1790

Transcription completed by the London Electoral History 1700-1850 project, undertaken by Penelope J. Corfield, Edmund M. Green, and Charles Harvey.

Date of closing of poll: 2 July 1790

Poll book reference: London Metropolitan Archives, WR/PP 1790.

Since election contests for the constituency of Westminster were notoriously expensive, the Government and Opposition resolved to each return one candidate in 1790. The Government candidate was once more Samuel Hood, Baron Hood, who was connected to William Pitt the Younger via his brother's marriage to Pitt's aunt. The Opposition candidate was once again Charles James Fox, who was the sitting MP for Westminster since 1780. The election looked like it was going to be uncontested until John Horne Tooke, son of a poulterer and Wilkite radical, joined the electoral race. Tooke was a patron of the Society for Constitutional Information who was described as 'a friend of the monarchical part of the constitution, but an enemy to the aristocratic power which has grown to so great a height in this county, as to control both King and People'.

Mrs Sheridan described the contested election as 'the dullest contested election that ever was seen'.

The election easily returned Hood and Fox, but Tooke petitioned against their return to 'raise the electors if possible to a sense of their own degradation'. The petition was dismissed in 1791 on the grounds of being 'frivolous and vexatious'.