ELLIS, Charles Rose (1771-1845), of 2 Audley Square, Mdx. and Seaford House, Suss.

Ellis was Canning’s closest friend and most trusted political confidant. The owner of two Jamaican plantations, and chairman since 1810 of the committee of West India planters and merchants, he was ‘the leader of the West India party’ in the Commons. Session of Parl. 1825, p. 462. Since 1815 he had lived mostly on the continent, accompanied by his two sons, whom he started in the army in 1817, and his sickly daughter, Eliza. Countess Granville Letters, i. 95. In November 1819 he was staying with his fellow-Canningite Huskisson at Eartham, Sussex. Four months later, from a base in Brighton, where Eliza was ‘very, very ill’, he presided over his unopposed re-election on his own interest for Seaford. Add. 51818, Ellis to Holland, 12 Nov. 1819; Harewood mss HAR/GC/26, Canning to wife, 9, 18 Feb.; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC8/43; Northants. RO, Agar Ellis diary, 3-6 Mar. [1820]. He did not immediately resume his parliamentary career, probably because of his daughter’s illness, which terminated in her death, 18 Aug. 1820. In November Lady Granville, who thought him ‘an angel of a man’, was delighted to find him ‘in such good spirits again’. ‘If esteem is the measure of one’s affection’, she went on, ‘there can be no bound to that he inspires. I think more highly of him than of anybody I know’. Bagot, Canning and Friends, ii. 101; Countess Granville Letters, i. 190; ii. 14.

In October 1820 Ellis was advised by Canning, who consulted him on his personal embarrassment over the proceedings against Queen Caroline, that ‘non-attendance would be the safest and most desirable course’ when the bill of pains and penalties reached the Commons. He went with Canning to Walmer Castle in early December to air the problem with Lord Liverpool, his late wife’s uncle; and although the premier initially persuaded Canning to delay his intended resignation, Ellis brought him to accept it as inevitable. W. Yorks AS (Leeds), Stapleton mss, Canning to Ellis, 14 Oct. 1820; Add. 38742, f. 85; TNA 30/29/9/5/12, 13; Arbuthnot Corresp. 18; J. E. Cookson, Lord Liverpool’s Administration, 288-9. He found the queen’s affair ‘so disgusting a subject that one hates to enter upon it’ and had ‘some thoughts’ of going to Paris with Canning in the first week of 1821. Bagot, ii. 106-7; Harewood mss 26, Canning to wife, 13, 19 Dec. 1820. After reconsideration, as he told Lord Granville, he ‘determined to wait over the liturgy question’; and on 26 Jan. he replied to Hamilton’s comments on Canning’s resignation, vindicating it and vouching for his concurrence in the decision to omit the queen’s name from the liturgy. The Whig George Howard* thought it ‘a lame defence’, and George Macpherson Grant* deemed it ‘very unsatisfactory’. TNA 30/29/9/5/14; Geo. IV Letters, ii. 895; Castle Howard mss, Howard to Lady Morpeth, 28 [Jan.]; Macpherson Grant mss 361, Macpherson Grant to Lady Stafford, 27 Jan. 1821. Ellis voted against the opposition censure motion, 6 Feb. A fortnight later he was confident that even they, having ‘worn the queen nearly threadbare’, knew her ‘game to be up’. At the same time he was worried, as he observed to Sir Charles Bagot, ambassador to Russia, that the issue of parliamentary reform was

now assuming a formidable shape. Many of the country gentlemen, supporters of government, formerly anti-reformers, are now for a moderate reform ‘for the sake of satisfying the country’ (as if the reformers would be the dupes of a tinkering job of reformation!) But the real motive is funk, and that is a feeling so likely to spread and to spread so wildly that I begin to think the reform question far more serious than I used. Cumbria RO, Bagot mss, Ellis to Bagot, 23 Feb. 1821.

Ellis, who voted for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, had resumed the active chairmanship of the West India committee in January. He was one of the West Indian Members who presented a Jamaican petition for relief from distress to the king, 23 Feb., and he led the deputation which impressed on Liverpool and the chancellor Vansittart the need for adequate protection against East Indian sugar, 28 Mar. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/3/4/457, 479, 481-2; J.L. Ragatz, British Caribbean Hist. 145; Add. 38744, ff. 153, 155. He voted with government against repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., and the disfranchisement of ordnance officials, 12 Apr. At about this time he reintroduced Canning to Holland House (Ellis had been brought up in Jamaica with Lady Holland), where he had not been for 15 years. Lord Ilchester, Home of Hollands, 251; Fox Jnl. 66. He was given a month’s leave to attend to ‘urgent private business’, 30 Apr. 1821. ‘Astounded’ to learn from Canning in November that the only question under discussion with Liverpool was whether or not he should take the governor-generalship of India, he had ‘scarcely a doubt’ that he would turn it down. Unlike Canning, he thought Liverpool would then be obliged to make him ‘another offer’ more calculated to ‘answer the purpose of remedying the inconvenience of his out of office position in the House of Commons’. Add. 38743, f. 26.

Ellis voted against more extensive tax reductions, 21 Feb., and abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 12 Mar. 1822. He spoke of ‘the severe distress under which the colonies now laboured’, 20 Mar., and seconded a motion for a return of senior West Indian appointments, 22 Mar. That day he chaired the meeting of the West India committee which adopted a petition complaining of distress, and he duly presented it and had it referred to the foreign trade committee (of which he was a regular member), 28 Mar. The Times, 23, 29 Mar. 1822; Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/1-2, 4. On Hume’s motion for inquiry into the government of the Ionian Islands, 14 May, he, Canning and Huskisson were reported to have ‘walked out of the House shortly before the division, in a manner which seemed to indicate a wish rather to challenge observation than avoid it’. The Times, 23 May 1822. He argued that a lessening of West Indian protection against East Indian sugar would be ‘the ruin of those who had virtually abolished the slave trade’, 17 May, and he presented petitions against equalization of the duties, 31 May, 3 June. Ibid. 1 June 1822. Later that month and in July he was centrally involved in unsuccessful negotiations with ministers for measures to relieve distress. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/30, 33-34, 38-39, 41-42, 46-48. He was in the minority of 21 in favour of the export of flour ground from bonded corn, 10 June, but he voted with ministers against repeal of the salt duties, 28 June, and for the Canada bill, 18 July 1822.

Ellis considered that the rumoured offer of the exchequer to Canning after Lord Londonderry’s* suicide would be ‘little short of an insult’. On his acceptance of the foreign office, where Ellis’s elder son Charles Augustus, Lord Howard de Walden, was taken on as a précis writer in October 1822, Ellis and Granville were said to have persuaded him to tone down his ‘violent and indignant’ letter of acceptance to the king. TNA 30/29/9/5/15; Greville Mems. i. 133. During the autumn and early winter he was tormented by ‘intolerable aching pain’ in his leg, which not only crippled him and confined him to London, but made it impossible for him to sleep in a horizontal position. He was on the mend by late December 1822, when he helped Canning, with whose schemes to remodel the government he was au fait, to make the disgruntled Huskisson swallow his exclusion from the cabinet. He also lent himself to Canning’s abortive bid to take from Robinson, the new chancellor of the exchequer, the Downing Street house which went with the job. TNA 30/29/9/3/9; 29/9/5/15-20; Add. 38296, f. 395; 38743, f. 279; Hobhouse Diary, 101-2.

Ellis, who was asked by Canning to disseminate his view that further ‘interference’ after the unanimity shown on the address, 4 Feb., would precipitate war between France and Spain, voted with government against parliamentary reform, 20 Feb., and on the sinking fund, 3 Mar. 1823. It was said that his frequenting of Holland House fuelled suspicions of Canning among some of his ministerial colleagues. Add. 38568, f. 118; Grey mss, Lambton to Grey, 13 Feb. 1823. He was much exercised early in 1823 with the problem of East Indian sugar and its threat to the West Indian economy and the campaign for the abolition of slavery. He had interviews with Liverpool, 20, 28 Feb., and chaired a general public meeting of the West India interest, 12 Mar., when a petition was adopted. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/73, 76, 80, 96-97, 114; The Times, 4 Mar. 1823. In the House, 3 Mar., he denied the free traders’ allegation that ministers were pledged to equalize the duties; and on 19 Mar. he presented petitions against it from Antigua, Barbados and Montserrat. He was largely satisfied with the government’s agreement to maintain the level of protection on the 1814 basis for the term of the East India Company’s charter; but he warned Huskisson, now president of the board of trade, of

the growing discontent among the proprietors in the colonies ... [which] has already arrived at the point that there exists an almost unanimous feeling, that no colonies are so much oppressed as the British. And when to this feeling, with reference to the unproductiveness of their property, shall be added the apprehensions of its insecurity in consequence of the announced systematic attack of the emancipators, I fear little would be wanting but the opportunity to induce all the resident proprietors, with the concurrence too of many of the absentees, to connect themselves with any country strong enough to protect them.

Personally, he ‘could never reconcile myself to being, or making Howard, a Yankee’; and, to counteract the ‘mischief’ of the abolitionists’ campaign, he wished ministers to take ‘the inquiry into and the improvement of the condition of the negroes into their own hands’. Add. 38744, ff. 151, 194-203. He was made chairman of the West India subcommittee on the amelioration of slavery, 25 Apr. 1823. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/114. He voted against repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., and inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. In a substantial speech on Buxton’s motion for the abolition of slavery, 15 May, he put the case for the planters, who had merely inherited a system sanctioned in law by successive governments and Parliaments. Warning of the perils of hasty emancipation by ‘compulsory enactments’, he advocated careful preparation of the slaves by education and religious instruction. He denied that colonial legislatures had been ‘culpably slow’ in implementing amelioration, though he admitted that ‘the sanguine expectations’ which had informed his own motion of 1797 on this subject had not been realized. He said that the owners would concur in ‘every fair and reasonable proposal’ for amelioration, blamed the lax morals and irreligion of Caribbean society on the corruption of the colonial church establishment and supported Canning’s counter-resolutions for amelioration and cautious progress to emancipation. After presenting petitions from London West India merchants against equalization, 22 May, he led the opposition to Wolryche Whitmore’s call for inquiry into the sugar duties, arguing his case as a question of simple justice to the West Indies which went to the core of colonial policy. He voted against Scottish parliamentary reform, 2 June, and inquiry into chancery delays, 5 June 1823.

Ellis showed his characteristic generosity of spirit in asking Liverpool to provide one George Ricketts, for whom he had secured an offer of the command of a boat in the Irish preventative service, with an alternative post which would not expose his war wound to ‘severe weather’; but Liverpool, less inclined to ‘charity’, gave him short shrift. Add. 38296, ff. 395-400; 38297, ff. 9, 39, 146. Though still handicapped by his leg he was able to go with Canning to Lord Morley’s at Saltram in October 1823. Increasingly concerned at the state of the West Indian colonies, he corresponded with Lord Holland on how to encourage the implementation of measures of amelioration in Jamaica. Add. 51818, Ellis to Holland, 10, 13, 18 Oct. 1823. He chaired a meeting of the West India committee, 21 Nov., held to adopt resolutions, which he transmitted to ministers, drawing attention to the ‘awful warning’ of the slave insurrection in Demerara and pressing them to repudiate the calumnies of the abolitionists, reform the colonial church establishment and guarantee adequate compensation in the event of emancipation. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/138; Add. 40359, ff. 58-63. As he subsequently told Lady Holland, he had ‘a very difficult job’ in ‘preventing the calling of a general meeting, for discussing and ordering the publication of a very indiscreet set of resolutions professing to be an exposition of our case’. Although he had done ‘tolerably well’ from that year’s sugar crop, he was made uneasy by

a very bad spirit among the whole people, which was not wanting to render the disposition of the negroes sufficiently alarming, and which will increase the danger in that quarter, while it will embarrass us in fighting our battle in Parliament and will have the effect of rendering our countrymen in England less temperate and discreet than they were last year. Add. 51818, Ellis to Lady Holland, 4 Dec. 1823.

Ellis led deputations to government on the ‘agitated state’ of the West Indies and the economic difficulties of the planters early in 1824. He chaired a public meeting at the London Tavern, 10 Feb., when he moved the adoption of an address to the king asserting the proprietors’ property rights and entitlement to compensation if they were violated. Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M9154/1/150-3, 158, 159, 162, 164, 172; The Times, 11 Feb. 1824; TNA 30/29/9/5/21. He voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb., but, he told Granville, ‘my amusement has been chiefly in the line of sugars and rums’. He welcomed the government’s concession on the latter, at which some West Indians were inclined to look askance, 8 Mar., 9 Apr. The Times, 10 Apr. 1824; Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/177-80. He had privately expressed willingness to ‘change situations with a negro slave’ for the day of the debate on Canning’s proposals for amelioration, 16 Mar.; but he answered Buxton with a forceful restatement of the planters’ case. While he emphasized their readiness to co-operate, already formally signified to ministers, he attacked the abolitionists for creating the current climate of unrest which made safe progress difficult. The ‘only sure foundation’, he contended, was the government’s scheme for improvement by religious instruction, founded on reform of the church establishment. He raised minor objections to the proposal to admit slaves as witnesses and more serious ones to that to confer compulsory powers for the purchase of freedoms. To Granville he commented that Canning’s opening speech had been ‘a masterpiece of dexterity and discretion’, though he regretted his characteristic indulgence in his ‘talent of ridicule’ by ‘quizzing our colonial assemblies’, which was ‘calculated to produce bad blood’. On the whole, however, he thought that ‘all the principles and doctrines which he laid down were so sound and discreet, that it has given the greatest satisfaction to moderate and disinterested people, and my countrymen forgive the manner for the sake of the matter’. TNA 30/29/9/5/21, 22, 24. He welcomed the bill to incorporate the West India Company, 10 May, as ‘an admirable means for the employment of barren capital’ which would ‘diffuse more widely a sense of the importance of the West India islands’. He deemed the case of the prosecution of the missionary John Smith for inciting rebellion among slaves in Demerara to be an issue ‘between the Methodists and the government, in which we [the West Indians] are not implicated’: and he gave a silent vote against Brougham’s censure motion, 11 June. Ibid. 29/9/5/32. He voted for the Irish insurrection bill, 14 June 1824, and, pleased with Howard’s recent promotion to under-secretary, contemplated the end of ‘the shortest and most successful session that I remember since I have been in Parliament’. Ibid. 29/9/5/33, 34.

Ellis visited Granville at The Hague in July and August 1824. In mid-October he was at Seaford, whence he sent to Huskisson a letter from George Hibbert†, the agent for Jamaica, asking him to urge government to authorize the temporary use of molasses in the distilleries. Huskisson had no personal objections but pointed out the practical difficulties, which Ellis, who had little enthusiasm for the idea, thought would strengthen his hand when it was discussed by the West India committee. He chaired its meetings of 22 Oct. and 3 Dec. 1824, and led a deputation which made an unsuccessful approach to ministers on the subject in February 1825. Add. 38746, ff. 15, 36, 38, 40, 44; TNA 30/29/9/5/34, 35; Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/241, 268, 272. He protested against any violation of the ‘solemn compact’ on the East Indian sugar duties, 18 Mar. 1825, and expressed anxieties about the government’s plans for those on rum and brown sugar. Despite his ‘surprise’ at the projected reduction of duty on Mauritian sugar, he generally welcomed Huskisson’s plans to remove restrictions on West Indian trade, 21 Mar., as likely to stimulate the colonial economies and create the prosperity and tranquillity essential to emancipation. He supported the West India Company bill, 16 May, but on 3 June deplored the Mauritius trade bill which, by placing on the same footing as West Indian sugar the produce of a country where the slave trade had been notoriously carried on, would have an ‘injurious’ moral effect. He voted for the Irish unlawful societies bill, 25 Feb., Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and for the duke of Cumberland’s grant, 10 June 1825.

Ellis was host to Canning at Seaford in November 1825, when he again discussed with Holland the problems of implementing amelioration in Jamaica, before going to Paris for Christmas. Bagot, ii. 296; Add. 51818, Ellis to Holland, 24 Nov. 1825; Lady Holland to Son, 42; TNA 30/29/9/5/37. He was not surprised that the threatened opposition of ‘the commercial and banking supporters of government’ to the emergency bank restriction bill in February 1826 turned out to be ‘only a bubble’; but he acknowledged that ‘the distress is really very great’. Much of his own time was taken up with West Indian matters, though ‘not to ... good purpose’. He conferred with ministers on the planters’ worries over the intensive anti-slavery agitation, 21 Feb. TNA 30/29/9/5/38; Inst. of Commonwealth Stud. M915/4/1/317. He voted silently with government on the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar.; but, as he wrote to Granville, he felt that

our slavery debates have been far from satisfactory. The Jamaica trials were a terrible case, and, what rendered it provoking, as well as mischievous in its effect, if the colonial office had expressed a single word of disapprobation of what, when brought before Parliament, they could not defend, or had taken a single spontaneous step towards reforming the state of the laws which they now agree cannot be tolerated, no parliamentary attack could have been made. The Saints feel they have gained so much ground that they have announced their intention of renewing their attacks after Easter. TNA 30/29/9/5/39.

Ellis, who voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr., said that proprietors generally ‘treated slaves with kindness and humanity’ in the debate on alleged maltreatment in Berbice and Demerara, 20 Apr. He argued that when they did not they were ‘subject to the control and animadversion of Parliament’, insisted on their right to ‘adequate compensation’ and pointed out that for all the ‘disgust and horror’ rightly excited by the Berbice evidence, further investigation had revealed that there had been only 67 genuine cases of abuse in 14 years. Fearing that ‘the remainder of the session seems to be intended to be employed very much in attacks on us devoted West Indians’, he privately applauded Canning’s conciliatory declaration of 20 Apr. that the proceedings of the Anti-Slavery Society were a hindrance to government and that there was no hidden agenda behind the amelioration proposals contained in the order in council of 1824. This, he observed to John Allen

ought to induce the West Indians to adopt those measures, for the sake of afterwards gaining the support of the government in opposition to the Saints. But whether my countrymen will have the sense and temper to feel the expediency of this compromise is more than I can venture to expect, though I am not quite without a hope. Add. 52195, Ellis to Allen, 25 Apr. 1826.

In his last known speech in the Commons, which he had separately published, Ellis answered Brougham’s attack on the slow progress of amelioration, 19 May 1826. He did so not as ‘the indiscriminating champion of the colonial legislatures’, for he had been personally criticized for interfering by the Jamaican assembly; but he defended their record, appealed to them to meet Canning half way and ended by quoting Fox’s pronouncement that unilaterally imposed emancipation would be ‘mischievous’. A week later he was genuinely surprised to be informed by Canning that he was to be offered a peerage, which Canning had requested in response to the king’s expressed wish to mark his appreciation of his services. As Canning wanted nothing for himself, he had nominated Ellis as the ‘person who after my own family is the nearest to me in the world’. After 24 hours’ consideration Ellis accepted, opting for the title of Seaford. Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1235, 1243; Bagot, ii. 350-2; Add. 38301, ff. 213, 231. He did so with a pleasure which gives the lie to Lady Carlisle’s speculation that he and his sons did not ‘much like’ it, which ‘some people say Canning merely does ... to show his power’. Greville wrote sourly that ‘everybody cries out against it’: as Ellis ‘has no property, and is of no family, and his son is already a peer’, it ‘is thought very ridiculous and that he would have done much better to have declined it’. Castle Howard mss, Lady Carlisle to Morpeth, 1 June [1826]; Greville Mems. i. 160-1. In anticipation, Ellis retired from the Commons at the dissolution and returned his younger son for Seaford.

