Family and Education

b. 19 Mar. 1784, 1st s. of Munbee Goulburn of Amity Hall, Jamaica and Portland Place, Mdx. and Hon. Susannah Chetwynd, da. of William Chetwynd†, 4th Visct. Chetwynd. educ. by Dr. Moore at Sunbury, Mdx. c. 1791-3; Trinity Coll. Camb. 1801. m. 20 Dec. 1811, Jane, da. of Matthew Montagu† of Sandleford Priory, Berks., 3s. (1 d.v.p.) 1da. suc. fa. 1793. d. 12 Jan. 1856.

Offices Held

Under-sec. of state for home affairs Feb. 1810-Aug. 1812, for war and colonies Aug. 1812-Dec. 1821; plenip. for negotiating peace with USA July 1814; PC 10 Dec. 1821; chief sec. to ld. lt. [I] Dec. 1821-Apr. 1827; chan. of exch. Jan. 1828-Nov. 1830, Sept. 1841-July 1846; sec. of state for home affairs Dec. 1834-Apr. 1835.

Capt. duke of Gloucester’s vol. inf. 1803-7.

Biography

By 1820 the saintly, sober, ‘cockeyed’ Goulburn had completed ten years as a junior minister in the Tory administrations of Perceval and Lord Liverpool.1 Well regarded by his superiors, especially his departmental chief, the colonial secretary Lord Bathurst, he had acquired a reputation for diligence, efficiency and reliability and was on terms of intimate friendship with Robert Peel*, the Tories’ coming man, whose hostility to Catholic claims he shared and in whose shadow he was content to walk.2 Reserved and unimaginative, though not without humour, he was a self-consciously poor speaker. He had purchased a modest Surrey estate near Dorking, was happily married to a devoted if neurotic woman and doted on his four children, particularly his eldest son Harry (b. 1813). From his shady father, who had died when he was seven, he had inherited the substantial Amity Hall plantation in Jamaica. The ownership of slaves sat uneasily with his deep Evangelical commitment (though he was no religious zealot); and on discovering in 1818 through his brother Frederick, the bungling manager of the estate, that they were suffering inhumane conditions, he tried to improve matters and became an advocate of amelioration and gradual abolition. As his Jamaican income had fallen to barely £2,000 a year, slightly less than his under-secretary’s salary, he was obliged to be financially prudent.3

At the general election of 1820 he was returned again for West Looe on the Buller interest. In the House (where he frequently acted as a government teller) he claimed ‘a very considerable diminution of the expense’ of the Ionian Islands staff, 2 June, and stated that the information requested by Lord John Russell would exonerate ministers from the charge that they had betrayed Parga by returning it to Turkey, 29 June. He believed that the king would get the better of Queen Caroline, ‘his worse half’, if he showed his face more; and in December 1820, explaining the government’s determination not to concede restoration of the ‘guilty’ queen’s name to the liturgy, he sounded the influential county Member Littleton for a hint of how the ‘country gentlemen’ felt.4 He paired against Catholic claims, 28 Feb., moved an amendment to prevent Catholics becoming colonial governors, which was beaten by 163-120, 27 Mar., and denounced the measure as a ‘danger ... to the Protestant establishment’, 2 Apr. 1821. His handling of departmental business included a defence of the cost of Mediterranean garrisons, 14 Mar., replying to Creevey’s motion alleging misuse of the Barbados four-and-a-half per cents, 24 May, and opposing inquiry into the administration of justice in Tobago, 6 June, and Maitland’s regime in the Ionian Islands, 7 June. A few days later he called on Croker, secretary to the admiralty, to express regret at Peel’s refusal to return to office at the board of control. Croker, who noted that he ‘wishes that we should keep altogether’, recorded that they ‘laughed about his refusing [in 1818] to go to Ireland [as chief secretary] on account of the expense’, while the present idle incumbent Charles Grant was ‘laying by £4,000 a year out of it’.5 He remained uneasy at the possible consequences of the king’s ill humour with Liverpool, but joked to Bathurst that whoever informed him of the queen’s death in August 1821 ‘stands a chance of being made a baronet’. He backed the premier’s successful bid to moderate the commander-in-chief the duke of York’s scheme for severe reductions in the colonial military establishment, and in October 1821 turned his mind to the problem of relieving distressed West Indian colonies by relaxing restrictions on their foreign trade.6

In late November 1821 the cabinet decided, as part of the impending coalition with the Grenvillites and replacement of Lord Sidmouth as home secretary by Peel, to appoint the duke of Wellington’s pro-Catholic and mercurial brother Lord Wellesley lord lieutenant of Ireland, ‘provided a very capable secretary could be found’. After Huskisson had turned it down, Goulburn was reckoned to be the ‘best’ choice, with his staunch Protestantism seen as an additional recommendation in view of Wellesley’s bias. He agonized for more than 24 hours, ostensibly, as he told Bathurst, on account of financial worries, ‘considering my own circumstances and the little prospect of improvement in West Indian affairs’. Yet he also had severe reservations, which he kept to himself, about taking on ‘one of the most difficult and laborious offices under the government’ in harness with the ‘dilatory and inefficient’ Wellesley, who would take ‘the whole credit’ for any success, while ‘the whole labour of the administration must necessarily devolve upon me’. He fretted too that William Plunket*, who was to be made Irish attorney-general, ‘might occasion embarrassment’ by being so prominent a champion of Catholic claims. The entreaties of Liverpool and Lord Londonderry*, the offer of an annual pension of £1,000 (doubled in 1825) for long service at the colonial office and his confidence that he could rely on Peel for support and advice overcame his misgivings.7 The appointment of Goulburn, ‘the most sincere and therefore the most bigoted opponent of the Catholic claims’, perturbed Lord Grenville, and his alarm was conveyed to Liverpool by his nephew Charles Williams Wynn*, who was destined for a cabinet place in the reshuffle. (Williams Wynn’s cousin Lord Buckingham, head of the Grenvillite squad, was desperate for a share of power and his personal reward of a dukedom, and therefore not inclined to complain.) Liverpool allowed Williams Wynn to reserve his right to promote the Catholic cause and publicly criticize Goulburn’s appointment if necessary.8 Goulburn and Peel’s friend William Vesey Fitzgerald*, though a pro-Catholic, welcomed his appointment as that of ‘a man of courage and honour ... who will not think it enough to court the Catholic demagogues and to be praised by the Catholic press’; while the anti-Catholic backbencher Henry Bankes believed him to be an essential counterbalance to Wellesley:

He possesses very good sense, great industry, considerable practice in business ... together with a clear and unaffected manner of explaining everything which belonged to his departments. His private character is excellent, and even exemplary, his habits of life temperate, orderly and becoming his circumstances, which were confined rather than affluent.9

After briefing meetings with Peel and Liverpool, Goulburn arrived in Dublin on 20 Dec. 1821, to begin what proved to be over five years’ hard and harassing labour. One of his enduring problems was Wellesley’s idleness and inefficiency, as he later wrote:

It was very difficult to get an opinion or direction from him without on his part much previous deliberation and conference with others. Written papers sent to him were detained indefinitely and to obtain with respect to them any written authority was impossible. My whole official intercourse with him when I was in Dublin was by personal interviews, and those only occurred after repeated postponement on account of real or pretended indisposition and never except after waiting always one and not infrequently as many as three hours in his anteroom. The interviews generally resulted in my having permission to take the course which I might in conversation have suggested. When I was in London I rarely heard from him and I was compelled to take in Parliament in concert with ... [Peel] that line ... which I judged expedient ... To myself he was kind and considerate. He readily listened to the objections which I had ... occasion to offer to appointments ... and often sacrificed his personal feelings in deference to representations of which he admitted the justice.10

On the other hand, he received steady support from Peel and got on famously with William Gregory, the experienced under-secretary at Dublin Castle.11 A month after his arrival Williams Wynn reported to Buckingham that his ‘regular and constant manner of doing business is very much pronee by the Orange party, contrasted with the indecision and idleness of Grant, though they allow that abstinence from wine is a new and dangerous feature in an Irish secretary’. Daniel O’Connell* and the Catholic agitators, of course, regarded him as ‘our mortal enemy’.12 Goulburn went to England in February 1822, when his wife’s illness distracted him, for the opening of Parliament and his necessary re-election, which, as he confided to Peel, presented him with additional anxieties:

I am ruined already by non-payment of rents, by the decay of my West India property and by an office which does not pay its expenses. But ... I do not think I could in fairness to the government say that I would have nothing to do with West Looe, which would be ... to put myself out of Parliament. I am therefore compelled to run into this new expense and can only endeavour to restrict it with in certain limits ... I think Arbuthnot* [the patronage secretary] ought to know how I am situated and whether if I fail at Looe I have any chance of being returned elsewhere; if not ... I shall retire into private life, and I hope before I am quite a bankrupt.13

He was opposed by and defeated a wealthy adventurer, whose subsequent petition was unsuccessful; he presumably got some assistance from the treasury. In his absence the Irish insurrection and habeas corpus suspension bills were pressed through the Commons by Londonderry.14 His first reported speech on Irish business was in reply, described as ‘heavy and ambiguous’ by the Whig Sir James Mackintosh* and as ‘very poor indeed’ by Williams Wynn, to Newport’s call for ‘remedial measures’, 22 Apr., when he gave an assurance that ministers had matters in train.15 He spoke in similar terms, 29 Apr., before making a flying visit to Dublin, where Wellesley concurred in his plans to establish a regular police force, purge incompetent magistrates (in which he made good progress that year) and effect a temporary adjustment of tithes.16 On 16 May he got leave to introduce a bill to provide for the employment of the Irish poor in a subsidized programme of road building, which became law on the 24th. His police bill encountered strong opposition, but in discussions with ‘leading Irish Members’ he conceded some modifications and prevailed in his argument that the measure was a ‘necessity’; it received royal assent on 5 Aug. and represented, as Goulburn believed, ‘the foundation successfully laid’ of a regular police force.17 He introduced a bill to facilitate the leasing of tithes, which became law on 6 Aug. On 17 June he assured Vesey Fitzgerald in the House that the authorities were doing all possible to relieve Irish distress, and next day, asking Gregory for facts and figures, he moaned that ‘I am persecuted nearly to death both in and out of Parliament, and am supposed to be the most inhuman and unfeeling of men because I have not given an assurance that the government of Ireland can or will feed the people’.18 The urgent need for additional relief overcame his doctrinal aversion to large-scale government intervention, and he secured an extra grant of £100,000, 21 June. He opposed as ‘subversive’ and defeated by 72-65 Hume’s proposals for the reform of Irish tithes, 19 June. Carrying extension of the Insurrection Act, 15 July, he claimed that without it ‘open insurrection and rebellion would have broken out’. He defended the Canada bill, 18 July, and opposed inquiry into the government of Trinidad, 25 July 1822.

Back in Ireland by 11 Aug., he remained fearful of ‘a renewal of insurrection’. He ended direct distress relief on 1 Sept., but continued the public works programme in the hardest-hit areas.19 The Whig James Abercromby*, visiting Ireland at this time, suspected that there was ‘no harmony’ between Wellesley and Goulburn, who ‘appears to be quite oppressed by his office’.20 In early November 1822 he heeded Peel’s advice to keep out of the current contest for the vacant seat for Cambridge University (which he coveted), in order to avoid an awkward clash with Liverpool’s nephew Lord Hervey*, but he laid down his marker for the next opportunity.21 Encouraged by Peel, he worked throughout the autumn on the ‘difficult’ problem of tithes.22 He and his wife, who narrowly missed serious injury from a flying bottle, were in the Dublin New Theatre Royal when the Orange demonstration against Wellesley occurred, 14 Dec. 1822; but he was dismayed by what he considered the viceroy’s overreaction and the subsequent ill-judged prosecutions of the miscreants, which he believed had scotched any hope of reconciling Protestants to a moderate tithes reform. He came close to resigning, but was talked out of it by his wife, whose anxiety that the promotion of his friend Frederick Robinson* to the exchequer in February presaged a wider reshuffle which would exclude him, he had to quell. He was obliged to announce in the House, 5 Mar. 1823, that the government intended to introduce a general measure to outlaw all illegal societies, including Orange organizations; he duly did so on 7 May.23 He was in Dublin when Barry moved for papers on the prosecutions, 24 Mar., and shared Peel’s view of Plunket’s ‘injudicious’ explanation, though the composition of the small minority led him to hope that when the issue was renewed ‘we shall not have one English country gentleman as furiously or as generally against us as I at one time imagined’. Yet he was far from confident of defeating Brownlow’s motion for information, 15 Apr., when he defended Plunket and denied any rift between himself and Wellesley; he gave Plunket full credit for his ‘admirable’ speech, which enabled the orders of the day to be carried. He regarded the success of Burdett’s motion for a parliamentary inquiry, which he spoke against, 22 Apr., as ‘more matter of regret than surprise’, as ministers were ‘beaten by the defection of all the English country gentlemen who usually support’.24 On 10 Feb. he refuted Vesey Fitzgerald’s charge that his 1822 Tithes Leasing Act was ‘impracticable’, but conceded that ‘it might not have been as efficient as he could have wished’; and on 6 Mar. he got leave to introduce a bill to provide for a temporary composition of tithes and one to establish a permanent commutation. Both were attacked by the Protestant hierarchy and the second had to be ditched; but the composition measure, which Goulburn guided through the House in May and June, became law on 19 July 1823. During the winter recess he monitored its initial operation and, after consultation with Peel, obtained leave to bring in an amending bill, 9 Mar. 1824, when the Whig George Agar Ellis* was ‘inclined to call out with Lord Byron, "I wish he would explain his explanation"’. This became law on 17 June 1824 and, with the earlier legislation, helped to improve the lot of the Irish poor.25 He successfully opposed Hume’s motion for inquiry into the Irish church and tithes, 4 Mar. 1823, as ‘a precedent, pregnant with the utmost danger to every kind of property’; but Agar Ellis considered this defence to be ‘mere general declamation’.26 He resisted more effectual levying of Irish first fruits revenues, 10 Apr., renewed the Insurrection Act to guard against the ‘state of insubordination’ still prevalent locally, 12 May, and opposed abolition of the lord lieutenancy and inquiry into Irish education, 25 June, and referral of the Irish Catholics’ petition complaining of bias in the administration of justice to the judicial commission, 26 June 1823. To O’Connell, Goulburn, ‘a man of miserable intellect and only the more virulent on that account’, had become the ‘rancorous ... supporter of all the abuses in the church and in the corporations and ... the Orange lodges’; but in Liverpool’s eyes he was ‘not only invaluable in himself, but just the man to be secretary’ to Wellesley, as ‘his purity and correctness of character make amends for the defects of the other’.27 Back in Dublin by late August 1823, he concluded that ‘the state of the country is at the present moment better than it has been at any time since my arrival’. Despite worries about scarcity, his optimism continued through the winter, though he believed that continued outrages in Cork and elsewhere were ‘clear indications that the spirit of disturbance is not subdued and that the disposition of the people is not altogether reformed’; he reckoned that Ireland would require its current military force of 20,000 for the foreseeable future.28

Goulburn saw off Newport’s motion for information on Catholic burials, 6 Feb., and Grattan’s for returns of Catholic office-holders, 19 Feb. 1824. Aiming to seize the initiative from opposition, he got leave on 16 Feb. to introduce a bill to enforce Irish clergy residence, which became law on 21 June, and on 26 Feb. a brief one to amend the previous year’s Church Rates Act, which reached the statute book on 16 Mar. He objected to the principle of the Catholic bishops’ petition for separate funding for education of the Irish Catholic poor, 9 Mar., defended the grant for Protestant charter schools, 16 Mar., and, acquiescing in Newport’s proposal for the establishment of a commission of inquiry into education, 25 Mar., paid lip service to the virtues of interdenominational instruction.29 In early April, when there was a groundless rumour that he was to resign, he was discommoded by one of his habitual colds, but he was able to go to Dublin for the Easter recess. There he discussed the growing threat of the Catholic Association with Wellesley.30 On 4 May he opposed a motion for an advance of capital to Ireland, which would raise unrealistic hopes. Next day he beat by 26-10 a proposal to reduce the Irish militia. In his long reply to the Whig motion for inquiry into the state of Ireland, 11 May, he ‘stopped short in the middle’ and ‘could not go on and was obliged to sit down, having lost the thread of his argument’. Mrs. Arbuthnot, who felt that he ‘lends no assistance in getting rid of abuses and the notorious jobbings that go on in Ireland’, expected him to suffer ‘numberless jests’.31 He defeated by 87-71 a new attack on first fruits revenues, 25 May. After recovering from a sprained ankle he secured continuation of the Insurrection Act, 14 June 1824.

Later that summer he had private talks with Orange leaders in a bid to discourage lawlessness among the rank and file and made a tour of the supposedly distressed areas around Limerick, Killarney and Tralee, from which he returned to Dublin ‘very agreeably disappointed ... in ... the condition of the people’. He could not detect anything politically sinister behind the foreign secretary Canning’s visit to Ireland.32 The mounting influence of the Association and the electoral potential of the Catholic clergy convinced him that repressive action was necessary, though he dissociated himself from the hysteria of the Protestant extremists, believing that there was no danger of ‘immediate and combined insurrection’, but rather of ‘a sudden ebullition of fanatical fury in particular places’. In concert with Peel he overcame Wellesley and Plunket’s reluctance to move against the Association, but in the event the cabinet decided on a bill to outlaw all illegal societies, which Goulburn sought leave to introduce, 10 Feb. 1825.33 He was very nervous beforehand, but felt that he had performed creditably (though Agar Ellis deemed his speech ‘confused’), and he steered the measure through the Commons with comparative ease.34 He acquiesced in the introduction of Newport’s Irish vestries bill and Parnell’s justices regulation bill, reserving his right to oppose later, 22 Feb. He took the same line on Grattan’s poor relief bill, 22 Mar., and Newport’s measure to curb pluralism, 14 Apr. He was a teller for the minorities against Catholic claims, 1 Mar., 26 Apr., having spoken briefly against the second reading of the relief bill, 25 Apr., after his initial post-midnight attempt on the 19th had been silenced by the adjournment. He opposed the ‘securities’ of disfranchising the Irish 40s. freeholders, 26 Apr., and payment of the Catholic clergy, 29 Apr. He voted against the third reading of the relief bill, 10 May, was pleased by the narrowness of the majority and was relieved by its subsequent defeat in the Lords, believing that the peers’ hostility accurately reflected popular opinion. He told Gregory that had the majority been ‘very small, or but little more than the bishops’, he would have expected Liverpool, Peel, Lord Eldon and other anti-Catholic ministers to resign in order to allow ‘an experiment to be made by those who thought they could conduct it as to Catholic emancipation with adequate securities’. As it was, he was reconciled to staying in office as long as Liverpool and Peel remained. Fresh rumours that he was about to be replaced by Robert Wilmot Horton* came to nothing. 35 He opposed Spring Rice’s motion for information on Irish religious animosities, 26 May, and persuaded Newport to withdraw his for the prosecution of individuals found guilty of abuses in running Protestant charter schools, 9 June 1825. He terminated the proceedings of the Irish select committee by carrying a short report leaving all major problems to government, and on the potentially troublesome education report hinted that they were willing to experiment cautiously with reform. His subsequent line that mixed education should only be implemented on a limited scale was adopted as official policy.36 When a dissolution was expected in September he predicted ‘some severe and unpleasant contests’ and numerous adverse results in the Irish counties.37 The domestic conflict between Wellesley’s new American Catholic wife and his bastard son and secretary Edward Johnston aggravated Goulburn, but he failed to persuade Liverpool to recall Johnston to his post in the London stamp office. He did scotch Wellesley and Plunket’s notion of reviving ‘private communication’ with leading members of the Association and, with Peel’s help, Plunket’s unscrupulous bid to have his son made dean of Clogher. He had remained a contender for Cambridge University, and in November 1825, when a canvass took place, confirmed his candidature for the general election now expected next early summer. The situation was awkward, for the sitting Member Lord Palmerston, the pro-Catholic secretary at war, intended to stand, as did his anti-Catholic colleague William Bankes, while the other serious candidate was the Trinity man John Copley*, the anti-Catholic attorney-general. Goulburn was ‘very angry’ with Copley for intervening and confessed to Peel that if the treasury were to back him, as was being hinted, ‘I shall think that I am very ill used’. In mid-December 1825 he made a short visit to Cambridge to show his face and Peel, though careful not to interfere with Palmerston, did what he could to dispel the idea that the government preferred Copley.38

