Leicester, the county town, was a centre of cotton and worsted stocking manufacture: in 1831 it contained about 7,000 knitting frames giving employment to some 1,200 persons, but the trade was in general decline in this period, which was marked by severe spells of distress among the framework knitters.
The general election of 1820 witnessed an attempt to destroy the compromise, promoted by John Price, editor of the Leicester Journal, who denounced the ‘imbecile conduct’ of the corporation in acquiescing in the election of Pares.
That the first of these has no design of coming I have private confidential intelligence ... I have no apprehension from the former [who] would know too much of Leicester to use his head against a post, and the latter, the most unpopular man in the three kingdoms, would by coming infallibly ruin the cause of the high party altogether.
Derby Local Stud. Lib. Pares mss, W. Jackson to Pares, 3 Feb., Pares to Thomas Pares sen. [4 Feb. 1820].
According to one observer sympathetic to the anti-corporation party, the Journal’s chief object was to keep Pares in a ‘state of alarm by way of a hoax’, but well before the election, as Elizabeth Pares reported to her uncle, the editor’s electioneering had become the subject of popular lampoonery:
Mr. Price’s cock is arrived but it is only in effigy! and therefore not to be feared. It was carried by one of Tom’s party cut out in pasteboard and tied to a pole ... [which] I made to dance in tune to his band, by means of a string, to the great amusement of the spectators ... This morning the people were sweeping the gutters with candle and lanthorns, to search for Mr. Price’s friend! Such are the humours of the elections!
Ibid. Elizabeth Pares to Pares sen., 1, 2 Mar., Roger Miles to Pares, 4 Mar. 1820.
Anxious for the ‘peace and harmony’ of the borough, though no doubt fearing a contest, Mansfield resented the Journal’s interference and stood by the compromise. But the corporation, goaded by the Journal’s criticism and intervention, were more disposed to break their apparent compact with Pares. The breach came as a consequence of the Journal’s approach to Sir William Manners† of Buckminster Park who, though unwilling to stand himself, tried to create mischief by giving credence to the rumours of the appearance of a wealthy third man from London. Mansfield demanded that the corporation should give him their undivided support, and promptly resigned when it was refused. According to inside information the corporation were prepared
to nominate Mr. Mansfield only, and to give him most heartily and zealously their unanimous support, and also agreed not to seek for a third candidate; but they declined pledging themselves, collectively and individually, to give him single votes, thereby, in effect, supporting Mr. Pares, and directly discountenancing any third candidate who might happen to offer, although his political principles might be more congenial to their own, than those which Mr. Pares has uniformly manifested since his return to Parliament.
Leicester Jnl. 3, 10 Mar. 1820; VCH Leics. v. 141; Leics. RO Misc. 373, 574.
On the whole the anti-corporation party were equally keen to maintain the status quo, and warned against the ‘pernicious effects of a violent contest’. The Whig Leicester Chronicle spoke of the Journal’s apparent personal animosity towards Mansfield, while Pares was gratified in canvassing to find that ‘my most lukewarm friends, have given me a divided vote, and from others I have received a promise of plumpers’.
Leicester wool merchants, manufacturers and traders petitioned the Commons for repeal of the duty on wool imports, 9 May 1820.
Excluded from office, the town’s articulate and wealthy Dissenters had taken some part in the attempt to persuade Charles March Phillipps* to contest the county in 1820, but thereafter borough politics was the main sphere of their opposition to the corporation. The first clash arose in the winter of 1821-2 over the planned Leicester improvement bill, when the anti-corporation party, headed by Paget, demanded that its implementation should be financed out of the corporation’s own funds. A second line of attack arose out of long-standing grievances over the levy and use of the borough rate, with particular reference to the building of the borough gaol. Paget was instrumental in pressing for inquiry into expenditure through the auspices of St. Martin’s vestry in 1824. The corporators’ alarm at these challenges to their autonomy was undoubtedly heightened by the fact that their antagonists were mostly members of one or other of the town’s foremost congregations of Dissenters, headed by Charles Berry for the Unitarians and Robert Hall for the Baptists. When in 1822 the reissue of Hall’s Apology for the Freedom of the Press and for General Liberty was taken up in a leading article by the Black Dwarf as ‘a vindication of radical reform’, the corporation had already taken steps to safeguard its supremacy.
