Thetford

Economic and social profile

The small borough of Thetford, which straddled the Suffolk border, was situated at the junction of the rivers Thet and Little Ouse. The most significant employer was Charles Burrell, who in 1836 took over the family agricultural machinery manufacturing firm and began building portable steam engines.W. G. Clarke, ‘Thetford’, Norfolk Record Office (hereafter NRO) MS 125. By the 1870s, after four decades of large-scale expansion, the business had become the largest manufacturer of traction engines in the world.A. Crosby, A history of Thetford (1986), 112-13. Other important employers were the Fison family, who were millers and manufacturers of chemical fertilisers, and the Bidwell malting works.Ibid. The railway came to Thetford in 1845 with the completion of the Norwich and Brandon line, which also connected with the Eastern Counties line from London to Norwich.Ibid. Nonconformity in Thetford rose considerably in this period. The first Primitive Methodist chapel was built in 1838, and by 1851 the borough was made a separate circuit. The first Baptist chapel was erected in 1859.Clarke, ‘Thetford’, NRO MS 125.

Electoral history

A striking feature of the borough’s post-Reform parliamentary politics was the ambiguous nature of the candidates’ party loyalties. Before 1832, Thetford’s representation had been controlled by the borough’s two leading Whig landowners, the fourth duke of Grafton, and the merchant and international banker Alexander Baring, who in 1822 had purchased the interest and estates of the Catholic 11^th Baron Petre.HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 742-3. By arrangement with the corporation, which was dominated by the borough’s leading businessmen, they nominated a member each, but by the 1831 general election the stability of this pact was undermined when the increasingly conservative Baring, who as Member for Callington had opposed the reform bill, turned out his pro-reform son, Francis, and put himself up for the borough.Ibid. Outraged by Baring’s manoeuvre, the radical fertiliser manufacturer James Fison, who was excluded from the corporation, proposed in absentia the reformer George Keppel, who was subsequently seconded and received three votes, only for the mayor to disallow his candidature.Bury and Norwich Post, 4 May 1831; Norwich Mercury, 7 May 1831. Although the reintroduced reform bill removed one Member from Thetford, 30 July 1831, Grafton and Baring lobbied successfully for its removal from schedule B, and it was saved from partial disfranchisement in the revised bill, despite its low population of just under 3,500 and its description by the boundary commissioners as a ‘very feeble constituency’.LJ, lxiii. 1053; PP 1831-32 (141), xl. 251. The campaign to prevent the transfer of Thetford’s Lent assizes to Norwich, however, failed, and in June 1832 the Norfolk and Norwich Assizes Act (2 & 3 Will. 4. c. 47) received royal assent.HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 743.

As well as maintaining the borough’s double-member status, the 1832 Reform Act kept its existing boundaries. 146 electors (124 £10 householders and 22 corporators) were registered at the 1832 general election, making Thetford the smallest English borough in terms of its electorate.PP 1833 (189), xxvii. 226. Members of the Grafton and Baring dynasties continued to dominate the representation, but only with the tacit support of the Best, Bidwell, Burrell, Fison, Faux and Gill families, who likewise maintained control on the town council. Yet, the existence of a small group of self-described ‘independent’ electors reflected a growing unease with this arrangement, and the return on petition of the outsider Sir James Flower in 1842 brought to an end thirty-six years of uninterrupted representation by the Grafton family. With Alexander Baring’s sons following their father into the Conservative camp, shared representation was the norm, though their party loyalty was lukewarm at best, making many of the parliamentary elections in this period rather anodyne affairs. Indeed, party spirit was generally lacking on both sides at the hustings, with the candidates eschewing pledges and instead preferring to identify themselves solely with their family. Reflecting on this staid state of affairs, the Norwich Mercury in 1865 described the borough as being in an ‘abject soulless state’.Norwich Mercury, 14 July 1865.

Rancorous party politics was therefore largely the domain of the town council elections. The Liberals, known locally as the Radical party, swept to power in 1835, and James Fison became mayor in 1840, though by 1841 the pendulum had swung back to the Conservatives, led by the Bidwell and Burrell families.Crosby, Thetford, 97-8. Partisan rivalry was fostered further by the local press, particularly the Conservative-supporting Norfolk Chronicle, owned by the staunchly Protestant Stevenson family, and the Liberal-supporting Norwich and Bury Post, though coverage of Thetford’s parliamentary elections was generally limited.M. Allthorpe-Guyton, ‘The artistic and literary life in Norwich during the century’, in C. Barringer (ed.), Norwich in the nineteenth century (1984), 39-43.