On another trip to Cambridge in early February 1826 Goulburn told Jane that he was ‘pretty sure’ that even if he could not defeat Bankes this time he could establish an impregnable position for the next. Anticipating a comparatively quiet session on Irish matters, he predicted a difficult time over the prevailing distress and the consequences of the recent financial crash, especially as ‘Hume, Hunt and Cobbett have like seagulls who portend a storm come from their ... hiding places and begun the one to talk of economy and retrenchment, the others to assemble and harangue the people’. Privately, he could not see why the cabinet ‘turned a deaf ear’ to agitation for an issue of exchequer bills to relieve commercial distress; he criticized Canning’s folly in staking the government’s existence on resistance to this and Liverpool’s ‘obstinacy’. The Bank’s intervention to advance money to businessmen on security of their goods ‘relieved’ him and enabled him to soothe Jane’s anxieties about his possible loss of office.39 He announced on 16 Feb. that he would legislate on Irish subletting and church rates. As an amendment to Newport’s motion that day, he got leave to introduce a bill to regulate rates, which became law on 31 May. His subletting bill, which in practice merely facilitated evictions, was presented on 10 Mar. and received royal assent on 5 May.40 He agreed to the appointment of a select committee on Irish tolls and customs, 16 Feb. He stalled on education, 7, 20 Mar., when he defended the Kildare Place Society and said that action had been taken to correct abuses in the charter schools. He reserved his future response to Spring Rice’s bill to improve local jurisdiction and Newport’s to prevent episcopal unions, but would not countenance the latter’s measure to disfranchise non-resident Irish freemen, 9 Mar. On 2 Mar. he supported the government amendment against intervention to overturn the verdicts in the Jamaican slave trials, as one who had ‘had the misfortune to succeed to a property’ there. His object, he told his wife, had been to ‘impress upon the House how much more useful it was to attack the system than the individuals who administered it’. He was now ‘satisfied that slavery ought to be abolished as soon as it can be done with consistency and due regard to the interests of the slaves’, but he expected abolition to spell ‘ruin’ for all West Indian proprietors. Though fatigued by the demands of his Cambridge University campaign, select committee work and Commons duties, he claimed to be ‘quite well’.41 His Easter visit to Dublin alarmed him with evidence of impending economic collapse and renewed famine, and he secured modest grants to relieve hardship in Dublin and Drogheda.42 He defeated Whig amendments to his church rates bill, 21 Apr., and objected to O’Connell’s petition calling for the removal of the aged Lord Norbury as Irish chief justice, 5 May 1826. On the ‘very serious’ unemployment riots in Lancashire in late April, he commented to Jane that they exhibited ‘the folly which always animates the lower orders under such circumstances of destroying the machinery by which we have created so great a demand for the manufactures of the country and the labour of the people’. His hopes of an early end to parliamentary business were dashed when the cabinet got themselves into a ‘scrape’ by proposing, ‘very imprudently’ as he thought, the emergency admission of warehoused foreign corn, which ‘aroused against them a great many of their best friends’.43

Goulburn was assured of a seat for Harwich on the treasury interest at the general election, but decided to persevere at Cambridge, even though he knew he had no chance. An invitation to contest Dublin did not seriously tempt him, but on 19 May 1826, a fortnight before the dissolution, he accepted the offer (which had been on the cards for almost a year) of the archbishop of Armagh, the primate of Ireland, to return him unconditionally for Armagh city in recognition of his ‘services’ to the Irish church. He ‘very readily’ accepted, reflecting that by placing Harwich at the government’s disposal he would give himself ‘a good claim another time’.44 Thus insured, he stood the poll at Cambridge in order to establish his future position whenever Copley, who came in with Palmerston, was promoted to the bench. In fact, he finished a distant last, 71 votes below Bankes, whose ‘superior tactics’ he privately acknowledged. He remained confident of eventual success, but some thought that many Protestant voters blamed him for letting in Palmerston.45 Concluding that the overall result of the elections meant that ‘we shall have a very blackguard set in the next Parliament’, he checked that all was ‘in good order’ at Betchworth and made courtesy calls in Cambridge before rejoining his family in Dublin in early July 1826.46 The Cambridge election had cost him £1,500, which he could barely afford, and damaged his relations with Palmerston. He was additionally worried by a scandal involving his brother Frederick as governor of New South Wales and the problem of providing for his profligate brother Edward.47

He had gone to Ireland expecting the worst, resigned to the continuance of Johnston’s bad influence over Wellesley and Plunket’s petulance, and filled with ‘forebodings as to the wretched state’ in which the country was likely to be placed by autumn famine, which ‘make me almost wish that I had nothing to do with it’. Peel authorized the expenditure of £4,000 to contain the current fever epidemic and £3,000 to relieve distress, but their worst fears about the harvest were not realized.48 Goulburn was above all alarmed by ‘the state of party feeling’ and bitter religious divisions, which suited O’Connell’s ‘mischievous’ game, and the increasing electoral power of the Catholic priesthood. He gave Peel a requested review of the military force at the disposal of the Irish government at the end of October: he reckoned that the existing one was adequate as long as reserves were available, and commented that ‘our divisions are no longer political’, as ‘the language of the priests is more directed against the Protestant religion than against the Protestant ascendancy’.49 He had the ‘great annoyance’ of having to cross to London for the preliminary session of the new Parliament, where he rebuked Spring Rice for his partisan tone on the Catholic question, 6 Dec. 1826, and saw ‘many new faces and very few that I was acquainted with’.50 Back in Dublin, he was alarmed by the ‘unexpected’ transfer of troops from Ireland to Portugal, but was reassured of contingent reinforcements by Peel, who urged him to consider the matter of whether to proceed against the new Catholic Association, on which Wellesley was prevaricating. Goulburn was against prosecution and persuaded Wellesley to take he same line, which settled the issue, though George Dawson*, Peel’s under-secretary, criticized his ‘apathy’.51

Goulburn returned to the Irish office on 10 Feb. 1827, but was rendered largely hors de combat for the best part of a fortnight by his customary cold, exacerbated by a deranged stomach. The news of Liverpool’s stroke and political death, which he received while discussing business at Peel’s on 17 Feb., initially filled him with gloom, as he anticipated the immediate ‘break-up’ of the ministry, the formation of a new one to concede Catholic emancipation and his own necessary resignation with Peel, as he told Jane:

That I shall regret office I cannot deny as it has enabled me to contribute more to your comforts and to those of my family and friends. Independently of those considerations, I shall not regret having more time to enjoy your company and to attend to the education of my boys.

Her hysterical reaction to the prospect of his loss of office and income led him to adopt a calmer tone, holding out renewed hope of things continuing as they were, but he entreated her to reconcile herself to a possible change of circumstances. He now reckoned on a likely Commons majority against Catholic relief, in which case he ‘saw no reason why the government might not go on’. Having failed to find anything new to say on the question, he spoke briefly against Burdett’s unsuccessful motion, 6 Mar., when he said that as Irish secretary he had been obliged to treat Catholics ‘in a more indulgent manner than he should otherwise have done’. He made himself so hoarse that he was speechless and distressed for three days.52 On the prevalent notion that a compromise concession of some Catholic claims might be made in return for ‘an assurance of no further agitation of the question’, he told Gregory that he was not indisposed to it, though he insisted that ‘the Parliament, privy council and bench must be exclusively Protestant’. In slightly improved health, he prepared to pay back Newport for ‘some of those absurd speeches which he made in my absence’, 15 Mar., but the chance did not arise, and instead he opposed inquiry into the electoral malpractice of Leicester corporation. Still plagued with stomach trouble (Dr. Warren attributed his indigestion to ‘foulness of the bowels which irritates the stomach and makes it refuse to do its duties properly’ and purged him with blue pills), he resisted Brownlow’s motion for copies of his correspondence with the Lisburn magistrates about the Orange procession, 29 Mar., and Newport’s on the laws regulating the repair of Irish churches, 3 Apr., when he denied personal bigotry and defended his record in office. He still hoped that the existing government might be preserved, though he had ‘doubts how the principles of both parties can be brought to coincide on some important points’.53 When Peel, Wellington, Eldon and others resigned rather than serve in Canning’s coalition with the Lansdowne Whigs, Goulburn followed suit and placed his office at Canning’s disposal.54 Copley’s appointment as lord chancellor opened Cambridge and he offered again, but after a discouraging canvass he withdrew, ‘the expense of a second contest being very ill accommodated to an out of office income’. On his return to London he found William Lamb* in possession of the Irish Office, and on 1 May he took his place in the House with Peel ‘on the second row between the treasury bench and the bar’. He regarded the presence of Brougham and Burdett behind the treasury bench as ‘a tolerable indication that nothing but cowardice prevents the introduction of the Whigs into the government at the present moment’; they were to ‘come in at the end of the session’.55 He supported the Penryn disfranchisement bill to ‘mark his sense of the existing corruption’, 7 June, and reserved his opinion on East Retford until the evidence had been presented, 11 June. He opposed the Coventry magistracy bill as ‘destructive of chartered rights’, 8 June, and voted with government against it, 11, 18 June, as he did for the grant for Canadian water defences, 12 June 1827. During the ministerial negotiations which followed Canning’s death in August he enjoyed the discomfort of the Lansdowne Whigs over Herries’s appointment to the exchequer under Lord Goderich; and on Wellesley’s removal from the Irish lord lieutenancy he remarked that tranquillity there would ‘not be attained by those who profess to support the Roman Catholics while they do not go the full length of the priesthood or demagogues’.56 From the opposite perspective, Newport told Lord Holland, 15 Aug. 1827, that Lamb had already ‘gained much credit by his readiness of access and conciliatory manners, in both of which qualities (exclusive of his narrow minded bigotry) Goulburn was decidedly deficient, and his self-sufficiency even in communication with the adherents of his party was extreme’.57 Goulburn regarded the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino as ‘an unjustifiable attack on a friendly power’.58 In January 1828 Wellington, commissioned to form a ministry after Goderich’s collapse, offered Goulburn an unspecified cabinet place, which he accepted, anticipating ‘an office of hard work’ and welcoming the duke’s apparent disposition to reunite ‘all those who acted under Lord Liverpool’.59 He got the chancellorship of the exchequer, for which he had no obvious qualifications. The appointment, which was dictated by political considerations, in that the Huskissonites, whom Wellington took in, would not accept the retention of Herries at the exchequer, raised many eyebrows and spawned a conspiracy theory that it was of Huskisson’s devising.60 In practice, Goulburn was scarcely less financially ignorant than his treasury colleagues Wellington and Dawson (financial secretary); and while he was required to speak with punishing frequency on ministerial economic policies, these emerged from a collective cabinet effort superintended by the duke. Goulburn’s personal inclination, determined in part by his Evangelical commitment, was for preservation of the revenue producing tax base and avoidance of deficit financing and a large national debt, with tax reductions to be implemented only sparingly.61 The snobbish second generation peer Lord Ellenborough, a senior member of the government, noted that neither Goulburn nor Herries, being ‘of the class of under-secretaries’, looked ‘as if they belonged to a cabinet’ when it first assembled.62

