In April 1784, George Nevill, 17th Baron Abergavenny, was approached to ask whether he would accept promotion to an earldom. In the wake of Pitt the Younger’s success in the general election, it was time for debts to be repaid and right at the front of the queue was John Robinson. Robinson had formerly worked for Lord North as a political agent but had chosen to switch his allegiance to Pitt and put all of his energy into securing Pitt a handsome victory. Robinson’s daughter was married to Abergavenny’s heir, Henry, so the new peerage would ensure that Robinson would ultimately be grandfather to an earl.

Abergavenny had also made a political journey. Married back in the 1750s to a member of the Pelham clan, he had naturally found himself within the orbit of the Old Corps Whigs and then of the Rockinghams. A consistent opponent of North and his handling of the American crisis, he had distanced himself from the former Rockinghamites who had entered the coalition with North and ultimately helped to bring the Fox-North administration down. So, the earldom was a double reward.

It might all have been very different, as exactly 37 years previously, while a student at Christ Church, Oxford, Abergavenny had narrowly avoided being tried for murder.

The story, as told in the press and in private correspondence, was that one of the Christ Church scouts (servants) named John or William Franklin (the papers could not agree which) had been found early in the morning of 4 April 1747 in one of the college quadrangles, badly bruised and with a fractured skull. His hair had been shaved and his eyebrows burnt off. There were also tell-tale indications of him having been very drunk.

What appeared to have happened was that a group of students, one of them Claudius Amyand, had been holding one of their regular shared suppers in their rooms, but had decided to entertain themselves by making Franklin, who seemed to have had a reputation as being somewhat eccentric, extremely drunk. The regular attendees had taken the prank (as they viewed it) so far, but things had become more extreme when they were joined by others, who had not been part of the original group. The newcomers were Abergavenny, Lord Charles Scott, a younger son of the duke of Buccleuch, Francis Blake Delaval and Sackville Spencer Bale (later a clergyman and domestic chaplain to the 2nd duke of Dorset). They appear to have handled Franklin very roughly – making fun of him by shaving his head – and to have left him so drunk that he was utterly incapable. According to Frederick Campbell, Abergavenny and Scott retreated to their own rooms at this point, leaving it to the remainder of the party to drag Franklin ‘out to snore upon the stair-case’. [Hothams, 42]

It was unclear what happened next, but it was assumed that after being abandoned on the stairs, Franklin had fallen down, fracturing his skull. On being discovered in the morning, Abergavenny’s valet took Franklin home, where he was examined by a surgeon, but nothing could be done for him. That there may have been a more sinister explanation for his injuries was, however, indicated early on by the news that most of those believed to have taken part in the drinking session had fled, and it was gossiped that the two most responsible for his injuries had been Abergavenny and Scott. [Ward, 169]

Certainly, the coroner’s jury considered that there had been foul play and brought in a verdict of ‘wilful murder by persons unknown’. Some observers took a different view. Frederick Campbell reckoned that it had been a joke that had been carried too far and he was certain that none of those in the frame would ever be convicted. He also added that ‘there was not three of the jury but was drunk’. [Hothams, 42] Horace Walpole’s sympathies, unsurprisingly, were also with the students, commenting: ‘One pities the poor boys, who undoubtedly did not foresee the melancholy event of their sport’. He had nothing to say about the unfortunate Franklin, who had lost his life. [Walpole Corresp, xix. 387] The only one of the group who seemed to have played no role in what had happened to Franklin was Amyand, who had quit the supper party early.

Had Abergavenny been charged with murder, he would have been able to apply to the House of Lords to be tried before them, in the same way that had happened to Lord Mohun in the 1690s and was to happen again soon afterwards to Lord Ferrers and Lord Byron.

In the event, there was no need for Abergavenny to face the prospect of a trial in Westminster Hall. While the coroner’s jury had concluded that Franklin’s death had been murder, the grand jury that sat on the case during the summer assizes refused to bring in the bill triggering a trial. The grand jury was said to have been made up of some of the principal gentlemen of the county and to have deliberated for several hours before reaching their decision. No doubt they were reluctant to agree to a trial of students from gentry (or noble) backgrounds, but they may also have been swayed by the convenient death of Lord Charles Scott just a few weeks before the assizes, which left the proceedings lacking a key witness (or a likely defendant).

Whatever his role had been, Abergavenny walked away unscathed. In 1761 he applied to be recognized as Chief Larderer at the coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte, and in 1784 he had his status enhanced with promotion to the earldom. Blake Delaval was also able to cast off whatever opprobrium had attached to him, and just two years after Franklin’s death stood for Parliament for the first time (unsuccessfully). He later represented Hindon and Andover and in 1761 was made a knight of the Bath. What happened, truly, on that night in April 1747 was never discovered and justice for Franklin – or at least a full explanation of what had happened to him – was never achieved.

RDEE

Further reading:

The Hothams: being the chronicles of the Hothams of Scorborough and South Dalton…, ed. A.M.W. Stirling (2 vols, 1918)

Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (Yale edition)

W.R. Ward, Georgian Oxford: University Politics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1958)

General Advertiser

Whitehall Evening Post

Bloomsbury Square, and its immediate surroundings, have long been associated with prominent political figures. In 1706, several peers had residences in the square, notably the (2nd) duke of Bedford and the earls of Northampton and Chesterfield. Close neighbours residing in Great Russell Street, were the duke of Montagu (whose house later became the British Museum), the earl of Thanet and Lord Haversham, and John Hough, at that point bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. By 1727, things had changed somewhat. Montagu was still living in Great Russell Street, now joined by William Baker, bishop of Bangor, shortly after translated to Norwich. But Northampton’s heir had left Bloomsbury Square for Grosvenor Street, though another house had been taken by the earl of Nottingham. [Jones, ‘London Topography’]

Jump forward half a century, and Bloomsbury Square remained a place closely associated with the aristocracy. It was still home to the (5th) duke of Bedford and he had been joined by one of the foremost legal minds of the time: William Murray, earl of Mansfield, who had moved there from Lincoln’s Inn Fields a few years previously. According to Mansfield’s biographer, the square ‘conveyed a delightful atmosphere of leisure and repose, where often the only sounds came from the twittering and chirping of birds’. [Poser, 167] In June 1780, this ‘delightful’ haven was to be turned on its head and Mansfield’s residence was to become one of the principal targets of the Gordon rioters, who flocked to the square on the night of 6/7 June determined to torch the place.

Much has been written about the Gordon riots, which brought London (and other cities) to a virtual standstill for several days in June 1780. The immediate cause was the Protestant Association’s petition calling for the repeal of the 1778 Catholic Relief Act. Having gathered in St George’s Fields on Friday 2 June, members of the Association, led by their president, Lord George Gordon, processed to Parliament to present the petition. While things had begun calmly enough, in the course of the day more unruly elements flocked to Westminster and MPs and members of the Lords found themselves besieged within their chambers.

