Commons 1790-1820

York made up as a market town and social centre for what it lacked in economic vitality. The dispersal of the large freeman electorate and the partiality of the lower class of resident freemen for election favours made it an expensive constituency and ‘not an inviting place for an adventurer’.Fitzwilliam mss X515/20, Cavendish to Fitzwilliam, 18 Nov. [1787]. While the Whig interest, sponsored by Earl Fitzwilliam and centred on the Rockingham Club, were determined to regain the ground they had lost through the defeat of Lord John Cavendish and Sir William Milner in 1784,Ibid.

The right of election in Thirsk was vested in 50 burgages situated in the virtually depopulated old town. All but one belonged to Sir Thomas Frankland, 6th Bt. of Thirkleby, who, for the sake of appearances, transferred them to friends and relations at election time. Throughout the period he returned either guests or members of his family. He resisted Pitt’s invitation to barter them for a peerage. From 1805, his nominees were chosen in accordance with his brother William’s politics.

In 1790 a compromise, which operated throughout this period, divided the patronage of the borough between the young 5th Duke of Rutland’s trustees and Lord Mulgrave; but it was at first attended by considerable suspicion in the duke’s camp that Mulgrave, who owned an extensive estate nearby, intended to gain the upper hand, seeing that the duke’s interest was founded on the less reliable basis of the corporation’s attachment to his late grandfather the Marquess of Granby.

Ripon remained a close borough, the proprietors since 1781 being the heiresses of William Aislabie. His elder daughter, widow of Charles Allanson of Bramham Biggin, had the major share of his estate, and his younger daughter, the wife of William Laurence, the rest.PCC 222 Webster. Until 1807, while he lived, Laurence arranged the returns and the two families nominated a Member each.

Sir Thomas Dundas, 2nd Bt., created Baron Dundas in 1794, whose father had purchased the majority of the burgages in 1762, controlled both seats at Richmond throughout the period. Normally they went to members of his large family; occasionally they were filled by impecunious Whigs. Beauclerk, according to one report, purchased his seat in 1796 for £5,000 and in 1798 sold it to Shakespeare for £2,000.

The electoral conflict at Pontefract in 1790 took the form of a contest between inhabitant householders and burgage owners over the right of election, in dispute since 1768. John Smyth and William Sotheron, neighbouring landowners and the sitting Members, represented the householder party, whose candidates had been declared elected by committees of the House in 1783 and 1784, when parliamentary reform was in the air, contrary to the decisions of previous committees.

Northallerton remained a close borough (without a corporation) jointly controlled since 1745 by the Peirse and Lascelles families, who returned one Member each. Henry Peirse of Bedale returned himself throughout, serving 50 years in all. Edward Lascelles succeeded his cousin to the other seat. On his becoming Lord Harewood, he returned his heir, at whose death there was an interval during which Peirse’s nephew kept the seat warm for the deceased’s brother. Henry Peirse wrote to the reformer Rev. Christopher Wyvill, 6 Dec. 1798:

Earl Fitzwilliam, sole patron of Malton by inheritance from his uncle the Marquess of Rockingham, secured the return of his nominees unopposed until 1807, despite rumours of opposition at most elections.NLW mss 17158, f. 16; The Times, 17 Dec. 1789; Morning Chron. 28 May 1796. Attention was necessary: the borough received £100 from each Member after elections, and the electors half a guinea each if they so desired. Fitzwilliam’s policy was to return Members connected with his late uncle as long as they were available.

The 5th Duke of Devonshire, whose father had acquired the nomination to one seat by marriage in 1758 and the other by purchase in 1762, controlled 74 out of 96 burgages. These were conveyed either for life or ad hoc to his tenants, none of them residents of Knaresborough, and the Members, who were relatives or friends of the duke on the Whig interest, were if possible returned by proxy.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. v.

Samuel Thornton, who represented Hull for over 20 years, described it as ‘a populous place, extremely difficult of control by the influence of the gentlemen who reside in it’.Fortescue mss, Thornton to Grenville, 27 Aug. 1806. The corporation, the Trinity House and the Dock Company (established in 1774) were the three formal agencies through which local merchant opinion could be expressed, but unless united, as they were in 1802, the influence of none of them was decisive.