Goulburn, who inevitably caught ‘a very severe cold’ before February was out, derided Hume’s notion of establishing a dozen separate finance committees on the 15th and outlined the aims of the recently appointed committee, on which he of course sat and where he narrowly failed to carry his proposal for a specific annual sum to be set aside for debt reduction’.63 He voted with Peel against repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., but in cabinet subsequently seemed to Ellenborough to be ‘rather for and against it’. He accepted Huskisson’s compromise on the corn laws, drafted resolutions as a basis for further discussion and was Wellington’s emissary to Grant, president of the board of trade, who wanted further relaxation.64 He refused to consider repeal of the lucrative stamp duty, 11 Mar., but promised to consider that on marine insurances, 25 Mar. On the 12th he carried a resolution to repeal the Act empowering the national debt commissioners to grant life annuities and on the 14th introduced an enabling bill, which became law on 9 May. He defended his Irish Vestry Act against Hume’s attack, 20 Mar., and opposed Davies’s borough polls bill 31 Mar. He presented and endorsed anti-Catholic petitions, 21, 29 Apr., and voted silently in that sense, 12 May. He dismissed Harvey’s motion for parliamentary control over crown excise prosecutions, 1 May, and next day, on the advice of Croker, dropped his amendment to extend a provision of the Test Acts repeal bill to Ireland. His speech proposing the financial provision for Canning’s family, 13 May, was condemned as ‘miserable’, ‘cold’ and ‘received as coldly’ by Canning’s nephew Lord George Cavendish Bentinck*.65 He was against repeal of the usury laws, 20 May, Hume’s call for full disclosure of civil list pensions, 20 May, and transfer of the malt tax to beer, 23 May. The king and Ellenborough were keen for him to replace the departed Huskisson at the colonial office in May, but Wellington vetoed this on account of his being compromised on the slavery issue.66 On 3 June he obtained leave to introduce a bill to restrict the circulation in England of small Scottish and Irish bank notes, which became law on 15 July and completed the currency system adopted in 1819. He denied his alleged involvement in malversation in the Leinster police establishment, 12 June, and opposed inquiry into the Irish church, 24 June. He got rid of a resolution deploring the decline of British shipping, 17 June, and defended the ‘misrepresented’ additional churches bill, 30 June, but abandoned it for the session, 8 July. He resisted as ‘a bad economy’ the Whig proposal to abolish the place of lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 4 July, though in cabinet beforehand he had been inclined to concede it.67 His first cautious budget statement, 11 July, identified a genuine surplus revenue of £3,000,000 to be applied to reduction of the sinking fund, boasted of the ministry’s achievements on retrenchment and presented an optimistic view of the economy’s general health. Strong opposition forced him reluctantly to withdraw his bill to cut the cost of pensions by imposing, as the finance committee had recommended, a superannuation scheme for public servants funded by deductions from salaries, 14 July 1828. He effected it the following year, partly by decree.

In September 1828 he obtained a Welsh judgeship for Edward.68 He continued the search for economies in public expenditure that autumn. He was appalled by the bad timing of Dawson’s public assertion that the Catholic question must be settled forthwith, but perceived its essential truth.69 According to Mrs. Arbuthnot, he was held in high regard by Wellington at the beginning of 1829, when he was one of the six Protestant ministers who told the king on 13 Jan. that immediate action was necessary: ‘a good dinner in a very warm room’ gave him ‘a cold and a pain in my leg’.70 In cabinet, 17 Jan., he ‘begged it might be understood that he reserved himself for the details, before he divided in favour’ of emancipation; and next day he ‘talked of the advantage of doing away with the [Irish] lord lieutenant at some not too distant time’. He was one of the small group who drafted the king’s speech and, after George IV had endorsed it, 27 Jan., he was deputed to inform the Irish primate, to whom he additionally explained his personal reasons for supporting concession and offered to resign his seat if necessary. He told Gregory that it ‘has been a choice between tremendous difficulties’ and asked to be given ‘credit for honesty of intention, and a desire to do what was best for the country’.71 He announced his conversion in the House when presenting several hostile petitions from Irish clerics, 12 Feb., arguing that ‘a disunited administration and a divided Parliament are likely to prove much more prejudicial to the interests of the Protestant church’ than emancipation with adequate securities. In cabinet he now backed the disfranchisement of Irish 40s. freeholders. Hampered by a streaming cold and an obvious lack of enthusiasm, he spoke flatly for the relief bill, 17 Mar. 1829, explicitly placing himself in the same boat as Peel.72

On 13 and 20 Feb. 1829, when the Whig Lord Howick* thought he ‘cut a most laughable figure, clearly not knowing what to say’, he maintained under questioning that there was no need to reappoint the finance committee.73 He opposed amalgamation of the two London ordnance establishments, 2 Mar., increasing the interest rate on British compensation claims against France, 4 May, reduction of the malt and beer duties, 12 May, repeal of the agricultural horse tax, 13 May, when he presaged intended revision of the assessed taxes next year, and inquiry into East Indian trade, 14 May. Bankes thought his second budget statement, 8 May, when he boasted of another surplus and continued retrenchment, but ruled out tax cuts, was ‘very clear and intelligible’.74 Goulburn also completed his abandonment of the sinking fund and announced his plan to convert unfunded into funded debt by giving holders of £3,000,000 in exchequer bills incentives to take four per cents instead. The obscurity of this part of his speech was deliberate and designed to lay the ground for a more ambitious conversion scheme, which it was ‘the practice of the time’ to keep from the public.75 He defended the interim measure, 14, 22 May. He justified the cost of Nash’s London improvements and the refurbishment of Buckingham House, 12 May, but he set an excess limit of £150,000 on the latter, 25 May 1829. He, Peel and Vesey Fitzgerald were charged with investigating the condition of the Irish poor and the feasibility of introducing a regular system of poor relief.

