| Description | The "unexpected and sudden" resignation of Sir Richard Bulkeley Williams, the county member since 1832, brought Anglesey face to face with a contested election. First tot enter the lists were the Tories offering as their candidate Owen John Augustus Fuller Meyrick of Bodorgan - "a quiet retiring character" in the opinion of John Sanderson, the Plas Newydd agent (PN/II/28), and a man least likely to "encounter the turmoil of a county representation" the attendant expenses. Early in January 1837 the Liberals, after considering the respective claims and merits of William Owen Stanley of Penrhos, Colonel James Hughes and Sir John Williams of Bodelwyddan, plumped for Stanley (PN/II/47). From the start the scales were rather heavily weighted againt Meyrick; as an anti reformist he found no sympathy in either the Plas Newydd or the Baron Hill camps (cp. PN/II/25-29), and John Sadnerson was convinced that he would not stand without the support of Bulkeley (PN/II/30). He had, however, two staunch protagonists in the persons of Hampton Lewis of Henllys and John Griffith of Garreg-lwyd (cp PN/II/29), an it appears that he could count among his supporters people like the widow Vickers who were influenced less by any strong political considerations than by a personal hatred of the Penrhos fmaily, and the "tyranical" bearing of some of its member (PN/II/62). The contest was on the whole an uneventful one : "The progress of the Anglesey election" writed Sanderson to Lord Anglesey on the second day of poll "has had little to distinguish itself...during a long protracted canvass, but great activity in the respective parties and an unsparing expenditure on the part of Mr Meyrick (PN/II/80). It did not pass, however, without allegations of the coersion and bullying of tenants on the part of the Stanley faction (PN/II/66). The result was a foregone conclusion : Stanley 693 votes, Meyrick 586 - " honourable to the county and creditable to the freeholders and tenants" (PN/II/80) |