Staffordshire

Staffordshire was celebrated both for the production of earthenware (known as Staffordshireware) at its Potteries in the north-west, and for the manufacture of iron and hardware in the densely populated ‘black country’ around Walsall and Wolverhampton in the south; but the ‘greater part of it’ was ‘a highly cultivated agricultural district, abounding in wood, water and game’.PP (1833), xxxvii. 604; White’s Staffs. Dir. (1834), 13, 14. Edward Littleton of Teddesley, Member since 1812, considered it ‘quite extraordinary that in the same county and that not a large one’ there should exist ‘such very different habits and tastes’. Hatherton diary, 12 Nov. 1820. The representation had for many years been divided between the Trentham interest, headed since 1803 by George Granville Leveson Gower†, 2nd marquess of Stafford, whose son Lord Gower had assumed the family seat in 1815, and the independent country gentlemen, by whose consent Littleton had succeeded to the seat of his great-uncle Sir Edward Littleton. There had been no contest since 1747, but the Stafford family, who ‘were probably the richest in England’, faced increasing opposition from the independent freeholders, who had established a hostile Staffordshire Freeholders’ Association in 1810, as a result of the extensive rationalization of their estates and controversial rent increases at a time of worsening agricultural distress. E. Richards, ‘Social and Electoral Influence of Trentham Interest’, Midland Hist. (1975), iii. 117-29; J.C. Wedgwood, Staffs. Parl. Hist. iii. 30.

At the 1820 general dissolution Gower offered again. Littleton, who was unexpectedly detained in Vienna by the illness of his wife, deputed his uncle John Walhouse to campaign on his behalf on account of his father’s ‘official situation’ as sheriff, and promised to continue his support for the ‘extensive manufacturing districts of our county’. An opposition was ‘generally expected’, and at a meeting of the Freeholders’ Association chaired by its ‘prime minister’ George Tollet and backed by the Shugborough interest of the 2nd Viscount Anson, 4 Mar., Sir John Fenton Boughey of Aqualate Hall, a local Whig coal owner who had avenged the loss of his Newcastle-under-Lyme seat to the Gowers in 1818 by undermining their price-fixing arrangements, agreed to come forward and ‘be supported free of expense’. Boughey let it be known that he was opposed to Catholic claims, but otherwise confined himself to attacking Stafford’s ‘system of private and unconstitutional nomination which has so long prevailed’. In response, Gower rejected ‘so extraordinary a charge’ and stood firm, seemingly ‘determined’ and ‘with £100,000 in his pocket’. (Only three weeks earlier, however, he had privately informed Littleton that ‘he was in doubt whether he should stand for the county again, for he was determined not to spend another autumn and winter in England’.) Staffs. Advertiser, 4, 11 Mar.; Hatherton mss D260/M/7/5/11, ff. 17, 40; Hatherton diary, 21 Mar. 1820; Richards, 131-7. The supporters of Littleton, whose return was considered ‘certain’, repeatedly denied reports that he was ‘connected with the other candidates’, leaving Gower and Boughey to canvass ‘for plumpers’ in a campaign which raged ‘with great fury’. Staffs. RO, Sutherland mss D593/S/16/12/16; Hatherton mss 5/11, ff. 30, 36, 43; Salop RO, Weld-Forester mss 1224, box 337, Forster to Emery, 7 Mar. 1820. The struggle, as a placard for Boughey commented, was not ‘between Whig and Tory’, since ‘the politics of the three candidates are nearly alike’: the ‘question at issue is, shall the proud aristocracy’, comprising a ‘great phalanx’ of ‘Lords Stafford, Anglesey, Dartmouth, Harrowby, Talbot, Macclesfield, Dudley, Granville and Paget’, be permitted to ‘force upon you a Member of Parliament, or will you choose one for yourselves?’ Littleton believed that the hostility to Gower was ‘not so much directed against him personally, as against the family’, who would ‘richly deserve being turned out of the county for their pride, inattention to the interests of the county, and shameful niggardliness’; he had ‘never heard of Lord Stafford doing a liberal act, though his income must be nearly £200,000 per annum’. ‘It is a hard circumstance’, he complained, ‘that I should be compelled to incur expense by their unpopularity’. Hatherton diary, 21 Mar. 1820; Hatherton mss 5/11, introductory note by Littleton.

At the nomination, when banners were paraded by ‘immense numbers’ of freeholders bearing the inscription ‘Gold cannot buy nor peers compel us’, 9 Mar. 1820, Gower again rejected charges of ‘undue influence’ and ‘private nomination’. After the sheriff had declared in favour of Littleton and Boughey, for whom there was a ‘perfect forest’ of hands, Gower demanded a poll, which was arranged for the following week. Three days before it started, however, he unexpectedly declined, citing the ‘feeling’ that many freeholders wished the representation to be ‘entrusted to other hands’, and his ‘desire that the peace of the county shall not be disturbed’. Initially suspicious, Boughey entreated his friends ‘not [to] relax their exertions until the return’, when to his evident incredulity, he and Littleton were elected unopposed. Staffs. Advertiser, 11, 18 Mar.; The Times, 13 Mar. 1820; Hatherton mss 5/11, ff. 43, 49. ‘To the astonishment of the county and the disappointment of all his friends ... Gower declined the contest’, observed the local diarist Dyott. Dyott’s Diary, i. 333. ‘It appears almost like a dream that the Whig interest of this county should have been able to overturn without even a struggle the overwhelming influence of the house of Trentham and its adherents’, Anson informed Lord Holland, 19 Mar., adding that he hoped Littleton would ‘take the hint, and become a better politician than heretofore’. The Staffordshire Advertiser, however, believed that the return of a Member by Anson instead of Stafford was ‘no ground of exultation’ to ‘the independent freeholders’, who were now faced with the ‘serious anomaly of a champion of Whig principles pledged to vote against the Catholics’. Add. 51830, Anson to Holland, 19 Mar.; Staffs. Advertiser, 25 Mar. 1820.

Gower’s controversial decision to withdraw had been taken on the advice of his father’s steward James Loch*, who took most of the blame in the ensuing public recriminations, a typical example of which ‘deplored’ the ‘ill-timed advice which induced your Lordship to desert’ a ‘contest in which it was morally certain you must have been eventually successful’. Privately, however, ‘Lord Anglesey, Lord Bagot and Lord Dudley, Lord Waterpark, Mr. Curzon, Colonel Sneyd of Keele, Lord Dartmouth and Mr. Chetwynd’ were reported to be ‘all furious against Lord Gower for having resigned the contest, and convinced he would have obtained an easy victory’. Staffs. Advertiser, 18 Mar., Hatherton diary, 15 May 1820. The ‘exchange ... of a nobleman for a radical is atrocious’, observed Lord Clare. Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss, Clare to Sneyd, 25 Mar. 1820. Even Stafford’s loyal brother Lord Granville, who had sat for the county, 1799-1815, could not ‘concur in the resolution to abandon an interest which has been in our family for above a century’, for although it would have cost £100,000, ‘the contest would have confirmed the seat to the family for another century’. Add. 48223, Granville to Morley, 16 Mar. 1820. Littleton was certain that Gower would have ‘carried his election easily had he stood’, Boughey having ‘confessed’ to him ‘afterwards that his friends had no money, and that they could not have commanded the means, then indispensable for a long poll, to bring each voter to the county town’. Hatherton mss 5/11, intro. As one of the disgruntled Trentham agents observed, Stafford’s nominees had ‘been returned without expense for the last 73 years’, and given ‘the honour and consequence which they had derived from this circumstance’, it was ‘not too much to expect one struggle to have been maintained before the representation was conceded’. Cited in Richards, 133.

Gower, however, was convinced that there was ‘a radical dislike among the freeholders to being represented by a nobleman’ and appeared to be ‘in the highest spirits at his escape from the thraldom of county representation’, which he had feared would ‘be a constant subject of contest, and cause of trouble and anxiety’ in the future. Hatherton diary, 31 Mar., 28 Apr.; Bradford mss, Gower to Bradford, 12 Mar. 1820. His committee had been advised that ‘Boughey’s agents having early instructions, got the lead in canvassing’, and the Staffordshire Advertiser reported that the ‘public voice throughout the county was confessedly strongly in favour of new candidate’. Sutherland mss D593/S/16/12/16; Staffs. Advertiser, 18 Mar. 1820. It was ‘on account of the part his family has taken ... in recent arbitrary measures’, commented the Morning Chronicle, that ‘the freeholders ... to a man rejected a most unexceptionable candidate, backed by the largest fortune in the country’. Hatherton diary, 31 Mar. [1820]. Writing in similar terms, Charles Long* noted that Gower

had neglected the county while his opponents had been quietly making great progress in their canvass, so that when his agents went round they found they had been anticipated, and the result was not favourable. Added to this, radicalism had spread in the Potteries and the expense of the contest was estimated at £120,000. But we are arrived at times when if the rich will not fight their battles we shall be overwhelmed by the rabble and their wild doctrines. Lonsdale mss, Long to Lonsdale, 23 Mar. 1820.

Loch conceded that Gower might have come in ‘at an expense of £110,000 or £120,000’, but believed they would only ‘have had a similar but a more expensive contest next time’. The ‘truth is’, he explained to his uncle, ‘the yeomanry and manufacturing districts have cast off their dependence on higher ranks’ and ‘the revolution is begun’. ‘The upper classes have lost the influence over the middle and lower classes’, he told another correspondent: ‘It is the greatest blow the aristocracy has received these fifty years’. Cited in Richards, 135. Looking ahead, however, Littleton could not ‘imagine the proud peers of Staffordshire’ would ‘allow the thing to rest’ and predicted that Gower’s popular younger brother Lord Francis Leveson Gower*, who would ‘be of age on next new years day’, would be soon ‘called upon’. Hatherton diary, 21 Mar., 15 May 1820. Gower, according to Littleton, had ‘spent about £24,000 in his canvass’ and Boughey ‘between £3 and £4,000’, which ‘his supporters had subscribed’. Littleton, whose committee had resolved ‘not to employ professional men’, paid ‘not much more than £1,000’, of which nearly half was spent on delivering addresses ‘to every freeholder’ through ‘the medium of the high constables’, £209 13s. on printing and newspaper advertising, £84 19s. 8d. on election officials and ringers and £160 on ‘four copies of the land tax assessment’ for canvassing, which Littleton considered ‘enormously high’. He later ‘abandoned’ his election dinner, ‘at which Sir Oswald Mosley† [of Rolleston] was to have presided’, thinking ‘it much better to let party spirit subside’. Hatherton mss 5/11 intro.; Hatherton diary, 21 Mar., 19, 25 Aug., 18 Oct. 1820.

In the House, the Liverpool ministry was generally supported by Littleton and opposed by Boughey. Petitions from the Potteries for inquiry into the trade were presented to the Commons, 14 June (and referred to the committee on distress, 19 June 1820), and again, 26 Jan., 20 Feb. 1821. CJ, lxxv. 310, 324; lxxvi. 13, 91. Boughey and Littleton took opposite sides over the Queen Caroline affair, although the latter initially ignored the government’s ‘expresses’ summoning his support, but in December 1820 both joined ‘all the great proprietors’ in resisting an attempt by Thomas Lister to get up a radical requisition ‘advising the crown to dismiss the administration’, which was supported by some of the ‘yeomanry and poorer classes, who are much distressed’. Add. 38742, f. 171; Staffs. RO, Dyott mss D661/10/1/6; Hatherton diary, 11-15 Dec. 1820. Public meetings of ‘loyalty’ to the throne were held at Leek, 9 Dec., and Hanley in the Potteries, 12 Dec. 1820, when there was a ‘most stormy meeting’ at which ‘the radicals assembled in thousands and drove a few loyal gentlemen who had assembled to address the king from the room’. Staffs. Advertiser, 23 Dec.; Hatherton diary, 15 Dec. 1820. Littleton maintained his support for Catholic relief, to which his colleague was opposed, and against which a petition reached the Lords from the Potteries, 9 Apr. 1821. LJ, liv. 180.

