Sir Edward Turner 2nd Bt and THE OXFORDSHIRE ELECTION OF 1754
Sir Edward Turner 2nd Bt and THE OXFORDSHIRE ELECTION OF 1754
The personalities and backgrounds of the four candidates featured largely in the highly coloured propaganda put out by both parties. Dashwood, a man of thirty-nine, was the hero of the 0ld Interest in Oxfordshire Since 1740 he had been Member of Parliament for Oxford City, though he had never been known to speak in the House. He could ride all the way from Kirtlington to Banbury on his own land. He was a large, convivial man weighing 16 stone 9 lbs. at the time of the campaign. He was related to Wenman and through him to the Bertie family who were Earls of Abingdon; some of his friends were Catholics and he had once visited Rome.
Both Turner and Viscount Parker were physically small men. Turner’s father had made his fortune in the South Sea Bubble and Sir Edward himself had built a “Gothick barn" of a house at Ambrosden which his own son was afterward to demolish. He had canvassed at one time for the succession to Wenman as one of the Oxford M.P.s: as recently as 1751 he had stood for election as a Tory to represent the University in Parliament. but had come bottom of the poll, His great ambition was, however, to represent his county. for knights of the shire occupied a distinguished position in society. Given his political history, his surname was unfortunate and his opponents made the most of it. Unlike Dashwood, Turner was a conscientious Justice of the Peace. In 1752 an outbreak of cattle disease led him to take the unpopular step of closing the markets at Banbury and Bicester while it lasted: a few months later he ordered a Bicester woman to be whipped. Viscount Parker's character stands out less clearly. He was a young man, recently back from the Grand Tour; he had spent some time in Geneva, that stronghold of Calvinism. The Tories accused him of wishing to undermine the Church of England, to which the Whigs replied by accusing Dashwood of having kissed the Pope‘s toe. Viscount Parker‘s opponents liked to recall the behaviour of his grandfather, who had founded the Macclesfield fortunes by embezzling public money while he was Lord Chancellor.
The Tory colour was blue, the Whig green. sometimes laced with gold. Their
propaganda was fought with no holds barred. In April 1753 the New Interest
published a paper, “News, Boys! News!" which set the tone; a week later
the 0ld interest replied. At this point an enterprising Oxford printer, William
Jackson of the High Street stepped in and organized their amalgamation, thus
founding Jackson’s Oxford Journal which maintained its existence, latterly as part
of the Oxford Journal Illustrated, until 1928. The Oxford Times claims to be
its successor today, He took much of his news from the London Evening Post;
the election campaign was keenly, followed in London; 231 Oxfordshire
freeholders lived there and both parties were anxious to secure their votes.
Though he never committed himself locally, Jackson‘s sympathies nationally were
Tory. He continued to provide a forum for both parties to declare their
opinions. His public was as eager for scandal as for news. The University,
though not directly involved, was renowned at this period for its powers of
invective and there were several dons willing to exercise their talents in the
cause of county politics; among them Thomas Bray of Exeter College, and Theophilus
Leigh, Master of Balliol and Turner’s brother-in-law, are worth mentioning.
Leigh was dubbed by his enemies “Dr. Twister", Reading the extracts we
give from Jackson's Oxford Journal one should look not so much for
straightforward reporting of events as for the airing of opinion. There are
burlesques of actual meetings, letters sometimes representing sometimes
satirizing the views of freeholders and others, advertisements, some like those
of the candidates genuine, others spurious like one signed “Tho. Green &
Turnham Green" (ire. Viscount Parker and Sir Edward Turner). Poems are given, questions
are put and answered, and reports appear of entertainments, such as that given by
the New Interest at Henley in November 1753, and of race meetings all over the
county where the gentry liked to parade their party colours. Even Quarter
Sessions were occasions for party rallies, while at the opposite extreme of
society, the mob was ready to be roused. Races at Burford, lists of the Grand
Jury, riots at Chipping Norton, all were grist to Jackson’s mill.
At the general election in 1741, Sir
Edward was chosen as a representative in parliament for Great Bedwin, co. Wilts,
and sat for the same borough till 1747. The election for Great Bedwin was
contested in 1747 by Sir Edward Turner, Bart. William Slope)“, and Lascelles Medcalf, esquires, and on that occasion, the Baronet was unsuccessful, as he was
also in a subsequent attempt to represent the University of Oxford An 1748. But
at the approaching general election in 1754, he commenced an active canvass for
the county of Oxford in conjunction with Lord Parker, confidently calculating on
the support of the friends of the ministry. (
May 30, 1753. The grand contest for the representation of the county was
ushered in, by the partisans of Sir Edward Turner and Lord Parker assembling
their friends on Monday in Whitsun-week, at Biscester, to play a grand match of
cricket, and on the following day to see a main or cocks, and a game at
single-stick. These sports did not escape the animadversions of their
opponents, who, combining them with a recent offer to procure the conversion of
the Derbyholds into Freeholds, were apprehensive of its giving the new
candidates a popularity that would prove fatal to the old members. By a ruse
de guerre they, therefore, endeavored to excite a sort of religious prejudice
against the new interest, by representing them as partial to Judaism, some
unsuccessful efforts have been lately made in parliament to procure the
enactment of a law in favour of the Jews In consequence, electioneering squibs
flew about in abundance, and among others issued in derision of the Bicester
games was the following :
Ordered by the New Christians, Julie 8, 1753.
That all Jews wandering in Oxfordshire, or any of the adjacent counties, do
repair to Bicester on Monday or Tuesday in Whitsun-week to give in their names,
that freeholds of forty shillings yearly value may be assigned them, the Rabbi
and New Christian: then holding a council for that purpose. Notwithstanding Sir
Edward Turner was one of the best friends of the parish of Bicester, a strong
party was formed there against him, headed by Mr. Coker, though it is now
impossible to say whether any such transactions took place, as are detailed in
the annexed paragraph Extracted from Jackson's Oxford Journal of December 29th,
1753, and headed “ Bicester”
“On Friday night the bells rang, and all day on Saturday; and at night nearly
all the inhabitants celebrated the same by drinking the health of Sir James
Dashwood, Lord Harley, and the glorious minority. A half hogshead of ale was
given to the populace, who were numerous and unanimous in their cries of no
Jews ! ' ‘ No naturalization! but “'Whenman and Dashwood forever !’ and were
just returned from a bonfire on the Market-hill from a procession round the
town, with the effigy of a Jew, whom they named Ned. A Jew was also fixed in the
middle of the bonfire The whole was concluded to the satisfaction of everybody.
The illuminations were the largest ever known in Bicester.")
The yellows, on the day or return, went in a cavalcade from the Bear at Oxon and were followed by a tumultuous rabble, who pelted the carriages and horses
with filth. On Magdalen's bridge, they surrounded a post-chaise, in which was
Captain Turton and another gentleman, crying “Over with them! down with them!
and at the same time taking hold of the wheels and traces, and lifting the
carriage up. A chimney sweeper threw two pebbles at it, and, stooping. to pick
up a third, Turton drew a pistol and shot him dead. For this fact, he was tried
and acquitted. Ibid.) *‘The Results
were. Lord Viscount Wenman 2033, Sir James Dashwood 2014, Lord Viscount Parker
1919, and Sir Edward Turner 1890,) which dwindled into such total insignificance
on scrutiny, that the high sheriff considered it his duty to make a double
return. The matter thus resting with the House of Commons was finally decided on April 23, 1755, when Lord Parker and Sir Edward were declared duly elected.
