The parish, borough and market town of Preston, at the head of the Ribble estuary about 35 miles north-west of Manchester, was an important cotton spinning and manufacturing centre.5 Its representation had been contested four times, 1796-1818, and from 1800 was vested in a coalition formed by the Whig 12th earl of Derby and the Tory cotton manufacturer and corporator John Horrocks†. This had usurped the Derby-Hoghton alliance to which the corporation had forfeited both seats when Parliament ruled in 1768 that the franchise lay in ‘the inhabitants at large’ (subject to a six months’ residence qualification and a year without poor relief), rather than in the resident freemen. Testifying to the 1827 select committee on borough polls, the four-times mayor Nicholas Grimshaw said that the electorate was over 5,000, adding: ‘householders may be ascertained by paying scot and lot and freemen may be ascertained, but these voters cannot’.6 Assurances of support from local Whigs and radicals, who considered the coalition corrupt and sponsored independence parties, attracted a steady supply of anti-coalition candidates, while near universal manhood suffrage, a growing and fluctuating population and close links with Manchester and other unfranchised manufacturing towns made elections costly and difficult to control.7 Management was effected by close monitoring of property tenure by coalition supporters and Derby’s agents, assisted by captains for each of the town’s poor law (census enumeration) districts. A network of street captains organized treating at designated public houses, sent up voters on request and reported defectors to the district captains.8 Reflecting Preston’s transition from a de facto county town to the Ribble’s premier manufacturing centre, canvassing was concentrated at the cotton mills (13 in 1820), where entertainments were offered and favours distributed. Candidates were also expected to tour the public houses and address the populace nightly from their hotel windows and open spaces close to the hustings.9 The mayor, assisted by the bailiffs, acted as returning officer and was elected annually on 12 Oct. by a jury of 24 resident guild burgesses chosen by two eleisors previously selected from among the 17 capital burgesses. One was nominated by the outgoing mayor, the other by the seven aldermen. Each son born after his father’s admission was entitled to admission as a guild burgess at the next 20-year guild after his coming of age. His designation as a ‘resident’ or ‘foreign’ was hereditary and independent of his place of birth or abode. Few freemen were admitted outside guild years.10

Samuel Horrocks, who had succeeded his brother John as Member and head of the family firm in 1804, and Derby’s son-in-law Edmund Hornby, the ‘seat-warmer’ since 1812 for Derby’s grandson Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley, had defeated the ‘independent’ Dr. Peter Crompton, of the Liverpool Concentric Society, in a seven-day poll at the general election of 1818. Hornby was not expected to stand again, but he agreed to do so jointly with Horrocks when George III’s death precipitated a general election shortly before Smith Stanley came of age in 1820.11 Charles Swainson of Coopers Hill, Walton, the proprietor of the Fishwick mill, declined nomination and the first challenger to declare was Henry Hunt. The ‘Orator’ had recently been fêted in Preston on his way from Lancashire assizes, after clashing with Derby’s heir Lord Stanley* over his management of procedures and the ‘close’ Lancashire grand jury after Peterloo. Hunt’s Preston supporters were led by the cobbler Huffman and reed maker John Irving. According to the Manchester Mercury, these two ‘pure radicals’ had resolved to nominate him while he was on bail prior to his trial at York, and to fund his campaign by drawing on a subscription raised for his legal costs.12 Announcing his candidature, 31 Jan., Hunt defined inquiry into Peterloo and repeal of the ‘Six Acts’ as the sole issues (his addresses of 5 Mar. added civil and religious liberty, annual parliaments, universal suffrage, the ballot, tax reductions and corn law repeal to his list). He also made it ‘distinctly understood, that although Dr. Crompton may not go so far ... yet this offer is not in the slightest degree intended to oppose him’. The Preston printers refused Hunt’s notices but the Manchester Observer promoted his candidature.13 Renewing their challenge, on 15 Feb. Crompton’s former backers, joined by the attorney Peter Haydock, the banker John Lawe, the manufacturer William Ormerod Pilkington, the cabinet maker William Woodcock and the timber merchant Thomas Emmett, requisitioned the 1819-20 sheriff of Cheshire John Smith Barrie, who declined. Their target was Hornby’s seat. Crompton’s Concentric Society ally, the militia colonel George Williams† (who was afterwards nominated for the county), started on the same interest as a self-professed ‘Old’ or Foxite Whig, but made way for the Whig barrister John Williams*, who arrived late from York assizes.14 To discredit John Williams, the ‘old coalition’ portrayed him as part of a ‘new coalition’ with Hunt and ridiculed his small stature and defeat in 1818, when party to another ‘independence coalition’ at Chester. Retaliating, Williams’s supporters criticized Horrocks’s silence in the House and lack of learning and mocked Smith Stanley as Hornby’s ‘bantling’.15 On the hustings, 7 Mar., Horrocks was nominated by the Tory alderman William Fell and seconded by Hornby’s kinsman William Shawe, and Hornby by William Rawstorne of Penwortham and the Tory Joseph Myers. Williams’s sponsors were Joseph Lawe and Pilkington and Hunt’s were Huffman and Irving. Voting was in tallies of five ‘taken alternately from each side of the bar’.16 With the poll at Horrocks 224, Hornby 221, Williams 216 and Hunt 214 after three days, Horrocks’s son-in-law, the physician William St. Clare, sent the family the following account:

[Contrary to all expectation] the town has been kept extremely quiet, considering the nature of the contest, but at the opening of the business the pressure of the crowd rushing into the hall was so great, that a great many gentlemen (half-suffocated and squeezed to a jelly), were prevented from entering. Amongst this number were the two Mr. Grimshaws, Mr. Travis, Mr. Troughton and your humble servant, which was rather a disappointment, more particularly as the three latter and Mr. William Rawstorne were to have proposed and seconded the two worthy candidates ... Williams (who has actually started) and young Mr. [Smith] Stanley, with several others, were obliged to get in at a window by a ladder. Hunt’s voters have split upon Williams; but it is not expected that he can hold out very long, as signs of weakness have already appeared. It is said that Williams is exerting himself very much, but I trust to very little purpose. He is principally supported by a set of young men, amongst whom are two, that I regret very much. These I understand mean to vote for ... Horrocks and Williams. The polling hitherto has been very slow, as you will judge from the state of the poll this evening, which is the third day.17

Support for Hunt declined sharply after he left for York on the eighth day. Williams ran Hornby close for a further three days, but fell back after the 7th Dragoons were summoned to quell rioting, and he conceded defeat on the 13th day. Rawstorne and Derby’s attorney James Walton admitted that it had been a ‘very provoking and ... expensive business’ and calculated that the coalition had 500-600 voters unpolled. Walton suggested that candidates stand singly in future.18 A notice of 23 Mar. 1820 requested those turned out for voting for Williams to give their names to the editor of the Preston Chronicle, Isaac Wilcockson.19 The election cost the Horrocks-Hornby coalition almost £11,560, including £8,203 on public houses, nearly double their 1818 expenditure. Williams probably spent £1,500.20 According to William Addison’s edition of the pollbook, about 1,646 (51 per cent) of the 3,206 voters split for the coalition candidates, and 1,124 (35 per cent) for Williams and Hunt. Horrocks shared 212 votes with Williams and Hornby only one, confirming the virtual extinction of a distinct Whig or liberal vote noted in 1818. Williams received 188 plumpers, Horrocks 44, Hunt three and Hornby two.

The abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties in November 1820 was marked by illuminations and a radical address to Queen Caroline, countered by a ministerialist one from the corporation to the king.21 To belie Preston’s reputation ‘as the only town in England which would give such a mountebank as Hunt 1,100 votes’, the Tory Blues established the (short-lived) Preston Sentinel in April 1821, closely followed by a Pitt Club at the Mitre Inn with the banker James Pedder as chairman and the attorney Joseph Bray junior as secretary, and lavish coronation celebrations.22 Williams, as one of the late queen’s lawyers, was fêted and presented with plate at a dinner chaired by John Lawe, 20 Sept. 1821, and from October the freemen, led by Peter Haydock, tried to exercise the right to nominate eleisors. The campaign foundered in 1824, when it was taken up by the mob.23 The radicals petitioned the Commons in protest at Hunt’s treatment in Ilchester gaol, 20 Feb. 1822, and the shoemakers paid tribute to him at that year’s guild, a lavish three-week celebration during which 2,730 resident and 361 foreign burgesses renewed their rights and 153 were admitted. It placed the corporation accounts £1,885 in deficit.24 Legislation sponsored by the gentry manufacturers and merchants for widening the Preston-Wigan and Preston-Garstang roads was enacted in 1822 and 1823, as were a new Blackburn road crossing the Ribble in 1824 and improvements to the Liverpool road the following year.25 Preston’s petitions to the 1820 Parliament were predominantly to the Commons. They received ones from William Omerod opposing the Salford hundred court bill, 29 Apr., the churchwardens and guardians of the poor against the poor removal bill, 30 May, and the trustees of the Preston Gas Light Company, objecting to restrictions under the gas workings bill, 16 July 1822.26 The shoemakers and their allies petitioned against the tax on leather, 30 Apr. 1822, 26 May, and the hides and skins bill, 12 Mar. 1824, and the inhabitants did so for repeal of the combination laws, 25 Mar. 1824, and the window tax, 21 Apr. 1825.27 The 1824 beer duties bill attracted unfavourable petitions from the licensed victuallers, brewers and inhabitants, 7, 14 May, and certain cotton spinners and manufacturers objected to easing the restrictions on machinery exports, the movement of artisans and the relaxation of the combination laws, 25 Mar. 1824. Others requested that these matters be referred to the select committee on artisans and machinery, 5 Apr. 1824. Both Houses received petitions from manufacturers and master spinners fearful that their working hours would be curtailed under the 1825 cotton factories regulation bill, 13 May, 6 June, and the same parties petitioned against the Equitable Loan Company bill, 28 Apr. 1825.28 The town’s 55 attorneys urged the repeal of the duties on public notaries’ licences, 12 Apr. 1824 (and 26 Feb. 1830), and opposed the bankruptcy laws amendment bill, 21 Apr. 1825. The Nonconformists and inhabitants petitioned for the abolition of colonial slavery, 7 May 1823, 15, 22 Mar. 1826, and in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 27 May 1824.29 Both Houses received petitions in 1825 and 1826 favourable and hostile to Catholic relief, which the Catholics and Dissenters supported and the Preston Pilot, established in January 1825 as a ‘king and constitution paper’, resolutely opposed.30 The Roman Catholics also petitioned the Lords to object to the outlawing of the Catholic Association, 18 Mar. 1825.31

Horrocks had survived a life-threatening attack by an aggrieved employee in July 1823 and his retirement, which was urged by his son Samuel on business grounds, caused a sensation when it was announced with Hornby’s resignation and Smith Stanley’s candidature in April 1826, amid layoffs in manufacturing, widespread industrial unrest and clamouring and petitioning for government assistance and the repeal of the corn laws.32 Smith Stanley, who advocated Catholic relief and moderate reform, canvassed early, stressing his commitment to Preston since 1818. Approaches through the Pitt Club to Smith Stanley’s father-in-law Edward Bootle Wilbraham* and William Thomas Lee of Salford failed, although Lee briefly tested the ground. Horrocks’s son declined a requisition and the naval captain Robert Smith Barrie, a staunch anti-Catholic, was substituted for him on the Blue interest, backed by the Grimshaws and Horrockses, their corporation allies and the Preston Pilot, which endorsed Smith Stanley despite his politics. Hunt contested Somerset and, encouraged by the Liverpool printer Thomas Smith, some of his supporters persuaded the radical journalist and agitator William Cobbett†, who was in the area, to stand and established committees in his interest in London, Manchester and the manufacturing towns. John Liddell and George Williams started for the independents but withdrew, leaving the field to their ally the lawyer John Wood, whose candidature was brokered by his father Ottiwell Wood with Blackhurst, Myers and Woodcock. Formerly a Liverpool sugar refiner, Wood whose headquarters were at the Red Lion, had canvassed for Crompton in 1818 and was supported by Concentric Society members and the Manchester Unitarian manufacturers Edward Baxter†, Joseph Brotherton†, Robert Hyde Gregg†, Mark Philips†, Richard Potter†, Thomas Potter†, John Shuttleworth† and J.E. Taylor. They advocated reform, retrenchment, civil and religious liberty, free trade, popular education and temperance at elections, and condemned boroughmongering and all slavery. The Manchester Times, the Liverpool Mercury and Manchester Gazette recommended Wood. The Manchester Guardian, which, with the Preston Chronicle, endorsed Smith Stanley, also ultimately judged Wood acceptable.33 Smith Stanley, whose committee chairman Wilson consistently denied reports of a coalition with Wood or Barrie, was the front runner, but the second place was too close to call.34 The candidates were identified by their colours and retinues (Smith Stanley orange, Barrie blue, Wood green, Cobbett red) and mustered in force at the new corn exchange, where Nicholas Grimshaw presided as mayor, 9 June. Eamer and Irving (Huffman according to the Preston Pilot) proposed Cobbett; the iron founder Richard Walker and Woodcock nominated Wood; Cross and J.S. Apsden sponsored Smith Stanley, and St. Clare and Samuel Gorst did the same for Barrie. The show of hands was for Cobbett and Wood. This prompted their opponents to issue the anti-Cobbett Political Mountebank daily during the poll, together with anti-Unitarian handbills and warnings to the Dissenters not to back Wood. Nineteen Greens were detained amid great publicity on suspicion of plotting to cause an affray.35 The nomination of Cobbett’s London committee chairman, the radical Norfolk squire Sir Thomas Beevor of Hargham, on the second day, to provide him with an additional polling booth, was matched by those of the naval captain Samuel Martin Colquhitt of Tranmere for Barrie, John Lawe for Smith Stanley and his committee chairman Mark Philips for Wood. The proximity of rival mobs to the booths, their attempts to capture them and intimidate voters, Cobbett’s spurious objections and Barrie’s insistence on administering the full oaths to Catholics delayed polling, which was twice halted by rioting. Troops were summoned from Kirkham to protect the mills and they remained on stand-by. The corporation estimated that a thousand remained unpolled when Smith Stanley and Wood were declared elected after the maximum 15 days.36 The Members invited the Catholics to join in the victory procession.37 Smith Stanley topped the poll and Cobbett trailed throughout. Wood, who finished 970 votes behind Smith Stanley and 321 ahead of Barrie, nudged into second place on the third day, and despite his concern that his 36-hour absence to attend his mother’s funeral would be misconstrued as retirement, he retained his lead over Barrie, who narrowly outpolled him on the sixth and eighth days.38 Taking the credit for Smith Stanley’s success, Horrocks junior wrote to Derby, 19 June, in a vain attempt to revive the coalition in favour of Barrie. He was turned down despite his threat ‘that the Derby interest will be materially injured by the present election being decided contrary to the feelings of my father and other gentlemen who have the interest of the town at heart’. An appeal from Barrie’s committee to Smith Stanley’s also failed, 21 June.39 The Preston papers praised Smith Stanley and commiserated with Barrie. The Times welcomed Cobbett’s defeat and taunted him for polling fewer votes than Hunt, but it printed Cobbett’s parting diatribes ridiculing Smith Stanley as a ‘vain, paltry empty creature, more silly than a green girl’ and the Woods as miserly sugar bakers, and another in which the ‘mountebank’ congratulated himself for drawing £15,000 from the Smith Stanley and £7,000 from Wood to keep out the Tory. Cobbett and Barrie, whose henchman Colquhitt challenged Wood to a duel for ‘insulting the royal ensign in one of his evening speeches’, both promised to petition.40 Two-hundred attended the Blues’ dinner for Barrie, chaired by St. Clare, 3 Aug. 1826.41 Of 4,222 polled, 650 (15 per cent) plumped: 451 for Cobbett, 92 for Wood, 71 for Barrie and 36 for Smith Stanley (45, five, four and one per cent of their respective totals). The pollbook was not printed, but lists drafted for the corporation indicate a revival in the Whig-liberal vote, with approximately 41 per cent of the split votes (35 per cent overall) cast for Smith Stanley and Wood and 45 per cent (39 per cent overall) for Smith Stanley and Barrie.42

