WOOD, John (1789-1856), of Edge Hill, Liverpool, Lancs.; Scoreby, Yorks. and Tanfield Court, Inner Temple, Mdx.

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

Constituency

Dates

1826 - 1832

Family and Education

b. 4 Nov. 1789, 1st surv. s. of Ottiwell Wood, fustian manufacturer, of Manchester and Grace, da. of John Grundy, woollen manufacturer, of Bury, Lancs. educ. by Rev. William Shepherd at Gateacre, Lancs.; Glasgow Univ. 1806; I. Temple 1820, called 1825.1 m. 9 Dec. 1828, Elizabeth, da. of Rev. James Serjeantson, rect. of Kirkby Knowle, Yorks., 2da. suc. fa. to Scoreby 1847. d. 10 Oct. 1856.

Offices Held

Chairman, bd. of stamps and taxes 1833-8, bd. of revenue 1838-49, bd. of inland revenue 1849-d.

Recorder, York 1832-3.

Biography

A cradle radical of Lancashire freeholder stock, Wood was baptized on 19 Nov. 1789 at Mosley Street Unitarian Chapel in Manchester, where his father Ottiwell Wood (1759-1847), a prosperous manufacturer and lifelong advocate of liberal ideas, had a house in Oldham Street.2 He was a founding trustee of Manchester Academy (1786) and treasurer (1803-8) during its transfer to York, where in 1808, when he also ‘retired’ to Liverpool, he purchased the 1,281-acre Scoreby estate, five miles south of the city, by which Wood later qualified as an East Riding magistrate.3 His mother was a great-great-granddaughter of John Grundy of Mathers (d. 1728), the progenitor of the Bury manufacturing dynasty and a co-founder in 1719 of Bank Street Presbyterian Chapel, Bolton, the source of many petitions that Wood presented.4

Intended for the Unitarian ministry, which his brother Samuel (1797-1849) entered in 1819, Wood left Glasgow University in 1808 without taking his degree and went into business at the Liverpool counting house of William and Edgar Corrie, preparatory to trading as a sugar refiner in partnership with his fellow Dissenter William Thornhill.5 A leading member with his father and brothers of the Liverpool Concentric Club, he seconded the nomination of the reformer William Ramsden Fawkes† for Lancashire in 1818, and canvassed for the radical Dr. Peter Crompton at Preston that year and Liverpool at the general election of 1820.6 Possibly for health reasons, he had recently (at the age of 30) embarked on a career in the law, and by 1826, when, at his father’s instigation, he contested Preston on the anti-corporation interest of Crompton’s former backers, he was a barrister on the Northern circuit and a successful practitioner at the bar of the Commons.7 Assisted by his Liverpool friends and wealthy Manchester liberal Dissenters (Edward Baxter†, Joseph Brotherton†, Mark Philips†, Richard Potter†, Thomas Potter, John Shuttleworth† and J.E. Taylor) and their newspapers (the Liverpool Mercury, Manchester Guardian and Manchester Gazette), he defeated the radical William Cobbett† and the ‘No Popery’ candidate Robert Smith Barrie and came in with the Whig 12th earl of Derby’s grandson Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley after a riotous 15-day poll. During it, he left Preston briefly on account of his mother’s death and was detained as a precaution after Barrie’s henchman Captain Samuel Martin Colquhitt challenged him to a duel for allegedly insulting the royal ensign.8 Mocked throughout as a ‘sugar baker’ and rabid Deist, ‘half-merchant, half-lawyer’, he advocated parliamentary reform, lower taxes and free trade, including repeal of the corn laws or a fixed duty. He also called for civil and religious liberty, the abolition of West Indian slavery, education for ‘the lower orders’, and temperance.9

