Cockermouth

Economic and social profile

Cockermouth, the election town for West Cumberland, lay in the parish of Brigham at the confluence of the rivers Cocker and Derwent, twenty-five miles south-west of Carlisle. The manufacture of cottons, linens and woollen goods dominated the borough’s economy and the main employment was in weaving, factories and tanneries. Hats, stockings and hosiery were also manufactured.3Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 68-9. The textile industry, however, declined sharply from the 1850s onwards, and the borough experienced halting population growth thereafter.4J.D. Marshall and J.K. Walton, The Lake Counties from 1830 to the mid-twentieth century (1981), 24-6. Although, geographically, Cockermouth was the eighth largest English borough, in 1851 its electorate was the sixteenth lowest.5PP 1852 (8), xlii. 515. In 1866 10 per cent of the 336 registered electors were working class, which was comparatively low for a borough in this period.6PP 1866 (170), lvii. 51. The Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith railway opened in 1865, which connected the borough to the London and North Western Railway, and to the South Durham and Lancashire Union railway, thus linking the two great iron producing areas of West Cumberland and Durham.7Marshall and Walton, Lake counties, 40.

Electoral history

Prior to 1832, the representation of Cockermouth had been dominated by the Lowther family and their supporters, known as the ‘Yellows’. The family’s firm grip on the borough’s politics had been established in 1756, when Sir James Lowther had bought over half the 278 burgages for £58,000, and for the first three decades of the nineteenth century his descendant, the Tory 1^st earl of Lonsdale, was able to effectively repel the challenges of the Cumberland Whigs, known as the ‘Blues’.8HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 229; J.V. Beckett, ‘The making of a pocket borough: Cockermouth, 1722-1756’, Journal of British Studies, 20 (1980), 140-57. The Blues were led by the county’s principal landowners, who included the families of Aglionby of the Nunnery, Brougham of Scales Hall and Brougham, Crackenthorpe of Bank Hall and Newbiggin, Curwen of Workington, and Lawson of Brayton. The Lowthers’ belligerent opposition to parliamentary reform, however, rapidly diminished their influence across the county. Following the 1832 Reform Act, the 305 newly-enfranchised £10 householders in Cockermouth overwhelmingly took the Blue side, effectively destroying the Lowther interest. According to one Liberal newspaper, the borough was better known ‘for the firmness and consistency of its electors in Liberal principles than all the north of England put together’.9Daily News, 21 June 1852. However, although the Yellows did not field a candidate until 1840, Blue hegemony was far from assured. The Boundary Act, which enlarged the area of the constituency from 3.9 to 13.3 square miles, gave increased weight to the influence of the Tory 3^rd earl of Egremont, who owned rich iron-ore bearing territory in the west of Cumberland.10N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel, 432; Marshall and Walton, Lake Counties, 105. Following the earl’s death in 1837, his son, Henry Wyndham, who resided at Cockermouth Castle, took an active interest in local politics, and steadily rebuilt the Conservative interest. His election in 1852 finally broke the Blue monopoly, and joint representation persisted until 1868, when the Conservatives briefly held both seats. The nature of the ‘Castle’ influence, though, was consistently attacked at the hustings, while, in turn, the Yellows were unrelentingly critical of the pretensions of the ‘outsider’ Edward Horsman, a Scottish lawyer and divisive figure amongst the local Blues, who represented the borough for sixteen years. Influence and locality, therefore, were prominent issues in Cockermouth elections. Fierce party loyalties were further fostered by the Blue Carlisle Journal (estimated weekly circulation 2,216 in 1841) and the Yellow Carlisle Patriot (962).11Marshall and Walton, Lake Counties, Appendix 2, p. 243.

With their cause hopeless, the two sitting Tory MPs, John Henry Lowther and Sir James Scarlett, retired from the representation of Cockermouth at the 1832 general election.12HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 231. Andrew Green of Bridekirk, a radical wool merchant who was a zealous advocate for abolition of the corn laws, announced his candidature in January 1832, even before the passage of the reform bill, and presented himself as a ‘man of the people’.13R.S. Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867 (1871), 263. The Cumberland Blue hierarchy, however, eventually threw its weight behind Fretcheville Dykes, a member of one of the oldest landowning families in the county, and the barrister Henry Aglionby of Nunnery. Deprived of a candidate to support, the Yellow Carlisle Patriot mocked Dykes and Aglionby for ‘conceding much more to popular rights’ in an effort to win over Green’s supporters.14Cited in The Times, 11 Dec. 1832. Following a frenetic final week of canvassing, Dykes comfortably topped the poll, with Aglionby returned in second, twenty-seven votes ahead of Green.15Morning Chronicle, 12 Dec. 1832.

