Westmorland

This article has not been researched and written yet

This article has not been researched and written yet

Appleby Castle physically dominated the adjoining borough, and the castle interest exerted considerable influence over Appleby elections. The castle had formed part of the extensive Westmorland estates of the Cliffords, lands which in 1676 passed to the earls of Thanet. The Clifford estate also brought with it the hereditary shrievalty of Westmorland, and the substantial interest afforded by this inheritance was wielded in this period by the Tory 6th Earl of Thanet (Thomas Tufton†).

In 1725 Henry, 3rd Viscount Lonsdale, and Sackville, 7th Earl of Thanet, made an agreement for their joint lives whereby each was to nominate one Member, the mayor in turn, and the aldermen and councilmen pari passu; neither to buy burgages without notice to the other. On Lonsdale’s death in 1751 Mrs. Lowther, mother and guardian of Sir James Lowther, 5th Bt., renewed the agreement.

James, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, and Sackville, 8th Earl of Thanet, had agreed in 1773 to be joint patrons of Appleby for their lives, an arrangement made by their forebears in 1725 and uneasily renewed after a disastrous collision in 1754. Before he died in 1786, Thanet had the edge on Lonsdale by the purchase of additional burgages, but his heir Sackville, Lord Tufton, being in his 17th year, did not seek to take advantage of this at first, any more than his father had.

At George I’s accession the chief interests at Appleby were those of the Tory earls of Thanet, who owned Appleby castle, and of two Whig Westmorland families, the Lowthers, Viscounts Lonsdale, and the Sandfords of Howgill castle. On 9 Oct. 1714 the bishop of Carlisle wrote to James Lowther:

The small town, or rather village, of Appleby was in every sense dominated by its castle, owned, together with some 40 burgages, by the dowager countess of Pembroke until her death in 1676. Contested elections were unthinkable in her time, and Lady Pembroke was described by (Sir) Daniel Fleming as being ‘as absolute in that borough as any one in any other’. In 1660 the townsmen elected two Yorkshiremen, Sir Henry Cholmley and Christopher Clapham, who had assisted her in disputes with her tenants.

A borough by prescription, Appleby was subject to the Cliffords, earls of Cumberland, whose castle dominated the town; the mayor and two bailiffs had no influence on elections. Henry Clifford, 2nd Earl of Cumberland, himself a Catholic, returned two others of that religion to the first Parliament of the reign: Christopher Monckton, a Yorkshire country gentleman, and John Eltoftes, an Inner Temple lawyer whose services had been employed by the family and who had already represented Appleby in the previous reign.

Although it was the shire town where assizes and sessions were held, Appleby seemed to Leland ‘but a poor village, having a ruinous castle wherein the prisoners be kept’. Except where it adjoined the castle, the town was almost surrounded by the river Eden and by swampland; the only highroad ran on the other side of the river. Unlike Carlisle, Appleby had never been of much strategic value, and being unwalled it had suffered severely during Scottish raids; following one of these in 1388 the borough had had its fee-farm reduced from 20 marks to two.