The elections of May 2026 in England, Scotland and Wales provide another opportunity to consider some of the features of parliamentary elections in the unreformed 18th century. Here Dr Charles Littleton looks at one of the period’s more notable constituencies and one particularly turbulent contest there.

Between 1715 and 1832 there were 22 general elections. Attention to these is usually most focussed on some of the contentious ones in the more populous constituencies. There is the return of John Wilkes for Middlesex on four occasions in 1768-9 as the Commons tried to enforce its determination to exclude him from the chamber. Or there are the elections in the borough of Westminster in 1780 and 1784 when the Whig leader Charles James Fox campaigned aggressively and tirelessly. In 1784 he was aided by his friend Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, who allegedly offered kisses for votes.

Both Middlesex and Westminster were populous, urban constituencies, ripe for social unrest and raucous politics. With between 12,000 and 14,000 inhabitants qualifying themselves by paying scot and lot, Westminster would appear to have been the largest electorate in 18th-century Britain.

But not quite… The prize for the constituency with the most numerous electorate goes to Yorkshire. By far the largest county by area and population, Yorkshire was also more than just a rural counterweight to urban Middlesex and Westminster. It was so large that it was divided into three administrative units – the East, West and North Ridings – each with its own character. While the East and North Ridings were largely rural and maritime, the West Riding contained centres of textile and nascent industrial manufacture such as Bradford, Halifax, Leeds and Sheffield. Over the course of the 18th century the number of 40-shilling freeholders with the right to vote grew from about 12,000 to 18,000, and while not all of the growing population of the West Riding manufacturing centres had the right to vote, they made clear that their interests could not be ignored.

A major contrast between Yorkshire and the southern metropolitan constituencies was the role of the aristocracy. There were few nobles or even large landowners who sought to dominate elections in Middlesex. Yorkshire, though, abounded in aristocratic families, with some of the leading nobles of the realm living there in palatial country seats. A survey listed two bishops and 50 peers ‘having interest in Yorkshire’ – 13 dukes, one marquess, 22 earls, nine viscounts and five barons [Proceedings of Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, vii. 74-75].

This list was drawn up in preparation for the 1734 general election. A rivalry between two peers lay at the heart of this fight, one of the more notorious in an election year that had more contests than any since 1710. When William Wentworth, 2nd earl of Strafford, grandson of Charles I’s lord lieutenant of Ireland, died in 1695, his title of Baron Raby passed to his cousin Thomas Wentworth. Strafford’s extensive estates in Yorkshire and Ireland were bequeathed, however, to his nephew Thomas Watson of Wentworth Woodhouse in the West Riding, who subsequently added Wentworth to his surname. Raby always resented this unequal division of the family estate and strove to assert his prominence. Following a career as a diplomat, in 1711 he managed to secure his restoration as earl of Strafford. In 1708 he bought the estate of Stainborough, north of Sheffield, where he built Wentworth Castle to rival Wentworth Woodhouse, with only five or six miles between them.

From 1711 Strafford was a negotiator for the Treaty of Utrecht, for which perceived betrayal of the Allied cause he was impeached by the incoming Whig ministry in 1715. By 1734 he was in the Tory opposition, and the growing stature of his rival’s heir, also Thomas Watson Wentworth, added to his determination to ensure a Tory victory. Watson Wentworth had been elected a Member for Yorkshire in 1727, created Baron Malton the following year, and appointed lord lieutenant of the West Riding in 1733. He set himself up as leader of the Yorkshire Whigs for the 1734 election, which caused resentment among more experienced Whigs such as Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle. Malton put forward Cholmley Turner and Rowland Winn as the Whig government’s candidates.

Malton’s detailed electoral management was matched by the Tory peers Strafford and Charles Bruce, Baron Bruce of Whorlton, who had an estate at West Tanfield in the West Riding. Through Bruce of Whorlton’s extensive consultation with both Tory and Country Whig peers, Sir Miles Stapylton, 4th bt, was eventually chosen as the opposition candidate. Later, Bruce of Whorlton also persuaded the Country Whig Edward Wortley Montagu to stand with Stapylton on a joint ticket, in order to split the Whig vote.

The poll lasted a week from 15 May 1734 and in the end the representation was split, as Stapylton came top, followed closely by Turner, only 17 votes behind. The official poll numbers are remarkable for the period and give a sense of both Yorkshire’s size and its political fracturing. Stapylton had 7,896, Turner 7,879, Winn 7,699, and Wortley Montagu 5,898 votes. This was the only general election in Yorkshire between 1710 and 1807 which went to a poll, and judging by the record of the votes cast, participation was high.

Malton, raised to an earldom in November, did not let the matter rest after the poll and petitioned to unseat Stapylton. He eventually had to abandon it, having damaged both his finances and his reputation with the Whig grandees by this fruitless campaign. He appears to have learnt from his unsuccessful attempt to ‘dictate’ to the county in 1734. Yorkshire avoided a poll in 1741, a general election year that saw more contests than any other in the century. In 1746 Malton was created marquess of Rockingham, and he and his heir Charles Watson Wentworth, 2nd marquess of Rockingham, ensured that Yorkshire did not engage in such open and expensive conflict again. Despite this surface calm, the multitude of noble interests, the numerous ‘independent’ freeholders, and the industrial cities, ensured that politics in Yorkshire remained lively, especially in the 1780s. This later tumult led Charles James Fox to comment that in their size and political importance, Yorkshire and Middlesex, ‘between them make all England’.  

CGDL

Further reading:

Eighteenth-Century Political Participation and Electoral Culture website (Yorkshire – ECPPEC)

C. Collyer, ‘The Yorkshire Election of 1734’, Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, vii (1952), 53-82

C. Collyer, ‘The Yorkshire Election of 1741’, PLPLS, vii (1952), 137-152

R. W. Smith, ‘Political Organization and Canvassing: Yorkshire elections before the Reform Bill’, American Historical Review, lxxiv (1969), 1538-1560