HUGHES HUGHES, William (1792-1874), of Clapham Common, Surr. and Belle Vue House, Ryde, I.o.W.

Little is known of Hughes’s antecedents. His father, John Hewitt, who lived in Greek Street, Soho, married the daughter of William Hughes of Clapham, a wealthy property owner and urban landlord, on 20 Oct. 1791. IGI (London). Just under a year later, their first child was baptized in the church of St. Anne as William Hughes Hewitt. They had at least three more sons and five daughters between 1793 and 1810. Ibid. On 10 Feb. 1809 William Hewitt was articled for five years to the attorney Emmanuel Allen of Carlisle Street, Soho, vestry clerk of St. Anne’s. He was admitted as an attorney in common pleas on 16 Feb. 1814. TNA IND 1/4570, 4601. He appears to have practised initially at 5 Palgrave Place, Temple, but from 1817 his address was given in the Law Lists as Clapham Common. In August 1814 he married, and at about this time he became a liveryman of London as a member of the Cordwainers’ Guild. His father died intestate in 1821. Administration of his estate, which was valued at under £800, was granted on 22 May to his widow, but she died soon afterwards, and administration was granted on 15 Nov. 1821 to their second son, Frederick Hewitt. PROB 6/197/82, 112. William was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn the following year and withdrew his name from the register of attorneys in 1825, when he became a wealthy man, as the principal beneficiary of the will of his grandfather William Hughes, who died in May, worth about £90,000 in personalty alone. Hewitt’s inheritance consisted of four leased freehold houses in Nicholson Lane, London, several dwellings and pieces of land at Battersea Rise and Clapham and a half-share in the residue of the estate, which was calculated for duty at almost £85,000. Gent. Mag. (1825), i. 476; PROB 11/1699/264; IR26/1045/511. In compliance with his grandfather’s direction, he took the name of Hughes in lieu of Hewitt, and thereafter styled himself, ludicrously, as Hughes Hughes. He evidently used part of his windfall to acquire a property at Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, where he was an occasional resident, though his principal base remained at Clapham.

In February 1826 he offered for Oxford, where the ministerialist and anti-Catholic sitting Member, Sir Charles Wetherell, the solicitor-general, was expected to stand down to contest the current vacancy in the University representation. In the event, Wetherell decided to stay put, but Hughes and his main rival Robert Eden*, brother-in-law of Peel, the home secretary, announced their intention of standing for the city at the next general election, as did the other sitting Member, John Lockhart. In a series of addresses typical of an argumentative and verbose man, Hughes, who took ‘independence’ as his watchword, reported the progress of his continuing canvass of the non-resident voters, including those in London, and declared his utter hostility to Catholic relief, and his support for the ‘mitigation, and gradual abolition’ of slavery, ‘a material alteration, if not total abandonment’ of the corn laws, transfer of the duty on beer to malt, and such a repeal of taxes on necessities as was compatible with the public service. Oxford University and City Herald, 18, 25 Feb., 4, 11, 18, 25 Mar. 1826. Resuming his canvass of the out-voters in late April 1826, he made a virtue of the fact that, unlike Eden, a chancery lawyer, he was not ‘engaged in any profession or business’ which would distract him from his parliamentary duties. He expanded on this at the general election in June, when he said that the recent Commons resolutions regulating committees on bills made it imperative ‘to return gentlemen of complete leisure, inasmuch as upon them additional duties will now devolve of the highest importance, and requiring a devotion of time incompatible with other engagements’. He suggested that the corn laws had received ‘a death-blow’ from the decision temporarily to open the ports, and welcomed the rejection of the Liverpool ministry’s attempt to give the treasurer of the navy a separate ministerial salary. When Eden withdrew, Hughes seemed certain to come in unopposed with Lockhart, but many of the resident electors resented him as a stranger, and at the last minute they put up James Langston, a popular Oxfordshire Whig, who had just been defeated at Woodstock by the Blenheim interest. He topped the poll, and Hughes finished well adrift of Lockhart. Ibid. 29 Apr., 3, 10, 17 June; The Times, 26 May, 13, 16, 17 June; Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 17 June 1826.