Thus, what began as a relatively focused cause was soon taken over by general lawlessness, and as Bob Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock have argued persuasively, many of those involved in the later stages of the rioting had as their target the criminal justice system itself and were far less driven by concerns about religion. [Hitchcock and Shoemaker, 346, 349-50] Consequently, several prisons were attacked and the inmates released; lawyers in and around the inns of court went in fear of assault (or worse) and prominent judges, like Mansfield, became very obvious targets. The fact that Mansfield had also been vocal in his support of the Catholic Relief Act made him doubly susceptible.

Mansfield had been singled out for special treatment even on that first day. Arriving at Westminster, his carriage had been attacked and he had had to be rescued by the archbishop of York. After the day’s proceedings were adjourned, Mansfield was forced to make his way out of the Lords via a back door and travelled home by river as his coach had since been torn to pieces.

Over the next few days rioting gripped London. By Tuesday 6 June Mansfield’s nephew (and eventual heir) David, 7th Viscount Stormont, felt the need to advise the officer commanding the guards in London that he had received ‘reliable information’ that several houses were in need of additional protection, among them those of the marquess of Rockingham and Mansfield. [TNA, SP37/20/54, ff. 76-6] Despite Stormont’s efforts, Mansfield himself decided that too visible a military presence might only infuriate the crowd, so he requested the guards remain at a distance. It was a fatal mistake. When a band of rioters arrived outside Mansfield’s house on the night of 6/7 June, they found it undefended and set to work pulling down the railings before breaking into the house itself. There, they gave vent to all their destructive power, burning his library and gutting the building. Mansfield and Lady Mansfield only narrowly escaped, by using the back door onto Southampton Row.

Mansfield’s losses were significant. Consigned to the flames were his own legal notebooks, along with his library and pretty much the entire contents of the house. Efforts to save the building were stymied because when firefighters arrived on the scene, they refused to get involved until the soldiers (who had by then made themselves known) withdrew, in case they got caught in the middle of fighting between the crowd and the troops.

According to one paper, Mansfield’s losses amounted to £30,000, the library constituting a third of the total. [Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1780] Another paper attributed the destruction to Mansfield’s own ‘ill-judged lenity’, after he had ‘humanely requested [the troops] not fire upon the deluded wretches’. The same paper detailed some of the irreplaceable items that had been destroyed, including a portrait of Viscount Bolingbroke by the poet, Alexander Pope, ‘which, though not having the merit of a professed artist, was always esteemed a great likeness’. [Whitehall Evening Post, 10-13 June 1780]

The tragedy of the Gordon Riots and its impact on Bloomsbury Square did not end on 7 June. Precisely how many people were killed and injured in the rioting remains unclear, but among the rioters well over 300 were killed. Some troops were also among the dead, one of them a cavalrymen posted in Bloomsbury Square, who came off his horse and was finished off by the crowd. [Whitehall Evening Post, 8-10 June 1780] Retribution for some of those involved came quickly and within days there were numerous arrests. By the end of the month the first trials were underway.

As was so often the case, it was the very recognizable among the most marginalized who ended up being handed in. One such was John Gray, whose case has been written about extensively. A native of Taunton in Somerset, who had made his way to London, Gray was one of many on the fringes of society, eking out a living by feeding horses for hackney carriages. [London Courant, 24 July 1780] Although described as ‘a stout made man’, he appears to have had a clubfoot and to have needed a crutch to walk. He seems also to have had mental health issues. He stood out in the crowd taking part in pulling apart one of Mansfield’s outhouses and a few days later was arrested after being spotted trying to pick someone’s pocket.

Gray was convicted at the Old Bailey (https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/) and, in spite of a petition for mercy subscribed by several prominent Taunton residents, one of them the chaplain to Lord Bathurst, [TNA, [SP37/21/132, f. 250] and other recommendations that his case was one worthy of the king’s consideration, [TNA, SP37/21/91] the appeals for clemency were rejected. On Saturday 22 July, he was conveyed back to Bloomsbury Square with two others and hanged on a gallows positioned so that their last view was the remains of Mansfield’s burnt-out former residence.

RDEE

Further reading:
Clyve Jones, ‘The London Topography of the Parliamentary Elite: addresses for peers and bishops for 1706 and 1727-8’, London Topographical Record, xxix (2006)
Norman S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)
Tim Hitchcock and Bob Shoemaker, London Lives: poverty, crime and the making of a modern city 1690-1800 (2015)

One of the seminal moments of Pulteney’s career occurred at the end of the parliamentary session on 31 May 1725 when he was dismissed from his post as cofferer of the household, on account of his opposition earlier in the session, most notably over the Civil List bill. There followed a period of opposition which ended only with the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole from the Treasury on 3 February 1742. Pulteney then entered the Cabinet, but consistent with his oft-repeated pledge not to take office, he did not take an administrative post. On 14 July, the penultimate day of the 1741-2 session, he was raised to the earldom of Bath, taking his seat in the Lords on the following day.

Pulteney lost a lot of popularity when entering the House of Lords, and he failed twice to attain major office in the years following: he was overlooked in favour of Henry Pelham, as first lord of the Treasury, upon the death of the earl of Wilmington in July 1743 and failed to construct a ministry when the Pelhams and most of their colleagues resigned in February 1746. From then on, his political career is deemed to have been over and he spent his time in ‘retirement’.

However, there was another side to Pulteney, related to the accumulation of power and influence. On the very day he took his seat in the Lords, a bill to prevent the marriage of lunatics received the royal assent. This was managed through the Commons by Pulteney’s long-term associate Phillips Gybbon and served to offer some protection to Pulteney’s investment in the reversion of the estates of the Newport, earls of Bradford.

The heir to the estates of Pulteney’s friend, Henry Newport, 3rd earl of Bradford (1683-1734) was Bradford’s illegitimate son, John Newport, whose mother Ann Smyth was on her deathbed. The reversion of Bradford’s estates had been granted to Pulteney (in return for paying for Newport’s maintenance and the debts of the third earl). Now Newport could not be married off by unscrupulous operators for the estates. Similarly, the third earl’s brother, Thomas Newport, who succeeded to the title as 4th earl of Bradford, was a certified lunatic.

The Bradford estates were destined for Pulteney’s son, William, Viscount Pulteney, who pre-deceased his father in June 1763. Sir Lewis Namier detailed the battle waged by Bath to become lord lieutenant of Shropshire following the accession of George III. Bath used his connexions with the new king and John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, to overcome the claims of his rival, Henry Arthur Herbert, created Baron Herbert of Chirbury in 1743 and promoted earl of Powys in 1748. In 1736 when Ann Smyth had petitioned for a bill to allow her son (at the time known as John Harrison) to be adopt the surname Newport, the first two-names on the drafting committee were Herbert and Pulteney, with Herbert managing the bill through the House.

The death of Viscount Pulteney did not end Bath’s interest in the Bradford estates. On 21 March 1764 a bill received the royal assent allowing the guardians of John Newport to make leases of his estates during his lunacy. It was managed through the Lords by Pulteney’s ally, Samuel Sandys, Baron Sandys, and through the Commons by John Rushout, the future Baron Northwick (son of Pulteney’s friend, Sir John Rushout, 4th bt.).

