WOOD, Charles (1800-1885), of Hemsworth, nr. Pontefract, Yorks.; Hickleton, nr. Doncaster and 22 Charles Street, Mdx.

Wood was descended from George Wood, who had purchased Monk Bretton, near Barnsley, in the reign of James I. His grandfather and namesake was a captain in the navy, while his great-uncle Sir Francis, the first baronet, was a wealthy East India merchant and friend of the 2nd marquess of Rockingham. R.J. Moore, Sir Charles Wood’s Indian Policy, 1. On his death in 1795 he was succeeded by his nephew, this Member’s father, Sir Francis Lindley Wood of Hemsworth, who maintained the connection with Rockingham’s descendants and was a close friend and confidant of the 2nd Earl Fitzwilliam and his son Lord Milton*. Sir Francis passed up a number of opportunities to become a Member himself, preferring to be one of the leading Whig activists in Yorkshire politics. Wood attended a prep school at Everton before going to Eton, where he was said to have been ‘the most promising young man in every respect they have had for some time’. J.G. Lockhart, Charles Lindley, Visct. Halifax, i. 11. At Oxford his tutor Edward Hawkins considered him ‘the cleverest person he had ever had as a pupil’. He took a double first in classics and mathematics, and became friendly with George Grey† and Francis Thornhill Baring*, subsequently colleagues in Lord John Russell’s* first administration. Although one of his examiners at Oriel was John Keble, unlike his brother Samuel and later his own son, he was never drawn into the developing religious movements of Oxford. Moore, 1. After Oxford he undertook the grand tour with Thomas Henry Bucknall Estcourt* before returning to study the law. During the rumours of a dissolution in October 1825, his father wrote to Fitzwilliam seeking an opening for him. Fitzwilliam replied that Lord Yarborough was looking for a second Whig for his Blue party at Great Grimsby, where the cost would be £4,000. Sir Francis accepted these terms and asked Fitzwilliam to secure the seat, adding:

My son has shown a creditable show of industry at least by his degree at Oxford and by his unremitting attention for two years to the study of law which he determines not to follow as a profession ... I have not the slightest doubt of his fulfilling his own resolution of attending consistently and unremittingly to his duties.

Yarborough duly approved of Wood as a candidate. Borthwick, Halifax archive, Fitzwilliam to Sir F.L. Wood, 18 Oct., reply, 21 Oct., Milton to Sir F.L. Wood, 11 Dec. 1825. At Yarborough’s instigation, he canvassed Great Grimsby in March 1826 with his colleague George Heneage. Ibid. Yarborough to Wood, 18 Feb. 1826. On 20 Mar. he informed Estcourt that they had

dined, drank toasts, speechified from five till one in the morning, canvassed for five days, and have secured such a majority as, we trust, renders us quite secure ... I trust that the business is settled, and unless an opposition ... should unexpectedly start up, I hope that I shall have nothing more to do till a dissolution, the speedy arrival of which I pray for. Glos. RO, Sotheron Estcourt mss F365/1571.

Wood again returned to Great Grimsby after reports that an agent had been there trying to secure a ministerial candidate. Halifax archive, Yarborough to Wood, 27 Mar. 1826. At the general election Sir Thomas Phillipps of Middle Hill Hall, Worcestershire provoked a contest, but the two Whigs easily defeated him, Wood topping the poll. Lincs., Rutland, and Stamford Mercury, 9 June 1826. ‘My own election was easy enough’, he told Estcourt, 27 June 1826, ‘and since that I have been busy in Yorkshire where we had fears of a contest up to the day before the election’. Sotheron Estcourt mss F365/1571.

Wood fulfilled his father’s expectations as a parliamentarian, attending regularly and taking an active part in proceedings. He voted against the grant to the duke of Clarence, 16 Feb. 1827. He joined Brooks’s on the 18th, sponsored by Milton and John Ramsden*. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and inquiry into Leicester corporation, 15 Mar., and against going into committee on the spring guns bill, 23 Mar. When the latter returned from the Lords, 17 May, The Times reporter believed it to be Wood (making his first known intervention) who voiced support for their amendments. The Times, 18 May 1827. He was in the minorities for information on the Dublin Orange procession and the Lisburn magistrates, 29 Mar., and chancery delays, 5 Apr. He voted to disfranchise Penryn, 28 May. He was a member of the committee on the Coventry magistracy bill and defended its report, 8 June, insisting that they were ‘not fit to be entrusted with the preservation of peace’ during elections, and was a majority teller for the ensuing bill, 15, 18 June. He divided for the grant to improve water communications in Canada, 12 June 1827. He was appointed to the select committee to consider the consolidation of the Acts concerning the treatment of lunatics the following day, and was one of the Members authorized to bring in the county lunatic asylums and madhouses regulation bills, 19 Feb. 1828. He defended the former’s clause forbidding the medical officer of an establishment from being one of its inspecting commissioners, not as a slur on the medical profession, but merely as a wise precaution, 17 Mar. He voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., and Catholic claims, 12 May. He thought the Wakefield and Ferrybridge canal bill ought to be proceeded with sometime that session, notwithstanding the preference which had been given to the Aire and Calder scheme, 3 Mar. However, despite his amendment to postpone its second reading, the Wakefield bill was thrown out that day. He voted against extending East Retford into the neighbouring hundred, 21 Mar., and spoke in the same sense, 2 June, when he advocated transferring its seats to ‘some large and populous town’, or to Yorkshire, if this was impractical. However, when Lord Howick proposed that option, 27 June, he rejected it, saying the majority opinion in the county was hostile. He voted against the East Retford disfranchisement bill that day. He presented a Rotherham petition against the Malt Act, 21 May, and claimed that it operated unequally on barley producers in different parts of the country, 23 May. On 21 May he welcomed the alehouses licensing bill, which would remove many of the evils of the present system and give county magistrates ‘a concurrent jurisdiction in certain cases’. He defended the bill and argued that all public houses should have the same closing time, 19 June, but objected to the proposals in the perry and cider excise licences bill, 26 June, as being ‘of a contrary principle’ to those enacted for alehouses. On 6 June he and John Stuart Wortley were ordered to prepare a bill to alter the game laws. He explained that its purpose was not to suppress poaching, which could ‘never be effectually done’, but to ‘encourage, as much as possible, a legal sale of game’, 13 June, and protested that if the House imposed conditions based on the amount of land owned before granting the right to kill game on it, ‘they would restore all the anomalies which it was the object of the bill to remove’, 26 June. He voted against the appointment of a registrar to the archbishop of Canterbury, 16 June, the use of public money for renovating Buckingham House, 23 June, and the additional churches bill, 27 June. He voted for a reduction in the salary of the lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 4 July, and against the grant for North American fortifications, 7 July 1828.

Wood voted for the Wellington ministry’s concession of Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar. 1829. He expressed his hope that the labourers’ wages bill would go to a committee, 4 May. Next day he was a minority teller for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham. He divided against an additional grant for the marble arch, 25 May 1829. That summer he married a daughter of the Whig leader Lord Grey, a politically fortuitous union which presaged his steady rise in the party. During the honeymoon, which was spent touring the continent in the late autumn, Wood fell dangerously ill shortly after leaving Genoa. Fortunately a Dr. Heath, travelling with Lord Bessborough, was at hand to minister to him. For a time there was great concern for his life, and Grey resolved to send out his son Frederick to assist, but before his departure news arrived of Wood’s recovery. Halifax archive, Lady Grey to Georgiana Grey [?9], 17 Dec., Grey to Sir F.L. Wood, 16 Dec. 1829. During October there was great anxiety about Fitzwilliam’s health, and it seemed likely that Milton would soon succeed him, creating a vacancy for Yorkshire. George Strickland* of Hildenley, one of the county’s leading Whigs, informed Wood’s father, 10 Oct. 1829, that he had heard Wood’s name mentioned, but, admitting his concern at the likely expense, suggested that Lord Morpeth* should probably be the Whigs’ choice. Halifax archive. In the event Fitzwilliam rallied.

Wood voted for the Ultra Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830. Before dividing for Hume’s motion for tax reductions, 15 Feb., he called for ‘a considerable reduction of public burdens’, warned that a return to a paper currency would ‘increase and aggravate all the evils we at present endure’, and added that there was great dissatisfaction in the country at ministers’ inadequate response to distress. Informing his father of the defeat of the motion that day, he observed:

You cannot think what an altered loose state all politics are in. Nobody knows what his neighbour thinks and the government is in talent weaker than is conceivable. All the debate on every question and each side of it is carried on by our side and the opposite benches never more have to decide. Goulburn is inefficient most lamentably, Herries ditto in debate and character, ditto ditto of everybody but Peel. Ibid. C. to Sir F.L. Wood [16/17 Feb. 1830].

He divided against the army estimates, 19 Feb., and voted steadily with the revived opposition for economy and reduced taxation from March onwards. On 22 Mar. he proposed abolishing the vacant treasurership of the navy, but withdrew his amendment in favour of Vernon Smith’s proposal for a reduction of £1,200 in the salary. He moved another to reduce the salary of the assistant secretary to the treasury, which he condemned as ‘an unjustifiable violation of the treasury minute’ stating that the salary should not exceed £2,000, which was defeated by 178-106. He divided for repeal of the Irish coal duties, 13 May. Before voting for a reduction in consular services, 11 June, he complained that ‘such a system of lavish expenditure was scarcely ever before submitted to this House’. He divided to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., 5 Mar. (as a pair), 15 Mar. He voted for the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., inquiry into the Newark electors’ petition against the duke of Newcastle, 1 Mar., and for Russell’s parliamentary reform motion, 28 May. He divided for information on the interference by British troops in the affairs of Portugal, 10 Mar., and declared that the government had not ‘a shadow of defence’ for the intervention at Terceira, before voting for the critical resolutions, 28 Apr. He thought the poor law amendment bill was ‘calculated to produce much good’, 26 Apr. He voted for Jewish emancipation, 17 May, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 24 May, 7 June (as a pair). He was a majority teller for the third reading of the Galway franchise bill, 25 May. On the sale of beer bill, 4 June, he said that because adulteration was impossible to stop, caused no harm to the public, and would not deprive the revenue of duty, there was no longer any need to outlaw it. The renewed cohesion of the Whig opposition after the death of George IV led Wood to become more closely involved with some of the party’s leaders, and on 29 June he attended the meeting at Brooks’s which resolved to call for an adjournment of 24 hours on ministers’ notice for a temporary supply. A. Mitchell, Whigs in Opposition, 229. Reporting the ensuing debate to his father, 3 July, he observed:

We had such a night as seldom occurs, [Henry] Brougham raging mad, utterly unamenable to any sort of reason ... After all we had a very fair division, but so far as the debate went it was an ill managed matter, and I suppose that we shall have another session of the present ministry, bad and inefficient as they are. Halifax archive.

He voted against increased recognizances in the libel law amendment bill, 9 July 1830.

Before the 1830 general election, Wood had considered offering for Yorkshire, having been advised that ‘such an opportunity never before existed of success on cheap grounds’. After conferring with Morpeth, who was undecided about his own candidacy, he resolved to ‘think about’ this ‘tempting prospect’. In the event, however, he felt that while it might be possible to secure the county seat for less than the £4,000 that Great Grimsby would cost, it was improbable without the backing of the manufacturers. Ibid. C. to Sir. F.L. Wood, 3 July. He therefore started for Great Grimsby on the same terms as previously. Reporting on his canvass, 12 July, he told his wife, ‘I am quite safe, the popular candidate and in high favour, they cannot find anything to say against me’. Halifax archive. Next day he added:

I have talked myself quite hoarse, besides being obliged to taste and swallow diverse sorts of villainous compounds called punch, etc., etc. Heavens! what a disgusting operation it is. What would I give for a quiet snug seat of my own. Ibid.

The following day two ministerial or ‘Red’ candidates arrived, but Wood dismissed their chances and shortly afterwards left Great Grimsby to attend the Whig meeting in York, which was to decide on candidates for the county. Ibid. Wood to wife, 14 July 1830. It was generally agreed that Morpeth would be one, but the second was still open to debate. Rumours that the manufacturers wanted Brougham led the country gentlemen to panic, and many, including Wood, declared their willingness to stand before the meeting opened. Morpeth was soon approved, but the proposal of Brougham caused uproar, and Wood alleged that there was a stronger feeling against than for him. After a rapid conference, the country gentlemen agreed to set aside their own aspirations in favour of Ramsden, whom Wood formally proposed. Deadlock ensued, and many urged Wood to withdraw Ramsden’s nomination, which at length he agreed to do, though with some ill grace. He said that he reserved the right to nominate another at a later date, but Brougham was eventually adopted. Leeds Mercury, 24 July 1830. Wood returned to Great Grimsby, and after addressing the freemen, assured his wife, ‘I shall have more votes than enough and more than I care for’, 28 July. Halifax archive. Next day he reported, ‘I am the best of friends with my opponents ... I was dragged, all in a friendly way, into a room full of Reds, had my sherry, made ’em a speech, was cheered three times three, and came out again’. Ibid. Wood to wife. He was returned in first place. As a member of the Whig election committee he subsequently went to York, where he seconded Morpeth’s nomination for the county. ‘I am quite contented and pleased’, he informed his wife, 6 Aug., ‘all the world congratulate me on my speech ... [and] folks are kind enough to say that I played a difficult game very well, so I am highly gratified’. Ibid.

He voted against the ministry, who had of course listed him as one of their ‘foes’, in the crucial division on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. When the result was known, he and his close friend and brother-in-law Lord Howick dashed to a reception in Berkeley Square that their kinsman Lord Durham was attending and ‘rushed into the room, calling out in great excitement, "We’ve beat them; they’re done for"’. Reid, Lord Durham, i. 215. On 18 Nov. Wood reported to his father that the construction of the incoming Grey ministry was ‘going smoothly’:

The Whigs, Huskissonians, with perhaps a sprinkling of Tories, those once called Ultras, will form the new government. They are now become good reformers, and certainly gave most effectual assistance in turning out the late administration ... I think it very possible now that I shall not be able to leave town for any time this winter; at present I am to act as Lord Grey’s private secretary. Halifax archive.

He was one of six close relations whom Grey immediately appointed to office. Three Diaries, 25. When Brougham was charged by William Duncombe with abandoning his Yorkshire constituents by accepting office as lord chancellor, 23 Nov. 1830, Wood retorted that he was ‘running away a little too hastily as to the opinion of the people of Yorkshire’, who he believed would welcome Brougham’s elevation. Advising his father of the Irish situation, 10 Jan. 1831, he commented:

In my opinion Ireland will never be at peace till we pay the Catholic priesthood, and if I was dictator I would suppress two-thirds of the Irish bishops and deans, and so form a fund, and sooner or later that must be done, though it would be cutting one’s throat, perhaps, to say so now.

On 21 Jan. he reported that everything was going well in Ireland, and that the tribute to Daniel O’Connell* was ‘a failure entirely’. Halifax archive. Towards the end of that month he advised Thomas Creevey* that provided the king would give his support, Grey would dissolve Parliament if it rejected the ministerial reform bill. Creevey Pprs. ii. 216. On 1 Feb. he confided to his father, ‘The cabinet is unanimous on the plan of reform, and the king !!!! highly approves, so that it will be hard if king and country do not beat the Parliament’. Writing again, 3 Mar., he observed:

the reform is an efficient, substantial, anti-democratic, pro-property measure, but it sweeps away rotten boroughs and of course disgusts their proprietors. The main hope therefore of carrying it, is by the voice of the country, thus operating by deciding all wavering votes ... The radicals, for which heaven be praised, support us ... A strong demonstration in Yorkshire would rivet Bethell [the liberal Tory Member], and perhaps decide Duncombe [the Ultra Tory Member]; but county meetings now if you can, without a moment’s delay. We stand well as yet, but boroughmongers are numerous. Halifax archive.

Thereafter Wood kept his father regularly informed of the progress of the bill, for which he voted at its second reading, 22 Mar. According to Tom Macaulay*, on learning the result of the division, ‘Wood who stood near the door, jumped on a bench and cried out, "They are only three hundred and one". We set up a shout that you might have heard to Charing Cross’. Macaulay Letters, ii. 10. Next day Wood told his father, ‘we must, I take for granted, reckon upon a dissolution’. Halifax archive. When George Dawson criticized the bill for unfairly giving representatives to Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland, while unrepresented towns and parishes in Lancashire had larger populations, 25 Mar., Wood replied that his argument was invalid because it was not intended to enfranchise districts. He divided against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. As a member of the Liverpool election committee, he rejected Gascoyne’s complaint that their finding of gross corruption at the last election was based on the testimony of a single witness, but absolved Gascoyne himself of involvement in bribery, 21 Apr. That day, when Lord Althorp realized that the ordnance estimates would not pass, he sent Wood and Howick to inform the cabinet of his wish for an immediate dissolution. E.A. Wasson, Whig Renaissance, 212. Wood told his father, 24 Apr. 1831, that ‘there never was a more successful coup’. Halifax archive.

At the ensuing general election Wood abandoned Great Grimsby, where the proposed abolition of one of its seats was unpopular, and sought a safer berth. Having asked Milton ‘for a seat which he cannot give me’, and declined an approach from the reformers of Pontefract, he was returned for John Calcraft’s* pocket borough of Wareham, probably as a paying guest. Ibid. C. to Sir F.L. Wood, 24 Apr.; Leeds Mercury, 30 Apr 1831. This enabled him to remain in London, where he helped to collate the election returns and calculate their probable consequences for the prospects of the reform bill. In early May he reported that the elections were going ‘à merveille’ and on their conclusion declared, ‘if we do not let our bill be damaged in committee, we shall have it safe enough through the Lords, black and sulky though they look’. Halifax archive, C. to Sir F.L. Wood, 4, 27 May, 25 June 1831. On 23 May he asked Lord Holland to use his influence to secure the attendance of Lords Oxford, Suffolk and Waldegrave ‘as early as they can in the next session’. Add. 51569.

Wood voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July 1831, and though not actually on the payroll vote, was an assiduous supporter of its details, casting not one wayward vote. On the presentation of an Appleby petition complaining of a mistake in the census returns and asking for the case to be heard at the bar of the House, 12 July, he denied the assumption that ministers were determined to disfranchise the borough without inquiry. He added that he might be put in a similar situation with respect to Wareham, where there was also a mistake in the return, though if he did appeal to the House, it would be ‘to its justice, not to its passions’. He was a majority teller against the petitioners’ request. On 14 July he contended that the opposition attempt to substitute the 1831 census for that of 1821 was simply a delaying tactic. That month he declined an approach from Halifax to stand there at the first post-reform election, explaining that his ‘constant occupation in London would prevent my making myself acquainted with my future constituency in the manner which I should feel it my duty to do’. Halifax archive, C. Wood to R. Briggs, 16 July 1831. During discussion of Gateshead’s enfranchisement, 5 Aug., he rejected comparisons of its relationship to Newcastle with that of Hull to Sculcoates, pointing out that the former were separate towns in different counties, while the latter were essentially the same town, under one jurisdiction. He divided with ministers on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug. He was a majority teller for the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and divided for the second reading of the Scottish measure, 23 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s motion of confidence in the government, 10 Oct. On 8 Nov. 1831 Lord Palmerston*, the foreign secretary, informed the duke of Richmond that Wood was one of those who thought that the bill ought now to be made more extensive and radical. Southampton Univ. Lib. Broadlands mss, PP/GC/RI/11.

