COCKS, John Somers (1788-1852), of The Priory, Reigate, Surr. and 3 St. James’s Square, Mdx.

Following the death of his elder brother Edward during the siege of Burgos, Cocks had been brought in for Reigate on the family interest and retired from the army to assist his father (since 1806 2nd Baron Somers) in the management of their interests in Herefordshire, Surrey and Worcestershire. He settled at Reigate Priory following his marriage to the daughter of the borough’s co-patron in 1815; but Somers, a former Grenvillite, who was anxious as steward of Hereford and county lord lieutenant to emulate the success of the Whig 11th duke of Norfolk (d. 1815) by securing a monopoly of the representation of the city and county of Hereford for the Tories, put him forward for Hereford, where in 1818 he defeated one of the sitting Whigs. He ceased to advocate economy and retrenchment in that Parliament and, following his father’s political line, proved to be a competent debater and steadfast supporter of Lord Liverpool’s administration. J.J. Sack, Grenvillites, 168; Add. 38280, f. 12; 38286, ff. 282, 312, 319; 38573, f. 127. Professing loyalty to the ‘king and constitution’ and support for local causes, he came in unopposed in 1820. No mention was made of his family’s pro-Catholic sympathies, which few Hereford Tories shared. On the hustings he lamented the prevalence of agricultural and commercial distress and said that he condoned franchise transfers only where corruption had been proved. Hereford Jnl. 2, 9, 16, 23 Feb., 8, 15 Mar. 1820. From Reigate afterwards, he sent apologies for his non-attendance at the Herefordshire Association annual dinner in May 1820. Ibid. 31 May 1820.

During the Lords’ proceedings on Queen Caroline’s case Cocks deputized for Somers (who voted to find her guilty) at the Hereford races and corporation dinner, and he was elected president of the Hereford Agricultural Society, 19 Oct. 1820. Ibid. 23 Aug., 4, 25 Oct. 1820. He agreed to present Hereford’s address congratulating the queen after the case against her was dropped, but announced from Wimpole Street, 17 Jan. 1821, that he should ‘be considered only as the medium of making known to Her Majesty the sentiments it contains, most of which ... differ widely from those I entertain’. He signed the loyal address to the king adopted by the Tory corporation, 15 Dec. 1820, and he and his brother James, Member for Reigate, divided against censuring ministers’ handling of her case, 6 Feb. 1821. A Hereford handbill alleged that the family’s conduct on the queen’s case was dictated by the £2,000 a year they received from public funds. Ibid. 15, 22 Nov., 20, 27 Dec. 1820, 3, 10, 24 Jan., 28 Mar. 1821. Being indistinguishable by his initials from his brother, Cocks’s activities in the 1821 session cannot be precisely charted; but he was certainly the more active, as James, being intended for the church, had to keep a low parliamentary profile. He probably divided with government on the revenue, 6 Mar., and supply, 11 Apr., 28 May, voted against parliamentary reform, 9 May, and paired against abolishing the death penalty for forgery, 23 May. The Times, 26 May 1821. He or James divided for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. Both voted against repealing the additional malt duty, 3 Apr. They were put forward for the Aldborough election committee, 8 May, but rejected following an objection by the petitioner, William Bryant, an old opponent of their family in Reigate. Surr. Hist. Cent. 176/5/2c, 2e. Cocks intended voting to amend the Newington select vestry bill and complained when it languished in committee, 16 May. The Times, 17 May 1821. He took the courtesy title of Lord Eastnor when Somers became an earl at the coronation and in his first address to the Herefordshire Pitt Club, 30 Aug., he expressed broad agreement with Pitt’s political principles, but added that ‘had I taken a part in politics during the latter part of his career, I should have felt compelled to differ with him on minor points’. Hereford Jnl. 5 Sept. 1821. He attended the Hereford ‘free buck dinner’ at Michaelmas, and returned to Eastnor Castle for the duke of Gloucester’s visit in December 1821. Ibid. 3 Oct., 19 Dec. 1821.

