Panton Plymley, as he was first known, was born at Bank House on the 4,000-acre Longnor estate, which had been in the Corbett family since the reign of Henry VI. It became his father’s on the death of his maternal uncle Robert Corbett (formerly Flint), in accordance with whose will the family assumed the name of Corbett by royal licence, 20 Nov. 1804. Little is known of his early life. His mother, one of the Pantons of Flintshire and Plas Gwyn, Anglesey, died following the birth of his younger brother Uvedale in 1792, and his father, who was made archdeacon of Shropshire that year, soon remarried.
A person of very large fortune, without direct bribery might by constant attention and proper agents secure a return. But our situation is very different. We have not that great fortune and you did not seek the representation as a personal advantage, but were willing to take it as a duty; and it is one of the duties of men of independent fortunes to serve in Parliament if called upon ... M.P.s of your fortune leave their families in the country and live in cheap lodgings, dining in the coffee house of the Commons five days in the week and visiting their friends the other two. But you would not like to leave your family, you must therefore have taken a small house in London, but then you would see them only in the mornings for five days in the week and be kept up till 12 or 1 o’clock or later very many of those days; so that it is an uncomfortable thing to the rest of the family to have its master Member of Parliament.
Salop Archives, Corbett of Longnor mss, diary of Katherine Plymley 1066/124, 1 Feb. 1820.
Undeterred and assisted by his father and brothers, Corbett retained his election committee, cultivated his interest and came in with Henry Grey Bennet, the sitting radical Whig, after only a show of opposition at the general election of 1820.
Writing to his father, who set great store by the political conduct of his old friend William Wilberforce*, Corbett explained how he came to vote with administration for the continued use of admiralty droits as civil list revenue, 5 May 1820:
I went into the House very undecided, thought Brougham’s speech very able, but after hearing Canning I made up my mind to vote against it and was afterwards fortified in that determination by what C.W. Wynn said; I hope I decided right; I had called upon Mr. Wilberforce that morning, in hopes of hearing his opinion, but I could not see him, and he was not in the House.
Plymley diary 1066/122, 12 May 1820.
Accounting for his failure to vote on the appointment of an additional Scottish baron of exchequer, 15 May, he said that he
went into the library and read carefully through some papers calculated to throw light upon the subject before he went into the debate, and, as these did not appear to him sufficient ground for the motion, yet not being able entirely to make up his mind to oppose it, he walked out of the House.
Ibid. 1066/123, 24, 29 May 1820.
He wrote of his maiden speech, in favour of appointing a select committee on agricultural distress, 30 May:
At past two this morning [31 May] I began by stating that I did not like to give a silent vote upon a question of such importance. That I thought the House would not do its duty if it did not take some notice of the very numerous petitions that had been presented from all parts of the country complaining of distress, which I knew to exist, that I was not very sanguine of being able to do any great good by inquiry, nor should I pledge myself to support any specific measure for relief, but I thought we were called upon to make an inquiry, and the motion ... called for no more. I particularly wished it to be understood that in giving my vote for the appointment of a committee, I did not do it with any intention of setting up the agriculturist in opposition to the manufacturer and tradesman, for I considered their interest so inseparably united that one could not be relieved at the expense of the other.
Ibid. 3 June 1820.
His minority vote for economies in revenue collection, 4 July, prompted his half-brother Robert, who was anxious for ministerial preferment, to remark, ‘I am glad his name is so recorded, though it would have been much more pleasant if it had been in a majority on the same side of the question’. He accompanied Grey Bennet to a meeting on prison discipline addressed by Wilberforce, 23 May 1820, and was elected a director of the African Institution that month.
He had been quick to condemn Queen Caroline’s decision to return to England, feeling that ‘something decisive must be done, she must either be acknowledged queen, or be put upon her trial’.
I often feel, from want of decision and confidence in my own judgement, and from inability to speak, that I am not at all fit for the situation I am placed in, and am sometimes tempted to wish I had declined what appeared to me at the time so flattering an offer; but then again I think this wish wrong, when I reflect that had I not attended to the call (and my friends would have said that I might easily be in Parliament) I should probably have regretted it myself. Therefore, I at last came to the conclusion that I ought to be thankful and endeavour to do my duty as well as I can.
Plymley diary 1066/125, 11, 19 Feb. 1821.
On reform, he had no qualms about voting to transfer Grampound’s franchise to Leeds, 12 Feb. 1821,
When Charles Williams Wynn became president of the India board as part of the 1822 Grenvillite accession, Archdeacon Corbett proposed his re-election for Montgomeryshire and Robert Corbett was promised a clerkship in his private office, care being taken throughout the protracted negotiations to ensure that Panton’s parliamentary independence was not thereby compromised.
Corbett took a house in Somerset Street for the 1824 session, but illness soon caused him to return to his father-in-law in Lichfield.
I voted for the [Irish] elective franchise bill because I was convinced that independently of the Catholic question it was calculated to remove a very great evil. On the subject of paying the Catholic clergy, I felt much difficulty, but upon the best consideration I could give the question I voted for the resolution upon the conviction that should the emancipation bill pass, paying the clergy would be the strongest security to the Protestant establishment, as it would give the government much influence over them and decrease their influence with their flocks. I regret exceedingly that there should be any difference of opinion on such an important question between so large and respectable a body of my constituents and myself, for whose opinions I entertain the highest respect, and hope they will give me credit for not changing any opinion without serious reflection, and that I possess in common with them, the most anxious desire to maintain the Protestant religion and church establishment at the Reformation ... I am sorry that I cannot vote against the third reading, as so many of my constituents wish it, but I am willing to pay every attention to their opinion, and therefore, unless I feel from conviction compelled to vote for the third reading, I shall not vote at all.
Salopian Jnl. 27 Apr., 4, 11, 18, 25 May, 1, 8 June; Plymley diary 1066/135, 4 May 1825.
He reiterated his views on presenting Shrewsbury’s petition against concessions, 6 May, and, despite the hostility he knew it would generate, he did not vote on the third reading, 10 May.
Corbett divided against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828. He voted for the spring guns bill, 23 Mar., to disfranchise Penryn for electoral corruption, 28 May, to limit election expenses, 28 May, and for the grant for Canadian waterways, 12 June 1827. He divided against the Coventry magistracy bill, 11, 18 June. He presented petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 7 June 1827.
I should never have been satisfied with any bill unless it was introduced on the responsibility of government. That is now done, and I rejoice to find the details of the bill are such as are consistent with the principles on which I support it.
He delegated to Robert the task of responding to his critics in Shrewsbury, where it was rumoured that he had been ‘bought off’ with a place on the India board.
Corbett seconded Williams Wynn’s nomination at the Montgomeryshire by-election of December 1830, necessitated by his appointment as the Grey ministry’s war secretary.