With rumours current of an early dissolution in the autumn of 1825, Burbidge approached Richard Arkwright, now well established as a Leicestershire squire at Normanton Turville, but Arkwright, after consultation with his father, declined to contest the borough. At the same time Burbidge was in communication with the wealthy Peels, anxious to turn to account their wish to seat one of Robert’s younger brothers. According to William Peel there was little doubt that the corporation was spoiling for a fight in order to regain the second seat but, as he cautioned Robert, his instincts and information were ‘all for a single seat and no contest’. Burbidge tried to draw the Arkwrights and Peels into coalition but, conscious of the town clerk’s duplicity, William Peel consulted Mansfield for an accurate appraisal of Leicester politics. Mansfield, who had presumably privately indicated his own wish to retire, spoke of the growing polarization of borough politics and predicted, as William told Robert Peel, that
one Peel unconnected with any other candidate would (in his opinion) be certain of success and ensure a permanent seat at the expense of from £2,000 to 2,4 or 2,500 at each election. (His first election cost 2,800; his second with a threat of opposition cost 2,400.) If a Peel were to join any other candidate it would create a contest more severe than it is possible to conceive; the expense would be immense, but still one Peel would succeed and the other candidate would be beaten. ‘So satisfied am I’, says Mansfield, ‘of the impolicy of bringing forward two candidates that though no one can wish better to the Peels than I do, I would (for the good of the cause and the peace of the town) vote against your second candidate’.
When at length the Arkwrights confirmed their disinclination to become involved, Burbidge tried to persuade the Peels to nominate a second candidate, but it was already clear to them that any attempt to seat two Tories would be futile. Mansfield reassured them that the duke of Rutland’s interest ‘would go with you warmly’ and that the influential country gentry (including Clement Winstanley of Braunston Hall, Robert Otway Cave of Stanford and Charles Lorraine Smith of Enderby Hall) could all be relied on for support. As for the corporation, he would ‘tell them all they are d__d fools if they don’t take a Peel and compromise with the other party’.
It appears to me that great difficulty may arise if the corporation reserve to themselves the power of assisting with their votes and influence a third candidate, should there be a third in opposition to Pares. This third candidate may be a gentleman of the county, with some local interest of his own. He may therefore have a better chance independent of corporation influence than one of your sons, and if he is to be on an equal footing as to that influence, the contest will be between us and Pares. It appears to me that the safest course is to reserve a full power of withdrawing at any time from a threatened contest for the borough, to say to the corporation I will offer one of my sons to replace ... Mansfield. If you reserve to yourselves the power of supporting a third candidate ... I will not pledge myself to perseverance in an expensive contest ... Unless this be said, and directly understood, I fear that somehow or other a third candidate will arise. I think this a better course than any stipulation as to amount of expense, for I believe there would be vast trouble in enforcing the observance of such a stipulation, and that practically it would not be observed.
Add. 40385, f. 333.
The certainty of a contest when Parliament was dissolved three months later prompted the Peels to look elsewhere. Mansfield and Pares stood down, but the corporation were still at a loss for prospective candidates. Otway Cave and the Derby banker William Evans, who also had a share in his family’s cotton and paper mills, were first in the field. Otway Cave, a friend of Burdett (whose son-in-law he later became) at first made no political pronouncements beyond stating his ‘attachment to the Protestant religion’, but he was supposed to favour Catholic relief and ‘the liberal line of policy’ recently pursued by the government. Evans, who was put up by the Babingtons of Rothley Temple, with whom he shared a certain Evangelical zeal, declared his support for corn law revision, Catholic relief and the abolition of slavery. Charles Godfrey Mundy of Burton Hall, a leading county magistrate, declined repeated invitations to stand.
smooth your way to the county, and at all events secure your seat for the town. Hereafter when you are more independent in point of fortune you may be disposed to change your mind and it will be time enough then to do it. I know it is more than probable you will be returned whether this arrangement be made or not, but this will tend to render it much more certain and to relieve you from some part of the heavy expense ... Your present financial situation does not fairly require of you to take such very high ground, and this is an intermediate course ... which I ... strongly recommend ... I doubt whether it will be necessary for you to tell your committee more than that you are to be strongly supported by these persons, and that finding the opinion of your constituents so strongly opposed to the Catholics you would certainly not give a vote in opposition to their wishes.
Leics. RO, Braye mss 3536, 3547.
Rumours surrounding the corporation’s desperate search for a candidate were ‘no less numerous than ridiculous’. The creation of honorary freemen as a prelude to the general election (thereby avoiding statutory restrictions on freeman voting rights) was not matched by success in the secret committee’s search for acceptable Tory men. Arkwright and Edmund Peel could not be won over, while a deputation to London returned empty handed. It was a fortnight before the corporation set up Sir Charles Abney Hastings of Willesley Hall as an anti-Catholic Tory on ‘the true Blue interest’. In view of the urgency of the situation and in order to clinch this deal, since Abney Hastings was not known to have nursed political ambitions or to be ‘in any way prepared with funds for a contest’, Burbidge agreed to indemnify him against heavy election expenses. In the aftermath of the election, when the terms of this agreement became an issue of dispute, the town clerk assured Sir Charles that it had been arranged
that you should pay the expenses of the contest if it did not exceed £10,000. That if it exceeded that sum and did not amount to £15,000 the corporation should pay the excess beyond the £10,000, you advancing in the first instance the sum which might be so required and that the corporation should repay to you that amount, but if the expense should go to an extent beyond £15,000 then that you should pay £15,000 and the corporation should take upon themselves all beyond; so that in any event you was to be indemnified against all expenditure exceeding £15,000.
Leicester Jnl. 26 May, 2, 9 June 1826; Braye mss 3477; HEHL, Hastings mss (microfilm in IHR) HA 1125.
The late adoption and aggressive promotion of Abney Hastings impaired Otway Cave’s reliance on the independent ‘Blue interest’ and put his return in jeopardy. With the intensification of partisan feelings following the appearance of an avowed anti-Catholic, Otway Cave’s professed neutrality on the question seemed increasingly a liability. Abney Hastings looked to be safe and Evans seemed likely to take the second votes. The balance of politics in Leicester, according to the evidence of Evans’s election agents to the 1835 Commons select committee on electoral bribery, was heavily dependent on treating and purchased votes:
Those who have the best purse are sure to be returned; politics are comparatively immaterial ... I consider out of 2,812 [votes] there are at least 600 marketable; and the balance of political feeling in Leicester is so even, I do not think without purchase either party would get a majority of 100 of the unbought votes. I have analysed the poll book several times; I consider we have at least 600 that are to be purchased. In addition to that 600, there are 400 or 500 that, though they make a boast of voting for their party, yet expect to be paid on the same terms as those 600 who made their bargain. ‘You will give me the same as the others’.
PP (1835), viii. 125, 128.
