Abingdon

Abingdon, situated on the Thames in the north of Berkshire, and six miles from Oxford, was the county town and polling place for county elections, though it was soon to be supplanted by the substantially larger and faster expanding borough of Reading. While it was essentially a market town for the surrounding agricultural region, it had become in the eighteenth century a centre for the weaving and spinning of hemp and flax and the production of sacking, sheeting and carpets. In this period it was generally prosperous, with low poor rates; but a depression in the local hemp trade, which was hit by competition from Scotland and the Baltic, left its mark and became an issue at elections. N. Hammond and D. Miles, Bk. of Abingdon, 45, 105; J. Townsend, Hist. Abingdon, 160; VCH Berks. iv. 441; PP (1835), xxiii. 144.

The corporation consisted of a mayor, 12 principal and 16 secondary burgesses, who were chosen for life by the mayor, the two bailiffs and the principal burgesses from the ‘better and honester men of the borough’. The right to vote in mayoral elections extended beyond the ratepayers, who enjoyed the parliamentary franchise, to embrace inhabitants ‘of the inferior sort’, defined in 1806 as ‘householders or lodgers who furnish their own diet; that is potwallers’. They, together with the secondary burgesses, had the power to return two candidates for the mayoralty from the principal burgesses; but the final choice between them rested with the mayor, the bailiffs and the other principal burgesses. The mayor annually nominated one bailiff from the inhabitants, though his selection was theoretically subject to ratification by the mayoral electorate, who themselves had the power to choose the other, commoners’ bailiff. This limited ‘freedom of ... elective constitution’, by which Oldfield set too much store, was offset by the power which the corporation possessed under the charter of 1774 to elect each year two principal burgesses to serve with the retiring and new mayors as justices, who were responsible for revising the lists of voters. PP (1835), xxiii. 139-42; Berks. RO, Preston mss A/AEb 2, pollbooks for elections of mayors and commoners’ bailiffs; J. Townsend, News of a Country Town, 7-9; Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816), iii. 31-32.

Abingdon had long been open and unpredictable, with an acknowledged but by no means dominant venal element in its electorate. Dissent had played a significant role in the particularly turbulent periods of 1754-74 and 1802-7, providing solid and active support for ‘independent’ candidates. Colchester Diary, i. 55; Townsend, Country Town, 8; J.E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution and English Radicalism, 109-10; F. O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons, and Parties, 206, 263, 272, 361, 364. From 1811 until 1818 the borough had been represented by Sir George Bowyer of nearby Radley, a pro-Catholic supporter of the Liverpool ministry, who had commanded broad support among the contending factions as a compromise candidate, but whose membership of the House was largely nominal for most of the 1812 Parliament as a result of the mounting financial problems which eventually ruined him. At the general election of 1818 he had been replaced by John Maberly of Shirley, Surrey, a wealthy businessman, who, though an Englishman, with premises in London, had acquired linen and soap manufacturing works in Aberdeen and recently founded a bank in Edinburgh, which he later extended to other Scottish towns and to London. As Member for Rye, 1816-18, he had supported government, but his relations with them had turned sour. After making an unsuccessful bid to hold on to the Rye seat at the dissolution, he stood for Abingdon, which he had been cultivating for at least six months, and was returned unopposed. Thereafter he went into opposition, emerging in the 1818 Parliament as one of the leading critics of government’s fiscal policies, particularly the sinking fund and excessive taxation. He built up a powerful position in the borough, where, though he was not without critics and enemies, his politics were generally popular. His annual new year donation of coal to the needy poor became part of the fabric of Abingdon life. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 9-11; iv. 484; Townsend, Country Town, 149.