The 1835 general election witnessed further disunity in the Blue camp. The source of the division was dismay over Dykes’ parliamentary record. At a meeting of Blue electors, one voter, Isaac Atkinson, explained that:

His first objection to Mr Dykes was a sweeping one – he charged him with a neglect of duty, with an inattention to their interests, which even his friends admitted, and with a betrayal of his trust.16Carlisle Journal, 3 Jan. 1835.

Dykes’ alleged ‘betrayal of trust’ concerned his votes against the abolition of flogging in the army and against an inquiry into the impressment of navy recruits. At the hustings, Dykes was noticeably equivocal on the subject, insisting that ‘in the abstract’ he was ‘prepared to support a system’ to preserve discipline in the army and man the navy ‘without recourse to degrading and cruel measures’, but that the lack of any coherent alternatives had determined his votes.17Carlisle Journal, 10 Jan. 1835. Unimpressed with his explanations, a group of Blue electors brought forward Edward Horsman, an Edinburgh-based lawyer, in direct opposition to Dykes.18Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs, 265. Horsman, who admitted that he was ‘almost an entire stranger’, adopted an unambiguously Radical position, calling for the ballot, shorter parliaments, and the removal of bishops from the House of Lords. Significantly, he declared that he would vote for the repeal of flogging in the army and stated his opposition to the impressment of seaman. He also called for the ‘total extinction of all tithes’, a position which Dykes had refused to adopt.19Carlisle Journal, 3 Jan. 1835.

At the nomination Aglionby, who had not canvassed ‘on principle’, stayed aloof from the internecine rivalry, stating that as he was not ‘a party to one or the other’, he would ‘leave them to themselves’. An assiduous speaker in the Commons who remained popular in the borough, he declared his support for shorter parliaments, the ballot, and a fixed duty on corn, and reiterated his opposition to the Irish coercion bill. Following a bitter campaign, Aglionby decisively topped the poll, with Dykes narrowly beating Horsman by thirty-two votes. An analysis of the poll reveals that Aglionby’s supporters were evenly split between Dykes and Horsman. Although the two sitting members received 93 split votes, Aglionby and Horsman gained 98, while Dykes and Horsman got only seven. Dykes’s re-election, therefore, was secured by his 48 single votes, with Horsman gaining only six.20W.W. Bean, The parliamentary representation of the six northern counties of England (1890), 72.

In December 1835 Dykes ‘startled’ the electors of Cockermouth by announcing his intention to resign the representation of the borough, citing ill health and the pressure of devoting the necessary time to public business.21Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 5 Dec. 1835. Following a generous speech at a public dinner for Dykes where he delicately addressed his previous opposition to the retiring member, Horsman was selected as the Blue candidate for the vacant seat.22The Times, 11 Dec. 1835. Captain Richard Moorsom, who had unsuccessfully contested Whitby at the 1832 general election, offered as ‘a staunch and sterling reformer’, but with little chance of success he retired before the nomination, leaving Horsman, who called for the exclusion of all pensioners from voting in the House of Lords, to be elected without opposition, 15 Feb. 1836.23York Herald, 12 Dec., 26 Dec. 1835; Standard, 19 Feb. 1836.

The 1837 general election reignited the bitter rivalries that had plagued the Blues two years previously. Outraged at the way in which Dykes had been treated, a group of Blue voters, led by George Wheatley, brought forward Major Richard Benson, the son of a local solicitor, who had served with distinction in the Indian army. In a transparent attempt to win over Horsman’s supporters, Benson insisted that, if elected, he would vote for household suffrage, shorter parliaments and the ballot, and claimed that while serving in India he had advocated the substitution of fines for corporal punishment.24Carlisle Journal, 29 July 1837.

The nomination was acrimonious and spilled over into violence. Benson’s proposer, Joseph Banks, unequivocally condemned the previous treatment of Dykes, and warned that ‘the hand which first sowed the seed of discord was this day about to reap the bitter fruits’. He called upon the 35 voters who had plumped for Dykes in 1835 to vote for Benson. Banks also highlighted Benson’s local credentials, arguing that, in contrast to Horsman, ‘they now had the opportunity of returning a fellow-townsman of business habit, and of real independence’.25Ibid. In response, Horsman, who lamented that the contest ‘was the most painful he had ever witnessed’, stated that ‘it was not a political but a personal contest’ and claimed that Benson’s supporters were being paid three shillings a day to shout at him at public meetings, an accusation that caused stones to be thrown at the hustings. He was also dismissive of Benson’s military background, as he ‘certainly never heard that because a man was a good soldier, he must be a good member of Parliament’.26Ibid. Aglionby again refused to back either candidate, though he appeared to suggest that Horsman’s parliamentary experience should be taken into consideration. His position in the borough now unassailable, Aglionby was comfortably re-elected in first place, with Horsman beating Benson by eleven votes.27Morning Chronicle, 6 July 1837.

The Cockermouth by-election of June 1840, necessitated by Horsman’s appointment as a lord of the treasury in Melbourne’s administration, witnessed the borough’s first Conservative candidature in the post-Reform era. In another bitter campaign, the local press attacked Horsman for allegedly voting in the Commons after receiving his appointment to office, declaring that ‘no member of the House of Commons ever soiled his fingers more in their service than Mr Horsman’.28Cumberland Pacquet, cited in The Times, 29 May 1840. This attack was part of a wider hostility to Horsman’s status as an outsider, ‘a selfish, jobbing alien, who merely seeks ... the accomplishment of a mercenary purpose’. The Carlisle Patriot echoed this critique of the Edinburgh lawyer, declaring that ‘Cockermouth is the pot in which the honourable gentleman boils his Scotch porridge’.29Carlisle Patriot, 29 May 1840. Horsman, according to his opponents, had only come forward at Cockermouth to further his own career, and after declaring Radical sympathies in order to secure his return, he had become ‘as obsequious a slave to the ministers as if he had been of O’Connell’s tail’.30Ibid.

Horsman’s ‘obsequiousness’ and perceived faux radicalism were also attacked by the Carlisle Radical Association, which issued an address urging the ‘Radical Reformers of Cockermouth’ to:

Use all your exertions to defeat the arch-traitor Horsman, who by his professions of Radicalism, induced you to send him to the House of Commons, where he has shamefully belied all his promises, and sold himself and you for a place.31Morning Post, 2 June 1840.

Again, Horsman’s outsider status was highlighted: the address declared that ‘the canny Scot has contrived to ‘boo’ himself into office’.32Ibid. Led by the Chartist handloom weaver Joseph Hanson, the Carlisle Radical Association’s attack on Horsman was also part of a wider strategy of Chartist activists backing Conservative candidates who were willing to condemn the Melbourne ministry’s poor law legislation.33For example, see the Nottingham by-election of April 1841 when local Chartists backed the Conservative candidature of John Walter against the Liberal candidates: ‘Nottingham’, HP Commons, 1832-68, http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/1832-1868. Horsman’s opponent, Henry Wyndham, duly did this, arguing that ‘the government ... had given the people Bastille workhouses’.34Standard, 3 July 1841.

A distinguished army officer and Waterloo hero, Wyndham was the second son of the Tory 3^rd earl of Egremont, who, in addition to the family seat of Petworth in Sussex, owned Cockermouth Castle. Upon succeeding his father to the Cumberland estates in 1837, Wyndham assiduously cultivated political support in the borough and, as a protectionist, positioned himself as a defender of the region’s agricultural interest.35Carlisle Patriot, 29 May 1840. Significantly, the Yellow press highlighted Wyndham’s local connections, calling him ‘their friend and neighbour’.36Cumberland Pacquet, cited in The Times, 29 May 1840. In fact, Wyndham still spent much of his time at Petworth, although an article in the Carlisle Patriot generously insisted that, in contrast to Horsman, at least he was ‘resident at Cockermouth during a portion of every year’.37Marshall and Walton, Lake counties, 105; Carlisle Patriot, 29 May 1840. However, following a violent nomination when Wyndham was cut on the face by a stone thrown from the crowd, Horsman was re-elected by a majority of twenty-six votes.38Standard, 3 June 1841.

