Cambridgeshire was a variedly productive agricultural county, with no significant manufacturing industry. In 1824, the 5th Earl De La Warr, writing to the 3rd earl of Hardwicke, the lord lieutenant, wondered whether there was any point in backing a scheme to establish a horticultural society, as ‘our county is too thinly peopled with resident families to give such an institution any chance of success’.
Before the 1820 general election the Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, the organ of the independent party in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire (which seems to have been rescued from financial difficulty by a subscription supported by Whigs and radicals in these counties), carried an anonymous threat of opposition to the sitting Members. Manners, the one principally menaced, told Rutland that Sir George Leeds of Croxton was
certainly to be proposed ... Seriously, I recommend you to give it up. He will not spend a farthing, but you will £10,000 or £12,000; and how can it be considered tanti, when in addition to the expense, the irksomeness of keeping up the interest is considered?
Add. 51831, Waldegrave to Holland, 21 June; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 19, 26 Feb., 4 Mar.; Cambridge Chron. 25 Feb.; Rutland mss, Manners to Rutland, 16 Mar. 1820.
In the event, and although there had been an abortive opposition to Rutland’s borough nominees a week earlier, there was no disturbance. At a county meeting the day before the election, Hardwicke and De La Warr secured the passage of an address of congratulation to George IV on his accession. Manners was proposed by General Sir Charles Wale of Shelford, and Osborne by his neighbour Richard Greaves Townley junior of Fulbourn. The Rev. George Adam Browne, vicar of Chesterton and bursar of Trinity College, attacked Manners as a ministerial lackey. He was answered by Henry Gunning, an esquire bedell of the university, who, though an active Whig, deplored any attempt to create friction; and by Dr. William Chafy, master of Sidney Sussex College, who called for a united front against radicalism and subversion. Edward King Fordham of Royston and the Rev. Thomas Musgrave, a fellow of Trinity, questioned Manners as to his views on parliamentary reform, with special reference to the borough, and civil list expenditure; but, shielded by Chafy, he declined to commit himself. It was reported that Osborne’s return ‘cost him without a contest £2,000 for ribbons, etc’.
He was the prime mover behind a county meeting to consider an address to the king calling for the dismissal of ministers on account of their prosecution of Queen Caroline and refusal to deal with distress. To the concern of De La Warr, he obtained the signatures of Bedford (even though he disapproved of ‘the dismissal of ministers’ as the object of the meeting), his son Lord Tavistock*, and their fellow Whigs the 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam, the 20th Baron Dacre, a former Member for Hertfordshire, and Leeds; and also those of Fordham and some of the leading Cambridge independents.
Petitions complaining of agricultural distress were forthcoming from Wisbech and the eastern Isle in February 1822.
At a county meeting organized by the radical independents and held on Market Hill in pouring rain, 14 Feb. 1823, Charles Beales and Eagle proposed a sweeping programme, apparently drawing on William Cobbett’s† ideas, which embraced an ‘effectual reform’ of the Commons; repeal of assessed taxes and duties on essentials; abolition of unmerited pensions and sinecures and reduction of the standing army; cuts in public salaries; the abolition of tithes and their appropriation for liquidation of the national debt; a redistribution of ecclesiastical revenues; the sale of crown lands to pay off the debt; reduction of the interest on it in proportion to the increased value of currency since 1819, and a levy on funded property to provide for the poor. According to Beales, Bedford had declined to sign the requisition on account of ill health, but remained staunch for reform. Maberly’s amendment to petition the king to dismiss his ministers, the Commons for a policy of reform and retrenchment, and the Lords to expunge all record of proceedings against the queen from the journals, was summarily rejected after being opposed by George Fordham, whose violent attack on tithes provoked disturbances among the undergraduates in the crowd. Pryme’s attempt to soften the resolutions by deleting all references to tithes and the national debt failed, while Gunning’s denunciation of the extremists, whom he depicted as mostly non-residents of the county, was shouted down. Wells, fresh from a mischievous opposition to the re-election of the Whig James Scarlett for Peterborough, lambasted the Whigs as ‘greater enemies to reform than the Tories’, and ‘avowed himself a friend of Mr. Cobbett’s measures for the relief of the country’. An embarrassed Osborne reaffirmed his support for reform, but dissociated himself from the attack on tithes and funded property. He presented the petition to the Commons without comment, 27 Feb. 1823. The radical victory and discomfiture of the Whigs delighted James Hodson, editor of the Tory Cambridge Chronicle, who made much of Gunning’s subsequent public letter denouncing the ‘very disgraceful’ petition as the work of extremist outsiders. Gunning’s comments drew a rejoinder from Foster, who vouched for the respectability of the meeting, but at the same time deplored the ‘infatuation’ of Wells, the Bealeses and other followers of Cobbett. This in turn drew a response from Charles Beales, who alleged that ‘at the reform committee the day before the meeting’, Foster ‘was in such a lamentable state of indecision and perplexity that he declared he did not know his own mind’.