On the address, 4 Feb. 1830, he peddled the official line that distress was local and temporary. He upheld the currency settlement of 1819, 5, 11 Feb., when he opposed the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, unable to see ‘any deficiency in the adequate representation of commerce or manufactures’. He defeated by 184-69 Hume’s demand for large tax remissions, an implied censure of himself, 15 Feb. Opposition observers were contemptuous of all these performances, especially the last two; and Lord Holland described him as ‘an encumbrance not an assistance’ to Peel in debate.76 He outlined savings of £1,300,000 in public expenditure, 19 Feb., and on the 23rd announced his intention to hold an inquiry into the beer trade, with a view to opening it. He secured the appointment of a select committee, 4 Mar., and on 8 Apr. brought in a bill to effect its recommendations, which he steered through, in significantly amended form, against strong opposition in June. He denied Davies’s charge that he had shown partiality to Nash in the last investigation, 2 Mar. He opposed inquiry into the Irish church, 4 Mar., and admitted its defects but claimed that it had been improved, 27 Apr., when he replied to O’Connell’s attack on the Vestry Act and defeated by 177-47 his motion for an amendment bill. The cabinet decided that Davenport’s planned motion on the state of the nation must be resisted, and on Peel’s insistence Goulburn brought forward his budget statement to pre-empt it. In cabinet he proposed ‘a modified property tax’ on ‘landed property, all fixed property, and the funds as well as all offices’, but not on ‘the profits of trade’, to finance repeal of the beer tax, temporary remission of the hop duty and reduction of the sugar duties. Wellington and a majority of his colleagues compelled him to abandon the property tax. On 15 Mar. he revealed this to the Commons, before detailing his plan to cut the beer, cider and leather taxes, further reduce the four per cents and, in order to claw back revenue, increase the Irish stamp duties (he was forced to abandon this contentious measure) and the Irish and Scottish spirit duties and tax Irish tobacco. Howick conceded that the plan was ‘upon the whole satisfactory’ and ‘a good beginning’.77 He refused the Ultra Lord Chandos’s request for reduction of the coffee duties to assist the West Indian colonists, 19 Mar. He spoke for the continuation of the treasurership of the navy as a separate office, 22 Mar., and on the 25th beat by 167-78 Poulett Thomson’s motion for inquiry into a revision of taxation. Next day he explained his scheme to reduce the four-and-a-half per cents. He spoke against abolition of the Bathurst and Dundas pensions on which ministers were defeated, 26 Mar. On 5 Apr. he spoke, ‘ill’, as Agar Ellis thought, and with ‘a purling stream of language ... full of phrased nothings and gentle shufflings’, as Richard Monckton Milnes† described it, and voted against Jewish emancipation. He attributed the government’s ‘embarrassing’ defeat, on an issue to which he claimed to be indifferent, partly to the ostentatious abstention of Dawson, Holmes and other official men.78 His and Wellington’s attempt in the prolonged negotiations with the bank over renewal of its charter to secure a relaxation of restrictions on joint-stock banks ended in failure.79 He secured the appointment of a select committee on superannuations and saw off ‘Bum’ Gordon’s bid to widen its scope, 26 Apr. In Peel’s absence on account of his father’s death, 3-17 May, the already overworked Goulburn was in charge of the Commons. On 3 May he was forced by the prospect of defeat to withdraw the vote of money for Windsor Castle repairs with an assurance that he would set up a committee to determine its full and final cost. Informing Peel, he observed that ‘the state of the king’s health and the prospect of an early dissolution’ were encouraging ‘the country gentlemen who usually support us’ to please their constituents by questioning all government expenditure. However, Wellington fully approved his decision.80 He made O’Connell withdraw his motion for information on persons executed under the Irish Constables Act, 4 May, had a ‘heavy’ but successful evening on the miscellaneous estimates, 10 May, and easily defeated Hume’s call for abolition of the Irish lord lieutenancy, 11 May, Spring Rice’s motion for repeal of the Irish coal duties, 13 May, and Graham’s for a return of privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May, when Howick felt he missed a chance to expose the exaggerations in the opposition case.81 He expressed support for gradual progression towards abolition of the death penalty for forgery and did not oppose Slaney’s motion for inquiry into employment fluctuations in the manufacturing districts, 13 May. He defeated a motion for inquiry into the tobacco duties, 25 May, and declined to repeal those on soap and candles, 7 June, when he defended the grant for South American missions. On 11 June he successfully resisted reduction of the grant for consuls abroad. He opposed Smith Stanley’s Irish ecclesiastical leases bill as a violation of church property, 16 June, and the following day defeated proposals for inquiry into the conduct of the church commissioners and interference with the merchants seamen’s fund. He ran into trouble on the expiring West Indian sugar duties. Faced with Grant’s notice of a motion for a general reduction, he concocted a scheme to impose a temporary sliding scale of duties on coarser sugars and to recoup revenue by raising the duty on Irish and Scottish spirits and rum, which he explained after defeating Chandos’s motion for substantial reductions, 14 June. Initial optimism that the plan would take soon evaporated, however, and on 21 June he made a poor fist of defending it against Howick’s onslaught. Forced by lack of time to give in, he had the humiliation on 30 June 1830 of having to concede a ‘temporary’ reduction in the duties.82

Thomas Creevey* heard that at the levee to kiss the new king’s hand, 26 June, the myopic William IV, when Goulburn’s turn came, said ‘"I can’t make out who you are. You must tell me your name, if you please"’.83 He was being widely criticized for failing to give Peel adequate support in debate, was known to aspire to the Speakership and was therefore the subject of speculation that summer.84 He reconnoitred Cambridge University, but concluded that he had no chance. He was returned in absentia for Armagh, even though some, including the primate, now doubted his suitability in view of the furore which his stamp duties proposals had provoked and his turnaround on Catholic emancipation; his election did not go down well with the inhabitants.85 Goulburn was with Peel and Wellington in late September 1830, when they decided to try to attach Palmerston and his friends to the ministry; the negotiations failed.86 On 5 Oct. he presented to the cabinet his scheme to transfer to the consolidated fund all the salaries previously partly paid out of the civil list and to make savings of £28,000 in the diplomatic service. The king’s objections obliged him to modify the plan.87 In the House, where he thought ‘the general feeling is against us’, he brought forward his proposals for a ‘considerable saving’ in the list, 12 Nov., in a speech which even ministerialists considered at best ‘indifferent’ and others ‘wretched’. He opposed Parnell’s motion for inquiry as ‘an infraction of the inalienable prerogative of the crown’, 15 Nov. 1830, when the government’s defeat ended his 20-year tenure of office (interrupted only for eight months in 1827-8).88 Two weeks later he told Gregory:

I am by no means sorry for a change which has released me from a mental and bodily labour which was I felt beyond my strength to bear and which must necessarily have been increased by the determination of the opposition to use every mode of vexatious delay which the forms of the House permitted in order to wear out its opponents.

Alarmed by the ‘species of servile war raging in some parts of the country’, he organized farmers of the Betchworth area to deal with any ‘Swing’ disturbances, but also got neighbouring squires to make more generous contributions to poor relief. He continued his regime of domestic stringency, and to prepare Harry for Cambridge placed him with the leading Evangelical Henry Venn Elliott in Brighton.89 Arbuthnot was inclined to exclude Goulburn, ‘whom he destines for the Chair’, from the Tory leaders and managers’ early consultations on organizing the party in opposition; it is not clear whether or not he participated.90 In the House, he defended the Irish Protestant clergy, 18 Nov., and opposed a radical motion for returns of church rates, 25 Nov. He denied having when in office misled the Commons as to the cost of the Canadian Rideau canal project, 6 Dec., and promised the Grey ministry ‘fair play’ in scrutiny of their plans to reduce public salaries, 9 Dec.; he was named to the select committee. He argued that day that Hodgson’s requested return of English borough freemen would ‘afford no useful information’. On 16 Dec. 1830 he interrupted Hume’s boast of his consistent devotion to ‘reform in everything’ with a cry of ‘Hear, hear’, which prompted Hume to denounce him as ‘the defender of every extravagance and ... abuse’. Goulburn retorted that Hume had gone back on his initial support of the sale of beer bill in order to advance his prospects of election for Middlesex.

He concerted with Herries and Sir George Murray, 3 Feb. 1831, on opposition tactics that evening in the Commons, where in the event ‘little or no business’ came up. He told his wife:

As to reform all that passed ... showed the difficulty in which ... [ministers] were in respect to it. The petitions mostly prayed for ballot, universal suffrage, etc., as a means of attaining other objects subversive of the present state of our society, and if the government mean not to go these lengths they will not gain anything in the opinion of those who now cry out boldly for reform and whom it is their object and interest to pacify. I rather apprehend that they will go as far as they can in accordance with popular opinion ... They are popular for the moment and they do not see that ultimately they must either resign ... or adopt every unjust measure which the people or rather the mob of England or Ireland may think fit to clamour for.

He had been persuaded by Wellington not to raise the question of British relations with France and subsequently prompted the duke to veto any Tory parliamentary initiative on foreign policy.91 He was pleased with the opposition’s ‘capital’ performance on 4 Feb., when he and Calcraft pointed out ‘some of the leading fallacies’ of the ministerial civil list proposals and enjoyed ‘crowing over them for their change of opinion’. A visit to the City the following morning revealed to him ‘a great doubt whether the change of government has been for the better’, and he reflected that ‘the talents of the government appear as much obscured by office as ours used to be’, that the ‘damp’ which Peel’s absence had caused had been ‘removed by the operation of last night’, that ‘we shall be able to beat them in debate as well as in information’ and that ‘if we do but manage our proceedings with temper and discretion we shall have the feeling of the country soon with us’.92 He was appointed to the select committees on the East India Company, 4 Feb., and public accounts, 17 Feb. He had a satisfying evening on 11 Feb. when, ‘evidently prepared’, he shredded the budget of his successor, Lord Althorp, ‘furiously declaiming’ against the proposed tax on stock transfers and repeal of the duty on printed calicos. He welcomed the abandonment of the transfer tax, 14 Feb., but argued that the budget’s basic flaw was that it reserved ‘no surplus whatever of revenue beyond expenditure for the redemption of the national debt’. Once more plagued with ‘the remains of a cold’, he told Jane that ministers would ‘learn by experience the folly of taking off old taxes, to which the people are accustomed, for the sake of present relief, while they impose new burdens in another quarter which from being new is not so readily borne’.93 He acquiesced in the reference of the Windsor Castle and Buckingham House projects to a select committee (to which he was appointed), 15 Feb., but reserved his future right to defend himself if blamed retrospectively. He briefed Ellenborough on the cotton duties, 17 Feb., and four days later joined him and a few other Tories in hearing the grievances of a deputation of ship owners disgruntled with the timber duties proposals.94 According to a government backbencher, he took notes as Sir James Graham laid out the navy estimates, 25 Feb., but ‘shrunk from the battle’.95 He reiterated his criticisms of the new tax plans, 21, 28 Feb., 10 Mar., and on 11 Mar. urged Althorp to stop dithering on the timber duties and attacked his proposal to reduce those on sugar. He joined in the opposition assault on the former, 18 Mar., and enjoyed their victory.96 He endorsed the Irish secretary Smith Stanley’s resistance to Ruthven’s bid to relieve small occupiers from the potato tithe and defended his own Composition Act, 22 Feb. He deplored the implication of Newport’s motion on Irish first fruits, 14 Mar., and criticized the government’s advance of capital to Ireland, 30 Mar. He supported their proposal to grant £10,000 a year to the crown for civil contingencies, 25, 28 Mar., 14 Apr., when he claimed that it differed little from his own abortive plan; but on 30 Mar. 1831 he condemned the salaries committee’s recommendation that no future pensions should be granted without parliamentary consent as ‘an invasion of the constitution and an inroad on the dignity of the crown’.

Goulburn’s first reaction to the government’s reform scheme, 1 Mar. 1831, was to write to Jane from the House:

Never was any measure conceived with greater wickedness. It is evident that the Whigs mean to leave office and to make it untenable for any successor; and to do this they leave a question which will be the foundation of perpetual agitation if rejected and of revolution if carried ... The cowardice of the representatives of populous places will prevent many who will vote against it afterwards from opposing the first introduction and under these circumstances we shall reserve our strength until the second reading.

