[7] John Biggs the elder had come to the town from Withybrook in Warwickshire at the end of the eighteenth century and set up a small hosiery business.

Eventually, this led to Walmsley and Gardner being unseated and replaced by John Ellis and Richard Harris, causing a 15-year battle between local Liberal factions.

[11][7] Biggs held the seat until 1863, when he recognised a union was needed between the warring Liberal factions—spurred by a Conservative victory by William Unwin Heygate at an 1861 by-election for the borough—and resigned from politics altogether.

The town hall he had campaigned for during his earlier political life was approved and built, frame-rent was abolished, and the reunited Liberal party was "rescued... from their inertia".

Encouraged by the campaigning of local printer John Burton, the response was so great that the plan was changed to involve the erection of a statue in the town.

[14] P. L. Quinn suggests that the character of Augustus Debarry in George Eliot's novel Felix Holt, the Radical is based upon John Biggs.