| AdminHistory | In this election Capt. Charles Henry Paget, son of Sir Charles Paget, the borough member from 1806 to 1826 and 1831 to 1834, was opposed by William Bulkeley Hughes of Plas Coch, who had been an aspirant to parliamentary honours in the borough election of 1835, but had then withdrawn in favour of I.J.E. Nanney. Paget had the support of the reformist element in the consitituency, headed by James Rees, proprietor of the Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald, and the redoubtable Dr O.O. Roberts, who was both his proposer and one of his most energetic agents (see 387, 388). Hughes on the other hand, the Tory representative, was firmly backed by Asheton Smith of Vaenol, and could count on the considerable Orsmby - Gore interest in the contributory borough of Cricieth. Indeed, it was the latter that turned the scales in his favour ; "that cursed Cricieth has swamped us" report O.O. Roberts to Sanderson (395). But, in fact, Hughes' majority was a fairly narrow one of 20, he polling 405 votes as against Paget's 385. It was later maintained by John Trevor, editor of the Caernarvon and Denbigh Herald that the Plas Newydd cause owed its defeat to the treachery of one of Lord Anglesey's agents, John Williams of Bangor (403) - that and the general "supineness of the reformists" (404) |