LITTLETON (formerly WALHOUSE), Edward John (1791-1863), of Teddesley Park, Staffs. and 45 Grosvenor Place, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher, 2009
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

6 June 1812 - 1832
1832 - 11 May 1835

Family and Education

b. 18 Mar. 1791, o.s. of Moreton Walhouse of Hatherton, Staffs. and Anne Cracroft, da. of Abraham Portal of Ludgate Hill, London. educ. Chiswick 1798-1800; Brewood 1800-6; Rugby 1806-7; Brasenose, Oxf. 1809-12; L. Inn 1810. m. (1) 21 Dec. 1812, Hyacinthe Mary (d. 4 Jan. 1849), illegit. da. of Richard Colley Wellesley†, 1st Mq. Wellesley [I], 1s. 3da. (2 d.v.p.); (2) 11 Feb. 1852, Caroline Anne, da. of Richard Hurt of Wirksworth, Derbys., wid. of Edward Davies Davenport*, s.p. suc. gt.-uncle Sir Edward Littleton†, 4th bt., to Teddesley 1812 and took name of Littleton by royal lic. 23 July 1812; fa. 1821; cr. Bar. Hatherton 11 May 1835. d. 4 May 1863.

Offices Held

PC [GB] 12 June 1833, [I] 21 Sept. 1833; chief sec. to ld. lt. [I] May 1833-Nov. 1834.

Maj. Staffs. yeomanry 1814, lt.-col. 1819, lt.-col. commdt. 1829.

Ld. lt. Staffs. 1854-63.

Chairman, Staffs. and Worcs. Canal Co. 1816-63.

Biography

Dubbed ‘that marplot Littleton’ by Thomas Creevey*, but considered ‘a man of good understanding and considerable acquirement, with a large share of vanity accompanied with pride and pomp’ by his Staffordshire neighbour William Dyott, Littleton continued to sit on the former interest of his great-uncle Sir Edward Littleton, whom he had succeeded in the representation.1 Described by Mrs. Arbuthnot as ‘a determined Canningite’, he continued to vote ‘sometimes with, and sometimes against’ the Liverpool ministry.2 The keeper of a detailed journal, which he sometimes ‘omitted for a long time to fill up’ (explaining, ‘when you are in the way of seeing and hearing a great deal, you are too much occupied to record it’), he later recalled that he had

generally voted with the government, opposing it however occasionally on some questions ... of economy, but especially on questions relating to the improvement of criminal law. The great battle of succeeding years was the Catholic question, on which I for several years witnessed with admiration Canning’s unrivalled oratorical powers, and in favour of which I always gave a zealous vote, and something more than a formal support both in Parliament and in my county, where I had on that account much prejudice to encounter.3

The Staffordshire industrialist Sir Robert Peel† abhorred his ‘Catholic politics’, but thought him ‘an excellent commercial Member’.4 In the House, where he aspired to the chair, he fostered a reputation as an authority on procedure and made regular technical interventions. He proposed and served on committees on several private bills, and campaigned for reform of the regulations governing the constitution of such committees, which were adopted by the House, 19 Apr. 1826, 15 Feb. 1827, 26 Feb. 1830. An incessant presenter of petitions, on subjects including the Staffordshire pottery trade, coal duties, malt and beer taxes, Catholic claims, the East India Company’s monopoly, truck and slavery, he steadily opposed ‘any attempt, by the introduction of a standing order, to restrict’ the practice, defending it as a privilege ‘warmly cherished not only by my constituents, but by the public at large’, 21 May 1829.

At the 1820 general election Littleton pledged to continue his support for the ‘extensive manufacturing districts of our county’ in a declaration sent from Vienna, where he was detained on account of his wife’s illness, and deputed his uncle John Walhouse to campaign on his behalf. The controversial decision of the other sitting Member Lord Gower to relinquish his family’s traditional seat rather than face an expensive contest allowed Littleton to come in unopposed.5 Welcoming the collapse of the Trentham interest, the Whig Lord Anson hoped that Littleton would ‘take the hint, and become a better politician than before’.6 He condemned the Western Union canal bill as a ‘gross violation of private property’, 15 May 1820. At a dinner with the duke of Wellington, 19 May, he expressed approval for Lord John Russell’s bill to disfranchise Grampound and transfer its seats to Yorkshire, which ‘occasioned them to immediately stigmatise me as a reformer’.7 He spoke in support of Lord Althorp’s insolvent debtors bill, 26 May. On 1 June he obtained leave for a bill to abolish the ‘oppressive effects’ of the truck system, which he read a second time ‘to the joy of the Staffordshire nail makers, at whose request I introduced it’, 23 June.8 He argued for hearing inquiry evidence before the introduction of trade bills and was appointed to the select committee on the subject, 14 June. That day he spoke and voted for inquiry into Anglo-Irish trade, claiming that abolition of the ten per cent duties ‘would be of infinite advantage to the starving manufacturers’. He was a minority teller for exempting the potteries from them, 10 July 1820, and endorsed a petition for their repeal, 16 Feb. 1821. He voted with opposition for economies, 4 July 1820.

He ignored the government’s ‘expresses’ urging his attendance at a meeting on the Queen Caroline affair, 21 Aug. 1820; but Huskisson informed Canning, 30 Jan. 1821, that ‘many of our friends (Littleton for one) who had come down to vote for Lord Archibald [Hamilton] turned against him’, and he divided in defence of ministers’ conduct, 6 Feb.9 Supporting a Birmingham petition complaining of distress, 8 Feb., he admitted that it had partly resulted from what had been ‘very properly done by government with respect to the currency’, but also blamed the ‘system of taxation’ and suggested that ‘a tax bearing equally on funded and landed property’ would prove ‘a great relief to the farmer, as well as the manufacturer’. Apprehending that his views might have been misinterpreted (the radical Whig Henry Grey Bennet, for example, recorded in his diary that Littleton ‘called the fundowner a monster and recommended an attack upon him’) he explained that he favoured taxes both ‘on land and on the national debt’, 12 Feb. The Whig Henry Labouchere* nevertheless considered that ‘the speeches of Littleton and still more of Curwen’ were ‘a declaration of war against the fundholders’.10 On 12 Feb. he called for the redistribution of Grampound’s seats, arguing that it was ‘most improper and impolitic, that so many large and populous towns ... should remain unrepresented’. He was absent from the division lists on Catholic claims, 28 Feb., but present to vote with ministers on the revenue, 6 Mar. He was appointed to select committees on agricultural distress, 7 Mar. 1821, 18 Feb. 1822. He recommended changes to the regulations governing the sale of bread and was appointed to the related select committee, 15 Mar. 1821. He spoke and voted for repeal of the additional malt duty, 21 Mar., but abstained on 3 Apr. He supported calls for country banks to provide ‘either legal coin or bank of England pound notes’ in exchange for ‘their larger notes’, 13 Apr. He divided for the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 4 June 1821.

Littleton divided with government against more extensive tax reductions, 11, 21 Feb., but with opposition for naval reductions, explaining that ‘the altered situation of the country warranted an alteration of his vote’, 1 Mar., and abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822. He condemned the salt tax as ‘grievous and impolitic’, 28 Feb., but opposed immediate repeal as ‘inconsistent’ with recent measures ‘to support public credit with a sinking fund’. He welcomed the vagrancy laws amendment bill, 29 Mar. 1822, and testified to the success of its operation, 4, 10 Feb. 1824. He spoke in favour of a clause proposed to be added to the licensing bill ‘encouraging the sale of beer of a diminished strength’, 24 May 1822. He divided for criminal law reform, 4 June, and presented two petitions against the truck system, 17 June 1822. He voted with government on the sinking fund, 5 Mar., and against tax reductions, 10 Mar., and warned that ‘too sudden a repeal’ of the coal duties would ‘very materially’ injure investors, 27 Mar. 1823. He divided against repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., and inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. He condemned the French invasion of Spain, 30 Apr., but discountenanced war as ‘our commerce and manufactures were now in a flourishing state’ and should not be risked in ‘a quarrel which was not ... our own’. He criticized the combination bill’s ‘minute and vexatious regulations’, which ‘no man connected with the manufacturing districts could possibly approve of’, 27 May. He voted with government on the currency, 12 June 1823. He divided against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb., and the usury laws repeal bill, 26 Feb., 8 Apr., which he described as ‘impolitic’, 9 Apr. 1824. He condemned proposals to encourage importation of foreign silks as a ‘menace’ to which his constituents were ‘unanimously opposed’, 5 Mar., but three days later announced that ‘his opinion on the question had been altered’ by the ministerial explanation. On 18 Mar. he endorsed the government’s ‘wise and prudent’ policy of ‘keeping out of war’ with France, and ‘at the request’ of Canning, the foreign secretary, moved a successful amendment to the opposition censure motion. George Agar Ellis* thought it ‘a very good speech’ to which ‘the House did not pay all the attention that it deserved’.11 Littleton again opposed proposals to revise the coal duties, 29 Mar., 1 Apr. He voted with government against condemning the trial in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June 1824.

He divided for suppression of the Catholic Association, 26 Feb., and for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. On 28 Mar. he gave notice of ‘a measure for the regulation of the franchise in Ireland’, which he hoped would provide ‘an indispensable accompaniment to Catholic concession’. Next day, however, Canning wrote to complain of his fixing the first reading for 14 Apr., ‘the day on which the House meets after the recess’, and entreated him ‘to reconsider’ and ‘not to moot that question, till the Catholic bill had passed a second reading’. Wilmot Horton protested in similar terms that Burdett had postponed the relief bill ‘specially on account of the inconvenience accruing to Members from attendance on that day’, but Spring Rice advised him to ‘adhere to your present resolutions’ as ‘I am sure we should do well on that day’. Littleton postponed until the 22nd when, as Canning had promised, he experienced ‘no difficulty’ in obtaining leave to bring in the bill.12 On the second reading, 2 Apr., he explained that the bill, ‘in every respect his own measure’, was intended to remove ‘fictitious votes’ from the Irish registers and raise the minimum freehold qualification from 40s. to £10, which would ‘take from the Catholic population an influence in elections which was neither useful to their interests nor safely exercised’. Sir John Nicholl* noted in his diary that the measure, which was carried by 233-185, was ‘opposed by the ultra-Whigs as a disfranchisement and abandoning [of] popular rights’, but ‘supported by those who supported Catholic claims, as tending to help in the Catholic bill’.13 Littleton defended the disfranchisement of freeholders who ‘exercised the elective franchise by a fraud on the constitution’, 9 May, and ‘could not conceive on what principle those who supported parliamentary reform could oppose this measure’, 12 May; but following the Lords’ rejection of Catholic relief he withdrew it, 27 May. On 10 Mar. he opposed a motion to prevent interested Members from voting on private bills, observing in his diary that he ‘carried the House so completely ... that Hume did not divide’.14 He endorsed a Birmingham petition against the iron, copper and metal duties, 11 Mar., and warned that Staffordshire manufacturers would be ‘seriously affected’ by a proposed reduction of the china duties, 25 Mar. He voted to revise the corn laws, 28 Apr., but for the duke of Cumberland’s annuity bill, 6 June. He presented and endorsed a Nottingham petition against the exportation of machinery, 14 June 1825, and spoke thus, 11 May 1826. He called for the restoration of Sir Robert Wilson* to his army rank, 17 June 1825.

Rumours of an impending dissolution that September prompted Littleton to ask Sir Robert Peel to second his nomination, as a representative of ‘the manufacturing body’. William Peel* told his brother the home secretary that the letter ‘is (as I think the writer also) a perfect piece of humbug’, but added that their father intended to ‘second the nomination, stating that he does not approve of Littleton’s Catholic politics’. Littleton welcomed the subsequent postponement of a dissolution, informing the home secretary that it ‘cannot fail to be regarded by those who have compromised their interests with their constituents on the Catholic question as a gracious act on the part of the government’; and Canning observed that ‘your constituents will not have an opportunity of throwing your disfranchisement bill in your face, on the hustings, this year’.15 Littleton duly lost his £50 wager with the Speaker that Parliament would be dissolved before 1 Nov. 1825.16 He voted for inquiry into silk trade petitions, 24 Feb. He was a majority teller for the resolutions governing the passage of private bills, 19 Apr., and against a proposed amendment to the licensing bill, 12 May. He was not unduly concerned by the circulation of Staffordshire handbills urging the electors to choose anti-Catholic Members, telling his agent:

The mass of the people are seldom unjust, and I cannot think that after 14 years’ zealous devotion to the county representation and parliamentary business, during which period my vote on the Catholic question has always been the same ... they would now be influenced to turn around upon me, and tell me I am unworthy of their confidence.17

He spoke in similar terms at the 1826 general election, when he also contended that Canning’s foreign policy afforded the ‘best hopes for an enduring peace’ and that distress had ‘arisen mainly from natural causes’, but advocated a ‘gradual’ alleviation of the tax burden. Rumours of an anti-Catholic candidate came to nothing and he was returned unopposed.18

Writing to Canning to support his claims to the premiership, 22 Feb. 1827, Littleton described ‘a meeting of the opposition’ at which Lord John Russell, James Abercromby ‘and several others’ had agreed that ‘your accession to the principal post in the administration’ would be ‘a great advantage to the principles they support in common with yourself’ and ‘a great gain to their own views as a party’.19 He was ‘one of the most earnest and active members’ of the ‘petit comité’ which met at Norfolk House in support of Catholic relief, for which he voted, 6 Mar. 1827.20 He presented petitions and spoke against the game laws, 28 Mar. He boasted privately that the Canning ministry had ‘the entire confidence of the king, and the heir presumptive, and the best understanding with the Whigs’, and hoped that ‘the old Tories will be kept out for ever’, 23 Apr.; but he reassured his agent that there was ‘not the slightest ground’ for the widespread reports that he would be made a peer, noting that he would ‘never ask for such a thing, much less intrigue for it’, 28 Apr.21 He argued for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 2 July. On 19 May he had informed his agent that he could ‘not see how even the Catholic question is to turn out the government’ since they were not pledged ‘to it as a cabinet measure’, but warned of other ‘defects in its construction which endanger its continuance, for instance were Canning to die, there is not a soul on the treasury bench who could succeed him’. He returned from Holland to attend his funeral, when he ‘saw more men of character and talent in tears than I had ever expected to have seen on any occasion’.22 Lord Londonderry informed Wellington of having been ‘long since told by Littleton that if Canning’s health failed, Robinson [Lord Goderich] would succeed him’.23 According to Sir Henry Hardinge*, Littleton believed that Goderich’s ministry was the ‘best that could possibly be formed’, that it would ‘gradually be strengthened by the old Tory interests, excepting a small band who will adhere to the ex-ministers’ and that Wellington ‘must accept the army’.24 Writing to Peel, 6 Dec. 1827, he ‘contradicted the calumnious report’ that ‘Huskisson had declared it impossible for him to continue in the cabinet, if you were restored to it’, and later claimed that ‘this correspondence was the means of smoothing the negotiations that brought the parties together in the [Wellington] cabinet in the month following’.25 He considered a ‘union’ of Peel and Huskisson as ‘the most desirable of all things in the present state of the country’ and wrote to congratulate Peel ‘on the realisation of that event’, 23 Jan. 1828.26 Meeting Wellington, 29 Jan., he informed him that ‘as the last administration could not hold together it was evident no one party was strong enough to form one alone’ and that he would support the government ‘as long as a liberal system should be persevered in’. On being asked if he ‘had noticed in the ... Commons any symptom of organization of opposition’, he replied, ‘none whatever. How could there be any? Every leading man of every party had been in some of the governments of the last year, and all had been parties to the same measures’.27

Littleton, who considered the inclusion of Lords Londonderry and Aberdeen to be ‘the only discreditable part of the new cabinet arrangements’, was appointed to the finance committee, 15 Feb. 1828, ‘on a distinct understanding that I shall vote on each question as I think proper’, but he was not made its chairman, as had been widely rumoured.28 Elected to Brooks’s the following day, he recalled how he had been blackballed the previous year ‘when I was supporting a government more than half Whiggish, and now the Whigs are out, they have elected me!’29 Giving ‘the House an extempore effusion’ of his opinions, 18 Feb., he pledged support for the administration, defended Huskisson’s acceptance of office and pronounced his ‘perfect confidence in the declaration of the duke, that he will have a bona fide neutrality observed in the cabinet with reference to Catholic claims’. That day, however, Wellington told Peel that he was ‘a little uneasy about the composition’ of the finance committee, as he could not ‘consider Mr. Littleton and Mr. Wilmot Horton as friends’.30 He was part of a deputation to Wellington, 22 Feb., to put the case for transferring East Retford’s seats to Birmingham rather than extending its franchise to Bassetlaw, against which he spoke, 25 Feb., and voted, 21 Mar.31 Commenting that he was ‘not a friend to the general question of reform in Parliament’, 19 May, he explained that he was ‘anxious for the success of this bill, as no measure is better calculated to prevent anything like violent innovation’. He presented numerous petitions against the Test Acts, 20, 22 Feb., and voted for their repeal, 26 Feb., observing in his diary that although he was ‘undecided even to the last’, the ‘government spoke so feebly, and all the arguments the other way were so ably put, that it was impossible to resist’.32 He spoke against infusing the issue with ‘party spirit’, 28 Feb. He divided for the spring guns bill, 23 Mar. He called for turnpike bills to be exempted from parliamentary fees, arguing that they were ‘unjust’ as ‘every one has an interest in the improvement of public roads’, 21 Apr. He was appointed to the committee for their amendment, 19 May, and on 11 July introduced new resolutions which were adopted early the next session. He voted against condemning chancery delays, 24 Apr. He was added to the committee on the Catholic land tax, 6 May, and voted for relief, 12 May. On 16 May he informed the Irish viceroy Lord Anglesey of his hope that Burdett’s tactic of ‘abstaining hereafter from discussing details till the concurrence of the Lords’ would ‘finally lead to that concurrence between the two Houses which will force on the government the settlement of the question’, and added that ‘the duke’s government increases in strength daily ... founded on an almost universal belief of his fitness for his post’ and that ‘no administration in my time has ever stood so well with the public’.33 Following the resignation of the Huskissonites in May, he told Huskisson, ‘I don’t know what the devil to do. I have been going into opposition rapidly, especially in the finance committee, where the government has not acted up to its early professions’.34 He was one of the ‘ejected liberals’ identified by Lord Palmerston*, 4 June, and his name appears in the other lists of Huskissonites that month. He presented petitions against bull-baiting but cautioned against any ‘positive enactment’ that would ‘deprive the poor and working classes of this species of amusement’, 6 June. He enquired about the government’s policy on the expiring silk duties and presented petitions for their reduction, 12 June. He called for ‘some delay’ to the additional churches bill, 23 June. He supported the cider excise licensing bill, 26 June. Next day he asked whether Peel would support the transfer of East Retford’s franchise ‘to a great town like Birmingham or Manchester’, but got no reply. He expressed sympathy with British claimants seeking compensation for loss of property during the Napoleonic wars and attacked the conduct of the commissioners responsible for handling their claims, 1 July 1828, 4, 28 May 1829. He condemned the Foreign Enlistment Act for its ‘most injurious influence upon the shipping and manufacturing interests’, 3 July, and voted for ordnance reductions, 4 July 1828.

Littleton, who had observed in his diary, 7 Feb., that the ‘Speaker told me seriously that he had heard me mentioned as likely to succeed him in the chair’, dismissed a fresh rumour that he ‘was likely to be elected speaker’ in a letter to Robert Percy Smith*, 10 Sept. 1828:

How it originated I cannot conceive ... That I would take the office, all conscious as I am of my unfitness for it, and would fearlessly face that family of disease (piles, fistulae, stone, gravel, strangury, and constipation) for the sake of such an honour, I will not conceal from you. But depend on it, it is an honour not reserved for me ... I have disregarded my connection with the duke’s family, and have followed the remnants of the Canning party to ‘honest corner’; while I lost no opportunity last session of giving Peel such kicks as a country gentleman could give, on the East Retford question. He was more than angry with me: and no doubt dislikes me for it ... It cannot be that I stand well at Downing Street.35

Lord Bathurst informed Wellington, 29 Sept. 1828, that ‘there is a silent canvass going on in the favour of Mr. Littleton being Speaker, on the supposition that there will be a vacancy’, and that ‘he will be supported by the Whigs and the Canningites, and have some friends among the country gentlemen and will therefore be a formidable rival to Sir John Beckett if, as it is imagined, Sir John should be proposed’.36 No vacancy occurred.

