Among the boroughs, the City of London, the financial and commercial centre of the kingdom, was second only to neighbouring Westminster in the size of its electorate, which consisted of freemen (resident and non-resident) attached to the livery companies. They were predominantly smaller merchants, shopkeepers and artisans. Had the franchise been in the freemen at large the electorate would have been probably ten times greater; and a householder qualification would have quadrupled it.1 The governing corporation consisted of a lord mayor and 25 other aldermen and 240 common councilmen. Aldermen were elected for life, as vacancies arose, by the freemen householders of the City’s 26 constituent wards. Common councilmen, who varied in number from ward to ward, were elected annually in December by the same electorate: in almost all cases, once chosen they were formally re-elected. The livery met in common hall on special occasions, by requisition to the lord mayor, who was chosen annually (29 Sept.) by the court of aldermen from two candidates elected by the liverymen from aldermen who had served as sheriff.2 The Members were invariably men with a stake in the City, whose commercial interests they were expected to protect and promote: they were usually but were not required to be aldermen. During the French wars the Pittite Toryism of the corporation had generally set the tone of politics in London, where considerable influence could be exercised through the Bank of England, the East India Company and other institutions. Under the direction of the radical Whig Robert Waithman, a retail linen draper and common councilman, and his more radical rival Matthew Wood, a hop merchant and a popular, improving lord mayor, 1815-17, the radicalism and reforming enthusiasm for which the City had been noted in Wilkes’s day was steadily revived in common council and among the livery.3 Wood replaced the Foxite brewer Combe as Member in June 1817, and at the general election a year later, in a striking triumph for opposition, he was returned with Waithman, the reformer Alderman John Thorp, a haberdasher, and Thomas Wilson, a merchant and spokesman for the shipping and commercial interests, who generally supported the Liverpool ministry. The ministerialist sitting Members, Alderman Sir William Curtis, a merchant and banker and leader of the City Tories, and Alderman John Atkins, a West India merchant, were defeated at the polls, the former narrowly but the latter humiliatingly.4 Waithman became an alderman soon afterwards, but Wilson never did; indeed, he was not even a common councilman.

At the mayoral election of 1819, when the Tory Alderman George Bridges, a wine merchant, defeated two liberal rivals, Waithman, sheriff Joseph Parkins and the demagogue Henry Hunt*, a liveryman, provoked uproar by proposing resolutions condemning the Liverpool ministry over the Peterloo massacre. The court of aldermen, led by Curtis, who carried a loyal address, 12 Oct., subsequently took legal proceedings against them, which were unsuccessfully resisted by common council and by Waithman and Wood as aldermen. They ended inconclusively in king’s bench in June 1820.5 Meanwhile Waithman had retaliated by hounding Curtis over his practice, as collector of the orphans’ fund coal duties, of retaining large balances in his own hands. Curtis so far gave ground as to reduce them from three to two months, but in January 1820 he had the issue investigated by an aldermanic committee, which duly exonerated him in March.6 At the general election that month all the sitting Members offered again. They were joined by Curtis and Bridges, who took some support from Wilson on account of his refusal to become an alderman. Nothing came of a report that the merchant Edward Ellice, Whig Member for Coventry, was to be nominated. Tierney, the Whig leader in the Commons, told Lord Grey, 27 Feb., that Curtis was ‘by no means so secure as government represent him’; but he feared that the recent Cato Street conspiracy would have ‘a very prejudicial influence on the public mind’ in the City, as elsewhere.7 So it seems to have done: after a rowdy contest, during which Waithman remorselessly attacked Curtis, who let his son stand in for him for most of the time, over the coal duties and presented himself as the champion of ‘the great body of tradesmen’ against mercantile ‘influence’, he and Thorp were turned out, albeit narrowly.8 A reported late transfer of votes to Waithman by Wood and Thorp was of no avail. Wood’s personal popularity served him well, but Tierney reckoned that, obsessed with the ‘stupid vanity of being at the head of the poll’, he ‘did not split his votes as he ought to have done, and Thorp and Waithman were both beaten by trying to seat one another’. Wood denied this. Tory and ministerial influence seems to have been systematically exercised against Waithman, who complained bitterly on this score and later appealed for unanimity among ‘the friends of liberty’. Curtis’s intemperate vindictiveness in victory earned him a vote of censure from common council.9

