Leicester had not been contested since 1768, but a compromise between the rival corporation and independent parties was broken in 1784. The corporation then secured two Members favourable to Pitt’s ministry, assisted by the desertion of the independent interest by the 4th Duke of Rutland, whose nominee John MacNamara was.
There are a number of obscurities in the electoral history of Wigan, where the admission of freemen was regulated by a complicated municipal constitution. In-burgesses were chosen at the annual Michaelmas court leet from inhabitants paying scot and lot by the jury of the court, which was itself composed entirely of in-burgesses. The mayor had the power to create honorary freemen, generally known as out-burgesses, who had the right to vote in mayoral and parliamentary elections, but it would seem that only two such creations could be made by each mayor.See M.
In 1768, when the right of election was determined to be in ‘the inhabitants at large’ (subject to a six months’ residential qualification) rather than in the resident freemen, control of the parliamentary representation of Preston was wrested from the corporation by the 11th Earl of Derby, in alliance with Sir Henry Hoghton of nearby Hoghton Tower.
Newton was controlled by the Leghs of Lyme, who were lords of the manor and also owned most of the land in the borough. The head of the family until his death in 1792 was Peter Legh, and the Members returned in 1790 and 1796 were his nephew and heir, Thomas Peter Legh, and Thomas Brooke of Ashton Hayes, who was second cousin to Thomas Peter. The latter died in 1797, having bequeathed the family property to his eldest illegitimate son Thomas Legh, then about four years old.
As a port Liverpool was by now second only to London, enjoying a quarter of the country’s foreign trade and the largest share of its African trade. It gave employment to about 3,000 shipwrights, who, with ancillary trades, made up the majority of the electorate. Freemen qualified by birth or servitude and no longer by purchase, so the corporation was unable to command them; there was in any case a long-standing political conflict between that Anglican body and the dissenting freemen.
Lancaster was eclipsed by Liverpool as a port for the West Indian trade in this period. The consequent decline in the staple industries of shipbuilding and cabinet-making was never fully compensated by the developing cotton industry, though the town later enjoyed a revival of prosperity from the American, Russian and coastal trades. The freedom was obtainable by birth, apprenticeship, restricted gift of the mayor and two bailiffs and by purchase. A bye-law of 1796 set the minimum price of admission by purchase at ten guineas and in 1807 the practice was ended altogether.
The majority of the burgages at Clitheroe were owned by Thomas Lister of nearby Gisburn Park, a Whig, and Assheton Curzon, a ministerialist. Lister got the upper hand in 1780 and kept it in 1784, returning himself and a nominee on both occasions, but before 1790 he and Curzon came to terms and agreed to revert to their former practice of returning one Member each. Lister retired at the general election, his colleague John Lee was provided with a seat elsewhere and, probably at the behest of his friend the Duke of Portland, he brought in Sir John Aubrey, a recent convert to opposition.
The presence of the naval dockyard and the victualling office gave the Admiralty a permanent interest at Rochester, but in one seat only was it secure and contests were frequent. Sir Charles Middleton, the Admiralty Member in the Parliament of 1784, complained to ministers that the freemen had ‘reaped very little advantage from the being the side of government’,PRO 30/8/173, ff.
The arrangement whereby the Admiralty and the Ordnance returned a Member each was maintained without difficulty until 1802. Management of the borough was in the hands of the latter department. The 3rd Duke of Richmond, then master general of the Ordnance, informed Pitt, 22 June 1790, ‘Queenborough is over as we would wish though there was a contest’.PRO 30/8/171, f. 149. One of the defeated candidates was the nabob William Popham, late Member for Milborne Port, who was in opposition to Pitt.
Maidstone was an open borough with a reputation for venality. Oldfield stated that successful candidates spent between £3,000 and £5,000 per election and contests were insisted upon. Sir Matthew Bloxam had spent £15,000 by 1802, in four elections.Rep. Hist. iv. 76; Spencer mss, Bloxam to Spencer, 30 July 1802. Over a third of the electors were non-resident, but no poll lasted more than three days. There were two parties in the town, Red (or Purple) and Blue, the former ministerialist and the latter independent.
