Ipswich

Ipswich was a garrison town and port situated on the Rivers Gipping and Orwell, 12 miles from the North Sea. William Cobbett† described it in 1830 as a ‘fine populous and beautiful place’. Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, ii. 619; W. White, Suff. Dir. (1844), 89. Its shipbuilding industry was then in decline, and legislation for new docks was not enacted until 1837. Its growth in this period is attributable to the success of Dissenter and Huguenot families such as the Alexanders, Crickitts, Cobbolds and Ransomes in establishing financial and manufacturing businesses to serve its rich agricultural hinterland, and to the water supply and gas works (1821) which facilitated civic improvements and the construction of ‘handsome houses’ and commercial premises. L.J. Redstone, Ipswich Through the Ages, 41-5; S.J. Plunkett, ‘Municipal Reform and Civil Progress in 19th Cent. Ipswich’, in Ipswich From the First to the Third Millenium (Ipswich Society, 2001), 35-66. Although denied assize town status (until 1839), Ipswich was the venue for county elections, and local landowners, among them Francis Seymour Conway†, 2nd marquess of Hertford, whose seat was at Sudbourne, and the former Members Sir Andrew Snape Hammond (d. 1828) of Whepstead and Sir William Middleton (d. 1829) of Shrubland Park, were proud of their ability to dictate a few votes. However, the influence exerted by government through the barracks and freemen employed at Ipswich and other dockyards was much greater, and ‘money [was] the best friend’ at elections. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 371-4; Add. 60289, f. 68; Suff. RO (Ipswich), Broke of Nacton mss HA93/7/38; Redstone, 100-103. Politically these had been dominated since the early eighteenth century by entrenched family allegiance to the borough’s Blues and Yellows, whose political organization included newspapers, ‘managers, whips, colours, associated clubs and propagandists’. S.M. Sommers, Parl. Politics of a County and its town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in 18th Cent. 174. The Yellows, though loosely identified with the Suffolk Whigs (many wore orange favours), considered themselves an ‘independent’ party of parliamentary and borough reform, espoused liberal causes and enjoyed the support of Dissenters. The Blues, like the county’s Tories, were regarded as the ministerialist party of church and state, but the anti-Catholicism of their hierarchy was more pronounced, as was their approval of Canning and Huskisson’s ‘liberal’ trade policies, which most Yellows also endorsed. K.J. Atton, ‘Municipal and Parl. Politics in Ipswich, 1818-1847’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1980), 10, 176-82. Splitting votes between rival parties was unusual at borough and almost unknown at parliamentary elections, plumping rare and party endorsement of candidates essential. In practice this required recommendation by both corporators and wealthy, often unfranchised, individuals, such as (in 1820) the Blue tanner John Bond and the Quaker Henry Alexander, whose bank handled Yellow party funds. F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties, 356; Atton, 26, 361.

The high steward and recorder, both elected for life, played little part in the day-to-day government of the borough’s 14 parishes, which by charter was entrusted to a deliberative assembly, as the corporation was called, of two bailiffs, 12 portmen and 24 common councillors. PP (1835), xxvi. 215-17. The municipal franchise was vested in the corporation and freemen at large not in receipt of alms, differing from the parliamentary one only by the inclusion of customs and other office-holders (43 in September 1825). Atton, 289; Ipswich Pollbook (1825). The bailiffs were required to be portmen or common councillors and were elected annually in early September with the town clerk and installed before a partisan dinner at Michaelmas. They acted as returning officers and were joint trustees of charities yielding about £2,000 a year, used and abused for financing loans, pensions, and employment schemes to assist proven partisans. In 1830 the ‘corporation’ took out a £10,000 loan and farmed out its lucrative water rentals to cover its debts. Ipswich Borough Archives, 1255-1835 ed. D. Allen (Suff. Recs. Soc. xxxiii), pp. xlii-xliii; PP (1835), xxvi. 222-4, 231. The common councillors were self-electing, remained at full strength and were solidly Blue; but from 1825 their influence was threatened, eroded and usurped by their partisans of the ‘extra-constitutional’ Wellington Club. Atton, 36, 320; PP (1835), xxvi. 260-1; Ipswich Borough Archives, p. xliii. The portmen, who supplied the four assistant magistrates, were also self-electing, always Yellows and usually served for life. There were five vacancies in 1820, when their party had long been out of office. By 1824, despite election successes, the number of portmen had dwindled to five (too few to supply two bailiffs and a town clerk in addition to four magistrates), partly through a shortage of suitable freeman recruits. The creation of honorary freemen to supply the deficit became a key issue in Ipswich local politics in the 1820s, much as it had been in 1773, when king’s bench declared the established practice of enfranchising party supporters as honorary freemen on the eve of a poll illegal. PP (1835), xxvi. 218-19, 231; Atton, 13-18, 33; Ipswich Borough Archives, pp. xxxviii-xliv. HP Commons, 1754-90, i. 380, 381 recorded but could not explain the reduced electorate in 1774. Only 33 of the 1,185 freeman admissions between 1800 and 1831 were by presentment, but the practice persisted of enrolling freemen (by birth and servitude) on the eve of contested borough or parliamentary elections at a cost of two guineas each to Members or party sponsors. PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 536; PP (1835), xxvi. 225, 226. As birth, residence and service in Ipswich were unnecessary, it remained possible to swamp elections with out-voters, or ‘out-sitters’ as they were known, and the proportion of non-residents polled increased from approximately 50 per cent in 1784 to 64 per cent in 1826, falling slightly to 61 per cent in 1831. A.R. Childs, ‘Politics and Elections in Suff. Boroughs’ (Reading Univ. M. Phil. thesis, 1974), 75; Ipswich Borough Archives, p. xl. In 1827 only 387 of Ipswich’s 1,440 householders were freemen. J. Glyde jun. Moral, Social and Religious Condition of Ipswich, 18. The municipal corporations commission concluded in 1834 that Ipswich’s ‘constitution ... still presents the appearance of a popular government, but is in reality no such thing’; and their report damned it as an ‘ill-regulated republic’ and ‘oligarchy ... fast approaching a legal dissolution’ in which ‘the most considerable portion of the inhabitants, whether considered with reference to numbers, property or taxation’ were unfranchised, and ‘the most respectable, intelligent and independent classes of the community’ were disqualified from holding municipal office. PP (1835), xvi. 262.

During the intense period of renewed political activity in the 1820s, every municipal appointment was a party matter, with success at bailiwick elections perceived as a key to victory at parliamentary ones, although the returns so secured were twice altered on petition. Electioneering costs escalated and Members came under increasing pressure to meet bills of between £4,000 and £5,000 for bailiwick and parliamentary elections, in addition to about £615 a year for the customary sponsorship of race meetings, dinners and charities. The financier William Haldimand contributed £5,000 and his committee £12,000 towards the Yellows’ success in 1825. Atton, 287, 296-305; Essex RO, Barrett Lennard mss C60, Ipswich accts. 0/41/3; O’Gorman, 82, 83, 254. The attorney Simon Jackaman, the Blues’ candidate for the office of town clerk, stated in evidence in 1834 that he spent £757 in 1820, £447 in 1823 and £1,103 in 1825 before he was declared a bankrupt; from 1828 he organized the party’s London freemen. Suff. Chron. 15, 22 Mar. 1834; PP (1835), xxvi. 221. Turnout at municipal elections could be almost as high as at general elections. At the general elections of 1820, 1826, 1830 and 1831, 955, 980, 556 and 780 freemen polled, and at bailiwick elections of 1821, 1823 and 1825, 727, 825 and 901 did so; but much depended on the readiness of Members and party supporters to pay to bring in out-voters, and polls generally ranged between 380 and 465; only 306 voted at the recordership election in March 1831. Ipswich Pollbooks (1820), (1823), (1825), (1826), Mar. and May (1831). Out-voter support was organized in clubs at London taverns, which complemented those within the constituency, and candidates were expected to canvass at both venues and at Bury St. Edmunds, Colchester, Harwich and Woodbridge. Barrett Lennard mss C60, Ipswich accts.

