Dismissed by William Cobbett† as ‘an ill-looking place enough’, Marlborough, a hundred in itself, was a small but reasonably prosperous market town in eastern Wiltshire.1 The Commons’ rulings of 1689 and 1717 had confirmed that the right of election lay not in the inhabitants at large, but in the corporation, which comprised a mayor (the returning officer) and an indefinite number of co-opted burgesses, from whom the common council was chosen. Since at least the mid-eighteenth century, the patronage of the borough, as at neighbouring Great Bedwyn, had been entirely in the hands of the Brudenell Bruces, earls of Ailesbury, of Tottenham Park and Savernake Lodge, who were the dominant local landowners. Under their influence, there had been a steady reduction in the number of corporators, who, being completely subservient to their patron, always returned the Tory relations and friends nominated by him.2 Lord Bruce, who had been Member for Marlborough since 1796, succeeded his father as 2nd earl of Ailesbury in 1814. A lukewarm supporter of administration in the Commons, his Tory sympathies were to become much stronger in the Lords. That year his steward, John Ward, who was the leading corporator, brought in a group of three ‘rigidly conservative’ burgesses: Thomas Merriman, his banking and legal partner, who acted as Ailesbury’s agent; John Halcomb, a coach proprietor, who became another partner in his bank, and Nicholas Washbourn, a surgeon.3 As the municipal corporations report remarked of Ailesbury’s extensive influence, the corporation was

principally composed of persons united with him by relationship or professional connection; and there is a good ground for believing that no one was admitted a burgess who was not attached to the interest of the patron of the borough.4

At the general election of 1818, in place of the retiring Members, he brought in Lord Brudenell, the only son of his first cousin the 6th earl of Cardigan, and John Wodehouse, the eldest son of the 1st Baron Wodehouse, who had previously represented Great Bedwyn. Neither was very active, though both supported the Liverpool administration, and he had them returned, unopposed, at the general election of 1820. He declined to move the address in the Lords at the start of the following session, writing to the prime minister, 13 Apr., that ‘I am sure your lordship cannot doubt my readiness to support His Majesty’s government at the present conjuncture’.5 Later that year he further consolidated his interest in the borough by purchasing an estate from the 5th duke of Marlborough for £17,250.6

In November 1820 the inhabitants greeted the news of Queen Caroline’s acquittal with jubilation, while the corporation agreed a loyal address to the king, 24 Nov., which they asked Ailesbury to present.7 His pertinacity in seeking a promotion in the peerage was rewarded with a marquessate, one of the coronation peerages of the following year. Ward retired in 1822, when Merriman took over as Ailesbury’s henchman, and Stephen Brown, a brewer, was elected to the corporation, 8 Nov. 1822. A dinner was held in honour of Ward’s 40 years’ service, 16 May 1823; he died in April 1829, worth over £120,000.8 A petition to the Commons from the corporation for repeal of the Insolvent Debtors Acts was brought up, 24 Feb. 1823, and one from the licensed victuallers against the beer bill was presented by Wodehouse, 14 May 1824.9 Brudenell having in May accepted his first commission in the army, which obliged him to seek re-election to the Commons, the writ was moved, 11 June 1824, and he was returned unopposed a week later.10 John Benett, the county Member, presented a petition from the owners and occupiers of land in the vicinity of Marlborough and Salisbury against alteration of the corn laws, 28 Apr. 1825, and Brudenell brought up one from the town against colonial slavery, 23 Feb. 1826.11

Amid rumours of an impending dissolution, Lord Wodehouse wrote to Ailesbury, 9 Aug. 1825, to indicate that his son wanted to retire from the House, and to express his wish that his grandson Henry, John’s eldest son, should replace him.12 Nothing came of this, presumably because Ailesbury intended the seats for Brudenell and his own heir, Lord Bruce, who came of age later that year. The patron’s hegemony did not go unchallenged, however. An address, one of several, complained that members of the corporation were seldom

permitted to know the names of the men they will be required to elect to legislate on your, the people’s, and the nation’s rights, till only a few hours before the return is made; as on the morning before the last general election, to a question put to one of the body, to know who would be the Members (for the querist well knew there were never any candidates) the corporator replied in his true military language, ‘We have not heard from headquarters’.

It also employed the standard argument of the reformers: that the right of election was vested in the inhabitants as burgesses, not in the small number of burgesses elected to the corporation.13 Probably at the instigation of the local attorney John Woodman, the leader of the fledgling independent party, two candidates were put up.14 They were Thomas Hudson*, a wine merchant, of Cheswardine Hill Hall, Shropshire, and William Blackburne, a lieutenant-colonel in the East India Company’s army.15

Robert Briant, a linen and woollen draper, attempted to introduce them, 14 June 1826, but Merriman vociferously objected, and it was not until Bruce and Brudenell had been proposed by Ward and Merriman that he and Woodman were able to nominate Hudson and Blackburne, who both said that they had entered in order to enable the inhabitants to try the right of election. Having forced the mayor to take a poll, 18 residents, including Briant and Woodman, tendered their votes, for example ‘as an inhabitant of Marlborough and thereby being a burgess’, ‘as a burgess according to several ancient charters’, ‘as a free burgess paying scot and lot’, and even, in one case, ‘as a Burdett’. As Briant had expected, they were all rejected, and Bruce and Brudenell were declared elected by the votes of the eight corporators present.16 It was the first contest since 1737, and Ailesbury’s daughter Elizabeth wrote that she was ‘greatly surprised at hearing there was an opposition’, which ‘could merely have been done to annoy you and the corporation’.17 A petition was presented from Hudson and Blackburne, 4 Dec. 1826. Great efforts were made on their behalf by Woodman and the London attorney John Coverdale, of 3 Gray’s Inn Square, and at least £750 of expenses were incurred. Because Merriman refused to release any of the corporation’s papers, they even had to employ William Illingworth, former deputy keeper of the records in the Tower, to undertake the thankless task of searching for documents in various repositories in London. The Tory majority on the committee decided against them, albeit on the casting vote of the chairman, Isaac Gascoyne, who reported, 30 Mar. 1827. Lord Nugent made enquiries about the case, but apparently did not fulfil his intention of raising it in the Commons.18 Blackburne never sat in the House, but evidently had a seat in view through the influence of Henry Brougham*, to whom he gave an assurance, 13 Aug. 1827, that ‘I am anxious, in or out of Parliament, to devote to your cause all the means which I possess’.19

Perhaps in an attempt to ward off criticism of the small size of the corporation, John Gardner, a surgeon (who had succeeded Washbourn, now resident at Idstone, Berkshire, as Ailesbury’s medical attendant), and John Russell, an ironmonger, were added to it, 23 June 1826. Also elected, 9 Nov. 1827, were the attorneys Thomas Baverstock Merriman and Thomas Halcomb, the respective sons of Merriman and John Halcomb (another of whose sons, John, contested Dover as a reformer three times during this period and was its Member, 1833-5).20 In December 1827 an address of thanks from the town was forwarded to Ailesbury on his resignation as colonel of the Wiltshire militia.21 Petitions from the locality against alteration of the corn laws were presented, 19 Feb. 1827, 22 Apr. 1828, and one for a protecting duty on foreign wool was brought up, 12 June 1827. Bruce, who was inactive in the House, presented the corporation’s petition against the alehouses licensing bill, 19 May 1828.22 In the absence of Brudenell, the Marlborough corporators’ anti-Catholic petition was presented by Sir John Nicholl, Member for Great Bedwyn, 27 Feb. 1829, at the request of Ailesbury, who brought it up in the Lords that day.23 Because both Bruce, from conviction, and Brudenell, from loyalty to the Wellington ministry, were prepared to support Catholic emancipation, Ailesbury turned them out soon after the start of the session. His son, who never returned to the House, was replaced by the anti-Catholic Thomas Henry Sutton Bucknall Estcourt, whose father, Member for Oxford University, busied himself with finalizing the arrangements. Another long standing opponent of emancipation, Henry Bankes*, recorded his surprise and gratification at Ailesbury’s unsolicited offer to seat one of his like-minded sons. The honour went to his eldest son William, whose predecessor, Brudenell, early the following year found a berth for Fowey, a seat William Bankes had spurned.24 The opinions and votes of the new Members on emancipation coincided with those of the Ultra Ailesbury, who divided against the second reading of the Catholic relief bill, 4 Apr. Bucknall Estcourt presented a hostile petition from the Wesleyan Methodists of Marlborough, 23 Mar. 1829, and brought up another from the inhabitants against the sale of beer for on-consumption, 24 May 1830.25

The independent interest renewed its efforts to unseat the sitting Members at the general election of 1830. In mid-June the London counsel Henry Alworth Merewether, who was optimistic after the successful attempt to open Rye, advised Woodman to find two candidates, preferably ‘decided government men, in order to ensure as far as we can the neutrality of government when we petition’. He suggested the promotion of a petition stating the inhabitants’ grievances, ‘to prepare men’s minds for going into the matter’, which was to have been presented by Sir James Graham, who had supported them in the committee four years earlier. Although nothing came of this, Woodman did pursue his other idea of tendering a number of respectable residents as burgesses at the next corporation meeting, 25 June, when, at Merriman’s urging, admission was refused to the 16 proposed. These included Woodman and the attorneys Henry John Smith and Christopher Day, who all made speeches against Ailesbury’s usurpation of their rights at a dinner held in Marlborough that evening. Had they succeeded in their claims, they would have had a majority of five over the then 11 members of the corporation.26 It proved difficult for the reformers to find suitable candidates, especially as neither Hudson nor Blackburne offered again. Coverdale was initially wrong-footed by a suggestion from Marlborough’s eldest son Lord Blandford* that his friend the political economist Robert Torrens* should start. He was ruled out as being too radical, but it was only after a series of misunderstandings and acrimonious exchanges that he was persuaded to withdraw. Anthony Mervin Storey, a barrister, of Basset Down House, near Swindon, also agreed to stand aside. One candidate was finally secured in the person of the London counsel John Mirehouse of Brownslade, Pembrokeshire, where he was active politically, and who had briefly canvassed Leominster earlier that year.27 Nothing came of negotiations with the diplomat Sir Stratford Canning*, a cousin of the late prime minister; the young lawyer Charles Pelham Villiers†, a nephew of the 3rd earl of Clarendon, and the Irish barrister Andrew Valentine Kirwan of 73 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, who aroused Coverdale’s ire by belatedly choosing to pursue a seat elsewhere.28 It was therefore not until late July that the candidacy of another diplomat, Sir Alexander Malet of Wilbury House, near Amesbury, was agreed. He, like Kirwan, was a member of Brooks’s, but the disadvantage of having to settle for a Whig was balanced by his credentials as a respectable local gentleman. He and Mirehouse made an electoral agreement to bear much of the expected legal costs, issued a joint address, 26 July, and canvassed the borough, 28, 29 July, when they both favoured restoring the electoral franchise to the inhabitants. Coverdale advised Woodman to avoid any suggestion of treating and to ensure that all rates had been paid prior to the election.29

Merriman nominated Bankes and Bucknall Estcourt, 30 July 1830, and at his prompting, the mayor, Brown, refused to allow Smith to propose Malet and Mirehouse. They therefore introduced themselves and reiterated their opinion that the right of election lay with the inhabitants. Amid violent scenes, the same 16 men who had recently claimed to be burgesses tendered their votes for the reformers, but despite Mirehouse’s threat to sue Brown for damages if he did not make a double return, the sitting Members were declared elected.30 The unpopularity of the corporators, especially the mayor, was illustrated by Joseph Patey’s later pamphlet attack on the corporation, in which he recounted how ‘to gratify my own humour, as well as that of many others, on a market day I procured a bell, and cried in the street that the "brown bear" had escaped its keeper, and offered a reward for its safe return’. Action was taken against him, but Coverdale was gratified that they had ‘nailed a name to his back which he will never be able to rub off’. There was also a very public row between Merriman (whose brother Benjamin, a cheese factor, was elected to the corporation, 13 Aug.) and Hopewell Hayward Budd of Winterbourne, Berkshire, who accused him of misconduct.31 A petition from Malet and Mirehouse was brought up, 3 Nov., but despite the best endeavours of their lawyers, Sir Robert Peel, who had recently left the home office on the fall of the Wellington ministry, reported against them, 30 Nov., on the grounds that the right of election was vested in the ‘mayor and burgesses only’.32 The ‘Swing’ riots which took place in the vicinity of Marlborough late that year were suppressed by the local Tory magistrates.33 Anti-slavery petitions from the town were brought up, 11 Nov. 1830, 2, 25 Mar., and Bucknall Estcourt presented a corporation petition complaining of distress and calling for lower taxes, 2 Mar. 1831.34 A petition in favour of parliamentary reform from the gentry, yeomanry, tradesmen and inhabitants was presented by Edward Ayshford Sanford, 23 Feb., and another from the inhabitants in favour of the ballot was brought up by Graham, 26 Feb.35 Malet and the independent party approved ministers’ reform proposals, under which Marlborough was to be partially disfranchised, because, as Woodman put it, ‘we will very readily give up one Member provided we are empowered to exercise a right in electing the other’. Malet presented their address in favour of the reform bill to the king, 16 Mar., and forwarded similar petitions to the 3rd earl of Radnor, who presented it to the Lords, 16 Mar., and to Edward Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, who brought it up in the Commons, 19 Mar. Thomas Roff, the serjeant-at-mace, was briefly turned out for putting his name to one of these petitions, which attracted over 400 signatures, and numerous other examples of intimidation occurred.36 At a meeting, 4 Apr., Woodman, supported by Smith and Day, clashed repeatedly with Merriman, but although he succeeded in having the proceedings adjourned, he could not prevent an anti-reform petition being agreed three days later. It was entrusted to Bankes, who raised the question of Marlborough’s representation in the Commons, 15 Apr., when he was answered by John Cam Hobhouse, who enquired of Woodman about the case. Malet reported that, although Bankes ‘assures me he laboured hard to find a meet opportunity for allowing himself to be fairly laid upon his back’, he failed to present the petition before the dissolution intervened.37

The sitting Members both voted against reform and were therefore very unpopular in the town, though their actions were fully approved by Ailesbury, who invited them to stand again. Malet, who had declared his intention to offer once reform was passed, issued an address, 26 Apr. 1831, in which he declined to undertake a ‘vain struggle’ at that time. Mirehouse, who had jokingly suggested to Malet that they should ‘toss up’ for the seat, did not stand either, and the idea that Bruce might be persuaded to enter as a reformer against his father was quickly dismissed.38 No opposition was therefore raised, 29 Apr., when Merriman and Brown proposed Bucknall Estcourt and Bankes, whose anti-reform speeches were drowned out by the crowd. The day before a circular had given notice that Ailesbury would exhibit his ‘menagerie’ for the last time, and

as the several members of the corporation presented themselves to the poll, a scene truly ludicrous took place. Each in his turn was called by the name assigned to him in the bill, and greeted by imitative sounds of the animal he was supposed to represent.

Bucknall Estcourt and Bankes were duly returned by the 12 corporators, but, as Malet remarked, ‘I think you have given them one and all a tolerable dose of that potent drug ridicule’.39 Bankes finally presented the corporation’s petition, 24 June, when William Pole Tylney Long Wellesley denied that its anti-reform sentiments were widely held in Marlborough. He, in turn, brought up a reform petition from the inhabitants, 5 July, when his accusations about Ailesbury’s undue influence were scornfully rejected by Bankes.40 Both the borough’s Members accepted that it would be deprived of one seat, 30 July, but pointed out the anomaly of the Whig cabinet minister Lord Lansdowne’s neighbouring pocket borough of Calne being allowed to retain two. The radical Henry Hunt reiterated this argument, and the former attorney-general Sir Charles Wetherell attacked the possible abolition of either constituency, but its partial disfranchisement was agreed without a division. Ailesbury and several corporators signed the Wiltshire declaration against reform. In the Lords, another reform petition was presented by Radnor, 5 Oct., and Ailesbury voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 7 Oct. A meeting of the inhabitants, 5 Nov., chaired by Major Fulwar Craven of Chilton House, agreed an address to the king complaining of the rejection of the bill.41 In an apparent repeat of an incident earlier in the year, when Ailesbury and Bucknall Estcourt had evidently had a disagreement about the expected reform proposals, the latter again offered to resign his seat after he had been unavoidably absent from the division on the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831. He also suspected that Ailesbury wished to bring in another of his sons, Lord Ernest Augustus Charles Brudenell Bruce, and was reassured when the matter was hastily smoothed over.42 A petition from the agriculturists and principal inhabitants of Marlborough for repeal of the malt duties was presented by Benett, 9 Apr. 1832.43 Ailesbury again divided against the second reading of the reform bill, 7 May. A few weeks later the reformers held a public dinner to celebrate the enactment of the bill, and it was probably that year that they established an Independent and Constitutional Association, with Woodman as its secretary.44

In the final version of the reform bill, Marlborough, with 570 houses, of which 260 were worth more than £10 a year, and taxes which were assessed at £1,276 for the year ending April 1831, narrowly escaped the disfranchising clauses and retained two Members. The constituency was slightly enlarged to include the parish of Preshute (or Manton), to add to those of St. Mary, and St. Peter and St. Paul, of which it was composed.45 Neither Mirehouse, who complained that he had been abandoned, nor Craven, in the end offered as candidates, and it was left to Malet to stand as a reformer at the general election in December 1832, when there was a registered electorate of 263. Bankes transferred to Dorset, and Bucknall Estcourt was temporarily left without a seat, having declined to stand either for Devizes or Wiltshire North, though he subsequently represented both constituencies. Ailesbury instead put up Lord Ernest Bruce and another Conservative, Henry Bingham Baring.* Hopes that the Reform Act would have ended his dominance were disappointed, not least because he owned 70 or 80 qualifying houses and most of the land now included in the enlarged constituency, and his candidates were successful after a violent contest.46 Nor was Ailesbury’s interest greatly reduced by his financial difficulties, which were caused by the enormous cost of rebuilding Tottenham and the fraudulent activities of his steward, John Iveson, who was exposed in 1833. The corporation was remodelled in 1835, but Merriman was elected to it, and exerted his influence on his patron’s behalf until his death in 1841.47 Bruce, who inherited his father’s title and estates in 1856, continued to nominate Baring until the borough was partially disfranchised in 1868, and his brother until he was succeeded by him as 3rd marquess in 1878. Their half-brother Lord Charles William Brudenell Bruce, former Member for Wiltshire North, occupied the seat until it was abolished in 1885.