He remained active for several years in the Lords and on the West India committee, despite telling Bagot in October 1827 that ‘the dreadful catastrophe’ of Canning’s death had robbed him of ‘all interest in politics for the future’, beyond a wish to ensure that ‘those who created the difficulties and the worries which wore him out might not have the triumph of gratifying their spite, or succeeding in their speculations’. Add. 38749, f. 312; 38752, f. 42; TNA 30/29/9/5/48; Bagot, ii. 425-7. In February 1828 he left Paris in response to a summons from Huskisson, who was under fire from some Canningites for taking office with Wellington. He defended the decision in the Lords, 25 Feb., and in London society, having at least one ‘pretty violent altercation’ over the dinner table with Lord George Cavendish Bentinck*, Canning’s nephew. Add. 38754, ff. 234, 279; Countess Granville Letters, ii. 5, 10; Colchester Diary, iii. 549-50; Greville Mems. i. 205-6. Later that year Howard married Cavendish Bentinck’s sister Lucy, whom Seaford provided with a jointure of £2,000, secured partly on her own fortune and partly on one of his Jamaican estates. Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hervey mss Acc. 941/56/30, Seaford to Bristol [12 Oct.1828]. He was a pragmatic supporter of the Grey ministry’s reform bills and reconciled himself without too much difficulty to the disfranchisement of his borough, where his son was in any case ousted on petition in March 1831: the first bill, though flawed, was not

revolutionary in the sense of a tendency to convulsion or anarchy, for it takes property and a higher rate of qualification than formerly as the basis of representation, and gives nothing [to] and takes away prospectively much direct influence from the rabble. TNA 30/29/9/5/78, 81.

He was ‘a great sufferer’ by the slave insurrection in Jamaica in late December 1831; but, according to Holland, he bore the ‘cruel misfortunes’ of this and his elder brother John’s death in February 1832 with ‘unaffected calmness and philosophy’. Holland House Diaries, 60, 137; Add. 51818, Seaford to Holland, 10, 13 Dec. 1831. He visited Jamaica in 1833-4 to survey the damage and adopted his agent’s scheme to repair the sugar works on the New Montpelier estate and convert the Old into a breeding ground for working cattle. He expected an immediate loss of £10,000 and that the single plantation would yield at best two thirds of the crops of the two; but he hoped that this streamlining and other economies would ensure that ‘the future ultimate loss’ would ‘not be considerable to those who come after me, if indeed property of any sort should be allowed to last so long in this country’. Add. 51818, Seaford to Holland, 2 Aug. 1833-14 Oct. 1834; Hervey mss 56/30, to Bristol, 16 Aug. 1833. He was reported to have declined the government of Canada in 1835. Holland House Diaries, 298.

Since at least 1826 Seaford, a widower for 23 years, had been paying court at Dieppe, Brighton and other resorts to Lady Hardy, 17 years his junior, the estranged wife of Nelson’s comrade in arms. Hardy died in 1839 and the following year Seaford married his ‘droll’ widow, who brought him three stepdaughters. Add. 52017, J. R. Townshend to H. E. Fox, 9 Nov. 1826; TNA 30/29/9/5/47, 49, 50, 58, 131; Lady Holland to Son, 89; Countess Granville Letters, ii. 293, 312; Ilchester, Chrons. Holland House, 271-2; Lieven-Palmerston Corresp. 190. He subsequently rented from Lady Georgiana Bathurst a house at Woodend, near Chichester, where he took ‘quiet enjoyment’ in ‘solitude’. Add. 51818, Seaford to Lady Holland, 18 Oct. 1843. He died there in July 1845. By his will, dated 7 Sept. 1843 and proved under £20,000, he left his wife, who lived until 1877, an immediate legacy of £500, confirmed her jointure and gave her the option of continuing to reside rent free at Woodend. He released the Old Montpelier estate from all claims other than those of his wife, provided for the widow of his younger son, who had died in 1841, and devised his plantations, Seaford property and town house in Audley Square to Howard, now a diplomat, in whose title the barony of Seaford merged. Gent. Mag. (1845), ii. 419-20; PROB 11/2023/670; IR26/1722/642.