Wood voted for the second reading of the revised bill, 17 Dec. 1831. On 26 Jan. 1832 he confided to Denis Le Marchant† that the ‘crux in the cabinet’ was Grey and Althorp’s disagreement over the need to create peers to carry the bill. Three Diaries, 186. Again a consistent supporter of the bill’s details, he was a majority teller to go into committee on it, 20 Jan., and divided for its third reading, 22 Mar. In early April he was assigned the task of getting Charles Greville to try to persuade Lord Harrowby, one of the leading ‘Waverers’, of the necessity of securing the second reading of the bill in the Lords, and to approve the number of boroughs in schedule A. Greville Mems. ii. 286, 288, 289, 294. Their negotiations continued for almost two weeks, although Wood predicted to Francis Thornhill Baring, 5 Apr., that the bill would have a majority of ‘seven undoubted, twelve certain, and fifteen sure, and should not wonder if it were carried by seventeen to twenty’. Baring Jnls. i. 93. Revising his opinion, he told Grey to expect nine, 10 Apr., which proved to be the actual majority, 14 Apr. Three Diaries, 222. He voted for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the bill unimpaired, 10 May, and the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and paired against a Conservative amendment to increase the Scottish county representation, 1 June. He divided with government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12, 16, 20 July, and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. He was a majority teller for the Greek convention, 6 Aug., and the bill to restrain party processions in Ireland, 8 Aug. 1832.

Edward Ellice*, secretary to the treasury and Grey’s brother-in-law, wanted to resign after the reform bill had passed, but Wood advised Grey, 3 July 1832, that he was ‘indispensable’. G.M. Trevelyan, Lord Grey, 384. On 19 July Wood notified his father that John Bull, ‘that most veracious of papers’ and, ‘as being conducted by [John] Croker*, the best informed of our intentions, announced my promotion to the office of secretary to the treasury. Ergo, the Tory would believe it: what more is to be said?’ Halifax archive, C. to Sir F.L. Wood, 19 July 1832. When Ellice’s wife died later that month he resigned and on his recommendation Wood replaced him. As such he chaired the government’s management committee for the 1832 general election, when, notwithstanding his earlier reservations, he was returned for Halifax after a contest. I. Newbould, Whiggery and Reform, 26, 30. He represented the borough for next 33 years and progressed steadily through the ranks of the Liberal party. At the admiralty he distinguished himself with his defence of the navy estimates in 1839, but, like Howick, he resigned out of loyalty to Grey later that year. He spent an unhappy time as Russell’s chancellor of the exchequer, but appeared to find his niche at the board of control under Lord Aberdeen and later as secretary of state for India under Palmerston. He suffered from a speech impediment, which earned him an unenviable reputation as a Commons bore. Greville recalled:

He was a deplorable speaker ... His utterances [were] so unintelligible that they might almost as well have been spoken in a foreign language ... [One] speech of five hours was the dullest that was ever heard. The Speaker told Charles Villiers that it was the very worst speech he had ever heard since he had sat in the House. Greville Mems. vii. 289.

Grenville Fletcher wrote of him in 1862:

Of ... strong party feeling there does not sit in the House a man of more decided character ... [His] political creed appears to be, that the reins of government are theirs by right of birth and of position ... I have always considered [him] to be one of its most shining lights, shining by his indisputable ability, shining by his staunch Whig opinions, and still more brightly by his undeviating and unwearied attachment to his Whig connections. G. Fletcher, Parl. Portraits, iii. 120.

Wood fell from his horse while hunting in November 1865 and suffered concussion. He used this as a pretext for resigning from Russell’s ministry the following February, and a few days later he was elevated to the peerage. He subsequently served in Gladstone’s first ministry. The Times, 7 Feb. 1866; Oxford DNB. He died in August 1885. By his will, dated 12 Apr. 1880, he left all his property to his wife, but as she had predeceased him in 1884, everything passed to his eldest son and successor in the peerage, Charles Lindley Wood (1839-1934), a leading Anglo-Catholic.