Description:At the 1790 local election in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Granville Leveson-Gower (1721-1808), Lord Stafford’s Trentham party stood for the Parliamentary seat for Newcastle with their candidate Admiral John Leveson-Gower, Lord Stafford’s brother. The election was contested by Thomas Fletcher and Clement Kynnersley who stood as independent candidates. The Trentham party won the election, however, on their success, Lord Stafford was presented with a huge bill for canvassing expenses. Outraged by the enormous sum, Stafford commissioned an investigation into the election accounts.
Richard Lowndes was given the responsibility of investigating the canvassing expenses for the 1790 Newcastle Election. The Sutherland Papers include a volume of observations written by Richard Lowndes on the 1790 election which forms a report on the canvassing expenses.
Lowndes’ observations are very entertaining, particularly his dry remarks about bad electoral procedure. His ‘Observations’ provide an overview of the Trentham party’s canvassing at the 1790 election, exposing how the outcome of eighteenth century elections appears to have depended upon and been decided under the influence of alcohol.
The Role of Alcohol in Eighteenth Century Elections
Frank O’Gorman’s influential work on eighteenth century elections refers to the importance of canvassing in an electoral campaign. Election committees employed agents who organised ‘treating’ for the electorate, in order to reward loyal voters and rally support for a candidate. The importance of free alcohol in canvassing is evident where O’Gorman notes that ‘personal familiarity with the inn-keepers’ was an ‘essential’ quality in an election agent. Agents arranged the opening of local alehouses for parties of voters, taking responsibility for the expense of alcohol consumed.
During an election, candidates and their patrons needed the support of their social inferiors to ensure that they were elected. It was easy for voters and publicans to take advantage of such a situation, and even to exploit the generosity of the wealthy patron footing the bill. Election agents also manipulated the situation to their candidate’s advantage. Lowndes’ observations refer to publicans who sold more alcohol than had been permitted, and occasions when public houses had been ordered to close only to be re-opened by election agents in order to rally support for candidates.
Hannah Barker and David Vincent report that the Newcastle Election of 1790 cost ‘the Gower interest’ over seven thousand pounds, an amount that Lord Stafford ‘was deeply unhappy at’. Lord Stafford was particularly reluctant to pay the bills as ‘around half was spent on the unauthorized distribution of alcohol’
To learn more about Lowndes' 'Observations', click on the images on the left.
Contextual Information from Barker, Hannah and Vincent, David, Language, Print and Electoral Politics 1790-1832: Newcastle-under-Lyme Broadsides (Boydell Press, 2001) and O’Gorman, Frank, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England 1734-1832 (Clarendon Press, 1989)