There was not a whisper of opposition to his re-election in 1820, when the contested county election a week later excited far more interest. Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 12 Feb., 11 Mar. 1820; Townsend, Country Town, 150. Local agriculturists and tradesmen petitioned the Commons for measures to alleviate distress, 17 May 1820. CJ, lxxv. 221. There was a general illumination to celebrate the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties against Queen Caroline in November 1820, and members of the town’s benefit societies petitioned the Commons in her support, 26 Jan. 1821. Reading Mercury, 27 Nov. 1820; CJ, lxxvi. 12. In November 1821 the corporation took steps to dispute and resist the county’s bid to levy rates on the borough, claiming exemption by its charters from any jurisdiction of county magistrates, and their efforts were eventually crowned with success in 1823. Selections from Municipal Chrons. of Abingdon ed. B. Challoner, 242-4. Petitions from Abingdon for mitigation of the severity of the criminal code and the repeal of recent legislation dealing with insolvent debtors were presented to the Commons, 9 May 1822 and 12 Feb. 1823 respectively. CJ, lxxvii. 247; lxxviii. 19. The town petitioned the Commons, 29 Mar., and the Lords, 5 Apr. 1824, for amelioration of the condition of slaves in the West Indian colonies. Ibid. lxxix. 222; LJ, lvi. 142. A meeting on 11 Feb. 1825 voted a petition to the Commons for repeal of the assessed taxes, one of Maberly’s pet subjects. Berks. Chron. 19 Feb. 1825; CJ, lxxx. 70. The mayor, burgesses and inhabitants petitioned the Commons, 19 Apr., and the Lords, 16 May, against Catholic relief, which Maberly, hitherto an opponent, now supported in the House for the first time. Townsend, Country Town, 161; CJ, lxxx. 320; LJ, lxii. 810. A bill to provide for the paving and lighting and general improvement of Abingdon was introduced to the Commons by Maberly on 21 Mar. 1825; but at a meeting of inhabitants, 14 Apr., when the promoters of the measure were reported to have resorted to delaying tactics to defuse the situation, there was criticism of their failure to consult the townspeople at large and to raise the necessary funds by open subscription, rather than by their adopted expedient of private loans at punitive rates of interest. The measure received royal assent on 27 June 1825. Townsend, Country Town, 160; CJ, lxxx. 66, 159, 236, 543, 603; Reading Mercury, 21 Feb.; Berks. Chron. 30 Apr. 1825. At the annual visitation feast of the free grammar school, 7 Aug. 1825, William Bowles, the mayor, warmly praised Maberly’s parliamentary conduct, especially his campaign for reduced public expenditure. Berks. Chron. 13 Aug. 1825. There was a heated contest for the post of commoners’ bailiff the following month, when Maberly’s opponent B. Collingwood, a grocer, beat his supporter William Strange, a banker. Ibid. 10 Sept. 1825; Preston mss A/Aeb 2. A meeting on 23 Feb. 1826 produced another petition to the Commons for repeal of the assessed taxes, which Maberly presented, 22 Mar. Berks. Chron. 25 Feb., 25 Mar.; Reading Mercury, 27 Feb. 1826; CJ, lxxxi. 201. After his successful canvass in April it was generally assumed that he would be unopposed at the approaching general election, though there was a rumour that a man of Tory principles would come forward to challenge him. Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 29 Apr.; Berks. Chron. 29 Apr.; Reading Mercury, 1 May 1826. At a dinner for his supporters, 10 May, he gave a lengthy and very detailed explanation of his conduct in the expiring Parliament, boasting in particular of his unremitting support for retrenchment, tax reductions, and fiscal and parliamentary reform, on which he preferred a ratepayer franchise to anything approaching universal suffrage. As for the Catholic question, he promised that if returned again he would abide by his constituents’ views on the subject, as expressed at a public meeting. The previous day his opponents, of whom Nathaniel Dodson, vicar of St. Helen’s, was one of the leaders, had promised the intervention of a candidate of ‘liberal and constitutional principles’; and on 15 May he appeared in the shape of the Tory Thomas Duffield of Marcham, about three miles west of Abingdon. Maberly, hastily summoned back from London to make another canvass, accused Duffield of disturbing the peace of the borough and boasted that although when he had first stood there, on ‘the popular interest’, a majority of the corporation had been hostile to him, he had since won many of them over. Duffield, who claimed to stand for attachment to the civil and religious institutions of the country and ‘disavowal of a systematic opposition to ... government’, persevered for a fortnight, but then gave up, conceding that he had no chance. Berks. Chron. 13, 20 May, 3 June; Reading Mercury, 22 May, 5 June 1826. At his unopposed election Maberly was nominated by John Francis Spenlove, a brewer and principal burgess, and the Rev. Edward Nicholson, master of the grammar school, and prominently supported by the mayor, James Cole. He again defended his conduct, denying that he had practised factious opposition to ministers, whose recent espousal of liberal policies he generously applauded. He repeated his promise that on the Catholic question ‘he should in future act under the direction of his constituents’. After rushing off to speak at the election for Northampton, where his son William Leader Maberly came in again, he returned to Abingdon to give dinners for his supporters. Berks. Chron. 10, 17, 24 June; Reading Mercury, 12, 26 June 1826. Duffield subsequently donated 200 guineas for distribution among the poor and gave each voter a guinea voucher entitling him to dine at any inn within a certain time. Reading Mercury, 24 July 1826. The 1826 mayoral election was warmly contested: Spenlove, Maberly’s man, topped the poll with 254 votes, ahead of William Doe Belcher, a supporter of Duffield, who had 174; but it was Belcher who was chosen to serve. Ibid. 3 Sept.; Berks. Chron. 9 Sept. 1826; Preston mss A/AEb 2; Townsend, Country Town, 164.

