Essex South

Economic and social profile

The flat maritime county of Essex, comprising 981,120 acres and traversed by the Thames, Colne and Blackwater rivers, was overwhelmingly agricultural, with nine-tenths of its lands arable, pasture or meadow. Wheat, barley, potatoes, oats and beans were the chief produce.Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 111. Silk manufacturing also contributed to the local economy, though by the 1850s the industry was in decline due to foreign competition.English history from Essex sources, 1750-1900, ed. A.F.J. Brown (1952), 11-12. By the middle of the nineteenth century suburban London had begun to creep over the border into south-west Essex, though West Ham, home to docks of growing importance, was the only parish noticeably affected in this period.VCH Essex, ii. 1-2. The railway reached suburban Essex in 1838 when the Eastern Counties Railway opened the first section of its main line from London to Romford. The opening of the Braintree to Maldon line in 1848 further improved the county’s links with the capital.Ibid., 21-9. By 1856 Southend could be reached by train from London, spurring its rise as a seaside resort.English history from Essex sources, 181. The ancient forest of Epping, in the south-west of the county, also developed as a popular tourist attraction in this period. The Anglican church was the dominant house of worship, with over 400 churches and chapels of ease in the county, though the market town of Chelmsford and the south-western districts of Rochford, Romford and Stratford contained a significant Dissenting community, with a number of Independent, Wesleyan and Baptist chapels. Roman Catholic chapels were located at Barking, Chelmsford, Romford, Stratford and Walthamstow.D.W. Coller, A people’s history of Essex (1861), 192-3.

Electoral history

Essex South was created by the 1832 Reform Act, which split the county into two divisions. From 1774 until 1830, a compromise between the leaders of the Tory and Whig interests had ensured Essex remained unpolled, save for between 1810 and 1812, when the reformer Montague Burgoune of Mark Hall had tried unsuccessfully to break the compact.HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 370-4. A contested by-election in March 1830 triggered another flurry of activity. At the 1830 general election the radical attorney Daniel Whittle Harvey, of Feering, a perennial thorn in the side of the local Whigs, had brought forward William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley, the duke of Wellington’s wastrel nephew. Long Wellesley was defeated, but came in at the following year’s general election, alongside the Whig Charles Callis Western.Ibid. This proved to be the zenith of the local Reformers’ achievements. Although the newly-created southern division was home to the Ingatestone estates of the county’s largest landowner, the Catholic Whig William Petre, 11^th Baron Petre, the Conservative gentry remained dominant. Leading landowners included Thomas William Bramston, of Skreens; Charles Round, of Danbury Park; and Sir John Tyssen Tyrell, of Boreham House, who came in for the northern division in 1832. The most politically active Liberal landowner was the Quaker banker Samuel Gurney, of Upton, West Ham, whose sons, Samuel and Edmund, regularly chaired election committees.

The voters of the southern division polled at Maldon, Billericay, Rochford, Romford, Epping and the election town of Chelmsford, which was a traditional Conservative stronghold. Romford, along with Stratford, added as a polling district in 1837, bordered the north-east of London, and it was here, where agricultural issues were less prevalent, that the Whigs, or Liberals as they were increasingly becoming known, were strong. The composition of the electorate remained steady between the First and Second Reform Acts. The freeholders accounted for 55 per cent of the registered voters in 1837-38, a proportion that had barely changed by 1852. The next largest body were the £50 occupying tenants, who made up approximately 27 per cent of the voters throughout this period.PP 1837-38 (329), xliv. 558; PP 1852 (8), xlii. 311. In 1852 three per cent of the county electors were also registered for property in the borough of Maldon, a low proportion for borough freeholders in a county.PP 1852 (4), xlii. 305.

Although the Conservatives or ‘True Blues’ dominated the representation in this period, only failing to capture both seats in 1832, 1847 and 1857, the Whigs, known locally as ‘Yellows’, remained politically active, contesting every election. The southern division of Essex was therefore home to a vibrant political culture. The local clergy vigorously joined in at election time, with those attached to the established church mostly canvassing for the Conservatives, while, according to one contemporary, ‘the dissenters ... almost to a man adopt one line of politics; they are all of the Yellow party’.Quotation taken from N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 175-6. Non-electors also played a prominent role. In 1838 the Chartist movement gained a brief but significant following in the rural south-west of the division, while Richard Cobden’s tour of the region in July 1845 attracted considerable interest from the county’s labourers. Unsurprisingly, agricultural questions, particularly the corn laws and the much detested malt tax, and the future of the established church dominated election discourse. Partisan rivalry was further fostered by the Conservative-supporting Essex Standard, owned by the arch-Protestant John Taylor. The Liberal Essex Telegraph was established in 1858.K. Neale, ‘The Essex gentry at the general election of 1865’, in K. Neale (ed.), Essex: full of profitable thinges (1996), 398.

The 1832 general election underlined the determination of the local Whigs to capture both of the southern division’s two seats, but their efforts were beset by various troubles, some of their own making. Long Wellesley, offering again as a Reformer, had recently fallen out with Whittle Harvey over money and to avoid his creditors he spent the contest at Calais, leaving his campaign to be managed by his wife, Helena.HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 815-20. He stood in an uneasy coalition with Sir Thomas Barrett Lennard, of Belhus, the illegitimate but acknowledged son and heir of Thomas Barrett Lennard, 17^th Lord Dacre (1717-86). Although Lennard had expressed his fears that to solicit ‘two votes’ would jeopardise both candidates’ chances, the two Reformers shared committees and election expenses.Essex Standard, 8 Sept. 1832; The Times, 29 Dec. 1832. Lennard also had his own problems. Aged seventy at the election, his mental and physical capabilities were openly questioned, and his earlier support at the 1830 county election for John Tyssen Tyrell, who had gone on to oppose reform, came back to haunt him when he declared that he had served the cause of reform ‘all his life’.Essex Standard, 22 Dec. 1832; Morning Chronicle, 10 Oct., 17 Dec. 1832.

Lennard and Wellesley were opposed by the Conservative Robert Hall Dare, of Fitzwalters, a popular landowner and staunch defender of the agricultural interest. He also owned a plantation in British Guiana, and his unwillingness to call for the immediate abolition of slavery was condemned by the local Whig-supporting press.Essex Independent, cited in The Times, 24 Nov. 1832. At the nomination Hall Dare asserted that the Reform Act ‘was too sudden, and went too far’, before insisting that as ‘a loyal subject’ he would now support it in letter and spirit.Essex Standard, 22 Dec. 1832. After the first day of polling, Hall Dare had a commanding lead of nearly 500 votes, leaving the contest between the two Reformers. Wellesley’s wife subsequently instructed her husband’s supporters to plump for him on the second day, a missive that prompted Lennard’s supporters to retaliate and only back their man.The Times, 29 Dec. 1832. Although Wellesley gained majorities in his own strongholds of Romford and Epping, he was outpolled elsewhere, and Lennard was elected in second place, by a margin of 106 votes. Wellesley, as was his custom, immediately sought to lay blame, castigating the local Whigs for a breach of faith. They in turn accused him of abandoning the coalition at the first sign of trouble.Ibid., 20, 29 Dec. 1832. Both the Conservatives and the Whigs closely scrutinised the register at the 1833 and 1834 revision, with the Essex Standard concluding that the parties’ relative strengths remained largely unaltered.Essex Standard, 28 Sept., 5, 12 Oct. 1833, 10 Oct. 1834.

The 1835 general election, however, marked the Conservative ascendancy in the division. The ‘True Blue’ party brought forward Thomas Bramston, of Skreens, whose family had a distinguished history of parliamentary service for the county, to stand in coalition with Hall Dare. With agricultural questions dominating the contest, the two Conservative candidates were united in their support for the abolition of the malt tax and their hostility to free trade.Ibid., 13 Jan. 1835; Essex Standard, 16 Jan. 1835. They were opposed by Champion Edward Branfill, of Upminster Hall, who had been brought forward at the last minute by local Dissenters, determined to have a ‘Yellow’ candidate. His connection to local Dissent was ruthlessly attacked by a handbill accusing him of being an ‘avowed enemy’ of church and king.Essex Standard, 16 Jan. 1835. At the nomination, an indignant Branfill described the handbill as ‘so malicious, so censorious a slander’. Mirroring his opponents, he also pledged to vote for a repeal of the malt tax, but was more circumspect on the issue of agricultural protection.Ibid. At the end of a bitter contest, Hall Dare and Bramston were returned by a commanding majority of over one thousand votes, comfortably outpolling Branfill in every electoral district, including the traditional Whig stronghold of Romford.Ibid., 23 Jan. 1835.