Eastnor divided with government on distress, 11 Feb., and taxation, 21 Feb., but voted for admiralty reductions, 1 Mar., and to abolish one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822. He chose not to divide on the salt tax, the aliens bill and other issues calculated to embarrass the Grenvillites brought into the administration in January, and cast a wayward vote against referring the Calcutta bankers’ petition to a select committee, 4 July. In April he accompanied the Herefordshire delegation to meetings with the chancellor of the exchequer Vansittart and the Irish secretary Goulburn to lobby for a reduction in the duty on hops. Ibid. 1 May 1822. When, on 9 May, Curwen proposed a quantitative limit to corn importation as an alternative to the proposals of the leader of the House Lord Londonderry. Eastnor warned of the danger of raising ‘false hopes’ and indicated that he would support government despite his reservation that their plan ‘did not go far enough’. He presented a Reigate petition for repeal of the leather tax, 13 May. The Times, 14 May 1822. James deputized for him at the Herefordshire Association dinner, 31 May 1822, but he went to Hereford at Michaelmas and lent his support to the Haw bridge road scheme. Hereford Jnl. 5, 12 June, 17, 24 July, 2 Oct. 1822. He presented Hereford’s petition against the Insolvent Debtors Act, 23 Feb. 1823, voted against inquiry into parliamentary voting rights that day, and on the 24th moved the writ for Reigate, where their father’s cousin, the banker James Cocks, replaced James. The Times, 21, 22 Feb. 1823. He divided with government on taxation, 18 Mar., and the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. 1823. In December he canvassed Hereford where the forthcoming retirement of his Whig colleague Scudamore had been announced. Hereford Jnl. 3, 10, 31 Dec. 1823. Attending to constituency business in 1824, he assisted the Tory Member for Herefordshire Sir John Geers Cotterell with the revived Hereford gas light bill, Ibid. 22 Dec. 1822, 31 Dec. 1823; CJ, lxxix. 46, 102, 129, 427. and presented petitions against West Indian slavery, 24 Feb., the combination laws, 25 Mar., and the proposed beer, 17 May, and hide regulation bills, 31 May. The Times, 25 Feb., 26 Mar., 18 May, 1 June 1824. He presented an anti-slavery petition from Reigate, 16 Mar. Ibid. 17 Mar. 1824. He intervened in committee on the county courts bill, 26 Mar. He voted against reforming the representation of Edinburgh, 26 Feb., and condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June. He conceded, when his conduct as chairman of the Surrey quarter sessions was criticized in petitions from O’Callaghan and debtors alleging ill-treatment in Horsemonger Lane gaol, 24 June, that when sentencing them he had been unaware ‘of the precise nature of the prison regulations’. He returned to Hereford for the corporation elections and Pitt Club dinner in October 1824. Hereford Jnl. 6 Oct.; Hereford Independent, 23 Oct. 1824. He voted to outlaw the Catholic Association, 25 Feb., and for relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. On 24 June he testified to the ‘high character’ of the Welsh judge and Surrey magistrate William Kenrick†, whose conduct in the Canfor case was under attack. He attributed his absence from the Herefordshire Association dinner and the corporation feast that year to his wife’s illness, and in November 1825 they left to spend the winter in Nice. Hereford Independent, 25 June, 8 Oct., 5 Nov. 1825. He failed to return for the 1826 parliamentary session and an address, dated 1 May, announced that he was standing down at the dissolution that month. Hereford Jnl. 17 May 1826. It was probably a ploy to gauge Somers’s strength, for on receiving a new requisition, 15 May, and promises of Whig support, 22 May, his brother announced that Eastnor would stand. With his uncle Colonel Philip James Cocks deputizing, he topped the poll in a hard-fought contest and was returned in absentia with the Whig Edward Bolton Clive. Ibid. 24, 31 May, 7, 14, 21 June 1826.

He remained abroad until the summer of 1827, and resumed his parliamentary duties after the Wellington ministry, to which Somers adhered, took office in January 1828. Ibid. 12 July 1826, 23 May, 3 Oct. 1827; Wellington mss WP1/914/15. In 1827 Robert Price, the Whig Member for Herefordshire, had considered Somers to be ‘very anti-Huskisson’. Fitzwilliam mss, Price to Milton, 4 Oct. 1827. Eastnor voted against repealing the Test Acts, 26 Feb. 1828. On 18 Mar. he modified his stance, stating that Dissenters ought not to be deprived of the right of office provided they made an alternative declaration as security, and reaffirmed his commitment to securing Catholic emancipation. He presented and endorsed a petition advocating it from Hereford’s Catholics, 24 Apr., and voted for the relief bill, 12 May. He also presented Hereford’s petition for the removal of impediments to the study of anatomy, 19 May, and voiced support for protection in the glove trade and criticized the cider and perry excise licenses bill, 26 June. He voted with government against chancery reforms, 24 Apr., and ordnance reductions, 4 July 1828. In January 1829 the patronage secretary Planta listed Eastnor as a possible mover or seconder of the address announcing the decision to concede Catholic emancipation. As Planta predicted, he and his relations voted ‘with government’ for the measure, 6, 30 Mar. Add. 40398, f. 86; Wellington mss WP1/991/20; 1009/22. When Hereford’s favourable and unfavourable petitions were presented, 3 Mar., he endorsed the former and criticized the latter, which had been promoted by the clergy and the Pitt Club, although he conceded that it was ‘numerously and respectably signed’. On 10 Feb. 1829 he presented a protectionist petition from Hereford cider retailers and licensees. Somers left the Lords immediately after hearing the 1830 king’s speech and complained to Wellington at its failure to promise action against distress; and Eastnor, likewise, did not divide with their friends on the address, 4 Feb. Wellington mss WP1/1095/4. He voted against enfranchising Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., Jewish emancipation, 17 May, and abolishing the death penalty for forgery, 7 June, although it was supported by his constituents. However, he heeded local opposition to changes in the licensing laws, and presented petitions against ‘throwing open the retail trade in beer’, 16, 19 Mar. Taking care to thank ministers for recent tax concessions, he endorsed the licensed victuallers’ petition on the 19th, stating that it was

extremely unjust ... that having for years been called upon to bear burdens from which all other classes were exempt, such as the billeting of soldiers and other burdens, they should now be thrown out of the means of supporting their families, though they embarked their property on the faith that the laws affecting them would be allowed to continue.

He voted for further restrictions on on-consumption under the sale of beer bill, 21 June, 1 July 1830. Nothing came of attempts to field a candidate against him at the general election that month, and he was returned unopposed with Clive after an arduous canvass. From the hustings he thanked his 1826 supporters, reaffirmed his commitment to ‘king, church and state’, and expressed support for the ministry and the home secretary Peel’s legal reforms. He endorsed the government’s retrenchment policy, but conceded that it was of less benefit to Hereford and the county than to the manufacturing districts. Refuting allegations of a coalition, he insisted that his co-operation with Clive extended solely to specific constituency issues like the ‘beer bill’. Justifying his low profile in the House, he remarked that ‘those who have diligently read the debates of last session will be almost as well convinced as those who have listened to them, that additional debaters are not required’. At the county election, he proposed the vote of thanks to the sheriff. Hereford Jnl. 30 June, 7, 14, 21, 28 July, 4, 11 Aug. 1830.

As one of the government’s ‘friends’ and spokesmen on the address, 3 Nov. 1830, Eastnor defended the omission from it of parliamentary reform, adding that he did not rule out a reform bill that session but was personally ‘indisposed to any general alteration in the constitution of this House’:

I cannot think it fair to throw all the evils of the country on the system of representation in this House ... and I believe few of those who advocate reform are agreed upon the sort of reform that is necessary.

He divided with ministers when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He was granted a fortnight’s leave, 14 Feb. 1831, following the death on the 9th of his mother, Gent. Mag. (1831), i. 188; Hereford Jnl. 28 Feb. 1831. and returned on the 28th to counter allegations of corruption at Reigate made by John Maberly as the presenter of reform petitions from nearby Croydon and Wallington. With Somers’s ‘approbation and concurrence’ he divided against the Grey ministry’s reform bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment by which it was lost, 19 Apr. Hereford corporation had furnished him with an anti-reform petition to present, 14 Apr., and he presented others against slavery and the Beer Retail Act, 4 Nov. 1830, 18 Apr. 1831. Hereford Jnl. 23 Mar., 6, 13 Apr.; Grey mss, Somers to Grey, 29 Sept. 1831. When Sudbury, which stood to lose a Member under the reform bill, petitioned against its schedule B designation, 15 Apr., he said that Reigate was also wrongly scheduled and, to no avail, asked Lord John Russell to explain the principles on which boundary decisions and population totals had been arrived at. Prompt action by Herefordshire Tories in forming a committee, and private friendships with the Whigs, spared him a contest at Hereford at the general election that month, but he was denied a hearing on the hustings. Herefs. RO, diaries of John Biddulph of Ledbury [Biddulph diary] G2/IV/J/59, 19 Mar.-1 May; Herefs. RO, Pateshall mss A95/V/EB/595; A95/V/W/a/130; Hereford Jnl. 6, 13, 20, 27 Apr. 1831.

Eastnor voted against the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July 1831. He chose not to divide on the schedule A boroughs, but promptly corrected his fellow anti-reformer Goulburn’s observation that ‘Reigate and Appleby stand on the same footing’, 19 July. Before voting to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July, he claimed that while he had long opposed reform, he had lately hoped that ministers would bring in a measure he could endorse, but he felt the current bill was ‘too sweeping’. He thought that the danger of revolution if reform was not conceded was exaggerated and that the poor were better served by the existing system. He refused to defend nomination boroughs, but maintained that small ones helped to preserve the balance between agriculture and industry, and argued that the bill gave too much power to £10 householders. Correcting Hume, 30 July, he said that Reigate had 228 £10 householders, not ten to 15 as stated. Safeguarding his family’s interests, he voted for the proposed division of counties, 11 Aug., and opposed Lord Chandos’s motion to disfranchise Evesham, arguing that as the bill would change the constituency, the new electorate should not be punished for the corruption of the old, 14 Sept. He divided against the reform bill’s passage, 21 Sept. 1831. Somers so dreaded the likely repercussions of its defeat in the Lords that he decided against attending to vote on it, and advised Grey and Wellington accordingly. Grey mss, Somers to Grey, 23, 29 Sept., reply, 26 Sept. 1831; Wellington mss WP1/1196/4.

Eastnor held aloof from constituency reform meetings, but he assisted his father-in-law Hardwicke’s heir presumptive, the Tory Charles Philip Yorke*, during the Cambridgeshire by-election and signed the Herefordshire anti-reform declaration in November 1831. Hereford Jnl. 27 July, 3 Aug., 23 Nov. 1831, 4 Jan. 1832; NLW, Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, p. 216; The Times, 20 Oct. 1831. He was forced to concede, as its presenter, that the Worcestershire petition approving the Lords’ conduct had not been publicly adopted, 16 Dec., and now expressed his hope that the revised bill could be so improved as to conciliate all classes. He voted against its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and endorsed Croker, Goulburn and Charles Williams Wynn’s arguments against proceeding with a single block vote on the Schedule A disfranchisements, but stopped short of voting with them, 20 Jan. 1832. When the schedule B boroughs were considered, 23 Jan., he declared that he could not support the measure beyond its first clause, deeming it, like its predecessors, ‘rather a reconstruction of this House than an alteration in those parts of our institutions which have decayed from the course of time, or are not adapted to the wants of the community in consequence of the creation of new interests’. Using arguments previously adopted by Somers in correspondence with Grey, he criticized the bill’s ‘unnecessary and alarming length’ and its facility for interfering ‘with all classes’ and disturbing ‘all the relations and interests of society’; but he conceded that the events of the last 12-15 months justified extensive measures, that ‘nomination boroughs must end and large commercial and manufacturing towns be enfranchised’. He had no objection to enfranchising small freeholders, provided better provision was made to regulate occupancy, but he opposed the creation of metropolitan districts and asserted that the bill was a threat to the constitution and ‘ultimately ruinous to the agricultural interest’. Grey mss, Somers to Grey, 30 Dec. 1830, 23, 29 Sept. 1831. Croker commented, 24 Jan.:

John Wortley would not vote against schedule A, nor Lord Sandon, nor Lord Eastnor, so that I suppose their noble fathers mean to allow the bill to be read a second time. But all these oppose schedule B, but with so little effect, that we divided last night worse on schedule B with their assistance, than we had done on schedule A without it. Croker Pprs. ii. 149.

Eastnor spoke briefly against the bill’s registration provisions, 7 Feb., and divided against enfranchising Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the third reading, 22 Mar. He suggested transferring the rural hundreds of Reigate and Tonbridge from East to West Surrey under the boundaries bill, but would not force the matter to a vote, 22 June. He divided against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July. He presented a protectionist petition from the glove manufacturers of Kington, 28 Feb., and advocated inquiry into their distressed trade, 1 Mar. He voted against the coroners’ bill because he disliked hasty changes in the law, 20 June 1832.

Eastnor was well received when he spoke at the Herefordshire Association’s annual dinner in May 1832; but he retired rather than risk defeat at Hereford at the general election in December, and came in for Reigate, which he represented as a Conservative until he succeeded his father to the peerage in 1841. Biddulph diary G2/IV/J/61-62, 9 June-8 Dec.; Hereford Jnl. 2 May, 13 June; Hereford Times, 8 Dec. 1832. He died at his Grosvenor Place mansion in October 1852 and was buried in the family vault at Eastnor church. Hereford Jnl. 13, 20 Oct.; Gent. Mag. (1852), ii. 523. He had provided generously for his widow (d. 1873) and relations and was succeeded in his titles and estates by his only son Charles Somers Cox (1819-83), Conservative Member for Reigate, 1841-7. PROB 11/2164/959; IR26/1948/1026.