Although Grantham had not gone to the poll since 1772, it was listed by the Treasury as an open borough before the elections of 1790 and 1796, and at the latter election unquestionably became one. Previously, as Oldfield stated in 1792: ‘The Duke of Rutland and Lord Brownlow, from their property in the town, the contiguity of their seats, and their personal interest have the entire command of its representation’. Each patron returned his own relations.
The Duke of Ancaster returned one Member, as usual, in 1790; and the corporation regained the seat they had lost to a nabob in 1784 for want of a ready candidate by putting up Thomas Fydell, a merchant banker of their number who had been three times mayor.Oldfield, Rep. Hist. iv. 160. The nabob Watherston did not offer again and another nabob, Gen. Richard Smith, who appeared as a third man, fared badly at the poll. His and an electors’ petition against the return were not pursued.
There were too many aristocratic landowners in Lincolnshire, as well as too many independent freeholders, to allow of a predominant interest. Yet the peace of the county remained undisturbed from 1724 to 1807, despite some alarms, and one seat was held by one family, the Anderson Pelhams of Brocklesby, from 1774 to 1802 and from 1807 to 1823, if Robert Vyner II, who succeeded his half-brother Charles Anderson Pelham on the latter’s elevation to the peerage as Lord Yarborough in 1794, be counted as one of the family.
Leicester had not been contested since 1768, but a compromise between the rival corporation and independent parties was broken in 1784. The corporation then secured two Members favourable to Pitt’s ministry, assisted by the desertion of the independent interest by the 4th Duke of Rutland, whose nominee John MacNamara was.
Since 1780 a compromise had operated whereby the 4th Duke of Rutland, the dominant peer, returned one Member on his interest (the Orange) and the independent gentry (the Blues) returned the other. The 4th Duke died in 1787 leaving three infant sons and his duchess to manage his interest in conjunction with Pitt and the Duke of Beaufort. Not until 1806 was there a Rutland family nominee and the compromise was maintained throughout the period.
There are a number of obscurities in the electoral history of Wigan, where the admission of freemen was regulated by a complicated municipal constitution. In-burgesses were chosen at the annual Michaelmas court leet from inhabitants paying scot and lot by the jury of the court, which was itself composed entirely of in-burgesses. The mayor had the power to create honorary freemen, generally known as out-burgesses, who had the right to vote in mayoral and parliamentary elections, but it would seem that only two such creations could be made by each mayor.See M.
In 1768, when the right of election was determined to be in ‘the inhabitants at large’ (subject to a six months’ residential qualification) rather than in the resident freemen, control of the parliamentary representation of Preston was wrested from the corporation by the 11th Earl of Derby, in alliance with Sir Henry Hoghton of nearby Hoghton Tower.
Newton was controlled by the Leghs of Lyme, who were lords of the manor and also owned most of the land in the borough. The head of the family until his death in 1792 was Peter Legh, and the Members returned in 1790 and 1796 were his nephew and heir, Thomas Peter Legh, and Thomas Brooke of Ashton Hayes, who was second cousin to Thomas Peter. The latter died in 1797, having bequeathed the family property to his eldest illegitimate son Thomas Legh, then about four years old.
As a port Liverpool was by now second only to London, enjoying a quarter of the country’s foreign trade and the largest share of its African trade. It gave employment to about 3,000 shipwrights, who, with ancillary trades, made up the majority of the electorate. Freemen qualified by birth or servitude and no longer by purchase, so the corporation was unable to command them; there was in any case a long-standing political conflict between that Anglican body and the dissenting freemen.
Lancaster was eclipsed by Liverpool as a port for the West Indian trade in this period. The consequent decline in the staple industries of shipbuilding and cabinet-making was never fully compensated by the developing cotton industry, though the town later enjoyed a revival of prosperity from the American, Russian and coastal trades. The freedom was obtainable by birth, apprenticeship, restricted gift of the mayor and two bailiffs and by purchase. A bye-law of 1796 set the minimum price of admission by purchase at ten guineas and in 1807 the practice was ended altogether.
