NORTHUMBERLAND ELECTION BROADSIDE – “TO THE FREEHOLDERS OF NORTHUMBERLAND” – MATTHEW BELL’S COMMITTEE – Newcastle, 18 March 1826

Alnwick: Smith, Printer, 1826.

Political broadside printed on a single sheet.

Sheet size: 27.5 x 22.7 cm.

Condition: Near fine. Original horizontal and vertical folds as issued. Light handling wear only. Clean and well-preserved example with strong impression and excellent legibility throughout.

Description

A scarce surviving election broadside issued during the fiercely contested Northumberland Parliamentary Election of 1826, one of the most important county election contests of the late Georgian period.

Addressed simply “To the Freeholders of Northumberland”, the broadside was issued by Mr Bell’s Committee Room, Newcastle, and dated 18 March 1826. It forms part of the increasingly hostile exchange of accusations and counter-accusations between the supporters of Matthew Bell and those of Henry Thomas Liddell, later 1st Earl of Ravensworth.

The text specifically responds to statements allegedly made by Liddell concerning the conduct of Bell and his supporters during the election campaign. Bell’s committee accuses Liddell of making insinuations and charges which had not been openly advanced during the contest itself, declaring that the committee are justified in presenting “the Facts upon which these Insinuations and Charges are founded”.

Particularly notable is the broadside’s highly combative language, warning that:

“Language not to be misunderstood”

and asserting that even Liddell’s own supporters would resent the methods allegedly employed to mislead the freeholders of Northumberland.

The document belongs to a remarkable series of surviving election broadsides generated by the 1826 contest. The election followed the death of Sir Matthew White Ridley and quickly developed into a major political struggle involving some of the most influential political and landed interests in northern England.

The principal contestants included:

• Matthew Bell (1769–1849), Newcastle merchant, industrialist and reform-minded Whig politician.
• Henry Thomas Liddell (1797–1878) of Ravensworth Castle, later 1st Earl of Ravensworth.
• Thomas Wentworth Beaumont (1792–1848), one of the wealthiest landowners in Britain.
• Lord Howick (Charles Grey), future Prime Minister and architect of the Reform Act of 1832.

The campaign generated an extraordinary quantity of election literature including addresses, handbills, broadsides, poll books and committee publications. These documents provide a vivid record of electoral politics before parliamentary reform, when county elections could become lengthy, expensive and intensely personal affairs.

Unlike formal parliamentary papers, such broadsides were intended for immediate political use and were generally discarded after the election. Their survival is therefore considerably less common than official printed records.

The present broadside is especially desirable as it records a specific stage in the public dispute between Bell and Liddell supporters and illustrates the aggressive rhetorical style characteristic of Georgian electioneering.

Historical Importance

This broadside survives from the final years of the unreformed electoral system prior to the Reform Act of 1832. It provides direct evidence of:

• Georgian electoral campaigning.
• County politics in Northumberland.
• Political organisation through election committees.
• Public political controversy before modern party structures.
• The role of printed ephemera in shaping electoral opinion.
• The careers of Matthew Bell and Henry Thomas Liddell.

It offers a valuable primary source for the study of parliamentary elections, political communication and regional political culture in early nineteenth-century Britain.

Institutional Holdings

Examples of Northumberland election ephemera from the 1826 contest are preserved within major archival collections relating to the Bell, Beaumont, Grey and Liddell families. However, individual election broadsides survive unevenly and many were never systematically collected.

At the time of cataloguing, no separate institutional record has been identified for this specific 18 March 1826 Bell Committee broadside. As with much election ephemera of the period, survival appears limited.

A scarce and highly evocative survival from one of the most important Northumberland parliamentary contests of the Georgian era, preserving the language, tactics and personal rivalries of unreformed British electoral politics.

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