Shropshire

County

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Background Information

Number of voters:

about 4,000

Elections

DateCandidate
29 June 1790SIR RICHARD HILL, Bt.
 JOHN KYNASTON
6 June 1796SIR RICHARD HILL, Bt.
 JOHN KYNASTON
14 July 1802SIR RICHARD HILL, Bt.
 JOHN KYNASTON (POWELL)
8 Nov. 1806JOHN KYNASTON (POWELL)
 JOHN COTES
12 May 1807JOHN KYNASTON (POWELL)
 JOHN COTES
14 Oct. 1812JOHN KYNASTON (POWELL)
 JOHN COTES
25 June 1818JOHN KYNASTON (POWELL)
 JOHN COTES

Main Article

The county representation remained in the hands of the country gentlemen, who insisted on their independence and vetoed election expenses. There had been no contest since 1722 and the peace of the county was not effectively disturbed in this period. The conduct of Sir Richard Hill in Parliament and in the borough of Shrewsbury exposed him temporarily to the threat of opposition. In October 1795 Isaac Hawkins Browne* was reported to be contemplating standing against him; and perhaps it was he who was again referred to in a local anticipation, in January 1796, of the candidature of a ‘gentleman of high character, opulent fortune and the most respectable connexions whose independent spirit will set him far above the suspicion of temporizing, from private fears, upon constitutional questions’. But at the election of 1796 Hill’s opponents knew him ‘to be too strong’ to challenge.1

In December 1799, and again in June 1800, it was expected that the other Member Kynaston Powell would establish his claim to a peerage; his ‘great friend’ Sir Corbet Corbet of Adderley and Richard Lyster of Rowton Castle both came forward—the latter obtaining Lord Bradford’s preference—but no vacancy arose.2 Corbet returned to the fray in 1806, when Sir Richard Hill at length retired and supported the pretensions of John Cotes of Woodcote. He had intended to encourage his eldest nephew Col. John Hill to stand ‘and on this account both he and his father [John Hill*] gave up all thoughts of the borough of Shrewsbury’, but finding that Bradford and other magnates preferred ‘the Woodcote squire’ did not pursue it. Corbet was well inclined to the Grenville ministry, while Cotes espoused the tradition of independence. At the nomination meeting, the likelihood of a contest was deplored and Corbet earned the gratitude of the county by retiring in Cotes’s favour.3 There was no change until Cotes died in 1821, although both Members were remarkably lax in their attendance.

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. Oracle, 15 Oct. 1795; Salopian Jnl. 6 Jan.; True Briton, 6 June 1796.
  • 2. Shrewsbury Chron. 27 Dec. 1799; Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. (ser. 3), ix. 78; (ser. 4), xii. 20; PRO 30/8/125, f. 166; Bradford mss, Lyster to Bradford, 21 June, reply 23 June; Corbet to same, 2 July, reply 6 July 1800.
  • 3. Shrewsbury Chron. 31 Oct., 7 Nov.; Salopian Jnl. 12 Nov. 1806; Prince of Wales Corresp., vi. 2299; Bradford mss, Cotes to Bradford, 24 Oct., Sir R. Hill to same, 27 Oct., Eyton to same, 30 Oct., 9 Nov. 1806.