10 - A Loyal City? The Diversity of Dissent in Bristol in the 1790s

Summary

The relatively low visibility of popular radical organisations at Bristol in the decade following the French Revolution has led historians of the city to conclude there was little support for them. Mark Harrison, for example, notes that although the ‘public expression of loyalism was abundant’ in a welter of anti-Jacobin addresses forwarded by the corporation to the throne, the radicalism to which it was opposed remained ‘spectacularly absent’. It is not easy to disagree. Compared to well-known radical centres in smaller towns, like Norwich, Sheffield and Manchester, Bristol appears disproportionately quiet. For an explanation we may look partly towards the familiar arguments about the city's introspective concern with its own civic affairs, where issues over corruption and accountability in a relatively open electoral franchise centred more readily on the exclusive activities of the corporation. In these years, the corporation, its merchant allies and the political elite attracted more hostile public attention than ever before through their energetic attempts to further increase their own executive and judicial powers and to control the election of the city's representatives, nullifying the impact of the city's generous freeman franchise.

It is certainly no coincidence that in 1790, at the first English general election after the fall of the Bastille, a challenge was launched at Bristol against the by now customary pact agreed by the Tory candidate, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Whig candidate, Lord Sheffield. The Reverend Edward Barry revived the city's Independent Society of Freemen, claimed he had attracted 1500 men to join him, and called for a third independent candidate to step forward to uphold the right of election. ‘It was neither men nor party they assembled for’, declared Barry, ‘but the CAUSE; to protect their common rights’. A candidate was duly found in the merchant David Lewis, but the opening days of the poll were not encouraging and Lewis withdrew with just twelve votes to his name. With the remaining two candidates elected and chaired, Lewis, who according to the local press could have ‘nothing to complain of but the perfidy of his promising friends’, made his way to the Bush and consoled himself over dinner with Sheffield and the Whigs. Barry blamed Lewis for not trying hard enough, and Lewis blamed Barry for falsely claiming he had 1500 freemen ready to cast an independent vote.