Warwick

Warwick was dominated physically by its Castle overlooking the River Avon and politically and proprietarily by its lord, the anti-Catholic Tory and placeman Henry Richard Greville, 3rd earl of Warwick, borough recorder since 1816 and from 1822 the county lord lieutenant. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 97, 98. At pains to expose the ‘undue influence’ exercised ‘more especially of late’ by the earl, ‘or as it is familiarly designated in the borough, the "Castle" influence’, the municipal corporations commissioners described the corporation of 12 aldermen and their elected mayor (the returning officer) as ‘close ... in the strictest sense of the word ... [and] composed on principles of political exclusiveness’. Voting at mayoral elections was by show of hands and long mayoralties, effected by the majority of aldermen absenting themselves at Michaelmas (charter day), were common before king’s bench ruled otherwise in 1827. A Whig victory, after a permanent Tory majority had narrowed the field to a choice of two, was a pyrrhic one. PP (1835), xxv. 647-64; P. Styles, ‘Corporation of Warwick, 1600-1835, Trans. Birmingham Arch. Soc. lix (1935), 9-122.

The local economy, damaged since the Restoration by the decline in the town’s military importance and its poor communications, had been boosted by the opening of the Warwick-Birmingham (1793) and Warwick-Napton (1800) canals, which generated a sharp rise in the number of manufactories, landlords and resident voters. Commenting on the increase, the Tory Birmingham Journal complained in 1830 that the ‘purchase of 1,200 [Warwick] votes is a very different thing from the purchase of 500’. Many of the newcomers were Irish Catholics or Nonconformists and the natural allies of the Blue or independent party, the traditional opponents of the Castle (the Orange interest), who had campaigned against the Test Acts and for reform since the 1780s and rallied opposition to wartime taxation under the banner of retrenchment. VCH Warws. viii. 417, 418, 508, 514; Birmingham Jnl. 31 July 1830; T.H. Lloyd, ‘Dr. Wade and the Working Class’, Midland Hist. ii (1973-4), 61-65. The town teemed with attorneys and party organization persisted through the public houses and banks: the Orange bank of Greenway, Whitehead and Weston, drawing on Glyn, Mills and Company; and the Blue bank, Dawes, Tomes and Russell (afterwards Tomes Russell and Tomes), drawing on Ladbrokes. Several factors had combined to leave the borough unpolled between 1792 and 1826, and the Commons ruling of 18 Feb. 1793 (confirming the voting rights of non-resident ratepayers) was not severely tested until 1832-3. The Tory barrister and ‘seven-year mayor’ Charles Gregory Wade, father of the pro-reform vicar of St. Nicholas’s Dr. Arthur Savage Wade, failed to capitalize on the revival he had successfully instigated in the corporation of gentlemen, which, having made one seat their own, had lapsed following the death in 1778 of Andrew Archer of Umberslade. Neighbouring Whig gentry and businessmen, among them William Greatheed of Guys Cliffe, and the Unitarian William Parkes of Marble House, were unwilling or unable to pay to champion the independents, who successfully projected the compromise of 1802, whereby the Castle named one family Member and the Blue hierarchy the other (acceded to by the 2nd earl on account of his dire financial straits) as a ‘triumph for liberty’. Styles, 93-104; VCH Warws. viii. 442, 464, 502-3; J.K. Buckley, Joseph Parkes, 2-4. The Blues had first returned Charles Mills, a partner in Glyn, Mills and Company and former East India Company chairman with an estate in the neighbouring parish of Barford, in 1802. His colleague Sir Charles Greville, a career soldier and veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, lived in London and had been substituted for his brother Lord Warwick, whose politics he espoused on the latter’s succession to the earldom in 1816.

Dissatisfaction with Mills, an Orange banker who had proved to be a reformer on the hustings but an anti-Catholic ministerialist in Parliament, was growing. The attorney and banker John Tomes, a stalwart of the independent party since 1784 and their agent in 1792-3, had rejected requisitions to stand in 1818, but he became the cofounder with Dr. Wade in November 1819 of a new club, the Warwick Union for Religious and Civil Liberty. Fear of unrest and the recent bankruptcy of the largest employer, the worsted manufacturer John Parkes, a prominent independent, told against mounting a challenge at the general election of 1820, and the Members were returned unopposed. After Mills spoke candidly of his ‘church and state’ politics on the hustings, Tomes deputized for him at the dinner. Warws. RO, Greville [of Warwick Castle] mss CR 1886, box 613; Warwick Advertiser, 20 Nov., 4 Dec. 1819, 19, 26 Feb., 4, 11 Mar. 1820. The appointment as Queen Caroline’s chaplain of the Whig pamphleteer Dr. Samuel Parr of Hatton, who with Dr. Wade and the minister of High Street Unitarian chapel, William Field, habitually rallied the independents, heightened local interest in her prosecution, and its suspension was marked with illuminations at the Swan, the Woolpack and the homes of leading Blues. Warwick Advertiser, 4 Mar., 15 July, 19 Aug., 18 Nov.; The Times, 17 Nov. 1820. Parr’s name headed the requisition for the meeting of 26 Dec. 1820 that adopted a radical address in her favour. Greville refused to present it at Brandenburgh House and the Blues appointed a delegation headed by Alderman John Edwards, Dr. Wade, Tomes’s son Richard and son-in-law William Collins (son of the Whig alderman Thomas) and Joseph Parkes to do so. The corporation Tories responded by protesting in The Times that reports of support for the queen in Warwick were exaggerated, and addressing the king. The Times, 22 Nov., 1 Dec. 1820, 2 Jan. 1821; Warwick Advertiser, 23, 30 Dec. 1820, 13 Jan. 1821. The tradesmen rallied behind both banks after a spate of local bankruptcies, 1820-1, and they survived the December 1825 crisis, which forced the closure of Warwick’s last worsted factory. The farmers at the market petitioned against the calculated corn averages and proposed pivot price, 21 May 1822, and the borough joined them in petitioning both Houses for agricultural protection, 26, 27 Apr. 1825. Warwick Advertiser, 3 Mar. 1821; CJ, lxxvii. 284; lxxx. 343; LJ, lvii. 652. Petitions were also got up between 1820 and 1826 condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 27 May 1824, and for the abolition of colonial slavery, 6 Mar. 1826; and the Lords received a petition for Catholic relief from the Protestant Dissenters of High Street Chapel, 17 May 1825. CJ, lxxix. 422; LJ, lviii. 81.

Lord Warwick’s appointment as lord lieutenant and the refurbishment of his castle were celebrated with feudal splendour in November 1823, amid signs that he had revived his father’s 1798-1802 plans for ‘remodelling the corporation’ by appointing partisans as aldermen, so making a mockery of mayoral elections and governing through the Greenway oligarchy. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 272; The Times, 11 Nov. 1823. Retaliating, when a dissolution was anticipated in 1825, the independent aldermen Collins and Edwards tried in vain to secure the election of Greville (an alderman since 1822) as mayor, in order to disqualify him as a parliamentary candidate. Simultaneously Tomes, whose candidature was endorsed by the Warwick Advertiser, issued notices, 21, 22 Sept., and canvassed successfully. Mills’s intended retirement at the dissolution was advertised on the 23rd. Warwick Advertiser, 2 Nov. 1822, 24 Sept., 1 Oct. 1825; PP (1835), xxv. 663; Styles, 115; Greville mss CR 1886, box 477, canvass bk. Oct. 1825. Greatheed’s son-in-law, the Whig Charles Percy*, who subsequently backed Tomes, claimed privately on the 19th that he had been offered the seat, but turned it down from lack of funds and his reluctance to compromise the absent Greatheed:

It would probably have been a seat for life, and entirely independent, and it is a chance which never will recur. At this moment a radical has started, who will be returned without opposition, as the moderate party have nobody ready, whereas had I come forward at the moment it was proposed, said Jack Radical, for many long but weighty reasons, would not have started. Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC12/67.

