Wigan was a rapidly expanding manufacturing town 18 miles west-north-west of Manchester: its population, which included a large Irish Catholic element, almost doubled between 1801 and 1831. Its main industries, which had been stimulated by local improvements in canal transport, notably the Douglas navigation (1732-42) and the Leeds-Liverpool canal (1770-7), were coal mining and metal and textile manufacture.1 When John Wesley preached there in 1764 he described it as ‘proverbially famous for wickedness’. The growth of organized Dissent, which had a significant presence in the town by this period, improved matters to a degree; but in 1809 a local female Independent complained that it was ‘a place of mental barrenness, where ignorance and vulgarity are their boast and literature has scarcely dawned, where genius, when it happens to appear, is often treated with contemptuous neglect’.2 Amid a large and potentially unruly population, the parliamentary electorate was extremely restricted. The corporation, which consisted of a mayor, 11 other aldermen, two bailiffs and the usual officers, was a self-electing body dominated by a handful of interrelated families. The franchise was in the freemen, of whom there were two types. In-burgesses (or jury burgesses) were chosen at the annual Michaelmas court leet from inhabitant ratepayers by the court jury, which was itself composed entirely of in-burgesses. Out-burgesses (or honorary burgesses), who had to be ‘gentlemen of rank or property or clergy’, were nominated by the mayor, but only two could be created during each mayoralty.3 The electorate, which seems to have reached a maximum in this period of 122 (in 1831), was composed largely of gentlemen, professionals and well-to-do merchants and manufacturers. In 1830, for example, gentlemen and professionals accounted for 46 per cent and merchants and manufacturers for 30.4

Since 1802, when a coup by the corporation had overthrown the controlling aristocratic Bradford and Portland interests, the seats had been occupied by Sir Robert Holt Leigh of nearby Hindley and John Hodson, a wealthy Wigan textile manufacturer, who had no children but a number of nephews. Both retired at the dissolution of 1820, when Hodson transferred his interest to his nephew James Alexander Hodson of Upholland. In Leigh’s room there came forward Lord Lindsay, the eldest son of the 6th earl of Balcarres, a Scottish representative peer, who had long ago sold his Fifeshire property and settled near Wigan at Haigh, the former Bradshaigh estate, which had come to him by marriage. Haigh was rich in fine cannel and coal, which Balcarres had fully exploited: he was a leading local employer in his mines and their associated ironworks. He and his son had staked a future claim to a seat in 1806, but since then had bided their time, while cultivating good relations with Leigh, the Hodsons and the corporation. The third candidate was Lord Newport, the son of the 1st earl of Bradford, who was seeking to re-establish the family interest and whose brother, the Rev. George Bridgeman, was still, as rector of Wigan since 1799, lord of the manor.5 It is not clear whether the ‘secret and confidential understanding’ for mutual support between Balcarres and the Hodsons was concluded before or soon after the election.6 The preliminaries to Wigan’s first contested election for 30 years were marked by drunkenness and disorder; and while the formal proceedings and polling were undisturbed, ‘very serious riots’ occurred afterwards. Lady Newport’s fear that her husband’s was ‘almost a hopeless case’ was justified by the result.7 Soon after polling began, Leigh and Robert Clayton of Adlington, near Chorley, supporters of Hodson and Lindsay, presented to the mayor, Hodson’s cousin John Hodson Kearsley, a brewer, a protest against the reception of votes from non-resident jury burgesses. Accordingly, the votes of 19 of the 97 electors who tendered were rejected: they offered six votes for Hodson, 11 for Lindsay and 12 for Newport. Of the 78 whose votes were admitted, 30 voted for Hodson and Lindsay. Eleven split for Hodson and Newport, including Kearsley and the bailiff John Walls, which confirms an impression that the alliance with the Lindsays was not acceptable to all the Hodson party. Eight split for Lindsay and Newport, who received 13 plumpers, to Hodson’s nine and Lindsay’s seven. The 19 honorary burgesses who polled, including seven members of the extended Hodson family, cast 13 votes for Hodson, six for Lindsay and five for Newport.8

