Talbot was descended from the earls of Shrewsbury through the Hensol Castle, Castle Talbot and Lacock branches of the family. His forefathers had purchased the Abbey and most of the 18,725-acre parish of Margam at the Dissolution, and intermarried with the Mansels of Oxwich and Penrice to become Glamorgan’s largest resident landowners (34,000 acres). Margam’s political hegemony had lapsed, but as manorial lords of Kenfig and proprietors in Aberavon, their interest remained decisive in the struggle between the 6th duke of Beaufort and the 2nd marquess of Bute for control of Cardiff Boroughs, while in Glamorgan Talbot’s father had led the ‘independent’ party against the absentee aristocracy and rebuilt Penrice, where by 1820 the annual rent revenues reached £15,000.
Talbot is reputed to have refused to sign the thirty-nine articles, but he gained a first in mathematics at Oxford in 1824, when, to his dismay, his coming of age was a great county occasion.
to abstain very cautiously from committing yourself to any party or set of men, until you had a full opportunity by considerable experience of forming a deliberate judgement which set of measures generally pursued or recommended by contending parties were upon the whole most conducive to the real interests of the country, for if once you became a party man, you were no longer quite as independent, and perfect independence should in no degree be sacrificed but on most mature consideration guiding the judgement.
Replying, Talbot described ‘knowledge gained’ at university as ‘rather curious than useful’, and dismissed his examination success as an endeavour to please his tutor. He concurred that the distinction between the parties ‘is so inconsiderable that it is no easy matter to make up the mind to either, however, I never shall approve of the maxim medico tutisimus ibis’.
It has always been my grand object to restore Margam to what it ought to be, the park and residence of the owner of the property. If it depended only on myself, I should have little difficulty, but there appears to have been on the part of those who held the purse strings, an anxious wish to get rid of the cash by every possible means. I mention this, because it will now depend more on you than on me, whether I am ever enabled to put my project into effect. I can easily limit my expenditure to £2,000 per annum even with my large establishment here, and if you would also limit the expenditure of the estate to what is absolutely necessary, I should soon be enabled to begin operations. There is a wide difference between conducting the affairs of a trust and of an individual.
Penrice and Margam mss 9236, Talbot to G. Llewellyn, 21 July 1827 and passim.
In 1829, after an extended visit to his cousin, the pioneer photographer William Henry Fox Talbot†, at Lacock Abbey, Talbot returned to his family at Penrice. He stewarded the races at Cardiff, for which Bute lent Cole the Castle, planned his new mansion, and kept a close watch on transport schemes, for he saw ‘grounds to dislike the introduction of an Act of Parliament on land which belongs exclusively to myself’.
I have also had a conversation with the earl of Ilchester respecting the money spent in electioneering, and in consequence of his communications to me, I have not the least further delicacy with regard to coming forward as a candidate for the county. I have received a letter from Sir Christopher stating his intention to resign at the next dissolution ... and I mention these things in confidence to you in order that you may be prepared, as soon you see his advertisement of resignation, to retain the legal men for me as soon as possible afterwards. It is unlikely there will be any opposition, but I am prepared if there is to raise a sum of money on the purchased estates which will be conveyed to me by the trustees. At all events, who is there in the county who has both a claim to represent the county, and money to support that claim? I have paid Miss Talbot’s fortune and Miss Emma’s. There now only remains Mrs. Traherne’s unpaid, and the trustees have agreed to take my personal bond for that, which will leave the purchased estates unencumbered.
Penrice and Margam mss 9238, Talbot to G. Llewellyn, 7 June 1830.
Cole announced his retirement and Talbot, frequently accompanied by Dillwyn, canvassed the gentry with his agents directly after the king’s funeral.
Nothing can be more satisfactory than the result of the English elections. We are not, however, as fortunate in Wales. Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire and Breconshire and Monmouthshire return all government men. Glamorgan is pre-eminent in returning two Whig Members. I marvel how Lord Lansdowne has managed about Calne. I see too Mr. Gye has left Chippenham.
