Lancelot Allgood
Lancelot Allgood (11 February 1711 - 26 April 1782) was a British landowner and politician who served as High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1746, and as member of parliament for Northumberland in the 10th Parliament of Great Britain between February 1748 and 1754.
Biography
Lancelot Allgood was born 11 February 1711[1] the son of Isaac Allgood, of Brandon White House, Ingram, and grandson of the Rev. Major Allgood, Rector of Simonburn.[2]
Allgood studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, matriculating 20 November 1730, and was admitted to Gray's Inn on 6 January 1731.[3]
He took a Grand Tour in the later 1830s, and is recorded to have met and travelled for some time with Thomas Forster of Adderstone, a great friend of Allgood's father,[1] but since 1716 a Jacobite exile in Europe after playing a leading part in the north of England in the Jacobite rising of 1715.[4]
Allgood married his relative, Jane, daughter and heir of Robert Allgood, of Nunwick, near Simonburn, Northumberland on 22nd February, 1739. Robert Allgood had purchased Nunwick from the Herons of Chipchase, and when he died it came to Lancelot by virtue of his marriage. Allgood commissioned the erection of Nunwick Hall at the junction of Simon Burn and the River North Tyne.[2]
Lancelot Allgood was Sheriff of Northumberland in 1746, the year in which Bonnie Prince Charlie's Jacobite rising of 1745 was put down by the Duke of Cumberland. Allgood was present at the reception of the Duke of Cumberland in Newcastle in January 1746, and witnessed the ceremony of presenting him with the freedom of the town on his return from the victory of Culloden in April 1746.[2]
A vacancy occurred in the Parliamentary representation of Northumberland by the death of John Fenwick on 19 December 1747, and Allgood became a candidate for the seat. The old member was a Tory; his colleague, Sir William Middleton, 3rd Baronet, was a Whig. Parties were so evenly balanced in the county that the Whigs were encouraged to try for both seats. Allgood being a Tory, the Whigs put forward Lord Ossulston, son and heir of Charles Bennet, 2nd Earl of Tankerville, to oppose him. The election took place at Alnwick in February, 1748, commencing on the 18th of that month and lasting six days. At the declaration of the poll there was a squabble with the sheriff, Nicholas Brown of Bolton, and for a time it was uncertain which of the candidates had been elected. Allgood polled 982 votes, Ossulston 971; but the sheriff rejected 27 of the Tory votes, and declared Lord Ossulston elected by a majority of 16. Thereupon Mr. Allgood presented a petition to Parliament, complaining of an undue return. Both parties were ordered to attend at the bar of the House, but the matter was postponed, and the House rose without deciding the question. Allgood renewed his application in November 1748, and the 14th February 1749 was fixed for the hearing, on which occasion Mr. Fox told the House that Lord Ossulston would give no further trouble in the affair, and Mr. Allgood was declared duly elected.[5]
The fact of the 1745 Rebellion, the relationship between Tories and Jacobites, and Allgood's supposed Jacobite sympathies all were of moment in the election. However Henry Carr, a Whig elector, commented in a latter that "considering Mr. Allgood’s good character and his zealous behaviour in the late rebellion, I cannot bring myself to vote against him." (Carr also drew adverse implications from the absence from Northumberland of Lord Ossulston's father, the then Lord Lieutenant of Northumberland, during the rising, and analysed the state of the Tory & Jacobite alliance)[a]
At the next election, in 1754, Allgood announced his willingness to submit his claims once more to the freeholders. His party, however, made no favourable sign, and Lord Ossulston having succeeded to the earldom, Sir Henry Grey, of Howick, and the old member, Sir William Middleton, were returned without opposition.[7]