At the 1832 general election there was little evidence of partisan rivalry. Although Alexander Baring put up his favourite son, Francis, in the Conservative interest, the latter, who had sat for the borough as a Whig from 1830 to 1831, refused to offer a position on the questions of Ireland, banking reform and slavery, delivering only this explanation of his political loyalties:

Though a few idols should be removed from their niches, and some party walls be broken down, the foundations of the fabric of the constitution should remain unmoved forever.Norfolk Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1832.

At the nomination, moreover, Baring’s candidature was seconded by James Fison, a committed radical who had previously campaigned assiduously for reform, which served only to muddy the political waters further.Ibid. The Reform candidate, Lord James Henry Fitzroy, the third son of the fourth duke of Grafton, who had sat for the borough since 1830, was also reluctant to pledge himself on political issues. He called for ‘a judicious reform in Church and State’ and the abolition of the slave trade, but as his proposer insisted, Fitzroy ‘would not step over the threshold of St. Stephen’s shackled by promises to support particular measures’.Ibid. Both men were returned without a contest.

Fitzroy’s untimely death at the age of thirty following a short illness in July 1834 created an unexpected vacancy in the representation. The Grafton family’s preferred candidate was the fourth duke’s eldest son, Henry, who had twice sat for Bury St. Edmunds in the pre-Reform Commons and was known by the courtesy title of the earl of Euston.HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 143-5. Although the Grafton interest remained strong enough to return one Member, a group of local ‘independent’ tradesmen, reportedly galvanised by the family’s lack of financial outlay in the borough, sought to bring forward their own candidate, but a requisition asking a local barrister named Biggs Andrew to stand ultimately came to nothing, leaving Euston to be elected unopposed.Morning Chronicle, 7 Aug. 1834; The Times, 7 Aug. 1834.

At the 1835 general election Euston, ‘a steady friend to reform’, was re-elected without a contest alongside Baring, who now described himself as ‘a moderate Tory’, having the ‘same principles as my father’.Parliamentary test book (1835), 55, 12. This outcome was repeated at the 1837 general election, an unremarkable affair that passed without any significant comment in the local press.Norfolk Chronicle, 29 July 1837. The Chartist movement, which had reached Norwich, thirty miles north-east of Thetford, in March 1839, also failed to make any impact on the borough’s politics.J.K. Edwards, ‘Chartism in Norwich’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, 19 (1967), 85-100.

The 1841 general election witnessed the first sustained challenge to the Grafton interest in the post-Reform era. Following a requisition from a group of ‘independent’ electors, Sir James Flower, of Eccles Hall, Norfolk, about twelve miles east of Thetford, came forward as a Conservative.Norfolk Chronicle, 12 June 1841. A renowned huntsman who had served as high sheriff of the county in 1838, Flower was a committed supporter of the agricultural interest, though echoing the approach of the borough’s previous members, he was cautious in declaring his political principles.Ibid., 25 May 1850. His rather prosaic address merely expressed his commitment to church and state and his dislike of ‘rash innovation’.Ibid., 19 June 1841. Nevertheless, Flower received staunch support from the Norfolk Chronicle, which published a leading article asserting that ‘it is surely high time that forbearance towards the political conduct of [the Graftons] yield to considerations more accordant with the wishes of a large portion of the independent electors’.Ibid., 12 June 1841. He also won the tacit support of the Barings, who were keen to return two Conservative candidates.Bury and Norwich Post, 30 June 1841. With Francis Baring retiring at the dissolution, his father, now first Baron Ashburton, brought forward his eldest son, William Bingham Baring, who had previously been Whig Member for the borough from 1826 to 1830. A more promising talent than his younger brother Francis, William had been the last son to defect to the Conservatives, crossing the floor of the Commons when Member for Winchester in 1835.P. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Barings 1762-1929 (1988), 90, 114.

Following a frenzied day of polling in which Flower’s supporters reportedly took to the poll a bedridden voter who had not left his house for years, Baring was elected in first place.Bury and Norwich Post, 7 July 1841. Euston, who received a last-minute vote from an elector whose qualification was allegedly not checked by the polling clerk, tied for second place with Flower on seventy-one.Morning Post, 2 July 1841. The mayor declared a double return and all three candidates were gazetted as MPs.Norfolk Chronicle, 3 July 1841; London Gazette, 23 July 1841. Unsurprisingly, Flower petitioned against the result, 26 Aug. 1841, and the election committee struck off the bad vote for Euston, who was declared ‘not duly elected’, 4 May 1842.The Times, 27 Aug. 1841; PP 1842 (548), v. 26.

