Oxfordshire was a fertile agricultural county, with centres of manufacture at Bicester (leather slippers), Henley (silk) and Witney (blankets).1 The notorious and ruinous contest of 1754, which cost the protagonists over £40,000 each, discouraged further disturbances of the peace for three generations. In 1815 the interest of the dukes of Marlborough of Blenheim Palace, who had shared the county representation with the Tory gentry since 1761, had been eclipsed, largely as a result of their own family divisions.2 In this period the electoral ambitions of the dissolute 5th duke and his equally disreputable son Lord Blandford*, who were at daggers drawn, were restricted to their borough of New Woodstock. The other leading Tory peers were the 4th earl of Macclesfield, the lord lieutenant, seated at Shirburn Castle, near Thame; the 5th earl of Abingdon, whose main residence at Wytham Abbey was on the Berkshire side of the Thames a few miles from Oxford, but who also owned estates at Rycote, near Thame; and the 3rd Earl Harcourt, a courtier, who had property at Nuneham Courtenay, near Oxford, and Stanton Harcourt, near Witney. The only significant Whig presence was that of 5th earl of Jersey, who had a residence at Middleton Park, near Bicester. Fox’s nephew the 3rd Lord Holland had sold his Oxfordshire property at Fringford in 1815, but he retained a freeholder’s stake in the county. The sitting Members in 1820 were John Fane of Wormsley, near Watlington, Macclesfield’s brother-in-law, who had sat as a general but independently inclined supporter of Tory governments since 1796, and whose popularity in the county was enhanced by his zeal in defending the agricultural interest; and William Ashhurst of Waterstock, near Thame, the beneficiary of the disarray at Blenheim in 1815, whose politics were similar to Fane’s, although he was more disposed to side with the Liverpool ministry.

Ashhurst joined Macclesfield, Marlborough, Blandford, Harcourt and Abingdon in signing the requisition for a county meeting to vote a loyal address to the regent in the aftermath of Peterloo. He attended it, 12 Nov. 1819, but Fane, who had been represented on the requisition by his eldest son and namesake, was an absentee. Macclesfield moved and Marlborough seconded the address, which was unanimously carried after the Rev. Vaughan Thomas, vicar of Yarnton, had been persuaded to withdraw a largely incomprehensible amendment asserting the right of the freeholders to petition for redress of grievances.3 Fane and Ashhurst were returned unopposed at the general election of 1820, when the uneventful proceedings were marked by an expression of clerical alarm at ‘the perils which beset the constitution at the present hour’ and a call on the Members to pay particular attention to the problems of local agriculturists.4 Petitions for relief from agricultural distress from Burford, Chipping Norton and Henley were presented to the Commons, 15 May, and the Lords, 19 May 1820;5 and Fane almost certainly voted for inquiry into distress on the 30th.

The abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties against Queen Caroline was widely celebrated in the county, and at Ewelme a mob smashed the windows of the rectory, where the bishop of Llandaff, who was himself stoned, had arrived from the Lords.6 Yet Jersey complained to Holland, 20 Nov. 1820, that ‘the Tory pestilential air of Oxfordshire infects the neighbouring parts of other counties’ and seemed to put a county meeting in support of the queen out of the question.7 Loyal addresses were adopted in a number of Oxfordshire towns, and at the quarter sessions in early January 1821 the bishop of Oxford attempted to promote a requisition for a county meeting to follow suit. There was apparently some initial resistance to the idea, but a requisition was produced under the leading signatures of Macclesfield, Abingdon, Fane and Ashhurst, and the meeting fixed for 22 Jan.8 Jersey was keen, as the duke of Bedford put it, to ‘fight single handed the whole host of Tories, gentry, clergy, magistrates, etc., etc., of the county’, and published in the national and local press an explanation of his and Holland’s refusal to sign the requisition and a call for the freeholders to demand the restoration of the queen’s name to the liturgy and measures to alleviate distress. Holland was reluctant to go to Oxford to support him, but eventually agreed to do so under pressure from Lord Lansdowne and Jersey’s formidable wife, who assured him that ‘the freeholders are all against the ministers. The Tories even do not like the meeting. There is every prospect of success’.9 At the meeting, where Macclesfield, Harcourt, Fane and Ashhurst remained silent, Jersey and Holland carried by an overwhelming majority an amendment criticizing the prosecution of the queen and hoping for an early restoration of tranquillity. Macclesfield, Abingdon, Harcourt, the Fanes and other leading Tories issued a public protest, complaining that the sheriff, Thomas Fraser of Woodcott, had allowed the amendment to be carried by non-freeholders and urging support for the original address, which was open for signatures in the principal towns and villages. In consultation with Jersey, Holland concocted a reply based on a letter to Jersey from Fraser confirming that the amendment had been fairly put and carried, and a subsequent denial that he had personally invited Holland to attend.10 Ashhurst voted for restoration of the queen’s name to the liturgy, 26 Jan., 13 Feb., when a petition in support of the queen from Witney reached the Commons,11 but joined Fane in dividing with government against the opposition censure motion, 6 Feb. 1821.

