f their
countenance; and in parliament they always voted for any measure of
reform which it was evident the people would want no longer.

It was, therefore, in accordance with family principles and practice,
that the then reigning squire and M. P., Levison Stopford, Esquire,
should take his seat on the ministerial benches, and vote in and out
of parliament for the Bill with which all England rang. Levison
Stopford did not make brilliant speeches, but he had a fair share of
prominence in county business, was a middling landlord, a respectable
head of a family, connected by marriage with a Whig peer, the father
of a promising son, and, as the newspapers said, four lovely
daughters. All these recommendations to public favour could not secure
him against division in his native borough. There were Conservatives
among us, who clung to the time-honoured institutions of Tattleton,
and could not consent to see their ancient privileges, charter, old
posts, and all, submerged in those of two adjoining boroughs--Little
Tattleton, whose constituency consisted of the beadle, and Lumberdale,
to which the earl always nominated his second son; for people already
understood, that on the passing of the Bill these three should become
one, at least in elections.

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. 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. The mayor said, that though he respected birth and breeding,
yet, if a country gentleman like Mr Stopford would so far disgrace his
family as to vote for a measure which must break down the British
constitution, and utterly ruin England in less than twenty years, he,
for his own part, felt called upon to oppose him. 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 candida