PALMER, Robert (1793-1872), of Holme Park, Sonning, nr. Reading, Berks. and 6 Charles Street, Berkeley Square, Mdx.

Palmer’s ancestors had settled in the parish of Hurst, six miles east of Reading, by 1600. His grandfather Robert Palmer, a London attorney, prospered as the long-serving principal agent to the dukes of Bedford. He bought Hurst Lodge in 1742, and subsequently acquired property on the nearby manors of Sonning, Berkshire, and Sonning Eye, across the river in Oxfordshire. He died 21 Jan. 1787 at his London house in Great Russell Street, reputedly ‘possessed of £45,000 a year freehold, and at least £60,000 in mortgages and in the stocks’. He was succeeded by Richard Palmer, his only son with his second wife Charlotte Wakelin (his first marriage had been childless), who was born in 1768. VCH Berks. iii. 249; N. Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 304; Gent. Mag. (1787), i. 94; PROB 11/1149/738. In 1795 he bought Sonning House and its estates from Admiral Rich. He demolished the existing house the following year, and built a new one, Holme Park. He died 29 July 1806, a week after making his will, by which he provided his wife with an annuity of £400, in addition to her entitlement under their marriage settlement, and left £15,000 between his younger sons Richard (1795-1874) and Henry (1799-1870), who both entered the church, and their five sisters. His personalty was proved under £45,000. VCH Berks. iii. 204, 213, 514; E.W. Dormer, ‘Bishops’ Manor at Holme Park’, Berks. Arch. Jnl. xxxviii (1934), 177-83; A. Perkins, Bk. of Sonning, 7, 101, 104; PROB 11/1449/738; IR26/115/132. The principal beneficiary was his eldest son Robert, who was then a 13-year-old boy at Eton. Soon after he went to Cambridge, where he did not graduate, his uncle Charles Bowles told Farington that on coming of age he would have ‘7 or £8,000 a year besides money’. Farington Diary, xi. 3845. It was reported that at the ‘treat’ which he gave on attaining his majority, 31 Jan. 1814, ‘Mr Foster of Woodley, having drunk rather too much, was laid by to refresh, but was soon afterwards found to be dead’. [W. Turner], Reading 70 Years Ago ed. P.H. Ditchfield, 11.

In December 1816 Palmer turned down an invitation from the Tory corporation of Reading to stand for the borough at the next general election; and the home secretary Lord Sidmouth, who lived at nearby Woodley, declined to intervene with him, though he professed to be ‘confident that the town ... could not have a worthier representative’. Ibid. 60; Devon RO, Sidmouth mss, Sidmouth to Simonds, 16 Dec. 1816. At the county meeting to petition against the renewal of the suspension of habeas corpus, 10 June 1817, Palmer was one of the three members of the local Pitt Club who ‘held up their hands against it’. Reading 70 Years Ago, 67. He attended the county meeting to address George IV, 8 Mar. 1820, and later that day he nominated for re-election the Grenvillite Whig sitting Member Richard Neville, observing as he did so that it was a duty to posterity to hand down a constitution ‘improved if possible, but certainly not deteriorated’. The Times, 9 Mar. 1820. On Neville’s succession to the peerage at the end of February 1825 Palmer offered for the county, ostensibly in response to a requisition got up by the leading Tory squires. He was threatened with an opposition from the radical reformer William Hallett, who had contested Berkshire at the three previous general elections. (In 1818 Palmer, as sheriff and returning officer, had been personally inconvenienced by Hallett’s vexatious protraction of the poll to its maximum duration.) In the event Hallett, who was too ill to appear in person, withdrew at the last minute. At the nomination Palmer claimed that

he came forward politically a perfectly independent man; by independence, he meant that he was not particularly attached or bound to any public party ... or biased by any party feeling. Nevertheless ... when he considered the present unexampled state of the prosperity of the country, in all the branches and relations of its trade, commerce and manufactures, coupled with the gradual and material reduction of the public burdens, and the confident anticipation of their speedy and still further diminution - in a word, when those who had so efficiently and with such advantage to the country held the reins of government, he ... thought such ministers, under whose wise and able administration these results had been obtained, were justly entitled to his support as well as that of the country at large.