Recalling the 1826 Parliament, in 1832 Edward Davies Davenport named Wood as one of the three ‘most willing’ members of the opposition ‘virtually’ led by Hume.10 A regular seconder and teller, his interventions in debate were frequent, wide-ranging and interrupted only by his regular absences on the circuit, for which he received leave, 9 Mar. 1827, 13 Mar. 1828, 1 Mar. 1830. He spoke for peace and toleration and combined the constitutional Whigs’ commitment to retrenchment, remedying distress and checking corruption with the radicals’ demands for an extended suffrage, the ballot, shorter parliaments, and ending military flogging. Though proficient, he did not excel as an orator: Brotherton, who observed him in 1828, noted that he was impossible to hear in a rowdy House.11 He voted in Hume’s minority on the address, 21 Nov. 1826, and seconded him against Canning on war with Portugal, 12 Dec., denouncing it as a harbinger of high property taxes and currency restrictions. His maiden speech, 7 Dec. 1826, delivered on presenting three Bradford distress petitions, described the sorry plight of the Lancashire weavers and labourers and was the first of his many tirades against agricultural monopolists and pleas for corn law and currency reform that session (22 Feb., 12 Mar., 21 May 1827).12 He voted in Whitmore’s minority for a 50s. corn pivot price, 9 Mar., and against increased protection for barley, 12 Mar. He opposed the duke of Clarence’s annuity bill, 16, 26 Feb., 2 Mar., and the proposed expenditure on garrisons, 20 Feb., and Canadian waterways, 12 June. His objections to the purchase of York House for use as a national art gallery focused on the building’s unsuitability and were easily dismissed by government, 11 May.13 He voted to consider removing bankruptcy jurisdiction from chancery, 22 May, and in a minority of ten for repeal of the Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act, 31 May. Like the Unitarian leader William Smith, Wood sought to distance himself from the weavers’ radical petitions for wage regulation while expressing sympathy for their plight and supporting inquiry, 30 May 1827, 30 Apr., 1 May, 2 June 1828.

He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and presented petitions he had solicited from congregations in Lancashire and elsewhere for repeal of the Test Acts, 23, 25, 30, 31 May, 6, 7, 8, 12 June 1827. On 7 June he described and stressed the practical difficulties faced by the Nonconformist merchants of ‘immense wealth ... shut out from all influence in the corporation of Liverpool’.14 The Smith Stanleys and others expected him to promote the enfranchisement of Manchester and electoral reform in Preston, and he was added to the committee on the borough polls bill, 3 May, and voted to restrict election expenditure, 28 May 1827.15 He divided for the Penryn disfranchisement bill that day, but made his support for it conditional on the rejection of sluicing, saying that he viewed the proprietorial influence of aristocratic landowners ‘with as much contempt as he did these corrupt boroughs’. He recommended the controversial Preston poll bill drafted by Derby’s attorneys, 14 June, and introduced it on the 18th, for printing and circulation.16 His inclusion on the select committee on the alehouse licensing bill and endorsement on 15 June 1827 of a Preston petition for modification of the 1824 (‘Tom and Jerry’) Act were severely criticized by the corporation and the Tory Preston Pilot.17

Opposing the duke of Wellington’s administration, he rallied to Hume on the estimates and tried in vain to expose and exploit the political differences between the home secretary Peel and the beleaguered colonial secretary Huskisson, 11, 12 Feb. 1828. He urged repeal of the Test Acts on presenting favourable petitions, 15, 20, 25 Feb., 5 Mar., and voted thus, 26 Feb. On 20 Feb., as a self-professed spokesman for the Dissenters, he made a personal plea for the repeal bill’s prompt enactment and also Catholic emancipation. He warned that the Dissenters’ 35-year silence was over and that defeat in the Lords (which he anticipated) would inevitably unleash a ‘grand and powerful union’ countrywide for religious toleration. He commended the Irish Catholics for petitioning for Test Acts repeal, when the Unitarians reciprocated, 24 Apr., 6 May, and divided for Catholic relief, 12 May. Wood questioned East Retford witnesses, 3, 4 Mar., and voted to find one of them guilty of perjury, 7 Mar. He voted against the disqualification bill, 24 June, and objected (as committee chairman) to changes proposed by Peel to the revived disfranchisement bill, before dividing against it, 27 June. He voted to lower the corn pivot price, 22 Apr., and for the gradual introduction of a fixed 10s. duty, 29 Apr. 1828, 19 May 1829. He divided for inquiry into chancery administration, 24 Apr., and took charge of the bankrupt laws amendment bill, 16, 23 May 1828. On the 28th he attended the Westminster reform dinner.18 Perceiving that his motive for opposing the Canning family’s pension, 13 May, was ‘perhaps different to that of others’ in the minority, he explained that it derived solely from Canning’s ‘uncompromising’ opposition to parliamentary reform, praised his ‘talents and genius’ and criticized the Tories’ ‘factious conduct which had embittered the latter years of his life’, 14 May. He joined in the criticism of the finance committee, its chairman Sir Mathew White Ridley and the estimates, 16 May, voted (as subsequently) against the grant to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels, 6 June, and echoed Hume’s objections to civil list pensions, 20 May, 10 June. He voted for the usury laws repeal bill, 19 June, and retrenchment, 20 June. He criticized the proposed Buckingham House expenditure, 23 June, and divided for inquiry into the Irish church, 24 June, and ordnance reductions, 4, 7 July. He considered the church establishment ‘overgrown’ and opposed the additional churches bill from conviction, 20 June. After failing to kill it by forcing four time-wasting divisions, 30 June 1828, he presented a barrage of hostile petitions from Unitarian congregations countrywide over the next ten days.

Addressing Lancashire concerns, and after prior consultation with the Smith Stanleys, on 12 Feb. 1828 Wood postponed the Preston poll bill, which the corporation now opposed, and sought to realize its principal objectives through the borough polls bill, on which committee he sat. He was a spokesman for it, 28 Apr.19 His detailed account of Liverpool’s electoral corruption failed to convince the House that a franchise bill was justified, 9 June, and his attempts (3, 4, 12, 26 June) to secure changes that Derby’s agents sought in the turnpike bill were also unavailing.20 He persisted in his bid to amend the 1824 Licensing Act (30 Apr., 19, 26, 27 June, 10 July), notwithstanding Preston corporation’s objections.21 His success, as counsel with George William Wood†, in resolving local differences over voter qualification facilitated the passage of the 1828 Manchester Police Act, which in July (after hopes that it would assist the transfer of Penryn’s seats to Manchester had been dashed) was celebrated as a tribute to his ‘sound judgement ... steady, consistent and inflexible adherence to liberal principles’ and growing influence.22 At Kirkby Knowle in December he married Elizabeth Serjeantson (d. 1887), whose brother Peter was a Liverpool broker. A pre-nuptual settlement gave them £6,000 and £550 a year charged to Scoreby.23

Wood welcomed the concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 despite the ‘bitter pill’ of the attendant Irish disfranchisements. Before going the circuit he presented and endorsed favourable petitions from Lancashire’s Dissenters, 6, 11, 16, 23, 27 Feb., 2, 3, 4 Mar., ridiculed Preston’s anti-Catholic petition as the Ultra Isaac Gascoyne’s bantling, 4 Mar., and divided for emancipation, 6 Mar.24 He attended a dinner at Preston’s Bull Inn to celebrate its passage, 28 Apr., but refused to make common cause with its radical supporters at the Black Bull.25 He was for permitting Daniel O’Connell to sit without swearing the oath of supremacy, 18 May. His interventions (on 11, 12, 25 May, 19 June) helped to revive the controversy over Nash’s role in the costly Buckingham House refurbishment and contributed to the baiting of the anti-Catholic Lord Lowther*, whose office as commissioner of woods and forests had been in abeyance. Having first criticized Lord Blandford’s opposition to the proposal, he voted to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May (as again, 11 Feb. 1830). He refused to vote for a new East Retford writ, 2 June, but divided for Blandford’s reform resolutions that day. As one of Hume’s key spokesmen against the ecclesiastical courts bill, which drew support from both sides of the House, he deliberately faulted its details and late introduction, so engaging its author, the dean of the court of arches Sir John Nicholl, in debate and forcing ministers to intervene, 3, 5 June. He had opposed the 1828 friendly societies bill on his constituents’ behalf and he ensured that they received copies of the 1829 bill, to which he secured minor alterations, 15 May. In December 1829 the corporation of York made him their counsel, and he took a house there in Tower Street.26

Wood was not in the Commons, 4 Feb. 1830, and maintained next day that had he been, he would have ‘felt at a loss’ how to vote on Knatchbull’s amendment regretting the omission of distress from the address, for although he shared the Ultras’ disappointment and hoped retrenchment and concessions on corn would alleviate the weavers’ plight, he could not align with them in opposition. Later that month, signalling a hardening of opinion, he refused to endorse distress petitions from Salford, 17 Feb., and Preston, 26 Feb., stating that he now saw no point in cutting taxes while Parliament remained unreformed. He spoke similarly of the need to put reform first when presenting a petition against the East India Company’s trading monopoly, 4 June. He voted for Blandford’s scheme, 18 Feb., to enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and for Russell’s moderate and O’Connell’s radical reform proposals, 28 May. He had endorsed resolutions similar to O’Connell’s on the 12th as the presenter of a Preston petition. He continued to support Hume and also divided fairly steadily with the revived Whig opposition on most issues, including Jewish emancipation, 17 May, on which he brought up favourable petitions, 20 May, 4 June, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 24 May (paired), 7 June. He voted in O’Connell’s small minorities on the Doneraile conspiracy, 12 May, for universal suffrage, 28 May, and for reform of the Irish Vestry Acts, 10 June 1830 (and again, 23 Jan. 1832).

