Cressett Pelham was renowned for his eccentricity, largesse and love of field sports. An episode of mental illness in 1797 had interrupted his parliamentary career as Member for Lewes, and in 1801 a commission of lunacy had been taken out against him. He recovered to succeed his father in 1803 to Crowhurst Place and the 7,000-acre Cressett estate of Cound, stayed regularly at Hastings and settled in Shropshire, where he became an enthusiastic sponsor of the county hunt.
so juristical, so ambiguous, that the most ingenious cannot discover from anything contained in it, what are his principles, or whether he has any principles at all. Had he spoken a few minutes longer, even he, with all his studied ambiguity, could scarcely have failed to give the world some little insight into his future conduct.
Aston Hall mss C.1111.
Cressett Pelham’s remarks could rarely be heard or understood by reporters in the gallery, but he was a busy and voluble county Member. He divided with his Tory colleague Rowland Hill against Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and presented and endorsed hostile petitions from Shropshire and London, 18 Apr., 6, 10 May 1825.
He brought up protectionist petitions from Shropshire against altering the corn laws, 26 Feb., and divided against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827.
The Wellington administration counted Cressett Pelham among their ‘foes’, but, possibly heeding Cleveland’s adherence to them, he commended the address, 2 Nov., and did not vote on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented and endorsed petitions against slavery, 4 Nov., and the coastwise coal duty, 11, 15 Nov., when he defended Members’ right to explain the contents of the petitions they presented and protested at the delay in considering election petitions. He called on the new Grey ministry to take up the slavery question themselves rather than leave it to private Members, 17 Nov. He was against adjourning the House during the ‘Swing’ riots, warmly endorsed Littleton’s truck bill, 13, 14 Dec., and expressed continued support for Sturges Bourne’s select vestries bill, 16 Dec. 1830, and repeal of the coastwise coal duty, 4 Feb. 1831. Sir Thomas Martin, the comptroller of the navy, dismissed his plea for a reduction in the estimates as proof that he knew ‘nothing at all about the subject’, 25 Mar. 1831. Cressett Pelham continued to air his grievances over the constitutional change wrought by Catholic emancipation, 4, 18 Nov., but called for ‘open discussion’ and the speedy consideration of parliamentary reform, 6, 9 Dec. 1830. He did not, as local reformers had hoped, encourage Shropshire to petition for reform;
[Cressett Pelham] has often voted for the lessening of taxes; but with that versatility of judgement peculiar to himself, he has thought proper to oppose reform; an act which I think is hardly atoned for either by those frequent harangues of his, which make such a figure in the debates, or by that perfectly original scheme, which he once proposed, that Parliament should move for change of air from one town to another.
Shrewsbury Chron. 29 Apr. 1831.
Denied the support of Cleveland, who had declared for the ministry and the bill, he sought Tory patronage at the ensuing general election and, despite complaints from Sir John Wrottesley* and others about his contrariness, attendance, failure to have his speeches reported and ‘performance of public duties’, he defeated Lloyd and Mytton and was re-elected with the anti-reformer Hill. He boldly defended his conduct, particularly his visit to the West Indies, and vote against the reform bill, and his denunciation of its provision for dividing counties like Shropshire was loudly cheered.
He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July 1831. He pointedly declined to make common cause with Hunt and its detractors who advocated universal suffrage, 8 July; and before dividing for Gordon’s adjournment motion, 12 July, one of at least five for which he voted that night, he condemned the bill as ‘mischievous, dangerous and unconstitutional’ and the ‘most ill-contrived piece of legislation ever submitted to a British Parliament’, and warned that it would inevitably lead to universal suffrage. He endorsed anti-reform petitions, 13, 14, 15 July, and objected almost daily in committee to the bill’s details and its threat to the constitution. He voted to use the 1831 census to determine English borough disfranchisements, 19 July, and strenuously opposed the disfranchisement of Bishop’s Castle, refuting Lord John Russell’s allegations that it was a corrupt nomination borough, 20 July. He defended the rights of the burgesses of Hedon and Midhurst, 22 July, of New Romney, St. Mawes and Seaford, 26 July, objecting especially to combining the latter with Hastings. Before voting against the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July, he asserted that Members should not act solely for their own constituencies, but for the country at large, highlighted the constitutional differences between the American confederacy and the United Kingdom and pointed to the migratory nature of the population in the growing towns, which he conceded deserved to be enfranchised. He objected to taking Members from East Grinstead and Maldon, 29 July, and Sudbury, 2 Aug., and referred to himself as one of the ‘half a dozen Members’ railed at by Grattan on the 4th for ‘taking upon themselves the character of champions of all the boroughs, and repeating night after night the same argument’. He defended their conduct, 4, 5 Aug., and endorsed Charles Williams Wynn’s remarks and praise for the Welsh contributory borough system, 9, 10 Aug., when he also drew attention to anomalies in the treatment of Yorkshire. He vehemently opposed the division of counties, 11 Aug., and cited this as his chief objection to awarding county representation to the Isle of Wight independently of Hampshire, 16 Aug., and the proposal for the rape of Bramber, 2 Sept. He was not listed in the majority for Lord Chandos’s amendment for enfranchising £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug., but evidently favoured it. He queried ministers’ definition of such voters, 19 Aug., and defended them as ‘persons of the highest respectability’ when Cumberland petitioned against their enfranchisement, 27 Aug. He supported the abortive amendment to preserve existing voting rights, 27 Aug., criticized the bill’s registration proposals, 3, 6 Sept., and preamble, 7 Sept., and divided against its passage, 21 Sept. He voted against the second reading of the Scottish measure, 23 Sept., and objected to the proposed union of Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, 4 Oct. He was named as a defaulter and did not vote on Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. 1831.
