STANHOPE, Philip Henry, Visct. Mahon (1805-1875).

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher, 2009
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

1830 - 1832
1832 - 2 Apr. 1833
1835 - 1852

Family and Education

b. 30 Jan. 1805, 1st s. of Philip Henry Stanhope†, 4th Earl Stanhope, and Hon. Catherine Lucy Smith, da. of Robert Smith†, 1st Bar. Carrington. educ. private tutors; Christ Church, Oxf. 1823. m. 10 July 1834, Emily Harriet, da. of Sir Edward Kerrison*, 1st bt., 4s. 1da. suc. fa. as 5th Earl Stanhope 2 Mar. 1855. d. 24 Dec. 1875.

Offices Held

Under-sec. of state for foreign affairs Dec. 1834-Apr. 1835; sec. to bd. of control Aug. 1845-July 1846.

Biography

Grandson of the radical 3rd Earl Stanhope, nephew of the famous Levantine traveller Lady Hester Stanhope and eldest son of a scholarly Whig turned Ultra Tory, who succeeded to the earldom in 1816, Mahon came from a family whose members were renowned for their diverse talents and eccentricities. He displayed a precocious ability at languages and composition, and excelled in the course of literary and practical education prescribed for him by his father.1 He was taken on his first continental tour as a boy in 1812 and after studying at Oxford, where he was active in the Union, he spent several years abroad, visiting Belgium, Germany and Italy, March-April 1825, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, July 1825-January 1826, and France, Spain, Gibraltar and Tangier, September 1827-May 1828. The Peninsula made a particularly strong impression on him, and he found the Spanish ‘individually one of the finest races of men in the world although an oppressive government has rendered them nationally nothing’.2 He made his reputation as a historian with his first work, The Life of Belisarius, the sixth-century Roman general, which was published in 1829.3

Mahon’s father refused to countenance his desire to enter the army, having parliamentary ambitions for him instead. As he thought that there was no possibility of acquiring an ‘independent seat’, he wrote to advise Mahon to side with the ‘government party’, led by the prime minister, Lord Liverpool, as the lesser of two evils, 23 Apr. 1825. His son replied from Rome, 19 Feb. 1826, that it

seems to me that the present unanimity of most people tends very much to diminish the importance of party, but I concur with you in thinking that from the present prosperous situation of the country, one would be most inclined to enlist with those to whom we are indebted for it, that is the present administration.4

Returned to England, he attended debates in the Commons: for example, he later commented there (22 Mar. 1831) that he had been present to hear Canning’s speech on the silk trade, 13 Apr. 1826. No opening occurred at the general election later that year, and nothing came of soundings made by Stanhope in 1827 about vacancies in Ireland, which had been thought a possibility because Mahon, unlike his father, was strongly in favour of Catholic emancipation.5 In May 1828 he hoped that, despite the ‘singular and almost unparalleled’ state of parties, the penal laws against Dissenters and Catholics would be lifted, though he opposed the idea of Jewish emancipation. Commenting on an approaching county meeting in Kent, where his father’s principal estates lay, he wrote that he did ‘not think that any moderate Catholics will have any chance at Maidstone on the 24th [Oct. 1828]; the contest will be between the Brunswickers and the blackguards Hunt and Cobbett’.6

On 18 June 1829 his close friend Philip Pusey*, whose writings on finance and politics he greatly admired, raised the possibility of one or other of them standing for two unnamed constituencies, which were almost certainly Rye and Seaford. Mahon replied that

my father’s wish as to my seat is not to give a round sum at once but to fix an annual payment and he has authorized me to offer as much as £1,000 a year. If the thing could be settled even at this ‘eleventh hour’ of the session I could make a payment immediately, but I fear that he would decidedly object to incurring the risk of a speedy dissolution by paying £3,000 down.

