Tavistock, situated in the Tavey valley 15 miles north of Plymouth, was one of the principal market towns of Devon. It was not entirely agricultural: it had an old tradition of coarse woollen manufacture and was located at the centre of the west Devon copper, tin and manganese mining district, though all these industries were in decline in this period. It was connected by a canal, opened in 1817, to the River Tamar and Plymouth.2 It had no corporation and was governed by a portreeve, elected annually by 24 freeholders at the court leet of the manor, who also acted as the returning officer.3 Since the 1730s electoral control had been in the hands of the Russell family, dukes of Bedford, who by 1830 owned some 454 acres in the town, which constituted almost all its property. They had a further 12,000 acres in the surrounding area, including a substantial cottage at nearby Endsleigh, which the 6th duke and other members of his family used periodically.4 The right of election was in the freeholders, who had fallen in number from just over 100 in the early eighteenth century to little more than 30 by 1820. There had been no contest since 1734. Bedford, a dedicated Whig, was a considerate, though not an indulgent landlord and an attentive electoral patron, who laid the foundations for the striking improvement in the social and economic condition of the town which was carried into full execution by his successor. In 1823, William George Adam, the auditor of all Bedford’s estates, wrote to Andrew Wilson, who in that year combined the positions of Bedford’s borough steward and land steward at Tavistock:

I see no danger to the duke’s political interest from parting with the control of houses that confer no votes, as any lands or gardens that can be objects to connect with freeholds may be retained. The objections to leases for lives on farms do not apply to property in a town and I can see no danger of any persons getting influence in getting popularity as we find universally that the middle man exacts rents too high to make them objects of regard.5

While Bedford’s electoral control was in practice impregnable, it and his pervasive influence were not without their local critics. The chief among these, and the bane of the life of the alarmist Wilson, was John Rundle†, a partner in the Tavistock Bank, who had additional interests in his large family’s iron founding and timber businesses. His politics were distinctly radical. His daughter, the authoress Elizabeth Charles, recalled:

The bank ... was a focus and centre of the neighbourhood. Men of all classes came to hear what he thought of all matters political and social. He was liberal to the core ... With him politics meant public spirit in the largest sense; reform, radical reform, not destroying except as the seed destroys the husk, uprooting nothing but weeds, to give room for all good things to live and grow.6

Lord Holland described him in 1832 as ‘the head of ... the radical party’ in Tavistock and ‘a good reformer, but considered and even called by many of the electors a dictator or despot, and governing even his democratical crew as much by fear as love’.7 His leading allies were his business partner John Gill, John Flamank, a draper, John Hornbrook, a surgeon, and the Rev. William Evans, a Unitarian minister.

At the general election of 1820 Bedford returned the staunch backbench Whigs John Peter Grant, a debt-ridden Scottish lawyer and laird, and the popular John Fazakerley, a close friend of his son Lord John Russell*. Like Grant before him, Fazakerley had suffered financially as Member for Grimsby. Two months later Bedford reluctantly turned out ‘poor dear Faz’ in order to accommodate the Devonian Lord Ebrington, the son of the 1st Earl Fortescue and a rising star of opposition, who had been ousted from his county seat. Bedford reported that the electors of Tavistock were ‘delighted to have him’.8 On 16 Oct. 1820 Rundle chaired a meeting of the inhabitants which resolved to send a petition to the Commons against the prosecution of Queen Caroline;9 it evidently did not reach the House. A petition complaining of agricultural distress did so, 1 June 1820.10 Rundle carried a petition for relief from distress by means of retrenchment, tax reductions, revision of the tithes system and parliamentary reform at a ‘crowded’ meeting, 15 Feb. 1822.11 At the Bedfordshire county reform meeting, 20 Apr. 1822, when Bedford spoke forcefully for reform, a Tory clergyman made a pointed allusion to the fact that Tavistock was in his pocket. In reply, the Duke said that

he was free to confess that the freeholders of Tavistock generally did him the honour of considering his wishes; but he pledged himself that he never asked for place or pension or favour for any elector ... the moment the representation of that borough was thrown open to the town, and every inhabitant paying scot and lot was entitled to vote, would be the happiest moment of his life.12

Petitions were sent to the Commons for repeal of the coal duties, 10 Mar. 1823, 10 Mar. 1824, 21 Feb. 1825;13 against licence duties (from the licensed victuallers), 29 Mar. 1824;14 for the abolition of slavery, 10 Mar. 1824, 23 Feb. 1826;15 and for inquiry into the prosecution of the Methodist minister John Smith in Demerara, 27 May 1824.16 Among the signatories of a declaration of confidence in the Tavistock Bank during the panic of late 1825 were Wilson, the Rev. Edward Atkins Bray, vicar of Tavistock, and Colonel William Bray, Wilson’s predecessor as Bedford’s borough steward.17