At the last parliamentary election in 1818, the Blue banker and sitting Member since 1807, Robert Alexander Crickitt, and the West India planter William Newton had survived a strong challenge from an ‘independent’ or Orange party allied to the Yellows, with Henry Baring* as their candidate. HP Commons, 1754-1790, iii. 332, 333. The success at the 1819 bailiwick elections of James Thorndike and John Eddowes Sparrowe, who had procured a loyal address to the regent and refused to convene a protest meeting after Peterloo, augured well for the Blues at the dissolution in 1820. Suff. Chron. 11, 25 Sept., 2 Oct.; Ipswich Jnl. 11 Dec. 1819; Add. 25336, ff. 163-4; Barrett Lennard mss 041/4. Baring had continued to distribute largesse and cultivate his Ipswich ‘friends’ and east Suffolk Whigs, but, preferring to remain in Paris for his ‘health’, he announced that he would not be standing at Ipswich, 10 Feb. 1820. Suff. RO (Ipswich), J. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, ff. 87-70; and New Suff. Garland (1866), 436; Morning Chron. 24 Feb. 1820. He recommended Haldimand, a member of Brooks’s Club and director of the Bank of England, who favoured a graduated scale of ingot payments and free trade, to Henry Alexander and the Yellow committee, and publicly endorsed his candidature with that of the Essex Foxite Whig Thomas Barrett Lennard, a friend of Charles Callis Western* and the Dissenters John and William May, bankers and merchants in Essex and Ipswich. Barrett Lennard mss C58/90, St. Vincent to Barrett Lennard, 20 Feb.; The Times, 22, 24, 28, 29 Feb.; Suff. Chron. 26 Feb. 1820. The Yellows, very few of whose committee members were freemen, organized their London support from 68 Chancery Lane and the Four Swans in Bishopsgate, with the Stowmarket merchant Henry Buchannan as chairman, and had two committees at the Golden Lion, Ipswich, financed by advances from the candidates and party elders. They campaigned for free trade, retrenchment and repeal of the Six Acts, attacked ministerial corruption, high taxes, pensions and sinecures and repeatedly denied reports linking Barrett Lennard and Haldimand with the radicals Sir Francis Burdett*, William Cobbett†, Henry Hunt* and Arthur Thistlewood, and claims that they would not proceed to a poll. Morning Chron. 2, 3, 7 Mar.; The Times, 4, 6 Mar.; Ipswich Jnl. 11 Mar.; Suff. Chron. 11 Mar. 1820; Glyde, New Suff. Garland, 436, 437. The Blue committee was chaired at the White Horse, Ipswich, by the attorney James Wenn, the borough steward, William Tollemache, the 6th earl of Dysart’s man of business, and funded by Crickitt and Bacon’s Ipswich Town and Country Bank. They had to overcome criticism that their Members’ votes for the suspension of habeas corpus had made them the tools of ministers. They retaliated after the Cato Street conspiracy by presenting the Yellows as a threat to the constitution and shouting down the diminutive Barrett Lennard, who had been denied a county meeting in Essex after Peterloo: their squibs depicted him as a pygmy. Ipswich Jnl. 26 Feb., 4, 11 Mar.; Suff. Chron. 4 Mar. 1820. Newton’s retirement disappointed his friends and weakened the Blues, who hastily adopted another of Crickett’s partners, John Round† of the Colchester bank, lampooned as ‘Castaway Round’ because he had been passed over by the party in 1818 after being returned with Crickitt in 1812. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, ff. 91-93; Suff. RO (Ipswich) HA247/8/3-7. Relations between Haldimand, Barrett Lennard and Round remained amicable, but Crickitt was repeatedly criticized for placing personal and ministerial interests before those of his constituents. Suff. Chron. 4 Mar. 1820. Shortly before the poll Barrett Lennard informed his father, ‘my canvass today has been successful. How vexed I shall be if any imprudence of our party should furnish to the Blues a handle for a petition’; but the Bury and Norwich Post reported that Haldimand, who brought down four directors from the Bank to support him, now ‘found in canvassing that the largest purse would not match the treasury’. Barrett Lennard mss C58/90; Bury and Norwich Post, 15 Mar. 1820.

On 7 Mar. 1820 the Revs. Thomas Reeves and Thomas Leathes and Majors Sir Charles Broke and Charles Stisted nominated their fellow common councillors Crickitt and Round and the portmen William Barnard Clarke, Charles Chambers Hammond, Benjamin Brame and Frederick Francis Seekamp did the same for Barrett Lennard and Haldimand. Ipswich Jnl. 11 Mar. 1820. The Yellows maintained a narrow lead throughout the six-day poll. During it Haldimand and Barrett Lennard issued a joint declaration for parliamentary reform, including triennial parliaments. They professed themselves ‘friendly’ to the ‘emancipation of Catholics and Dissenters’, when Crickitt raised the ‘No Popery’ cry, and promised that Haldimand would concentrate on national issues and Barrett Lennard on local concerns. Suff. Chron. 11, 18 Mar. 1820. Pollbooks and ancillary evidence confirm contemporary claims that the Yellows owed their success to London out-voters. Ipswich Pollbook (1820); PP (1835), xxvi. 231; Suff. RO (Ipswich) Acc 427/1039, diary of John Wood jun. 29 Feb.-17 Mar. 1820. According to the antiquarian John Glyde, 92 Ipswich freemen charged £2 12s.6d., Harwich and country freemen four guineas and 119 long-distance freemen five guineas for their votes, with prices rising after the practice of ‘palming and cooping’ was ‘introduced from Norwich’ on the third day. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, f. 91; New Suff. Garland, 452-4; Suff. Chron. 15, 22 Mar. 1834; PP (1835), xxvi. 231. Broke and Stisted demanded a scrutiny on behalf of Crickitt, who only the previous week had scorned the practice as unmanly and unconstitutional. Ipswich Jnl. 4 Mar.; The Times, 10, 11, 13, 15, 21 Mar. 1820. An unprecedented 117 cases were heard over a four-week period, during which Hertford was implicated in a plot to prevent the authorities discovering that 18 Blue voters from Sudbourne and Orford had been paupers. Crickitt was declared to have topped the poll by a majority of three, returned with Haldimand, 14 Apr., and chaired at the Royal William, 26 Apr. Add. 25336, f. 171; Broke of Nacton mss HA93/7/38; The Times, 17 Apr. 1820; Glyde, New Suff. Garland, 441-4. Barrett Lennard engaged the barrister William Selwyn, but feared ‘no petition will be of any avail’. He had written to his father, 7 Apr.:

I wait here that I may judge for myself of the prudence of going before the House ... with a petition. I find that I cannot trust any of our committee upon this subject. I have determined therefore to watch the returning officers closely and to judge for myself, without being in any respect guided by them: I mean the committee. The fate of the scrutiny is very uncertain ... It is very fidgeting work and, for want of the excitement which attended the election, is worse. Barrett Lennard mss C58/91-93.

