Somersetshire East

Economic and social profile:

The maritime county of Somerset, comprising 1,052,800 acres, was overwhelmingly agricultural, with nine-tenths of its land given over to arable and pasture. Wheat, oats, barley and beans were the chief produce, alongside butter and cheddar.H. J. Hanham (ed.), Dod’s electoral facts (1972), 285. Farming struggled to recover following the depression of the Napoleonic Wars, with rural labourers suffering particular hardship. By the beginning of the 1840s overpopulation had also become a problem and many married labourers began to take up offers of free emigration to Australia.R. W. Dunning, A history of Somerset (1978), 69-70. The eastern division contained two important urban centres: Bath, now past its peak as a fashionable spa, and Bristol, once an extremely prosperous port, which had been overtaken by Liverpool in commercial importance.Robson’s Somerset Directory (1839), 1-11. Frome and Glastonbury remained significant centres of cloth and silk manufacturing, but faced increasing competition from abroad.Dunning, Somerset, 72. The Bristol to Exeter railway line, engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and completed in 1844, provided a much needed boost to the local economy, enabling milk, butter and cheese to be transported far more efficiently. The distribution of fresh dairy produce also benefitted from the Somerset Central railway, running from Highbridge Wharf to Glastonbury, which was opened in 1854 and extended to Wells five years later. Another line from Frome to Yeovil, part of the Great Western railway, was completed in 1857.Ibid., 93-4; T. Bryan, The Great Western Railway (2010), 7-43.

Electoral history:

Somerset East was a creation of the 1832 Reform Act, which split the county constituency into two divisions. Although the county had a long tradition of uncontested elections, and had polled just once after 1820, at most elections an embattled sitting Member had retired to avoid an expensive contest, reflecting a fierce level of competition for the county’s seats. Since 1784 the local aristocracy had agreed not to interfere in parliamentary elections, leaving the gentry to contest the representation.HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 889. This arrangement continued into the post-Reform era. The leading Tories in the division included Sir William Coles Medlycott of Ven House, Milborne Port and James Adam Gordon of Naish House. On the Whig side was Sir Abraham Elton of Clevedon Court, Sir Henry Strachey of Sutton Court and William Gore Langton of Newton Park. Significantly, there was no overriding influence in the newly-created eastern division, though the extremely wealthy Gore Langton wielded substantial control.B. Elvins, ‘Somerset county MPs 1832-1885: a profile’, Somerset archaeology and natural history, 141 (1998), 150. Gore Langton’s popularity, however, was about more than just his purse. Since first coming in for the county in 1795, he had acquired a reputation as an outspoken reformer and become something of a local hero.HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 41-2; HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 322-4. Aged seventy-one by the time of the Reform Act, he continued to cultivate the persona of a battle-scarred reformer and despite increasing infirmity, managed to soldier on for another fifteen years.Bristol Mercury, 8 Dec. 1832, 3 Jan. 1835, 10 July 1841. Having such an unapologetic opponent of the corn laws sitting for a predominantly agricultural division infuriated the more hot-headed sections of the local Conservative party, but with their sitting Member William Miles, of Leigh Court, content to maintain shared representation, a second Conservative candidate did not materialise until 1852, five years after Gore Langton’s death.

The composition of Somerset East’s electorate did not change dramatically between the First and Second Reform Acts, with just over two-thirds (68%) registering as freeholders and almost a fifth (23%) as £50 occupying tenants. With no dominant interest, voter registration was extremely important, and here the Liberals initially had the edge. The East Somerset Liberal Registration Society, aided by the Bristol and Bath branches of the Anti-Corn Law League, was particularly effective in the years between 1841 and 1847, and even at the height of the corn-law crisis local Protectionists were unable to find a credible candidate to stand alongside Miles. Liberal apathy, however, had set in by the beginning of the 1850s and without Gore Langton’s charismatic appeal, the party struggled to match a well-oiled Conservative and Protestant Association, which began to secure a crucial advantage on the register. Conservative hegemony was achieved in 1852 and went unchallenged for the rest of this period. The party’s dominance also coincided with a visible decline in the participation of non-electors. During the 1830s, the hustings were enthusiastically attended, with Miles being pressed repeatedly by the audience to justify his views, but after 1852 the nomination became a more mild-mannered affair. Partisan rivalry, however, continued to be sustained by a vibrant print culture. The Liberal cause was championed by the widely-circulated Bristol Mercury, while the Conservatives enjoyed the staunch support of the Bristol Journal, Bristol Mirror and Bath Chronicle.A. Woolrich, Printing in Bristol (1986), 10.

At the 1832 general election Somerset’s sitting MPs offered again in their respective strongholds, Gore Langton standing for the eastern division and Edward Sanford, who had sat as a reformer since 1830, for Somerset West, where the bulk of his estates lay. With William Dickinson, the county’s leading anti-reform stalwart, declining an invitation to contest the eastern division, the local Tories settled on William Miles, of Leigh Court, a member of an extremely wealthy Bristol banking family.Bristol Mirror, 14 July 1832; Taunton Courier, 19 Dec. 1832. As MP for New Romney from 1830-32 Miles had staunchly opposed the Grey ministry’s reform bill.HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 396. Fiercely criticised by the local Whig press, he now attempted to disassociate himself from the Tories, declaring that he would ‘attach himself to no party’.Morning Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1832. In a similar fashion the new reform candidate William Brigstock, formerly of Binfield Park, Berkshire, but now resident at Combe Hay near Bath, was keen to move on from his political past. As recently as 1831 he was reported to have been a supporter of the ‘ultra-conservative’ James Adam Gordon, MP for Tregony, but by June 1832 he had abandoned ‘the ranks of Toryism’ to become ‘a staunch and real reformer upon deliberate conviction’.The Age, 12 Aug., 2 Sept. 1832. In his first published address he claimed to be ‘independent and unprejudiced’, belonging ‘to no party’.Bristol Mercury, 7 July 1832. His opponents were unconvinced, describing him as ‘the Berkshire wolf’, who ‘last year was an anti-Reformer’ but had ‘now sloughed his skin’.The Age, 12 Aug. 1832. There were no doubts about Gore Langton’s political credentials. His long record of agitating for corn law abolition and parliamentary reform lent credence to his claim that he would enter the Commons ‘as a free Member of Parliament’.HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 41-2; HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 322-4; Morning Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1832.

At the nomination, in front of a highly-charged audience, Gore Langton spoke in similar terms, saying that he would give no pledges and ‘wear no shackles’. Miles, proposed by Dickinson, attempted to follow suit, but his claims of independence were drowned out by constant interruptions and he was forced to give up after a volley of stones landed on the hustings. Gore Langton and Brigstock won the show of hands.Morning Chronicle, 18 Dec. 1832. The ensuing poll was marred by outbreaks of sporadic, often serious violence. One elector at Wells died after having his eye knocked out and numerous windows were smashed at Axbridge during the first day’s poll.Morning Chronicle, 22 Dec. 1832; Morning Post, 29 Dec. 1832. The result was a dramatic victory for the Reformers. Gore Langton topped the poll with a convincing majority and Brigstock secured second place, 400 votes ahead of Miles, who received a ‘great number’ of single votes.Morning Post, 29 Dec. 1832. The Bristol Mercury hailed their victory as one of ‘paramount importance – as one worthy of being singled out from the mass’.Bristol Mercury, 22 Dec. 1832.