The sudden death of Boughey in June 1823 created a vacancy, for which Sir John Wrottesley of Wrottesley Hall, who had stood briefly in 1812 with Anson’s backing, immediately came forward with the support of the Trentham and Shugborough interests acting together in ‘an odd combination’. He was eulogized by local Whigs as ‘the enemy of extravagance and corruption, and the friend of reform’, but the Tories were ‘discontent’, Dyott being unable to ‘recollect an event that appeared to give such general disapprobation as the circumstance of Wrottesley’s offering’. On 2 July some of Stafford’s ‘loyal’ supporters met at the Swan Hotel in Wolverhampton, ‘to wait upon and solicit Lord Francis Leveson Gower’, to whom it was ‘understood that Wrottesley would have conceded’, but he promptly declined, citing ‘reasons of a domestic nature’, leaving the Staffordshire Advertiser ‘convinced that the marquess of Stafford has no desire to obtrude any part of his family on the county’. A number of other candidates were rumoured, including George Chetwynd of Brocton Hall, who was ‘very generally expected’ to vacate his troublesome seat at Stafford, Anglesey’s son Lord Uxbridge*, Lord Harrowby’s son Lord Sandon*, Sir John Chetwode of Oakely, former Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, Ralph Sneyd of Keele or his son, George Levett of Betley and Theophilus Levett of Wichnor Park, ‘recorder of Lichfield’; but these reports also came to nothing. Ralph Sneyd, who had been solicited by Lord Dudley to stand ‘as a friend to government’ with the support of Anglesey, later claimed that he had the ‘predominant interests of the pottery district’ behind him and that ‘success’ was ‘within my reach’, but ‘circumstances over which I had no control obliged me then to leave [it] "unseized"’. Dudley tried to convince Sneyd’s father Walter that he ‘need not fear a contest with ... Wrottesley, a man of much less considerable estate’, but his last minute attempts to secure ‘a candidate of sound principles’ proved abortive. At the nomination, 14 July 1823, Wrottesley, who refused to give any ‘pledges’, was proposed by John Hodgetts Foley, Member for Droitwich, and seconded by George Anson, Member for Great Yarmouth. Nine days later he was returned unopposed. Staffs. Advertiser, 28 June, 5, 12, 19, 26 July; Lichfield Mercury, 11 July 1823; Dyott’s Diary, i. 350; Sneyd mss, Dudley to Sneyd, 17 July [1823], Sneyd to Dudley, 15 Feb. 1832. In the House, Wrottesley adopted the same opposition line as Boughey, whom he had backed in 1820, but unlike him joined Littleton in support of Catholic claims, to which it was generally believed that ‘eight-tenths of the freeholders were averse’. False rumours of an impending dissolution in 1825 prompted both Members to fear anti-Catholic reprisals; but while Sir Robert Peel† of Tamworth, father of the home secretary, did ‘not approve of Littleton’s Catholic politics’, he agreed to second his nomination as ‘an excellent commercial Member’. Lord Francis Leveson Gower concluded that Littleton would ‘get over it, but any Protestant would turn out the other vagabond’ and thanked ‘heaven’ that he was ‘out of that mess’. Staffs. Advertiser, 26 July 1823, 17 June 1826; Add. 40381, f. 342; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 17, Gower to Denison, 19 Aug. 1825.

At the 1826 general election both Members offered again, stressing their support for the interests of the ‘manufacturing districts’. An anonymous handbill denouncing them as ‘decided supporters of the Catholics’ and urging the freeholders to find ‘a friend to the king and the heir presumptive’ was attributed by Littleton to his former seconder, the Rev. Henry Broughton, but Littleton doubted that ‘a man can be found’, as ‘the no popery party must find the "arma virumque" before they can take the field’. Wolverhampton Chron. 14 June, 1826; Hatherton mss 27/3, f. 14A. Moreover, as he informed his agent William Leigh:

The mass of the people are seldom unjust, and I cannot believe that after 14 years’ zealous devotion to the county representation and parliamentary business, during which period my vote on the Catholic question has always been the same, and during which I have been four times elected, they would now be influenced to turn round upon me, and tell me I am unworthy of their confidence. Seriously speaking, were I to discover anything like a general disposition to act thus dishonourably towards me, I do not think I should be induced to make much effort to retain the distinction of representing the county ... Therefore don’t be surprised if you hear me take a very high tone with the county about its representation. Hatherton mss 27/52, ff. 36, 37.

Littleton suspected that Wrottesley might ‘have considerable difficulty in getting a good proposer’, there being ‘but few Whig landowners in the county’, most of whom were his own ‘personal friends and well-wishers’ and ‘not so much disposed to support him’, but he warned Wrottesley against ‘canvassing publicly’, as ‘it never has been the custom of the county’ when ‘there has been no opposition’ and ‘would perhaps engender a contest, by exciting the general expectation of one’. Ibid. 27/52, ff. 36-43. Pressed on his support for Catholic claims at a crowded nomination, 12 June 1826, Littleton conceded that ‘on this one question 9/10ths of the inhabitants might disagree with him’, but pointed to his ‘undeviating course of conduct’ on this subject ‘for fifteen sessions’. ‘Not even a whisper of opposition’ was heard and at their unopposed return, 16 June 1826, Wrottesley ordered ‘six barrels of ale to be distributed among the population of Wolverhampton’. Staffs. Advertiser, 10, 17, 24 June; Wolverhampton Chron., 14 June 1826.

Following the formation of the Canning ministry in April 1827 Littleton, one of ‘Canning’s toads’, opposed an attempt by Charles Landor to get up a county meeting to address Peel on his retirement as home secretary, believing it would ‘be an indirect lift to the party opposed to the Catholic question’. Speculation throughout that year that he was ‘about to be made a peer’ and that Sneyd would come forward to ‘replace him’ proved groundless. Hatherton mss 27/52, ff. 58-63; Sneyd mss, Percy to Sneyd, 6 Mar. 1827, Clare to same, 14 Mar. 1828; Duke Univ. Lib. Fazakerley mss, Ord to Fazakerley, 17 Apr. 1827. A requisition to convene a county meeting for the establishment of a Brunswick Club was resisted by the lord lieutenant Lord Talbot in November the following year. Add. 40308, f. 86. Both Members supported repeal of the Test Acts and the Wellington ministry’s concession of Catholic emancipation, against which petitions from the Potteries reached the Commons, 5 Mar. 1827, and the Lords, 24 Feb. 1829. CJ, lxxxii. 272; LJ, lxi. 73. A petition from the Staffordshire mining works against the East India Company’s monopoly which had been ‘zealously’ backed by Littleton reached the Lords, 15 Mar. 1830. Hatherton mss 27/52, ff. 124, 125; LJ, lxii. 115. One from the Potteries against slavery was presented to the Commons, 21 May 1830. CJ, lxxxv. 455.

