One of the last surviving Members of the first reformed Parliament, Pinney spent a fortune ‘debauching the frail electoral virtue of Lyme Regis’, supported by his family’s vast wealth from West India slave plantations. A ‘kindly, self-indulgent, undistinguished bachelor’, he sat for 28 years in the Commons as an increasingly advanced reformer, but had no qualms about engaging in electoral corruption, for which he was unseated in 1842, or waging a fierce anti-slavery campaign against an opponent.
The ‘fortune’ amassed by Pinney’s ancestors from their West India plantations forms the basis of one of the first full-length studies of a slave-owning dynasty. In 1762 Pinney’s grandfather John Frederick Pretor (1740-1818) had changed the family name on inheriting the Nevis plantations of his cousin John Frederick Pinney (1719-62), MP for Bridport from 1747-61. Under his management sugar production and slave trading thrived and he began transferring large sums to England, purchasing property at Bristol and the Dorset estate of Somerton Erleigh in 1799. Although Pinney’s father (1773-1845) became a partner in the family’s merchant house, he proved far less capable in business than his younger brother Charles (1793-1867), on whom much of the day-to-day management devolved. A year after inheriting the family estates in 1818 he retired to the life of a rentier at Somerton Erleigh.
In 1831 Pinney’s father purchased a ‘grand house set on a hill’ in Lyme Regis and announced that Pinney would stand as a reform candidate once the borough had been opened up by the Reform Act. His agents began offering loans to future electors and the family started recruiting influential supporters, among them the pioneering fossil hunter Mary Anning, who had become close friends with William’s sister Anna Maria. Anning’s brother apparently even canvassed for William.
Pinney’s refusal to stand aside for a more senior reformer opened the way for a serious challenge by the borough’s former Tory patron at the 1832 general election.
A fairly regular but generally silent attender, Pinney gave steady support to the Whig ministry on most major issues of the day, including their Irish policy and controversial reform of the poor law. Described in one contemporary source as ‘inclining towards radicalism’, presumably on account of his hustings speech, he in fact voted against most radical motions during his first parliament, resisting calls for greater economies, 14 Feb. 1833, the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr. 1833, the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, 15 May 1834, and a revision of the corn laws, 7 Mar. 1834.
Speaking at a constituency dinner for local reformers later that year, shortly after the dissolution, Pinney admitted that he could have made himself ‘more popular’ had ‘he inclined more to the radical party’, but declared that he would never cast votes ‘merely for the sake of popularity’. His bid for their undivided support worked but was undoubtedly also assisted by his family’s acquisition of another ‘splendid mansion’ in the town, formerly occupied by the Dowager Countess Poulett, which effectively made his father the town’s leading proprietor.
Pinney divided steadily against Peel’s short-lived ministry and with the Whigs following their return to office. He remained opposed to the radicals over the ballot and parliamentary reform, but began to lend more support to dissenting causes, including the removal of bishops from the Lords and the abolition of church rates, perhaps because Lyme’s first municipal elections in 1835 had produced an overwhelmingly Nonconformist town council.
Opposed by a fanatically Protestant Tory Renn Hampden at the 1837 election, Pinney robustly defended his voting record, arguing that bishops would be better employed in their dioceses. Denounced by Hampden for views that would force his supporters to break their ‘allegiance to Christ’, Pinney retaliated with a scathing personal attack, accusing Hampden of ‘barbarous’ acts in the West Indies, including the flogging of female slaves on his Barbados plantations.
Pinney had hitherto avoided voting on slavery and continued to be absent for most divisions on the subject. However, he was present to support the ministerial plan of slave apprenticeships, 30 Mar., 28 May, 1 Aug. 1838, and steadily backed their Jamaica policy the following year. He changed his tune over the corn laws, casting majority votes against revision, 15 May 1838, 19 Feb. 1839, but joining the free trade minority for an inquiry, 4 Mar. 1840. His stance against the ballot and radical reform, including the Chartists’ demands for universal suffrage, however, remained unchanged. He of course sided with the beleaguered Whig ministry in Peel’s no confidence motion, 4 June 1841.
Pinney’s campaign tactics at the 1841 general election ultimately lost him his seat. With Lyme said to be ‘locked up in his purse’ another walkover was widely anticipated, but at the last minute a local Tory candidate appeared, backed by the notorious boroughmonger John Attwood. One of the most venal contests of the period ensued. Although Pinney eventually secured a slim majority, it was inevitable that the result would be challenged on petition.
While Attwood attempted to consolidate his foothold in Lyme, Pinney began to look for another seat. Nothing materialised until March 1847, when there was a vacancy in Somerset East, the county constituency bordering his father’s Somerton Erleigh estates, which Pinney had inherited in 1845 along with personalty valued at £110,000.
Back in the House, Pinney cast 21 votes before the 1847 dissolution, mostly on minor matters and alongside his Liberal colleagues, although he was sufficiently independent to oppose the Russell ministry’s proposed changes to the Poor Law Removal Act, 23 June 1847. Attempts by Somerset’s Protectionists to find a candidate to run against him at the 1847 general election came to nothing, not least owing to a fear that the Liberals would also retaliate with a second candidate, and he was again returned unopposed in what was widely billed as a ‘shameful’ truce. Pressed for his attitude to Catholic endowment on the hustings, about which he claimed to have written ‘no less than 120 letters’ to his constituents, he promised to consider the Protestant case, but was determined to avoid ‘injustice’ to his Catholic fellow-countrymen.
Pinney continued to side with the bulk of his party on most major issues, backing further free trade measures and Russell’s policies towards Catholics and Jews, but he also began to support radical motions for further parliamentary reform, whilst remaining firmly opposed to the ballot. On 20 Feb. 1851 he was in the progressive majority for Locke King’s proposed extension of the county franchise, which briefly derailed Russell’s ministry. He was hardly an assiduous attender though, and in 1849 participated in a little under a quarter (54) of the session’s 219 divisions, a level slightly below the average.
At the 1852 general election it was remarked that Pinney had ‘proved he possesses every qualification for representing’ Somerset East, ‘except its Conservative principles’.
Pinney’s tenure at Lyme now looked set to become ‘as secure as its cobb’ and at the 1857 election he won an overwhelming majority against a Tory candidate ‘sent down’ by the Carlton Club.
His vote against the Derby ministry’s abortive reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, almost cost Pinney his seat a second time. At the ensuing general election he was widely criticised for preferring Russell’s scheme of reform, which had proposed to disfranchise Lyme Regis, over Disraeli’s bill, which had preserved its ‘ancient rights’.
Whether or not Pinney came to some form of agreement with his Tory opponent about stepping aside at the next election is unclear, but in early 1860 all the proceedings against his return were dropped, without explanation.
It having been ‘long understood that Pinney would not seek re-election’, he retired from Lyme at the 1865 general election and offered instead for Bath, where he had been invited to stand alongside the sitting Liberal. Finding his request for a ‘requisition’ signed by 1,200 voters was considered ‘exorbitant’ by the local party, however, he withdrew rather than risk an uncertain contest.
Pinney, dismissed as a ‘self-indulgent, undistinguished bachelor’ in the study of his family, spent much of his retirement continuing to improve Somerton Erleigh, purchasing the neighbouring property of Catsgore Farm in 1865.
One of the last surviving Members of the first reformed Parliament, Pinney died a few weeks before his 92nd birthday in 1898 at the grand house in Berkeley Square where he had ‘lived all his life’.