Mullett, M. and Mullett, L. (2021). 'The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill': The 1831 General Election in Cumberland. Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 21 (series 3). Vol 21, Bowness-on-Windermere: Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society. pp. 197-214. https://doi.org/10.5284/1090529.
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Title:
'The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill': The 1831 General Election in Cumberland
Issue:
Transactions of the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society 21 (series 3)
The British General Election of 1831 paved the way for the passage of the Reform Act of 1832, which remodelled the parliamentary representation of constituencies on more equal numerical grounds and awarded the franchise to new strata of the middle classes. This article, which is based on the hitherto un-researched collection of the Graham Mss held in the Cumbria Archive Centre, Carlisle, as well as contemporaneous newspaper sources, charts the pivotal role of the Cumberland electorate in a contest which resulted in a major displacement of the previously dominant Lowther interest - that was, in turn, a crucial aspect of the gradual erosion of the parliamentary power of the English peerage. The archival sources we have researched present the evidence from a Whig vantage point so that the Lowther/Tory position is not, by any means, fully represented in what follows.