Hughes, who continued to cultivate Oxford, Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 5 Aug., 14 Oct. 1826; Oxford University and City Herald, 19 June 1830. was called to the bar in 1827, but if he practised it was only for a short time, on the home circuit and at Surrey sessions. Both Langston and Lockhart supported Catholic emancipation in 1829, when Hughes let it be known in Oxford that his attachment to the Protestant constitution remained ‘firm and unalterable’, and that in the gallery of the Commons he had ‘heard with alarm and indignation the monstrous project’ explained. Oxford University and City Herald, 14 Mar. 1829. He did not, however, initially come forward for the city at the general election of 1830 when, after a rumour that he would offer for Maidstone had come to nothing, he accepted an invitation to stand for Rochester as an Ultra Protestant and canvassed the borough with some success. However, his leading supporters at Oxford, where Langston and Lockhart sought re-election, kept his name before the freemen and hinted that he might yet stand. He abandoned Rochester two days before the Oxford nomination, having apparently received private assurances of enough support to turn out Lockhart, who had become vulnerable. In both constituencies his conduct was the subject of complaint and recrimination, with the chairman of his Rochester committee alleging that he had been bought off by Lord Jersey, the father of his rival Lord Villiers*, with a promise to pay his Rochester expenses and give him such support as he commanded at Oxford by virtue of his property in the county. For his part, Hughes denied any such connivance, later claiming that Oxford had always been his ‘first love’. He led the poll, in which he was heavily dependent on the support of non-resident, especially London, voters, for three of the five days and, although overtaken by Langston, finished comfortably ahead of Lockhart, who did not prosecute the petition which he lodged. Maidstone Gazette, 25 May, 8 June, 6, 13, 20, 27 July; Oxford University and City Herald, 19 June, 10, 17, 24, 31 July, 7 Aug. 1830, 16 Apr. 1831; Rochester Gazette, 3 Aug.; The Times, 3 Aug. 1830.

The Wellington ministry listed Hughes among the ‘good doubtfuls’, while Henry Brougham* claimed him as a gain for opposition. (He never joined Brooks’s.) From the outset of his parliamentary career, he was an unabashed contributor to debate. He presented and endorsed an Oxford Anglicans’ petition for the abolition of slavery, 3 Nov. 1830, when, approving the address, after being reassured that there would be no unwarrantable interference in the internal affairs of Holland, he trusted that he would in future be able to support government, ‘notwithstanding the confident predictions which had appeared to the contrary’. Disclaiming any attachment to ‘a factious and irreconcilable opposition’, he promised backing for ministers in their attempts to ‘uphold whatever is excellent in those institutions under which this country has so long flourished, to introduce useful reforms, and, above all, to reduce the public burdens, and promote all practicable economy and retrenchment’. He applauded their ‘judicious step’ in advising the king not to go into the City for the lord mayor’s jamboree, 8 Nov., but helped to vote them out of office on the civil list, 15 Nov. He presented an anti-slavery petition from Dissenting women of Oxford, 10 Nov. He opposed Alderman Thompson’s bill to regulate charitable institutions, 7 Dec. His suggestions for amendments to the regency bill were ruled out as unnecessarily pedantic, 9, 10 Dec., but on the 13th Dec. he secured a change to the title of the Colonial Acts validity bill to provide for the longer duration of patents after a demise of the crown. On 17 Dec. he presented a bill to improve fire precautions in the erection of buildings and party walls within a 12-mile radius of London. It was printed for consideration, went through its second reading, 11 Feb. 1831, and was referred to a select committee, 14 Mar., but made no further progress in the 1830 Parliament. Hughes had the House counted out to adjourn the debate on Sugden’s motion for returns concerning chancery administration, 20 Dec. 1830.

