The Border town and county of Berwick-upon-Tweed, known for its salmon, smacks and agricultural produce, was an open and venal borough, which as ‘a town by itself’ had to be specifically mentioned in treaties and all national legislation.4 Contested elections followed by petitions were frequent, protracted canvassing customary, and the freemen, about a half of whom (4-600) were non-resident, expected payment for votes promised and votes cast.5 The ability of the neighbouring gentry of Northumberland, North Durham (Nor[t]hamshire and Islandshire) and Berwickshire to control the representation generally proved to be short-lived, and the leading local interests had been undermined by the insanity of Wilmot Vaughan (1755-1820), his father’s successor in 1800 as 2nd earl of Lisburne, and the apportionment of the Blake-Delaval estates following the death in 1808 of the 1st Baron Delaval, who latterly had ceased spending at elections. This had prompted interference by the dukes of Hamilton and Northumberland, the 2nd Earl Grey, the 8th earl of Lauderdale and the 2nd Viscount Melville who, as the Liverpool ministry’s first lord of the admiralty and Scottish election manager, attempted to harness to himself the influence available to government through the garrison, customs service and naval dockyards. Clubs affiliated to the three main eighteenth century parties - the populist Watson-Vaughan Constitutional Club, the Blake-Delaval Patriotic Club and the Independent Club, favoured by the Presbyterians - persisted, and they continued to organize the poor freemen and London and Newcastle out-voters at parliamentary and borough (guild) elections between 1820 and 1832.6 Non-elite tradesmen, newcomers and others excluded from the guild, but with votes at vestry elections, gravitated mainly to the Independents led by the corn merchant Rutherford Ainslie Clunie and the coroner and attorney Benjamin Nicholson. Employers commanding votes included the Berwick Shipping Company and its precursors who leased the Lisburne fisheries,7 the Chartres family (brewers, cabinet makers and ironmongers) and the shoe manufacturer George Thompkins, who had over 100 Berwick out-workers.8 Power was vested locally in the mayor and four bailiffs (the returning officers), who were chosen annually with the ‘alderman of the year’ and borough officers at Michaelmas by the resident freemen. Some eight to ten per cent of the borough’s adult males, they collectively constituted the corporation or guild and were entitled (with their widows) to shares of approximately six and two acres respectively in stints and meadows (4,500 acres) worth £6,500 a year. Guild offices controlling their allocation were usually contested and annual mayoral elections resumed in 1825 after a 30-year break. Freeman creations, of which there were 488 between 1818 and December 1831, peaked when out-voters were brought in at parliamentary elections (1818, 47; 1820, 80; 1826, 73; 1830, 46). The right of younger sons to become freemen had been confirmed by a parliamentary ruling in 1783 that only sons born after their father’s admission could qualify by birth, but both this and the right of out-voters to vote at guild elections were disputed. Furthermore, the parish vestry, the sole rating authority until the impecunious guild was forced to levy charges in 1828, was increasing in importance as a political forum.9

