In July 1739, the General Evening Post reported the death of a Mr Kent at his house near Seven Dials. According to the paper, Kent occupied the post of chimney sweeper of the king’s palaces ‘a place of considerable profit’. Replacing him was one Mr Fatt and both men were described as ‘Blackmoors’ [an outdated term indicating Black heritage]. The role would have involved ensuring the upkeep of the chimneys at royal residences in London, such as St James’s Palace. Intriguingly, Treasury accounts from 1714 suggest that the holder of the post at that time was Anne Fatt, suggesting that the family had held the role before, under Queen Anne, and had now regained it, under George II.

Eighteenth and nineteenth-century commentators were often snide about chimney sweeps. The nature of their profession meant that they were frequently derided for being ‘unclean’, and this sometimes led to them being described as black, or depicted in prints with black skin. Consequently, some caution needs to be used when identifying a sweep’s heritage. However, the fact that the paper used the specific term ‘Blackmoor’ seems indicative of the fact that this was not a case of people being dealt with slightingly because of perceived uncleanliness.

One of the weekly essays in the Scots Magazine for February 1740 noted the ‘Promotion of Mr Fat [sic] the Chimney-Sweeper’, and also employed terminology describing his heritage directly, which appears to confirm the identification. Making reference to a vacancy in one of the Cornish boroughs, the author suggested that he hoped to see Fatt promoted to Parliament, before remarking that the presence of a Black Member of the Commons might give rise to racist abuse. [Scots Magazine, ii. 56] A later essay, in the Oxford Magazine for 1770, also referred to Fatt as the only ‘Black-a-moor’ ever to have held a place at Court. [The Oxford Magazine or Universal Museum, v. 59]

The commentary surrounding Fatt’s appointment offers valuable insights into attitudes to the Black population of Britain in the period. It is interesting that a potentially lucrative contract was held in succession by Black British businessmen; also, that Fatt’s good fortune was the subject of comment in major periodicals. The reports help to add layers to our understanding of the composition of London society at the time. They show that members of the Black population were able to develop affluent careers, but also that their success was remarked upon, and not always favourably.

Fatt’s striking, if not wholly unusual, surname has also led to the likely identification of new voters. A decade after Fatt took over as sweep to the royal palaces, a by-election was held in Westminster after one of the constituency’s Members, Granville Leveson Gower, Viscount Trentham (later marquess of Stafford) accepted a place in government. Under the rules of the day, he was obliged to seek re-election, on this occasion triggering a contest after Sir George Vandeput, bt. chose to challenge for the seat. The initial result saw Trentham returned with 4,811 votes to Vandeput’s 4,654. Following a scrutiny, the numbers were revised down but Trentham still emerged with 4,103 votes, comfortably ahead of Vandeput, who was left with 3,933 votes.

According to the poll book, one of those voting for Trentham was William Fatt, who was identified as a ‘chimneysweeper’ from Pye Street in the parish of St Margaret and St John. As such, he was one of five men involved in the trade (one of them noted as a Chimney Doctor, rather than sweep), voting in the election. Although more work is needed to confirm the finding without doubt, it seems highly credible that this was the same man who, ten years earlier, had taken on the role of sweeper of the royal palaces. Assuming this to be the case, he thus joined John London as a second Black voter participating in the election.

Fatt’s name is not unique and unravelling the details of the family is complex. Two individuals, both named William Fatt, wrote wills in the 1770s, which were proved within three years of each other. It seems most likely that the first William Fatt, by then described as being of Castle Street, in St Giles in the Fields, whose will was proved in 1773 [TNA, PROB 11/984], was the man appointed to sweep the royal palaces in 1739 and who voted in the 1749 poll, even though the document makes no mention of a trade. This William Fatt referred to a daughter, Mary Knotgrass, which calls to mind the appearance in legal records from 1760 of William (a soot merchant from Swallow Street) and George Fatt (a victualler from Great Earl Street, Seven Dials), who stood bail of £40 each for Peter and Mary Nodgrass [sic]: possibly they were her brothers as William’s will mentioned four sons: William, George, Henry and Thomas.

The second William, almost certainly son of the elder William, died on 9 April 1776. He was buried in St Martin in the Fields, where a memorial was erected to him, his wife (Martha) and to sons-in-law, Thomas Angell (d. 1780) and another named Freeman. His will gave his trade as a chimney sweep, indicating a continuation of the family business. [TNA, PROB 11/1022] It referred to a house in Hampton, Middlesex, which he left to his daughter Mary, along with property at Sharrett (Sarratt) in Hertfordshire, which he left to another daughter, Anne. Both places also featured in the will of William the elder. Execution of the will was deputed jointly to Mary and to a carpenter from Piccadilly, named James Filewood, who received £10 for his trouble. By coincidence, Filewood also featured in the 1749 Westminster poll book.

The Hertfordshire property seems to have offered both William (the younger) and George Fatt further opportunities to vote. Both names appear in the 1774 poll book for the county. William, noted again as resident of Swallow Street, but also a householder in Sarratt, voted for William Plumer and Viscount Grimston. George Fatt, noted of London, but claiming rights as a householder at Great Gaddesden, also voted for Grimston but, unlike William, gave his other vote to Thomas Halsey. George Fatt then featured in the subsequent poll for the county in 1790. This time, he plumped for William Hale, who failed to be returned.

That the family business endured beyond the lives of the two Williams is indicated by the existence of a trade card from 1780 describing George Fatt as son of William and continuing the sweeping business from Sweeper’s Alley, Castle Street, Long Acre. It also noted that he had retained the role as sweeper to the king. George Fatt’s success in doing so appears to have been in spite of the efforts of ‘a great officer’, who had attempted to install his own porter in the role on William’s death. According to the press, ‘P.D.’ complained of the appointment of the man, who had been chosen in spite of knowing nothing of the business of chimney sweeping. [Morning Chronicle, 19 Apr. 1776]

This brief snapshot into the successful establishment of a family business, by people of Black heritage, is just a minor glimpse into the lives of Londoners in the eighteenth century. More work needs to be done to determine beyond doubt the family’s story. However, the findings suggest that there were many more people like them (and John London): successful business operators, who took the trouble to lodge their votes in eighteenth-century parliamentary elections.

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Further Reading:

Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping (2001)

https://www.londonlives.org

ECPPEC

Even in a snap election, polling day is the culmination of sometimes years of dedicated campaigning and cultivation of support which, in modern terms, can all be over in a matter of a few hours. Even in the eighteenth century, some were relieved to be freed of the pressures of having to keep in with the voter base. When Lord Hervey was elevated to the House of Lords in 1733, vacating the seat at Bury St Edmunds, which he had represented since April 1725, he was unashamed at his pleasure at being spared ‘all Corporation solicitation, hypocrisy, flattery and nonsense’. Even in a place like Bury, where the Hervey family possessed a dominant interest, candidates were expected to fulfil certain obligations and Hervey was only too glad to be rid of them.

This sort of careful cultivation was true of many candidates who worked hard to maintain a profile among their constituents against the day when they would call upon them for their votes. That said, the goal in many places was to avoid contests at election time, so this was well worth it if it resulted in the electors agreeing on candidates in advance and thus avoiding an unnecessarily costly vote. Where a contest could not be avoided, there was all the panoply of election day to be navigated and the considerable pressure of looking on while the votes were tallied.

John Wilkes, who had caused the administration so much trouble from 1768 to 1770, had finally been elected for Middlesex in 1774 without challenge, and been able to repeat that six years later. In the spring of 1784, though, in the general election called to cement Pitt the Younger’s premiership, he faced a contested poll for the first time in 15 years. As one of Pitt’s supporters, he had lost much of his appeal among reformers, even though he and his partner, William Mainwaring stood promising to seek their constituents’ views on matters of importance, while their opponent, George Byng (a Foxite) was vague about the reforms he was likely to advocate.

In modern elections, one is used to the intense excitement of election night: polls closing at 10pm and by the early hours of the following morning the vast majority of results counted. There is then the ritual progression of candidates, successful and disappointed, trooping onto platforms to hear the results and to offer their speeches. Even where there are recounts, these do not normally hold matters up for more than a few hours.

Eighteenth-century elections were much more drawn out and there was often a considerable delay between the end of the poll and the final result being declared, so much less opportunity for the kind of line-up so familiar in contemporary elections. For Wilkes and the other candidates in 1784, it was almost a month before the result was known. Mainwaring had secured a clear plurality of votes (2,118) but Wilkes had only managed 66 more than his rival, Byng, who inevitably demanded a scrutiny. This meant that the officers in charge of the election trawled through the lists of voters and each party had an opportunity of questioning the validity of certain votes in the hopes of tipping the balance.

On Tuesday 11 May, Wilkes wrote to his daughter letting her know he had just returned from the London Guildhall, whence the sheriffs had adjourned the scrutiny and where the day had been spent agreeing on process. The various parties had initially met at another venue, but it had been decided it was too small to accommodate everyone. [Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 13 May 1784] Wilkes had been unhappy about the delay and noted that at that point, just 20 hours remained ‘to scrutinize 3000 voters’. He also anticipated there would be lengthy debates over each point in contest. That said, Wilkes assured his daughter he had secured for himself ‘acute and long-winded counsel’ to argue on his behalf. [Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 1-2]

In spite of Wilkes’s concerns, on Friday 14 May, it was all over. The various parties had gathered at 8am, and Byng’s counsel had at once opened the case of one John Decker, as Wilkes had it – at least one newspaper gave the name as John Darker [Morning Chronicle, 15 May] – whose right to vote they were questioning. Had this vote been discounted, it would have opened the way for many others, but after much deliberation the sheriffs decided that it should stand. No one named Decker or Darker appears in the poll books. There was, however, a voter named John Decks, one of five voters from Winchmore Hill, who did poll for Mainwaring and Wilkes, so it was presumably this man whose vote had proved to be so clinching. Realizing that the game was up, Byng’s counsel ‘desired to give a few valedictory words’, during which the sheriffs were abused. Byng himself threatened to take the matter to the House of Commons and lodge a formal petition against the result, but Wilkes was confident he would not do so. [Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 5-6]

The formal conclusion finally came on Monday 17 May, when Wilkes and Mainwaring were back at Guildhall to hear themselves at last ‘declared duly elected Knights of the Shire for Middlesex in the ensuing parliament’. Byng chose not to appear, ‘nor any of his friends’ and the papers noted that the overall turnout for what ought to have been an historic moment was fairly lacklustre: ‘Not above forty freeholders attended this last stage of the business’ [General Evening Post, 15-18 May 1784]. There was thus none of the modern paraphernalia of a line-up of candidates on a stage, just the two who had been accounted the winners and a handful of supporters. They then adjourned to the White Hart at Holborn for a celebratory dinner.

[Letters from the Year 1774, iii. 10-11]

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Further reading:

ecppec.ncl.ac.uk

Lord Hervey and his Friends 1726-38, ed. Earl of Ilchester (1950)

John Wilkes, Letters from the Year 1774 to the Year 1796 (1805) vol. III

In the eighteenth century, when the ability and opportunity to vote was heavily restricted, songs and music were a key aspect of election campaigns and the political process.

Songs and music accompanied, and were an important part of, the kind of election events satirically depicted by Hogarth, from election ‘entertainments’ to the polling. Competing campaigns used the memorable and emotive power of music and verse to appeal to voters, and wider opinion. Election agents and committees paid for the printing and distribution of partisan election ballads, set to well-known tunes, such as ‘Chevy Chase’, and ‘God Save the King’. Voting often took place over a number of days, and rapidly printed ballads could also appear during the course of the poll in a bid to influence events. A note on a Somerset ballad of 1768 stated that it was ‘dispersed by the agents’ of one of the candidates, while, in Lincoln in 1823, it was reported that copies of a satirical election song were ‘scattered in great profusion’ from the windows of an inn during polling.

Ballad singers were also paid to sing election ballads in the vicinity of the polling place: this happened so frequently that Frederick Pilon’s 1780 play on the ‘humours’ of an election included a scene in which a ballad singer sings voting advice to ‘crowds of people’ gathered at the hustings. Similar figures appear in satirical prints, such as one on the 1780 Westminster election, showing a man standing on a barrel in front of the hustings, singing a ballad to the tune ‘Derry Down’.

As well as celebrating and attacking particular candidates and parties, election ballads could instruct on the practicalities of voting – for example, by encouraging people to meet at a certain place in order to go to vote. Ballads could also promote eighteenth-century versions of tactical voting, including encouraging voters only to use one of the two votes they were allowed, to avoid helping other candidates (‘plumping’). It was claimed that particular ballads had an effect on the outcome of an election, including in Yorkshire in 1784, and Coventry in 1826. There is also plenty of evidence for songs and music being used in the campaigns of those who weren’t elected. 

Election ballads also impacted elections more broadly. They were read and performed in a wide variety of settings – including inns, polling places, and in the streets – where they fuelled the political engagement of voters and non-voters who heard, sung, read, and danced to them. By encouraging interest in, and opinion about political issues and the political process across the social spectrum, ballads contributed to a wider ‘culture’ of elections and electioneering in the era before democracy.

Certain songs particularly caught the public imagination and became vehicles for political expression and protest. One of these was Handel’s famous chorus, ‘See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!’ (from his oratorios Joshua and Judas Maccabaeus). Indeed, Handel reportedly foresaw the piece’s great popularity. Moving from the theatre to the street, the chorus was regularly performed during election ‘chairings’. This was when victorious candidates – or temporarily or would-be victorious candidates – were seated in decorated chairs and carried, typically through major streets, often accompanied by banners, flags, and musicians playing drums, trumpets, and fifes. Such processions could be attended by many thousands, gathered in the streets and watching from windows – including women, children, and men who didn’t have the vote. The ceremony is famously satirized in Hogarth’s Chairing the Member, in which the member is about to be toppled by unruly bearers.

The songs and music that accompanied chairings often used martial tunes to figure electoral victory as a form of military triumph, and could also be played by military bands. The words to Handel’s chorus were well suited to this ‘heroic’ fashioning: ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes! / Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!’. At the Wiltshire by-election of 1819, John Benett’s triumphal procession through Salisbury featured banners with the words ‘See, the conquering hero comes’ and it was reported that, as soon as the band ‘struck up’ the accompanying tune, ‘the multitude joined in the chorus’.

Handel’s chorus was also adapted to address particular political circumstances. Electoral adaptations of Handel could be printed and circulated as broadsides and slip songs; one song printed after the turbulent Coventry contest of 1784 reworked Handel to comment on perceived ‘illegal’ proceedings during the election, and assert the legitimacy of the result. This song called on its audience to ‘See the legal members come, / Sound your fifes and beat the drum’. 

As well as being used by the ‘winning side’ to assert the legality of their victory and expose perceived electoral abuses, chairing songs could also be used to challenge a result. Although often thought of as taking place at the end of an election, chairings could also take place at various other points in the campaign (and repeatedly during the electoral process), and they could serve the rhetorical function of willing, or asserting, a victory that had yet to be – and perhaps was unlikely ever to be – officially confirmed. Chairing songs could circulate and be performed during a campaign as a means to dishearten an opponent, and were also enlisted in post-election challenges, by celebrating those seen (at least by some) as the ‘true’, if unofficial, victors.

In the Worcester election of 1774, when Sir Watkin Lewes finished in third place, it was reported that he immediately ‘protested against the return’ on the grounds of ‘illegal’, ‘unjust’, and ‘corrupt’ proceedings, and declared his intention to challenge the result in Parliament. It was also reported that, as soon as he left the polling place, Lewes was ‘chaired’ and ‘carried through the principal streets, amidst the acclamations of a vast concourse of people, singing their favourite song, “See the legal member come”’.

Lewes’ own protest was amplified by a general chorus of disapproval against perceived electoral injustice: a protest also publicized more widely through newspaper reporting of the incident. (And this episode suggests how the later Coventry song hailing the ‘legal members’ belongs to wider political and musical tradition.) When sung at chairings, songs not only had the potential to reach a large audience (if they could be heard above the noise). They could also be a way to involve this audience in a form of active, very public and collective political expression, by getting them to sing together, and making them performers. (It is important to remember that chairing songs could also be used ironically, and could be provocative, and produce different responses, including jeering and parody.)

The performance of these ‘victory songs’ during elections in the eighteenth century can perhaps invite some comparison with the playing and singing of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, a song associated with a previous Labour victory, during the speech in which Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the date of the 2024 UK general election. While the playing of this piece during the Prime Minister’s speech had a range of different effects on different audiences, like the chairing songs of the past, it brought to the fore the use of political and musical memory – and the songs and music of victory – to engage with a current election.

KP

Further Reading

Kendra Packham, ‘Literature and the Culture of Elections and Electioneering in Eighteenth-Century England’, The Review of English Studies, 72 (2020), pp. 104–28.

T. W. Whitley, The Parliamentary Representation of the City of Coventry (Coventry, 1894).

Direct comparisons with today’s political parties and those in the 18th century are not straightforward. Neither the Whigs nor Tories were unified political units; there was no party headquarters, no single accepted leader, and at election time not the same sense of a manifesto to pursue. Rather, people identified broadly with one or other group and if active in politics they were likely to be associated more with a factional leader than with the party as a whole. This was certainly true of the Whigs who, during the mid-eighteenth century, were divided between a variety of different noble factions. Some Tories favoured a rapprochement with the Leicester House grouping, closely associated with the Prince of Wales’s reversionary interest (looking forward to the time when their man became king and could start handing out rewards), while others were inclined to embrace near permanent opposition. The remainder, though increasingly a small minority, clung on to their identity as Jacobites.

In this sense, new parties were forever breaking onto the political scene as one grandee or another decided to go his own way or join with another alliance. However, in 1769 the imprisonment of John Wilkes helped give rise to a new political grouping that threatened to upset matters in a very real way.

Wilkes had returned from exile in 1768 to fight the general election that year. He had then surrendered himself to the courts and been imprisoned following his earlier convictions for libel. One of his reasons for quitting the continent had been his unsustainable level of indebtedness and, in response to this, a new organization, The Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights [SSBR], was formed with the express aim of helping Wilkes pay off his creditors.

However, alongside the aim of saving Wilkes from his bank account, the new group also had a clear political agenda. They believed that the people of Middlesex, who had elected Wilkes but had their choice overturned by Parliament, had been abused by the system. They also saw in Wilkes himself an example of how the power of the state had unfairly interfered in the liberties of an individual. In response, the SSBR co-ordinated nationwide petitions covering a raft of issues, though at the root of them all was the notion of the freedom of the individual and their right to have their voice heard. As they declared from the outset:

Their sole aim is to maintain and defend the constitutional liberty of the Subject. They mean to support Mr WILKES and his cause, as far as it is a public cause… [quoted by Thomas, 111]

Several MPs were prominent members of the new group, among them Wilkes’s lawyer, John Glynn, who had been elected to Middlesex at a by-election in 1768 following the death of George Cooke. There were also influential radicals from the City of London, such as Brass Crosby, John Sawbridge and James Townsend – who would each of them go on to become Lord Mayor. A downside of having so many big personalities – all the more so once Wilkes was freed from prison and able to play a more active role himself – was the tendency to fall into in-fighting. That was precisely what happened and in 1771 the SSBR fractured with one section (including Sawbridge and Townsend) leaving to become the Constitutional Society, under the leadership of John Horne Tooke.

Left at the head of the SSBR, Wilkes oversaw a reform programme, committing its members to campaign for a series of measures, including shorter parliaments and reform of the franchise. The group targeted both parliamentary and local elections, and established its own newspaper, the Freeholders Magazine, or, Monthly Chronicle of Liberty. Wilkes, after all, had huge experience of the power of the press, having previously co-edited the North Briton, which had helped bring down Lord Bute.

That the SSBR was serious about its efforts to bring about reform was apparent even before the split. In April 1771, Sawbridge introduced a motion in Parliament for reducing the length of Parliaments. Although he pronounced his own view to be in favour of annual Parliaments, he conceded the question of annual or triennial Parliaments should be a matter for future debate. At the heart of the reform, though, was the concept of accountability:

The length of Parliaments gave up that power which the constituents ought to have over their representatives, that of frequent examination into their conduct, and rejection of them if they thought them unworthy… long Parliaments gave an opportunity to such an intimacy between the minister and the Members, always dangerous and destructive to the constitution… [quoted in Jones]

In spite of the bad-tempered arguments, and a very public spat in the press between Wilkes and Horne Tooke, at the general election of 1774 both SSBR men and members of the Constitutional Society contested several seats on Wilkes’s reform programme. They had their greatest successes in and around London, winning six seats there, and a seventh at Dover. Elsewhere, they struggled and Sir Watkin Lewes, a flamboyant supporter of Wilkes, failed three times standing for Worcester. He was eventually successful at London in 1781.

Ultimately, the SSBR failed to cut through and in time Wilkes himself became a cheerleader for Pitt the Younger. According to Peter Thomas, ‘The Wilkite cause had little appeal to the electorate outside London’ [155], which was certainly Watkin Lewes’ experience. It was also reflected in their failure to carry any of the major elements of their political programme.

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Further Reading:

Nicola Jones, ‘Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights’

Peter D.G. Thomas, John Wilkes: A Friend to Liberty, Chapters 7 and 9

Find out more about the political parties that existed in the 18th century via our Georgian Elections Project blogs, or in some of our recent TikTok videos!