Bath turned 80 on 22 March, but continued to exhibit considerable vigour, sitting on eight of the 18 days remaining in the session, including on 2 April despite being begged by Lady Elizabeth Montagu ‘not to lose all this lovely morning in the House of Lords’ [https://emco.swansea.ac.uk/emco/letter-view/1297/]. Following the end of the session, Bath travelled to Shropshire, where he reviewed the militia at the end of May. Upon his return to London, he fell asleep in a garden, caught a fever and died on 7 July 1764.

The dynastic implications of Bath’s actions become clear if we look beyond the contemporary criticism levelled at him for leaving his estate to his elderly brother, General Harry Pulteney. In fact, the descent of the estates followed the intentions laid down by Henry Guy in his will of 1711 (which provided the basis of Bath’s wealth). Guy’s list of remainders ended with the male heirs of Daniel Pulteney, Bath’s cousin.

The ultimate beneficiary in 1767 was Frances Pulteney, daughter of Daniel and the wife of William Johnstone, who took the name Pulteney after Frances succeeded to the Pulteney estates. This William Pulteney succeeded his brother (Sir James Johnstone) as 5th baronet in 1794 and spent over 30 years as MP for Shrewsbury. His daughter and heir, Henrietta, was created successively Baroness Bath (1792) and countess of Bath (1803). Upon her marriage to Sir James Murray, 7th bt. in 1794 he also took the name Pulteney.

SNH

Hugh Oldham (c.1450-1519), bishop of Exeter from 1505, has had a good press from historians. Described by the Exeter MP and chronicler, John Hooker alias Vowell (d. 1601), ‘as a great favourer and a friend both to learning and to learned men’, he was a major benefactor of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the foundation of his friend, Richard Foxe, bishop of Winchester. Although Hooker was no advocate of Oldham’s own academic attainments, rather patronisingly remarking that he had ‘more zeal than knowledge and more devotion than learning’, he praised him for his friendliness. A curious action in the court of King’s bench in 1512 gives a rather contrasting picture of the bishop, albeit one, as an ex parte statement, on which little reliance is to be placed.  When the bishop’s servant, William Knot, came to Crediton to summon one of the clerks of the diocese, Edward Grigson, to appear in the consistory court, Grigson responded uncharitably, claiming that ‘the Bysshoppe  of exet[er] is the most extorcyoner and poller that is in Englond for he hath extorcyoner and polled both me and my Tenauntez and that he hath more poison in that grete fowle bely of hys then all the Bysshoppes in Englond’. A jury found for the bishop, and he was awarded the relatively modest sum of £8 in costs and damages.

The action was an innovative one.  Medieval statutes of scandalum magnatum, the first dating from 1275 and reenacted in almost the same terms in 1378 and 1389, had given peers and the King’s great officers protection against the circulation of defamatory rumours about them. The purpose was political: as the 1378 enactment put it, such rumours created ‘Debates and Discords’ whereby, in the hyperbolic language of such statutes, the realm might be brought to ‘quick Subversion and Destruction’.  Despite this alarming danger, the statutes were rarely used until the first years of the sixteenth century, when lawyers began to wonder whether their peerage clients might use the offence of scandalum magnatum as a civil plea to win damages against those who could be accused of speaking ill of them. Their first recorded effort proved a failure. In 1495 Sir Richard Croft sought to forward a land dispute with Richard, Lord Beauchamp, by bringing an action under a statute which penalised the fabricating of false deeds. Beauchamp’s response was to counter-sue for damages of £1,000 on the eccentric claim that the allegation he had fabricated false deeds was itself an offence under the scandalum magnatum statute of 1378. This claim, which, if successful, would have given peers extensive protection against litigation, was quickly dismissed by the chief justice of the common pleas, Sir Thomas Bryan, who succinctly observed that the statutes of scandalum magnatum were ‘not made to oust men of their legitimate actions’.  Yet Bryan’s ruling did not preclude the use of the statutes to sue for scandalous words.  There were a series of such actions in the common-law courts in early years of the sixteenth century.  The most famous of these was brought by Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham, in the same year as Odiham’s, against his former servant, Thomas Lucas of Inner Temple, former solicitor-general to Henry VII, for allegedly saying that ‘he sett nott be the Duke two pens’ and that the duke ‘hath no more conseyens than a Dogg’.

It would, however, be mistaken to see these actions solely in terms of the exploitation of aristocratic privilege under arcane medieval statutes, for they can also be seem as part of a more general development. Church courts had enjoyed a monopoly over cases of defamation, and, as in those courts the plaintiff could gain no damages beyond the imposition of penance upon the defendant, this was unsatisfactory. These actions of scandalum magnatum were only one attempt to redress this deficiency, for, at about the same time as they emerged, the common-law began to provide a general remedy with plaintiffs able to sue for damages for reputational damage caused by defamatory words.  Scandalum magnatum certainly gave peers a legislative advantage, one that was later to be ruthlessly exploited by the future James II in the early 1680s, but lesser men also had a common-law remedy for slander.

Further reading

Article on Hugh Oldham, bishop of Exeter, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

J.H. Baker, The Oxford History of the Laws of England, 1483-1558 (2003), pp. 781-2, 797-8.

J.C. Lassiter, ‘Defamation of Peers: the Rise and Decline of the Action of Scandalum Magnatum’, American Journal of Legal History, xxii (1978), pp. 216-36.

In 1756 William Murray left the House of Commons after 14 years as MP for Boroughbridge, having been appointed Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King’s Bench, and created Lord Mansfield. He was therefore a highly experienced judge by the time he made his ruling in the case of Somerset v Stewart on 22 June 1772. This dealt with the imprisonment of James Somerset, an enslaved person under the ownership of Charles Stewart. Although Mansfield had not wished it to be so, his decision was seen as a judgment on the legal status of slavery in England.

Prior to the Somerset decision, although slavery was rife within the British colonies, the status of slavery in England itself was disputed. Previous high-ranking law officers had left contrary opinions on the matter. In 1696 the Lord Chief Justice Sir John Holt, in the case of Chamberlain v Harvey, had ruled that ‘no man can have property in the person of another while in England’. Yet 23 years later, the West India lobby, opposed to Holt’s previous statement, obtained an unofficial opinion from the Attorney General Philip Yorke and the Solicitor General Charles Talbot:

We are of opinion that a slave, coming from the West Indies to Great Britain or Ireland, with or without his master, doth not become free; and that his master’s property or right in him is not thereby determined or varied; and that baptism doth not bestow freedom upon him, or make any alteration in his temporal condition in these Kingdoms. We are also of opinion that his master may legally compel him to return again to the plantations. – Yorke-Talbot Opinion, 1729

It is with these conflicting statements in mind that we need to understand the significance of the Somerset v Stewart decision.

