ANDERSON PELHAM, Hon. Charles Anderson Worsley (1809-1862).

When Anderson Pelham’s father succeeded as 2nd Baron Yarborough in September 1823 he wished Gilbert John Heathcote* to replace him as Member for Lincolnshire, but on his refusal he brought forward Sir William Amcotts Ingilby in order to keep out Sir Robert Heron*. According to Emelia Boucherett, Yarborough hoped that Amcotts Ingilby ‘could easily be turned out when young Pelham came of age’, but in the event he proved a popular Member and sat undisturbed. Anderson Pelham was returned for the family’s pocket borough of Newtown at the 1830 general election, when he was only just of age. He later told the Lincolnshire freeholders that ‘not only was there no chairing at my electing, but I was never at the borough in my life’. Suff. RO (Ipswich), Barne mss HA53/359/88; R.J. Olney, Lincs. Politics, 93-94; Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 13 May 1831. He was listed by the Wellington ministry as one of their ‘foes’ and voted against them on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented a petition for the abolition of slavery, 6 Dec. 1830. In his maiden speech, 7 Mar. 1831, he justified his support for the Grey ministry’s reform bill and its proposed disfranchisement of Newtown on the ground that ‘large and populous towns were not represented at all’, citing the absurdity of a borough of 102 inhabitants returning two Members and his family’s readiness to set aside all private interest ‘for the benefit of the people’. He voted for the bill’s second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. At the ensuing general election he had planned to sit again for Newtown, but following an anti-reformer’s decision to retire from Lincolnshire and Heathcote’s refusal to stand, he was persuaded by the reformers to come forward for the vacancy. On the hustings he denied that reform posed a threat to the agricultural interest, promised to vote for ‘all stages’ of the bill, and declared his abhorrence of slavery. The reformers insisted that he was not Yarborough’s nominee and he was returned unopposed. Lincs. AO, Ancaster mss ANC XIII/B/6, h, q; 3ANC 9/14/273; Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 29 Apr., 6, 13, 20 May 1831.

With other county Members, he took some interest in the progress of the Fordingham drainage bill in June and July 1831. Ancaster mss 3ANC 9/13/3. He was chosen to move the address, 21 June, when he defended the government’s dispatch of troops to Lisbon, stressed the general enthusiasm for reform, of which his own election furnished a ‘striking illustration’, and called for a ‘fair and moderate’ discussion of the reintroduced bill, reminding Members of the restraint shown out of doors. He divided for its second reading, 6 July, and told The Times that he had been omitted from the lists on the 12th, when ‘I voted against the adjournment on every division, and was one of the majority at seven in the morning’. The Times, 18 July 1831. He gave steady support to the bill’s details and reiterated his support for the disfranchisement of Newtown because of its economic insignificance, 22 July. He presented a petition from parts of Holland (Lincolnshire) against the registry of deeds bill, 11 July. He divided for the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. At a county reform meeting following the defeat of the bill in the Lords, 18 Nov. 1831, he declared that nothing but ill health would prevent him from supporting the measure. Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 30 Sept., 25 Nov., 30 Dec. 1831. His marriage at Brighton may explain why he paired for the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831. He steadily supported its details in committee, and voted for its third reading, 22 Mar., and for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May 1832. He presented petitions against the Blankney and Ruskington drainage bills, 11 May, and against the general register bill, 7 June. He paired against a Conservative amendment to increase Scottish county representation, 1 June, and spoke and was a majority teller against Tennyson’s attempt to amend the boundaries of Stamford, 22 June. On 2 July, however, he was in the minority of 39 for preserving the electoral rights of Irish freemen. He voted with ministers on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12, 16 July (as a pair), and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. He divided to make coroners’ inquests public, 20 June. He presented petitions from Long Sutton complaining of an increase in the incidence of sheep stealing, 4 July, and from the North Eastern Unitarian Association in favour of the new Irish education system, 9 July. He was in the minorities against Hume’s motion to disqualify the Dublin recorder from Parliament, 24 July, and the grant to Maynooth College, 27 July. Addressing the Grimsby reform festival, 14 Sept. 1832, he declared himself ‘ardently attached’ to the cause of reform but lukewarm about the secret ballot. J. Drakard, Grimsby Reform Festival, 9, 11-12.

At the 1832 general election Anderson Pelham topped the poll for North Lincolnshire. He sat there as a Liberal until his succession to the peerage in 1837, in which capacity he acquired the epithet ‘Yarborough the Good’. G.E. Collins, Hist. Brocklesby Hounds, 12. He was suffering from partial paralysis when appointed lord lieutenant in 1857 and never recovered from the shock of being wrecked in his yacht Zoe off the Norfolk coast that year, after which he was ‘constantly attended’ by a physician. The Times, 27 May 1857; Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 10, 17 Jan. 1862. He died at Brighton in January 1862 after ‘a long illness’ and was buried in the family mausoleum at Brocklesby. In his will, dated 31 July 1858, he expressed his ‘strong feelings’ against the ‘unnecessary pomp’ frequently seen at aristocratic funerals and made provision for his widow and younger children. The residue of his estate passed to his eldest son and successor in the earldom, Charles Anderson Pelham (1835-75), Liberal Member for Great Grimsby 1857-62. Gent. Mag. (1862), i. 223-4.