At the same time, he reserved his right to exercise independent judgement on specific issues. Berks. Chron. 5, 12, 19, 26 Mar.; Reading Mercury, 7, 14, 21, 28 Mar.; The Times, 25, 31 Mar. 1825. In a favourably disposed newspaper, he was fancifully described as being

of a lofty stature, and gifted with a fine manly figure. His countenance is marked and expressive, and his eye intelligent. His voice is sufficiently powerful for the purposes of oratory, but he does not strike the observer as a practised speaker. His manner is both modest and resolute; in it may be remarked a strong feeling of independence, guided by genuine English caution. Berks. Chron. 2 Apr. 1825; Add. 28673, f. 365.

He presented the petition of Wallingford corporation against Catholic relief, 18 Apr., Berks. Chron. 30 Apr. 1825. voted accordingly, 21 Apr. (but not on 10 May), and was in the minority against the disfranchisement of Irish 40s. freeholders, 26 Apr. 1825. He presented a petition from Wokingham against alteration of the corn laws, 25 Apr. The Times, 26 Apr. 1825. He voted with the Liverpool ministry to go into committee on the duke of Cumberland’s annuity bill, 6 June, and was listed in the majority for the third reading on the 10th; but he wrote to The Times to assert that he had not been in the House on the second occasion and that he had voted in the minority on 6 June for Brougham’s amendment to restrict the grant to £3,000. Ibid. 14 June; Berks. Chron. 18 June 1825. In 1826, he divided with government on the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar., and the salary of the president of the board of trade, 10 Apr. At the general election he was returned unopposed with the veteran Whig sitting Member Charles Dundas. On the hustings, he replied to criticism that by his vote of 10 Apr. he had supported ‘a great ministerial job’ and ‘a measure for increasing the influence of the government in the House of Commons’: he repudiated such an inference, insisting that he had merely voted for adequate remuneration, as originally proposed by opposition, for a deserving individual minister, Huskisson. He was also anxious to dispel the notion that he was hostile to the interests of agriculture. Without going in detail into the question of the corn laws, he warned that ministers were certain to make ‘some alteration’ in them next session:

Nor, indeed, have I heard any gentleman contend, that, under the existing state of the country, they ought to remain the permanent law of the land. I think that, if those principles of free trade which Parliament have thought proper to adopt (and be it remembered that they were adopted before I took a seat in that assembly) are to be persevered in, the same principle must be extended to the article of corn, taking care, at the same time, that a fair and sufficient protection be secured to the agriculturists of this country.

He suggested that before Parliament met the local agriculturists might confer and then inform himself and Dundas of their views by deputation. He reiterated his hostility to Catholic relief, and proclaimed himself ‘an unfettered man’, who would ‘maintain his seat upon independent principles’. Berks. Chron. 3, 24 June; The Times, 21 June 1826.

In February 1827 he felt obliged to give a written public explanation of his comments on free trade and protection, which had caused disquiet in the farming community. He denied having advocated repeal of the corn laws or expressed approval of free trade doctrines, and said that he had only intended to apprise the agriculturists of ‘what I conceived would be the probable result of the deliberations of Parliament upon this question’, so that they could give it due consideration. He promised to treat all petitions with ‘attention’. Berks. Chron. 10, 17, 24 Feb., 3 Mar. 1827. He presented one from Maidenhead against alteration of the corn laws, 27 Feb., together with others from Wallingford against the importation of foreign wool and from the farmers of north Berkshire for repeal of the Weights and Measures Act. The Times, 28 Feb. 1827. On the second reading of the corn bill, 2 Apr., he acknowledged the deficiencies of the Act of 1815, but said that as the representative of ‘a very large class of persons engaged in agricultural pursuits’, who believed that ‘a great part of the poor lands must be thrown out of cultivation by the permission to import foreign corn’, he felt it his ‘duty’ to oppose the measure from his conviction of ‘the utter ruin which must fall upon the agriculturists’. On 26 Feb., having been primed by the Tories of Wallingford, he gave details of the ‘flagrant bribery and corruption’ practised there by the Whig sitting Member William Hughes, which highlighted the ‘total inefficacy’ of the existing Bribery Act. He therefore supported Lord Althorp’s motion for the establishment of a select committee to consider petitions alleging electoral bribery; but later in the debate he expressed a preference for Williams Wynn’s suggestion that the time limits governing the presentation of such petitions be extended. He rubbed Dundas’s Whig nose in the dirt of Wallingford corruption, 19 Mar. Ibid. 20 Mar. 1827. He voted against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. On 28 May 1827 he voted against the disfranchisement of Penryn, but for Althorp’s bill to curb the expense of elections.

