GURDON, Brampton (1797-1881), of Grundisburgh Hall, Suff., Letton Hall, Norf. and 19 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, Mdx.

The Gurdons were an old and highly-respected East Anglian family, possessing considerable estates in both Norfolk and Suffolk. Gurdon’s father, Theophilus Thornhagh, a ‘high-minded country gentleman’, formerly lieutenant-colonel of the West Norfolk militia, had served as an active magistrate in both counties and, like his own father before him in 1789, had been high sheriff of Norfolk in 1824.Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Mar. 1849; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1836), 395-6. The Gurdons were recognised as a family that had long ‘maintained the Old Whig principles’ and on his death Theophilus Thornhagh was feted as having taken ‘an honourable lead’, as a friend of Thomas Coke, in the recent Whig politics of Norfolk.Norwich Mercury, 18 Mar. 1857; Bury and Norwich Post, 21 Mar. 1849. In his own early political forays, Brampton Gurdon showed no signs of relinquishing such family traditions, seconding Coke’s nomination at the 1831 Norfolk hustings, and later that year, with his father, attending a Norwich meeting in support of the government’s reform proposals.The Times, 9 May 1831, 21 Nov. 1831. Nominating Sir Jacob Astley at the 1837 West Norfolk election, Gurdon called for Irish reforms ‘to extend equal laws and equal rights to the oppressed people of that fertile island’, whilst ten years later, having himself been sounded out as a potential candidate, Gurdon again acted as a proposer at the hustings, using his speech to extol the importance of Lord John Russell’s education proposals.The Times, 2 Aug. 1837; Norf. R.O. MC 50/74/22; Bury and Norwich Post, 18 Aug. 1847. Gurdon’s father-in-law, the prominent local Whig Lord Colborne, was evidently an important influence guiding his political conduct at this time: one Liberal insider commented on Gurdon’s possible candidature in 1847 that it ‘appear[ed] to depend upon Lord Colborne whether Gurdon will come forward at all’.Norf. R.O. MC 50/74/17; Morning Post, 6 May 1854; see also Bury and Norwich Post, 15 July 1862. Another consideration seems to have been Gurdon’s unwillingness to pledge himself to the total restoration of agricultural protection in the aftermath of corn law repeal.Norf. R.O. HMN 5/128/1. It would appear that Gurdon supported the idea of a fixed duty, and was ‘unwilling to take any pact that would preclude the possibility of accepting what we now think the only protection likely to be obtained’.

Following service as high sheriff of Norfolk in 1855, Gurdon was returned for West Norfolk in 1857 as the Liberal partner in a controversial compromise with one of the sitting Conservative members, George Bentinck.Norfolk Chronicle, 28 Mar., 4 Apr. 1857; Norwich Mercury, 1 Apr. 1857. Gurdon declared his adherence to ‘Economy in Expenditure’ and to the cause of constitutional and social reform, stressing that ‘I am not, nor ever have been, what is called a finality man’.Norfolk Chronicle, 21 Mar. 1857; Norwich Mercury, 1 Apr. 1857. He presented himself as an independent supporter of Palmerston, a man to whom he believed England owed ‘a deep debt of gratitude’ for his conduct during the Chinese hostilities.Norwich Mercury, 1 Apr. 1857. Despite dividing in favour of the defeated motion to abolish the property qualification for MPs, against the expressed wishes of the government, 10 June 1857, Gurdon firmly stood by Palmerston on the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858. He was among the defeated minority which supported Russell’s motion proposing that the newly-constituted Indian Council should be composed of twelve rather than fifteen individuals, a division which saw many Liberals vote with the Conservative government, 11 June 1858. A committed Anglican and patron of six livings, Gurdon had in the years prior to his election espoused the cause of religious liberty and toleration, a stance he maintained with his support for the oaths bill, admitting Jews to sit in parliament, 16 July 1858, and his consistent backing of the bills permitting marriage to a deceased wife’s sister.H. B. J. Armstrong (ed.), Armstrong’s Norfolk Diary (1963), 32; M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs (1976), i. 172-3. In 1838 Gurdon had made a speech at a meeting of the National Society in Norwich, in which he stated that ‘however much he liked the system of education connected with the establishment’, he supported the Whigs’ education policy: The Times, 15 Nov. 1838. Gurdon’s age – he turned sixty in September 1857 – ensured his exemption from service on election petition committees throughout his time in parliament, and probably explains his decision to join with 27 other members in calling for the Commons not to sit beyond midnight on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8 Feb. 1859. Nevertheless, though Gurdon is not known to have contributed to debate, he was extremely assiduous in his parliamentary duties, which included select committee service on the sheep and cattle contagious diseases prevention bill, which his colleague Bentinck had introduced.PP 1857 sess. 2 (129), ix. 648ff. Gurdon regularly presented petitions on behalf of his constituents: see Ipswich Journal, 24 Apr. 1858; The Times, 18 Feb. 1859; Ipswich Journal, 4 Feb. 1860; The Times, 7 July 1860, 19 Apr. 1861, 29 Mar. 1862, 20 Feb. 1863; The Standard, 1 Mar. 1864.

Gurdon voted against the Conservative reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, although at the ensuing West Norfolk election, where he was re-elected unopposed alongside Bentinck, he stressed that the second reading of the measure would have received his ready assent, if the government had provided an assurance that the ‘objectionable’ clause relating to freehold voters residing in boroughs would be struck out.Norfolk Chronicle, 9 Apr., 14 May 1859. Whilst calling for an extension of the franchise to ‘intelligent and skilled mechanics’, Gurdon stressed his aversion to the ‘extreme opinions shadowed forth last winter by Mr Bright’.Norfolk Chronicle, 14 May 1859. He supported Gladstone’s 1860 budget and the French commercial treaty, but was one of only 15 Liberals to oppose the abolition of paper duties, 12 Mar. 1860.Morning Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1860. The following year, however, when paper duty repeal was integrated into the budget, Gurdon voted for the measure in supply, 30 May 1861, an apparent break in principle not missed by the Conservative Norfolk Chronicle.Norfolk Chronicle, 29 June 1861. Despite feeling ‘regret’ at the ‘great expense’ being incurred for the national defence, which he termed a ‘ticklish subject’, Gurdon backed Palmerston’s spending policy, for ‘England could never… allow a doubt to exist as to who had command of the ocean’.Norfolk Chronicle, 12 July 1862, 29 Sep. 1860, 26 Sep. 1863.

A dogged opponent of the secret ballot, believing that it would lead to ‘fraud, bribery and intimidation of the worst kind’, Gurdon was a majority teller against Duncombe’s motion for the use of the ballot at future elections at Gloucester and Wakefield, 9 Feb. 1860.Norfolk Chronicle, 14 May 1859. Two years after pouring scorn on the proposal of equality in the borough and county franchises as ‘a principle totally unknown to the English constitution’, Gurdon backed Locke King’s motion for the reduction of the county suffrage to £10, 13 Mar. 1861.Ibid. However, he was attacked by the Daily News as one of the thirty-five reform-stultifying ‘cidevant Liberal… Deserters on Mr Baines’s Bill’ for the lowering of the borough franchise to £6, 10 Apr. 1861.Daily News, 13 Apr. 1861. Gurdon again voted against Baines’s franchise bill, 13 May 1865. Gurdon was again the subject of radical opprobrium following his support for the university elections bill, 12 July 1861, which introduced the practice of proxy voting: ‘In the majority are to be found the names of 17 or 18 Whigs of the BEAUMONT, INGHAM and GURDON school upon whose aid the retrograde spirit of Toryism knows it can rely whenever there is mischief to be done’.Daily News, 15 July 1861.

Gurdon was in the minority for the second reading of the religious worship bill, 1 May 1861, a measure which its supporters claimed would facilitate increased attendance and access to religious services, but which detractors decried as a flagrant breach of the parochial and episcopal systems. He regularly opposed the recurrent anti-Maynooth motions brought forward and divided in favour of the prison ministers’ bill, permitting Catholic prisoners to receive chaplains of their own faith, 20 Apr. 1863. However, Gurdon’s failure to register a vote (or even pair off) in any of Trelawny’s closely contested church rate abolition motions caused a considerable stir amongst the Norfolk Dissenting community.The Standard, 19 May 1862, listed Gurdon as one of only four Liberal county MPs to be absent without pairs on that session’s church rate abolition bill. In response to a severe onslaught from that body’s mouthpiece, the Norfolk News, which claimed Gurdon’s prospects of re-election were hopeless in the light of such inactivity, the Liberal Norwich Mercury countered by stressing Gurdon’s consistent conduct in regard to a measure about which he had never publicly expressed an opinion or pledge.Norfolk Chronicle, 30 Mar. 1861; Norwich Mercury, 13 Mar. 1861; Norfolk Chronicle, 4 May 1861. The Norfolk Chronicle depicted Gurdon’s non-committal behaviour as a sign rather that he would ‘at last throw [his] strength into the Conservative scale’, extricating himself from the ‘dictatorial dictation’ of the Liberal party’s radical contingent. Although Gurdon opposed Peto’s nonconformist burial bills, 24 Apr. 1861, 15 Apr. 1863, he supported removal of the oath requiring officials to promise to safeguard the establishment, 4 Mar. 1863 and divided in favour of the Oxford tests abolition measure, 16 Mar., 1 July 1864. At a meeting of the Norfolk Anti-Malt Tax Association in February 1865, whilst emphasising his concurrence with the eventual aim of the duty’s total repeal, Gurdon advocated a more cautious policy of reduction, aimed at ensuring cross-party support.Norfolk Chronicle, 4 Feb. 1865; Norwich Mercury, 4 Feb. 1865. He was one of fourteen Liberal county MPs to vote in the minority for Fitzroy Kelly’s motion calling for the reduction and ultimate repeal of the malt tax, 7 Mar. 1865.The Times, 9 Mar. 1865.

Gurdon faced his first contested election in 1865, although rumours abounded that the nomination of a second Conservative candidate, Hon. Thomas de Grey, was in fact aimed at removing the sitting Tory renegade, Bentinck, rather than himself, whilst the Norfolk Chronicle only heightened the sense of political confusion with their suggestion that Gurdon might be preparing to step forward as a supporter of Lord Derby.Norfolk Chronicle, 10 June 1865; Norwich Mercury, 1 July 1865; Norfolk Chronicle, 3 June 1865. In the event, Bentinck retired on health grounds, with another Conservative offering in his place. Seeking the electors’ suffrages on the basis of the record of peace and increased prosperity under the Palmerston government, Gurdon regretted that ‘at my age a personal canvass is impossible’, a factor probably contributing to the Norfolk Whig grandee Lord Leicester’s private verdict that ‘Gurdon is too slow to win’.Norf. R.O. HMN 5/150/29. On the hustings, attention was again focused upon Gurdon’s political principles, his competitor de Grey caustically observing that ‘for a man who called himself a Liberal, [Gurdon was] rather a Conservative one’.The Times, 20 July 1865. Gurdon finished bottom of the poll, the two successful Conservative candidates polling over a thousand more votes combined than their Liberal rivals. While he blamed the defeat on Tory strength in the Fens,Norf. R.O. HMN 5/128/11. his apparently lukewarm Liberalism also seems to have been a factor. One elector declared that ‘he might have stood by the party’ if they had put forward someone ‘Liberal enough to oppose the malt tax question. We have had Gurdon stick in our throats long enough’.Norf. R.O. HMN 5/150/21/2. The Liberation Society trumpeted Gurdon’s unseating as one of their relatively few successes in the English seats in 1865.G. I. T. Machin, Politics and the Churches in Great Britain 1832 to 1868 (1977), 332.

Taking ‘little action’ in public affairs following his 1865 election defeat, Gurdon died in April 1881, having been ‘quite childish for the last two years’.Norwich Mercury, 30 Apr. 1881; A. Hawkins and J. Powell (eds.), The Journal of John Wodehouse, First Earl of Kimberley, 1862-1902 (1997), 332. He left estate valued at under £200,000.Armstrong, Armstrong’s Norfolk Diary, 176-7. A ‘gentleman whom everybody liked’, an obituary noted the esteem in which he was held by the ‘whole county of Norfolk’.Norfolk Chronicle, 22 July 1865; Norwich Mercury, 30 Apr. 1881. One regular diner at Letton effused over the ‘great style’ of Gurdon and his wife, whose ‘kindness and unaffected simplicity…contrast[ed] so favourably with members of the would-be genteel’.Armstrong, Armstrong’s Norfolk Diary, 31, 94. See also Ibid., 32, 46, 55, 63, 76, 95. Celebrated as an ‘excellent and liberal landlord’, Gurdon took an active interest in agricultural affairs, regularly attending the local societies, where his speeches emphasised the necessity of agricultural modernisation and improvement.Norf. R.O. HMN 5/128/4/2; Norwich Mercury, 1 July 1865, 30 Apr. 1881; Norfolk Chronicle, 26 Sep. 1857, 25 Sep. 1858, 24 Sep. 1859, 29 Sep. 1860, 26 Sep. 1863, 17 June 1865. He was a diligent magistrate in both Norfolk and Suffolk and a keen supporter of the local volunteer movement.Norfolk Chronicle, 26 Sep. 1863. He enjoyed the traditional outdoor pursuits of the country gentleman, occasionally shooting with his nephew, Lord Kimberley.Hawkins and Powell, Journal of John Wodehouse, 79. Both of his sons were actively involved in politics. Whilst the eldest, Robert Thornhagh, failed to be returned for North Norfolk in 1868 and for South Norfolk in 1871 and 1874, he was returned as a Liberal for the latter in 1880, before representing Mid Norfolk as a Liberal, 1885-6, and as a Liberal Unionist, 1886-92, Apr.-July 1895. He was created Baron Cranworth in 1899. The younger, William Brampton, was appointed to a clerkship at the treasury in 1863, and served as Gladstone’s private secretary, 1865-66, 1868-74.H.C.G. Matthew (ed.), The Gladstone Diaries (1978), vi. 351-2. He contested Norfolk South-West, Rotherhithe and Colchester before being elected to represent North Norfolk, 1899-1910, distinguishing himself in Parliament as a Liberal pro-Boer.J. W. Auld, ‘The Liberal Pro-Boers’, Journal of British Studies, 14 (1975), 82 n.16. Gurdon’s brother, John Gurdon Rebow, was Liberal MP for Colchester, 1857-59, 1865-70.