Towards the close of the year 1903 the Earl of Harrowby generously presented to the Mayor and Corporation of Tiverton a very complete collection of manuscripts carefully preserved by his ancestors and relating to the Parliamentary connection between themselves and the old Corporation of Tiverton, swept away by the municipal Reform Act of 1834–5. The general nature of the tie has long been known. It was a political nexus binding privileged burgesses to an influential family, and the sanction was interest. The motto might have been, on both sides, do ut des, for, while there were many professions of personal attachment, which may have been real, it was well understood that the cornerstone of the whole edifice was mutual advantage. As the connection, venal in origin, crystallized into permanence and respectability, it lost something of its sordid character. Sentiments of honour and loyalty, and even chivalric devotion, were spoken and cultivated, but these were the accidents, the trimmings. The substance remained what it had always been—reciprocal profit. All this was vaguely familiar to the present generation of townspeople, to whom traditions of the ancien régime had descended from their forefathers, but the arrival of twenty-six stout files, crowded with an infinite variety of curious particulars, has made an evident change in the situation. We no longer behold through the dark windows of distorted memory. Now at last we see face to face; and for the authors of some of those “human documents” the Day of Doom would have already dawned, but for the screen of their own insignificance, which incriminating papers may remove, but the discretion of the censor at once re-erects.

Before we speak of Tiverton as an appanage of the Ryders, it will be desirable to glance at the subject of pocket boroughs in general. There are no pocket boroughs or rotten boroughs now, and readers who have bestowed no special attention on political or constitutional developments, may be glad of some measure of illumination as to their rise and their place in the representative system of England. An impression formerly prevailed that the institution dated from the great Revolution, but this, it will be easy to show, was a fallacy. It was much older. On the other hand, the pocket-borough was never substituted by the arbitrary action of the Crown for the open borough, although it was the settled belief of many of the inhabitants of Tiverton that under the provisions of that mighty instrument, Magna Carta, the right of returning members had been inalienably secured to them, and the circumstance that this right was in fact exercised by neighbouring towns, like Barnstaple and Taunton, was considered proof that the local potwallers, or potwallopers, were the victims of invidious and illegal discrimination. “Magna Carta,” said Sir Edward Coke, “is such a fellow that he will not fear an equal”; and if it had been true that open voting in the boroughs had been promulgated as the law of the land after Runnymede, it has been judicially determined that no departure from that principle, brought about by the use of the Royal prerogative or by any other means, would have been recognized as valid. The terms of Magna Carta, however, do not countenance the view that the burgesses of any given town became entitled at their own option to send deputies to Parliament, or that universal suffrage was the rule. On the contrary, Parliamentary representation had at that time no existence either in theory or in practice. The Commons were simply tenants in capite of the Crown. After 1265, no doubt, elections began to be held, and many little places were summoned to return members, who received salaries from their constituencies in payment of their services. This charge rendered the honour a costly burden, and Edward I., one of the wisest of our princes, varied the direction of the writs so as to distribute the maintenance of the new third estate over as wide an area as possible. The towns themselves did not greatly value the franchise, and, in many instances, petitioned to be relieved of the dubious privilege. It seems unquestionable that the mere receipt of an occasional summons did not create or confirm any inherent or indefeasible right of unbroken representation, nor do we meet with any attempt to institute such a system until the days of the Reformation, when a new spirit invaded the country and the Commons, as a branch of the Legislature, made rapid strides in numbers and importance.

Then it was that the lawyers of the Inns of Court, many of them Puritan in sympathy, disinterred the ancient records, and, on the strength of one or two summonses, insisted that such demesne towns, some mere villages, were boroughs by prescription, and as such possessed the right to send representatives to Parliament for all time. The consequence was that about thirty towns, in which great men at Court had an interest, resumed their lapsed privileges, and by the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Lower House had received an accession of sixty fresh members. This seems to have been brought about in the first instance by the sheriffs sending precepts to the places in question, and although in the thirteenth year of Elizabeth a debate took place regarding the admission of members from towns not hitherto represented, the practice was not seriously challenged owing to the efficient patronage and protection of the courtiers before named. In subsequent reigns the Commons themselves proceeded to enlarge their body. James I., indeed, talked of reform, but that pedantic monarch, far from checking the growth of the borough system, was the very sovereign to whom Tiverton was indebted for its charter.

The small borough, in the nature of things, tended to become a pocket-borough. In the reign of Elizabeth the Earl of Leicester “owned” the town of Andover; and the degree to which this form of property was stretched is amusingly illustrated by the well-known story of Ann Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, who lived in the days of the Merry Monarch. The Secretary of State, Sir Joseph Williamson, had sent her a letter in which he named a particular candidate for her borough of Appleby. Incensed at this presumption, the haughty dame returned the following reply: “I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been neglected by a court, but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan’t stand.”

The system, it goes without saying, lent itself to numberless kinds of abuse. It has been stated that at one period a mistress of the King of France acquired some borough, and that the Nabob of Arcot was able to secure the return of seven or eight members, all pledged to his interest. These assertions may be true or they may not, but the possibility of such anomalies did not deter apologists from affirming that the system was not by any means an unmixed evil.

This brief sketch will perhaps suffice as an explanation of the origin and character of the borough system in general. Let us now turn to the case of Tiverton in particular. As has been intimated, many of the inhabitants believed that Tiverton was a borough by prescription, and that accordingly the crown could not by its charter limit the right of election to members of the corporate body alone. Naturally the evidence relied on was that of State papers. An inquisition post mortem a^o 51 Edw. III. sets out the extent and value of the manor and borough, from which it appears that the two were distinct as to rents and services, and that each had a separate court. By Letters Patent a^o 1 Edw. IV., the King grants the manor, borough and hundred to Humphry Stafford, Knight, in special tail without any other description. These data are obviously insufficient, and search was made at the Rolls Chapel from the thirty-third year of Henry VIII., the year of the earliest return to Parliament extant since the reign of Edward IV. The result was not satisfactory to the enthusiasts who instituted the inquiry, the first return discovered being that of 18 James I., when John Bamfylde and John Davye, Esqrs., were returned by indenture dated the 20th December, by the Mayor, capital burgesses, and assistants. It may be added that in Prynne’s Brevia Parliamentaria there occurs no mention of Tiverton, which, on all these grounds, can hardly have been a borough in the sense desired.

Tiverton, then, we may take it as certain, did not enjoy the right of returning members until the thirteenth year of the reign of James I., when the Mayor, Capital Burgesses, Assistant Burgesses of the town and parish, or the major part of them, were empowered to choose and nominate two discreet and sufficient men to be burgesses of the Parliament. The charter was renewed in the same terms in the fourth year of James II., and again in the reign of George II., so that we need feel no surprise that, when the potwallopers from time to time threatened to assert their supposed right, the members of the Common Council, assured of their legal position, treated such vapourings with calm superiority. Until the tidal wave of reform demolished the bulwarks of their monopoly, the twenty-four were sole masters and arbiters. It was they who had the right to decide who should sit in Parliament for the ancient town—they and they alone. But how that right was exercised, if we except the bare list of the Council’s nominees, there is for a long period no evidence to show.

However, there was always material for a deal, and in the former half of the eighteenth century Tiverton already figures as a political tied-house. The overlordship afterwards acquired by the Ryder family was then vested in a politician of some note, who in 1728 was one of the representatives of Tiverton, though the Parliamentary connection of his house with Honiton was even closer and of much longer standing, lasting, indeed, from 1640 to 1796. We allude to Sir William Yonge. Martin Dunsford, the first real historian of Tiverton, describes him as “a popular man and closely attached to the minister, Sir Robert Walpole,” adding that he “had great influence over the leading members of the Corporation of Tiverton, and generally directed their choice of burgesses.” The same writer, referring to Sir Edward Montague and Charles Gore, Esquire, who in 1761 held one of the seats successively, makes bold to assert that “there is reason to believe these members were never in Tiverton, but bargained for their seats at a distance either with Sir William Yonge or with Oliver Peard, Esq., the primum mobile, of the Corporation.” With regard to the former, there is clearly some misapprehension, as he had died in 1755, but the tradition that this eminent Devonshire worthy was dictator at Tiverton must have rested on a solid foundation. It behoves us, therefore, to render some further account of him.

In the course of his successful career Sir William, who was the fourth holder of the baronetcy, became one of the Lords of the Treasury, and on the restoration of the order in 1725, was created a Knight of the Bath. Subsequently he was appointed Secretary at War and Privy Councillor, and over and above these political distinctions, was entitled to write after his name the honourable symbols LL.D. and F.R.S. As Dunsford implies, he was a great personal friend of Walpole, and his support was of inestimable value to that statesman, “the glory of the Whigs.” Outside the house he does not appear to have counted (save, of course, in Devonshire), but inside, partly by reason of his high ability, and partly on account of his voice, which is stated to have been peculiarly melodious, his speeches were eagerly listened to. One curious fact preserved concerning him is that Sir Robert could speak from notes taken by Yonge, and by no other.

During the local supremacy of this statesman, and doubtless under his auspices and sponsorship, there was introduced to the Corporation of Tiverton a member of the Bar, Dudley Ryder, Esq., who in 1735 became their representative. In 1741, the same gentleman, but now known as Sir Dudley Ryder, Solicitor-General, was re-elected; and he continued to hold the seat until 1754, when he was elevated to the great office of Lord Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench. Mr. Nathaniel Thomas Ryder succeeded him, but only for a short time, after which Mr. Nathaniel Ryder occupied the seat, and remained one of the members till, in 1776, he was called to the House of Lords by the title of Baron Harrowby. As the Hon. Dudley Ryder was still an infant, Mr. John Wilmot was permitted to fill the vacancy, but on the clear understanding that he would at the proper time make way for Lord Harrowby’s son and heir. This condition was eventually carried out in the most honourable manner, and, on the part of Lord Harrowby, with a patriotic regard for the public interests.

Thus, little by little and step by step, the Ryders firmly consolidated their political influence in the town, and though only one of the seats was claimed for a member of the family, the other seat also was evidently at their disposal. This for a long series of years was entrusted to the Duntzes, rich merchants of Exeter, who became baronets. Apart from politics, the Ryders had no connection with Devonshire, which they seldom visited, but Sir John Duntze, living at Rockbeare, and a member of the Tiverton Corporation, was able to keep a watchful eye on the local barometer, of whose subtle changes he (and most of his colleagues) kept Lord Harrowby sedulously and punctually informed through the post. On the other hand, poor Duntze, a perfect martyr to rheumatism, experienced, owing to the exposure of the long journey by coach, considerable difficulty in attending to his Parliamentary duties, and for practical purposes Lord Harrowby, or his nominee, was the London agent of the Tiverton Corporation. From the point of view of convenience no arrangement could have been happier.

The above remarks apply to the first Lord Harrowby and the first Sir John Duntze. The second Lord Harrowby, after a distinguished official career, was advanced to the dignity of an earldom, and locally much regret was expressed that he did not take his second title from the town so long represented by his grandfather, his father, and himself. Had this been the case, the present Lord Chancellor, whose eldest son enjoys the courtesy title of Viscount Tiverton, must have looked elsewhere for a subsidiary territorial designation. The second Sir John Duntze lived at Tiverton in a large house, which he either erected or restored for himself in the centre of the town; and an old man named Court, who is still alive, but almost totally blind, told me a year or two since of a lively incident which he can remember as taking place in front of the floridly decorated mansion. The potwallopers of the place, he said, organized a torchlight procession, the principal feature of which was a cavalcade of four-and-twenty bedizened donkeys. The point could not be missed. The asses were aggressively emblematic of the “corporators,” and their riders of the family of which Lord Harrowby was the head.

In 1832, the Parliamentary connection ended with the passage of the Reform Bill. The alliance had always been with the Corporation rather than with the town, although many of the inhabitants, directly and indirectly, had been repeatedly benefited by the generous consideration of Lord Harrowby and his relations. There was, however, in the town a strong body of malcontents numerous enough to carry their point, and a potent counter-attraction had arisen in the person of Mr. John Heathcoat, a resident manufacturer, whom his opponents derisively styled “Lord Tiverton.” In view of these facts, Lord Harrowby’s friends felt it their duty to notify him that no member or adherent of his family would stand a chance of being returned at the approaching open election. The members of the Common Council, loyal to the end, refused the least countenance or support to any of the new candidates until his lordship’s wishes had been disclosed, but the day of their predominance was already past. Politically, the game was up. Both Lord Harrowby and his brother, the Hon. Richard Ryder, consented to remain members of the Corporation, but three years later the “iron hand of Parliament,” as the Town Clerk expressed it, “terminated the long continuance and interchange of friendly communications.” At present the chief, if not the sole surviving, link between the family of Ryder and Tiverton is the large share of the ecclesiastical patronage of the borough still in the hands of Lord Harrowby.

And now for the Ryder correspondence. The earliest letters appear to date from the time when the Georgian lawyer was elevated to the bench and the seat which he had occupied, no doubt to his immense advantage, passed by inheritance to his son, then a young man fresh from college. We have the very epistles written by the gentleman whom Dunsford so grandly names “the primum mobile of the Corporation,” congratulating him on taking his master’s degree and absolving him from the unnecessary trouble of a journey to the south in order to attend his cut-and-dried election. A letter from Mr. Osmond acquaints him with the departure from the town of a “pretty partner” whose lively manners had enhanced the enjoyment of a visit, whilst the member for Tiverton was yet a callow bachelor. Eight years later Mr. Ryder had joined the noble army of Benedicks, and then we find Mrs. Peard afflicted with an unselfish anxiety to gratify his lady with a fine collection of shells.

Such pleasing gifts were the regular accompaniment and sweetener of the more serious transactions, the graver obligations which formed the mainstay of the connection. On the part of the members there was the annual present of a pair of bucks for the municipal banquet, and one of the oddest passages in this vast epistolary jungle is to be found in a letter of Sir John Duntze, in which he informs his colleague that a member of the Corporation, on bad terms with another member, announced as the ostensible cause of the quarrel, that he had been improperly helped to venison on the occasion of this important festival. Allusions to the subject are so frequent and unctuous, that one is tempted to conclude that in those gay, convivial days the yearly consignment of venison was a more considerable factor in the case than we should now deem possible. Thus, Mr. Mayor observes, with the distinctive air of a man of the world:—

This brings us to the topic of the social status of the Corporation, which was comparatively high. Its critics, indeed, complained that it included attornies, “very improper persons to be elected”; and the members were frequently laughed at for “having Mayors in trade.” In reply to this heavy indictment it was alleged by one of their number that at least twenty-two out of the twenty-four had landed property either in the town or in the parish. This was in 1831. In the reign of William and Mary the “burgesses” are described some as esquires, others as merchants, and one or two as yeomen; and this standard, there is reason to think, was consistently maintained. Tiverton, it may be well to say, was for centuries an important centre of the woollen trade. Instead of one big factory, as now, for the production of lace, there were many modest firms engaged in the manufacture and sale of serges, etc., and consequently the Common Council was, above all things, the valued preserve of families enriched by commerce, some of whom had acquired all the attributes of gentle birth and breeding. Mr. Worth, of Worth, and Mr. Cruwys, of Cruwys Morchard, belonged to two of the oldest families of Devon, and an ancestor of the former had sat in Parliament for Tiverton in days when the choice of members was apparently free and unfettered. With such the Ryders corresponded in the most genial, unaffected, and friendly way, and, in their somewhat infrequent visits to the place, were glad to accept their hospitality. They would, for instance, occasionally stay with Mr. Dickinson, of Knightshayes, an ancestor of the present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Sir W. H. Walrond), and once, at least, Air. George Owen, of Lowman Green, was honoured by a surprise visit from the younger nobleman.

In the year 1808, this second Lord Harrowby condescended to be Mayor—a concession which resulted in a somewhat diverting misconception. It appears that a Barnstaple correspondent, interested in the working of the mails, had written to him in the belief that he was a “common or garden” mayor—a plain Mr. Mayor. His consternation on learning the truth does not need to be imagined, for he has pictured it himself:—

Lord Harrowby was coached for the inaugural ceremonies by the cousins Wood, the elder of whom, Mr. Beavis Wood, who long filled the office of Town Clerk, was by far the shrewdest of the Ryders’ multitudinous correspondents. Even now his clever, incisive letters, lit up with many a happy jest, are a pleasure to peruse, and neither in his earlier nor in his later ones was he inclined to spare the feelings and eccentricities of those with whom his lot was cast. Thus, on August 5th, 1808, he writes:—

Tempora mutantur. Of the old times and the old Christians Mr. Wood had told Lord Harrowby not a few entertaining stories, which are still preserved in his faded but excellent handwriting. Possibly at some future date they may be printed for the benefit of students of human nature, together with extracts from other correspondence, but with one more specimen of his admirable humour this paper must be brought to a close.