As Frank O’Gorman has shown, the qualities looked for in 18th-century MPs, while having a number of features that would be recognizable now, were subtly different from those looked for in modern candidates. In the absence of the kinds of organized party structures that emerged in the 19th century, people looked for alternative markers:

“The ideal candidate should be accessible, approachable, and sensitive to the wishes of the constituency. This meant that he should be a local man, of honour, reputation, and integrity, known to everybody. He should be a gentleman but he should be cordial with all classes.” [O’Gorman, 123]

Obviously, candidates might take the opportunity of years of careful cultivation to become known to their prospective constituents and in the case of county elections, in particular, selection of candidates might happen months in advance. Elections brought all of that into sharp focus, though, and ultimately candidates were expected to perform well in pre-election meetings convened in inns and town halls and ultimately on the hustings. Here, it was expected they should:

“command the platform, silence the heckler, and amuse the crowd” [O’Gorman]

While some national issues did play at times of election, the interests of each constituency were normally paramount, so every contest was subtly different. Again, as O’Gorman has argued:

“Questions of political significance to Westminster politicians seemed much less real to voters than critically important issues concerning the welfare and prosperity of the constituency at a time of rapid social and economic change” [O’Gorman, 124]

The first opportunity for candidates to set out their stalls and gauge the interests of the voters was normally a series of meetings, sometimes convened long before the date of the election was known. These were held with the clear intention of avoiding expensive and divisive contests. Many seats were settled in this way, such that in the period 1715-1754 when there were six general elections, the county of Berkshire only had contested elections twice, Cumberland once and Cornwall had no contests at all. Borough constituencies might be more likely to see contests, but even here there were places that rarely experienced a contested election. Again, in that period 1715-1754 there were no contests in Brackley (Northamptonshire) or Camelford (Cornwall). Bath, by contrast, had elections each time.

These sorts of pre-election meetings might also be an opportunity for candidates to address each other – as well as their prospective constituents. Arguments might also play out in the local press. As Perry Gauci has shown, one prominent 18th-century politician, William Beckford, who was both an MP and Lord Mayor of London, had to battle hard in 1761 to retain his seat in the City of London, amid criticisms from the Livery that he had neglected them in favour of Parliament. At a meeting of the Livery in advance of election day, Beckford argued strenuously in favour of his record, noting the importance of spending time in Parliament for London’s benefit.

Beckford did not just deal defensively, though. Having settled the issue of his own attendance, he turned to what he thought was the rank injustice of London’s under-representation:

‘By his calculations, “this great City” paid one-sixteenth of the land tax and one-eighth of taxes in general but elected only 4 of the 558 MPs’. He then continued with further examples of his own contribution and ‘defied anyone to contest that he had not done his utmost “where the trade, liberty and franchises of the City were concerned”’ [Gauci, 102]

All of this built up to the day of the poll, when everyone gathered at the hustings and the candidates had a further chance to address the crowd. The liveliness of the occasions offered perfect opportunities for print satirists to capture the atmosphere and the desperation of some candidates to win over their voters. In one James Gillray print, The Hustings, Charles James Fox is shown at St Paul’s Covent Garden during the 1796 election for Westminster, addressing a ragged crowd and assuring them of his opposition to the Pewter Pot Bill. In response they cry ‘We’ll have a Mug, a Mug, a Mug’. Fox ended at the top of the poll, largely aided by the second votes of those supporting his competitors.

Even at such a late point of an election, efforts were usually made to decide the contest without going to the trouble of actually polling with a show of hands being called for from the assembled voters. It was only once this mechanism had failed to reveal a clear decision that those qualified to do so were finally invited to come forward to cast their votes, and all along the candidates continued to be free to discourse with the crowd to try to sway them right up to the moment they presented themselves to the clerks.

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Further Reading:
Perry Gauci, William Beckford: First Prime Minister of the London Empire (2013)
Frank O’Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (1989)

Find out more about hustings over on the History of Parliament’s TikTok channel!

One of the most iconic images from an 18th-century election was the successful candidate being chaired through the town by a jubilant set of supporters. Possibly the best known image is that by William Hogarth at the conclusion of his series, the Humours of an Election. In it a rotund candidate (normally identified as George Bubb Dodington) struggles to keep his seat as his chair is carried through a rioting throng of supporters and opposition activists. As the ECPPEC project has shown, the chairs used in this ceremony were rarely preserved, so few examples remain. This is perhaps the less surprising when we consider how lively (for which read raucous) the ceremony might be, as is clearly indicated both in images like that by Hogarth and from examining a series of newspaper reports from the period.

The general election of 1734 was dominated by the aftermath of Sir Robert Walpole’s failed effort to pass the Excise the previous year and this was reflected in many of the individual polls. In May 1734, the poll for Derbyshire concluded with Lord Charles Cavendish and Sir Nathaniel Curzon, bt. ahead of the third-placed candidate, Henry Harpur. Cavendish and Curzon’s success infuriated Harpur’s supporters and the press reported how ‘an outrageous Mob’ gathered in front of County Hall to prevent Cavendish from being chaired. Their action resulted in skirmishes between the rival camps which left at least one man dead, several more wounded and a great number of smashed windows. Consequently, Cavendish and Curzon’s chairing was delayed to the following day. [Daily Courant, 28 May 1734]

Derbyshire’s unruly chairing was in striking contrast to that at York, even though the contest had been ‘hard fought’ and there were later to be unsuccessful petitions against the result. Here Sir Miles Stapleton, a Tory backed by some opposition Whigs, was elected for the county, and was carried around the city in triumph, with flags and ensigns carried before him. According to one paper the event ‘was attended by the greatest number of gentlemen, as well as the populace, that ever was known’ in the city. Stapleton gave a ball the same night and there was ‘nothing but rejoicings in the City, (except a few)’. Even such an apparently joyful occasion, though, was too much for the other successful candidate, the Whig Cholmley Turner, who pleaded indisposition through gout, and so passed on being carried around at the same time. [Daily Journal, 7 June 1734]

Three decades on and the country faced an even more charged general election than that of 1734 prompted by a difficult economic situation, widespread unemployment, the presence of numerous carpet-bagger candidates, and chief among them, the return from exile of the divisive figure of John Wilkes. Wilkes’s attempt to secure election in the City of London proved unsuccessful, but he was returned at the head of the poll for Middlesex instead. Even so, Wilkes clearly decided that for once he ought to show some restraint and in spite of efforts to persuade him to be chaired around Brentford, ‘he absolutely refused, choosing to retire with the greatest privacy’. [Public Advertiser, 1 Apr. 1768] His victory inspired celebrations beyond the bounds of his own constituency, though, and in Edinburgh it was reported that a large number of apprentice boys paraded around with an effigy of Wilkes on their shoulders, which they later chaired before committing their ‘mock hero’ to a bonfire erected at the Grass Market. [Lloyd’s Evening Post, 8-11 April 1768]

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Find out more about the chairing process via our friends at ECPPEC, or read more about 18th century elections through our Georgian Elections Project.

Relations between Parliament and the press in the 18th-century were often strained. Strictly speaking, it was a breach of privilege for the details of parliamentary debate to be reported for much of the period, although that did not prevent some from doing so. It was not until the 1770s that restrictions on reporting debates were lifted but even then, one could not expect to see everything said in Parliament reproduced faithfully in print.

As one print satire from 1757 showed, concerns about the tendency of newspapers to leak important information went well beyond the confines of Westminster. At times of war there were concerns about the tendency of members of the establishment to blab, enabling journalists to circulate what ought to have been kept secret.

As far as accuracy went, while some parliamentary speeches were reported accurately, this was not always the case. Sometimes, MPs (like John Wilkes) leaked their speeches in advance, though it is never clear whether what was then said reflected what was printed. On other occasions, reporters might simply make things up. Certainly, Samuel Johnson said as much when attending a dinner party. He claimed that when he was working as a reporter for Edward Cave, editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, he used to compose his reports from home based on scanty details of who had said what. The only thing he was always careful to ensure was that ‘the Whig dogs should not have the best of it’. [Sparrow, 15-16]

If reporting what went on within Parliament was a difficult subject before the 1770s, elections and pre-electoral manoeuvring offered to the press much more scope for reporting on politics. Then, as now, different papers had different political loyalties. This meant that one, inevitably, got a different view of events and of the causes in play depending which paper one happened to read. There was also plenty of not always very friendly rivalry between the different offerings, with some not refraining from insulting organs representing the other side. For instance, in 1734 the Whig-leaning Daily Courant could not stop itself from laying into its anti-Walpole rival, the London Evening Post:

the London Evening Post of last Night, has, in the usual Strain and Spirit of that Paper, endeavoured to make up in abuse and scurrility, what is wanting in truth and argument… [Daily Courant, 4 May 1734]

The general election of that year was dominated by the aftermath of Sir Robert Walpole’s efforts to pass the Excise the previous year. This was reflected in many of the contests fought in various constituencies, where previously elections had been settled with one candidate returned from each party. For example, in Essex, formerly shared between one Tory and one Whig, two Tories succeeded in forcing the solitary Whig candidate into third place. This was celebrated in the London Evening Post, seeing it as the triumph of independent freeholders over the many office-holders who lived in the county, an example it hoped might be imitated elsewhere:

So great a majority in a county where such numbers of place-men and dependants reside, shews the honesty of the freeholders, and their aversion to all those that voted for Standing Armies, Excise, &c. Here the Freeholders elected Men of integrity and Capacity to serve their Country, without a View to either Place or Pensions… [London Evening Post, 7-9 May 1734]

While the London Evening Post celebrated such opposition successes, though, the Daily Courant had already questioned what it was they were ultimately hoping to achieve:

If nothing but alterations will satisfy those given to change, let us ask them, since we enjoy Peace, Liberty, and Property already, what it is they design to give us more? [Daily Courant, 27 April 1734]

Irrespective of their political stances, newspaper reporting of 18th-century elections underscored the liveliness of the occasions, even in places where there was no formal contest. There was often pageantry, with Tory supporters appearing with ‘oaken boughs in their hats’ to distinguish themselves from supporters from the other parties. There was always plenty of food and drink on offer, too, and often a lively festive atmosphere. Sometimes, though, things got out of hand, as happened at Maldon in Essex in 1734 after it became apparent that the Tory (and suspected Jacobite), Thomas Bramston, one of the sitting members, would not win there. At that point, according to the Daily Courant:

the Rabble that attended him into Town, became so riotous and unruly, that they flung stones at the two other candidates as they stood on the Hustings, and assaulted all that voted for them in so violent and outrageous a manner, that in all probability a great deal of mischief would have been done, and, perhaps, some lives have been lost, if the magistrates had not read the proclamation [the Riot Act], which dispersed them… [Daily Courant, 4 May, 1734]

Unsuccessful in Maldon, Bramston managed to get elected, instead, for the county, retaining his seat until Henry Pelham’s snap election in 1747.

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Further Reading:

Andrew Sparrow, Obscure scribblers: A History of Parliamentary Journalism (2003)

Find more blogs and videos from our Georgian Elections Project here.

In the 18th century, as now, London was looked to as an important battleground in any election. What might now be thought of as the key areas of present-day metropolitan London were represented by the county of Middlesex, the borough of Westminster and the City of London itself, and the wealth and power of the last of these meant that it commanded four seats in Parliament, rather than the normal two. The electorate was also relatively large – between 7,000 and 8,000 people – though that was a small proportion of the city’s overall population of around 120,000. To qualify to vote, people needed to be a member of one of the city’s ancient livery companies, many of which derived from the old mediaeval trade guilds.

In 1713, there were 60 such livery companies, headed by ‘the great twelve’ – the oldest and most wealthy of them – but also including more modest companies, like the Fletchers. Originally a trade guild for those involved in the craft of arrow making, by the 18th century it was a small company and not particularly wealthy. However, even a compact livery company like the Fletchers was able to offer some insights into the political divisions apparent in the country in the years leading up to and on from George I’s accession as king.

