Family and Education

b. 14 May 1780, o.s. of John Lewis† of Harpton Court and 2nd w. Anne, da. of Adm. Sir Thomas Frankland†, 5th bt., of Thirkleby, Yorks. educ. Croydon 1788-92; Eton 1792-8; Christ Church, Oxf. 1798. m. (1) 12 Jan. 1805, Harriet (d. 11 Aug. 1838), da. of Sir George Cornewall†, 2nd bt., of Moccas Court, Herefs., 2s.; (2) 15 Oct. 1839, Mary Anne, da. of John Ashton, capt. Horse Gds., s.p. suc. fa. 1797; mother 1841; cr. bt. 11 July 1846. d. 22 Jan. 1855.

Offices Held

Commr. revenue [I] 1821, [UK] 1822-4, education [I] 1824-8; sec. to treasury Sept. 1827-Feb. 1828; vice-pres. bd. of trade Feb.-May 1828; PC 5 Feb. 1828; treas. of navy Feb.-Nov. 1830; chairman, poor law commission 1834-9; charity commr. 1835-7; roads commr. 1839, commr. S. Wales turnpikes (‘Rebecca’ riots in Wales) 1843-4.

Sheriff, Rad. 1804-5; recorder, New Radnor 1819.

Maj. Rad. vols. 1803, lt.-col. 1803-5, (militia) 1808.

Biography

Lewis, whose father and grandfather had represented New Radnor Boroughs, aimed to re-establish his family’s political supremacy in Radnorshire, where enclosures and crown land sales enabled him to increase his holdings.1 After early unsuccessful forays there, in 1812 he had been promised support in the county at the next vacancy by Richard Price*, provided he refrained from opposing him in New Radnor Boroughs. He accordingly arranged to sit for Beaumaris, which he represented until 1826 on the interest of its patron, the 7th Viscount Bulkeley, a Grenvillite peer. In the Commons he had generally acted with the third party, led by Lord Grenville’s nephew Charles Watkin Williams Wynn, but, like Bulkeley’s half-brother Sir Robert Williams*, he had preferred to sit with the Whig opposition in the 1818 Parliament.2 He had a reputation as a frequent debater, useful parliamentary spokesman and consummate and ambitious man of business attracted to political economy.3 He sat on the 1817 and 1819 finance committees, and had been accorded the sobriquet ‘Louis le Devisant’ [‘Lewis the Currency’] on account of his strong support for the resumption of cash payments in 1819.4 He habitually devoted time to legislation on canals and turnpikes, in which he had a vested interest, and had drafted several select committee reports, including those on the assize of bread (1815) and poverty (1817), which he wrote with William Sturges Bourne*.5 Being outspoken and pro-Catholic, his great ambition to become Irish secretary had eluded him, despite his wife’s close family connection with the premier Lord Liverpool.6 Addressing Beaumaris corporation at his election in 1820, he delivered an hour-long critique of Robert Owen of New Lanark’s plan for the poor, in which he lauded the advantages of the Scottish over the English relief system.7

Lewis was included on select committees on issues associated with poverty, including the employment of agricultural labourers, vagrancy and emigration, as a matter of course throughout the 1820s. On questions of trade and finance he shared Grenville’s tendency to strict economic liberalism, and generally aligned with Canning, John Herries, William Huskisson and Thomas Wallace I. He intervened briefly ‘in the interests of trade and navigation’ to support the call for government action over London Bridge, 4 May 1820, and advocated concessions for the Baltic trade under the 1821 Timber Act, 5 Apr., and deregulation of the colonial woollen trade, 14 June 1821. He was appointed to the select committees on foreign trade, 1821-4, and on the combination laws and protective legislation prohibiting tools and machinery exports, 1824-5. He believed that the agriculture committee conceded to Holme Sumner, to which he was appointed, 31 May, was unlikely to realize the expectations of the petitioners complaining of distress, and had said so when justifying his opposition to its establishment, 30 May 1820. He shared Holme Sumner’s commitment to extended inquiry and improved means of regulating the corn laws, but he recommended a duty of 20s. a quarter on corn, when Holme Sumner proposed 40s., and warned that protection and overregulation of the currency would themselves induce distress and higher taxes.

He presented the Berkshire freeholders’ petition for shorter polls, 19 June, and chaired the investigative committee, 29 June, 3, 4 July 1820, bringing up its report, 13 July.8 As previously, he divided against parliamentary reform, 9 May 1821, 25 June 1822, 22 Feb. 1823, and for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He did not speak on the Queen Caroline case, which exposed differences among the Grenvillites, but he divided against the opposition motion censuring her treatment by ministers, 6 Feb. 1821. Reinforcing Huskisson’s arguments against the Hull poor rates bill, 20 Feb. 1821, he declared that its proposal to make the port chargeable confirmed ‘the acknowledged tendency of the poor laws to swallow up all the property in the kingdom’. He added that he ‘did not mean to throw out the wild notion that the system could be entirely got rid of’; the subject was one to be ‘touched with gentleness’, but ‘one great misfortune in the system of poor rates was that it wore the appearance of humanity whilst it produced real hardship and severity’. He was against including Irish corn averages in those for the United Kingdom, because of their inferior grain, 26 Feb. 1821. The following day, when certain London merchants petitioned against renewal of the West India Dock Company’s charter, he referred to the frequent abuse of loopholes in commercial legislation and called for it to be subjected to better parliamentary scrutiny. His speech on bank cash payments, 19 Mar., which according to The Times was ‘for some time inaudible in the gallery’, stressed the crippling effect of forged pound notes on the poor, who were least able to detect them or sustain losses. It also set out the advantages of increasing the circulating coinage and taking steps to prevent bullion exports destabilizing currencies.9 He spoke similarly when endorsing the Irish Bank cash payments bill, 11 Apr., and suggested that Irish, like Scottish banking legislation, should set ‘no limit to the number of partners’. He paired against making forgery a non-capital offence, 23 May. He was ‘particularly averse’ to the malt duty repeal bill, promoted by the Whig opposition, and claimed that reducing the tax would ‘necessarily affect the sinking fund ... and shake the security of the country’, without affording ‘relief to the extent of one farthing in the pot of porter’, 3 Apr. He was a majority teller for Tennyson’s gamekeepers bill, 15 May. Speaking on the vagrancy laws amendment bill, 24 May, he defended the laws of settlement and conceded the difficulty of dealing with part of the poor law system without considering the whole. Commenting later that day on Scarlett’s poor relief bill, he reiterated his belief that

the meaning of the statute [of 1601] ... was to inflict compulsory labour by way of punishment, not to afford labour for the mere purpose of maintenance. It was anything but in the nature of giving the poor personal property.

He agreed with the bill’s ‘great objects’, but joined Calcraft in pressing for its deferral, 20 June, arguing, in what Williams Wynn described as ‘an extremely good speech’,10 evocative of the 1817 report, that the ‘present system would in time destroy the foundations of our national prosperity’. He did not see the remedy in new enactments, but in a strict examination of the law as it now stood and an understanding of how it had been perceived formerly and what it ought to provide in future. On 15 June Lewis was appointed to the Irish revenue commission, a salaried post which he accepted after first consulting Grenville. The radical Joseph Hume alleged in the House that day that the appointment was a bribe held out by government for Grenvillite support, but Calcraft extolled Lewis’s abilities and independence, and an amendment blocking his appointment was defeated by 81-23. As a placeman he aligned with the liberal Tories in government and divided steadily with them. On 2 July 1821, as a member (since 20 June) of the select committee on the extra post bill, he defended the decision not to bring up their report.11 He gave Bulkeley £100 for the Beaumaris corporation improvement fund in December 1821.12

Lewis’s overture to Lord Londonderry* when the Grenvillites went over to government in January 1822 brought no definite promise of office, but he congratulated Peel on his appointment as home secretary and sought Lord Harrowby’s patronage for a cousin.13 Like Williams Wynn, now president of the India board, on 22 Feb. he voted against reducing the additional duties on salt, which he had previously advocated. When Wiltshire petitioned for government action to combat agricultural distress, 3 Apr., he defended the purely investigative role of the agriculture committee (to which he had been reappointed, 18 Feb.), and announced that it ‘did not seek to increase restrictions on foreign corn imports’. He presented Beaumaris’s petition for repeal of the leather tax, 1 May. The revenue commission ‘proceeded upon the principle of removing if possible every remaining distinction between the revenue regulators of Ireland’ and the United Kingdom, a policy that Lewis defended when the Irish calico printers petitioned, 15 May.14 He was appointed to the select committee on the Irish linen trade, 18 May, which the commission, whose powers were extended to England and Scotland, 24 June, also investigated.15 He spoke and voted in Canning’s minority of 21 for allowing warehoused foreign corn to be ground for flour and exported, 10 June 1822.

Having chaired and drafted the report of the 1820 select committee on turnpikes and highways,16 and been instrumental in placing those of the metropolis and Scotland under scrutiny, Lewis was granted leave on 11 Feb. 1823 to bring in a consolidating bill for England and Wales, but it made little headway that session.17 Supporting the introduction of an ad valorem duty on beer, he pointed out that quality could be ascertained accurately with a saccharometer and duties apportioned accordingly, 24 Mar. He endorsed the St. Marylebone petition against the coal duties, which he steadfastly opposed, 27 Mar. He gave noncommittal replies to questions on the Irish linen bounty, 25, 29 Apr. He voted against inquiry into the currency, 12 June, and to receive the report on the usury laws repeal bill, 27 June 1823, and supported similar measures, 27 Feb., 8 Apr. 1824. When he and his wife visited Beaumaris on their way from Ireland in December 1823, he contributed £400 to the corporation’s funds.18 Control of the constituency, which the Grenvillite duke of Buckingham still hoped to use to ‘enlarge our phalanx’, had passed to Bulkeley’s widow, who made it known that Lewis’s return ‘depended on the footing on which ... [he] stood.’19

He was one of several supporters of Catholic relief to vote against Newport’s motion on Catholic burials, 6 Feb. 1824.20 Deputising for the master of the mint, he succeeded in deferring a motion on the feasibility of switching to a decimal currency, 16 Feb.21 He spoke against Hume’s abortive amendment on the sugar duties, 8 Mar., and ordered an account of British exports to France under the Commercial Trade Acts, 12 Mar.22 He was named to the committee on the assize of bread, to which his 1815 report had been referred, 22 Mar.23 He was busy steering the troubled Radnor and Hereford roads bill through the Commons, when Cripps, by proposing a general turnpike bill, made him concede that his own measure was delayed because of the ‘complexity’ of the task; this Peel confirmed, 25 Mar.24 Later that day, possibly to safeguard his Radnorshire interests, he tried to alter the game laws amendment bill to ensure that certain tenants of manorial lords ‘legally qualified to kill game’ did not lose that right. He summarily dismissed petitioners’ grievances against the beer bill, 17 May, and again advocated fiscal changes to end tariff differences between Ireland and the United Kingdom, 26, 27 May.25 He voted against condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith for encouraging slaves to riot, 11 June. His appointment to the Irish education commission on Peel’s recommendation, 14 June, brought his revenue commission work to a close, and meetings with Dr. Patrick Curtis, the Catholic archbishop of Armagh, and archbishop John Magee of Dublin took up much of his time during the recess.26 In December 1824 Lady Bulkeley confirmed that Beaumaris would be available to him at the next election, their intermediary Richard Neville* having assured her that Lewis did ‘not object to the terms of £8,020, by £500 [£500 annually] with all election expenses and annual dinners paid’.27

In January 1825 Williams Wynn received and circulated ‘a long, most interesting and satisfactory letter from Frankland Lewis on his recent visit to Ireland, which I thought showed so much observation and good sense that I sent it down to Bath to Lord Liverpool’. The Grenvilles remained personally and politically committed to doing all they could to bring about Lewis’s appointment as Irish secretary, and, commending him to Buckingham, Wynn wrote:

He mentions that he has been himself in 22 counties, and that with his colleagues, he may say that they have really been in every corner of Ireland, and that they all agree in the opinion that there is no ground for immediate alarm and that the Catholics are too well aware of the advantage which they enjoy from Lord Wellesley’s government to hazard his recall and the revival of the high Orange system, which would be the probable effect of any insurrection.28

Grenville acknowledged the value of such ‘local information, which I have not, and which is so necessary for a right judgement’, when assessing policy on the Catholic Association.29 Lewis’s testimony in February before the Lords select committee on the state of Ireland was highly praised.30 He agreed with the petitioner, John Kirby of Kerry, that the catechizing practices of Catholic priests in Irish schools were deplorable, 1 May, but defended the government’s policy of non-interference while the education commission had the matter in hand. Replying to Peel, 15 Feb., he made it clear that he could not bring in consolidating legislation on turnpikes that session and suggested that until he could do so, the matter should be referred to the select committee on the metropolitan trusts proposed by Lord Lowther, to which he was named, 17 Feb.31 He presented the Belfast cotton traders’ petition against the coal duties, 25 Mar.32 When London petitioned for a fixed duty on corn, 25 Apr., and Huskisson intimated that government might introduce corrective legislation next session, he announced that he now regretted his vote for the 1815 law, ‘being convinced that the alteration between a free importation on the one hand, and the entire exclusion of corn on the other, was a most injudicious and erroneous regulation’. To forestall a private bill, he warned that it ‘could only be safely and satisfactorily treated by the united consideration of the government and legislature’. He pointedly ‘disclaimed all concurrence in’ the Aberdeen whalers’ petition for protection and the oil-gas bill, with which he had previously been associated, 6 May.33 His report from the education commission criticized the proselytising tendencies of Irish charter schools, but he cautioned against using it to justify postponing their funding, 30 May, and strongly opposed Newport’s motion for an address to the king regretting the commission’s findings, 9 June.34 He had to delay his departure for Ireland with the commission in September 1825 because of family illness and begged his colleagues ‘to proceed without me from Dublin to Belfast in the hope that I may be able to join them there or at all events to meet them at their return’.35