When Mills’s death, 29 Jan. 1826, preceded the dissolution, the unsuccessful 1792 candidate Robert Knight (now Member for Rye) promptly secured the writ, 2 Feb., and the by-election was set for the 10th. Warwick Advertiser, 4 Feb. 1826; CJ, lxxxi. 3. With Tomes already in the field, the 2nd Lord Headley’s brother George Winn*, who was sent down by the treasury on the 4th with a reputed purse of £4,000, made little headway, despite raising the ‘No Popery’ cry and securing the assistance of Greville’s agents. Their squibs abused ‘low born’ Tomes. Winn, flanked by his proposers, the antiquarian William Staunton of Longridge and Lord Warwick’s militia second-in-command Samuel Steward, was also accompanied by the Greenways and the Revs. John Bougier and John Staunton. He failed to make himself heard on the hustings without intervention by Tomes, whom he and his spokesmen maligned as ‘respectable’ but unfit to represent them in Parliament on account of his rank and radical connections. Tomes’s sponsors, Dr. Wade and Joseph Sanders, praised his character, contributions to civic life and long-standing support for the crown, reform and toleration, leaving their candidate to confirm the last three and pay tribute to Mills. Tomes was 186-14 ahead when polling adjourned that evening. Winn retired before it resumed next day and announced that he would try again at the general election. The Times, 8, 14 Feb.; Warwick Advertiser, 11 Feb. 1826. A canvassing book justifies Winn’s complaint that reports sent to him by Greville’s agents deliberately understated Tomes’s strength. Greville mss CR 1886, box 477. Greville canvassed personally as soon as Winn left Warwick, 2 Feb. From April a new Tory paper, the Warwickshire Chronicle, was established, which ran until December 1827 and countered the Warwick Advertiser’s coverage of the general election and corporation issues. Meanwhile, Tomes, who was offered £400 raised by his fellow townsmen towards his costs, hailed his return as the achievement of the people and claimed that ‘had the contest been prolonged, our opponents would have witnessed such an array of strength and independence as must have crushed the idea that burgesses of Warwick ... would ever surrender their known or acknowledged rights, or bow to any authority that does not emanate from themselves’. Warwick Advertiser, 18, 25 Feb. 1826. He made virtues of being ‘no parliamentary orator’ and his ‘humble origins’, and before the dissolution in June affirmed his support for reform and retrenchment and opposition to slavery by his votes (as subsequently for Catholic relief). Winn desisted and nothing came of an approach in April by the attorney Thomas Heath, an independent, to the 1824-5 sheriff Chandos Leigh of Stone Leigh, who was tempted to declare and prepared notices, but shunned a contest involving Tomes. Greville and Dr. Wade were the main speakers on the hustings, where Greville boldly defended his ‘church and state’ politics and the rights of the West India planters before he and Tomes were returned unopposed. Warws. RO, Heath and Blenkinsop mss CR 611/32-38; Warwick Advertiser, 29 Apr., 27 May, 3, 10 June; The Times, 10 June; Warws. Chron. 14 June 1826.

With the surgeon John Wilmshurst into his third successive term as mayor and Tomes secure, in November 1826 William Collins and Richard Hiorns engaged James Scarlett* as counsel and obtained a mandamus from king’s bench against Wilmshurst and his fellow Orange aldermen, George Boswell, the Rev. Thomas Cattell, Kelynge Greenway, Greville, Edward Hughes, Steward, Charles Wake and Thomas Woods Weston, for neglecting to hold mayoral elections. This the solicitor-general Sir Nicholas Tindal*, acting for the corporation, failed to block, although king’s bench discharged without costs their attempt to prosecute the ‘eight aldermen’ who, according to Joseph Parkes, had called in charity loans held by Tomes’ voters. The Castle conceded the appointment of assistant burgesses, offices devoid of executive power in abeyance since 1700. The Times, 24 Nov. 1826, 10 Feb. 1827; PP (1835), xxv. 664; Styles, 113. The verdict, delivered on 9 Feb., was celebrated in pamphlets by Collins and Parkes and at a grand dinner to Tomes at the Swan, 1 May 1827, when the speakers also hailed Canning’s appointment as premier. Greville, who had no real claim to residence, resigned as an alderman, but the independents were unable to prevent Castle henchmen filling vacancies, and 11 of the 12 assistant burgesses were their declared adherents. W. Collins, King and Burgesses of Warwick v. Mayor and Eight Aldermen (1827); J. Parkes, Governing Charter of Warwick; Warwick Advertiser, 3 Mar., 14 Apr., 5, 19 May 1827.