Last Thursday we received the news by an express, dispatched by the new tumor: gentlemen at London, that Lord Parker and Sir E. Turner were voted representatives tor the county of Oxford by the honorable House of Commons. On this occasion a. few hemp-dressers, in hopes of a little ale, rang the bells, but about six o’clock in the evening they were discharged, and the bells rung backward. On Friday, being market day, a blue flag was placed on the top of the tower, and at twelve o’clock, when the market bell rang, a little green hero (who hail the following motto on his breast, viz. No liberty, no freeholders but bribery and corruption forever) was brought and hanged in the pillory on the market-hill, where he hung till about six o‘clock in the evening when he was taken down and chained to the caseveralge, after which he was dragged through the streets, till he parted limb from limb. The bells were never suffered to be rung all this day, except a peal backward in the morning. As the populace was unanimous, not the least disorder was committed, nor did any accident happen, unless a few or the green ladies fell into fits on seeing their little hero used in the above manner.
Throughout the campaign the Tories were accused of Jacobite and Papist sympathies, well illustrated by a skit on their meeting held in “May 1753 at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand”.
The Crown and Anchor featured prominently in a
number of political satires of the 1790s. James Gillray in particular
frequently associated it with sympathizers to the French Revolution. In his
print The Hopes Of The Party Prior to July 14th (1791), a mob
gathers outside the Crown and Anchor to watch many well-known reformers
assassinate the king, as the queen and the prime minister William Pitt hang
from the lampposts of the tavern.
The repeal marked the climax of Oxfordshire’s election campaign. A deceptive
calm followed, to be interrupted by the Battle of Chipping Norton in February
1754, Both parties arranged rival meetings in that town on the same day; both
brought agitators with them and roused the mob to action. The New Interest
stormed the White Hart where the Tories were dining and assaulted the landlord,
William Heynes. A Grand Jury composed of Whigs with a Tory chairman brought a
true bill against the fourteen Whigs who had organized the mob, Jackson reports
these events in the style of a mock campaign.
Then at last came the poll. Thomas Blackall of Haseley was pricked as High
Sheriff for the election. The 'election writ was issued on April 9th, 1754 and
the return had to be made on May 31st, Both documents are substantially similar
to the forms still in use, (The 1970 writ is shown on p.39). The poll opened on
April 17th and ended on the 23rd, The writ was proclaimed at a
County Court the Sheriffs Court, presumably held (if the normal custom were
observed) on the site of the old Shire Hall in the Castle Yard.
This was traditionally county
territory For convenience, however, the City lent Broad Street for the actual
voting. Fourteen polling booths, one for each of the Hundreds into which the
county is divided, were erected there outside Exeter College. The reproductions
include the plan of the booths“, a detailed plan of a single booth, and the
bill” for erecting them. Each booth displayed the name of the Hundred, the
freeholders’ oaths, and the penalty for forswearing. ‘ No register of electors
existed, but in each booth, the sheriff‘s clerks recorded the name and qualifications
of each voter, the way he voted and whether he had sworn the freeholder’s
oaths, These oaths were not obligatory for all voters, but had to be taken when
anyone challenged an individual's right to exercise the franchise. Each party
had a checker and recorder of its own in every booth, parish constables were in
attendance to keep guard and the High Sheriff was responsible for overseeing it
all. The Vice-Chancellor tried to keep the University neutral; street wardens were appointed from all colleges and both parties; undergraduates not
possessing a vote were forbidden to come near the booths, carry weapons, or
leave their colleges during the poll: college gates were to be kept shut.
Although Viscount Parker and Turner had promised in a manifesto to keep the
peace. the 0ld Interest organized a regiment of Blueskins and guarded the
hundred booths with a mob of twenty men deep every day. These tactics were enough
to have prevented the Whigs from voting. Fortunately for the New Interest, the
Rector and Fellows of Exeter College were solidly on their side. Early in the
morning of April 17th. New Interest freeholders were admitted to the college
premises by its main gate in Turf Street. They were entertained handsomely.
Then the Rector opened the back gate onto Broad Street, allowing them to get
into the booths from behind and vote unhampered, This continued each day; a
Whig mob recruited by Exeter’s porters and servants kept control of the narrow
Turf by the College gate. By April 20th the Vice-Chancellor relaxed his rules.
When the poll closed on the 23rd, Blackall announced the result. Wenman was
declared to have a majority of 114 and Dashwood of 95 over Viscount Parker.
with Turner at the bottom of the poll.
The Whigs at once demanded scrutiny" and the County Court was adjourned
until May 9th. The Sheriff asked Jackson to print a copy of the poll based on
his own books. As Blackall was known to be a Whig, the Old Interest decided to
publish their version. taken from the Checkbooks of Wenman’s and Dashwood’s
clerks.” In the vital matter of how the votes were cast the different editions
tally reasonably well. In an electorate of 4.000, only 95 showed themselves to
be neutral by casting one vote for each party. The result of the scrutiny was:
Wenman 2,033; Dashwood 2,014; Viscount Parker 1,919; Sir Edward Turner 1,890.”
But Blackall, whose conduct throughout both poll and scrutiny had been above
reproach in spite of savage
propaganda returned all four candidates.
This was quite illegal and meant that the House of Commons would have to settle
a disputed election.
Months passed slowly by while the Commons deliberated. Meanwhile, the propaganda
continued. In July 1754 Oxford was the scene of a scandal known as the Rag
Plot. Five four-line stanzas of Jacobite verse were discovered hidden in a
bundle of rags. Some Scottish turns of phrase point to lady Susan Keck as the
author, though Turner was also known as a versifier, Mrs. Mary Carnall, Wife of
a Carfax grocer, said she had found the bundle outside their shop and the paper
inside it. Maria Duke who owned the rags had left them to run an errand; she
denied all knowledge of the verses. A servant of the Kecks was a regular
customer at Mr. Carnall’s. Only the New Interest supported the story. When Old
Interest supporters attacked the shop in August the constable and mayor refused
to intervene. The mayor and vice-chancellor were still investigating the case
in October. An odd feature of it was that the London Evening Post predated the
discovery of the treasonable paper by four days, Rewards of £50 and £200 were
offered for Unmasking the plot, Meanwhile, a Tory gentleman accused the butler
of Exeter College of inserting a portrait of the Young Pretender in the back of
his watch. but the Watch Plot did not embarrass the Whigs to any extent.
Both tales kept the election issue alive, The Commons had a very difficult case
before them. All four candidates had made up their minds before voting took
place to demand scrutiny if the results were unfavorable. They knew their
opponents had made use of many unqualified voters and that was the root of the
trouble. The restriction of the franchise to the 40/- freeholders was
notoriously unfair to copyholders and long leaseholders. Copyholders held their
land by virtue of possessing a copy of the entry in the court roll entitling
them to it and paying about 3/4d. a year to the Lord of the Manor. In
Warborough and Shillingford 22 manorial courts had not been held for thirty or
forty years. so that the Copyholders who lived there had come to regard
themselves almost as freeholders. Both sides exploited this situation, the
Whigs especially inventing a new class which they called Customary Freeholders.