On 8 Sept. 1828 Littleton informed Huskisson that he was convinced that Wellington meant ‘to propose some arrangement on the Catholic question’, noting ‘some strange changes of sentiment among many of the [Protestant] party’ which would make him ‘indifferent about risking a difference with Peel’. Writing from Ireland, 29 Oct. 1828, where his visit to ‘nine or ten counties’ had ‘rather altered’ his hostile ‘feeling about the Brunswickers of the north’, he predicted that the duke himself ‘would propose nothing, but that if a bill were sent up by a large majority next session he would make what he could of it’.37 He and John Fazakerley* were ‘satisfied that the duke is honest’ about the question and concurred in thinking that ‘it looks as if he means waiting for a vote of ... Commons’, 27 Jan. 1829.38 Writing to his wife, 5 Feb., Littleton rejoiced ‘at the prospect of an early and complete settlement of the question’, but thought that ‘after Peel’s speech in 1827 in which he declared his sole motive for quitting Canning was his certain advocacy of the Catholic question, his facility in turning now is rather strange’. ‘We liberals are dying with laughter at the just confusion and shame, to which roguery, selfishness and intolerance are at length put’, he commented in his diary, 6 Feb., adding to his wife four days later:

It is to me, for who for 17 years have fought in the ranks of the friends of religious liberty, nuts and sugar to see the men who from selfish and unchristian like motives have been struggling to keep the Catholics down politically, at length left to do their own dirty work alone, without one name of respectability to help themselves with ... They are all now in shame and confusion ... Peel has done himself great honour, and should be stoutly supported.39

He duly assisted Peel in his contest against Sir Robert Inglis*, ‘the prince of bigots’, at Oxford University, although he felt that Peel had been ‘wrong to resign’ and ‘having resigned ... wrong to offer himself again, and put his friends to a test under awkward circumstances’.40 He presented petitions against emancipation with which he differed, 23, 27 Feb., 6, 26 Mar., and in favour, 9, 26 Mar., and voted accordingly, 6 Mar., when he congratulated the House, and again, 30 Mar. On 19 Mar. he welcomed the Irish freeholders bill, ‘having offered ... in 1825 a measure similar in principle’ as a ‘necessary accompaniment to the measure of relief’, and argued that without it ‘we shall have, not Catholic equality, but Catholic ascendancy’. Writing to his agent, 29 Apr., he claimed to

have given myself great pains by inquiring among the best informed Irish to ascertain how many Roman Catholics might ... get into Parliament from Ireland under the present modification of the electors’ franchises: I am assured universally not ten. I know that there are not more who could get returned from England. Here endeth my first epistle to the Romans.41

He argued against the issue of the East Retford writ and voted for the transfer of its seats to Birmingham, 5 May 1829, 11 Feb. 1830. He contended that the restriction of small notes had ‘considerably increased’ the ‘evil’ of the truck system, 11 May 1829. He presented and endorsed petitions against renewal of the East India Company’s charter, 12, 14 May, having advised his agent that he was ready ‘to join with the public in its efforts to completely destroy that monopoly’.42 He argued against allowing Daniel O’Connell to take his seat unhindered as he had been ‘elected eleven months ago, under the old law’ and had ‘no claim to the benefit of the new’, 21 May. (On hearing that O’Connell was to pass through Bilston early the following year, he told his agent, ‘catch him, and burn him alive!’)43 He opposed the Rotherhithe poor bill and refuted ‘imputations’ circulated against him by its parliamentary agent, 28 May 1829.

Littleton spoke in favour of the lunatic licenses bill, 9 Feb. 1830, when he was appointed to the select committee on the East India Company. Informing his wife of the government’s difficulties and their small minority on the address, 10 Feb., he observed, ‘there is no certainty for them on any point, party being dissolved, they do not know their opponents. Neither do they know their friends ... Questions will continually arise incidentally in debates, on they will find themselves basketted’.44 On 17 Feb. he sought leave to introduce his truck bill, and he inveighed against the ‘policy and expediency of connecting this subject with the currency’ the following day. After postponing his motion for 25 Feb. and abortive bids to obtain leave, 17, 18 Mar., it was introduced by Benson, 1 Apr. On 3 May Littleton appealed for its ‘consideration’ by a select committee, of which he was appointed chairman that day. He sought clarification of the government’s attitude at the end of May, but was warned by Herries, president of the board of trade, that ‘there may be a greater difference even with respect to the principle than you supposed’.45 Littleton, a majority teller for the amendments to the second reading of the bill, 23 June, 1 July, condemned the delaying tactics of Hume, its chief opponent. On 9 July he was forced to abandon it, but hoped that the next Parliament would sanction ‘some effective measures for the repeal of the most baneful system that ever afflicted the manufacturing body of this or any other nation’. He voted against Lord Blandford’s parliamentary reform scheme, 18 Feb., but for the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 Mar. He divided against ministers on the interference of British troops in the internal affairs of Portugal, 10 Mar., and the treasurership of the navy, 12 Mar. He welcomed their proposed remission of beer duties, which would ‘not only be an assistance to the labourer, but to the agriculturist’, 16 Mar, but he condemned ordnance monopolies and voted for a revision of taxation, 25 Mar., and against the estimates, 29 Mar. He opposed the Scottish and Irish poor removal bill, 26 May, urging either inquiry or repeal of ‘the whole law of removal’. He voted for abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830.

At the 1830 general election Littleton offered again, stressing his support for ‘transferring the franchise from convicted boroughs to the large towns’, hostility to slavery and the East India Company’s monopoly and campaign to end truck. Observing that ‘violent party distinctions were more nearly obliterated than they had been, for a long series of years’ and that ‘every honest man’ now ought to exercise ‘private judgement’, he promised to ‘join any party, in whatever quarter of the House it might sit, for the purpose of obtaining some remission of the public burdens’. He was again returned unopposed. ‘He is such a favourite with his constituents’, remarked his wife, ‘that there is no danger of his being turned out, like so many county Members have been this time’.46 Writing to Lord Wharncliffe, 12 Sept., Littleton hoped that ‘the new reign, and the notoriety of the present king’s opinions being more liberal, or at all events more flexible than his predecessor’s’, would provide ‘an honourable ground for an attempt to improve the construction of the government’ and remedy its ‘extreme weakness in talent’, adding that ‘if from long connection with the old Canningite party I can be of any assistance ... my regard for the duke ... and my cordial respect for Peel would make me a most willing agent’.47 That month he was listed by ministers as one of 11 members of the ‘Huskisson party’. He believed that by ‘the calamity’ of Huskisson’s fatal accident, which he witnessed, ‘an obstacle was removed’, whereupon he, Wharncliffe and ‘several other independent parties, not so inveterately hostile to the duke, urged on various members of his government the importance of renewing his efforts to effect a junction’.48 Agar Ellis, however, distrusted Littleton, who ‘wants to be Speaker’, believing that he and Wharncliffe ‘would gladly coalesce with Wellington, but if the Canning party can be kept together, I doubt their impudence enough to go over alone’.49 Following the breakdown of private negotiations between Palmerston and Wellington, Littleton

regretted so much that they should not have come to a more close understanding, both as to men and measures, and was so convinced that on the latter point the duke could at that moment make great concessions, without inconsistency, that I was determined to talk to [Charles] Arbuthnot* on the subject. Accordingly I called on him ... [31 Oct.] and found that he and the duke were under an idea that Palmerston’s friends would insist on the introduction of [Henry] Brougham*. I disabled his mind on this point, and told him that Graham and Stanley were, in my belief, the only Whigs in the ... Commons Palmerston would care for, and perhaps Lord Grey in the House of Lords, that it appeared to me these parties might honourably join the government on the following terms: the duke of Kent to be regent, a reduced civil list, a bill to abolish pluralities in civil offices, abolition of the China monopoly, two Members to be given to three or four large towns, with a positive engagement that every future case of convicted borough should be a case of transfer.50