In 1820 the sitting Members, both Tory ministerialists, were Alexander Allan of Kingsgate, Kent, a director of the East India Company first returned in 1803, and his colleague since 1812 Henry Heneage St. Paul of nearby Ewart House, an anti-Catholic soldier and country gentleman, who was supported by the 3rd duke of Northumberland. They had trounced their Whig opponents in 1818, when the rump of the Vaughan-Watson party led by the town major, Captain Vaughan Forster of Palace Green and Lisburne’s kinsman, the defeated 1812 candidate Prideaux John Selby of Twizell House, Belford, failed to rally decisively; but by 1820 Allan, the veteran of four Berwick contests, could not afford another poll, poor health rendered St. Paul’s candidature uncertain, and the Whig Lord Ossulston, son and heir of the 4th earl of Tankerville of Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, had mustered local support following his 1818 defeat.10 Splitting the government interest, Admiral Sir David Milne of Inveresk, near Edinburgh, a close connection by his first marriage of Sir William Purves Hume Campbell of Marchmont (a claimant to the Polwarth peerage) and of the Home family of Paxton House and Wedderburn Castle, Berwickshire, entered the fray as a professed devotee of Melville.11 The election coincided with intervention by the magistrates and select vestry to combat strikes in the nearby coalfield and a slump in the salmon trade, which a delegation was sent to London to try to reverse.12 Milne, who spent £4,000 (and an additional £914, 1820-23), portrayed himself as Allan’s successor and commenced his Berwick canvass on 5 Feb. Ossulston, the first to rally and arrange transport for the London out-voters, arrived two days later, accompanied by his brother Henry Grey Bennet*.13 Ossulston and St. Paul issued canvassing notices, 11 Feb. Allan delayed announcing his retirement until the 17th, and, as the Bennets boasted, the contest was perceived from the outset to be between Milne and St. Paul for second place.14 A guild, attended by Ossulston and St. Paul, 29 Feb., from which Milne, a non-freeman, was excluded, adopted the usual addresses of condolence and congratulation.15 Nominating Ossulston, 8 Mar., the mayor Thomas Jordan Steel and the vicar of Berwick, Alderman Joseph Barnes, recommended him as a locally connected candidate and experienced politician. His sponsors, William Greive of Ord House and Alderman David Logan of Ferney Castle, Berwickshire, made similar claims for St. Paul. Milne, nominated by Vaughan Forster and William Foreman Home, appealed to the government, independent and Lisburne interests. As usual, polling was by seniority, commencing with the mayor, who plumped for Ossulston. Alderman David Elson plumped for Milne, and Greive, Admiral David Stow and Logan for St. Paul. The bailiff Richard Thompson and Alderman Daniel Ord of Longridge (1758-1827), a political devotee of Grey and author (as a putative candidate) of the successful 1802 petition, voted for Ossulston and Milne. The remaining bailiffs (Francis Chartres, David Richardson and Robert Yellowly), alderman of the year James Mills and George Thompkins voted for Ossulston and St. Paul.16 After the first day, when polling was largely confined to residents and local gentry, the poll stood at Ossulston 125, St. Paul 111 and Milne 64. Milne failed to overtake St. Paul the following day, but the voting after a three-hour adjournment at Ossulston 448, St. Paul 332, Milne 313 on the third day, pending the arrival of a boat from London and the enrolment in a tumultuous guild of its ‘freeman’ passengers, took the tally to Ossulston 460, St. Paul 352, Milne 322. With his opponents virtually polled out, Milne secured a further adjournment next morning, a Saturday, at Ossulston 463, St. Paul 353, Milne 344. Freemen admitted on Monday 13 Mar., amid protests from St. Paul and his friends, gave the advantage to Milne, for whom 25, all non-residents, plumped, and the poll was declared at Ossulston 470, Milne 373, St. Paul 356. Grey welcomed St. Paul’s defeat notwithstanding Milne’s Tory credentials, but the resident freemen immediately adopted a resolution of support for St. Paul ‘next time’ and proposed petitioning.17 The pollbook confirms Ossulston and St. Paul’s lead among the residents and Milne’s dependence on out-voters, but its format (separate lists of voters for each candidate) precludes further analysis. Of 1,199 votes cast, 874 by residents and 325 by out-voters, Ossulston (380:90) and St. Paul (290:66) each derived 81 per cent of his total from residents and 19 from out-voters. The figures for Milne were (204:169), or 55-45 per cent.18 Voter consistency from June 1818 to March 1820 has been estimated at 82-85 per cent: 78 per cent for St. Paul and 94 per cent for Ossulston, for whom 55 former St. Paul voters plumped and a further 137 cast a split vote.19

In January 1824 Captain Robert Romer of the ordnance office, who had previously been based in Berwick, informed the duke of Wellington as master-general that Milne, though approved by Melville, had made himself locally unacceptable to the government party ‘in consequence of his having coalesced with Lord Hamilton and thereby ousted ... St. Paul’.20 The latter’s partisans, the London fish factor George Landless and Berwick mariner James Lilburne, petitioned successfully against Milne’s return, which they attributed to illegally admitted votes and bribery, and his election was voided, 3 July 1820.21 Milne’s wife noted the corporation and Ford Castle agent Clement Pattison’s disloyalty to Milne and that ‘all the Berwick attorneys divulged everything they knew to each other’.22 Disqualified at the ensuing by-election, Milne issued notices dissociating himself from his agents’ activities and endorsed another ministerialist, Lauderdale’s son-in-law James Balfour* of Whittinghame.23 Lady Milne rightly cautioned that Balfour ‘has fallen into the same blender as yourself, namely been too long of starting, as St. Paul commenced his canvass on Wednesday evening; but I never yet have known anything rightly conducted that William Foreman [Home] had the direction of’.24 Balfour and the radical Whig Sir Francis Blake of nearby Tilmouth Park, a distant kinsman of the Delavals requisitioned by Steel, declared but desisted, leaving the ailing St. Paul, who had been ‘rapturously received’, 4 July, to come in unopposed on the 13th.25 On 2 Aug. 1820 Ossulston, one of Queen Caroline’s partisans, presented an address to her from the guild, secured on 31 July by William Riddell of Union Street and Mills, who ensured that they adopted an address of thanks to Ossulston for doing so.26