Haldimand took his seat, but the Yellow chairing was postponed pending the outcome of Barrett Lennard’s petition. Presented on 9 May, it alleged partiality and neglect by the bailiffs, who had failed to appoint a professional assessor, and bribery by Crickitt. It succeeded and the return was amended in his favour, 16 June. A counter-petition considered with it (from Round’s supporters against Haldimand’s return) failed; others prepared for Crickitt and Haldimand remained unpresented. Add. 25336, ff. 171, 172, Glyde, New Suff. Garland, 445; CJ, lxxv. 169, 170, 184, 185, 305-7, 311, 315; The Times, 14, 15 June 1820. With proceedings against 18 pauper freemen who had voted pending in the court of king’s bench, Crickitt was persuaded not to risk implicating the bailiffs and Hertford further by lodging an appeal, and Middleton presided over the Yellow chairing, 3 July, when partisan dinners were hosted at the Golden Lion and the free grammar school where 400 mustered with Henry Baring. Only resident freemen were employed as bearers and tickets cost a guinea. Atton, 174; Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, f. 203; New Suff. Garland, 445-51; Suff. Chronicle, 6 July 1820. It was reported that Haldimand paid over £30,000 for his election and Barrett Lennard £12,000, and that Crickitt contributed £4,000 to his committee’s fund. T.B. Lennard, Account of Lennard and Barrett Fams. 94; Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, f. 94 and New Suff. Garland, 453. Amid violence from bludgeon men of both sides, the Yellows consolidated their success at the borough elections in September, promised to end partisan mismanagement of corporation funds and to support Sir Henry Bunbury’s* campaign for the re-establishment of county meetings and a fair hearing for Queen Caroline. Suff. Chron. 2, 16, 23, 30 Sept., 7 Oct. 1820, 8 Mar. 1834; Ipswich Jnl. 9 Sept. 1820; PP (1835), ix. 361. Rumours of disturbances in support of the queen among troops stationed at Ipswich had circulated since August, when a semi-official borough meeting addressed her, and the town hall was illuminated and bells rung, 18 Nov., to celebrate the withdrawal of the bill of pains and penalties. The Times, 12, 14 Aug., 14 Sept.; Ipswich Jnl. 18 Nov. 1820; Clarke, 147. A heavily requisitioned public meeting adopted an address in her favour that also criticized and called for the dismissal of Lord Liverpool’s ministry, 12 Dec. 1820. The Blues left early and dispatched another supporting the king and his ministers. Add. 25336, f. 179; Suff. Chron. 9 Dec.; Ipswich Jnl. 16 Dec. 1820. Barrett Lennard took charge of legislation amending the local paving and lighting Acts, which received royal assent, 28 May, 8 June 1821. Suff. RO (Ipswich), Ipswich borough recs. C/1/3/4; CJ, lxxvi. 44, 273, 291, 384, 425. The Yellows celebrated the queen’s birthday in May 1821 and the anniversary of their Members’ chairing, and publicly mourned the queen’s death, but deliberately left the Blue common councillors to celebrate George IV’s coronation alone. Suff. Chron. 19 May, 7 July; Ipswich Jnl. 21 July, 18 Aug. 1821.

Petitions complaining of the effects of agricultural distress were received by the Commons from the merchants, 9 May 1820, and by both Houses from the town and neighbourhood, recommending protection as a remedy, 21, 25 Feb. 1823. CJ, lxxv. 166; lxxviii. 58; LJ, lv. 540. Local brewers, merchants and traders sent petitions sanctioned by the borough and inhabitants to the Commons for repeal of the duties on malt, 3 Apr. 1821, 2 July 1822, and coal carried coastwise (the port’s major import), 18 Mar. 1823, 23 Feb. 1824 (and again, 15 Nov. 1830), and for a protective tariff on imported wool, 11 May 1824. Add. 25336, ff. 216-29; CJ, lxxvi. 229; lxxvii. 395; lxxviii. 131; lxxix. 81, 346; lxxxvi. 75. A similar group petitioned with bipartisan support for repeal of the Insolvent Debtors Act, 10 Mar. 1823. CJ, lxxviii. 102; Add. 25336, f. 217. The Commons received petitions from the innkeepers and licensed victuallers for inquiry into and repeal of the tax on their licences, 18 Apr. 1821, 17 Mar. 1824, and against the beer retail bill, 18 July 1822. CJ, lxxvi. 283; lxxvii. 437; lxxix. 173. The merchants and bankers petitioned the Commons for revision of the criminal code, 3 June 1822. Ibid. lxxviii. 316. Opposition to slavery was bipartisan and anti-slavery petitions were forwarded to both Houses by meetings of magistrates, clergy, inhabitants and chapel congregations in 1823, 1824 and 1826; 800 signed that presented by Haldimand for inquiry into the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 31 May 1824. Ibid. 285; lxxix. 130, 436, 446, 447; lxxxi. 114. The beggars of the parish of St. Margaret, the target since 1819 of the Society against Mendacity, petitioned the Commons against the proposed incorporation of the borough’s parishes for poor law purposes, 4 June 1821; and the town and borough did so against the poor removal bill, 31 May 1822. Add. 25336, f. 165; CJ, lxxvi. 411; CJ, lxxvii. 304. A petition against renewing the Aliens Act was presented to the Commons from the inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood, 12 July 1822. CJ, lxxvii. 423. The parish of St. Margaret petitioned for repeal of the assessed taxes, 28 Feb. 1825. Ibid. lxxx. 133.

