Pechell, an independently-minded Whig, achieved an unassailable tenure at Brighton, despite an inauspicious start. Born into a distinguished military dynasty, he had followed his older brother Samuel into the navy at the age of fourteen and served in Nelson’s fleet at the blockade of Toulon before moving to the Mediterranean, where he saw ‘much active service’ and led the capture of Vigo in 1809. Aided by his connections and a well-deserved reputation for gallantry, in 1812 he secured his first command on the North American station, having briefly served under his brother on the flagship of their uncle Sir John Borlese Warren. His successes in destroying and capturing ‘a great variety of vessels’ ensured his promotion to commander in 1814, and he notched up further victories enforcing fishing treaties and combating piracy on the Halifax and Jamaica stations, often defying the odds. In 1822 he achieved post-rank and went on half-pay. His account of his perceptions of Haiti appeared two years later.
At the 1832 general election Pechell, the ‘possessor of an independent fortune’, came forward for the newly enfranchised town of Brighton as a ‘moderate reformer’, amidst widespread assumptions that like his brother, the royal nominee at Windsor, he was backed by the court. After a severe contest, in which he was ‘struck violently’ on the head, he was defeated by ‘two decided Radicals’.
Pleading ill-health, Pechell absented himself from the test of party strength on the speakership vote, 19 Feb., but voted with ministers on the address, 26 Feb. 1835, prompting a stream of abuse in Brighton’s radical press, which accused him of dishonestly obtaining his seat and acting with the so-called Derby Dilly.
Thereafter Pechell, a steady attender, generally supported the Whigs on most major issues, including those relating to the Irish Church and Irish municipal reform, but was never afraid to chart ‘an independent course’.
Following the death of William IV, Pechell was gazetted as a groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria in July 1837. However, for reasons which are unclear, ‘his sense of duty to the queen dowager induced him to decline’ the position.
In what became another long-running cause, on 5 Apr. 1838 Pechell challenged Lord Brougham’s claims that British naval officers policing the slave trade had held back from seizing vessels until they were laden, in order to obtain more head-money. An active champion of the naval forces engaged in the suppression of the trade, he was later able to claim the credit for improving the conditions and remuneration of those serving off the coast of West Africa, 22 Feb. 1848, and for securing the deployment of gun boats against the slavers of Brazil and Cuba, 12 Apr. 1858. On 16 July 1840 he objected to the county constabulary bill, citing the additional cost to towns such as Brighton that already had a police force. He attended various constituency meetings on this issue and against the new poor law, which he pledged to give his ‘determined and continuous opposition’, and happily shared a platform with local Chartists on the matter in February 1841.
Pechell was returned in first place for Brighton with cross-party support at the general elections of 1841 and 1847 (by when the court interest had all but evaporated), and again in 1852, 1857 and 1859. He took issue with the poor law amendment bill of 1844 and the ‘inhumane’ Poor Law Removal Act requiring non-resident paupers to seek relief in their parish of origin, against which he was in a minority of five, 13 July 1847. He was in the Protestant minorities against the Maynooth grant, 24, 28 Apr., 2, 21 May 1845 - later explaining that he had objected to its funds coming from the exchequer rather than Church revenues - but was back in the Liberal fold for repeal of the corn laws the following year.
By now Pechell, who had succeeded to his brother’s baronetcy and taken the additional name of Brooke in 1849, had become increasingly concerned at the ‘centralising tendencies’ of the Russell ministry’s 1848 Public Health Act. He was especially critical of Chadwick’s board of health, which he doggedly pursued for interfering in non-corporate towns like Brighton against the wishes of local inhabitants. Welcoming an amendment bill, 21 Feb. 1855, he observed that he ‘had shortened his life by the battles he had had to fight with former governments over this’. Taking up similar cudgels against the police constabulary bill the following year, he mused:
He had hoped that he should this year have had a quiet session, and that he should not again have had occasion to lift up his voice against the principle of centralisation. He had come into the House just as the New Poor Law had walked out of it; and ... never a session had passed without his having been compelled to resist some inroad or other upon the constitution. The present measure was another of those attempts.
Hansard, 10 Mar. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 2155-6.
However, he apparently sympathised with a controversial local campaign to adopt the 1835 municipal corporations act in Brighton, and replace its old-fashioned town commission with a town council elected on a wider (male) franchise. He successfully moved for copies of the initial inquiry refusing corporate status, 17 Mar. 1853, and after the town commissioners failed to surrender all their powers in 1854, took the lead in steering through legislation giving the newly appointed council total control, in the form of the 1855 Brighton Commissioners Transfer Act.
Pechell died in harness at his London home three weeks later ‘after a short illness’. Predeceased by his only son Captain William Henry Cecil Pechell, who had been killed in the trenches before Sebastopol in 1855, the baronetcy and family estates were inherited by his cousin George Samuel Pechell (1819-97), another soldier. Castle Goring, however, passed to his daughter Adelaide Harriet and remains in the hands of her descendants.