Blake and Balfour hurried to Berwick directly St. Paul’s death on 1 Nov. 1820 was announced. The writ could not be issued until the 23rd on account of the prorogation following the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties, and the queen’s treatment, the subject of a public meeting at the town hall, 17 Nov., illuminations and processions, 20 Nov., and a partisan loyal address from the guild, 2 Dec., became the main election issue. Blake criticized the government’s handling of the affair and Lauderdale’s vote for the bill, while Balfour defended them. Both professed themselves champions of the borough’s independence.27 Balfour was lampooned as a stranger determined to sell the borough to the ministry as a ‘joint-stock concern of Lauderdale, Balfour and Company’, and Blake as a radical demagogue.28 Blake’s London committee, first convened at the Freemason’s Tavern, 10 Nov., by the barrister William Boscawen Bell, and Balfour’s friends at the Angel Inn, Fenchurch Street, met daily to ensure that out-voters were ‘pouring in’ well before the nomination, 4 Dec.;29 and so great were the government’s exertions on Balfour’s behalf that the Whig Lord Lansdowne observed, ‘if ... [he] contrives to lose ... he will have the merit of being the only man who could do so’.30 Blake’s proposers, Ord and the mayor Anthony Compton, backed by the physician John Hall, stressed his lineage, near residence and popularity as the wartime commander of the local ‘Goldspinks’ regiment, leaving him to praise the ‘crown and the freedom of the constitution’ and to denounce Steel, who after requisitioning him twice previously, had defected to Balfour. Balfour’s sponsors Milne and Logan projected him as a church and state candidate, but claimed that he would have opposed the queen’s trial and was prepared to vote to abolish all ‘unnecessary places and pensions’. Barnes, Mills, Clement Pattison, George Thompkins and the alderman of the year Walter Rowland voted for Blake, as did the mayor and bailiffs Joseph Cockburn, John Pilmour and George Sharp, but Ossulston refused to endorse him. The fourth bailiff Peter Weatherston, Steel and the 1819-20 bailiffs voted for Balfour, who led by 87-77 on the first day. Blake overtook him on the second and established a 50-vote lead on the third (370-320). He mustered only four votes to Balfour’s 43 (23 residents and 20 out-voters) the following day, but retained his overall lead and was declared the victor by nine votes (374-363). Balfour attributed his defeat to 30 defectors, whose names he promised but failed to publish.31 Of 737 polled, 458 (62 per cent) were residents and 279 (38 per cent) out-voters. Balfour carried the residents by 232-226, but Blake’s majority of 37 (158-121) among the out-voters brought up by Thompkins’s kinsman, the commercial traveller William Hopper Thompkins of Kennington, who later settled in Berwick, proved decisive.32

On 13 Feb. 1821 the Commons received a petition for the restoration of the queen’s name to the liturgy, adopted in guild, 2 Dec. 1820; their address to the queen was scheduled for presentation, 22 Jan. 1821.33 Whigs and traders initiated petitions to the Commons for legislation against itinerant hawkers, 21 Mar. 1823, tax concessions on Scotch whisky, 11 Apr. 1823, candles, 23 Mar. 1824, and leather, 6 Apr., and repeal of the assessed taxes, 30 Mar. 1824, 22 Feb. 1825.34 The corporation and fishery owners petitioned against the herring and cod fisheries bill, 26 Apr. 1825.35 When the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society Thomas Clarkson visited Berwick in 1823, he found their campaign strongly supported by the churches and corporation and noted the divisions in the 1,000-strong Scottish church, which induced the seceders, led by the Rev. Balmers, to petition independently in 1824 and 1826.36 Anti-slavery petitions were forthcoming from congregations of all denominations in November 1830 and March 1831.37

As agreed, 13 July 1821, but postponed on account of the tumultuous Michaelmas guild that year, on 23 Sept. 1822 78 Berwick Whigs, led by Ord and Grey’s kinsman John Grey of Millfield, rallied at a civic dinner to confer the freedom on Joseph Hume*, who eulogized the absent Blake and Bennets as reformers.38 Ossulston succeeded his father to the Tankerville peerage, 11 Dec. 1822, and on 15 Jan. 1823 the guild, represented by the collector of customs John Steavenson as mayor, offered the freedom and their interest at the ensuing by-election to the 2nd marquess of Waterford, the custodian by right of his wife (the daughter and heiress of the 1796-1802 Member, the earl of Tyrconnel and his Delaval wife) of the Ford Castle estate. It was anticipated that Waterford would propose the marchioness’s cousin, John Delaval Carpenter, 4th earl of Tyrconnel, but he put forward his illegitimate son Sir John Poo Beresford, Member for Coleraine, a distinguished soldier and ardent anti-Catholic.39 Balfour desisted, a flurry of support for Milne, who was building a new mansion locally at Milne Graden, was quelled, and Beresford was returned unopposed, 17 Feb. 1823, proposed by Greive and Robert Romer. He dined 200 supporters at the Red Lion.40 That month the 3rd earl of Lisburne and his heir entrusted the encumbered Vaughan estates, including fisheries on both banks of the Tweed, to John Ingram Lockhart* and Lord Kensington†, preparatory to offering them for sale, but negotiations foundered.41

