Costly litigation after the general election of 1790 had ensured that the representation of the Norfolk assize town of Thetford, straddling the Suffolk border, was controlled by the two largest local landowners, the 4th duke of Grafton, who was also the recorder, and the Catholic 11th Baron Petre. By arrangement with the mayor, ten aldermen and 20 common councilmen of the corporation, dominated by the Best, Bidwell, Burrell and Faux families prominent in the town’s brewing, coal, iron, paper and wool trades, they nominated a Member each. Freeman admissions were deliberately confined to the corporation and Members; the chartered provision for the annual election of the mayor (the returning officer) by a show of hands of all adult males was overlooked; and appointments were settled by the aldermen and patrons among themselves.
Since 1818 the borough had been represented by two Whigs, Grafton’s second son, Lord Charles Fitzroy, a soldier obliged to spend much time abroad on account of gambling debts, and Nicholas Ridley Colborne of nearby West Hargham. Both were re-elected at the general election of 1820. No adjustment was made after Petre sold out to the financier Alexander Baring* in 1822, but at the general election of 1826 Baring’s heir William Bingham Baring, then of nearby Buckenham House, replaced Ridley Colborne. He, however, continued to represent Thetford interests following his return for Horsham.
Thetford politics were dominated in this period by the campaign to prevent the transfer of its Lent assizes and attendant business to Norwich, which the corporation, patrons and Members argued was a matter for the judges, not Parliament, to decide. Annual petitions and memorials for change from Norwich and the county magistrates were all countered, and Commons motions for inquiry withdrawn, 14 June 1824, and defeated by 72-21, 24 Feb. 1825.
The state of the corporation-controlled Little Ouse navigation linking the town to Wisbech and King’s Lynn this was another locally important issue. The corporation and merchants joined the Bedford Level commissioners in petitioning successfully against the 1825 Eau Brink bill promoted by King’s Lynn, and in 1827 spent £4,200 on its own improvements. Like King’s Lynn, they petitioned and employed counsel against the Eau Brink commissioners’ 1831 bill, which became a casualty of the dissolution, and a compromise bill received royal assent, 6 Sept. 1831.
The annual wool fair dinners in July, chaired by the Norfolk Member Coke, provided an occasional platform for merchants excluded from the corporation, like the radical founder of the fertilizer firm, James Fison, a Wesleyan Methodist whose principal trade was now in coal, corn, malt and wool.
The decision of Alexander Baring, who as Member for Callington had opposed the bill, to unseat his pro-reform sons and come in for Thetford at the general election in May 1831 created a furore. After Baring and Fitzroy were nominated, Fison, backed by a crowd of 2,000, tried to exercise his right as a scot and lot payer by proposing in absentia the reformer George Keppel, Coke’s brother-in-law and son of the 4th earl of Albemarle. Ignoring the borough’s likely loss of a Member, he criticized Baring for removing Ridley Colborne, failing to support reform and more especially for tolerating slavery. Henry Bailey seconded, three votes were tendered and, in accordance with the Commons ruling of 1685, the mayor disallowed Keppel’s candidature and entered it in the assembly book as a minute before declaring Fitzroy and Baring elected.
Thetford’s loss of a Member under the reintroduced bill was confirmed without a division, 30 July, and the inhabitants petitioned the Lords in its favour, 4 Oct. 1831. The patrons, however, lobbied successfully for its removal from schedule B, and it was excluded in the revised bill despite its low population (under 3,500) and assessed taxes (£886 17s. in 1830).
in the corporation
Qualified voters: 31
Population: 2922 (1821); 3462 (1831)