COCKS, Hon. John Somers I (1760-1841).

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

20 Mar. 1782 - 1784
1784 - 1790
1790 - 30 Jan. 1806

Family and Education

b. 6 May 1760, 1st s.of Charles Cocks, 1st Baron Somers, by Elizabeth, da. of Richard Eliot of Port Eliot, Cornw.; half-bro. of Hon. Philip James Cocks*. educ. Harrow 1770-1; Westminster 1774-8; St. Alban Hall, Oxf. 1778. m. (1) 19 Mar. 1785, Margaret (d. 9 Feb. 1831), da. and h. of Rev. Treadway Russell Nash, DD, of Bevere, Worcs., 3s. 1da.; (2) 3 June 1834, Jane, da. of James Cocks, banker, of London, wid. of Rev. George Waddington, rector of Northwold, Norf., and sis. of James Cocks*, s.p. suc. fa. as 2nd Baron Somers 30 Jan. 1806; cr. Earl Somers 17 July 1821.

Offices Held

Capt. Worcs. yeomanry 1794, maj. 1796, lt.-col. commdt. 1799-1811; col. Worcs. vol. cav. 1798, 1803.

Recorder, Gloucester 1811; high steward, Hereford 1816; ld. lt. Herefs. 1817-d.

Biography

Cocks came in for Reigate on the family interest from 1790 until he succeeded to the title. Having hitherto sided with Pitt, he assured him, 1 Aug. 1790, that he wished him to be ‘strongly supported in the present critical situation of foreign politics’, and offered his attendance for the purpose. On 12 Apr. 1791 he voted with opposition on the Oczakov question, having explained on 29 Mar. that ‘he wished to judge favourably of ministers and he thought they had acted well till the present occasion’. He would not support Grey’s motion of 20 Feb. 1792, because he thought it came too late, but voted for Whitbread’s against the Russian armament on 1 Mar. Having the year before abandoned his support of the religious dissenters’ lobby, he had no truck with opposition thereafter. On 6 Mar. 1794 he approved the militia augmentation bill, explaining that if he seldom spoke it was because ‘he never wished to repeat what he heard from the House in much better language’. On 17 Mar. he stated the case against General Lafayette, but was not heard on 28 Mar., speaking when the House was clamorous for the question. He was a teller against the managers of Warren Hastings’s trial, 29 Apr. 1794. In 1795 he applied to Pitt for a deanery for his maternal grandfather and late that year sent him a ‘treasonable publication’ being circulated at Worcester. On 29 Apr. 1796 he opposed amendment of the Game Laws, objecting to ‘new doctrines’. In 1797 he had a lengthy correspondence with Pitt over improvements he wished to see in the cavalry bill to allow more time for volunteering.1 He served in Ireland in 1798 and on 12 Mar. 1801 justified the Irish martial law bill in terms of his experience there.

Cocks is not known to have divided against Addington’s ministry but was disappointed in Pitt’s second ministry. He informed his cousin Lord Hardwicke in September 1805:

I disapproved of the latter end of his former administration in respect to peace and yet I could not approve of the terms of Mr Addington’s peace. The administration of the latter, however, honest and well meaning, had my support, until it appeared wholly unable to carry on the government, owing perhaps to some lack of energy, and to the general union of parties against it. I then hoped for a strong administration composed of almost all the ability and strength of the country with Mr Pitt at the head. I was therefore sadly disappointed in the event only to find one weak administration changed for another, now still more weak by the failure of the late attempt at re-coalition and by the conduct of Mr Pitt, as impolitic as unjustifiable in respect of the unfortunate and degrading business of Lord Melville.

After denouncing the war and expressing his wish for a ‘safe and honourable peace’, Cocks concluded:

The true old Whig principle of our ancestors, if I apprehend it rightly, is mine. It avoids both extremes, and in many cases will not fear a coalition of extremes in order to produce the happy medium.2

This summary of his attitudes needs qualification. On 19 Feb. 1802 he informed his brother-in-law Reginald Pole Carew* that he ‘sincerely approved’ of Addington’s measures, that ‘almost all’ his friends in Parliament supported them, but that circumstances had obliged him to retire to the country, except when ‘positive public duty’ enjoined attendance. As his father wished for a place from Addington for his younger brother Reginald, he was prepared to attend, hoping that he too would be offered an office ‘suitable to my rank, time of life and long standing in Parliament, which I think a seat at the Treasury board would be’. He wished Addington to know this, but nothing materialized. He took leaves of absence on 28 Mar. and 10 May 1803, for 7 weeks in all. Soon afterwards he offered for Worcestershire on a vacancy, but thought better of it.3 He was in the House in March and April 1804, as some brief speeches on minor issues attest, but did not join opposition. On 13 June in a speech in favour of the abolition of the slave trade, which he said he had supported from the start, he blamed Pitt for the delay in its realization and, after voting for Pitt’s additional force bill on 8 and 11 June, he informed the House that on reflection he must oppose it as inefficient. At the same time he expressed his disappointment at the narrow basis of Pitt’s administration. Next day Sir Evan Nepean informed Hardwicke, ‘Mr Somers Cocks has taken his leave of Pitt. I am sorry for it, though connected as he is, I am not surprised at it.’ Hardwicke replied, 22 June:

I am sorry that Cocks thought it necessary to take the part he did in the debate, and if he were not a man quite incapable of any such motive, it might be supposed that he was influenced by the diminution of numbers on Friday to vote against the bill and the report which he had supported in its former stages. I believe he has no particular connexion by which he is likely to be guided, but he acts from the feeling of the moment, and sometimes by over thinking and refining upon the question that is brought before him. I took it for granted he would not vote after he had delivered his opinion, which he could not avoid doing, and I sincerely wish he could by some way or other be brought to act in connexion with Mr Pitt.4

After this, Cocks was listed first ‘Pitt’, then ‘doubtful’ by the Treasury in September 1804. On 11 June 1805 he called for Melville to be brought to justice, reproaching the Pittites for their party prejudices, and next day voted against them. He was listed ‘doubtful Pitt’ a month later. Meanwhile mutual concern for the security of their interest at Reigate had brought him into collusion with Hardwicke, who wrote to Charles Yorke, 9 Jan. 1806, apropos of the prospects of a broader basis for Pitt’s ministry:

I have had a correspondence lately with Cocks, who is desirous to act with us; and I think we may agree upon such terms as to form a good phalanx of strength. He is a very honourable and well intentioned man, and I am pleased to see him act upon family grounds.

Yorke in reply concurred, but thought that the project would require

some degree of caution and management on account of certain defects in our good friend’s powers of vision and comprehension in matters of business ... I have heard him sometimes speak good sense, and to the purpose in the House; but his judgment and discrimination are not to be depended upon at all times.5

Pitt’s death, followed by Cocks’s father’s a few days later, did not prevent his collaboration with Hardwicke, in support of the Grenville ministry. He likewise went into opposition in 1807, his sons in the Commons following suit. Two of them served in the Peninsula and he dissented from the opposition in his support of that struggle. Farington noted in 1812 that he was ‘a Whig, but a country gentleman Whig, not going all lengths with those politicians who profess themselves to be Whigs’. In a pamphlet war with the bishop of Gloucester in favour of Catholic relief that year he wrote: ‘I really believe the honest Whigs and Tories are both friends to the constitution, but I think the Whigs are the wiser and safer friends’.6

Somers developed an ambition to take over the late Duke of Norfolk’s sphere of influence in Herefordshire and Gloucester after 1815, making little of his interest in Worcestershire. This accentuated his opposition to parliamentary reform, of which he wrote in a pamphlet of 1817:

I have invariably voted against parliamentary reform ... it is the height of folly for a man because he is a Whig in political principles, therefore to give encouragement to what is at this period styled parliamentary reform, and positively wrong for one who sees so strongly as I do, the certain mischief of a radical change in the representation, or of shaking the principles on which the advantages of the present representation rest, to encourage or widen the breach between constitutional Whigs and constitutional Tories.7

On 21 Apr. 1817 he proposed his support to the Liverpool administration, expecting an earldom in return.8 After proving his sincerity, he obtained one in 1821. He died 5 Jan. 1841.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Authors: Brian Murphy / R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. PRO 30/8/124, ff. 42, 44, 47, 48-71.
  • 2. Add. 35763, f. 41.
  • 3. Pole Carew mss CC/L/34; see WORCESTERSHIRE.
  • 4. Add. 35715, f. 84; 35750, f. 157.
  • 5. Add. 35706, ff. 304, 311.
  • 6. Farington, vii. 76; Reply to the protestant letter, 78.
  • 7. A defence of the constitution, 7, 76.
  • 8. Add. 38573, f. 127.