Newport’s motion for accounts of the previous session’s grants for Irish education, 7 Mar. 1826, brought an admission from Goulburn that government policy was undecided, and Lewis now promised that all the commission’s reports except that on Maynooth College would be presented in time. He was against confining Spring Rice’s local jurisdiction bill to Ireland, 9 Mar., and, explaining that Radnorshire was similarly short of suitable magistrates, he suggested that the shortfall could be remedied by using crown appointees, provided ‘chartered and corporation rights’ were also honoured. He defended the commission and the Kildare Place Society when the Irish estimates were voted, and saw off attempts to reduce their funding and transfer administration to the lord lieutenant in Dublin, 20, 22 Mar. As teller for the government majority on the corn importation bill, 8 May, he stressed his reliance on ‘income from the land’ and refuted charges that the measure had been hurriedly adopted and would harm the landed interest. ‘Gold’, he added, ‘it was true, must go out for corn; but as we have no gold for that purpose in this country, we must send goods abroad in order to purchase it’. He opposed the abortive freeholders in districts bill, 2 May, and Russell’s resolutions denouncing electoral bribery, 26 May 1826. Lady Bulkeley’s death on 3 Feb. had left him searching for a safe seat at the impending general election. He started canvassing Radnorshire, but soon realized that his interests would be better served if he adopted a higher local profile and refrained from challenging the ailing and elderly Walter Wilkins, so he went to Ireland to be returned for Ennis on the O’Brien interest.36 Before Parliament met he attended to patronage matters and education commission business.37

On 3 Feb. 1827 he warned Peel that the education commission would submit two reports and enclosed that adopted and ‘signed only by Grant, Blake and myself - Foster and Gladstone having declined to put their names to it’. He attributed their differences

to animism. We could not agree either as to the extent to which it is promoted or disseminated by the [Belfast] Institution ... [or on] the arrangements which were necessary to guard against it. I kept back the report as long as I could in the hopes of our agreeing, but finding it was not likely to take place, I have taken the only step which was open to us.38

He endorsed the Irish bishops’ petition, expressed continued support for Catholic relief, 2 Mar., and divided for it, 6 Mar. When he represented the Canningite John Gladstone on the Berwick-upon-Tweed election committee which voided his election, 19 Mar., his opponent Lord Howick repeatedly complained to his father Earl Grey that Lewis’s ‘experience in the House and plausible manner give him great influence over the other members of the committee’.39 Grey agreed that Howick ‘could not have had a more dangerous adversary. I know him well. He is one of those smooth tongued flammable fellows, who, making the greatest professions of candour, are ready for any roguery’.40 On 2 Apr. Lewis urged Robert Grant to withdraw the petition against the return of George Spence for Reading.41 In committee on the Corn Trade Acts, 19 Mar., he spoke of the scarcity of 1801 and called for a system which would work equally well at times of dearth and plenty, warning that if Parliament left the public exposed to combinations of capitalists (corn factors and millers), ‘they would have occasion to rue it’. He reaffirmed the need for a select committee and legislation to amend and consolidate the General Turnpike Act, pointing out that commissioners of roads could levy over £1,500,000 annually in tax, 27 Mar. His consolidating bill was referred to a select committee appointed by the Canning ministry, 16 May, and enacted.42 He cautioned against accepting the Lords’ amendments to the spring guns bill, 17 May. Though unsuccessful, Newport’s attempt to have the education commission’s reports referred to a select committee, 5 Apr., put pressure on Lewis to explain their delayed production. He made no comment on the differences between them, and referred instead to the reductions in expenditure which his majority report recommended. He later (25 May) tried to allay fears about the Maynooth grant, and used statistics to confirm the findings of the Irish revenue commission presented by Spencer Perceval, 18 June.43 As a speaker for the Canning ministry’s warehoused corn bill that day, he referred to the ‘appalling position in which the country was placed’ by the failure of the Liverpool ministry’s measure.44 Many, including the patronage secretary Planta, had wished to see Lewis ‘fly aloft’ when Canning formed his ministry. He had again been passed over for the Irish secretaryship and, with his work on the education commission almost over, he wrote to Canning, 25 June, pledging support and seeking further employment.45 Promising to recall him ‘when I can’, Canning claimed to be

glad you have made the enquiry; because while I rather wished that you should be apprized of the existence of the disposition towards you which I have here declared, I felt that in the absence of all power on my part to specify the when or the how, the time or place of the probable occurrence of such an opportunity, the gratuitous expression of such a disposition might have appeared but a cheap and barren compliment.46

‘At the desire of Lord G[oderich]’, and briefed by Williams Wynn, Lewis remained in London during the ministerial negotiations which followed Canning’s death in August 1827. He was nervous lest he should be offered the treasury secretaryship under Herries, and informed his wife, 20 Aug., that he considered bringing

my political matters to a crisis, and having it distinctly understood that either I must now know what I have to depend upon, or at once retire. To go into the House of Commons to support Herries and Tom Courtenay as finance ministers (and if Huskisson was ill they would be effectively managers of the business) would be too degrading, and I for one have no wish to undergo it. I intend to see Planta today and I will endeavour to explain myself fully to him; and I will also try to see Lord Lansdowne, to spirit him up if I can, to put his wits upon Herries. All this is very disagreeable. I will write again in the course of the day if any thing occurs.

He also had doubts about accepting a place on the India board ‘that by the good will of Lord Goderich and of Charles Wynn I presume I might fill’, although ‘several of my friends have told me I ought not to refuse it, as it is more easy to be promoted with an office in hand than without, and that it is in all respects on a par with the other secretaryships’.47 John Fazakerley*, who would have preferred to see Lewis at the board of trade, viewed his appointment as treasury secretary in the Goderich ministry as a necessary step in the perpetuation of the Canningite system.48 He accepted it and was duly congratulated by the Grenvilles and Lord Lansdowne, with whom, according to Lord Lowther*, ‘if he has any connection ... I am sure it must have been these six weeks’. Lowther added:

I have by chance been thrown into business with him three or four time in committees of the House of Commons, etc., etc., and after Huskisson and Herries I should esteem him as the best man of business amongst all the Commons and far superior to many holding places in the cabinet, [such]as Palmerston, Wynn, C. Grant. However, time will show, and in my opinion I think he will be soon thought qualified to hold a higher situation.49

Lady Williams Wynn saw the appointment, with its income of £3,000-£4,000 a year, as one of several gains for ‘the House of Cornewall ... the only people who have profited in the late storms’.50 Noting the Tory ascendancy, Grey observed: ‘Will they quote as a set off the appointment of [the pro-Catholic] Frankland Lewis, whom it would have surprised one a good deal some time ago to hear described as a Whig’.51 By November 1827, he was said to be first in line for the next privy council vacancy.52

