In 1820 Wetherell was ‘a disappointed lawyer’ without a seat. Despite the patronage of lord chancellor Eldon, his rise at the chancery bar had been slow. Above all, he fancied himself entitled to legal office in the Liverpool ministry, which, as a ‘thorough Tory of the oldest school’, he had supported in the 1812 Parliament.
whilst strait-laced in his opinions, his ideas of dress were much the reverse, in fact he was one of the greatest slovens who ever walked, and it was a wonder when he did walk how his clothes and his body contrived to keep together.
Ballantine, i. 148; Gent. Mag.(1846), ii. 428; M.D. George, Cat. of Pol. and Personal Satires, xi. 16836, 17194.
He could not, however, be ignored.
At the general election of 1820 he stood for his native city of Oxford, where he became involved in a contest with one of the sitting Members, standing on the Blenheim interest, and a barrister who had been turned out of the seat in 1818. In a canvassing speech, he praised the ‘excellence’ of the existing constitution. At the nomination, when he boasted of his ‘growing reputation and fame in Westminster Hall’, he denied being ‘addicted to the purposes and intentions of the radical reformers’ (an impression created by his successful defence of the radical James Watson in the treason trial of 1817, which he had undertaken purely to make a professional point), and tried to prove ‘how incompatible the infatuated schemes of the radical reformers were with the sober genius and well-established foundations of the British constitution’. He comfortably topped the poll.
one of the most vigorous and able speeches I ever heard. It had rather too much of the copia verbum and was too long, with terrible repetitions; but for legal argument and clear and powerful illustrations, and above all, the claim for riveting attention, I hardly ever heard from anyone a speech of the same character.
Grey Bennet diary, 5a.
Wetherell, who got into more trouble with the Speaker for referring back to this debate, 31 Jan., voted for the opposition censure of ministers’ conduct, 6 Feb., and for further motions on the liturgy question, 13, 15 Feb. He divided against government on the suppression of the liberal constitution in Naples, 21 Feb. He voted silently against Catholic relief, which was anathema to him, 28 Feb., and spoke against aspects of the relief bill, 23 Mar. (when, to the great private amusement of Canning, he minted the word ‘posteriority’), 26, 27 Mar.
He did likewise against more extensive tax reductions, 11, 21 Feb., and abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822. He said that the bill to reduce the navy five per cents must be effected so as not to depreciate them in the event of war, 8 Mar., and upheld the royal prerogative to dismiss army officers and make articles of war, 12 Mar.
used some of the strangest words imaginable in a long tiresome speech. Somebody said to the chancellor [of the exchequer], ‘what words Wetherell coins’. ‘Oh!’ said he, ‘I should not mind the coinage, if it was not for the utterance’.
Fox Jnl. 136.
He voted for the grant for the publication of government proclamations in Ireland, 22 July. At the annual Oxford mayoral feast, 30 Sept. 1822, he reviewed and explained his parliamentary conduct, ‘much to the satisfaction of the assembly’.
After describing the revised Marriage Act as ‘an Arabia of rapine and confusion’, Wetherell presented a petition from the archdeacon of Oxford against it, 14 Feb. 1823.
Charles Williams Wynn*, president of the board of control, ruled Wetherell out of consideration for the vacant puisne justiceship of Chester in September 1823 because his ‘business is I apprehend too great to induce him to sacrifice a portion of it to this office’.
A connection with Wetherell is a difficulty for an administration. It is not desirable to drive him into opposition and it is impossible to place him in any conspicuous office that requires common sense. I thought they might have got out of the scrape (though not well) by withdrawing him into the exchequer.
His fellow Whig John Whishaw told Lady Holland that Wetherell ‘is very anxious for office, but will assuredly be disappointed’.
on account of his general knowledge, of his attainments as a chancery lawyer, and his readiness in debate on all subjects, the attention which he has paid to ecclesiastical matters, and his zeal for the interests of the church, I think decidedly that he will be more useful to us in the House of Commons than any other man.