Protestant Dissenters of Abingdon petitioned the Commons for repeal of the Test Acts, 22 May, 7 June 1827; and in 1828, when Maberly voted for that measure, they again petitioned the Commons, 22 Feb., and the Lords, 29 Feb. Reading Mercury, 14 May 1827, 25 Feb., 3 Mar. 1828; CJ, lxxxii. 482, 527; lxxxiii. 96; LJ, lx. 87. The government’s concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 led to ructions within the corporation, which on 20 Feb. resolved to petition Parliament against it. Strange, the commoners’ bailiff, who had ostensibly acquiesced in the petition, subsequently informed Maberly that he and the mayor’s bailiff, Charles Baster, in fact dissented from its prayer and wished him to make this clear when he presented it. Maberly referred the matter back to the corporation, telling them that the Speaker had privately advised him that such a statement would invalidate the petition. The corporation promptly censured Strange for what it deemed his clandestine bid to sabotage the petition. In the event, when Maberly presented it, 9 Mar., he signified the bailiffs’ (as well as his own) dissent from its prayer, but secured its acceptance as an expression of the sentiments of the individual signatories. An anti-Catholic inhabitants’ petition with over 700 signatures had been presented to the Commons by Maberly, 2 Mar., and to the Lords by the 5th earl of Abingdon, the high steward, 5 Mar. Maberly presented a less numerously signed inhabitants’ petition in favour of emancipation, 16 Mar. Municipal Chrons. 247-8; Townsend, Country Town, 172; Reading Mercury, 2 Mar.; Berks. Chron. 7, 14 Mar. 1829; CJ, lxxxiv. 94, 115, 141; LJ, lxi. 118. The friends of civil and religious liberty, led by Thomas Bowles of Milton Hill, Charles Eyston of East Hendred and Nicholson, held a dinner to mark the passage of emancipation, 23 Apr., when Baster and Strange were presented with silver salvers in recognition of ‘their independent conduct in defence of civil and religious liberty’. The controversy was aired in the local press during the following month. Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 2, 9, 16, 23 May; Reading Mercury, 4 May; Berks. Chron. 9, 16, 30 May 1829. On 22 Aug. 1829 the Tory Berkshire Chronicle, which had an axe to grind against Maberly, reported that as a result of the local hemp and flax manufactures being ‘now almost broken up’, there was severe distress among the town’s poor. The newspaper trusted that in the next session Maberly, who by implication was partially responsible for this depression as a participant in the thriving Scottish trade, would ‘exert himself on behalf of his poor starving constituents’. Abingdon bankers petitioned the Commons for mitigation of the punishment for forgery, 24 May 1830. CJ, lxxxv. 463. As the failing health of the king raised the prospect of a general election a number of possible challengers to Maberly were touted, including Duffield, Philip Pusey of Pusey, recently returned for Rye, and Lord Abingdon’s son Lord Norreys*, whose coming of age the previous year had been celebrated by the corporation. Berks. Chron. 27 June 1829, 12 June 1830. On 6 July, two weeks after the king’s death, Maberly, who was ostentatiously supported by Dr. Charles Tomkins, a leading Baptist, and Nicholson, laid his parliamentary account before 150 of his constituents at a dinner in the county hall. Before doing so, he expressed regret at the falling off in the local hemp business, but bluntly told his audience that the Abingdonians’ failure to compete with Scottish manufacturers was ‘owing to a want of skill and enterprise’. He offered to pay for a few intelligent men to go to Scotland to study improvements in machinery, not least in his own establishment. He explained and defended his political conduct under the five heads of tax reductions, parliamentary reform, trade, finance and civil and religious liberty. More specifically, he advocated ‘gradual reform’; stood by his general support for the sale of beer bill, despite having been told that it would damage him; claimed as feathers in his cap the revival of the finance committee and an improved system of presenting public accounts; praised ministers for their liberality on religious toleration and, on his support for Catholic emancipation, asserted that if his constituents had instructed him to oppose it he would have resigned his seat, but that as they had kept silent they could hardly censure him now. It was reported that Duffield had declined an invitation to stand from a deputation of Maberly’s