At the 1830 general election both Members stood again, citing their support for reduced taxation. (Littleton, who anticipated ‘no stir’, all his ‘correspondents in every part of the county’ having given him ‘assurances of tranquillity’, promised to ‘join any party, in whatever quarter of the House it might sit, for the purpose of obtaining some remission of the public burdens’.) A report in the Birmingham Gazette that ‘a person of the highest respectability and talent’ would start came to nothing and the Members were again returned unopposed. Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 22-24; Staffs. Advertiser, 17, 24, 31 July, 7, 14 Aug., Staffs. Mercury, 14 Aug. 1830. Littleton’s wife commented that her husband ‘had luckily very little trouble’ except ‘to feast 2,000 people at breakfast on the day of nomination and to make a few speeches. He is such a favourite with his constituents that there is no fear of his being turned out, like so many county Members have been this time’. Hatherton mss, Hyacinthe Littleton to G. Wellesley, 9 Sept. 1830. Littleton congratulated Leigh on his ‘success in preventing a political union being formed at Bilston’, 11 Nov. 1830, but condemned the Wellington ministry for ‘quarrelling with the unionists’ and the duke’s ‘silly’ rejection of ‘temperate’ reform, following which Stafford, articulating a general mood throughout the county, instructed Littleton to inform Wellington that ‘unless parliamentary reform were conceded, he must oppose the government’. Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 18-20, 53; 27/6, f. 80. Both Members rallied behind the incoming Grey ministry and its reform bill, in favour of which multiple petitions were presented from the Potteries to the Lords, 25 Feb., and by Littleton, 28 Feb., and Wrottesley, 19, 29 Mar. 1831. LJ, lxiii. 252; CJ, lxxxvi. 324, 406, 456. Littleton, who believed that ‘the country must be roused from one end to the other if the bill be rejected’, instructed Leigh to ‘go to Stafford on the first day of the assizes’ and get ‘going’ a county meeting in favour of reform, which was held with many ‘great proprietors’ in attendance, 21 Mar. Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 52-5; Staffs. Advertiser, 26 Mar. 1831. A favourable petition from the ironworks proprietors reached the Lords, 23 Mar., and another against slavery, 15 Apr. 1831. LJ, lxiii. 364, 439.

At the 1831 general election both Members sought re-election as supporters of reform, in favour of which Littleton perceived there to be an ‘extraordinary degree of unanimity’ among his constituents. Reports that Peel ‘would offer himself in opposition to one of the late Members’ proved ‘altogether without foundation’, and a public pledge by the Rev. Broughton ‘to do everything in his power to raise a candidate in opposition to them’ was conspicuously unsuccessful. Littleton instructed Leigh to go ‘elsewhere in promoting the cause of reform’, as ‘you are too good a man to employ in a pageant (for such I hope the Staffordshire election will be)’, and, alluding to the reform bill’s proposed division of counties, confidently predicted that it would be ‘the last time he should appear’ before the electors ‘as the representative of the whole county’. He and Wrottesley were returned unopposed. Staffs. Advertiser, 30 Apr., 7 May 1831; Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 98, 99. The following month a county meeting was held to express ‘dissent’ from the reform resolutions passed in March, but Littleton later claimed that it was ‘notorious that great influence was used by Lord Talbot, and a few landlords to make their tenants sign the anti-reform declaration’, whose signatories included Peel. Staffs. Advertiser, 11 June; The Times, 17 June; Hatherton diary, 13 Oct. 1831. Both Members supported the bill’s details, although Wrottesley voted for Lord Chandos’s clause to enfranchise £50 tenants-at-will and backed Littleton in his ‘embarrassing’ conflict with ministers to obtain two Members for Stoke, for which petitions reached the Commons, 12 July, and the Lords, 6 Oct. 1831. Hatherton diary, 4 Aug. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 644; LJ, lxiii. 1067. Following the bill’s rejection there, Littleton received ‘many letters calling for a county meeting to address the king’ in its support, for which he ‘signed a requisition’ and Anglesey ‘promised every assistance’. ‘The old county meetings are now to be repeated’, complained Ralph Sneyd on hearing of it, adding, ‘the stupidity of doing exactly the same thing over again would only be pitiable, but for the hopes of outrage and purpose of intimidation’. On 25 Oct. 1831 ‘about 7,000 persons of all ranks’ assembled on the ‘town field’ outside Stafford to hear reform speeches by Mosley and Edward Buller of Dilhorne, both future Liberal Members, Lords Lichfield and Shrewsbury, Captain William Chetwynd† of Brocton Hall and Wrottesley and Littleton, who boasted that there was ‘no rabble’ and that ‘an excellent feeling towards peerage, as an institution of the country, pervaded the proceedings’. Hatherton diary, 11, 13, 25 Oct.; Add. 69364, Sneyd to Fortescue, 22 Oct. 1831. At the beginning of December 1831 Littleton, who had been pushing for ‘the [political] unionists to knock under’, happily informed the home secretary Lord Melbourne that the ‘Potteries had abandoned their political union, in deference to the government’. Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 137; diary, 1 Dec. 1831. Petitions for the supplies to be withheld until the bill had passed were presented from the Wolverhampton Political Union by Wrottesley, 22 May, from various parts of the county by Littleton, 23, 24 May, and from the Potteries, 4 June 1832. CJ, lxxxvii. 326, 332, 337, 371.

