‘Nobody to me [is] more agreeable than Fazakerley’, Sydney Smith told Lady Holland in 1832.
a man of more literary information, more acuteness, and power of argument, and withal of more extended and comprehensive views than most I know. Hence it is he [is] the intimate friend and correspondent of Lords Lansdowne and Holland, and most of the eminent men of that class of this day.
Hatherton diary, 18 Jan. [1832].
Fazakerley, who had joined Brooks’s in 1812, was a popular figure in Whig society. He was steadfast in his attachment to the tenets of mainstream Whiggery (for example, he applauded the choice of Tierney as leader in the Commons in 1818 as ‘a rebuke to the Mountain’);
Soon afterwards Fazakerley, whose health was indifferent at this time, sold his property at West Hill on the Isle of Wight, though ‘not at half its value’, as he told George Graham, 25 July 1820:
One can’t quite easily part with the old walls and trees and views to which one has been so long accustomed ... And now I meditate a scheme for seeing Italy and hearing some debates in the Parliament of Naples next winter.
He welcomed the rebellion there and the consequent ‘discomfiture of the legitimates’ of Europe, whom he wished ‘no greater harm than to be obliged to govern by laws which secure the lives and properties of their subjects’. He reported that Queen Caroline was
still a great favourite with the people, and even with those who have no doubt of her guilt she finds some mercy, for they say she was so ill used that she could not help it ... I have little doubt of her conviction. There is an end to economy and reform of all sorts till this question is disposed of. No one will listen to any other subject.
Bromley Davenport mss, Fazakerley to Davenport, 4 Apr. 1820; Add. 48215, ff. 11, 13, 15.
Fazakerley, who had acquired a Devon estate at Stoodleigh, did not in the event winter in Italy; he was at Bowood and Althorp at the turn of the year.
In January 1822 he was at Nice, where he became engaged to the dwarfish and myopic Eleanor Montagu, ‘one of the Portman Square constellation’ of Tories with intellectual pretensions, whose sister Jane was married to Henry Goulburn*, the Irish secretary. He wrote ‘jokingly’ of the business to Graham:
The sun of Nice has melted two obdurate hearts and instead of going on as a bachelor into Italy as I intended I shall have to return to England to make preparations for submitting to the yoke of a little lady rather more diminutive even than your esteemed rib ... there is no great beauty and no money, so that at least I have proceeded on the hope of having discovered other excellent reasons for my choice ... it will take six or eight months at least to get money matters and my cursed estate put into proper order and in the meantime we wish to be as quiet as possible.
Add. 48215, f. 19; 51576, Fazakerley to Lady Holland, 4 Jan.; 51687, Lansdowne to Holland, 21 Jan. 1822.
Sir James Mackintosh* wrote sourly of this ‘singular piece of news’:
He is fastidious, indulgent to his own peculiarities and extremely susceptible to annoyance from disagreeable companions, and in short seemed a predetermined bachelor. He is to marry the daughter of a renowned bore and a member of a family so disagreeable that it seems needless to examine the character of any individual of it.
Add. 52445, f. 37.
George Agar Ellis* thought it a ‘foolish’ enterprise.
In the late summer of 1822 Fazakerley, who observed to his friend Edward Davies Davenport* that he longed to see ‘a great republic ... solidly established’ in place of the Austrian monarchy, reluctantly tore himself away from ‘ses bois et ses champs’ at Stoodleigh, as his wife told Mrs. Graham, to go abroad with her.
He is a little out with me about my love of society and towns, which is only natural, as he cannot tell till he tries me whether I shall take to a life so different from what I was made for ... I am not afraid of his continuing dissatisfied with me, for I mean when once the die is cast to take to making butter and feeding chickens in good earnest. It would be too foolish with every essential happiness to throw it away because I do not exactly lead the life that suits my fancy.
Add. 52011, Mrs. Fazakerley to Fox, 21 Feb., 7, 19, 29 Aug., 16 Sept.; 52017, Townshend to same, 30 Aug. 1825.
In late October, to the great relief of Eleanor, who perceived that it was ‘a considerable privation to Faz, though the united opinions of all his friends had made him submit to think that it would not be a wise measure’, he gave up the idea of buying Courtlands. They had already settled on Sidmouth for their winter quarters, and were resolved to wait a year or two before deciding what to do with the Stoodleigh estate, which was proving profitable, and where to settle permanently. There was, Mrs. Fazakerley told Fox, ‘some chance of Faz’s coming into Parliament, which delights me for many reasons’; and various unspecified schemes were considered during the following six months.
Fazakerley, writing from Stoodleigh, his summer base, in August 1826, admitted to Lady Holland that ‘I begin to acknowledge the inconvenience of the distance of Devonshire, and I should not be surprised if I made up my mind to sell what I have here, though it would cost me a pang’. Bedford commented to her two months later that ‘the account of Faz is melancholy. He is wholly unfitted to be a country gentleman, and much as I should like to have him for a neighbour in Devon, I heartily wish for his own sake he would sell that estate’.
I scarcely knew him ... but ever since the late struggle, all the opinions and principles which I value have been so bound up with Canning’s existence and his power, that certainly no public event ever made me feel so comfortless and despondent. Indeed I cannot see hope in any direction, for if the king were to send for the best of the present men and desire them to form a government, I don’t see how they could manage matters in the House of Commons. Wellington and Peel hang over me like a nightmare. I see no chance of escape. And then what is to become of Ireland and the whole of our foreign policy? All this and the mortification which one feels at the triumph of those base people, his former colleagues.
Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ossington mss OsC 47.
A few weeks later, rejoicing that ‘the apolitical are still without the walls’, he congratulated Thomas Frankland Lewis* on his appointment as financial secretary to the treasury in the Goderich ministry and exhorted him to ‘be honest, and to use your influence ... to accomplish every practicable degree of retrenchment, and not to join the senseless and wicked cry of those who say there is no use in small savings’:
The principle on which Canning professed to proceed, and on which Lord Lansdowne joined him, was that the old Tory fortress was not to be taken by storm, but that it was to be gradually and silently undermined by the effect of placing good men in situations of influence ... I think and from the beginning thought them so right in this that I believe no other system would have succeeded and that under any other mode of operating the church and king [party] would have scattered them to the winds.
NLW, Harpton Court mss C/416.
He had, however, no faith in Goderich’s competence as premier and placed his ‘hope, and confidence and comfort of every sort’ in Huskisson, despite fears for his health.
Fazakerley presented Lincoln petitions for repeal of the Malt Act, 8 Feb., and of the stamp duty on receipts, 25 Feb. 1828. He brought up petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 21, 25, 26 Feb., when he voted for that measure. On 6 Mar. he presented a petition from the freeholders of Lincoln seeking the right to vote for the county. He voted against the proposal to sluice the delinquent borough of East Retford with the freeholders of Bassetlaw, 21 Mar. He voted for Catholic relief, 12 May. He divided against the Wellington ministry on civil list pensions, 20 May, the Irish assessment of lessors bill, 12 June, the archbishop of Canterbury’s bill, 16 June, the garrisons grant, 20 June, the refurbishment of Buckingham House, 23 June, the additional churches bill, 30 June, and the ordnance estimates, 4 and 7 July. He presented a Lincoln petition for repeal of the Act restricting the circulation of one pound notes, 9 June, and one from Calne for the abolition of colonial slavery, 25 July 1828.
Fazakerley, who predicted to Littleton, 20 Sept., that ‘these Brunswick clubs will drive the government to some decision’ on the Catholic question, ‘and as no government is likely to listen to their calls for blood, the decision can hardly fail to be right’, took Sunning Hill, Berkshire as a winter residence that year.
we have no wandering plans at present and shall scarcely form any even of the most limited kind whilst Faz is in Parliament. A dissolution, however, from the king’s health cannot be far off and then perhaps we may go abroad for a few months or a year.
Add. 52011.
Fazakerley urged James Abercromby* to use his influence to try to restrain Sir James Graham* and Lord Althorp*, who had been speaking of ‘open war if the duke [of Wellington] does not produce a measure‘ of Catholic emancipation. He subsequently expressed his hope that
all the friends of civil and religious liberty will drop their differences and unite to press for measures of concession. It ought to be agreed to do this in an amendment [to the address] and to take a vote upon the first night, unless ministers announce their intention to do something, and I am ... anxious that this ground should be taken at once, and firm opposition proclaimed to any government that will not settle the question. If Althorp agrees in this view, and acts upon it stoutly from the first, everyone will rally behind him.
NLS mss 24770, ff. 23, 29.
He voted for emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., and presented a constituent’s petition in its favour, 11 Mar. 1829. He brought up a Lincoln petition for repeal of the assessed taxes, 10 Apr. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May, but was shut out of the division on Lord Blandford’s reform motion, 2 June. He voted against the grant for the Marble Arch, 25 May, and to reduce the hemp duties, 1 June. He told Stratford Canning*, 10 May 1829, that after the passage of emancipation ‘a languor and a want of interest’ had overcome politicians: ‘The Tories are gradually returning to their natural allegiance and the Whigs would require great provocation to act against ministers’, especially as Peel as home secretary was ‘as liberal on almost all subjects as he dares to be’.
Fazakerley voted for the amendment to the address, 4 Feb., and on 12 Feb. 1830, expressing his ‘entire concurrence’ in the prayer of the Lincoln petition, presented by his colleague Sibthorp, for repeal of the assessed taxes and the malt duty to help relieve distress, called on ministers to reduce expenditure across the board. He voted with Hume for a remission of taxes, 15 Feb., and was in the opposition minorities on the estimates, 19 Feb., 1 Mar. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., 5, 15 Mar., and the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., but not for Blandford’s reform scheme, 18 Feb. He was one of the 27 opposition Members (he and Russell were examples of the ‘wisest’ among them, in the view of Graham) who met at the Albany, 3 Mar., and agreed to act under Althorp’s leadership to seek reductions in expenditure and taxation.
At the general election a few weeks later Fazakerley abandoned Lincoln and canvassed Arundel on the interest of the 12th duke of Norfolk. His prospects initially appeared promising, but the intervention of a second Whig, which, as he explained to Milton, ‘would have added both to the trouble and expense of the election’, prompted him to withdraw, convinced that he had made the ‘right decision’. He could not ‘summon up courage’ to stand for Pontefract, as Milton apparently suggested, and, writing from Stoodleigh, 24 July 1830, he observed:
It is naturally very painful to me to separate from friends with whom I have so long engaged in the most interesting of all pursuits ... But the best things must have an end, and I shall content myself with observing from these remote fastnesses the progress which you all make in promoting the public good. In this almost unexampled relaxation of public morals, and I am sorry to think indifference in the constituent body, you will have a task more difficult than ever. The difficulties too of the country are becoming greater every day.
Brighton Guardian, 7, 14 July; Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 9 July; Add. 51813, Phillimore to Holland, 14 July 1830; Wentworth Woodhouse mun. G2/11, 18.
Milton was not alone in regretting Fazakerley’s absence from the next Parliament, reflecting that he and his father had ‘the will, but not the means’ to assist him. Charles Poulett Thomson* told him that ‘I know of no one in the House amongst our common friends whose opinion I ranked so highly or on whose judgement I could so much rely as yours, and I shall badly miss the support I found in them’.
I am sorry ... but I think his decision was only prudent under the circumstances ... This country (that is London) is abominably expensive, and we found that our income was not at all more than was absolutely necessary to live (though comfortably) yet very quietly, five months of the year in London; and therefore, when it was a question of sinking a considerable sum of money to come into Parliament, with no reasonable prospect of our common and unavoidable expenses doing anything but increase, we thought it high time to retreat and make the sacrifice in time. Faz dislikes London so much, that though of course sorry to lose the interest of politics and drop his intercourse with many friends whom he saw principally in the House, he does not much care about the matter, and I have already ceased to think about it.
They were undecided, she went on, whether to remain at Stoodleigh for the winter and spring, to take a house at Torquay or to go to Paris.
Fazakerley, whom Maria Edgeworth met and described as ‘most agreeable’ at about this time,
the last election, and the manner in which several counties broke loose from the old influence of aristocracy and property, convinced me of the necessity of dealing largely with this question: otherwise it was, I thought, clear that if the excitement went on at the next election, the 40s. freeholders throughout England would take the game into their own hands, return Members of extreme popular opinions for every county, and throw such a body into Parliament as would deprive any government of the power of controlling or shaping any measure of reform. Had the late House of Commons acted differently on the questions of East Retford and the great towns, had the counties not acted as they did in many instances at the late election, and, to crown all, had ... Wellington not made so extravagant a declaration on the subject, the case might have been far different; but all these things together have produced a state of feeling with which, added to the real merit of the argument, it would be madness and folly to contend. The new government therefore very wisely at once announce a reform; and every one is very anxious to know what they will do.
For his own part, conceiving that ‘the question concerns less the composition of the House of Commons, than the character and composition of the elective body’, and that the principal object was ‘to reconcile the middling classes to the parliamentary constitution’, he favoured the abolition of ‘decayed boroughs and transferring their rights to populous towns, fixing the right of voting at a reasonable amount of qualification’; opening ‘close corporations’ to ‘resident householders rated at a certain sum’; disfranchising non-resident voters and ‘the lowest of the scot and lot and potwallopers who are the people most open to bribery and profligate corruption’, and making practical arrangements to reduce the cost of elections for counties, where he would raise the freeholders’ qualification and give the vote to respectable copyholders and leaseholders.
agree with me in thinking that almost any plan brought forward by this government ought to be supported by persons of our opinions. It is pretty certain to be a great improvement on the present state of things, and any government who will undertake such a measure has in my eyes so much merit and is sure to meet with so many difficulties, that it would require a very strong case to give me courage to vote against them. I feel this not only on the reform question, but generally, that we in our lives have never seen an administration so likely to do good and to act virtuously. Their own characters and the times are guarantees for their good conduct, so I shall go to London with a disposition to be among the most submissive of their adherents. It would indeed be most painful to find myself obliged to think even of acting otherwise.
He was in a dilemma over the recently revealed and ‘frightful’ list of sinecures and pensions: though reluctant to interfere with legal rights, he acknowledged that ‘the proof of corruption here is so flagrant and the amount so enormous, and the whole system so flagitious, that I long to find in my own mind a plea for attacking them’.
Fazakerley was returned unopposed for Peterborough at the 1831 general election, but appears to have been an absentee, probably because of poor health, for most of the first session of the new Parliament, when the only known traces of his activity are his pairings on the ministerial side for the divisions on the second reading of the re-introduced reform bill, 6 July, and on details of the measure, 5, 9, 17 Aug. His friend Sir James Macdonald* told him, 14 Sept., that he ‘ought not to hesitate’ to go up for the third reading, and he was present to vote for the passage of the bill, 21 Sept.
He was much more assiduous in his attendance in the 1832 session, when he voted generally for the details of the reform bill, though he was one of the minority of 32 who opposed ratification of the £50 tenants-at-will franchise, 1 Feb. He divided for the third reading, 22 Mar. He voted with government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 27 Jan., their policy on Portugal, 9 Feb., and the navy civil departments bill, 6 Apr. He presented a Peterborough petition against the general register bill, 31 Jan. He was added to the East India committee, 1 Feb., and named to that on slavery, 30 May. Kept in London during April by his wife’s advanced state of pregnancy, he continued to fret about the reform bill’s prospects in the Lords.
Fazakerley resisted attempts to get him to stand for the Northern division of Devon at the general election of 1832, when he came in again unopposed for Peterborough.