Both Houses received petitions from the town and its hinterland against revision of the corn laws in 1827 and 1828. CJ, lxxxii. 230; lxxxiii. 287; LJ, lix. 314. Petitions were also forthcoming for repeal of the Test Acts, 12 June 1827, 18, 19 Feb. 1828, and from the Roman Catholics for relief, 24, 28 Apr. 1828. CJ, lxxxii. 545; lxxxiii. 264; LJ, lx. 71, 250. A new Warwick-Napton canal bill was petitioned for, 27 Mar. 1829. CJ, lxxxix. 176. Anti-slavery petitions forwarded to Greville in 1828 went unpresented and plans to petition on the Catholic question in 1829, when the Grevilles, as placemen, kept a low profile, were abandoned. Warwick Advertiser, 10 June 1826; Lloyd, 66-68. Prompted by the Warwick Advertiser, the gentry, clergy, ministers and inhabitants petitioned for repeal of the malt and beer duties to alleviate distress, 8, 9 Mar., and the lawyers against the administration of justice bill, 13 May 1830. Warwick Advertiser, 2, 16, 23 Jan., 6, 13, 17 Feb., 13 Mar. 1830; CJ, lxxxv. 148, 416; LJ, lxii. 93. On 6 July 1830 the bankers, clergy and inhabitants petitioned the Lords to protest at the on-consumption provisions of the sale of beer bill, and the licensed victuallers for compensation for those members of their trade whom it would adversely affect. LJ, lxii. 834.

The representation remained unchanged at the 1830 general election, when the main issues were the recent establishment of the Birmingham Political Union, of which Dr. Wade and William Collins were prominent founder members, retrenchment, reform, and the wording of the borough’s address of condolence and congratulation to the king. Warwick Advertiser, 24, 31 July 1830. Having failed to have a reference to ‘the inhabitants’ included in that adopted and forwarded to Lord Warwick for presentation, 29 July, when speeches eulogized the late king, the independents brought pressure to bear on the mayor, Joseph Ward, who the day after the election called a second meeting for 10 Aug. 1830. The speakers that day lavished praise on William IV. The address of ‘the mayor, burgesses and inhabitants’ was entrusted for presentation by Dr. Wade and William Collins and phrased similarly to the corporation’s. Styles, 116; Warwick Advertiser, 31 July, 7, 14 Aug. 1830. Its ‘father’ Edwards resigned in protest from the corporation when Greville’s election agent, the town clerk’s son Robert Tibbits, was made an alderman at Michaelmas, creating a vacancy that, in breach of the charter, proved almost impossible to fill. Warwick Advertiser, 6 Nov. 1830; Styles, 116, 117.

The Wesleyan Methodists contributed to the 1831-2 petitioning campaign against slavery. LJ, lxiii. 87. William Collins and Dr. Wade, supported by the nascent Warwick Political Society, organized petitions to the new Grey administration in favour of reform. With the tannery owner Alderman Samuel Burbury, Edwards, John Enoch, Field, Sanders and others, both were main speakers at reform meetings convened but shunned ‘through indisposition’ by the mayor Thomas Jones and chaired by Thomas Collins. The petition adopted on 2 Feb. included demands for the ballot, retrenchment and the abolition of sinecures and placemen; that of 15 Mar., inspired by John and Joseph Parkes, specifically supported the ministerial bill. Tomes declared and voted for the latter. Greville, the reluctant presenter, 28 Feb., of the first petition, vehemently opposed it, and a campaign to oust him gathered momentum. Warwick Advertiser, 1 Jan., 5, 12 Feb., 5, 12, 19, 26 Mar. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 324; LJ, lxiii. 273. With Knight’s son-in-law Edward Bolton King of Umberslade as their candidate and a committee at the Woolpack, the reform committee commenced canvassing immediately after the county meeting at the racecourse, 4 Apr. Greville and Tomes, who despite voting regularly had yet to speak in the House, canvassed thoroughly that week, and King, who relied on the same supporters as Tomes, added the promotion of ‘retrenchment and economy in every branch of the public expenditure’ to his notices. Greville mss CR 1886, box 613; Warwick Advertiser, 9 Apr.; The Times, 11, 12 Apr. 1831. Appealing for loyalty, Greville rejected calls for his resignation and on 12 Apr. issued a notice criticizing those who had forced a premature and unnecessary canvass. He added that ‘having hitherto voted, not so much against reform, as against the wanton violation of the present bill, I shall willingly give my assent to any measure that does not subvert the ancient existing establishments, and endanger public security and public safety’ and, twisting the words of Fox (which King immediately countered with others from the same source), he refused to become a slave to reform. The Times, 14 Apr.; Warwick Advertiser, 14 Apr. 1831. Greville voted for and Tomes against wrecking the bill, 19 Apr., and the real tussle at the ensuing election was for second place between King and Greville, who now projected himself as a moderate reformer opposed to the bill’s potential for disfranchising the lower classes of Warwick. Squibs abounded. Greville, whose committee took over the Warwick Arms and added green laurels to their colours, canvassed surrounded by bludgeon men, and the town was packed with political unionists from Birmingham, Coventry, Kenilworth, Leamington, Nuneaton and Stratford, who arrived mainly by barge and sported pink and blue for King and Tomes. Warwick Advertiser, 23, 30 Apr. 1831. Greville and his sponsors Staunton and Steward barely mentioned reform on the hustings. Dr. Wade and Edwards, nominating Tomes, whose committee was based at the Swan, praised his support for the bill, but made retrenchment and corruption the main thrust of their speeches. King’s proposers, Burbury and the hat manufacturer Charles Lamb, sported pink rosettes and emphasized his wealth, near residence, connections in high politics and support for reform. Ibid. 30 Apr.; Lloyd 68-70. Polling closed that day at Tomes 60, King 53, Greville 46. After failing to redress the balance over the next three tumultuous days, when troops were summoned and threats and brawling were commonplace, Greville conceded defeat on 3 May with the poll at Tomes 688, King 513 and Greville 505. King and Tomes received ten votes each before the result was declared the next day. King spoke triumphantly, but Tomes reined in his supporters with a conciliatory speech praising Greville personally as a soldier and Member. He did, however, highlight the abuse and manipulation of the rating records by Lord Warwick’s agents and also claimed that a hundred lifelong Blues had had their votes deliberately rejected on technicalities. Warwick Advertiser, 7, 14 May 1831; VCH Warws. vii. 503. This the 1833 parliamentary committee confirmed. Abstract of Commons Evidence respecting the Borough of Warwick and the Earl of Warwick (1834), 6, 13, 19, 21, 24, 25. From a distance, the reformer Thomas Creevey* delighted in Lord Warwick’s defeat in ‘his own town, at his castle gate. The beaten candidate his own brother too’; Creevey mss, Creevey to Miss Ord, 4 May 1831. but Sir George Philips*, who had been present at the Warwick meetings and the canvass, informed Lord Brougham, 5 May 1831, that there been a ‘great danger of a division amongst the reformers’. Brougham mss. According to Merridew’s edition of the poll book, of 1,171 tendering, 1,019 had votes accepted and 274 (24 per cent) plumped, the overwhelming majority, 267 (53 per cent of his total), for Greville. Tomes and King had 440 split votes (63 and 88 per cent of their respective totals). Tomes shared 170 votes with Greville (24 and 34 per cent of their respective totals). Only 11 split King-Greville. Also named were 52 unpolled burgesses and 151 whose votes were ‘disallowed’: 101 Tomes-King, 30 Greville, 16 Greville-Tomes and four King. Reflecting the growth in rack-renting, ‘landlord pays rates’ was commonly specified as a reason for rejecting votes. ‘Residence’ was not an issue. According to the borough’s twentieth-century historian Styles, the average rate assessment was £14 17s. for reformers and £8 3s. for anti-reformers. Greville carried the vote in the parish of St. Nicholas, but the Dissenters voted overwhelmingly for Tomes and King, as did the skilled artisans and shopkeepers, whom Greville’s agents subsequently targeted and threatened with eviction. Styles, 108-10; Warws. RO, Styles mss CR 1741/2; Greville mss CR 1886, box 753/75.

