1808

Date: Thursday 17 Mar. 1808.

Poll book reference: Kresen Kernow, CF/1/4555/1-3.

It appears to have been the original poll sheet, titled: 'Borough of Grampond. The Poll taken at the Election of two Burgesses to serve in Parliament for the said Borough at the Town Hall of the said Borough...'.

The 1808 election was triggered by the 1807 general election being declared void.

Candidates: Robert Williams III (Tory); John Teed (Tory); Hon. George Augustus Frederick Cochrane (radical Whig?); and William Holmes (Whig).

Robert Williams III was a banker and London alderman who supported the Pittite government. Having stood as MP for Wootton Bassett from 1802 to 1807, Sir Christopher Hawkins offered him a seat at Grampound in 1807. He ran again in harness with John Teed (a merchant and ships agent from Devon) after the 1807 result was voided.

Hon. George Augustus Frederick Cochrane had been a candidate in the voided 1807 election. He ran in harness with William 'Black Billy' Holmes, the son of an Irish brewer. Cochrane and his running mate were funded, as in 1807, by Cochrane's wealthy nabob brother, Hon. Basil Cochrane.

The election returned Williams and Teed. Cochrane and Holmes petitioned on the basis that multiple of their supporters' votes had been discarded. The House of Commons determined that the right of election resided 'in the mayor and burgesses of Grampound' and not 'in the mayor, capital burgesses and resident freemen'; as a result, Williams and Teed were unseated and Cochrane and Holmes returned.