Lewis made way for George Dawson at the treasury when the duke of Wellington formed his coalition ministry in January 1828.53 Now ready to be ‘ruled’ by Huskisson, he was made a privy councillor and appointed vice-president of the board of trade under another Canningite, Charles Grant. Grenville made much of his being in neither the cabinet nor a post ‘where your opinion will be counted or even asked on the fate and subject of Ireland’, and placed little faith in his efforts to secure a pension for Williams Wynn, who was left unplaced.54 His re-election for Ennis, 11 Feb., posed no immediate problem. Herries (now master of the mint) considered him a suitable government nominee for the 1828 finance committee, but he was not appointed to it.55 As agreed in cabinet, he divided against repealing the Test Acts, 26 Feb. On Irish issues, he approved the principle of the landlord and tenant bill, which he perceived as a useful step towards assimilating Irish with English land tenure and establishing a ‘wealthy, decorous and orderly occupying tenantry’, 25 Feb. He defended the education commission when the hostile Grange Corman petition was received on the 28th. The cabinet was divided on the disfranchisement of East Retford and, assisted by Williams Wynn, Lewis vainly tried to defer the issue by preventing counsel being summoned, 7 Mar. He faced tough questioning in the House on a loophole in the corn bill permitting imports through the Isle of Man, 10 Mar., and strove to defend the decision to continue levying stamp duty on transactions under 6d. when the tradesmen of Hull petitioned against it, 11 Mar. Opposing the appointment that day of a select committee on the franchise in counties corporate, because it ‘would introduce the consideration of the entire state of the representation of this country’, he noted the peculiar characteristics of each and cited Fox’s analogy between the elective franchise and ‘a house built at various times, which though an odd piece of patchwork, that could not be explained on any system of architecture, was yet far better and more convenient than if devised as a whole on any regular plan of science’. (He raised similar objections to the freeholders bill, 16 May 1828.)

Wilkins’s death, 17 Mar., gave Lewis his opportunity in Radnorshire, and he resigned his seat and declared his candidature, 21 Mar. 1828, having first ensured that Wilkins’s son would not stand.56 He was returned unopposed and resumed his seat, 17 Apr., notwithstanding a counter-campaign led by the Whig diplomat, Sir Harford Jones Brydges of Boultibrook and Kentchurch Court, who criticized his recent ‘anti-protection’ speeches and his management of the New Radnor tithes, and maintained that Radnorshire would not be adequately represented should he remain in office.57 Sir Edward O’Brien had turned down his request to nominate a replacement for Ennis and refunded him ‘less than £700’. As agreed at his election, Lewis took charge of the Rhayader enclosure bill. He also faced a further challenge from Jones Brydges, in the shape of a strongly worded Radnorshire petition for protective tariffs on wool.58 He defended the government’s trade policy when the Spitalfields silk weavers petitioned similarly, 21 Apr. He spoke and was a majority teller for the resolutions on corn, 29 Apr., and took charge of the bill prohibiting the importation of corn through the Isle of Man, 30 Apr., 7 May, playing an active part in debate when opposition amendments to it were defeated, 20, 21, 23 May. He voted for Catholic relief, 12 May. He ordered detailed returns of metal exports and imports, 19 May, and was a majority teller for the government’s Pensions Act amendment bill, 22 May. His ministerial future had been uncertain since Huskisson had first threatened resignation over East Retford in March. Ellenborough, the lord privy seal, had then professed ‘no doubt of his staying, and he will do the business [of the board of trade] better than Grant’. However, though annoyed at the turn of events, when Huskisson, Grant and William Lamb resigned in May, Lewis declined the Irish secretaryship and joined the exodus.59 He informed Wellington, 29 May:

By undertaking to discharge the arduous duties which devolve upon the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, I should be placed in a situation of so much embarrassment in consequence of the withdrawal of so many persons with whom I have been to a certain degree politically connected, that I feel it politically incumbent upon me to decline.60

Ellenborough noted, 30 May, ‘I find Frankland Lewis resigns too. He mars his fortune at the very moment when it would have been made’.61 Lewis described his own misgivings in a letter to his brother-in-law, the Kington banker James Davies, 7 June:

I decided not to hold office with the present ministry. I trust I have done right, though it is certainly not so clear a point as I could wish, considering how important a decision it has been. Certainly, it would have been in my power to prevent much mischief in Ireland, and if a Tory lord lieutenant and secretary are sent there the evils will be very great. Again there is nothing to look forward to. The Whigs are divided and no one confides in them as a mass. We who are now gone out are an important and respectable body, but not now strong enough to do much alone, and with whom are we to unite? Time and chance however are open, and at all events we shall have might enough in the House to prevent the government from being influenced to any great extent by their Tory supporters. If the government had held together six months longer we should have gone on very well. For myself, I own that every day increased my good opinion of the duke. His worst quality is that he sometimes thinks he understands things of which he knows nothing but he listens to the practical people who are brought before him, and governs himself by their statements. I was very much struck with this at the meeting with the governors of the Bank on the last day of my official existence ... I was tired of Ireland and felt that it would absent me so much from home that in addition to other considerations I could not bring myself to like the idea of taking the office. It is however a great sacrifice considering the position in which I started, the change it will make, and the prospects which it opened. All this honour must now be set aside and there is nothing now but to attend to what is going on and to look forward.62

Lord Palmerston* observed privately on 19 June how the appointment of Lord Francis Leveson Gower (as Irish secretary) and Calcraft (as paymaster to the forces)

have struck with bitter repentance the breast of Frankland Lewis. He feels about Ireland as a capricious young lady when she sees a more interested and less romantic fair led to the hymenal altar by the wealthy young squire whom she had lately rejected. He told [Lord] Minto the other day that if he had known what he now knows (God knows what that is) he should certainly not have left government. ‘Well’, said Minto, ‘but you know if you had not left the government you might have kept your office, but you could not have kept your character, and so on the whole it is as well as it is’. Whether Lewis agreed in this he did not say, but he was sitting all last night on the treasury bench as if to recall to his recollection happiness gone by, or to preface the way for happiness to come.63

In the Commons, 2 June, Lewis claimed that he had supported and voted ‘from the first’ for sluicing the franchise at East Retford with the neighbouring hundred, disfranchising only those voters found guilty of corruption, and said he would do so again ‘in the same sense and with the same object as I did before’. He remained hostile to transferring East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, and when challenged in debate by Tennyson and Williams Wynn, 27 June, he confirmed his preference, as previously stated, taking New Shoreham and Cricklade as his precedents. Later that day, justifying his support, as a majority teller, for the borough polls bill, which he had previously opposed, at its third reading, he claimed that 90 per cent of the original bill had been ‘taken away’. Proposing an amendment to his 1827 General Turnpike Act in order to reduce the personal liability of trustees, 3, 26 June, he argued that without it the whole turnpike system would be put at risk, as trustees stood only to gain the market rate of interest on their investments whereas liabilities could total £11,000,000. He defended the policy of abolishing the tariffs on foreign wool when Lincolnshire petitioned for protective duties, 3 June. However, on presenting a similar petition from Radnorshire, 12 June, he suggested doubling the current import levy to a penny a pound and reducing that on exports to 6d. a hundredweight. Knatchbull congratulated the wool producers on changing his mind, but Lewis said that he still believed that high duties would not work. On 4 July 1828 he carried an amendment to the customs bill, making the duty on wool nominal. As a speaker for the bill restricting the circulation of low denomination Scottish banknotes in England, 3 June 1828, he cited statistical evidence from the 1825-6 crisis, endorsing the 1819 Act, and repeated his arguments in favour of gold coinage and against a paper, silver or dual standard. He approved the £80,000 Windsor Castle grant, 6 June, and the game bill, 13 June. Heartened by the tone of Wellington’s speech on Catholic relief, and ever anxious for office, he flaunted his knowledge of Irish affairs when supplies were voted, 23 June, catching the former secretary Lamb unprepared with a detailed question on the Cork Institution, and launching into a staunch defence of the Belfast Academy’s right to government funding.64 Responding to the Colne handloom weavers’ petition, 1 July, he defended free trade and argued against minimum wages. He drew attention to inconsistencies in the savings banks bill, 3 July, spoke of its relevance to poor law policy and the national debt and, taking the chancellor of the exchequer Goulburn by surprise, proposed an amendment, which he later withdrew at Goulburn’s request. Highlighting the dangers of permitting banks to hold deposits of £15,000,000 to £17,000,000 redeemable at any time, he vainly renewed his attempt to have corrective clauses inserted when the bill was reported, 10 July. He argued that ‘government can never interfere with the money market without producing a certain quantity of mischief, because the interest paid upon the deposits of savings banks is above the market rate of interest’. He also defended the corporate funds bill, which Poulett Thomson’s adjournment motion failed to kill, 4 July. He voted in the government’s majority that day on ordnance salaries. In committee on the customs bill, 10 July, he spoke of his regret at hearing Members ‘speaking of the corn law as a measure intended as a protection to the landed interest’, and agreed with Goulburn that there should be no backtracking. He later rallied to his own defence in committee on the Irish butter trade bill, which closed a loophole whereby Dublin had been excluded from the provisions of his 1827 Act. His attempt to rescue the bill failed, 15 July. John Evelyn Denison* complained privately that Lewis’s report from the committee on civil government in Canada was ‘very ill drawn’, 14 July 1828.65

As the patronage secretary Planta predicted in February, Lewis voted for Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar. 1829. He also refused to endorse Radnorshire’s anti-Catholic petition, 9 Mar.66 Voicing his opposition to the attendant changes in the Irish freeholder franchise, he made it clear that he sanctioned them only as a means of carrying emancipation, 20 Mar., and deplored the absence of a middle class and genuine freeholders in Ireland, which the measure would help to remedy. He maintained that the threat posed by Jesuits to national security was exaggerated and had already been adequately dealt with in the relief bill, 23, 27 Mar. Opposing the county bridges bill, 12 May, he said that its proposal to transfer maintenance costs from the county to the turnpike trusts was particularly unsuitable for Wales, where trust revenues were low and there was great risk of damage from mountain torrents. He attributed the distress in the wool trade referred to in the county Meath petition to the ‘evils of smuggling’, not insufficient protection as stated, 11 May. Later that day he failed (with Peel and Monck), to prevent the committal of the justices of the peace bill. He decided against voting on the Clare election on the 19th ‘because it would be putting on the records of this House, matter contradictory and unintelligible without that explanation which will not be affixed to it’. Although he was no longer a member of the commission or the select committee, his views on Irish education featured in the Rev. William Lee of Cashel’s correspondence with Wellington in April 1829.67 When he was pressed to counter allegations made in the Commons that the commission had recommended a plan based on the exclusion of the Scriptures, 22 May, Peel did nothing to assist him. His professions of support for John Nash, whom he had commissioned to refurbish Harpton Court, did not preclude Lewis from sitting on the investigative committee on the Buckingham House contract, 27 May, 19 June, of which he wrote, ‘Colonel Davies is his opponent. Lowther and Croker his real enemies. There is no case of fraud against him’.68 He spent much of the 1829 summer recess abroad and in September became deputy chairman of the Economic Life Assurance Society, chaired by Sir James Mackintosh*.69 In December Peel consulted him over the Radnorshire memorial against the proposed abolition of the courts of great sessions and remodelling of the Welsh assize system.70

Prompted by William Vesey Fitzgerald’s* illness he consulted Charles Arbuthnot* and Planta in January 1830, fuelling speculation that he would go to the mint or return to the board of trade; but he had to be content with the treasurership of the navy, then targeted (as a sinecure) for attack by the radicals.71 The Times, copied by the provincial press, judged him ‘an able man, well acquainted with business and on the score both of talent and integrity thoroughly worthy of ministerial and public confidence’; but Lord Durham thought it ‘a strange appointment. He brings no one and has a sinecure’.72 He voted against transferring East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb. His re-election, at a cost of about £240, was a formality despite attempts to isolate him and encourage hostility to government.73 After being sworn in, 5 Mar., he observed privately, ‘it is an anxious session, and the position of the government is a very odd one’.74 As the South Wales industrialist Walter Coffin observed in March, Lewis’s presence on the London coal trade committee made it a government matter, and he successfully countered amendments to extend its scope to ‘other ports’, 11 Mar. He brought up their report, for which he was responsible, 13 July, together with those from the select committees on Irish tolls.75 He countered Spring Rice’s motion for a select committee on the Irish poor by calling for a similar inquiry for England and an end to policy differences between the two countries, 11 Mar. As usual, he warned against hasty abolition of the cess or taking an optimistic view of Irish unemployment, and spoke of the evils of absenteeism and the merits of the Scottish poor relief system. He was not included on the committee. Drawn into the debate on the state of the nation, 23 Mar., he pointed out that Hume’s pamphlet assumed an increasing, not a depreciating currency, claimed that Burdett’s arguments ‘in favour of paper’ were based on a misinterpretation of John Horne Tooke†, and criticized the inadequacies of the Bank Restriction Act. He remained convinced that

those mischievous dreamers who propose not a fixed, but some fluctuating standard, which the government and this House may change at their pleasure, would by such a measure hazard the safety of all descriptions of property, but would also never be able to avert the distress whenever it threatened any particular interest. I am convinced their opinions are founded in error and, therefore, I hope never to see them adopted in this country.

He ordered a detailed breakdown of accounts of London’s wool exports and imports, 30 Mar. He attributed the rise in imports complained of in the Colchester flour manufacturers’ petition to ‘Ireland’, rather than defects in the corn bill, 28 May. He divided against Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 14 May. Ever scornful of Owenite ideas, in committee on the poor law amendment bill, 26 Apr. 1830, he was among the many who argued strongly on humanitarian grounds against the clause empowering parishes to remove children from parents unable to support them, which was defeated by 91-9. He agreed that ‘the procreation of children without the means of supporting them is a very great evil’, but he did not consider a retarding system appropriate and reiterated his preference for the Scottish relief system. Although critical of the government’s cavalier attitude, 27 Apr., he refused to make common cause with his constituents or Welsh Members opposed to the administration of justice bill, by which the Welsh judicature and courts of great sessions were abolished, and had backed similar proposals since 1817. Its provision for holding joint-assizes for ‘Welsh’ Breconshire and Radnorshire, however, grieved him, for he had hoped for an arrangement with Hereford.76 Attending to his department’s business in the Commons, where he frequently acted as a government teller, he did much to counter allegations of wasteful naval expenditure (22 Mar.). As announced, 10 Mar., and despite being repeatedly outmanoeuvred by Hume, he successfully steered through consolidating legislation on naval pay, 10 May. Earlier, in the committee of supply, he had spoken against salary reductions. He faced tough questioning from Hume when he introduced his bill to consolidate and regulate the navy treasurership, 7 June, but succeeded in rushing it through before the dissolution precipitated by George IV’s death. He also defended the navy commissioners’ policy when the parish of Greenwich petitioned alleging underpayment of rates by the Hospital, 2 July 1830. He now looked to Planta for patronage and was mentioned as a ‘possible’ for the war office or as a replacement for Leveson Gower as Irish secretary in the event of a reshuffle. Sir Henry Hardinge* considered Robert Wilmot Horton* a better choice for either post.77

According to the 5th Earl of Oxford’s heir Lord Harley, Lewis had no money to fight a contest when he came in for Radnorshire unopposed at the 1830 general election.78 On the hustings he defended the government’s record on taxation, allayed fears of war with France and praised amendments made by Spence to the administration of justice bill.79 He attended the meeting convened by Herries on 25 Aug. to review the outcome of the elections nationally.80 In September, when political realignments were considered following Huskisson’s death, Lewis’s loyalty to Wellington was not in doubt, but Ellenborough, who met him at a pre-session dinner, 30 Oct., noted:

He longs for the Grants. I told him it would not do, and what sort of man Charles Grant was. Frankland Lewis does not seem to like his office, but he says he shall bring it into order if he remains there, and make it a privy councillor’s office without drudgery. He and indeed all seem to wish they were better and more boldly led in the House of Commons.81

Lewis divided with his ministerial colleagues on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830, and resigned with them. He briefed Lord Grey, as premier, on the problems of combining the navy treasurership and vice-presidency of the board of trade, 24 Nov. 1830;82 and expressed confidence in Poulett Thomson’s right to hold both posts concurrently, when the House considered the matter, 25 Feb. 1831. Yet he also suggested awarding clerks in those departments higher salaries to ensure future competence. Referring to the Irish trade commissioner’s report, ‘the last public business ... [Huskisson] ever prosecuted with me’, 10 Mar., he supported Warburton’s bill to prevent tobacco growing in Ireland, arguing that the House should pause before throwing away £3,000,000 in easily collected revenue; he offered to introduce compensatory legislation should the bill fail. The London coal bill took up much of his time this session. Having been accused of abusing his position as committee chairman by including information in the 1830 report without his colleagues’ authorization, 14 Dec., he announced his bill as a private Member’s measure, 23 Dec. 1830, and carried its first and second readings, 28 Mar., 18 Apr. 1831, before it became a casualty of the dissolution.83 He voted against the ministry’s reform bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., and questioned the basis on which franchise decisions had been taken, 25 Mar., when, citing the return for Radnorshire, he called for publication of a table of all results collated from the home office’s questionnaires. This brought a defensive response from Lord John Russell, who admitted that different procedures had been followed in England and Wales. At the Radnorshire reform meeting, 5 Apr., Lewis said he would support ‘a well arranged measure’, but opposed the government’s because it would deprive England of 60 Members and showed ‘undue preference for Ireland’. He failed to carry a counter-petition which expressed general agreement with the principle of the bill and the decision to enfranchise Presteign, but opposed any change in the proportion of Members ‘fixed at the respective Unions with Scotland and Ireland’.84 He insisted that he did not vote for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment with the objective of ousting the government, 19 Apr. 1831. Seeing off a challenge in Radnorshire at the ensuing general election from the reformer Edward Romilly, son of the late Whig lawyer, he said:

I distrust a measure which at once blows hot and cold ... I dislike it because I find it popular in places where bribery habitually, systematically and shamelessly prevails amongst electors with whom the receipt of money for their votes has not been confined to the low or the needy. The provisions of the bill not only do not provide an efficient remedy for this species of corruption, they tend, I fear very materially to enforce it.

His failure to present the Radnorshire petition before the dissolution was resented and, though eventually unopposed, he faced intense pressure to represent his constituents’ views on reform.85

Speaking with ‘candour and sincerity’, before dividing for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July 1831, he said that as he had supported the original bill before learning its details, he felt ‘bound in deference ... to go as far as I can in support of this bill, consistently with the free exercise of my own judgement, which I can never consent to surrender’. He made it clear that although he intended voting to consider it in committee, ‘it must wear a different and a fairer shape than at present, before I can give it my vote that it shall pass into a law’. He pointed to disfranchisements proposed ‘not for the purpose of improving, but of destroying’ - a principle he could never approve - and argued against applying the same voting qualifications nationwide. He confirmed that he had voted for Gascoyne’s amendment as a fair proposition, not anticipating that it would cause the bill to be abandoned, and warned of the threat which additional Irish Members would pose to the Union. The minister Spring Rice noted, ‘We have gained an unexpected recruit in Frankland Lewis’.86 He voted to hear counsel on the Appleby petition, 12 July, possibly also to delay the bill’s committal by adjournment that day, and to make the 1831 census the determinant of English borough disfranchisements, 19 July. He was listed among the bill’s supporters absent from the divisions on Downton, 20 July, and St. Germans, 26 July. The same day, following discussions with Wellington, he declined Russell’s offer of an unsalaried place on the boundary commission.87 Peel thought he would have taken it had he been able to ‘place the responsibility for acceptance on others’.88 He criticized the decision to enfranchise Tower Hamlets, which he claimed erroneously assumed that the interests of London and Middlesex freemen were the same, 4 Aug., and succeeded in restricting Presteign’s franchise to the part of the town which lay wholly in Wales, 9, 10 Aug. However, his campaign to include landholding in assessments of £10 householders in rural areas failed, 9, 10, 20 Aug., 2 Sept. He considered the condition (in clause 21) requiring all rents, rates and taxes to be paid before a £10 householder could vote inoperable, as rents were commonly paid six months in arrears, and said it would encourage the poor to join electoral clubs, ‘accept bribes and to be corrupted’, 25 Aug. He voted against disfranchising non-resident freemen in the hundreds of Aylesbury, Cricklade, East Retford and New Shoreham, 2 Sept. Ministers conceded minor alterations which he suggested in the wording of clauses 48 and 53, 6 Sept.; but arguing that little substantial change had been achieved, he divided against the bill’s passage, 22 Sept. 1831.

Lewis was named to the select committee on Windsor Castle and Buckingham House, 23 June 1831, and corresponded with the colonial secretary Goderich on the ‘irregularity’ of Nash’s subcontracting policy.89 He disapproved of the wording of Poulett Thomson’s motion for a select committee on the use of molasses in United Kingdom breweries and distilleries, but after speaking in defence of the corn growers, whose interests he felt were threatened, he was appointed to it, 30 June. He was also named to committees on steam carriages, 20 July, civil list expenditure, 12 Aug., and drawback duties on malt and spirits, before which he testified, 23 Sept.90 Despite Wellington’s fears that Herries, Goulburn or others connected with the coal trade would wreck Lewis’s London coal trade bill in committee, he successfully steered it though the Commons, carrying its third reading with only minor alterations, 12 Sept.91 He had supported the decision to give the administration in Dublin control of the education grant and called for a single system which attempted no religious instruction, 9 Sept. He urged the House to suspend judgement pending ‘an explanation from a proper authority’ when Colraine petitioned against the dismissal of two British army officers for refusing to participate in Catholic ceremonies in Malta, 12 Oct. 1831.

Lewis was at Gorhambury with Lord Harrowby and moderate anti-reformers early in September, and he reported regularly to Williams Wynn in Montgomeryshire on the bill’s progress in the Lords. He considered Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion of 10 Oct. ‘little less than seditious’ and wished it ‘had never appeared, as it binds the House to something like the old bill’.92 He declined attendance at the Radnorshire meeting which addressed the king urging the reform bill’s speedy passage, 1 Nov. Like Lord Clive, with whom he conferred, he deliberately left town before the division on the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831.93 He voted against its committal, 20 Jan. 1832. When opposition sought to ‘clog’ the £10 householder franchise ‘with et ceteras’, he pointed to apparent anomalies giving county voters burgess or householder votes in boroughs, 2 Feb. He voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar. When in May 1832 a government headed by Wellington was in contemplation, he included Lewis on his list of cabinet members, but it is not clear whether he would have accepted, or what his post would have been, had the ministry been formed.94 He did not vote when party strength was tested on the Russian Dutch loan. Hyde Villiers had offered Lewis a place on the East India committee, 21 Dec. 1831, to which he was named, 27 Jan. 1832, possibly after a meeting with Lord Althorp.95 He was named to several other select committees that session, including that on slavery, 30 May. His comments on the coroners bill were mainly critical, but he refused to support amendments making inquests public and medical and legal qualifications obligatory, arguing that in view of the low salaries offered the office would never attract the best professional men. In the summer of 1832 Lewis sent his elder son George Cornewall Lewis† (1806-63) to Paris with Nassau Senior to study poverty, and despite local opposition, he had his younger son Gilbert (b. 1808) presented to the living of Gladestry.96 He attended the assizes at Presteign in August as foreman of the grand jury, but left before the reform festival on the 11th.97

After an arduous canvass, Lewis came in unopposed for Radnorshire at the general election in December 1832 and assisted the Conservatives at Hereford and Ludlow, which were ‘sharply fought’.98 He was refused dispensation to keep his seat when appointed to the poor law commission in 1834 and did not contest the county subsequently. In 1847, after his service as a commissioner had terminated, he came in for the New Radnor district with a view to reserving the seat for George, retaining it until his death at Harpton Court in January 1855.99 His estates had, since 1844, largely been settled as part of his marriage settlement on George, his successor in the baronetcy conferred on him by Peel in 1846 in recognition of their joint public service. Lewis left his second wife Marianne (d. 1868) his London house in Grafton Street with its contents and her property previous to their marriage (£40,000), and his Radnorshire tithes reverted to Frederick Calvert and Sir Walter Cornewall. His will made no mention of his younger son, on whom the baronetcy and Harpton Court devolved in 1863.100

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Margaret Escott

Notes

• 1. Oxford DNB; K. Parker, ‘Parl. Enclosure in Rad.’ and ‘Sale of Crown Lands in Rad. in 19th Cent.’ Trans. Rad. Soc. lxxiii (2003),127-47; lxxv (2005), 153-73.
• 2. HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 433-4; J.J. Sack, Grenvillites, 166, 175, 179, 183; UCNW, Beaumaris mss v. 58.
• 3. P.J. Jupp, ‘Landed Elite and Political Authority in Britain c. 1760-1850’, JBS, xxix (1990), 53-71.
• 4. B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 32, 41-42; Williams Wynn Corresp. 245.
• 5. J.R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism (1969), 246-7; A. Brundage, Making of New Poor law, 9; P. Mandler, ‘Tories and Paupers: Christian Political Economy and the Making of the New Poor Law’, HJ, xxxiii (1990), 93.
• 6. Torrens, Melbourne, 93.
• 7. N. Wales Gazette, 16 Mar. 1820.
• 8. PP (1820), ii. 330-63; CJ, lxxv. 449.
• 9. The Times, 20 Mar. 1821.
• 10. NLW, Coedymaen mss 608.
• 11. The Times, 3 July 1821.
• 12. Beaumaris mss iv. 319.
• 13. NLW, Harpton Court mss C/487; Add. 40344, f. 181.
• 14. PP (1822), xiii. 1214-15.
• 15. The Times, 2, 16 May 1822; PP (1823), vii. 239-52, 747.
• 16. PP (1820), ii. 317.
• 17. The Times, 12, 20 Feb., 19 Apr. 1823.
• 18. Beaumaris mss iv. 319.
• 19. Bucks. RO, Fremantle mss, Buckingham to Fremantle, 11 Jan. 1824; Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, ii. 33.
• 20. The Times, 7 Feb. 1824.
• 21. Ibid. 17 Feb. 1824.
• 22. Ibid. 13 Mar. 1824.
• 23. PP (1824), vi. 467-84.
• 24. Ibid. 667-84; CJ, lxxix. 148, 154, 191, 247, 393, 451.
• 25. PP (1824), xi. 1-773; The Times, 18, 27, 28 May 1824.
• 26. Add. 40511, f. 231; PP (1825), xiii; Harpton Court mss 495; Wellington mss WP1/798/8; 800/24; 801/12.
• 27. Harpton Court mss C/377.
• 28. Coedymaen mss 1012; Harpton Court mss C/589; Buckingham, ii. 192.
• 29. Buckingham, ii. 213; Coedymaen mss 414.
• 30. Buckingham, ii. 218; LJ, lvii. 39.
• 31. Add. 40373, ff. 124, 140; 40378, ff. 39, 297.
• 32. The Times, 26 Mar. 1825.
• 33. Ibid. 7 May 1825.
• 34. Ibid. 31 May 1825; PP (1825), xii. 1-881.
• 35. Add. 40382, f. 406; Williams Wynn Corresp. 333.
• 36. Harpton Court mss C/397, 595-6; P. Parris, ‘Shire Hall Presteign’, Trans. Rad. Soc. li (1981), 40-41; Hereford Jnl. 17 Jan. 1827.
• 37. Harpton Court mss C/584-5; PP (1826-7), xii.
• 38. Add. 40391, f. 198; PP (1826-7), xiii. 1137-42.
• 39. Grey mss, Howick to Grey, 6, 12, 20 Mar.; St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 194, T. to J. Gladstone, 16 Mar. 1827.
• 40. Grey mss, Grey to Howick, 14 Mar. 1827.
• 41. The Times, 3 Apr. 1827.
• 42. Carmarthen Jnl. 27 Apr. 1827.
• 43. The Times 19 June 1827.
• 44. Ibid. 19 June 1827.
• 45. Duke Univ. Lib. Fazakerley mss, Ord to Fazakerley, 17 Apr. 1827; Harpton Court mss C/523, 593.
• 46. Harpton Court mss C/379.
• 47. Coedymaen mss 712, 715; BL, Dropmore mss, Lewis to Grenville, 22 Aug. 1827; Add. 40394, f. 170; Harpton Court mss C/621.
• 48. Harpton Court mss C/405.
• 49. Ibid. C/416, 419; Buckingham, ii. 350; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 10 Sept. 1827.
• 50. Williams Wynn Corresp. 361.
• 51. NLS, Ellice mss, Grey to Ellice, 8 Sept. 1827.
• 52. Harpton Court mss C/513.
• 53. TNA 30/29/9/3/37.
• 54. Harpton Court mss C/417, 418; Add. 38754, f. 179; 59406, f. 14; Wellington mss WP1/915/46; 920/5; Ellenborough Diary, i. 18; Coedymaen mss 448, 466, 736.
• 55. Add. 40395, f. 221.
• 56. Harpton Court mss C/3044; Hereford Jnl. 26 Mar. 1828.
• 57. Harpton Court mss 2160, 2161; C/597; Cambrian, 29 Mar., 5, 12 Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 2, 9, 16 Apr. 1828; MacLeod of MacLeod mss 1062/12.
• 58. Harpton Court mss C/598-601; Hereford Jnl. 28 May, 4, 18 June, 30 July, 3 Sept. 1828, 4 Mar. 1829.
• 59. Ellenborough Diary, i. 71, 112, 130; Harpton Court mss C/403, 600; Hereford Jnl. 4 June 1828; HMC Bathurst, 654; TNA 30/29/9/5/71; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 472-3; Croker Pprs. i. 421.
• 60. Wellington mss WP1/943/19.
• 61. Ellenborough Diary, i. 130-1.
• 62. Harpton Court mss C/601.
• 63. Southampton Univ. Lib. Broadlands mss BR2 3AA/5/3.
• 64. Greville Mems. i. 212.
• 65. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Denison diary, 12 July 1828.
• 66. The Times, 10 Mar. 1829; Harpton Court mss C/398.
• 67. Wellington mss WP1/1011/16.
• 68. Harpton Court mss C/606.
• 69. Ibid. C/492, 602; Hereford Jnl. 19 Aug. 1829.
• 70. Harpton Court mss C/517; Hereford Jnl. 22 Apr., 26 Oct.; Chester Courant, 3 Nov. 1829.
• 71. Harpton Court mss C/359, 524; Coedymaen mss 976; Add. 51680, Lord J. Russell to Lady Holland [Jan.]; 51785, Holland to C.R. Fox, 11 Jan.; Greville Mems. i. 350, 352; Lonsdale mss, Lowther to Lonsdale, 4 Feb. 1830; Wellington mss WP1/1098/16.
• 72. The Times, 15 Feb.; Hereford Jnl. 17 Feb., Cambrian, 19 Feb.; Grey mss, Durham to Grey [15 Feb. 1830].
• 73. Hereford Jnl. 10, 17, 24, Feb., 3, 10, 17 Mar.; Cambrian, 19 Feb., 5 Mar.; Shrewsbury Chron. 19 Mar. 1830; Harpton Court mss 2625-7.
• 74. Harpton Court mss C/603.
• 75. NLW, Bute mss L73/29.
• 76. Harpton Court mss C/399, 604-6.
• 77. Ibid. C/498; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 306; PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/31, pp. 95-99.
• 78. NLW, Ormathwaite mss G36, f. 19.
• 79. Harpton Court mss 2626; Hereford Jnl. 30 June, 21 July; Shrewsbury Chron. 13 Aug. 1830; D.R.Ll. Adams, ‘Parl. Rep. Rad. 1536-1832’ (Univ. of Wales M.A. thesis, 1969), 457-9.
• 80. Harpton Court mss C/430.
• 81. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 407-8.
• 82. Harpton Court mss C/421.
• 83. Hereford Jnl. 30 Mar. 1831.
• 84. Hereford Jnl. 30 Mar., 13 Apr. 1831; Adams, 464-5.
• 85. Harpton Court mss 2161-4; C/535, 536, 579; Hereford Jnl. 27 Apr., 4, 11, 18 May; Cambrian, 30 Apr. 1831.
• 86. Add. 51573, Spring Rice to Lady Holland [6 July 1831].
• 87. Wellington mss WP1/1190/5, 11; Harpton Court mss C/581.
• 88. Wellington mss WP1/1190/25.
• 89. Harpton Court mss C/407-9.
• 90. PP (1831), vii. 452-3.
• 91. Wellington mss WP1/1197/4.
• 92. Greville Mems. ii. 190; Harpton Court mss C/590; Coedymaen mss 1014-20.
• 93. Hereford Jnl. 26 Oct., 16, 23 Nov. 1831; Coedymaen mss, bdle. 19, Clive to Williams Wynn, 23 Dec. 1831.
• 94. Wellington mss WP1/1224/2.
• 95. Harpton Court mss C/368, 571.
• 96. Ibid. C/367-9, 400; Brougham mss, Lewis to Brougham, 27 Feb., 4 May 1831.
• 97. Harpton Court mss C/401; Hereford Jnl. 13 June, 8, 22 Aug. 1832.
• 98. Harpton Court mss 2165, 2628; Add. 40879, f. 344.
• 99. NLW, Maybery mss 6615; Ormathwaite mss FG1/7, p. 203; Add. 40511, ff. 231-2.
• 100. PROB 11/2210/336; IR26/2038/305; Add. 40595, f. 209; Harpton Court mss C/520-1.