‘Almost as tired as if I was in office’ as a result of attendance on committees and in the House, he continued to hope that the reform bill would be rejected at that stage, and was in any case sure that if it got through it could be emasculated in committee. He convinced himself that there was little popular enthusiasm for reform, despite ‘the government making every effort to have the mob on their side’, though he lamented that ‘the respectable classes of society’ were ‘cowardly as well as alarmed and unwilling to come forward’. He had ‘no fear of the bill passing even if the second reading be carried’, as there was ‘an incipient apprehension among some of the middling orders who have property’.97 His own contributions to the reform debates were limited to a brief attack on the bill as a ‘monstrous and violent’ measure which would raise and disappoint ‘extravagant expectations’ and reduce the monarchy to dependence on the Commons, 9 Mar., an assertion that the Irish proposals would endanger the Union, 24 Mar., and a defence of the Cambridge University anti-reform petition, 30 Mar. He voted against the second reading of the English bill, 22 Mar., and surmised that despite the majority of only one for it ‘the responsibility of a dissolution is one which the government may not be willing to take upon themselves however convenient it may be to them to get rid of the present House’. He was pleased to find Peel and Herries ‘in good heart, determined to resist the bill most manfully’, in early April. He regarded Russell’s abandonment of the proposed reduction in the number of Members as ‘an indication of a change of purpose’ which would be ‘a great encouragement to the timid and wavering on our side’ and delighted in the radical Hunt’s assertion that most of ‘the lower orders’ in the manufacturing areas were hostile to the bill. He divided for Gascoyne’s successful wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831, and told Ellenborough next day that ‘if ministers did not go out, the bill was lost’.98

At the ensuing general election Goulburn stood for Cambridge University with Peel’s brother William, professing support for ‘temperate’ reform, as the culmination of a month-long campaign against Palmerston, the foreign secretary, and the other sitting Member, the Whig William Cavendish, organized by the resident anti-reformers. They won comfortably, inflicting on the ministry its only defeat in a large open constituency. Goulburn, who had been ready if beaten to ‘hail the tranquillity of private life and freedom from attendance in the House of Commons as a great blessing’, occupied the seat for the rest of his life. His friends opened a subscription to defray his £2,000 costs. Attacks on his ownership and alleged maltreatment of slaves, which he had prepared himself to refute, led to a protracted public dispute with Zachary Macaulay.99 Immediately afterwards he told Wellington that he now accepted the necessity of some measure of just reform based on enfranchisement rather than disfranchisement, but the duke, discounting the notion of ‘a reaction among the lower orders’, thought the Tories ‘should consent to no violation of principle, of justice or of property’.100 Three weeks later Goulburn urged Peel to exert himself more decisively in the new Parliament to secure

a perfect understanding and concert among all who are opposed to the government measure of reform. We must not be scrupulous as to little differences ... Without it, I much fear that the false opinion circulated by the government of your disinclination to combine with others in opposition to the bill will gain ground, that men will think the bill likely to be carried as it is and will be inclined to make good their individual interests and to secure a certain popularity under the new constitution rather than endeavour by patient and continued resistance to save the actual constitution ... We have a good force and I think may do a great deal if we can direct it properly and in a body.

Peel professed willingness to co-operate in opposition to reform, however futile, but refused to promote any alternative scheme or to countenance renewed ‘party connection with the Ultra Tory party’.101

On 16 June 1831 Goulburn took his seat in the Commons, where he ‘saw many new faces, not very good looking nor yet so bad as I expected’, and concluded after a conversation with the radical Member John Maberly that ‘our best course undoubtedly will be to endeavour to break the connection between the radicals and the present government’, though he had ‘no hope’ of success, as the ministers were ‘more radical than the radicals’. Later that day he attended the small opposition meeting which decided to adopt Planta’s Charles Street house as a party headquarters.102 On 22 June he joined temperately in criticism of the omission of any reference to providence in the king’s speech. He objected to Hume and Hunt’s imputation of nepotistic corruption to all who dispensed patronage, 28 June, when he secured the addition to the renewed select committee on the king’s printers of two Members ‘not so directly opposed to me on all political questions’. He was named to the select committee on the use of molasses in brewing and distilling, 30 June, and defended the Sale of Beer Act, while admitting that its ‘inconveniencies’ in practice had been greater than anticipated and that if it could be shown to have ‘tended to the democratisation of the lower classes’ legislation would be necessary. He ridiculed the radical alderman Wood’s call for a return of salaries to 1797 levels and refuted Graham’s charge that the late ministers had ‘fled from the helm of affairs’. He and Dawson left the House before the division, ‘shabbily’, as Littleton saw it, ‘because they would not swell the ministerial majority’.103 Goulburn welcomed the proposed repeal of the coastal coal duties, but criticized Althorp for neglecting the revenue, 1 July, berated Hunt for his attack on the grant for Oxford and Cambridge professors’ lectures, 8 July, and tried to exploit ministerial differences on the wine duties, 11 July. He took exception to Hume’s assertion that the Wellington ministry had blindly upheld the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, 18 July. He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, and concluded optimistically that the ‘express reservation’ made by ‘several’ of its supporters of ‘their opposition on a further stage’ meant that ‘the majority ... will be as small as can be necessary for carrying the bill’.104 On 19 July, when he voted for use of the 1831 census to determine the disfranchisement schedules, he contended that the proposal to disfranchise Appleby was inconsistent with the reprieve of Reigate. He denied that Bishop’s Castle was corrupt, 20 July, and on 22 June argued in vain for East Looe, Lostwithiel, Minehead and Petersfield to be allowed to keep one Member. Illness put him out of action until 3 Aug., when he denounced the enfranchisement of Greenwich and the other metropolitan districts and deplored Hobhouse’s thinly veiled threat to the Lords. The previous day he had found the Tory committee ‘in good heart’ and discerned ‘a growing opinion from the tone of the papers and some members of the government that they are not quite united on reform’.105 On 5 Aug. he voiced concern at the powers given to the boundary commissioners, backed Croker’s attack on the enfranchisement of Gateshead and insinuated that the generous treatment of County Durham smacked of gerrymandering in favour of Lord Durham, a member of the cabinet and one of the authors of the bill. He said more on this, 9 Aug., maintaining that Sculcoats, near Hull, deserved separate representation if Gateshead did. Later, on the proposal to unite Rochester with Chatham, he again alluded to the treatment of Durham, and a cheer from some Tories provoked the radical Tom Duncombe to launch a savage personal attack on him. The House was ‘in a state of great excitement for about two hours’. Although Goulburn stayed silent, he consulted friends ‘as to whether he should notice the matter out of the House’, but Duncombe was eventually brought to apologize and the Speaker intervened to ensure that the affair went no further.106 Undeterred, Goulburn implied partiality in the configuration of the Pembroke Boroughs, 10 Aug., when he enjoyed ministers’ discomfiture in a discussion on the Irish poor, in which they were ‘attacked and abandoned by all their friends as being a government that did nothing though they promised everything’, and their enforced withdrawal of a botched clause of the reform bill. He told Jane, ‘I think the opinion of their incapacity is gaining ground among their friends, many of whom though still voting with them let out their complaints in no very measured language’.107 He was named to the select committee on the charges of civil government, 12 Aug., but a recurrence of illness kept him away from the hot and putrid House until 29 Aug., when he praised the work of the Irish board of charitable bequests. Next day he voted to preserve the voting rights of existing non-resident freemen. Continued ill health prevented him from accepting Peel’s invitation to Drayton for shooting in early September.108 He returned to the Commons on the 12th and made several interventions on details of the reform bill in the following week: he denounced the proposal to deprive three county towns, including Guildford, of a Member, 15 Sept. That day he criticized ministers for not meeting Hunt’s motion for repeal of the corn laws with a direct negative and repeated his fear that their wine duties plans would damage relations with Portugal. He condemned the Irish public works bill as a measure intended ‘merely to increase the patronage of the government’, 16 Sept., and exchanged heated words with Smith Stanley. He divided against the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. He voted with government against inquiry into the ‘trumpery and iniquitous’ allegations of the Deacles, 27 Sept., and anticipated ‘the rejection of the [reform] bill by a large majority in the Lords’.109 He spoke in favour of inquiry into the effects of renewal of the Sugar Refinery Act on the West India interest, 28 Sept., and said the ministerial proposal for the appointment of a select committee on those colonies was ‘an absolute delusion’, 6 Oct., when he supported the prayer of an Irish clergyman’s petition for the proper enforcement of tithes collection. He condemned the abolition of the Scottish exchequer court, but was not listened to, 7 Oct. On 10 Oct., when he was listed as home secretary in a putative moderate reform ministry, he made what was generally reckoned to be a listless speech against the motion of confidence in the government.110 He joined in the attack on Russell over his ‘whisper of a faction’ indiscretion, 12 Oct., applauded the attorney-general Denman’s assurance that the government would take stern action against rioters, 13 Oct., and clashed with Burdett over the acceptability of the Birmingham Political Union’s petition for the creation of peers to carry reform, 19 Oct. 1831. A few days later he sent Wellington a paper on the national finances and picked a hole in Althorp’s calculations.111

Goulburn, who told Harry on 30 Nov. 1831 that the next session would be stormy, as ‘the state of the country and of all our concerns foreign and domestic is such as to call forth every latent feeling of bitterness and hostility’, pressed Peel to come to London for ‘consideration and concert’.112 In the House, 15 Dec., he acquiesced in (and was named to) the select committee on Irish tithes, but carped at ministers for prevaricating on the issue; he was named to the West India select committee that day. He voted against the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831. In the Christmas recess he tried to interest Peel in an alternative moderate bill drafted by the barrister Hildyard, but Peel dismissed the idea and argued that it was preferable to try to modify the government’s measures. Goulburn thought that as ‘the majority of the House of Commons’ would ‘vote as they are bid’ there was no hope of achieving this:

My view is ... to get the bill again rejected if possible. A second year’s consideration would be invaluable to the country ... I am daily more convinced that this reform is not desired except by those who are to gain by it, and I therefore think that all we can do in the way of encouraging resistance to it either in our House or in the Lords ought to be done ... It is ... bad policy in us to do anything which looks like encouraging an idea that we think the bill as it is must pass.113

On 17 Jan. 1832 he secured a return of income and expenditure designed to give Althorp ‘credit for a blunder in the arrangement of his budget, a deficiency of £1,000,000’.114 He spoke and voted against going into committee on the reform bill, 20 Jan., and on the 23rd (when he was in the majority against Hobhouse’s vestries bill) protested that it was impossible to consider the proposals for individual boroughs without the boundary commissioners’ recommendations to hand. On 25 Jan. he concerted with Peel and Herries the ‘plan of operation’ for prosecuting their ‘good case’ against the Russian-Dutch loan next day, as part of their campaign to exploit ‘a growing opinion in the public mind of the incompetency of the government to conduct any real business’. He did not speak in the debate, 26 Jan., when ministers scraped by with a majority of only 20 ‘despite every effort made by them to procure attendance’; but he privately contrasted ‘the adverse feeling entertained towards them’ with ‘the enthusiasm with which the duke of Wellington’s health was received’ at a Burns Night dinner. Earlier that evening he had listened uneasily as his Irvingite friend Spencer Perceval had intemperately called for a day of general fast and humiliation. He said he would vote with Perceval if he divided the House, but when Althorp repeated his assurance that ministers intended to name such a day he prevailed on Perceval to withdraw his motion. He was ‘grieved’ by Perceval’s demented rant against Godless ministers, 20 Mar., when he tried in vain to shut him up. He subsequently in private impressed on Perceval and his wife ‘the extreme danger of underlying imaginations as to being directed by the Holy Spirit ... but with very little success’.115 He said the proposed division of counties would set the agricultural and manufacturing interests at odds, 27 Jan. On supply, 6 Feb., he indulged in some ‘bitter ... invective’ against Althorp’s financial management; he told Jane that he was ‘much approved and what I said received no answer’.116 Busy in the mornings with his work on the West India committee, he continued to criticize details of and point out anomalies and inconsistencies in the reform bill: he voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., hinted at political bias in the preferential treatment given to Whitby over Dartmouth, 9 Mar., and complained of the disfranchisement of Minehead and enfranchisement of Merthyr Tydvil, 14 Mar. He was inclined to give ministers’ plans for Irish tithes reform general support ‘in order to enforce payment of what is due to the Irish clergy’, but he found their declarations on the subject, 14 Feb.

very embarrassing to their future measures and still more embarrassing from the mode in which they were taken up by the radicals to those who like myself are disposed to give them real and effective assistance in tranquillizing the country. But they are weak and foolish in all their proceedings, doing what is right so as to make it appear wrong and raising resistance to themselves by a foolish desire of conciliating radical support. I have increased my cold.117

He divided with government against Hunt’s motion for information on military punishments, 16 Feb. He endorsed Althorp’s refusal to repeal the soap tax, 28 Feb., but supported Chandos’s call for a greater reduction in the sugar duties to relieve the West Indians, 7 Mar. He voted against the third reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., and afterwards claimed ‘victory’ in argument for its opponents and urged the Lords to throw it out. He opposed the malt drawback bill, 30 Mar., 2 Apr., when he outlined his general but qualified support for the government’s tithes reform plans. He was a founder member of the Carlton Club in March. He spoke against the navy civil departments bill, 6 Apr., and continued to try to show up ministers’ financial incompetence, believing that ‘the more we damage them now the better’.118 He presented and supported a petition against the new Irish education scheme, 8 May 1832.

After the Lords had rejected the reform bill, 7 May 1832, he speculated about the ‘awful questions’ of peerage creations or ministerial resignation, but concluded that ‘the solution ... depends not on our will so much as on far higher powers’. He at first considered it ‘impossible’ that the Conservatives could ‘take office to carry such a reform bill as will satisfy the people and what is worse the king’s pledges on the subject’ and foresaw only ‘ruin’: ‘in the maze in which we are we have no hope but in God’s guidance and superintendence’. He doubted the wisdom of Wellington’s determination ‘not to desert’ the king if called on, for he could not imagine how he could form a viable government ‘with such a House of Commons and under such circumstances as those in which the Whigs have placed us’. He followed Peel’s example in refusing Wellington’s request to serve in a Conservative reform ministry, clear in his mind that moderate reform was now a chimera, that such an attempt could lead only to inflamed passions and ‘yet more violent measures’ and that ‘a united opposition to the bill’ led by Peel afforded a far better chance of modifying it. The notion that if Manners Sutton resigned from the Chair to lead the Commons or even head a government Goulburn could succeed him was dismissed by the reformers, who had no doubt that the House would not elect him as its Speaker.119 Even on 14 May 1832 Goulburn did ‘not despair yet of a [Conservative] government able to go on’; but the humiliating Commons debate of that evening convinced him that the game was up, though he fretted that the Conservatives had abandoned the king to ‘men who, having no regard for monarchy and no feeling for existing institutions, will not be very merciful in their triumph and will for a time march uncontrolled upon the revolutionary road which they have opened for themselves’.120

Goulburn was named to the select committee on the Bank’s charter, 22 May 1832, and its proceedings occupied much of his time in the following three months. He voted silently against the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May. He objected to details of the boundaries bill, 7, 8 June. He quizzed Althorp on the state of the finances, 4 June. On the 18th he got leave to introduce a bill to amend the 1827 Irish Union of Parishes Act, which became law on 17 July. He opposed the births registration bill, 20 June, voted for Baring’s measure to exclude insolvent debtors from Parliament, 27 June, defended the Irish Protestant clergy, 28 June, and stressed the importance of securing their entitlement from tithes when calling on Irish Catholics and Protestants to bury the hatchet, 29 June. He voted against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July, and spoke thus, 16 July. He divided against Harvey’s attempt to open the Inns of Court, 17 July. On the 23rd he spoke and voted against the Irish education plan, arguing that if the Protestant scriptures were jettisoned ‘we may have able talkers, able leaders of political unions and able agitators, but we shall not have good citizens, good subjects or good Christians’. Next day he opposed Hume’s motion to exclude the recorder of Dublin from the House. He mocked Althorp’s financial incompetence, 27 July. On 30 July 1832 he denounced the bribery at elections bill as ‘calculated to encourage conspiracies’ and seconded the motion of thanks to Manners Sutton on his supposed retirement from the Chair. Wellington wanted Goulburn to stand for the Speakership in the next Parliament, but when Peel, who had been solicited to support the better qualified Williams Wynn, sought his views but rather discouraged him, he gave up the idea, professing that ‘what feelings of ambition I may have had are gone and I only remain in public life because God has cast my lot there and because I consider it the duty of every man to use his best endeavours in the station in which he finds himself to arrest the progress of evil; in other words, to check the frantic career of the government’.121

Goulburn, as Peel’s faithful lieutenant, remained a leading Conservative politician for almost 20 years. He was home secretary in Peel’s first administration and, having been narrowly defeated for the Speakership in 1839, an able and supportive chancellor of the exchequer in his second. The death of Harry from consumption in 1843 was a blow from which he never fully recovered. Peel’s death in 1850, when he acted as a pallbearer and executor, caused him great anguish.122 He died at Betchworth ‘after a very short illness’, in January 1856. By his will, dated 30 Jan. 1855, he left all his real estate to his elder surviving son Edward, his residuary legatee, and charged it with annuities of £200 for his wife (who died in 1857) and £100 for his daughter Lydia. He left £3,200 to be invested for his wife’s benefit.123 In 1846 Croker, reflecting on Goulburn’s being compelled to ‘eat his words ... in silence’ by Peel’s decision to repeal the corn laws, described him as ‘a most excellent and honourable man, with high principles, both moral and political’.124

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

See B. Jenkins, Henry Goulburn, 1784-1856. A Political Biog. (1996); Oxford DNB.