Wellington enquired after Berwick in January 1824 with a view to seating the former governor of Mauritius, Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, but local difficulties facing the government party scotched the attempt and Farquhar came in for Newton.42 With a general election anticipated, Blake impoverished by the collapse in 1821 of his family’s bank and Beresford expected to make way for his nephew Marcus Beresford, Logan easily defeated Steavenson in the 1825 mayoral poll, secured the election of his nominees, William Brown, John Johnston, Henry Johnson and David Weatherly as bailiffs, and rallied their friends at a dinner to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Greive’s first mayoralty.43 An overture afterwards from the London freemen to the Liverpool West India merchant and Canningite John Gladstone, Milne’s nominee on the 1820 election committee, brought him to the attention of Clunie, who wrote to him of a possible accommodation with the Beresfords, put the cost of a Berwick election at £2-4,000 and arranged for him to visit the town in November to meet Nicholson and about 40 of their partisans.44 Certain of the votes of 277 residents and most of the 100 undeclared, Gladstone, who had been informed that Beresford had 278 promises and Blake 234, ignored warnings about the bad ‘character and conduct of the Berwick voters’ and permitted his candidature to be announced before receiving the assurances he had sought of ministerial support and the co-operation of the Beresfords. On 7 Nov. 1825 he confidently informed Canning that he expected to be able to ‘relieve the House from the annoyance of wasting their time on Sir F. Blake’s speeches’.45 On the 16th the home secretary Peel confirmed government backing for Beresford, directed the treasury to make it known that Gladstone acted independently and to ensure that he was warned that Allan had found Berwick too expensive.46 Nothing came of reports that Blake, who confirmed his candidature at a meeting of the London freemen in January 1826, would retire or be seated elsewhere, or of the year-long residence of the anti-Catholic Sir Roger Gresley* of Drakelow’s eccentric mother and retinue at the Hen and Chickens (Gladstone’s headquarters) to promote his candidature.47 The thrust of the three-cornered contest was expected to be between the anti-Catholic Tory Beresford and the liberal Tory Gladstone; but Blake’s support for Catholic relief was known to have cost him at least 50 promised votes, and he was compromised by debt and a late £6,000 election loan brokered for him by Pattison.48 The successful prosecution of the Berwick pier commissioners in king’s bench by the fishery owner General Tyrwhitt, 5 June, slavery and restrictions on bank notes were the major local issues.49 Nominating Blake, whose committee sat daily at the King’s Arms, 12 June, Ord and Steel stressed his ‘inflexible independence’, commended his parliamentary conduct and long residence and criticized defectors to Gladstone. Proposing Gladstone, Milne stressed his mercantile fortune and high standing in the Commons and projected him as the only candidate capable of reversing the recent economic downturn in Berwick. Home seconded, leaving Gladstone to explain his reservations about free trade and the anti-slavery campaign, which his Liverpool opponents ensured were well publicized. Beresford’s sponsors Greive and Romer played the ‘No Popery’ card and Beresford promised to ‘vote to end slavery’. The show of hands was inconclusive, and Gladstone, was ‘thunderstruck’ to be trailing behind Beresford and Blake on the first day. He overtook Blake, now his main rival, the next day (13 June), and by bringing in distant out-voters he remained in second place behind Beresford, so thwarting what Clunie claimed on the hustings, 13 June, was a deliberate attempt to introduce a system of shared representation based on the revived Blake-Delaval interest.50 Noting growing public anger at the ill-disguised attempt to unseat Blake, the Berwick Advertiser conceded that a Beresford-Blake coalition was ‘probably attempted’ and might explain the reluctance of some of Blake’s ‘promised freemen’ to vote; but it also accused Tankerville of intriguing against Blake and warned:

The borough will be grampounded ... It was truly pitiable to see the [election] court sitting and looking at one another the last five days of the poll, during which only 57 (seven per cent of those polled) voted.

Blake’s agent Gilchrist was refused a scrutiny when the result was declared, 21 June, and Gladstone, whose majority over Blake had dwindled to a single vote (467:466) on the 7th day, was shouted down.51 Gladstone informed Canning, 22 June 1826:

After a most arduous struggle, during nine days’ polling, and under circumstances of no ordinary character, I was last night returned ... by a majority of six with two more votes in reserve ... Blake’s vote for himself was the last given ... The keenness and ardency of the contest have exceeded any thing I ever witnessed. I had the Catholic question, my West India connection, the late contemplated further changes in our corn laws, with the shipping interest’s hostility to your late treaties with the Northern powers all to bear up against, but these obstructions were ... trifling ... [compared] with a vile and unnatural coalition which was formed after the polling commenced between the other candidates and their friends. I could as soon have expected fire and water to amalgamate. The Beresfords, church and king and anti-Catholic in the extreme ... considered supporters of your government ... to unite with Blake, a radical in every sense of the word, against me ... as a friend of yours ... behind my back, whilst to my face all was smooth and hollow! I polled 163 plumpers. Each of my opponents have had two-thirds of the number, only 34 were left to Blake, 56 to Beresford. They might have gone the same way, had they not been voted on the first day and previous to their connection. In addition, I had the prepossessions and prejudices of the returning officer, their assessor, etc., to contend with, and without even legal assistance, having been told I should not require it. Then, the blind, the sick, the pauper, nay even the insane in one instance, besides the lame, were brought up against me with debtors relieved from prison. Of course, I resisted where I could, but too often unsuccessfully. In one instance, a gentleman was brought five miles in a litter who had broken his leg a few weeks since and had only been twice previously lifted in his bed. Joseph Hume, taken on his road to Montrose, was yesterday brought back from Edinburgh to vote against me ... How I have got through it, and my few, but able, friends is more like a dream than a reality ... I wrote repeatedly to ... [Stephen Rumbold] Lushington* [the patronage secretary] for leave to certain boatmen in the preventive service to come and exercise their franchise, but could get no answer, nor did I until I wrote to ... [John] Herries*, who told me they were disqualified, which he afterwards, when it was too late, assured me was not the case. Thus you see how I have been circumstanced! The object of the Beresfords, I rather think, must have been to close the borough jointly with Blake, without regard to me, thinking, if once done, they could keep it so, and not regarding the sacrifice of principle or party to which it subjected them ... As it was Beresford polled 512, myself 479, Blake 473, each had the benefit of at least 50 split votes from the other.52