opponents because he had designs on the county seat; but a challenger appeared in the person of the wealthy ministerialist and anti-Catholic Ebenezer Fuller Maitland of Shinfield, near Reading, who had been defeated at Wallingford in 1820, but had come in for Chippenham on a family interest in 1826. His leading backers were Belcher, who said that he had always opposed Maberly both on political principle and because ‘he had always been a rival to the manufactures, and an enemy to the trade of the town’, Dodson, and the principal burgesses John Vindin Collingwood, a butcher, and William Bowles. To counter their boast that they had seduced 20 of Maberly’s promises, Nicholson and company held a meeting, 20 July 1830, when they claimed to have ascertained that although some electors had been tampered with, the number of defectors amounted to no more than two doubtful cases. Townsend, Country Town, 177; Berks. Chron. 10, 24, 31 July; Reading Mercury, 12, 19 July; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 24 July 1830.

On the hustings, in broiling heat, Tomkins and Nicholson, who spoke at great length, sought to tar Fuller Maitland with the brush of electoral corruption through his connections with Wallingford and Chippenham, and contrasted his silence in the House with Maberly’s loquacious advocacy of liberal policies. Belcher referred to Maberly’s mysterious change of politics in 1818 and repeated his accusation that he was ‘an enemy to our manufactures’. Maberly himself, as well as giving his usual detailed exposition of his parliamentary conduct, repudiated the charge, claiming that as soon as he became Member for Abingdon he had given up the use of hemp in his Aberdeen factory. He repeated his offer of a funded educational tour of Scottish works and said that he was looking into the possibility of removing some Abingdonian workers permanently to Scotland. He accused Fuller Maitland’s supporters of committing acts of bribery, against which he threatened legal action. He dismissed Fuller Maitland’s credentials as an effective Member and alleged that he had been sent down by the treasury, a charge which Fuller Maitland intervened to deny, though he did admit under pressure that he had had ‘a conversation with friends belonging to the treasury’. Maberly also denounced Dodson, the ‘head and front of this opposition’, for unconstitutional interference in elections. Dodson defended his right to promote his own political views and denied that he had fomented the opposition, but pointed to Maberly’s support for Catholic emancipation as confirmation of his belief that he was an enemy of the church, and in turn accused him of bribery. Fuller Maitland made a brief speech, denying the charges against him, including one that he had masqueraded as a Dissenter (he had been born as one in 1780, but had conformed for many years), and indicated that he was favourable to any ‘practicable’ measure of parliamentary reform. On Maberly’s insistence, the bribery oath was put to all voters. From the first 174 votes recorded, Maberly had a lead of only ten (92 to 82); but from the next 49 he received 41 to Fuller Maitland’s eight, giving him a lead of 43. Fuller Maitland retired, but his supporters alleged that Maberly then inflated his majority by polling, with the connivance of the mayor, Cole, the votes of 26 men whose qualifications were at least dubious. (The pollbook reveals that in fact 22 of these votes were cast for Maberly after the last four recorded for Fuller Maitland, including those of William Bowles and Belcher, when Maberly’s lead stood at 43.) At a celebration dinner after the close of the poll, Maberly, claiming to have received the vast majority of the independent and ‘most substantial votes’, accused his opponents of having obtained at least 40 by bribery, which he again threatened to make an issue of in the courts. He also complained of hostile corporation influence and Dodson’s ‘insinuations and false attacks’. Fifteen gentlemen and clergymen voted for Maberly, including Nicholson, Tomkins and two other members of his family, and the Dissenting ministers William Wilkins and John Kershaw. Maitland’s nine supporters from this social group included Dodson, Belcher, William Bowles, Sir Charles Saxton and the principal burgess Thomas Knight, who served several times as mayor. Full Report of Speeches and Other Proceedings connected with Abingdon Election (1830), which contains (pp. 66-74) the pollbook. See also the accounts in Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 31 July; Reading Mercury, 2 Aug.; Berks. Chron. 