Heir to the abeyant barony of Camoys and the Oxfordshire estates of a prominent family of recusants, who had retained ‘their property through all the persecutions and proscriptions attendant upon the Reformation’, Stonor defied all odds to become Oxford’s first Catholic MP, making him one of just five Catholic MPs to be returned for an English constituency at the 1832 general election. Given the well-rehearsed antipathy of Oxford (and especially its University) towards Catholic emancipation in 1829, this was an ‘extraordinary circumstance’, as one commentator noted.
A deputy lieutenant for Oxfordshire in 1831, Stonor had taken a prominent part in the campaign for the Grey ministry’s reform bill that year, chairing local committees and meetings in support of pro-reform candidates, including those held at Henley for the county contender Richard Weyland, and seconding the nomination of the second reform candidate George Granville Harcourt at the Oxfordshire 1831 general election. Speaking at the ensuing dinner held to celebrate their victory, he declared that ‘from the earliest publication of the reform bill, he had been an unqualified approver of it’.
Believing that Oxford’s electors were ‘more liberal than that’, however, he persisted against the city’s two incumbents, both moderate reformers, prompting a ‘huge contest’ in which the city’s notorious freemen were left in little doubt about his ‘affluence’ and long purse. In his addresses he outlined his support for a radical programme of reform, including the secret ballot, shorter parliaments, a property tax and the abolition of colonial slavery, but refused to be ‘pledged’ beyond promising to attend to ‘local interests’. After the sole Conservative candidate resigned in his favour, evidently out of personal malice towards the sitting Members, Stonor narrowly secured second place ahead of William Hughes Hughes in the poll.
Speaking at his victory dinner, 28 Dec. 1832, Stonor rebutted Protestant fears that he would ‘confederate with the Irish demagogues in their diabolical endeavours to revolutionize the kingdom’ and looked forward to proving ‘that a Catholic was not necessarily an enemy to the establishment’.
Determined not to let Hughes Hughes walk over, Stonor, who had joined Brooks’s sponsored by the duke of Norfolk and John Fazakerley MP, 31 Mar. 1833, brought forward his brother-in-law Charles Towneley. An ultra reformer of ‘similar politics’, Towneley declared his opposition to the Irish coercion bill.
At the 1837 general election Stonor, who had served as high sheriff the previous year, transferred his attentions to the county. Faced with stiff Tory opposition from a newly formed Oxfordshire Conservative Association, he attempted to negotiate a deal to share the representation, believing that the Liberals were entitled to at least one of the three seats, but was unceremoniously rebuffed.
Stonor’s elevation to the abeyant barony of Camoys in September 1839, a title which had remained dormant for almost 400 years, conveniently removed him from the field. His one-eighth and somewhat ‘fortunate’ claim to the title derived from his descent from Mary Biddulph, the co-heiress of the baronies of Camoys and Vaux, who had married his great-grandfather Thomas Stonor in 1732.
On Stonor’s death in January 1881, the barony and family estates devolved upon his grandson Francis (1856-1897), another Liberal lord in waiting. Francis was the eldest son of Stonor’s second son Francis (1829-1881), a senior clerk in the House of Lords, who had died just eight days before, and his daughter-in-law Eliza Peel, the youngest daughter of the premier Sir Robert Peel. Stonor’s third son was the Roman Catholic archbishop of Trapezus Edmund Stonor (1831-1912). At least four of his nine daughters became nuns. Ephemera relating to Stonor’s electioneering and his household office remains in the family’s possession at Stonor Park.