With the leading ‘True Blue’ gentry seeking to cement their political superiority, the following June witnessed the formation of the South Essex Conservative Association.Morning Post, 2 June 1835. The Conservatives’ strength was put to the test a year later when Hall Dare’s death created a vacancy in the representation. Their chosen candidate was George Palmer, one of the country’s most prominent shipowners. Since he had unsuccessfully contested South Shields in 1832, Palmer had been searching for a parliamentary seat and his distinct lack of local connections was noted by his Whig opponents, who also questioned whether a shipowner could adequately represent an agricultural constituency.The Times, 3 June 1836. At the nomination Palmer dismissed such criticisms, citing his earlier opposition to the duty-free import of foreign meal and biscuit. He also called for a repeal of the malt tax and the maintenance of the corn laws. Undeterred by their earlier crushing defeat, the ‘Yellows’ again put up Branfill, who now argued for the repeal of the corn laws.Ibid. The contest was short but undeniably partisan, with Branfill’s supporters appearing at the declaration with a banner displaying a gallows and a rope, underneath which was written ‘Palmer’. The Conservative vote, however, remained dominant, and Palmer was elected by a comfortable majority, even though he had been marginally outpolled in Billericay and Romford.Ibid., 8 June 1836.

The strength and unity of Essex Conservatism was fully evident at the 1837 general election. A joint election committee was established for the return of Bramston and Palmer, while a leading article in the Essex Standard, titled ‘No Plumpers’, called upon Conservative voters to unite behind both men.Essex Standard, 28 July 1837. The local clergy also played an active role in the Conservative canvass, much to the chagrin of Branfill, who attacked the local established church for being ‘a home to merchandize rather than a house of prayer’.Ibid., 4 Aug. 1837. Defence of the agricultural interest was again the dominant issue, with the Whigs’ attempt to paint the Conservatives as opponents of the new queen falling on deaf ears. Branfill struggled to be heard at a raucous nomination and after being repeatedly interrupted by one member of the assembled crowd, he brandished a whip, threatening to silence the inquisitor himself.Ibid. Bramston was re-elected at the head of the poll, 251 votes ahead of Palmer, who comfortably defeated Branfill. A breakdown of the poll confirmed that the Conservatives triumphed in every division apart from Romford.Ibid., 11 Aug. 1837.

Although agricultural protection continued to dominate the local political agenda, the Chartist movement made inroads into rural southern Essex. The origins of the local movement were traced to the influence of five of the ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’, who, after returning from Australia, settled on farms in southern Essex. Led by George Loveless, they established a Chartist association in Greensted, ten miles south-west of Harlow, and attracted significant support from local agricultural labourers. Chartist newspapers began circulating on nearby farms and frequent meetings were held, with delegates attending from Waltham Abbey, Epping and Harlow, and orators from London.English history from Essex sources, 207-8. In December 1838 a large Chartist meeting was held in Chelmsford, alarming local magistrates who sought to have it banned.Ibid., 207. The Essex Standard was particularly outraged, with a leading article declaring:

George Loveless, instead of quietly fulfilling the duties of his station ... is still dabbling in the dirty waters of radicalism and publishing pamphlets to keep up the old game’.Essex Standard, [to be found]

The local movement began to wane somewhat after 1839, though John Thorogood, a Nonconformist Chelmsford shoemaker who had joined the Essex Chartists, gained national notoriety in 1840 when he was imprisoned for non-payment of church rates. In the Commons, Bramston staunchly defended the actions of the Essex magistrates in imprisoning him.Hansard, 5 Aug. 1840, vol. 55, c. 1285. In 1848, after years of decline, the region’s remaining Chartist branches were amalgamated into a single Essex and Suffolk Chartist Union.M. Chase, Chartism: a new history (2007), 315.