Their joint expenses at Seaford amounted to about £100, but while Pusey was successful at Rye in March 1830, Mahon was left empty-handed. On 5 Aug. 1829 he had his first interview with the diplomat Viscount Strangford, who also set about trying to find him a seat. Troubled by bouts of ill health throughout that year, he remained essentially optimistic about the march of events:

For when I consider what numerous and terrible gales the vessel of the state has weathered and overcome during the last forty years, I can hardly imagine the possibility of any impending shipwreck, though not without apprehensions of tossing from a tempest. Increase of population beyond all reasonable means of maintenance - this is the circumstance which in my mind most darkens the horizon.7

Mahon’s search for a constituency began in earnest in May 1830, when the king’s death seemed imminent. Stanhope now put up £3,500 to buy him a seat, but none was initially available at that price. He considered Canterbury, where with his local connections he might have been able to replace the ministerialist Member, Stephen Rumbold Lushington, who was resident in India. Stanhope, however, strongly opposed the idea of Mahon engaging in what would probably prove to be an expensive contest there, though his friends advised him to keep the plan in reserve. On 21 May Strangford wrote that

between ourselves, I strongly suspect that Mahon has had some sort of intimation from Lord G[ranville] S[omerset]* that government, satisfied with the sort of general support which M[ahon] is disposed to give them, will not set up a candidate in opposition to him. This is merely my conjecture, but I think there must be something in it, from the change in Mahon’s tone, within the last 48 hours, when speaking of the manifold inconveniences and vexations of a contest - of which he now, comparatively, makes light, and above all, from the more decided manner in which he talks of supporting government.

Mahon, however, pledged himself to take an independent stance and said that he ‘would not as my mother advises accept of a treasury seat on any account’, but he urged his father to agree, 24 May:

I fully admit the objections in my circumstances to a contest, and I only wish for one in case a purchase should be impossible at the price which we propose. You must not therefore look upon the alternative as a purchase but as not being in Parliament at all. Now many things are comparatively good which are not positively good. If I don’t come into Parliament now, there is an end of my political prospects for life, since at the next election I should be too old to enter upon them with any prospect of success and should have fixed upon another (probably a literary) turn.

He nevertheless abandoned the idea of Canterbury when a ministerialist candidate started. Meanwhile, his maternal grandfather Lord Carrington had failed to bring him in for Hedon, where he would also have had to face a contest, or at any of his other boroughs, and he was just beaten to the purchase of a vacancy at Lymington.8 By early July, however, he had secured a seat on Lord Clarendon’s interest at Wootton Bassett, for which, under an undated electoral agreement, he was to pay £1,500 a year. But he could not escape the necessity of conducting a canvass, including a speech made ‘from my horse like a Roman general to his troops’, which he found extremely exhausting; Lord Porchester*, with whom he soon became friends, described him as ‘a noble fellow’.9 It was probably at this time that Pusey informed a deputation ‘from a borough on the coast of Sussex’ that Mahon, to whom they gave the erroneous title of colonel, had been ‘summoned in another direction and was therefore obliged to decline the honour they intended him’.10

He was listed by the Wellington ministry among the ‘doubtful doubtfuls’, probably because he had left England, 11 Aug. 1830, to restore his health on the continent.11 In a letter to Pusey, 18 Aug., he condemned the change of government in France on the grounds that the people would now

expect to find a revolution in future a sort of easy transfer from a bad government to a good one, without any infringement of vested property or legal rights, as a sort of storm, which is to last but a few days or hours, and end like other storms only in the clearing and purifying of the air.

On 2 Oct. he observed that ‘of all forms of government none perhaps is so bad as progressive government which does not rest on institutions or look back to former periods of its national history but hurries forwards in pursuit of theories’.12 Although sensitive to possible charges of indolence, he asked his father, 9 Oct., whether ‘on public grounds should I not better consult my duty, by postponing my attendance till the second meeting in February than by entering upon it with a strength unequal to the duties it imposes?’13 By 8 Nov., when he informed Lord Holland that he was ‘poring over antiquities at Rome’ rather than attending the ‘very important session in London’, he had decided to delay his return until the new year.14 Porchester wondered whether he would continue to act with the ‘Wellington party’, but in a letter to Stanhope from Naples, 6 Dec., Mahon stated that

had I been in England my vote would have been with the minority the other night [15 Nov.], both on that question itself - for I think that retrenchment in the civil list is already carried to the utmost verge of national prudence or national dignity - and also with reference to the probably effect of a defeat in dissolving the ministry. I looked upon the talent and decision of the duke of Wellington as our safeguard for tranquillity at home, upon his renown in Europe as our best security for peace abroad and I much lamented that the country should be deprived of the services of the greatest hero she has ever, though fertile in heroes, produced.15

