Norfolk

<p>In 1754 Norwich was the third largest city in England and the fourth largest urban constituency, a cathedral city of great dignity and antiquity and the centre of the Norfolk woollen industry. Its municipal constitution resembled that of London, with a court of aldermen and a court of common council; and municipal politics were fiercely contested. There was a large body of Dissenters; and since the franchise included freeholders as well as freemen, a considerable rural vote.

<p>Euston Hall, seat of the Dukes of Grafton, is four miles from Thetford, and during this period the borough was under Grafton’s control.</p>

<p>The corporation was a power in Yarmouth politics, and the corporation was controlled by the Walpole and Townshend families, who each filled one seat. But there was always an anti-corporation party and in 1754 this found a leader in John Ramey, an attorney who had acted as agent for the Townshend-Walpole interest and had been disobliged by them.

<p>From 1754 to 1774 one seat at King’s Lynn was held by Sir John Turner and the other by a member of the Walpole family. In 1765 Turner quarrelled with one of his principal supporters, and an opposition developed against him which soon assumed a political character. Turner, who had held office under the Grenville Administration, remained with Grenville in opposition; his opponent, Crisp Molineux, was a friend of Wilkes and admirer of Chatham; while the Walpoles preserved their neutrality.

<p>Castle Rising was a complete pocket borough, shared by the families of Walpole and Howard. George, 3rd Earl of Orford, nominated to one seat throughout this period; the other was controlled by Henry, 12th Earl of Suffolk, and after his death in 1779 by his mother, Lady Andover.</p>

<p>The 3rd Duke of Grafton, seated four miles away at Euston, was recorder of this corporation borough and his family had controlled it unopposed throughout the century. Since 1784, however, he had been politically less active and had no member of his immediate family whom he wished to return. In 1790, when one of his nominees died on the eve of dissolution and the other retired, his nomination to both seats was successfully challenged by the Catholic peer, Robert Edward, 9th Baron Petre.

<p>Municipal politics continued to play an important part in Norwich parliamentary elections<fn>B. D. Hayes ‘Pols. in Norf. 1750-1832’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1957), 55, 234. The freeholder vote, much of it in the ‘country’, constituted about one-fifth of the electorate.</fn> and at times candidates for the corporation spent not much less than parliamentary candidates (about £4,000).<fn>Ibid. 432; Add. 37885, f.

<p>On the face of it, the electoral arrangements for Lynn were a straightforward compromise of the nominations between two interests. The Walpoles, father and son, represented their long established interest.

<p>Yarmouth was a flourishing port, with a steadily rising population and a large and venal electorate, many of them outvoters in London, Norwich and the dockyards of Chatham, Sheerness, Northfleet, Deptford and Blackwall. It was accepted that electors might claim two guineas a vote, but their price rose and in the keen contest of 1818, when 653 outvoters were fetched, <em>douceurs</em> of £20, £80 or even £100 were reported; though the outvote did not sway the outcome.<fn>C. J. Palmer, <em>Hist. Gt. Yarmouth</em> (1856), 224-35; B. D. Hayes, ‘Pols.

<p>The Walpole and Howard families continued to name a Member each throughout this period. Since 1779 their representatives in this electoral pact had been George, 3rd Earl of Orford, by now insane, whose faithful friend Charles Boone continued to sit on his interest, and the dowager Lady Andover.<fn>Oldfield, <em>Hist. Boroughs</em>, i. 409; Norf. RO, Howard mss HOW 742, Orford to Lady Andover, 22 Mar.