Charles Stewart (or Steuart), a Scottish merchant who had become a cashier and paymaster of customs in Boston, Massachusetts, came to England on business in 1768/9, bringing with him James Somerset, an enslaved person under his ownership. During their time in England, Somerset was baptised, with three abolitionists – Thomas Walkin, Elizabeth Cade and John Marlow – acting as godparents. As the Yorke-Talbot opinion suggested, there was a belief, which their opinion disagreed with, that the baptism of an enslaved person made them free. Somerset eventually escaped Stewart’s service in October 1771, evading recapture until the end of November. He was taken to a ship anchored in the Thames – the Ann and Mary – and detained there for the purposes of being shipped to Jamaica to be resold as a slave.  His godparents intervened, issuing a writ of habeas corpus, a legal procedure under which a prisoner would be brought to court to decide whether they had been lawfully detained. Somerset was duly brought before the Court of King’s Bench on 9 December 1771.

The case eventually began in February 1772, heard by three judges with Mansfield presiding as Lord Chief Justice. Somerset was released pending the hearing, and in that time met with the famed abolitionist Granville Sharp, who had previously issued writs of habeas corpus for similar cases to resolve the uncertainty surrounding slavery. Although he supported Somerset’s case, he did not represent him; Somerset was instead defended by a team of barristers led by the sitting MP for Middlesex, John Glynn. 

The defence sought to frame the judgment on the basis that a ruling in favour of Stewart would set a precedent for legalising enslavement across the British Isles. Francis Hargrave, in this his first case, exemplified this position during proceedings, stating that ‘the question is not whether slavery is lawful in the colonies… but whether in England?’ Another main point of contention from the defence, articulated by John Alleyne, was that due to Stewart’s ownership of enslaved people being legalised through municipal law in America, his ownership of James Somerset did not hold sway in ‘a country where such municipal regulations do not subsist.’

The lead counsel for Stewart, John Dunning, who was also a sitting MP, sought to challenge Alleyne’s argument. He posited that although municipal regulations were not binding in a different country, there were relationships similar to Stewart and Somerset’s of an equivalent status that could be transposed: ‘I have not heard, do I fancy, is there any intention to affirm, the relation of master and servant ceases here?’ William Wallace also questioned what the implications of setting Somerset free would be for the lucrative industries in the colonies that were dependent on the labour of enslaved people. He argued that ‘the Court must consider the great detriment to proprietors… that many thousands of pounds would be lost to the owners, by setting them [enslaved persons] free.’

On 14 May, Mansfield adjourned the final session before his judgment was to be given. As in previous cases he had presided over, Mansfield strongly recommended that an agreement between the parties be reached before an opinion was given, but it seemed that both sides were committed to a judicial resolution. Reluctant to give a judgment on the legality of slavery in general, Mansfield narrowed the remit of his judgment. Rather than answering questions on the morality of enslavement, or the potential detriment to British commerce, Mansfield stated that his decision would be based on ‘whether any dominion, authority or coercion can be exercised in this country, on a slave according to American laws?’

The Court of King’s Bench’s decision was finally read by Mansfield in Westminster Hall on 22 June 1772. The Morning Chronicle reported the day after the decision that ‘Lord Mansfield in a written speech, as guarded, cautious, and concise, as it could possibly be drawn up, delivered the unanimous opinion of the whole court…’ Within the parameters he had previously proposed, Mansfield asserted that ‘so high an act of dominion must be recognized by law of the country it is used.’ As the dominion over another person that slavery imposed was not supported by English law, Mansfield declared:

Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England.

James Somerset was therefore released.

Although this declaration created a judicial decision against the institution of slavery in England, the parameters Mansfield had set greatly narrowed the impact of Somerset’s release. The precedent set by this case was that the actions of Stewart to detain Somerset against his will to deport and sell him into slavery were not supported by English law. However, this did not outlaw the existence of slavery in the colonies, or the existence of domestic servitude. Rather it stipulated that the level of dominion over another which Stewart had tried to enforce – the forced deportation of an individual for the purpose of selling them as a slave – was unlawful in England.

Despite Mansfield later stating in 1785 that his decision went ‘no further than that the master cannot by force compel him [the slave] to go out of the Kingdom’, this judgment was seen by many as a boon to the emerging abolitionist campaign, posing the question, if slavery in its fullest extent could not be legal in England, why was it still legal in the colonies? With the emergent anti-slavery rhetoric gaining more traction, the West India Interest saw for the first time that there was unified opposition to the status quo. New tactics were needed to counter fears that Somerset v Stewart could eventually destabilise the practice of colonial slavery.

JMPB

Further Reading:

Somerset v Stewart, 1 Lofft 1, 1772

D. Olusoga, Black and British: A Forgotten History (2016)

N. S. Poser, Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason (2013)

E. L. Wong, ‘Emancipation after “the Laws of Englishmen”, in Neither Fugitive nor Free: Atlantic Slavery, Freedom Suits, and the Legal Culture of Travel (2009), 19-76

D. J. Hulsebosch, ‘Nothing but Liberty:” Somerset’s Case” and the British Empire’, Law and History Review 24, 3 (2006), 647-657

S. Swaminathan, ‘Developing the West Indian Proslavery Position after the Somerset Decision’, Slavery and Abolition, 24, 3 (2003), 40-60

The story of the Gordon Riots is well known and has been told many times before. However, one aspect that has not been considered so much is what they tell us about access to the old Palace of Westminster. Key to this is the evidence that was presented at Lord George Gordon’s treason trial in February 1781, when several well-placed MPs and parliamentary officials offered their testimony on how the crowds had pressed their way into the heart of the palace.

While the original delegation bringing the Protestant Association’s petition to Westminster had been orderly enough, by the late afternoon of 2 June 1780 the Palace of Westminster was clogged with protesters. Protesting later turned to rioting, and in London there were days of lawlessness, with houses and chapels pulled down, prisons broken open and widespread looting. Only after several days was order restored by the army and militia.

One of the most useful witnesses summoned to give evidence at Gordon’s trial was Thomas Bowen, officiating as the Commons’ chaplain on the day the petition was presented. Bowen had accompanied the Speaker to the chamber at the beginning of proceedings, but already found the lobby ‘crowded, and the people… clamorous’. After leading those MPs present in prayers, Bowen retreated to a place ‘under the gallery, by the door’. He was, thus, well-placed to observe Gordon interacting with the crowd outside the chamber. He witnessed Gordon going to the door frequently, and repeating what was being said by the Members. Gordon assured the crowd that the Speaker considered them ‘good people’, while (likely) George Rous, who had form on calling for aggressive action to quell troublemakers, was calling for the magistrates to be called. Lord North dismissed them as ‘a mob’.

When the motion to consider the petition was eventually called for, Bowen exited the chamber and made his way to an adjoining room, but noticed that the crowd was refusing to quit the lobby, making a division impossible. He was prevailed on to speak to them to encourage them to retire, but without success. At least one person insisted they would only go if Gordon told them to do so.