By the Reform Act, Walsall secured one Member and Wolverhampton and Stoke two, for which Wrottesley and Littleton, who served as one of the boundary commissioners, had both pressed hard. Littleton, whose campaign on Stoke’s behalf was criticized in the local press, complained that ‘the Potteries have not behaved well to me, they owe to me entirely, to my early and continued insistence with the government their construction as a borough, and they now owe me another Member’. Hatherton mss 27/7, ff. 38-51; diary, 7-8 Dec. 1831. He and Wrottesley staunchly defended the proposed boundaries, which gave the new boroughs populations of 15,066, 67,514 and 52,946 respectively, and registered electorates of 597, 1,700 and 1,349 £10 householders. The county, which had the parishes of Broom and Clint transferred to Worcestershire, was divided ‘easily and advantageously’ to give an electorate of 8,756 and a population of 118,931 in the Northern division, and 3,107 electors and a population of 129,745 in the Southern, without which Littleton had predicted that the ‘south western district of Staffordshire would sway the elections of the whole’. PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 310-5; xl, 1, 2, 9, 18, 20; Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 141-6; diary, 25 July 1831. Citing the ‘abundance of the franchise’ in that portion of the county, Littleton persuaded his fellow commissioners to take Walsall instead of Lichfield as the ‘nomination town for South Staffordshire’, but ‘so many objections were made to having the county nomination held within that vortex of population’, which it was feared ‘would always be heated with the contests raging in Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Dudley’, that ‘the government were induced to revert to the original place’, for which a motion was successfully moved by Peel at Littleton’s request, 22 June 1832. Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 165-7; diary, 14 June 1832.

At the 1832 general election the sitting Members offered as Liberals for the Southern division, where Littleton believed that ‘any row with the Tories’ was ‘out of the question’ and General Dyott, though ‘always open mouthed and loud’, would ‘not willingly do me harm’. He and Wrottesley were returned unopposed. Hatherton mss 27/53, ff. 175-7; Staffs. Advertiser, 22 Dec. 1832. In the Northern division Ralph Sneyd promised to assist Dudley in giving the ‘county a fair chance of redeeming itself from the radical thraldom’ to which it had been reduced by ‘the panic and tergiversation of a portion of its aristocracy’, but he declined to offer himself ‘as the champion of the Tory party’, observing:

In 1823 one of the two Members, with the backing proffered to me, might have considered himself seated for life if he fulfilled the condition of his election diligently and conscientiously. In 1832, one of the two candidates for the department of the Upper Trent ... even in the doubtful event of his success could only retain his seat by perpetual contests; and he would assuredly be dislodged by the first popular question upon which he happened to take the unpopular side. Sneyd mss, Sneyd to Dudley, 15 Feb. 1832. P.J.S.

A Conservative candidate was forthcoming in Jesse David Watts Russell* of Ilam Hall, who was defeated with ease by the local reformers Mosley and Buller. Both divisions re-elected their Liberal Members without opposition in 1835 and returned one Conservative in 1837; Russell was elected with another Conservative for the Northern division in 1841, but in the South the representation remained shared. Members of the Trentham and Shugborough dynasties continued to be returned intermittently throughout the century.