The Tories’ aim was to regain control by unseating Wood on petition without interfering with Smith Stanley’s return and to secure a bill, grounded on the election committee’s findings, that would restrict the franchise to ‘scot and lot’ payers or ‘housekeepers’, and so make the electorate easier to monitor.43 A petition drafted by Barrie’s lawyers attempted to prove that Wood had obtained 300 votes unfairly by using Cobbett’s booth and employing bludgeonmen to drive away Barrie voters. It was undermined from the outset by the polling figures for Cobbett’s booth, difficulty in proving agency against Wood, and the tactics resorted to by Barrie’s agents. Wood was reported to be ready to resign to avoid petitioning costs.44 Taking over the case on the recommendation of T.J. Hall, Nicholas Adam, as counsel for the corporation, advised that the 1768 Commons ruling on the franchise was definitive. He refused to ‘rule on whether the House would back any bill to regulate the right of voting’, as pro-reform Members were reluctant to restrict voting rights, but he was optimistic about overturning Wood’s return.45 Exhaustive inquiries in October and November deterred Barrie, who had already spent £7,207, from proceeding with a petition. However, the corporation, who appointed a subcommittee and opened a subscription, resolved to proceed with a bill to increase the number of booths, poll clerks and assessors and to defray their own election costs.46 Cobbett meanwhile submitted two petitions calculated to void the election. The first, presented on 28 Nov., claimed that voting by tallies was illegal and alleged ‘divers illegal acts and contrivances put in practice by the mayor and ... returning officers ... with the wish and intention to prevent ... [him] having a majority on the pollbook’. The second, of 2 Dec. 1826, protested at the ‘pretended legality of the election’ and claimed that the returning officers were ‘partial to Smith Stanley and Barrie’.47 The corporation prepared a costly defence and carried a resolution of confidence in the returning officers Grimshaw, Bray and Nicholson, 14 Feb. 1827, but neither petition was proceeded with.48

The Preston election bill, drafted by the Haydocks and introduced by Wood as a private Member’s bill, 18 June 1827, provided for district polls, additional booths and voter registration. It was killed by adjournment, 21 June.49 On 17 May Grimshaw and Peter Haydock had testified before the committee on the borough polls bill, of which Wood was a Member, and the corporation subsequently hoped that the legislation proposed by the committee and a new Preston charter (obtained in 1828), increasing the number of magistrates and their powers, would improve election management. They declined to support the 1828 Preston poll bill, a public bill based on that of 1827. The Preston Pilot condemned it as an attempt to ‘radicalize beyond the hope of melioration, the nature of the Preston franchise’. The Smith Stanleys refused to legislate on the latter and the second Preston poll bill was abandoned after a favourable petition was presented to the Commons, 15 Feb. 1828.50 The likely loss of their Preston seat was a factor in Lord Stanley’s decision in July 1827 to decline office for Smith Stanley in Canning’s ministry, to which they adhered. Stanley also specifically denied Canning permission to move the Preston writ before the summer recess.51 Smith Stanley’s appointment in September as colonial under-secretary in Lord Goderich’s ministry prompted Cobbett to renew his Preston campaign, but a by-election was rendered unnecessary by Smith Stanley’s refusal to serve under Wellington when the ministry collapsed in January 1828, before Parliament reconvened.52

The Preston branch of the Anti-Bread Tax Association had organized a 4,200-signature petition for gradual repeal and reform of the corn laws, which the Lords received, 16 Feb., and the Commons on the 22nd, and the Tories petitioned the Commons for agricultural protection, 26 Feb. 1827.53 Petitions to both Houses from the Dissenters and Catholics sought relief and ‘unconditional’ repeal of ‘such penal enactments that punish religious belief with civil privations’, 1, 16 Mar., and Nonconformists and others of all denominations petitioned for repeal of the Test Acts, 28 May, 13 June 1827, 15, 18 Feb., 5 Mar. 1828.54 When emancipation, which both Members supported, was conceded in 1829, the anti-Catholic petition was entrusted to the Liverpool Member Isaac Gascoyne, 4 Mar., and criticized by Wood (the presenter of a favourable one, 10 Mar.). Eldon presented the hostile petition to the Lords, 5 Mar. The Whigs dined at the Bull Inn and the pro-emancipation Tories and radicals at the Black Bull to celebrate the measure’s passage, 28 Apr.55 The retail brewers petitioned for repeal of the 1824 ‘Tom and Jerry’ Act, which the corporation condoned, 15 June 1827, 29 Feb. 1828, and the merchants petitioned in favour of the Calder navigation bill that day. Both Houses received petitions from medical pupils and practitioners for relaxation of the regulations restricting anatomical dissection, 5, 6, 9 May, and the 1828 friendly societies bill was widely opposed, 17 Apr.-20 May 1828.56 The impoverished weavers supported the minimum wage bill, 16 May 1827, and they petitioned seeking a duty on cotton twist exports as a remedy for distress, 26 Feb. 1830, a few days after Cobbett addressed them in the theatre and market place.57 A borough meeting chaired by the mayor, James Mounsey, 22 Mar., when Swainson, James and John Lawe, James Pedder and George Jackson were the main speakers, petitioned both Houses against the East India Company’s trade monopoly, and their petitions were referred to the select committee with others from Nonconformist congregations against suttee, 5, 26 Apr., 12 May 1830.58 The Commons received a 1,500-signature reform petition that day from certain inhabitants advocating the ballot and universal suffrage, and the operative spinners petitioned the Lords for a reduction in children’s working hours, 7 June 1830.59

Smith Stanley and Wood sought re-election and issued addresses directly the king’s death was announced that month. Cobbett backed down, and amid speculation that Smith Stanley would be switched to the county should his father be opposed, two Catholics, Charles Petre of Blackburn and the Liverpool barrister Rosson were touted as prospective candidates and Le Gendre Nicholas Starkie* of Huntroyde was requisitioned. The main talking point before Hunt, the promoter that summer of the Metropolitan Political Union, renewed his challenge, following his adoption on 22 July by a ‘mixed assemblage of radicals and Tories’, was the provision of ten voting booths, authorized under the 1828 City and Borough Polls Act, and the appointment by the corporation of a committee of six to implement it.60 The Manchester Guardian of 31 July reported a late futile invitation to the Huskissonite Charles Grant*. On 30 July Shawe and John Lawe proposed and seconded Smith Stanley, and Richard Walker and the Catholic John Bushell sponsored Wood. Hunt arrived during the nomination speeches and was proposed in ‘the people’s cause’ by Irving and the draper Joseph (alias James) Mitchell.61 He contrived delays in which to harangue the mob while the polling arrangements were implemented next day, and ensured that commissioners of oaths were dispensed with, but he failed to prevent Smith Stanley employing 60 lawyers to escort the Orange voters to the correct booths and monopolizing the Catholic vote. Cheap bread, the economic downturn, slavery, the East India Company’s monopoly and reform were the main issues. Hunt, who made Smith Stanley his target and capitalized on his opposition to the ballot, added to them the recent revolution in France. His criticism of the Members for co-operating on local issues had little effect, although ‘their coalition’ was a factor in Joseph Bray’s defection to the radicals. Wood topped the poll on the first day, a Saturday (Wood 595, Smith Stanley 509, Hunt 371), but Smith Stanley opened the public houses that weekend and polled an unprecedented 1,009 votes in the first three hours on the Monday. There was a surge of support for Hunt and Wood during the mechanics’ lunch hour and that evening the poll stood at Smith Stanley 2,886, Wood 2,771, Hunt 1,160. Hunt accused his radical and Tory backers of misleading him and retired next day (4 Aug.). He criticized Smith Stanley as previously in his resignation speech and denounced Wood as a traitor to radicalism who had let down his Preston supporters. No comparison of Wood-Smith Stanley and Wood-Hunt splitting is possible as the pollbooks do not survive, but squibs and contemporary reports suggest that the former predominated. The Preston Pilot, which had hoped to see Smith Stanley unseated, commented, ‘a Whig Member has been returned through Tory influence amongst a radical constituency’.62 Henry Brougham*, who monitored the election for the Whigs, was informed that

