Lichfield

Borough

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Right of Election:

'in the bailiffs, magistrates, free-holders of forty shillings per annum, and all that hold by burgage tenure, and in such freemen only of the said city as are enrolled, paying scot and lot there'

Number of voters:

about 600

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
10 Feb. 1715WALTER CHETWYND285
 SAMUEL HILL275
 Richard Dyott195
 John Cotes192
24 Apr. 1718WILLIAM SNEYD vice Chetwynd, appointed to office255
 Walter Chetwynd254
 CHETWYND vice Sneyd, on petition, 10 Dec. 1718 
20 Mar. 1722WALTER CHETWYND 
 RICHARD PLUMER 
 Thomas Clark 
17 Aug. 1727WALTER CHETWYND 
 RICHARD PLUMER 
 Sir John Statham 
 Thomas Bagshaw 
20 May 1731GEORGE VENABLES VERNON vice Chetwynd, appointed to office 
16 May 1734SIR ROWLAND HILL 
 GEORGE VENABLES VERNON 
14 May 1741GEORGE VENABLES VERNON 
 SIR LISTER HOLTE 
2 July 1747RICHARD LEVESON GOWER278
 THOMAS ANSON272
 Sir Lister Holte237
 George Venables Vernon229
24 Nov. 1753SIR THOMAS GRESLEY vice Leveson Gower, deceased348
 Henry Vernon261
 VERNON vice Gresley, on petition, 29 Jan. 1754 

Main Article

There was no predominant influence at Lichfield. Contests were frequent and sometimes turbulent owing to a strong and aggressive Jacobite element in the town. In 1715 Chetwynd, a Whig, and Hill, a moderate Tory, defeated two high Tories. At a by-election caused by Chetwynd’s appointment to office in 1718, a Tory was successful, Chetwynd’s supporters being ‘kept out of the Hall and barbarously beaten and abused, and their lives endangered by a very great mob with papers in their hats resembling white roses’, the Pretender’s emblem.1 Chetwynd was subsequently unseated on petition. In 1722, a Tory reported:

there will be a right majority at Lichfield but the returning officer, who was always thought a Tory and an honest man, has been bought and will certainly return the others.2

Two Whigs were returned. In 1727 the Whig Members were again returned, according to their opponents’ petition by paying the corporation £800, and by threatening the tenants of the dean and chapter with eviction and even ‘with ecclesiastical censure for incontinency’ if they did not support them.3 At a by-election in 1731, however, a Tory was returned, William Chetwynd, the brother of the previous Member, desisting when he found the returning officer entirely in his opponent’s interests.4 In 1734 and 1741 two Tories were unopposed. But in 1747 Lord Anson, who had been laying out part of his prize money on buying up freeholds and burgages at Lichfield,5 joined interests with Lord Gower, the former Tory leader, who had recently gone over to the Government. After a bitter contest at which ‘the whole Jacobite party made their push to sacrifice Lord Gower for having quitted his party’, Anson’s brother, Thomas, and a son of Lord Gower were successful at a cost of £20,000.6

At a by-election in 1753, the Tory candidate,

Sir Thomas Gresley Bt., entered the city attended by upwards of 200 gentlemen and 500 freemen. The ribbons worn on this occasion were blue [Tory] and white [Pretender], with the mottoes of ‘No Jews’ [against the bill for the naturalization of the Jews], ‘No venality and corruption’, ‘Christianity and the English constitution for ever’.7

He was successful, only to be unseated on petition.

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Keatt’s Weekly Jnl. 3 May 1718.
  • 2. HMC Portland, vii. 318.
  • 3. CJ, xxi. 46.
  • 4. Read’s Weekly Jnl. 1 May 1731.
  • 5. Staffs. Parl. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), ii (2), pp. 265-6.
  • 6. Ld. Anson to Sir Peter Warren, 23 July 1747, Lichfield mss.
  • 7. Staffs. Parl. Hist. ii (2), 254.