In this article Dr Kathryn Rix and Dr Martin Spychal of our House of Commons, 1832-1868 project discuss a pivotal vote in the early nineteenth-century Commons – the selection of the Speaker in February 1835. They explore popular reaction to the vote, its short and long-term significance and the difficulties of compiling an accurate division list before the publication of an official record of parliamentary votes.

At around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday 19 February 1835, in one of the largest divisions recorded in the House of Commons during the nineteenth century, the Whig MP for Edinburgh, James Abercromby, was elected as Speaker. He ousted the long-serving Tory Speaker, Charles Manners Sutton, in a very close contest. The voting figures were widely reported to have been 316 for Abercromby and 306 for Manners Sutton, excluding the two tellers and two MPs who paired off with each other.

Awaiting the result

Charles Greville captured the excitement surrounding the division, recording in his diary that

For the last three weeks every newspaper has been literally filled with the controversy, every club engaged in betting on the event; in every room, at the corner of the street, nobody talked of anything else. It was the first enquiry of every man you met, ‘Well, what do you hear to-day, they say Sutton will win by 30.’ The next man (a Whig) would say, ‘It is safe; Abercromby will have 317 votes sure’.

The result was eagerly anticipated nationwide. In Rochester, Chatham and Strood, the inhabitants awaited the arrival of the night coaches from London with the news. Despite the late hour and torrential rain, thousands of people paraded in the towns to celebrate Abercromby’s victory with ‘heartfelt huzzas’, accompanied by ‘several bands of music’ and ‘a thousand torches’.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, the arrival by an express coach of the Sun newspaper, which published a report of the division that evening, prompted the ringing of the bells of St Nicholas’s church, although threats of ‘dismissal and intimidation’ by disgruntled Tories deterred the bellringers of St Peter’s from following suit. Within five minutes of the result arriving in Liverpool, it was telegraphed to Holyhead, where a steam-boat, the Liffey, was ready to carry this information across the Irish Sea to Dublin. So keen were people to hear the outcome that ‘persons on board were provided with night signals, to communicate the news as soon as the packet reached the Irish shore’.

The significance of the division

This division was a momentous one for several reasons. It was the first decision made by the new Commons which assembled after the January 1835 general election. The election had been called by the Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel, appointed as prime minister after William IV dismissed the Whig ministry led by Viscount Melbourne in November 1834. Disappointingly for Peel, the election results favoured the Whigs, together with their Radical and Irish allies, and he arrived at Westminster as the head of a minority government. Manners Sutton’s rejection was a major blow for Peel’s fledging ministry, which resigned in April 1835 after further defeats.

Up until this division, it had been customary to re-elect the incumbent Speaker, irrespective of party considerations. Manners Sutton had been chosen as Speaker in 1817 and re-elected on six successive occasions. Although he had announced his retirement in 1832, Earl Grey’s Whig ministry had persuaded him to return to the Speakership in January 1833, feeling it important to have an experienced person in the chair given the large influx of novice MPs in the first reformed Commons.

Backing Manners Sutton also removed the need for ministers to agree on their preferred alternative candidate, with Lord John Russell favouring Abercromby, while Grey and Viscount Althorp preferred Edward Littleton. Although Littleton was proposed in 1833 by Radical and Irish MPs, he mustered only 31 votes to 241 for Manners Sutton, who received the backing of his own party as well as Whig ministers and their supporters.

In 1835, however, the situation was different. William IV’s replacement of Melbourne’s ministry with Peel’s was seen by the Whigs as unconstitutional, breaking the principle that no government should hold office without parliamentary consent. In contrast with their previous support for Manners Sutton, the Whigs now accused him of involvement in the ‘political intrigues’ surrounding the change of government.

The Speakership contest provided an opportunity to assert Whig dominance in the Commons and unite the different elements of what would later become the Liberal party. When Whig, Radical and Irish MPs met at Lichfield House on 18 February 1835 to discuss combining in opposition to the Conservatives, they agreed to rally behind Abercromby in the next day’s division. His victory was therefore a pivotal moment in the history of the emerging Liberal party.

The temporary House of Commons

The division was also significant as the first held in the temporary House of Commons used by MPs in the wake of the catastrophic Westminster fire of October 1834. MPs had moved from their badly damaged chamber in St Stephen’s Chapel into the chamber formerly occupied by the House of Lords, which was rapidly adapted. One last-minute and rather unorthodox alteration was made ahead of the debate on the Speakership for the benefit of Manners Sutton’s wife Ellen, who ‘had a door broken in under the reporter’s gallery that she might hear through the walls of the House the debate as it proceeded’.

The temporary Commons chamber had seating room for 456 MPs (including in the galleries), compared with 387 in the old chamber. Despite its greater capacity, it was overfilled during the division. The doors of the Commons were opened at noon, and within five minutes, 300 MPs had entered. At 2 p.m. between 400 and 500 MPs accompanied Black Rod to the Lords for the formal opening of Parliament. The debate on the Speakership began at 2:30 p.m. after they returned to their own chamber. After speeches on both sides, the division itself took place shortly after 6 p.m., when over 620 MPs were present.

Taking the division

The system of taking divisions in 1835 was somewhat different from the separate lobbies for the ‘Ayes’ and ‘Noes’ familiar today. It was not until February 1836 that the Commons acquired a second division lobby and no official division lists were published before that date, although informal (and often inaccurate) lists supplied by individual MPs did appear in newspaper reports. Before 1836, one side (usually the presumed majority) remained in the chamber to be counted, while the other side went out into the lobby. When the House was in committee, a different procedure was followed, with all MPs staying in the chamber and moving to opposite sides of the House to be counted.

