Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
By and by, however, it became evident to his most sanguine supporter that Sommerset had no chance; Sir Jonas and Lord Lumberdale themselves advised him to give up the contest; but the man had been persuaded that the safety of Great Tattleton, if not that of the British nation, depended on him, and a persuasion once in Sommerset's head was not easily got out.
We all believed that Palladium of Tattleton to be kept somewhere in the church, and generations had returned their representatives according to its provisions. But the bounds of the borough were so devious, and the free burghers so thinly scattered among us, that all elections within the memory of man had been quietly managed by the mayor, the town-clerk, and the sheriff.
The family pew and vault were there; and they had been squires and justices of peace from father to son, dispensing hospitality, work, and law, at their seat of Fern Hall a great old manor-house, standing deep in a thickly-wooded dell not half a mile from Tattleton. So far as I could learn, the Stopfords had given no ornaments to state or church, but theirs was pre-eminently a safe house.
Both the earl and the baronet possessed some property, and more influence, in our borough, by help of which they warned the loyal Conservatives that their country was in danger, and exhorted Great Tattleton to rush to the rescue.
Sir Jonas and the Earl of Lumberdale assured him he was the hope of Tattleton; and, in an evil hour, he consented, in electioneering phrase, to contest the borough. With his relations, who regarded Sommerset as their top branch, the step was in high favour; and all his friends came out strong in approbation, excepting old Tom Prior.
There never was a contested election in the borough of Great Tattleton that I remember but one, and it took place on what was termed the last appeal to the country in the matter of the Reform Bill.
The Tattleton Chronicle was remarkably full upon it. I think, till this day, Lily is regarded as a devoted heroine by all the Tories of Tattleton, for there are Tories there still. But we had a splendid wedding at our church, under Mr Stopford's very nose, before he went to parliament.
Sir Jonas Underwood, of Little Tattleton Park, did not like that prospect he had been regularly returned by the loyal and independent beadle ever since his majority, a period of some forty years neither did the Earl of Lumberdale, as the present state of things made his second son's canvass by no means difficult.
Moreover, an old gateway and two crazy posts had something to do in the business by right of ancient custom. In short, Tattleton was what the advocates of the whole Bill were apt to term a close and sometimes a rotten borough.
The town-clerk always said as the mayor did: all the Tories in Tattleton took them for examples, by degrees a party was formed against Stopford on what had hitherto been his own ground; and long before the dissolution, it was known that they intended, as the phrase is, 'to start' Sommerset Cloudesly, Esquire, as an opposing candidate in the Conservative interest.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking