Leicestershire

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In 1682 Thomas Baskerville had bluntly described Leicester as ‘an old stinking town, situated upon a dull river, inhabited for the most part by tradesmen, viz.: worsted combers and clothiers’. Celia Fiennes, visiting in 1698, was more complimentary, noting the spaciousness of streets and market-place and the presence of ‘a great many Dissenters’. In fact the town’s Nonconformist community was small in comparison with other midland centres of Dissent, and accounted for approximately 100 parliamentary votes.

The course of Leicester politics in the second half of the eighteenth century was largely determined by the conflict between the corporation and the independent party, and between the Anglicans and the Dissenters. These did not always coincide, but two parties tended to develop—one calling themselves Whigs, and the others called by their opponents Tories. Rioting was endemic at election time, but party conflict and the size of the electorate prevented the borough from becoming corrupt.

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.

The chief interest at Leicester was that of the Tory corporation, who were Jacobite sympathizers. Troops were quartered in the town during the rebellion of 1715. At the time of the Atterbury plot of 1722, the Duke of Rutland and other Whig leaders alleged that the corporation had allowed the enlisting of men in the Pretender’s service and the proclaiming of him as James III in the town. They were also accused of tolerating Jacobite disturbances in 1738 and 1744.

Of the four interests that had dominated Leicester before the Civil War, only one survived intact. The town had suffered so severely at the hands of the Cavalier army in 1645 that popular support vanished for the Hastings family (headed until 1667 by Lord Loughborough, royalist general and conspirator). There was a revival after the 7th Earl of Huntingdon came of age in 1671, and allied himself with Sir Henry Beaumont of Stoughton and the country interest, until it was undermined by his vagaries as a Whig collaborator.

A place of considerable importance in the sixteenth century and ‘one of the ancientest and greatest towns’ belonging to the duchy of Lancaster—the description dates from 1587—Leicester was governed in Elizabeth’s reign by a close oligarchic corporation consisting of the mayor and aldermen (known as the 24) and 48 councilmen or comburgesses. The latter body, selected by the mayor and 24 from ‘the most wise and sad commons only’, represented the commonalty in municipal and parliamentary elections; they could be replaced ‘as often as seems necessary’.

Leicester formed the most important part of one of the four demesne manors in the duchy of Lancaster’s honor of Leicester. The town was relatively prosperous for most of the 16th century despite its inclusion in an Act of 1540 (32 Hen. VIII, c.18) among places where ‘many beautiful houses’ were in decay. Although no longer a centre for the wool trade, the town continued to be a prime market for the pasture farmers of the surrounding area, and by 1540 leather work and other crafts were flourishing there.