Grantham

Economic and social profile:

Grantham, a thriving market town situated on the river Witham, saw its population more than double in the first half of the nineteenth century following the completion in 1797 of the Grantham canal, which joined the River Trent at Nottingham, allowing the transportation of coal to the town.White, History, gazetteer, and directory of Leicestershire, 670-2. Grantham’s chief trade was malting, producing around 20,000 quarters of malt a year, which was sent to Staffordshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire.Ibid.; Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 129. The agricultural machinery factory of Messrs Hornsby and Sons was also an important employer, and expanded rapidly in the middle years of the 19^th century.R.J. Olney, Lincolnshire politics, 1832-1885 (1973), 7. In 1852 the town was linked by the Great Northern Railway to London and Doncaster, and more immediately to Peterborough and Newark. Thereafter Grantham grew from an agricultural market town into an industrial and railway centre, which also heralded the inexorable decline of the Grantham canal. Working-class voters accounted for 20 per cent of Grantham’s electorate by 1865, a standard percentage for a constituency at this time.PP 1866 (170), lvii. 50. The strong presence of the established church in the borough, led by the politically active Reverend William Potchett, meant that one of the ‘few requisites for candidates’ in this period was anti-Catholicism.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 634. Of the local newspapers, the Stamford Mercury was the most political, offering unwavering criticism of the vested interests of the Blues and Reds, while the Lincolnshire Chronicle gave steady support to the Conservatives.

Electoral history:

Grantham’s pre-1832 elections had been dominated by factional rivalries between the leading families of Lincolnshire, whose estates surrounded the borough. The Tory 1^st Earl Brownlow of Belton, lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, took an active interest in the borough’s affairs, and in 1818 had resurrected the Red party. Prior to 1832 the rival Blue party had been headed by Sir William Manners, also a Tory, who, following the death without issue of his uncle, Wilbraham Tollemache, 6^th earl of Dysart, in 1821, was styled Lord Huntingtower and took the name Tollemache in lieu of Manners. Lord of the manor of Grantham and ‘notorious for his occasional eccentricities’, Huntingtower had secured the return of his son James Frederick Tollemache in 1826. However, the Tories, represented by the competing Red and Blue parties, never achieved political hegemony in the decade preceding reform, with the Whig Cholmeleys of Easton, supported by the Thorolds of Syston Park, a constant thorn in their side.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 634-41.

Although the Reform movement had been strong in Grantham, and the independent or Purple James Hughes had been returned for the borough in 1831, the decision of the boundary commissioners to add the townships of Spittlegate, Manthorpe-with-Little-Gonerby, Houghton and Walton, and Harrowby to the borough gave added weight to the Brownlow and Dysart interests, and the disenfranchisement of the London freemen curtailed Purple support. After 1832 the Brownlow interest endorsed Glynne Earle Welby of Denton, himself a significant landowner, giving him an unassailable position in the borough. The Blue party was headed by Lionel Tollemache, who succeeded as Lord Huntingtower in 1833 and as 8^th earl of Dysart in 1840. Dysart, the owner of the greatest number of houses within the borough, was once reported to have threatened to take the roofs off his houses in Grantham if his tenants voted contrarily.Dod’s electoral facts, 129; Olney, Lincolnshire politics, 12. He gave his support to his younger brothers Algernon and Frederick, even after the latter converted to the Liberal cause in 1852. It was the wishes of the rival landowners rather than strict party political considerations that determined the elections in this period, though by 1865 the pollbooks revealed the emergence of Liberal and Conservative party-based voting.