He presented petitions from the clergy of Bristol, 4 Feb., and Southampton, 18 Feb. 1831, for the introduction of a bill to encourage individuals to build and endow churches by allowing them to hold the perpetual presentation without the consent of the ecclesiastical authorities: he argued that it was the duty of government ‘adequately to furnish the population with the means of sound religious instruction, according to the principles of the established church’, but that in the current state of the finances public money should not be so applied. He presented similar petitions from Devon, Manchester, and Rutland, 2, 7, 10 and 18 Mar., when he expressed fears, discounted by the Grey ministry, that the additional churches bill which had just passed the Lords posed a threat to the Church of England. He presented a petition from the minister and congregation of Fitroy Episcopal Chapel, Fitzroy Square, London, for a day of ‘public humiliation, fasting and prayer’, 7 Feb. He brought up similar ones from Cheltenham, 8 Feb., when he rebuked the O’Gorman Mahon for casual ‘invocation of the name of the Deity’ but got no support from the Speaker, and from Ryde, 14 Feb., when he seconded Perceval’s motion for a general fast. He expressed no personal opinion on the merits of a petition for inquiry by synod into the state of the church which he presented, 11 Feb. Frustrated in his attempt to have printed an anti-slavery petition from Fitzroy Chapel, 9 Feb., he threatened to read extracts from every subsequent one, and in many cases, particularly those concerned with additional churches, he proved as good as his word. He presented more anti-slavery petitions, 10, 15, 16 Feb., 9, 23 Mar., 14 Apr., and on 9 Mar. divided the House on his motion, defeated by 48-16, to have that from the women of Ryde printed. He complained that the proposed tax on steamboat passengers would be damaging to the Isle of Wight, 17 Feb., and supported the prayer of hostile petitions presented by others, 29 Mar. As requested by several London parishes, he urged objections to Hobhouse’s Vestry Act amendment bill, 21 Feb., specifying as the main one in his own eyes the fact that it came near to ‘the principle of universal suffrage, to which I am most decidedly opposed’. When Daniel O’Connell presented two Oxford parish petitions calling for parliamentary reform, 26 Feb., Hughes, professing ignorance of their existence, claimed that his ‘enlightened constituency’ wished him to come to the question unfettered. In a public letter to the mayor pleading a call of the House as his reason for not attending the city meeting to endorse the ministerial reform bill, 15 Mar., he stated that he, like ‘the soundest and best part of the population’, was ‘altogether averse to ... radical reform’, but wished to see ‘such temperate, wise and practical amendments, as are consistent with the spirit of our constitution, and the advanced civilization of the age in which we live’. He therefore endorsed the bill, which he had at first considered to be ‘too sweeping’, as a ‘timely concession’, obstructive resistance to which would lead to disaster beneath ‘the deluge of a ferocious democracy’. At the same time, he reserved his right to seek amendments to its details, notably its proposal to disfranchise non-resident freemen. Oxford University, City and County Herald, 19 Mar. 1831. On the day of the Oxford meeting, he presented a petition from Tain for reform of the Scottish electoral system. When Langston presented the Oxford petition, 19 Mar., Hughes welcomed it and declared his support for the second reading of the bill, which he delivered silently, 22 Mar. During the following week he visited Oxford to canvass opinion on the measure. Ibid. 26 Mar. 1831. In the House, 29 Mar., he supported the Hampshire reform petition, but was invited by the Speaker to explain his remark that its strong language was justified by the denials by the Members for Newport, in defiance of ‘the sentiments of the people’, of the need for reform; he felt that he had nothing for which to apologize. He was one of the Members bringing pressure to bear on ministers to allow the vote to the future children and apprentices of qualified freemen, as he explained at an Oxford dinner, 11 Apr., when he complained of ‘a kind of guerilla warfare’ against his ‘honour and character’ over the Rochester affair and denied a rumour that he did not intend to support the third reading of the bill. Ibid. 16 Apr.; The Times, 18 Apr. 1831. He tried unsuccessfully to kill the Wolvercot enclosure bill, which was opposed by the Oxford authorities, 13 Apr. According to an Oxford newspaper, he voted in Hume’s minority of 17 for deducting royal pensions from the civil list, 14 Apr. Oxford University, City and County Herald, 23 Apr. 1831. He voted against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment to the reform bill, 19 Apr. 1831. The next day he repudiated Hunt’s assertions that it was ‘a fraud or a delusion on the people of England’ and that most of them did not understand it, and testified to the strength of support for it in Oxford. At the ensuing general election he and Langston were re-elected unopposed as its enthusiastic supporters. In reply to the allegation that it was inconsistent in him to support the entire bill after voicing reservations over its details, he argued that ‘we must have the whole bill or no bill, its component parts being so nicely adjusted, that if you withdraw one point you destroy the equipoise and mar the whole’. He predicted that this regenerative measure of reform would strengthen the throne, aristocracy and church, and lead to the abolition of sinecure places and pensions and, ultimately, to a reduction in taxes on the poor. At the same election, he supported reformers in Oxfordshire, Surrey and Hampshire. Ibid. 30 Apr., 7, 21 May 1831.

Hughes secured a return of information on applications for the erection of new churches under the Acts of 1825 and 1827, 23 June, and drew attention to the filthy state of the interior of Westminster Hall, 8 July 1831. He had earlier written to Lord John Russell specifying various detailed changes which he wished to be made to the reform bill, and it was stated in the Oxford press that he would hesitate to support the second reading of the reintroduced measure unless ministers agreed to allow quarterly as well as half-yearly rent payers to vote. Ibid. 2 July 1831. In the event, he voted silently for it, 6 July. It was from the opposition benches that he deplored the ‘gross act of injustice’ of refusing Sir Abraham King compensation for the loss of his patent to supply official stationery, 11 July. He had given notices of motions to abandon the division of counties and to give the Isle of Wight two Members instead of the proposed one. On 13 July he supported the prayer of a petition to that effect, a few hours after voting steadily with ministers throughout the night against an adjournment. Ibid. 16 July 1831. For the next three weeks he was a steady supporter of the details of the bill in committee, though he was in the minority for the total disfranchisement of Saltash, 26 July. He spoke for the disfranchisement of Downton, 21 July, and Minehead, 22 July, and for the removal of one seat from Chippenham, 27 July, and Guildford, 29 July. He persuaded Lord Althorp to postpone consideration of the division of Lincolnshire, which he was prepared to exempt from his hostility to the general principle, 10 Aug., when he paired for the enfranchisement of Merthyr. The next day he pressed his amendment against the division of counties, arguing that it would create ‘districts’ under the control of great landowners and lead inevitably to adoption of the ballot. He was defeated by 241-122, but announced on 16 Aug. that he would try again at the report stage. Later that day he unsuccessfully put the case for giving the Isle of Wight an additional Member, to look after its agricultural interest. He had earlier given notice of an amendment to clause 18 to get rid of the anomaly whereby freeholders of borough property, the tenants of which included an occupier paying £10 or more, would not be able to vote for the county by virtue of that property. He had been at the foreign office meeting of reform Members, 11 July, when Althorp had indicated that ministers planned to move this amendment themselves, and Hughes stated to the House, without contradiction, 13 Aug., that this was their intention. He was one of the Members accidentally locked out of the division on Davies’s amendment to confine freeholders of cities and towns which were counties of themselves to the borough; he would have opposed it. M. Brock, Great Reform Act, 226-7, 370; The Times, 19 Aug. 1831. On 18 Aug. he voted for Chandos’s successful amendment to enfranchise £50 tenants-at-will in the counties, after stating that he was unwilling to give landlords the power of withholding or conferring the vote by the arbitrary refusal or grant of a seven-year lease. He defended his action in a letter to The Times, where it had been criticized. The Times, 20 Aug. 1831. On 19 Aug. he gave notice that before the House next went into committee on the reform bill he would move a resolution that there should be no reduction in the current number of Members. When Althorp, responding to the reverse over the Chandos clause, 19 Aug., outlined proposed adjustments whereby borough copyholders and leaseholders were to be permitted to vote in counties, Hughes complained of a ‘breach of faith’ by ministers, and moved an amendment against the altered clause which was defeated by 187-1; Warburton was his only supporter. Attacked in The Times for trying to delay the bill, he wrote