According to Mrs. Arbuthnot, Littleton hoped that ‘Pal[mersto]n and Co.’ might drop all their demands except parliamentary reform, of which ‘the most moderate would satisfy them, that is to say, representatives for four great towns to be obtained by taking one from eight rotten boroughs and some alterations in county voting’.51 He accordingly deplored Wellington’s declaration against reform, which had made ‘all amalgamation of parties ... now hopeless’, telling his agent, 11 Nov., ‘never was there greater folly’:

What makes the duke’s conduct more silly, is that men’s minds were attuned to moderation on the subject of reform. They were united in temperate views, and would have thought representation given to a few great towns, as many rotten boroughs extinguished, and a reform of the Scotch franchise a great thing. Now we must fight for it.52

On 9 Nov. Littleton accused O’Connell of deliberately misrepresenting his remark that he ‘did not care about Ireland’ in terms of his truck bill, which had appeared out of context in the Dublin Evening Post of 23 Oct., and repudiated the charge. James Hope Vere recalled that he ‘never saw in the House such a storm or heard such cheering’.53 Littleton helped to vote the Wellington ministry out of office on the civil list, 15 Nov. Writing to Wellesley, 19 Nov. he reported that Palmerston

had no sooner received a letter from Lord Grey informing him he had just left the king ... than he came to me to tell me what had passed between Grey and himself, and concluded by asking me what objects I had for myself. I of course stammered out ‘none’, and then slipped in a ... suggestion others had frequently made to me, re[garding] the anticipated vacancy of the speaker’s chair. I told him I would not ask for a peerage but through the chair, I should value the attainment of that distinction. He commended my ambition and promised his support.54

On 26 Nov., however, he observed that ‘the Speaker will I fear hold on’, not wanting to ‘ask to be removed’, adding, ‘I must devise means of making him or others think of it in the course of this session. At all events I should think a coronation would carry him off’. He duly asked Grey for the government’s support whenever Manners Sutton retired, 6 Dec. 1830, claiming that ‘many of the Members who now occupy minor departments’ had ‘voluntarily expressed’ their preference for him, that he had the backing of Palmerston and Graham and some leading backbenchers, and that ‘pecuniary compensation either now or hereafter is no object to me’. Grey, however, declined ‘to enter into any engagement’ in advance of a vacancy.55

On 14 Dec. 1830 Littleton resumed his campaign against the truck system and secured leave to reintroduce his bill by 167-27. He moved its second reading, 11 Feb., but its commitment was repeatedly deferred until 22 Mar. 1831, when the provisions prohibiting truck and the repeal of earlier Acts were divided into two separate bills. The repeal bill passed its third reading, 20 Apr., but both measures were overtaken by the dissolution that month. Reintroduced in the Lords by Wharncliffe, 28 June, they passed their third reading, 5 Aug., and after being steered through the Commons by Littleton, they were read a third time, 5 Oct., the repeal bill without opposition, and the prohibition bill with amendments which passed 61-4, with Littleton as teller. That day he noted in his diary:

Passed my truck bills after 20 months incessant attention, and correspondence of more than 1,000 letters, constant interviews, daily attendance in the House to watch opportunities of bringing on the different stages. My mind is quite relieved.

The bills received royal assent (as 1 and 2 Gul. IV, cc. 36, 37), 15 Oct. 1831, and Littleton later claimed that ‘in the Potteries the practice has ceased’ and in Gloucestershire was ‘waging an unequal war with the law, which I am told will put it down’.56 He criticized the game laws, 8, 15 Feb. 1831, when he approved a bill to regulate the employment of cotton factory apprentices. He contended that ‘great dissatisfaction’ existed ‘amongst the agricultural and manufacturing interests at the immunity from taxes conceded to the fundholder’, 14 Feb. He defended the government’s ‘very trifling augmentation’ of the army, 21 Feb., and their grant of £25,000 to the queen, 25 Mar. He endorsed petitions from the Potteries for repeal of the duty on boric acid, 30 Mar. 1831, explaining that use of its cheaper alternative, white lead, meant that workers ‘seldom live beyond the age of forty’.

Littleton had opposed Lord Chandos’s motion to disfranchise Evesham, 16 Dec. 1830, insisting that his support for a full measure of reform was not the ‘result of any new-born zeal’. By now, as he informed Wellesley, 20 Dec. 1830, he was convinced that

nothing short of an extensive and almost republican basis of franchise will satisfy the country. We can still have a milder measure of reform than we could if reform were resisted six months longer, but already it is a problem how the monarchy and the peerage can coexist with the independent House of Commons we are about to construct ... Retford and the duke’s speech occurring about the same time with the French revolution have brought us to this crisis.57

Citing the numerous reform petitions from Staffordshire which he had been asked to present, 28 Feb. 1831, he noted that they were ‘signed by Whig and Tory, poor and rich, and by persons of all classes and conditions’ and that he had never seen ‘so much unanimity on any public question before’. Littleton, who had privately expressed to Hume ‘very grave doubts of the possibility of carrying reform with this present House’, 29 Dec. 1830, commended the ministerial reform bill’s ‘comprehensiveness and its perfect safety’ to his agent, 4 Mar. 1831, hoping that the country might ‘be roused from one end to the other, if the bill be rejected, for its only chance will be to get a dissolution’.58 He voiced his ‘indignation’ at seeing ‘the term "revolutionary" applied to a measure’ which would ‘produce great benefit’ and insisted that Huskisson would have supported it, 9 Mar. He voted for its second reading, 22 Mar., spoke again in its support, 18 Apr., and divided against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment the following day. ‘Thank God we are prorogued’, he informed his agent, 22 Apr. 1831.59 At the ensuing general election he declared his ‘firm support’ for the ‘strictly conservative’ reform bill, which was ‘indispensable for the health and preservation of the constitution, and the peace and welfare of the country’. He instructed his agent to work ‘elsewhere in promoting the cause of reform’, as ‘you are too good a man to employ in a pageant (for such I hope the Staffordshire election will be)’. Rumours of opposition by Peel came to nothing and he was returned unopposed.60

Littleton presented the Turnpike Acts continuance bill, 27 June 1831, and was reappointed to the East India committee the following day. He demanded more time to consider the register of deeds bill, 30 June. He opposed withholding the Liverpool writ since ‘under the present system there is not a borough in England and Wales in which we can expect an election to take place without some kind of corruption’, 8 July. He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, at least twice against an adjournment, 12 July, and steadily supported its details, although he objected to ‘taking the amount of assessed taxes as the tests of the prosperity of the manufacturing districts’ on the ground that ‘their capital is employed in trade’, 5 Aug., and was a leading campaigner for giving representatives to the Potteries. In an undated memorandum, he claimed to have submitted plans for the enfranchisement of Stoke in December 1830 to Althorp, who ‘told me he had read it to Grey’s cabinet’, and that when he ‘subsequently found that Gateshead was to have Members’ he had ‘insisted on the equal claim of Walsall’. On 3 July he complained to Althorp that despite his firm belief that the Potteries should be allocated two Members rather than one

at the earnest and very just remonstrance of the government and the friends of the reform bill, I had consented not to move the transfer of Stoke from schedule D to schedule C ... I receive greater unpopularity by it than by any act of my parliamentary life. Judge of my surprise when I heard ... Gisborne give notice that he should move to bring Stockport from schedule D to C, and when he further informed me that Lord John Russell had consented to the measure. My constituents will hardly think when they see this motion that I am acting fairly by them ... I hope I may be released from my engagement ... The cases of Stockport and Stoke are so precisely the same, that the 60,000 of my constituents in the latter place will condemn my conduct.61

He presented and strongly endorsed a Stoke petition for ‘two representatives’, 12 July, and after being informed by Russell that the government would not relent, gave notice of a motion to that effect, 29 July. After attending a meeting at Althorp’s where it was ‘agreed to waive all minute differences of opinion’, 3 Aug., he told his agent that he did not intend ‘without further instructions from my constituents’ to press it; but the following day he voted in committee for giving Stoke two Members, having

made, to my great pain (for I feared embarrassing the government, but was compelled by an engagement made to my constituents) a motion for bringing the Potteries out of schedule D (one Member) and inserting it in schedule C. After a short debate it was negatived, though I think my statement was a strong one.62

The agent handling Stoke’s campaign, however, was far from mollified and in a series of letters to the local press condemned Littleton’s handling of the business, especially his failure to inform the government that ‘Peel and his friends would support the motion’, of which Littleton insisted he had ‘had no knowledge’ until ‘the last minute’, 19 Aug. ‘Had our case been circulated at the time you presented our petition’, the agent remonstrated, 12 Sept., ‘and had you then moved the transfer of Stoke into schedule C, as it was expected you would have done, the Potteries would have had two representatives, or had it been allowed to circulate and the motion made but ten days earlier than it was, the result would have been the same’.63 On 26 July Littleton had advised his agent:

We march slowly in the reform bill. All sorts of unfair tricks are practised to clog and defeat it. Sir Robert Peel affects to dislike it, but never tells his friends privately not to delay it, this is always his way, and gets him the character of a Jesuit. He wishes to upset the bill and defeat the government ... I have had the best constituents for twenty years that ever man had, and hope to repay them by taking a share, by unfailing presence in the House of Commons, in the accomplishment of a measure which shall shut the door of the temple forever to mere dandies, young lifeguardsmen, jobbing lawyers, and money changers.

He later boasted that he had ‘been present in every division except two, and on those I paired. It is sharpish work, and many Members are ill’. ‘Reform, Reform’, he complained in another diary entry, 27 Aug., ‘the dullness of the committee is dreadful’.64 He defended the proposed registration system, 2 Sept., and voted for the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., when he was one of the organizers of a backbenchers’ meeting to oppose the resignation of ministers in the event of defeat.65 He urged the necessity of ‘reasserting the principle of the bill’ with ‘as little delay as possible’ following its rejection by the Lords, 10 Oct., declaring that ‘if I am to be blamed for having become a convert to the necessity of introducing at once an extensive measure of reform, the country at large must share in the censure, for my opinions have changed with those of the country’. Privately he confessed that ‘I omitted half of what I meant to say through want of self-possession’, brought on by seeing ‘Peel taking notes, and Croker smiling, which annoyed me’.66 He voted (as a teller) for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion that day, and for the revised bill’s second reading, 17 Dec. 1831.

Littleton, who had been asked by Russell to assist with the boundary commission, 21 July, defended the arrangements proposed for Wolverhampton and Walsall during a ‘little skirmish with Croker’, 4, 6 Aug. 1831, and again, 8, 28 Feb., 5, 7 Mar. 1832. He privately urged Althorp to appoint a select committee to ‘suggest satisfactory divisions of most of the counties’, 25 July, and spoke at length in defence of the proposed division, 11 Aug. 1831, commenting in his diary that ‘this was a question of infinite delicacy and difficulty’ whose ‘tendency and object was aristocratic and designed to please the Tories and the Lords’. He was ‘employed daily in keeping the government to their colours’ on it and after a ‘capital division’ that day, which he attributed to ‘Ebrington and myself solely’, he remarked, ‘I was so happy, I could not sleep’. ‘The division of Worcestershire is the only blot in the whole scheme’, he later informed his agent, ‘all other counties divide easily and advantageously’.67 On 1 Sept. he was officially

proposed with 30 others as a commissioner [unpaid] for dividing counties and giving limits to boroughs, and selecting the chief towns for the courts to be held. Some of the opposition objected to Mr. D. Gilbert* and myself as being Members, but no division.68

On 28 Oct. he ‘set to work on the borough reports’ under the supervision of Lieutenant Thomas Drummond of the Royal Engineers. ‘I am hard at work here at the limits for boroughs’, he reported to his agent, 10 Nov., ‘and not a holiday now have I had a chance of over this year’.69 Having discovered ‘some clear cases of fraud on the part of the returning officers of small boroughs’, 11 Nov., the commissioners met with ministers, 15 Nov., when ‘it was thought that the number of houses, and the amount of assessed taxes together would furnish a better test of respectability of each place than the arbitrary line of population proposed in the late bill’; they ‘were accordingly instructed to prepare tables’.70 Littleton warned Russell against Lord Sandon’s attempts to restrict urban voters ‘to the borough elections, and shut them out from counties’, which would ‘lead to a division of the country and of the Members of Parliament into two parties, a town party, and a country party, and jealousy and hatred would thus be engendered, and would endure till one party destroyed the other’.71 He and Ebrington later pledged ‘to die on the benches of the House of Commons sooner than allow town influence to be shut out of county elections’.72 On hearing of ministers’ plans to ‘give two Members to ten places in schedule D’, 8 Dec. 1831, Littleton

rejoiced to find the Potteries was one place, and, though there was some doubt about it, Dudley was agreed upon as another. The Potteries have not behaved well to me, they owe to me entirely, to my early and continued insistence with the government, their construction as a borough, and they now owe to me another Member. They are no borough in fact, and the government would never have thought of making them one.73

He continued to work on the boundary arrangements ‘from 11 till 7’ for much of December and January, observing that ‘nothing can be more dull and flat than the House of Commons’, 8 Dec., and complaining that Russell had produced ‘a fresh set of instructions respecting the boundaries to be given to boroughs containing less than 300 qualifying tenants’, which amounted to ‘a complete bouleversement of all our proceedings’ and meant that ‘many of their reports must be torn, and reconstructed, and many of them must revisit their boroughs in the frost and snow’, 19 Dec. 1831.74