There was a petitioning campaign for relief from agricultural distress in 1821, when Ashhurst presented petitions from Burford, 19 Feb., and Chipping Norton and Henley, 1 Mar., and petitions from Burford and Chipping Norton reached the Lords, 12 Mar.12 Fane voted for the repeal of the additional malt duty, but Ashhurst sided with ministers to rescind it. Both continued their opposition to Catholic relief, which was petitioned against to the Lords from Horsepath, 10 Apr., and the diocese of Oxford, 16 Apr. 1821.13 Parliament was heavily petitioned on agricultural distress in 1822, when Fane joined in the rebellion of discontented country gentlemen against government and opposed the revised corn law, but Ashhurst, by now lax in his attendance, supported it, and was criticized for refusing to explain his reasons for doing so at the annual meeting of the county Agricultural Society.14 On 30 May 1822 the archdeacon and clergy of the diocese petitioned the Lords against the Catholic peers bill, which both Members had opposed.15 Their petition to the Commons against concessions to Catholics was presented by Fane, 17 Apr. 1823; and that session petitions were presented to both Houses from Witney for repeal of the Insolvent Debtors Act, and to the Commons from Watlington (13 Mar.) and Chipping Norton (16 May) for relief from agricultural distress.16

On Fane’s death, 8 Feb. 1824, the first candidate in the field was George Dashwood, son and heir of Sir Henry Watkin Dashwood of Kirtlington Park, the impoverished 3rd baronet, formerly Member for Woodstock on the Marlborough interest, whose father had represented the county. When Fane’s son came forward, however, Dashwood withdrew, disclaiming any wish to disturb the peace or to incur financial problems. At the county meeting which nominated Fane, 25 Feb., one of Dashwood’s clerical backers explained that he had responded to an unsolicited invitation to stand and that he did not consider his pretensions to be inferior to Fane’s. The latter was formally elected, 8 Mar., when he promised to follow the same independent line as his father.17 Petitions for the abolition of slavery from Bicester, Chipping Norton, Henley, Hook Norton and elsewhere were presented to both Houses in March 1824, and on 4 June Fane presented one from Henley for inquiry into the prosecution of the Methodist missionary John Smith in Demerara. One from Thame for a repeal of assessed taxes was presented to the Commons, 18 Mar. 1824.18 Similar ones followed, 4 and 10 Feb. 1825, and Fane voted for repeal of the window tax that session.19 Both Houses were petitioned against Catholic relief in April.20 Fane and Ashhurst shared the task of presenting Oxfordshire petitions against any alteration of the corn laws.21 Numerous similar petitions were got up in 1826, as were ones for the abolition of slavery.22 Both Ashhurst and Fane voted against the revised corn bill.

At the general election of 1826 they came forward again, but the first contest for 72 years was presaged when George Frederick Stratton, a staunch protectionist and anti-Catholic, secretary of the Agricultural Society and major commandant of the Bloxham yeoman cavalry, offered, ostensibly in response to a numerously signed requisition. Stratton, who had nominated Ashhurst in 1820, had once owned an estate at Great Tew, bought by his nabob father; but a disastrous experiment in convertible husbandry under the aegis of the Scot John Claudius Loudon had forced him to sell up in 1815.23 At the annual meeting of the Agricultural Society, Ashhurst, who had become unpopular in parts of the county, especially the north, where it was said he was never seen, defended his conduct on the corn laws and denied having neglected the agricultural interest; but on the eve of the nomination, 12 June, the dean of Christ Church warned Peel, the home secretary and Member for the University, that he was in ‘great danger’ and that Stratton, ‘who has no real pretensions, is expected to make such a figure by means of the low party in the county as to induce Mr. Ashhurst to withdraw’.24 At the meeting Ashhurst’s seconder, Richard Weyland, who had recently inherited the Woodeaton estate, near Islip, from his father, boasted of his having turned down earlier in the year the chance of a seat for life for the University. Ashhurst defended his parliamentary conduct, untruthfully denied having voted for the duke of Cumberland’s grant, attacked Ashhurst as a man with no substantial stake in the county who had turned out his old tenants for ‘a parcel of Scotch adventurers’ and excused his failure to visit all parts of the county on the grounds of his busy life as Member and chairman of the sessions. In the same breath he admitted that with a large family and small fortune he could not sustain a contest and, complaining of Stratton’s treachery, announced his retirement. He warned the freeholders to consider well before returning Stratton, whose idiosyncratic brand of Methodism made him suspect as a defender of the interests of the established church. After Fane had proclaimed his independence and made a half-hearted statement of his support for the gradual abolition of slavery, Stratton denounced Ashhurst as a man too servile to ministers for a county Member, and declared:

I consider my cause to be the cause of the yeomanry of the county. I consider that the northern part of the county is not represented, as far as communication between its Members and their constituents is concerned; and the cause of complaint is that they never see their Members.

He gave assurances of his hostility to Catholic claims and determination to uphold the agricultural interest. Following some desultory discussion Edward Simeon nominated and Weyland seconded Dashwood, who ‘declined a contest’. Subsequently they and 73 of Ashhurst’s other leading supporters, including Blandford, issued a declaration pressing him to change his mind and promising financial support through a public subscription. On 14 June Smith told Peel:

The county election is to take place on ... [the 16th]. All those of the better sort are indignant at the impudence and bad faith of Mr. Stratton. Preparations are making for a poll ... It is hoped that many of those who signed the requisition will not follow it up with their votes, when they see the unanimity of the principal persons in the county in favour of Mr. Ashhurst.25

On the day of election Ashhurst announced his intention of standing. Two freeholders demanded that Stratton should swear the requisite qualification oath, which he did with a bad grace, insisting that his rivals should do likewise. Stratton led after the first day’s polling and was still ahead at the end of the second, a Saturday. Ashhurst, who was in second place, remained confident; and on the resumption of polling on the Monday there was a surge of support for him and Fane, which relegated Stratton to third and forced him to retire, complaining of coalition and the use of intimidation and undue influence. Fane’s second place was ascribed partly to mismanagement and partly to the anxiety of the respectables to ensure Ashhurst’s success.26 Analysis of the pollbook clearly reveals the practical coalition between Ashhurst and Fane, who received split votes from 1,117 freeholders, or just under half the 2,295 who polled. This represented 84 per cent and 88 per cent of their respective totals. Ashhurst shared 136 votes with Stratton, Fane 107. Stratton received plumpers from 815 voters, or 36 per cent of those who polled, which made up 77 per cent of his total. He had a very marked advantage in the three northern hundreds of Banbury, Chadlington and Wootton, where he was supported by 73 per cent of those who voted, as against 32 for Ashhurst and 28 for Fane; but in most of the rest of the county, apart from his own former territory in Bloxham and in Bampton, he came a poor third. He received very strong support in the towns of Banbury (94 per cent), Deddington (93) and Chipping Norton (92), but received comparatively little in Henley and Watlington and almost none in Bicester and Thame. He came second, with 54 per cent support, in Oxford, where Ashhurst had 60 and Fane only 29. The 55 Woodstock voters went 38 for Ashhurst, 30 for Fane and 27 for Stratton.27

Ashhurst and Fane responded to the Oxfordshire petitioning campaign against further interference with the corn laws in 1827 by voting against the corn bill, 2 Apr.28 The diocese petitioned both Houses against Catholic relief.29 Dissenters of Bicester, Chipping Norton, Henley, Thame and Witney petitioned in 1827 and 1828 for repeal of the Test Acts, which Ashhurst opposed and on which Fane did not vote.30 Petitioning against Catholic relief continued in 1828 and 1829, when both Members opposed emancipation. Bicester and Chipping Norton sent favourable petitions to both Houses.31 In 1830 Fane, who voted frequently with the disaffected Tories in opposition to the Wellington ministry, presented several Oxfordshire petitions complaining of agricultural distress and demanding repeal of the beer and malt duties. Chipping Norton petitioned the Lords to the same effect through Lord Stanhope, 15 Feb.32 There was petitioning also for mitigation of the criminal code and abolition of the death penalty for forgery offences.33

In mid-June 1830, when the king’s final illness heightened expectations of a dissolution, it was announced in the Oxfordshire press that Abingdon’s eldest son Lord Norreys, who had come of age the previous year, would stand at the next general election. Ashhurst immediately announced his retirement for domestic reasons, but Fane stood his ground. After the king’s death there were mutterings in the press about an attempt to revive aristocratic nomination, and Dashwood, who had succeeded his father in 1828, came forward. There was little to distinguish his written political professions from those of Norreys: both promised to act independently and to safeguard the agricultural interest, though Norreys also claimed to favour ‘all practical retrenchment’; while Dashwood, called on to be more specific, gave an assurance that ‘my attachment to our invaluable constitution is firm, and not to be shaken’. It was reported that Stratton, who soon afterwards went to America, where he died in penury, had declined an invitation to stand.34 It was agreed by the committees that Dashwood’s would provide transport for voters pledged to vote for him and Fane, at the joint expense of both candidates; that the same arrangement would operate for voters promised for Norreys and Fane, with the former’s committee providing the transport; and that Fane’s agents would make provision for his plumpers. At the nomination, on hustings erected opposite Balliol, 2 Aug., no burning political issue emerged, though slavery and economy were aired, in addition to the interests of agriculture. Parliamentary reform was apparently not mentioned. The reticent Dashwood left most of the talking on his behalf to the Rev. William Gordon, vicar of Dun’s Tew, who asserted that he had responded to an invitation to protect the independence of the county. Then and at the commencement of polling, 6 Aug., there were some sneers at Norreys’s youth; and there seems to have been a suspicion that Dashwood, who was related to the Marlboroughs, had been put up as a stalking horse for Blandford, now an advocate of reform. When Dashwood gave up after three days polling, in which he was always well behind, Gordon denied this story, claiming that on the announcement of Ashhurst’s retirement Blandford had written to Dashwood to ascertain his intentions and offer his support.35 The voting of the 2,762 freeholders who polled was mixed. Fane got only 94 plumpers, while Norreys received 421 (26 per cent of his total) and Dashwood 241 (19). The largest single block of votes was the 1,001 splits for Fane and Norreys (36 per cent of those who voted), which represented 53 and 62 per cent of their respective totals. Fane and Dashwood shared 809 votes (29 per cent of voters), which made up 42 per cent of the former’s and 65 per cent of the latter’s totals. There were only 196 splits for Norreys and Dashwood (seven per cent of voters). Fane was well supported throughout the county: he was particularly strong in the hundred of Pyrton, where his own and Macclesfield’s estates lay; but his lowest percentage of the vote was the 55 which he achieved in Bloxham. Norreys’s strongest area of support was in Thame, his home territory. Dashwood’s good showing in Wootton, where he topped the poll with 73 per cent of the vote and was supported by 48 of the 52 Woodstock voters, confirms that the Blenheim interest, such as it was, went largely to him. He and Fane received 130 and 129 votes respectively from the 207 who voted from Ploughley, where his own and Jersey’s property lay. He did significantly better than overall in the northern hundreds of Banbury, Chadlington and Wootton: there the proportions were Dashwood 66 per cent, Fane 63 and Norreys 41; while in the whole county they were 45, 69 and 59 respectively. Fane came first in the towns of Bampton, Banbury, Bicester, Henley, Chipping Norton and Watlington; Norreys did so in Burford, Thame, Ensham and Oxford, where he had 71 per cent support as against 58 for Fane and 45 for Dashwood; and Dashwood headed the poll in Deddington, as well as Woodstock.36

Oxfordshire petitioning for the abolition of slavery was resumed in the new Parliament.37 In late August 1830 there were anti-enclosure riots at Otmoor; and when prisoners taken there were being escorted to Oxford gaol, 6 Sept., a rioting mob attacked the military in St. Giles’s and enabled over 40 of them to escape. During the ‘Swing’ disturbances in late November, there were at least 30 incidents of wage riots and machine breaking in the county.38 Norreys voted with ministers on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, when Fane was absent. A Thame petition to the Commons for the ballot, 28 Feb. 1831, was the precursor of a widespread petitioning movement in favour of the Grey ministry’s reform bill the following month.39 Norreys, who claimed to favour moderate reform, voted against the second reading. Fane divided for it, but subsequently spoke against the measure and joined Norreys in voting for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment. Committees were formed at Witney and Henley, and subsequently elsewhere in Oxfordshire, to monitor the bill’s progress and take steps to promote the return of reformers in the event of a dissolution.40 When this occurred Fane announced his retirement, but Norreys sought re-election as a supporter of ‘a modified reform’. George Granville Harcourt, Member for Lichfield since 1806, whose father, the archbishop of York, had recently succeeded to his cousin Lord Harcourt’s Oxfordshire estates and changed his and his childrens’ name from Venables Vernon to Harcourt, offered as a supporter of the bill, for which he had voted as a convert. It was said that he was ‘a bad canvasser’, who ‘made a poor job of it, in Oxford market place, coquetting with the farmers’. Dashwood declined an invitation to stand because he could not afford another contest. Oxfordshire reformers got up a requisition to Weyland, who had no Whig credentials, but whose brother John had supported the bill as Member for Hindon. He accepted, and presented himself as an uncompromising supporter of the measure. In an attempt to avoid being overwhelmed by the powerful pro-reform tide, some of Norreys’s supporters, including Ashhurst and Jersey’s son Lord Villiers*, issued a declaration advocating moderate change and condemning the sweeping ministerial measure as ‘particularly injurious to the agricultural interests’. On nomination day, 4 May, it was learned that Weyland had been returned in absentia for Weymouth, but he renounced that seat.41 So rowdy was the nomination meeting, thanks to a liberal distribution of free alcohol on behalf of Norreys, that none of the candidates could make himself heard. Norreys was popular in the University, where the young William Gladstone† was active on his side; and during the poll, which began on 9 May, there were clashes between undergraduates and townsmen. According to Gladstone, there was a strong residue of hostility to Catholic emancipation among the freeholders on both sides. He recalled 60 years later an incident in which he

held forth to a working man, possibly a forty shilling freeholder, on the established text, reform was revolution. To corroborate my doctrine I said, ‘Why, look at the revolutions in foreign countries’, meaning of course France and Belgium. The man looked hard at me and said these very words: ‘Damn all foreign countries: what has old England to do with foreign countries?’

Harcourt, who argued that Canning, whom he had followed in the 1820s, would have supported the reform bill, and Weyland denied any formal coalition, while admitting that some of the voluntary reform committees in the localities, which organized the free transport of voters to Oxford, may well have canvassed for them jointly. The outcome was never in doubt and Norreys gave up after three days, when he was almost 373 behind Weyland and 466 behind Harcourt in a poll of 2,934.42 Harcourt and Weyland shared the votes of 1,536 freeholders, or 52 per cent of those who voted, which made up 86 per cent and 91 per cent of their respective totals. They received only 57 and 22 plumpers respectively. Norreys had 996 (34 per cent of those who polled), which represented 76 per cent of his total. He shared 189 votes with Harcourt and 131 with Weyland: only 320 men (11 per cent of the voters) cast mixed votes. The only hundreds in which Norreys did significantly better than in the county overall (45 per cent) were his stronghold of Thame (81), and Lewknor (61), Dorchester (58), Bullingdon (55), Bampton (53) and Langtree (52). He got only 40 per cent support in the three northern hundreds, as against 66 for Harcourt and 64 for Weyland. The reformers were first and second in Banbury, Bicester, Chipping Norton, Deddington, Henley, Watlington and Oxford, where the voters divided 64 per cent for Harcourt, 60 for Weyland and 44 for Norreys. The latter came first in Burford, Ensham and Thame, and second, ahead of Harcourt, in Woodstock, from where he received 16 plumpers from 48 voters.43

On a rumour in late May 1831 that Harcourt was soon to be made a peer Blandford announced that he would stand as a reformer, but the story was immediately discounted by Harcourt himself.44 The inhabitants of Bicester, Henley and Witney petitioned the Lords to pass the reform bill in early October, but a hostile petition emerged from Shotover and Horsepath. After the bill’s rejection a meeting was held at Henley to address the king in its support.45 In March 1832 it was reported that many of the nobility, gentry and clergy of the county had addressed the king against the creation of peers to carry the measure in the Lords.46 Oxfordshire was one of the seven English counties which received one additional Member by the Reform Act, and only minor changes were made to its borders by the Boundary Act. At the 1832 general election, when there was a registered electorate of 4,721, Harcourt and Weyland were returned unopposed with Norreys. Harcourt and Norreys remained Members for almost 30 and almost 20 years respectively; and there were only three contests before the county was divided into three in 1884.