In view of the inevitability of an expensive contest and the uncertainty of Otway Cave’s financial resources, the great advantage of a coalition with the corporation was soon apparent to his advisers. Once assured that ‘at least £20,000’ was at Abney Hastings’s command, Otway Cave’s committee sought to effect such an alliance. The corporation were sympathetic, but the stumbling block of the Catholic question remained. The corporation agreed to a coalition on the conditions that Abney Hastings’s return was to be secured by Otway Cave’s retirement if circumstances dictated such a step and that Otway Cave should publicly pledge himself to vote against relief. At a meeting on 7 June 1826 between three corporators (Burbidge, William Dewes and John Liptrott Greaves), Cheney, de Lacy Evans and Joseph Philips representing Otway Cave, and Isaac Lovell, Henry Wood and James Rawson junior from Abney Hastings’s committee, it was agreed that Abney Hastings’s return was to be guaranteed and that his and Otway Cave’s expenses were to be equally shared, subject to contingencies arising out of the latter’s being obliged to withdraw. The arrangement was ‘made without the knowledge of the respective candidates’ and was ‘not to be communicated to them’; but the following day Otway Cave issued a notice that he would ‘vote for the repeal of the corn laws’ and would ‘not vote for Catholic emancipation’.
Party feeling was exacerbated by the current distress among the town’s hosiery workers and the arrival of Abney Hastings to canvass sparked an affray in which a child was killed.
Sir Charles or his friends for him solemnly deny the charge of slave holding. We are going on as well as possible, but rather impatient for the poll. The mob are with us so completely that we fear they should give us too energetic a support, and break the heads of our opponents. Their windows are already broken.
Leics. Historian, ii (1980-1), 24-27; J. Clive, Macaulay, 96-98; E.A. Knutsford, Zachary Macaulay, 436; Macaulay Letters, i. 211.
The Abney Hastings party charged Evans with duplicitously adopting the cause of abolition and denounced him for allegedly resisting factory reform and for ‘immuring young children in cotton mills’. The Catholic question remained the corporation’s foremost staple of attack and no opportunity was lost to incite popular prejudice. Evans published a cool rebuff in favour of toleration and, with Paget, attacked the corporation for attempting to hoodwink the electorate with ‘puerile badges and unmeaning watchwords’. With the election still more than a week away Macaulay told his mother:
Public feeling is very excitable; and it is scarcely to be expected that it will evaporate in words. If Evans should fail, and Sir Charles venture to be chaired, I would not answer for his life ... we confidently expect to be at the head of the poll.
Leicester Jnl. 9, 16 June 1826; Macaulay Letters, i. 212.
The full extent of the corporation’s determination to carry the election was evident from the outset. On the pretext of avoiding intimidation and safeguarding public order, the town clerk surreptitiously determined the construction of the hustings to favour the municipal party. The returning officer deferred to the corporation’s wishes. The blatant injustice of conducting the poll on the tally system by allotting an adjoining pen or avenue for Abney Hastings and Otway Cave, with one slightly apart for Evans, caused much indignation. This whole arrangement, recorded The Times, had the unmistakable effect of
polling two votes for the corporation candidates to the single plumper for Mr. Evans, in effect securing, as the freemen are too numerous to be polled out in 15 days, a certain majority of two to one for the corporation candidates.
The Times, 15-17, 19-22 June 1826.
At the nomination, 12 June, Abney Hastings was proposed by Alderman Gregory and seconded by the Rev. Edward Vaughan, vicar of St. Martin’s. Abney Hastings declared his hostility to the corn laws, slavery and concessions to Catholics. Evans, who was nominated by Thomas Babington and seconded by the radical hosier John Coltman, followed suit on the corn laws and slavery, but declared his belief in the need for Catholic emancipation. Otway Cave was proposed by Thomas Wood and seconded by J. B. Robinson. He commended the ‘liberal line of policy’ adopted by Canning, Robinson and Huskisson and said that on the Catholic question he had deferred to ‘the almost unanimous opinion of the electors’ he had canvassed. On the first day of polling Evans’s counsel objected to the polling arrangements and to counteract this and facilitate the retrieval of split votes persuaded the Whig lawyer Thomas Denman*, who was passing through the town on the way from his election at Nottingham, to stand. Burbidge countered with a facetious nomination of the radical orators William Cobbett† and Henry Hunt*. The returning officer refused to recognize Denman’s candidature and listen to the protests of a prominent member of Evans’s committee, whom the chief constable gratuitously knocked unconscious. This provoked a riot. In its aftermath, even the recorder admitted that the police had ‘converted themselves into partisans, rather than preservers of the peace’. Recriminations about wrongful arrest and the partiality of the magistrates gave rise to bitter resentment, but only in the face of public uproar was it ultimately arranged to make some provision for Denman’s voters.
After a contest of ten days Abney Hastings and Otway Cave were returned with comfortable majorities over Evans, with Denman in fourth place.
Leicester manufacturers petitioned the Commons for relaxation of the corn laws, 1 Mar., and a combination of local Catholics and Protestants did so for adjustment of the national debt, the abolition of sinecures and tithes and parliamentary reform, 6 June 1827.
The accumulated debt from heavy election expenses drove Burbidge to press Abney Hastings somewhat peremptorily for more than he had originally agreed to pay. Confident in his interpretation of their electoral agreement, the town clerk made light of all objections, and in the autumn of 1826 plagued Hastings’s solicitor, threatening exposure in the press. The exasperated attorney complained:
I have been tormented daily and am now so teased that I will run away to avoid the importunity of the people unless we can get the money or give some satisfactory answer to the claimants.
Claiming that the corporation’s financial sacrifice had exceeded all their calculations, Burbidge cajoled Hastings into agreeing to a settlement (as well as conceding an additional sum for personal expenses), reminding him that the cost ‘to you will be many many thousands less than it has to Mr. Otway Cave and Mr. Evans’. Yet his belief that Otway Cave’s share would be ‘honourably answered’ proved to be erroneous.
To be robbed, I am aware, is an ordinary occurrence, but to be subjected to that infliction through the medium of an organized and protracted process of calumniation, precludes the propriety of any further forbearance.
He published his recriminations in the Leicester Chronicle, and the case was covered by some London newspapers. All attempt at arbitration failed, and the corporation were forced to mortgage property in order to meet their debts. Their discomfiture in the face of Otway Cave’s perseverance was meat and drink to the anti-corporation party and taken as final proof of municipal gerrymandering.
In 1830, following the election of De Lacy Evans as the independent Member for Rye, Otway Cave took a close interest in the politics of the ‘oppressed’ Cinque Ports and abandoned his uncertain interest at Leicester for Hastings. Despite his claim on the anti-corporation party for his parliamentary conduct, he could not overcome the enmity of the Evangelicals or their obligations to William Evans, who stood forward again in 1830. In particular, Matthew Babington deplored the thought of Otway Cave’s candidature as divisive and prejudicial to the independence of the borough. Aware of this and of the divisions within the anti-corporation camp, Otway Cave declared that he had no desire to contest the borough, thereby risking ‘the revival of those jealousies’ which might even jeopardize the restoration of the compromise. ‘Nothing short of the most complete unanimity could induce me to offer myself again’, he wrote prior to the dissolution, pledging his support for Evans or Paget or both. Misinterpreting this candour as a veiled appeal for support, the framework knitters (then in dispute over wages) made an effort to promote his return as the champion of the working classes. Paget, having set his sights on the county, was never a threat, but the stockingers, already divided, could never hope to match the electoral weight of Evans’s influential friends, led by Pares and Babington. The corporation, now ‘in debts and difficulties inextricable’, directed their energies into thwarting Paget and took some comfort in the nominal restoration of the compromise, as Abney Hastings and Evans were returned unopposed for the borough.
There was heavy petitioning of the 1830 Parliament for the abolition of slavery.
Manufacturers, traders, artisans and other petitioned the Commons for repeal of the corn laws, 18 July 1831.
in the freemen and householders paying scot and lot
Number of voters: 4781 in 1826
Estimated voters: over 5,000
Population: 30125 (1821); 39904 (1831)