Replying, Canning cast doubt on the insinuations against the elder Beresford.53 The manuscript pollbook, in which 92 entries are damaged, confirms Gladstone’s dependence on out-voter support. Of 860 electors polled, 256 (30 per cent) plumped: 162 for Gladstone, 58 for Beresford and 36 for Blake (34, 11 and eight per cent of their respective totals). Of 604 who split their votes, at least 262 voted for Beresford and Blake, 140 for Beresford and Gladstone, and 143 for Gladstone and Blake. The votes of further 59 probable splitters are partly or wholly illegible. Blake derived over 67 per cent, Beresford over 60 per cent, and Gladstone approximately 46 per cent of his total from the 483 residents polled (56 per cent of the electorate), an overwhelming 85 per cent of whom (410:68) split their votes. The 377 out-voters (44 per cent overall) included at least 122 Gladstone plumpers and another 113 who voted for him.54

Blake spoke ruefully at a public dinner, 28 June 1826, of his failure to mount a late London canvass and proposed toasts to his 472 supporters, the corporation, Hume and reform.55 The correspondence of ‘Anti-Jesuit’ (Turner, the Blakeite co-editor of the Berwick Advertiser) and ‘Mercator’ (Gladstone) in the Berwick and Liverpool newspapers kept the slavery debate alive and a petition calculated to void Gladstone’s election and bring in Blake was prepared on behalf of the mariner John Crow, butcher Robert Simpson and mason Joseph Craik, three resident Blake-Beresford voters. It alleged treating, maintained that disqualified persons were polled and ‘lawful Blake votes’ rejected, and claimed that the franchise was vested ‘in the freemen ... residing, inhabiting and paying scot and lot’.56 Embittered, Gladstone enquired after Berwick patronage and ignored Clunie’s allegations of mismanagement by Beresford and Blake and also his reassurances that the petition would be abandoned to avoid inquiry and possible disfranchisement.57 Steel defeated Weatherhead by 186-111 in the mayoral poll, Pilmour, Evans, William Foreman Home and Robert Simpson were elected bailiffs and George Sharp’s bid to become alderman of the year foundered.58 The physician William Dunbar How and Blake’s former attorney A.T. Steavenson, who convened a public meeting, failed to prevent the election petition being dispatched, 23 Nov., and presented, 28 Nov. 1826.59 Following its referral, 6 Mar., Blake’s nominee Lord Howick informed his father Grey, 12 Mar. 1827:

There could not have been a more unfavourable committee chosen for the petitioners, who have a very strong case. The chairman, Mr. Carew, Member for Wexford, has really no authority whatever, but lets Mr. Frankland Lewis, the nominee on the other side, do just as he pleases and his experience in the House and plausible manner give him great influence over the other members of the committee, who most of them I think mean to do right but are unfortunately too easily lathered over by him.60

The committee, who were judged according to their attitudes to Catholic relief and Canning’s likely succession as premier, cleared Gladstone of bribery by seven votes to six, but found him guilty of treating by the same majority, so voiding his election, 19 Mar. 1827.61 To Huskisson, his initial choice as nominee, Gladstone explained:

It has always been the practice at elections there during the polling for the friends of each candidate to have some 40 or 50 [runners] ... engaged to attend the candidates of their leading friends on their morning and evening canvass, to attend the voters to the hustings, and to be in attendance on their committees for whatever messages or purposes they might be wanted. To these, for wages and refreshments, it seems 10s. to 12s. 6d. per day is allowed to each during the poll. It is previously arranged by the friends of the candidates. To me the circumstances were then unknown, but this is the treating for which I am unseated!62

Claims by the petitioners and revelations that the returning officer Logan had not been continuously resident induced the committee, prompted by William Adam as counsel for Gladstone and Beresford, to examine the franchise, scrutinize the borough records and question the town clerk Mark Jamieson.63 They ruled on 19 Mar. 1827

that the right of election is in the burgesses who have been regularly admitted and sworn. That a burgess who has gone to reside without the precincts of the borough, whenever he returns within its limits, has a right to enjoy all the rights and privileges of the borough, unless he has in the meantime, for just cause and in regular form, been amoved by the corporation, and so disfranchised.