The Blues had gained strength through the Suffolk Pitt Club, at which the county Member Sir Thomas Gooch presided, 7 July 1821, and although many of their elections bills remained compounded or unpaid, they launched what The Times described as an ‘unexpected and extraordinary’ challenge ‘at enormous expense’ at the borough elections, 8, 29 Sept. 1821, which they later hailed as a successful bid to prevent the Yellows making honorary freemen to fill vacancies among the portmen. Ipswich Jnl. 8 Sept.; Suff. Chron. 15 Sept.; The Times, 11 Sept., 4 Oct. 1821. The duke of Wellington, a freeman since January 1820, was nominated in absentia and apparently without his knowledge for the stewardship vacant since Dysart’s death in March, but was defeated (401-326) by the Whig Sir Robert Harland, a brother-in-law of the county Member Sir William Rowley. Blue candidates for bailiffs, town clerk and subordinate offices lost by similar majorities, but Henry Alexander’s absence was interpreted as a sign that the Yellows’ resources were depleted. Ipswich borough recs. C/4/4/7/1-4; Suff. RO (Ipswich) HD 11 Acc. 2711/25, 26; Suff. Chron. 8, 15, 29 Sept., 6 Oct. 1821; Clarke, 149. After travelling down with the wealthier Haldimand to propose the candidates, pay his dues and contribute to the speeches at the town hall with ‘several other eminent opposition gentlemen’, Barrett Lennard became convinced that he would be the loser ‘in case of their taking one on one side and one on the other’, and that Crickitt, a vice-president of the Pitt Club, would be the leading Blue. Barrett Lennard mss C61, Barrett Lennard to fa. [Sept.], 24 Oct. 1821. Pitt Club celebrations in August 1822 were countered by pro-reform Fox dinners addressed by Barrett Lennard and the county Whigs, who toasted the Ipswich Members. Oakes Diaries ed. J. Fiske (Suff. Recs. Soc. xxxiii), ii. 267, 273; Ipswich Jnl. 10, 17 Aug.; The Times, 23 Aug. 1822. The Blues raised no opposition to the Yellows’ nominees at the bailiwick elections in September, and co-operated to admit 18 new freemen, nine each from the unfranchised élite of both parties. Suff. Chron. 31 Aug., 7, 14, Sept. 1822; Suff. RO (Ipswich) HD 11 Acc. 2711/25, 26. According to the Bury and Norwich Post, printed cards naming the 16 approved for admission by the party leaders were circulated, as were others from those who ‘wished to be part of the elect’. This led to the admission of a ninth Blue and Henry Alexander, who was thus rewarded for securing the admission of the 16 by a ‘show of hands’. William Batley recalled in 1834 that others excluded from the list had refused to stand, as they felt bound by the agreement, and that the bailiffs had turned down requests for a poll. Ipswich Jnl. 14 Sept.; Bury and Norwich Post, 18 Sept. 1822; Add. 25336, ff. 211, 212. The Blues, however, successfully contested the lesser offices at Michaelmas 1822, paving the way for their victory in 1823 when, assisted by members of the new King and Constitution Club and amid ‘accusations of bribery and corruption hardly to be paralleled except at parliamentary elections’, they matched the efforts of the London Inflexibles organized by Robert Manning of the Stock Exchange, brought in more than 80 dockyard workers and so regained ‘the whole of their lost power despite Yellow sacrifices’. Suff. Chron. 30 Aug., 6, 13 Sept., 4 Oct.; Ipswich Jnl. 13 Sept.; The Times, 18 Sept. 1823. Their candidates for bailiffs, William Batley and John Aldrich, nominated by Crickitt and his banking partner Edward Bacon, defeated Middleton and Seekamp’s nominees William Pearson and Robert Crawley by 450-435; Jackaman outpolled the Unitarian attorney Stephen Abbot Notcutt in the town clerk’s election by a similar margin. The Times, 12 Sept. 1823; Ipswich borough recs. C/4/4/7/5, 6. Testifying before the 1835 election committee, the Yellow printer and corn merchant Charles Cowell claimed that the bribery he witnessed in 1822-3 caused him to withdraw from municipal politics, in which he intervened again only when he ‘attempted to make a compromise between the parties’ in 1825. PP (1835), ix. 599. Haldimand, a bitter opponent of the Holy Alliance, hosted dinners in Ipswich and London to support ‘Liberal Spain’; and chairing the London Inflexibles’ anniversary dinner at the Paul’s Head, Cateaton Street, 4 Feb. 1824, he promised that he would support the Yellows and the Spaniards ‘to the last shilling of his means’. The Times, 5 Feb.; Ipswich Jnl. 7 Feb. 1824. The Yellow anniversary dinner on 5 July 1824, which Barrett Lennard attended, was also a crisis meeting. Barrett Lennard mss C60, notices, 12 July 1824; Clarke, 153. Litigation had been initiated in the names of the London architect Thomas Brady, the portman William Barnard Clarke, and the attorney Robert Porter challenging the legality of the 1822 freeman admissions in the names of the first pair listed, the Blue John Aldrich and the Yellow James MacDonald*. Suffolk Chron. 21 Aug., 4 Sept. 1824. It was followed in July 1824 (before a ruling was obtained) by quo warranto actions on affidavits from two Blue common councillors, the builder Benjamin Batley Catt and Abraham Cook, challenging the legality of the election of Sir William Middleton and the elder Stephen Abbot Notcutt (the town clerk) as portmen when that body was inquorate, with a view to exposing vacancies, having the charter revoked and securing another confining the franchise to residents. Their ultimate aim was to create a close corporation and they estimated the cost of doing so at £1,500. TNA KB1/6/2; Atton, 17; Suffolk Chron. 21 Aug., 4 Sept. 1824. The 1824 bailiwick elections were clearly invalid and not contested, but the Blues had sufficient freemen in attendance to ensure that no speeches were heard. Suff. Chron. 4, 11 Sept.; Bury and Norwich Post, 15, 29 Sept. 1824. On 13 Nov. 1824 king’s bench ruled against the 1822 freemen, likewise Middleton, and the office of bailiff remained vacant until Seekamp and C.C. Hammond were returned in July 1825. Ipswich Jnl. 20 Nov. 1824, 18 June, 23 July 1825; Clarke, 154, 155. Their re-election at great cost in September, when the Blues polled 40 ‘placemen’ and the Yellows carried the resident (178-158) and the non-resident vote (289-267), was hailed in their notices as a guarantee of the Yellows’ success at the next general election. Bury and Norwich Post, 7, 14 Sept.; Ipswich Jnl. 10 Sept., 1 Oct.; Ipswich Pollbook (1825); Ipswich borough recs. C/4/4/7/7-9. However, it created an opportunity for further litigation and was a factor in the great court’s decision in October to carry a resolution requiring the Members to bear the full cost of future borough elections, and the tacit agreement reached at a meeting at Notcutt’s that the parties should hold office alternately lest the borough be ‘Grampounded’. Ipswich Jnl. 15 Oct. 1825; Clarke, 155-7; PP (1835), xxvi. 231. The Tory Ipswich Journal warned:

Here we have all the trouble and turmoil of annual elections, and we think the advocates of annual parliaments and universal suffrage would at least ‘halt between two opinions’ if they were to witness the scenes of confusion and uproar that even the annual election of the local magistracy creates in this town. Ipswich Jnl. 1 Oct. 1825.

John May had announced at the Yellow celebrations at the Bear and Crown, 29 Sept., that Barrett Lennard would contest Maldon at the next election - a decision later attributed to the high cost of Ipswich municipal elections. Suff. Chron. 2 Oct. 1825; Ipswich Jnl. 15 Mar. 1834. Blues dining at the White Horse, 29 Sept., when the defeated candidate Edward Bacon presided, held Crickitt responsible for the poor communications with London, which had left up to 200 of their supporters unpolled. Bury and Norwich Post, 7, 14 Sept.; Ipswich Jnl. 10 Sept. 1825. For this or purely financial reasons, Crickitt announced his retirement from politics, 14 Oct. Bury and Norwich Post, 7, 14 Sept.; Ipswich Jnl. 10 Sept. 1825. Quo warranto proceedings resumed in December 1825 but were soon abandoned. Add. 25336, f. 248. Alexander’s bank survived the late 1825 crisis thanks to gentry support, but Crickitt’s Maldon bank failed, bankrupting him and exposing his misappropriation of £10-16,000 for electioneering purposes. Bacon saved their Ipswich bank through personal largesse and appeals for calm, and by taking into partnership the brewer John Chevalier Cobbold and the attorney and banker William Rodwell, secretary of the Suffolk Pitt Club. Oakes Diaries, ii. 367-70; J. Glyde jun. 16; TNA B3/1010, 1017; N and Q, cxcvi. 404, 405. Meanwhile, the task of organizing their party began to be taken over by a ‘club’ established at the Blue wine merchant and 1822 freeman Henry Gallant Bristo’s Wellington inn, to oppose the common council’s compromise with the portmen in the wake of their 1825 defeat. Clarke, 121-3, 129; Atton, 26, Redstone, 64.

Haldimand was expected to stand with a ‘friend’ at the 1826 general election, but his resignation from the Bank, repeated trips to the continent for ‘health reasons’ and delayed dividends and repayments from the Spanish loans encouraged rumours, repeated in election songs and doggerel, that he would retire and the Blues prevail because he could no longer afford the seat. The Times, 3 May 1824; Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, ff. 98-102. Robert Torrens, the soldier, political economist and editor of the Globe, paid a deposit of £5,000 to stand with him; and it was Torrens, endorsed by Barrett Lennard, who canvassed the organizers of the Ipswich, London and Colchester freemen in late April, and on 11 May made an impressive entry to Ipswich, where Haldimand very briefly joined him before returning to Italy. Ipswich Jnl. 29 Apr., 6, 13 May; Suff. Chron. 29 Apr.; Colchester Gazette, 13 May 1826. The Ipswich Journal reported correctly that notwithstanding his declaration against the corn laws, Torrens had recently contacted ministers, addressed 200 London freemen at the White Hart, Bishopsgate and canvassed the Ipswich freemen as a self-styled supporter of the ministry’s foreign and trade policies and the home secretary Peel’s proposals for criminal law reform, and now denied that there was any political distinction between Blue and Yellow. The Globe, 27 May; Ipswich Jnl. 27 May 1826; TNA 30/29/9/6/43. Wenn, one of the 1822 freemen, again chaired the Blues’ committee. They had yet to announce their candidates, but the barrister Charles Ewan Law (the brother of the 2nd Lord Ellenborough) was confidently expected stand. Ipswich Jnl. 20, 27 May; The Times, 23 May 1826. His failure to do so was attributed to the treasury’s decision, announced on the 26th, to support two Scots, the retired East India Company surgeon Charles Mackinnon and Robert Adam Dundas, a kinsman of the first lord of the admiralty, the 2nd Viscount Melville, whose health was regularly toasted at Blue party celebrations. Suff. Chron. 29 May 1826. The party requested a £7,000 contribution to be paid to Rodwell’s bank from Mackinnon and a £12,000 deposit from Dundas, who later admitted that the election cost him £5,000 in addition to £2,000 supplied by the treasury. The Times, 24 Nov. 1832. Torrens, by far the best public speaker of the four, was hailed as Baring’s political heir and used the Globe to boost the Yellows’ prospects. He denied reports that Haldimand, who was attacked as a republican who favoured religious toleration, was standing down, and refuted vote-catching claims by Mackinnon that he would bring patronage to Ipswich when he became a director of the East India Company. Mackinnon, he said, was ‘endeavouring to obtain a seat ... to further his ambitious views with regard to that directorship’ which he would never obtain. Globe, 27 May, 1, 8 June; Suff. Chron. 27 May, 3 June; The Times, 5 June 1826. The Blues depicted Torrens as ‘a peg to hang votes on’ and mocked him as the

patron of that greatest of all romances, political economy, an unread author upon all incomprehensible subjects, a disciple of Mr. Owen of Lanark, an orator at all meetings in and about London, where the principal attraction is a second rate speech dressed in the commonplace flourishes of rhetoric and interspersed with poetry for gallery ladies. J. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, f. 100.

Making ‘No Popery’ the major issue, Mackinnon and Dundas drew support from the clergy, exploited Torrens’s reluctance to declare his views on the issue and canvassed widely, paying particular attention to London, Harwich and Woodbridge. Ipswich Jnl. 27 May, 3, 10 June; Kent and Essex Mercury, 20 June 1826. The Yellows, many wearing orange favours, claimed to have liberated the borough from government control and warned of the danger of returning two Scotsmen of the ‘wha wants me tribe ... commanded by the treasury’ and depicted Dundas in squibs as a papal legate. Suff. Chron. 27 May, 3 June 1826, His brother George, his friend Richard Mee Raikes and nephew and partner Charles Morris, all of them political economists, conducted Haldimand’s personal campaign. Ibid. 10, 17 June 1826. With Harland and the portman and county clerk William Hammond, who proposed Haldimand in absentia, 11 June, they praised his high integrity as a financier and his commitment to religious toleration and Ipswich’s independence. Brame and Everett proposed Torrens, and Broke and Round did the same for Dundas, whose ‘church and state’ Toryism they applauded. Mackinnon’s proposer, Sir Charles Vere, and seconder, Robert Bacon, erroneously cautioned that a non-Tory vote was a threat to the charter. Bury and Norwich Post, 21 June 1826. Sir Andrew Snape Hammond, who at 88 was too old and infirm to travel from Berkshire to propose Dundas, had written similarly to Sir Philip Broke, describing Dundas as their means of restoring the corporation. Broke of Nacton mss HA93/7/38; 9/221. Voting began ‘slowly and cautiously’, 12 June, and proceeded ‘neck and neck’; bribery and cooping were rife. Barrett Lennard arrived with his wife on the 14th to vote and rally support for Haldimand and Torrens, who were declared elected on the 17th by margins of eight and seven votes, after polling ended in the customary fashion with the common councillors voting together for the Blues. Globe, 14 June; Ipswich Jnl. 17 June 1826; Ipswich borough recs. C/1/4/2/20; Suff. RO (Ipswich) Acc.427/1426, diary of John Wood, 13-20 June 1826. The parties’ polling lists had not tallied since the bailiffs refused the votes of ten customs officers for Dundas and Mackinnon on the 14th, and the Blues remained convinced that their candidates finished 502-497 ahead. Ipswich borough recs. C/1/4/1/2, 3. Morris and Torrens were chaired, and dined their supporters at the Bear and Crown with Rowley, 19 June, the eve of his fourth unopposed return for the county. Ipswich Jnl. 24 June 1826. Dundas’s requests for a half-hour polling extension and a scrutiny of 11 votes were rejected and the Blues prepared to petition. Torrens criticized their tactics, but the Ipswich Journal warned: ‘he that throws stones should not live in a house of glass’. The Times, 19 June; Ipswich Jnl. 24 June, 1 July; Suff. Chron. 24 June 1826. The Times reported that the Yellows had been overconfident and made too little preparation, while

the influence of government was never exercised with more vigour and directness. ... The dockyards were raked for voters and those who were discharged were put on again upon the promise of voting for Dundas and Mackinnon; and the persons in the army who are freemen of Ipswich were brought here to vote for the Blue party. The Times, 20 June 1826.

As residence and occupation were rarely specified in the pollbooks, the precise number of ‘government’ votes (estimated at 123 in 1823) and their impact on the result cannot be ascertained. A survey of names indicates that of 980 polled, approximately 789 (80 per cent) had also voted at the 1825 bailiwick election; that 105 Blues and 85 Yellows voted only at the general election, and that 16 who had voted for the Blues at the 1825 municipal election switched to the Yellows at the general election, with 34 going in the opposite direction, from mistrust, it was said, of Torrens as an Irishman. Suff. Chron. 13 Sept. 1823; Bury and Norwich Gazette, 19 June 1826 Ipswich Pollbooks (1825), (1826).