Similarly long leaseholders had been encouraged to vote. The best example is
the Bicester Derbyholders, who held their land on a lease granted late in
Elizabeth I‘s reign by the Earl of Derby for a term of ten thousand years at a
penny a year. As the payment had not been worth collecting within living
memory, they were freeholders in all but name. To do them justice. Wenman and
Dashwood had disowned the Warborough Copyholders on finding their true status,
but the Whigs had polled over a hundred similar votes. An important
constitutional issue was involved here. Before the Commons the Whigs made the
most of their case: copyholders already traditionally enjoyed the right to vote
in the counties of Glamorgan, Merioneth, Hereford. shire, and Gloucestershire and
in the borough of Woodstock. It was desirable to extend the privilege
throughout the country. Copyholders of £300 per annum were allowed to represent
a borough, those of £600 might sit in Parliament for a county, Why, therefore,
were they unable to vote? As they were entitled to serve on juries they were
undoubtedly free and lawful men. The question was fiercely debated. After a prolonged argument, the Whig Government shelved the question and the Commons
decided that for the purposes of this particular election, the copyhold should
be allowed. The famous lawyer Blackstone, who was then lecturing at Oxford,
drew up a pamphlet, “Consideration on the Question whether Tenants by Copy of
Court Roll. according to the Custom of the Manor though not at the Will of the Lord, are Freeliolders qualified
to vote in Elections for Knights of the Shire“, Published in London in 1758,
this settled the controversy: Blackstone pronounced against the copyholders, An
Act of Parliament of the same year legalized this View. Copyholders, together
with long-leaseholders and the richer tenants-at-will, had to wait for the
franchise until the Reform Act of 1832, Constitutionally, therefore, the main
result of the Oxfordshire Election was to put back the clock for nearly eighty
years,
There were many other grounds for objection to voters. as the documents show. On
the immediate question of who should represent the county, the Commons decided
at midnight on April 24th, 1755, a twelvemonth and a day after the poll had
closed, that Viscount Parker and Turner had been elected. The figures given by
both sides are there for your examination. A Whig House of Commons had returned the New
Interest candidates The cost of the election, reckoned by the Tories at
£20,068. 1. 2d. on their part alone, was still being disputed in 1758. It seems
probable that only Turner paid his debts in full, After this exhausting
struggle it is not surprising that in the 1761 Election Oxfordshire preferred
compromise to contest, returning Dashwood in the Old Interest and Sir Charles
Spencer. a brother of the Duke of Marlborough, in the New,
After the Commons’ decision, the Oxford Journal faithfully records actions and
reactions in the county. The mob at Bicester rang the church bells backward and hanged “a little green hero” in the pillory on Market Hill. John Princep
the vicar, a firm Whig, threatened to dismiss a Tory parish clerk when he
introduced Psalm 64 into the services So the London Evening Post commented that
Mr, Reputation, a Bicester attorney, was petitioning Parliament to proceed for
High Treason against anyone reading a psalm reflecting on the New Interest. At
Kidlington, where the voters had been Tory, the mob, said Jackson, rejoiced at
the ruin of their country The Old Interest published an address of thanks to
Wenman and Dashwood and in August 1755 they had a banquet at Oxford Town Hall
for their freeholders which became an annual event. In early June that year
Lady Susan Keck, worn out by her efforts to further the Whig cause, had died.
Jackson’s tribute to her was a moving one. While Viscount Parker and Turner
busied themselves at Westminster the unfortunate Wenman was reduced to
subletting his townhouse and selling up all its furniture except the pictures.
Dashwood, relying on the fortune founded by his brewing ancestors, was at ease.
He comfortably forgot his . I.P‘s duties and enjoyed the luxury of entertaining
his personal friends again When his Whig neighbour the Earl of Jersey had his
house burnt down, Dashwood sent him help in spite of his politics, but he did
not resume his former custom of supplying Sir Edward Turner with bucks from
Kirtlington Park,
It was in February 1755 that William Hogarth made the first – and, as it was to turn out, much the more fortunate – of his two major expeditions into the field of political satire. Hitherto he had seemed well content with social and domestic subjects. Since 1729 when, according to his fragmentary memoir, he had married at the age of 32 and 'commenced painter of small Conversation pieces from twelve to fifteen inches high,' this energetic and versatile artist had continued to enlarge his fame; but, although generally admired, his 'curious Miniature Conversation Paintings' did not altogether satisfy him. Evidently, he loved the theatre; and he now began to borrow suggestions from the actor's and the playwright's art. He had decided (he wrote)
'to compose pictures on canvas similar to representations on the
stage. ... Let the figures in either pictures or prints be considered as
players dressed either for the sublime – for genteel comedy, or farce – for
high or low life. I have endeavoured to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer.
...'
Hogarth's earliest effort at pictorial dramatization was, of
course, A Harlot's
Progress, painted during the year 1731 and published as a series of
prints in the spring of 1732. Their success was apparently immediate; and the
appearance of Plate III, which shows the formidable harlot-hunting magistrate,
Sir John Gonson, as he bursts into Moll Hackabout's room, bent on removing poor
Moll to the miseries of Bridewell, elicited particularly loud applause. Sir
John's activities were by no means popular; and the Lords of the Treasury, who
did not share either his reforming zeal or his moral prejudices, are said to
have cut short their business and abandoned their official posts that they
might have an opportunity of hastening to the print shop.
Followed A
Rake's Progress, originally advertised in December 1733, and Marriage-a-la-Mode, the
finest and most effective of these panoramas of 'pictur'd Morals,' announced
after a lapse of a little over eleven years. Meantime the painter-dramatist had
attracted the attention of many eminent contemporary critics. In 1736 Jonathan
Swift paid him the tribute of some enthusiastic doggerel verses:
'How I want thee, humorous Hogarth!
Thou, I hear, a pleasant rogue art.
Were but you and I acquainted,
Every monster should be painted:
You should try your graving tools
On this odious group of fools;
Draw the beasts as I describe them;
Form their features, while I give them...
And Henry Fielding, no less severe a judge, had saluted him in
1740 as 'one of the most useful Satyrists of any age, hath produced.'
Whether Hogarth was as genuine a moralist as he himself sometimes
liked to imagine, and as his literary admirers have often claimed, is a
question that, although it throws an important light on the constitution of his
genius, cannot be debated here. If he had something of Fielding's genial scorn,
tempered by much of the novelist's delight in the oddity and diversity of human
existence, we can credit him with very little of Swift's saeva indignatio. He could
never have become a ferocious and embittered recluse but remained essentially
a man of the world, for whom the revolutions of fashion and taste and opinion,
despite a temperament both irritable and combative, was still the most
fascinating of all themes. He was not a man, one supposes, whoever threw a
newspaper down till he had studied it to the bottom of the sheet – or, rather,
if he flung it down, his natural inquisitiveness, sooner or later, would have
persuaded him to pick it up again – and the newspapers of 1753 and 1754 were
full of the forthcoming General Election, with particular reference to the
County Election to be held at Oxford. Long before the hustings were actually
manned, the political struggle waged in the ancient university city and
throughout the adjacent hundreds had become (we are informed) the 'constant
topic of conversation of almost all our coffee-houses in town'; and the
diatribes of envenomed academic pamphleteers and mercenary, local journalists
were seized upon and re-echoed in the columns of the London press. What gave a
provincial election this nationwide significance? The student of modern
political affairs, accustomed to the procedure established by a succession of
nineteenth-century Reform Bills, is apt to forget that, during the eighteenth
century, parliamentary elections were frequently arranged by a system of
judicious compromise. Local interests divided the field between them, thus
preserving the stability of a time-honoured feudal status quo. County elections
were unusually expensive, owing to the large number of forty-shilling
freeholders whose sympathies must be ascertained, aroused, or suborned against
the advent of election day; and there was no reason to procure with
considerable expense results that might equally well be obtained by means of a
quiet private treaty. In Northamptonshire, for example, during the entire
century, contests were held on only three occasions; only three counties would
go to the polls in the General Election of 1761. So long as the magnates of the
county were 'determined to keep the peace, their tenants or dependants, the
electors, need not hope to break it.
Naturally, they might wish to do so. For besides much pleasurable
excitement and the gratifying sensation that they were exercising a free choice
and gallantly supporting the role of patriotic Englishmen, a contested election
was bound to bring them many material advantages. Whereas the lowlier sort were
feasted with beer and beef – election 'treats' were always numerous and costly
– obscure shopkeepers received a sudden influx of aristocratic patronage, and
the humble parson a haunch of venison from his Grace's Lordship's park.
These benefits might be short-lived: but they were nonetheless agreeable.
And when, in the year 1752, the Duke of Marlborough, a devoted
Whig or champion of the 'New Interest,' decided to break the truce and launch
an attack on Oxford, the traditional stronghold, of Toryism – or, as he
preferred to style it, 'the little kingdom of Jacobitism' – his decision was as
welcome to the freeholders as it was disconcerting and exasperating to wealthy
supporters of the opposite cause. His challenge, however, could not be
disregarded; and for the next two years – under the Septennial Act Parliament
was not due to be dissolved until the spring of 1754 – the opposing forces
gradually assembled in an atmosphere of increasing excitement, taunts being
hurled to and fro after the custom of Homeric heroes, while the protagonists
looked to their weapons and lengthily buckled on their armour. Both physically
and politically, none loomed so large as that massive champion of the 'Old
Interest,' Sir James Dashwood of Northbrook and Kirtlington, a tun-bellied
country gentleman who since 1740 had represented the County of Oxford in the
House of Commons. A land-owner who, it was said, could travel from Kirtlington
to Banbury without ever leaving his own ground, he had a wide circle of
Jacobite acquaintances – with whom his association, nevertheless, seems
generally to have been convivial rather than political – and was rumoured to
have demonstrated his allegiance to the Stuarts by planting a covert of
Scottish firs upon a knoll that dominated Kirtlington Park. As an orator he was
undistinguished, and the best that his friends could say of one of the rare
speeches he found it expedient to deliver in the House of Commons was that he
had 'spoken intelligibly with the voice of a man and an Englishman.' Yet this
perfect type of conservative squire, corpulent, good-humoured,
hard-drinking, devoted to his generous stake in the county that he helped to
govern, was separated by only two generations from the world of commerce. His
grandfather, Alderman George Dashwood, had been a brewer and a scrivener; and,
among the nicknames coined by his adversaries, Sir James was often referred to
as 'The Jolly Brewer':
See but yesterday's knight, how lordly he struts,
With a carcass the size of his ancestor's butts.
Arrayed at his side, in the ranks of the Old Interest, stood his
cousin, Lord Wenman of Thame and Caswell, holder of an Irish title and member
for the City of Oxford; while confronting them were Sir Edward Turner of
Ambrosden, an amiable if somewhat ineffective personage with a taste for Gothic
architecture and an unfortunate reputation for political tergiversation, and
Lord Viscount Parker, the eldest son of the astronomer Earl of Macclesfield.
Such were the adversaries brought into the lists by the Duke of Marlborough's
precipitate and inconsiderate action; and though the standards they raised bore
various devices, and their war cries were frequently inspired by local spite
and prejudice, the main issues that they disputed were of importance to the
whole kingdom. The New Interest were henchmen of the Court Party: the Old
Interest, representatives of a large and influential section of the British
populace that had not yet acquiesced in the blessings of Hanoverian rule. They
opposed the extravagance of modern governments and lamented the rapid growth of
taxation, both direct and indirect. The Land Tax was especially offensive, and they complained that the proceeds of taxation were devoted to the upkeep of
huge and unnecessary standing armies. More vaguely, they asserted that every
Whig, notwithstanding his adherence to the present dynasty, was at heart a
Republican, an unrepentant, 'king-killer,' just as the New Interest claimed
that every Tory was at heart a Jacobite, pointing out that it was the existence
of Jacobite plots that obliged the government to impose taxes, maintain a
standing army and increase the burden of the National Debt. The Tory country
gentlemen made a virtue of their 'independency' – the independence enjoyed by
any party that has been long in opposition.
Each Interest had its colours – blue for the Old, green for the
New; and very soon verdant and azure cockades began to blossom thick along the
streets of Oxfordshire towns and villages. As early as December of 1752,
Dashwood and Wenman, attended by a bodyguard of gentlemen's servants, marching
two and two, musicians with drums, trumpets, and French horns, a large
procession of freeholders, fifteen coaches and banners bearing the
legends Pro Patria, No
Bribery, No Corruption and Liberty, Property, Independency, had advanced
in state on the town of Henley, where a dinner was held and speeches were
delivered, in which the candidates, disdaining the urban wiles of their subtle
Whig antagonists, apostrophized their well-fed supporters, not in 'pathetic'
and 'admirable' phraseology, but (we are assured) 'in the honesty of their true
British hearts,' emphasizing their staunchness, their disinterestedness and
their independent standing. Similarly, in February 1753, the New Interest summoned
their partisans to attend them at the Bear Inn in Oxford, there to approve the
choice of Turner and Viscount Parker as candidates, and thus 'exercise a right
of which they have long been deprived.' As the New Interest procession
assembled outside Christ Church, they were assailed by the clamour of an
'honest' Old Interest mob, rhythmically intoning 'A Wenman! A Dashwood! ...'
Canvassing of equal vigour was carried on not only in Oxford and the
surrounding districts but in London itself, where many Oxford freeholders had
their, houses and places of business; and we hear of Dashwood hard at work
among wax chandlers, brandy merchants, cheesemongers, and sugar-bakers, whom he
entertained regularly at the King's Arms and One Tun Tavern opposite Hungerford
Market and the Saracen's Head in Friday Street; while Viscount Parker and
Turner retorted with a lavish opposition treat. Volleys of satirical election
literature were discharged on both sides and not a few minor contestants,
recommended by their oddity or absurdity, achieved a passing journalistic fame.
For instance, there was Lady Susan Keck – nicknamed 'Lord Sue' by writers of
the Old Interest – wife of the candidate for Woodstock (the Duke of
Marlborough's family preserve), who devoted herself with passionate energy to
the campaign against the Old Interest and, mounted on horses from her husband's
racing stable, spurred like a political amazon into the remotest villages. Also
singled out for particular notice was a New Interest don, Thomas Bray of Christ
Church (a college that, together with Exeter, was distinguished from the rest
of the University by its Whiggish and Hanoverian bent), whom an ignominious
private misfortune exposed to widespread public ridicule. A certain Theodosia
Cornel, an Oxford street-walker, had imputed to Mr. Bray the paternity of her
illegitimate child; and, though the woman was afterward convicted of slander,
Bray and his Theodosia became favourite targets of Old Interest pamphleteering.
Professional journalists, of course, took a share in the game, prominent among
them being William Jackson, an Oxford printer, who launched the most celebrated
of election news, the Oxford
Journal, which professed – but failed – to present both sides of
the question with complete impartiality. Amateur satirists were not behindhand;
and several eminent academic personages, including Dr. Blackstone of All Souls,
Charles Jenkinson of University College, and the Master of Balliol, contributed
lampoons, parodies, and squibs which added to the virulence of Grub Street all
the accumulated rancour of an Oxford senior common room. Augustan Oxford,
usually so stagnant, had seldom seen such entertaining years.
Described by its historian as the 'most literate' of
eighteenth-century election contests, the Oxfordshire Election was to derive a
fresh impetus, and acquire new acrimony, from the events of April 1753. A
further issue emerged – the notorious 'Jew Bill.' This mild and praiseworthy
measure would have enabled foreign Jews, resident in England, to become
naturalized by Act of Parliament, subject to the same limitations as their
native co-religionists. English Jews did not, at the time, number more than
seven or eight thousand families; but they held important positions in London
and Bristol, and it seemed reasonable enough that those who had been born
abroad should be allowed to exercise the restricted freedom already granted to
their English kin. The proposal, however, aroused fierce resentment and drew
down upon the heads of the government an 'inexhaustible torrent of ribaldry.'
It was suggested that the Jewish influx would soon absorb the whole realm; an
unknown Jew, near the Royal Exchange, was alleged to have been overheard
remarking, that he now hoped to live to see the day when he would 'not meet a
Christian in this place or an Englishman in the kingdom'; and there was talk of
the probable condition of England in the year 1854 when a Sanhedrin would sit
at Westminster, St. Paul's would be a synagogue, and for the statue of Sir John
Barnard in the City would have been substituted that of Pontius Pilate. The
agitation spread to the provinces; and Ipswich urchins were said to have
surrounded the Bishop of Norwich, noisily begging him to circumcise them. The
government thereupon gave way; and, six months after it had been passed, the
alarming Act was hastily repealed.
Meanwhile, Old Interest propaganda had not let the occasion slip.
As True-Blue defenders of British Liberty, Wenman, and Dashwood Were loud in
their condemnation of this insidious and subversive Bill (though the New
Interest complained that originally they had not taken the trouble to vote
against it), and Dashwood, contrary to his usual practice, addressed his fellow
members in a 'very curious speech of almost unheard-of oratory.' At Oxford,
where a Jew can very rarely have been seen, and the idea of a Jewish invasion
was correspondingly dreadful, his anti-Semitism had the required effect. The
New Interest might compare him to a pantomime actor and announce that, in the
'new farce called Repeal or Harlequin,' the part of Harlequin had been 'done
intolerably bad.' But Oxfordshire at large responded to his call; and at
Bicester, the churchbells rang all day, and loyal toasts were vociferously
drunk, amid shouts of 'No Jews! No Naturalization!- Wenman and Dashwood forever!'
So the preliminary stages of the election followed their lively and disorderly course. Treating was lavish, drunkenness widespread, and physical violence not uncommon. In January 1754, the Old Interest offered the corporation and freemen of Oxford the 'most plentiful entertainment ever known in tha memory of man'; whereas the New were content to meet at various inns and drink the health of the Duke of Marlborough, because (hinted their opponents) the two sheep-stealers commissioned to procure mutton had just been arrested and committed to the local jail. Frequent clashes occurred between organized mobs. At Banbury an Old Interest gang, inflamed with free liquor by the 'domestic of a certain gentleman,' grossly affronted 'one honourable person who had attended a New Interest supper party; and at Chipping Norton, where the Old Interest faction had set an example by throwing stones, the New Interest burst into the White Hart and brutally assaulted a Tory gentleman who was dining there. ... At length the electors went to the polls – from April 17th to April 23rd, 1754. Hustings had been erected in front of Exeter College, but New Interest supporters found it difficult to penetrate the dense Old Interest mob that opposed them twenty men deep; and at this point, the Fellows of Exeter, devout adherents of the government party, resorted to a skillful and (their adversaries considered) an extremely unfair stratagem. Voters were admitted through the back gate on the Turl and allowed to pass out again through the Broad Street main gate. They could thus enter the hustings from the rear; but during its passage, the ungrateful electorate abused the Fellows' hospitality. The Hall of the College became a scene of Bacchanalian merriment, 'offuscated' with clouds of tobacco smoke, obstructed by casks of ale and polluted by the presence of loose women. Exeter, as the Vice-Chancellor declared, had signally disgraced itself and, by the excesses it permitted, remained 'per aliquot dies foedata et conspurcata.' Yet Exeter's stratagem failed to turn the tide; and when the poll was made known, both Old Interest candidates had respectable majorities. A scrutiny was at once demanded; petitions, alleging corruption and other irregularities, were eventually laid before the House of Commons; and, after numerous sittings, Turner and Viscount Parker were declared to be the rightful victors. But the controversy did not die down. Two pretended plots, the 'Rag' and 'Watch' plots, both of them intended to convict the Old Interest of treasonable Popish designs, were opportunely brought to light; and, on the heels of the High Sheriff's inconclusive scrutiny, there was a final burst of violence as a body of New Interest supporters drove in procession across Magdalen Bridge. Their carriages were pelted with filth, and an 'honest' mob made desperate attempts to hurl them into the river below; at which a Captain Turton leaned from his post-chaise and shot down, mortally wounding, an aggressive Tory chimney-sweep.
Hogarth captures four elements of the election process in his
paintings: the elaborate entertainment of the townsfolk to win their support,
the flagrant bribery of the country electors, the shenanigans associated with
polling day itself, and the ‘chairing’ of the winners through the town.
Collectively the paintings depict the chaotic consequences of a political
system built on the mutual avarice and dishonesty of both the candidates and
the electorate. The pictures are typically Hogarthian: intelligent, intricate, and rich with allusion. Yet, despite their complexity, through their use of
humour, familiar locations, and stereotypical characters, they effortlessly lay
bare the networks of patronage and corruption which sustained the
eighteenth-century political system.
So much for the topical background of Hogarth's famous series. But
to compare the pictures that the artist produced with the actual course of the
Oxfordshire Election, as he read of it in the London papers or heard if
discussed in one of the coffee houses he was fond of frequenting beneath the
piazzas of Covent Garden, is at once to become aware of many significant
discrepancies. The Oxfordshire contest evidently supplied a hint; but, like
every artist worthy of the name, Hogarth did not employ the material that he
had gained from his experience of 'real life' until it had gone through lengthy
interior processes of digestion and assimilation. Clearly, he made no attempt to
provide a literal representation of Oxfordshire scenes or personages. Hogarth's
election is held in the country; behind the last of the series, Chairing the Member, we
observe the unpretentious red-brick buildings of a quiet English country town.