When a dissolution was anticipated in September 1825 Hatfield suggested that if no county gentleman volunteered to oppose Manners, Townley, who had succeeded his father to the Fulbourn estate two years previously, would be ‘put in nomination upon the Lincolnshire plan’.
proceeding to a poll and carrying it on with perseverance while necessary, reserving to myself, however, a discretion as to the mode of carrying on the contest, with a view to doing so upon a system as little expensive as possible, consistent with my security.
As Manners had ‘made a pretty general canvass personally and by agents, letters, etc.’, and Beales had told him that ‘the third party ... were equally determined to poll the county’, he had informed the under-sheriff of his determination to demand a poll if necessary. He promised never to retire without giving Hardwicke the ‘earliest’ notice and claimed not to have ‘the most distant notion of who will be put up as a new candidate’. The same day, Jenyns told Hardwicke that he did not think the impoverished Wells had actually canvassed: he ‘had not met with much encouragement’ from his associates, and indeed had been told by some, especially the Dissenters, that if he endangered Osborne he would be removed from his registrarship of Bedford Level corporation. He warned, however, that ‘by his address and manner he may give a good deal of trouble and put the other candidates to a very considerable expense’.
As for Manners, five days before the election he advised Rutland that there would be at least ‘a very unpleasant day’ and that rather than face a contest he should cut his losses and give up the county:
I think success very doubtful ... The lower orders and Dissenters are most inveterate against the bishop, and even supporters of government and anti-reformers are out of humour about the borough [where Rutland had just returned a Scot and an Irishman].
The following day he suggested that if Hardwicke’s nephew stood, ‘our best way would be to join him, as the duke of Bedford has turned his back on us and left us in the lurch’; and on 18 June 1826 warned that ‘a storm is impending, which will fall most heavily upon us’, and that ‘the phalanx that will be arrayed against us will be of the most formidable nature’. He thought that the ‘amazingly popular’ Adeane, ‘a very good chairman at the quarter sessions’, had ‘great weight’, and that if he stood and ‘manages to bring up voters their second votes will bring in Lord Francis without any exertion on his part’. He also suspected that Sir Henry Peyton of Doddington, near March, was working against them under the influence of his Whig clergyman brother Algernon. Manners’s personal inclination was to abandon the seat rather than incur great expense, especially as Rutland was still grief-stricken by his wife’s recent death; but he wrote from Cambridge two days before the election:
Mr. Purchas [the leading Rutlandite member of the corporation] has just now told us that the great hope of the enemy arises from the expectation of bowling us out on the Treating Act. I fear they have much better grounds for expecting success. The fens, Peyton’s interest and the duke of Bedford’s, I think they depend upon, as well as the radicals and the discontented Cottenham, Willingham and Ely people ... I think even if there is an opposition ... we must go to the poll and see the result; and if we then fancy it hopeless we may give it up the first evening. Many say that the whole object is put you to expense.
Rutland mss, (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Manners to Rutland, 16-19 June 1826.
At the nomination, Manners emphasized his support for agricultural protection and Osborne rested on his past record. When Manners refused to answer his request for a pledge to vote for reform, Wells, as Jenyns reported, ‘indulged in a philippic against the Rutland family’, castigated the bishop of Ely and nominated Adeane, whom he did not know and had not consulted. He was seconded by Thomas Oslar of Fulbourn. Adeane, who had that morning turned down an invitation from a deputation sent by the reformers’ meeting (which Wells had not attended) and had no wish to be tarred with Wells’s brush, immediately declined the nomination, claiming to be pledged to support Osborne, though he indicated that he did not rule himself out for the future. Wells persisted, and when a poll was demanded for Manners and arranged to begin the next day, Adeane announced that even if he was returned he would vacate the seat. He was not seen again on the hustings.
