Electoral influence was exercised at Totnes through the corporation, which had the power of creating freemen. A large municipal debt, which became increasingly unmanageable during the 18th century, was an important factor in ensuring the corporation’s subservience to beneficent patrons, either men of their own number or neighbouring landowners.
The strongest single interest in 1790 belonged to Harry Powlett, 6th Duke of Bolton, who had property in the parish and had returned at least one Member at each election since 1768. In 1784 he divided the representation with Judge Francis Buller, whose influence derived from the Yarde estates at Churston Ferrers, about five miles from Totnes, which had come to him by his marriage. The same arrangement held in 1790, when Bolton nominated his second cousin’s son, William Powlett Powlett, a Hampshire landowner, and Buller his only surviving son, who had come of age in 1788. There was no opposition, though one of the corporators, Francis Epworth, a retired naval officer, who claimed to be ‘connected with another alderman and a considerable body of freemen’, approached government with an offer to support a ministerialist against the Whig Powlett. One Wombwell (possibly John Wombwell, a Spanish merchant) was mentioned as a prospective candidate, but he did not appear.
Buller Yarde announced his intention of retiring at the dissolution as early as November 1793, while Powlett’s opposition politics were evidently unpopular with a number of his constituents. In 1794 John Petrie, a wealthy Scottish nabob, showed an interest in standing for Totnes at the next election, but failed to secure a decisive answer from Pitt to his requests for ministerial backing.
from the peculiar circumstances under which ... Totnes is at this moment respecting its Members, one having declined, and the other being positively refused by the corporation and freemen, Captain Hawkins Whitshed, knowing some of the people of the greatest interest there, made application to them and he finds that he should not have the smallest difficulty could the Duchess of Bolton he persuaded to name him, as the people to whom ... [he] applied had it seems promised to support her Grace’s nomination of any other person except Mr Powlett. At present her choice is not made and I understand she has not any relation with whom it could interfere.
Portland’s reply was summarized thus: ‘No pretence to apply to the Dss of B., represent the exception to be taken by her to Mr W.’s conduct, and suppose she may have a particular person in view for it’.
At the general election of 1796 she duly discarded Powlett and put up Lord Arden, a lord of the Admiralty, presumably at the recommendation of government. The Buller interest evidently lapsed with the retirement of Judge Buller’s feeble son, and in his place stood Lord George Seymour, youngest brother of Francis Seymour Conway, 2nd Marquess of Hertford, whose interest at Totnes probably derived from the nearby property at Berry Pomeroy of his second cousin (of the half-blood) once removed, Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset. The Seymour interest had fallen into neglect since the early 18th century and Somerset, something of a recluse, did not interfere in Totnes politics until after 1832.
upwards of a twelvemonth since strongly invited to offer himself ... which he accepted of—to oppose anti-ministerial interest. He was enjoined to the most absolute secrecy ... From this mistaken circumstance, it now appears that three persons in the interest of government are opposing each other.
Their pleas for government either to accommodate one of the other candidates at Honiton or to allow Harcourt to stand in harness with Arden were unavailing, and matters went to a poll in which Harcourt came a poor third.
In 1798 the Duchess of Bolton and Hertford donated £600 each towards the municipal debt, which was substantially increased by the cost of repairs to the parish church after it was struck by lightning the following year. When Seymour vacated his seat in 1801 William Adams, a native of Totnes and three times mayor, who had bought the nearby Bowden property with money acquired in trade and had been active on behalf of Harcourt in the 1796 general election, stood and was returned unopposed. With the support of his kinsmen the Bentalls, local bankers, and the Marshalls, another family prominent in Totnes affairs, he built up an interest which secured his own unopposed return at the next three general elections and endured for 21 years after his death. In 1807, when he became recorder of Totnes, he gave £500 to the town (the Duchess of Bolton gave £1,000) and his relatives and friends were well rewarded with patronage.
The man returned with Adams in 1802, John Berkeley Burland, was an Addingtonian, whose property lay in Somerset and Dorset. He seems to have come in nominally on the Bolton interest, but probably owed his introduction at Totnes to Hertford, his second cousin. (He also stood in the same relationship to Somerset as did Hertford.) On his sudden death in 1804 the duchess asked her kinsman William Lowther, who had succeeded her brother James as Viscount Lowther in 1802, to recommend a candidate. Lowther in turn wrote to Pitt suggesting his niece’s husband George, Viscount Villiers, son of the 4th Earl of Jersey, provided the premier had no one else in view. Pitt had, and took the opportunity of recommending Vicary Gibbs, a prospective solicitor-general. There was a threat of opposition from ‘a candidate on a new interest’, but it came to nothing.
On the death of the Duchess of Bolton in 1809 the Powlett property at Totnes went to her maternal grandson William John Frederick Vane, second son of William Henry Vane, 3rd Earl of Darlington, who had sat for Totnes on the Bolton interest from 1788 to 1790. As Vane was not due to come of age until 1813, uncertainty surrounded the future of the Totnes interest. In July 1809 his father claimed to be able to offer ‘much helpful information’ if his friend the Prince of Wales wished to nominate a candidate at the next election,
There have been meetings at Totnes of the aldermen, where the coalition seems to go on very smoothly, and it has been notified that my father is prepared to name a gentleman whom he would wish to see elected ... Lords B. and H. are ready with their friend ... The freemen are working hard to promote their own views but I think they will only make our success the more palatable by adding a little to its difficulty.
‘Lords B. and H.’ cannot be identified with absolute certainty, but it seems most likely that they were the eldest sons of the 6th Duke of Bolton’s two married daughters and coheirs, namely Henry Vane, Viscount Barnard, Darlington’s first son (who was to sit for Totnes 1826-30), and his first cousin (of the half-blood) George John Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, son and heir of the 5th Earl of Sandwich by Lady Mary Powlett, Bolton’s daughter by his first marriage. Adams referred to Hinchingbrooke by name later in this letter, and in one of 28 Aug. told Courtenay that he was to ‘meet Lord Hinchingbrooke at dinner today at George Farwell’s’ and had been ‘receiving my instructions as to what I am to say to him’.
The projected coalition between the Adams and Darlington interests evidently came to nothing, perhaps because Darlington remained faithful to the Whigs when the Regent finally abandoned them in 1812. At the general election Courtenay stood again on the Adams-Bentall-Marshall interest in harness with Ayshford Wise, a distant relative of William Dacres Adams and a partner of the Bentalls and Farwells in the Totnes Bank, founded by his father, who had been recorder of Totnes 1779-1807. They were opposed by John Proctor Anderdon, a West India merchant and business partner of William Manning, and George Francis Seymour, Hertford’s nephew, a late substitute for his uncle Lord Robert Seymour, who had the previous year announced his intention of giving up his seat for Carmarthenshire and contesting Totnes, but changed his mind when his electoral difficulties in Wales were overcome. Courtenay’s second votes gave Wise a narrow victory over Anderdon, who was supported by the Farwells and their allies the Taylors and Mitchells, though he shared two votes with Courtenay. Seymour received 21 second votes from Anderdon’s supporters and one from Adams’s kinsman Capt. Richard Dacres, who also voted for Courtenay.
On 20 Oct. 1817 Edward Lee, an Irishman who had bought property in Devon after leaving the House in 1806, told his friend Lord Sidmouth that he intended to stand for Totnes, by invitation, at the next general election. He claimed that Wise, who had come in ‘by chance’ last time, had no hope of success and requested a ministerial approach to William Dacres Adams to secure him Courtenay’s second votes on a reciprocal basis.
in the freemen
Number of voters: about 80