The 1754 Taunton by-election 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.
Background
Vacancy and nominations
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.
The Dissenters proposed Robert Webb, who had previously served as the member for Taunton from 1747 until the general election in 1754, to fill the vacancy. The recent history of the elections in Taunton suggested that no opposition would be offered: the last contested election had been in 1741. That however proved not to be the case, and a group of Tories put forward their own candidate, Sir John Pole, 5th Baronet of Shute in Devon. Webb did not want the expense of a contested election, and withdrew, leaving the Dissenters without a candidate. Unable to find a suitable candidate, the Dissenters appealed to Lord Egremont to locate someone to stand for the Whiggish interest. The Mayor, Henry Manly, was sent to London to meet with the Whig Prime Minister, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, to try and secure a candidate. Manly reported that the Duke of Newcastle did not want the seat to go to a Tory, and was willing to fund the election from the secret service account (more accurately the King's private money, a fund which was not accountable to Parliament). Eventually, through communication with both Lord Egremont and the Duke of Newcastle, Robert Maxwell came forward as the Whig candidate. Maxwell offered to spend up to £3,000 on the election, in addition to the money promised from the secret service fund.
Candidates
John Pole was the only son of Sir William Pole, 4th Baronet. The family owned the Shute House estate in east Devon, and had returned six generations of members of parliament, including John Pole's father. He had inherited the estate, and the baronetcy upon his father's death in 1741. Robert Maxwell was the oldest son of John Maxwell, 1st Baron Farnham, an Irish politician and peer. Robert had been a member of the Parliament of Ireland since 1743 for the constituency of Lisburn. He had not stood for the British parliament during the 1754 general election, though he was by that time almost certainly resident in England.