At their meeting, 24 May 1820, Waithman and his leading supporter, Samuel Favell of St. Mary Axe, secured inquiry into the orphans’ fund scandal by the general purposes committee.10 Two days later they carried a petition to the Commons for parliamentary reform, which was brought up on the 30th by one of the sheriffs, as was the custom with corporation petitions. Apart from Curtis’s formal motion to have it printed, it went unnoticed by the Members, who were subsequently criticized by Waithman in common council.11 Queen Caroline’s cause was immensely popular with the livery, the more so as Wood set himself up as her personal champion, escorting her back to England in June and basking in the mob’s acclaim. Waithman also took up her case in common council. They and the livery addressed her and petitioned Parliament in her support; and Bridges caused an outcry and received a belated censure by having troops stationed at Holborn during the common hall meeting of 30 June. On 17 July Favell and Waithman carried a common council petition against the bill of pains and penalties by 100-14.12 The abandonment of the measure in November 1820 was enthusiastically celebrated in the City with three nights of illumination and a plethora of ward addresses.13 Common council addressed the queen, 21 Nov., and Wood and Waithman orchestrated her visit to St. Paul’s to give thanks for her acquittal, 29 Nov., which created ructions in the court of aldermen and drew a written protest from Curtis, Bridges and others.14 Waithman promoted a corporation address to the king for the dismissal of the Liverpool ministry, which was carried by 84-32, 1 Dec., and, with Wood, Sir William Domville, Sir Claudius Hunter and Joshua Smith, vainly resisted the court of aldermen’s loyal address, which Samuel Birch proposed and Bridges and Curtis endorsed, 5 Dec. In common hall on the 7th Favell carried by 46 votes a counter-address in support of the queen. At a common hall, 15 Dec. 1820, Waithman and his supporters got unanimous backing for a similar address.15 On 11 Jan. 1821 a London Tavern meeting of merchants and bankers voted a declaration of support for the existing constitution and established religion, which was signed by Bridges, Curtis and Wilson. The same day in common council Favell, Waithman and Company carried petitions to both Houses praying for the restoration of the queen’s name to the liturgy. The Whig leaders promoted a counter-meeting of merchants and bankers at the Mansion House, 24 Jan., when the corporation’s petition reached the Commons. The livery’s petition, voted on 29 Jan., when Curtis, Bridges and Wilson were ‘instructed’ to support it, was presented by Wood on 13 Feb. 1821. Ward and parish petitions were also forthcoming.16 Wood of course joined in the parliamentary campaign on behalf of the queen, but all his colleagues sided with ministers. In a coda to the affair, Waithman and his supporters in common council pursued the matter of the alleged assault on him, as sheriff, by troops outside Knightsbridge barracks during the funeral in August 1821 of two men killed in clashes at the queen’s funeral 12 days earlier. Wood raised it in the Commons, 28 Feb. 1822, but ministers easily got rid of it.17

Meanwhile, the general purposes committee’s report on the orphans’ fund duties had vindicated Curtis’s critics and recommended action to regulate collection and auditing.18 Curtis took the initiative by securing the appointment in February 1822 of a Commons select committee and rushing into law a bill based on its report, which attached no blame to him but called for revenues to be paid over quarterly and the surplus applied to extinction of the debt. Waithman, Favell and Wood led the furious outcry against him in common council in July 1822, but it signified little.19 In common council, 29 Jan., Waithman and Favell promoted an address to the Commons for parliamentary reform, which was presented on 17 Feb. 1823.20 Wood, Wilson and Bridges attended a City property owners’ meeting to petition for a revision of London tithes, 27 Feb., and severally promised to support it.21 That summer the corporation subscribed to assist Spanish liberals, though Bridges and Curtis were among aldermen who subsequently protested against the grant.22 In September 1823, to the mortification of the king, who regarded him as his personal enemy, Waithman was chosen as lord mayor.23 In 1824 there were corporation and ward petitioning campaigns for repeal of the house and window taxes, of the duty on publicans’ licences and of the coastal coal duties, a source of great grievance in London.24 The corporation petitioned against renewal of the Aliens Act, 31 Mar., and on 14 May, at the instigation of Favell, for such parliamentary reform as would give the metropolis as a whole the numerical representation to which it was entitled and eliminate ‘corrupt influence’.25 The assessed taxes were again the subject of petitions in 1825. So too were the corn laws, for the revision of which Favell, Waithman and Wood spoke in common council, 7 Apr., as did Waithman, Wilson and Wood at a meeting of merchants and bankers, 13 Apr.26 There was some parish petitioning that session against Catholic claims, which Wood supported and his three colleagues opposed.27 In 1826 the corporation, prompted principally by Favell, petitioned for the abolition of colonial slavery, a reform of bankruptcy administration, repeal of the assessed taxes and relaxation of the corn laws.28

