Nottinghamshire

Nottinghamshire, a county ‘rich in produce and manufactures’, was the centre of the Dukeries, the ‘immense domains of the ducal houses’, and, according to the local reformer Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield, the representation was ‘entirely under the influence of the nobility’. Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iv. 315-17; Hatherton diary, 3 Nov. 1821; Pigot’s Commercial Dir. (1822-3), 323. Of these, the 12th duke of Norfolk, who had a country house at Worksop, was deemed by Oldfield to have such large estates as ‘must command a powerful interest’. Oldfield, iv. 318. However, the most active and self-assertive patron was the troubled 4th duke of Newcastle of Clumber Castle, the Tory lord lieutenant, who recorded evidence of his electoral concerns in his extensive diaries and had influence in the county’s boroughs, notably Newark, which he shared with another local magnate, the 6th Baron Middleton of Wollaton Hall, to whom he was related by marriage. J. Golby, ‘A Great Electioneer and his Motives’, HJ, viii (1965), 201-18; Unhappy Reactionary ed. R.A. Gaunt (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. xliii), pp. ix-xxx. Newcastle had achieved his ambition of gaining control of one of the county seats in 1814, when he brought in an anti-Catholic supporter of Lord Liverpool’s administration, Admiral Frank Frank, who later reverted to his former surname of Sotheron. When in 1816 Charles Herbert Pierrepont succeeded his father as 2nd Earl Manvers and came into possession of Thoresby Hall (as well as the former estates of the dukes of Kingston), he was replaced by the army officer and colonial governor Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, who had represented the county in two previous spells. Cavendish Bentinck, an indifferent parliamentarian, was the brother of the 4th duke of Portland of Welbeck Abbey, whose family traditionally held one seat in the Whig interest. Although several of the resident gentry, such as the former county Member Anthony Hardolph Eyre of Grove Park, also had significant territorial interests, they, on most occasions, ‘tacitly acquiesced in’ the nomination of Members, who were generally considered immoveable as ‘sitting tenants’. Oldfield, iv. 317-18; Peep at the Commons (1820), 12; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 312-13.

By the time of the general election of 1820, Nottinghamshire had not witnessed a contest for nearly a century. Portland, preoccupied with estate management and ever haunted by the past ‘agitation of county politics’, readily embraced the continuing compromise as an antidote to exertion and expense, but was embarrassed by his brother’s residence abroad and wondered whether he should be replaced by his heir, Lord Titchfield*. However, William Sherbrooke of Oxton argued that Cavendish Bentinck’s popularity was in his favour, while ‘a resignation at this moment, quite unexpected, would produce a great sensation and perhaps a contest’, so Portland eventually allowed him to be represented by another of their brothers, Lord William Frederick Cavendish Bentinck*. A.S. Turberville, Welbeck Abbey, ii. 338; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Portland mss PwH 75, 250, 1083; Harewood mss WYL 250/8/26, Canning to wife, 6, 20 Feb. 1820. John Savile Lumley, the nephew of the 6th earl of Scarbrough of Sandbeck Park, Yorkshire, and the estranged son of the proprietor of the Savile estates at Rufford, took the county by surprise in offering in opposition to Sotheron, who determined to resist. Lumley, of whom it was said that ‘he will not be easy to beat’, set aside £5,000 for a contest, but finally declined at the request of Middleton, his maternal uncle. Wentworth Woodhouse mun. F49/71; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Newcastle mss NeC 6275, 6277; Nottingham Jnl. 4, 11 Mar.; Nottingham Rev. 17 Mar. 1820; J.H. Moses, ‘Elections and Electioneering in Constituencies of Notts. 1702-1832’ (Nottingham Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1965), i. 106-7. No other challenger materialized and Cavendish Bentinck, in his absence, and Sotheron, at the apparent cost of £1,000, were returned unopposed. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 7; Nottingham Jnl. 18 Mar.; Nottingham Rev. 21 Mar. 1820; Glos. RO, Sotheron Estcourt mss D1571 F733. The former was present to bring up four petitions from owners and occupiers of land complaining of agricultural distress, 7 June. CJ, lxxv. 286; The Times, 8 June 1820. Henry Enfield, the town clerk of Nottingham, informed Lord Holland, 24 Nov. 1820, that a county meeting on the Queen Caroline affair ‘would be either high Tory or radical; the one quite as probable as the other’. Add. 51831. When it occurred at Mansfield in January 1821, it looked as if a loyal address to George IV would be approved, but, as Norfolk had hoped, a hostile amendment, moved by Henry Gally Knight* of Firbeck Hall, Yorkshire, was triumphantly carried, despite the vocal resistance of Portland, Newcastle and Manvers. Ibid. Norfolk to Holland, 23 Jan.; The Times, 29 Jan. 1821. An anti-Catholic petition from the county and town was presented to the Commons by Michael Nolan, 28 Feb. 1821, while one from the archdeacon and clergy against the Catholic peers bill was brought up in the Lords, 7 June 1822, probably by Newcastle, who occasionally helped to promote such hostile petitions. CJ, lxxvi. 122; LJ, lv. 225; The Times, 1 Mar. 1821, 8 June 1822; Unhappy Reactionary, 42. The petitions of the archdeacon and clergy against relief were presented to the Commons, 18 Apr., and the Lords, 13 May 1825. CJ, lxxx. 314; LJ, lvii. 794.

In December 1821, when Cavendish Bentinck was offered King’s Lynn as a consequence of his proprietary interest in the Norfolk marshlands, Portland refused to risk any exertion in Nottinghamshire on behalf of Titchfield, who was instead seated for Lynn. Portland mss PwH 270. William Plumer* of Gilston Park, Hertfordshire, wrote to Cavendish Bentinck:

I heartily wish an arrangement could have been made entirely to your satisfaction by the duke of Portland allowing his son to take your place in the county. Without this allowance on the part of his Grace, you could not, at any rate, give up the county and leave it open ... Your brother may be wise and discreet in his determination not to contest the county, at any rate. But ... I do not deem it equally wise to give out, as a resolution and a fixed rule of conduct, that the duke of Portland will not, in any case or under any circumstances, contest the county for a son, a brother or any man whom he may think a proper person. Letters at Welbeck Abbey, 116-17.

On 23 Oct. 1824 Newcastle told Sotheron that he was ‘perfectly right’ to rule out standing in any future contest, ‘for I consider a county contest the height of absurdity and folly’. He also approved Sotheron’s intention of withdrawing in the face of a rival nomination on the hustings, believing that he would ‘retire with honour should any opposition be made to his return’. Partly because Portland ‘did not like it’, in June 1825 Cavendish Bentinck decided to relinquish the county seat in favour of a more appropriate berth at King’s Lynn; his announcement of his future departure left Newcastle bemused as to who would offer in his place. Unhappy Reactionary, 44. On this being made public, Lumley, who was considered an advanced Whig, immediately entered the field, leading John Smith*, a former Nottingham Member, to seek the support of Henry Brougham*, 19 Sept. 1825, since he feared the

result if he were opposed by any respectable man. But the worst is [that] Lumley, with a thousand good qualities, has no knowledge of election matters, and I cannot discover that he has any able and active friends in the county. In the town, where there are many freeholders, he will be well received and I am taking pains for him. Ibid. 47; Nottingham Jnl. 25 June, 16 July 1825; Brougham mss.

Although it was considered that John Evelyn Denison of Ossington Hall and Gally Knight would have been respectable alternatives, and the candidacy of Lord Newark*, Manvers’s heir, was rumoured, none of the electoral patrons was evidently prepared to sponsor a challenger at the general election of 1826. Ossington mss, Denison diary, 21 Feb., 25 July; The Times, 5 June 1826. Newcastle, who privately described himself as ‘perplexed and harassed beyond measure about my election and other affairs’, took offence (as did Denison) at the liberal speeches of the proposers and seconders, noting that ‘the language of all these gentlemen was very exceptionable: reform in Parl[iamen]t, cheap bread for the operatives, no corn laws, no slavery, concessions to the Papists and such like subjects suited to the taste of a Nottingham mob’. Unhappy Reactionary, 50, 52; Nottingham Rev. 2, 16 June; Nottingham Jnl. 10, 17 June; Denison diary, 28 July 1826. Following the unopposed return of the politically opposed candidates, Newcastle congratulated Sotheron, 17 June 1826:

Was it not worthwhile to offer yourself again to receive such a tribute? What a contrast you must have formed to your worthy colleague! You, with your immense cavalcade of respectable freeholders. He, with none save a few radical rascals ... You making a manly, open and genuine speech, he close, deceitful and thankless. He cheating you and cheating his friends and leaving you to pay the piper - and, to wind up all, you publishing an address candid, grateful and gentlemanly; he, an address self-sufficient, ungenerous, insulting and vulgar. Here is a strong contrast and I don’t envy Mr. Lumley in his new post, which, rest assured, he holds for the first and last time ... We have a pretty mess brewing in the county, as well as in the boroughs, which it will require our vigilance and our address to counteract.