A total of 2,136 voted, of whom only 116 were resident outside the county. Manners received a vote from 65 per cent, Osborne from 42 per cent and Adeane from 29 per cent. Over half (1,188 or 56 per cent) plumped for Manners and over a quarter (576 or 27 per cent) split for Osborne and Adeane. Thus 85 per cent of Manners’s total consisted of single votes; and 64 and 92 per cent respectively of Osborne’s and Adeane’s were splits with one another. There were 179 splits (eight per cent of voters) between Manners and Osborne; 142 (seven per cent) plumpers for Osborne, and negligible plumpers for Adeane (28) and splits between him and Manners (23). The latter’s strongholds were in the hundreds of Cheveley (where 99 per cent of the voters supported him) and the neighbouring ones of Staine (94 per cent) and Radfield (88 per cent); the eastern hundred of Staploe (94 per cent), where the freeholders of Soham, influenced by the Dobede family, and Burwell were for him almost to a man; the far south-eastern hundred of Chilford (86 per cent); and the northern hundreds of Wisbech (92 per cent), where 74 of 77 town freeholders were for him, North Witchford (87 per cent), where he polled strongly in Chatteris and unanimously in March, and Ely (84 per cent), where the bishop’s influence presumably counted. Osborne polled well in the hundreds of Flendish, south-east of Cambridge (89 per cent); Chesterton, south-west of it (76 per cent), where Cottenham was a stronghold; Papworth, adjoining the border with Huntingdonshire (75 per cent); Cambridge itself (69 per cent); and South Witchford (64 per cent), where he had strong support in Haddenham. Adeane’s best showings were in Chesterton (77 per cent), where 65 out of 75 Cottenham voters split for him and Osborne; Papworth (72 per cent); and Flendish (65 per cent). He was supported by 52 per cent of Cambridge voters, and Manners by 45 per cent.
A week after the election Adeane issued a lengthy address defending his conduct and stating his willingness to stand ‘as an independent gentleman’ on a future occasion, if required. There was subsequently some criticism of him in the press for betraying the independent interest. After considering Adeane’s apologia and declaration of intent, Hardwicke decided to keep his options open. His half-brother Sir Joseph observed to him:
It would indeed under the circumstances of a new Parliament, whatever may eventually be its duration, be totally unnecessary to make any pledge, or offer to befriend or support any future candidate whoever he may be, so that the ground may be perfectly open to you and yours to take advantage of any circumstances that may eventually turn up, to regain if it has been unhappily lost, that alliance with the county which your extensive property and high character, etc. had so manifestly obtained and supported; and that the connection thus gained so honourably may not hereafter be abandoned.
For Rutland, the contest had been one ‘against radicalism’, as he told Lord Liverpool.
As agricultural distress recurred in the winter of 1829-30, Page chaired a meeting of farmers of Ely and South Witchford, 31 Dec. 1829, which called for unspecified measures of relief.
In the first week of June 1830, as the king’s failing health presaged a general election, Hardwicke used a dinner of the Bedford Level corporation to throw out a hint that he was willing to join in any opposition to Manners. Sir Joseph Yorke was seen as his likely candidate; but he, given his age and comfortable berth at Reigate, was ‘not very keen upon the subject’, and a week before the election Hardwicke told one of his agents that he and his brothers had decided to make no move until events had unfolded further:
Lord F. Osborne says he has no one object but his own seat, and that above all his conduct must be regulated by circumstances. He complains of both Adeane and the duke of Rutland; of the former, for not communicating to him his intentions; and of the duke for a reason which I do not entirely recollect. It appears to me, therefore, that unless (which is not very probable) there should be anything said or a nomination from quarters that would have some weight in the county, Sir Joseph would not need to be brought forward. This, at least, seems to be the only course to be pursued; and perhaps it is as well to prevent a premature canvass. The duke of Rutland is afraid of an opposition, and I think Mr. Adeane would not come forward if he saw it would produce one.
Herts. Archives, Caledon mss E167, Wing to Parkinson, 7 June, Sir J. Yorke to Hardwicke, 12 June, Hardwicke to Parkinson, 23 June; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 12 June 1830.
