Sussex was broadly divided into a northern strip, an extension of the Kentish Weald, which was ‘thickly wooded’ and yielded large quantities of timber, and the South Downs, a ‘range of green open hills’ which ‘afforded excellent pasture for sheep’ and was ‘in some parts ... fertile in corn’. Manufacturing was ‘neither various nor extensive’.
In February 1820, following the death of George III, Webster made a pre-emptive move, issuing an address in which he denounced the Six Acts as ‘arbitrary, uncalled for, and a most ill-timed and dangerous innovation of the constitution’, and avowed his determination to stand on his record of opposition to them.
Brighton, where Sir G. was supposed to have some friends, is decidedly averse to him. All the respectable persons dislike his politics and his private life. He did not pay his bills last time, and their disgust is increased by seeing his wife, a beautiful and engaging woman, living there alone, and, it is said, almost expelled from Battle Abbey by a rival, seduced or ravished from your scullery, so that if you take up arms now, it will be quite a Trojan war.
Ashburnham replied that Webster was ‘almost universally abhorred and execrated’ in the east, and alleged that the baronet’s financial affairs were so desperate that ‘he must either get into Parliament or get out of the kingdom’. Frustrating this aim, he believed, was ‘within the power of any individual of a tolerably respectable family in Sussex’.
We are all greatly alarmed for the result in Sussex, and your letter to me does not tend to inspire confidence ... We have written to and pressed everybody who has been named either in your letters or in those of Mr. Curteis. His pour in upon us, and you must teach him a little discretion. He has addressed a letter publicly to the treasury: in another he states that he is fighting the cause of the Pavilion ... All this ought to be stopped.
No mercy was afforded to Curteis by the squib writers, who characterized him, in language typical of the campaign, as ‘the fawning sycophant, the niggardly miser, the upstart purse proud nobody’.
At the nomination meeting Ewan Law†, an eastern freeholder sympathetic to Burrell and Curteis, entered a formal protest at the election being held at Chichester. Precedent and the weight of legal opinion were strongly against him, and the sheriff dismissed the complaint. Burrell and Curteis themselves requested an adjournment of the poll to Lewes after the western freeholders had polled, which might have been sanctioned but for the objection of Cavendish, who presumably hoped to emulate Webster’s Chichester coup in 1818. The nomination must have given him encouragement, as he beat Curteis on a show of hands and paraded some notable converts among the speakers in his cause. Sugden, Webster’s opponent in 1818, now revenged himself on the aristocracy who had then snubbed him by promising Cavendish a plumper. Sir Robert Stopford, who seconded Cavendish in the absence of Poyntz was, in the words of an enraged Egremont, ‘Tory up to the chin’ and ‘wallowing in Court favours’. The choice of Shelley, an avowed supporter of Cavendish, to nominate Burrell, amounted to an admission of the folly of the coalition, which Burrell sought to justify, though he recognized that it had given ‘great offence’. Curteis professed himself friendly to moderate measures of parliamentary reform, but promised ministers general support. Both he and Huskisson turned the charge of aristocratic interference back on Lord George Cavendish, who spoke on his son’s behalf.
On our arrival in Chichester we were met by a large body of the friends of Mr. Cavendish, who conducted us to the poll. Six men, fantastically dressed in the colours of Mr. Cavendish, walked on each side of our carriage and a band of musicians with banners, etc., preceded us. Caesar in the midst of his triumphs would not have been received with greater enthusiasm.
On that day, for the only time, Cavendish led the daily poll. Fearing a deluge of town votes, Curteis urged Sheffield to mobilize unpolled freeholders in the rural north-east, warning that ‘the flag of distress is abroad’ and that they were engaged in a battle for ‘the protection of property against the destruction meditated by radicals against it, and against morals, religion and ... all good government and order’.
From the published pollbook, which contains some discrepancies, it appears that 4,124 freeholders were polled (over 300 more had their votes disallowed), of whom 60 per cent gave a vote to Burrell, 55 per cent for Curteis and 45 per cent for Cavendish. The clear party schism was illustrated by the fact that Cavendish secured 1,579 plumpers (85 per cent of his total), whereas Curteis had 72 and Burrell only 53. Burrell and Curteis received 2,132 split votes (88 and 94 per cent of their respective totals), while Burrell and Cavendish shared 234 votes (ten and 13) and Curteis and Cavendish 54. The east-west division was irrelevant to such a contest: Burrell polled best in the east and Cavendish in the west. Some 200 non-resident freeholders travelled to vote, chiefly from adjacent counties and from London, where both sides had committees working to maximize the outvote; they split roughly 60:40 for the coalition. Pollbook evidence confirms the existence of a sharp urban-rural divide. Of the seven largest towns, Brighton, Chichester, Horsham, Lewes, Rye and Worthing all showed clear majorities for Cavendish, and only in Hastings, where government influence was strong, were supporters of the coalition in the majority. The presence of flourishing Dissenting congregations in Chichester and Lewes probably aided Cavendish (on the hustings, Curteis had bemoaned his lack of support from this quarter). In Brighton, Curteis’s cause cannot have been helped by unanswered allegations that he had approved an increase in the town’s contribution to the county rate. At Rye the patron, the Rev. George Lamb, an early mover in the effort to replace Webster, had pronounced Curteis to be ‘entirely disagreeable’ to the local inhabitants on account of his perceived hostility to their harbour interests, and complained that thanks to the coalition his efforts for Burrell had fallen on stony ground. Collectively, the urban vote, which comprised a quarter of the total, went to Cavendish by two to one.