This confirmed the election’s legality and the rights of younger sons and out-voters.64 Grey confided to Howick that he ‘had rather hoped that a complete exposure of the infamous corruption of ... [Berwick] might have led to its disfranchisement’.65 Blake and Milne, whom Guthrie and the disqualified Gladstone briefed on the committee’s deliberations and his plans to prove Steel guilty of bribery, commenced canvassing immediately.66 The London freemen favoured petitioning afresh and made John Bayley of Upper Harley Street, who had property in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Ireland, their nominee. Robert M’William was talked of, and a meeting at Berwick town hall, 22 Mar., chaired by John Foreman Home and addressed by the attorney Steavenson and Clunie, carried resolutions criticizing Blake and the petitioners and vainly requisitioned the East India Company director John Carnac.67 At an eve of poll meeting on the 26th they switched with Steavenson to Milne.68 On the hustings, 27 Mar., Blake, proposed by Steel and Riddell as an advocate of retrenchment and lower taxes, insisted that he had not supported the late petition out of malice and cautioned against giving and accepting ‘bribes and golden baubles’. Milne, nominated by the Rev. William Stow Lundie of Spittal House and the Rev. William Compton as a gallant anti-Catholic officer and seaman, also advocated retrenchment. Blake was 238-83 ahead after the first day. Bayley, who arrived on the second, made way for Milne directly he had been nominated by How and Nicholson, and the poll stood that night at Blake 281, Milne 91, Bayley 3. Milne conceded defeat next day at Blake 312, Milne 101, Bayley 4. The chairing was cancelled on account of Blake’s mother’s death.69 Gladstone surmised that the appearance of Bayley, who had liaised with Allen, was a petitioning ploy;70 and Clunie encouraged Milne and Bayley to come to an arrangement, using William Foreman Home, who knew them both, as intermediary. Their objective was to prove Blake guilty of bribery at the last two elections and seat Milne, whom Clunie asked to find and brief a ‘Member of weight and experience, accustomed to take some active part in discussions’, such as Lord Binning, Sir George Warrender or Sir George Clerk, to present their petition.71 The Berwick Advertiser warned that a retrospective petition would fail.72 Undeterred, How procured a petition and Foreman Home advised Milne, who mistrusted Bayley and remained in Musselburgh:

The state of the ministry, and the consequent uncertainty of all political plans and prospects, may have influenced Mr. B., but on the other hand, when he was here he expected Mr. Canning would be appointed premier, but he also anticipated that the opposite party in the last administration would very shortly gain the superiority. In his letter to me, Mr. Bayley mentioned a call Lord George Beresford had made upon him, and an interview may have subsequently taken place. It is possible some circumstance, some mutual arrangement as to future proceedings in the borough or some other frustration to Mr. B.’s present plans, may have then occurred. I incline to the opinion that Mr. B. would only act fairly and openly, and probably some casual circumstance, or there appearing no cause for expedition since the arrangement he proposed has been acceded to, and the recess affording time for examining the evidence etc. which Mr. Nicholson has furnished. But, should matters be otherwise and you have a separate and opposite interest to Mr. B’s (which is merely possible), had you been in London the end of this week or by Monday next, you might have had the opinion of counsel on the case, you might have had full communication with Mr. Bayley, and might have learned the probable result of a successful petition. An early dissolution seems talked of, and you could have ascertained how far this was likely from the best sources. There would be time, but none to spare, for effecting these objects, and presenting a petition.73

Milne was well received by Melville in London in late April, and How, Steavenson, Thomas Greive of Fishwick Mains, Charles Cuthbertson of Tweedmouth, John Baillie of Edrington Castle and the ornamental painter William Carr of Cook’s Row, St. Pancras lent their names to a petition against Blake’s return alleging bribery and corruption at the last two elections, which was submitted with another in Milne’s favour, 1 May.74 It was clear by the 9th that Bayley would not finance or proceed with either, and in the absence of sureties, both were discharged, 16 May 1827.75 In February 1831 Nicholson, who claimed that he had gone to London ‘with a very strong case’, vainly invoiced Milne for almost £76.76

Lisburne’s trustees and agents, the shipping company, the corporation, fishery tenants and proprietors united to oppose the 1827 salmon fisheries bill, which they maintained threatened the livelihoods of 500 local families. With Beresford’s backing they lobbied ministers, 16 Apr., submitted evidence to the select committee, 19 May, and on the 31st petitioned the Commons, where the bill was lost.77 The Berwick Advertiser endorsed the Dissenters’ 1827 and 1828 petitions for repeal of the Test Acts and criticized the 1828 friendly societies’ bill and the 1828 Scottish promissory notes bill, which, encouraged by Ridley, Bigge, Gibson and Company, who hoped to extend their banking operation to Berwick, the corporation, magistrates and burgesses sought to amend by introducing a clause permitting the circulation in Berwick of Scottish £1-£5 notes. They reapplied for the concession in hostile memorials and petitions in 1829 and 1831.78 A Roman Catholic chapel opened in June 1828, and petitions for and against emancipation, which Blake supported and Beresford opposed, were circulated and presented when it was conceded in 1829.79 How, as mayor, resisted ‘Protestant’ pressure to convene the borough, but a guild meeting on 19 Feb. petitioned the Commons for repeal of the assessed taxes, 26 Feb. 1829, and directed the corporation solicitor, then in London, to ensure that it was supported by the Members. This, their letters to the Berwick Advertiser confirmed.80 Amid worsening distress, the guild memorialized the treasury and petitioned in protest against the 1830 Northern Roads bill, which threatened to bypass Berwick.81 They were also instrumental in negotiating new leases for the fisheries, assisted with the Tweed fisheries bill, which received royal assent, 29 May, and supported the Berwick-upon-Tweed light dues bill, which was enacted, 3 May 1830.82 Nothing came of the Berwick Advertiser’s attempts to persuade the guild or townsmen to petition against the East India Company’s monopoly.83