7, 14 Aug. 1830. At the visitation feast, which fell only days after the election, Maberly observed that as he had spoken a great deal lately and had not pleased all his constituents, he would eschew any controversial remarks. Reading Mercury, 16 Aug. 1830. The acrimony generated by the contest was carried over into the municipal elections on 1 Sept. 1830. In that for the mayoralty, Maberly’s friends James Latham and Thomas West got 325 and 324 votes respectively, while Collingwood and Belcher received 324 and 323. Latham and Collingwood were returned to the chamber, where the principal burgesses chose the latter. In the election for commoners’ bailiff, Maberly’s man Edward Cowcher beat Richard Badcock by 381-361. On legal advice, which suggested that the technical return of three rather than the statutory two candidates might invalidate the election, Collingwood declined to serve as mayor. A fresh election was eventually held on a mandamus from king’s bench in November, when ‘party spirit’ ran ‘extremely high’, and there was serious disorder. Collingwood and Latham topped the poll with 425 and 421 votes respectively, and the principal burgesses duly appointed Collingwood. It was alleged that every one of the 850 or so who voted was paid at least 5s., and that some received as much as £3. Townsend, Country Town, 178; Preston mss A/AEb 2; Reading Mercury, 6 Sept., 22, 29 Nov., 6 Dec.; Berks. Chron. 11 Sept., 4, 18 Dec. 1830; Municipal Chrons. 250-1. Petitions to Parliament for the gradual abolition of slavery were got up by various denominations of Abingdon Dissenters in the winter of 1830 and spring of 1831. Berks. Chron. 13 Nov. 1830; CJ, lxxxvi. 408, 486.

At a town meeting convened by requisition, 27 Jan. 1831, Thomas Fletcher and one Richardson proposed a petition, to be presented by Maberly and Lord Abingdon, calling for ‘a rational, practical and efficient reform’ of Parliament. As chairman, Collingwood agreed to sign it, and his impartial conduct was subsequently applauded by Kershaw, who followed Nicholson in speaking for reform. The petitions reached the Lords on 7 Feb. and the Commons on 28 Feb. Townsend, Country Town, 181; Berks. Chron. 29 Jan.; Reading Mercury, 31 Jan. 1831; LJ, lxiii. 207; CJ, lxxxvi. 324. Maberly attended the town meeting and dinner held on 17 Mar. (the day after the county reform meeting in the borough) to petition the Commons and address the king in support of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, for which he of course voted in the House. Other prominent speakers were Nicholson, Kershaw, Thomas Bowles, Tomkins and Roland Neate of Tubney. Berks. Chron. 12 Mar.; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 19 Mar.; Reading Mercury, 21, 28 Mar. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 416. There was ‘unusual excitement’ in Abingdon shortly before the dissolution in April on account of the discontent of a number of unemployed paupers of St. Helen’s parish, who were up in arms over the rumoured intention of the new overseers to purge fraudulent claimants on the rates and reduce allowances. There were some ugly scenes at vestry and borough court meetings, but the affair eventually petered out, with most of the malcontents pacified by official explanations. Berks. Chron. 23 Apr. 1831. There was no threat to Maberly at the general election, though it was reported that a member of the Yates family, Sir Robert Peel’s* maternal kin, was a possible starter for the Tories. The Times, 27, 30 Apr.; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 30 Apr.; Windsor and Eton Express, 30 Apr.; Reading Mercury, 2 May 1831. Maberly subsequently regaled the poor with bread, cheese and beer, and at a celebration dinner, 6 May, endorsed the reform bill, which ‘struck at the very root of corruption’. When Collingwood refused to sanction a meeting to address the king thanking him for standing by his ministers and dissolving Parliament, Tomkins, Nicholson, Fletcher, Kershaw and their reforming friends went ahead regardless, 12 May; it was said that the address, which Maberly presented on 15 June, was signed by about 240 people, many of whom anticipated great reductions in taxation from a reformed Parliament. Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 7 May; Reading Mercury, 9 May; Berks. Chron. 14 May, 18 June 1831. A meeting of 14 Sept. 1831 petitioned the Lords to pass the bill. Berks. Chron. 17 Sept.; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 24 Sept.; Reading Mercury, 26 Sept. 1831.