The three candidates who stood at the 1832 general election had all previously contested Grantham, with varying degrees of success. Glynne Earle Welby, who had first come in for the borough in 1830, offered again on the Red interest. A consistent opponent of the reform bill whose effigy had been burnt in the town, Welby was belligerent, insisting that his votes had been ‘dictated by my conscience’ and that ‘I should hang my head with shame were I ever to further any measure that was opposed to the honest conviction of my mind’.Morning Post, 12 Dec. 1832. He was opposed by Algernon Tollemache (also known as ‘Talmash’) who was brought forward by his father, Lord Huntingtower, in the Blue interest. At the 1831 general election, when Tollemache had been defeated in third place, Huntingtower had pledged the Blues to ‘support King William and reform’, but in 1832 Tollemache appeared to revert to the family’s traditional Conservatism.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 640-1. He called for the abolition of slavery, but insisted that the claims of the planters should take precedence, and called for a reform of church pluralities, while insisting that he ‘would not agree to any appropriation of one shilling’.Morning Post, 12 Dec. 1832. Significantly, there was little difference between the Red and Blue platforms. Welby also believed that slavery ‘should not be abolished until full compensation is given to planters’, and while he was not ‘determinedly against a reform in the church’, he would oppose any measure that would ‘destroy the scared institution of an established church’.Ibid. Welby’s brother-in-law Sir Montague Cholmeley, who had sat for Grantham as a Whig between 1826 and 1831, came forward in the Purple interest. He gave his unwavering support to parliamentary reform, but opposed the ballot, as it was ‘an un-British and unmanly enactment’.Ibid. Colonel James Hughes, who had been returned for the borough as a Radical in 1831 thanks to the support of the now disenfranchised London freemen, withdrew from the contest on the eve of the election with little prospect of success.Morning Post, 12 Dec. 1832; HP Commons 1820-32, ii. 640-1.

The ‘lively’ canvass highlighted the important role played by the borough’s aristocratic women in the borough’s parliamentary elections. Cholmeley enjoyed the ‘indefatigable’ public support of his wife, Lady Georgiana, her two sisters Mary and Louisa Beauclerk, daughters of the 8^th duke of St. Albans, and Lady Thorold, who were reported to have ‘put in requisition all the persuasive arts of the sex’.Morning Post, 12 Dec. 1832. Tollemache praised his female supporters, as he was ‘incited by their zeal, backed by their support, and rewarded by their smiles and daily attendance’, while Welby paid his ‘admiration and good feeling to the Ladies who have honoured and cheered us’.Ibid., 15 Dec. 1832. Following a poll of 650 voters, Tollemache was elected in first place with 388, Welby came in second with 303, leaving Cholmeley bottom on 241. It was a decisive victory for the Conservatives, represented by the rival Red and Blue parties, and underlined the weakness of the Reformers who, deprived of the support of the London freemen, were unable to effectively challenge the influence of the large landowners.

The commanding influence of the Dysart and Brownlow families was again evident at the 1835 general election when, despite William IV’s controversial replacement of the Whigs in November 1834 with a Conservative ministry under Peel, the local Liberals saw their share of the vote drop. Tollemache, who was brought forward by his eldest brother Lionel who had succeeded their father as Lord Huntingtower in 1833, refused to explicitly identify himself with the Conservatives. At the hustings, he merely reiterated his wish to abolish church pluralities whilst resolutely opposing appropriation of its revenues, and declared that he ‘pledged himself to support measures not men’.Ibid., 8 Jan. 1835. In February 1835 the Examiner listed Tollemache as one of the Commons’ ‘doubtful men’: Examiner, 8 Feb. 1835. The Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 158, described Tollemache as a ‘Reformer’, while Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 167, listed him as a ‘moderate reformer’. Dod’s electoral facts, 129, lists him as a ‘Conservative’. His votes in 1835 made his Conservative loyalties clear. He backed Peel on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and paired off against Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835. This ambiguity did little to weaken his position, though, and he was re-elected alongside Welby, both men receiving 351 votes. The Liberal candidate, George Francis Holt, a resident of Grantham who had been active in the borough’s reform movement, received only 149 votes.

The weakness of the borough’s Liberals was further exposed at the 1837 general election. Following Cholmeley’s decision to decline a signed requisition from 180 electors to stand, the Liberals scrambled for a candidate before eventually settling for Robert Turner, a retired banker and ‘townsman of considerable property’ who began his canvass only five days before the poll.Stamford Mercury, 21 July 1837. Already in the field were Welby and Frederick James Tollemache, who offered in place of his younger brother, Algernon.Ibid., 7 July 1837. Tollemache, who had sat for the borough from 1826 until his defeat in 1830, echoed his brother’s stance of being ‘unshackled and unpledged’, although he ‘distinctly stated’ that his political opinions were ‘of a decidedly Conservative character’.Ibid., 28 July 1837.

