Bristol

Borough

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

Background Information

Right of Election:

in the freemen and freeholders

Number of voters:

about 5,000

Population:

(1801): 63,645

Elections

DateCandidateVotes
19 June 1790HENRY CHARLES SOMERSET, Mq. of Worcester544
 JOHN BAKER HOLROYD, Baron Sheffield [I]537
 David Lewis12
 William Cuninghame5
28 May 1796JOHN BAKER HOLROYD, Baron Sheffield [I]714
 CHARLES BRAGGE679
 Benjamin Hobhouse102
 David Lewis4
23 Nov. 1801 BRAGGE re-elected after appointment to office 
6 July 1802CHARLES BRAGGE 
 EVAN BAILLIE 
16 Aug. 1803 BRAGGE re-elected after vacating his seat 
29 Oct. 1806CHARLES BRAGGE (BATHURST) 
 EVAN BAILLIE 
5 May 1807CHARLES BRAGGE (BATHURST) 
 EVAN BAILLIE 
15 July 1812 RICHARD HART DAVIS vice Bragge (Bathurst), appointed to office1907
 Henry Hunt235
16 Oct. 1812RICHARD HART DAVIS2899
 EDWARD PROTHEROE2429
 Sir Samuel Romilly1677
 Henry Hunt447
20 June 1818RICHARD HART DAVIS3377
 EDWARD PROTHEROE2259
 Hugh Duncan Baillie1684

Main Article

By the end of the 18th century Bristol had lost its position as the second largest city and second most important port in the kingdom, but it remained one of the most prestigious and demanding constituencies. Despite its large electorate, of which a significant proportion was non-resident, control was securely in the hands of the long-established political clubs, led by a comparatively small number of men from the propertied and mercantile classes. Local government was carried on by a closed, self-electing corporation, notorious for its extravagance and mismanagement and deeply unpopular with the majority of Bristolians; but radicalism had little root in the city, which on the whole was conservative and introspective, and attempts to open its electoral politics on the Westminster model made hardly any impression in this period.1

The result of the 1784 general election, when the ministerialist Steadfast Society and the Whig Union Club fought each other to a standstill and managed to return one Member each, indicated that a state of equilibrium had been reached. In March 1790 the two organizations agreed to share the representation between them. Both sitting Members retired at the general election, when the Steadfast Society adopted Lord Worcester, son of the 5th Duke of Beaufort, a major power in Gloucestershire. The Bristol Whigs had more difficulty in selecting a candidate. John Coxe Hippisley*, a Somerset man who had prospered in India, claimed that ‘from local connexion combined with the expectation of some ducats’ he would have ‘found good support’, but that his commitment to stand for Sudbury obliged him to decline an invitation from Bristol some six months before the election. First in the field was Lord Sheffield, a former Northite and a pundit on economic matters, who had been ousted from Coventry in 1784. According to Hippisley, two leading Bristol Whigs told him they would prefer Sir Gilbert Elliot, a close friend of Edmund Burke, their former Member. Another contender was William Cuninghame of Enterkine, Ayrshire, later author of Principles of the Constitution of Governments (1811), who had apparently been taken up by the supporters of Henry Cruger, originally elected for Bristol in 1774 as a radical, but returned there in 1784 as a supporter of Pitt, though sponsored by the Union Club. On 13 May 1790, one of Sheffield’s supporters warned William Adam, the Whig election manager:

Mr Cunningham has taken ground I didn’t suspect. He is among the dissenters, promising everything. He will do mischief. Lord S. must be at Bristol soon or all chance of his doing anything, or of the Tories not starting two, will be over ... If the dissenters as dissenters bring a man forward, we are under. The Church will be a prevailing enemy.

At a small meeting of Bristol Whigs, 11 June, Sheffield, Elliot and Sir George Onesiphorous Paul of Rodborough, a leading Gloucestershire Whig, were put in nomination. Alderman Noble gave the following report to the Duke of Portland, the opposition leader, who was high steward of Bristol:

Lord Sheffield would have had a majority but that he was a warm supporter of Lord North’s administration and the American war. The majority therefore fell very considerably in favour of Sir Gilbert. Mr Cunningham had only one vote there, but I am convinced he was the speaker of many others ... Convinced that Lord Sheffield and Mr Cunningham will both be again brought forward, an express to Sir Gilbert was declined till the ground was more sure ... I fear some subscription may be required of about £1,000, but this I mention only from myself.

Portland told Elliot to accept the invitation if it came, regardless of the subscription, which would cost less than the seat for Helston which had already been bought for him; but the next day informed him that Bristol was now out of the question, because at a subsequent meeting the ‘Crugerites’ had refused to abide by the decision of the majority and withdrawn, leaving ‘the principal persons of the Whig party to act for themselves, being determined to ruin that party, either by forcing them to unite in the support of whomever they (the Crugerites) should set up, or sacrifice all respectable persons of that party at the shrine of Toryism’. He added that the Crugerites would probably be frustrated, for it had been ‘intimated to the Whig leaders that the Tories are not indifferent to support a person of their nomination, in conjunction with their own candidate’. Hippisley’s version, later told to Elliot, was that Sir Gilbert had been dropped only as a result of a misunderstanding ‘on the score of cash’ by Portland, who had ‘misconceived the intentions of the party, which were that their nominee should be at no expense’. There was no time for further explanations and the Whigs accepted Sheffield, ‘with difficulty’.2 There was a token contest, forced, according to one historian of Bristol, by ‘a clique of extreme Tories’, who joined forces with elements disgruntled at being deprived of an electoral bean-feast and put up David Lewis, an eccentric and illiterate Welsh tradesman. Cuninghame was said to have been nominated without his own consent. Hippisley thought the election would ‘cost the two parties about £5,000 between them’, but that the Members would only have to subscribe small amounts in charitable donations; and Sheffield put his expenses at just over £300.3

Sheffield transferred his support to government on the outbreak of war with France and became odious to those Bristol Whigs who remained loyal to Fox. At the dissolution in 1796 Portland made inquiries at Bristol as to his prospects of being returned unopposed, or being ‘indemnified and saved harmless’ if he had to face a contest. Worcester took his leave of Bristol to stand for the county and a deputation from the Steadfast Society successfully approached Charles Bragge of Lydney, brother-in-law of Speaker Addington and Member for Beaufort’s borough of Monmouth in the 1790 Parliament. They also asked Lord Hawkesbury, president of the Board of Trade, who had property in Gloucestershire, if his son Robert Banks Jenkinson* might stand, but he was engaged elsewhere. Shortly before the election, Beaufort wrote to Bragge that ‘you will walk in very easily’, with ‘no other impediment than the obstinate behaviour of Lord Sheffield and his friends’.4

Sheffield seems to have been undecided whether or not to stand for Parliament and tried unsuccessfully to extract from Portland a firm promise of a British peerage in return for standing a poll at Bristol. When he arrived there, he found that his Whig enemies had started the reformer Benjamin Hobhouse*, a native of Bristol, who charged him with neglect of local interests and stood as the champion of peace. Sheffield told his friend Lord Auckland:

My quixotism was provoked by the idea of such a man, not wanting in abilities, representative of the second city and the effect it might have. I certainly never acted on a more patriotic principle. Every respectable creature of both parties had a high opinion of me, the ci-devant opposite party full as favourable as my own, or rather more so, as there was a division among the Whigs. My old friends in great part were torpid, many supposing I would not stand again. I declared my opinion vigorously and exhibited an energy that warmed them.

