The creation of a Pocket Borough in Clitheroe, Lancashire, 1693-1780: 'Honour and odd tricks'

Northern History

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 301-326

  French, H R ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 34347294027     PISSN: 0078172X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/007817204790181023     Document Type: Review

References (55)

1. These definitions are taken from J. A. Phillips, Electoral Behavior in Unreformed England: Plumpers, Splitters and Straights (Princeton, 1982), p. 61
2. similar definitions are made in H. T. Dickinson, The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 1995), p. 31
3. and F. O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: the unreformed electorate of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 32-37. By the mid eighteenth century, Phillips has suggested that 'corporation' boroughs had the smallest electorates, averaging only thirty voters; 'burgage' boroughs averaged about 130; 'inhabitant' boroughs averaged 600; the largest urban electorates existed in 'freeman' boroughs, with an average of 750 voters
4. Phillips, Electoral Behavior, p. 61
5. Dickinson, Politics of the People, p. 31
6. O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, p. 32
7. J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England, 1675-1725 (1967), pp. 73-74
8. Plumb, Political Stability, pp. 159-89
9. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common, (1991), p. 71
10. J. Cannon, Aristocratic Century: the Peerage of eighteenth-century England (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 1-33
11. J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688-1832. Ideology, Social Structure and Political Practice during the ancien regime (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 93-118
12. L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven & London, 1992), pp. 147-94
13. Contests occurred in 1693, 1694, 1695, 1698, 1702, 1706, 1713, 1715, and 1722, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, and D. W. Hayton (Cambridge, 2002), II, 323
14. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick (1970), I, 269
15. W. Self Weeks, Clitheroe in the Seventeenth Century (Clitheroe, 1927), p. 6
16. See J. K. Walton, 'North', in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, II, 1540-1840, ed. P. Clark (Cambridge, 2000), p. 124. Walton notes that the average 'urban' settlement in Cheshire and South Lancashire in the 1660s contained a median of only 883 inhabitants
17. For Cockermouth, see J. V. Beckett, 'The Making of a Pocket Borough: Cockermouth 1722-1756', Journal of British Studies, 20.1 (1980), 140-58
18. see also The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B. D. Henning, I (1983), 286
19. The disputed election of 1661 turned on the voting rights of free inhabitants. The Commons ruled in favour of their enfranchisement, although the wording of the decision was ambiguous. See Self Weeks, Clitheroe, pp. 295-96
20. M. A. Mullett, '"Men of Knowne Loyalty": The Politics of the Lancashire Borough of Clitheroe, 1660-1689', Northern History, XXI (1985), 113-15; Buck(inghamshire) R(ecord) O(ffice), AR 94/80/1334
21. Mullett, NH, XXI (1985), 112
22. Commons 1690-1715, II, 324
23. Commons 1660-1690, III, 205
24. H(istorical) M(anuscripts) C(ommission), 14th Report, Appendix IV, The Manuscripts of Lord Kenyon (1894), p. 273, Roger Kenyon to Guicciardini Wentworth, 22 July 1693
25. C. Rose, England in the 1690s: Revolution, Religion and War (Oxford, 1999), pp. 85-87
26. After the Revolution, Brandon sought the Honour of Clitheroe, but failed after a petition from the Duchess of Albermarle in February 1690. Commons 1690-1715, II, 324
27. P. Higson, 'Hugh, 12th Lord Willoughby of Parham, A Leading Lancashire Dissenter At and After the Revolution of 1688-9', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, 146 (1996), 41
28. Commons 1690-1715, IV, 12
29. See Commons 1660-90, I, 286-87
30. The out-bailiff was regarded as the more socially prestigious post: 'the out-bailiff is the chief, and hath the preeminency', see Anon, An Historical Account of The Rights of Elections of the Several Counties, Cities, and Boroughs of Great Britain. . . (1755), p. 161
31. Bartholomew Walmesley was implicated as a Jacobite in the 'Lancashire Plot' of 1693. See, The Jacobite Trials at Manchester in 1694 from an unpublished manuscript, ed. W. Beaumont, Chetham Society, O.S. XXVIII (1853), 44, 54-55, 61, 63, 71, 74, 99-100, 102. I am grateful to the late Alan Weaver for this reference
32. Testimony of Henry Bayly quoted in the 1694 Commons Committee on Elections report, in H. A. Merewether and A. J. Stephens, The History of the Boroughs & Municipal Corporations of the United Kingdom (1835), p. 1361
33. HMC, Kenyon, p. 275, Guicciardini Wentworth to Roger Kenyon, 28 Aug. 1693
34. Anon, Historical Account, p. 160
35. Of the senior officers of the Duchy, both the Chancellor (Willoughby) and the Attorney-General (Edward Northey) were post-1688 appointments. Only the Secretary, Guicciardini Wentworth, Kenyon's correspondent, had been in post since 1671. R. Somerville, Officeholders in the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster from 1603 (London & Chichester, 1972)
36. Brandon succeeded his father as Earl of Macclesfield early in 1694, and gained royal favour by obtaining command of the county regiment, see H. Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the reign of William III (Manchester, 1977), p. 128
37. Thomas Stringer, Commons 1690-1715, V, 593-95
38. The History of Parliament: The Commons 1558-1603, ed. P. W. Hasler, II (1981), 214
39. He was the son of John Lister, Bailiff of Clitheroe 1678-79, 1685-86, and 1693-94 and grandson of Richard Lister, see fn. 86. Richard was found heir to his father's two burgages by the inquiry jury of 2 Mar. 1704. Lincs. RO., BNLW, Box 1, Clitheroe Inquiry Jury Verdicts, 1664-1780
40. Commons 1715-1754, I, 599
41. Sir B. Burke, A Genealogical & Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland (1882), II, 1509. Stanley's father was second son of Sir Thomas Stanley Bt. of Bickerstaff, whose family eventually inherited the earldom in 1736
42. Stanley was chosen as High Sheriff of Lancashire for the year 1718. Burke, Landed Gentry, p. 1509
43. Commons 1715-1754, II, 219
44. The Andertons possessed an estate in Clitheroe with a total annual rental value of £84, but owned no burgages. The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists, 1717-1788, 1, 1717, ed. R. Sharpe France, Record Society of Lancashire & Cheshire, 98 (1945), 113. Haldane appears to have been the younger brother of Patrick Haldane, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at St Andrews, M.P. for Perth 1717-22 and commissioner for forfeited estates 1716-25, who earned a reputation for his rigorous seizure of such property
45. Burke, Landed Gentry, I, 708
46. Lady Petre was Catherine, daughter and heiress of Bartholomew Walmsley of Dunkenhaigh. J. B. Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetcy of the British Empire (1850), p. 788
47. Lincs. RO., BNLW, Box 1, Clitheroe Inquiry Jury Verdicts, 1664-1780
48. For example, between 1760 and 1777 the Curzons spent £42,000 building Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1754-1790, eds Sir L. Namier and J. Brooke (1964), II, 287-88
49. Burke, Landed Gentry, II, 1509
50. LRO, DDFr, 3/8, Richard Eddleston, 'The Result of My Enquiries as to Old William Riddihough. . .', 3 Jan. 1782
51. LRO, DDFr, 5/63, Book of Agreements respecting the Borough of Clitheroe, 1785-1824, 1-6
52. See H. R. French, 'Urban Common Rights, Enclosure and the Market: Clitheroe Town Moors, 1764-1802', Agricultural History Review, 51.1 (2003), 59-62
53. 'Poems & correspondence of the Rev. Thomas Wilson B.D.', ed. F. R. Raines, Miscellanies, CS, O.S. XLV (1857), xxviii-xxix
54. J. Habbakuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System: English Landowner ship, 1650-1850 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 1-76
55. French, AgHR, 51, 61-64