User:Hallett N1/sandbox

Sir Thomas Branthwaite Beevor, 3rd Baronet (1798–1879), was a little known radical supporter of William Cobbett who first saw this campaigner for wider voting rights and parliamentary reform at a meeting in 1823 in Norfolk. Here the veteran controversial campaigner over took a county meeting designed by various Whig dignitaries, including Thomas Coke MP, to send an innocuous petition to government for relief. Cobbett also addressed the six thousand strong crowd demanding the selling of church lands to pay the national debt, reduction in the standing army, the abolition of sinecures and a temporary halt to the payment of tithes. With some confusion and several people trying address the crowd at once in one account, Cobbett's resolution was passed, greatly impressing the young Sir Thomas Beevor. Consequently, the future Baronet used his name and influence to help Cobbett in his struggles with the governments of the time, hoping to get him elected to government and helping with finances. Beevor was at his side in Cobbett's attempt to get elected at Preston, his libel case, when he was elected at Oldham in 1832 and in his later years.