The 1826 bailiwick elections were dominated by the impending petition against the return of Haldimand and Torrens, the agreement of ‘the high contracting parties’ to retain Notcutt as town clerk and return one bailiff each, and the determination of Blues of the Wellington Club to provoke a contest to ensure that treating continued. Their candidates John Chevalier Cobbold, William Lane and the attorney Charles Gross were elected as bailiffs and town clerk, 8 Sept., polling 246, 234, 242 votes respectively to their opponents’ 123, 75, 133. Ipswich Jnl. 2, 9 Sept. 1826. The Bury and Norwich Post apportioned no blame to the common council, but complained how ‘by a mere trick the Blue party regained possession of the bench’ after a ‘half hour poll’. Retaliating, the Alexander family spent almost £1,000 on securing the lesser offices for the Yellows at Michaelmas. Bury and Norwich Post, 13 Sept. 1826; Add. 25336, f. 261. Mackinnon, who by agreement with Dundas looked after Ipswich business, did not refer to the Wellington Club in his speech at the corporation dinner, 29 Sept. 1826, which, according to the printed version, was a hard-hitting attack on Torrens’s military career and pursuit of political economy. Ipswich Jnl. 7 Oct. 1826. On 16 Feb. 1827 the Commons received a petition from the inhabitants (endorsing the politics of its presenter Torrens) for free trade, constant importation of foreign corn and freedom of worship. CJ, lxxxii. 181; Globe, 17, 23, 24 Feb. 1827. The return of Haldimand and Torrens was challenged in a petition presented, 26 Nov. 1826, charging their agents and representatives with bribery, and the bailiffs with perjury for promising victory in September 1825 and accepting the votes of known paupers, felons, customs officers and boatmen. CJ, lxxxii. 26, 27. Haldimand remained abroad. Torrens, who in 1832 was successfully prosecuted for an Ipswich election debt, had withdrawn £2,000 of his deposit, and the Yellows did not contest the petition as planned. Globe, 23 Feb.; Suff. Chron. 24 Feb. 1827; The Times, 1 Feb. 1832 (Lapridge v. Torrens). When called before the election committee, 22 Feb., Torrens produced a letter from Haldimand endorsing his request that the names of the first ten freemen polled be struck off as paupers, so avoiding further costly proceedings, and the return was amended in favour of Dundas and Mackinnon, 26 Feb. 1827. CJ, lxxxii. 119, 210, 214, 217, 227; Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, f. 96. Petitions against relaxation of the corn laws were adopted and presented to both Houses, 23, 28 Mar. 1827. CJ, lxxxii. 350; LJ, lix. 210, 211. Bacon presided at the new Members’ chairing, 18 Apr., when Gooch spoke strongly against political economy, Catholic emancipation and the new Canning administration. Neither new Member dissented. Suff. Chron. 21 Apr.; Ipswich Jnl. 24 Apr. 1827; Clarke, 159. Mackinnon’s pleas to ministers in 1827, 1828 and 1829, that without government patronage to secure him an East India Company directorship Ipswich would be hard to keep, infuriated them and went unheeded. NAS GD51/3/611/1, 2; Wellington mss WP1/948/7; Ellenborough Diary, i. 268, 269, 306, 307, 330. The Members did not attended the grand ball, 2 Feb. 1828, or participate in debates on local turnpike legislation, and both acquired reputations for meanness. J. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, ff. 100, 101; Lincs. AO, Ancaster mss, Western to Heathcote, 22 July 1830. Regretting his decision to contest Ipswich, Dundas protested on his own and Mackinnon’s behalf at their party’s extortionate demands and Alexander Dorkin’s bills for printing pollbooks and election ephemera, 1 Aug. 1828:

Our money ... has been fooled away in the most profligate and extravagant manner ... We have no evidence of the energy of the party except in the readiness they show to perpetually demand our money. J. Glyde, ‘Materials for Parl. Hist. Ipswich’, ff. 102, 103.

As requested by the repeal committee in London in May 1827, the Dissenters, organized by the Rev. Charles Atkinson, petitioned both Houses for Test Acts repeal, 22 Feb. 1828. Bacon’s speech at the corporation dinner indicated that respect for Wellington waned when repeal was conceded. Committee for Repeal of Test and Corporation Acts ed. T.W. Davis (London Rec. Soc. xiv), 157, 159; CJ, lxxxiii. 96; LJ, lxi. 22; Ipswich Jnl. 4 Oct. 1828. Reports of a Brunswick Club being established in Ipswich in the autumn of 1828 were quickly quashed; but numerously signed anti-Catholic petitions were forthcoming when emancipation was conceded in 1829 and forwarded for presentation by the Members, who remained opposed to all concessions. The town’s Catholic congregation, Whigs and Dissenters entrusted their favourable petitions to Barrett Lennard. Ipswich Jnl. 22 Nov. 1828, 28 Feb., 14 Mar., 4 Apr.; The Times, 11, 26 Mar. 1829; CJ, lxxxiv. 121, 124. The maltsters and the town petitioned for repeal of the 1827 Malt Act, 1 Apr. 1828, and between 21 and 24 Apr. the Commons received at least 72 petitions from Ipswich friendly societies opposed to the 1828 bill. CJ, lxxxiii. 220, 254, 259, 264. The town’s tobacco and snuff manufacturers (the Ransomes) petitioned for protective tariffs, 17 Feb. 1830. Ibid. lxxxv. 54. The Commons received the bankers’ petitions for the abolition of capital punishment for forgery offences, 24 May, and they were also instrumental in petitioning the Lords for criminal law reform, 21 June. Ibid. 463; LJ, lxii. 751 Stoke Green chapel petitioned against slavery, 16 June 1830. CJ, lxxxv. 559.

The ‘unusual calm ... [in] our loco politico hemisphere for the last year!’ (Ipswich Journal) had been shattered at the 1827 bailiwick elections by the unexpected arrival of a steamer with Yellow ‘Inflexible’ voters from London, and the consequent defeat by Seekamp, Pooley and James Lawrance of the coalition nominees Denny, William Sparrow and Jackaman. Lawrance, now town clerk, and Sparrow were honorary (1822) freemen. Ipswich Jnl. 15 Sept., 6 Oct. 1827. In June 1828, following mandamus proceedings, Lawrance was declared a non-freeman and a ruling was also obtained against Seekamp (and C.C. Hammond) as bailiffs. Pooley’s death in office that month reduced the number of eligible portmen to five and the snap election called to fill the vacancy only prompted further quo warranto actions, for it had become legally impossible for the Yellows to put forward two candidates as bailiffs. Clarke, 159, 160. Blues were returned at the September 1828 elections with a token show of opposition, but their partisan management of the borough farms was severely criticized. Ipswich Jnl. 13 Sept., 4 Oct. 1828. Mackinnon and the Rev. S. Reeve nominated their party’s successful candidates Edward Bacon, John Chevalier Cobbold and Sparrowe at the 1829 bailiwick elections. Ibid. 12 Sept. 1829. On 9 Sept. 1829, its numbers swelled by the arrival of London freemen, the great court voted by 265-130 to appeal to king’s bench and petition the king for permission to appoint freemen suitable to be portmen. The Blues retaliated by reviving their threat to disfranchise the out-voters under a new charter and the matter was apparently dropped. Ibid. 19, 26 Sept., 3 Oct. 1829; Atton, 26. Before the dissolution precipitated by George IV’s death, the corporation petitioned against the sale of beer bill, 18 May 1830, which Cobbold, in a personal plea to Wellington, had claimed would cost him £150,000. Wellington mss WP1/112/3; Clarke, 159-60.