The 1832 election, however, proved to be the zenith of the reformers’ achievement in this constituency. Brigstock’s unexpected death in December 1833 created a fresh vacancy in the representation, for which Miles once again came forward.Morning Post, 31 Dec. 1833; Bristol Mercury, 4 Jan. 1834. Keen to avoid the difficulties he had faced in 1832 as an opponent of parliamentary reform, he now presented himself as a ‘moderate’, who was willing to support the Whig ministry when their policies were based on ‘constitutional principles’.Morning Post, 15 Jan. 1834; Bristol Mercury, 8 Feb. 1834. With the local Whigs apparently satisfied and unwilling to field another candidate, a group of disgruntled local electors took matters into their own hands and brought forward the notorious radical Henry Hunt, arguably the best-known (and certainly the most flamboyant) agitator of the day.J. Belchem, ‘Hunt, Henry [Orator Hunt] (1773-1835)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com; Morning Post, 30 Jan. 1834. A freeholder near Glastonbury, Hunt had displayed an unusual talent for whipping up popular political excitement in the county, though he had polled a poor third at the 1826 general election.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 892-3. He had been elected for Preston in 1830, but his opposition to the reform bill, on the grounds that it excluded the working classes, had cost him his seat in 1832.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 603-4, v. 797-8. Appearing before the electors at a lively nomination attended by nearly 3,000 people, Hunt castigated Grey’s ministry for its ‘pretended anxiety for the liberties and pockets of the people’, contending that a Tory government would be preferable to a Whig one. He withdrew, however, before the poll, as he was unable to raise sufficient money to fund a contest.Poor Man’s Guardian, 1 Feb. 1834. Miles, who refused to state his opinions on municipal reform, despite being pressed on the issue by Mr. Emery, a well-known radical druggist from Wells, was as a result returned unopposed.Ibid. The Bristol Journal heralded his election as ‘triumphant proof of the revival of Conservative sentiments among the electors’, while the Bristol Mercury censured the division’s ‘great Whig families ... for their desertion of the electors at this time of crisis’.Bristol Journal, cited in Morning Post, 11 Feb. 1834; Bristol Mercury, 8 Feb. 1834.

The great Whig families, however, seemed content to maintain shared representation, a position also readily welcomed by Miles. There was no hint of any rival candidates at the 1835 general election, although that did not deter Gore Langton, dismissing rumours he was about to retire, from robustly defending his position:

I have been called Jacobin, Destructive, Leveller and Radical; but I trust I stand too high to be injured by such paltry means of annoyance. I will yield to no man in loyalty to my king and in attachment to the constitution.Bristol Mercury, 3, 17 Jan. 1835; Parliamentary test book (1835), 94.

A more restrained Miles issued an address confirming his intention to maintain an ‘independent course’, though he also praised Peel’s leadership, commending the new premier as an ‘advocate of improvement’.Bristol Mercury, 3 Jan. 1835. At the nomination both parties seemed determined to avoid confrontation. Gore Langton’s seconder, one Captain George Treweeke Scobell, described him as a reformer who wished to defend the country’s institutions. Miles’s seconder, William Dickinson, concurred, generously praising Gore Langton as ‘an improver of the constitution’. The only note of discord was provided by the pugnacious Emery, who confronted Miles with a pitchfork, on which was placed a large loaf, inscribed Gore Langton, and a small loaf, inscribed Miles, alluding to the latter’s support for the corn laws. Emery also attempted to interrupt Miles’s speech, calling Peel an ‘apostate’, but Miles remained unruffled and deftly sidestepped questions about his lack of commitment to church reform.Bristol Mercury, 17 Jan. 1835. Gore Langton and Miles were re-elected without a contest.

At the 1837 general election the division’s continued neutrality prompted a degree of consternation among some local Whigs. Miles’s vote against Irish municipal reform, in particular, was roundly criticised, with Captain Strachey, Gore Langton’s seconder at the nomination, suggesting that Miles should ‘yield a little to the altered circumstances of the time’ and back such reforms. Scobell went further, arguing that the ‘best cure’ for Miles’s intransigence on Irish municipal reform was the return of ‘two Reformers’. An unrepentant Miles insisted that Irish municipal reform would hand power to Catholics.Bristol Mercury, 5 Aug. 1837. At a rain-swept nomination, Miles’s insistence on speaking inside Wells town hall further incensed Scobell, who argued that by addressing only a ‘small conclave’, Miles was making the division ‘a closed borough’. Moreover, in what was now something of a personal election ritual, Emery (this time inside the town hall) pressed Miles to explain his stance on a range of progressive measures, including universal education and religious equality.Morning Chronicle, 31 July 1837. These dissenting voices, however, did not translate into any tangible opposition. Gore Langton and Miles were again returned without a contest, leaving Scobell to warn that a Liberal challenger would be brought forward next time.Ibid.