Following the abandonment of the May 1827 election petitions the struggle for power was transferred to the guild and vestry. Trounced in the 1827 mayoral poll by the cooper William Wetherhead, a non-freeman and Dissenter, in 1828, when each office was bitterly contested, How defeated Steel, to whom A.T. Steavenson and his friends had defected, by 211-175, and began to reform the corporation’s finances.84 Disorderly guilds and mandamus proceedings ensued. At a rowdy meeting in Berwick church, 16 Apr., How failed to secure the election of his supporters to the vestry, whose members successfully prosecuted the mayor and corporation in the rolls court for maladministration of the borough charities, 8 Dec. 1829.85 Duped and defeated at the April 1830 vestry elections, which spawned further litigation, and with Clunie newly bankrupted, Hopper Thompson and A.T. Steavenson directed their attention to the general election precipitated by the death of George IV.86 Notices confirming Beresford’s candidature and from A.T. Steavenson on behalf of an ‘eligible candidate’ were issued, 2 July 1830. Blake, who conceded that there had been defections from his party, declared on the 5th, when Frederick Gye, who vacated at Chippenham, and Frederick Beaumont, brother of the Northumberland Member, arrived to canvass.87 A meeting of 150 out-voters at London’s Portugal Hotel that day resolved to back Gye, Beaumont deferred to Blake, 8 July, and with Beresford secure, the contest was perceived to be between Blake and Gye.88 Projecting himself as a ‘commercial man’, Gye applied to Gladstone and the Wellington ministry for advice and assistance, but he received little from either and was dismayed to be denied the ‘unanimous support’ of Gladstone’s friends, 30 July.89 Demonstrations of popular support for Blake and Beresford and rumours of Gye’s retirement preceded the nomination, 31 July.90 Ord’s son, Major John Bertram Ord, and How, who was denied a hearing, proposed Blake, who read out a testimonial from Hume endorsing his candidature. Stow Lundie and Logan nominated Beresford, who portrayed himself as a near resident and Member who had spoken on the fisheries bill and local issues. Gye, sponsored by William Scott of Castle Gate and Hopper Thompkins, challenged Ord’s right as a non-resident to nominate Blake (Longridge was three miles from Berwick). He criticized Blake as a ‘one-sided’ party man in the Commons, said that he opposed him with a view to redressing the damage caused by the 1826 petition, and appealed to his own reputation as a successful merchant of 27 years’ standing. Alluding to the ‘domestic brawl’ in the vestry, he urged Hopper Thompkins, whom he praised, to ‘patch up’ relations with his former friends. According to the Berwick Advertiser, the lower classes fulfilled their promises with unprecedented ‘languor’. After 14 hours’ polling over the first two days, a Saturday and Monday, the poll stood at Beresford 317, Blake 242, Gye 102. Dismayed to be trailing and that only ‘27 of the 107 out-voters on his list’ had arrived, Gye retired at 1pm next day (4 Aug.) at Beresford 387, Blake 285, Gye 147, and criticized the ‘combination’ against him and their vote purchasing tactics.91 The manuscript pollbook confirms Gye’s poor showing among the out-voters and the importance of the Beresford-Blake coalition, especially to Blake, who derived 93 per cent of his overall total from votes shared with Beresford, including 145 of the 149 he received when the corporation voted on the first day. Of the 427 polled (341 residents and 86 out-voters), 35 (12 per cent) plumped: 22 for Gye, nine for Beresford and four for Blake; and 392 (88 per cent) split their votes: 267 Beresford-Blake (189 residents and 78 out-voters), 111 Beresford-Gye (110 residents and one out-voter) and 14, all residents, Gye-Blake. Beresford and Blake each derived 76 per cent of his total from the residents. For Gye the figure was 93 per cent.92

A petition from George How of the anti-corporation party, aimed at voiding the election and obtaining a new ruling on the franchise was presented, 16 Nov. 1830, but not proceeded with. It alleged that the returning officers had acted partially, corruptly and unlawfully by influencing and ordering votes, rejecting legal and admitting illegal votes and closing the poll prematurely without adequate notice.93 Three days previously king’s bench had refused to set aside the verdict of the jury at Newcastle assizes (12 Aug.), which found Hopper Thompkins and his allies guilty of serious riot in February, and they were refused a retrial, fined and bound over.94 Hopper Thompkins, though defeated (155-164) by Major Ord, had recently been sworn in as mayor, and his campaign to reform Berwick ‘by disfranchising all non-resident burgesses and all resident ones who did not pay rates and taxes’ was again publicized when king’s bench granted Ord a mandamus, confirming his mayoralty, 27 Nov.95 On 15 Dec. 1830 a borough meeting requisitioned by the 1829-30 mayor John Wilson of Tweed House and 114 others forwarded petitions to both Houses for parliamentary reform, which their proposer Ord hailed as a ‘boon to the county, the town and ultimately to the corporation’.96 Boosted by king’s bench’s decision on 31 Jan. to quash quo warranto proceedings against him, on 10 Mar. 1831 Ord, who considered the constitutional changes that the Grey ministry’s reform bill proposed too great, encouraged the guild to petition criticizing its details, especially the proposed freeman disfranchisements, and to seek a ‘15-mile rule’ governing residence; but he failed to prevent the adoption of an address to the king (presented by Grey, 30 Mar.) and petitions of outright support for the measure at a rival meeting addressed by Riddell and Barnes, 14 Mar.97 Beresford, the presenter of the hostile petitions, 17 Mar., declared and voted against the bill, which Blake supported; and, encouraged by Milne at their meeting at Greenlaw, 18 Mar., the Berwickshire anti-reformers mounted a well-publicized campaigned on behalf of the Berwick out-voters. In a letter to Ord that day, subsequently printed in the Berwick Advertiser, Blake, the presenter on the 21st of the favourable petition received also by the Lords, 23 Mar., made it clear that he considered a 15-mile rule ‘reasonable’ and would ‘throw no impediment in the way of such of my constituents as object to their own disfranchisement’.98 The London freemen’s petition for continued enfranchisement was received by the Commons, 19 Apr. 1831, when the bill was lost, and by the Lords on the 21st.99