At an election dinner in Nottingham, Lord Rancliffe, the reinstated town Member, greeted Lumley’s triumph as the first step towards Nottinghamshire’s complete independence. Sotheron Estcourt mss F789; Nottingham Rev. 16, 23 June, 7 July 1826; [W. Carpenter], People’s Bk. (1831), 317.

Sotheron brought up the grand jury’s petition against alteration of the corn laws, 26 Feb. 1827, and several parochial ones to the same effect were presented to the Lords by Newcastle the following month. CJ, lxxxii. 230; The Times, 27 Feb. 1827; Unhappy Reactionary, 52. An analysis of the votes at the contest for a county coroner in mid-1828, when 1,171 freeholders were polled, emphasized the numerical preponderance of those resident around the county town in the south over those in the peerage domains in the north. Referring to the disputed question of turning East Retford into a county borough by extending it to the surrounding district (as eventually occurred two years later), this account noted that ‘the whole hundred of Bassetlaw cannot produce so many freeholders as a circle of four miles around Nottingham’, a fact which fostered the belief that a second independent candidate would sweep Sotheron aside. Nottingham Rev. 23 May 1828. He presented the anti-Catholic petition of the archdeacon and clergy, 6 May 1828, and others from Nottinghamshire early the following year. CJ, lxxxiii. 319. However, like Manvers, he opposed the idea of a county meeting to oppose emancipation, which was desired by Newcastle, an Ultra, who wrote in his diary, 21 Jan. 1829, that his was ‘now nearly the most disgraced county in England. We have a wretched gentry and I cannot get them to stir’. Sotheron Estcourt mss F792, Newcastle to Sotheron, 11 Dec., reply, 13 Dec. 1828; Where Truth Abides ed. J. Fletcher, 85. When an abortive requisition was got up, Sotheron was informed by his friend the Rev. John Thomas Becher, prebendary of Southwell, 14 Mar. 1829, that Newcastle was not behind it and that

the promoters apprehend a cry against them, if held at Nottingham; that they fear the consequences of the duke of Portland’s influence if convened at Mansfield; and that they wish to select Southwell, which is of all places the most improper, as we have neither room, market place nor area. Sotheron Estcourt mss F792.

Early the following year Sherbrooke rejected the idea of holding a county meeting on agricultural distress since ‘the opinions would be various and the debate, I fear, without beneficial result’. Ossington mss OsC 83. Newcastle, who put its failure down to fear of Portland’s opposition, regretted that none was held, as ‘such an occasion would have been a touchstone by which we should have ascertained the now concealed opinions of many’. However, he was pleased that ‘a petition to Parliament well and firmly worded praying for consideration of the wretched state of the landed interest is drawn up and sent round for signature at the different towns of the county’. Unhappy Reactionary, 62. This was presented to the Lords, at the request of an indisposed Newcastle, by Lord Stanhope, 22 Mar., and to the Commons by Sotheron, 23 Mar. 1830. LJ, lxii. 141; CJ, lxxxv. 219; Cent. Kent. Stud. Stanhope mss U1590 C190/2, Newcastle to Stanhope, 18 Mar. 1830.

Soon after the previous general election, Becher, who was apparently his election agent, had pressed Sotheron to consider retiring, and he did so again as the likelihood of a dissolution approached on the final illness of George IV in 1830. Sotheron had apparently agreed, but, not having issued an address to this effect before the emergence of a third candidate, evidently felt obliged to persist. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Becher to Sotheron, 6 May 1831. The interloper was Denison, a Huskissonite, who, at the suggestion of Edward Smith Godfrey, the clerk of the peace, proposed to offer himself under the not entirely wholehearted patronage of his father-in-law, Portland, who had served in Canning’s cabinet. Sherbrooke acknowledged his undoubted claims, but discouraged any canvass, since he would ‘not be Whig enough for the Nottingham people’, while, even if Lumley resigned, ‘some other person might be started on the Nottingham side’. Portland, who had reservations about a contest, but was sympathetic to the revival of the family interest, at last told Denison that ‘in the case of a vacancy I should have no difficulty in proclaiming that I gave you all the support in my power’. Having been advised by Portland not to employ Godfrey, ‘for fear the old cry of aristocratical nomination should be raised’, Denison made a bid to secure the services of William Edward Tallents, Newcastle’s Newark agent, but he declined as he was still retained by Sotheron. Denison diary, 26 June; Notts. Archives, Tallents mss, Denison to Tallents, 22 June, reply, 23 June, Sotheron to Tallents, 27 June, reply, 30 June 1830. Denison stated his aspirations to Newcastle, who was uncharacteristically undecided, 24 June, and talked about it to Manvers, who had a poor opinion of both sitting Members, but remarked that ‘possession was nine points in his opinion’. Unhappy Reactionary, 64; Denison diary, 26 June 1830. Rumours of a contest soon reached the local press, and Thomas Bailey of Basford, who stood unsuccessfully for Nottingham at the general election that summer, issued an unsuccessful appeal to Gally Knight to liberate the county. Nottingham Rev. 2, 9 July, 13 Aug. 1830. Enraged at Denison’s bid to presume upon the Portland interest (though perhaps Sotheron was at greater risk), Newcastle determined to preserve the peace irrespective of his distaste for Lumley. Condemning his conduct, Newcastle confided to his diary, 4 July, that he

is not by any means the man that I should think worthy to represent the county. If there was a vacancy Lord Newark ought to be the representative. It appears therefore that we shall have warm work in Notts. - a contest for the county, for Nottingham, for Newark and for Retford. Unhappy Reactionary, 65.

On the 6th he peremptorily warned Denison off, informing him that ‘your endeavour to seat yourself in Parliament for the county ... by ejecting one of the present Members will meet with my determined opposition’. Denison immediately declined, ostensibly to avoid disturbing the county, and Lumley thanked Newcastle for obtaining this amicable resolution, which again secured his and Sotheron’s unopposed return. Newcastle mss NeC 7651, 7652; Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Denison to Sotheron, 6 July, Newcastle to same, 9 July; Nottingham Jnl. 10, 24, 31 July, 14 Aug. 1830. According to Lord Melbourne, Denison’s withdrawal was prompted by the conflict of opinion among his supporters: ‘so much ill blood was likely to arise from his standing at present, that he had determined upon withdrawing now, but wished to have it understood that he should offer himself upon any future opportunity’. Notts. Archives DD 2B/8/10. In August 1830 Denison wrote to John Nicholas Fazakerley* that Newcastle’s high-handedness at Retford had

given great offence, and if I meet his son [Lord Lincoln†] as an opponent in the county, his grasping at the hundred [of Bassetlaw] and the county will be useful to me. I suppose I have a very good chance of succeeding without much trouble at the next vacancy ... but if the whole system is thrown open in counties, there may be many candidates, and a turn of affairs on which no one can calculate. Add. 61937, f. 114.

Citing in particular the changed opinions of his constituents over parliamentary reform, Becher again urged Sotheron to reconsider his position later that year. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Becher to Sotheron, 6 May 1831.

Local gatherings in support of reform paved the way for a strongly favourable county meeting at Mansfield, 17 Mar. 1831, when, notwithstanding Portland’s stance, many former Tories ‘joined with Whigs and reformers’ to back the Grey ministry’s reform bill. Robert Nassau Sutton of Langwith put up a token opposition, but Sotheron, conspicuous by his absence, was deserted by his erstwhile supporters Sir Robert Clifton of Clifton and William Fletcher Norton Norton of Elton, who both spoke for reform. Other prominent speakers were Sherbrooke, Colonels Thomas Wildman of Newstead Abbey and John Gilbert Cooper Gardiner of Southwell, Francis Hart of Nottingham and William Bennet Martin of Thurgarton Priory. Gally Knight conveyed his support by letter and the meeting concluded with speeches from Granville Harcourt Vernon*, Denison (who called on Sotheron to redeem his reform pledge), Rancliffe and Lumley. Nottingham Rev. 4, 11 Feb., 4, 18, 25 Mar. 1831. Newcastle believed that almost all the gentry were ‘enlisted by fears or otherwise in the engulfing cause of reform’ and that ‘I alone remain fixed in my determination and have to fight the cause almost single handed’. Unsurprisingly, he was angry to be told by Sotheron that he felt obliged to resign in consequence of the county meeting:

He said that he thought he should vote for the second reading of the bill and then accept the Chiltern Hundreds. I never heard of such folly. If he votes for the bill, he of course favours the reformers, and his reforming constituents cannot complain of him. Unhappy Reactionary, 77.

But at Westminster, Sotheron lost his nerve and spoke and divided against the bill, 22 Mar. Although Ichabod Wright of Mapperley congratulated him for making a stand in favour of a more moderate measure, it was claimed that his vote was given in opposition to the wishes of most of his constituents, who had already determined to oppose his re-election in order ‘not to have the county vote neutralized’. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Wright to Sotheron, 26 Mar., reply, 28 Mar.; Nottingham Rev. 1 Apr. 1831. Nottinghamshire’s reform petitions were presented to the Lords by Grey, 24 Mar., when Newcastle questioned how representative it was, and to the Commons by Lumley, 28 Mar. 1831. CJ, lxxxvi. 446; LJ, lxiii. 370; Unhappy Reactionary, 77-78.

Prior to the general election that spring, when Lumley stood again, it was reported that Martin had had the idea of inviting Norfolk’s only son Lord Surrey*, who declined, to secure the second seat. To the regret of Manvers, Middleton and others, Sotheron issued a parting address, 22 Apr. 1831, the necessity of his resignation being attributed by Becher, who avowed that he would nevertheless have stood by him in what would have been a ruinously expensive and bitter contest, to the hostility engendered towards him over his parliamentary conduct on reform. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Wilkins to Sotheron, 31 Mar., election address, 22 Apr., Lumley to same, 23 Apr., Manvers to same, 24 Apr., Middleton to same, 25 Apr., Becher to same, 25, 26 Apr., 6 May 1831. Newcastle failed to dissuade him from retiring and urgently sought a replacement to oppose Denison, who immediately offered for the vacancy; the general understanding that the latter was committed to making another attempt at Liverpool, although privately scouted by his friends, made the duke all the more anxious not to see the seat abandoned by default. Unhappy Reactionary, 78-79; St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 198, T. to J. Gladstone, 10 May 1831. However, responding to Newcastle’s appeal, Sir Robert Howe Bromley of Stoke Hall felt too old to stand, adding that if Sir Richard Sutton of Norwood Park, the son of a former Member, ‘could be induced to come forward by a very general influential requisition he would come in to a certainty and I believe the freeholders would all go with him’. Even more discouragingly, Middleton doubted whether either of Newcastle’s two possibilities (probably Bromley and the future Conservative Member Lancelot Rolleston of Watnall Hall, who had been defeated for Nottingham in 1820) would have sufficient support, and favoured Denison as the best means of preserving the county’s peace. Newcastle mss NeC 4532, 4533; Tallents mss, Newcastle to Tallents, 27 Apr. 1831. When Newcastle met Rolleston, 30 Apr. 1831, he recorded that he

saw not the slightest chance of success although really desirous of making the attempt if a reasonable prospect appeared ... He was assured and thought so himself that the feeling in favour of reform was so strong and general that the chance of gaining a majority of the freeholders in spite of the great interests combined and organized against us was utterly hopeless ... Deeply mortified and disappointed as I was, I could not but subscribe to his opinion for it was apparent that we were bound hand and foot and too late on the ground.

Cheered by (unfulfilled) hopes of bringing in an anti-reformer for Retford, he complained that ‘it is really an indignity to the county to suffer two men to be seated without resistance, who pledge themselves to revolutionary measures’. Therefore he, unsuccessfully, renewed his appeals to Bromley and Rolleston, and considered approaching John Emmerton Wescomb of Thrumpton and Robert Nassau Sutton, although in the case of the last, he soon thanked Tallents for having discouraged him from ‘exposing himself and us to ridicule’. Unhappy Reactionary, 79-81; Tallents mss, Newcastle to Tallents, 2, 4 May 1831.

Despondent, not least at the appearance of a handbill advocating his dismissal from the lord lieutenancy, Newcastle wrote to Tallents, 4 May 1831, that

I feel as if I were living with a halter round my neck. I see everything falling around me and I see to my sorrow and heart-breaking mortification that none will make attempts to save the county from that distinction which most assuredly awaits it. Where Truth Abides, 102, 107; Tallents mss.

