The division of Sussex into western and eastern constituencies by the Reform Act of 1832 endorsed a hallowed custom. As Lord Sheffield put it, 26 May 1807:
It always appeared to me the true policy of Sussex for the landed men of East and West, each to agree to consider of a proper representative, and that being done, the whole of the county to agree to support them.NLI, Richmond mss 69/1233.
Lady Spencer remarked, in 1806, apropos of Surrey politics, ‘One can never be certain of the ground one treads on in such sort of neighbourhood to London and where property is so sub-divided’.Spencer mss, Lady to Ld. Spencer, 5 Nov. 1806. Soon after the unopposed election of the Whig 5th Duke of Bedford’s brother in 1789, George Sumner, a nabob’s son, was prepared to take up the cudgels on behalf of Pitt’s administration. Sir Gilbert Elliot commented:
In the contest of 1784 Sir Charles Bunbury, after 23 years’ service as county Member, became one of Fox’s martyrs. The county was thrown open again by the decision of Joshua Grigby to retire. At this juncture, 4 Jan. 1790, Sir Gerard William Vanneck, Member for Dunwich, a county landowner with his London bank at his back, publicly announced his candidature. As a Whig who wooed the significant dissenting element among the yeomen freeholders, he stirred up the resentment of the conservative gentry. On 7 Jan.
Staffordshire did not go to the poll between 1747 and 1832, during which period it became an important manufacturing county: by 1818 one of its Members claimed to represent 14,000 freeholders and in 1820 another was credited with staking £100,000 on the defence of his seat—although he gave it up.Staffs. RO, Hatherton mss M/F/5/26, diary, 19 June 1818, 31 Mar. 1820. Expense apart, contests were discouraged by the smooth operation of a compromise after 1753.
The county gentry would not hear of an aristocratic representative, but vied among themselves for the county seats. There had been no actual contest since 1715, but only the fear of expense and the convenient assumption, denied in theory but usually observed in practice, that the eastern and western parts of the county should have a Member each, prevented others before the spell was finally broken in 1807.
The county representation remained in the hands of the country gentlemen, who insisted on their independence and vetoed election expenses. There had been no contest since 1722 and the peace of the county was not effectively disturbed in this period. The conduct of Sir Richard Hill in Parliament and in the borough of Shrewsbury exposed him temporarily to the threat of opposition.
Since 1747 the Noels, earls of Gainsborough, and the Cecils, earls of Exeter, had combined to dominate the county representation, to the exclusion of the Finches, earls of Winchilsea, who did not challenge them after 1761. All three families were short of personal representatives. The 9th Earl of Winchilsea, lord-lieutenant of the county and a courtier, was unmarried.
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 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.
At the dissolution of 1790 neither sitting Member was directly beholden to Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland, whose family had controlled one seat since the 1760s. Sir William Middleton of Belsay had been returned at three successive general elections as the candidate of the independent gentlemen; and Charles Grey, elected in 1786 on the elevation to the peerage of Northumberland’s brother, was not an Alnwick nominee as such, although the duke must have at least acquiesced in his return.