At the court leet of 30 Sept. 1820 44 jury burgesses, of whom all but two were Wigan residents, were admitted.9 Wigan inhabitants addressed congratulations to Queen Caroline the following November.10 Lindsay, who, like Hodson, was an indifferent attender, but supported the Liverpool ministry and opposed Catholic relief, took up residence at Haigh in 1822. Balcarres encouraged him to look after his ‘interest and weight in the corporation’ in order to safeguard the seat.11 By the following year he was contemplating retirement either for his cousin James Lindsay*, a soldier, whose father had bought the Balcarres estate from the earl, or for his youngest uncle, Hugh Lindsay, Member for Perth Burghs and a director of the East India Company.12 Wigan publicans and others petitioned the Commons for repeal of the additional duty on excise licences, 8 Mar., and against the beer bill, 11 May; and the inhabitants did so for investigation of the prosecution of the Methodist missionary John Smith in Demerara, 26 May 1824.13 In 1825 the Commons were petitioned for a repeal of assessed taxes, 3 Mar., by local millers against the import of foreign flour, 4 May, and by cotton factory workers against the Combination Acts, 11 May. Both Houses were petitioned in favour of Catholic claims.14 In February 1825 Balcarres, seeking an excise appointment for a supporter, complained to Lushington, the secretary to the treasury, that an identical piece of patronage had recently been given to Bradford: this, ‘on the very eve of a general election’, had ‘occasioned considerable sensation in the borough’ and placed him in ‘a very awkward situation’. Lushington apologized, but absolved the treasury from blame.15 Balcarres’s death the following month removed Lord Lindsay from the Commons and he was quietly replaced by James Lindsay, who presented himself as the means of maintaining the connection with Haigh during the minority of the new earl’s 12-year-old eldest son.16 Hodson and Lindsay were re-elected without opposition in 1826.17 Three months later the outgoing mayor, Thomas Hardman, offered Balcarres the nomination of an honorary burgess.18

Protestant Dissenters of Wigan petitioned heavily for repeal of the Test Acts, which Lindsay opposed and on which the ailing Hodson abstained.19 Local cotton weavers petitioned for action to prevent fluctuations in wages, 6 June 1827; and both Houses received petitions from leading inhabitants and manufacturers against truck payments in 1828.20 Dissenters petitioned both Houses in favour of Catholic emancipation, 27 Feb. 1829. Hodson opposed it in the House and took charge of hostile petitions; but Lindsay, adopting a pragmatic line, which Balcarres reluctantly endorsed, supported it. The inhabitants petitioned the Commons on both sides of the question, 17 Mar. Lindsay at first made light of any ‘difficulties’ which might arise in Wigan, commenting to Balcarres that if the ‘present anger’ did not quickly evaporate, as he expected, ‘rather than contest matters’ at the next general election, they should ‘find some other person than myself till Lindsay is fit, which is not very far distant’. It was subsequently impressed on him by Kearsley and another alderman, Alexander Haliburton, that his volte face on the question had upset some of his supporters.21 Merchants, manufacturers and others petitioned both Houses against the East India Company’s trade monopoly, an increasingly important issue in industrial Lancashire, in May 1829 and March 1830.22 The Commons were petitioned by Wigan publicans against the sale of beer bill, 7 Apr., and by bankers for abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 24 May 1830.23

It was known by then that Hodson was inclined to retire at the next dissolution. Lindsay assured Balcarres that he was ‘on the best terms’ with the unpredictable Kearsley, while he believed that ‘you are entirely so, with Sir Robert Leigh; still, there is no saying what may happen’. In view of Hodson’s stated wish to retire, Balcarres evidently asked him on the eve of the 1830 general election ‘if there were any of his family coming forward’, whom he felt obliged to support, ‘particularly’ naming Kearsley and one of Hodson’s Cardwell cousins. According to Balcarres, Hodson ruled out any of his relatives, including Kearsley (who supposedly confirmed this himself), and agreed to stand again. On 18 June 1830, six weeks before the election, James Lindsay engineered a ‘convention’ between Balcarres and the 1st Baron Skelmersdale of Lathom, near Ormskirk, whereby in the event of Hodson’s retirement the Lindsays would give their interest to his son Richard Bootle Wilbraham† on a basis of mutual support. Lindsay told Skelmersdale that ‘it might be two or three years before Hodson might place him there, but that eventually he might calculate on it’.24 A fortnight before the election a group of unfranchised inhabitants, led by John Holt of Bispham Hall, Edmund Alston, an Independent cheese factor, the attorneys Joseph Acton, James Battersby and John Lord, and Richard Fegan, a cotton manufacturer, determined to try to establish the right of the inhabitant rate payers to vote, and requisitioned the mayor, Henry Bullock, for a meeting. On his refusal, they went ahead regardless and mustered before a crowd of about 3,000 on 26 July, when Alston set the tone by condemning the ‘deep and degrading state of thraldom, under which ... Wigan had laboured for so long a time’. They had already successfully approached Richard Potter, one of a Manchester Unitarian family of linen merchants active in the promotion of liberal and free trade doctrines, and James Hardcastle of Bradshaw Hall, Bolton, a manufacturer with similar views, and now formally adopted them as candidates. They arrived in Wigan the following day, when they called for reductions in public expenditure and taxation and the payment of fair wages and denounced the corn laws and the East India Company’s monopoly. The general issue of parliamentary reform was apparently not raised.25 Hodson and Lindsay received a declaration signed by Bullock and 40 other voters requesting them to pledge their opposition to renewal of the East India Company’s charter. Hodson did so unequivocally, but Lindsay’s obviously reluctant compliance was later denounced by Hardcastle as ‘evasive’. At another pre-election meeting of the dissidents, Balcarres was portrayed as a supporter of negro slavery during his spell as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica 30 years earlier. When Lindsay, Hodson and Potter had been nominated, Kearsley dismissed the rate payers’ claim to vote as ‘wholly irregular and illegal’, declared support for Hodson, accused Lindsay of neglecting the borough and, to general surprise, nominated himself. In subsequent tetchy exchanges with Lindsay, he denied bearing a grudge over his support for Catholic emancipation, but attacked him as a stranger and aristocratic nominee. Lindsay petulantly conceded, under pressure, that he had pledged himself to oppose the Company’s monopoly. During these proceedings, it became clear that James Bancks, John Croudson, Robert Morris and Samuel Newsham, attorneys and jury burgesses, supported the rate payer franchise. Free trade and electoral independence were the major issues, but Hardcastle, who became agitated on the hustings, declared his opposition to universal suffrage. After lengthy wrangling over procedure, it was agreed not to accept the votes of non-resident burgesses. The tendered votes of 110 rate payers (108 for Hardcastle and Potter, one for Kearsley and Potter, one for Hardcastle and Kearsley) were rejected by Bullock. Hodson and Lindsay won easily. A large crowd was afterwards harangued by Archibald Prentice, the Manchester free trade agitator.26 Of the 61 freemen (54 jury and seven honorary burgesses) whose votes were accepted, 42 split for Hodson and Lindsay, seven for Hodson and Kearsley, four for Hodson and Hardcastle, three for Potter and Hardcastle and two for Lindsay and Kearsley. There were only three plumpers. Of the honorary burgesses, six voted for Hodson, four for Lindsay and three for Kearsley (his brothers James and Robert and Hodson). His supporters among the jury burgesses included himself, three cotton spinners, one manufacturer, a cordwainer and a labourer. The jury burgesses who voted for Potter or Hardcastle or both were Bancks, Croudson, Morris and Newsham, plus John Acton, cotton merchant, John Fisher, liquor merchant, and John Willgoose, farmer.27

Hardcastle and Potter petitioned against the return, 3 Nov. 1830. That day Hodson, who had been ill since the election, told Balcarres that he intended to retire. He made no mention of a replacement, but Balcarres alleged that Kearsley, who was subsequently allowed by the Commons to defend the return in Hodson’s room, had already canvassed. Bootle Wilbraham apparently issued an address, but it was thought that he had ‘little chance of succeeding’.28 Lindsay, who hoped to get Kearsley to bear half the costs of contesting the petition, told Balcarres, the day after the committee was appointed, 15 Feb. 1831, that with the ‘assistance’ of the Tory managers Planta and Holmes ‘and good luck, we have as fair (I might say as favourable) a committee, as I could have selected’. He admitted that their opponents had a ‘much stronger’ case than he had anticipated, having discovered that returns in the sixteenth century had been by ‘the mayor, aldermen, burgesses and commonalty’; but he was confident that the defendants’ case, while not ‘decisive’, was ‘decidedly better than theirs’. The committee adjudicated on the right of election, dismissing the petitioners’ claim that it was in ‘the inhabitant householders paying scot and lot’ and Lindsay’s that it was in ‘the mayor, aldermen, bailiffs and burgesses, duly admitted and sworn’, and accepting Kearsley’s contention that it was in ‘the in-burgesses, paying scot and lot, and the honorary burgesses duly admitted and sworn’. On 21 Feb. the return of Hodson and Lindsay was formally confirmed and Hodson took the Chiltern Hundreds. Lindsay reported to Balcarres:

I much fear the battle ... has not been fought without considerable loss. I cannot tell what the expense of it will be, but it lasted five days, which ... must cost us many hundreds of pounds ... I have let Kearsley off lightly, by shaking hands with him without explanation, for which he is obliged to me and avows eternal friendship, not one syllable of which I believe further than his interest goes. I think this question now settled will enable you ... to keep the borough without further interrogation.29

Kearsley came forward for the vacancy and on 1 Mar. 1831, when the details of the Grey ministry’s reform bill were disclosed in the Commons, easily defeated a token challenge in the name of the absent Hardcastle. He was reported to have ‘professed his intentions’ of opposing renewal of the East India Company’s charter, but the large hostile crowd which witnessed the proceedings was not appeased, and he was slightly injured by a stone thrown by a woman as he left the hustings.30 Only 53 of the 122 electors on the roll (13 corporators, 74 jury burgesses and 35 honorary burgesses) polled, and one of these was deemed ineligible. Four supported Hardcastle: Acton, Croudson and James and Ralph Knight, butchers.31

Wigan Dissenters sent several petitions to the 1830 Parliament for the abolition of slavery.32 The inhabitants petitioned the Commons against truck payments, 14 Dec. 1830, and merchants and manufacturers for repeal of the excise duty on cotton goods, 10 Feb. 1831.33 Inhabitants’ petitions for the ballot and a rate payers’ franchise were presented to the Commons, 10, 26 Feb., by the Members for Preston, Hunt and Wood, who drew attention to the restricted electorate and Balcarres’s domination of the borough. A similar petition reached the Lords, 22 Mar.34 On 10 Mar. a meeting chaired by Ralph Thicknesse, a Wigan banker and coal owner and Hodson’s partner in the Kirklees colliery, who was related to the Hodsons and Kearsleys by his marriage into the Woodcock family, and attended by Potter, petitioned the Commons in support of the reform bill. A few days later Hardcastle, Potter and Thicknesse announced that they would stand for Wigan if the bill became law.35 Lindsay and Kearsley opposed it in the House, where on 18 Apr. 1831 Hunt did not deny the substance of Lord Stanley’s allegation that in a recent speech at Manchester he had encouraged his audience to go to Wigan in large numbers to back Potter when the election came and, if necessary, to intimidate the electors into supporting him.36

At the dissolution following the defeat of the bill, when the reform tide ran very strongly in Wigan, Lindsay abandoned the borough to stand for Fifeshire. Bootle Wilbraham came forward in his place, claiming to be a friend of moderate reform but an opponent of the bill, while Thicknesse and Potter offered as its uncompromising supporters. Kearsley sought re-election, but, so fierce was the popular hostility towards him that he dared not appear on the hustings and refused to do so even when summoned by a deputation.37 The town had been in a disturbed state for a week, and 500 special constables were sworn in to deal with the expected disorder. After a legal discussion concerning the validity of votes for Kearsley, if he refused to attend, nominations took place before a very large, noisy and unruly crowd, 4 May. Hardcastle was nominated, but subsequently withdrew and asked his supporters to vote for Thicknesse. There was wholesale intimidation of anti-reform voters, whose clothes were marked with chalk. Kearsley’s brothers and business partner were physically assaulted. When proceedings were adjourned for the day, with Thicknesse on 39, Kearsley 24, Wilbraham 15 and Potter seven, the mayor, Leigh, his brother Roger and members of the corporation were badly beaten and Bootle Wilbraham barely escaped with his life. A mob went on the rampage, wrecking the moot hall and severely damaging Kearsley’s house in Standishgate, along with the nearby premises of Luke Smalley, a chandler. Troops were called in to restore order and to protect the dignitaries the following day, when, after two more voters had polled, Thicknesse and Kearsley were returned.38 Of the 98 electors listed on the roll, only 55 voted, one of whom was rejected. Twenty-one plumped for Thicknesse; 13 split for Kearsley and Wilbraham; 11 for Thicknesse and Kearsley; six for Thicknesse and Potter; two for Thicknesse and Wilbraham, and one for Potter and Hardcastle. Twenty-eight, therefore, voted for reform and 13 against, while 13 cast mixed votes. Of the 42 who had voted for Hodson and Lindsay in 1830, 20 voted for Thicknesse and four for Potter, and 13 supported Kearsley and ten Wilbraham. One-third did not vote. Of Lindsay’s 45 supporters in 1830, only ten voted for Wilbraham. Twelve voted for Kearsley, 21 for Thicknesse and even five for Potter. Sixteen did not vote. Of the seven honorary burgesses who polled, four split for the anti-reformers, but three, including Kearsley’s brother Josiah, gave Thicknesse a vote.39

Roger Holt Leigh died of chest inflammation 12 days after being beaten and his brother, who had himself been nearly killed, blamed his death at least partly on that episode.40 There was a renewed outbreak of serious rioting on 23 May 1831, when an enraged mob liberated a man arrested for theft from Smalley’s premises, completed the destruction and pillaging of Kearsley’s house and attacked the post office. Troops were called in and quartered in the town, and several dozen suspects were arrested. At Lancaster assizes in August 1831 two rioters were sentenced to death, three to transportation and 14 to imprisonment.41 Another petition against truck reached the Lords, 18 June 1831. Kearsley presented one for the restriction of Sunday opening hours under the Sale of Beer Act, 7 Oct. 1831; and on 2 Mar. 1832 Thicknesse produced one from Wigan mill owners against the factories regulation bill.42 Thicknesse, Alston and Fegan were prominent at a reform meeting, which petitioned the Lords to pass the bill, 26 Sept. 1831. After its defeat, a meeting was held to address the king in its support, 20 Oct. 1831.43 News of the resignation of ministers in May 1832 caused ‘a complete stop to trade’ at the market and was marked by a ‘funeral peal’ of church bells. On the 16th a meeting of about 5,000 adopted a petition to the Commons for the supplies to be withheld until reform was carried.44 Thicknesse’s attempt to have Wigan rather than Newton designated as the polling place for the southern division of Lancashire, as originally proposed, 7 June 1832, was defeated by 54-5.45

Wigan, which in 1831 was reckoned to contain 568 £10 houses, was unchanged by the Boundary Act.46 At the 1832 general election, when there were 483 registered electors, Thicknesse and Potter were returned, ahead of the Cobbettite radical and journalist James Whittle, with Kearsley a poor fourth.47 Kearsley won back his seat in 1835 and Wigan narrowly returned two Conservatives in 1841; but the Lindsay interest was not successfully reasserted until 1845.