That day, still searching for ‘a bold and clever man, with nerves of iron and a large stock of ready wit and full resource’, he received news of Denison’s surprise return for Liverpool, and, although doubting that he would be ‘blockhead enough’ to opt for that constituency, he again summoned Bromley to enter. Unhappy Reactionary, 81. Bromley, who reflected that it was better that Isaac Gascoyne* should ‘slip in by accident’ at Liverpool and that he himself was ‘as little akin to an Ultra Tory as to Brougham’, refused, and on the morning of the election Newcastle could only exclaim to Tallents that

if you can get anyone forward now, he shall have my earnest support still. It is mortifying beyond expression to see so fair an opportunity thrown away, because no one has ordinary spirits or a grain of patriotism (self-devotion) which can alone serve in such desperate times. Tallents mss, Bromley to Tallents [5 May], Newcastle to same, 5 May 1831.

As had been expected, no opposition was offered to Denison, who for instance had conducted a successful canvass in Southwell, and he and Lumley, whose supporters delayed proceedings on the hustings until assurances were given that Denison would persist for the county despite the Liverpool result, were returned unopposed. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Burrow to Sotheron, 25 Apr., Becher to same, 26 Apr., 1, 6 May 1831. Lumley, proposed by Wildman and Gardiner, judged the election to have determined ‘whether gentlemen should be returned on the nomination of themselves, or of some noble, whom they served as a hireling’, and Denison, nominated by Sir Richard Sutton and Gally Knight, declared himself a ‘staunch and determined reformer’. Nottingham Rev. 6, 13, 27 May; Nottingham Jnl. 7, 14 May; Lincoln and Newark Times, 11 May; The Times, 11 May 1831. Becher, who had heard that Sir Richard Sutton would have stood if Denison had not pre-empted him and that £10,000 had been put up in order to tempt an anti-reformer into the field, denied the rumour that Sotheron had given Denison advance notice of his retirement, and intervened at the election dinner to uphold his friend’s political reputation. In providing the popular Sotheron with a long self-justificatory account of these proceedings, Becher revealed a guarded admiration for Denison, who duly chose to sit for Nottinghamshire instead of Liverpool, as a highly respectable successor. Sotheron Estcourt mss F793, Becher to Sotheron, 1, 4-6, 9 May 1831. However, for Newcastle, abandoned by the Tory gentry and particularly resentful of Rolleston’s timidity, the return of ‘two revolutionists ... without the slightest opposition or even remark’, was a resounding defeat:

No county in England can be more stigmatised than this - there is not one man in it worthy of any distinction above the swinish multitude, except on the side opposed to me and even then, although they are better than those who call themselves my friends, yet they are but a sorry set and undistinguished for worth or talent. It is melancholy to think that the eight Members returned for this county all are reformers.

He contemplated forming a Nottinghamshire King and Constitution Society and in August he bolstered the resolve of Bromley, almost his sole ally, in his attempt to promote a county declaration against reform. When this was published in October 1831, he was the principal target of the reform riots in Nottingham; his house there was destroyed and Clumber had to be placed under military protection. Nottingham Jnl. 6 Aug., 1, 8, 15 Oct. 1831; Unhappy Reactionary, 82-86, 94.

Under the reform legislation, the county was separated into two constituencies, but it was not easy to arrange a fair division, whether in terms of population, territory or political influence. For example, early in 1832 Nottingham reformers welcomed the possibility of a Southern district, where ‘two popular candidates might be returned’, but warned against assisting the revival the Newcastle interest in the northern ‘Dukeries’. Notts. Archives CP5/4/861; Nottingham Rev. 27 Jan. 1832. In the end a North-Western (later ‘North’) division, with Mansfield as its polling town, was created out of the large hundred of Broxtowe, excluding the borough of Nottingham, together with Bassetlaw, which was effectively the constituency of East Retford. The South-Western (or ‘South’) division comprised the rest of the county, including Nottingham, although the temporary decision to have elections held at Southwell rather than the more obvious Newark briefly caused Denison acute political embarrassment. PP (1831-2), xxxix. 181-2; Tallents mss, Godfrey to Tallents, 11 June, Handley to same, 11 June, Denison to same, 13 June, 7 July 1832. The reform bill had little immediate effect upon the aristocratic domination of the representation, with a ‘family compact’ of Newcastle, Portland and Manvers co-operating to ensure the return of their relations. Thus, while Newark was elected for Retford, Lincoln and Denison came in unopposed for Nottinghamshire South, and Lord Lumley (as he was now styled) and the Conservative Thomas Houldsworth* of Sherwood Hall were elected for Nottinghamshire North after a contest against Gardiner. The Times, 18 Sept. 1832; Unhappy Reactionary, 94-98; Golby, 213-14.