On 29 July 1831 he had voted for O’Connell’s motion to swear in the original Dublin election committee. He presented and endorsed a petition for repeal of the stamp duty on fire insurances, 18 Aug., commended the Irish public works bill as ‘a material improvement upon the old system’, 16 Sept., and was appointed to the select committee on Irish tithes, 15 Dec. He retained his ambitions for the Speakership, promising his wife to ‘do all in my power to create claims on Stanley and all the rest for the chair’, and writing a ‘long letter’ to Palmerston about his claim, 15 Oct. 1831, on account of James Abercromby* being ‘likely to come into Parliament again’ and ‘the Whigs preferring him, as it is natural they should’.75 He divided for going into committee on the reform bill, 20 Jan. 1832, and again supported its detailed provisions. Next day Russell asked him to make himself ‘master of all such details relating to the numbers of houses counted, as forming the towns disfranchised’ and to ‘sit behind him’ and ‘furnish him with them if wanted’. ‘Tired to death with the reform committee’, he paired off, 8 Feb.76 He spoke regularly in defence of the boundary bill’s details and the work of the commissioners, insisting that ‘we never in any one instance in the course of our labours, made any inquiries as to the owners of property, or their political opinions’, 5 Mar. When Russell demanded that he ‘give up Walsall’ the following day, he ‘positively refused unless Gateshead and five or six others were given up too’, but he left it to Wrottesley, his county colleague, to argue ‘the claims of Walsall to one representative’ against the protests of Croker, 9 Mar.77 He voted for the third reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May, the second reading of the Irish bill, 25 May, and against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish bill, 1 June. On 17 May he noted in his diary that ‘any attempt at amelioration’ had been ‘rendered hopeless by the prejudice and recklessness of the House of Lords’, who by rejecting the bill had ‘become odious to the nation’.78 He presented and endorsed Staffordshire petitions for the supplies to be withheld until the bill was passed, 23, 24 May. He rejected Croker’s allegations of impropriety over the new boundaries for Tamworth and Exeter, 7 June, asserting that he knew of no instance where ‘the boundary line has been carried one yard to the right, or one yard to the left, for the accommodation or in favour of any particular interest’. The following day he spoke in support of the allocation of county polling places and defended the boundaries for Arundel. That day

the boundary bill went through a committee, not occupying altogether more than 10 hours. It had been universally supposed early in the session that a month at least would have been occupied at this stage, every line being debatable matter. But by much previous labour in satisfying objections, and by having observed throughout most scrupulously the fairest and most impartial conduct much opposition was got over before we entered the House.79

He was a majority teller at least three times for the bill, 22 June, when it passed ‘after only three nights’ discussion’ and ‘no very important alterations’. ‘Thank God the boundary bill is now out of my hands’, he wrote to his agent the following day.80 Warning that ‘considerable anxiety prevails ... on the part of the borough and parochial authorities, as to the duties that will devolve on them under the English reform bill’, he urged ministers to ensure a wide circulation of the Act, 25 June 1832.

He voted with government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12, 20 July, and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. 1832. On 8 Feb. he argued for a select committee on the register of deeds bill, to which he was appointed, 22 Feb. He supported a bill to regulate the election of coroners, 16 Feb., and voted to make their inquests public, 20 June. He proposed measures to expedite the processing of ‘the immense quantity of private business’, 2 Mar. He was appointed to the select committees on petitions, 9 Mar., and slavery, 30 May. He favoured postponing discussion of the corn laws, 1 June, and presented and endorsed a petition for hearing the complaints of country banks, 4 June. He expressed ‘great satisfaction at the reductions which have been made by the government’, 25 July, noting that their repeal of the borax duties would prevent ‘great loss of life’ in the Potteries. He called for a ‘complete statement of the imports and exports of the country’, 30 July. That day he complimented the work of the Speaker, who was expected to retire. On 2 Nov. he advised Fazakerley that he had made up his mind ‘to accept the support of my friends as Manners Sutton’s successor’, adding that Grey ‘earnestly desired to see my election’ and ‘Althorp’s feelings were the same, so were Dartmouth’s and Palmerston’s’.81 He ‘did us such good service in the boundary bill’ and ‘knowing as we did before ... what he aimed at, we are bound to him unless it was very odious to our friends’, Althorp informed Earl Fortescue, 21 Nov.82 That day Agar Ellis noted in his diary that Abercromby was ‘not to be the new Speaker, Althorp having used him very ill, in favour of Littleton’, who in private boasted to Mrs. Huskisson that he had been ‘assured that all will go right’ and might ‘consider it as all but settled’.83 Russell, however, preferred Abercromby and considered that ‘Littleton ought to be a peer’, conjuring the prospect of a contest which Edward Ellice*, who hated Littleton ‘most cordially’, believed he would lose, as ‘the most unpopular man in the House’. Greville felt that Littleton had ‘no claims to be Speaker compared with those of Abercromby (having been half his life in opposition to the present government)’, but observed that ‘he obstinately insists upon the expectations held out to him being realised’.84 As Dyott noted:

No schoolboy was ever more vain of a school prize than my friend ... It was certainly driving at a post of high distinction, but the vain ostentation exhibited, betrayed rather a want of the proper feeling of a great mind ... He wants temper; he is deficient in acquirement; he is haughty and peevish in manner, with a want of suavity in general deportment.85

Fearing a rift in the party, the government opted to re-elect Manners Sutton.86 Annoyed at this decision, the radicals put Littleton up for the Speakership at the beginning of the 1833 session, when he was nominated by Hume and seconded by O’Connell, but he declared himself an ‘unwilling candidate’ and they lost the division by 241-31.87

At the 1832 general election Littleton was returned unopposed for the new division of Staffordshire South, where he was re-elected in ‘a short but inexpensive contest’ with the local Tories following his appointment as Irish secretary in May 1833. His unauthorized proffering of alterations to the Irish coercion bill during negotiations with O’Connell, which he later admitted to have been ‘a gross indiscretion’, initiated the political crisis which led to Grey’s retirement in July 1834. He was derided by many, including Greville, as ‘the instrument of breaking up this government’; as Dyott put it, his ‘conduct was highly censured and deservedly, his motive was vanity and an effort to appear of supreme consequence’. After the 1835 general election, when he was returned unopposed, he was passed over by Russell as the Liberal candidate for the Speakership, and on the formation of the second Melbourne ministry was elevated to the Lords, where he spoke ‘rarely’.88 Unsuccessful in his attempts to influence the outcome of the ensuing Staffordshire South by-election, Littleton, who Dyott believed had ‘lost the respectable situation he once held in the county by his unsteadiness as a political character’, took ‘a great interest’ in agriculture and the improvement of his own estates.89 Commenting on the decline of the landed interest, 26 Dec. 1856, he boasted to Croker, ‘here I still am, well; once the county’s Member, now its lord lieutenant and its father with a vengeance ... I am only the fifth proprietor of my property since the time of James I. I believe I am the only peer of whom that can be said’.90 Hatherton’s Memoir and Correspondence relating to Political Occurrences in June and July 1834, published posthumously in 1874, went some way towards vindicating his conduct in the O’Connell affair and correcting his unflattering portrayal in Brougham’s Memoirs of 1871, although it was criticized in Denis Le Marchant’s† Memoir of Lord Althorp (1876).91 He died at Teddesley Park in May 1863. By his will the family estates passed to his only son and successor in the barony, Edward Richard (1815-88), Liberal Member for Walsall, 1847-52, and Staffordshire South, 1853-7.

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Philip Salmon

Notes

  • 1. Creevey Pprs. ii. 305; Dyott’s Diary, ii. 45.
  • 2. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 96; Session of Parl. 1825, p. 473.
  • 3. Hatherton diary, intro., 21 Nov. 1821, 27 June 1831.
  • 4. Add. 40381, f. 342.
  • 5. Hatherton mss D260/M/7/5/11, ff. 1, 30, 36, 40; Staffs. Advertiser, 26 Feb., 4, 11, 18, 25 Mar., Lichfield Mercury, 10 Mar. 1820.
  • 6. Add. 51830, Anson to Holland, 19 Mar. 1820.
  • 7. Hatherton diary.
  • 8. Ibid.
  • 9. Add. 38742, f. 171.
  • 10. HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 16; Harrowby mss, Labouchere to Sandon, 12 Feb. 1821.
  • 11. Hatherton diary, Mar. 1824; TNA 30/29/9/5/22.
  • 12. Hatherton mss 27/2, ff. 70, 72-74; Bagot, Canning and Friends ii. 282.
  • 13. Merthyr Mawr mss, Nicholl diary, 26 Apr. 1825.
  • 14. Hatherton diary, 13 Mar. 1825.
  • 15. Hatherton mss 27/2, ff. 82, 85; Add. 40381, ff. 342, 381.
  • 16. Hatherton mss 27/2, f. 53.
  • 17. Ibid. 27/52, ff. 36-37.
  • 18. Staffs. Advertiser, 10, 17 June 1826.
  • 19. Hatherton mss 27/4, f. 3.
  • 20. Gent. Mag. (1863) i. 101-2; Canning’s Ministry, 40, 43; Hatherton mss 27/4, f. 8.
  • 21. Hatherton mss 27/52, ff. 58, 62; Duke Univ. Lib. Fazakerley mss, Ord to Fazakerley, 17 Apr. 1827.
  • 22. Hatherton mss 27/52, ff. 64, 68.
  • 23. Wellington mss WP1/895/18.
  • 24. Ibid. WP1/895/25.
  • 25. Hatherton mss 27/4, ff. 115-17; Parker, Peel, ii. 23-25.
  • 26. Hatherton mss 27/5, f. 13.
  • 27. Hatherton diary, 29 Jan. 1828.
  • 28. Ibid. 11, 15 Feb.; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC12/85; 17/36.
  • 29. Hatherton diary, 16 Feb. 1828.
  • 30. Add. 40307, f. 50.
  • 31. Hatherton diary, 22 Feb.; Lincs. AO, Tennyson D’Eyncourt mss 2 Td’E M85/9, C. to G. Tennyson, 27 Feb. 1828.
  • 32. Hatherton diary, 26 Feb. 1828.
  • 33. PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/31B/1.
  • 34. Add. 38756, f. 198.
  • 35. Hatherton diary; Hatherton mss 27/5, f. 44.
  • 36. Wellington mss WP1/955/15.
  • 37. Add. 38757, ff. 44, 91.
  • 38. Hatherton mss 27/5, f. 84.
  • 39. Hatherton mss, Littleton to wife, 5, 10 Feb.; diary, 6 Feb. 1829.
  • 40. Hatherton mss 27/52, f. 110.
  • 41. Ibid. f. 121.
  • 42. Ibid. f. 124.
  • 43. Ibid. 27/53, f. 46.
  • 44. Hatherton mss.
  • 45. Ibid. 27/6, ff. 24, 62.
  • 46. Staffs. Advertiser, 17, 24, 31 July, 7, 14 Aug.; Staffs. Mercury, 14 Aug.; Hatherton mss, Hyacinthe Littleton to G. Wellesley, 9 Sept. 1830.
  • 47. Hatherton mss 27/6, f. 45.
  • 48. Ibid. f. 80.
  • 49. Brougham mss, Agar Ellis to Brougham, 4 Oct. 1830.
  • 50. Hatherton mss 27/6, f. 80.
  • 51. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 398.
  • 52. Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 40.
  • 53. Hopetoun mss 167, f. 183.
  • 54. Hatherton mss 27/6, f. 66B.
  • 55. Ibid. ff. 71, 74, 77.
  • 56. Ibid. 27/53, f. 141.
  • 57. Ibid. 27/6, f. 80.
  • 58. Ibid. 27/6, f. 84; 27/53, f. 52.
  • 59. Ibid. 27/53, f. 85.
  • 60. Staffs. Advertiser, 30 Apr., 7 May 1831; Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 98.
  • 61. Hatherton mss 27/7, ff. 38, 40.
  • 62. Hatherton diary, 29 July, 4 Aug.; Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 116.
  • 63. Hatherton mss 27/7, ff. 41, 45, 51.
  • 64. Ibid. 27/53, ff. 112, 116; Hatherton diary, 27 Aug. 1831.
  • 65. M. Brock, Great Reform Act, 236.
  • 66. Hatherton diary, 11 Oct. 1831.
  • 67. Ibid. 21, 25 July, 11 Aug. 1831; Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 141.
  • 68. Hatherton diary, 1 Sept. 1831.
  • 69. Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 136.
  • 70. Hatherton diary 26/7.
  • 71. Ibid. 7-8 Dec. 1831.
  • 72. Ibid. 29 Feb. 1832.
  • 73. Ibid. 7-8 Dec. 1831.
  • 74. Ibid. 7-8, 19-20 Dec. 1831.
  • 75. Hatherton mss 27/7 f. 94; Hatherton diary, 15 Oct. 1831.
  • 76. Hatherton diary, 21 Jan., 8 Feb. 1832.
  • 77. Ibid. 6, 9 Mar. 1832.
  • 78. Ibid.
  • 79. Ibid. 7-8 June 1832.
  • 80. Hatherton mss 27/53, f. 165.
  • 81. Fazakerley mss.
  • 82. Devon RO, Earl Fortescue mss.
  • 83. Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 21 Nov. 1832; Add. 39948, f. 145.
  • 84. Add. 51680, Russell to Lady Holland, 2 Dec. 1832; 40403, f. 115; Greville Mems. ii. 332.
  • 85. Dyott’s Diary, ii. 145-6.
  • 86. Earl Fortescue mss, Althorp to Ebrington, 30 Dec. 1832.
  • 87. Gent. Mag. (1863), i. 102; Oxford DNB.
  • 88. Staffs. Advertiser, 22 Dec. 1832; Greville Mems. iii. 61-2; Dyott’s Diary, ii. 179; Torrens, Melbourne, ii. 82; Holland House Diaries, 387.
  • 89. Dyott’s Diary, ii. 203; Gent. Mag. (1863), i. 102.
  • 90. Croker Pprs. iii. 369.
  • 91. Hatherton mss D1121/P/1/1; D4028/6/1/6; Le Marchant, Althorp, 512-16.