Bowen then left the lobby and went to ‘the eating room’, where he was joined by an exhausted Gordon. He told Gordon what he had heard, and Gordon made his way to the gallery overlooking the lobby so that he could speak to his supporters. Bowen followed, and deposed that Gordon spoke to those gathered below, urging them to be peaceable, though Gordon also took Bowen by the gown, introduced him to the crowd and tried to get Bowen to give his opinion on the Catholic Relief Act. According to Bowen, this was the only time in the whole proceedings when he felt unsafe. John Anstruther, who was in the lobby, gave his own account of Gordon addressing the crowd, but made no mention of Bowen. He agreed, though, that there ‘was great confusion in the lobby’.

Following Bowen, MP John Cator offered his evidence of the events of 2 June. He said he had been ‘going from some of the committee-rooms to the gallery over the lobby’ and found the lobby packed with people and the Commons stymied in their efforts to hold a division, as the officers of the House were unable to get the lobby cleared. He heard someone call Gordon by name, and then witnessed him make his way ‘to the rails, and looked over’. Cator followed suit to observe Gordon’s interaction with the crowd. Gordon advised that most of the MPs were opposed to considering the petition at that point, but asked what the crowd wished: ‘they cried out, “Now, now.”’

Two more Commons’ staff were summoned to give their evidence. One was Joseph Pearson, one of the doorkeepers. He had been posted in the lobby, and his testimony confirmed Bowen’s, that Gordon had come to the door on several occasions to pass on what was happening to the crowd outside. He reckoned the ‘mob’ had finally dispersed by nine in the evening, but ‘so great was the confusion I cannot say how [the lobby] was cleared’. Another doorkeeper, Thomas Baker, supported Pearson’s account, noting that the crowds only disappeared after soldiers arrived.

What was clear from several of the witnesses was how easy it was for the crowd to make their way deep into the parliamentary estate. Sampson Rainsforth deposed being in New Palace Yard when about 200 people had made their way over Westminster Bridge and at about 2pm ‘the whole cavalcade came from Charing Cross down to New Palace Yard, with flags and music’. He also observed that ‘they had blue cockades in their hats’: the colour of the Protestant Association. This tallied more or less with at least one newspaper report that related that the delegation arrived at the Houses of Parliament at about half past two. [Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 3 June 1780] Like Anstruther, Rainsforth then made his way into the lobby where he observed Gordon standing at the door leading into the Commons’ chamber, though he did not catch what was said. Clearly, though, it was still possible to access the lobby in spite of the reports of large crowds making the passageways impassable.

Witnesses to what took place in the lobby generally agreed that while potentially unruly, the crowd there was reasonably well behaved, though at least one MP, Philip Jennings Clerke, reckoned that the original petitioners were distinct from those in the lobby, whom he dismissed as ‘a different class of person’. Certainly, all was not peaceful. Constable Charles Jealous, stationed in Palace Yard, witnessed the bishop of Lincoln’s coach being attacked as he arrived to attend the House of Lords. The coach, he said:

was stopped by the mob, and the wheels were taken off. I saw a gentleman taken out of it, who, they said was the Bishop: they pulled off his wig, and struck him in the face… He got into the house in order to escape.

Jealous observed that those involved in roughing up the bishop were not wearing blue cockades, suggesting they were not part of the more organized group who had been involved with presenting the petition. One newspaper also reported six peers being ‘extremely ill-used… their bags pulled off, and their hair left flowing on their shoulders’. Several chose not to hang around and summoned hackney carriages to get them away.

Dispersing the crowds from around Parliament proved just the beginning of the business as protests turned to riot and a general breakdown in law and order. But what the opening moments of those chaotic days in June 1780 showed was how intimate the palace could be. Access was easy right up to the doors of the Commons, with spaces – like the gallery over the lobby – available for Members to address people gathered below. It all goes to show that Parliament was a dynamic space, where Lords, MPs, officials and the general public rubbed shoulders and where so much depended on a sense of what was and was not reasonable behaviour.

RDEE

Further Reading:
The Trial of the Honourable George Gordon, commonly called Lord George Gordon, for High Treason… On Monday, the 5th Day of February, 1781.
The Gordon Riots: Politics, Culture and Insurrection in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain, eds. Ian Haywood and John Seed (Cambridge, 2012)

On 26 Feb. 1549 a private bill ‘to dis[in]herit William West, [for] attempting to poison’ his uncle Thomas West, 9th Lord De La Warr, received a first reading in the House of Lords. The De La Warr estates were entailed on the male line and, as the 9th Lord had no children, his heirs were his half-brother, Sir Owen West, who had no sons, and then William West, the son of his next half-brother Sir George West. It was also assumed that William would inherit the De La Warr barony, although the peerage was a barony by writ and consequently not tied to the heirs male (indeed it had passed to the West family in the fifteenth century through the female line).

Sir George West had died in 1538, when William was still a child. De La Warr had then taken his nephew ‘into his keeping and service … tendering him as his natural son to his great cost’, employing him to serve him at his table. However, the baron alleged that, on reaching the age of 18, William had grown impatient of waiting for his inheritance and plotted to kill his uncle, though in the first instance this would have benefited Sir Owen, who survived until 1551. William procured poison, which he mixed with the drink he was to serve to De La Warr. However, one of the other servants, ‘perceiving certain powder about the brim of the … cup otherwise than was accustomed’, alerted the 9th Lord who, ‘having suspicion thereof and of nature somewhat abhorring the same, refrained to drink thereof’.

William was imprisoned in the Tower of London and evidently signed a confession. Surprisingly however, attempted murder was not in itself a felony at this date, and consequently De La Warr decided to proceed against his nephew via private legislation. The bill passed rapidly through the upper House, but, for reasons unknown, the Commons redrafted it. The new bill was given a first reading on 14 Mar. 1549, but proceeded no further because the session ended that same day. De La Warr tried again when a new session began in the following November; once more his bill quickly passed the Lords, but the Commons again insisted on redrafting it. Moreover, the lower House wanted to hear William’s side of the story. Consequently he was brought from the Tower on 23 Jan. 1550, when he insisted that he was not guilty and had only signed the confession out of fear. However, three witnesses (possibly servants of De La Warr) testified against him. This appears to have convinced the Commons of his guilt and they passed the bill, which was duly enacted. William was then released from the Tower the following June.

The 1550 act did not break the entail. Instead it empowered De La Warr to appoint trustees to hold the estates during William’s lifetime, after which they would pass to the next male heir. It also banned William himself from inheriting the barony, but without disbarring his heirs. Despite William’s attempt to murder him, De La Warr felt bound to make provision ‘towards the maintenance of’ his nephew’s ‘living and degree’. Consequently, when the baron made his will in 1554 he provided for William ‘of my charity and nothing of his desert’. He granted his nephew a £350 annuity and the use of three houses, two in Sussex and one in London. He also referred obscurely to William’s other ‘vices and evil demeanours’ which, ‘for that he is of my blood’, he had ‘passed over in silence’.