Privately, Peel confessed to his friend Goulburn, the Irish secretary, that he inclined to Wetherell ‘partly because having an appetite for tithe bills (which appetite will be wonderfully sharpened by the preference of another candidate) he will be a most troublesome opponent’. The king was ‘strongly for Wetherell, having a high opinion of his powers of abusing a foe’.
not surprised the chancellor and Peel should support him, for he is as bigoted and furious No Popery as they could wish; but why Canning should, unless because he was one of the queen’s friends, I cannot conceive. He is a good lawyer, but a most tedious House of Commons speaker, most uncouth in his manners.
Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, ii. 17, 22.
It was not quite plain sailing for Wetherell, because Lord Liverpool and Eldon agreed that it was essential to accompany the offer ‘with some explanation as to particular measures likely to be brought before Parliament’, especially the tithe question, and ‘likewise (in order to obviate future embarrassment and misapprehension), with some reserve as to certain situations in the course of judicial succession’.
the final tenor of his conversation was to the effect that his future condition would rest in such a state of uncertainty, as he understood the rule as exemplified by practice would leave him, that he felt not disposed to accept, and he intimated that I should receive a letter from him today, which from what he said, I expect will be a refusal ... I told him my opinion was that he was deciding wrong if he declined.
In the event, to Eldon’s surprise, he meekly signified his acceptance without further demur.
The arguments in favour of Wetherell were that he is a man of undoubted talents, that he had brought himself for some years into Parliament, probably not without encouragement from the chancellor, and had with some rare exceptions supported the administration, that through his father he was connected both with Lord Liverpool and the chancellor, that he had already been twice disappointed in 1817 and 1819, and borne those disappointments ill, and if again foiled would probably become a desperate opponent in Parliament, and a grievous annoyance to the chancellor personally in the discussions respecting his court. The objections to him were, that he has an uncontrollable spirit and very strong passions and an ill-regulated mind, and an hereditary tendency to madness ... The chancellor from the first was a strong advocate for Wetherell, and prepossessed the king in his favour ... It may be doubted whether the chancellor in his selection of Wetherell were more actuated by fear or favour. Even the favoured person himself during his suspense expressed this sentiment. The chancellor flatters himself that W. being conciliated will follow his advice. This may be doubtful even while he remains in his present office or that of attorney-general, but is scarcely to be looked for, when he shall be removed to one of the high judicial offices; and much less, if it should be deemed prudent to repel him from one of those offices, which may be expected to become vacant in a year or two.
Hobhouse Diary, 108-9.
William Fremantle* alleged that the appointment was ‘universally condemned’.
Hobhouse underestimated Wetherell’s loyalty and instinct for self-preservation, for he did not kick over the traces during his tenure of the post, the duties of which he apparently executed efficiently enough. His re-election for Oxford was undisturbed.
Wetherell presented an Oxford parish petition for repeal of the house and window taxes, 8 Feb. 1825, but of course had nothing to do with the parliamentary campaign for that object. His statement that the chancery commissioners, of whom he was one, would make ‘a partial report’ very soon, 10 Feb., provoked derisive opposition laughter.
By the end of the year Wetherell had apparently decided not to stand again for Oxford, where it was thought that in any case he would be ‘turned out ... for parsimony’ at the next general election.
At the general election the following month he duly abandoned Oxford and was returned unopposed for Hastings on the treasury interest.
was quite sure that W. would receive that as an insult to him, and ... I certainly would not propose it to him ... I could see no determination, if he did not succeed Copley, which he could act upon, and that upon any such office as could be, or had been thought of, he would have no option but to retire without office to the bar. I am quite sure he would not take a judgeship. In all this Copley ... fully concurred. His emoluments at the bar were very considerable before he was solicitor. They have of course since (for such always happens with a solicitor-general) been less. But I have no doubt that if he quitted that office, such emoluments would be very considerable ... You should not discourage gentlemen from taking the office of solicitor by not allowing them to have the few advantages which vacancies of higher offices may offer ... I have not the slightest doubt that W., with some friendly advice first given, would make a very good master of the rolls, to which he may be removed if Copley goes higher, and that removal cannot be distant if things remain as to politics as they probably now are. But I think there was no option between the attorney-generalship and retirement for W.
It was hoped that the highly regarded Nicholas Tindal*, who was to replace Wetherell as solicitor-general, would ‘have considerable influence over him’; and following his acquiescence in certain ‘explanations’, he received his promotion.
