declared himself to be ‘a firm supporter of an adequate protecting duty for British agriculture’.31Standard, 4 Oct. 1841.

Support for agricultural protection was widespread in Nottinghamshire, even though it was strongest in the south of the county.32J.R. Fisher, ‘The Nottinghamshire Agricultural Association’, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 94 (1990), 65-6. In 1846 the Nottinghamshire Agricultural Protection Society, formed two years earlier by the county’s owner-occupiers and tenant-farmers, successfully mobilised its network of supporters and engineered the defeat of the earl of Lincoln, Newcastle’s eldest son, who now supported repeal, in two consecutive by-elections in the south and north divisions.33Ibid., ‘Issues and influence: two by-elections in South Nottinghamshire in the mid-nineteenth century’, Historical Journal, 24, 1 (1981), 155-65. Thus, when Vernon, already unpopular with his constituents over his support for the Maynooth grant, came out in favour of corn law repeal in March 1846, his position as member for East Retford became untenable, and he retired at the 1847 dissolution. In his place the Liberal gentry brought forward John Walbanke Childers of Cantley, near Doncaster, a former member for Malton and a staunch advocate of corn law repeal. However, according to Newcastle, Childers was alarmed by the electoral register, which showed a consistent level of support for protection, and after issuing an address he quickly withdrew from the contest.34Morning Post, 26 June 1847; Unhappy reactionary, 147.

Although support for agricultural protection was high, Newcastle’s attempts to bring forward a second candidate alongside Duncombe were initially frustrated. His original choice, George Monckton-Arundell, viscount Galway, of Serlby Hall, continually equivocated over whether to stand. An exasperated Newcastle recorded in his diary that Galway had:

Behaved in the shabbiest and most harassing manner, he will and he will not [stand]. I shall be very glad if another shall be chosen instead of him – he does not merit the honor which he does nothing to obtain. I suspect that he will make a wretched MP after all, and that he will seldom vote as we should wish.35Ibid.

On the recommendation of the duke of Portland, Newcastle approached Sir Charles Anderson, of Lea Hall, Lincolnshire, to offer as a Protectionist, but following Galway’s decision to finally stand, Anderson quickly gave way, bringing an end to what Newcastle described as ‘this busy farce’.36Ibid. At the nomination, the retired Vernon, citing his right as an elector to be heard, gave a lengthy speech in defence of his parliamentary conduct, claiming that although he was in favour of a low fixed duty on corn, once he found that ‘neither a fixed duty nor a sliding scale were longer tenable’ he ‘could not do otherwise than support’ repeal. Finishing with an unapologetic flourish, he insisted that he ‘had endeavoured to do his duty to his country, whether or not his former constituents felt that he had failed to do it to them’.37Daily News, 29 July 1847. Duncombe and Galway, who both spoke succinctly against free trade, were elected unopposed.

In February 1851 Newcastle died, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Lincoln, a committed Peelite who had little time for the zealous protectionism of his father. Thereafter East Retford’s parliamentary elections were an altogether calmer affair. In February 1852, following Duncombe’s decision to resign his seat in order to contest a vacancy for the East Riding of Yorkshire, he was seamlessly replaced by his nephew William Ernest Duncombe, eldest son of the 2^nd Baron Feversham. The fifth duke of Newcastle mischievously suggested that, by replacing his uncle, Duncombe was introducing a system of borough-mongering into the borough, but, unwilling to force a contest, he declined to bring forward his own candidate. Following his unopposed return, Duncombe, after giving a rather prosaic history of the conservative movement since Charles I, warned against the rising ‘arrogance and insolence of Rome’, and insisted that the question of protection or free trade was not settled.38Nottinghamshire Guardian, 12 Feb. 1852. The following month, Galway’s appointment as a lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria necessitated another by-election. Like Duncombe, Galway had little time for those who championed free trade, calling Richard Cobden ‘an almost bankrupt calico printer’, though he conceded that it would be ‘folly’ to attempt to re-introduce protection. After lavishing praise on Derby and insisting that he would never vote for the Maynooth grant, he was also returned without opposition.39Ibid., 25 Mar. 1852. With Newcastle focusing his efforts on returning his younger brother Robert for the northern division of the county, the Liberal gentry again declined to be drawn into East Retford’s parliamentary politics at the general election of July 1852. Duncombe and Galway were therefore returned unopposed, though the latter’s valedictory speech was constantly interrupted by members of the audience who rejected his argument that the effects of free trade had been far from positive.40Nottinghamshire Guardian, 8 July 1852.