King, though a firm supporter of the ministry and their reform bills, which Tomes also consistently backed, was prepared to criticize them in debate, and did so on 30 Aug. over time constraints in the revived reform bill’s registration clause, which made it impossible for most of those disqualified in 1831 to redeem their voting rights. Warwick Political Society petitioned the Lords urging the reform bill’s passage, 4 Oct., and a borough meeting on the 14th, chaired by Thomas Jones, protested at its rejection by the Lords, commended the Members for supporting it and forwarded addresses to Lord Althorp and the bishop of Norwich for presentation. LJ, lxiii. 1050; Warwick Advertiser, 1, 15 Oct. 1831. The Warwick Advertiser had published the aldermen’s votes at the Michaelmas election and the Members were fêted at the mayor’s feast, 1 Nov., when most speeches were devoted to reform. Warwick Advertiser, 15 Oct., 5 Nov.; The Times, 26 Oct. 1831. Its presenter King declined to comment on a petition from the Leamington Political Union for the town’s inclusion in the Warwick constituency, 28 Feb. 1832. CJ, lxxxvii. 152. Warwick reformers were among the main speakers at the Birmingham Political Union meeting at the racecourse, 5 May, and with a ministry headed by the duke of Wellington in contemplation, the Warwick Union and the ‘burgesses and inhabitants’ petitioned separately calling for supplies to be withheld until reform was secured, 21 May. Preparations were also made to return King and Tomes in the event of a precipitate dissolution. Warwick Advertiser, 12, 19, 26 May 1832; CJ, lxxxvii. 326. Over 2,500 celebrated the bill’s enactment at a dinner and ball chaired by William Collins, 30 June, when canvassing for the general election commenced in earnest. Warwick Advertiser, 9 June, 14 July 1832. The Political Society had petitioned the Lords and Commons against colonial slavery, 11, 14 Oct. 1831, and, as requested by them, both Members divided with Fowell Buxton for a select committee to consider its immediate abolition, 24 May, and were required to support this before their candidature was endorsed at the 1832 general election. CJ, lxxxvi. 904; LJ, lxiii. 1089; Warwick Advertiser, 2, 16 June 1832. The Political Society had also petitioned for abolition of the tax on knowledge (books and newsprint), 14 Oct. 1831. In June 1832 certain inhabitants petitioned the Lords complaining that they had received notices from Lord Warwick’s agent, warning that they would be obliged to leave their lands if they refused to do his bidding at the forthcoming municipal and general elections. LJ, lxiv. 338.

The Boundary Act made no changes to the borough limits, which being well defined and permissive of ample growth had been ‘settled in two hours’ by the commissioners. Northumb. RO, Blackett-Ord mss 324/A36, W.H. Ord to fa. [26, 22 Sept. 1831]. Initially, reform made little difference to the size of the electorate, which totalled 1,352 in December 1832 after 901 objections to 1,586 submissions had been considered at registration. Warwick Advertiser, 22, 29 Sept. 1832. At the general election that month, in one of the fiercest and most venal contests known, the Conservative Greville, who was subsequently unseated on petition, topped the poll and the Liberal King came second, after a late collapse in support for Tomes. The Times, 15 Dec. 1832; Abstract of Commons Evidence (1834), 5-7; PP (1833), xi. 203, 213; CJ, lxxxviii. 96, 97, 385. Disfranchisement, the prosecution of Lord Warwick and union with Leamington were now narrowly avoided. Warwick was contested a further ten times before Leamington was added to it in 1885, and except for the interlude between William Collins’s by-election victory in March 1837 and King’s defeat at the general election that July, one-and-one representation persisted, 1835-52, and again, 1865-85, after an interlude of Conservative dominance. PP (1833), xi. 197-751; The Times, 29 Aug. 1833, 23 July 1834; D. Paterson, ‘Tory Political Influence in mid-19th Cent. Warwick’, Warws. Hist. v (1975-8), 197-207; N. Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 209.