With George IV’s death and a dissolution in prospect, he paid greater attention to local legislation (30 Apr., 12, 20 May, 4 June 1830). He had a petition criticizing Lancashire’s ‘close’ grand jury printed, despite the Smith Stanleys’ objections, 24 May, and opposed the administration of justice bill with Hume and O’Connell to the last, having on 4 June presented and supported hostile petitions from Cheshire, whose separate jurisdiction it abolished. He pressed in vain for inquiry into the management of the London parish of St. Luke’s by the church commissioners, 8, 17 June. He had yet to act on a promise (made in debate, 19 May 1829) to amend the Sugar Acts on behalf of the refiners, when Huskisson proposed a further reduction in the duty on West Indian sugars, 14 June. Opposing this, he criticized ministers, pleaded for deregulation and warned that ‘this silly idea of protecting the West Indian interest’ had resulted in a shortfall in raw sugar, harming the refiners and driving business abroad. Glancing at Huskisson, he added: ‘it is of no use to enter into commercial treaties with foreign powers with respect to refined sugar, for it is not a market our refiners want’. He rightly surmised that a three-cornered contest at Preston at the general election, when the radical Henry Hunt* made Smith Stanley’s seat his target, would not jeopardize his return, and he secured it at a cost of only £450; but his failure to spend deprived him of his early lead in the poll and dented his popularity. He paid tribute to Smith Stanley in his closing speech and argued against intervention on the continent to assist the deposed French king.27 Before Parliament assembled he was fêted in the manufacturing towns and as a guest at the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railway.28

The Wellington ministry naturally listed Wood among their ‘foes’. Opposing them on the address, 3, 5 Nov. 1830, he reserved particular criticism for the facility with which it sanctioned intervention in the Netherlands, Poland and Portugal, and the absence of any pledge on reform or measures to assist the labourers and the agricultural poor. He divided against them on the civil list, 12 Nov., and again on the 15th, when they were brought down. Addressing the House for the first time after Lord Grey succeeded Wellington as premier, 22 Nov., he promised to scrutinize the new ministry closely, expressed admiration for the Tories Sir Robert Peel and Lowther and explained that he would continue to sit with opposition as a ‘private individual’, yet would back the government on reform and taxation and support them in the event of an early dissolution. As ‘one of the no-party’, he criticized the ‘spoiling’ tactics resorted to by Peel in opposition, 7 Dec. 1830, 15 Feb. 1831, over the chancellor Lord Althorp’s game bill. He was appointed to the select committee on the East India Company’s charter, 4 Feb., and was an effective lobbyist against the calico duties, 28 Feb., 8 Mar. 1831. Making reform, including the ballot, his priority, he presented and endorsed favourable petitions from the manufacturing towns, 7 Dec. 1830, 21, 26, 28 Feb. 1831. Countering allegations by the anti-reformers and his colleague Hunt, who had defeated Smith Stanley at the December 1830 by-election, he described Lancashire as ‘overwhelmingly’ pro-reform, criticized Liverpool’s ‘narrow franchise’ and urged ministers to concede separate representation to Salford and to extend Wigan’s franchise, 26 Feb. Two days later he spoke similarly of York, ‘a great town in which there is merely a pretence of representation’, and, anticipating that the ministerial bill would disappoint the radicals, he projected it as an ‘essential benefit’ and ‘important step’ towards reform which ‘neither I nor those with whom I act will oppose’. Claiming support for it from ‘all Northern England and the manufacturing towns’, he defended it at length, 7 Mar., disputed counter claims made by Gascoyne as the presenter of Liverpool’s ‘moderate reform’ petition, 14 Mar., and brought up favourable ones, 16, 19 Mar. He voted for the bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. Presenting heavily signed favourable petitions from Manchester and Preston in Hunt’s absence, 20 Apr., he drew on them to dispute Hunt’s claim that Lancashire had tired of reform. Most of the mass of anti-slavery petitions he presented during that Parliament (4, 10, 12, 17, 25 Nov., 6 Dec. 1830, 14 Apr. 1831) were from Lancashire’s Dissenters, whose petitions against church rates, 25 Nov. 1830, and for tithe reform, 19 Mar. 1831, he also endorsed. On the locally divisive issue of the factory bill, he was named to the select committee, 14 Mar., and presented petitions from both sides, 19 Mar., 18 Apr., but declined to speak. At the 1831 general election he canvassed for reformers at Liverpool and in the county and only narrowly avoided a contest at Preston, which returned him with Hunt after intrigues against him failed. On the hustings, where he defended the reform bill, while reaffirming his support for shorter parliaments, a wider franchise and the ballot, he was (wrongly) accused of poor attendance and criticized for neglecting corn law reform and failing to defer to Hunt’s political leadership on ‘matters affecting the working classes’.29

William Ewart* recalled that on 5 July 1831, on the ‘important issue’ of the Liverpool writ and the anti-reformer John Benett’s attempt to disfranchise the borough for corruption

Rigby Wason came into the House with all the pomp and circumstance of a judge about to record the final sentence of disfranchisement against the freemen. He was armed with a large black book in mourning for the carpenters and other victims of his legislative justice. Great was his wrath when John Wood so promptly put an end to the proceedings.30

He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, and gave it steady support in committee. Commenting, 14 July, 8 Aug., on several petitions entrusted to him advocating amendments, he stated, to taunts from Hunt, that although he was sympathetic towards their demands, supporting the ministerial bill remained his priority. He defended the decision to retain the 1821 census as the standard for English borough disfranchisements, 14 July, and the provision made for Yorkshire, 10 Aug. When on 4 Aug. a second seat for Stoke-on-Trent was proposed, he stated his preference for single Member constituencies and conceding a Member to Ashton-under-Lyne (which was afterwards awarded). He voted for the bill’s third reading, 19 Sept., and was a majority teller for its passage, 21 Sept. He voted for the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. He divided for the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and consistently for its details, intervening only to ascertain how the registration clause would operate in Preston, 20 Feb. 1832. He paired for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar., and voted for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May. Next day, as directed by the meeting, he presented and endorsed a Manchester petition requesting that supplies be withheld pending its passage, which had had been rushed to him by Richard Potter, Fielden and Shuttleworth.31 On 17 and 24 May he cited the ‘large number’ of similar petitions he had received as proof of the continued popularity of the measure.32 He divided against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish reform bill, 1 June. He wanted the proposed boundaries for Whitehaven altered to neutralize Lord Lonsdale’s influence there and to amend the provisions for Stamford, 22 June 1832. He cast a minority vote for appointing 11 of its original members to the reconstituted Dublin election committee, 29 July, but divided with government on the controversy, 23 Aug. 1831, having first equated the motion to Benett’s ‘time-wasting’ Liverpool franchise bill (that he had opposed, 21 Apr. 1831) and condemned both. He divided with administration on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12, 16, 20 July, and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. 1832.

