Taunton by-election, 1754
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Robert Maxwell
Whig
The Taunton by-election of 1754 to the Parliament of Great Britain was held across thirteen days, from 10–24 December 1754 in Taunton, the county town of the southwestern English county of Somerset. It took place following the death of the incumbent Whig Member of Parliament, John Halliday. The by-election was contested by Robert Maxwell on behalf of the Whigs, and Sir John Pole, 5th Baronet for the Tories. Maxwell was elected with a majority of 56. The election had over 700 rejected votes, and the result caused rioting in Taunton, during which two people were killed.
The election was fiercely contested, and both sides incurred great expenses during the campaign. There was not another contested election in Taunton for almost twenty years, and during that time the Taunton Market House Society was set up with the aim of preventing the bad blood of a contested election, and to spend money that would have otherwise been spent on campaigning on improving the town. Maxwell remained as one of Taunton's members of parliament until 1768.
In the mid-18th century, the parliamentary constituency of Taunton, which had an electorate of around 500, returned predominantly Whig members of parliament, partly due to an agreement between Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont and the local Dissenters; Lord Egremont, the chief landowner in the borough, would nominate a candidate for one of the two seats, while the Dissenters would name the second. Nationally, parliament had been controlled by the Whigs since 1715, in what was dubbed the "Whig Supremacy" by Basil Williams. At the 1754 general election, Lord Egremont put forward his brother-in-law, George Carpenter, 3rd Baron Carpenter, while the Dissenters nominated one of their own, John Halliday. The pair were elected unopposed. Two months after the election, on 8 June 1754, Halliday died, resulting in a by-election being called to fill the vacant seat.
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