The 1841 general election in Cockermouth was dominated by the issue of the corn laws. Aglionby called for a fixed duty on corn, explaining that he would ‘increase or reduce it according to circumstance’, while Horsman was more vociferous, claiming that ‘a more injurious policy than our present corn-laws he thought it impossible for any government to adopt’. Wyndham, in contrast, insisted that ‘the cry of cheap bread meant cheap labour and low wages’.39Standard, 3 July 1841. The nomination was a hostile affair, with Horsman once again singled out for criticism. Although Horsman attacked the nature of Wyndham’s influence, arguing that his ‘castle walls should crumble if the electors did their duty’, Wyndham responded by mocking Horsman’s Scottish roots, declaring that his ‘castle had been built to repel northern invaders, and those castle walls should resist them again’.40Ibid. However, after a polling day marred by violence, Aglionby and Horsman were re-elected by a comfortable majority.41Standard, 5 July 1841. The unity of the Blue votes was striking. Aglionby and Horsman received 126 splits, 98 and 99 per cent of their respective totals, while 98 per cent of Wyndham’s total votes came from plumpers.42Bean, Parliamentary representation, 73. Following the poll, Wyndham, who complained of the ‘baneful influence of Treasury money most lavishly distributed’, insisted that he would ‘contest the borough again and again, until ... successful’ and called upon the Conservatives to focus their efforts on the new register.43Standard, 5 July 1841; Morning Post, 7 July 1841. He duly came forward at the 1847 general election, but believing his prospects to be poor, he retired before the nomination, leaving Aglionby and Horsman, who had both voted for corn law repeal, 15 May 1846, to be re-elected without opposition.44Morning Post, 28, 30 July 1847.

Wyndham was finally returned for the borough at the 1852 general election following a hard fought campaign in which he was assisted by the second earl of Lonsdale, president of the council in Derby’s short-lived administration.45Daily News, 21 June 1852. Horsman again railed against the ‘Castle’ influence, urging the electors to ‘assert their local independence’, and in a combative nomination speech, he described Wyndham as ‘the rich man attempting by money to corrupt his poorer neighbour’.46Morning Post, 10 July 1852. However, Wyndham persevered and was narrowly elected in first place, beating Aglionby by six votes, and Horsman, who lost his seat, by thirteen. Critically, the Yellow vote was firmly united behind Wyndham, whose 150 plumpers accounted for 94 per cent of his total. The Blue vote had also remained solid, with Aglionby and Horsman sharing 144 splits (96 and 98 per cent of their respective totals), but the Yellows had clearly been more successful in adding their supporters to the register since 1847.47Bean, Parliamentary representation, 74. Several electors petitioned against Wyndham’s return on the grounds of treating and bribery, 23 Nov. 1852, and a separate petition was launched against Aglionby’s return on the same grounds, 23 Nov. 1852.48Ibid., 74-5. The election committee subsequently confirmed the result, though it was critical of the various machinations of the candidates’ agents.49PP 1852-53 (357), x. 477-89.

Aglionby died in July 1854, necessitating a by-election. After Dykes, who had remained a prominent figure in local politics since his retirement in 1835, declined an invitation from the Blue hierarchy to stand, John Steel, a wealthy, retired Cockermouth solicitor, who had been intimately involved in the borough’s parliamentary elections since the 1820s, accepted a requisition signed by nearly 200 electors and came forward in the Liberal interest.50Carlisle Journal, 4 Aug. 1854. Steel’s candidature, however, did not placate a section of the Blues, who remained bitter about the support given previously given to Horsman, but further attemps to again bring forward Benson came to nothing.51Carlisle Journal, 11 Aug. 1854. Although it was reported that Sir Henry Vane of Armathwaite would offer as a Conservative, no challenge materialised, and Steel, who supported the £5 household franchise but insisted that the ballot would ‘enable men to deceive each other and to deceive themselves’, was elected without a contest.52Daily News, 5 Aug. 1854; Standard, 5 Aug. 1854.

The 1857 general election was dominated by the China question. Steel was unequivocally supportive of Palmerston, arguing that the premier had ‘triumphed over the difficulties’ which the previous administration had been unable to address.53The Times, 16 Mar. 1857. With Wyndham leaving his ‘first love’ of Cockermouth to contest a safer seat at West Cumberland, the Yellows brought forward Richard Bourke, Lord Naas, chief secretary for Ireland in Derby’s first administration, who had vacated his seat at Coleraine following the dissolution.54Morning Chronicle, 6 Aug. 1860; Caledonian Mercury, 20 Mar. 1857. His status as an ‘outsider’ was not lost on the Liberal press, who mocked him for making Cockermouth ‘his harbour of refuge’.55Caledonian Mercury, 20 Mar. 1857. Naas, who had voted for Cobden’s motion of censure over the events at Canton, attacked Palmerston’s foreign policy. With the candidates split on the China question, both the Blue and Yellow leadership seemed content with maintaining shared representation, and when a Mr. Jolliffe issued an address in the Conservative interest, the Yellow Cumberland hierarchy refused to support him, prompting his retirement before the nomination.56Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs, 278.

A decade of uncontested shared representation followed the 1857 general election. In March 1858 Naas, who retained the strong backing of the Wyndham interest, was re-elected following his re-appointment as chief secretary for Ireland. Although he assured the electors that ‘in the office of an independent member I will endeavour to discharge my duties in Parliament without fear, favour, or affection’, there was little doubt concerning his Conservative loyalties as he called for the Derby ministry ‘to be given a fair trial’ and condemned Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill.57The Times, 6 Mar. 1858. At the 1859 general election Andrew Green Thompson of Bridekirk, son of the defeated Liberal candidate in 1832, issued an address in the Conservative interest, but withdrew before the nomination.58Morning Post, 19 Apr. 1859; The Times, 28 Apr. 1859. The campaign was dominated by the subject of parliamentary reform, with Steel insisting that ‘everyone who paid the Queen’s direct taxes should have a voice in the representation of the people’. In contrast, Naas, while claiming that ‘it was a great mistake to think that the Conservative party had any fear of the working classes’, cautioned against any ‘upset’ of the present system, as he feared the ‘tyranny of the mob’. Naas and Steel were united in their opposition to the ballot, however, with former describing it as ‘a nasty, sneaking, hypocritical, Yankee device’.59Carlisle Journal, 3 May 1859. The two men again clashed over parliamentary reform at the 1865 general election, and offered different interpretations of foreign affairs. Steel unequivocally backed Palmerston’s foreign policy, while Naas, in a speech that lasted over an hour and a quarter, attacked the premier for his ambiguous stance in the Danish war and praised the ‘courage and fortitude’ of the Confederacy.60Ibid., 14 July 1865. They were re-elected without a contest.

The by-election of July 1866, which followed Naas’s appointment as chief secretary for Ireland in Derby’s third administration, was a dramatic affair. Wilfrid Lawson, the leading temperance campaigner who had sat as Liberal MP for Carlisle, 1859-65, came forward in the Blue interest. Resident at Arkleby Hall, Aspatria, in the west of Cumberland, Lawson had ‘considerable local influence’ and in a short, but ‘vigorous’ canvass he called for an extension of the franchise and condemned Naas for his position on Irish tenant rights and the established Irish church.61Carlisle Journal, 6 July 1866; The Times, 6, 12 July 1866; The wit and wisdom of Sir Wilfrid Lawson: being selections from his speeches 1865-1885; with a biographical sketch (1886), 11-14. However, Naas, who attacked the short-lived Russell ministry’s reform bill as ‘crude and undigested’, had the full weight of the Wyndham interest behind him, and two days before the poll Lawson retired.62The Times, 9, 12 July 1866. Re-elected without opposition, Naas mocked Lawson’s ill-advised candidature, which ‘only had a butterfly life of three days’.63The Times, 12 July 1866.

The relative strength of the Wyndham interest was confirmed at the April 1868 by-election following the death of Steel. The Blues brought forward Isaac Fletcher of Tarn Bank, who pledged that, if elected, ‘he should give the party of which Gladstone was the leader his cordial and unswerving support’. He called for disestablishment of the Irish church and compulsory secular education, and alluding to the Wyndham interest, asked the electors ‘whether they would return a man to Parliament who was free and unfettered, or a castle nominee’.64The Times, 18 Apr. 1868. Andrew Green Thompson, who had been a prominent backer of Naas at previous elections, again came forward, but this time with the crucial backing of the Wyndhams, he proceeded to the poll.65Lancaster Gazette, 25 Apr. 1868. At the nomination the show of hands was in favour of Fletcher, but Green was elected with a majority of twenty-six votes. For the first time since 1831, Cockermouth had two Conservative MPs.66Daily News, 27 Apr. 1868.

The 1867 Representation of the People Act reduced the representation of Cockermouth to one seat, although the borough’s electorate tripled to 1,074. No changes were made to the borough’s boundaries.67The population of the borough, recorded as 7,057 in the 1861 census, had been steadily decreasing since that date, and was therefore moved into schedule A of the Representation of the People Act: PP 1867-68 (3972), xx. 191. For the parliamentary debate on boroughs returning one member only see Hansard, 31 May 1867, vol. 187, cc. 1387-429. The enfranchisement of male householders played directly into the hands of the Liberals, who enjoyed uninterrupted representation until 1885, when the borough was subsumed into Cumberland West. A helpful, though antiquated, overview of the region’s parliamentary elections can be found in Robert Ferguson’s Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867 (1871).