The widely held reservations about Curteis may explain why funds to defray the vast expense of the election were less forthcoming from the magnates than had been their pledges of support. Platitudes about returning candidates free of personal charge were quickly forgotten when the coalition agents presented a bill not far short of Cavendish’s expenditure of £26,218. Curteis was expected to match Egremont’s contribution of £9,000, to which Ashburnham added £2,500, with the remainder being raised by subscription. This rankled with Curteis, particularly as Burrell’s contribution did not exceed £4,000, and the matter was still in dispute 18 months after the election. The Lewes agent for Burrell and Curteis drew comfort from the reflecton that ‘on our side ... the expense has not entirely been thrown away as it shows that small freeholds do not yet govern the county’. Their opponents could only gloat at Curteis’s discomfiture when faced with the bills.
Huskisson’s comment during the debate on the election bill that county meetings were ‘almost unknown’ in Sussex seemed to be borne out during the Queen Caroline affair in the autumn of 1820. Poyntz and Lord George Cavendish, who might have raised a demonstration in her favour, declined to do so, and Sheffield’s attempts to promote a meeting in the opposite interest met with an indifferent response, as did Ashburnham’s efforts to revive his local militia troop. In January 1821 the assembled magistrates of the eastern division were asked to sign a loyal declaration to the king. Seventeen did so, another 16 approved it in absentia, while two publicly dissented, an indication of the overwhelmingly Tory composition of the magistracy. (A correspondent of Egremont in 1831 scarcely exaggerated when he complained that ‘for 45 years Whigs have been universally excluded’ from the bench.)
Ease, affluence and plenty, which seven or eight years since so universally predominated among the Sussex yeomanry, have nearly disappeared, and penury, grumbling and discontent prevail in their stead. This alteration in their circumstances has greatly operated on their political opinions, and they now loudly declaim against the men and the measures which they formerly most strenuously and vehemently upheld.
Yet the farmers’ flirtation with radicalism proved to be short-lived, and Curteis’s parliamentary activity did not live up to his public rhetoric.
Although it was widely assumed that Cavendish’s late entry to the fray in 1820 was executed with an eye to the next general election, by the autumn of 1825 John Smith, Member for Midhurst, expressed pessimism about his prospects, ‘the war whoop of the church having been raised ... with some effect’, and the following spring Lord Yarborough believed his chances were ‘doubtful’. The Tory Brighton Gazette predicted defeat for the Whigs, naming the Catholic question as ‘the rock on which they will split’, and in late May 1826 press rumour correctly stated that Cavendish would not stand a contest. Reports that Alexander Donovan of Framfield, lately defeated at Lewes, would come forward instead proved chimerical.
No pollbook has survived, but details from the local press show that of the 3,288 freeholders who polled, 64 per cent gave a vote to Burrell, 62 per cent to Curteis and 36 per cent to Webster. Webster secured 917 plumpers (80 per cent of his total), Curteis had 242 (12) and Burrell 65. Burrell and Curteis received 1,793 split votes (85 per cent of both their totals), Burrell and Webster, much to the former’s disappointment, shared only 258 (12 and 22 per cent), and a mere 13 split for Curteis and Webster. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the main areas of support for Webster were in the towns, and that votes from Brighton and Chichester accounted for his good early showing. The Brighton Gazette boasted that the importance of Brighton within the county electorate had never been greater. Figures for the six rapes of the county show that Webster narrowly outpolled Curteis in Chichester and also scored well in Lewes (which included Brighton) and Hastings, where his former residence was situated. In Bramber, where Norfolk’s influence was strong, the sharp fall in Webster’s vote compared with Cavendish’s in 1820 indicates that, contrary to newspaper reports, his interest was not exerted wholeheartedly in Webster’s favour. Burrell and Curteis polled most impressively in their respective areas of the county, with Burrell’s support topping 80 per cent in Arundel and Bramber and Curteis’s approaching 90 per cent in Pevensey.
The fact that the majority of voters in 1826 had travelled to the poll at their own expense prompted renewed calls for future elections to be sited at Lewes; one paper reported that ‘the blood of East Sussex seems now to be up’. Petitions, rather than a county meeting, were the means adopted to further this aim, and 25 were presented from eastern parishes, against 17 from the west expressing hostility to change. Curteis introduced a bill, 5 Apr., but at the second reading, 9 May 1827, the formidable figure of Huskisson again stood in its way, and on advice Curteis withdrew it.