The discussion of major political issues was usually avoided by the leading gentry at meetings of the county’s popular agricultural societies, but this rule was deliberately broken in 1841, when the question of the corn laws dominated local discourse. As the Essex Standard noted after both Bramston and Palmer spoke at the wool fair dinner at Chelmsford in June that year, ‘no one can fairly censure the introduction of politics into agricultural meetings at the present moment’.Essex Standard, 25 June 1841. Unsurprisingly, on the eve of the 1841 general election Bramston and Palmer issued addresses giving their unequivocal support for the ‘just protection’ of the agricultural interest.Ibid., 2 July 1841. The two Conservatives were expected to be returned unopposed, but on the morning of the nomination a group of local Radicals, led by the miller Robert Dixon, of Wickham Bishops, put up Rowland Gardiner Alston, whose namesake father had previously sat for Hertfordshire.Morning Post, 6 July 1841. Alston reportedly had only a tenuous connection to the division, being the part-owner of a workhouse that had been turned into four cottages.Essex Standard, 9 July 1841. Echoing the internecine tensions of the early 1830s, the majority of the Whig gentry were against what they believed to be an unnecessarily vexatious radical candidacy, and were conspicuous by their absence from the nomination.Ibid. The Conservatives did not hesitate to capitalise on their opponents’ evident weakness; Sir John Tyrell, MP for the northern division, dismissed Alston’s candidature as ‘hopeless’. Palmer, meanwhile, indulged in hyperbole, warning that under free trade, the agricultural labourer would be no better than the ‘serfs of Poland, who eat nothing but black bread, which you would hardly give to your pigs’.Ibid. Alston was heavily defeated in every polling district, leaving Bramston and Palmer to be comfortably re-elected once again.Ibid.

Thereafter the debate over maintaining the corn laws gained momentum. Under the leadership of Robert Baker, of Writtle, the Essex Protection Society was formed, raising nearly £5,000 by public subscription.People’s history of Essex, 185-6. In July 1845 Richard Cobden, after a successful appearance at Colchester, spoke to a mass meeting at Chelmsford, where a resolution in favour of corn law repeal was passed without opposition.Ibid.; English history from Essex Sources, 196-7. As expected, Bramston and Palmer voted against repeal at the bill’s critical second and third readings in 1846.

At the 1847 general election the issue of free trade was superseded by an almost hysterical alarm concerning threats to the future of the established church. The debate was driven by the staunchly Protestant Essex Standard, whose editorials gave effusive praise to the recently-formed National Club. Bramston, who had voted in favour of the 1844 Dissenters’ chapels bill and the 1845 Maynooth College bill, came in for particular criticism, with the local paper declaring that:

on all the essentially Conservative questions, [Bramston] has as effectually supported the enemies of constitutional principles as if ... he had, at the time of his election, mounted the Yellow cockade of the Whig-Radical party.Essex Standard, 9 July 1847.

In response, Bramston issued an address stating his opposition to the payment of Roman Catholic clergy by the British state, but the Essex Standard was unconvinced, noting that his votes were stamps ‘in indelible marks against his name’, making his support for Conservative principles ‘nothing more than a mockery and a delusion’.Ibid.

It was therefore religion, rather than Peel’s repeal of the corn laws, that created a schism in the local Conservative party at the 1847 general election. With Palmer retiring, a section of the ‘True Blues’ who were dismayed at Bramston’s voting record brought forward William Bowyer-Smijth, of Hill Hall near Epping, a deeply pious man who was unyielding in his condemnation of Roman Catholicism. The Whig gentry, meanwhile, invited Sir Edward North Buxton, a partner in the successful London brewery Truman, Hanbury, Buxton and Co., and son of the noted Abolitionist Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Seeking to capitalise on the unusually disunited Conservatives, the local Whigs expressed their desire to see Buxton returned alongside Bramston. At the nomination Thomas Lennard asserted that to return Buxton alongside Bowyer-Smijth would expose the former to ‘the danger of being wrapped up in the cold blanket of an illiberal colleague’, while Samuel Gurney of Norwich, Buxton’s father-in-law, praised Bramston for taking a ‘liberal line’ in his votes, arguing that he had more in common with Buxton than Bowyer-Smijth. Bramston quipped that Lennard’s ‘patronising manner [was] more the act of an able tactician than of a private friend’.Ibid., 6 Aug. 1847. Nevertheless, the Whig strategy worked. Following a notably bitter contest, Bramston was easily re-elected at the top of the poll, with Buxton coming in second, 34 votes ahead of Bowyer-Smijth. A breakdown of the poll revealed that Bramston’s commanding victory and Buxton’s narrow return were secured by a significant number of electors splitting their votes between the two men.Chelmsford Chronicle, 27 Aug., 3, 10 Sept. 1847. Moreover, while Bowyer-Smijth had polled strongly in his home district of Epping and Chelmsford, he was beaten by Buxton in Billericay, and the Whig strongholds of Romford and the newly-created Stratford polling district.Essex Standard, 13 Aug. 1847.