While Mr. Allgood was in Parliament the one absorbing local question was the construction of roads. The rebellion of 1745 brought the great roadmaker, Marshal Wade, to Newcastle, and inspired the freeholders of Northumberland to "mend their ways" in emulation of his achievements in Scotland. In 1747, Newcastle Corporation made the road across the Town Moor, and Parliament passed the first Turnpike Act for Northumberland — an Act which authorised the continuation of the Town Moor Road from the borough boundary at Gosforth to Buckton Burn, near Belford.[b] The road through Ponteland followed, and in 1751 Allgood was entrusted with a petition for leave to bring in a bill authorising the repair and widening of the road from Alnmouth to Alnwick, and by Lemington Coal Houses, and along Edlingham Dikes to Rothbury, from there south to Coldrife, by Ewesley Gate to Cambo and Wallington, by Kirkharle and Little Bavington to Colwell, Chollerton, and Wall to Hexham, and also the road leading out of the Alnwick to Rothbury, to Jockey's Dike Bridge. Leave was given, and Allgood had charge of the measure through its various stages until it received the Royal Assent. Two similar bills — one for a road from Longhorsley through Weldon Bridge and Whittingham to the Breamish, and the other for a road leading from Morpeth, through Mitford, Longwitton, and by Rothley Park wall to the High Cross at Elsdon — were in charge of Sir William Middleton, with Allgood as a member of the committee to which the details were referred.[7]
Upon the accession of George III in 1760, Mr. Allgood received the honour of knighthood. The year following, on the 9th of March, when the newly-established conscription for the militia was put in force, there was a riot at Hexham, in which Sir Lancelot was involved. It was reported that during the outbreak he and Christopher Reed, of Chipchase, hid themselves in a hayloft. In a notorious pamphlet, published shortly afterwards, entitled The Will of a certain Northern Vicar, this assumed escapade is satirised in halting rhyme:[8]
I give the corpulent Kitt Reed
My lecture upon gingerbread.
And leave him too (tho' not for Fun),
For fear of Harm — a Wooden Gun ;
At the same time (in case of Riot),
A Cockloft, for to keep him quiet :
A Ladder too (Fame do not tattle).
To aid him in the day of battle.
And to his worthy Comorade [Sir Lancelot],
Who with 'im such a Figure made,
A large Birch Rod, that He may be
Tickled most exceedingly.
Sir Lancelot Allgood died on 26 April 1782, and was succeeded by his son, James Allgood, LL.D., Sheriff of Northumberland in 1786. Two of his daughters were married to members of the Loraine family — Hannah, the eldest to William, afterwards Sir William Loraine, 4th Baronet, and Isabella, the second daughter, to Lambton Loraine, his brother.[9]
Notes
- ^ Henry Carr wrote: "I should certainly vote for Lord O. if he had been opposed by any person reasonably suspected of Jacobitism, but considering Mr. Algood's good character and his zealous behaviour in the late Rebellion, I cannot bring myself to vote against him in favour of the son of a man who, though Lord Lieutenant of the County, deserted it so shamefully in the time of danger and who seems to have nothing said in his favour but that he is a Whig set up by the Whig party, who I wish had made a choice of a man of more merit, as I think we shall look a little too sour and shew ourselves irreconcilable to the bare name of a Tory if we can't be so far soften'd and reconciled by Mr. Algood's behaviour as to look upon him almost as one of ourselves, but must to a man oppose him. And if that should be the case I fear the consequences of it would be a reuniting of the Jacobites and the Tories whom the latter at the time of the Rebellion separated themselves from, and which separation, I hoped, would continue and bring the moderate part of them over to us, if we show a reasonable moderation on our side and a readiness to receive them."[6]
- ^ The Town Moor, Gosforth, Belford road forms part of the Great North Road and later the A1 road.
References
- ^ a b Cruickshanks 1970.
- ^ a b c Welford 1895, p. 40.
- ^ Foster, Joseph (1888). Alumni oxonienses: the members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886; their parentage, birthplace and year of birth, with a record of their degrees. Being the matriculation register of the University. Oxford, Parker. p. 20.
- ^ "FORSTER, Thomas (1683-1738), of Adderstone, Northumb". History of Parliament Online (1715-1754). Retrieved 18 August 2018.
- ^ Welford 1895, pp. 40–41.
- ^ Hughes, Edward (1952). North country life in the eighteenth century. London, New York, Oxford University Press. p. 266.
- ^ a b Welford 1895, p. 41.
- ^ Welford 1895, pp. 41–42.
- ^ Welford 1895, p. 42.
Sources
- Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "ALLGOOD, Lancelot (1711-82), of Nunwick, Northumb". History of Parliament Online.org. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
- Welford, Richard (1895). Men of Mark 'twixt Tyne and Tweed. pp. 40–42. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.