At the 1841 general election, however, it was the Conservatives who threatened to disturb the electoral consensus by fielding a second candidate. The drive to displace Gore Langton came from both national and local quarters. With the Conservatives at Westminster anxious that the Whigs be aggressively challenged the length and breadth of the country, the electoral organiser Sir James Graham MP identified Somerset East as one of the divisions that should be ‘fought to the last extremity; individual feelings and interests must be disregarded in an emergency of such danger and importance’.Add. 40616, f. 209. For the local party, the logic was simple: with corn law reform at the top of the national political agenda, it was inconceivable that Gore Langton, an unequivocal supporter of repeal, should be allowed to stand unopposed. The reality was more problematic. Gore Langton, now aged eighty, remained an immensely popular figure in the county, and with a challenge expected, the Bristol Mercury conjectured that he be unlikely to simply give way, noting ‘threatened men live long’.Bristol Mercury, 3 July 1841. Sir William Coles Medlycott was invited to come forward as a Conservative, but declined.Morning Post, 22 June 1841. At the eleventh hour James Adam Gordon of Naish House, a former MP for Tregony, entered the race, declaring that the division should not ‘submit’ to the abolition of agricultural protection. For Gordon, even a fixed duty on corn was a ‘specious step’ towards repeal.Bristol Mercury, 26 June 1841; Standard, 6 July 1841. After a brief canvass, however, he also withdrew, citing a lack of support.Bristol Mercury, 10 July 1841. At the nomination, a bullish Gore Langton, enthusiastically backed by over 1,000 supporters drawn from the county’s freeholders and yeomen, asked his audience, ‘could anyone believe that if he thought it would ruin himself or his tenantry, he would support the abolition of the corn laws?’ He went on to condemn those in the county who backed the ‘odious corn laws’ and, referring to his age, quipped that ‘although he had grey hairs, he had no white feathers’. Taking the opposite view, Miles spoke at great length in favour of the sliding scale in corn duties, arguing that a fixed duty would offer ‘no protection to the agriculturalist’. He also opposed any reduction in the timber and sugar duties.Ibid. Gore Langton and Miles were again re-elected without a contest.

Miles later emerged as the county’s leading opponent of corn law repeal, chairing numerous meetings of the Somerset Agricultural Protection Association and warning his audiences that the Anti-Corn Law League was ‘taking every means to poison the minds of the people against those connected with the farming interest, whether landlords, tenants, or labourers’.Standard, 9 July 1844; Bristol Mercury, 30 Nov. 1844. The urban centres of the eastern division, in particular, became home to active Anti-Corn Law League branches in the early 1840s, with a particularly strong organisation in Bristol.Bristol Mercury, 10 Feb. 1844. Free trade sentiment even began to permeate county meetings, including those originally held to promote the cause of agricultural protection.Examiner, 24 Feb. 1844. By 1845 Miles had become one of the leading members of the Central Agricultural Protection Society, presided over by the duke of Richmond.R. Blake, Disraeli (1966), 225; Morning Post, 4 Feb. 1845. In December 1845 a leading article in the Bristol Mercury highlighted how the western division’s two Conservative Members were coming round to free trade, leaving Miles as the sole county MP ‘uninfluenced by the advance of knowledge and general diffusion of intelligence’.Bristol Mercury, 20 Dec. 1845. The Anti-Corn Law League, meanwhile, appeared to be making further inroads into the division, with the organisation’s newspaper reporting that the Liberals had increased their strength on the register by five per cent at the 1845 revision.Extract from The League newspaper, dated 12 Dec. 1845, quoted in PP 1846 (451), viii. 409.

Even after Peel’s repeal of the corn laws in 1846, the East Somerset Liberal Registration Society remained assiduous in its duties, strengthening the local party’s electoral advantage.Daily News, 16 Mar. 1847. This proved significant in March 1847 when Gore Langton’s death created a vacancy.Bristol Mercury, 27 Mar. 1847. With Scobell rebuffing overtures to stand on the grounds that he was ‘too old and attached to his domestic retirement’ (though he later sat for Bath, 1851-57), the local Liberals turned to William Pinney, former MP for Lyme Regis, who in 1845 had inherited his father’s Somerton Erleigh estates, bordering the eastern division, and a vast fortune of £100,000.Daily News, 19 Mar. 1847; Morning Post, 19 Mar. 1847. On the hustings he championed free trade, arguing that Protection had done a ‘great injury’ to the ‘grazing farmers’ of the Somerset levels. Echoing the independent rhetoric of his predecessors he also declared, ‘if you don’t send me into Parliament unfettered by pledges, I would rather not go there at all’.Morning Chronicle, 12 Mar. 1847; The Times, 20 Mar. 1847. With the dissolution imminent, the Conservatives failed to find a suitable candidate, leaving Pinney to be returned unopposed.

The Protectionists’ struggle to find a suitable challenger to Pinney continued at the 1847 general election, held just four months later. Handbills were distributed to the electors, promising that ‘a local gentleman of fortune’ would stand, but with the Liberals threatening to retaliate with a second candidate of their own, efforts to win support for the Protectionists’ campaign came to nothing.Bristol Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847. The subsequent nomination was as a result a rather muted affair, with Pinney explaining that he came forward not in opposition to Miles, but because the prevalence of ‘Liberal feelings’ in the county entitled the party to one seat. Miles half-heartedly congratulated his audience on achieving free trade, before warning that they would ‘bitterly repent it’. He saved his fiercest invective for Peel, accusing the former leader of ‘throwing over the friends who had so long stood by him’. Pressed on the hustings for their attitudes towards Catholic endowments, Miles declared that ‘I will never, by any vote … give a sanction to the endowment of the Roman Catholics’. Pinney was more circumspect, promising to consider the Protestant cause, but stating that he wished to avoid ‘injustice’ to his Catholic fellow-countrymen.Morning Post, 20 July 1847; Morning Chronicle, 11 Aug. 1847. In what was denounced by a faction of the local Protectionist party as a ‘shameful’ truce, Miles and Pinney were elected unopposed.Bristol Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847.

Over the following five years the Liberals’ advantage on the register was gradually eroded. While the East Somerset Conservative and Protestant Association assiduously contested the revision, the register was increasingly ‘left to chance’ by the local Liberals, who according to one newspaper ‘suspended their operations until the division had been sedulously canvassed and ransacked by their opponents’.Bristol Mercury, 24 July 1852. Building on their registration successes, the Conservatives brought forward two candidates at the 1852 general election, the first time they had done so in the post-reform era. With Miles standing again, the second candidate was William Francis Knatchbull, of Babington House near Bath, a cousin of Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9^th bt., a former MP for Kent East who had served as paymaster-general in Peel’s second ministry. Knatchbull was well-known in the county, having served as high sheriff in 1841 and nominated Miles at the 1837 and 1847 general elections.Bristol Mercury, 13 Feb. 1841. The extent to which Miles and Knatchbull now supported free trade was somewhat murky. The Conservative association’s committee issued an address calling the policy ‘reckless’, but Knatchbull’s supporters insisted he was no longer a ‘thorough-going protectionist’, despite claims from the local Liberal press that his family name had ‘been long associated with class-protection and deep-dyed Toryism’.Bristol Mercury, 17 July 1852. Miles stated categorically that he would not support a ‘re-imposition of the corn laws’, though he criticised the hypocrisy of manufacturers benefitting from protective duties on silk, cottons and wool.Ibid.

