Family and Education

b. 11 Feb. 1711, o. surv. s. of Isaac Allgood of Brandon White House and Nunwick, Northumb. by Hannah, da. of Isaac Clark, vintner, of London. educ. B.N.C. Oxf. 1730; G. Inn 1731; Grand Tour (France and Italy) 1736-8. m. 22 Feb. 1739, Jane, da. and h. of Robert Allgood of Lambley and Simonburn, Northumb., 3s. 5da. suc. fa. 1725; his w.’s cos. George Allgood at Seghill, Northumb. 1749. Kntd. 9 Dec. 1760.

Offices Held

Bailiff, Hexham 1725-36; sheriff, Northumb. 1746-7.

Biography

A large landowner and ‘the promoter of the corn road from Hexham to Alnmouth and the military way from Carlisle to Newcastle’, Allgood was ‘one of the most influential men in mid-Georgian Northumberland’.1 When he stood for Northumberland at a by-election in January 1748, Lord Tankerville wrote of the ‘heat of Jacobitism which is carried on by our adversaries. They would have persuaded the common people of Mr. Allgood’s attachment to the Government, but I believe that doctrine had availed them but little’.2 Allgood had had Jacobite contacts; on the grand tour he had met Thomas Forster, a great friend of his father’s, and travelled with him to Italy.3 But during the Forty-five his loyalty to the Hanoverian dynasty was so manifest that a local Whig wrote:4

I should certainly vote for Lord Ossulston if he had been opposed by any person reasonably suspected of Jacobitism, but considering Mr. Allgood’s good character and his zealous behaviour in the late rebellion, I cannot bring myself to vote against him ... I think we shall look a little too sour and show ourselves too irreconcilable to the bare name of a Tory if we can’t be so far softened and reconciled by Mr. Allgood’s behaviour as to look upon him as one of ourselves, but must to a man oppose him.

He was returned on petition a month later.

At the general meeting of the gentlemen of the country in July 1753 Allgood ‘behaved very hansomely’ by standing down and declaring he would give no ‘unnecessary trouble’.5 Knighted when he presented an address on the accession of George III, he died 26 Apr. 1782.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. New Hist. Northumb. xv. 199.
• 2. To Newcastle, 17 Jan. 1748, Add. 32714, f. 63.
• 3. Thos. Forster to James Edgar, 30 June 1737, Stuart mss 198/97.
• 4. E. Hughes, N. Country Life in 18th Cent. 266.
• 5. Northumberland to Newcastle, 5 July 1753, Add. 32732, f. 174.