Description
[004653] [Election Accounts] Election Accounts for the Northumberland Election of March 1820. Alnwick and Newcastle: No Publisher, 1820. First Edition. Various. Unbound. Ephemera. Good. A small collection of manuscript material, including a small account book detailing ‘election disbursements’, c.20 items in all
Some light browning, a few tears where letters have been opened, account book folded with a vertical crease, but generally quite bright and clean
Charles John Brandling (1769-1826), a Tory, fought and won the Northumberland election of 1820, after many years as the M.P. for Newcastle. This collection of documents details how much he spent and what he spent it on. The accounts were prepared by Robert Thorp, the Duke of Northumberland’s attorney, and two private letters here from D. W. Smith, the Duke’s agent, advise Thorp on how the accounts are to be prepared, and sent to John Clayton, Brandling’s Newcastle attorney. There are various rough copies, interim accounts, and lists of bills paid and to be paid, but the centrepiece is the fully detailed final statement, in a home-made notebook. Thirty-two Alwick publicans each received “the usual payment of £7/10/0 (even four ‘gin-shops’ were paid); eleven chair-bearers received a guinea each, bailiffs and constables half that; cockades were bought (too expensively according to Clayton); ‘firing guns and procuring men to draw in Mr Brandling’, all cost money; Brandling spent £282 on a dinner at the ‘White Swan’ hotel in Alnwick; expenses for printers, musicians, bellringers, even the Town Hall cleaner got a guinea. There appears to have been some creative accounting as well, with one of ‘private’ letters seemingly noting an expenditure of around £764, while the ‘official’ account book only notes a £557 spend
An interesting overview of the vast expense of an election campaign even in largely uncontested seats where “preference of the ‘independent’ squirearchy for bipartisan representation, with one Member at least from among their ranks, was generally heeded” (Fisher, D. R. (Ed), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, 2009)
