Haddington Burghs

North Berwick was a small castellated town and port on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, 22 miles north-east of Edinburgh. It had no guildry or incorporated crafts and was dominated by the largest proprietors, the Hamilton Dalrymples, who in the 1820s spent over £700 on improving the harbour. Its population was 1,694 in 1821 and 1,824 in 1831 and it had a council of 12.PP (1831-2), xlii. 211; (1836), xxiii. 373-7. Lauder, described by the 1831 boundary commissioners as ‘a place of no trade’, was an inland burgh 25 miles south of North Berwick and an important hiring centre for the Irish in southern Scotland. James Maitland†, 8th earl of Lauderdale, the acknowledged leader of the Scottish Whigs until he gravitated to Toryism in this period, and his Tory nephew the 8th marquess of Tweeddale of Yester House were the chief landlords, and Lauderdale’s seat, Thirlstane Castle, dominated the town. Possession of at least one of Lauder’s 315 burgess acres was a prerequisite of burgess admission, and the rights over them and their apportionment as common land were the subject of a protracted dispute between the burgesses, the burgh’s only public body, and the magistrates, 1796-1825. Reflecting the progress of attendant litigation, entry fees (£5 in 1796) rose to £42, 1806-1822, fell to £10, 1822-25, following an ambiguous court judgment in 1821, and remained about £30 from 1825, when the lord ordinary found in favour of the magistrates. The population was 1,845 in 1821 and 2,063 in 1831 and the council had 17 members. Ibid. (1831-2), xlii. 219; (1836), xxiii. 301-5; R. Romanes, Lauder (1903), 52, 53. Haddington, the county town of East Lothian, was central to it and 17 miles east of Edinburgh. Its grain market was one of the best in Scotland and it had a distillery and an iron foundry. Its population was 5,255 in 1821 and 5,883 in 1831 and its council, known locally as ‘the convenery’, numbered 27 (16 elected by the merchants and 11 by the incorporated trades, who were ‘jealous of the influence of each other’). PP (1831-2), xlii. 215; (1836), xxiii. 171-3; J. Richardson, Recollections of a Haddington Octogenarian, 21, 22. Jedburgh, set in a deep valley at the northern end of the Cheviot Hills, 46 miles south-east of Edinburgh, was the county town of Roxburghshire and a major wool manufacturing centre, where the council was the largest mill owner. The population was 5,245 in 1821 (burgh and parish) and 5,647 in 1831 (parish only). It had a council of 25, eight incorporated trades, at least four of which were represented on the council in any given year, and a complex local election system. PP (1830-1), x. 180; (1831-2), xlii. 217; (1836), xxiii. 237-40. From his family residence in the High Street, Lauderdale effectively dominated Dunbar, a small burgh at the southern entrance to the Firth of Forth, 27 miles east of Edinburgh and 28 north-west of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Since the demise of its whaling fleet in 1806, the principal trade was in herrings, and pressure for harbour improvements was mounting. It had a population of 5,272 in 1821 and 4,735 in 1831 and its council of 20 was ‘virtually self-elected’. Ibid. (1831-2), xlii. 213; (1836), xxix. 315-24.

Notwithstanding evidence of intermittent factionalism and tension between councils, trades, inhabitants and neighbouring gentry in Haddington and Jedburgh, where public meetings and petitioning on local and national issues had become common, the representation had continued to be determined jointly by Lauderdale and the Grenvillite Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton of North Berwick (whose main estate was at Bargany, Ayrshire), who together commanded Dunbar, Lauder and North Berwick. A bid in 1807 by the 1780-7 Member Francis Charteris, Lord Elcho (d. 1808) of Amisfield, Haddingtonshire, to assume control had failed; but Jedburgh and Haddington had fostered opposition to the Dalrymple-Lauderdale coalition in 1818 and their provosts, William Hope of Hope House and the Haddington tobacconist and candlemaker Thomas Pringle, applied to the Liverpool ministry’s Scottish manager, the 2nd Viscount Melville, for a candidate at the general election of 1820. The re-election of the sitting Member, the ailing absentee Dudley North*, seemed unlikely and the corporation of Lauder was expected defy their patron’s wishes. North’s return in 1818 had facilitated that for Richmond by Lord Dundas of Lauderdale’s heir Lord Maitland*, who, as a Scottish peer’s eldest son, was barred from representing a Scottish constituency. NAS B18/22/35 (Dunbar election pprs. 1818); NLS mss 11, f. 25; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 604-8. The lord advocate Sir William Rae* informed Melville on 3 Mar. 1820 that the Haddingtonshire Member Sir James Grant Suttie had turned down their offer of government sponsorship to bring in his son George and that the Glasgow merchant Kirkman Finlay* and Sir David Milne* of Inveresk, Edinburgh, who had Berwickshire connections through his first wife, the late daughter of Sir Alexander Purves, preferred to try their luck at Glasgow and Berwick-upon-Tweed. NLS mss 11, ff. 25, 26. Sir Walter Scott, whom Rae also sounded, wrote to Lord Montagu, 10 Mar.:

Lord Lauderdale’s boroughs have hoisted the flag of rebellion, which is not unlikely to terminate in their independence. Jedburgh and Haddington rebelled decidedly, Dunbar and North Berwick remain under the general influence of his Lordship and Lauder is open. But since the trees walked forth to choose a king there was never such a difficulty in finding a representation. Harden [Hugh Hepburne Scott†] declined. Gala [John or Admiral Sir George Scott] declined. They chose to offer it to me and I declined of course, so there is little parliamentary ambition in the rough clan. [Henry] Home Drummond* [of Blair Drummond, Perthshire], took up the gauntlet at last and is now at Lauder neck and neck with Sir Hew Hamilton Dalrymple within one vote of victory, which I fancy will depend on an old woman who has a cow to sell. If I were her I would put crombie [the cow] up to public auction and learn the price of a borough. Scott Letters, vi. 146-8.

Reporting the ‘keen contest ... between two ministerialists’, the Scotsman observed: ‘Both parties are sanguine ... It is a matter of perfect indifference to the people ... which of them will succeed’. Scotsman, 11 Mar.; Caledonian Mercury, 14 Mar.; Edinburgh Advertiser, 14 Mar. 1820. Home Drummond’s initial success, to which the Member for Selkirkshire, William Eliott Lockhart, and his Jedburgh friends contributed by encouraging the ‘other towns to throw off the fetters of Lord Lauderdale’, elicited a furious response from Dalrymple Hamilton, who, in Lauderdale’s absence on the continent, where he waited on Queen Caroline, and with North Berwick the designated election town, belatedly resolved to stand himself. NLS mss 11, ff. 28, 32, 42, 47, 48; Add. 58999, f. 186; NAS GD51/1/198/9/26. To avoid embarrassing Melville and his family, with whom Dalrymple Hamilton had recently co-operated in Ayrshire, Rae let it be known that it had been his decision to start Home Drummond, whose canvass at Lauder in any case faltered once Dalrymple Hamilton, who blamed ministers for the debacle, succeeded in ‘fixing the day of election of delegates’. NLS mss 11, f. 57; NAS GD51/1/198/9/31; NAS GD110 [microfilm RH4/57] 5/31. He secured the votes of sufficient artisans and tradesmen on the council to carry Lauder by 11-7, so ensuring that he would be returned notwithstanding continued support for Home Drummond from the chief magistrates Alexander Dawson and James Watson, the treasurer Robert Henderson and the neighbouring landowners Alex Allan of Muircleuch, John Simpson of Blainslie, Charles Simpson of Threepwood and George Simpson of Addiston. NLS mss 11, f. 77; Edinburgh Advertiser, 17 Mar. 1820. He informed Lord Grenville, 21 Mar.: ‘The truth is, I found that government had started a candidate and it was absolutely necessary to come forward or lose the seat. I have had as usual a very severe contest, but I shall certainly be returned’. Add. 58999, f. 186. He celebrated the coalition’s success at dinners in North Berwick’s town hall and Blair Inn, 31 Mar., when the chief guests were his kinsman by marriage Sir George Warrender of Lochend, Haddington, who as Member for Sandwich undertook most constituency business, Lord Maitland, the provost of Dunbar William Hume and the Dunbar merchant Christopher Middlemass of Underedge. British Gazette and Berwick Advertiser, 8 Apr.; Scotsman, 8 Apr. 1820. Reporting to Melville, who promised him further financial assistance to secure the constituency, Home Drummond observed, 26 Apr.:

Jedburgh, with the exception of a very small minority, some of whom will be turned out at Michaelmas next, is decidedly and warmly in my favour. At the last election there was no division in the council, and the delegate in my interest was chosen by the voices of 21 of the 25 members of council, two being absent and two having declined to vote. At Jedburgh there was no local influence used on either side of the question, and this was the only one of the burghs where I was then personally known. At Haddington the delegate in my favour was chosen by a majority of 15 to 7 votes. Here the local interest that was exerted was against me, and I had no other intercourse with the electors before the election than calling once on each of them. Since that time I have given them all a dinner, and I am confident that the result of the next Michaelmas election will be materially to strengthen the hands of the majority. At Lauder I had the votes of seven out of 17 electors, being all the number who were not by the possession of acres or otherwise under the influence of Lord Maitland ... They assure me on grounds that leave me no doubt of the fact, that at next Michaelmas they will have a majority on the council and if this majority be once obtained, I think I may be answerable with your ... support for it being permanently preserved, for by the constitution of this burgh the majority may remain in office indefinitely ... I have advanced between £300 and £400 for the purchase of the burgh acres at Lauder, which are necessary for the qualifications of the new voters to be introduced at Michaelmas ... I am a fortnight hence to give another entertainment at Jedburgh ... I have said nothing of Dunbar, because at present it does not appear advisable to disturb the ruling interest, though on a future occasion a diversion there may be useful as Lord Maitland is nowhere popular. As to North Berwick, I don’t think it is assailable. NAS GD51/1/198/9/31, 32.

The 1820 Michaelmas elections produced few significant changes, except perhaps at Lauder, where the proceedings were rarely publicized. Lauder’s burgesses petitioned the Commons for the abolition of self-election and restoration of their ‘just and reasonable right of freely electing their representatives in the town council’, 2 May 1821, but the matter was not referred to that session’s select committee on the royal burghs. Edinburgh Advertiser, 10, 20 Oct. 1820; PP (1836), xxiii. 304, 305; CJ, lxxvi. 301. Unusually, the town clerk of Lauder John Romanes’s return of information to Parliament in August 1822 named no burgesses or councillors (PP (1823), xv. 707).

Lauder, Haddington and Jedburgh, which had previously addressed the queen, were illuminated to celebrate the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties against her in November 1820, when Lauderdale’s speech endorsing the ministry’s decision to prosecute her signalled his changing allegiance. Scotsman, 7 Oct.; Lauderdale, Speech ... 2 Nov.; Caledonian Mercury, 20, 23 Nov. 1820. Home Drummond came in for Stirlingshire at the 1821 by-election, and Rae, who had joined him in scotching Warrender’s claims, advised Melville to offer government backing in Haddington Burghs at the next election to Tweeddale’s kinsman by marriage Sir David Hunter Blair of Dunksey, Wigtownshire. Ministers regarded his Ayrshire interests as a potential negotiating ploy with Dalrymple Hamilton, an almost perpetual absentee that Parliament. NAS GD51/1/198/8/8. A Haddington meeting, 5 May 1825, carried resolutions against Catholic claims, but a counter-petition was also adopted and both were presented to the Lords, 17 May 1825. Berwick Advertiser, 14 May 1825; LJ, lvii. 825, 836. Petitions against colonial slavery were forthcoming from Haddington, Jedburgh and North Berwick in 1824 and 1826, and each burgh petitioned both Houses in 1826 against interference with the Scottish banking system. CJ, lxxix. 271, 507; lxxxi. 111, 120, 165, 171, 223, 237; LJ, lvi. 134; lviii. 58, 104, 107, 124, 155, 212. At the general election in June Lauderdale’s decision to support administration and his successful negotiations with the Dundases, the Tory Lowthers and Tweeddale in 1824-5 facilitated the return for Haddingtonshire of Tweeddale’s brother Lord John Hay, for Berwickshire of Lauderdale’s second son Anthony Maitland, and for the Anstruther Burghs of his son-in-law James Balfour. It also produced a vacancy for Lord Maitland at Appleby, which the incumbent, Dalrymple Hamilton’s kinsman Colonel Adolphus Dalrymple of High Mark, Wigtown, vacated to sit for Haddington Burghs. Dalrymple, whose election was managed locally by Dalrymple Hamilton’s brother John, the provost of North Berwick, was an anti-Catholic Tory resident in Brighton, and Lord Maitland was the de facto Member. Berwick Advertiser, 10 June, 1 July; Scotsman, 5 July; Caledonian Mercury, 6 July 1826.

Dalrymple introduced the Dunbar harbour bill early in the new Parliament, and notwithstanding hostile petitions from certain local ship owners, the provost, magistrates and council of Haddington, and several on behalf of the duke of Roxburghe (a minor), it received royal assent, 21 June 1827, after the 8th earl of Haddington’s heir Lord Binning* had failed by 100-46 to carry a rider to it, 15 June. CJ, lxxxii. 98, 147, 238, 309, 370, 388, 475, 599, 554, 565, 587; LJ, lix. 416, 422, 425, 427, 431. Lord John Hay had warned his brother the previous month that Binning ‘goes against his near political friends ... to overthrow the Maitlands’ and that there were a ‘great number of attempts making by the different burghs ... to have additional commissioners accepted to control and manage the funds of the towns - excepting Dunbar’; but like the coalition ministries, the reform campaign proved to be short-lived. NLS mss 14441, f. 24. The council and inhabitants of Haddington petitioned both Houses in March 1828 for repeal of the stamp duty on receipts over £20, and in protest at being compelled to maintain gaols for the use of the county, 2, 5 May 1828. CJ, lxxxiii. 216, 306; LJ, lx. 146, 324. Jedburgh and Haddington, which had several Dissenting congregations, petitioned for repeal of the Test Acts, 27, 28 Mar. 1828, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery offences, 24 May 1830. Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1895), iv. 329-33; CJ, lxxxiii. 205; lxxxv. 463; LJ, lx. 145, 146; lxii. 759. On 27 Mar. 1829, 380 inhabitants of Lauder petitioned the Commons against Catholic emancipation, a concession their Member opposed and the Maitlands and Dalrymple Hamilton welcomed, and hostile petitions were also received from Jedburgh, 23 Mar.CJ, lxxxiv. 177; LJ, lxi. 256. At the general election of 1830 attention focused on the bitter contest in Haddingtonshire, where George Grant Suttie almost succeeded in ousting Hay, and the arrangement for the Burghs apparently endured for the price of a few dinners. NMM ms 84/070, box 3/13; Berwick Advertiser, 14, 21 Aug.; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 19 Aug. 1830.

The corporations, congregations and inhabitants of all five burghs contributed to the 1830-1 petitioning campaign against colonial slavery. CJ, lxxxvi. 86, 126, 175, 264, 483; LJ, lxiii. 104, 127, 165 255, 433, 472. That for burgh reform was revived in Dunbar, Haddington, Jedburgh and Lauder at the 1830 Michaelmas elections, and by the provost, magistrates and council of Haddington at their 25 Nov. meeting, when they petitioned both Houses for reform of its burgh elections and an equitable property-based parliamentary franchise in counties and corporations. CJ, lxxxvi. 148; LJ, lxiii. 188, 263, 264. The burgesses and inhabitants of Jedburgh and Dunbar sent up petitions for a general reform in Scotland and an extended franchise that month; another from the freemen and burgesses of Lauder (received by the Commons, 16 Feb., and the Lords, 4 Mar.) sought a burgess franchise for town council and parliamentary elections in the burghs and to deny non-residents voting rights in both. A burgh meeting at Jedburgh, 4 Feb., adopted a petition for an extended franchise in Scotland, similar to that agreed at the Roxburghshire meeting the previous week, and was presented with it, 22, 28 Feb. CJ, lxxxvi. 193, 255, 288; LJ, lxiii. 243, 264, 289; Berwick Advertiser, 29 Jan., 12 Feb.; The Times, 1 Feb. 1831. Petitioning for Scottish burgh and parliamentary reform persisted, and in March, under the direction of the provost of Jedburgh Robert Rutherford and a committee appointed by the inhabitants of Haddington, with a view to ‘acting in concert’ to return a reformer, the same four burghs petitioned for the Grey ministry’s English reform bill and celebrated the passage of its second reading with bonfires and public dinners, chaired and addressed by 24-year-old Robert Steuart, an advocate of reform, including church reform, and the ballot, who had succeeded his father at Alderston, Haddingtonshire, in 1827 and married into the Dalrymple family of North Berwick. CJ, lxxxvi. 388, 406, 423; LJ, lxiii. 336, 337, 345, 347-8, 498, 500; Berwick Advertiser, 19 Mar.; Scotsman, 26 Mar., 2, 9 Apr.; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 28 Mar., 4, 9 Apr. 1831. Lauderdale’s sons and Dalrymple voted to defeat the English bill, 22 Mar., 19 Apr. 1831.

The inhabitants of Haddington and Jedburgh declared for Steuart directly the dissolution was announced, 23 Apr., and the town council of Jedburgh promised him their support on the 26th. On the 29th the provost of Haddington, the distiller Archibald Dunlop, who had refused to convene a reform meeting, 10 Mar., and resisted the adoption (by 12-9) of resolutions thanking the king for the dissolution, 25 Apr., waived his opposition to Steuart, and the borough’s reformers carried the delegate’s election by 16-5. The bailie, second magistrate, treasurer and deacons of most Haddington trades had voted with the reformers, 25 Apr., but the hammermen, the largest and wealthiest incorporation, had opposed them. Berwick Advertiser, 12 Mar., 30 Apr.; Edinburgh Evening Courant, 25, 30 Apr.; Scotsman, 27, 30 Apr.; Caledonian Mercury, 5 May 1831. On 30 Apr. the future boundary commissioner (and 8th earl of Stair) Sir John Dalrymple† informed the lord chancellor’s brother and election manager James Brougham*, ‘I have been working like a horse about Lauder, etc. We have got Haddington and Jedburgh, and I am sanguine in my hopes of carrying Dunbar and also Lauder. Had I a little ready [money] all would do’. Brougham mss. Meanwhile, the reformers of Haddington, Hawick and Galashiels mounted a brisk, violent and ultimately unsuccessful campaign on behalf of Steuart. At Lauder, where the parties were equal at eight each, they secured a majority for the reformer William Orr at the delegate’s election, 4 May, by abducting one of the Tory bailies, Charles Simpson. Simpson’s minder Lord Maitland had succeeded in rescuing ‘the stranger Dalrymple’ from the mob, but their clothes were torn in the scuffle and the election court was accordingly ‘irregularly’ adjourned to the acting magistrate James Shaw’s house the Black Bull, where, in Simpson’s continued absence, Lauderdale’s ‘friends’ refused to participate in the proceedings. Seven miscreants, among them three Galashiels operatives, were later ‘brought to justice’ for their part in the abduction, but most of those involved evaded arrest or were ‘spirited away’ by their allies. Caledonian Mercury, 5, 7 May; Scotsman, 7 May; The Times, 9 May 1831; NAS AD14/31/379; GD224/580/3/1/3/9. Dalrymple was certain of the votes of the Dunbar delegate Christopher Middlemass and of Dalrymple Hamilton, the delegate for North Berwick. Maitland was confident he could ‘trace and prove the Lauder business to the candidate and his agents’, and at the election in Jedburgh, 23 May 1831, when the reformers again gathered, Middlemass protested formally, alleging bribery by Steuart in Haddington, violence at Lauder by men in his orange and blue livery and bribery and violence on the part of Orr. Steuart entered similar complaints against Middlemass and Dalrymple Hamilton. The praeses, the Jedburgh wool merchant and dean of guild George Hilson, declared Steuart elected by 3-2, and he dined 160 at the Spread Eagle. NAS GD40/9/327/6; Brougham mss, W.F. Elliot to Brougham, 27 May; Berwick Advertiser, 28 May, 4 June; Caledonian Mercury, 28 May; Scotsman, 28 May; G.B.A.M. Finlayson, ‘Note on Employment of Military in Haddington, 1831’, Trans. E. Lothian Antiq. Soc. x (1966), 17-21; J.I. Brash, ‘Conservatives in the Haddington District of Burghs’, ibid. xi (1968), 46. The Berwick Advertiser and private commentators noted that, anticipating trouble, most Edinburgh papers and the London ones they fed had carried misleading and exaggerated accounts of mob violence at Jedburgh. Brougham mss, Abercromby to Brougham, 29 May; The Times, 31 May; Berwick Advertiser, 4 June 1831.

On 21 June 1831 Dalrymple and Middlemass petitioned against Steuart’s return, alleging bribery, intimidation and abduction. Claiming the seat for Dalrymple, they maintained that Hilson and Orr had not been lawfully elected as delegates and that Steuart, as the elected Haddington delegate, was not eligible to become a candidate. The lord lieutenant of Fifeshire Lord Rosslyn and the Grey ministry’s election managers anticipated that the election would be voided. CJ, lxxxvi. 551-2; Wellington mss WP1/1184/18; Cockburn Letters, 320. Steuart decided against defending his return, divided for the second reading of the reintroduced English reform bill, 6 July, and afterwards signed a declaration that he would not seek re-election for Haddington burghs that Parliament. Ministers faced embarrassing questions in the House on the election riots, 27 June. An election committee chaired by Sir George Clerk and dominated by his fellow anti-reformers found for Dalrymple and had the return amended in his favour, 10 Aug. 1831. CJ, lxxxvi. 626, 738, 741, 744; The Times, 28 June 1831. The decision, coupled with the successful prosecution of the Lauder rioters in the sessions court in July and the high court in November 1831, brought Dunbar and Lauder to the verge of tumult. Scotsman, 16 July, 23 Nov.; The Times, 25 Nov. 1831.

A hostile Lauder petition presented to the Commons, 5 July 1831, cautioned against the precipitate disfranchisement of English freeman out-voters and called for a £10 vote throughout Scotland. A similar one from Jedburgh, received by the Commons on the 14th, sought the continued enfranchisement, for life, of Scottish town councillors with no property in their burghs. CJ, lxxxvi. 623, 656. Public meetings in Haddington and Dunbar in September forwarded petitions commending the government reform measures to Lord Camperdown for presentation to the Lords, 30 Sept.; the inhabitants of Jedburgh petitioned similarly, 4 Oct. That from the magistrates and councillors of Haddington praised the English reform bill and requested measures incorporating the same principles for the rest of the United Kingdom, 6 Oct. LJ, lxiii. 1022, 1048, 1067; Berwick Advertiser, 10 Sept., 1 Oct.; The Times, 1 Oct. 1831. Nothing came of a scheme to detach Jedburgh from the group and include it with Kelso and Hawick in a new Selkirk district. LJ, lxiii. 1095. Following the Lords’ rejection of the English bill, a meeting at Lauder town hall, 8 Nov., chaired by William Lauder the younger, addressed the king in support of ministers and called for ‘speedy reform’. Berwick Advertiser, 19 Nov. 1831. A ‘grand reform meeting’ at Haddington that month, hosted by Sir John Dalrymple, who in August had overseen the rapid preliminary survey of the burghs, was, according to the ‘Waverer’ Lord Haddington (who opposed reform outright in 1832), held exclusively ‘for the friends of the bill’. Those present afterwards complained to reporters that it was merely an entertainment at Dalrymple’s house and threw little light on his own or the government’s attitude to Scottish parliamentary reform. Brougham mss, Dalrymple to Brougham, 12, 31 Aug.; Sheffield Archives, Wharncliffe mss 416 (i); The Times, 25 Nov.; Berwick Advertiser, 26 Nov. 1831. In February 1832 Lord Minto, who heard it from Hilson, informed one of the Scottish bill’s architects, Thomas Kennedy*, that ‘the pride of Jedburgh had been a little hurt by the preference of Haddington as returning burgh’. Cockburn Letters, 387. Haddington itself resented the substitution of the county sheriff for the provost as returning officer and petitioned accordingly, 22 Mar. CJ, lxxxvii. 330. When, in May, a further Lords’ defeat jeopardized the English bill and put a new Wellington ministry in contemplation, public meetings at Haddington and Jedburgh petitioned the Commons to withhold supplies until reform was secured, 21, 23 May, having, like Dunbar, also petitioned the Lords urging its prompt and unmodified enactment. The main speaker at Jedburgh, 14 May, was Archibald Douglas of Atherstone, who under the Boundary Act became the largest local proprietor in Jedburgh. The provost and magistrates of Haddington’s petition to the Lords (18 May) included a plea for the enactment of the police bill, and it was widely feared that the £10 franchise would be compromised. Kelso Chron. 18 May; Berwick Advertiser, 19 May 1832; CJ, lxxxvii. 326, 332; LJ, lxiv. 185, 200, 216, 244. The Haddington courthouse bill, the subject of hostile petitions from Dunbar, North Berwick and Haddington, received royal assent, 2 June 1832. CJ, lxxxvii. 150, 153, 159, 381; LJ, lxiv. 231, 276.

Under the Scottish Reform Act, the same five burghs formed the Haddington District, a constituency of 539 registered electors at the general election in December 1832. The Liberal Steuart had secured Dunbar and North Berwick in June, and after establishing an overwhelming lead over the Conservative Lord Maitland he was returned unopposed. Berwick Advertiser, 16 June, 22 Dec. 1832. He defeated Conservatives in 1835 and 1837, but his tenure was increasingly dependent on government support, and he lost to a Conservative in 1841. The representation remained subject to expensive tussles between Whig Border lairds after the Liberals regained the seat in 1847, and although it was contested a further five times, the constituency remained solidly Liberal until it was abolished in 1885. J.I. Brash, ‘Conservatives in the Haddington District of Burghs’; Scottish Electoral Politics, 221, 227, 242, 266, 267; M. Dyer, ‘"Mere Detail and Machinery"’, SHR, lxii (1983), 27, 29, and ‘Burgh Districts and the Representation of Scotland, 1707-1983’, PH, xv (1996), 293-301.