The distressed state of Essex agriculture in the following five years brought the issue of protection back to the fore at the 1852 general election, allowing local Conservatives to speak with one voice. Bramston and Bowyer-Smijth were united not only in their support for Derby’s ministry but also in their condemnation of the consequences of free trade, with the latter singling out Buxton for failing to support the rural interest in Parliament.Ibid., 9 July 1852. Buxton was defended by his father-in-law Samuel Gurney, who published a pamphlet To the electors of South Essex warning voters not to back the ‘retrograde movement’ espoused by Bowyer-Smijth and asserting that free trade had ‘added to the comfort and happiness of the inhabitants of this country’, even in agricultural districts.S. Gurney, To the electors of South Essex. Recommending the election of Sir E.N. Buxton (1852), 1-10. The Conservative victory, however, was comprehensive. Buxton was defeated in every district apart from Stratford, with Bramston and Bowyer-Smijth polling fairly evenly across the board.Essex Standard, 23 July 1852.

The 1857 general election, which witnessed a brief reverse in the local Conservatives’ fortunes, was characterised by a blurring of party lines. Since 1855, Bramston had given steady support to Palmerston on domestic and foreign issues. Moreover, although he had voted for Cobden’s motion on the bombardment of Canton, believing that it marked a severe ‘injury’ to British interests in the region, he nevertheless pledged to continue to back Palmerston’s ministry if he was returned.Ibid., 18 Mar. 1857. Bowyer-Smijth, in contrast, had consistently followed Disraeli into the division lobby, before voting against Cobden’s motion, describing it as ‘an apology to a parcel of atrocious barbarians’.Ibid., 1 Apr. 1857. Richard Baker Wingfield, of Orsett Hall, Romford, brought late into the campaign by the local Liberals, declared that he would have voted with Palmerston over the China affair.Bury and Norwich Post, 24 Mar. 1857. At the nomination Bramston defended his independent approach, asserting that he was not a Member who had ‘nothing to do but vote according to the directions of the whipper-in of his party’. Wingfield, introduced as ‘a genuine Liberal – not merely a man who calls himself a Whig’, lavished praise on Palmerston’s foreign policy and called for the abolition of the malt tax. Bowyer-Smijth focused his ire on Wingfield, describing his support for the agricultural interest as ‘sailing under false colours’.Essex Standard, 1 Apr. 1857. Following a rowdy nomination, Bramston was once again re-elected in first place and Wingfield narrowly came in second, just 17 votes ahead of Bowyer-Smijth. A breakdown of the poll revealed that Wingfield’s return had been secured by 445 split votes with Bramston, 21 per cent of his total.Chelmsford Chronicle, 24 Apr. 1857. Wingfield had also polled particularly well at Stratford, home to the Gurney family.Essex Standard, 3 Apr. 1857.

The Liberal victory was swiftly reversed at the 1859 general election, an intensely bitter and personal affair. With Bowyer-Smijth now ensconced in Paris, where he was living with a young girl whom he had hoodwinked into a sham marriage, the Conservatives turned to John Perry-Watlington, of Moor Hall, Harlow, who had served as high sheriff of the county in 1855.The Times, 6 Dec. 1917. Although a popular and well-respected figure, his alleged connection to the controversial Puseyite Alfred Poole blighted his campaign. Poole, originally a curate at St. Barnabas, Pimlico, had had his licence revoked in 1858 due to a scandal over allegations of improper questioning of women in the confessional. In 1859, with his appeal being considered by the privy council, he received vocal support from the Puseyite vicar of Perry-Watlington’s Harlow parish.N. Yates, Anglican ritualism in Victorian Britain, 1830-1910 (1999), 71. Perry-Watlington was subsequently accused by his Liberal opponents of subscribing to Poole’s defence fund, an allegation he strenuously repudiated.Morning Chronicle, 25 Apr. 1859. At election meetings he consistently denied that he supported the ‘peculiar doctrines’ of Puseyism, describing himself instead as a ‘sincere’ member of the established church.Essex Standard, 20, 27 Apr. 1859; Morning Chronicle, 20 Apr. 1859. Like Bramston, Perry-Watlington was also a moderate in his politics, proclaiming himself a ‘Liberal-Conservative’, though both men expressed their support for Derby.Essex Standard, 4 May 1859. With religious issues again at the forefront of the campaign, Wingfield-Baker also had his own problems, struggling to square his apparent unwavering devotion to the established church with his vote in favour of church rate abolition.Ibid. After a rather drawn out contest, Wingfield-Baker lost his seat, finishing over 450 votes behind Perry-Watlington, who was elected in second place. Bramston was once again victorious. An analysis of the poll confirmed that only 6 per cent of voters had split their vote between Wingfield-Baker and Bramston, compared to 11 per cent in 1857. The harmony of Bramston and Perry-Watlington’s message was also reflected by a greater unity in the Conservative vote: 51 per cent of voters shared their votes between the two ‘True Blue’ candidates, compared with 42 per cent in 1857.Chelmsford Chronicle, 3 June 1859.

The Essex Conservatives preserved their electoral hegemony at the 1865 general election, seamlessly replacing both the retiring Members. Bramston, whose health was fragile, was succeeded by Henry John Selwin, of Down Hall, Harlow, who had twice unsuccessfully contested Ipswich.Standard, 26, 29 June 1865. Perry-Watlington, who had somewhat surprisingly stepped down in order to focus on his county commitments, was replaced by the young and inexperienced Lord Eustace Cecil, the second surviving son of the 2^nd marquess of Salisbury, who owned estates near Barking.Ibid., 8 July 1865. Wingfield-Baker came forward once again for the Liberals, and in a bid to reach out to the agricultural interest, made repeal of the malt tax the centrepiece of his campaign.Daily News, 19 July 1865. Echoing the Liberal strategy of 1859, Cecil’s commitment to the established church was questioned by his political opponents, who attempted to paint him as a closet papist, an accusation possibly motivated by the Tractarian sympathies of his more prominent elder brother, Robert, styled Viscount Cranborne, who had come in for Stamford in 1853.Essex Standard, 14, 19 July 1865. Cecil strenuously denied the allegation, but it continued to linger, and at the nomination he was interrupted by an elector who wished to know his opinions on the Maynooth grant and the Roman Catholic oaths bill. Cecil refused to answer, and instead gave a fiercely partisan speech, describing as a ‘fallacy’ the Liberal cry of ‘peace, retrenchment and reform’. Selwin, owing to the recent death of his wife, did not appear personally at the nomination, but the retiring Perry-Watlington spoke on his behalf.Ibid., 19 July 1865. Following another acrimonious contest characterised by personal attacks, Selwin and Cecil were elected by a comfortable majority.Chelmsford Chronicle, 28 July, 4 Aug. 1865.

The 1867 Reform Act redistributed the county into three double-member constituencies: Essex West, East and South. Although the southern division remained the same in name, its boundaries were re-drawn, with the hundreds of Harlow, Waltham, Ongar and Chelmsford transferred to the West and Bengie to the East.PP 1867 (250), v. 605. The passage of the Second Reform Act and attendance to the register eventually increased the electorate to over 9,000 in 1874. Selwin and Cecil migrated to Essex West at the 1868 general election, where, owing to the continuing dominance of the Conservative gentry, they were returned without a contest. The new, smaller southern division contained the polling districts where the Liberals had traditionally been stronger prior to redistribution, and at the 1868 general election Wingfield-Baker and his Liberal colleague Andrew Johnston came in unopposed. Conservative hegemony, however, was restored in 1874 and maintained in 1880. The constituency was abolished in 1885, whereupon the county was divided into the single-member divisions of Walthamstow, Romford, Epping, Saffron Walden, Harwich, Maldon, Chelmsford and South-East.