In 1847, when away for the summer at Scarborough with his family, Captain Mainwaring was informed that Lord Brackley, a nephew of the Duke of Sutherland, proposed standing at the General Election as a candidate for the Northern Division of Staffordshire. He wrote to his bailiffs at Whitmore and Biddulph, desiring them to communicate his wish to his tenants that they should give a plumper for Buller. On the 2nd of August he heard that Mr. Buller had withdrawn in consequence of those who had promised him support having deserted him. The next day he was told that Mr. Buller had decided to stand, and on the 4th he went to Stafford with Captain Powys, Lord Anson and Mr. Coyney, and proposed Mr. Buller; Mr. Pye seconded him. Mr. Adderley and Lord Brackley were also nominated. On the 9th of August the Whitmore tenants breakfasted at the Mainwaring Arms: 5 of them went to vote at Stone, and 13 proceeded to Newcastle, all plumpers for Buller; at 3 o’clock they all dined together. On the following day Captain Mainwaring left for Biddulph, and went from there to Leek with 22 voters, making in all, with 1 for Eccleshall and 1 for Cheadle, 42 plumpers.
Mainwarings of Whitmore, page 114
The Northern division of Staffordshire was a county constituency in the county of Staffordshire. It was created in 1832 and abolished in 1885. It returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Elections were by the bloc vote system whereby each voter may cast as many votes as the number of seats to be filled.
A plumper vote is a vote cast at an election for a single candidate when the voter has the right to vote for two or more.
Edward Buller was a member of the Whig Party. He was member of parliament (MP) for North Staffordshire from 1833 to 1841, for Stafford from 1841 to 1847, and for North Staffordshire again from 1865 to 1874.
The Whig Party were ultimately successors to the Roundheads who were supporters of Parliament in the English Civil War (1642 – 1651); the Whigs began as a political faction that opposed absolute monarchy and Catholic emancipation.
During the Civil War the Mainwarings of Whitmore supported the Roundheads. Rowland Mainwaring’s support for the Whigs 200 years later is in line with his ancestors’ political views.
Despite the support of Rowland Mainwaring and his tenants for Mr Buller, in 1847 Lord Brackley became Member of Parliament for North Staffordshire and held the seat until 1851 when he resigned due to ill health. He was a member of the Conservative Party, a Tory. The second successful candidate for North Staffordshire was Charles Adderley, also a conservative, who had been a member since 1841.
The 1847 United Kingdom general election resulted in the Whigs in control of government despite candidates calling themselves Conservatives winning the most seats. The Conservatives were divided between Protectionists, led by Lord Stanley, and a minority of free-trade Tories led by former prime minister Sir Robert Peel. This left the Whigs, led by Prime Minister Lord John Russell, in a position to continue in government.
Related posts and further reading
- Rix, K. (2019, February 26). Corruption at elections in Britain in the 19th century. The Victorian Commons. https://victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2019/02/26/corruption-at-elections-in-britain-in-the-19th-century/
- Salmon, P. (2014, February 5). The mathematics of Victorian representation: part 1. The Victorian Commons. https://victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/the-mathematics-of-victorian-representation-part-1/
- “In general elections, meanwhile, electors in two-member constituencies could cast votes for two candidates from the same party (straights), share their votes between candidates from different parties (splitting), or cast just one of their votes (plumping).”
- Salmon, P. (2022, November 22). The 1872 Secret Ballot and Multiple Member Seats. The Victorian Commons. https://victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2022/11/22/the-1872-secret-ballot-and-multiple-member-seats/
- “The calmness and order of Britain’s new secret elections, by contrast, was striking. At the first by-elections to be held in Pontefract, Preston, Tiverton and Richmond, it was widely reported that there was none of the usual ‘horse play’ and ‘excitement’. Some commentators even complained that the secret ballot had ‘taken all the life out of elections’, making them ‘dull’. They have become ‘the most monotonous of monotonies’, commented the South Wales Daily News, wistfully recalling the agitation and passion of ‘olden times’.”
- “The biggest problem, however, which was to become a significant issue in the 1874 general election, was the question of how to cast a good old fashioned ‘plumper’ in those constituencies that continued to elect two (or more) MPs. It is often forgotten that unlike today with our first-past-the-post system, before 1885 the vast bulk of England’s parliamentary seats were multi-member. This created a much more complex voting system in which electors could either divide their support between different candidates or use just one of their multiple votes to support a single candidate, by casting a ‘plumper’. Shortly before the 1874 general election the Reading Mercury, 31 Jan. 1874, published this extraordinary but by no means uncommon advice:
- “If the voter intends to vote … all he has to do is put a cross (X) against the names of the candidates … Of course if the voter intends to give a “plumper” two crosses must be written opposite the name of the candidate thus favoured.”
- … the advice was inaccuarate – under the new rules “special notices had to be issued telling electors that ‘you cannot give more than one vote to any one candidate or mark more than one X after the name of such candidate’.”
Wikitree: