OTWAY CAVE, Robert (1796-1844), of Stanford Hall, Lutterworth, Leics. and Castle Otway, Templederry, co. Tipperary

Otway Cave, whose maternal ancestors having long been prominent in Leicestershire politics, had sat for Leicester from 1826 to 1830. A reformer, he supported (after some equivocation) Catholic emancipation, abolition of slavery, repeal of the corn laws, and parliamentary reform. As the proprietor of Castle Otway, near Nenagh, and Lisson Hall in county Tipperary – lands acquired by an ancestor with Cromwell’s army – he was offered but declined an invitation to stand for county Tipperary at the 1830 general election.M. Lambe. A Tipperary Estate: Castle Otway, Templederry 1750-1853 (1998), 12-4. He sold the latter property to Sir Richard Keane in 1838: Freeman’s Journal, 24 Dec. 1838. However, his pledge to assist in the recovery of Ireland’s ‘lawful rights’ meant that he was well-regarded by Daniel O’Connell, on whose behalf he had petitioned parliament in 1829. Defying the opposition of his future father-in-law, Sir Francis Burdett, he was returned for Tipperary at a by-election in August 1832, as a prominent supporter of municipal reform and the appropriation of Irish church revenues, and was sworn in on the last day of the unreformed parliament.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 616-21; iii. 880-1; A. Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester. A History of Leicester 1780-1850 (1954), 149-62; M.W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett and his times, ii (1931), 591. For family background and political career prior to 1833, see HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 591-6. Having gained the reputation of a ‘Tipperary radical’ and potential thorn in the side of the Whig ministry, he was approached by the county electors on the questions of tithes and repeal, but, though rumoured to be an ‘ardent repealer’, he retired at the 1832 general election rather than take the pledge.Freeman’s Journal, 9 Nov., 4 Dec. 1832; The Times, 5 Dec. 1832; Morning Post, 18 Dec. 1832; D. O’Connell to William Scott, 25 Oct. 1832, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, iv. 458.

Otway Cave was presented to the king by his uncle, Sir Robert Waller Otway, an admiral in the royal navy, in June 1833, and, after his mother established her legal title as 3^rd baroness Braye in 1839, he was styled the Honourable.The Times, 20 June 1833. The title was brought out of abeyance on 27 August 1839, the duke of Bedford having resigned his equal claim. As Otway Cave’s elder brother, Thomas, had died without issue in January 1831, the title fell into abeyance at his mother’s death in 1862: A.T.T. Verney-Cave Braye, Fewness of My Days (1927), 11, 189. In addition to his Irish properties, he held large estates in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and, after 1818, in Lincolnshire, which secured him a total income estimated at £20,000 a year. His visits to his Irish estates were sufficiently long to allow him to participate in local affairs, and he was regarded as a model landlord. His support for popular causes created common ground with a significant portion of his Irish tenants, and he further increased his local popularity, early in 1834, by disposing of the middlemen on his estate, thus substantially reducing his tenants’ rents.Lambe, Castle Otway, 19; Morning Chronicle, 2 Jan. 1835, 19 Aug. 1837; Examiner, 5 Jan. 1834. Later that year, however, an attempt was made to burn down Castle Otway, which was believed to have been part of a campaign by the local ‘Orange’ magistracy to drive him from the county.Morning Chronicle, 31 Oct. 1834; The Times, 27 Nov., 4 Dec. 1834. The dispute arose after a fair was established near his residence, the arson being charged to a local ‘gentleman’ named Mr. Dancer.

Otway Cave, who had reportedly spent £30,000 on his election at Leicester in 1826, used his wealth to fund the Liberal cause, and was therefore considered ‘qualified alike by his great landed possessions and the liberality of his opinions, to represent the second county of Ireland’.HP Commons 1820-32, vi. 592; ii. 616-9; PP 1835 (116), xxiii. 1, 133, xxiv. 1, xxv. 1, xxvi. 1 [2066-8]; PP 1835 (547) viii. 1 [127]; The Court Journal, 24 Jan. 1835. At O’Connell’s invitation, he was returned unopposed for Tipperary at the 1835 general election, on ‘thoroughly Radical principles’. An advocate of the abolition of Irish tithes, which he considered ‘the brand of insult on the forehead of a gallant people’, he was then prosecuted for withholding tithe payments.The Times, 2 Dec. 1834, 5 Jan. 1835; Morning Chronicle, 23 Dec. 1834; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 33-4. After supporting the government’s motion on Irish tithes, 3 June 1836, he was charged by his detractors with irresponsibility and hypocrisy when, having resisted for three years, he paid his arrears in February 1837.PP 1836 (582) xl. 145; The Times, 27 Nov., 19 Dec. 1835, 15, 16, 17 May 1836; Morning Chronicle, 2, 18 Jan. 1837, quoting The Cork Standard; Morning Post, 2 Feb. 1837.

In the Commons, he supported the election of Sir James Abercromby as speaker, and voted in the minority for Lord Chandos’s motion to repeal the malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835. He also expressed ‘his disgust and indignation’ at Russian conduct towards the Poles, criticising the government for choosing as ambassador to Russia a man known to sympathise with Czarist policy.Hansard, 13 Mar. 1835, vol. 26, cc. 954-5. He later joined the ‘Friends of Poland’: Caledonian Mercury, 24 June 1839. Like other Irish radicals, he divided against both Peel’s resolution on Irish tithes and Russell’s motion on the Irish Church, though he did support government proposals for the reform of Irish municipal corporations, 29 Mar. 1836. As a zealous Liberal and an enemy of ‘the old ascendancy principle’, he supported the Whigs’ political alliance with O’Connell, who in turn backed him against more radical forces within Tipperary politics, and he joined the General Association in October 1836.Morning Chronicle, 19 Aug. 1837; The Times, 10 Oct. 1836; Belfast News-letter, 16 Nov. 1838. Having subscribed to the O’Connell fund in 1836, he acted as a steward for the dinner given in his honour at Covent Garden in 1844; Morning Post, 2 June 1836; The Times, 11 Mar. 1844. He nevertheless enjoyed ‘an affectionate friendship’ with his father-in-law, Sir Francis Burdett, the two men pairing during Otway Cave’s frequent periods of ill health.Examiner, 14 Dec. 1844; Morning Post, 17 Feb. 1840; Belfast News-letter, 5 Feb. 1841. His sister-in-law, Angela Burdett Coutts, was a renowned philanthropist: E. Healy, ‘Coutts, Angela Burdett’, Oxford DNB, xiii. 715-21.

As a member, it was said that ‘his talents, discernment, and information were of a superior order’, and that he ‘would probably have been an influential speaker, had not the extreme delicacy of his health prevented the possibility of regular parliamentary attendance and practice in debate’.Examiner, 14 Dec. 1844. He appears to have served on only one select committee, an inquiry into the Penryn and Falmouth election petition, and introduced no bills.PP 1842 (240) viii. 163. Yet, in spite of his frequent absences from the House, he was still able to thwart a Conservative attack upon the government’s foreign policy with a powerful speech in defence of his friend and fellow radical MP, Sir George de Lacy Evans, the commander of the British Legion in Spain during the first Carlist war, 19 Apr. 1837.Hansard, 19 Apr. 1837, vol. 38, cc. 2-12; Leicester Chronicle, 29 Apr. 1837. Evans’s finances were later buttressed by an inheritance of £20,000 from Otway Cave’s estate: The Times, 4 Mar. 1845; Speirs, Radical General, 121. Otway Cave maintained an interest in Spanish affairs and, in 1843, attended a banquet for General Espartero, the ex-regent of Spain: Morning Chronicle, 27 Sept. 1843. Rumours of his impending retirement having been quashed, he offered again at the 1837 election on the principles of ‘No tithes, equal laws, or repeal’. Well-funded as the ministerial candidate, he easily defeated a Conservative challenge, and overcame a subsequent petition against his return.The Times, 10 Oct. 1836, 10 July 1837; Morning Chronicle, 19 Aug. 1837, 27 Sept. 1837. He was unable to attend the house in the autumn session, pairing with Sir John Mordaunt and Lord Charles Manners, but remained active outside the house.The Times, 9 Dec. 1837; Standard, 13 Mar. 1838; Leicester Chronicle, 9 Mar. 1839. In December 1837 he attended a meeting of radicals at Westminster to press for parliamentary reform, and in October 1838 chaired a meeting on the Great South Western Railway scheme, which endorsed the proposals of the Irish railway commissioners, joining a subsequent deputation to the Irish viceroy, Lord Morpeth.Morning Post, 5 Dec. 1837; Morning Chronicle, 13 Oct. 1838, 7 May 1839. He was also active as a magistrate, and, following the murder of a land agent on his property in November 1838, joined the committee of the ‘Tipperary Society’ for the preservation of the peace.The Times, 10 Nov. 1838, 22 Jan. 1839; PP 1839 (486) xi.1, xii. 1 [1151], and see HP Commons, 1832-68, ‘Lanigan, John’.

Amidst further rumours of his impending retirement, Otway Cave was again returned at the 1841 general election after a violent contest, in which he advocated a reconsideration of the corn laws and emphasized the threat posed to Ireland by ‘Tory despotism’.Morning Chronicle, 25 June 1841; 19, 23 June 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 21, 24 July 1841; The Times, 1 Oct. 1841, 22 Apr. 1842. In September 1841, during the course of a ‘spirited inquiry’ of the prime minister, he forced Peel to state that the government, not wishing to see the ‘admitted errors connected with the system of Irish registration corrected … by any limitation of the franchise’, would not reintroduce the bill prepared by Lord Stanley in the previous session.Hansard, 20 Sept. 1841, vol. 59, cc. 613-7; The Times, 22 Sept. 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 22 Sept. 1841. As one O’Connellite put it, he ‘forced down his Tipperary stomach-pump into the stomach of Quack Doctor Peel’s mind, and by hard pumping brought up some information’: Morning Chronicle, 24 Sept. 1841. He continued to press the new ministry on its attitude towards Ireland, arguing that the mismanagement of Irish affairs might even justify a call for repeal.As when he interrogated the home secretary, Sir James Graham, about the derogatory comments on the reliability of Irish witnesses attributed to a Greenwich police magistrate: Hansard, 28 Sept. 1841, vol. 59, c. 925; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Sept., 1 Oct. 1841. He opposed the reintroduction of the income tax, 13 Apr. 1842, and supported a commission to inquire into the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844. Although he mobilized his tenantry in support of the repeal candidate at the Tipperary by-election that month, it was thought that he himself would resign rather than take the repeal pledge, and, having attended parliament on just a handful of occasions that session, it was anticipated that he would soon stand aside in favour of a repealer.Lambe, Castle Otway, 29; Morning Post, 20 Sept. 1844; The Times, 20 Sept. 1844. He used his last Commons speech to support a motion condemning the state prosecution of O’Connell, and chided Peel for failing to redeem the pledge he had made to him in 1841 to pursue ‘a wise and generous policy towards Ireland’.Morning Post, 30 May 1843; Examiner, 14 Dec. 1844; Hansard, 5 Sept. 1844, vol. 76, cc. 2004-5.

Otway Cave died in harness after a short illness in November 1844, whilst convalescing in Bath, and was buried at Stanford Hall.Examiner, 14 Dec. 1844; Morning Chronicle, 19 Aug. 1837; The Times, 2 Dec. 1844; Morning Chronicle, 7 Dec. 1844. For details of his tomb, see Archeological Journal, xii-xiii (1956), 193. A sympathetic and responsible landlord, Otway Cave was said to have been modest and unostentatious in his habits. Amiable in private life, he laid personal claim merely to a ‘consistent and independent, though humble, political career’. His estates passed to his wife, Sophia, who bequeathed them to his cousin Captain Robert Jocelyn Otway.Gent. Mag. (1845), i. 201.