He was a teller for the majority in the division on the Dover election petition recognizances, 13 Feb. 1827. On 21 Feb. he opposed inquiry into the allegations of electoral malpractice by Northampton corporation, though he claimed that he had no wish to ‘screen delinquency’. He conceded that Catholics had a case in complaining of double exactions of land tax in certain instances, but foresaw difficulties in rectifying the matter, 26 Feb. He voted against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. He repelled renewed attacks on Eldon and chancery administration, 27 Feb., 13 Mar., 5 Apr., when he was a teller for the majority against the production of information. He voted for the spring guns bill, 23 Mar. He was dubious about Shadwell’s writ of right bill, 27, 30 Mar., deprecating ‘rash or hasty interference’ with the laws of real property. He opposed inquiry into the state of debtors’ gaols and the laws governing imprisonment for debt, 3 Apr., and expressed strong reservations over Hume’s proposed bill to prevent frivolous arrests for debt on mesne process, 10 Apr. A week later he ‘very handsomely’ resigned with Peel, Eldon and the other Protestant ministers rather than serve in Canning’s ministry, even though he would almost certainly have soon become master of the rolls or vice-chancellor had he remained in office. He opposed Lords’ amendments to the spring guns bill, 17 May, and was a teller for the minority in two divisions. Opposing the Coventry magistracy bill, 8 June, he argued that the Commons ‘ought rather to exercise a conservative power, for the preservation of charters, than lend itself to the uncalled for confiscation of them’. He was in the small minorities against the measure, 11, 18 June. He did not oppose the introduction of the bill to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 June, but said that its advocates must prove their case at the bar of the House; and he suggested that it would raise false expectations if it was given a second reading, 22 June. He opposed Smith’s Dissenters’ marriages bill, which ‘placed the people of this country, and of these times, under the revolutionary law of Cromwell’, 18 June. He spoke against Lord Nugent’s proposal for the registration of voters, 29 June 1827.
In August 1827 the duke of Wellington was informed that lord chancellor Lyndhurst (as Copley had become) thought that in the event of the Protestant Tories’ return to power, Wetherell, ‘one of the bad bargains of the previous administration’, might be ‘easily satisfied’ by appointing him chief baron of the exchequer in the room of Alexander, who was ready to ‘retire when desired’. When Wellington formed his ministry in January 1828 he, Peel and other ministers would have preferred to retain the services as attorney-general of Sir James Scarlett*, the Whig who had replaced Wetherell in 1827. The king, too, was keen to keep Scarlett, so that he could take the lead in certain duchy of Cornwall law cases pending in king’s bench in which he had a direct interest. Wetherell, who was reported to be ‘very much depressed’ at receiving no immediate approach, wrote to Wellington ‘positively declining all contingent offers’. In the event Scarlett, after consulting his close political connections, decided that he was too nearly associated with the Whigs to continue in the post, and it was offered to and accepted by Wetherell. Eldon, who was piqued at being himself disregarded for office, claimed to have been instrumental in persuading Wellington to restore Wetherell as fair reward for his political loyalty and personal sacrifice.
On 21 Feb. 1828 he was named to the select committee on parochial settlements, though he warned that he would be able to give only occasional attendance. He thought that Davies’s proposed bill to limit the duration of borough polls would be of little benefit, and he opposed it, 3, 31 Mar., 2, 28 Apr., 6, 15 May. He still had reservations about the Catholic land tax bill, 21 Feb., and he criticized it in detail, 10 Mar., 18 Apr., and was appointed to the select committee on the problem, 1 May. He voted against repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., and spoke at length and voted against Catholic relief, 12 May. He was willing to accept a commission of inquiry into the common law ‘with limited objects and intelligible means’, but not the comprehensive affair proposed by Brougham, 29 Feb. He encouraged Kennedy to divide his bill to amend the Scottish law of entail into prospective and retrospective parts, 6 Mar., and was sceptical about Spring Rice’s plans to amend the law concerning testators and executors, 2 Apr. He opposed Taylor’s motion on chancery delays, 24 Apr., still unconvinced of the need for a fourth equity judge. He clashed with Williams Wynn and Littleton during the East Retford inquiry, 3, 4 Mar., and spoke and voted against the committal of a witness for prevarication, 7 Mar. He opposed Sykes’s motion for inquiry into the parliamentary franchise in boroughs with county jurisdiction, 11 Mar., arguing that once one anomaly was corrected, ‘you know not when you will be allowed to stop in your career of alteration’. He was hostile to the bill which Sykes introduced, 20 Mar., 23 May, when he complained that it had ‘cost me a great deal of labour, and not a little inconvenience’, but seemed to be of no interest to most Members. He thought Benett’s tithes commutation bill was hopelessly flawed, 17 Mar. He had insurmountable objections to Lord Althorp’s freeholders registration bill, 25 Mar. Leading the resistance to Harvey’s motion for more efficient control over crown excise prosecutions, 1 May, he mocked the ‘plausible idea, that it is possible to devise a petty system for the protection of a revenue of £43,000,000’. He was willing to accept Poulett Thomson’s bill to amend the usury laws if it preserved their principle, 20 May, but warned that he would have no truck with repeal of the standard of interest. He defended the archbishop of Canterbury’s bill, 5 June, commenting that opposition, with their ‘great talent for multiplication’, were guilty of exaggerating the registrar’s income. He carried its third reading, 16 June, when he was a teller for the majority in two divisions. He was twice a teller for majorities in favour of the additional churches bill, 30 June. He opposed investigation of Baron de Bode’s compensation claims and was a teller for the hostile majority, 1 July. He voted with his colleagues on the ordnance estimates, 4 July, and the customs bill, 14 July. On 17 July 1828 he denounced a petition attacking the conduct of Nicholl in the prerogative court as ‘a gross, scandalous, and malicious libel’.
In late October 1828 Wellington and Peel considered the possibility of offering Wetherell a puisne judgeship and, if he refused to accept it, of forcing him to resign as attorney-general, to be replaced by Scarlett or Tindal. Neither thought he would take the offer, and on reflection they decided ‘not to resort to extremities’, for reasons which Peel explained:
We reappointed Wetherell, therefore we thought him qualified ... at the beginning of the year. Since that time he has done his business at least as well as he ever did it, probably better ... He would not put his refusal of the puisne judgeship on any private or personal ground. He would say, ‘I refuse, because acceptance in my case would be to lower the pretensions and dignity of the office of attorney-general’ ... Whatever you and I may think of Wetherell’s wrongheadedness in excluding Scarlett from the duchy of Cornwall cause, the bar would violently resent anything that had the appearance of a punishment inflicted for the assertion of a right. Then comes the Catholic question and political martyrdom added to the above considerations ... I would not offer the puisne judgeship ... unless you have reason to expect that he would accept.
Wellington Despatches, v. 179-80, 189-90, 192, 203-4, 217; Wellington mss WP1962/8; 964/24; 965/7; 968/17.
According to Lord Ellenborough, president of the board of control, Lyndhurst at the end of the year was determined in the event of the death of the master of the rolls to exclude Wetherell, for he would ‘ruin the court of chancery and be a most mischievous man in the House of Commons, a great Tory and bigoted Protestant’. He contemplated making him chief baron in the room of Alexander, whom he earmarked for the rolls. When the cabinet decided in late January 1829 to concede Catholic emancipation, Ellenborough noted that Peel ‘thought Wetherell would resign’, though he also wondered whether ‘the weak state of the master of the rolls’ health might possibly induce honest Wetherell to profess his Protestantism’. John Croker*, observing the ‘wry face’ which he made at ‘Peel’s merriment’ at the Speaker’s eve of session dinner, also thought he might well resign.
never heard such a speech ... He out-Heroded Herod. Its vulgarity and coarse buffoonery was beyond anything that ever was exhibited. His contortions were such that his braces broke, and his breeches were near coming down, so that his shirt appeared in large expanse between his waistcoat and them.
Henry Bankes* confirmed that ‘his manner, countenance, grimace and gesture, and his variety and contortion of attitude were so excessively grotesque that the House was kept almost in a continued roar of laughter’. Greville, who described Wetherell as ‘half mad, eccentric, ingenious, with great and varied information and a coarse, vulgar mind delighting in ribaldry and abuse, besides an enthusiast’, recorded the Speaker’s comment (which Ellenborough attributed to Horace Twiss*) that ‘the only lucid interval he had was that between his waistcoat and his breeches’.
