A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



The chief of them, Sir Thomas Johnson, sat for 

 Liverpool from 1701 to 1727,''* and all attacks upon 

 his seat were unsuccessful.'" He and his father had 

 been the leaders in the struggle against the Tory 

 supremacy. A representative of the new class of 

 Liverpool merchants, he was assiduous in his atten- 

 tions to the interests of the town,"* and deserves to 

 be regarded as one of the principal fosterers of its 

 new prosperity. He died a poor man after a labo- 

 rious life, and his memory now survives only in the 

 name of Sir Thomas Street.'" 



Fairly launched on its upward career by I700> 

 Liverpool was to enjoy during the course of the i 8th 

 century a rapidly increasing prosperity, the course 

 of which it will be impossible to follow in any detail. 

 Staunchly loyal to the Protestant succession, the town 

 enjoyed the favour of the Whig party. Its Whiggism 

 may be illustrated by the fact that in 1 7 1 4 it for- 

 warded an address to the Crown, asking for the 

 punishment of the Tory ministers of Anne, who had 

 endeavoured to restore the exiled Stuarts ; '^* by the 

 fact that in 1 709 it was the only provincial town to 

 offer hospitality to the exiled ' Palatines,' of whom 

 it took 130 families;"' and above all by the fact 

 that in the rebellion of 171 5, during which it was 

 the single stronghold of Whiggism in Lancashire, it 

 threw itself vigorously into a state of defence.*'" 

 When the rebellion was crushed it was not unnaturally 

 chosen as the venue for many of the trials ; '^' two of 

 the unfortunate prisoners were executed on the 

 gallows in London Road, while many hundreds were 

 transported, to the no small profit of the Liverpool 

 traders who took them out. The later rebellion of 

 1745 found Liverpool equally loyal; a regiment of 

 foot was raised and equipped by public subscription,'^' 

 and after having a brush with the Highlanders near 

 Warrington, it played a useful part in garrisoning 

 Carlisle, during the Duke of Cumberland's northward 

 advance, its conduct earning warm praise."' When 

 the rising was over, the party feeling of the town 

 burst forth in mob riots, in the course of which the 

 only Roman Catholic chapel was burnt."* As might 

 be expected in a town so vigorously Whig, the 

 ascendancy of the Whig party remained almost 

 unshaken both in municipal politics and in the 

 Parliamentary elections. Liverpool was generally 

 regarded as a safe Whig borough,"' and the power of 

 electing new freemen, hitherto pretty generously 

 exercised, now began to be used by the Town 

 Council for the purpose of securing party ascend- 

 ancy."* Under these circumstances the Tory party, 

 extruded from power, made themselves the advocates 

 of the rights of the burgess body as against the Town 

 Council — rights of which they had formerly been the 

 principal opponents. The election of Sir Thomas 



Bootle as one of the members for the borough from 

 1727 to 1734'" represents the partial triumph of 

 this interest. During the same period, and largely 

 under Bootle's influence, a vigorous attack was made 

 on the ascendancy of the Town Council,"^ which was 

 for some years quite overridden, the government of 

 the town being assumed, in accordance with the 

 popular interpretation of a clause in the William III 

 charter, by a succession of popular mayors acting 

 through the assembly of burgesses. In 1734 Lord 

 Derby was elected mayor, and under his powerful 

 direction, an attempt was made to regularize the 

 position of the assembly, and to establish its right of 

 passing by-laws and electing freemen. Lord Derby 

 died before the end of his year of office ; and after 

 his death the agitation quietly and completely died 

 out. There was a partial revival of the controversy 

 in 1757, when Mr. Joseph Clegg,"' one of the alder- 

 men who had been mayor in 1 748, led a renewed 

 attack upon the council. But though the council 

 tried in vain to obtain a new charter"" establishing 

 beyond question its control of borough government 

 Clegg's attack came to nothing, and the challenge of 

 the council's authority was not again renewed until 

 the time of the French Revolution. The chief 

 interest of this struggle is the demonstration which it 

 affords that the ascendancy of the Whigs was as 

 narrowly oligarchic as that of the Tories had been 

 after the Restoration. Indeed, it was even more so ; 

 for it is to this period that we must attribute an 

 increasing chariness in granting the freedom of the 

 borough to new-comers.'" Up to the beginning of 

 the 1 8th century it would appear that almost all resi- 

 dents obtained the freedom without difficulty. By 

 the middle of the century it was rarely granted to 

 new-comers except for the purpose of influencing 

 elections; and finally in 1777 the rule was laid 

 down '*' that none but apprentices and sons of freemen 

 should be admitted to the freedom. Thus in the 

 second half of the century a minority of the principal 

 merchants of the town exercised political rights in it. 

 This increasing restriction was peculiarly unfortunate 

 at a period when, owing to the rapid growth of trade, 

 the population wasincreasing with unheard-of rapidity. 

 But it is probably to be attributed to the very fact of 

 this increase of trade, the town council being 

 unwilling to sacrifice the large revenue which they 

 derived from the dues paid by non-freemen. These 

 dues were now for the first time becoming very 

 valuable ; and hence arose a new series of struggles, 

 due to the attempt of boroughs such as London, 

 Bristol and Lancaster, to obtain exemption from the 

 payment of dues in Liverpool under the mediaeval 

 charters which freed them from the payment of dues 

 throughout the kingdom. One such question had 



'« Ret. of Memb. of Pari. 



625 Even in 17 10, when the Tory re- 

 action was at its height ; Hist. MSS. Com, 

 Rep. xiv, App. iv, 579. 



™ See Norrh Papers (Chet. Soc. ix), 

 passim, 



fi27 'j'jie facts of Johnson's life have 

 been summarized by E. M. Piatt, Trans. 

 Hist. Soc, (new ser.), xvi, 147. 



'^8 Lanes, in 17T5 (Chet. Soc. v), 4. 



*29 Hist, MSS, Com. Rep. viii, App. i, 

 47(2. The reception of the ' Palatines * 

 was a very definite party issue ; cf. for 

 example. Swift's attacks on it. Examiner, 

 COS. 41, 45. 



sso Picton, Li-u, Munic, Rec, ii, 78 ; 

 Ware, Lanes, in lyt^, passim, 



™' Ware, iaBci. in 171 5, 190-202; 

 Picton, Liv. Munic. Rec, ii, 79 ; Stuart 

 MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), ii, 232 ; Milne- 

 Home MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com.), 112. 



"" Picton, Li-u, Munic. Rec, ii, 105 ff. 



'S9 Walpole, Letters (ed. Toynbee), ii, 

 165. 



684 Picton, Liv. Munic. Rec, ii, 109 ; 

 Hist. MSS. Com, Rep, xv, App. vii, 

 334- 



™5 Hist, MSS, Com, Rep. xiv, App. iv, 

 579 j ^'^P- *v, App. vii, 121-2 ei passim. 



"' Ibid. Rep, xv, App. vii, 122-3. 



*W Picton, Liv, Munic, Rec, ii, 99. 



28 



588 Ibid. 89-99. for a full analysis 

 and description of this struggle and its 

 results see Muir, Hist, of Li-v, \(i-j--jy, 

 also Hist. Munic. Govt, in Liii, 125-8, 

 269, where full excerpts from the 

 municipal archives are printed, 



689 Picton, Liv, Munic, Rec, ii, loi, 2 ; 

 A letter from Mr, Joseph Clegg, etc, j A 

 Correct Translation of the Charter etc, ly 

 Philodemus ; and other pamphlets and MS. 

 by Clegg preserved in the Liverpool City 

 Library. 



**" Hist, Munic, Govt, in Liv. 270-1, 



'■" For the steps in this development 

 see Hitt. Munic, Govt, in Liv 120-1. 



"2 Picton, iro. Munic, Rec, ii, 194. 



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