Forfarshire, which had last polled in 1782, was noted for its agriculture, fisheries and textiles, and its resistance to returning government candidates.1 Census enumerators attributed the population increase from 113,138 in 1821 to 139,600 in 1831 to the division of the commons in Kirriemuir and mechanisation of the linen trade, which in 1831 ‘probably furnished employment to 8,000 men aged 20 and above’ and ‘about 500 weavers of wool and linen for domestic use’.2 The county town of Forfar and the burgeoning textile town and port of Dundee were constituent burghs of the Perth district, and the other royal burghs, Arbroath, Brechin and Montrose, belonged to the Aberdeen group. The other towns included Broughty Ferry, Carnoustie and Kirriemuir. Lord Douglas, the lord lieutenant, who as the Pittite Tory Archibald Douglas of Douglas had ended half a century of Maule hegemony by capturing the county seat in 1782, had become an absentee, and most county business was entrusted to the attorney James L’Amy of Dunkenny, who had been appointed sheriff in July 1819 and subsequently deputized regularly for the convener John Guthrie of Guthrie.3 The representation had been vested since 1805 in the largest landowner, the dissolute Foxite Whig William Maule (formerly Ramsay), who had inherited the Panmure and Brechin Castle estates of his great-uncle William Maule†, 1st earl of Panmure. No Melvillite Tory had been prepared to stand against him, but the interests of Sir James Carnegie of Southesk, who came in for Aberdeen Burghs in 1830, the Douglases, the Lyon family, earls of Strathmore, and the Ogilvies (former Jacobites) of Cortachy Castle, near Kirriemuir, could not be discounted.4 Furthermore, Maule’s tenure of Panmure was itself compromised by his failure to have the family titles restored to him as stipulated in the 1st earl’s will.5 The dominance of the Panmure interest was nevertheless confirmed by Maule’s unopposed return at the general election of 1820, when his proposers were Guthrie of Guthrie and Alexander Murray Guthrie of Craigie House, Dundee. The Tories stayed away, and the dinner for 100 served to rally support for radical causes and Joseph Hume, Maule’s successful candidate for Aberdeen Burghs.6

Petitions against the withdrawal of bounties on linen exports, which stressed the interdependence of Forfarshire’s agricultural and manufacturing interests, were adopted by the Dundee-based Forfarshire Chamber of Commerce, 6 Apr., Kirriemuir and the freeholders, the heritors and the commissioners of supply at the annual general county meeting, 29 Apr., and were presented to the Commons, 25, 30 May, 1 July 1820.7 Queen Caroline’s cause was popular in the towns, where the abandonment of the bill of pains and penalties against her was celebrated with illuminations and addresses.8 The landowners and occupiers of the Strathmore valley joined their Perthshire neighbours in petitioning for repeal of the additional malt duty, 21 Mar. 1821, and the farmers and proprietors countywide petitioned the Commons, 25 Apr., and the Lords, 29 Apr. 1822, for relief from agricultural distress.9 On 30 Apr., with L’Amy as praeses, the annual general meeting adopted a petition promoted by Guthrie of Guthrie, Maule’s brother John Ramsay of Dysart and Peter Arklay of Dunninald against the proposed export restrictions on Scottish breweries and distilleries, which Maule presented, 6 May 1822. In addition, the meeting referred the unsuccessful Forfar court house bill, previously discussed at a county meeting, 2 Apr., to L’Amy, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, David Greenhill of Fearn, the Guthries, George Lyon of Glenogil, Gilbert Laing Meason of Lindertis and Maule and his brother, with instructions to report to the Michaelmas head court which intended publicizing the valuation rolls.10 The Tay ferries bill, the subject of one favourable and five hostile petitions to the Lords, 31 May, received royal assent, 24 June 1822.11