In October 1829 the Ultra leader Sir Richard Vyvyan* listed him among the ‘Tories strongly opposed to the present government’, and it was with the Ultras that he was politically associated for the remainder of his parliamentary career. On 11 Dec. 1829 he had a furious row in the chancery court with Edward Sugden*, the solicitor-general, over a matter of etiquette, which might have ended in a duel if they had not been dragged before a magistrate and bound over to keep the peace.
Wetherell was glorious. The brute will sit next to me, when he has not a friend, but it is near the treasury bench. He stank so unutterably as he advanced in his argument, that he cleared a space round himself, like the upas tree.
Grey mss, Howick jnl. 2 Mar.; Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss, Littleton to Sneyd, 2 Mar. 1830.
On 4 Mar. he supported Inglis’s motion for the previous question to be moved against Newport’s call for a commission on the Irish church, which ministers were ready to concede to a limited degree; he was not happy with Peel’s attitude. He voted against government in the divisions on relations with Portugal, 10 Mar., the Bathurst and Dundas pensions, 26 Mar., and the ordnance estimates, 29 Mar. He supported Davenport’s motion for inquiry into the state of the nation, 19 Mar., but saw no reason why it should dwell on the currency question. He clashed with Daniel O’Connell over demands for repeal of the Union, 22 Mar. He secured returns of information on chancery administration, 30 Mar., 8 Apr. He was not happy with Ellenborough’s divorce bill, 1 Apr. He opposed Poulett Thomson’s usury laws repeal bill, 26 Apr., 6 May, when he was a teller for the hostile minority, and 15 June. He challenged O’Connell to proceed with his threatened motion on the Cork conspiracy trials, 29 Apr., and thought his bill dealing with Catholic charitable bequests went too far, 4 May. He voted against ministers for the production of information on privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May. He divided against Jewish emancipation, 17 May. He protested against the notion that ministers could shelter behind the formal opinions of the law officers, 21 May, expressed misgivings about the House’s handling of the inquiry into the Barrington case, 22 May, and voted against the amendments to the Galway franchise bill, 24 May. He failed to secure the addition of a clause to the king’s signature bill making it a treasonable offence to forge royal stamps, 27 May. Later that day he condemned the administration of justice bill as a half-baked mess, which would do ‘ten times more mischief than we pretend to reform’; and on 18 June, when he was a teller for the minority against going into committee on it, he said that majority opinion in Wales was hostile to it and that ‘leave might as well have been given to bring in a blank sheet of paper’, so incomprehensible was it. He asked for support from ‘the Cambrian warriors’ in his unsuccessful attempt to secure its postponement, 5 July. He opposed Phillimore’s motion for inquiry into the divorce laws, 3 June, and was a teller for the majority against it. He also pressed Sadler to drop his motion for the introduction of a system of poor laws to Ireland. On 4 June he explained that having been prevented by the pressure of Commons business from bringing in a bill to regulate ex-officio prosecutions, he would move that the expenses incurred in the Alexander case be deducted from the supply unless ministers gave a satisfactory statement of intent; Peel mollified him. He gave notice of a motion for a bill, 10 June, but did not act on it. He spoke and voted against abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June. On 10 June he moved for prior inquiry before sanctioning the proposed appointment of a fourth chancery judge. When the debate was resumed, 24 June, he argued that arrears were not sufficient to justify it; but the order of the day for the second reading of the justice in equity bill was carried against him by 133-96, and against an adjournment motion, for the division on which he was again a minority teller, by 118-77. He said that the House was not obliged to adopt the recommendations of the law commissioners, especially regarding a general register, 11 June. That day he voted against government on the grant for consular services. He voted for restrictive amendments to the sale of beer bill, 21 June, 1 July. On 30 June he called on Members not to adopt the address on the temporary provision for the public service after the death of George IV, which would leave ministers free to dissolve Parliament without dealing with the regency question. He opposed Hume’s demand for a reduction in the salary of the chairman of ways and means, 7 July 1830.