The 1713 general election in London, the last that was to take place under Queen Anne, was particularly lively. There were riots and efforts to upset the course of the election by candidates and those close to them. William Newland, son of one candidate, George Newland (a member of the Joiners’ Company), was said to have encouraged a ‘rascally mob’ to descend on the Guildhall, where they were opposed by ‘a great mob of weavers’. The Tory Lord Mayor himself, Sir Richard Hoare, was even said to have ended up scrapping with one of the other candidates, Robert Heysham, a former Tory but who was now standing as a Whig. The result of the election appeared to hang in the balance for a while, though in the end the four Tories all prevailed. It was a close-run thing, though, with just 33 votes dividing Sir William Withers and the highest place Whig candidate, John Ward.

Examination of individual livery companies offers a valuable perspective on the contest. It might be expected that fellow liverymen might all vote the same way, but that was not necessarily the case. In the poll books for 1713, just 14 Fletchers appear to feature. Of these, nine voted for the successful four Tories: Hoare, Withers, Cass and Newland; another voted for the Whigs Ward, Scawen, Heysham and Godfrey. One member of the company, James Wakefield, showed some independence of spirit, though, and bucked the trend by voting for the former Member, John Ward, a Whig, along with the Tories Hoare, Cass and Newland. Wakefield’s vote reflected more widespread uncertainty about Ward’s own position: a Whig who seems on occasion to have supported Tory measures and himself voted for three of the Tory candidates.

At the following election in January 1715, fortunes were reversed. Now, the Whig candidates Heysham, Ward, Godfrey and Scawen were all returned, each of them substantially ahead of their rivals, two of them former MPs who had been successful just two years earlier. Marking the scale of their victory, whereas before there had just been a handful of votes in it, now 555 votes divided the lowest placed Whig, Sir Thomas Scawen, from the highest placed Tory, Sir John Cass, whose personal vote had declined substantially by 918 votes.

As for the 14 Fletchers, it is difficult to know how they voted in the new election as no poll book appears to survive from January 1715. By 1722, when the next general election was held, though, five seem still to have been alive and voting. Of them, two voted for the same raft of candidates, the two Whigs Heysham and Barnard and one Tory, Godfrey, while another voted solidly for Tories: Parsons, Child and Lockwood. James Wakefield trod his own path once again, and voted evenhandedly for two Tories (Child and Lockwood) and two Whigs (Heysham and Barnard).

Members of the Worshipful Company of Fletchers and the candidates they voted for, as they appear in the 1713 Poll book:

• Brown Philip: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Colebran [Colebrand], Thomas: Ward, Scawen, Heysham, Godfrey
• Eddowes, John: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Fish, Thomas: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Graves, William: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Harding, Thomas: Ward, Scawen, Heysham, Godfrey
• Mason, Nathaniel: Ward, Scawen, Heysham, Godfrey
• Milla, Samuel: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Nedwick, Joseph: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Paine, Thomas: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Potts, Percivall: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Wakefield, James: Ward, Hoare, Cass, Newland
• Ward, Downes: Hoare, Withers, Cass, Newland
• Wilson, John: Ward, Scawen, Heysham, Godfrey

Source: London Politics 1713-1717, ed. Henry Horwitz (London Record Society, XVII)

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Further reading: https://ecppec.ncl.ac.uk/

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Modern elections are all about photo opportunities. Some party leaders have made a speciality of pulling off stunts in front of the cameras, while others have become the victims of popular protest.

Of course, the 18th-century had no cameras to log the progress of campaigns, but that did not mean politicians were any less likely to seek opportunities of showing themselves among their voters, and indulging in big gestures to attract or shore up their support base. There was also a lively print culture based around satires, ballads and squibs to keep people engaged in the campaign whether or not they were able to vote themselves.

At the most basic level, candidates of all stamps worked to woo their voters by throwing entertainments. Distinctions were often made between the more respectable figures in the constituency, who might be invited to a dinner at an inn or the candidate’s own home, and the rest of the locals, who were treated to barrels full of beer and perhaps a roast or two to enjoy en plein air. That the dinners were carefully tailored is indicated by John Wilkes’ correspondence with his election agent when he was contesting Aylesbury, in which he made it plain that one local voter was not welcome at the dinner he was planning for the electorate.

Some of the more hotly contested elections, though, attracted bigger gestures as members of the candidates’ support-base waded in to help their man over the line. One of the best known was in 1784 when Charles James Fox, under pressure to retain his seat as MP for Westminster, was championed by a group of fashionable aristocratic women, led by the duchess of Devonshire, who supposedly offered kisses in return for votes. Unsurprisingly, this inspired a raft of satires, including The Devonshire, or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes, showing the duchess mid-embrace being harangued by a sex-worker shouting out encouragingly, ‘Huzza – Fox for Ever’.

Devonshire was not alone in playing an active role in the election, being just one of a bevy of supporters for Fox, who faced off against a similarly active set of grandees backing Pittite candidates, including the duchesses of Rutland and Argyll. All came in for abuse of one kind or another in the press, but one of Pitt’s female supporters, Mrs Hobart, attracted particular attention. As Elaine Chalus has observed, she was perhaps less usual in the world of the 1784 campaign, in that she was lampooned ‘for her obesity and awkwardness’ unlike Devonshire who was famous for her glamour. [Chalus, 213] One satire in particular, ‘Madam Blubber’s Last shift or the Aerostatic Dilly’ depicted Hobart atop a balloon carrying two voters towards the polls at Covent Garden. Watching her, off to one side, one candidate comments ‘A foul wind is fair for us’.

At their worst, 18th-century elections could be brutal affairs. In one of the many elections for Middlesex during the Wilkite agitation that rocked the constituency, one member of the public was killed by heavies hired by the other side. The extent of the violence of the December 1768 by-election, contested between the Wilkite candidate, Glynn, and the ministerialist Beauchamp Proctor, was captured in at least one print, ‘The Brentford Election’, named after the county town where the poll took place. It shows the moment where the hustings was rushed by bludgeon-wielding hired thugs with two women among those knocked to the floor.

It was not just those in the crowd who risked injury. Candidates might also expect to be pelted by a variety of objects: a particular favourite of the crowd being dead cats. One print produced by Henry Sadd, after Robert Dighton, for the 1796 Westminster election shows the candidates on the hustings at Covent Garden with a crowd in front. Most seem good-humoured, but in the foreground one can detect a small child with a dead cat in his hand, getting ready to throw it at the platform. In another from 1784 called The Mask, showing a candidate addressing the crowd from the hustings, a dead animal can be seen flying through the air.

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Further Reading:

Elaine Chalus, Elite Women in English Political Life, c.1754-1790 (2005)

Find our full Georgian Elections Project here, and keep an eye on our TikTok channel for future videos on hustings and satirical prints during 18th century elections!

Party manifestos as we know them today are largely a product of the post-1832 changes in the way parties and elections have been organized and many might point to the issuing of Sir Robert Peel’s 1834 Tamworth Manifesto as one of the most significant stages on the road to the development of modern party programmes. However, it would be wrong to assume that prior to that individual politicians or alliances of factions did not sometimes cohere around shared sets of values or policies.

At a very basic level, 18th-century politics was dominated by the competing allegiances of the Tories and Whigs and these overflowed into broad ideas of how the country should be governed and the workings of the constitution. Occasionally, though, other issues came to the fore.

Whereas today members of the royal family are very careful to remain above party politics, this was not the case in the 18th century and one of the most important coalitions in the middle of the period was headed by the then Prince of Wales, Prince Frederick. From his London base at Leicester House, Frederick had worked to help bring about the fall of Sir Robert Walpole and in 1747 he took another important step forward in attempting once more to unite the opposition factions behind a single programme. The so-called ‘Carlton House declaration’, named after one of his other London residences, was issued by the prince in June 1747 in advance of the snap election called that summer by the Prime Minister, Henry Pelham. As Linda Colley has pointed out, the declaration offered to his somewhat reluctant Tory allies a measure of reform, notably:

‘Place and Militia Bills, restrictions on the Civil List, and a £300 per annum landed qualification for J.P.s’ [Colley, In Defiance, 254]

At the heart of the prince’s offering was the hope that he would in time be able to rule over a country stripped of party antagonisms. However, although there were some examples of co-operation in the election between the prince’s Leicester House coterie and some Tories, it was not until the following year, too late to make enough of an impact in the election, that the Tories as a whole accepted Frederick’s olive branch. Over the next three years he continued to develop plans for how his first administration might be different from his father’s, before his unexpected death in the spring of 1751 stalled the whole programme.

Prince Frederick’s may have been the first significant effort to identify common points of interest that might unite otherwise rival groupings, but it would not be the last. In the 1760s and 1770s supporters of the radical John Wilkes also established broad principles they undertook to support in the event of being returned to Parliament. One of these was for reform of the franchise and in March 1776, even though he had by then concluded that the cause was unlikely to be successful, Wilkes himself gave a celebrated speech in the Commons arguing for reform. Wilkes pointed to the fact that the Commons as elected in 1776 was still broadly drawn from the same constituencies as had returned Members of the Cavalier Parliament in the 1660s. And yet these no longer adequately reflected the changes that had happened across the country. More controversially, he also advocated extending the vote to classes of people normally excluded from the system: ‘The meanest mechanic, the poorest peasant and day labourer’, all of whom, he insisted, ought to have ‘some share… in the power of making those laws’ which affected their daily lives.

Possibly the most significant development, though, came with the Rockingham Whigs and in particular their ‘philosopher’ in chief, Edmund Burke. More than ever before, here was a coherent party, marshalled carefully by its leadership and with a clear programme centred on Burke’s ideas of ‘Economical reform’. Most important, in 1782 the short-lived Rockingham administration had the opportunity of putting some of these ideas into practice. Thus, Crewe’s Act, Clerke’s Act and Burke’s Establishment Act all made moderate, but significant, changes to who could vote, who could sit in Parliament and how many people were able to enjoy positions in the government and royal household [Elofson, Rockingham Connection, 8]. Setting out the terms of the last of these in a speech on 14 June 1782, Burke had to explain the thinking behind the cuts proposed and why certain offices had been spared. One of these, was the Ordnance. The reason for this being left alone was, he suggested, because the duke of Richmond was now at the head of the board and he had already done much to reform it from within:

The noble Duke had come to his bed side like an adulterer, but it was a divine adulterer, to beget an Hercules and an Eurystheus, sufficiently powerful to be capable of destroying all the snakes and monsters, that infested the Ordnance Office… [Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, iv. 144]

Burke also had to deal with the tricky subject of his own position as Paymaster General. He admitted that he had wrestled with what was best to be done about it, but admitted, somewhat weakly:

He had no pretensions to extraordinary disinterestedness, or meant not to reap the fair emoluments of his situation. Not to do that, would be to violate the first law of God and Nature, by abandoning the interest of his family… [Writings and Speeches, iv. 145]

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Further reading:

Linda Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: the Tory Party 1714-60

W.M. Elofson, The Rockingham Connection and the Second Founding of the Whig Party

Max Skjönsberg, The Persistence of Party: Ideas of Harmonious Discord in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Click here to find more blogs from our Georgian Elections Project or head over to our TikTok channel for videos exploring the Whig and Tory parties in the 18th century.