In fact, leaders of the Steadfast Society asked Hawkesbury to recommend an alternative candidate to Sheffield, but Hawkesbury thought he ‘should be supported as long as there is any prospect of success’, though he agreed that if his defeat seemed likely, it would be wise to find ‘some proper person’ who would be able to outpoll Hobhouse. In the event, Hobhouse posed no serious threat and withdrew after the first day’s polling. Lewis kept it open for another day. A mob attacked Sheffield’s headquarters and the council house, but Sheffield thought ‘we have shown the weakness of the democratic part of the city’ and that ‘with tolerable management it may be kept down for ever’.5

Bragge stood again as the candidate of the White Lion Club (as the Steadfast Society was now more usually known) in 1802, when Sheffield retired to become a British peer. Hobhouse declined to involve himself in a contest and the field seemed clear for Sir Frederick Morton Eden, Auckland’s nephew, who told his uncle two days before the election that his only opponent was the ubiquitous Lewis, who would not get 50 votes. The next day, however, a group of leading Whig merchants met to deplore the candidature of Eden as an outsider and to nominate Evan Baillie, a wealthy Bristol West India merchant, who stood ‘on the Whig interest’. Eden immediately withdrew, leaving Baillie to come in unopposed with Bragge. To mark Baillie’s success, some of his supporters founded the Independent and Constitutional Club. On the ministerial side, there emerged the Loyal and Constitutional Club, closely allied to the White Lion Club and largely indistinguishable from it.6

There was no change or disturbance in 1806, when each club pledged support for the candidate of the other, but Bragge told his brother-in-law, 18 Oct., that ‘many of those who brought him in’ were dissatisfied with Baillie, who had certainly not acted with the Whigs in the House. On the hustings Edward Protheroe, a local merchant who had been prominent among Baillie’s supporters in 1802, was at pains to deny rumours that the Whigs would have preferred another candidate, and the allegation that Baillie’s Whiggism was suspect.7

Both sitting Members sought re-election in 1807. On the hustings Henry Hunt, the radical, who was winding up his unsuccessful brewery at Clifton, proposed Sir John Jarvis, 1st Bt. (d.1830), an Irish barrister, who had raised a corps of riflemen in Somerset, but the returning officers ruled Hunt out of order as a non-voter and declared Bragge and Baillie elected. When an attempt was made to chair Bragge, who had earlier been abused on the mistaken assumption that, as a member of the Grenville ministry, he had tried to force Catholic relief on the King, he was physically assaulted and had to take refuge in the White Lion. The military were called in to restore order. Bragge later said in the House that he did not believe his ordeal had been the result of a ‘No Popery’ cry, but the truth of the matter is not clear.8

Hunt’s version of these events, written in gaol 13 years later, must be regarded with suspicion. He claimed that curiosity had taken him to Jarvis’s headquarters, where he found everything in chaos. He offered to propose Jarvis, whom he had never met before, took the opportunity to denounce the tyranny of the Bristol clubs and portrayed Jarvis as a reformer, but at last realized that the hapless baronet was ‘a mere tool in the hands of the White Lion, or ministerial faction’, set up to deter the electors from seeking genuine opponents for the sitting Members. He attributed the violence against Bragge to their frustration at being cheated of an election and claimed to have saved his life by leading the mob off to Brandon Hill, where he placated them with beer and promised to help them assert their political independence. Hunt chaired a meeting at Bristol, 10 July 1807, which passed resolutions condemning the clubs and stating a determination to restore freedom of election, following the example of Westminster. The resultant Bristol Patriotic and Constitutional Association was publicized by William Cobbett and, according to Hunt, encouraged by Burdett, but if it survived at all it made no significant impression.9

In August 1811 Adm. George Cranfield Berkeley, who had retired in 1810 after 27 years as Member for Gloucestershire and was on active service in Lisbon, told his kinsman Lord Buckingham that Robert Claxton, chairman of the Independent Club, had asked him to consider standing for Bristol at the next general election, when Baillie would retire. Although Berkeley was tempted, he did not commit himself, being uncertain of his ability to be present at the election, but he asked Buckingham to mention his pretensions to his brother Lord Grenville, who had been chosen high steward of Bristol after Portland’s death. The Whig leader had already been informed that the Independent Club were keen to invite Sir Samuel Romilly*, the eminent lawyer, to supply Baillie’s place. After consulting the Duke of Norfolk, who had property in Gloucestershire, Grenville communicated to Romilly their willingness to support him at Bristol and Romilly showed an interest in representing the city, but ruled out any question of facing a contest or being put to expense.10

