Northumberland

<p>In 1754 the representation of Newcastle was ‘compromised’: Sir Walter Blackett, a Tory, and Matthew Ridley, a Whig, both popular and highly respected local men, were returned unopposed, and continued to be so in 1761 and 1768.

<p><strong>Economic and social profile</strong></p><p>Situated on the north bank of the river Tyne, ten miles from the North sea, Newcastle was a sizeable port that developed as a service and commercial centre for the surrounding industrial region. Although a substantial minority of male workers were employed in traditional heavy industries, such as shipbuilding, metal manufacture and engineering, the employment structure was dominated by service and commercial interests such as transport and retailing.

<p>Newcastle’s economic expansion created a wealthy corporation, whose revenue in this period was estimated by contemporaries at between £9,000 and £12,000 p.a. Not surprisingly this body was dominated by the merchants and coal owners who had benefited most from economic development. The complex procedure for election to the common council and the bench of aldermen had allowed members of Newcastle’s company of Merchant Adventurers to establish a dominance over the corporation which, despite sporadic demonstrations of opposition, survived long into the 18th century.

<p>Though located in a county where both Jacobitism and Toryism were popular, Morpeth returned only three Tories among the 14 Members who sat for the borough during this period. Whig dominance of parliamentary elections had its roots in the influence of the lords of the manor, from 1692 the Whig 3rd Earl of Carlisle (Charles Howard, Viscount Morpeth), an interest derived from the borough’s corporate structure.

<p>Though the Evans list claimed that there were 1,100 Dissenting ‘hearers’ at Berwick it was silent on the number of Dissenting voters in the borough. Contemporaries, however, were in no doubt as to the influence of Nonconformity in the town: in 1695 it was asserted that elections there were chiefly in the hands of ‘Presb[yterians] and Dissenters’, while in 1710 another observer claimed that Berwick was ‘riveted in fanaticism’. At least four of Berwick’s seven Members in this period were either Dissenters or had family links to Nonconformity.

<p>Berwick ranked as an open borough, but Government had considerable influence through the Customs, Excise, and Taxes, the Post Office, and the garrison, navy, and Ordnance.</p><p>In 1754 of the three candidates Thomas Watson was of an old Berwick family, had several times been mayor, and had represented it since 1740 with Government support; John Delaval’s family, at Ford Castle, were neighbouring squires connected with Lord Northumberland; while John Wilkes was a stranger. Henry Pelham ‘having disobliged the great Delavals’,<fn>J. S. Charlton to Newcastle, 2 Feb.

<p>At Morpeth there were seven trade guilds, each of which had the right to elect a certain number of freemen. These were then admitted at the court leet of Lord Carlisle, who owned the manor. To an increasing extent during the eighteenth century the Carlisle family exercised control by restricting the number of freemen, and in 1747 the fourth Earl persuaded the guilds to pass a resolution that no freemen should be elected without his consent.