to defend his record of support for it, to justify dividing the House and to deny that in proposing that there should be no reduction in the number of Members he was resurrecting Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment. He also wrote aggressively to the editor of the Morning Herald, whom he accused of trying to undermine his position at Oxford by portraying him as a covert enemy of the bill. He claimed that he had ‘given a more undivided attention to the business of the House, and more votes personally, in favour of the bill, than any other Member’, insisted on his right to exercise independent judgement on matters of detail, and said that if the division of counties went through he would vote for the ballot and triennial parliaments. Ibid. 23 Aug.; Oxford University, City and County Herald, 27 Aug., 3 Sept. 1831. In the House, 24 Aug., he announced that he had decided to postpone his motion regarding the number of Members until the report stage, when the fate of his renewed proposition concerning the division of counties would be known. Complaining that ministers had sanctioned and encouraged the slurs cast on him in the press, he sought to justify his conduct, and explained that he wished 32 hitherto unallocated seats to go to large towns, in order to counterbalance the effects of the division of counties and the Chandos clause. He opposed Campbell’s amendment against enfranchising tenants who paid rent more frequently than by the quarter, because it would give too much power to landlords, 25 Aug. The following day, after adjusting the terms of an amendment of which he had given earlier notice, he proposed that, in order to prevent any ‘system of jobbing in votes’, notices to quit on weekly tenants should not have the effect of depriving them of the franchise at the next election. Althorp dismissed the notion as fanciful, and it was negatived. On 27 Aug. Hughes welcomed proposed changes to clauses 23 and 25, and suggested others which would make the division of counties relatively unobjectionable, namely that the boundary commissioners should be empowered to make a report of opinion, not determination, as to how to divide the schedule G counties, and that those not thus dealt with by Parliament should be left undivided with four Members. Later that day he voted in the minority of 17 to preserve existing voting rights, and he divided for attempts to preserve the rights of all freemen and of non-residents, 30 Aug. He defended these votes (on which Langston took the government side) in the Oxford press, asserting that he would rather resign his seat than be an ‘automaton’ in the House. The Times, 29 Aug.; Oxford University, City and County Herald, 3 Sept. 1831. He protested against the appointment as boundary commissioners of the lord chief baron, two county Members and a clergyman, 1 Sept., but admitted that by making concessions government had now largely overcome his original objections to the unconstitutional powers of the commissioners. At the same time, he called on them to abandon the division of counties proposals, which would unduly delay the implementation of reform. Another self-exculpatory letter to The Times ensued. The Times, 3 Sept.; Oxford University, City and County Herald, 10 Sept. 1831. He completed his retreat on this issue, 3 Sept., explaining that Althorp’s statement of the previous day (when Hughes had voted with ministers on the franchise of the four sluiced freeholder boroughs), that either House would be able to send back the commissioners’ reports for revision as often as they wished, had persuaded him to swallow the division of counties. He reproved Sugden for mischievously suggesting that the commissioners were already at work without official sanction, 5 Sept. The following day he got nowhere with his amendment to have the cost of erecting booths and hustings charged on the constituency authorities, which he peevishly withdrew, whining that trying to secure changes in the bill was a ‘hopeless’ task. The Speaker put an abrupt end to his attempted explanation of his reasons for dropping his motion relating to the number of Members, 7 Sept. He was in the minority for the disfranchisement of Aldborough, 14 Sept. He favoured a 15 rather than seven-mile limit for qualified non-resident freemen voters, 13 Sept. He voted for the third reading and passage of the reform bill, 19, 21 Sept., and for the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. Four days later he hastened to the Isle of Wight to address the reform meeting at Newport, 28 Sept., when, according to one report, he was ‘not received so cordially as he might have been’. He was back at his post in the Commons on the 30th, and on 10 Oct. 1831 divided for the motion of confidence in the ministry. Portsmouth Herald, 2 Oct.; Oxford University, City and County Herald, 8 Oct. 1831.