No contest was anticipated at the ensuing election. The Yellows had yet to adopt candidates and the Blues were left with little alternative but to support the sitting Members. Western and John May encouraged Gilbert John Heathcote* to offer on the Yellow interest and informed him, 23 July 1830:

Mr. Alexander, a Quaker and opulent banker, is head of the party and a man perfectly to be relied upon. He will be in town [London] on Monday and will see you on the way. [He] wishes to start two to drive the other party into a compromise of one and one ... For security, make a decided contract with your supporters that you shall not be asked to spend above a certain sum. ... Ipswich has had a bad name for expense but there is a change, my friends will now be certain to get one. Ancaster mss, Western to Heathcote, 23 July 1830.

Writing to Western and Heathcote, May added:

We have succeeded in keeping back the writ so that our election does not commence before Monday [2 Aug.]. This gives us time if it is needed. Our chances of success increase daily and we have reason to be more than ever confident Mackinnon does not intend to contest it if opposed. Indeed so decided is the aversion on both sides to his trimming between the two parties that he has no chance whatsoever. He has made a most infamous use of Mr. Lennard’s letters of introduction to myself and brother, so that the general feeling is both amongst Blues and Orange, that Mr. Lennard has promised his support to Mackinnon in case of a contest and really whether there is a contest or not. I do hope Mr. Lennard will be here to defend his own character from the charge of inconsistency so unjustly attached to it by ... Mackinnon. Ibid. May and Western to Heathcote [July 1830].

Heathcote declined, and when Barrett Lennard arrived it was to canvass for and nominate another Essex Whig, the retired lawyer John Disney of The Hyde, Ingatestone, who had property and an interest in Harwich. ‘Dismal Disney’, a regular speaker at Foxite dinners and reform meetings, had no wish to prejudice his principles by lavishing money on the constituency. As Dundas, whose return ‘cost less than £800’ predicted, Disney came a distant third after a two-day poll, having secured 150 ‘plumpers’. Ipswich Jnl. 10 July; Suff. Chron. 7 Aug. 1830; Arniston Mems. 354; NAS GD205/45/15/3/7. On the hustings the Members and their joint proposers Admiral Sir Philip Broke and Benjamin Batley Catt praised Wellington and his administration and Disney advocated reform. Ipswich Jnl. 7 Aug.; Colchester Gazette, 7 Aug. 1830; Suff. RO (Ipswich) HD12/2705/14-16. The Blues repeated their success (by 300-126) at the 1830 bailiwick elections, when the Yellows were ‘determined not to spend a shilling’ and the Wellington Club brought ‘all the London voters down with their wives and children by the Hero steamer and expended £400’. Celebrating at the White Horse, Edward Bacon spoke of the ease with which Mackinnon and Dundas had been returned. Ipswich Jnl. 4, 11 Sept., 2 Oct.; Bury and Norwich Post, 15 Sept. 1830.

Dundas seconded the address, 2 Nov., and both Members divided with government on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830. Ipswich chapels of all denominations supported the 1830-1 petitioning campaign to end slavery. CJ, lxxxvi. 454; LJ, lxiii. 68. The Commons received a petition from the inhabitants for reform and the ballot, 6 Dec. 1830, and the change of ministry prompted local changes. CJ, lxxxvi. 149. The Yarmouth barrister Robert Alderson, who had not acted for the borough since 1819, formally resigned as recorder, and the portmen and common council agreed that Charles Frederick Williams, a barrister on the western circuit and recorder of Bridport, should succeed him. The Wellington Club disagreed and the common council became divided on the issue, with the majority backing James Bacon, who as bailiff in 1828 had produced a long overdue audit of the borough accounts and might ‘disturb the hornet’s nest of mismanagement of borough finances’. Ipswich Jnl. 5, 12 Mar. 1831. Williams won by 172-134, 11 Mar. 1831, in what the Suffolk Chronicle described as

a victory gained by the union of the more liberal Tories with the old constitutional Whigs and those friends to liberty who are content for its sake to be called radicals: a union in which the adherents of each party were willing to forego minor points of difference to obtain one common end, a triumph over the Dark Blue Tories of the Wellington Club.Suff. Chron. 12 Mar. 1831.

Few out-voters were polled except for a group from Woodbridge. Ipswich Pollbook (Mar. 1831). On 16 Mar. Williams chaired a borough meeting to petition in favour of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, at which Edward Bacon, the main speaker for the Blues, argued that hostile petitions had failed to prevent the enactment of Catholic emancipation and declared for moderate reform, including the disfranchisement of rotten boroughs that ‘trampled on the rights of the people’, a £10 householder vote and one-day polls. He objected only to the proposed disfranchisement of freemen’s sons. Samuel Alexander, as spokesman for the Yellows, claimed that the bill’s enactment would generate prosperity through tax redistribution. The Times, 16, 19 Mar.; Ipswich Jnl. 19 Mar. 1831. The petition was criticized by its Commons presenter Mackinnon, who, with Dundas, strongly opposed reform, and defended by Barrett Lennard, 22 Mar. 1831. CJ, lxxxvi. 419; The Times, 23 Mar. 1831. The great court’s petition for the preservation of resident freemen’s rights was apparently not presented, but Mackinnon presented another from the London freemen criticizing their proposed disfranchisement under ministerial bill, 20 Apr. Suff. Chron. 26 Mar.; The Times, 21 Apr. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 509. Dundas was expected to contest his uncle William Dundas’s Edinburgh seat in the event of a dissolution and voted for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment which precipitated it, 19 Apr., when Mackinnon did not vote. Sir Henry Hardinge’s* wife observed that ‘Bob would have made his own way at Ipswich, if he had not engaged with Mr. Mackinnon, whom he found a shabby stingy fellow that entirely pulled him down’. Durham CRO, Londonderry mss D/Lo/C83 (33).