• 1. Arbuthnot Corresp. 233; Creevey Pprs. ii. 212.
• 2. Peel Letters, 32.
• 3. Jenkins, 99-102; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 44-45.
• 4. HMC Bathurst, 485; Hatherton mss, Goulburn to Littleton, 19 Dec. 1820.
• 5. Croker Pprs. i. 189.
• 6. HMC Bathurst, 503-8, 517-19.
• 7. Ibid. 522-4; Croker Pprs. i. 217-18; Hobhouse Diary, 80; Harrowby mss 14, f. 104; Add. 38290, ff. 98, 119; Surr. Hist. Cent. Goulburn mss Acc 304/68/1, pp. 58-60 (Goulburn’s ms mem.).
• 8. Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, i. 235, 239, 247-8, 250, 252; NLW, Coedymaen mss 946; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 129-30.
• 9. Add. 40322, f. 1; Dorset RO, D/BKL, Bankes jnl. 131 (Dec. 1821).
• 10. Jenkins, 132-5; Buckingham, i. 255; Goulburn mss 68/1, pp. 61-64; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 157-8.
• 11. Jenkins, 135; Arbuthnot Corresp. 26; Add. 40328, ff. 1, 9, 12; Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box ed. Lady Gregory, 173.
• 12. Buckingham, i. 274; O’Connell Corresp. ii. 949.
• 13. Add. 40328, ff. 14, 31.
• 14. Goulburn mss 68/1, pp. 67-70; Add. 37298, f. 158.
• 15. Add. 52445, f. 78; Coedymaen mss 636.
• 16. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 158; Jenkins, 144-5; Add. 40328, f. 69.
• 17. Add. 37299, ff. 207, 213, 238; Goulburn mss 68/1, pp. 75-76; Jenkins, 145-6.
• 18. Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 189-90; Jenkins, 150-1.
• 19. Add. 40328, f. 109; Jenkins, 152.
• 20. Castle Howard mss, Abercromby to Morpeth, 1 Sept.; Lansdowne mss, same to Lansdowne, 7 Oct. 1822.
• 21. Add. 40328, ff. 184, 194.
• 22. Add. 40328, ff. 129, 147, 149, 266, 288, 293; 40329, ff. 10, 19, 29.
• 23. Add. 40328, ff. 300, 306; 40329, ff. 1, 5, 7, 10, 17, 19; Lansdowne mss, Spring Rice to Lansdowne, 1 Feb.; Goulburn mss 67, Goulburn to wife, 4, 12, 26 Feb., reply [Feb. 1823]; Jenkins, 140, 153-6.
• 24. Add. 37301, ff. 14, 29; 40329, ff. 49, 54, 56.
• 25. Add. 40329, ff. 131, 172; Buckingham, ii. 13-14; Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 9 Mar. [1824]; Jenkins, 157-8.
• 26. Agar Ellis diary, 4 Mar. [1823].
• 27. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1080; Arbuthnot Corresp. 44.
• 28. Add. 40329, ff. 117, 137, 199, 203, 218.
• 29. Jenkins, 160.
• 30. Add. 40330, ff. 29, 39, 59; 40363, f. 235.
• 31. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 311; Jenkins, 160.
• 32. Add. 40330, ff. 93, 101, 105, 108; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 388; Jenkins, 162.
• 33. Add. 40330, ff. 207, 237, 246, 275, 304, 312, 316, 319; 40331, ff. 5, 19, 36, 48, 65; Parker, Peel, i. 346-7, 352-8; Buckingham, ii. 208; Jenkins, 164-6; Gash, 389-94.
• 34. Goulburn mss 67, Goulburn to wife, 11, 19, 21 Feb.; Agar Ellis diary, 10 Feb. [1825]; Broughton, Recollections, iii. 84-85; Add. 37303, f. 196; Jenkins, 165-6.
• 35. Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 223-5; O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1205, 1207, 1219, 1229; Jenkins, 167-8.
• 36. Add. 40331, f. 154; Jenkins, 169-71.
• 37. Add. 40331, ff. 143, 147.
• 38. Add. 40331, ff. 233, 246, 275; 40384, ff. 130, 228; BL, Herries mss, Goulburn to Herries, 26 Nov.; Hants RO, Calthorpe mss 26M62/F/C938.
• 39. Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 24, 25 Feb., 2 Mar. 1826.
• 40. Jenkins, 171-2.
• 41. Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 2, 3, 9 Mar. 1826.
• 42. Huskisson Pprs. 202-3; Jenkins, 173.
• 43. Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 29, 30 Apr., 4 May 1826.
• 44. Ibid. 67A, Goulburn to wife, 17, 20 May 1826; Add. 40381, f. 267; 40387, f. 107.
• 45. Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 24 May [11], 15, 16 June; Add. 37303, f. 146; Rutland mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Lord C. Manners to Rutland, 18 June [1826]; Colchester Diary, iii. 441.
• 46. Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 21, 25 June 1826; Add. 40332, ff. 44, 46.
• 47. Jenkins, 176-7.
• 48. Add. 40332, ff. 44, 46, 76; Jenkins, 177-8.
• 49. Parker, i. 416-18, 420-2; Add. 40332, ff. 52, 65, 127, 174; Jenkins, 178-80.
• 50. Add. 40332, f. 170; Goulburn mss 67A, Goulburn to wife, 20, 25, 27 Nov. 1826.
• 51. Parker, i. 428-32; Add. 40332, ff. 209, 211, 219, 227, 241; 40390, f. 281; Jenkins, 180.
• 52. Goulburn mss 66A, Goulburn to wife, 5, 10, 13, 15, 17 [18], 20-25 Feb., 5, 8 Mar. 1827; Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 225-7; Canning’s Ministry, 8.
• 53. Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 227-8; Add. 37305, f. 53; Goulburn mss 66A, Goulburn to wife, 20, 22 Mar. 1827.
• 54. Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 228-9.
• 55. Add. 40332, ff. 317, 319; Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 230-2.
• 56. Add. 40332, f. 324; Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box, 234.
• 57. Add. 51833.
• 58. Goulburn mss 66A, Goulburn to wife, 14 Nov. 1827.
• 59. Peel Letters, 104-5; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 11 Jan. 1828.
• 60. Parker, ii. 29; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 19, 21, 23 Jan.; Croker Pprs. i. 403; Herts. Archives, Panshanger mss D/Elb F78, W. to F. Lamb, 28 Feb. 1828.
• 61. Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC12/85; P.J. Jupp, British Politics on Eve of Reform, 83, 137; Jenkins, 191.
• 62. Ellenborough Diary, i. 3, 31.
• 63. Add. 40395, f. 22; Goulburn mss 66A, Goulburn to wife, 29 Feb. 1828; Jenkins, 193.
• 64. Ellenborough Diary, i. 46, 52; Add. 40333, f. 8; Jenkins, 194-5.
• 65. Harewood mss, Cavendish Bentinck to Lady Canning, 14 May 1828.
• 66. Ellenborough Diary, i. 118-19.
• 67. Ibid. i. 153.
• 68. Wellington mss WP1/952/6.
• 69. Wellington Despatches, iv. 652-3; Jenkins, 200-1.
• 70. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 229; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 16 Jan. 1829; Jenkins, 202.
• 71. Ellenborough Diary, i. 300, 305; Croker Pprs. ii. 12; PRO NI, Primate Beresford mss T2772/2/6/12; Parker, ii. 89.
• 72. Ellenborough Diary, i. 348-9, 358, 388; Jenkins, 203.
• 73. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 20 Feb. 1829.
• 74. Bankes jnl. 167 (8 May 1829).
• 75. Le Marchant, Althorp, 232; Jenkins, 205.
• 76. Howick jnl. 5, 11, 15 Feb.; Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 12 Feb.; Add. 51785, Holland to C.R. Fox, 20 Feb. 1830.
• 77. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 203-4, 209-12; Howick jnl. 15 Mar. 1830; Jenkins, 208-10.
• 78. Agar Ellis diary, 5 Apr. [1830]; Reid, Monckton Milnes, i. 95; Add. 40333, f. 88.
• 79. Jenkins, 207-9, 213-14; Wellington mss WP1/1111/42.
• 80. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 237; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 355; Croker Pprs. ii. 60; Add. 40333, f. 101.
• 81. Add. 40333, f. 99; 40400, f. 170; Howick jnl. 14 May 1830.
• 82. Ellenborough Diaries, ii. 269-70, 274-5, 280; Howick jnl. 21 June 1830; Jenkins, 212.
• 83. Creevey Pprs. ii. 212.
• 84. Baring Jnls. 64; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 290, 291, 306; O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1688; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 366, 395; Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80), Palmerston to Graham, 25 July 1830.
• 85. Primate Beresford mss T2772/2/6/20; PRO NI, Pack-Beresford mss D664/A/184, 192, 207, 208.
• 86. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 389, 395; Peel Letters, 125; Lieven Letters, 249; Coedymaen mss 1028.
• 87. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 383; Wellington mss WP1/1148/51.
• 88. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 416, 427, 431; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 401; Agar Ellis diary, 12 Nov. 1830; Baring Jnls. 70; Life of Campbell, i. 486.
• 89. Jenkins, 218-19.
• 90. Three Diaries, 23; Add. 40340, f. 250.
• 91. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [4 Feb. 1831]; Three Diaries, 42, 46-47; Wellington mss WP11175/ 12, 15
• 92. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [5 Feb. 1831]; Wellington mss WP1/1175/12; Three Diaries, 46.
• 93. Add. 51569, Ord to Holland [11 Feb.]; Le Marchant, 280-3; Three Diaries, 8, 50; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [15 Feb. 1831].
• 94. Three Diaries, 53, 55.
• 95. Baring Jnls. 82.
• 96. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 19 Mar. 1831.
• 97. Ibid. 67B, Goulburn to wife, 2, 3, 9, 16, 17, 19 Mar. 1831.
• 98. Ibid. 67B, Goulburn to wife [22, 23 Mar.], 12, 13 Apr. 1831; Three Diaries, 82.
• 99. Three Diaries, 72, 91; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [2 May 1831]; Jenkins, 226-7.
• 100. Wellington mss WP1/1184/23.
• 101. Add. 40333, f. 116; Parker, ii. 187-8.
• 102. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 17 June 1831; Three Diaries, 93.
• 103. Hatherton diary, 30 June [1831].
• 104. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 7 July [1831].
• 105. Ibid. 67B, Goulburn to wife, 2 Aug. 1831.
• 106. Hatherton diary, 9 Aug.; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [12 Aug. 1831]; Peel Letters, 137.
• 107. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [11 Aug. 1831].
• 108. Parker, ii. 188; Jenkins, 221-2, 230.
• 109. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 28 Sept. 1831.
• 110. Three Diaries, 148; Le Marchant, 356; Cornw. RO, Hawkins mss 10/2172.
• 111. Wellington mss WP1/1198/41.
• 112. Jenkins, 231; Parker, ii. 195-6.
• 113. Add. 40333, ff. 118, 120; Parker, ii. 196-9.
• 114. Arbuthnot Corresp. 161.
• 115. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 25 [27 Jan.], 21 Mar. [Mar.] 1832.
• 116. Add. 51573, Spring Rice to Lady Holland, 6 Feb. [1832]; Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife [7 Feb. 1832].
• 117. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 13-15 Feb., 7, 14 Mar 1832.
• 118. Ibid. 67B, Goulburn to wife, 11 Apr. 1832.
• 119. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 8-11 May; 68/1, pp. 81-83; W. Suss. RO, Goodwood mss 1486, pp. 199-200; Wellington Despatches, viii. 306; Three Diaries, 248, 250-1; Croker Pprs. ii. 159, 163; Hatherton diary, 12 May 1832.
• 120. Goulburn mss 67B, Goulburn to wife, 14 May 1832; Von Neumann Diary, i. 272; Jenkins, 234-5.
• 121. Wellington mss WP1/1236/16; Jenkins 238-9.
• 122. Jenkins, 299-300, 348-9.
• 123. PROB 11/2227/111; IR26/20632/101.
• 124. Croker Pprs. iii. 60.