In a similar letter to Pusey, he added that

to curtail, I mean to any extent, our public salaries sounds popular, and is readily swallowed by the mob, and yet it is in fact a most aristocratical and exclusive system since it tends to prevent any man from entering the public service without a good patrimonial fortune of his own.16

With the occasional exception, such as over his allowance, Mahon and Stanhope rarely differed personally, but they did do so, albeit usually amicably, over politics. Mahon, for instance, could not follow the Ultra line in favour of parliamentary reform, and in a letter to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 19 Dec. 1830, he condemned the

Protestant gentry and Protestant clergy, who if you get the soundest of them sometimes in private by their firesides, will tell you, very many of them, that the House of Commons does not properly represent the people or that measure [Catholic emancipation] could not have been so carried.17

Mahon arrived back in England, 26 Jan., and took his seat, 3 Feb. 1831.18 In a lengthy maiden speech, 2 Mar., he pointed out inconsistencies in the ministry’s reform proposals and between the aims of its various supporters. He said that he supported the enfranchisement of large towns, as had been proposed in the previous session, as ‘legal and constitutional, founded on expediency and upheld by precedent’, but he condemned the bill: ‘we are told we must vote for this measure if we wish to avoid a revolution. Why, Sir, this measure itself is a revolution’. Denying that he had any electoral, party or personal interest to defend, he promised to oppose the bill, being ‘convinced that our whole constitution would speedily sink under such a rash course of empirical experiment’. According to his own note, ‘dates in my life’, he said ‘a few words more’, 7 Mar.19 He intended to introduce a bill on the subject of dramatic authorship, but none was forthcoming in this period.20 On 22 Mar. he informed his father that

I am now quite full of a speech I am to make tonight. Not finding a good opportunity, or not able to catch the Speaker’s eye last night, I moved an adjournment at three this morning which was carried and which will give me ‘possession of the House’ as it is called at five this afternoon. Damned awful this prospect! I am in a great funk and much afraid of failure.21

Strangford related that he

chose a bad moment for getting up, and much of the beginning of his speech was lost, owing to the confusion and shuffling of feet in taking places, etc. But when he was heard, he was heard with much attention, and had evidently a perfect command of the good will of the House.22

He started by rebutting several of the reformers’ standard arguments, notably by denying that either Pitt or Canning, whose principles he claimed to follow, would have approved of the bill. His main point was that it would improve the House in talent, but that this would not be ‘honesty’, ‘not practical information, not liberal knowledge, not statesmanlike views, but a low, selfish pettifogging sort of talent - I ought rather to have called it cunning’. Similarly, independent country gentlemen of the type of Sir James Graham would be replaced by ‘some attorney’s clerk - some fellow without a virtue or a shilling’, or men ‘without any fixed principles of action - without any stake in the country’, who were ‘the delegates of local interests or particular prejudices’. He also declared that he had an ‘eager and an anxious wish to satisfy the people’, but only by ‘changes that do not go the fearful length of establishing a new constitution’, and he duly voted against the bill’s second reading. Somerset reported to Stanhope the next day that ‘I heard but one opinion of his performance. The House constantly cheered him’. His speech, which (like that of 2 Mar.) he corrected and published, was indeed widely praised, not least by Wellington, with whom he soon established a close friendship.23 Fully aware of his father’s fear that a declaration against reform would make him a ‘marked man’ in any popular contest, Mahon nevertheless decided to attend the Kent county meeting, 24 Mar.

because I thought it right and becoming to show that I was not afraid of meeting the people the very next day after the vote I had given, and because I felt convinced that the great unpopularity which must at present necessarily attend that vote, would be not aggravated but diminished by my stepping forward firmly and boldly in vindication of it.24