At the general election the Blues sponsored Mackinnon, who claimed that he was duty bound to defend the freemen’s chartered rights and argued that the ministerial measure was especially harmful to wealthy colonial and commercial interests represented by small boroughs with 2-300 votes. His new colleague was Robert Fitzroy, the naval captain son of a former commander of the garrison, Sir Charles Fitzroy†, and nephew of the pro-reform Suffolk Whig, the 4th duke of Grafton, on whose interest his half-brother Charles Augustus Fitzroy* now contested Bury St. Edmunds as a reformer. Suff. Chron. 30 Apr. 1831. Fitzroy’s patriotic appeals to the Union flag and warnings of the threat the bill posed to the constitution may have been influenced by the Wellington Club and certainly put pressure on Bacon to turn against reform, which the anti-reform Ipswich Journal warned would add 4,500 voters to the borough’s electorate; the Suffolk Chronicle put the figure at 2,500. Ipswich Jnl. 30 Apr., 7 May; Suff. Chron. 7 May. 1831. A communication from Barrett Lennard and the momentum for reform had raised Disney’s hopes. The Suffolk Chronicle reported his pro-reform activities and speeches, and he wrote privately of the high integrity of the Mays, but he made his candidature conditional on being funded by subscription, though he ‘should not dislike to act with a wealthy candidate who is disposed to spend (his) money’. Suff. Chron. 26 Mar.; Barrett Lennard mss C63 (i), Disney to Barrett Lennard, 31 Mar. 1831. The Yellows found their candidates through lord chancellor Brougham, who recommended Rigby Wason, the barrister who had ‘originated proceedings’ against the notorious bribery at the 1830 Liverpool by-election and now claimed to be committed to stamping it out elsewhere; and through the constituency broker Isaac Sewell, who introduced the wealthy London wholesale haberdasher James Morrison to the Alexanders. The Times, 5 May 1831; R. Wason, Short and Sure Way of Preventing Bribery at Elections, 3, 4; R. Gatty, Portrait of a Merchant Prince, 125, 307. As Member for St. Ives, Morrison had voted for the reform bill and claimed this had cost him his seat. The Times, 5 May 1831. His proposers were the ‘light Blue’ William Tuffnell and the senior portman William Hammond; Wason was sponsored by Brame and Seekamp. They were assisted free of charge by the Notcutts and John Edward Sparrowe, engaged Williams as counsel and secured a 140 majority in a poll of 800. Suff. Chron. 7 May 1831; PP (1835), ix. 242. The Blues and their sponsors pledged support for moderate reform, opposed the ‘present bill’ and were described as ‘anti-reform Tories’. Robert Bacon, who with Round managed their campaign, appealed to the freemen’s instincts of self-preservation, and fears of being swamped by new voters. Bacon faced fierce criticism on the hustings for backtracking on reform. Bury and Norwich Post, 4 May 1831. Mackinnon blamed government influence, used on behalf of the Yellows for the first time since 1806, for his defeat. Ipswich Jnl. 14 May 1831. The ‘independent reformers’, who had relinquished yellow and orange for crimson and white, stressed that the king supported the bill and reform and attributed their victory, at ‘a third of the cost’ of Haldimand and Barrett Lennard’s, to ‘principle not party’. They carried the Ipswich vote (178-132), the country vote (116-110), and the London vote (174-85), the last amid bitter allegations of treachery, for the parties had brought down comparable numbers of freemen by steamer. The Times, 10 May 1831; Ipswich Pollbook (May 1831). Williams was accused of partiality for refusing to admit some Blue claimants but no petition ensued. Ipswich Jnl. 7, 14 May 1831. A comparison of names and residences in the pollbooks indicates that of 172 who had voted for Williams in March, 141 voted for the reformers and 21 for the anti-reformers at the general election; of 134 who had voted for Bacon in March, 88 voted for the anti-reformers and 23 for the reformers at the general election. Ipswich Pollbooks (Mar. and May 1831).

Wason ‘lectured the freemen on reform’ at the 1831 bailiwick elections, but according to the Ipswich Journal it had ‘lost its charms’. When the London steamers arrived the Blues forged ahead. Cobbold and Thomas Dunningham defeated Seekamp and C.C. Hammond (477 and 478-316 and 317) to become bailiffs, and the elder Sparrowe outpolled the younger Notcutt by 483-311 in the town clerk’s election. Ipswich Jnl. 10 Sept.; Bury and Norwich Post, 14 Sept. 1831. The Members and a crowd of 2,000 attended a reform meeting deliberately called to coincide with the corporation dinner. Their petition to the Lords in favour of the reintroduced reform bill was presented on 5 Oct. 1831, along with a hostile one from inhabitants anxious to retain their voting rights; the latter was apparently initiated by the Bacons after failing to secure an amendment to the reformers’ petition. Bury and Norwich Post, 5 Oct. 1831; LJ, lxiii. 1061, 1063. The Blues’ opposition to reform had hardened. John Bond declared at the corporation dinner that it would culminate in the destruction of the established church, and they celebrated the bill’s defeat in the Lords by firing cannons in Bacon’s garden. Ipswich Jnl. 1, 8 Oct.; Suff. Chron. 15 Oct. 1831. Both Members supported the ministry and the reform bills in the House, although Wason, a ready debater, exercised his ‘independence’ on certain details. Opposing an amendment to settle the £10 householder qualification on particular properties in each borough, 3 Feb. 1832, he pointed out that Ipswich had ‘only 800 persons assessed to the rates at £10 and upwards’ but about 1,800 occupied ‘houses of the value of £10 and upwards’. He also proposed an amendment incorporating Bacon’s 1831 suggestion for single-day polls, which was rejected by 95-1, 15 Feb. When in May the bill was jeopardized by a further defeat in the Lords, the ministry’s resignation and the king’s invitation to Wellington to form an administration, the Blues had the bells pealed, prevaricated over a requisition for a reform meeting and planned to convene the assembly and issue a declaration of support for the duke. Ipswich Jnl. 12 May; Suff Chron. 12 May 1832. Grey’s return to office enabled the Yellows to respond with bell ringing, gunfire and bunting, and the figures burnt in effigy included a bishop and Bristo. Ipswich Jnl. 19 May; Suff. Chron. 19 May 1832. In June, over 500 signed a requisition thanking and praising Wason for supporting reform and urging him to stand again. Ipswich borough recs. C/1/4/3/2. A bill sponsored by the corporation empowering Ipswich to host the Suffolk assizes alternately with Bury St. Edmunds was entrusted to him and supported by petitions from the high steward, bailiffs, portmen, commonalty and inhabitants, 2 July, and the magistrates, grand jury and yeomanry of east Suffolk, 13 July; but the Bury St. Edmunds Member Earl Jermyn succeeded in blocking it and it was not given a second reading that Parliament. The Times, 14 July 1832; CJ, lxxxvii. 449, 486. The Maynooth grant was the subject of hostile petitioning to both Houses in April and May 1832. Bury and Norwich Post, 2, 30 May 1832; CJ, lxxxvii. 301; LJ, lxiv. 151. The inhabitants forwarded a petition in favour of the bill restricting child labour in factories to its sponsor Sadler for presentation, 8 Aug. 1832. CJ, lxxxvii. 566; The Times, 9 Aug. 1832.

The boundary commissioners, acting, it was later claimed, on the advice of local Liberals, declared the town ‘wealthy and flourishing’ and recommended no change in its ample boundaries. PP (1831-2), xli. 46-48; Ipswich Jnl. 8, 22 July 1837. The Reform Act enfranchised fewer than 700 £10 householders in 1832, when enrolment was poor, and accordingly made little difference to the size of the registered electorate (1,219). P. Salmon, Electoral Reform at Work, 22; O’Gorman, 183. The excluded out-voters ensured that the Wellington Club’s dominance of borough politics continued in September, but the Liberals Morrison and Wason defeated two Conservatives at the general election in December 1832, when Mackinnon’s unauthorized candidature left the party with ‘no chance of success’. Suff. Chron, 3, 10 Nov., 15 Dec.; The Times, 14 Dec. 1832; PP (1835), ix. 251. Dundas and another Conservative, the 3rd marquess of Hertford’s man of business John Croker*, had declined to stand. Arniston Mems. 354-5; Croker Pprs. ii. 184; Wellington mss WP1/1238/2, 8. The restructuring of the corporation under the 1835 Act had little immediate effect. The local parties continued to target parliamentary elections, and evidence presented in support of successful petitions against the return of Dundas and the Conservative barrister Fitzroy Kelly in January 1835 and of Wason in 1841 confirmed that Ipswich’s notorious bribery was traditional and endemic. The pattern of strict adherence to local parties, contested elections (including registration) and subsequent petitioning persisted. Liberals held both seats until 1837, and Conservatives for the next decade. Bipartisan representation, as briefly occurred following the Wason-Kelly duel in 1837, was unusual; and the return of a Liberal and a Protectionist in 1847 was possibly planned. PP (1835), ix, passim; (1842), vii. 275, 276; N. Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 156, 157, 158; Atton, 217. M.M.E.