Maberly’s hold on the Abingdon seat was broken not by his political opponents or the Reform Act but by his own financial ruin, which forced his bank to stop payments in January 1832. This effectively ended his parliamentary career and drove him abroad later in the year. His supporters got up a declaration, which was supposedly signed by ‘a considerable number of the electors’, expressing their belief that his embarrassment would be temporary and that he would be able to continue as their Member, and their intention to support him at the next election. His opponents made allegations of irregularities in the recent distribution of coals on his behalf, and of bribery to the tune of £6-7,000 at the last election. At the end of the month Duffield and Thomas Bowles canvassed Abingdon as rival claimants to the seat in the event of Maberly’s retirement. At a dinner, 4 Feb., Duffield, who was promoted as a local man and benefactor of the town and neighbourhood, said that he favoured ‘a practical and efficient parliamentary reform’, though he expected little good from it, denied being a religious bigot and declared his opposition to free trade in corn. Collingwood, Dodson, Badcock, Cole and Knight were among those who rallied to him on this occasion. He later subscribed £20 to the cholera relief fund and donated 20 acres of land for cultivation by the poor as allotments, to which Saxton added some contiguous waste of his own. Bowles asserted in February that Maberly had recently indicated to his friends that he would soon be able to resume his parliamentary duties, but he presented himself as his political heir if he was forced to stand down. Reading Mercury, 9, 16 Jan., 6 Feb.; Berks. Chron. 14 Jan., 4, 11, 18, 25 Feb., 12, 26 May; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 21 Jan., 4 Feb.; Preston mss A/AEp 11, Bowles’s address, 9 Feb. 1832; Townsend, Country Town, 186. The success of the reform bill’s second reading in the Lords was celebrated in Abingdon, but dismay prevailed when news was received of its defeat in committee and the resignation of ministers. A meeting already arranged to petition the Upper House was used by the reformers, 11 May 1832, to petition the Commons to withhold supplies until the bill was passed. Optimistically or ingenuously, they resolved that Maberly should present it. The reinstatement of the Grey ministry and the eventual enactment of reform were feted in the town. Townsend, Country Town, 184-6; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 14 May; Reading Mercury, 16 May 1832; CJ, lxxxvii. 329.

The boundary commissioners had reported that the only desirable extension to the borough, which contained 451 £10 houses, would be southwards into the parish of South Wick to take in some wharves and a handful of houses; but they at the same time recorded their doubts as to whether it was worth making any alteration for the sake of such a paltry addition to the electorate. PP (1831-2), xxxvi. 321; xxxviii. 27-28. A rumour developed, however, that such an extension was to take place and that to counterbalance its effects ‘three quarters of the present borough will be divested of their ancient privileges’. More realistically, the corporation resolved in July 1832 that it was unacceptable to include these few houses while excluding the much more densely populated area of St. Helen’s parish which lay outside the borough, and considered petitioning the Lords against the change. They did not do so, but in the Lords debate on the third reading of the boundaries bill, which must have passed through the Commons with the extension incorporated in it, 9 July, Lord Abingdon moved an amendment to restore the boundary to that of the old borough. On examining the relevant papers Lord Ellenborough noted that the commissioners themselves had been ‘decidedly in favour’ of no change and, after some desultory discussion, the amendment was carried. It was subsequently ratified by the Commons. Berks. Chron. 3 Mar., 7, 28 July; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 14 July; Municipal Chrons. 251; Townsend, Country Town, 186.

In a parting shot from the Hague in September 1832 Maberly, who did not vacate his seat before the dissolution, reminded James Brougham* of a promise that his brother, the lord chancellor, would do something for the stalwart Nicholson, a steadfast ‘Whig in that hotbed of Toryism’. Brougham mss, Maberly to J. Brougham, 24 Sept. 1832. At the general election, when the registered electorate numbered only 300, Bowles backed down at the eleventh hour. Maberly’s son, who was returned for Chatham, was nominated in desperation and in absentia by the reformers, but Duffield beat him by 114 votes in a poll of only 201. (One vote was cast for Bowles.) Duffield became as secure in the seat as Maberly had been, and the borough was in Conservative hands for 20 years. Berks. Chron. 15 Dec. 1832; Gash, 67, 274-7.