ABSTRACT
Westmorland's largest town, Kendal, had been publishing its own newspapers since 1731; by 1818 the Westmorland Advertiser and Kendal Chronicle, established in 1811 and universally referred to as the Kendal Chronicle or simply the Chronicle, was its most important title, with extensive local and more moderate national. As De Quincey's first editorial on the 1818 election shows, Henry Brougham was defeated on 3 July after four days of polling at Appleby, county town of Westmorland. Many of De Quincey's pieces in the current section reflect fear of this prospect with its accompanying threat of a slow erosion of the Lowther vote. Such sentiments would only have been deepened by the fact that Brougham 'was vowing to contest every future Westmorland election as long as he lived [and] announced that he was setting up a permanent county association to renew the party faith'.
