The freeholders of the marcher county of Hereford on the Welsh border had been polled three times between 1796 and 1818. Party organization was well developed and the squirearchy, who resented their exclusion from the representation of Leominster, expected their Members to be resident gentlemen of rank, committed to promoting the county’s agricultural and allied interests. Regular attendance at the assizes, city and county meetings and social and party functions was essential, as was patronage of local causes and the London-based Herefordshire Association, at whose quarterly meetings at the Globe Tavern in Fleet Street, and annual May dinners at the Albion or the Freemasons’ Tavern, Members and potential candidates were vetted. Following the death in 1815 of the 11th duke of Norfolk, a pro-Catholic Whig, whose deranged second wife Frances (née Scudamore, d. 24 Oct. 1820), owned the prestigious Holme Lacy estates, the county lord lieutenancy and the stewardship of Hereford had passed to the 2nd Baron Somers of Eastnor Castle. A Grenvillite who coveted an earldom, he had recently declared his support for Lord Liverpool’s administration and opposition to parliamentary reform but remained staunchly pro-Catholic. With his assistance, the Tory caucus gained control of the corporation of Hereford, and the party’s domination by the increasingly unpopular ‘Black and Tans’ (the anti-Catholic bishop of Hereford, George Isaac Huntington, and his clergy), who supported the militia colonel and squire of Garnons Sir John Geers Cotterell, was tempered through the establishment in 1818 of the Herefordshire Pitt Club, a constitutional club, embracing pro and anti-Catholic agriculturists, with Sir Hungerford Hoskyns of Harewood as its first president. In bitter and costly contests at the 1818 general election, the dowager duchess of Norfolk’s agents had colluded with Somers, whose son and heir John Somers Cocks took a seat at Hereford from the Whigs, who in turn failed to oust Cotterell in the county, so perpetuating ‘one and one’ representation and thwarting the aspirations of George Cornewall of Moccas Court to take his father’s former seat. The successful Whig Robert Price, the son of the landscape artist and scholar Uvedale Price of Foxley, had been brought in on Tory second votes and endorsed by the retiring Member Thomas Foley* of Newport House, Almeley, who in 1819 was returned for Droitwich.
We must I think be contented with one and one. The majority is on our side, but not much, and the activity rather on the part of our opponents; and there exists moreover a danger, lest Colonel Cornewall (who will soon probably be head of his family) attacking Price at a future general election, Sir John Cotterell should decline the expense of another contest - although with such expense certain to succeed.
Add. 38280, f. 12.
The Whigs, led by Foley, Price, Edward Bolton Clive* of Whitfield and John Lucy Scudamore of Kentchurch Court (the nephew of the Hereford Member), who was newly of age, dominated the county meeting which protested against the conduct of the Peterloo magistrates, 12 Nov. 1819; and the 1820 general election took place against a background of increasing discontent and agricultural distress.
answered him he certainly should have his votes, but second to Mr. Price, ‘who you know, Sir John, is the family Member’. Thus we Herefordshire gents are treated and our county turned into a close borough.
TNA C110/96 (ii), Cornewall to Jay, 9 Feb. 1820.
Cotterell’s supporters met him at the White Cross and dined at the Hotel. He was proposed by the chairman of the quarter sessions Colonel John Matthews† of Belmont, who had relinquished his candidature for Hereford in 1819, and seconded to some hissing by Somers’s son James Somers Cocks*, who stressed his long service, devotion to the constitution and readiness to vote against the taxes which the agriculturists opposed. Price was escorted to the hustings from Eign Gate and sponsored by Knight and the deputy steward of Hereford, the Whig banker Robert Phillips of Longworth. He gave a long account of his parliamentary conduct, reaffirmed his commitment to retrenchment, lower taxes, and ‘moderate’ reform and called for measures to combat distress and repeal of the repressive legislation enacted after Peterloo. His ‘friends’ paid 13s. a ticket to attend his election dinner chaired by Clive at the Greyhound.
The Queen Caroline case aroused popular interest, and party feeling ran high as a result of Somers’s vote for proceeding with her prosecution. Its abandonment in November 1820 was celebrated countywide with bell ringing, illuminations, feasts, bonfires and ritual burning in effigy of prosecution witnesses. Addresses of outright support for the queen were presented from Ledbury, Ross and the boroughs and her partisans dined regularly throughout 1821 at the Carolinean Club in Hereford.
The Commons received a distress petition for retrenchment, immediate reduction of the national debt interest and parliamentary reform, 15 Feb., and a moderate one from the hundred of Webtree, 18 Mar. 1822, and Price approved and presented the agriculturists’ memorials against the horse tax that month.
The Tories by Cobbett pursued helter-skelter,
Ran straight into a Whiggish petition for shelter,
Bespattered, bepelted, bedevilled en masse,
With a radical canister tied to their ...!
Its Commons presenter Price endorsed the petition, 21 Feb. Somers refused to sign it but presented it to the Lords, where he confirmed the distress and praised Lilly’s reply to Cobbett, 24 Feb.
In a flurry of political activity before the 1826 general election, when Hereford and Leominster were bitterly contested, the anti-Catholics strengthened their hold on the Pitt Club, and plans were laid and private bills passed for the Haw Bridge scheme, which the Whigs promoted, a new road to South Wales, the Leominster canal, and the Hereford-Grosmont railway.
The Pitt Club’s decision to expel members who ‘from private friendship’ had voted for Clive or withheld their support from the defeated candidate in Hereford, the anti-Catholic Tory industrialist Richard Blakemore of The Leys, 13 Oct. 1826, so angered Somers that he and Richard Jones Powell of Hinton and Thomas Powell of Hardwick resigned from and openly renounced it ‘not merely as a body opposed to that question [Catholic emancipation]’ but ‘as a local faction, the ‘cat’s paw’ of a few designing individuals, who ... have rendered what was originally a constitutional club, one of local party spirit’.
The meeting was attended by more freeholders than had been expected, owing to the assizes, and also it being market day at Hereford. It was generally expected that the farmers were against concessions to the Catholics, but it appeared otherwise, and, if not particularly friendly, at least they were not opposed, and certainly seemed inclined to the measure of emancipation. Whether they might have been indifferent to the subject or not, yesterday, so many county gentlemen whom they respected appeared friendly to the measure, they joined with them against the intolerants. The clergy, who generally see their interests pretty clearly, seem quite blind at present, and have done their cause much mischief. It is the interest of the establishment to conciliate the Catholics as support against the encroachments of the Dissenters.
Biddulph diary G2/IV/J/55, 28 Mar. 1829.
Protest notices and letters to the press followed, and the lesser clergy ‘bandied about’ a petition that ‘few read’ but many signed asking the king to dissolve Parliament and dismiss his ministers. The Ultras regrouped at a St. George’s Day dinner in Leominster, sponsored by the borough’s recorder, Thomas Harley Rodney.
Prompted by a request to the freeholders to reserve their votes for an undeclared candidate pledged to oppose ‘every measure calculated to militate against the general welfare by an increasing endeavour to effect a change in the present ruinous system of taxation, and by the adoption of such plans as shall tend to improve the condition of those who are now deeply suffering from the distress of the times’, Cotterell and Price embarked on an arduous personal canvass in July 1830. However, pressure to find third men to force contests at Leominster and at Hereford, where Blakemore, as sheriff, was disqualified from standing, proved greater. On 22 July Biddulph, who declined to second Price’s nomination, observed: ‘There is no probability of opposition or both would go out. They are not popular, or very useful in the House’.
Both Houses received contributions from Herefordshire congregations to the 1830-1 petitioning campaign against slavery.
It would be inconvenient to increase the number of Members now sent to the Imperial Parliament by the United Kingdom, and it would be unjust to diminish the number now returned by the county of Hereford. Eight are not too much to represent the county, city and boroughs, but they are unequally divided. Leominster and Weobley send two Members each. Why should not one Member from Leominster and Weobley be transferred to Ross and Ledbury, two populous and thriving towns carrying on a considerable and increasing trade?
NLW, Facs 746, Belmont Abbey mss 5.
‘Paul Pry’ in the Hereford Journal representing Lechmere Charlton, and ‘Philalethes’, a self-confessed admirer of Knight, who remained one of Lechmere Charlton’s severest critics, urged the Whig gentry to rally for reform and petitions were received by the Commons from Kington and from ‘the freeholders’ of Ross, who also appealed to have their franchise restored, 26 Feb.
At a public meeting in Hereford, 23 Apr., which Cotterell hurried from London to address, the Tories adopted a numerously signed and widely publicized declaration opposing reform and endorsing Eastnor and Cotterell, proposed by Hoskyns and Scudamore Stanhope and backed by John Holder and Arthur Matthews and Jones Powell.
Perhaps a candidate more generally respected by all parties and all ranks, of more estimable private character, or more correct conduct in public life could not have been selected than Mr. Hoskins, and he must have felt the flattering conviction of the estimation in which he is held by all men during his canvass.
Hereford Jnl. 4 May 1831.
The election, from which the Tories absented themselves, was a celebration of reform and the Whigs’ triumph. Knight and Clive proposed Price, who complimented the reformers on their successes in Leominster and the county and tried to rectify the damage Matthews had inflicted on his reputation as an independent Member and genuine reformer. Cornewall and the Rev. Thomas Powell Symonds of Pengethley, the nephew and heir of the former Member for Hereford, sponsored Hoskins and tried to elicit a public pledge from him to vote for civil and religious liberties, the reform bill with the ballot ‘if necessary’, ‘reform of every existing abuse in the institutions of our country’ and abolition of the placeman and pensions system. Hoskins confirmed his support for the bill, ‘the abolition of slavery and all sinecures and useless places and pensions’. Proceedings concluded with a dinner for the Members and 300 of their supporters in the shire hall.
The Tories turned out in force for a public dinner to Cotterell, 28 July 1831, chaired by Thomas Harley Rodney, supported by James Somers Cocks and Archdeacon Wetherell, who claimed that Cotterell had retained the clergy’s support ‘to the last’. Hoskyns, Arthur Matthews, the Pateshalls and Scudamore Stanhope all praised him, and Hoskyns proposed a toast to Edward Thomas Foley of Stoke Edith as his likely successor. Foley, however, would not be committed.
The reform bill’s passage in June was celebrated with public feasts and dinners in Kington, Ledbury, and Ross, which with Bromyard, Leominster and Hereford became the polling towns for the new three Member constituency. Under the Boundary Act Herefordshire gained Foothog and Welsh Bicknor from Monmouthshire, to which it lost Bwlch and part of Trellick; while Farloe chapelry was transferred to Shropshire South, Rochford to Worcestershire West and Litton and Cascob to Radnorshire.
Estimated voters: about 5000