At the dissolution in the summer of 1830 Shelley announced that he would not stand after all, blaming the widespread objections to his youth. Herbert Curteis’s address added a declaration of support for the agricultural interest to his reform pledge. However, the threat of an opposition to him persisted until the day of the election: Charles Cavendish, Webster, Norfolk’s son Lord Surrey* and his cousin Henry Howard, Member for New Shoreham, Donovan and even Lord John Russell* were variously expected to come forward. Of these, only Webster appears to have engaged in a canvass, according to Edward Curteis, who also reported to Egremont on the good prospects for his son at Chichester, Brighton and among the London out-voters. No relaxation of the canvass was permitted, on account of Norfolk’s refusal to give any pledge, and the overt hostility of Shelley, of Hurst at Horsham and of the radical irreconcilables in the towns. Burrell’s seat was thought to be secure, though one Whig newspaper complained of his ‘passive and inert’ conduct in Parliament. On the hustings, his proposer James Martin Lloyd* welcomed the return to the quiet inexpensive election of county Members. Curteis was nominated by Sir Charles Goring of Wiston and, somewhat surprisingly, by Thomas Read Kemp, Whig Member for Lewes, who hoped to see ‘a little more public independence from the son than the father has shown’, observing that ‘if returned he will be brought in under very different circumstances and freed from those trammels by which his father was bound’. Kemp’s extensive property holdings in Brighton meant that he almost embodied the ‘town’ interest, and he advised Curteis against devoting himself exclusively to agricultural concerns, though he also testified to the sincerity of his reform pledge. Curteis explained that he would not go as far as the radicals on universal suffrage and annual parliaments, but he professed his openness to persuasion on the ballot. Both candidates issued ringing denunciations of the lately deposed French king, but they refused to be drawn into giving pledges on the abolition of slavery. No third candidate appeared, and Burrell and Curteis were declared elected. With the conciliation of his father’s antagonists complete, Curteis thanked the Chichester radicals for not raising a ‘vexatious opposition’ against him, and noted that while he had been told that ‘between Tory and Radical, in between two stools, he would lose [the] seat’, he had ‘formed a different estimate and the result proved he was correct’.
Whereas in January 1830 Huskisson had detected a mood of resignation among Sussex farmers, the picture had dramatically altered by November, when the ‘Swing’ riots spread across the Kent border into the Sussex Weald. There were several instances of farmers colluding with the labourers, to link their own grievances over taxes and tithes to the demands for higher wages and poor allowances. Later that month the movement reached the west of the county, where incendiarism and machine breaking were prevalent.
The defeat of the reform bill in April 1831 and the ensuing dissolution obviated the need for a by-election to fill the vacant western seat, which ironically would have taken place at Lewes. Recognizing the precariousness of his own interest, Curteis did not take his re-election for granted. He warned Richmond that, given his support for the government’s bill, ‘I shall not feel myself called upon to give way to any reformer whatever’, and he clearly expected the duke to reciprocate his support for Lennox, albeit ‘without anything like coalition, which must be avoided’; this was apparently done. Donovan, who had recently engaged Richmond in an earnest, occasionally obsequious correspondence, did not offer for the eastern seat, despite earlier indications that he would do so. There remained a threat, as Curteis reported, that Sir John Shelley might be ‘put forward, backed by a purse made up by anti-reformers in London, not belonging to Sussex’, but ‘if such a thing were attempted I would not answer for the personal safety of the worthy baronet’. In the event the anti-reformers opted, as they had at the county meeting, for a dignified retreat, allowing Curteis and Lennox to be returned unopposed while they inserted in the press a declaration against the government’s bill, which was signed by Camden, the 2nd earl of Sheffield, the 5th Earl De La Warr (coheir of the Dorset interest), the 4th Viscount Gage and Shiffner. Lennox arrived at the hustings in Chichester at the head of a procession half a mile long.
Following the rejection of the reintroduced reform bill by the Lords a numerously signed requisition secured a county meeting, 4 Nov. 1831. Notwithstanding Richmond’s ‘fears of excitement’, a moderate address was adopted expressing confidence in the ministry, which was supported by the 3rd earl of Chichester, Goring and Donovan. However, the unanimity of the previous meeting was not repeated, as radical freeholders, led by Webster and George De Lacy Evans, Member for Rye, called for stronger wording and protested against the legislative role of the bishops. Talk of the formation of a political union for Sussex was condemned by Curteis, to hisses, as ‘extremely unpalatable’. The Tory George Robert Dawson* attempted to exploit these seeds of disunity with an inflammatory speech against the bill, but he had no connection with the county and the main body of anti-reformers were again absent (with ‘some reluctance’, in De La Warr’s case). Another of this group, Shiffner, interpreted the attendance of ‘about 300’ at the meeting as a vindication of his principles, though in reforming circles the event was hailed as a triumph.
By the Reform Act of 1832 Sussex lost nine borough seats through the disfranchisement of Bramber, East Grinstead and Steyning, and the partial disfranchisement of Arundel, Horsham and Midhurst, while it gained two through the enfranchisement of Brighton, which removed many urban voters from the county. Sussex was divided into East and West, each returning two Members. Despite the greater size and population of the East, the traditional boundary was adopted, with a small alteration being made in the west to compensate for the incorporation of a detached portion of Hampshire.
Number of voters: 4124 in 1820
Estimated voters: over 6,000