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Authors: Roy Jenkins
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was ‘most kindly’ received at Clumber and indeed subsequently wrote to his father about the Duke almost in terms which might have been employed by the Revd Mr Collins of Lady
Catherine de Burgh. Patron and protégé both dismayed and comforted each other with agreement on the awful impending threats to the social and moral order. Gladstone appears to have
thrown in the possibility of the downfall of the Papacy, to which the Duke looked forward with more complacency than did Gladstone. What they mutually accepted as more decisively good were
‘the virtues of an ancient aristocracy, than which the world never saw one more powerful or more pure’ than that epitomized at Clumber. 17
The Duke, however, was by no means all-powerful in Newark, and Gladstone had to deal not only with independent-minded burghers of that borough but also with magnates who had segments of
influence smaller than but separate from those of the Duke. The Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham was wholly supportive but regretted that his tenants had not been as ‘warm and
unanimous’ towards Gladstone as he would have wished. He would endeavour to apply corrective measures. Lord Middleton, on the other hand, replied from Wollaton House, the fine Tudor mansion
on the edge of Nottingham, with a heavy rebuke for Gladstone’s approach to him: ‘as an entire stranger to me, Imust be allow’d to express my surprise that you
should thus early have applied to me’. 18
However, despite this, a bumpy passage on the slavery issue and other rebuffs within the town, where it does not appear that his candidature aroused much enthusiasm, Gladstone did win. Indeed,
in an election for two seats, he came top of the poll, an experience which, even though he had then become famous, was subsequently to elude him in Oxford, South Lancashire and Greenwich. At Newark
there were three candidates for the two seats. The second Tory, Handley, was quasi-anonymous. The sole and defeated Whig was far from this. He was already a well-known lawyer, bearing the
rumbustious advocates’ title of ‘Serjeant’. Later, transformed from Serjeant Wilde into Baron Truro, he was to be Lord Chancellor in Lord John Russell’s first government.
Gladstone, who on the day of nomination spent six and a half hours on the hustings, was even at twenty-two a near match for him in debating skill and stronger in influence, polled 887, the dim Mr
Handley 798 and the future Lord Truro 726.
On the declaration of the poll, which was at nine in the morning of 14 December 1832, Gladstone spoke for ‘an hour or more – Serjeant [Wilde] procured me a hearing – but a cold
one’. 19 This might seem early evidence of Gladstone’s life-long taste for inflated oratory in even the most inappropriate circumstances.
But the point of the example is somewhat weakened by the fact that Serjeant Wilde followed him for one and a half hours.
There had been a number of the features of Eatanswill (Dickens’s caricature of a corrupt borough in
The Pickwick Papers
) to the Newark contest, not least the distribution of far
more money on Gladstone’s behalf than he was aware of or subsequently approved. However, it was not quite scandalous enough to lead to a petition against corrupt practices, the usual
Gladstone family experience. There was also a good deal of boisterousness, with stones missing Gladstone’s head by only ‘twelve inches’ (his usual precision), but he had
sufficient cohorts to be ‘most powerfully escorted [back] to the Clinton Arms’. In that hostelry, appropriately named to mark the Newcastle influence, Gladstone dined on the evening of
his election in the company of the members of the ‘Red Clubs’ which were vigorous in the constituency. Red was the local Tory colour, evoking a partisanship comparable with the waving
of the ‘bloody shirt’ by the Republican Party in the American presidential elections of 1872 and 1876. Even seventy years later (although this was
Catherine de Burgh. Patron and protégé both dismayed and comforted each other with agreement on the awful impending threats to the social and moral order. Gladstone appears to have
thrown in the possibility of the downfall of the Papacy, to which the Duke looked forward with more complacency than did Gladstone. What they mutually accepted as more decisively good were
‘the virtues of an ancient aristocracy, than which the world never saw one more powerful or more pure’ than that epitomized at Clumber. 17
The Duke, however, was by no means all-powerful in Newark, and Gladstone had to deal not only with independent-minded burghers of that borough but also with magnates who had segments of
influence smaller than but separate from those of the Duke. The Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham was wholly supportive but regretted that his tenants had not been as ‘warm and
unanimous’ towards Gladstone as he would have wished. He would endeavour to apply corrective measures. Lord Middleton, on the other hand, replied from Wollaton House, the fine Tudor mansion
on the edge of Nottingham, with a heavy rebuke for Gladstone’s approach to him: ‘as an entire stranger to me, Imust be allow’d to express my surprise that you
should thus early have applied to me’. 18
However, despite this, a bumpy passage on the slavery issue and other rebuffs within the town, where it does not appear that his candidature aroused much enthusiasm, Gladstone did win. Indeed,
in an election for two seats, he came top of the poll, an experience which, even though he had then become famous, was subsequently to elude him in Oxford, South Lancashire and Greenwich. At Newark
there were three candidates for the two seats. The second Tory, Handley, was quasi-anonymous. The sole and defeated Whig was far from this. He was already a well-known lawyer, bearing the
rumbustious advocates’ title of ‘Serjeant’. Later, transformed from Serjeant Wilde into Baron Truro, he was to be Lord Chancellor in Lord John Russell’s first government.
Gladstone, who on the day of nomination spent six and a half hours on the hustings, was even at twenty-two a near match for him in debating skill and stronger in influence, polled 887, the dim Mr
Handley 798 and the future Lord Truro 726.
On the declaration of the poll, which was at nine in the morning of 14 December 1832, Gladstone spoke for ‘an hour or more – Serjeant [Wilde] procured me a hearing – but a cold
one’. 19 This might seem early evidence of Gladstone’s life-long taste for inflated oratory in even the most inappropriate circumstances.
But the point of the example is somewhat weakened by the fact that Serjeant Wilde followed him for one and a half hours.
There had been a number of the features of Eatanswill (Dickens’s caricature of a corrupt borough in
The Pickwick Papers
) to the Newark contest, not least the distribution of far
more money on Gladstone’s behalf than he was aware of or subsequently approved. However, it was not quite scandalous enough to lead to a petition against corrupt practices, the usual
Gladstone family experience. There was also a good deal of boisterousness, with stones missing Gladstone’s head by only ‘twelve inches’ (his usual precision), but he had
sufficient cohorts to be ‘most powerfully escorted [back] to the Clinton Arms’. In that hostelry, appropriately named to mark the Newcastle influence, Gladstone dined on the evening of
his election in the company of the members of the ‘Red Clubs’ which were vigorous in the constituency. Red was the local Tory colour, evoking a partisanship comparable with the waving
of the ‘bloody shirt’ by the Republican Party in the American presidential elections of 1872 and 1876. Even seventy years later (although this was
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