Huntingdon

Borough

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

Background Information

Right of Election:

in the freemen

Number of voters:

about 200

Population:

(1801): 2,035

Elections

DateCandidate
21 June 1790HON. JOHN GEORGE MONTAGU
 JOHN WILLETT PAYNE
22 Dec. 1790 HENRY SPEED vice Montagu, deceased
26 May 1796WILLIAM HENRY FELLOWES
 JOHN CALVERT II
5 July 1802WILLIAM HENRY FELLOWES
 JOHN CALVERT II
31 Oct. 1806WILLIAM HENRY FELLOWES
 JOHN CALVERT II
6 May 1807JOHN CALVERT II
 WILLIAM MEEKE FARMER
3 Apr. 1809 SAMUEL FARMER vice Farmer, vacated his seat
5 Oct. 1812JOHN CALVERT II
 SAMUEL FARMER
16 June 1818WILLIAM AUGUSTUS MONTAGU
 JOHN CALVERT II

Main Article

The Montagus of Hinchingbrooke, earls of Sandwich, remained parliamentary patrons of Huntingdon in this period, as they had been since the reign of Charles II. With only one house in the town, they owed their supremacy primarily to patronage, the 4th Earl having secured Admiralty and other places for the burgesses and he and his successors maintaining their ‘popularity’ by hospitality and grants of land around the town.1 When members of their immediate family were not available, which was often the case in this period, the 5th and 6th Earls returned neighbouring landowners who could be relied on to maintain their interest. These were sometimes paying guests: in 1796, an agent of Sir Gilbert Heathcote* wrote to Lord Sandwich to ask if it was true that both seats were to be ‘disposed of’;2 and in 1807 Sandwich was reported to have received £4,000 from Farmer for his seat, which would help defray his expenses in the county election.3 Moreover, Fellowes of Ramsey, whom Sandwich had returned since 1796 to curb his ambition for the county seat, wrote on 14 July 1806:

The terms under which you were kind enough to offer me a seat for the borough may possibly under all circumstances appear to me high; but there was one implied by a part of your lordship’s conversation, which if intended, leaves me no choice, viz. an expectation that the MPs for the borough should vote with ministry.4

Despite Fellowes’s reluctance to support the Grenville ministry, he was duly returned in October: in 1807 Sandwich supported his candidature for the county. At that election, although George Rose tried to interest Sandwich in providing a seat for George Duckett*, he sold it to Farmer.5

The first hint of opposition came in 1818, when the 6th Earl died abroad just before the election. William Waldegrave*, Whitbread’s son-in-law, made inquiries about the borough ‘in consequence of an invitation to stand from some outvoters’: the latter, many of them Admiralty employees, represented about half of the electorate. Waldegrave was, however, discouraged from offering himself by the local Whig attorney, Samuel Wells, then embroiled in the county election.6 The feeble contest of 1820 was the first since 1741.

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. Oldfield, Hist. Boroughs, i. 320.
  • 2. Hunts. RO, Sandwich mss 11G, Forsyth to Sandwich, 21 May 1796.
  • 3. Fortescue mss, Fortescue to Grenville, Mon. [May 1807].
  • 4. Sandwich mss 11G.
  • 5. Ibid. 11H, Rose to Sandwich, 29 Apr., Duckett to same, 29 Apr. 1807.
  • 6. Fitzwilliam mss, box 92, Maltby to Milton, 19 June 1818.