Duncombe’s retirement from East Retford at the 1857 general election presented the Liberals with an opportunity to bring forward their own candidate and restore shared representation to the constituency. Their nominee, Francis John Savile Foljambe, was a member of a politically distinguished Nottinghamshire family who garnered respect irrespective of political loyalties. His father, George, high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1826, had been narrowly defeated as a Liberal at Nottinghamshire North at the 1837 general election, and was, according to one Conservative opponent, strongly supported ‘from good fellowship and as a foxhunter and landlord’.41Thomas Houldsworth, MP for Nottinghamshire North, 1832-52, to 4th duke of Newcastle, 23 July 1837, quoted in J.V. Beckett, ‘Aristocrats and electoral control in the East Midlands, 1660-1914’, Midland History, 18 (1993), 81. Moreover Duncombe, in his retiring address, endorsed Foljambe on the grounds of his local connections.42Nottinghamshire Guardian, 2 Apr. 1857. With the Conservatives keen to avoid an unnecessary contest now agricultural protection had ceased to be a political issue in the hundred, Galway and Foljambe were the sole candidates. At the nomination, there was little difference between them. They both opposed the ballot, the abolition of church rates, and the opening of the British museum on a Sunday, a measure that Foljambe argued would be ‘disgusting to the great masses of the people’. As a moderate who declared that he had been ‘born and bred in the school of the Whigs’, Foljambe’s candidature did little to alarm the local Conservatives. Indeed, following their unopposed return Galway admitted that, though he regretted the loss of a Conservative colleague, ‘they could not have chosen any man whom he would prefer as a colleague to Mr Foljambe’ as he ‘was one of his oldest friends’. Their only notable source of disagreement concerned the events at Canton. Galway attacked Palmerston for dissolving Parliament ‘on a paltry miserable Chinese squabble’, while Foljambe, who insisted that he would ‘go to parliament entirely free and unshackled by any party or faction’, defended the premier, believing that the ‘Chinese were the aggressors and that the insult was one which we ought not to submit to’.43Ibid.

Galway and Foljambe were re-elected unopposed at the 1859 and 1865 elections. Their respective loyalties to Derby and Palmerston set the two members apart, but neither election generated any excitement. In 1859, despite having voted against each other on the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, they seemed to largely agree on the question of further parliamentary reform, with Galway backing Derby’s ‘safe and moderate measure’, and Foljambe, who expressed his ‘personal gratification that it had not been thought necessary to saddle him with another colleague of the same principle as himself’, insisting that franchise extension was ‘not now the question of the day’. Both men supported non-intervention in foreign affairs, though Foljambe, in contrast to Galway, staunchly backed Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, declaring that ‘Englishmen abhor assassination, and that bill was intended to give expression to that abhorrence’.44Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1859. At the 1865 general election Foljambe went further than Galway in his support for franchise extension, with the latter warning that ‘mere numbers’ should not be allowed to ‘predominate over the just claims of education, intelligence, and property’.45The Times, 1 July 1865. In the Commons they followed their respective party leaders into the division lobby on the major clauses of the Derby ministry’s representation of the people bill, but, reflecting East Retford’s unusual position as a large agricultural borough, they were united in their support for the constituency’s exclusion from measures to prohibit payment for the conveyance of voters.46Hansard, 26 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, c. 758; 4 July 1867, vol. 188, c. 1015.

The 1867 Reform Act extended the borough’s electorate to just over 7,500, but its boundaries remained unchanged. Galway and Foljambe were again returned unopposed at the 1868 and 1874 general elections. Following Galway’s death in 1876, the borough witnessed its first contest for nearly four decades, while in 1880 two Liberals were returned for the first time since 1832. This was the last election before the constituency’s abolition in 1885, whereupon it was replaced by the single-member county division of Bassetlaw, though it retained its existing boundaries.