Bewdley

Bewdley was in the pocket of the Lyttelton family, high stewards of the borough, but they were not personally represented from 1796 when Andrews, a wealthy friend of the family, was returned. He made a gift of £3,000 towards building Bewdley bridge in 1801, and further gifts to the corporation of £1,000 in 1807 and £2,000 in 1808.W. R. Williams, Worcs. MPs, 174. The Earl of Mount Norris had married the sister and heiress of Thomas Lyttelton†, 2nd Baron Lyttelton, and his son George Annesley, Viscount Valentia, later referred to Spencer Perceval’s ‘appearances of support in my object of recovering for my family the borough of Bewdley’, which hopes ‘were put to an end by the lamented death of Mr Perceval’ and by his successor Lord Liverpool’s refusal to ‘consider himself bound by his promises’. Charles Arbuthnot of the Treasury wrote to Liverpool in 1818, ‘I venture to say that the government could not have restored that borough to Lord Mount Norris. We have no influence there at all, and the right of voting is confined to the personal friends of the sitting Member.’Add. 38283, f. 241; 38458, f. 208. Although Andrews’s business associate Wilsonn succeeded to the seat on his death in 1814, local patronage had passed for some years past to an attorney on the spot, Wilson Aylesbury Roberts, and it was his son who came in in 1818 and retained the seat unopposed until 1832.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. v. 256.