In February 1845 Baring was returned unopposed at a by-election following his appointment as paymaster general in the Conservative ministry.Standard, 25 Feb. 1845. A loyal Peelite, Baring, in opposition to his father in the Lords, duly voted for corn law repeal, 15 May 1846. According to Ashburton, his son was ‘a devoted disciple of the School of Doctrinaires, and everything called Free Trade has with him an irresistible attraction’.Ashburton to Peel, 30 Jan. 1846, Add. 40584, f. 18. Flower also voted for repeal, 15 May 1846. The Anti-Corn Law League had been active in Thetford in the early 1840s, with mixed results. In March 1844 the League’s agents delivered tracts denouncing the laws to the entire electorate and while they garnered some local support, others burnt the tracts.Norfolk Chronicle, 11 Mar. 1843. In 1844 the West Norfolk Agricultural Protection Society was formed, and held a series of meetings in Thetford, but the question of corn law repeal was arguably overshadowed in the borough by the duke of Grafton’s assiduous campaign for the abolition of the game laws.Ibid., 9 Mar. and 7 Dec. 1844.

Nevertheless, despite Baring’s best efforts, free trade was a prominent issue at the 1847 general election. At the nomination, which witnessed members of the audience brandishing sticks topped with a ‘big loaf’ of bread, Baring refused to be drawn on the issue, declaring that he would not discuss party political questions ‘which would only promote dissension where union existed’.Ibid., 31 July 1847; Clarke, ‘Thetford’, NRO MS 125. Upon Flower’s retirement at the dissolution, the new fifth duke of Grafton swiftly brought forward his eldest son, William, earl of Euston. Although Euston was standing ostensibly as a Liberal, he was equivocal on the question of free trade, warning that the repeal of the corn laws should not lead to a general extension of free trade policies, as foreigners ‘would thrive upon their folly’.Daily News, 29 July 1847. He was more direct on the issue of religious liberties, calling for Catholics and Jews to receive state grants for education and backing the maintenance of the Maynooth grant.Bury and Norwich Post, 4 Aug. 1847. Both men were returned unopposed, and shared representation was restored.

In July 1848 William Baring succeeded his father as second Baron Ashburton, whereupon he was seamlessly replaced by his younger brother, Francis, who returned to Thetford after a seven year absence. Unlike his elder brother, who had voted for repeal of the corn laws, Francis attacked repeal as being ‘injurious to society’ and declared that he would ‘oppose to the utmost the principles of free trade’, which from his experience as ‘a mercantile man’, would ruin the country’s agricultural and commercial interests.Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1848. Francis Baring’s unopposed return meant that, although shared representation was ostensibly maintained, both sitting Members, who enjoyed the continuing support of the dominant families on the town council, were highly suspicious of free trade measures. This situation was not lost on the Liberal-supporting Norwich Mercury, which on the eve of the 1852 general election complained that:

Under the present system the Members may be said to elect themselves, for they certainly do not represent the sentiments of the town, but only of certain constituents with whom they are on terms of intimacy.Norwich Mercury, 3 Apr. 1852.

At the 1852 general election neither candidate appeared willing to speak freely about his position on free trade. At the nomination Euston, who in the Commons had divided with the Conservatives in opposition to the government on the equalisation of the sugar duties, 29 June 1848, and the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, merely stated that free trade was not under threat as a policy, while Baring, who was constantly interrupted by cries of ‘no protection’, asserted that while he had misgivings, it would be ‘unwise to reverse the policy’.Daily News, 10 July 1852. Both candidates also continued the tradition of refusing to be drawn on major political questions. Euston was equivocal on franchise reform, while Baring declined to give his opinion of the Maynooth grant.Ibid. Despite this obfuscation, both men were returned unopposed.

There was also little to distinguish between Euston and Baring at the 1857 general election. Both men had voted against Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, and at the nomination, while they conceded that the British authorities in China had probably overreacted, they were united in their belief that, in Euston’s words, Palmerston ‘was the minister for the present exigencies of the state’.The Times, 21 Mar. 1857; Norfolk Chronicle, 4 Apr. 1857. They were duly re-elected without a contest, but Baring, whose health was reported to be ‘not equal to a residence in London’, retired from the Commons in November that year, and was replaced by his eldest son, Alexander.Standard, 10 Dec. 1857. In keeping with tradition, Alexander issued an address that, according to one newspaper, dwelt ‘chiefly on the connection of his family with the borough’ and was ‘quite devoid of any expression of political opinion’.Birmingham Daily Post, 8 Dec. 1857. At the nomination he declared that he would ‘go to Parliament unpledged to any party’, though he confirmed that his ‘opinions would remain conservative’. He refused to give an opinion on the question of the Bank Act, explaining that he needed to first hear the ‘discussions in Parliament’, but he did offer a judgment on Indian affairs, calling for the abolition of the East India Company’s court of directors.Standard, 10 Dec. 1857. He was elected without opposition.

Dismayed at Euston’s continuing disloyalty to the Liberal party, a group of electors sought to bring forward their own candidate at the 1859 general election. Much to their chagrin, Euston had voted for the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, the defeat of which had precipitated the dissolution. With Euston determined to offer for re-election, seventy-three electors signed a requisition asking the mustard manufacturer Jeremiah James Colman, of Norwich, to stand as a Liberal.Daily News, 25 Apr. 1859. Colman declined on the grounds that he could not devote the necessary time to parliamentary life, though in a measured response, he hoped that Thetford would ‘not merely be the snug borough of two influential families’.H. C. Colman, Jeremiah James Colman: a memoir (1905), 216. Undeterred by the rejection, the same group invited Charles Locock, son of the eminent physician of the same name, from London to contest the seat, but after visiting the borough he declined to stand, leaving Euston and Baring to be re-elected unopposed.Daily News, 25 Apr. 1859; Norfolk Chronicle, 30 Apr. 1859.

Euston’s succession to the dukedom on his father’s death in March 1863 precipitated Thetford’s first contested election for over twenty years. In his retiring address, the new sixth duke of Grafton stated that his conduct in the Commons had been framed ‘according to the measures themselves’ rather ‘than to the party who promoted them’, a position that was echoed by his chosen successor, his younger brother Frederick Fitzroy, who declared that he would not be a ‘thick and thin’ supporter of any man or party.Norfolk Chronicle, 11 Apr. 1863; Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Apr. 1863. After some initial prevarication, Robert Harvey, a partner in the Norwich Crown Point Bank and former Norwich alderman, accepted a requisition to offer in the Conservative interest.Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Apr. 1863. Although a contest was now assured, there was, in reality, little to choose between the candidates in terms of political beliefs. Indeed, Harvey, as an alderman, had earned a reputation for being a man ‘who cared little or nothing about party’, and at the nomination his proposer admitted that ‘he did not know much about Mr Harvey’s principles’.Norfolk Chronicle, 10 Dec. 1859; Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Apr. 1863. Harvey did little to enlighten him, declaring that he was ‘not tied to any administration’, and while he believed that legislative changes should be carried out in a ‘Conservative spirit’, Palmerston was ‘the greatest statesman of the day’. Both men also held identical positions on church rates, asserting that if no better alternative could be found, they should be abolished.Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Apr. 1863. The situation became more confused when, at the nomination, James Acland, a former Anti-Corn Law League activist and electoral statistician who would go on to work for the Reform League, was proposed and seconded, but then withdrew in favour of Harvey, who he claimed ‘by his great wealth and commercial education was in every way qualified to represent the borough’.Ibid. Despite such an endorsement, Harvey was unable, like Flower had done in 1842, to defeat the Grafton interest. Fitzroy was elected by a margin of twelve votes.

Following the declaration, a leading article in the Norfolk Chronicle reflected on a contest that in many ways encapsulated the political ambiguity of Thetford’s parliamentary candidates in the post-Reform era:

It could hardly be called a party contest in any way; all parties being mixed together indiscriminately in support of one or other of the candidates: thus we find the Liberal Lord Frederick Fitzroy carried to the top of the poll by the votes of Conservatives, and on the other hand the votes of the ultra-Radicals counting amongst those recorded for the Conservative Harvey; while again we had the singular spectacle of an ultra-Radical, recommending that the suffrages of those supporters, whose votes he sought, should be bestowed, not on his Liberal, but Conservative opponent. Although called a Liberal, Fitzroy was so conservative in his address and speeches, and his opponent, so liberal in his sentiments when communicating orally with the electors, that it would be somewhat difficult to detect the nice shade of distinction between them.Norfolk Chronicle, 25 Apr. 1863.

