The Jenkins, a cadet branch of the Charlton (Salop) family of that name, had East India connections and a mansion in Shrewsbury’s Abbey Foregate, built in 1698 by Thomas Jenkins. His descendants had intermarried with the county families of Wingfield of Preston Brockhurst, Charlton of Ludford, Leighton of Loton, Lloyd of Aston Hall and Muckleston of Bicton, through whom, by the death in childbirth in 1740 of Laetitia, the wife of Richard Jenkins (d. 1743), they had acquired that estate. Jenkins, the eldest of six children, was born at Cruckton and baptized at Portesbury, 2 June 1785.
I cannot help but feel mortified at the neglect which I have experienced from the authorities at home, now eight years since I was led to expect some special rank or favour ... Whatever may be the result I shall wish to be able to leave Nagpur early in 1827, and to embark from Calcutta towards the end of that year.
OIOC mss. Eur. F. 228/140/92.
The prospect of a vacancy for Shrewsbury may have induced him to apply to bring forward his departure on ‘urgent family considerations ... pressed upon me in letters from home’ in January 1826.
an enemy to all regulations and restrictions which tend to shackle a man from doing the best for himself without injuring his neighbour. I am of opinion that legislation on such subjects is best left alone. I am an enemy to all monopolies, domestic and foreign, which tend to close any available markets for the produce of our manufactories. India and China are imagined to afford these fields; and should I be returned ... no vote of mine shall oppose the just claims of the public. But this question involves the destiny of many millions of people, and I cannot bring myself, therefore, to view it as a matter of commercial regulation.
E. Edwards, Parl. Elections in Shrewsbury, 25-26; Shrewsbury Chron. 6 Aug. 1830; Salop Archives D45/1170/6.
On the eve of the poll he refused ‘for family reasons’ to go to Persia as commander-in-chief, a posting approved by Wellington, and which Elphinstone had already rejected.
Henry Brougham* thought that Jenkins might oppose the Wellington ministry, but they included him among their ‘friends’ and, perceiving that their existence ‘depended on the result of that question’, he divided with them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830, and corrected The Times for listing him as an absentee.
I am a friend to moderate reform, meaning thereby the admission of the great unrepresented towns to send Members to Parliament and the extension of the elective franchise to householders of a certain grade in towns and to leaseholders and copyholders in counties. I conceive, however, that these measures might be engrafted on the elective system as it stands, but I cannot see the necessity of subverting so many boroughs altogether, nor still less of taking away the right of voting from the lower classes, and of entirely reconstructing the elective system, which, however complicated, is interwoven with the habits and feelings, the patriotic feelings, of the lower classes. Any measure for checking bribery and corruption, and for lessening the expense and trouble of elections, both to the electors and the elected, I am also a good friend to; and in these views I dare say the subsidiary measures proposed may be useful and at least worth trying. With such opinions, I should not be disposed entirely to oppose the [Grey ministry’s] plan, but I shall not be able finally to agree to it without considerable changes ... I am not inclined to be a violent anti-reformer, but I am convinced that we ought not to go too far in demolishing old institutions, with the view of correcting abuses, in conjunction with which the country has so long flourished, the envy and admiration of the world.
Shrewsbury Chron. 18 Mar. 1831.
When their petition in favour of the reform bill was presented, 21 Mar., he testified to the respectability of its 1,000 signatories, but dissented from their prayer and said that ‘though not altogether an anti-reformer’, he considered the government’s measure ‘too sweeping’. He divided against its second reading, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. His supporters pressed their argument that most of Shrewsbury’s freemen would be disfranchised by the bill, and he kept his seat at the general election that month, assisted by the retirement after the first day’s poll of Boycott and the Manchester Unitarian mill owner Richard Potter†. He was denied a hearing on the hustings, and his opponents insisted that his votes did not match his professions of support for ‘moderate reform’. In his intended speech, which he had printed, he said that he had voted against the Grey administration on the timber duties, 18 Mar., because he thought lowering them would damage shipping ‘for the theoretical advantage of free trade’. Directly after the chairing he returned to London, where his second son was born, 20 May 1831, and kept aloof from the Shropshire contest.
Jenkins suggested holding anti-reform dinners and divided against the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, and to use the 1831 census to determine borough representation, 19 July 1831.
Jenkins had announced his candidature for Shrewsbury and canvassed early, but on 27 Oct. 1832 he stood down on health grounds, making way for another Conservative, Sir John Hanmer. He replaced Hanmer in 1837 after a severe contest and retired in 1841.