The leading interests were those of Lords Spencer and Grimston, who had returned a Member each since 1768. Earl Spencer’s was the stronger, based on his hold over the corporation and sustained by loans, the support of the local dissenters and superiority among the outvoters;
Lord Grimston is to be made an English peer, and in return for the assistance of Lord Salisbury towards this object of his, he is to bring in young Mr Calvert instead of his brother, who, as I understand, is to retire.
Lady Spencer informed her mother-in-law, 15 June:
My brother, thanks to you and your successful care of your son’s interest at St. Albans made the most extraordinary good canvass ever man made, and Lord Grimston but a very middling one. We thought that Richard and Calvert would come in without any bustle, but yesterday morning Lord Spencer heard that Lord Grimston was sending down all the outvoters in a violent hurry ... Lord Spencer began sending down voters on his part, and though Lord Grimston had the start of us, I hear more were sent down on our side than on his, and all his have decidedly given us promises of their votes.
On 17 June Spencer informed his mother of their success,
notwithstanding a great alarm and bustle created by the arrival of a third candidate (Mr Clutterbuck of Watford) who stood avowedly in opposition to the Grimston interest on account of the transfer that was supposed to have been made of that interest to Lord Salisbury in the person of Mr Calvert junior. He came only Tuesday night at seven o’clock but canvassed all night and got so much ground that he was enabled to poll 117 votes, most of whom gave their other votes to us. At seven last night however, Mr Clutterbuck found it advisable to decline proceeding any further ... His lordship met with some severe rebuffs in the course of the election.
The Spencers were jubilant: ‘our interest is now established more triumphantly than it ever was before’, and Spencer noted that the London freemen took to their new Member. ‘We were afraid of giving them the money as usual, till the Parliament has met, and the time for petitioning has elapsed, for fear of any advantage being taken of it.’
Calvert, whose father had paid election bills of £450 for him, subscribed to the following agreement with Lord Grimston, 13 June 1790:
On this day in the presence of my brother Mr William Grimston, Mr John Calvert with the approbation of his father having been recommended to the borough of St. Albans by me as a fit person to represent it in the ensuing Parliament did faithfully promise and assure me that he never would even attempt to make any independent interest in that borough, that he would court no popularity, nor that he would visit the borough at any time without my knowledge and approbation. That he would never canvass or offer his services to the borough without my consent and that he would resign any pretensions to his seat for that place whenever I should call upon him to do so.
On 18 July 1790 Grimston informed Calvert: ‘The secrets of the borough I shall keep to myself: it would be unhandsome to trouble you with what you have too much delicacy to enquire after’.
Grimston’s son and heir was expected to be his candidate at the next election and indeed canvassed, 29 Mar. 1796, but was not of age at the dissolution. In anticipation of this, Grimston had found a substitute in his kinsman Bucknall, who was prepared to pay up to £400 expenses, support ministers and prevent ‘a disciple of Tom Paine’ from securing a seat, as he assured Grimston, 28 Apr. 1796.
I am convinced that no stone will be left unturned to poison the minds of the lowest class of voters and to secure their votes, and that they are secretly aided in this business by our worthy Doctor P[reedy] and some other gentry of r[adical] principles.
To meet Waddington’s claim that neither sitting Member would offer again, Bingham and Grimston’s son had canvassed. In his address the ‘Frenchified’ radical advocated peace, tax relief and commercial growth. He denounced the influence of the crown and aristocracy and posed as champion of the electors’ independence. A ministerial paper gloated over Waddington’s failure; on the second day of the poll he burst into tears and retired ‘to the tune of 6,000 guineas’. He alleged that his opponents spent £16,000; in fact, Grimston spent £3,100. Spencer, who spent about the same, wrote, 27 May:
Everybody agrees that without our assistance, Mr Bucknall would have lost it, but ... I am extremely happy that Waddington is driven away, and Kingston and all his rabble have found that they cannot carry things in the manner they flattered themselves they could. I hope this will secure us a little peace in the place for some time to come.
Grimston’s friends likewise thought the fruitless expense would be ‘a complete warning’ to intruders.
Peace was preserved in 1802 when, Grimston’s heir being now eligible, Bucknall discovered a declining state of health and made way for him. Francis Kingston and the town clerk John Boys, the ringleaders of 1796, had temporarily deserted their banners. But in 1806 Kingston stirred up an opposition from an unexpected quarter: Halsey, nephew of the Whig county Member William Plumer. After a three-day contest Halsey, who had at first been ahead of Grimston on the poll, conceded victory. On 3 Nov. he wrote a palliative letter to Lord Grimston.
Though it is evident that Mr Halsey’s unprovoked conduct at St. Albans had the strongest tendency to create disturbance in the county, I think there is but one opinion as to that proceeding being wholly unjustifiable, whether Mr Plumer was at the bottom of it or not.
Grimston was given to understand that the reason for Plumer’s aggression was that he had supported the pretensions of the Hon. Thomas Brand to the county, endangering Plumer’s tenure. Plumer, writing to Spencer on 10 Nov., denied that his nephew had even consulted him, describing him as ‘a young man of honourable principles but of high spirit and enterprise’. Spencer, then a cabinet minister, was meanwhile being reproached by such Whigs as Whitbread for not getting Poyntz to join forces with Halsey, who supported the ministry, against Grimston, who did not. The fact was that the family were concerned only for their own interest. The dowager Lady Spencer had written, 2 Nov. 1806, ‘Poyntz’s personal interest ... adds so much to our strength that there cannot be any fear of his success’.