Both Members sought re-election at the ensuing general election and arrived to canvas, 26 Apr. Signalling a turnaround in their popularity since 1830, Blake was fêted by the populace and considered secure and a challenger to Beresford was sought.100 William Hepburne Scott of Harden, an anti-reformer like his brother the Roxburghshire Member, was keen to oppose Blake, but lacked funds.101 The reformer John Saville Ogle of Kirkley declined and Blake, proposed by the mayor’s brother George Frederick Ord and W.D. How, and Beresford, sponsored by Stow Lundie and Alderman Thomas Wilson, would have come in unopposed, 30 Apr., had not the shoemaker George Thompson and stocking weaver John Furnell nominated the local Tory squire Samuel Swinton of Swinton in absentia and forced a poll, which Swinton, having been summoned, stopped six hours later. Beresford maintained that the reform bill would reduce the electorate from 1,143 (527 residents and 616 out-voters) to 700 and criticized the government. Blake defended them and their bill and joined his sponsors in deploring attempts to pit the resident burgesses against the out-voters.102 None of the 366 polled were distant out-voters: 133 (37 per cent) plumped, 69 for Blake, 62 for Beresford and two for Swinton, who shared another two votes with Blake and three with Beresford; 228 (62 per cent) split Blake-Beresford.103

The anti-reformers and London out-voters, whose cause Beresford and Tankerville espoused, encouraged opposition to the reintroduced and revised reform bills, and letters to The Times highlighted the ‘unnatural influence’ exerted by Waterford’s Berwick attorneys.104 A guild on 14 Sept. thanked Beresford for voting against the proposed freeman disfranchisements, 30 Aug. 1831.105 Another on the 16th adopted a loyal address, and the inhabitants at a public meeting chaired by Ord, 26 Sept., petitioned the Lords urging the reform bill’s passage, 3 Oct.106 Hopper Thompkins renewed his challenge to the corporation in the courts following the election of his adversary and rival in the select vestry John Langhorn as mayor.107 Meanwhile Langhorn and G.F. Ord mustered support for an address protesting at the reform bill’s defeat in the Lords, 15 Oct., and made Lord Edward Fitzclarence of Etal an honorary freeman as a tribute to his father William IV’s continued support for Grey.108 The guild endorsed a petition to the Commons on behalf of 185 qualifying inhabitants for enfranchisement in the new Northumberland North constituency, adopted, 24 Jan., and presented, 31 Jan. 1832.109 Resolutions thanking the Commons for passing the reform bill, which Blake divided for and Beresford against, 22 Mar., were carried by Langhorn at the King’s Arms, 30 Apr., and the same meeting petitioned the Lords in its favour, 11 May. The London out-voters petitioned to the last against their disfranchisement.110 Nonconformists and Dissenters petitioned against slavery, 8 Aug. 1832, and the Members gleaned support by opposing the unpopular general register bill.111 The Berwick road bill received royal assent, 3 Apr. 1832.112

The prosecution of the mayor of Berwick in 1829 for leasing out Grange Barn Mill had prompted Lisburne’s surveyors to postpone the sale of the Magdalen Fields on the boundary of the old borough, and from 1832 they were offered as building lots in the enlarged constituency to which, as the commissioners had recommended, the Boundary Act added Tweedmouth and Spittal, making Berwick additionally a polling town for Northumberland North.113 Blake and a second Liberal, Sir Rufane Donkin, a connection by marriage of the Minto family, defeated the Conservative Beresford at the 1832 general election, when the registered electorate numbered 705 (436 qualified solely as freemen and 269 solely as £10 householders), an estimated reduction of 30 per cent. Each general election between 1832 and 1884 was hotly contested, but The Times’s 1832 prediction that Berwick would become a Liberal stronghold proved incorrect, for single party control was intermittent and interspersed with divided representation.114 The local jurisdiction of Northumberland and Durham in Berwick remained in contention, and although the number of freeman voters declined, stint distribution continued until 1859, and proven bribery persisted.115