Palmer, who was appointed to the finance committee, 15 Feb., voted for repeal of the Test Acts ‘as an act of kindness and conciliation’ which posed no threat to the established church, 26 Feb. 1828. He secured a return of information on redeemed land tax, 5 Mar. He presented an anti-Catholic petition from the clergy of the archdeaconry of Berkshire, 25 Apr., and voted against relief, 12 May. He presented a petition against the alehouses licensing bill, 30 Apr., and on 19 June objected to a clause which seemed to demean borough magistrates. He said that Stuart Wortley’s bill to legalize the sale of game would not put an end to poaching, 13 June. He presented Vale petitions for increased protection against foreign wool, 1 July, and one from Reading victuallers against the beer bill, 8 July. He was not in the Wellington ministry’s majority on the ordnance estimates, 4 July 1828. Planta, the patronage secretary, submitted Palmer’s name to the home secretary Peel as a possible mover or seconder of the address at the opening of the 1829 session, but he was not selected. Add. 40398, f. 85. Planta was in any case ‘doubtful’ as to how he would vote on Catholic emancipation, though he numbered him among those who would, ‘when the principle is carried, support the securities’. Presenting four hostile petitions from Berkshire, 16 Feb., Palmer stated that while he concurred in their contention that the concession of Catholic claims would endanger the Protestant establishment, he was prepared in these ‘totally different’ circumstances to listen with an open mind to what ministers had to propose, as he was ‘in the habit of looking up with confidence’ to them. He hoped, though with little optimism, for a satisfactory settlement of the issue. He presented a petition from Reading against emancipation, 26 Feb., but voted to consider the ministerial scheme, 6 Mar., explaining three days later that he felt ‘there is no choice left to us ... but to come to the adjustment of this question’. At the same time, he feared the worst from the Irish Catholics’ opposition to the bill to disfranchise 40s. freeholders and reserved his right to oppose the relief bill if he concluded that it would not bring peace to Ireland. He presented favourable petitions from Dorset, 16 Mar., and probably voted for the third reading of the bill, 30 Mar. He presented a petition from the archdeaconry of Berkshire against the annual Maynooth grant, 9 Apr. He voted in the minority against the grant for the Marble Arch, 27 May, and presented a Berkshire wool producers’ petition for protection, 27 May 1829.

Palmer spoke and voted for Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830, when he deplored ministers’ failure to admit the full extent of the ‘very great distress’ which prevailed. His stand on this issue was said to have given ‘great satisfaction’ at the Reading corn market two days later. Berks. Chron. 13 Feb. 1830. On 18 Feb. he supported the prayer of the Berkshire agriculturists’ petition, presented by his colleague, for repeal of the beer, malt and hops taxes. He thought this a more practical solution to their problems than currency reform, though he believed that the resumption of cash payments had caused much hardship. Later that day he voted against Lord Blandford’s parliamentary reform scheme, as he did the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb. He voted against government on the Bathurst and Dundas pensions, 26 Mar., and the grant for Windsor Castle improvements, 3 May, when Goulburn, the chancellor, complained that Palmer and other country gentlemen had acted thus ‘shabbily’ ‘with a view to their elections’. Add. 40333, f. 101. He was reported to have been a dinner guest of Wellington, 4 Apr. Berks. Chron. 10 Apr. 1830. He presented Maidenhead petitions for mitigation of the death penalty for forgery, 5, 27 Apr., but did not vote for that measure, 7 June. He voted against Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May. He argued that the sale of beer bill went ‘a great deal too far’, 4 May, secured an amendment to it, 3 June, and voted for others to modify its impact, 21 June, 1 July. On 4 June he expressed regret that Lord Stanley had withdrawn his bill to deal with the removal of Irish and Scottish vagrant paupers, a ‘serious evil’ in Berkshire, and approved Sturges Bourne’s suggestion that parishes be empowered to assist at their own discretion. He voted against going into committee on the administration of justice bill, 18 June. On 30 June 1830 he divided in the opposition minority in the first division on a regency, but was ‘driven away’ from the second by Henry Brougham’s ‘violent’ speech. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 11 July [1830].