Wood’s pragmatism extended beyond reform, although he generally remained true to his original beliefs. He took pride in his select committee work on private and public bills, and his competence as a lawyer and businessman was recognized in appointments to the select committees on the East India Company, 28 June 1831, 27 Jan. 1832, and the West Indies, 6 Oct., 15 Dec. 1831. The demands they placed on him prevented him going the circuit.33 He defended the bankruptcy bill on behalf of its author lord chancellor Brougham, 14 Oct. 1831, 20 July 1832. Continuing to sit with opposition, he voted in small minorities against the grant for Cambridge professors’ salaries, 8 July 1831, 13 Apr. 1832, and the civil list, 18 July, whose provisions he again criticized, 25 July, 10 Aug. 1831. He spoke in favour of printing the Waterford petition for disarming the Irish yeomanry, 11 Aug., and inquiry into Thomas and Caroline Deacle’s case, which had a popular following in Preston, 27 Sept. However, he refused to let ‘irritation at past extravagance’ sway his votes on expenditure on the royal palaces, 28 Sept., 9 Dec. Preferring a fixed duty, he gave only qualified support to Hunt’s campaign for corn law repeal, 24 June, 13 Aug. His absence when the Preston petition was brought up, 12 Aug., was severely criticized in the radical press.34 Although pressed by Hunt and the magistracy to advocate repeal of the 1830 Sale of Beer Act, he was prepared to concede its merits and agreed with Althorp that change should be limited to making licensing hours uniform, 30 June. He brought up petitions requesting this, 14 June, 23 Aug., 7 Oct. 1831, 7 May 1832. As a member of the select committee, he defended their recommendation permitting the use of molasses in distilling, 20 July 1831. He apparently did not vote when party strength was tested on the sugar refinery bill, 12 Sept., but, clashing frequently with the West India planters’ spokesmen William Burge and Keith Douglas, he stated the refiners’ case for reviving the Act, 28 Sept., when government conceded inquiry to avoid defeat, and again, 7, 13 Oct., when it was carried. Wood had appeared ill at ease when dealing with petitions from Richard Carlile, 3, 24 Aug., and the Deist William Taylor, 15, 30 Aug. 1831, and the reference to ‘Divine Providence’ in the preamble to the cholera bill, which he voted to omit, 16 Feb. 1832, infuriated him. He was also drawn to speak against church rates, 7 Mar. He presented petitions for the immediate abolition of colonial slavery, 24 May 1832, but he is not known to have voted on Buxton’s motion that day. He voted to suspend military flogging, 19 June. His ‘clever words’ on the Peterloo massacre, 10 Feb., equivocal stance on the locally unpopular general register bill, 2, 22 Feb., and the factory regulation bill, 9, 10 Feb., 14 Mar. 1832, together with the generally silent support he gave to the anatomy bill, which Hunt vehemently opposed, won him few friends, and the weekly propaganda sheets of Hunt’s 3,730 voters exploited them as further evidence of his betrayal, incompetence and neglect.35 In June 1832, the corporation of York, which in January had commended him for clarifying their election laws, made him their recorder.36

With no prospect of a fourth return for Preston, Wood announced his retirement directly the reform bill became law. At the 1832 general election he campaigned for the Liberals Charles Poulett Thomson* and Sir George Philips* in Manchester and George William Wood in Lancashire South, and reported regularly to ministers on their candidates’ prospects in Northern England.37 Appointed by Grey in 1833 to chair the board of stamps and taxes, he relinquished the recordership of York for an administrative career, heading the revenue board under successive Liberal and Conservative governments. In June 1854 he turned down the knighthood offered to him by Lord Aberdeen’s ministry in recognition of his service.38 His commitment to education was a lifelong one. A committee member since 1832 of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, he frequently deputized for Lord Brougham at meetings. He resigned as their treasurer over policy differences in 1844 and subsequently played an active part in the development of University College, London, where he was a member of the council (1835-d.), chaired the management committee (1845-56), and instituted scholarships and tuition for recruits to the Inland Revenue.39 He died at Bath in 1856, survived by his wife (d. 1887) and two daughters. His will, dated 13 Dec. 1828, confirmed a pre-nuptual settlement in their favour.40

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Margaret Escott

Notes

Draws on obituaries in Preston Chron. 18, 25 Oct.; Manchester Guardian, 22 Oct.; Inquirer, 25 Oct. 1856; Christian Reformer, xii (1856), 757; Univ. Coll. London Ann. Report (1857), 13-14.