At the general election of 1826 Ebrington came in again, but Grant made way for Bedford’s eccentric and impoverished younger brother Lord William Russell, who had sat for the borough from 1807 until 1819, when he had vacated for Grant and headed for the continent.18 In May 1827 Ebrington, who approved the Whig coalition in government with Canning, which horrified Bedford, offered to resign his seat, but the duke would not hear of it:

Our objects are still the same. I have no desire to form a party or to join any party against the present government and were you to give up your seat ... I should care so little about your successor that I should not interfere in his election, but leave it to the freeholders to elect Mr. Rundle or Mr. Gill, or anyone else they might take a fancy to.19

Protestant Dissenters of Tavistock petitioned the Commons for repeal of the Test Acts, 30 May, 6 June 1827, 18, 22 Feb. 1828, and members of the established church petitioned the Lords likewise, 21 Feb. 1828.20 Local maltsters petitioned for repeal of the Malt Act, 14 Mar. 1828.21 That year began a dispute between Wilson and Rundle, into which Adam and Bedford were drawn, over the site for and financing of a gas works to bring lighting to the town; it dragged on until the summer of 1831.22 On 23 Feb. 1829 Bray chaired a meeting to petition Parliament and address the king against Catholic emancipation, which Bedford and his Members of course supported, though Russell seems to have been too unwell to vote on the issue. The speakers included at least three other Anglican clergymen and some of the neighbouring Tory gentry, among them Arthur Chichester and William Courtenay*. The petitions were entrusted to Holdsworth, Member for Dartmouth, and Lord Rolle, a former county Member. Wilson, who apparently tried to impede the progress of the petitions, later complained to Adam of Bray’s ‘inflammatory sermon’ and unrelenting bigotry.23 In early February 1830 there was a riot, involving about 90 pauper labourers, which was apparently provoked by a decision of the magistrates on the disputed ownership of some faggots. Rundle, who spoke at length for reform and retrenchment at the Cornwall county meeting, 22 Mar., largely blamed the magistrates. Wilson deplored the existence of lawless elements in the town and of agitators, notably one Samuel Finn, eager to stir them up, though he also accused the clergy and magistrates of failing to exercise moral leadership and Rundle and the respectable radicals of ‘conceit and ingratitude’.24 The Commons were petitioned to break the East India Company’s commercial monopoly, 13 May, when Tavistock bankers and traders petitioned for mitigation of the punishment for forgery, as they did again, 24 May 1830.25

At the dissolution that summer Lord William Russell retired on account of the ill health which had badly interfered with his parliamentary attendance. He later told his nephew Lord George William Russell* that he had wished to step down two or three years earlier, but had agreed to stay in as a course ‘more advisable as affecting the election interests at Tavistock’. His replacement was Bedford’s grandson and heir presumptive Lord Russell, a shy young man just down from Oxford, who only came of age at the beginning of July 1830. Bedford told his son Lord George William, whom he had decided on good advice to drop as Member for Bedford, where his non-attendance and neglect had put the family interest in jeopardy, that ‘the same reasons would operate against my proposing you for Tavistock, where the electors are not at all disposed to submit to a non-attending representative’.26 Ebrington, warning that he would almost certainly in the next session take a ‘more decided’ line of opposition to the Wellington ministry, of which Bedford largely approved, offered to stand down; but the duke had no qualms about bringing him in again. Although the inhabitants of Tavistock presented addresses to Joseph Hume and Daniel O’Connell praising their parliamentary conduct in late July, the election of Ebrington and Lord Russell seems to have been undisturbed. Eleven days later Ebrington was also returned at the head of the poll for Devon.27

As Lord John Russell was defeated at Bedford, where he stood in his negligent brother’s room, he was the obvious replacement for Ebrington at Tavistock, though there was some talk, which came to nothing, of his standing for the vacant Southwark seat.28 Meanwhile, Wilson had become increasingly agitated about the state of feeling in Tavistock, where Rundle, Evans and Flamank had promoted a meeting, 30 Aug. 1830, which had adopted an address to the French people congratulating them on their ‘glorious triumph ... over tyranny’. Wilson reported soon afterwards that Rundle

as the head of a party is never at rest, and must dictate in everything, however unreasonable or inconsistent it may be. His whole aim seems to be directed against ... [Bedford] and agents, constantly uttering every expression of detestation at the way in which the borough is held, and that titles are only nicknames.29

Rundle and the Rev. William Rooker, a Unitarian minister, got up a meeting to petition Parliament for the abolition of slavery in early November, and further petitions to the same effect were presented during the 1830 Parliament.30 When Russell went to Tavistock to canvass the electors later in the month, just at the time that the Wellington ministry was being brought down, he was supposedly ‘threatened by an opposition’, but Bedford had no doubt that it would ‘end in smoke’. On his arrival, Russell ascertained that the ‘notion of an opposition’ seemed to have originated in Wilson’s alarmism and had no substance. The writ was delayed for a few days in order to ‘avoid the trouble and expense of two elections’ after his appointment as paymaster-general in the Grey ministry. Having returned to London when an offer of office was first communicated to him, he pleaded pressure of business as his reason for not attending the formalities.31 In December 1830 Rundle and 16 other electors petitioned the Commons for an extension of the franchise to the inhabitant householders and the introduction of the secret ballot.32 Rundle, Flamank and Evans took the lead at a meeting to endorse and petition in favour of the reform bill introduced by their Member, 15 Mar. 1831.33

At the general election which followed the defeat of the bill, Lord John and Lord Russell were returned again, though the former only came in for Tavistock in case of failure in his bid for one of the county seats. Rundle, who seconded his nomination, led a chorus of praise for the bill, while Lord John spoke at some length in its defence.34 There was idle speculation that if he was returned for Devon (which he duly was), his replacement at Tavistock would be Edward Divett† of Bystock.35 Bedford’s awareness of ‘the ticklish state of the borough ... and the risk there might be of proposing a stranger’ led him to decline Lord Holland’s application for his son Charles Richard Fox*. He offered the seat to Lord George William Russell, who had been mortified at being turned out of Bedford, but only on condition that he attended assiduously until the reform bill was passed. Russell, who was contemplating a diplomatic career, asked for time to consider; but in the interim Bedford was informed that ‘there was some movement going on’ in Tavistock among the ‘influential freeholders’ to ‘recommend to me to bring in’ John Heywood Hawkins, a villainously ugly young man who had made a great splash with his speech in support of the bill in the previous Parliament, had been ousted from his seat for Mitchell in a coup engineered by the Tory Lord Falmouth and was seen by leading ministers as someone for whom it was desirable to find a seat. Bedford still gave his son the first refusal, but he offered to step aside for Hawkins. The duke invited the latter to come in and observed to Lord George William that

with regard to any future influence my family may possess in the borough, I think that would be improved by my bringing in Mr. H. rather than you ... Russell being already in with John, and your succeeding John, our enemies there (for we have some of course) may say that before reform I made a family borough of it; whereas if I bring in a person wholly unconnected with me, but solely for the sake of promoting the great measure of reform, the feeling would probably be materially different.36

After establishing that the offer was free of political and financial strings, Hawkins accepted it, so putting paid to the hopes of the reformer Sir John Byng*, a protégé of Lord Anglesey, the Irish viceroy, who was anxious to obtain a seat.37 After his election Hawkins reported to his father that on his arrival in Tavistock he had

accompanied the duke’s steward and another agent round the town, to canvass the small constituency; rather above 30. Reform feeling very strong, with a slight feeling of republicanism. Very cordially received indeed. I find that the first proposal to return me emanated from some of the freeholders; the duke adopted it very readily ... This morning duly and unanimously elected, after sundry speeches from such of the electors as take a strong interest in politics; very complimentary to myself, very laudatory of the reform bill, and somewhat vituperative of tithes and parsons. I talked to them at some length, chiefly on ‘the bill’.

The other principal speakers were Francis Willesford, who called for the abolition of ‘abominable sinecures and unnecessary expenses’, John Bray, an attorney, and Rundle, who complained that when advocating reform outside Tavistock he was accused of having been ‘seduced by the duke of Bedford’, but that ‘in the borough’ he was ‘calumniated by the agents of the duke for acting in opposition to his Grace’. He traced to Bedford’s agents a rumour that the purpose of his recent visit to London had been to secure the nomination to the vacant seat for himself. He denied this and insisted that he was at present too preoccupied with his business concerns to contemplate entering Parliament, though he did not rule out standing on a future occasion. Wilson, who presided over the meeting in the absence of the portreeve, was suitably outraged at Rundle’s impertinence.38

Rundle and company met to petition the Lords to pass the reform bill, 29 Sept. 1831. News of its rejection was greeted with public expressions of mourning; and Gill, Rundle, Flamank and John Bray promoted a meeting to address the king in support of the measure and the ministry, 13 Oct., when the language used was studiously moderate.39 Soon afterwards Lord Russell, finding his health unequal to late sittings of the House, vacated for Bedford’s nephew Francis Russell (the eldest son of Lord William Russell*), a Waterloo veteran, man-about-town and inveterate gambler. At his quiet election, Bray and Rundle again advocated ‘patience and forbearance at present’, though they showed a ‘full determination of resorting to all rightful means of obtaining ... their cherished object, should unforeseen difficulties occur’.40 They organized a petition to the Commons for the supplies to be withheld until reform was secured, 23 May 1832.41

As the proprietary borough of a Whig magnate, and one with which Lord John Russell was so intimately connected, Tavistock’s treatment in the reform bills attracted close scrutiny in Parliament. Its population of well over 5,000, according to the 1821 census (which in fact included the whole of the parish, of which the borough formed only a part) put it comfortably outside the disfranchisement schedules of the first measure. When Alexander Baring, sore at the proposed disfranchisement of his own borough of Callington, complained, 3 Mar. 1831, that Bedford’s ‘monopoly’ would not be infringed, Lord Tavistock, Bedford’s son and heir, indicated that he would personally support any motion to have the borough included in schedule B, though he disingenuously denied that his father ever influenced his tenants ‘as to the manner in which they should give their votes’. Four days later William Peel remarked on the unfairness of depriving Tamworth, where his family had influence, of one Member, while Tavistock and the minister Lord Lansdowne’s borough of Calne went unscathed. He was taken to task by Bedford’s nephew John Russell (another son of Lord William), who argued that the bill was not intended to destroy such ‘just and proper influence’ as Bedford’s at Tavistock and would significantly increase the unacceptably small electorate. On 18 Apr. Sadler observed that while Tavistock might meet the requirements of population, it was not ‘famed for any particular pursuit of national industry’, whereas Rochdale, the centre of flannel manufacture, had been ignored. Outlining the reintroduced reform bill, 24 June 1831, Lord John Russell explained that further inquiries had revealed that the number of £10 houses in Tavistock had proved to be almost the same as those enumerated in the tax office returns, which ministers had found to be defective in many other instances. He cited the fall in the number of Tavistock electors during the past 110 years as an example of the abuses which had crept into the representative system and which the bill was designed to eradicate.42 Edward Littleton*, one of the team directed to collate the boundary commissioners’ reports in late October 1831, recorded that on 28 Nov.

Lord John Russell paid us a visit at the council office, principally to ascertain what had become of Tavistock, whether Captain Beaufort and I had examined the case, and whether we were of opinion that it should lose a Member or not. The duke of Bedford had written to him urging that he should not hesitate an instant about its partial disfranchisement. We had found the documents about it defective, and accordingly had not yet formed an opinion on it.43

There was an expectation that Tavistock would be put in schedule B in the revised bill of December 1831;44 but when Russell introduced it on the 12th, it emerged that as things stood the borough was to retain both Members, having been placed 95th in the scale of boroughs calculated by a formula based on their number of houses and amount of assessed taxes. At the same time Russell indicated that the case was still under investigation, as some of the information was suspect. Seeking to pre-empt criticism, he asserted that it was ‘utterly false and unfounded’ to suggest that ‘any unfair rule had been attempted to be established with respect to that borough’ or that ‘any unfair advantage has been taken of my official situation, for the purpose of placing it beyond the reach of disfranchisement’. The boundary commissioners, after sending down a surveyor to check the facts, recommended the extension of the borough to the whole of the parish except the manor of Cudliptown, which would create a constituency with a population of 5,602 and 380 £10 houses.45 In the House, 23 Jan. 1832, Russell was harried over Tavistock by Sir Richard Vyvyan, but it emerged that he had failed to take note of the new documentary evidence. The change in Tavistock’s parliamentary boundary increased its area from 0.5 to 17.4 square miles, but even so it had a nominal registered electorate of only 247 at the time of the 1832 general election, when fewer than 200 voted.46 In July 1832 Bedford wrote that ‘the line which I (and those connected with me in Tavistock) take is to be perfectly neutral with respect to the election of a second candidate’; and when offering a seat to Charles Fox soon afterwards, he told Lady Holland that he would ‘come in not as my Member, but as the town Member’, though he added that Lord John ‘will manage it’, even though ‘I cannot interfere myself directly’. This circumspection had been forced on him by the activities and energy of Rundle and his associates: as the election approached, he suspected Rundle, ‘the O’Connell of Tavistock’, of ‘playing his own game’ by professing friendliness.47 When Francis Russell died suddenly in late November 1832, Lord Russell was pressed into standing again. He and Fox were returned comfortably enough at the general election, but only after the first contest for nearly a century, provoked when Hume, at the instigation of ‘a mad radical’ (presumably Rundle), as the Russells believed, sent down the young ‘Benthamite Baronet’ Sir Francis Charles Knowles of Lovel Hill, Windsor to oppose Fox, recently appointed a member of the government.48 The Russell interest remained predominant, but Rundle secured a seat in 1835 and held it until 1843.