Indeed, since scrutiny was at once demanded, none of the candidates was ever
chaired; while Hogarth seems deliberately to have confused the issue by giving
orange, instead of green, cockades to the supporters of the New Interest. But
the campaign against the Jew Bill is reflected in the Entertainment episode;
and, in the same picture, we find a reference to one of the actual Whig
contestants in the blue banner – obviously snatched from the Tory procession by
the broken-headed New Interest bravo whose wound is being dressed with gin –
which bears the inscription: Give
Us Back Our Eleven Days. As President of the Royal Society, Viscount
Parker's father, Lord Macclesfield, had helped Chesterfield to present his case
for the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar in September 1752, by which
September 3rd became arbitrarily September 14th. This 'Popish' innovation both
puzzled and alarmed the British proletariat; and the cry, 'Give us back the
eleven days we have been robbed of!'' was taken up by the conservative mob, who
felt that eleven precious days had been wrenched out of their life-span. Some
of Lord Macclesfield's unpopularity appears to have followed his son to Oxford.
Yet, in another sense, the connection is close. It was the
singularity of the Oxfordshire Election – at a period when such conflicts were
rare – that excited Hogarth's fancy; and what he gives us is a generalized view
of party corruption and. political discord. Hogarth had sprung from the people
– the grandson of a small farmer, the son of an impoverished schoolmaster – but
he had a realistic appreciation of the dangerous effects of popular feeling.
Popular agitation had defeated the Jew Bill, just as in 1733 it had whipped up
the Excise Riots; and we should not be surprised (as Mr. R. J. Robson sensibly
reminds us)
'that the most liberal and enlightened of men tended to identify
the very real democratic elements in the eighteenth-century constitution with
'mobility' and violence, and deprecated any attempts to render more readily
articulate this public opinion by the introduction of manhood suffrage.'
Thus the Election
Entertainment – one of those 'treats' that Old and New
Interests alike showered on their supporters – has degenerated into a popular
orgy. The New Interest is standing treat here; but beneath the window of the
country inn streams an excited Old Interest procession, armed with staves and
brickbats, carrying the effigy of a bearded Jew, roughly labeled 'No Jews,'
and flags displaying the legends 'Liberty' and 'Marry and Multiply in spite of
the Devil.' A chamber pot is emptied on their heads, and three bricks skim
through the open casement. One of them scores a lucky hit; and the election
agent reels from his stool at the table, dropping the register of votes and
over-turning a bottle of wine. ...
Within the room, all is heat and confusion and noise. A fiddler
scrapes: punch is brewed on the floor: the chairman, his fork still impaling a
very large oyster, has succumbed to apoplexy. An 'ignorant and ferocious populace'
is guzzling and swilling at their betters' expense; while the gentry joins in
the fun with various degrees of cynicism or good humour. The elder candidate,
not very sober himself, struggles feebly against the boisterous endearments of
two extremely drunk supporters; but his colleague, a smooth and fashionable
youth, submits complacently to the lickerish caresses of a stout and aged Doll
Tearsheet, though a little girl is filching his diamond ring and his wig is
being set on fire. Canvassing for Votes and The Polling depict further stages
of a contested election in full swing. Money is pressed into a farmer's palms
by representatives of both parties, a plump ingratiating innkeeper and a lean
and truculent sailor; and the blind, the dying, and the mad are hustled to the
polling booth. Then, at last, the victorious member is chaired – incidentally,
he does not resemble either of the two candidates hitherto exhibited – and is
nearly upset by a fight that breaks out in the crowd between an old sailor,
turned bear leader, and a furious countryman who is swinging a flail. Blackened
chimneysweeps look down from the churchyard gate, and politicians and political
agents are carousing in an upper chamber. As a banner carried by the procession
explains, it is the Old Interest that has gained the day:
So far the moralist is in charge of the story. But satirical or
moral motives have never been in undisputed control of any genuine artist's
creative talents. The Election Series has a topical message and a political and
moral point of view: it is also an illustration of how far the artist's
creative impulse may transform and transcend the limited aims that he has begun
by setting himself. Hogarth's four pictures are a triumph of vision and skill.
In Sir John Soane's Museum they hang alongside the Rake's Progress, executed in
1733; and, in the intervening years, the pictorial moralist had become a great
creative artist. The Rake's decline and fall are displayed in a succession of
ingenious but often somewhat cramped and, at times, badly lighted peep-shows.
Their appeal is primarily dramatic; whereas, in the Election Series, every
window of the painter's imagination appears to have been thrown wide. A golden
illumination beams down from the summer sky: noble trees soar into the air
among the rose-red housefronts. As for the human figures who swirl in the
foreground, they combine the charm of incisive characterization with proper
regard for the complex decorative schemes in which they are incorporated.
Tumultuous but never overcrowded, each composition carefully built up on daring
and original lines, his Election Series was Hogarth's finest contribution to
the cycle of contemporary dramas he had launched in 1731 – a monument not only
to the painter's gifts but to the masculine and abounding genius of the English
eighteenth century.
An inn in the fictional town of Guzzledown is the setting for the
first scene, An Election Entertainment, which Hogarth displayed in
his studio just days before the General Election in April 1754. It is a
complex, densely populated scene full of absurdity, chaos, coercion, greed, and
violence.
The two Whig parliamentary candidates, Sir Edward Turner and Mr Viscount Parker
have gathered together the town’s few eligible voters to offer them an ‘entertainment’
- effectively a bribe - hoping to induce them to vote for the Whig party. The
party’s motto ‘Liberty and Loyalty’ is emblazoned on an orange flag on the left
of the painting whilst its colours, small orange rosettes, are piled on a table
in the left foreground, worn by some of the attendees, and fixed to the
walls. Orange was probably chosen in reference to William of Orange
(1650-1702) whose portrait is on the wall to the left of the window and to
whose supporters the term Whig was originally applied in the 1680s. The fact
that the portrait has been slashed suggests that the room had previously been
rented by the Tories, the opposing party, for their entertainment, and that
both factions were equally prepared to bribe the electorate.
The candidates are seen on the left, indicated by the laurels fixed to their
chairs. The younger, most exquisitely dressed, mostly likely Sir Edward Turner
is wearing a blue velvet coat with gold braid, fine lace at his cuffs and
throat, a black necktie, and a neatly curled white wig. The associated print
gives his name as ‘Sir Commodity Taxem, Bart.’, a reference to the Whig’s
excise laws. His finery, slender figure, and pink-and-white complexion contrast
with the rotund form, homely clothing, and coarse, bulbous features of the local
woman whose embrace and conversation he is suffering. Standing above them the
woman’s husband, wearing a coachman’s wig, his pipe at risk of setting the
candidate’s hair on fire, presses his wife and the candidate close together as
their daughter stares open-mouthed at the candidate’s diamond ring. The other
candidate, seated behind the first, in rich, but more countrified clothing, a
dark olive coat with gold braid to the sleeves and front and a longer grey wig,
is equally being importuned by a dribbling drunk, whose face is scratched,
presumably from brawling with Tories. A foolish-looking man, a cobbler
according to the leather apron he wears, clasps the second candidate’s hand in
a gesture of drunken allegiance. In almost no other situation would tradesmen
be able to engage so familiarly and near gentlemen of such
elevated social status but in pursuit of votes the usual social conventions are
abandoned by all.
The feast is redolent of the gluttony and greed of those around the table.
Beneath the painting of William III an enormously fat cleric, sweating from
overeating, has removed his wig. In front of him is a stripped ham bone, his
own chafing dish with gravy and bread, and a bottle of ‘Champaign’ [champagne].
