Frederick Caesar Linfield - Parliamentary Candidate

Parliamentary Candidate

Linfield stood for Parliament at the general election of December 1910 as the Liberal candidate in Horncastle in Lincolnshire but he was defeated by 524 votes by the sitting Conservative MP Lord Willoughby d’ Eresby, who had held Horncastle at each election since 1895. Linfield was soon given another chance at Horncastle however when, only days after the general election, Lord Willoughby succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father, Lord Ancaster. Linfield was formally re-adopted as Liberal candidate on 5 January 1911 in opposition to the new Conservative candidate Captain Archibald G Weigall, who had fought the nearby seat of Gainsborough at the December 1910 general election. The by-election was called for 16 February 1911 but Linfield was not expected to win, given the Unionist hold on the seat in recent times and an analysis of the past results and new voters on the roll enabled the correspondent of The Times newspaper to forecast correctly that the Unionists would hold the seat,.