His plea for more moderate reform was given an impatient and hostile hearing, and he was forced to write to the press to deny an allegation made by another speaker that he derived £1,000 a year from borough influence.25 He was, however, congratulated for his stand against the reformers, and Wellington wrote to Lady Stanhope, 31 Mar., that he ‘admired his spirit in coming forward to oppose them, and the temper with which he bore their taunts’. As he informed his father, 12 Apr., the former lord chancellor Lord Eldon called on him after his success and, like other Tories, evidently hoped to use his influence to win over Stanhope to their side in the Lords.26 On 12 Apr. he asked Lord John Russell whether ministers considered that an alteration of the proportion of seats allotted to England, Ireland and Scotland would amount to a violation of the principle of the bill, but received no reply. He attended the first day’s debate on Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment to this effect, 18 Apr., which he summarized as ‘much bad oratory and no result’. The following day he voted in the majority for the motion and, although he believed ministers might still persist, he acknowledged in private that talk of their resignation was prevalent.27 His short satirical piece, A Leaf from the Future History of England, dated 19 Apr., described the beginnings of the ‘English revolution’ of 1831.28 Partly because of his defence of the rights of the Maidstone freemen at the Kent meeting, he was solicited to offer at the subsequent general election, but he refused to consider standing there or for Kent. Instead, he successfully negotiated his return on the same terms for Wootton Bassett, where he and Porchester endured more arduous canvassing. He had feared widespread violence during the nationwide election and was dismayed at the Tory defeats, especially in the counties, which he felt deprived the opposition not only of physical but also of moral strength.29 At the Pitt Club dinner, 28 May 1831, he spoke in praise of his kinsman, attacked the administration, advocated moderate reform and disclaimed any anti-Catholic sentiments.30 It must have been at about this time that he became intimate with the leaders of the Tory party and attended meetings at Charles Street (for which he entered a subscription of £10, 25 Feb. 1832).31 The following month he requested the attendance of Lord Carnarvon, Porchester’s father, at a Conservative dinner, insisting that reform was ‘not a party, but a national question’.32

He criticized ministers for advising a dissolution and complained that they had concealed the significant principles of the bill, 21 June 1831. He also condemned the recent elections, ‘which did not proceed from the calm judgement of the country, but rather from its inflamed and misguided passion’, and argued that the bill was only supported by those who thought it preferable to no reform at all, or those who saw it as a first step towards the overthrow of monarchical institutions. In default of a more senior alternative, Sidney Herbert† forwarded to Mahon the anti-reform petition of the resident bachelors and undergraduates of Oxford University, which he presented and endorsed, 1 July.33 He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced bill, 6 July, but at least once with ministers against adjourning debate on it, 12 July. On 14 July he told Tom Macaulay*, who considered him a ‘violent Tory, but a very agreeable man and a very good scholar’, that ‘friendships of long standing were everywhere giving way and that the schism between the reformers and anti-reformers was spreading from the House of Commons into every private circle’.34 He divided for using the 1831 census to determine the boroughs in schedules A and B, 19 July, and to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July. He raised a few points in what he admitted was a vain defence of Wootton Bassett, 26 July, when he had to apologize for calling Daniel O’Connell’s allegations of corruption there ‘indecent personalities’. He chaired a political dinner for Sir Edward Knatchbull, the former Member for Kent, at Sittingbourne, 3 Aug., when he spoke in praise of his conduct in the House.35 Although one of those who ‘voted generally against the bill’, he sided with ministers for the division of counties, 11 Aug. He argued that Members should attend the coronation in court dress, 1 Sept., and divided for a select committee on the renewal of the Sugar Refinery Act, 12 Sept. He voted against the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept. Mahon requested George Robert Gleig, perpetual curate of Ash, near Sandwich, to accept the editorship of a proposed Tory newspaper, 14 Sept., as ‘I am convinced that in the present danger which threatens all our ecclesiastical as well as all our political establishments, there cannot be a higher moral duty than that of endeavouring to rescue both’.36 Gleig wrote to Wellington, 21 Sept., to urge him to help stir Mahon, who was ‘most zealous, most intelligent and most able’, into taking a leading part in Kent against the bill.37 He did write a Letter to the Lords by a Member of the House of Commons, dated 22 Sept., in which he advocated a period of delay so that the real anti-reform opinion of the people could become apparent, and he attended, but probably did not speak at, the Kent reform meeting, 30 Sept.38 He continued to be involved with plans for establishing a newspaper, but his scheme to raise £10,000 by means of a subscription of £50 from each of 200 opposition Members was immediately dismissed by Wellington as impractical.39 On 14 Oct. he informed his father that he had recovered from his inflammatory tendency, and had become ‘particular friends’ with Lord and Lady Salisbury. Four days later he reported to Pusey his belief that the king was firmly opposed to creating enough peers to ensure the bill’s success and that this issue might split the cabinet, while Henry Labouchere* agreed with Mahon’s view, 27 Oct. 1831, that opinion in the south of England was turning decisively against reform.40