A replacement for the Scottish Parliament’s 1425 Act regulating salmon fisheries was universally sought, but the different practices and preferences of the county’s sea and freshwater fishermen, especially over the timing of the close season, were evident in their petitions for and against the abortive 1823, 1824, 1825 and 1827 bills and testimony to the 1824 and 1827 select committees.12 Petitions in favour of the 1823 Scottish linen manufacture bill, which received royal assent, 27 June, were presented to both Houses from Kirriemuir, 7 May, 20 June, and to the Lords from Glamis and Forfar and their neighbourhoods, 10 June.13 The reintroduced Forfar court house bill received royal assent, 4 July, and it was reported that ‘no business of importance [was] discussed’ at the Michaelmas head court, 28 Sept. 1823.14 In 1824 petitions were received by the Commons from procurators at Forfarshire sheriff’s court for repeal of the duty on their licenses, 1 Apr., and by both Houses from the synod of Angus, who sought to restrict the right to teach in certain West Indian schools to members of the Church of Scotland, 20 May.15 The towns petitioned for corn law revision in 1825 and 1826, and petitions against it were sent to both Houses in 1825 by the owners and occupiers of land in the districts of Arbroath, Brechin and Montrose and by the synod of Angus, and in 1826 by the East Forfarshire Farming Association.16 The presbyteries of Dundee and Forfar supported the 1826 petitioning campaign against slavery.17 Opposition to the alterations to the Scottish banking system contemplated by the government in the wake of the 1825-6 crisis was encouraged in the local press and was the subject of intensive petitioning.18 L’Amy, an extraordinary director of the Bank of Scotland, also procured a hostile one from the noblemen, freeholders and commissioners of supply for presentation to the Lords, 3 Mar., and the Commons, 6 Mar. 1826.19 A county meeting that day, requisitioned by Guthrie of Craigie, Laing Meason, Alexander Greenhill, Patrick Chalmers of Auldbar, James Carnegie of Bulnamoon, Peter Wedderburn of New Grange and six others, carried resolutions proposed by Chalmers and Robert Scott of Aberthune against the Forth ferries bill, which they predicted would adversely affect the Tay, and it was a major issue at the spring meeting, 29 Apr., together with reforms of weights and measures, the Forfar roads bill and the Dundee railway bill, both of which received royal assent, 26 May 1826.20 The reversal that day by a private Act of attainders imposed in 1715 and 1745 on the Ogilvies restored David Ogilvy to the Scottish peerage as 4th earl of Airlie and was widely celebrated by his tenants and Tory allies before the general election in June. However, no opposition was raised to the return of Maule, who canvassed early and chaired a pre-election county meeting to instigate a subscription and appoint a committee (of which he was the convener) on distress in the manufacturing districts.21 The adoption of the Whig Douglas Gordon Hallyburton of Pitcur, a putative candidate since 1807 and half-brother of the Tory 5th earl of Aboyne, as election praeses was unanimous, and Maule was proposed by Laing Meason and seconded by Guthrie of Craigie, who praised his independence and support for the Liverpool ministry’s liberal trade policies. The contentious enactment of the Forth ferries bill was ‘raised and by-passed’ at the election dinner, which Maule, as chairman, used to rally support for Hume.22

The campaign against corn law revision gathered momentum in the autumn of 1826, and petitions presented in 1827 from Barrie, Monyfieth and Panbride, where the weavers clamoured for repeal, were countered by protectionist ones from the landowners and tenants of the Forfar district and farmers attending markets in the county.23 Following Lord Douglas’s death in December 1827, the duke of Wellington as prime minister ignored representations by the Lansdowne Whigs (in consultation with Maule) on behalf of Lord Duncan and the claims of Douglas’s son Charles Douglas*, and appointed Airlie lord lieutenant in February 1828.24 Airlie’s request for government sponsorship in the peerage election was turned down by Wellington, and likewise his recommendation that the list of new deputy lieutenants, in which the county had become grossly deficient, should be bipartisan and include Maule and Hallyburton in recognition their ‘great landed property’.25 The passage of the 1828 Salmon Fisheries Act, which prolonged the open season from 15 Aug. to 30 Nov. and retained the ‘Saturday slap’ (Sunday closure), ensured that a rival local bill foundered, but the measure failed to satisfy the Tay proprietors who had originally petitioned for it, 5 May 1828.26 Kirriemuir petitioned the Commons against conceding Catholic emancipation, 20 Mar. 1829.27 The members and directors of Forfarshire Chamber of Commerce petitioned both Houses in 1830 and 1831 against renewal of the East India Company’s charter.28

At a well-attended general county meeting, chaired by L’Amy, 30 Apr. 1830, the noblemen, justices, freeholders and commissioners of supply adopted petitions for the repeal of inventory duty on Scottish wills and for a duty on West Indian rum equivalent to that on Scottish spirits. They also petitioned against the Scottish judicature bill, but according to an editorial in the Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser, their opposition was confined to its provisions for maritime cases.29 The other important local issue that session was the passage of the Dundee harbour bill, which Kirriemuir, Lochee and Letham joined Dundee in promoting and Forfar and certain inhabitants of Lochee opposed.30 Airlie, whose hopes of election to the Lords were again dashed (as they would be until 1832), convened the county early to adopt addresses of condolence and congratulation to William IV; and at the general election he sponsored the candidature of his brother Donald Ogilvy for Perth Burghs, where Forfar was the returning burgh and John Stuart Wortley* hoped to replace the East India Company’s deputy chairman Hugh Lindsay.31 Maule’s return, proposed by Laing Meason and James Carnegie, was a formality and was unaffected by his withdrawal of support from Hume in Aberdeen Burghs, where a close contest also ensued; but, with many keen to ‘spy on the activities of Forfar council and others engaged in the Burghs contests’, attendance and demand for election transport were unusually high.32 Maule, the Guthries and their cronies met in committee, 8 Sept. 1830, to consider legislation on roads and bridges preparatory to the Michaelmas head court, which confined itself to local legislation.33 The United Associate Congregations of Kirriemuir and Lochee supported the 1830-1 petitioning campaign against West Indian slavery;34 but for the next two years Forfarshire politics were dominated by the clamour for reform, disputed elections and Dundee’s bid for a new charter and separate representation.35

The voiding of the Perth Burghs election (in which Donald Ogilvy had been defeated) and unrest during the ensuing contest between the Grey ministry’s lord advocate Francis Jeffrey* and Airlie’s brother William Ogilvy* prompted Airlie to summon the militia in January 1831 and seek support for raising a yeomanry regiment. Maule, who notwithstanding his failure to divide on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, had immediately applied to the new Grey ministry for a peerage, cautioned him against doing so

the farmers neither having the same capital, nor being able to spare the requisite time from their farms, in consequence of having fewer servants ... Another thing is that Forfarshire is in so quiet a state, that many men who might be persuaded to come forward upon an emergency would hang back when a case of necessity could not be made out.36

Proposals to give separate Members to Aberdeen and Dundee under the Scottish reform bill proved popular, and an unspecified number of Forfarshire petitions supporting the English and Scottish measures were forwarded to the 10th earl of Kinoull and presented to the Lords, 21 Mar. 1831.37 The manufacturers, householders and inhabitants of Kirriemuir petitioned both Houses similarly, 20, 21 Apr., and the Lords received a favourable petition from the inhabitants of Lochee, 30 Mar. 1831.38 Maule divided for the second reading of the English reform bill, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment by which it was lost, 19 Apr., and declared unreservedly ‘for the bill’ at the ensuing general election.39 As the bill’s authors had predicted, many landowners objected to changes it proposed in the county jurisdiction, the increased property qualification for candidates and the transfer of power to villages and urban areas through the £10 vote. Citing the risk of unrest, Airlie had resisted pressure to call a county reform meeting, but on 29 Apr. his name headed a requisition to L’Amy for one to consider the Scottish measure. The other signatories were John Hay of Letham, Scott of Aberthune, Robert Lyall of Newbiggin, James Moody (Mudie) of Pitmuis, Robert Douglas of Brigton, David Hunter of Burnside, James Mill of Woodhill and George Chaplin of Colliston.40 The meeting was scheduled before the election, 16 May, and perceived from the outset as a ploy to turn out Maule ‘by a side-wind’. Airlie took the chair, and the anti-reformers’ petition for ‘Scottish and moderate reform’ was proposed by Donald Ogilvy, with Peter Wedderburn Ogilvy of Ruthven seconding. In a direct appeal to the agriculturists, it called for an increase in Scottish county seats to match that in the burghs and incorporated resolutions confining the £10 vote (house and land) to the burghs and making a £100 cess the qualification threshold in the counties. The enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will was opposed as ‘a measure calculated both to disturb the good understanding subsisting between landlord and tenant, and to lead to new arrangements in the distribution of farms injurious to the interest of agriculture and the tenants themselves’. James Cruickshank of Langley Park’s plea for adjournment, as there was no longer a bill before Parliament, went unseconded and Lord Duncan and Hallyburton, who had recently announced his candidature for Dundee, arrived from the Lanarkshire election just in time to propose an amendment declaring unequivocally for the ‘principle’ of the reform bill, which they carried by 59-24, together with a resolution endorsing the parliamentary conduct of Maule and Duncan as reformers. With Hallyburton as praeses, Maule was proposed by William Fullarton Lindsay of Boysack and David Carnegie of Craigo and returned unopposed.41 Donald Ogilvy’s statement that he deprecated any measure of reform resulting in the proprietor of ‘bare walls in places like Kirriemuir coming in competition at elections with the landed proprietors’, and electioneering speeches by Hallyburton in Forfar and Perth, in which he maintained that he had taken care ‘pointedly and explicitly to separate the motives of the gentlemen who defended and voted for the resolution moved by Colonel Ogilvy from what I considered the tendency of the Acts’, spawned an acrimonious correspondence between them. Into it were drawn the lord advocate, the sheriff’s clerk Patrick Orr and Airlie, who had protested that the minutes of the election meeting taken by Orr were incomplete and incorrect. Their letters were promptly published in the local press, together with lists of the 87 freeholders present on 16 May and their votes, and the names and opinions of the nine absentees whose letters were read out at the meeting: at least six of them, including John Guthrie, had declared for the ministerial bills.42 According to an ‘abstract’ printed in the Perthshire Courier, 2 June, Duncan’s amendment was supported by 31 ‘landed men’, 21 ‘possessed of no landed property in the county’ and eight ‘late or present magistrates ... connected with royal burghs’; and Ogilvy’s resolutions for ‘improvement and alterations’ by 24 ‘landed men’ and eight ‘possessed of no landed property’. Cruickshank, Orr and Thomas Carnaby of Forfar abstained. Another freeholder left before voting commenced.