On the king’s death, Manners and Osborne offered again. Wells issued a long address applauding Manners for his honest opposition to Catholic emancipation, criticizing Osborne for his failure to act on the malt tax and declaring his intention of nominating Sir Joseph Yorke, whom he called on the independent freemen of the Isle to support. Yorke repudiated and dissociated himself from Wells, who had no choice but to withdraw this threat. More pertinently, 300 county residents requisitioned Adeane to stand. He declined to solicit election on account of the expense, but declared his willingness to take the seat if nominated and returned. All three candidates renounced any idea of coalition, but the Independent Press encouraged the supporters of Osborne and Adeane to split their votes in order to turn out Manners. Wells furiously denounced Adeane for his conduct in 1826, but he was out on a limb.
Many of the farmers disapprove of and are sorry about the vote on the beer bill, but notwithstanding almost all support me; and I scarce know of anyone that it has driven over to the enemy; and set against that the whole influence of the brewers is very powerfully in favour ... Lord Francis is very indignant at Adeane’s behaviour, which he considers an attack aimed pointedly at him. The Peytons are very strong for the old Members; and in the distant parts of the Isle that feeling is very decided ... the duke of Bedford [who had voted with ministers on the regency question, 30 June] is the same way. Lord Hardwicke is plump for Adeane, but if any of his tenants wish to give a second vote he declines interfering.
As far as ‘the respectability of the county’ was concerned, ‘everything wears a most favourable aspect’; but he expected Adeane’s supporters to exploit the Cambridge independents’ triumph over the corporation in the tolls case. The ‘mob’ would also, he anticipated, ‘be rendered furious’ by the inevitable references to ‘the obnoxious acts of the corporation, the bishop, the taxes, and the vote on the beer bill’.
Manners’s defeat, which was on a par with government losses in Devon and Suffolk, was seen by many as a symptom of ministerial weakness.
You will probably be more surprised than I was ... as you have not had an opportunity of hearing so much of the conduct of the Cambridge corporation, the effect of the triumph over them respecting the toll cause, and the extraordinary unpopularity of the bishop of Ely. These were the two great causes that occasioned the loss of the county to the duke of Rutland, for it is not surprising that the farmers should be pleased at having got rid of a tax upon their carts and baskets whenever they went to Cambridge market ... I felt I could not with propriety remain entirely neutral or support the old Members as a matter of course ... those upon whom I had any claim behaved uncommonly well to me, and acted according to my wishes in the handsomest manner ... Almost all the gentlemen of the county voted for Lord Charles Manners, but did not remain to support him during the continuance of the hustings, of which I understand he complains.
Add. 45034, f. 149.
In public, at least, Manners denied the truth of this slur on the Tory gentry, which was first made in the Chronicle, where his ‘quite unexpected’ defeat was attributed partly to ‘a considerable change ... in the political opinions of the freeholders’, but largely to ‘a combination of untoward circumstances’. Manners pointed to his high number of plumpers as proof of the fundamental strength of Toryism in the county; and a report that Rutland was to ‘sell Cheveley and all his estates in Cambridgeshire’ proved to be false.
The number of freeholders whose votes were admitted was 3,717, an increase of 74 per cent on 1826. (About 160 votes were rejected or left undecided.) Sixty-three per cent voted for Osborne, 56 for Adeane and 47 for Manners. In the county of Cambridge, where 2,240 voted, the proportions were 57 per cent for Osborne, 62 for Adeane and 45 for Manners; and in the Isle (1,477 voted) 72, 48 and 50 per cent respectively. Manners had 953 single votes, which constituted 26 per cent of his total. Osborne and Adeane polled 136 and 163 plumpers respectively. Forty-five per cent of the voters (1,661) split for Osborne and Adeane: these votes made up 71 per cent of Osborne’s total and 80 per cent of Adeane’s. Osborne and Manners shared 542 votes (15 per cent of voters), which furnished 23 per cent of Osborne’s total and 31 per cent of Manners’s. Votes for Adeane and Manners were cast by 262 voters (seven per cent of the total). In Cambridge, which supplied 456 voters (12 per cent of the total), Osborne came first with 325 votes, while Adeane had 245 and Manners 217: their relative strengths there were hardly changed from 1826. Markedly more than 45 per cent of the voters split for Osborne and Adeane in the following hundreds: Papworth (74), where Over, Swavesey and Willingham were strongholds; Chesterton (73), notably in Cottenham and Histon; Armingford (66), with centres of good support in Meldreth and Royston; and South Witchford (65), where 63 of 70 Hadenham freeholders voted this way. Plumps for Manners constituted 83 per cent of the votes cast in Cheveley, and were as high as 58 per cent in Staploe, where he again polled strongly in Soham and Burwell. But in the seven hundreds (excluding Cheveley) where his overall support had been 80 per cent or higher in 1826, it fell dramatically in 1830. This trend was particularly marked in the northern hundreds of Wisbech, North Witchford and Ely, where 88 per cent of voters had backed him in 1826, but only 55 per cent did so this time, and where the turnout increased threefold, from 391 to 1,169. The relative collapse in support for the Rutland interest in this region was largely owing to Hardwicke’s shift of allegiance, the unpopularity of the bishop of Ely and the prevalence of Dissent and radicalism. Overall, Manners was clearly deserted by some of the men whose influence had given him his comfortable majority in 1826, while the great increase in turnout worked very much to his disadvantage: the parishes in which he came bottom of the poll contained over two-thirds of those who voted.
At the new Cambridge mayor’s inaugural feast, 29 Sept. 1830, Rutland, together with his borough Members, tried to rally his county supporters. On 8 Oct., at a celebration dinner in Wisbech, Adeane reiterated his support for ‘economy and extensive retrenchment’ and portrayed himself as ‘a moderate practical reformer’. There was slight criticism of Osborne for his absence, which was attributed by his spokesman, Foster, to his wish not to appear to be gloating over Manners, whom he respected personally.
At the 1831 general election Osborne offered himself as a wholehearted supporter of the reform bill, while Adeane repeated that he would oppose ‘any alteration which would essentially alter its character or diminish its efficiency’. Hardwicke, alarmed by the measure, returned to his old allegiance and backed Rutland’s attempt to reinstate Manners, who came forward as the professed supporter of ‘safe and constitutional’ reform. He made much of an argument that the bill favoured the manufacturing interest at the expense of the agricultural, implying that a reformed Commons dominated by representatives of industrial towns would get rid of the corn laws. Pryme intervened with a public letter denouncing ‘the Judas declaration of ... moderate reform’ and calling for united support for the true reform candidates; while Osborne appealed to farmers not to be taken in by the specious argument that the bill threatened their livelihoods. Meetings throughout the county resolved to bring in Osborne and Adeane free of expense; and, when it became obvious that Manners had no chance, he was humiliatingly withdrawn four days before the election. Illness prevented Osborne from attending the formalities, when he was nominated by the Rev. Algernon Peyton, rector of Doddington, Sir Henry’s brother, and seconded by Townley. Adeane maintained that the reform bill, far from damaging the landed interest, would actually ‘promote’ it. A typically deranged harangue from Maberly, who proposed Manners and Fryer but found no backer, was ignored. Even Wells joined in the unanimity of the reformers, saying that ‘he now forgave’ the Whigs, whose ‘great and good measure had fully redeemed the past’.
At the end of September 1831 Samuel Beales and Foster tried to secure a county meeting to petition the Lords to pass the bill, but the sheriff, John Bendyshe of Kneesworth, refused to sanction one, on the pretext that the recent town meeting for that purpose made it unnecessary.
The contest assumed national significance in the aftermath of the defeat of the reform bill in the Lords and successes for anti-reform candidates at recent by-elections, notably in Dorset, where Lord Ashley clinched a desperately narrow victory on 17 Oct. (Ashley, as it happens, had told the duke of Wellington at the outset that Yorke was a bad choice of candidate; but this was very much a minority view.)
What a battle it will be. I can think of nothing else. It is the most important election that ever occurred. The three great interests of the county, Yorke, Manners and Peyton, formerly opposed to each other, but now united to overwhelm us, and backed by the bishop, the university, and weight of purse! It seems almost impossible that the reformers and middle classes can succeed against such high odds. To be sure we have a fine spirit and free agents against a cause which can only be supported by money and intimidation, and I think we shall win.
On the eve of the election Tavistock assured Ellice, the government’s patronage secretary, that ‘we are to win in Cambridgeshire’.
There was at first some confidence in opposition circles, especially after the Dorset success. The duke of Wellington seemed at an early stage ‘to think the thing quite sure’, while Mrs. Arbuthnot, infected perhaps by his optimism, wrote a week later that there was ‘every prospect of success’.
On the whole, as the thing ‘now must be’, it is best to put the best face upon it, and go through with it firmly. If it don’t answer now, it may be attributed to Townley having so much the start of him, especially in the fens; and there can be little doubt of his coming in whenever Parliament is dissolved after the reform.
Hardwicke contributed an initial £2,000 to Yorke’s fund, with more to follow as required, though he was cautioned by Lowther to bear in mind that ‘the eclat of having a large sum of money deposited at a banker’s had generally a bad effect, and he had known instances of its being injurious to the party’. He failed to persuade his half-brother to appear on the hustings.
all the accounts which I receive from Cambridgeshire concur in the anticipation of a very severe struggle, the issue of which I fear is doubtful, although this language must not be held out of doors. The fens are very hostile, and the Dissenters all over the county and Isle of Ely are a numerous and powerful body, of course all against us.
Arbuthnot told his son that ‘our party have great hopes, but are not free from alarm, as about Ely and in the fens the radicals are swarming’.
A total of 3,426 freeholders polled, of whom 58 per cent voted for Townley and 42 for Yorke. In the county (1,947 voters), the proportions were 55 to 45 per cent; and in the Isle (1,160 voters), 65 to 35 per cent. Yorke had a slight advantage of 52 to 48 per cent among the 319 non-residents who voted. Townley won in Cambridge by 303 to 168 (64 to 36 per cent) and in Wisbech by 142 to 51 (74 to 26 per cent). His strongholds were the hundreds of Chesterton (88 per cent), where Cottenham voters favoured him by 87 to 7; Flendish (84), his home ground; Whittlesford in the south (72); Papworth (71), where Over and Willingham were overwhelmingly for him; Thriplow (69) and Armingford (67) in the south-west, where Bassingbourn, Melbourn, Meldreth and Royston voted for him by 87 to 15; and the Isle hundreds of Wisbech (67), and South (67 per cent) and North Witchford (66), where Bedford’s Thorney voters were unanimously for him. Yorke polled markedly better than overall in Rutland’s territory of Cheveley (94 per cent); the neighbouring hundreds of Staine (71), where Allix had influence, and Radfield (58); Staploe (69), where the Tory vote in Soham and Burwell held up strongly; Longstowe (65), where De La Warr’s estates lay; and the south-eastern hundred of Chilford (60). In many of the parishes where Manners had suffered serious defections in 1830, majorities of voters returned to their Tory allegiance, but these parishes contained a minority of the electorate. As against this, the parishes in which Townley topped the local poll contained more than three-quarters of those who voted.
Bedford assured Lady Holland that ‘poor old Hardwicke, with the exception of his money’, was ‘of little consequence. He has all his life been hunting after the popularity and has never yet attained it’.
has not annoyed me; neither do I feel vexed at having entered upon it; for if I had not, the gentlemen of the county, who have been so long calling out for one of our family, would have considered themselves abandoned and slighted. The manner was certainly unfavourable; but the principal cause for the failure was the fact of Townley having had the start by several weeks, for Lord F. Osborne, who is the bitterest of all enemies, gave him much earlier notice of his intention than we at first supposed. This circumstance is of itself sufficient to account for it, and is all that need be said; but it actually appears that the duke of Rutland’s support did rather more harm than good, for it brought us into the hands of his agents, who were in general very bad, and gave the bishop of Ely the name of a supporter, which accounts for the large majority in the Isle of Ely in favour of Townley.
Hardwicke also reckoned that the fact that one of his stewards had acted as an agent for Townley, without informing him, had ‘deprived us of a great part of the interest I have always had at Haddenham and Littleport’.
There is an admirable spirit in that county, and I consider Captain Yorke’s success is quite certain upon a future occasion. The defeat arose from the circumstance of a six months’ preparation by Townley’s friends. There is a reaction there among the agriculturists. A few months ago, not 500 voters would have polled for an anti-reformer.
Three Diaries, 154; Wellington mss WP2/215/71.
On 15 Feb. 1832 Yorke, seated again for Reigate, presented a Cambridgeshire petition, supposedly bearing 1,465 signatures, calling for major modifications to the reform bill. He sought to embarrass Adeane over the ‘dissatisfaction’ felt by many of his constituents with his recent votes against details of the measure. Rutland’s claim, when presenting the petition to the Lords, 23 Feb., that it reflected a significant reaction against reform in the county, was dismissed in the pro-reform press, where it was alleged that it was ‘a university concocted petition, privately circulated under the jointly superintending influence of the spiritual and lay aristocracy of the county’.
Number of voters: 3717 in 1830
Estimated voters: about 4,000