At the opposite end of the table to the candidates is the mayor, his
black-trimmed red robe slipping off his shoulders as he sits slumped in his
chair. He is being bled following his collapse after gorging himself on
oysters. Eighteenth-century wisdom dictated that the removal of a pint of blood
would also remove any sickness in the body but in fact, no blood is dripping
into the barber-surgeon’s bowl and the mayor is a disturbing shade of blue: he
was considered to have eaten himself to death by Hogarth’s contemporaries.19 To
the right of the mayor sits a plainly dressed man, crippled by gout, probably
caused by excessive drinking and possibly, by the wide-eyed look on his face,
in need of the chamber pot being emptied out of the window behind him. In
contrast to the detritus on the table, on the floor in the foreground in front
of the mayor is an inviting arrangement of lobsters, oysters, root vegetables,
pewter plates, and a jug, a scene within a scene, a very finely executed
diminutive Dutch-style still-life recalling the feasting pictures of the
Netherlandish school to which the painting is indebted.
The scene reflects the violence often associated with the process of
electioneering during this period. Outside the window Tory supporters are
marching and waving banners, promoting their cause and attempting to disrupt
the Whig treat. The placard ‘No Jews’ refers to the Jewish Naturalisation Act
of 1753 which was repealed due to Tory opposition. ‘Marry and Multiply in spite
of the Devil’ refers to the Marriage Act, also of 1753, which rendered
marriages not conducted along the proper lines illegal. Some of the Tories,
wearing blue rosettes, are using sticks in an effort to attack the Whigs
through the window and are only held at bay by having the contents of the chamber
pot poured over them. Two bricks have been thrown through the window; one has
knocked the Whig party Secretary backward, he hovers in suspended animation
about to fall to the floor, along with the ledger he has been keeping recording
‘Sure Votes’ of which there is only one and ‘Doubtful Votes’ of which there are
many. To the left of the secretary, seated in the foreground are two ‘bruisers’
employed by the Whigs to extort promises of votes by force as indicated by the
bulb-headed staff one is leaning on. He has been wounded in the course of his
‘duty’ and is fortifying himself with a tot of gin whilst his brother-in-arms,
a butcher by trade given the sharpening tool swinging from his belt, pours
alcohol straight from a bottle to clean his colleague’s head wound. The Whig
bruisers have captured a banner from the Tory mob with the words ‘Give us our
Eleven Days’ on it. The phrase refers to the shift from the Julian to the
Gregorian calendar in 1752, opposed by the Tories, which involved omitting
eleven days of September. Many poorly educated people thought that the
government was ‘stealing’ eleven days of their lives and tried to win their
reinstatement. Violence was not only deployed within the electoral
process to win votes but was also one of the few ways the largely
unenfranchised population could record their displeasure with those who
governed them.
The scene depicts numerous corrupt practices that the opportunistic electors
and unscrupulous political parties employed whilst electioneering. Behind the
candidates stands a beautiful young woman wearing a blue cloak and straw hat
decorated with the Whig colours. She is being given a snuffbox by a red-coated
soldier who is simultaneously shaking hands with a rubicund and drunken
alderman. An alderman standing behind her raises his glass over the woman’s
head in a lewd toast; the inference is that the girl’s sexual favours have been
traded for a vote. In the foreground on the left of the picture is Abel Squat,
whose name we know from an inscription in the associated print. In
contrast to the stereotypical image of Quakers as scrupulous businessmen, he is
a fat, deeply unappealing man in typical plain Quaker dress, with a bulbous
nose, hooded eyes, red cheeks, bleary eyes, double chin, and large, plump, gnarled
hands with filthy fingernails. He sits before a table piled high with gloves
and stockings to be used as gifts for the wives of potential voters ‘To make
their interest sure and steady; For right and well their Honours know, What
things the petticoat can do.’ Squat gloomily reads a paper ‘I promise to
pay to / ….[illeg.] of 20 pounds six / months after date / R Pention’,
recognizing he will have to wait for his ‘pension’ or reward. On the
opposite side of the canvas is another dissident, in the garb of a Puritanical
tailor, grey, gaunt, and hollow-eyed, his hands together in prayer rather than
reaching out for the handful of gold coins one of the Whig agents is offering
him. He is the only person in the room who remains aloof from greed,
violence, and corruption and is presented as suffering for, rather than
benefiting from his honesty: he is clearly underfed and his son’s toes protrude
from his shoes. His wife chastises him as described in a poem apparently
sanctioned by Hogarth ‘Thou Blockhead! gold refuse, when here’s your child in
want of shoes?’
Interspersed between the evidently corrupt or vicious or gluttonous characters
are a lesser, though no less well-executed, chorus of vacuous jolly fools whose
high-spirited revelry, lubricated by alcohol, adds to the humour of the scene.
The company is serenaded by a disparate band of musicians. The rhythm set by
the female with the fiddle - apparently a portrait of ‘Fiddling Nan’ who was
well-known in Oxfordshire - is seemingly disdained by the double bass player,
the viol player has stopped playing to flatter an effeminate-looking gentleman
in the hope of being offered a free glass of wine and the bagpipe player is
playing the ‘Scotch Fiddle’, that is to say scratching for fleas. Seated in
front of the musicians alongside the effete gentleman are a trio of rustic
countrymen gawping either at the bricks flying through the window or the
attempts of a tipsy gentleman to entertain them. This gentleman is, according
to Hogarth, a portrait of Sir John Parnell, an Irish MP who asked for his
likeness to be included. Apparently singing the ballad ‘An old woman clothed in
grey’ whose first line is ‘Down, down with political fools …’ his hand
puppet is also mocking his neighbour’s pained facial expression.
The composition of An Election Entertainment has been compared
to Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. The pervasive
corruption demonstrated in the painting also recalls the theme of that work
“‘He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me” referring
to the candidates but also to the electorate.’ Notwithstanding this, the
comic vignettes within the complex and energetic composition give it humorous
overtones, less evident in the second third, and fourth scenes, which present an
increasingly despondent view of mid-eighteenth-century electoral practices.
Hogarth based his four election
prints on the Oxfordshire Election of 1754, interpreting the circumstances
liberally. His large oil paintings of the same subject in the Sir John Soane
Museum are well worth a visit, The prints differ slightly in detail and the
last three have been engraved the opposite way to the paintings,
PLATE I : AN ELECTION ENTERTAINMENT I
This engraving was issued in 1755. It contains allusions to the Jew Bill of
1753 and to the change made in the Calendar in 1752. (“Give us our eleven
days”) The “yellows” are feasting their constituents. “Speak and Have“ is the
motto of the entertainment. One gentleman submits unwillingly to the caresses of
a stout lady; another is embarrassed by a squinty cobbler and a maudlin barber.