The latter method was used for the Speakership division. The clerk of the Commons, John Henry Ley, asked the Ayes (for Manners Sutton) to move to the right hand side of the Speaker’s chair – presumably as viewed from the chair and from the table where Ley was sitting – and the Noes (for Abercromby) to move to the left. The count was performed ‘with unusual precision’, according to press reports, with one of the two tellers ‘pointing to each member with his wand’ and ‘the other calling his number’. Another account suggested that the teller actually touched each MP with his wand, which must have been difficult in the overcrowded conditions. MPs were counted bench by bench, although the large numbers attending meant some MPs must have been standing.

Those supporting Manners Sutton (who were largely but not exclusively Tory) were counted first, with the total of 306 being reached ‘in profound silence’. When the figure of 307 was reached for Abercromby, ‘a cheer arose’, which continued long after the final total of 316 was announced, and was echoed outside the chamber. The Irish leader Daniel O’Connell reportedly jumped with joy, while Peel looked ‘wan and ill’.

The accuracy of the division list

Counting so many people by this method in a short space of time – the division reportedly lasted about half an hour – was a difficult task. Producing an accurate record of the names of those who voted proved even more so.

Until 1836, there was no official system for publishing the names of those who voted in a division. This meant newspapers often published their own unofficial lists of major votes. As votes in the Commons took place behind closed doors, with reporters and other spectators cleared from the galleries, journalists tended to compile this information from their own counts of MPs present in the chamber before a vote, as well as intelligence from MPs or Commons officials who were present when the vote took place.

This meant that published division lists prior to 1836 were often inaccurate. On the day after the vote on the Speakership, several newspapers, including The Times, the Sun, Morning Post, Morning Advertiser, Albion and Star and the Morning Chronicle, all published their own, slightly contradictory division lists. Over the following days MPs wrote to editors to make corrections to these lists, and editors revelled in identifying errors in the lists published by their rivals.

Questions were raised over the votes of at least twelve MPs, five of whom were newly elected MPs. For instance, Thomas Bish, MP for Leominster, was identified as voting for Abercromby by the Albion and Star, and for Manners Sutton by The Times and the Morning Herald. He promptly issued public letters of correction to the editors of The Times and the Morning Herald confirming he had voted for Abercromby. Despite this correction, the record of the division published in Hansard (which remains the primary source consulted by historians for parliamentary divisions of the period) still contains Bish’s name in the list of the minority for Manners Sutton.

MPs considered it of the utmost importance that their votes were communicated accurately to their constituents, particularly in highly partisan divisions such as these. The extent to which the votes of individual MPs were followed in each constituency was underlined by the experience of Peter Ainsworth, MP for Bolton.

Following contradictory reports of Ainsworth’s vote in the London press, it was reported that ‘much betting took place’ in Bolton over who he had actually supported for the Speakership. Ainsworth then sent ‘several letters’ to his ‘leading supporters’ in the ‘liberal interest’ confirming that he had voted for the Conservative, Manners Sutton. Significantly, Ainsworth had courted both Conservative and Liberal votes at the recent election. Confirmation of his vote prompted reports that his Liberal supporters intended to censure his conduct, as well as the placarding of numerous posters across the walls of the constituency containing derogatory ‘squibs’ about his vote. Some Bolton Radicals even went so far as to burn an effigy of him.

The division lists published by newspapers were also of interest because they revealed why several MPs were absent from the division. Five MPs were absent because they were still on their winter tours of Italy. This was not the case for Roderick Macleod, MP for Sutherlandshire, however, who raced to London from his sojourn in Naples in time to vote for Abercromby.

Viscount Milton, MP for North Northamptonshire, was unable to attend, as he was attending to his father Earl Fitzwilliam, who had recently been injured when his labourer’s axe flew off its handle. Other MPs, such as Charles Denham Jephson, MP for Mallow, and Ralph Howard, MP for County Wicklow, revealed to the press that they had been present at the debate but deliberately abstained from voting (Howard’s name, however, remains on the published Hansard division list).

While we may never know the exact number of, and names of, MPs who voted in the division, the Victorian Commons team here at the History of Parliament have gone through all available press reports and known diaries and have arrived at what we think is the most accurate version of the division list.

We have found six errors in the division list provided by Hansard, which was first published in March 1835, around four weeks after the vote. The Hansard list only contains 657 MPs (there were 658 MPs at the time). Although it reported the declared totals of 316 and 306, its list named 313 MPs who voted for Abercromby, plus the teller and one MP who paired, making a total of 315 on that side. For Manners Sutton it named 309 MPs plus the teller and the pair, making 311 in total, and it also listed 31 MPs as absent.

Our corrections to the Hansard list:

• Sir William Robert Clayton, who was listed on both sides by Hansard, voted for Abercromby.
• Philip Howard and John Craven Westenra, both missing from the Hansard list, (probably) voted for Abercromby.
• Thomas Bish, who was listed as voting for Manners Sutton, voted for Abercromby.
• Sir John Edmund De Beauvoir, who was listed as absent, was present and voted for Abercromby.
• Ralph Howard, who was listed as voting for Abercromby, was present at the debate but absented himself from the division.

On this basis, we think that the final tally of the division was:

• 318 votes for Abercromby (including the teller and a pair)
• 309 votes for Manners Sutton (including the teller and a pair)
• 31 absent MPs

If anyone finds any additional corrections, do get in contact.

KR & MS

Further Reading:

J. Coohill, Ideas of the Liberal Party: Perceptions, Agendas and Liberal Politics in the House of Commons, 1832-1852 (Oxford, 2011), esp. pp. 99-109

I. Newbould, ‘William IV and the dismissal of the Whigs, 1834’, Canadian Journal of History, 11 (1976), 311-30

A. Graham, ‘The Lichfield House Compact, 1835’, Irish Historical Studies, 12 (1961), 209-25