CAVENDISH BENTINCK, Lord William George Frederick (1802-1848).

Lord George Bentinck, as he was commonly known, claimed to have ‘sat in eight Parliaments without having taken part in any great debate’ when he assumed the leadership of the Protectionists in the Commons in 1846. Disraeli, 1. The third of the four sons of the 4th duke of Portland and his wife, coheiress with her sisters the countess of Moray and the wife of George Canning* to the Scottish estates and fortune of the inveterate gambler John Scott† (d. 1775), Seth Smith, 24. he was raised and educated privately with his siblings, who nicknamed him ‘Singe’, at the family seat of Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire and at Fullarton House, near Troon, Ayrshire, where his father was developing the docks. A.S. Turberville, Hist. Welbeck, ii. 361. An excellent sportsman, Bentinck joined the army in 1818 with his elder brother John, but his military career was marred by personal disputes. In February 1821 he was cleared by the inquiry he had requested into charges of inattention to duty and contemptuous, insubordinate and disrespectful behaviour brought against him for calling his superior officer Captain John Ker a poltroon. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Portland mss PwH 260-2; PwL 385, 391; Seth Smith, 19-21. Ker refused to let the matter rest, and in May they almost fought a duel in Paris, where Canning, anxious to ‘save him from being a mere Lord Fred’, had taken Bentinck to ‘learn to speak French’ in good company. Harewood mss WYL 250/8/26, Canning to wife, 2 July 1820; Portland mss PwH 342, 628, 1021; PwL 385, 391. He returned to England and, assisted by his uncle Lord William Henry Bentinck*, exchanged regiments with a view to going to India in search of a fortune. A second exchange was effected in May 1822 to enable him to go out as an aide-de-camp to Canning as governor-general. Portland mss PwH 107-10, 267, 269, 409-10, 435, 437. Instead, when Canning became foreign secretary in Lord Liverpool’s administration in September he proposed making John and George, his companion at his farewell dinner in Liverpool, 30 Aug., his non-stipendiary private secretaries, ‘to wean them from their too great zeal in the chase and too great idleness in every other respect’. Harewood mss WYL 250/8/26, Bentinck to Mrs. Canning, 31 Aug., Canning to same, 2, 3 Sept. 1822; Portland mss PwH 438-9; W. Hinde, George Canning, 317. Portland’s political objections were overcome, but George alone accepted. Portland mss PwH 440-446; Add. 51574, Abercromby to Holland, 22 Dec. 1822. Writing of his appointment, George Agar Ellis* described Bentinck as ‘a weak young man’, while Lady Belgrave remarked on his love ‘for Miss A. Poyntz’. Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 30 Sept. 1822; Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. c. 439, f. 130. In the following months Bentinck kept Portland fully briefed on the Congress of Verona and the duke of Wellington’s negotiations in Paris concerning the liberal regime in Spain. Portland mss PwH 114-32. In January 1823, when Bentinck was unwell, Canning informed Portland:

I was prepared for the quickness and the good sense which I have found in him; and for his docility, diligence and excessive desire to do his duty, and more than his duty, I was not prepared. I am serious when I say that he has been of great use as well as comfort and pleasure to me, and hope I have done him some good, but not more than he deserves. Ibid. 129, 451.

(He was to deploy his knowledge of diplomatic procedures when questioning the foreign secretary Lord Palmerston about the Paris conference on the use of French troops in Belgium, 8 Aug. 1831.) Bentinck’s foreign office career ceased shortly after John became Portland’s heir by the death of their brother Lord Titchfield, 5 Mar. 1824, and, turning down Canning’s offer of a post as a précis writer, ‘it being the duke of Portland’s wish that he should now take to the army as his profession’, he succeeded to John’s commission in the Life Guards. Wellington mss WP1/754/35; Portland mss PwL 116-8; Harewood mss WYL 250/8/27, Canning to wife, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12 Apr.; Gent. Mag. (1824), i. 559; TNA 30/29/9/5/25. After engaging a junior officer, Henry Dallas, in a bloodless duel over the mess accounts in July 1825, he left the regiment and took half-pay with the rank of major. Add. 52017, Townshend to Fox, 1 Aug. 1825. He rode his first winner, William Stephen Poyntz’s* mare Olive, at Goodwood in 1824, and indulged his passion for racing and gaming. In September 1826 Portland, whose success in winning the Derby in 1819 he vainly aspired to emulate, honoured gambling debts of £13,000, which he had incurred on the St. Leger, and gave him the Muirkirk estate in Ayrshire to keep him occupied. Portland mss PwH 358; Seth Smith, 22; Gash, 164. He refused office when Canning became premier in April 1827, but corresponded on political matters with Portland, lord president of the council under Canning and Lord Goderich, when he was detained abroad on account of the ill health of the duchess and their daughters. Portland mss PwH 119, 139-47; PwL 408.

In December 1827 he was put forward for King’s Lynn, where the appointment of Lord William as governor-general of Bengal had created a vacancy. Ibid. PwJe 1080; PwL 138-147. Lady Carlisle informed Lord Morpeth*:

Lord George, though wishing well to government of course, appeared to me rather a frondeur, complained of the want of activity in ministers (by the bye the duke is certainly rather an inefficient member) and told me that the others even talk of beating us in the House of Commons, and that many are violent. Castle Howard mss.

Having wisely insisted on a prompt election he came in unopposed, 4 Feb. 1828, and took his seat on the 14th. Portland mss PwH 139; Norwich Mercury, 2, 9 Feb.; Harewood mss WYL 250/8/87, Bentinck to Lady Canning, 11 Feb. 1828. A Canningite who professed himself independent of party, he now shared Portland’s hostility to the new Wellington administration and annoyance at William Huskisson’s* adherence to it, and he erroneously predicted that Catholic emancipation ‘will be very much delayed and ... cannot now be carried during Mr. Peel’s political life’. Portland mss PwH 144. His ‘violent altercation’ with Lord Seaford on the subject over dinner at Sir George Warrender’s*, 25 Feb., greatly embarrassed their friends. Greville Mems. i. 205. Bentinck presented petitions, 22 Feb., and voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb.; he was heartened by the ministry’s defeat on the issue, which he attributed to ‘pitifully poor’ speeches ‘from the treasury bench’, ensuring that ‘all the doubters came over to our side’. Portland mss PwH 146-7. He voted against sluicing the franchise at East Retford, 21 Mar., 27 June. He presented and endorsed petitions from the merchants of King’s Lynn for protective tariffs, 18 Apr., and against the reimportation of duty free foreign flour via the Isle of Man, 28 Apr. When on 5 May the duke of Richmond secured the appointment of a Lords select committee on the wool trade with a view to restoring protection, Bentinck was credited by his cousin, the diarist Charles Greville, with obtaining ‘all the details ... for him ... that he might have a reason for being with the duchess, with whom he is desperately in love’. LJ, lx. 326; Mirror of Parliament (1828), 933, 1223, 1294; Greville Mems. i. 284; Seth Smith, 44. Bentinck informed Lady Canning that, as Member for Lynn, he was free ‘to vote according to his conscience’ and was prepared to move for protective tariffs on wool in the Commons ‘because I am a free trader on the score that in this instance the principle has been carried too far - the protection of the fine wool grower is about four per cent; that of corn ... 25 at least’. Harewood mss WYL 250/8/87, Bentinck to Lady Canning [1828]. To Huskisson’s dismay, he also corresponded closely with his aunt on the break-up of Canning’s party. Add. 38754, f. 234; Harewood mss WYL 250/8/87, Bentinck to Lady Canning [Jan.], 11, 15 Feb., 3, 7 Mar., 27 May and n.d.; The Times, 25 Feb. 1828. He insisted on contributing to the Canning memorial fund independently of Portland and pressed for a government pension for Canning’s family, which Portland as executor and trustee now negotiated with Huskisson. Hatherton diary, 23 Feb. 1828; Portland mss PwH 139, 147; Add. 38756, ff. 55-57, 65-70, 75, 97, 100, 109; Wellington mss WP1/944/10. Countering the award’s critics, lest his silence ‘be misconstrued out of doors into something like concurrence’, 13 May, he argued that ‘it is owing to Mr. Canning’s resistance that [Hume] ... and his small party are shrunk to their present miserable dimensions’, and sought to shame the Whig Lord Althorp by stressing the Canningites’ contribution to the previous day’s majority for Catholic relief, in which he had voted. Seaford considered the speech ‘better than I expected’; TNA 30/29/9/5/67. and the foreign office under-secretary John Backhouse informed Lady Canning that ‘Lord George did very well, though a little too much excited by Hume’. Harewood mss WYL 250/8/87, Backhouse to Lady Canning, 15 May 1828. He voted for information on civil list pensions, 20 May. Following the Huskissonite resignations, 3 June, Palmerston regarded Bentinck as a ‘probable’ supporter of the ‘liberals’ in the Commons. He voted with opposition for reductions in expenditure, 20 June, 4, 7 July, and inquiry into the Irish church, 24 June, and against the additional churches bill, 30 June, and the silk manufacture bill, 14 July 1828.

Bentinck was grieved by the ‘degradation’ and ‘political weakness’ of the Whig leader Lord Grey’s recent ‘disgraceful flirtation with the Ultra Tories’, and observed on requesting a lift to London for the session from Lord Morpeth, 19 Jan. 1829, that ‘I can’t journey up by myself for the bore of it, nor in the mail for the discomfort, less than all in company with a Tory because we should be sure to quarrel and fight before we got half way’. Castle Howard mss. He privately owned that the ministry’s concession of Catholic emancipation in 1829 was ‘handsomely done’. Greville Mems. i. 248. He presented a favourable petition from the Unitarians of King’s Lynn, 26 Feb., and voted for the measure, 6, 30 Mar. His main concern was the attendant Irish franchise bill, which he voted against, 19 Mar., and condemned as ‘an act of flagrant injustice’ whose principle had been opposed by Peel and Mackintosh as recently as 1825, 20 Mar. 1829. He was a minority teller that day for amending it to perpetuate the 40s. freeholder vote, which he claimed was ‘enshrined in the constitution’ and ‘a property dear to an Englishman as his own life’. Despite his increasing commitment to hunting and racing, in which from 1827 until their quarrel in 1837 he was partnered by Greville, Three Diaries, 54, 117; Greville Mems. i. 354; Portland mss PwH 149. Bentinck returned early for the 1830 session and voted to condemn the absence of any reference to distress in the king’s speech, 4 Feb. Afterwards, he informed Portland that Wellington and Peel’s speeches that day had revived the government’s reputation. Portland mss PwH 149. He voted against them for reductions in taxation and expenditure, 5, 15, 19, 22 Feb., and to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., and enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb. He divided for information on British involvement in Portugal, 10 Mar. He voted against the appointment of the former Canningite Thomas Frankland Lewis* as treasurer of the navy, 12 Mar., but not to withhold his salary, 10 May, and divided steadily with the revived Whig opposition from March until 7 July, including for Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May. He qualified his vote for inquiry into the management of crown land revenues, 30 Mar., by correcting the mover Daniel Harvey’s reference to the £40,000 paid to Portland for the advowson of Marylebone, which he claimed was valued at £46,000 and had been offered at a reduced rate to the crown to prevent it ‘falling into the hands of the Dissenters, which might have proved prejudicial to the interests of the Church of England’. He voted to make forgery a non-capital offence, 24 May, 7 June, having presented a petition to this effect, 14 May. He presented petitions from King’s Lynn against the locally contentious sale of beer bill, 21 May, and he was in the minorities for amending it to restrict licensing for on-consumption, 21 June, 1 July. He voted against the administration of justice bill, 18 June, and to modify the libel law amendment bill, 6 July 1830. At the general election that month he stood jointly on the corporation interest at King’s Lynn with his Tory colleague Walpole and promised to ‘leave off work any freeholder’ who failed to support their erstwhile rival Browne Ffolkes, who came in for Norfolk. Norwich Mercury, 10, 31 July; Norf. Chron. 17 July; Norf. RO NRS 8741, G. Hogge to Frederick Lane, 1 Aug. 1830; Portland mss PwL 28-29. He was returned after a token contest, and spoke on the hustings of his support for parliamentary reform and the enfranchisement of large towns. Norwich Mercury, 7 Aug.; Norf. Chron. 7 Aug. 1830.

The Wellington ministry listed Bentinck among their ‘foes’, and he divided against them when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. Informing his father of Grey’s ministerial appointments, he remarked that Brougham had been made lord chancellor ‘to get him fast and render him harmless in case he should become unruly’. He expressed dismay at the appointment of Lord Melbourne, whom he thought ‘both idle and inefficient’, as home secretary and complained that the postmaster-general Richmond, to whom he had intimated that Portland would support the new government, was entitled to something better. Portland mss PwH 150. He presented an anti-slavery petition, 18 Nov., intervened briefly in support of ministers on pensions and salaries, 13 Dec., and secured detailed returns of suits and fees in the Westminster court of requests, 21 Dec. Presenting a reform petition from King’s Lynn, 17 Feb. 1831, he dissented from its request for the ballot and stated:

For myself, I am disposed to trust with perfect confidence in the wisdom, prudence, and honourable intentions of ministers on this subject; I am satisfied that the measure they will produce will be such as to redeem the promise made by ... [Grey] that his reform, whilst it secured to the people the rights of good government, should also be so tempered with prudence as to be consistent with the permanent security of private property.

He presented petitions for, 19 Mar., and against the ministerial bill, 19 Apr., and voted for its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. At the ensuing general election he came in for King’s Lynn with the reformer Lord William Pitt Lennox at a cost of £1,050. On the hustings, he claimed that he had fulfilled his promises to ‘support his own independence in the House’ free from the spoils of office, that he had voted for tax reductions, secured valuable concessions on the duties on coal and beer, and had helped to steer legislation affecting the waterworks, new market hall and the port through Parliament. He promised to ensure that the Eau Brink commissioners maintained the free bridge over the cut and paid compensation for the damage sustained to the river and harbour. On reform, which he still advocated, ‘he had now no pledges to give’. Lord W.P. Lennox, Fifty Years Biog. Reminiscences, 157-63; Portland mss PwH 152; Norwich Mercury, 7 May, Norf. Chron. 7 May 1831.

Bentinck voted for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July 1831, and against adjourning its committee stage, 12 July, and making the 1831 census the criterion for English borough disfranchisements, 19 July. However, he was prepared to oppose the bill’s details and voted against the proposed disfranchisement of Appleby, 19 July, Downton, 21 July, St. Germans, 26 July, and Saltash, 26 July, and against taking a Member from Chippenham, 27 July, Guildford, 29 July, and Sudbury, 2 Aug. On Dorchester, 28 July, his name was included in both lists. He spoke for the proposal to give Brighton a second Member, 5 Aug. He may, as previously claimed elsewhere, have voted for Lord Chandos’s clause enfranchising £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug., but he is not named in the surviving partial lists, and he was certainly at Goodwood as usual for the racing. Oxford DNB; The Times, 20 Aug. 1831. He voted for the enfranchisement of Greenwich, 3 Aug., and Gateshead, 5 Aug., to unite Rochester with Chatham and Strood, 9 Aug., and to retain Merthyr in the Cardiff group of boroughs, 10 Aug. He voted against preserving the voting rights of all freemen, 30 Aug., and an amendment calculated to deny the freeholders of Aylesbury, Cricklade, East Retford, and Shoreham special status, 2 Sept. He divided for the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. 1831. Bentinck was privy to the cross-party negotiations which preceded the introduction of the revised reform bill, and shared Richmond’s concern ‘that the altered bill would be, in fact, more objectionable than the last, inasmuch as it is more democratic in its tendency’. Greville Mems. ii. 217-8, 220, 228. He voted for its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831. In January 1832 he was foreman of the grand jury which tried the Nottingham rioters, and bravely resisted being detained by a mob on the road to Mansfield. Norf. Chron. 4 Feb. 1832. His support for the reform bill in committee remained erratic, and he cast wayward votes against permitting borough freeholders to vote in counties, 1 Feb., for a £10 poor rate franchise, 3 Feb., and against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb. The Times, 29 Feb. 1832. According to the anti-reformer Greville, who was himself the source of the misunderstanding, Lord Sefton* was led to believe that Bentinck ‘endeavoured to get people to vote against the metropolitan clause, assuring them that government wished to be beat’; and he was criticized in the newspapers for doing so although ‘the whole of the thing was utterly untrue’. Greville Mems. ii. 270-1. He voted for the bill’s registration provisions, 8 Feb., to retain Amersham in schedule A, 21 Feb., Helston in schedule B, 23 Feb., and Gateshead in schedule D, 5 Mar., and divided for the third reading, 22 Mar. He left the House without voting on the address requesting the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the bill unimpaired, 10 May. The Times, 12, 14 May 1832. He voted for the Liverpool disfranchisement bill, 23 May. Next day he intervened in defence of Canning, whose ‘selfish’ stance on slavery was criticized by Fowell Buxton. He sought to justify the apparent incongruity between his intended vote for retaining the £5 county franchise under the Irish reform bill, 13 June, and his opposition to its introduction in 1829, by pouring scorn on O’Connell’s continued commitment to the 40s. franchise and, comparing his own stance with that of Palmerston, he said:

It is no argument to state that, because we preserved the old 40s. in England, we should now create a new 40s. right of voting in Ireland. I was one of the individuals who opposed the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders in Ireland in 1829 and I did so because I then considered theirs a case of great hardship.

He supported the proposed inclusion of Kilmarnock in the Ayr district under the Scottish measure, 15 June 1832. He divided with government in both divisions on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug. 1831, on Portugal, 9 Feb., and the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July, notwithstanding his hostile vote on this issue, 26 Jan. 1832.

Bentinck generally supported the Grey ministry’s expenditure proposals, but his individualism and reluctance to be restricted by party allegiance were evident on matters affecting trade. Mindful of the concerns of the King’s Lynn ship owners, whose complaints he cited, he voted for remission of the duties on quarantined vessels, 6 Sept. 1831, and he cast wayward votes for inquiry into the glove trade, 31 Jan., and a reduction in the duty on sugar, 7 Mar. 1832. Referring to the recent reform riots and the troubles in Jamaica, he considered complaints of the smallness of the reduction in the army estimates unwarranted and argued that ‘an increase could be justified’, 28 Mar. He opposed the malt drawback bill, claiming that it inflicted a new five-and-a-half per cent tax on Scotland, and before voting to amend it, 30 Mar., he said:

I spent the whole of the earlier part of my life in Scotland, and well remember that, fifteen years ago, there was not a single sailor on the Firth of Clyde, where I resided, who was not engaged in smuggling, as well as every other person along the coast. They did not look upon it as a crime, but followed it as an ordinary occupation, in which large profits were to be got. Now none of them are smugglers, and not one-tenth part of the revenue officers that used to be maintained are now kept up.

He divided against its third reading, 2 Apr. He voted against the recommittal of the Irish registry of deeds bill and the restoration of the registrar’s salary to £1,500, 9 Apr., and for Sadler’s proposals for permanent provision for the Irish poor, 19 June. He presented and endorsed his constituents’ petition against the Irish and Scottish vagrants bill, 13 July. He expressed support for the lord chancellor’s salary bill, 25 July, 2, 3 Aug., and cautioned against quibbling over the minutiae of the stage coach duty bill, 9 Aug. 1832. Replying to his critics among the reformers of King’s Lynn, who failed in their bid to unseat him at the general election in December, he cited his steady support for reform, retrenchment, religious liberty and the promotion of trade and added:

I have no disposition to crouch in servile obedience to any ministry, nor, on the other hand, to bend to the excitement of wild popular fury, but will endeavour to support such measures as may conduce to the welfare and happiness of the greatest number of people. Portland mss PwH 151; Norf. Chron. 30 June, 7, 14 July, 15 Dec. 1832.

Bentinck retained his seat for life. He declined office under Grey in 1833 and was an unofficial whip for the ‘Derby Dilly’, which went over to the Conservative opposition with Stanley in July 1834. He refused to join Peel’s 1841 ministry, preferring to remain a champion of the Turf and reformer of the tote and the Jockey Club, but, outraged by the premier’s decision to repeal the corn laws, he sold his racing stud cheaply for £10,000 in 1846 in order to devote his time to the Protectionist party. Macintyre, 145-6; The Times, 4 Aug. 1844; Seth Smith, 27-146. As an opposition leader Bentinck was a formidable organizer and disciplinarian, an active pamphleteer wholly committed to his cause and a master of the use of statistics in debate. Disraeli, passim.; N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel, 578, 586-98, 619-21, 624, 663-5, 669; Macintyre, 147-53. His sudden death while walking alone in the grounds of Welbeck in September 1848, seven months after resigning the party leadership, caused a sensation and was attributed at the inquest to emphysema and a heart attack brought on by overwork. His obituary in The Times, 23 Sept., which classified him as a ‘political moralist, not a statesman’, observed: ‘Young, energetic, confident, hopeful, persevering, full of indignation, opening new quarrels and provoking new antagonisms every day, his lordship was commencing, so it seemed, a long and vigorous career’. The Lynn Advertiser noted that Canning’s high opinion of Bentinck had been justified. Greville, who paid tribute to him as a politician and reformer of the Turf, complained that in his own betting dealings Bentinck ‘was neither upright nor straightforward’. The Times, 23, 25, 29, 30 Sept., 4, 24 Oct.; Lynn Advertiser, 30 Sept. 1848; Greville Mems. vi. 105-25; Seth Smith, 9-15. A testimonial paid for his statue in Cavendish Square. He died intestate and without issue and administration of his estate, at an undisclosed sum, was granted, 29 Dec. 1849, to his brothers, to whom his family’s provisions for him reverted following his father’s death in 1854. The Times, 26 Apr., 17 July 1847; PROB 6/225/91.