At the general election of 1830 Wetherell was put up for Boroughbridge by the 4th duke of Newcastle and was returned with another Ultra after a contest forced by the duke’s local rival. There had been approaches to him from Bristol, where he was recorder, and supposedly, though Croker could not credit it, from Protestant extremists in Dublin.
Wetherell deplored calls for repeal of the Union and supported the Grey ministry in their avowed determination to enforce the rule of law in Ireland, 8 Feb. 1831. He said that the laudable practice of allowing prisoners free communication with their attorneys was not confined to London gaols, as Wood suggested, 10 Feb. He supported Sugden’s unsuccessful motion for a bill to extend the Mortmain Act of 1736 to Ireland, 22 Feb. On 3 Feb. he mischievously asked why, if the forthcoming reform bill was a government measure, it was to be brought in by Russell, who was not a member of the cabinet. He spoke briefly against the secret ballot, 9 Feb. He supported Lord Chandos’s attempt to pre-empt the bill by investigating electoral corruption at Evesham, 17 Feb., when he was a teller for the majority against printing a petition alleging corrupt practices at Bridport, and the following day tried to get Graham, one of the ministers responsible for drafting the measure, to admit that he had threatened the House with dissolution if it was defeated. Unlike Vyvyan and Knatchbull, who were prepared to accept moderate changes, Wetherell and his closest associates were implacably opposed to all reform. Greville recorded that when Russell unveiled the ministerial scheme, 1 Mar., ‘Wetherell, who began to take notes, as the plan was gradually developed, after sundry contortions and grimaces and flinging about his arms and legs, threw down his notes with a mixture of despair and ridicule and horror’. Thomas Gladstone* told his father that
Wetherell’s vociferations and contemptuous cheers, every now and then, when Lord John Russell announced some new sweep, were very amusing. He seemed to lose all control over himself and would toss the sheet of paper from his hand to the table, as much as to say ‘this is absurd’.
Significantly, when Peel in his reply ‘admitted that he would consent to some reform, Wetherell looked grave and desisted from cheering’.
I will call this bill Russell’s Purge of Parliament ... [It] is republican in its basis ... [and] destructive of all property, of all right, of all privilege ... The same arbitrary violence which expelled a majority of Members in the time of the Commonwealth, is now ... proceeding to expose the House of Commons again to the nauseous tyranny of a repetition of Pride’s Purge.
The cheering when he sat down was ‘immense’, as Gladstone reported, while Greville commented that ‘such loud and long cheering as everybody agreed had not been before heard in the House’ was less a testimony to the merits of his ‘long, rambling and amusing’ speech than ‘an indication of the disposition of the majority of the House’. Mackintosh thought it was one of ‘his coarsest, but not his strongest speeches’, and that the applause for it revealed ‘the imbecility of the Tory party’.
told him that I quite approved of what he had done and that I strongly recommended him to persevere in the same line - to be forward in setting an example of what is right and to leave it to others to follow if they will, but by all means to avoid being led, as that is the only way to make good government.
Newcastle mss Ne2 F3/1/327.
The following day he was called to order for trying to force Althorp to say what ministers intended to do if the threat of armed rebellion in the event of the defeat of the reform bill became reality. He said that it was ‘highly problematical’ whether Canning or Huskisson would have supported the measure, 9 Mar. He suggested that the freemen of Canterbury who petitioned for reform were in breach of their corporate oaths, 10 Mar., as were petitioners from Kinghorn and Dundee, 16 Mar., and criticized ministers for leaving their budget proposals in suspense on account of the reform bill, 11 Mar. He thought Newport’s motion for a revaluation of Irish first fruits should be submitted directly to the law officers, 14 Mar. He stated some objections to Scarlett’s examination of witnesses bill, 17 Mar. Supporting Inglis’s motion alleging a breach of privilege by The Times, 21 Mar., he condemned Burdett’s ‘dictatorial’ speech inviting the Members for condemned boroughs to leave the House. He voted against the second reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar., having been reported beforehand as being utterly confident of its defeat.
Wetherell, who lost his wife on 22 Apr. 1831 (their only child had died in infancy the previous year), was returned unopposed for Boroughbridge a week later. He and Thomas Sadler* were nominated for Norwich without their consent, and were heavily beaten by two reformers.
