Rutland

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 800

Elections

DateCandidate
29 June 1790GERARD NOEL EDWARDS
 JOHN HEATHCOTE I
26 Sept. 1795 PHILIP SHERARD, Lord Sherard, vice Heathcote, deceased
6 June 1796GERARD NOEL EDWARDS
 SIR WILLIAM LOWTHER, Bt.
13 July 1802GERARD NOEL NOEL (formerly EDWARDS)
 GEORGE EVANS, Baron Carbery [I]
31 Jan. 1805 JOHN HENNIKER MAJOR, Baron Henniker [I] vice Carbery, deceased
6 Nov. 1806GERARD NOEL NOEL
 JOHN HENNIKER MAJOR, Baron Henniker [I]
14 May 1807GERARD NOEL NOEL
 JOHN HENNIKER MAJOR, Baron Henniker [I]
19 May 1808 CHARLES NOEL NOEL vice Noel vacated his seat
17 Oct. 1812CHARLES NOEL NOEL
 SIR GILBERT HEATHCOTE, Bt.
9 May 1814 (SIR) GERARD NOEL NOEL, Bt., vice Noel, vacated his seat
23 June 1818SIR GILBERT HEATHCOTE, Bt.
 (SIR) GERARD NOEL NOEL, Bt.

Main Article

Since 1747 the Noels, earls of Gainsborough, and the Cecils, earls of Exeter, had combined to dominate the county representation, to the exclusion of the Finches, earls of Winchilsea, who did not challenge them after 1761. All three families were short of personal representatives. The 9th Earl of Winchilsea, lord-lieutenant of the county and a courtier, was unmarried. So was Henry, 6th Earl of Gainsborough, but a Noel had come in continuously since 1727, and since 1788 his representative was his nephew Gerard Noel Edwards, who inherited the estates in 1798 and, with his son, retained one seat throughout the period. No Cecil came in after 1768 and the 9th earl and his heirs had to resort to subsidiary landowners. On the retirement of George Bridges Brudenell in 1790, Exeter patronized the candidature of John Heathcote, whose late brother Sir Gilbert Heathcote had declined the opportunity of coming forward for the county—though it had been their father’s ambition.

When Heathcote was dying in 1795 his nephew Sir Gilbert Heathcote of Normanton, who had staked his claim to represent Lincolnshire the year before, endeavoured to persuade the grandees to accept him for Rutland instead. His being sheriff barred him, as Lord Gainsborough reminded him, adding, 31 July, ‘I have engaged to unite my interest with those families whom I have always acted with on similar occasions’. He hoped the peace of the county would not be disturbed. Sir Gilbert received this news on his way from Scarborough to call on Lord Exeter and thereupon turned back, but informed Exeter that he hoped he and his family were not being ‘proscribed from the representation of the county of Rutland’. Exeter’s reply was that he had believed Sir Gilbert to be committed to Lincolnshire, where he would ‘religiously’ support him at the general election: he himself was previously engaged as to Rutland. Lord Winchilsea had no objection to Sir Gilbert, but his views evidently lacked weight. Exeter and Gainsborough’s choice fell on Lord Sherard, heir of the 4th Earl of Harborough, whose interest in the county was ‘subsidiary to ... the other three’, and Harborough wrote to Sir Gilbert, 31 July, hoping for his concurrence in view of his own disqualification. Sir Gilbert’s confidant John Forsythe, who thought his best plan was to replace a locum tenens as Member, was indignant at the outcome: ‘Is the little county still to be governed by three or four overgrown individuals, and overgrown only in what they falsely call honours?’.1

Sherard came in unopposed, but readily retired at the general election. Sir Gilbert Heathcote then came in for Lincolnshire and the Exeter interest was successively represented without difficulty by Sir William Lowther, Lord Carbery and Lord Henniker, who offered jointly with the Noels. The minority of the 2nd Marquess of Exeter from 1804 placed his trustee Henniker in an invidious position and when Sir Gilbert Heathcote, ousted from Lincolnshire, renewed his claims to Rutland in 1812, he made way for him, with another seat to fall back on. Heathcote claimed in his address that ‘many freeholders’ were ‘desirous to see some change in the representation’ and in 1818 he boasted of his opposition to government.2 But there was no further change until 1838.

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. Lincoln AO, Ancaster mss 3 Anc. 9/4/10-18.
  • 2. Morning Chron. 1 Oct. 1812, 12 June 1818.