Nevertheless, he wrote to his mother, 1 Dec. 1831, that ‘in politics things look blacker than ever and it daily becomes more evident that the question is not one of privileges or of parties but of property’; and, on 7 Dec., that he had gone to London and had ‘plunged at once into politics in which, sink or swim, I must continue immersed for many months’.41 He objected to the uniform £10 borough qualification, 16 Dec., and argued that the revised bill excluded the higher and lower classes, which meant that ‘under the present system all places are not represented, but all classes are; and that, in the new system, every place would be represented, but only one class’. He condemned ministers for not basing their measure on prescription, because

if you had but looked to practical grievance, rather than theoretical anomaly - if you had first enfranchised the large towns, and then, to make way for this increase, struck off an exactly equal number of small boroughs - why you might have expected to frame, not only a moderate, but a final reform.

He boasted that his speech ‘has been successful beyond my wildest expectations’ and was considered superior to that of his colleague, which was a ‘very high and certainly a very undeserved comment’. Others were critical, however, and thought it was chiefly notable for having provoked what Mahon himself, admiring ‘merit in an adversary’, called a ‘great speech’ by Macaulay.42 He duly voted against the bill’s second reading the following day. He supported the promotion of addresses to the king against the creation of a large number of peers, and he urged Pusey to speak and to take a leading part in opposing the bill’s details.43 He divided against going into committee on it, 20 Jan., and the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb. 1832. In moving the wrecking amendment against the bill’s third reading, 19 Mar., he extolled the certain benefits of gradual and moderate reform in preference to the unforeseeable consequences that extensive alterations might have for the public funds, the distribution of property and the due influence of the landed and commercial interests. He argued that all but two of the 14 literary men and most of the eldest sons of peers in the House would be unseated by the implementation of the bill, and that it would not prevent future wars or high government expenditure. He ended by appealing to those who had voted for its second reading, but against its details, to listen to the changing voice of public opinion and to join him in defeating the bill. He, of course, voted for his amendment, 22 Mar., which was lost by 355-239. He may well have been absent for much of the session through poor health, and was, for example, overtaken by illness as he attempted to obey the call of the House for Lord Ebrington’s motion for an address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the bill unimpaired, 10 May. He regretted missing a division ‘in which not only the interest of one’s party but the fate of one’s country are so essentially involved’. He was praised for his speech at the Pitt Club dinner, 30 May, but he subsequently went out of town again several times.44 He divided against the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July 1832, after which he wrote to Gleig that

this comes to you from a man half dead with sitting up in the House of Commons till five this morning at a temperature something like the famous Black Hole at Calcutta. I had however the satisfaction of seeing the ministers completely put down in argument and to observe how many of their friends had ‘sudden business in the country’ or ‘severe indispositions’ and stayed away from the division.45

While aware of the dangers of the ‘vigorous opposition’ inheriting the blunders of an ‘imbecile administration’, he continued to hope that the latter might be replaced, and, as he wrote to Pusey, 9 June, he thought that Wellington’s attempt to form a government should have been

supported at all risks, because then we had a chance, nay a certainty, of greatly modifying the reform bill and of supporting the independent privileges of the House of Lords. Our feelings of delicacy have lost us this last opportunity of rescue. The bill has passed unmodified and the authority of the peers as an independent body has received a deep and perhaps deadly wound.

He regretted Peel’s ‘fatal hesitation’ which had brought this about, but recognized, 5 Aug., that the

majority of our staunch friends were not yet convinced, as all discerning men nearer headquarters have been for many months, of the necessity, after what had passed, of granting a considerable measure. We have all become moderate reformers in London, though we never declared ourselves so as a party, but the country is still full of anti-reformers, and I think that had we pursued a different course collectively, we should have disgusted them without conciliating the enemy.46

Although he could make an impressive set speech, Mahon was not an able debater, and Lord Ellenborough thought he would never be very effective as a speaker. He was, however, active in the House, and apparently attended committee sittings regularly (at least on the reintroduced reform bill), as he once reported to his father that

we continue billing (but certainly not cooing, for we are very fierce and angry) on Wednesdays and sometimes on Saturdays, and you will therefore easily believe that all this especially on the dog days is very trying to the health and spirits.47

Facing the loss of his seat at Wootton Bassett, he was anxious to find an opening elsewhere. An initial sign that he might be supported at Sandwich came to nothing, and he also ruled out a contest for (probably the Eastern division of) Kent. He had hopes of Aylesbury, but lost the chance of what he considered would have been a seat for life when, in July 1832, Lord Nugent’s expected appointment as commissioner of the Ionian Islands threatened a by-election (which did not, in fact, take place) and, as Mahon felt that he could not vacate and enter the lists so soon before a dissolution, his friends were obliged to switch their support to another candidate.48 Instead, Salisbury put him up at Hertford, where, after succeeding in a violent contest, he was accused of bribery and unseated on petition. However, he was returned there at the general election of 1835 and served out the rest of his Commons career as its Member.49 To favourable reviews, he published his History of the War of the Succession in Spain in 1832, with a dedication to Wellington.50 His subsequent stature as a historian rests mainly on his seven-volume History of England (1836-54) and his four-volume Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (1861-2), but he pursued many other cultural interests and twice served briefly in minor office under Peel. He died in December 1875, being succeeded as 6th Earl Stanhope by his eldest son, Arthur Philip (1838-1905), Conservative Member for Leominster, 1868, and Suffolk East, 1870-5.51

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Stephen Farrell

Notes

  • 1. Cent. Kent. Stud. Stanhope mss U1590 C130/1, 2; C131/1, 3; A. Newman, Stanhopes of Chevening, 241-3.
  • 2. Stanhope mss C130/3, 4; C296/1; C318/1; Berks. RO, Pusey mss D/EBp C1/7, 30; Newman, 226, 243, 298-300.
  • 3. Newman, 280-1.
  • 4. Stanhope mss C130/3; C316/1.
  • 5. Ibid. C191/1, Stanhope to Cramer, 4 Apr.; C255, Mahon to Griselda Teckell, 18 May 1827; Newman, 251-2.
  • 6. Stanhope mss C130/4, Mahon to Stanhope, 14 Oct. 1828; Pusey mss C1/21, 35.
  • 7. Stanhope mss C296/1; Pusey mss C1/1, 4, 13, 26, 31, 36, 43.
  • 8. Stanhope mss A122/1; C130/9, Mahon to Stanhope, 19, 22, 24, 26 May, Wed., Sun. [June]; C138/2, Strangford to same, 21, 26 May; C318/2, Mahon to Lady Stanhope, Wed. [n.d.] 1830.
  • 9. Ibid. C138/2, Strangford to Stanhope, 6 July; C318/2, Mahon to Lady Stanhope, 5, 29, 30 July; C381/1; A122/1; Hants RO, Carnarvon mss 75M91/L12/2; Devizes Gazette, 1, 8 July 1830.
  • 10. Stanhope mss C353, Pusey to Mahon [n.d.].
  • 11. Ibid. C296/1.
  • 12. Pusey mss C1/32, 43.
  • 13. Stanhope mss C130/9.
  • 14. Add. 51835.
  • 15. Carnarvon mss J3/17; Stanhope mss C130/11.
  • 16. Pusey mss C1/41.
  • 17. Stanhope mss C130/9, Mahon to Stanhope, 31 May 1830; Newman, 228-30, 252-3, 301-2; Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Arbuthnot mss.
  • 18. Stanhope mss C296/1.
  • 19. Ibid.
  • 20. Ibid. C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, 18 Mar. 1831; C381/1, Cromwell to Mahon, 25 Feb. 1832.
  • 21. Ibid. C130/11.
  • 22. Ibid. C138/2, Strangford to Stanhope, 26 Mar. 1831.
  • 23. Ibid. C130/11; C190/2; C385/1; Pusey mss C1/8; Newman, 253; Earl Stanhope, Conversations with Wellington, p. v.
  • 24. Stanhope mss C316/2, Stanhope to Mahon, 19, 25 Mar.; C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, 26 Mar. 1831.
  • 25. The Times, 25, 28 Mar. 1831.
  • 26. Stanhope mss C130/11.
  • 27. Ibid. C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, 19, 20 Apr. 1831.
  • 28. Ibid. C385/1.
  • 29. Ibid. C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, 22 Apr.; C381/1, Caney to Mahon, 1, 26 Apr., electoral agreement [n.d.]; A122/1; Maidstone Gazette, 19 Apr.; Pusey mss C1/44; Carnarvon mss L12/6; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss, Mahon to Sneyd, 5 May 1831.
  • 30. Stanhope mss C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, 30 May; Standard, 30 May 1831.
  • 31. Pusey mss C1/9, 45; Stanhope mss A122/1.
  • 32. Carnarvon mss B24/80.
  • 33. Wilts. RO, Pembroke mss 2057/F5/15.
  • 34. Macaulay Letters, ii. 21, 70.
  • 35. Maidstone Jnl. 9 Aug. 1831.
  • 36. NLS mss 3870, f. 19.
  • 37. Wellington mss.
  • 38. Stanhope mss C385/1; Maidstone Jnl. 4 Oct. 1831.
  • 39. Wellington mss WP1/1195/22; 1196/14; 1199/10, 15; 1200/6, 7; A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press, 468-9, 471-3; NLS mss 3870, ff. 29, 33.
  • 40. Stanhope mss C130/11; C381/1; Pusey mss C1/24.
  • 41. Stanhope mss C318/2.
  • 42. Ibid. C318/2, Mahon to Lady Stanhope [17], 19 Dec.; Add. 51569, Ord to Lady Holland [16 Dec.]; 51573, Rice to same [16 Dec. 1831]; NLS mss 3870, f. 70.
  • 43. NLS mss 3870, f. 66; Pusey mss C1/1.
  • 44. Stanhope mss C130/8, Mahon to Stanhope, Sun. [n.d.], Fri. [May]; C296/1; C316, Stanhope to Mahon, 1 June; Standard, 31 May 1832.
  • 45. NLS mss 3870, f. 73.
  • 46. Pusey mss C1/12, 22, 32.
  • 47. Stanhope mss C130/11, Mahon to Stanhope, Sun. [n.d.]; C255, same to Griselda Teckell, 4 July 1831; Three Diaries, 310; Newman, 253, 272, 276, 309-10.
  • 48. Stanhope mss C130/8, Mahon to Stanhope, 19 June, 12, 21 July 1832; C381/1; NLS mss 3870, ff. 73-75; Pusey mss C1/23, 27, 31; Newman, 254.
  • 49. Stanhope mss C130/8, 10; C318/2; C382; NLS mss 3870, ff. 75-81; Pusey mss C1/18, 22, 23, 40; V. Rowe, ‘Hertford Borough Bill of 1834’, PH, xi (1992), 103; Newman, 254-7.
  • 50. Wellington mss WP1/1185/29; Newman, 285-7.
  • 51. The Times, 25 Dec. 1875; DNB; Oxford DNB; Newman, 263-4, 272-5, 277-98.