By March 1826 Curtis and Bridges had made known their decisions to retire at the next dissolution. Wood sought re-election, and was joined in the field by Waithman, who adopted a purity of election stance and was supported by voluntary subscription, and by Alderman William Thompson, a wealthy iron merchant and sitting Member for Callington, who had given general but not slavish support to the Liverpool ministry and opposed Catholic relief. It was thought that Wilson, despite earlier reports to the contrary, would offer again, and Alderman William Venables, the incumbent lord mayor, a wholesale stationer, came forward as a cautious reformer and supporter of the liberalization of commerce. It was reported the following month that Ellice and the wealthy financier Alexander Baring, Member for Taunton, a conservative Whig, had turned down invitations to stand.29 At the end of April Wilson decided to retire and commended in his room William Ward, a Spanish merchant and director of the Bank of England, who refused to become an alderman and expressed support for a fixed duty on corn and very cautious piecemeal parliamentary reform. The election was dominated by the corn laws, reform and the Catholic question, on which Venables promised to be guided by the sentiments of the livery and Ward declined to pledge himself, though he implied that he was not favourable to relief. Alderman John Garratt was nominated as a ‘No Popery’ candidate, but was not a serious contender and retired after the second day’s polling. Thompson, who was supported by the shipping and commercial interests, easily topped the poll, while only 154 votes (in a poll of 8,369) separated Waithman, Ward and Wood. Venables came a very respectable fifth. Wood’s fall from first to fourth was attributed to hostility to his support for Catholic relief, which he resented. It was considered ‘droll’ by the Whig Denis Le Marchant† that he

would have lost his election ... if 300 ministerialists had not voted for him upon the last day. He had polled all his votes and given up the matter, when this unexpected accession of strength saved him.30

At the mayoral election, 29 Sept. 1826, Favell and Hunt ranted for repeal of the corn laws. A common hall was held to petition, 19 Oct. 1826, when all four Members gave it their support, as they did when it reached the House, 19 Feb. 1827.31 There was a petitioning campaign for repeal of the Test Acts, for which all the Members voted, 26 Feb. 1828.32 On 20 Mar. 1828 the freemen householders of Castle Baynard ward petitioned the Lords for the City franchise to be extended to them and their fellows. Reformers in common council kept this issue alive, and in July 1830 secured the appointment of a select committee to consider it.33 At the 1828 mayoral election, when Thompson was chosen, Hunt denounced the farce of the livery’s selecting two men when the ultimate choice of the aldermen was a foregone conclusion. He subsequently railed against conspicuous civic consumption and the authorities’ indifference to the plight of the indigent poor, as he did in the two following years.34 In common council, 18 Dec. 1828, Favell, presenting the finance committee’s report, called for continued vigilance to ensure economy in corporation expenditure; but Waithman, while applauding the committee’s work, defended the court of aldermen and took credit for having opened their activities to public view.35 On 26 Feb. 1829 common council voted by 105-54 to petition Parliament in favour of Catholic emancipation and granted the freedom of the City to Peel for conceding it; Waithman was the only Member present.36 He and his colleagues voted for emancipation.

In common council, 16 Mar. 1830, Wood dealt with a motion for a reduction of public salaries and allowances in accordance with changes in the value of the currency by having it referred to a committee. In common hall, 5 Apr., Hunt proposed a string of resolutions linking distress with the need for ‘radical’ reform. Wood, whose ward of Cripplegate had petitioned for reform, 15 Mar., defended his parliamentary conduct and promised to support the resultant petition (as did the absent Ward by letter); but he argued that as reform was presently unattainable, tax remissions would be more pertinent. After criticism of the absence of all the Members but Ward from a division on the East Retford question, Hunt carried a motion binding Wood to propose in the Commons as soon as convenient the reduction of public salaries to 1797 levels and instructing the other Members to support it. Waithman, who had no time for doctrinaire advocacy of free trade principles, distanced himself from Hunt’s extreme demands, while Thompson urged a revision of taxes and paid lip service to salary reductions. When Wood presented the petition, 17 May, he and his colleagues endorsed it with varying degrees of enthusiasm.37 He duly gave notice of a motion on salaries, but the dissolution intervened, as did the reform bill in March 1831; and it was not until June that year that he was able to fulfil his pledge.38 The corporation petitioned the Commons for mitigation of the punishment for forgery, 7 June, and the abolition of unnecessary oaths, 5 July 1830.39