Fox Talbot mss.
Thomas Bucknall Estcourt* hoped Talbot would ‘not be disinclined to exert himself’.
Talbot arrived in London after the October races, too late to present the Glamorgan address. He was confident the Wellington ministry would be defeated on reform and ‘must go out’,
As to Swing, that is all humbug and hoax, but I do confess I am quite astonished that those who do receive their letters should publish to the world that they have.
Penrice and Margam mss 9238, Talbot to G. Llewellyn, 10, 18 Dec.; Cambrian, 18 Dec.; Bristol Mercury, 28 Dec. 1830.
He returned to Penrice, where county landowners and radicals solicited his support, 23 Dec. 1830, and on 25 Feb. 1831 presented petitions from the hundred of Cowbridge for tithe reform and from Bridgend for election by ballot.
He had declined a militia captaincy in 1829, and the June 1831 Merthyr rising confirmed his belief ‘that a force acting together only eight days in the year must be wholly inefficient for any practical purposes’.
very unwise in them, because everyone knows that if the duke of Beaufort had not been supposed to have great influence, the thing would not have been done. It is a job, and will tend to throw great discredit on ministers.
Ibid. same to same, 20 Mar. 1832.
He divided for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar., but was ‘absent in the country’ when a ministry headed by Wellington was contemplated. He divided for the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish measure, 1 June 1832. He divided with government on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug. 1831, the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July, and relations with Portugal, 9 Feb. 1832.
Costly building work at Margam between 1830 and 1832 forced Talbot to find £5,000 that year, but he attributed rumours that he was heavily in debt, which greatly annoyed him, to ‘my being arbitrator for Lord Portarlington in the case of a gambling bond transaction, wherein I hope I have benefited his lordship by my decision to an amount of £10,000, but certainly not at my own expense’.
I think it very possible to be both ‘conservative’ and friendly to the present ministry, but until I know what are the objects of the Conservative party, and what those of the present ministry, I should feel it disingenuous in me to solicit support as the adherent of either. I regret extremely that any pains should be taken to perpetuate the existence of two parties whose ancient cause of dispute is now at an end. I know not on what grounds or pretences we should speak of reformers and anti-reformers, Whigs and Tories, now that the hopes of one party and the fears of the other have met with a common fate in the passing of the bill. When I first became a Member ... I placed entire confidence in the administration of the duke of Wellington. It is my firm belief that his grace possessed more power to benefit this country than any minister of modern times. He was looked up to by the ... Commons, and by the country, for his noble and unostentatious retrenchments and for his perfect disinterestedness. The ball was at his feet, he would kick it, it came to Lord Grey, and he gave it, I am willing to allow, an unreasonably hard kick. In my humble opinion, it was then too late to attempt even modification, and I, with many others, found myself compelled either to support the whole reform bill, or to have none at all: an alternative which I considered tantamount to revolution. In a word, I supported the ministry of Lord Grey because I thought it would eventually prove more strictly speaking a ‘conservative’ one than that of his opponents ... I am no admirer of the present ministry either in regard to their financial views, or their foreign policy: I believe more practical good to have been done by the exertions of Sir Robert Peel and ... Wellington than is likely to be effected by ... Grey and Lord Althorp, and I think that in any measures which may come before Parliament, Conservative, or from whatever source, predilection for neither one set of men nor for another would influence my line of conduct in favour of either.
Bute mss L75/145.
Notwithstanding his protectionist principles, Talbot represented Glamorgan as a Liberal until the boundary changes of 1885, and subsequently Mid Glamorgan, where he encountered strong constituency opposition after opposing Irish Home Rule in 1886. He died a millionaire and ‘father of the House’ in January 1890, having declined Gladstone’s offer of a peerage in 1869, as his only son Theodore, who predeceased him in 1876, refused to stand for Glamorgan.