Spencer wrote to his mother, who was loath to ‘examine the poll’, 6 May 1807:
The first inclination of my mind is to give up all thoughts of interfering any more in the electioneering at the place, and of course to have nothing more to do with the corporation. It seems pretty evident now that we shall never have another election there uncontested, and though the contests are not very expensive ones, the constant recurrence of them, added to the occasional expenses of mayoralties, etc. are considerations which under my present circumstances must have some weight in my determination. If the Parliament should last its usual time, the present sitting Members will have abundant opportunities to confirm their interest, and the attention necessary to be paid to the corporation will all be trouble and expense thrown away.
On 29 July 1807 Spencer and his heir duly resigned from the corporation and on 2 Sept. he resigned as high steward. Lord Grimston took over, though the corporation remained ‘up to the eyes in debt to the Spencer family’.
a great many people, of different descriptions, want William Poyntz to stand, and have sent to him, but I fancy he will not venture to do it without your brother’s support. They have thought likewise, in case he will not, of one of the Lambs, but they wisely and positively decline it.
Lady Bessborough and her Family Circle, 180-1.
The cost of even an uncontested election was now estimated at £1,200. The Lambs were not averse to supporting the pretensions of a wealthy Whig neighbour, Daniel Giles of Youngsbury, who filled the vacancy after defeating an opportunist candidate Robert Williams III. Williams did not follow up his petition against the return.
According to the Lambs’ mother Lady Melbourne, writing to Giles in September 1811, by which time she had an eye to his seat for her son William:
at the time of election you often stated that you had no intention of making an interest for yourself, and that what you were then doing, William would profit by at some time and you never have since yet hinted to me that you had changed your intentions.
Giles replied, 11 Sept., that he had indeed been prepared to stand back for one of the Lamb brothers:
I was of course bound to stand the hazard of the contest. It turned out favourably and I obtained the seat but most assuredly not according to my understanding as a mere tenant for another, though as I have already said, if the application had been made to me at an earlier period I should without difficulty have given way to William and instead of cultivating an interest and making engagements on my own account should have readily co-operated with him in preparing the way for his future success.
Lady Airlie, In Whig Society, 121-5.
In any case, Lady Melbourne had not managed before the dissolution in September 1812 to persuade William Lamb to commit himself: she quoted him as saying that he was well out of it ‘as it would infallibly have ruined him’, though she believed he ‘might have come in for very little money and kept it at a small expense’. Lamb did not deny it, but he could not afford even ‘a moderate yearly expense’; and he had doubts whether Giles could secure his re-election, which proved justified.
Giles, who had joined forces with Halsey to keep a third man at bay in 1812, was defeated, though Halsey headed the poll. The third man was Christopher Smith, a London merchant and alderman, described by Giles as ‘Mr Perceval’s friend’ and invited by a faction in the corporation as a supporter of administration. Smith had not been the first candidate thought of for a contest. In 1811 John Sharpless, a London voter, described by his enemies as an ex-convict, sponsored Sir Jonah Barrington, the Irish lawyer, at a meeting of 30 outvoters near London. Barrington, who canvassed, was thought to have ‘not a particle of chance in succeeding’, and by February 1812 Smith had replaced him, encouraged by Sharpless and by John Monckton Hale, the electioneering attorney. Samuel Robert Gaussen was thought of as a more respectable local candidate, but he left it too late and did not live to see the election. The Halsey-Giles coalition attempted to discredit Smith as a renegade radical and secured the neutrality of the Grimstons; Lord Spencer would take no active part for them. His agent Harrison claimed credit for doing all he could for them ‘with propriety’ and for urging Giles to persevere when discouraged by an unpromising canvass. He insisted that both Halsey and Giles had neglected the outvoters. Smith received 107 plumpers. Nothing came of a petition contemplated against him for bribery.
On Halsey’s death early in 1818 the first candidate in the field was Robarts, a London businessman willing to ‘bleed freely’. His uncle George Tierney the Whig leader procured him the blessing of Lord Spencer, who had no other candidate in mind, but was anxious to thwart a bid by Lord Charles Spencer Churchill (who applied to government for support) to stake his claim to the dwindling Spencer heritage at St. Albans.
Lord Charles Spencer alias Churchill alias gander alias gaol bird has been canvassing St. Albans accompanied by his two respectable friends John Ward and Irreverend Preedie [sic] and met with a very cold reception.
She put this down to his having ‘not a farthing to rub against another’, while Robarts had money to throw away. When Lord Charles next day asserted that he was standing ‘with the most eager support of the Spencer family’, he was repudiated and a further stratagem of his to mislead the electors into thinking that Spencer and his son Althorp (who canvassed for Robarts) were at variance also failed. Nevertheless, Spencer Churchill reappeared at the ensuing general election and defeated Alderman Smith for second place. Smith’s supporters were greatly disappointed at his poor showing, claiming that it was a matter of broken promises; they prepared to fight again next time.
By the end of this period the Spencer interest was a shadow of what it had been and the Grimston interest had been hamstrung for want of a family candidate since 1808. Meanwhile St. Albans had become an unmanageable borough.
in the freemen and in householders paying scot and lot
Number of voters: about 600