According to the Whig Commons leader Lord Althorp, his political ally Charles Poulett Thomson, Member for Dover, a London merchant and parliamentary financial pundit, declined a ‘very respectably’ signed requisition to stand at the 1830 general election.40 A subsequent half-hearted attempt to get up an opposition to at least one of the sitting Members foundered, and at the first uncontested City general election since 1689 they were returned unopposed, though the radical alderman Sir Peter Laurie, who issued an address, said that he would have stood if another new man had come forward and set out his own credentials as ‘new blood’ for the next election. Little was said about reform, but all the Members professed enthusiasm for retrenchment and reduced taxation.41 The Wellington ministry reckoned Thompson and Ward as supporters. In early November 1830 there was a row in the corporation when the lord mayor elect, Sir John Key, and Hunter, without consultation, advised ministers to cancel the new king’s planned visit to the City on the 9th for fear of serious disorder.42 Common council petitioned Parliament for reform, 15 Nov., when Waithman voted against government in the decisive division on the civil list, Wood would have done so had he been able to attend, Ward stayed away and Thompson voted with ministers.43 There was heavy petitioning of the new Parliament for repeal of the coal duties and the assessed taxes and for the abolition of slavery.44 In February 1831 ward reform petitions, some of which stipulated the ballot, were got up.45 On 4 Mar. a crowded meeting of common council, at which Alderman Henry Winchester* raised a lone dissenting voice, resolved to address the king in support of the Grey ministry’s reform bill. Waithman gave it his full blessing, but Thompson, alarmed by its scale, was unenthusiastic. At a turbulent common hall, 7 Mar., when the clamour for reform was overwhelming, despite the fact that as it stood the bill would disfranchise many liverymen, he promised to support it, as, unreservedly, did Waithman and Wood. Ward refused to comply with the livery’s instruction to do so. Hunt’s call for the ballot and a wider borough franchise found no support, and William Cobbett† was denied a hearing. Petitions to both House were adopted.46 Ward and parish meetings to petition in support of the bill proliferated during the next few weeks.47 At a large Mansion House meeting of merchants and bankers, chaired by Key and attended by Daniel O’Connell*, 25 Mar., Venables applauded the bill, as did Waithman, Thompson and Wood.48 There was an attempt to unseat Ward, who, when pressed to resign by a livery committee set up to find a replacement, agreed to do so if half the corporation signed a written demand. He promoted a hostile City petition and, in contrast to his colleagues, voted defiantly against the bill, 22 Mar., 19 Apr.49 After its defeat common council established a committee to monitor developments; and on the immediately ensuing dissolution, when all the sitting Members offered, another committee was set up to support Waithman, Wood and Thompson and to find a fourth reformer to challenge Ward, who, supposedly egged on by the old Curtis faction, was thought to harbour hopes of being returned by the votes of disgruntled out-voters resenting disfranchisement. Key declined to stand for fear of dividing the reformers, and there was support for the Benthamite banker, historian and political economist George Grote†; but in the end it was decided to back Venables. A united committee, which Grote chaired, was formed and the election portrayed as one ‘for principle’ and not ‘for persons’, with ‘reform or no reform’ the sole issue. Alderman Michael Scales claimed to have accepted an invitation to come forward, but he withdrew two days before the election for the sake of unanimity. Ward, who paid lip service to the desirability of moderate reform, was expected to go to a poll; but on the morning of nomination day he announced his retirement, on the advice of his committee, in deference to the ‘sense of the livery’. The four reformers, whose costs were met by public subscription, walked over.50 Ward wrote to Wellington, 9 May 1831:

I have lost the opportunity of showing the world that there exists here a body (neither inconsiderable in number, nor wanting in influence) that is not to be carried away by the cry for reform, by the want of firmness of the chairman and deputy chairman of my committee ... No less than 40 of my former committee were actively engaged against me, the corporation had formed a committee weeks ago ‘to watch the bill’, as they said, but really to turn me out, and at the ward motes not a hand was raised against reform and nine-tenths had signed petitions. I nevertheless could have polled one third of the livery in my favour and this would have proved that the feeling was not universal. I had another reason for starting, because I believe if I had not, Thompson would have been thrown out and although he is for reform, he is adverse to the present government generally and if I had given way four Whigs would have been joined and would have turned him out.51

That day all four Members addressed the livery reform dinner, chaired by Grote and attended by Joseph Hume, Member for Middlesex, and John Cam Hobhouse, Member for Westminster.52

The reform bill ‘watch’ committee remained in existence, and in common council, 29 June 1831, concerns were expressed over the reintroduced bill’s provisions concerning weekly tenants and, by Wood and Venables, City freeholders.53 For opposing government on the case of Appleby, 12 July, Thompson was hauled over the coals by a ‘junta’ of the livery, to whom he pleaded ‘inadvertence’ and renewed his pledge to support the reform bill. The incident gave rise to widespread condemnation in Tory circles of what was seen as dictation to Members by their constituents, and even Waithman and Wood did not find it easy to justify the episode to its eager critics in the House.54 In late August Venables too was in hot water with the livery’s reform committee for his vote for the Chandos amendment for the enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will.55 Worries persisted about the fate of the livery’s franchise, but Key returned an evasive answer to a request for a meeting to petition the Commons for the livery as a body to be allowed to return two Members. This and the general progress of the measure were aired in common council, 7 Sept., when Charles Pearson criticized Wood for allying himself with Hunt in the House for a general ratepayer franchise. Wood, Venables and Waithman defended themselves vigorously and refused to be bound hand and foot as to details. The proposal to petition for separate representation for the livery was crushed by 118-5.56 The corporation and livery and most wards petitioned the Lords in support of the bill that autumn; and at the common hall meeting, 19 Sept., Pearson repudiated the charges of dictation against the livery and observed that

the last House of Commons partook of the nature of a Convention Parliament. The Members were not representatives in the ordinary sense of the word, for they were sent to the House pledged to votes and opinions as far as the question of parliamentary reform was concerned.57

The mayoral election turned into a lengthy struggle between the court of aldermen and the livery, who at the third time of asking in November forced the court to swallow the re-election of the reformer Key.58 After the rejection of the reform bill by the Lords, common council (8 Oct.) and the livery (10 Oct.) met to address the king in support of it and the government. A number of like ward meetings were also held, and on 13 Oct. there was a gathering of merchants and bankers, which was attended by Venables, Waithman and Wood.59 In November 1831 Ward and John Horsley Palmer, governor of the Bank of England, were involved, with the blessing of ministers and the Tory ‘Waverers’, in abortive attempts to promote a City address in support of a modified bill.60 In the crisis of May 1832, common council met on the 10th, when Waithman was the only Member present, to petition for supplies to be withheld until reform had been secured, and the livery followed suit the following day, when all four were there (as was a deputation from the Birmingham Political Union); but Thompson provoked an outcry by declining to commit himself to supporting such drastic action. Ward meetings ensued, and on the 14th the livery, under the direction of Grote, resolved to reconstitute the 1831 United Reform Committee to scrutinize developments and to ensure the return of pledged and committed reformers at the next election. That day common council, with the approval of all four Members, addressed the king for the appointment of only ministers who would carry the bill unimpaired; but on the reinstatement of the Grey ministry it was set aside.61

The Boundary Act made no significant change to the constituency, in which the whole of the Inner and Middle Temples were included.62 Thompson did not risk standing at the 1832 general election, when there were 18,584 registered electors, including resident liverymen, whose rights had been preserved. Venables, Waithman and Wood were joined on the reform side by Grote and Key, but shortly before the election Venables was persuaded to stand down to avoid a split which might let in the Conservative challenger George Lyall†. The four reformers were comfortably returned, but on Waithman’s death soon afterwards Lyall beat Venables.63 London reverted to its tradition of endemic contests, in which Liberals generally had the better of things until 1874, when three Conservatives were returned.