Although there was a grudging acceptance from the division’s Conservatives that free trade was there to stay, the activities of the ‘Manchester cotton-lords’ briefly took centre stage in the 1852 campaign. After some procrastination, Pinney withdrew from the contest and accepted an invitation to stand again at Lyme Regis. A leading article in the Bath Chronicle quipped that he had ‘proved he possesses every qualification for representing’ Somerset East, ‘except its Conservative principles’.Bath Chronicle, 10 June 1852. His last-minute replacement, Arthur Hallam Elton, of Clevedon Court, was also a staunch free trader, and throughout the contest he was dogged by rumours that his candidature was being funded by the Anti-Corn Law League in Manchester. Capitalising on these widely-repeated claims at the nomination, both Miles and Knatchbull warned that a Whig government would be subservient to Cobden and Bright. Elton was also accused of being a Puseyite and an opponent of Protestant institutions; he duly complained of his opponents flinging ‘as much dirt as they can’.Bristol Mercury, 17 July 1852. Following the division’s first poll in two decades, Miles and Knatchbull were returned with commanding majorities. At the declaration, a triumphant Miles stated his hope that the cry of large or small loaf would never be resorted to again.Morning Post, 24 July 1852. In the aftermath of defeat, local Liberals complained of landlord intimidation and coercion, but the Bristol Mercury’s characterisation of the contest was arguably more accurate, portraying the result as ‘the difference between a well-worked and a comparatively-neglected register’ and ‘the difference between being early and being late in the field’.Bristol Mercury, 24 July 1852.

Thereafter Conservative hegemony in the eastern division went unchallenged at the polls until after the second Reform Act. There was little sign of Liberal opposition at the 1857 general election, when Miles and Knatchbull were united in their condemnation of the bombardment of Canton. For Miles, Sir John Bowring, ‘the wrong person to have been to China’, was at fault and Palmerston had been wrong to back him.Bristol Mercury, 21 Mar., 4 Apr. 1857. He did not rule out supporting the premier when he showed ‘his Conservative instincts’, however, a view endorsed by Knatchbull. Following a surprisingly well-attended nomination, given that there was little at stake, both men were re-elected unopposed.Morning Post, 4 Apr. 1857. On the eve of the 1859 general election it was reported that the Liberals had invited the banker Sir Henry Hoare, whose Stourhead estates in Wiltshire bordered the eastern division, to come forward, but nothing came of it.Morning Chronicle, 11 Apr. 1859. As was the case at the two previous elections, Knatchbull remained largely in Miles’s shadow, merely echoing the senior Member’s support for the Derby ministry’s reform bill and his opposition to the conspiracy to murder bill and church rate abolition.Bristol Mercury, 7 May 1859. Once again they were re-elected unopposed with little fanfare.

Some political excitement returned to the division in early 1864, following confirmation that neither Miles nor Knatchbull intended to stand again at the next dissolution.Standard, 29 Mar. 1864. The Conservatives were swift in finding two suitable replacements. By March that year, the army officers Ralph Neville Grenville, of Butleigh Court, who had previously represented Windsor, and Richard Horner Paget, of Cranmore Hall, had accepted a requisition signed by ‘upwards of 1,000 electors’.Ibid. In April their candidatures were confirmed by a meeting of the local Conservative party at Wells.Standard, 11 Apr. 1864. The Liberals were also active. Elton, who had represented Bath from 1857-59 following his 1852 defeat, announced his intention to come forward, as did Hoare, who claimed he had received ‘numerous and unqualified promises of support’.Standard, 29 Mar. 1864. The prospect of an electoral showdown, however, soon fizzled out after it became clear that the Conservatives had obtained a majority on the register of over 1,500 voters since 1852.Standard, 13 June 1864. Elton quietly withdrew from the field and Hoare followed suit shortly after the dissolution.Bristol Mercury, 1 July 1865. The 1865 general election was therefore a largely uneventful affair, with the nomination presenting a picture of ‘great harmony’. Grenville and Paget, united in their belief that men who ‘were ready to advance’ should support Derby rather than Gladstone, were elected without a contest.Bristol Mercury, 22 July 1865.

The 1867 Reform Act re-organised the county of Somerset into three double-member constituencies, with the southern part of the eastern division (including Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet, Somerton and Wells) being transferred into the new Mid Somerset constituency.PP 1867-68 (165), i. 228-31. At the 1868 general election Grenville and Paget came in for the new division, but the Conservatives comfortably retained their hold over Somerset East, with Ralph Shuttleworth Allen and Richard Bright securing election with large majorities.Elvins, ‘Somerset County MPs’, 153. Conservative hegemony went unchallenged until the abolition of the constituency in 1885, when the representation was split into the single-member divisions of Bridgwater, Eastern Somerset, Northern Somerset, Southern Somerset, Frome, Wellington and Wells.Ibid.