Staffordshire

Stafford, which acknowledged no patron, was a constant drain on the purses of its Members, thanks to the size of the electorate, among whom journeymen shoemakers predominated. But money was not enough to maintain an interest there. Sheridan found the service of Joshua Drewry, editor of the Staffordshire Advertiser, useful. He came to grief in 1806 and in 1812, although he was inclined to attribute his failure in the latter election to the want of funds rather than admit that it was his neglect of his constituents that had caused it.

Newcastle was considered to be a close borough of the 1st Marquess of Stafford and was so listed by the Treasury before the elections of 1790 and 1796. He secured it by cultivating the corporation and tradesmen and by letting his property rent free for five, ten or 15 years. But whereas there had been only one contest between 1734 and 1790, there were no less than eight in this period—with a minimum of four days’ polling and of over 500 voters. Nearly a third of the electorate was composed of feltmakers (journeyman hatters), the majority of whom voted against the marquess’s nominees.

In an interview with Buonaparte on Elba in 1814, Vernon, one of the Lichfield Members, was asked ‘about my seat in Parliament, what place I represented, what was the right of voting, what the number of my constituents and whether any and what influence preponderated among them’.Philbiblon Soc. Misc. viii. 11. Although Lichfield was classed as an open borough, control of it had been shared since 1747 by the Ansons of Shugborough and the Leveson Gowers of Trentham. The combination was opposed until 1761, but tightened its hold thereafter. Oldfield commented in 1792:

The chief interests in Tamworth at George I’s accession were those of Thomas Willoughby, 1st Lord Middleton, high steward of Tamworth, whose estate of Middleton was 4½ miles from the borough; of Baroness Ferrers, the owner of Tamworth Castle, who in 1716 married James, Lord Compton, later 5th Earl of Northampton; and of the 2nd Viscount Weymouth, aged 4, owner of Drayton manor, two miles from Tamworth.

In 1715 Walter and William Chetwynd, two Whigs, whose family seat, Ingestre Hall, was less than five miles from Stafford, were returned unopposed. In 1716 the corporation petitioned against the septennial bill as ‘overturning our present constitution and an infringement of our liberties’.CJ, xviii.

At George I’s accession the chief interest at Newcastle-under-Lyme was in Lord Gower, the head of the Staffordshire Tories, who owned a large part of the town, where one seat was usually held by a member of his family. Except in 1715, when two Whigs were returned on petition, and in 1722 and 1734, when one of the seats was held by Whigs, all the Members were Tories till 1744 when Lord Gower went over to the Administration.

There was no predominant influence at Lichfield. Contests were frequent and sometimes turbulent owing to a strong and aggressive Jacobite element in the town. In 1715 Chetwynd, a Whig, and Hill, a moderate Tory, defeated two high Tories.

In this period identical returns were made for Tamworth by the sheriffs of both Staffordshire and Warwickshire. The corporation consisted of 24 capital burgesses and two bailiffs, who acted as returning officers. Of the two important property interests, the castle took no part in elections after the death of John Ferrers in 1680; but throughout the period the owner of Drayton Park usually controlled one seat. Lord Paget, a Staffordshire landowner, also had a small interest; he used it consistently on behalf of his steward John Swinfen.C. R.

No polls are known to have been required at Stafford in this period. In 1682 the mayor wrote that ‘it has been usual here on all elections of Parliament men to accept for one such person as the high steward of the borough recommended’.

The Mainwarings of Whitmore, the Levesons of Trentham and the Bowyers of Knypersley exercised the principal interests at Newcastle. Two Parliamentarians, Samuel Terrick and John Bowyer, were returned to the Convention of 1660. It is possible that Edward Mainwaring, who had also supported Parliament in the early days of the war, was a candidate, since Mercurius Politicus gives him as Bowyer’s partner. In 1661 he was returned with Sir Caesar Colclough, an Anglo-Irish baronet who had influential cousins and a considerable number of tenants in the borough.