Claims to be made Freemen - both at Hastings and Rye
Although the Hastings people had been spurred on by the address of Mr. Warre and other gentlemen to demand from the Corporation what they conceived to be their rights, the movement had been previously gaining ground by the example set in the same direction by the inhabitants of Rye.
As early as 1826 these latter claimants commenced an attack on their Corporation rulers, for the restoration of electoral privileges, which they declared had been withheld from them for 70 years, by applying to the Kings Bench for a mandamus to compel the Mayor to admit certain persons to their freedom. To this application, a rule nisi was not granted, and a petition to Parliament was equally ineffective. The next proceeding of the Rye people was to form a political association in furtherance of their aims and the same thing was done at Hastings. In that same year (still antedating the year 1830), Sir Charles Wetherall - of whom more anon - and Gen. Sir Henry Fane were elected for Hastings, whilst Richard Arkwright and Henry Bonham were elected for Rye.
They were all anti-reformers and all Corporation nominees. The candidature of the two last named gentlemen was opposed by Messrs. Benjamin Smith and S. B. Brockett-Chamberlayne. Mr. Smith, who had property in Hastings, where he and his family resided, was afterwards Member for Norwich, which city his father had also represented. Arkwright and Bonham were elected for Rye by the votes of 13 freemen, while their rivals received two votes of freemen and 62 men who for more than a year had paid their scot and lot, but whose notes were rejected. Near the end of the year a small newspaper of reforming tendencies, called the Rye Gazette was established, thus beating Hastings in the efforts of journalism by four years. In the spring of 1827, when there was a new ministry under the premiership of the Rt. Hon. George Canning, who had once represented Hastings, another petition was presented by the aggrieved men of Rye, and as this was of no avail, another petition was sent to the Duke of Wellington, with the like result.
In the following year (1828), additional efforts were made - firstly by an application to the Kings Bench (the expense of which was voluntarily borne by Mr. Benjamin Smith), and secondly, by a request - as was done at Hastings in 1830 - to the Mayor to call a meeting for consultation on the matter but which in both cases was not complied with. In this year, the death of Mr. Bonham occurred and to supply his place a new election at Rye was fixed for the 1st of March. On the preceding evening Col. de Lacy Evans appeared suddenly upon the scene, and offered to become a rival candidate to Mr. Pusey, the Corporation nominee, and also, if informally elected by the scot and lot men, to petition Parliament against the Corporation's choices for the morrow. Pusey was elected by 14 freemen, whilst a much larger number of other men, including freemen voted for the Colonel, who afterward lost no time in presenting his promised petition. The Hastings claimants were now eagerly watching and waiting for the result of such petition and were in ecstasies when after a committee had tried the case in April and May, they resolved, in effect, that the scot and lot men were free and that Col. Evans should have been returned.
Therefore Pusey was unseated and Evans took his place on the 17th of May. Thus triumphant, the people of Rye decided to give their victorious chief a public dinner, which took place in a spacious marquee erected in the Pole Marsh on the 16th of June. At some time before the dinner hour, the Colonel was met at the boundary of the parish on the Peasmarsh road by an immense crowd of carriages, horsemen and pedestrians, (and among them a considerable number from Hastings), who formed a procession to a triumphal arch at Landgate, where an address was presented. After that, the throng moved on to the George Hotel, where dismounts were effected nd the procession was reformed amidst the sounding of trumpets, the beating of drums, the flaunting of colours and the firing of guns. The principal thoroughfares were perambulated, after which about 200 persons sat down to the banquet in celebration of what was held to be a grand political triumph. Mr. Benjamin Smith - so well known at Hastings - being then in America, he was represented on that occasion by his brother. It was that success at Rye which stimulated Hastings into renewed action; hence the demands as before stated on the several dates of June 3rd and 7th, and July 1st and 2nd. Our own people believed that they need only to be persistent in these demands to get them ultimately complied with.
But even the Rye victory, as will be shown, was of short duration.