  • 1. I. Temple Archives Adm/4/9; BAR/4/1.
  • 2. IGI (Lancs.). Wood was not, as commonly stated, baptized in Cross Street chapel.
  • 3. Ibid.; Albion, 8 Mar. 1847; V.D. Davies, Hist. Manchester Coll. 72; VCH Yorks. E. Riding, iii. 161; VCH Lancs. v. 137, 142; PROB 11/2055/371.
  • 4. M. Gray, Hist. Bury, 44; E.D. Priestly Evans, Hist. Presbyterian Chapel, Bank Street, Bury, 179-80, 425-8.
  • 5. The Times, 31 Dec. 1822.
  • 6. J. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool (1875), i. 341; Manchester Mercury, 14 Mar. 1820; Preston Election Addresses (1826), 44-45, 122.
  • 7. The Times, 11 May; Liverpool Mercury, 12 May 1826.
  • 8. Manchester Guardian, 13 May, 10, 17 June, 1 July; Billinge’s Liverpool Advertiser, 20, 27 June, 4 July 1826.
  • 9. Preston Election Addresses (1826), 24, 44-45, 111-16; Manchester Guardian, 3 June; Preston Pilot, 1 July 1826; M.J. Turner, Reform and Respectability, 175.
  • 10. JRL, Bromley Davenport mss, Davenport mem.
  • 11. LSE Lib. Archives Division, Coll. Misc. 0146, Potter mss xii, Brotherton to R. Potter, 23 Apr. 1828.
  • 12. The Times, 8 Dec. 1826, 23 Feb., 22 May 1827.
  • 13. Ibid. 12 May 1827.
  • 14. Ibid. 24, 26, 31 May, 1, 7, 8, 9, 13 June 1827; Inquirer, 25 Oct. 1856.
  • 15. Preston Pilot, 17 Feb., 3 Mar.; Potter mss xiiia, ff. 181-2; Derby mss 920 Der (13) 2, Lord Stanley’s letterbk. iii, Birley to Stanley, 18 June 1827 and passim.
  • 16. The Times, 15, 19 June; Preston Pilot, 30 June 1827.
  • 17. The Times, 15, 16 June; Preston Pilot, 16, 23, 30 June, 7, 14, 21 July 1827.
  • 18. Add. 56552, f. 101.
  • 19. Derby mss (14) 61/1, Wood to Smith Stanley, 14, 27 Dec. 1827; 62, same to same, 7 Mar., Palmer to same, 8 Mar. 1828; Preston Pilot, 15 Dec. 1827.
  • 20. Derby mss (14) 62, Haydock to Smith Stanley, 3 May 1828.
  • 21. Ibid. Palmer to Smith Stanley, 22 Feb. 1828.
  • 22. Potter mss xii, ff. 136-203; M.J. Turner, ‘Manchester Reformers and the Penryn Seats’, Northern Hist. xxx (1994), 139-60; Billinge’s Liverpool Advertiser, 29 July 1828.
  • 23. Liverpool Advertiser, 16 Dec.; Gent. Mag. (1828), ii. 638; PROB 11/2075/371; 2242/881.
  • 24. Potter mss xii, f. 63.
  • 25. Preston Pilot, 2 May 1829.
  • 26. The Times, 7 Dec. 1829; Preston Pilot, 6 Feb. 1830.
  • 27. Preston Pilot, 3, 14 July, 7 Aug.; Derby Local Stud. Lib. Strutt mss, Strutt to wife, 13 July; Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham, 15 Aug.; Derby mss (14) 116/6, Winstanley to Smith Stanley, 18 Nov. 1830.
  • 28. Potter mss vi, almanac, 8 Sept.; Preston Pilot, 18 Sept. 1830.
  • 29. Derby mss (14) 116/6, Winstanley to Smith Stanley 24 Apr.; Hatfield House mss, bdle. 4, Leigh to Salisbury, 30 Apr.; Preston Chron. 30 Apr., 7 May; Brougham mss, Shepherd to Brougham [1831]; W. Proctor, ‘Orator Hunt’, Trans. Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, cxiv (1962), 148-9.
  • 30. Manchester New Coll. Oxf. William Shepherd mss vii, f. 53.
  • 31. Manchester Guardian, 12 May; The Times, 12 May; Manchester Herald, 14 May 1832; Diaries of Absalom Watkin, a Manchester Man ed. M. Goffin, 145.
  • 32. Wheeler’s Manchester Courier, 19 May 1832.
  • 33. William Shepherd mss vii, f. 87.
  • 34. H.N.B. Morgan, ‘Social and Political Leadership in Preston, 1820-60’ (Lancaster Univ. M. Litt. thesis, 1980), 101.
  • 35. Lancs. RO, ‘Letters from the 3,730’, Jan.-June 1832, passim.
  • 36. York Chron. 19 Jan., 7 June 1832.
  • 37. Preston Chron. 30 June, 14 July; Manchester Herald, 28 Nov. 1832; Add. 37949, f. 285.
  • 38. Add. 40401, f. 119; W. Griffith, Hundred Years: The Board of Revenue, 1848-1949, pp. 7, 204.
  • 39. SDUK pprs. [BL 739.d.5.; 818.m.10.]; UCL archives, SDUK archives, 1832-44; college corresp. 1828-49.
  • 40. Gent. Mag. (1856), ii. 662; PROB 11/2242/881; IR26/2085/889.