A stout person mops his pate over a steaming chafing dish, a nobleman hobnobs
with a fiddler, and a wag with a face smeared on his knuckles is singing “An old
Woman clothed in Grey" to a couple of bumpkins. There is an alderman in a
fit from a surfeit of oysters and an agent stunned by a brickbat while he is
registering the sure and doubtful votes. On the left is an incorruptible
Methodist tailor being badgered at once by an agent, wife, and son. In the
foreground a butcher with “pro patria" bound on his broken head, pours
Geneva on the flesh wound of a wincing bludgeon«man, who takes the same remedy
internally; a frightened boy brews rack punch in a tub. and a squat pedlar
distrustfully eyes a promissory note received in payment for his wares. At the
back of the picture the sword belonging to the Scabbard on the seat is leaving“
the room at the head of a posse of cudgels, an allusion to the way in which
gentlemen enlisted mob support. ‘or acc. to Lamb: “The sword that has forced an
entrance before its master “(On the Genius and Character of Hogarth). ’
- PLATE II : CANVASSING FOR VOTES
Upon the “Royal Oak” show-cloth a stream of secret-service money pours from the
Treasury, (with which the artist has maliciously contrasted the stunted
Horse-Guards), and Punch, ministerial “candidate for Guzzledown”, scatters gold
among eager electors. Below, the Tory landlord may be seen, contending with his
rival of the “Crown” for the vote of a newly-arrived farmer who is shown taking
the bribes of both. Behind, an electioneering agent (Mr. Tim Partytool) is
winning over the girls in the balcony with gifts from a pedlar’s tray. The
landlady sits counting her gains, watched from the doorway by a covetous
grenadier. On the left, a cobbler with his fingers on his recently acquired guineas listens
to the tale a barber is giving of Vernon’s popular capture of Porto Bello
(figured by the ’quart pot) — “with six ships only". In the background,
before the “Crown” (also the Excise Office), a riotous crowd is tugging at the
sign, which a man is sawing through, in happy ignorance that its downfall
involves his own destruction. Behind the landlady is a figure-head of the Lion
swallowing the Fleur-de-lis, an allusion to the mid-century wars with France. .
PLATE III: POLLING I
The reserve voters are being brought up to the hustings and the tired constable
is dozing. The complacent candidate on the left appears to be leading, while in
the background his rival scratches his head. At the edge of the platform, a
ballad-woman is retailing an uncomplimentary broadside.
First at the polling booths is a pensioner who has lost an arm, a leg, and a
hand in the wars. He lays his iron hook upon the Bible while the lawyers argue
about the validity of the oath and the clerk tries to hide his amusement. Next, a lunatic wearing a bib and confined in his chair by a wooden bar is shown voting
at the prompting of a man in fetters. Carried up the steps by a nurse and a
noseless man is a hospital patient with “true blue” in his cap, followed by a
blind man guided by a boy, while a cripple brings up the rear. In the
background, under a bridge occupied by an uproarious electioneering procession,
Britannia’s coach breaks down while the servants play cards on the box.
Although the scene depicted is obviously not Broad Street, Oxford, the polling
booth should be studied in connection with the plans we show. (See pp. 44, 4S)
PLATE IV : CHAIRING THE MEMBERS ‘ ‘
In spite of the title, one of the members is only a shadow. The Member shown is
supposed to be the borough monger Bubb Doddington. The old Duke of Newcastle is
among the crowd in the window. , '
Although the main theme of the print is irrelevant to the Oxfordshire Election,
the scene in the left-hand corner satirizes a minor episode at the end of it. A
monkey seated uncomfortably on the back of a bear accidentally discharges a
pistol in the face of a grinning sweep who is fixing gingerbread spectacles on
the face of a skull. The sundial behind proclaims “We must” (die all). This
refers to an incident that took place as the Whig procession rode ‘ out of
Oxford from the Bear Inn over Magdalen Bridge. Mud was slung and stones were
thrown. A certain Captain Turton looked out of his coach at the rear of the
procession, was spattered with mud, and drew his pistol, mortally wounding a
fifteen-year-old sweep called Joseph Holloway. Most of this description of the
plates is taken from the edition of Hogarth’s works published by Bell and
Daldy, London, in 1872, though slightly modified. Comments on the significance
of the monkey, the bear, and the sweep are based on the evidence for the
prosecution of Captain Turton, which is among papers in the Oxfordshire County
Record Office.
THE CASE OF JOHN BAPTIST TERRY
At the last Election for Knights of the Shire for the County of Oxford one John
Baptist Terry polled as a Freeholder for Ld. Viscount Viscount Parker and Sir Edward Turner on
Thursday the Day of April, being one of the Days of the Poll,
On the next Day Friday, the said Terry came and offered to poll again but
one of the Inspectors remembering his having voted the Day before, refused his
Voting a 2“. Time and took him before a Justice of Peace where said Terry made
the following Confession (to wit) That the said Terry had no freehold Estate in
the County of Oxford: That one
Josie who acted as Agent of Ld. Viscount Parker and Sir Edward Turner
met Terry in Chancery Lane on Tuesday the Day before the Election began and asked said Terry if he would go to Oxford and Vote for Ld, P, and Sir Edward.
Turner, he would give him 1 Ga. & 1A and a Ticket for which he should
receive 3 Gs. more at Oxford That Terry accepted said 1 Ga. & ‘A and the
Ticket; and immediately got into the Coach that was then in waiting at the
Crown and Rolls with three other persons in it; That said Terry accordingly
went to Oxford and voted for Ld. Viscount Parker and Sir Edward Turner and
as soon as he had voted he was told by some Persons at Exeter College, if he
carried his Ticket to the Kings Arms and gave it one Mr Jacksons who was Sir
Edward Turner Steward He would give him 3G5. for it; That said Terry did carry
the Ticket as directed and said Jackson gave him 3G5. for it.
A marginal note adds :
The sd. Jackson was sent to the Justices and upon being told what Terry had
alleged agt. him, he acknowledged his having paid him the 3G5. & said he
did it by Sir E, Turner's orders upon which ’. Edward Turner was sent for &
the whole matter related to him and he in Ans}. to it then declared that what
Jackson had done was by his Orders and he Wd. justify him and be Answerable for
his Affidavit if necessary.
The Whigs were
a political faction and then a political party in the parliaments
of England, Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Between the 1680s and 1850s, the Whigs contested power with
their rivals, the Tories. The Whigs merged into the new Liberal Party in the 1850s, though some Whig aristocrats left the
Liberal Party in 1886 to form the Liberal Unionist Party, which merged into the Liberals' rival, the
modern day Conservative Party, in 1912.
The
Whigs began as a political faction that opposed absolute monarchy and supported constitutional monarchism and a parliamentary system. They played a central role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and were the standing enemies
of the Stuart kings and
pretenders, who were Roman Catholic. The period known as the Whig
Supremacy (1715–1760) was enabled by the Hanoverian succession of George I in 1714 and the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 by Tory rebels. The Whigs took full
control of the government in 1715 and thoroughly purged the Tories from all
major positions in government, the army, the Church of England, the legal
profession and local political offices. The first great leader of the Whigs
was Robert Walpole, who maintained control
of the government from 1721 to 1742, and whose protégé, Henry Pelham, led the government from
1743 to 1754. The Whigs remained totally dominant until King George III, who came to the throne
in 1760, allowed Tories back in. But the Whig Party’s hold on power remained
strong for many years thereafter. Thus historians have called the period from
roughly 1714 to 1783 the “age of the Whig oligarchy.”
By
1784, both the Whigs and Tories had become formal political parties, with Charles James Fox becoming the leader
of a reconstituted Whig party arrayed against the governing party of the new
Tories led by William Pitt the Younger. The foundation of both
parties depended more on the support of wealthy politicians than on popular
votes. Although there were elections to the House of Commons, only a few men controlled most of the voters.
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