At the Berkshire meeting to vote condolences and congratulations to William IV, 24 July 1830, Palmer, who was reported to be ‘not popular in the county’, responded to Whig and radical demands for notice to be taken of distress by saying that ‘no man felt more for the privations of the labouring classes than he did’, and that he would be ‘ever ready to take charge of any petitions to the House of Commons on the subject, and to advocate to the utmost of his powers, any measures that might be calculated to afford relief’. Berks. Chron. 31 July 1831; NLW, Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, p. 10. There was no opposition to the return of himself and Dundas at the general election, when he explained his pragmatic support for Catholic emancipation. His cautious comments on the question of slavery, which he seemed to some of his audience to be defending, created dissatisfaction, and he had subsequently to issue a public explanation of his views, in which he insisted that abolition must be accompanied by ‘a due consideration of the interests of the West Indian proprietors’. On parliamentary reform, he substantiated his claim that he was ‘always ready to remove practical corruption wherever it was detected’ with an assertion that he had voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, though his name appears in none of the surviving division lists on that issue. He professed to favour the enfranchisement of unrepresented ‘commercial towns’ at the expense of ‘corrupt boroughs’, but considered that ‘radical reform’, especially the ballot, would produce ‘universal confusion’: ‘he was, therefore, a moderate reformer, but an objector to extensive innovation’. He boasted of the achievements of the finance committee in reducing public expenditure and called for tax remissions and inquiry into the civil list, though he was not sure that significant savings could be made in the latter. He asserted that the present corn laws provided ‘an inadequate protection’ against a poor harvest, and promised that on this subject he would ‘be found a faithful expositor of their local sentiments’. The Times, 9 Aug.; Reading Mercury, 9, 16 Aug. 1830. According to Charles Russell, the new Member for Reading, he gave a ‘gentlemanly and unpretending’ speech at the visitation feast of the grammar school in October 1830. Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. c. 160, f. 205.

Palmer, whom ministers listed among their ‘friends’, approved Williams Wynn’s proposal to do away with various antiquated oaths required to be sworn by Members before taking their seats, 4 Nov. 1830, and called for a general reduction of the ‘enormous number’ of unnecessary oaths imposed on public officers and for an end to ‘all civil disqualification in consequence of religious belief’. He voted against government on Parnell’s motion for the appointment of a select committee on the civil list, to which he was named, 15 Nov. He was given a month’s leave, 30 Nov. 1830, on account of the ‘disturbed state of his county’. Russell reported that he ‘very sensibly’ said that ‘against the fires’ enrolling a yeomanry ‘would be of no avail’, and that he ‘employed men to watch very vigilantly at night’ and recommended his tenantry to do likewise, ‘undertaking to share the expense with them’. Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, p.135; Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. c. 160, ff. 232, 241. He was a member of the grand jury for the special commission which tried rioters at Reading at the end of December 1830, when he had ‘much conversation upon the subject of reform’ with the foreman, Sir John Walsh of Warfield, Member for Sudbury. Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, pp. 149-50. He attended the Berkshire reform meeting, 17 Jan. 1831, and, while insisting on his right to act as he saw fit, and suggesting that the country’s problems were not solely attributable to the defects of the representative system, said that he would welcome any ‘practical and rational reform’, specifically the enfranchisement of large manufacturing towns, and that he would present the petition. Under pressure to support it in the House, he said that he would comply ‘so far as its prayer was for practical, rational and effectual reform’. Reading Mercury, 24 Jan. 1831. He was as good as his word when he presented it, 8 Feb., and he went on to observe that

having heard that the [Grey] government are unanimous in opinion as to the plan about to be proposed, and liking the constitution of the government, I entertain a sanguine hope that the plan will be such as this House may adopt, without endangering the structure of the constitution.

He presented a petition from the West Indian proprietors of Berkshire praying for fair compensation if slavery was abolished, 10 Feb. At the county meeting called to endorse the ministerial reform bill, 16 Mar., he admitted that he found himself ‘in a situation of some difficulty’, having expressed his support for ‘rational and practical reform’ and expected from an administration containing three former Canningites a moderate measure, but now being confronted with one which he considered to be ‘much too sweeping’: it ‘went at once, and too extensively, to objects, which even if necessary, should be gradually sought’. He particularly objected to the proposal to disfranchise many boroughs which were not tainted by corruption, and argued that the bill, which failed to tackle the problem of bribery, was the thin end of the radical reform wedge. He approved, however, the proposals to do away with corporation boroughs as such and to enfranchise 50s. copy and leaseholders in the counties. In deference to his constituents’ strong feelings in favour of the bill, he promised not to oppose its second reading, but made it clear that he would try to have it significantly modified in committee. The Times, 17 Mar. 1831; Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. d. 153, f. 107; Surr. Hist. Cent. Goulburn mss Acc 304/67B, Goulburn to wife, 17 Mar. 1831. After Dundas had presented the Berkshire petition, 22 Mar., he admitted that his own had been the only dissentient voice at the meeting and reiterated his opinion that the bill went much further than the ‘substantial’ measure of reform which he was prepared to swallow. In accordance with his promise, he voted for the second reading later that day. He declined to support Hume’s amendment to reduce the civil list grant by £12,000, 25 Mar., arguing that it was intended ‘only for a contingency fund’, but he reflected that the select committee seemed to have laboured ‘for very little purpose indeed’. On Benett’s motion to suspend the issue of the Liverpool writ, 29 Mar., he aired his view that the reform bill as it stood would not curb bribery, and promised to propose a clause requiring successful candidates to swear that they had not resorted to it. He presented a petition against the Kennet navigation bill, 13 Apr., and others from Berkshire against the Sale of Beer Act, which he said had encouraged the labouring poor to waste their time and money in drinking, 18 Apr. 1831. The following day he voted for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment to the reform bill.

Palmer sought to retain his seat at the ensuing general election, but he was up against it from the start, when he effectively left it up to the voters to determine whether or not he should persevere. Dundas was joined by another unreserved reformer, and Palmer’s statement that although he could not ‘go the whole length’ of the government scheme, he was ‘a friend to a substantial but at the same time a rational measure, such as would extend the elective franchise, where it can be shown to be necessary, and to correct abuses’, cut no ice with the overwhelming pro-reform majority. His withdrawal from the contest, previously determined in consultation with his leading supporters, was announced at the nomination meeting, 4 May 1831, and in an address the following day he conceded that ‘the force of public opinion’, in which many of his former supporters shared, had compelled him to admit defeat. Walsh thought that Palmer, ‘a cautious, retired, reserved man, caring very little about the representation of the county, and disliking contest or trouble’, had thrown in the towel too readily. A number of his opponents acknowledged his courage and honesty. Reading Mercury, 25 Apr., 2, 9, 16 May 1831; Add. 28671, f. 124; Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, p. 181; Warws. RO, Throckmorton mss CR 1998/Tribune/folder 16/28, 30, 31; Gash, 300-2.

It was expected that Dundas would be made a peer, and Palmer indicated in the autumn of 1831 that he would in that case stand for the county. Bodl. MS. Eng. lett. d. 153, f. 174; Reading Mercury, 10, 17, 24, 31 Oct., 7 Nov. 1831. Yet in January 1832 Walsh reported that, reticent as ever, he seemed unwilling to incur the expense of a contest. A meeting of leading Tories, 25 Jan., failed to agree on starting a subscription for him, but set on foot a preparatory canvass. Palmer was ‘very general in his expressions about politics [and] declared that he never would come in as the tool of any party, which watchword gave him an opportunity of evading all declarations about politics’. He did, however, ‘say that he should oppose the reform bill on the second [sic] reading’. In view of this, Walsh was ‘rather surprised’ in March by Palmer’s expression of his ‘perfect willingness’ to become a member of the Carlton Club. Walsh, who saw him as ‘an important acquisition’, was quick to put the necessary measures in train so as ‘to fix him’. Ormathwaite mss FG1/6, pp. 5, 6, 9, 10, 52. Palmer duly offered when Dundas’s peerage was ratified in May 1832. Denying the allegation that he was ‘an enemy to the principle of reform’, he stated his belief that

a measure of reform, embracing the principal features of the bill now in progress, namely the abolition of nomination boroughs, the proportionate enfranchisement of important towns, together with an extension of the elective franchise, is necessary to afford satisfaction to the country.

Challenged by reformers to clarify his views and to state categorically whether he would support the current bill ‘unimpaired in all its essentials’, he replied in a public letter of 17 May, when the reform ministers had been reinstated, that while he could not make such a pledge, ‘in direct contradiction of my former and present opinions, as to some of the details of that measure, and especially of the qualification clause’, he would not oppose the passage of the bill, in the unlikely event of its returning to the Commons. The reformers rallied behind Hallett. Berks. Chron. 12, 19 May; Reading Mercury, 14, 21 May; The Times, 23-25 May 1832. Palmer excused himself from attendance at the county meeting to address the king and petition the Lords in support of the bill, 25 May, on the ground that he had ‘caught so bad a cold during my canvass, that I am totally unable to speak a word audibly’. At the nomination, he denied being a Tory stooge, stressed that as reform was now safe those who had deserted him the previous year could safely return to their allegiance, and claimed that he had not voted for Gascoyne’s amendment with the intention of killing the reform bill, which he had wished to go into committee. He had no objection to inquiry into the possibility of an equitable commutation of tithes, but he was opposed to any ‘spoliation’. On the opening day of the election, he argued that the corn and poor laws were issues of more immediate importance to the agricultural interest than was reform, but observed that misguided Tory resistance to any change in 1830 (from which he absolved himself) had done much to precipitate the crisis. He boasted of his constant attendance and unfailing support for reductions on the 1828 finance committee, and his vote against the Wellington ministry on the civil list. He was reported to have lapsed three times into a lengthy and unaccountable silence. The Times, 26, 29 May, 1 June 1832. During the seven-day poll Palmer, who flatly denied a charge that he had in fact voted for East Retford to be thrown into the hundreds, rather than be disfranchised for the benefit of Birmingham, observed that when the reform bill had been

passed, and there shall no longer be any ground for objecting to our system of representation, I trust that there will arise in the country a strong and influential Conservative party, which will be always ready to stand by the throne, by the altar and by the people. There is a party in the state ... which may be distinguished under the title of levellers, men, who, under the specious sound of reform, are ready to pull down the institutions which they have neither the intelligence nor the virtue to admire. If the time will ever come when these men will endeavour to carry their designs into execution, I shall be found one of the Conservative party, and I have no doubt that in this county, as well as throughout England, that party will have the predominance.

After his comfortable victory over Hallett, in a contest which attracted considerable national attention, he declared that the basic issue had not been reform, but ‘whether the gentry and yeomanry of this county should have the liberty to return a Member ... of their own choosing, or whether they should submit to the dictation of the political unions’. Ibid. 2, 4-9 June 1832; Ormathwaite mss FG1/6, pp. 79, 80, 83, 84, 87. In the House, 28 June 1832, he requested government action to reduce the ‘incredible annual expense’ incurred by Berkshire in dealing with transient Irish paupers. He approved of Burrell’s labourers employment bill, 9 July, arguing that it was ‘better that a man should be employed and earn his livelihood, than that he should be paid out of the parish rate for doing nothing’. He voted against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July. He called for an end to the squabble over Lord Brougham’s offensive remarks about Edward Sugden*, though he thought Brougham owed an apology, 27 July. He endorsed the principle of the bribery bill, 30 July 1832, but thought it required more careful consideration than the House was able to give it at that late stage of the Parliament.

Palmer topped the poll for Berkshire at the 1832 general election and sat for the county until his retirement in 1859. Left to his own devices, he might well have followed Peel on repeal of the corn laws in 1846, but rampant protectionism among his farming constituents gave him little choice but to oppose it. Gash, 317-18. A long-serving chairman of Berkshire quarter sessions, he died a bachelor in November 1872. The Times, 26 Nov. 1872. By his will, dated 10 May 1849, he left all his real estate except a farm in Essex, which he devised to his brother Henry, to his brother Richard, rector of Purley, Berkshire. He bequeathed £5,000 each (doubled by a codicil of 5 Mar. 1862) to Henry and his surviving sisters Elizabeth, Susanna Caroline and Laura Frances. After Henry’s death in 1870 he made over the Essex property to Richard, his residuary legatee (18 Jan. 1871). He left a total of £4,000 in three per cent consols to form a trust fund for the inmates of his almshouses at Sonning, and £2,000 to provide coals for the deserving poor of the parish. On the Rev. Richard Palmer’s death the estates passed to his sister Susanna, and she was succeeded in 1880 by her nephew the Rev. Henry Golding, son of her sister Charlotte, who took the name of Palmer.