Hughes called for permanent provision for the duchess of Kent as the mother of the heir presumptive, 3, 10 Aug. 1831. He wanted imposition of the penalty of hard labour for infractions of the game laws left to the discretion of magistrates, 8 Aug. That day he spoke for the issue of a new writ for Dublin, and he voted with ministers for the prosecution of only the bribers at the last election, 23 Aug. He promised support for Gordon’s proposed motion for inquiry into pensions on the consolidated fund, 12 Aug. He was in the anti-Catholic minorities of 11 for the Irish union of parishes bill, 19 Aug., and of 47 for an end to the Maynooth grant, 26 Sept. He secured the second reading of his Churches Building Act amendment bill, 23 Aug., and on the 25th, when he handed it over to government, assured its critics that far from seeking to increase the powers of the official commissioners, it aimed to curb them and give more scope to individuals. He made suggestions on details of the measure, 26 Sept., 3 Oct. After the recent loss of the Rothay Castle, he recommended the appointment in every port of an official to monitor the seaworthiness of passenger vessels, 3 Sept.; he was named to the select committee on steam navigation, 6 Sept. He voted for inquiry into the effects of the Sugar Refinery Act on the West India interest, 12 Sept., and on 13 Oct. unsuccessfully moved the adjournment of the debate on the bill to renew it, which he said tended to encourage the foreign slave trade. Oxford University, City and County Herald, 17 Sept. 1831. On 15 Sept. 1831 he voted in Hunt’s minority of six for inquiry by committee of the whole House into the corn laws; but he subsequently wrote to The Times to explain that in doing so he had not committed himself to their repeal, which was unattainable, and that his preferred option was a ‘moderate fixed duty’. The Times, 17 Sept.; Oxford University, City and County Herald, 24 Sept. 1831.

In early December 1831 Hughes stood for election as an alderman of London for Portsoken ward against Michael Scales, who had been chosen there earlier in the year but been unseated by a judgment in king’s bench. Scales won comfortably, but on 3 Jan. 1832 the court of aldermen, as expected, seated Hughes in his stead. He held the post until he was ousted by king’s bench on a writ of quo warranto in July. The Times, 6, 7 Dec., 4 Jan. 1832; A.B. Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 186, 188, 242. He voted on 17 Dec. 1831 for the second reading of the revised reform bill, which, as was pointed out in his favour in the local press, incorporated a number of the changes for which he had campaigned, including preservation of the voting rights of the future children and apprentices of qualified freemen. Oxford University, City and County Herald, 17 Dec. 1831. He voted steadily for the bill in committee, though he was in the minority against the inclusion of Helston in schedule B, 23 Feb., and divided for its third reading, 22 Mar. 1832; but he is not reported to have uttered a syllable on it during its passage through the Commons. He voted against Hobhouse’s vestry reform bill, 23 Jan. He secured a return of information on prisoners for debt in the Fleet, 27 Feb. The following day he stated that after consultations with surveyors and government officials he had decided to drop his previous bill to regulate the building of party walls and to introduce a new one, on the model of the present Act; but on 1 June he announced that he had given up the idea. On 20 Mar. he introduced, with government support, a bill to rectify the anomaly whereby the provisions of the Act of 1823 allowing courts to abstain from the formality of imposing the death penalty for certain offences had not been extended to London and Middlesex. To his frustration and annoyance, he encountered obstructive opposition from Colonel Sibthorp, the reactionary Tory Member for Lincoln, whom he took to task for saying that the cost of transporting criminals to New South Wales could be saved by executing them, 26 Mar. Hughes eventually got the measure through the Commons, 31 Mar., but it did not return from the Lords. He was forced to withdraw, with a bad grace, his notice of 30 Mar. for a motion to end proxy voting in the Lords, which the Speaker said might lead to ‘a very unpleasant collision’ between the two Houses. He decided not to press his contemplated changes to the friendly societies bill, 2 Apr. He advocated giving the current Irish registrar a salary of £1,500, rather than the lower sum proposed by some Irish Members, 3, 9 Apr., voted with ministers for the navy civil departments bill, 6 Apr., and endorsed the London corporation petition for the abolition of slavery, 4 Apr. 1832.

At the London common council meeting, 10 May 1832, Hughes, who was present with five other aldermen, objected to the resolution calling for the Commons to withhold supplies until the reform bill had been carried, arguing that it was absurd to deny support to a putative government of whose composition they were as yet ignorant. He moved an amendment expressing undiminished confidence in the Grey ministry and the hope that any new administration would carry a bill ‘equally full and efficient’ as the one before the Lords. Amid much confusion, he was forced to drop it, but he and his fellow aldermen signified their dissent from the resolution. In the House later that day, when the City Members endorsed and claimed unanimous council support for the petition, Hughes detailed these events and dissociated himself from the ‘premature’ and ‘most dangerous step’ of withholding the supplies. However, he voted for the motion for an address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the bill unimpaired. On 15 May he denied that he had ‘committed a gross calumny’ on his brother aldermen, as had been alleged by one of his detractors in common council the previous day. The Times, 11, 15 May 1832. He voted for the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish bill, 1 June. He was in the minority against the government’s temporizing amendment to Fowell Buxton’s motion for the abolition of slavery, 24 May, and voted to make coroners’ inquests public, 20 June. He presented and endorsed an Oxford petition for relaxation of the criminal code, 30 May. He was one of the committee appointed to consider the agricultural labourers bill, 5 June, when he threw out the suggestion that it should not apply within ten miles of London. He presented hostile petitions from his area of Surrey, 8 June. He clashed again with Sibthorp, over the steam vessels bill, that day. On 19 June he obtained a return of information on the Act of 1831 giving additional powers to the commissioners for the erection of new churches, to substantiate his claim that it had proved to be ineffectual. He was named to the select committee on observance of the Sabbath, 3 July, and presented a number of petitions from retailers and tradesmen calling for steps to improve it, 8, 9, 11 Aug. He voted with government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12, 16, 20 July 1832.

Hughes stood again for Oxford at the general election of 1832, was beaten into third place by a local Catholic Liberal, but was seated on petition. Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 14 July, 6 Oct., 17 Nov., 1, 8, 15 Dec. 1832. He continued to support the Grey ministry, but was alienated by the Melbourne administration’s programme of church reform, and it was as a Conservative that he topped the Oxford poll in 1835. His parliamentary career was ended by his defeat in 1837. In 1834 he published a new edition of De Lolme’s Constitution of England. As master of the cordwainers he was elected alderman for Bread Street ward, after a scrutiny, in 1843, and served for almost five years. The Times, 19-21 Sept., 19 Oct. 1843, 13 Apr. 1848; Beaven, i. 54 The remainder of his life is obscure. He had left the Isle of Wight by 1857, and it was at Ilkley Wells, near Skipton, Yorkshire, that he died in October 1874. By his brief will, dated 15 Oct. 1872, he left small legacies to various relatives and to his ‘highly valued friend Mary Ann Kemp’. He divided the residue of his estate equally between his only son, William Hughes Hughes, a barrister, his five surviving daughters, and the children of his late daughter Ann Hughes May. His effects were sworn under a derisory £300.