1901 Saffron Walden by-election in 1900 he had brought it down to just 110. He had continued working locally to try and eliminate it altogether and must have had high hopes of victory at the by-election. Saffron Walden had at this time a reputation as a town with strong Quaker influences and a prominent member of the Society of Friends, E B Gibson, was one of Gray’s nominators. Saffron Walden constituency at this time was a large rural entity, stretching across north Essex from Hertfordshire to Suffolk with the town itself the only real centre of population, the rest of the division being made
Have with You to Saffron-Walden unanswered. Saffron Walden was Harvey's birthplace and he seems to have withdrawn there to live sometime in 1593. The epistle dedicatory is to Richard Lichfield, a barber-surgeon of Cambridge noted for his ability to make humorous, mock-academic orations. Nashe, who clearly knows something of Lichfield but may not have known him personally, at first addresses him in hyperbolic terms of exaggerated respect. The language chosen for the dedication is probably in imitation of a verbose and comically pedantic style sometimes used by Lichfield, and certain other barber-surgeons at Cambridge, for entertainment. Throughout the epistle Nashe seems to be appealing to