Commons 1790-1820

Woodstock, ‘adjoining to the wall of Blenheim park’, had offered no opposition to the dukes of Marlborough’s patronage since 1727.Oldfield, Boroughs, ii. 23; Rep. Hist. iv. 362. The 4th Duke continued to nominate members of his family and friends, expecting them, like himself, to support the government of the day. His neighbour and connexion by marriage Sir Henry Watkin Dashwood, a ruined man who had to be in Parliament, was Member from 1784 until 1820. The other seat was intended for his family, if and when eligible.

The North family, seated at Wroxton nearby, had controlled the corporation and named the Member since 1740. By 1784 their hold was so weakened that it was reported that ‘Lord North has been very nearly shaken at Banbury, and upon a poll would have carried it only by one’.Rutland mss, Sydney to Rutland 5 Apr. 1784. Nevertheless the Treasury regarded it as a close borough and no opposition was made to the ex-premier in 1790; or, when he succeeded as 2nd Earl of Guilford, to his son later that year; or on his death in 1792.

There had been no poll for the county between 1710 and 1754, when there was such a contest as discouraged any further disturbance of the peace of the county until 1826. George, 4th Duke of Marlborough, imposed a compromise with the county Tories in 1761, returning his brother Lord Charles Spencer. Viscount Wenman, with the support of his brother-in-law Lord Abingdon, the Earl of Macclesfield and the principal country gentlemen, held the other seat from 1768. The only disturbing feature in this period was the domestic disunity of the Duke of Marlborough’s family.

The corporation of Nottingham formed a self-perpetuating Whig and dissenting oligarchy which resisted all government except its own, acknowledging no patron. At the same time it made little attempt, until 1803, to manipulate the freemen, who in the last resort were reassured by its resistance to the enclosure of the common lands in which they were entitled to a stake, a resistance which however, cooped up a steadily increasing population.

On the face of it, the pact in operation since 1715, whereby the dukes of Newcastle and the Suttons of Kelham returned a Member each, was maintained in 1805 when the Sutton interest lapsed and was replaced by that of the 6th Baron Middleton, whose forebears had formerly intervened in borough elections. A fourth interested party, Sir Jenison William Gordon, 2nd Bt., was a consenting party to these arrangements.Nottingham Univ. Lib. Newcastle mss NeC 2672, 6580. But Newark remained, after all, an open borough with a sizeable electorate.

Henry Pelham Clinton, 2nd Duke of Newcastle and high steward of the borough, had had to be satisfied since 1768 with the nomination of one Member for Retford, supported by the Pink party on the corporation, whereas his predecessor had named both. The other seat, in the hands of the ‘independent’ or Blue interest, was held from 1780 to 1790 by a local landowner, Sir Wharton Amcotts, a friend of the 3rd Duke of Portland. In 1790 he stood down in favour of his son-in-law, Sir John Ingilby, who was regarded as a ministerialist and did not seek Portland’s blessing. There was no contest. Maj.

The Dukes of Newcastle and Portland had most to say in county elections. Portland had returned his brothers since 1775 and Newcastle, with no member of his family available, stood behind Pierrepont, an independent country gentleman, from his first election in 1778. There had been no contest since 1722. During the minority of the 4th Duke of Newcastle, Pierrepont, created Viscount Newark in 1796, secured the return of two sons in succession, as colleagues to Portland’s second son.

Newcastle was represented throughout the period by local landed gentlemen whose family wealth had been made in Newcastle trade, and who remained respected figures in the town and leaders of its business community. A Whig-Tory compromise and the expense of transporting non-resident freemen from various parts of the country discouraged contests.

Until 1802 Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle, returned two Members unchallenged for Morpeth. The party of independent freemen which had threatened Carlisle’s family interest earlier in the century was checked by a policy of careful management which combined charity payments to the poorer voters with a limitation on the size of the freeman electorate through control of the organs of local government.J. M. Fewster, ‘The Pols. and Admin. of the Borough of Morpeth in the later 18th Cent.’ (Durham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1960), ch.

The expense of maintaining an electoral interest at Berwick proved beyond all contenders during this period and it was increasingly regarded as an open, but venal, borough ‘almost as famous for its elections, as for its smocks and its salmon’. In 1784 the two leading interests represented by Lt.-Gen. John Vaughan (Lord Lisburne’s brother) and John Hussey Delaval had retained their hold, but on Delaval’s obtaining a peerage as a reward for going over to government in 1786, the ministerial nominee was defeated by a Whig, Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto.