NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION BROADSIDE – Liddell, Henry Thomas – TO THE GENTLEMEN, CLERGY, AND FREEHOLDERS OF THE COUNTY OF NORTHUMBERLAND – Alnwick – 23rd Feb, 1826.

Alnwick: Smith, Printer, 1826.

Single-sheet election broadside, printed on one side only.

22.3 x 27.9 cm.

Condition: Very good condition. Fold creases. Light age-toning, minor handling wear and contemporary manuscript endorsement to the reverse.

A scarce Northumberland election broadside issued by Henry Thomas Liddell during the opening stages of the fiercely contested 1826 county election.

Dated from the Committee Room, Alnwick, 23 February 1826, the broadside addresses the “Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the County of Northumberland” and follows the result of the previous day’s poll. Liddell presents the poll as confirmation that the county’s representation should not be treated as family property, and appeals to remaining freeholders to support him against what he describes as broken promises and misplaced confidence.

The text is a forceful campaign address, emphasising public trust, family influence, electoral honour and county independence. It reveals the intensely personal nature of Georgian county elections, in which questions of representation, inheritance, influence and political legitimacy were argued publicly through handbills and broadsides.

The 1826 Northumberland election was one of the most significant county contests of the pre-Reform period. It involved Henry Thomas Liddell, Matthew Bell, Thomas Wentworth Beaumont and Lord Howick, and generated an exceptional body of election literature including speeches, songs, squibs, handbills and satirical broadsides. Contemporary and modern accounts identify it as Northumberland’s first contested election since 1774, with four candidates contesting the county’s two seats.

Liddell was subsequently returned for Northumberland in the 1826 election alongside Matthew Bell, and later became 1st Earl of Ravensworth. The election is now recognised as a major episode in Northumberland political history and a revealing example of the electoral culture of Britain before the Reform Act of 1832.

No separate institutional record for this specific item has been traced. Related Northumberland election material survives in institutional and private collections, but this particular broadside, dated Committee Room, Alnwick, 23 February 1826, does not appear to be separately recorded in the principal online catalogues consulted.

A desirable survival of Georgian political ephemera, documenting the campaign of Henry Thomas Liddell and the contested politics of Northumberland in the years immediately preceding parliamentary reform.

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