After a ‘very close and arduous contest’ and a nomination ‘when no one could gain a hearing’, Welby was returned in first place, comfortably ahead of Tollemache in second, who narrowly defeated Turner.Ibid., 28 July 1837. The result was a controversial one, with the support given to Tollemache by the Reverend William Potchett, vicar of Grantham, drawing particular criticism. According to the Liberal-supporting Stamford Mercury, ‘the vicar of the parish was, as usual, the most busy in the throng, devoting the greater part of the Sabbath to canvassing for Talmash’.Stamford Mercury, 28 July 1837. In his address following his defeat, Turner was even more scornful:

Your vicar, who ought to be a teacher of the word of God, devoted nearly the whole of last Sunday to canvassing instead of healing souls. ... The duke of Rutland’s clerk, the earl of Brownlow’s steward, Lord Huntingtower’s agent, the political intriguing vicar of Grantham, all united for a bad purpose with the Blue party to enslave you’.Ibid., 28 July 1837.

Welby and Tollemache were re-elected without opposition at the 1841 and 1847 general elections. Although the 1841 contest, when Cholmeley briefly entered the race before retiring due to ill health, passed without incident, the 1847 general election generated a degree of interest in the local press following Tollemache’s vote in favour of corn law repeal, 27 Mar. 1846.Lancaster Gazette, 26 June 1841; Lincolnshire Chronicle, 2 July 1841. Defending his actions at the nomination, he declared:

He gave the vote that had been objected to conscientiously, knowing that he should offend, and he felt assured that he had offended deeply. He rejoiced at the vote, and if the time were to come over again he should give the same. All the experiments in favour of free trade had proved favourable; and it seemed to him the less we shackled trade the more it progressed.Lincolnshire Chronicle, 6 Aug. 1847.

The Lincolnshire Chronicle, though, was unimpressed, describing his address as ‘trite and haughty, evidently showing the writer’s intention to treat the electors with the same indifference he has evinced towards the interest of the borough in general’.Ibid., 30 July 1847. Welby, who lamented that ‘he could not but look with anxiety upon the change that had been affected in regard’ to the agricultural interest, focused his energies on explaining his opposition to the Maynooth grant:

There might be those who would call him a bigot and think him behind the times, but he could not change his principles. He would sooner find himself in a minority than do what he conscientiously believed would place in peril the established church of this country.Ibid., 6 Aug. 1847.

Tollemache, in response, asked ‘did the electors think that the Church of England ... could be endangered by a paltry grant?’ Although he was ‘no friend to the Roman Catholic system of religion’ he believed that ‘they ought to be tolerant to those that professed it’.Ibid. In contrast to 1832 therefore, there was a clear schism between the Red and Blue parties in terms of political platforms.

This rift widened during Russell’s ministry as Tollemache’s votes in the Commons reflected his inexorable drift towards the Liberals. At the 1852 general election Tollemache’s proposer described him as ‘a fair representation of the Conservative liberal party’, but in truth, he was a Liberal candidate in all but name.Ibid., 9 July 1847. Tollemache called for ‘household suffrage’ and admitted that he was nearly ‘a convert’ to the principle of the ballot. He was also defiant about his change of opinions:

[H]e first came among them little more than a boy. He was then 22 years of age, and was he to live from that to 44 with his eyes shut? Consistency was not to go blundering on in error, but, if wrong, to get into the right way as soon as possible’.Stamford Mercury, 9 July 1852.

Alarmed by Tollemache’s apparent conversion to the Liberal cause, the Conservative party leadership in London brought forward Lord Montagu William Graham. Graham, who had represented Dumbartonshire in the pre-reform Parliament, had no apparent connection to the city, and Tollemache’s supporters dismissed him as an outsider ‘fished up ... at the Carlton club’. In response, Graham’s proposer argued that Tollemache was ‘only a nominee of the earl of Dysart’, and quipped that ‘Mr Tollemache has a right to change his opinions, and they had also a right to change their member’. Welby, meanwhile, boasted that his own record proved that he had ‘not wavered from one side to the other, for he felt that such conduct militated against anyone who practiced it, and ended by bringing him into contempt’.Lincolnshire Chronicle, 9 July 1852.

The 1852 general election in Grantham was dominated by the issue of ‘papal aggression’, a term used to characterise the decision of Pope Pius IX to establish a Roman Catholic hierarchy of dioceses in England and Wales. Welby, who had voted for the ecclesiastical titles bill and opposed the Maynooth grant, declared that he ‘could not conscientiously vote the grant of any money for the education of Romish priests’ as ‘a good education made men more capable of persuading or misleading others’, though he was quick to stress that ‘Conservatism did not mean hostility to civil and religious liberty’. His sentiments were echoed by Graham who called for an inquiry into the grant. Tollemache, in contrast, remained perplexed about his opponents’ fixation with the issue. Having opposed certain clauses of the ecclesiastical titles bill, 23 May 1851, and supported the Maynooth grant, he argued that ‘instead of talking so much about Papacy and its errors, they should purify their own church. It was internal treachery which was the great evil. He would rather have twenty Popish bishops than one Romanizing clergyman’.Ibid. Tollemache’s stance, however, did little to assuage an unsympathetic electorate who expected a degree of anti-Catholicism. At the nomination, his agent, John King, admitted that Tollemache’s stance on Maynooth had excited ‘the hostility of the electors of Grantham’.Ibid. Following a bitter campaign, he was defeated in third place. Welby was re-elected by a commanding majority, and Graham returned in second.

At the 1857 dissolution Welby, who had succeeded as third baronet, 3 Nov. 1852, made way for his son, William. Like his father, Welby was a zealous defender of the established church, and in his address announced that he was ‘hereditarily and deeply attached to that union of church and state’ and would oppose any reform that would ‘endanger either the safety, or the Christian and protestant character of our institutions’.Ibid., 20 Mar. 1857. He was also keen to stress his independence, declaring at the nomination that ‘he came before them pledged to no party’ and ‘true Conservative principles’ were ‘simply an adoption of moderate reform’.Ibid., 3 Apr. 1857. With Welby’s position unassailable, the focus of the contest was the bitter rivalry between Graham and Tollemache, with the latter declaring that he was coming forward ‘in direct antagonism’ to his Conservative opponent.Ibid. Graham voiced his support for Palmerston over the Chinese war, but remained staunchly wedded to ‘defending protestant institutions’.Ibid. The Stamford Mercury, however, lampooned Graham’s protestant principles ‘which by the bye smell too strong of Puseyism to go down in Grantham’.Stamford Mercury, 27 Mar. 1857. Tollemache seized on this commentary, stating that ‘he was sorry to find so much Popery intermixed’ with Graham’s religious convictions.Lincolnshire Chronicle, 3 Apr. 1857. Although Tollemache was now an out-and-out Liberal and attacked the ‘do-nothing policy of the Conservatives’, he retained the backing of his elder brother Lionel, head of the Blue party and now the earl of Dysart.Ibid.; Stamford Mercury, 27 Mar. 1857. This support appeared to be crucial as following another hard-fought campaign, he was returned in second place, 87 votes ahead of Graham. Tollemache undoubtedly benefited from the 154 single votes he received, but the 203 split votes cast for him and Welby (with Graham and Welby receiving 255 shared votes) proved decisive.1857 Grantham pollbook, 30. The fact that just over half of Tollemache’s total votes were split with Welby again suggested that, for the voters, the backing of the local landowners mattered more than strict party allegiances.

The influence of the Welby and Dysart families went unchallenged at the 1859 general election. Following the defeat of the Derby ministry’s reform bill, the nomination was dominated by the issue of franchise reform, with little common ground between Welby and Tollemache. Welby, while conceding that the bill had been ‘open to grave objections’, argued that ‘the good preponderated over the evil’. He added that he would ‘willingly support any measure which seemed to him calculated to admit those to the suffrage whose education and intelligence qualify them to exercise the privilege’, but he remained implacably opposed to the ballot, believing that ‘the door would be opened wide for the readmission of all that bribery and corruption which they had tried so long to get rid of’.Stamford Mercury, 6 May 1859. Tollemache, in contrast, championed the ballot, claiming that ‘it would to a great extent remedy existing evils’. He also explicitly rejected the Derby ministry’s reform bill, explaining that he had backed Lord John Russell’s resolution ‘not from factious motives, but because [the] resolution embodied his own views as to what a proper reform bill should contain’.Ibid. Welby and Tollemache were re-elected without opposition.

However, the hegemony of the Red and Blue parties was disrupted at the 1865 general election when John Henry Thorold, of Syston Park, came forward in the Conservative interest. Thorold’s ancestors had been resident in Lincolnshire since the mid-sixteenth century, and his grandfather, Sir John Hayford Thorold, had been an active supporter of the Purple party in the pre-reform era.HP Commons 1820-32, ii. 634-40. At the nomination Thorold admitted that ‘he had gone away from the principles of his house’ but he did so ‘from sincere conviction’. He objected to the ballot, for he ‘did not believe an Englishman was afraid to give his vote’, and gave his support to the established church, though he ‘did not wish to oppress any man who differed from it’. Once again, Welby sought to present himself as an independent, explaining that ‘he supported the Conservative party, by giving them the vote when he thought them right, but he wanted nothing from them’. There was little doubt, though, that party lines had been drawn. Welby warned against the prospect of a Gladstone premiership, arguing that ‘he entertained some opinions which he considered very dangerous’, while Tollemache declared that ‘Conservatism never mended anything until compelled; but Liberalism improved things so soon as they discovered a way of doing so’. Conservatism, though, was triumphant. Following a tense day of voting during which gangs, who were reported to be wearing blue, set polling booths on fire, Thorold was elected in first place. Welby came in second, comfortably ahead of Tollemache, who once again lost his seat.Lincolnshire Chronicle, 14 July 1865.

The pollbook reveals a significant level of party-based voting at this contest. Of the 676 who polled, 50 per cent shared their vote between the Conservatives Thorold and Welby. These 335 shared votes accounted for 83 per cent of Welby’s total and 78 per cent of Thorold’s. Whereas in 1857 Tollemache received 203 split votes with Welby, which accounted for 52 per cent of his total votes, in 1865 he gained only 64 split votes with his Conservative rival, just 20 per cent of his total. His 174 plumpers accounted for 55 per cent of his vote.1865 Grantham pollbook, 48. Clearly, this increase in party-based voting since 1857 favoured the Conservatives.

The by-election of April 1868, necessitated by Welby’s decision to resign his seat in order to offer for a vacancy at Lincolnshire South, confirmed the Conservative strength in the borough. Edmund Turnor, the eldest son of the wealthy landowner Christopher Turnor, MP for Lincolnshire South, 1841-47, whose seat was at Stoke Rochford, just south of Grantham, offered in the Conservative interest. He was opposed by Captain Hugh Arthur Henry Cholmeley, the eldest son of Sir Montague Cholmeley, who had sat for the borough, 1826-31, before representing Lincolnshire North, 1847-52, and 1857-74. The nomination was a rowdy affair, with a large group of non-electors, many of whom were employed by Messrs Hornsby and Sons, persistently heckling Turnor. James Hornsby seconded Cholmeley, and backed the ballot as it would ‘free a great number of tradesmen’. Although the candidates were close neighbours, both were quick to underline the divisions between their respective parties. Turnor, who stated that ‘Liberals, when they find themselves in the House of Commons, put their promises in their pockets and button up their coats’, attacked Gladstone’s Irish church bill, claiming that it would ‘have a disastrous effect on the church of England’. In response, Cholmeley argued that ‘it must be a bigoted Tory who does not see that the Irish Church is doomed’ and gave his ‘cordial and unswerving support to the leader of the Liberal party’. Cholmeley was also critical of Welby’s decision to retire ‘without consulting the electors’, stating that he had ‘bartered the borough to Turnor like a suit of cast-off clothes’.Lincolnshire Chronicle, 2 May 1868. However, the Liberals had failed to strengthen their position since 1865, and Turnor was elected by a commanding majority.

The 1867 Reform Act increased the borough’s electorate from 755 to 2,018, which played directly into the Liberals’ hands. At the 1868 general election Tollemache and Cholmeley were returned without opposition, and thereafter the Liberals retained at least one of the borough’s seats until 1885, when Grantham became a single-member constituency. Following the Liberal split over Gladstone’s 1886 Irish home bill, the Conservatives dominated parliamentary elections until the turn of the century. A helpful overview of the parliamentary borough of Grantham can be found in Richard Olney’s Lincolnshire politics, 1832-1885 (1973).