When the Irish government was implicated in corruption at the Dublin election, he had called on the committee chairman Robert Gordon to confirm allegations of treasury interference and failed, by 76-51, with a motion to postpone the new writ, 8 Aug. 1831. He divided for Gordon’s censure motion based on the committee’s report, 23 Aug., and against issuing the Liverpool writ in order to consider the bribery there, 5 Sept. Harrying ministers and delaying the reform bill, he made time-wasting interventions on the navy estimates, 27 June, railway bills, 28 June, 21 July, the customs duties, 1, 11 July, and the Lescene and Escoffery case, 18 Aug. He called for lower duties on malt and tiles, 1 July, 15 Aug., and expressed support for the regulation of child labour in factories, 27 July. He objected to printing the radical Waterford petition for disarming the Irish yeomanry, 1 Aug., and, speaking ‘as a Protestant’, reiterated his objections to the Maynooth grant, 5 Aug., 26 Sept. He acknowledged the evils of absenteeism and said that he supported ‘in principle’ Perceval’s proposal to make Irish county lord lieutenants resident, 6 Oct. He voted against the truck bill, 12 Sept., and to postpone the Windsor Castle and Buckingham House grants, 28 Sept. As he explained in committee on the Sugar Refinery Act, 7 Oct., he saw no dichotomy between his endorsement of anti-slavery petitions, 27 June, and support for the West India lobby’s call for a select committee on the sugar trade, 12 Sept. He complained that the Newfoundland inquiry had been ‘got rid of ... by a side wind’, 13 Sept. 1831.
Cressett Pelham opposed the revised reform bill on constitutional grounds and voted against its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831. Urging further postponement for modification, on 20 Jan. 1832 he voted against proceeding with it in committee, where his idiosyncratic and almost daily criticisms of its minutiae contributed, almost inadvertently, to the opposition’s delaying tactics. Defending their conduct, 2 Feb., he denied that ‘any unnecessary delay has been offered to the bill’, which he insisted was ‘intended to serve the purposes of persons out of doors’. He again criticized the division of counties, 27 Jan., 10 Mar., and provisions for voter registration and polling, 24 Jan., 8, 10, Feb., and argued that the creation of £10 voters would increase corruption, 7 Feb. He voted against enfranchising Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and suggested that day that Southwark should have been attached to the City and Salford to Manchester and that the boundaries of Bishop’s Castle should have been adjusted to enable it to retain its franchise. He expressed unrepentant opposition to the bill before voting against its third reading, 22 Mar. When, during the days of May, the City petitioned for withholding supplies until the bill was passed, 10 May, he spoke highly of the corporation and protested at the impending degradation of the constituency by the infusion of ‘a set of vagabond £10 voters’. He persisted, almost to the last, in voicing his opposition to the Scottish and Irish measures, 1 June, 2, 6 July, and voted to preserve Irish freemen’s voting rights, 2 July. He had endorsed the call for information on Holland and Belgium, 6 Aug. 1831, and divided against administration on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July, but stated on 7 Aug. 1832 that in view of existing treaty arrangements and his preference for settling domestic concerns he would divide with them on Russia and Poland. When party strength was tested on relations with Portugal, on which apparently he did not vote, 9 Feb. 1832, he maintained that the true issues at stake were the breaches of the Foreign Enlistment Act involved and ‘improper partiality’ shown by ministers.
Cressett Pelham, fixed in his determination to intervene on all issues, opposed the Buckingham House expenditure, 17 Jan., 29 Feb., and seconded Trench’s abortive motion for details of the cost of refurbishing St. James’s Palace as an alternative, 27 Mar. 1832. Opposing the anatomy bill as a minority teller, 17 Jan., he suggested punishing the buyers and sellers of bodies and claimed that wars afforded ample opportunity for studying corpses; he voted against the bill’s recommittal, 27 Feb. He argued against rushing through the general register bill, 19 Jan. He remained convinced that Irish Catholics should have no control over church revenues, 24 Jan., 8, 14 Feb., and repeated his objections to the Maynooth grant, 23 June, 27 July. He voiced qualified support for the factory bill, 9 Feb., and voted against the malt drawback bill, 29 Feb. Among his several interventions on finance, he objected to the grants for a national gallery and record office, as ‘the best way to expand the mind is for young men to go and contemplate the arts in Greece and Italy’, 23 July, and he opposed public expenditure on book purchases for Aberdeen University, 28 July. Drawing on his experience of Sussex, he pointed to the futility of legislating against smuggling, 25 July. He supported the notion of ‘a general system of sewerage’ in London to improve public health, 31 July, and welcomed a concession permitting naval chaplains on half-pay to hold church livings, 8 Aug. He protested that the stagecoach bill would never have been passed had more country gentlemen been obliged to stay in town until the end of the session, 10 Aug. 1832.
He welcomed the proposed grant for Barbados, 29 Feb., and voted in Buxton’s minority for the immediate appointment of a select committee on colonial slavery, 24 May 1832, but stated that he considered Buxton’s speech ‘diametrically opposed to its object’ and the slaves as yet intellectually unprepared to assume the same functions in the state as Europeans:
I am inclined to believe that the laws, for the management of the lower orders in the West Indies, are not much more severe than those for the lower orders here. As to Jamaica, I know nothing about that; but I am acquainted with many of the Leeward Islands, and certainly am not disposed to give credence to the exaggerated statements that are made in this country about them. On one of those islands I went with the temporary governor to a Dissenting meeting, at which there appeared to be every mark of devotion. We cannot read the minds of men, but I know it appeared to me that there were more Christians among these blacks than in this metropolis. Above all, I trust that no measure will be adopted so as to lay this House under a restriction.
He was for appointing a select committee to consider emigration to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s land, 7 June, and divided against going into committee on the government’s bill to provide relief from local taxation in the West Indian crown colonies, 3 Aug. He seconded Perceval’s motion alleging breach of privilege against the printer Lawson, 31 Jan., by which Hume was prompted to admit responsibility for publicizing details of proceedings after the House had been cleared on the 26th. He deplored the leniency shown to the attorney Wright, 7 May, and the disclosure of evidence submitted to the select committee on Irish tithes, 1 June, and expressed support in principle for adhering to the practice of stamping government publications, 24 June. Criticizing Spring Rice’s proposals for regulating franking, 26 July, he argued that post office revenues would increase if free franking was abolished and said he had never used a Member’s privilege of giving franks. He proposed transferring to the state all ‘fees and extra emoluments accruing in the office of clerk of the patents and register of affidavits in the court of chancery’, 30 June, but the chancellor Lord Althorp pointed out that the public would gain little thereby and his motion was negatived without a division. He voted against Hume’s ‘tardy’ proposal to disqualify the recorder of Dublin from sitting in Parliament, 24 July, and had little time for the petition of complaint about Nottingham gaol, 1 Aug., or Hume’s arguments against compensating Sir Abraham Bradley King, 3 Aug. 1832. Evaluating him, the Spectator observed:
Cressett Pelham is noted for his eccentricity, to make use of a very mild word to describe his strange conduct in public and private life. The Shropshire farmers say he is not accountable, the reporters ... say he is incomprehensible, men of business say he is impracticable. We say that it is disgraceful and contemptible conduct in the electorate of such a great and wealthy county to chose such a man to represent them ... But Mr. Pelham not infrequently does very kind actions, and occasionally, like all other odd fellows, makes shrewd remarks. He is besides, the master of his own estate, has no family and can live on £50 per annum and declares he will rather be reduced to extremity than driven from his seat.
Spectator, 20 Oct. 1832.
Notwithstanding the complaints of Whigs and squib writers, his return for the Conservative stronghold of South Shropshire in December 1832 seemed assured.