De La Warr died shortly after making his will, and William subsequently persuaded his uncle’s trustees to surrender their interest to him. In February 1556 Mary I formally granted William possession of his uncle’s lands, describing him as ‘Lord La Warr’. Nevertheless, he was not summoned to Parliament. The following summer, having been indicted for plotting against Mary, William tried to claim the privilege of a peer to be tried by his fellow noblemen. However, the heralds ruled that he was a commoner, not because of the 1550 act, but because, as a barony by writ, the De La Warr title had descended de jure to the heir general, the 9th Lord’s niece. William withdrew his claim in order to enter a ‘not guilty’ plea, but was convicted of treason regardless. He was pardoned in April 1557.

Shortly after being pardoned, William crossed the Channel as part of the English forces sent by Mary to aid her husband, Philip II of Spain, against the French. William took the opportunity to present a petition to Philip containing ‘such matter … as is neither true nor justifiable’, which suggests that he had renewed his claim to the De La Warr peerage. He was imprisoned on his return to England, but released in March 1558. A year later, following the accession of Elizabeth I, William signed himself merely ‘Wyllyam West’, when he wrote to the secretary of state, Sir William Cecil, lobbying for an act to reverse his conviction for treason. He was also described merely as William West in the subsequent statute, which was passed in 1563. However, this was presumably a legal necessity, as he had been convicted of treason as a commoner. Elsewhere William called himself De La Warr in the 1560s, indicating that he had not abandoned his claim to the peerage.

The issue of William’s status came to a head when he was appointed joint lord lieutenant of Sussex in November 1569, alongside Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montagu and Thomas Sackville, 1st Lord Buckhurst. In the commission William was named as a commoner and was ranked last; but if he had indeed inherited the De La Warr peerage (which dated back to 1299), he should have been placed above Buckhurst, whose barony had been created in 1567. Queen Elizabeth probably did not want her kinsman Buckhurst to be relegated to third place in the commission. The problem was solved in February 1570, when William was prevailed upon to accept the De La Warr title as a new creation, which positioned him below Buckhurst in the hierarchy.

Following William’s death in 1595 his son, Thomas West, 2nd Lord De La Warr, claimed the precedence of the old De La Warr barony. This question was referred to the Lords in 1597, when the upper House found in his favour, a verdict which effectively set aside the rights of the heir general. The 1550 act was thereafter almost forgotten until it achieved contemporary relevance in the twentieth century. In 1955, Tony Benn cited it as a precedent when he sought to introduce a bill enabling him to renounce the inheritance of the Stansgate peerage – and even facetiously offered to attempt to poison his father.

BC

Further reading:

Sessional Papers. Printed by Order of the House of Lords (1955), iii. 31-2

K.J. Kesselring, Making Murder Public (2019)

L.O Pike, Constitutional Hist. of the House of Lords (1894)

Chronicle. of England … by Charles Wriothesley, II ed. W.D. Hamilton (Camden Society new series xx)

J. H. Round, Peerage and Pedigree (1910)

J. Adams, Tony Benn (1992)

Hampshire in the 1560s was a divided community. Despite the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559, there was still a sizeable Catholic population in the county, which enjoyed the patronage of the leading local magnate, William Paulet, 1st marquess of Winchester. One of the great survivors of Tudor politics, Paulet had been lord treasurer of England since 1550, adapting his own religious opinions to the radically different demands of Edward VI, Mary I and now Elizabeth I, while remaining an indispensable and influential figure at the heart of government. However, many of his own family were openly Catholic, and with the discreet backing of the marquess, they provided the backbone of Hampshire’s recusant community. Set against them was a rival gentry faction, staunchly Protestant, who looked for leadership to the county’s ecclesiastical head, Robert Horne, bishop of Winchester. Horne, who had lived in exile on the continent during Mary’s reign, was a strong-minded character, determined to eradicate Catholicism in his diocese. By the mid-1560s he had already successfully secured the sacking of a number of Hampshire magistrates on religious grounds.

The next major flashpoint came in the autumn of 1566, when a new session of Elizabeth’s second Parliament was summoned. Hampshire’s senior knight of the shire, Sir John Mason, a religious conservative, had died in April that year, necessitating a by-election. Horne was anxious for the new Member to be a convinced Protestant, but there was one very significant obstacle to his plans. The current sheriff of Hampshire, Richard Pexall, was the marquess’s son-in-law, and a leading member of his faction. And as sheriff, Pexall had overall responsibility for managing the election. Writs for the holding of elections were issued by Chancery to sheriffs, who then, in the case of county seats, summoned voters to assemble at the next ‘county day’, a fixed date each month when people routinely gathered to conduct business. In Hampshire, the normal meeting place was the cathedral city of Winchester. On the day of the election itself, the sheriff served as returning officer, assessing the eligibility of both the candidates and the electors, the latter being required to own at least 40 shillings-worth of freehold land in the relevant county. The sheriff also had complete control over the management and duration of the election, and was the sole arbiter of the outcome. In addition, he was responsible for notifying the result to Westminster. Consequently, sheriffs enjoyed considerable scope for manipulating the entire process.

Faced with this situation, Horne responded by trying to wrong-foot Pexall. Already in London for the opening of the new parliamentary session, the bishop used his own contacts, conceivably secretary of state Sir William Cecil or the lord keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, to obtain the election writ from Chancery at the end of September. Instead of passing it straight to the sheriff, as he should have done, Horne sent it to one of his own Hampshire allies, Richard Norton, who hung onto it for several days. Meanwhile, with the next county day looming on 7 October, another of the bishop’s supporters, William Uvedale, the remaining Hampshire knight of the shire, began mobilising Horne’s tenants to turn up at Winchester in force. Pexall finally received the writ just two days before the election was due to be held, which gave him barely any time to rally the Paulet faction.

Horne’s strategy was becoming clear. By law, the election had to be held on the next county day, regardless of how little warning was received, so on 7 October the votes would be heavily weighted in favour of the bishop’s preferred candidate. On the face of things this man was a compromise choice, Sir William Paulet, a Protestant grandson of the marquess. However, there was a catch: Paulet was a Dorset resident, which rendered him ineligible to serve as a Hampshire knight of the shire. Consequently, if he was elected, and Pexall agreed to return him, the sheriff would be liable to a hefty fine and even imprisonment for breaking election law. Pexall subsequently alleged, with some justification, that the Horne camp promoted Sir William as a ploy; assuming that the sheriff stuck to the letter of the law, and disqualified him, that would clear the way for an alternative candidate from the bishop’s faction, the hardline Protestant Henry Wallop. Faced with this unpalatable choice, Pexall himself cheated. On 7 October, around 300 of Horne’s allies assembled at Winchester in anticipation of an election, but the sheriff simply failed to turn up, and instead returned the writ to Chancery unexecuted, complaining that he’d been given too little time to summon the freeholders. Having himself now broken the law in another way, Pexall should by rights have been penalised, but the marquess presumably intervened to protect him, and in the short term nothing happened.

The sheriff’s evasive action restored the initiative to the Paulet camp. After the abortive October election, nothing could happen until the next county day on 4 November, which gave the marquess’s supporters plenty of time to mobilise. A fresh election writ was issued, and this time it was collected from Chancery by Pexall’s under-sheriff. Thus, when the rival factions assembled again at Winchester, the numbers were much more evenly matched. Moreover, the Paulets had now identified their own candidate, Sir John Berkeley, another of the marquess’s grandsons, but crucially also a Hampshire Protestant whose eligibility couldn’t be questioned. Horne’s allies again initially nominated Sir William Paulet, but Pexall debarred him as a non-resident, whereupon Henry Wallop was put forward as a substitute.

The election now settled into a more regular pattern, which again worked in the sheriff’s favour. In the days before secret ballots, votes were conducted in up to three stages, and in this case all three were needed. First, the freemen gathered in the hall of Winchester Castle, where the election writ was read out, and Berkeley and Wallop were formally nominated. There followed a ‘cry’, during which the rival supporters literally shouted the names of their preferred candidate, ‘A Berkeley’, or ‘A Wallop’. After half an hour of raucous bellowing, Pexall ruled that it was not possible to determine which man had the most support, and ordered the voters to re-assemble on the castle green. There, the sheriff took a ‘view’ of the two camps, the second stage available to him. According to Horne’s allies, Wallop’s supporters clearly outnumbered Berkeley’s, but Pexall questioned whether all of the crowd owned enough land to qualify as voters, and again concluded that neither side had a definite majority.

That decision opened the way to the third and final stage of the election, a poll of individual voters, which was again presided over by the sheriff. Unsurprisingly, Pexall opted to record the names of Berkeley’s supporters first, before pausing the whole process around 11 o’clock for a three-hour lunch break. Evidently he hoped that, with winter drawing in, a reasonable number of Wallop’s backers would lose patience and go home before their votes were recorded. When the polling resumed in the afternoon, Pexall began with some more Berkeley voters who had arrived late, then finally turned his attention to the Wallop contingent, who were still present in large numbers. According to subsequent testimony, the sheriff attempted to intimidate some of them into changing sides, threatening to report those that he recognized to the marquess. Eventually, at around eight or nine o’clock in the evening, Pexall declared the poll closed, even though some Wallop supporters who had turned up late insisted that they’d been excluded.

Predictably, the sheriff declared Berkeley the winner, by 216 votes to 209. However, Horne’s faction maintained that they’d been cheated, and that Wallop’s tally should have been as high as 258. Berkeley duly took his seat in the House of Commons, but Pexall was sued in the court of Star Chamber, accused of electoral malpractice. The outcome of that case is unknown, but it had no impact on Berkeley himself. In the event, this contest was the Paulet faction’s last major success. The old marquess died in 1572, and his family declined in importance from then on, leaving Hampshire’s Protestants in control of subsequent elections.

PMH

Further reading:

R.H. Fritze, ‘The role of family and religion in the local politics of early Elizabethan England: the case of Hampshire in the 1560s’, Historical Journal, xxv (1982), pp. 267-87

The House of Commons 1604-1629 ed. Andrew Thrush (2010), i. (especially chapter 4)

Robert Harley, Speaker of the Commons, secretary of state, earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer and, ultimately, lord treasurer and de facto leader of the government died on 24 May 1724. Just weeks later, on 5 June, Dr Henry Sacheverell died, infamous for his High Church diatribes against Nonconformists and the ‘false brethren’ in government who protected them.

Harley and Sacheverell’s careers were closely intertwined in the year 1710, but they were almost polar opposites. Sacheverell was High Church and ultra Tory; Harley of a Dissenting background and a moderate ‘Country’ Whig. Sacheverell was an outspoken, impetuous firebrand; Harley a subtle, political operator, who gained his moniker ‘Robin the Trickster’ because of his tendency always to hold his cards very close to his chest and to keep his opponents guessing.

By the beginning of 1710, however, both men were facing crises. Harley had been dismissed from his post in February 1708 as the government under Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, turned increasingly to the ‘Junto’ Whigs for support. From the last years of William III there had developed a strong enmity between the Junto and Harley, who thus found himself at odds with his erstwhile colleague Godolphin. Conflicts between them increased until the queen was persuaded to dismiss Harley. He was still out of office at the beginning of 1710 but looking for a way to strike back against his former colleague.

Matters were worse for Sacheverell, for on 9 Jan. 1710 he was impeached by the Commons for high crimes and misdemeanours, as he had finally gone too far in his anti-Dissenter vitriol. Back in 1702 he had already exhorted his listeners to ‘hang out the bloody flag and banner of defiance’ against those who refused to conform to the Church of England. Now, in a sermon of 5 November 1709 commemorating deliverance from the Gunpowder Plot, Sacheverell lumped Catholics and Protestant Dissenters together as equal threats to the constitution and the Church of England. He insisted that at the ‘Glorious Revolution’, the English people had not resisted against James II legitimately, as John Locke would have it, but had followed the Church’s teachings on non-resistance and passive obedience. Thus, the consequences of the Revolution pushed through by the Whigs, particularly the 1689 Toleration Act, were illegitimate and ought to be rescinded.

To Sacheverell, toleration had allowed the growth of ‘such monsters and vipers in our bosom, that scatter their pestilence at noon-day’. All this invective was disturbing enough for the Whigs in government, who relied heavily on nonconformist support. But it went further, for the sermon’s title, The Perils of False Brethren, made clear that Sacheverell was accusing the ministers who countenanced Dissent of insidiously betraying the Church of England from the very heart of government.

To the ministry’s horror, the sermon was a runaway best-seller when published in winter 1709, selling over 100,000 copies. They decided impeachment was the best way to silence Sacheverell, and charges were presented to the House of Lords on 12 January 1710. The subsequent state trial in Westminster Hall became the main focus of attention in the capital between 27 February and 10 March. It did not go to plan for the prosecution, as Sacheverell, playing the persecuted martyr, became a popular hero, and for two days from 28 February London was convulsed by riots in his favour. Despite the disturbances ‘beyond doors’, on 20 March the Lords voted him guilty by 69 votes to 52. However, while the government wanted him imprisoned and incapacitated from preaching, through the queen’s intervention the House resolved only to ban him from preaching for three years.

Sacheverell’s unexpected popularity was a harbinger of the Tory support the Whigs would face at the next general election, which by statute would take place in 1711. Further indications were not promising, for on 21 March, a motion in the Lords to prohibit Sacheverell from receiving any clerical promotion during his ban was lost by a majority of nine. That preferment came quickly enough, for in May he was presented to a living in Shropshire. He made a slow, triumphal progress through eight counties and twelve parliamentary boroughs on his way to his new rectory, feted enthusiastically throughout.

Harley saw his moment and encouraged the queen’s long-held dislike of the Junto. Throughout the summer of 1710 she rid herself of her Whig ministers, culminating in Godolphin’s dismissal on 8 August. On 21 September she capped off her campaign by dissolving Parliament and calling for an early general election. In the October elections the Tories won an overwhelming majority, inflicting a crushing defeat on the Whigs. Tory numbers were far more than Harley would have wished, and there would always be tension between him and the ultra Tories who had come into Parliament in Sacheverell’s wake.

As soon as they returned to power in 1715 the Whigs impeached Oxford and his associates. This did not go according to plan either and, after spending two years incarcerated in the Tower, Oxford was acquitted on 1 July 1717. Weakened from his confinement, he only lasted a few more years after his release, predeceasing by only a few weeks Sacheverell, the man whose own impeachment had contributed to Oxford’s rise to the premiership.

CGDL

Suggested Readings
Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (1973)
Brian Cowan, ed., The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell (Parliamentary History: Text and Studies 6) (2012)
Brian Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State and Premier Minister (1988)

On 20 October 1774 John Wilkes was returned to Parliament at the general election as one of the two MPs for the county of Middlesex. The election was uncontested and rounded off a successful year for Wilkes who had also just been elected Lord Mayor of London. This all might have been unremarkable enough were it not for the fact that he had previously been expelled the House on multiple occasions and posed a serious challenge to both the government and parliamentary authorities when many in the country had been on the lookout for just such an anti-hero.

Wilkes had long been a controversial figure. He had come to prominence as the proprietor and one of the main authors of the anti-government newspaper, The North Briton, for which he had ended up being arrested. Although the courts released him on the grounds of his privilege as MP for Aylesbury, Parliament later concluded that privilege did not extend to cases of seditious libel, leaving him free to be convicted and expelled.

Wilkes spent the next few years in self-imposed exile but early in 1768 returned home so that he could stand in the general election. After being humiliated in the City of London, he tried again a few days later in the rumbustious county of Middlesex and emerged at the head of the poll. As he had promised before standing, he promptly handed himself in and was sentenced to serve just under two years in prison under his previous conviction. Middlesex, thus, found itself in the peculiar position of having one of its MPs behind bars when Parliament opened that November.

On 14 November Wilkes submitted a petition to the Commons via his ally, Sir Joseph Mawbey, a renowned breeder of rare pigs, seeking redress of grievances. The business was adjourned to the new year when Parliament rejected a motion for Wilkes to be released. Further debates ensued, and during one Colonel Isaac Barre teased the ministry –increasingly perplexed by Wilkes’s continuing popularity – by suggesting that the best way of detaching Wilkes from his supporters was to pardon him and give him a job in government.

Arguments, many of them heated, continued in the Commons on and off until 3 February 1769 when Lord Barrington moved for Wilkes to be expelled:

The arguments for his expulsion were founded on the badness of the man, and the impropriety of suffering such a one to be part of the legislature.

Cobbett, xvi. 545

Of course, not everyone was against him and even some who had reason to dislike Wilkes were willing to argue his case on the grounds of constitutional propriety. The former Prime Minister, George Grenville, now a backbencher and one-time friend of Wilkes’s, who had been pilloried in the North Briton after he took over from the earl of Bute, worried that the ‘mode of proceeding’ was ‘new and unprecedented’. Despite many reservations about Wilkes himself, he concluded ultimately that the Commons’ proposed course of action was ill-advised. Others arguing in favour of Wilkes were the Rockinghamites, Edmund Burke and William Dowdeswell. They were not heeded, and Wilkes was expelled from Parliament by 219 votes to 137.

For many, this would have been the end of the affair. Wilkes was still in prison and Parliament had adjudged that he was not entitled to privilege. But Wilkes was not one to be put off by such a minor setback. Consequently, on 16 February 1769 he stood in the by-election and was re-elected. He was expelled again only for the voters of Middlesex to plump for him once more the following month. Finally, on 13 April, two candidates entered the lists against Wilkes. One need not have bothered as he was able to muster just five votes. The other, Colonel Luttrell, was a more serious proposition. Even so, when the votes were tallied, Wilkes had 1,143 and Luttrell just 296. Two days later, Luttrell was declared the winner.

Even at this stage, there was a sizeable minority in Parliament who were thoroughly unsettled by the implications of seating a person who had so obviously failed to carry the voters with him. There were also concerns about effectively punishing Wilkes twice for the same offence. Thus, on 29 April Sir George Savile presented a petition from the Middlesex freeholders protesting at their votes being discounted. They insisted that this had been no joke return and that they did not mean by doing so:

To throw away their votes, or to waive their right of representation, nor would they by any means have chosen to be represented by the said Henry Lawes Luttrell, esq…

Cobbett, xvi. 588

They requested to be heard by counsel to argue the case out. Parliament agreed and ordered all parties to appear on 8 May, the penultimate day of the session. Once again, the atmosphere was tetchy. Grenville quoted William Blackstone’s Commentaries to support his arguments, while Blackstone himself had put the opposite case. Grenville then came in for criticism from Sir Fletcher Norton when Norton spotted Grenville shaking his head while he was speaking. Norton retorted: ‘I wish the right honourable gentleman, instead of shaking his head, would shake an argument out of it’. [Chatham Correspondence, iii. 358-9] One MP, who had formerly voted with the government, Alexander Wedderburn, now came out against, offering a series of closely argued legal reasons why Luttrell should not be seated. His stance cost him his own seat though he was swiftly inundated with offers of alternative berths.

In spite of such gestures, the House once again voted to abide by their original decision to nullify Wilkes’s votes and accept Luttrell as the new MP by 221 to 152. Wilkes’s supporters may have lost, but Lord Temple, for one, heralded it as a triumph, noting that it was ‘the greatest minority I believe ever known the last day of a session’. [Chatham Correspondence, iii. 357]

The Wilkes case took up substantial parliamentary time and at times passions ran high. In the end, though, Parliament’s right to adjudicate who had the right to be an MP was maintained, whatever the two principals made of it. Following his release from prison in 1770 Wilkes would occasionally irritate the clerks by attempting to take his seat, but was always quietly shown the door. Even Luttrell seems to have become discontented with the situation and applied, unsuccessfully, for the Chiltern Hundreds.

As for those who chose to continue to vote for Wilkes long after it had been made clear that he would not be permitted to sit, their case was portrayed as one where they had opted, knowingly, to make a futile gesture and had thereby suspended their own rights, akin to the modern notion of spoiling a ballot paper:

Those who obstinately and wilfully persevere in voting for an unqualified person, are to be considered as not voting at all; their right of suffrage is acknowledged; but if the elector obstinately refuses to exercise this right according to law, he wantonly suspends his own right for the time, and his act being illegal is consequently void, and he is only in the situation of a man who had neglected to attend…

Cobbett, xvi. 595

RDEE

Further reading:
Chatham Correspondence, III
Cobbett, Parliamentary History, XVI
Robin Eagles’ biography of Wilkes, Champion of English Freedom: the life of John Wilkes MP and Lord Mayor of London, is published in June by Amberley.