Commons 1790-1820

With over 2,500 electors, of whom some 30 per cent were outvoters, Coventry was an expensive constituency, difficult to manage.This article is based on T. W. Whitley, Parl. Rep. Coventry, 202-52. Contests had long arisen out of conflict between the corporation (and its allies) and the commonalty, among whom the largest group were the journeymen weavers in the silk factories. The wealth of Lord Eardley, whose colleague his brother-in-law Wilmot had local connexions, carried the day in 1784 when they stood as Pitt’s friends.

Warwickshire was not contested between 1774 and 1820. The contest of 1774 had highlighted two significant features of elections for the county: the gentry’s jealousy of aristocratic intrusion, and the interest of the Birmingham commercial and manufacturing interests in the north in obtaining a representative. Sir Charles Holte† was then Birmingham’s choice and on his retirement in 1780 Sir Robert Lawley.

Distinct in their parliamentary interests, Steyning and Bramber were territorially interwoven. The franchise had been much disputed in the early 18th century. Oldfield blasted the two boroughs as ‘enveloped in the dark cloud of legal quibble and intricacy ... irregular in their districts, unintelligible in their constitutions, indefinite in their rights, corrupt in the exercise of their functions’.Rep. Hist. v.

After the extension of the franchise to the neighbouring freeholders in 1771, the constituency became a county in miniature vied for by Sussex country gentlemen, and elections were conducted with ‘constitutional decorum’.Oldfield, Boroughs, ii. 160. In 1784 the sitting Members Sir Cecil Bisshop and John Peachey had warded off the challenge of John Clater Aldridge, a friend of the 3rd Duke of Richmond, who was one of Pitt’s cabinet.

George O’ Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, purchased the controlling interest at Midhurst from the trustees of the 7th Viscount Montagu for 40,000 guineas in 1787.W. D. Cooper, Parl. Hist. Suss. 28; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. v. 52. At the next election he returned his brothers. In 1795 he sold out to Robert Smith, afterwards 1st Baron Carrington, who tried but failed in the same year to exchange Midhurst for the borough of Gatton.Camden mss C260, Smith to Camden, 15 (? or 25) Oct.

‘Perfect quietness’ was not to be expected at elections for Lewes, where the electorate more than doubled in this period.Add. 33109, f. 71; 33129, f. 359; The Times, 21 July 1802; Town Bk. of Lewes 1702-1837 (Suss. Rec. Soc. lxix), 221. Thomas Pelham, Baron Pelham (created Earl of Chichester in 1801) had since 1774 been content to return one Member and found it prudent to recommend one of his family.

The Ingram family, Viscounts Irwin, acquired an influence in Horsham in the early 18th century which in 1737 they converted into control.This article is based on W. Albery’s Parl. Hist. Horsham, chs. VI-X. This was unchallenged for some 50 years, but about 1787 the Whig 11th Duke of Norfolk, who had lately succeeded, decided to build up his influence as lord of the manor.

The 3rd Duke of Dorset owned 29 of the 36 burgages in the borough and returned both Members. Nathaniel Dance, whose wife was a near relation of his, nevertheless paid him £4,000 for a seat plus £50 to entertain the electors in 1796. When the duke died in 1799, by a controversial will he left his property and his electoral interest at East Grinstead to his wife for life, his heir being a minor.Oldfield, Boroughs, ii. 166; Rep. Hist. v. 55; Key (1820), 18; Farington Diary (Yale ed.), ii. 550, 559; Wraxall Mems. ed. Wheatley, iv.

Although there were only two effective contests in this period, Chichester remained an open borough. The 3rd Duke of Richmond had failed to carry both Members in 1784 when White Thomas was championed by the independent party of Blues anxious to prevent a ducal monopoly. Lest they should attempt to oust Richmond altogether, his surviving nominee Thomas Steele, whose roots were local, pretended to dissociate himself from his patron in his preliminary canvass for the election of 1790. The manoeuvre failed and Steele reverted to avowed reliance on Richmond.

By an agreement which had operated since 1774, the two owners of the ‘miserable thatched cottages’ which gave the right to vote at Bramber returned a Member each throughout this period. They were Sir Henry Gough Calthorpe, 2nd Bt., and the 5th Duke of Rutland. Gough Calthorpe on obtaining a peerage in 1796 returned Adams. After his death in 1798, with his sons still minors, Jodrell and his widow’s friend Wilberforce were returned in succession. Rutland was also a minor until 1799 and his mother and uncle the 5th Duke of Beaufort supervised the returns until then.