Wood ... won Preston at the expense of £450. It was a well managed affair ... Hunt showed great ability and behaved admirably well. If it had not been for the ale he would have beat [Smith] Stanley, who without any apparent cause was very unpopular.63

Wood’s inability to spend and refusal to open public houses was used against him, and the Blues called for the early requisitioning of candidates of ‘rank, consideration and influence, whatever their politics’ to thwart ‘all future adventurers’.64 Alarmed by Preston dinners in Hunt’s honour, the adoption of addresses promoting the Radical Reform Association’s demands for universal suffrage, the ballot and annual parliaments, and the revival of the Great Northern Union, the Blues approached their partisan, the county sheriff Robert Hesketh of Rossall.65

Smith Stanley’s doubts about Preston were confirmed at the by-election occasioned by his appointment as Irish secretary when Lord Grey’s ministry succeeded Wellington’s in November 1830. Delays in his acceptance and to the writ gave his opponents additional canvassing time while he remained in London and, although Hesketh declined, a ‘True Blue’ issued a notice, 27 Nov., and the newly established unions in Preston and neighbouring distressed areas mounted a brutal campaign on behalf of the absent Hunt.66 Derby, who had monitored recent challenges to aristocratic Whigs in Liverpool and Chester, was not surprised by the Preston contest, despite his agent John Winstanley’s early optimism. On 7 Dec. Smith Stanley was nominated as previously and Hunt, in absentia, by Irving, Mitchell and the Political Unionist John Johnstone, who made Smith Stanley’s opposition to the ballot and the ministry’s refusal to introduce a radical reform the main issues.67 Hunt had yet to appear when Derby informed Lord Stanley, 10 Dec.:

The radical party on the hustings offered to withdraw their opposition if Edward pledged himself to vote for the total abolition of [the] corn laws, and for the vote by ballot. These of course he refused to comply with, and the poll was to commence regardless, but I have no account of the numbers. Edward thought they would probably be at the head of the poll, by forcibly taking possession of the booth, their people being disposed to fight and ours not. He thinks they might probably be able to maintain the contest for a couple of days, but as our friends have determined not to give a single drop of liquor and all the respectable part of the town are coming forward and use all their influence to stop so useless and vexatious an opposition, it is thought they will give up a contest which will not serve their purpose of making expense.68

Hunt arrived on 13 Dec., with the poll at 3,311 to 2,853 in his favour. Smith Stanley, whose agents had issued 5s. dinner tickets over the weekend, outpolled him 539-419 over the next three days, but Hunt remained 338 ahead when the result was announced on the 15th.69 Smith Stanley demanded a scrutiny, but the radicals knew of malpractices on both sides, and correctly predicted that he would abandon it. Hunt, who had ordered a separate scrutiny of his own voters to cause further delay, was declared the victor, 24 Dec. 1830. He celebrated by touring the surrounding towns and Manchester where, as in London and Preston, subscriptions and celebrations had been organized and support solicited for his radical platform and to boost his election fund. Aping the radical weaver Joseph Hanson and the 1,002 in 1807, he had 3,730 commemorative medals struck for his voters and initiated an unstamped newsletter bearing their number, detailing his conduct in Parliament.70 With Preston again quiet, Winstanley informed Smith Stanley, 29 Dec. 1830:

Hunt (contrary to our expectations and wishes, for we had hoped it would have taken place on Friday) was not chaired until Monday, or rather he rode [was chaired] on that day and was attended by about 6 or 7,000 of the canaille, principally, as far as I could judge, from the country. It was altogether the flattest electioneering procession I ever witnessed. Hunt looked as if he was in a very bad humour and his sullenness seemed to infect the whole of the mob. An attempt was made by Mitchell and some others to compel an illumination but Hunt it is said soon put a stop to it, declaring now that the election was over he would not have anything done that might annoy any of your friends. The Blues were sadly disappointed at your address; they had hoped that you would have petitioned and that the election would have been set aside on account of the riots, etc., in which case they would have come forward with all their force to support you in hopes that you would have coalesced at the next general election with some Tory candidate which they would have set up. Notwithstanding ... Merewether’s opinion, I should not have the least fear of your agents being convicted of bribery if the last election should come before a committee of the House ... He seems to rest his opinion upon the Evesham case ... [but] surely there is a great difference between this and giving a man 5s. worth of meat and drink for having been taken from his work a day.71

Smith Stanley privately attributed his defeat, which stunned friends and colleagues, to the ‘stupidity or ill-will’ of Grimshaw as returning officer, his mishandling of the poll and scrutiny and his failure to quell ‘the system of outrage which has prevailed during the whole election’. Government found him a seat at Windsor, and his Preston committee chairman Shawe entered a formal protest against his treatment in Preston, 23 Dec. 1830.72 Annoyed at the absence of the registration provisions he had urged in the 1828 Act, Grimshaw had refused to insist on district polling (introduced by Mounsey in August) and exposed the abuses inherent in ‘indiscriminate voting’ - impersonation, duplicate and illegal polling. With an estimated electorate of over 6,000, 6,900 polling tickets were prepared and 7,122 polled. Smith Stanley’s committee estimated that 1,245 of Hunt’s votes were ‘fraudulent’.73 According to its twentieth century analysts, the pollbook shows the overwhelming support of the cotton workers and brewers for Hunt and of the ‘upper crust’ (gentlemen, lawyers and surgeons) for Smith Stanley, who also secured the ‘labourer’ vote by a two to one majority.74 Wood’s former tutor, the Unitarian minister William Shepherd of Gateacre, informed Brougham that the radicals ‘would not have tried their strength ... had not it been for the imprudent and offensive hauteur of Mr. [Smith] Stanley’. He further cautioned ministers against pandering to the weavers and suggested that the ministerial reform bill should leave Preston unchanged:

It will be a capital bone for the agitators to quarrel about. At the next election you will have the Hunts, the Cobbetts, the Prices, Jones’s and hoc genus omne at war for the pickings.75

Encouraged by Wood, Preston contributed to the 1830 and 1831 petitioning campaigns for the abolition of colonial slavery and church rates.76 The corporation, who sanctioned the Fishergate route, the Smith Stanleys, Wood and the Lancashire Member Wilson Patten co-operated to push through the Preston-Wigan railway bill that Parliament and opposed the Preston-Manchester scheme which infringed on its route.77 Opinion on the employment of child labour was divided, and the factories bill attracted favourable and hostile petitions.78 The reform bill posed no threat to Preston’s two seats, but the artisans feared disfranchisement by its £10 householder franchise. Wood declared firmly for the bill despite the omission of the ballot, which he advocated, and he repeatedly testified to its popularity, which Hunt, whom Cobbett derided as the ‘Preston Cock’, denied.79 The recorder designate, Thomas Batty Addison, chaired a meeting at the corn exchange requisitioned by the 50 leading Blues and Greens to petition for it, 29 Mar., when assurances were given that contrary to the radicals’ assertions, ministers did not ‘intend to deprive the present electors ... of their right of voting’. The Catholic barrister Robert Segar, the cheese factor and temperance advocate Joseph Livesey, Johnston, Irving, and Mitchell (who failed to carry an amendment on labourers’ earnings) were among the main speakers and 2,600 signed the petition.80 During Hunt’s Easter visit to present commemorative medals to his supporters and promote his brand of radicalism, he portrayed the bill as a means of transferring the rights of the labourers to the middle classes, and called for its defeat. Preston’s favourable petitions were presented to the Lords, 15 Apr., and the Commons, 20 Apr. 1831.81

Hunt and Wood sought re-election at the general election precipitated by the bill’s defeat, and Grimshaw was determined to conduct it like the last.82 ‘Nearly 300’ attended a meeting chaired by John Lawe to requisition Smith Stanley, 23 Apr., but he declined, followed on the same interest by Hornby’s son, Swainson and Richard Potter (who was defeated at Wigan).83 Hunt resumed his campaign in the neighbouring manufacturing districts and talked of offering Daniel O’Connell* or The O’Gorman Mahon* as his second man in Preston.84 The reformer George De Lacy Evans* was sent on Francis Place and John Hobhouse’s* recommendation by the committee of the Loyal and Patriotic Fund on the ‘assurance that Henry Hunt might by proper exertions be rejected’, and furnished with letters of introduction, promising £1,000 from the fighting fund at Brooks’s. He ‘expressed radical politics from the Tory Bull Inn’, but it looked likely, if he persisted, that he would unseat Wood, so he left to contest Rye.85 Grimshaw’s stance, the Blues’ quiescence and the short duration of the campaign had in any case rendered any change in the balance of the parties unlikely. The Members were returned unopposed. Hunt was nominated as previously, and Wood by Walker and Segar, who, pre-empting Hunt’s attempt to vilify Wood as an impostor and his political inferior, stressed his candidate’s radical credentials and pragmatic support for the reform bill. The repeal of the corn laws, the projected coroners bill (which Wood supported but was anathema to the opponents of anatomical dissection who had been campaigning in the town since 1829), government intervention in Portugal, the new churches bill, church rates and radical reform were each debated on the hustings, below a banner depicting Derby’s seat, Knowsley, with its windows closed and boarded.86 The Preston Chronicle observed:

If Mr. [Smith] Stanley, or Mr. Swainson, and Mr. Wood, or even Col. Evans and Mr. Wood had been put in nomination and the poll taken in districts, so that a proper check might have been made against fraudulent voting, we have no doubt but Mr. Hunt would have found himself in a minority ... Without some such security ... he might ... have been placed at the head of the poll.87

Preston’s freeholders rallied to Lord Stanley and Heywood in the Lancashire constituency and resolved to act with their Manchester committee.88

The Huntites insisted that Wood should be pledged to follow Hunt’s political leadership on all issues and criticized him mercilessly, generally with justice, in the ‘letters of the 3,730’ throughout the 1831 Parliament. Hunt’s own conduct was critically reviewed in Cobbett’s Political Register.89 Mitchell’s refusal to condone Hunt’s vote with Wood for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill split the Preston Huntites, and in August 1831 Joseph Hanson formed a Preston branch of the moderate political union pledged to support the Grey ministry, the ‘patriot king’ and the reform bill. A meeting on 17 May of the ‘3,730’ had adopted an address calling for a more radical reform than the ministerial bill, and they carried an alternative petition opposing the £10 clause and calling for the ballot, short parliaments and universal suffrage when Segar and his allies, backed by Joseph Dixon as mayor, organized a meeting to petition the Lords urging its passage, 29 Sept. They received the favourable petition, 3 Oct., and the critical one the following day.90 An address protesting at its rejection and urging peerage creations to carry it was adopted unanimously, 14 Oct.91 Hunt condemned the reform bill and planned a new union of the working classes to fight for universal manhood suffrage, the ballot and annual parliaments in the wake of the Bristol riots, but many Prestonians held aloof from his union and regrouped under the Quaker John Taylor after Mitchell’s friends were implicated in a scheme to incite rioting at Birley and Turton’s cotton factory in November 1831, for which 25 were indicted, and troops were billeted in the town all winter with a view to curbing unrest.92 Hunt, who maintained in the House that the bill would reduce the Preston electorate to 8-900 on account of its large number of substantial £6 houses, making it Derby’s pocket borough, failed by 290-11 with an amendment for a universal franchise, 2 Feb., and by 206-5 with another to exempt Preston from the £10 clause, 3 Feb. 1832. The boundary commissioners’ report published that month confirmed the difficulty of estimating the number of qualifying £10 tenements and Wood, whom ministers generally heeded, warned that about 3,000 Preston voters risked being disfranchised by the reform bill on account of rack-renting and registration costs, 20 Feb.93 When, following a further Lords’ defeat, a ministry headed by the duke of Wellington was contemplated, Segar rallied the reformers at the corn exchange, 11 May. Livesey failed that day to carry a compromise petition for household suffrage, short parliaments and the ballot, and the meeting was adjourned to Chadwick’s orchard, 12 May, when Taylor and Segar carried a petition, signed by 3,000, advocating universal suffrage, short parliaments, the ballot and withholding supplies until the current reform bill became law. Hunt drew the petition to the House’s attention, 17 May. As proposed on 12 May, a new branch of the Political Union was established in Preston, 4 June 1832.94 Reflecting Hunt’s influence, radical petitions were presented for free trade, 25 July, or a fixed duty on corn, 12 Aug. 1831. (The latter was rejected by 121-6, as too extreme.)95 Petitions for repeal of the 1830 Beer Act, 7 Oct. 1831, for the factories bill, 10 Feb., and a 4,913-signature one, 3 Aug. 1832, protesting at ‘Smith Stanley’s decision’ to send troops to Ireland to enforce tithes payment, were forwarded to and presented by Hunt.96 Wood and Lord Stanley, who repeatedly criticized Hunt’s inattention to constituency business, handled the Preston waterworks bill, which received royal assent, 3 Apr. 1832.97

As the boundary commissioners had recommended, Fishwick was added to the post-reform Preston constituency.98 Initially there was little difference in the size of the electorate, which when registered in November 1832 totalled 6,352: 6,291 ‘old voters’ and 736 £10 voters, of whom 675 had a dual qualification.99 Wood had announced his retirement in June, Robert Hesketh declined the following month and aristocratic representation was restored at the general election in December 1832, when the Conservative Peter Hesketh Fleetwood (Hesketh’s kinsman) topped the poll, with Smith Stanley’s brother, the Liberal Henry Smith Stanley, in second place. Hunt, who subsequently petitioned, polled third, ahead of the second Radical, the naval captain J. Forbes, and the Huntites’ bête noir, Crompton’s barrister son Charles.100 Excepting 1865, Preston was contested at each general election until the First World War. Hunt did not resume his challenge in 1835, and by 1837 Conservatives held both seats. Two Liberals represented the borough, 1841-52, but otherwise the Conservatives held at least one seat until 1885.