The 1865 general election, however, witnessed a genuine challenge by a candidate who was unequivocal in his support for one of the two major parties. According to the Norwich Mercury, the arrival of the unashamedly Liberal Thomas Dakin, an alderman from London, was a sign that ‘mummified Thetford was waking from the sleep of ages’.Norwich Mercury, 14 July 1865. The political alignment of the other two candidates, though, was far from straightforward. While Fitzroy elected to vacate his seat in order to contest Northamptonshire South, home to his family’s Wakefield estates, Harvey offered once again, though his address did little to clarify his position:

I have not been an extreme politician, nor do I class myself with any political party; I believe that an independent representative best serves political interests. ... I am opposed to professions or pledges, but let me say that I am favourable to progress ... whilst at the same time I should desire that all legislative changes should be conceived, and carried out in a conservative spirit.Bury and Norwich Post, 4 July 1865.

Baring, who had first entered the Commons in 1857 ‘unpledged to any party’, was equally evasive. At the nomination he praised Lord Derby’s leadership before launching an attack on the Liberal government’s ‘meddling’ foreign policy. He opposed the £6 borough franchise and questioned the validity of church rate abolition, but brought his speech to an end by praising Gladstone’s financial policy, of which ‘generally speaking, he approved’.Norfolk Chronicle, 15 July 1865. Dakin, in contrast, was unambiguous in presenting his position. Tellingly, he asserted that the election was ‘not simply a local question that was to be decided by the accident of a person being an inhabitant or by the accident of his having territorial power, but was an important national question’.Ibid. He heralded the Liberals as the ‘party of progress’ and attacked the Conservatives, whose policy had ‘always been to distrust the people’. Significantly, he also declared that there was ‘a distinction between the party Mr Baring represented and the party Mr Harvey and he represented’.Ibid. Dakin’s contention, though, was not so much an effort to paint Harvey as a Liberal but rather an attempt to frame himself and Harvey as the two candidates who were standing against the traditional domination of the two leading families the Graftons and, specifically, the Barings. Dakin’s argument seemed to resonate with his audience and he and Harvey won the show of hands.Ibid. However, at the close of the poll, although Harvey was elected in first place, Dakin lost out to Baring by just under sixty votes. Harvey’s commanding majority was in no doubt a reflection of his cross-party appeal.

The Conservative government’s 1867 Representation of the People Act (30 & 31 Vict. c. 102) reduced Thetford’s representation to one seat.Thetford had been in Schedule A of the bill from the very beginning: PP 1867 (79), v. 540; 30 & 31 Vict. c. 102, Schedule A. Baring, who was now spending the majority of his time in Nice, France, bitterly opposed the Derby ministry’s handling of the bill, which he believed would destroy the party, and he promptly took the Chiltern Hundreds, 25 Nov. 1867, triggering a by-election that would be the last time Thetford would elect a second member.Essex Standard, 27 Nov. 1867. First in the field was the former Member Frederick Fitzroy, who, according to newspaper rumours, had been privately informed by Baring of his intention to resign some time before it was made public.Pall Mall Gazette, 20 Nov. 1867; Bury and Norwich Post, 26 Nov. 1867. Fitzroy was opposed by Edward Strathearn Gordon, a distinguished lawyer and lord advocate of Scotland, who was standing solely so he could carry the Conservative ministry’s proposed Scottish reform bill through the Commons.The Times, 20 Nov. 1867. Gordon’s reason for standing was criticised by the Thetford branch of the Reform League, whose leader, F. R. Starkey, claimed that if Gordon was returned, Thetford would effectively be deprived of one member. The Reform League subsequently gave its support to Fitzroy, though they accepted that he ‘was not a stump orator’.Bury and Norwich Post, 26 Nov. 1867. However, as many of Fitzroy’s supporters had originally promised to back him only on the understanding that there would be no contest, Gordon’s arrival compromised his support, and believing that he was to be defeated, Fitzroy withdrew from the contest before the nomination.Morning Post, 3 Dec. 1867. Gordon, who was backed by Harvey and claimed rather unconvincingly that ‘Thetford was his first love in political life’, was elected unopposed.Ibid.

The 1868 Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, which had passed through the Commons under Gordon’s stewardship, disenfranchised Thetford in order to provide for a redistribution of seats in Scotland.PP 1867-68 (154), iv. 637; 31 & 32 Vict. c. 48. At the 1868 general election the Norfolk portion of Thetford now formed part of the southern division of the county, while the remainder was submerged into the western division of Suffolk. The 1868 dissolution thus brought to an end the parliamentary history of what Jeremiah James Colman’s friends called ‘that petty little borough’, whose members in the post-Reform era were habitually unwilling to nail their colours to a party mast.Quoted in Colman, Colman, 216.