Tyrwhitt Drake, one of the wealthiest commoners of his day, with inherited landed estates in half a dozen counties, continued to sit for the family pocket borough until it was disfranchised.
two of the best Members of Parliament - neither of them refused a vote, when required by duty to give it, or ever made a useless speech, or ever asked a favour for themselves or their families.
J.K. Fowler, Recollections of Old Country Life, 6.
In reality he was a lax attender, whose posthumous reputation for proud independence was grossly inflated.
He only paired in defence of the Liverpool ministry’s conduct towards Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821. He voted against Catholic relief, 28 Feb., took a month’s leave, 1 May, and attended to vote with government against retrenchment, 27 June 1821, as he did again, 11 Feb., 13 Mar. 1822. He divided against Canning’s bill to relieve Catholic peers of their disabilities, 30 Apr. 1822, and parliamentary reform, 20 Feb., 2 June 1823. He presented an Amersham petition for the abolition of colonial slavery, 18 Mar. 1824.
Returning thanks for his election in 1826 Tyrwhitt Drake declared that he was ‘determined to support our glorious constitution in church and state’ and to ‘vote for the abolition of what were really unnecessary sinecures and pensions’. He considered the government’s recent regulation to permit the release of bonded corn to be ‘of little consequence’, but trusted that there would be no further tampering with the corn laws, because ‘everything emanated from the land, and unless agriculture flourished none of our manufacturers would’.
Tyrwhitt Drake, whom ministers listed among the ‘moderate Ultras’ after the 1830 general election, presented an anti-slavery petition, 15 Nov., but absented himself from the civil list division which brought down the government later that day. He voted against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s first reform bill, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. He divided steadily against the reintroduced bill in July, and voted against its passage, 21 Sept. He voted against the revised bill, by which Amersham was transferred from schedule B to A, at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and on the motion to go into committee, 20 Jan. 1832. He presented the Amersham inhabitants’ petition against total disfranchisement, 24 Jan. He was in the majority against an attempt to restrict polling in the smaller boroughs to one day, 15 Feb. On 21 Feb. 1832, when Amersham’s fate was confirmed, he protested against the way in which its boundary had been drawn, leaving a ‘large portion’ of the town ‘unjustly excluded’. He voted against the third reading of the bill, 22 Mar. He was in the majority against Hunt’s attack on military punishments, 16 Feb., but divided with the Conservative opposition against the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July 1832.
After 1832 Tyrwhitt Drake ‘scarcely ever took any active part in national or county politics, further than to support generally the principles he approved’.
After listening to all we had to say, he replied, ‘You two fellows have known me all your lives, haven’t you?’. ‘Yes’, we answered. ‘Well, you know I have always associated with gentlemen?’ ‘Certainly’. ‘Then why the deuce do you want to send me to the House of Commons?’ He then spurred his horse, galloped down one of the rides of Tittershall Wood, and viewed the fox away, and that was the last attempt made to nominate him for Parliament.
Fowler, 3.
His first cousin once removed, Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt Drake, told this story of him:
He was one day travelling by train from London to Brighton and a lady in the same carriage tried hard to get into conversation with him without much success. As a last effort she said: ‘I suppose you will bathe in the sea when you get to Brighton, Mr. Tyrwhitt Drake?’. The Squire’s reply was: ‘No, Mam, I have been sick in it far too often to want to wash in it’.
Sir G. Tyrwhitt Drake, My Life with Animals, 5-7.