If the political cranium of the framers of this bill were dissected by a skilful phrenologist, some disciple of Gall or Spuzhei would say that the organ of destructiveness was not only fully developed, but that it protruded marvellously. The organ of destructiveness would only be second in size to the organ of inconsistency.
He denounced the proposal for three Member counties, 13 Aug., saw merit in Hume’s call for colonial representation, 16 Aug., welcomed the decision to give Parliament ultimate control over the boundary commissioners, 17 Aug., and objected to the appointment of returning officers by sheriffs, 19 Aug. When Peel went to the opposition headquarters to announce that he could not undertake to stay in London for much longer to continue the pointless struggle against the bill, 23 Aug., Wetherell was one of those ‘dissatisfied with this and prepared to go on interminably on the present system’.
[Wetherell] so misbehaved himself that it was charitable to think him either drunk or crazy. He threw his legs on the bench, and called on Lord Althorp to speak up. We passed the word that no notice should be taken of his speech; but, as he had fallen foul of O’Connell, we could not prevent that gentleman from rising and giving Sir Charles his deserts. The castigation was most complete and most severe.
Hawkins told the same tale:
Wetherell got well drubbed with his own weapons ... by Dan O’Connell. The castigation which the placid Althorp was provoked to bestow upon him, was in reply to his outrageous personal attack ... Some passages in Althorp’s speech, which are not very intelligible in a newspaper report, were provoked by the disorderly and insolent gesticulations in which he indulged while Althorp was speaking, a demeanour which gave the House, at the time, the idea that the Old Buffoon was inebriated. This I believe was not the case. The opinion of his own party now is (seriously) that he is labouring under a temporary derangement on the subject of reform.
Hawkins thought that the effects of this ‘double castigation’ were evident in Wetherell’s ‘improved behaviour and somewhat mitigated abuse’ on 14 Oct. 1831.
He expressed surprise at allegations that Irish tithes could not be collected without the assistance of the civil or military authorities, 12 July 1831. He deemed William Pole Long Wellesley* to be guilty of contempt of chancery, 18 July. He thought ministers should have been firmer with Brazil over acts of piracy, 19 July, accused them of breaching the Methuen Treaty concerning duty on foreign wines, 4 Aug., and was critical, though not censorious, of their policy on Holland and Belgium, 12 Aug. That day he seconded a wrecking amendment to the Irish judicial officers bill. He favoured immediate payment of the claims of Lescene and Escoffery, 22 Aug. The following day he spoke and voted against government on the Dublin election controversy, and he voted to suspend the Liverpool writ while bribery was investigated, 5 Sept. He thought the House would have to intervene if the problem of the Irish master of the rolls’s secretary could not be amicably resolved, 16 Sept. He said that the commissioners under the new lunacy bill should be accountable to the home secretary rather than the lord chancellor, 26 Sept, when he voted in the minority to end the Maynooth grant. He opposed O’Connell’s motion for documents concerning alleged irregularities at the Cork trials, but favoured investigation of the Deacles’ charges against Hampshire magistrates, 27 Sept. He wanted changes under the vestry bill to require the consent of at least two-thirds of ratepayers, 30 Sept. He spoke and was a teller for the minority against the bill to reform the Scottish exchequer court, 7 Oct. He supported Sadler’s motion for leave to introduce a bill to improve the condition of the labouring poor, 11 Oct. ‘With half-a-dozen young chancery lawyers at his back’, he led an obstructive opposition to lord chancellor Brougham’s bill to reform bankruptcy administration.
Wetherell’s words on the waning enthusiasm for reform in Bristol came back to haunt him on 29 Oct. 1831, when, as recorder, he processed into the town to open the assizes, disregarding prior warnings of trouble, which he considered it was the responsibility of government to prevent. His appearance triggered a riot and an attack on the Mansion House, from which he barely escaped with his life by disguising himself as a postilion and scrambling over the rooftops. (The wags had it that ‘he made his escape from the fury of the mob in the disguise of a clean shirt and a pair of braces’.) Aided by official timidity and military bungling, the mob remained in control of Bristol for three days, at the end of which large parts of the town had been destroyed and burnt and numerous people were dead. Wetherell was widely condemned and pilloried for having gone there, though in fairness it must be said that Protheroe, one of the Members, had given the home secretary assurances that there would be no disturbance. As recorder, he would normally have presided at the trial of the rioters, but ministers wisely bypassed him by omitting him, without explanation, from the special commission.
On the address, 6 Dec. 1831, Wetherell denied having been ‘directly the author’ of the riots and complained of his exclusion from the commission. He welcomed the ‘beneficial change’ in the revised reform bill regarding the freeman franchise, 12 Dec., but portrayed this and other modifications as admissions by ministers of earlier errors rather than genuine concessions. He joined in criticism of ministerial conduct on the Russian-Dutch loan, ‘a flagrant violation of the law’, 16 Dec. The following day, after presenting and endorsing a petition for reform of the system of poor management in the southern counties, he opposed the second reading of the reform bill, a defective measure brought forward to ‘satisfy people out of doors’ and ‘bottomed on the principle of radical equality’. On 20 Jan. 1832 he spoke and voted against going into committee on the bill, a ‘new-fangled plan of a constitution’, with ‘cooked up’ borough schedules. Hawkins reported to his father:
Wetherell, I think, promises more madly than ever. He seems more incoherent in his ideas, and less under command in his manner. If his gesticulations on so tame a subject as last night’s discussion are a specimen of what may be expected when we arrive at more irritating topics, the House will not hold him.
Hawkins mss 10/2178.
For the next two months he was indefatigable in his criticism of the details of the bill, taking particular notice of the inadequate information on which the borough disfranchising and enfranchising proposals were based and mocking the calculations of Drummond, ‘the English Euclid’. On 19 Feb. he asserted that the creation of enough peers to carry the measure through the Lords would be ‘illegal, unconstitutional, and unprecedented’. He was a teller for the minority against proceeding with the disfranchising schedules, 20 Feb., after complaining that ‘we are committing political injustice at the expense of mathematical accuracy’. He voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., when he also objected to giving Manchester and Salford separate representation. At this time Croker noted that while ‘the Ultra Tories are but a hollow support’ to the opposition leaders, Wetherell was ‘very cordial’, indeed ‘sincerely, actively and usefully so’. Hawkins dismissed his speech against the third reading, 20 Mar. 1832, when he attacked ministers on all fronts, as a ‘grotesque rodomontade’.
Wetherell was a steady opponent of Campbell’s bill to establish a general registry, 17 Jan., 8, 22 Feb., 6 Mar.; he was added to the select committee on the subject, 27 Mar. 1832. Nor did he see any merit in his fines and recoveries bill, 20 Jan. On the bill to provide for the continuity of the work of the court of session in the event of the death of a judge, 24 Jan., he said that as his arguments against the appointment of extra bankruptcy judges had been vindicated by subsequent experience, the surplus men should be sent to Scotland; and he strongly objected to abolishing the Scottish court of exchequer without proper inquiry, 2 Feb. He voted against ministers on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., and argued on 6 Feb. that it revealed their ‘utter incapacity’. He was against the production of information on unenclosed lands and intestates’ estates, 31 Jan. He supported the prayer of a petition for the restriction of childrens’ hours in factories, 1 Feb. On 8 Feb. he welcomed Grey’s statement that government were determined to uphold the rule of law to enforce tithe collection in Ireland, but he failed to goad Althorp into making a similar declaration.
Two days later, when he saw Campbell while filing a criminal information for a libel on Cumberland, he boasted that ministers were ‘afraid to meet Parliament, and that this is the reason why the Easter recess is so unusually long’.
Newcastle reported in mid-July 1832 that Wetherell had ‘a short time since abandoned the idea of coming into the next Parliament, but he has since revoked’, and wondered whether he might stand for Newark.
Wetherell died at Preston Hall, near Maidstone, Kent in August 1846, a week after suffering ‘concussion of the brain’ in a carriage accident nearby.
that most excellent and deserving man ... No one knows his sterling merits or great qualities better than I do ... I never knew a man of keener sense or neater perspicacity, one who had the clearest insight into all going on, whose principles were the soundest both in church and state, and who had the courage not only boldly to declare them, but always acted up to them ... In private life ... he was one of the most agreeable companions that I have ever met.
Letters of King of Hanover to Lord Strangford ed. C. Whibley, 93-94.