| Description | Regarding the Anglesey County Election of 1784.
Written from Beaumaris and giving day-to-day reports - circumstantial and graphic - of the progress of the election, in which Colonel Nicholas Bayly of Plas Newydd defeated Owen Putland Meyrick of Bodorgan. This election marked the culmination of the long feud between the houses of Bodorgan and Plas Newydd which had so agitated Anglesey during the latter half of the 18th century. That it was waged with great vigour and no little violence on both sides is amply evident from the letters. There are references to "broken windows", to a "violent contention between the parties for a man...(whom)... our men carried off in Triumph" (5); to slander and counter-slander at the hustings (6) to "wrangling, jangling and disputation of every sort within the Hall and noise bustle and confusion without". (8) Nor, should be overlook those two succinct and piquant postscripts which Harrison adds to his despatch of Friday evening : "One man of theirs choaked with meat and drink and actually died... a man of ours, no voter, tumbled down stairs and fractured his skull, but not dead" (8).
The poll finally closed on Saturday evening with a majority of 27 in favour of Colonel Bayly. There is more than a hint in these reports that the practice of creating forty-shilling freeholders was freely indulged in by both parties : "Mr Thomas's (Rice Thomas of Coed Alun, Caernarvon, a strong supporter of the Plas Newydd interest) tenants of whose loyalty we are in Fear are established... Mr Meyrick's leases are admitted to be good, which is a heavy shock" (5) |