He received and accepted a formal invitation from the Independent Club in mid December 1811, but his candidature was objectionable to a number of Baillie’s former supporters, including such wealthy merchant families as the Protheroes, Georges, Ameses and the Baillies themselves. On 23 Dec. 1811 Edward Protheroe, who was now living in London but was about to embark on a new career as a coal and iron magnate in the Forest of Dean, announced his intention of standing. Berkeley was no longer a serious contender. A meeting of the Independent Club, 7 Jan. 1812, rejected Protheroe and endorsed Romilly, provided he could produce a satisfactory assurance, which Romilly duly supplied, that his professional commitments would not prevent him from attending to the duties of a Bristol Member. Protheroe stood his ground and argued that the Independent Club, which he had never joined, did ‘not speak the sentiments of the Whig interest of Bristol’ in its pre-emptive choice of an outsider, whose political views were in advance of the ‘mild’ and ‘genuine’ Whig principles which he himself espoused. Hunt also announced his intention of standing, on Burdettite principles. Under pressure from his supporters, Romilly published an address, in which he stressed that he was a candidate by invitation and declined to canvass in person, but this gave rise to a notion that he had no intention of going to Bristol even during the election and he was obliged to correct the impression in a public letter.11

In face of this activity, the White Lion party formally invited Bragge to stand again and prepared to canvass for him, but Bragge, taking fright at the prospect of a contest, announced that he would not stand for Bristol again. The Bristol ministerialists then adopted as their prospective candidate Richard Hart Davis, a wealthy local merchant and banker, who was currently sitting for Colchester.12 Romilly, long pressed to show his face in Bristol, went there in April 1812 and delivered speeches in which, deliberately omitting any reference to specific political issues, he rested on his parliamentary record, admitted his willingness to take office in a Whig ministry and declared his pride in his association with the party of Fox, Grey and Grenville. He clearly detested popular electioneering, but was satisfied with his reception and dismissed as totally false Cobbett’s subsequently published story that his first speech at Bristol, from the Bush tavern, had been shouted down, and that Hunt’s condemnation of place-hunting Whigs and plea for the return of a radical reformer had been rapturously received. According to Romilly, the subscription to defray his election expenses subsequently organized by the Westminster Whigs was set on foot without his consent. He protested, but found that it had ‘proceeded too far to be abandoned’.13

Bragge declined to seek re-election at Bristol when he was appointed to office in June 1812 and Davis vacated Colchester to stand in his place. He was challenged by Hunt, whose cause was publicized by Cobbett. Protheroe issued an address on the pretext of explaining that, as a supporter of the electoral truce in Bristol, he would not contest a vacancy on the ministerial interest; but its true purpose was to attack Romilly as an outsider and the tool of the Independent Club which, having been infiltrated by new members whose Whiggism was only skin-deep, had conducted ‘corrupt negotiations with different ministers’. Hunt managed to keep the poll open for 14 days and the election was marked by serious violence, with troops again being called in. The ministerialist party were reputed to have spent over £14,000, of which Davis himself paid £10,000. Hunt’s petition, which complained of the presence of the military during the election and accused his opponents of employing armed thugs, administering the oaths illegally, committing acts of bribery and closing the poll a day early, was lost with the prorogation and subsequent dissolution of Parliament.14

Shortly before the general election, the Whig George Tierney was ‘not sanguine about Bristol’, but when Romilly arrived there he found his supporters ‘certain of success’ and boasting of 3,000 promises. He wrote later of the difficult part he had to act:

The Tories, inflamed with resentment against all popular candidates, on account of the tumults and acts of violence ... two months ago ... would be very eager to seize on any unguarded expression ... to raise a cry against me ... on the other hand Hunt ... would be ready to misinterpret and misrepresent whatever I might say ... It was obvious, too, that Protheroe and Davis might in the course of the election find it mutually their interest to unite.

At the nomination Davis proclaimed himself the friend of equal civil and religious rights and a supporter of the war. Romilly made no pledges, but proclaimed his attachment to Whig principles, being the friend of liberty, peace, parliamentary reform and economy, the enemy of corruption and undue executive power. Protheroe attacked Romilly as before, promised strict independence of conduct and made a vague declaration in favour of reform of abuses in the constitution. Hunt dropped his earlier abuse of Romilly, made no other objection to him than that he was a KC and had avowed his willingness to accept office, and declared his preference for him over the other two candidates.15

On the second day, when polling began in earnest, there was a long procedural wrangle, instigated, according to Romilly, by the agents of Davis and Protheroe. As a result, very few votes were cast. Romilly alleged that this stratagem had the desired effect of discouraging his frustrated supporters from attending on the third day, when Protheroe got 60 ahead of him. The long rumoured coalition between Davis and Protheroe was now openly formed and on the eighth day Romilly gave up, aware that his only outside chance of success lay in bringing up the London voters, which would be prohibitively expensive. Hunt kept the poll open for two more days. A triumphant Davis boasted that only his supporters’ second votes, given to keep out Romilly, had kept Protheroe in the running.16

Of the 4,386 electors who polled, 2,141 split their votes between Davis and Protheroe, making up 74 per cent and 88 per cent of their respective totals. Romilly had 764 plumpers (46 per cent of his vote), Davis 353 (12 per cent) and Protheroe 191 (8 per cent); 423 electors voted for Romilly and Hunt, who got only 12 plumpers, 404 for Davis and Romilly and only 86 for Romilly and Protheroe. Six hundred and fifty outvoters polled, most of them from Gloucestershire and Somerset. Only 58 gave addresses in London and its environs and nearly all of these voted for Romilly, either singly or in combination with Hunt. There was said to have been an exceptionally heavy enrolment of new freemen by the backers of the three major candidates and expenses were reckoned to have been high. Hunt again petitioned, seeking to void the election on the grounds of bribery, intimidation, treating and premature closure of the poll. He conducted the case in person and later claimed to have obtained access to the Bristol corporation accounts and to have produced from them clear evidence of corruption and extravagance, but the petition was rejected.17

There was no threat to Davis in 1818,18 but Protheroe’s position seemed precarious, even though Hunt declined to stand without the promise of a thousand votes. Protheroe’s support for the continuance of the property tax, anathema to the Bristol mercantile community, had alienated a number of his leading supporters, including the Ameses and the Georges. His role in the promotion of the new Bristol gaol, bitterly resented by many citizens because of its cost, had created discontent, and he was suspected of self-interest in his attempt to bring in a bill to repeal the duty on coal carried on the Severn. A general feeling that he had failed to act in accordance with the Whig principles which he had professed in 1812 drove others from his camp and into that of the ‘official’ Whigs who had backed Romilly. At a meeting at the Bush tavern, 25 May, the Bristol Whigs rejected Protheroe and issued an invitation to Hugh Duncan Baillie, son of Evan, who accepted. Protheroe announced his withdrawal, declaring that he would never be a ‘decided party man’, and began to search for a cheaper and quieter seat, but his retreat was not to the liking of his brothers, Sir Henry and Philip, and a core of old friends, including William Fripp, banker, and Butler Claxton, son of Protheroe’s former business partner. On 8 June, they met at the Rummer tavern to pass resolutions in his support, organize central and district committees and open a general subscription. Protheroe eventually agreed to come forward again, on the stipulation that neither he nor his brothers, who had planned to underwrite the venture, would be at any expense.

Meanwhile difficulties had arisen for the Whigs, partly because of a growing split between moderates and reformers and partly because of uncertainty over Baillie’s political views, particularly on parliamentary reform and Catholic relief. His opponents, both of whom were hostile to relief, as were most Bristolians, played on this issue and forced Baillie to make a declaration, 6 June, to the effect that although he favoured religious toleration, he would never support the accession of Catholics to political power, and would be bound by the general opinion of his constituents on the issue. His opponents then proceeded to make much of the fact that, despite this statement, he was content to accept the influential support of Charles Elton, a notoriously fervent pro-Catholic. On 12 June Baillie, having learned that Protheroe was back in contention and foreseeing another coalition between him and Davis, announced his withdrawal. The Bush tavern committee was dissolved, but on 13 June Elton, the reformer Thomas Stocking and others called a meeting of the ‘independent electors’ on Brandon Hill, where Dr Edward Kentish, another reformer, presided, and urged the necessity of opposing Protheroe who, he alleged, had made a written promise to him to support parliamentary reform in 1812. Resolutions were passed urging Baillie to change his mind, and a committee, which included Elton, Levi Ames and Christopher George, was formed to help promote his re-election. A later meeting at the Guildhall tavern, chaired by Stocking, resolved to nominate and support Baillie. The Bush tavern Whigs hastily reformed their committee and issued a formal invitation to Baillie, who accepted. Protheroe, it seems, was inclined to cut and run, but his brothers persuaded him to stand his ground.

On the hustings, Davis boasted of his support for the war and declared his hostility to Catholic emancipation, but thought it prudent to allude to his contribution, as a member of the finance committee, to the task of post-war retrenchment. Protheroe answered the various charges against him, claiming that his scheme for the repeal of Severn coal duties was designed to benefit all Bristolians and that he was opposed to all duties on coal, that he had been neutral on the gaol question and that he had supported retention of the property tax in the hope that it would facilitate the repeal of duties which bore heavily on the lower classes. Maintaining that he had always professed himself ‘a Whig of the old school’, and defying his critics to ‘produce a single instance of my apostasy from genuine Whig principles’, he argued that a Member of Parliament was the representative and not the delegate of his constituents. Baillie, whose attitude to reform remained uncertain, did not appear on the hustings at any time during the election, but Kentish, in print, and Stocking, verbally, attacked Protheroe for his broken promise on this issue. Stocking also pointed out that although Protheroe had stirred up a ‘No Popery’ cry against Baillie, he had once (24 May 1813) voted to admit Catholics to Parliament. The poll, in which just over 4,000 voted (only 347 of them being outvoters), closed after five days, with Davis an easy winner and Protheroe comfortably ahead of Baillie.

The ministerialists claimed Protheroe’s success as their own and Davis wrote to Lord Liverpool:

Nothing could exceed the loyalty and attachment to the existing government which has been shown here ... Protheroe acknowledges that he owes his seat entirely to our exertions. More than 1,200 of my friends gave him their second votes.

In an attempt to help retrieve the position of the Whigs in Bristol, John Moggridge of Woodfield Lodge, Newport, bought the formerly Foxite Bristol Mercury which, under the direction of Elton, was given a more vigorous and combative style. The reformers took steps to establish a new organization to secure ‘the concentration of the independent interest’ and early in 1819 there emerged the Bristol Concentric Society, dedicated to return candidates pledged to support civil and religious liberty, economy, and parliamentary reform.19

On 2 and 4 Feb. 1819 petitions were presented claiming that Baillie had been deprived of victory by a premature closure of the poll, which had prevented nearly 2,000 electors, mainly outvoters, from casting their votes. The initiative for this protest had come from the reformers, led by Stocking and Charles Walker, although Wintour Harris and his brother, attorneys and members of the Bush tavern committee, had become involved in its preparation and presentation. The petitioners of 2 Feb. failed to enter into recognizances, but the second petition was considered and rejected in March. There ensued a public squabble between Elton, as an apologist for Baillie, and Walker, on behalf of the reformers, who blamed Baillie’s vacillation for the Whig defeat in 1818, called for the adoption of a genuine reformer as prospective candidate and accused Harris of botching the case presented in the petition.20

Division was not confined to the Whigs. Early in 1819 Protheroe, having boasted of being returned ‘without solicitation, without trouble, without expense’, was furious to receive a bill from his committee for the expenses of his victory celebrations. He discovered that, contrary to his injunction, his brother Philip had paid the bulk of his general election expenses, and in pique he announced that he would not stand for Bristol at the next general election. The ensuing public row between the Protheroes and their committee and a private quarrel among the brothers themselves left Protheroe’s party in fragments. To complete the picture of disarray, financial disaster overtook Davis later in the year.21

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

  • 1. W. Minchinton, Port of Bristol in 18th Cent. 22-23; J. Latimer, Annals of Bristol in 19th Cent. 2; PP (1835), xxiv. 1222-3.
  • 2. NLS mss 11143, ff. 163, 166, 167; 11193, ff. 83, 85; 13339, Portland to Elliot, 12 June 1790; Ginter, Whig Organization, 165-6.
  • 3. Latimer, Annals of Bristol in 18th Cent. 491; NLS mss 11143, f. 163; Gibbon Letters ed. Prothero, ii. 218.
  • 4. Portland mss, PwV 110, Portland to Harford, 9 May 1796; Glos. RO, Bragge Bathurst mss X17/41, 42; Add. 38310, f. 156.
  • 5. Portland mss, PwV 110, Portland to Sheffield, 24 May; Add. 34453, f. 508; 38310, f. 156; Bristol Jnl. 28 May, 4 June 1796.
  • 6. Bristol Jnl. 12 June, 3, 10 July 1802; Add. 34455, f. 506; 45729, f. 132.
  • 7. Sidmouth mss; Bristol Jnl. 1 Nov. 1806.
  • 8. Bristol Jnl. 2, 9, 16 May 1807; Parl. Deb. ix. 653.
  • 9. Hunt, Mems. ii. 234-55, 260-3, 275-81; Pol. Reg. 8 Aug. 1807.
  • 10. Buckingham, Regency, i. 115; Fortescue mss, Abercromby to Grenville, 8 July; Add. 51530, Grenville to Holland, 15, 23 Aug. 1811; Romilly, Mems. ii. 412-15.
  • 11. Romilly, ii. 429-33; iii. 1-3, 7-9; Bristol Gazette, 26 Dec. 1811, 2, 9, 16, 23 Jan. 1812; Hunt, ii. 495-7.
  • 12. Bristol city archives, ‘Election Procs. 1806-12’.
  • 13. Romilly, iii. 21-29, 44-45; Pol. Reg. 11 Apr. 1812; Hunt, ii. 498-509.
  • 14. Bristol Pollbook (1812), pp. xxv-xxvii; Annals 19th Cent. 50-52; Hunt, ii. 509-68; iii. 1-19, 57-67; CJ, lxvii. 562.
  • 15. Grey mss, Tierney to Grey, 26 Sept. 1812; Romilly, iii. 54-58; Hunt, iii. 94-109; Bristol Pollbook, pp. xxxiii-lii.
  • 16. Romilly, iii. 58-64, 68-71; Brougham mss 28214; Hunt, iii. 109-17; Essex RO, Strutt mss micro. T/B 251/6/4, Davis to Strutt, 21 Oct. 1812.
  • 17. Annals 19th Cent. 51-52; CJ, lxviii. 43, 221, 231, 303; Hunt, iii. 115-37.
  • 18. The following account of the 1818 election is based on J. Williams, ‘Bristol in the General Elections of 1818 and 1820’, Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans. lxxxvii (1968), 173-201. See also The Late Elections (1818), 24-48.
  • 19. Add. 38458, f. 261; Grey mss. Goodwin to Grey, 17 Oct. 1818; Williams, 185-7.
  • 20. CJ, lxxiv. 60, 86, 136, 233, 235, 248; U. Corbett and E. R. Daniell, Controverted Elections (1821), 73-87; Williams, 185; C. H. Walker, Addresses to Electors; C. A. Elton, Apology for Baillie, and Sequel .
  • 21. Williams, 191-2, 193-5.