The ludicrously styled Hughes Hughes, baptised William Hughes Hewitt, had changed his surname on inheriting a vast fortune in 1825 from his maternal grandfather William Hughes, a Clapham property speculator and landlord.
Emphasising the service that ‘a man of complete leisure’ could give, Hughes Hughes had secured election for the notoriously venal borough of Oxford on his second attempt in 1830. An independently-minded Member, he had given general support to the Grey ministry’s reform bill and taken a prominent, but not always welcome, part in the attempts to amend some of its details, most notably the proposed disfranchisement of future freemen.
The moment he pronounced the word “Sir”, addressing himself of course to the Speaker, he was assailed with the most tremendous uproar and confusion. Such a variety of sounds, and so discordant, hardly ever before greeted mortal ear ... One honourable member near the bar repeatedly called out “Read” (to the member endeavouring to address the House) in an exceedingly bass and hoarse sound of voice. At repeated intervals a sort of drone-like humming, having almost the sound of a distant hand-organ or bagpipes, issued from the back benches: coughing, sneezing, and ingeniously extended yawning, blended with the other sounds, and produced a tout ensemble which we have never heard excelled in the House. A single voice ... imitated very accurately the yelp of a kennelled hound ... Not far from the same spot issued sounds marvellously resembling the bleating of a sheep, blended occasionally with an admirable imitation of the braying of an ass ... The deafening uproar was completed by the cries of “Chair, chair!” “Order, order!”, groans, laughter etc. which proceeded from all parts.
J. Grant, Random Recollections of the House of Commons (1836), 73-5.
Narrowly defeated at Oxford in the 1832 general election by two rival reformers, Hughes Hughes successfully overturned the return of his nearest opponent on petition and topped the poll in the ensuing by-election.
Otherwise Hughes Hughes continued to support the Whigs on most major issues, before being alienated by their proposals for Irish church reform and the new poor law, which he later claimed to have ‘opposed to the utmost of his power’.
The destruction of Parliament by fire in October 1834 brought Hughes Hughes notoriety as the only MP to be present ‘during the first hour of the conflagration’. He had been returning from the Middlesex sessions to his residence in Manchester Buildings, Westminster, to dinner at six o’clock, when ‘he was called out to the fire’. Arriving at the Speaker’s library ‘soon after seven’, he ‘succeeded in securing and, with the aid of the police, conveying to his own residence, a large quantity of the private papers and most valuable property of the Speaker, and assisted in saving the books, pictures, and beautiful tapestry in the library and levee rooms’, along with a ‘chimney piece’.
He, and the celebrated fireman’s dog, were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagration of the two Houses of Parliament - they both ran up and down, and in and out, getting under people’s feet, and into everybody’s way, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good, and barking tremendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence, that he became a positive nuisance. As no more parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he has consequently had no more opportunities of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut them out of their frames, and performed other great national services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness and obscurity.
C. Dickens, Sketches by Boz (1837), 137. I am indebted to Dr Caroline Shenton of the Parliamentary Archives for bringing this reference to my attention.
Hughes Hughes was back in the public eye next month, when, following the king’s dismissal of the Whigs, it was reported that during a stage coach journey to Oxford he had been overheard remarking that the mayor was a Tory, ‘as all sound-headed and good men must be’, and saying, ‘I voted the duke of Wellington out of office in 1830, and now I shall as earnestly vote him in’. Charged with ‘dark, deep, damning treachery and apostacy’ by the Liberal Morning Chronicle, 25 Nov. 1835, he publicly refuted their accusations, denying that the alleged conversation had taken place.
Listed by the Liberal press as one of the ‘Doubtful Men’ likely to support Peel’s new ministry, Hughes Hughes was soon embroiled in another public spat over his voting intentions on the speakership. Rebutting rumours that he had indicated that he would support the Whig challenger Abercromby, for which he had received a Liberal whip signed by Lord John Russell, he declared his support for Manners Sutton, the Tory incumbent.
We never relied for an instant on his vote ... He is one of those essentially unimportant persons who strive to make themselves of temporary consequence on such occasions ... He also seems to think, that because he saved some of the Speaker’s furniture in the late fire, he is bound to vote against Mr. Abercromby. It is evident that Mr. Hughes is no every day logician.
Morning Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1835.
Writing to the editors of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion that month, Hughes Hughes, in one of his regular updates, again described himself as a ‘moderate reformer’. He also added FSS to the acronyms FSA. FLS and FHS after his name, and called attention to ‘the new edition of De Lolme’s Constitution of England, with notes’, which he had published the previous year, all of which were incorporated into his 1835 entry.
Far less conspicuous in the lobbies during his last parliament, Hughes Hughes gave general support to the Conservative opposition following the reappointment of the Whig ministry, especially on matters relating to the established church and Ireland, but continued to chart an independent course in some areas, including voting with the radicals for inquiry into pensions, 19 Mar. 1836, and in the minority for a modification of the corn laws, 16 Mar. 1837. A staunch opponent of the 1835 English municipal corporations bill, he made a number of interventions in defence of the condemned freemen, citing the ‘hard and successful struggle for their preservation, in which he (Mr. Hughes Hughes) took an active part during the discussions under the reform bill’, and revisiting the arguments he had then made on their behalf, 23 June 1835.
The replacement of Oxford’s unreformed corporation with an elected council removed a mainstay of Hughes Hughes’ support at the 1837 general election, when he offered again as a ‘zealous defender’ of church and state and a ‘real reformer of every proved abuse’, stressing his ‘independent’ principles. Spurned by his former Liberal supporters, who charged him with being an ‘apostate’, and plagued by ‘misrepresentations of my parliamentary votes and conduct’, he was defeated by ‘a nominee of Joseph Parkes and the London Reform Club’.
At the 1841 general election Hughes Hughes offered again for Oxford, only to be persuaded to retire by his ‘friends’, who were concerned that his candidature would thwart the return of two Conservatives. Endorsing their candidature, he reaffirmed his attachment to Conservative principles.
Hughes Hughes, who is not known to have sought re-election elsewhere, appears to have dissipated a large part of his fortune in his six Oxford contests from 1826 to 1837. His nephew Henry Claylands Field, writing in 1897, believed that he spent ‘more than £70,000 in his elections’.