Airlie ensured that a scurrilous anti-Ogilvy handbill issued during the peerage elections in Edinburgh, where he was unsuccessful, was mentioned in the Lords by the duke of Buccleuch as presenter of the Forfarshire anti-reform petition, 28 June 1831. The lack of support for his proposal to raise the matter directly in Parliament dismayed him, and after taking counsel’s opinion he referred the slander against him to the courts.43 In the Commons, 27 June, Keith Douglas, the presenter of the hostile petition, which Maule insisted was unrepresentative of opinion in Forfarshire, succeeded in his objective of drawing the lord advocate and his ally Thomas Kennedy into the debate.44 The county’s landholders and magistrates and the inhabitants of Lochee petitioned the Lords in favour of the English reform bill, 30 Sept., and the inhabitants of Broughty Ferry and Kirriemuir petitioned similarly, 4 Oct. 1831.45 Maule’s elevation to the Lords as Baron Panmure at the coronation had been predicted locally and speculation concerning his successor was rife.46 He and the earl of Camperdown (as Duncan now became), gave their interests at the ensuing by-election to Hallyburton, whose canvass of Dundee, where the radical George Kinloch† was preferred, had faltered on account of his refusal to declare unequivocally for the ballot and repeal of the corn laws.47 Approving his candidature, the previously critical Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser declared him to be as liberal on protection ‘as a representative for a county, in the present state of opinion of an agricultural population, can be expected to be’, and welcomed his promise to co-operate ‘with the town Members in our districts, to promote the local interests of the county in general’.48 Rumours that Stuart Wortley, Charles Douglas or Henry Home Drummond would relinquish their seats to stand on the Tory interest were soon scotched (they backed Ogilvy), and by 22 Sept. it was evident that Donald Ogilvy, standing on the same ‘moderate reform’ and protectionist principles he had advocated in May, would run Hallyburton close.49 On 29 Sept. the Perthshire Courier reported: ‘Nothing that respectability of character and high family connections can confer is wanting to either party, and the issue must be regarded as a declaration on the part of the freeholders of their sentiments on the great measure of parliamentary reform’. At the election meeting, 3 Oct., Ogilvy’s party and Cruickshank tried to delay the reading of the writ and swearing-in of new freeholders to allow time for late arrivals. This was refused by 42-39, and at 12.45 pm. L’Amy took the chair and ‘read the writ very slowly’. Hallyburton and Alexander Fotheringham of Pourie proposed Laing Meason as praeses, and Sir John Ogilvy of Inverquharity nominated and General David Hunter of Blackness seconded Charles Lyell of Kinnordy. Laing Meason carried the election by 42-41. Disputes over the order of freeholder admissions and the qualification of Ogilvy voters were deliberately protracted pending the arrival of sufficient voters to procure a majority for Ogilvy, who was then hurriedly proposed and seconded by Wedderburn of Birkill and Cruickshank. Carnegie of Craigo and Fotheringham nominated Hallyburton and Hunter, a Whig renegade, made a speech explaining his decision to support Ogilvy as a defender of agricultural interests. Voting proceeded ‘neck and neck’, and directly the result was announced, Hallyburton attributed Ogilvy’s narrow victory to bad votes and promised to petition. Ogilvy hailed his success ‘as the constitutional candidate’ as proof of a reaction against reform, but his attempt to get an anti-reform petition under way failed.50 Wellington congratulated Airlie on the result and the anti-reformers delighted in what they perceived as Panmure’s defeat.51 A fellow anti-reformer informed Sir Archibald Campbell, 4 Oct.:

We won by a majority of two, and one of the voters, who came from Ireland, did not arrive till six o’clock in the evening. The cause, when we went into court, was considered hopeless. We were outvoted in the choice of a praeses, but, notwithstanding, we got all our voters put on the roll, amounting to four, two being admitted on the opposite side. Your friend Sir Francis Drummond was here, very keen you may believe. We had a voter from Germany direct, two from Ireland, and General Sir John Hope from Bute, a long journey for an old infirm man. All the professional men agree they never knew a cause so absolutely lost ever gained before.52

A published letter of 7 Oct. 1831 from Carnegie of Boysack to Ogilvy, for whom he had voted, disputed the Member’s claim that he owed his return to his political principles:

My own opinion in favour of the reform bill has never changed; and my vote was given to you, because I held myself pledged by a promise made long before the question of reform was agitated to support you, whenever you should become a candidate, in consequence of Mr. Maule retiring.53

Hallyburton addressed reform meetings in Perthshire and the burgh that autumn and, after prevaricating, proceeded with a petition against Ogilvy’s return, alleging improper interference by Airlie and ‘gross partiality’ in the management of the roll to procure a majority for Ogilvy, 7 Dec. 1831.54 The largely Whig committee to whom the petition was referred on 24 Jan. 1832, with additional evidence ordered on 26 Dec. 1831, reported in Hallyburton’s favour, and the return was amended, 31 Jan. 1832.55 Letters received by Airlie that month reveal that his agent Carnaby wrongly dismissed the flurry of activity he witnessed in Edinburgh to muster support for Hallyburton’s petition as ‘a gasconade’, and show how Ogilvy, who voted against the final reform bill’s second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and committal, 20 Jan. 1832, was unnerved by and hard pressed to deny false reports that he would ‘take the sense of the county’ on reform.56 The Dundee, Perth and Cupar Advertiser of 2 Feb. 1832 hailed Hallyburton’s success as a victory against the ‘interminable electioneering of the Ogilvies’.

The decision to grant Perth separate representation and transfer Forfar to the new Montrose group of burghs, which included Arbroath and Brechin, was generally welcomed.57 Hallyburton, as expected, steadily supported the ministry and their reform bills and voted against the Perthshire anti-reformer Murray’s spoiling amendment awarding second Members to Forfarshire and another seven large Scottish counties, 1 June 1832. His wayward vote against the third reading of the malt drawback bill, 2 Apr., and his support, as seconder, for an abortive proposal barring Scottish clergymen from voting at parliamentary elections, 6 June, accorded with constituency opinion.58 Petitions were received by the Commons from the presbytery of Forfar against the ministerial scheme for Irish education, 1 July 1832.59

As agreed at the annual general meeting, 30 Apr., Forfarshire paid to publish lists of qualified electors in the Edinburgh and local papers for the first time in May and June 1832 and advertised for appeals and additions.60 Ogilvy and Hallyburton canvassed early, but it was apparent at the Kirriemuir meeting in July which considered the attack on the king at Ascot races (an ill-disguised Conservative rally to promote Ogilvy’s candidature) that his support had waned, and ‘after several false starts’ he desisted.61 On 10 Aug. Kirriemuir celebrated his decision by adopting an address thanking Lord Grey and the king for the Reform Act.62 At the general election of 1832, when Forfarshire had a registered electorate of 1,340, Hallyburton, standing as a Liberal, was returned unopposed after Cruickshank, the putative Conservative, withdrew in order to contest Ayr Burghs.63 Forfarshire remained a safe Liberal seat and was polled only twice between 1832 and 1885: in 1835, when Hallyburton defeated the Conservative Stuart Wortley; and in 1872, when the election of the Liberal James Barclay interrupted the hegemony of the Maule (Ramsay), Hallyburton, Duncan and Carnegie families.64