A diminutive, pompous and well-meaning barrister committed to reforming the court of chancery, Taylor had abandoned Pittite Toryism shortly after entering Parliament in 1784 and thereafter he consistently advocated the removal of religious disabilities, the abolition of sinecures, parliamentary and criminal law reform and lower taxes. Recalled by John Hobhouse* as ‘an incredible coxcomb, but good-natured and not altogether without capacity’, his boast in 1827 that he had supported the Whigs, who made his Whitehall house their rendezvous, ‘for eight and thirty years at an expense of above £30,000’ was substantially correct. He also routinely marshalled snippets gleaned at his dinner table and elsewhere into informative letters to Lords Darlington and Grey and the Whig hierarchy.
Taylor’s second return for Durham in 1818 on his wife’s interest had not been contested, but a family dispute and futile appeal to chancery that year by Mrs. Taylor, who opposed the marriage of her niece and joint custodian of the Vane interest, Lady Frances Vane Tempest, to Lord Castlereagh’s* half-brother and heir, Lord Charles William Stewart†, prompted a challenge to him at the general election of 1820 by Stewart’s friend and prospective brother-in-law Sir Henry Hardinge. The Tory Richard Wharton’s† decision to contest the county restored Lambton-Tempest control in Durham without a contest and for the next decade Taylor represented the city with Hardinge as the nominee of the county Member, John Lambton, notwithstanding the residual Vane interest he commanded.
A steady but unaffiliated supporter of the Whig opposition led by Tierney in the 1818 Parliament, Taylor divided with them on most major issues in that of 1820, voting also occasionally with his friend and frequent guest Thomas Creevey and the ‘Mountain’ for economy, retrenchment and reduced taxation and consistently for criminal law reform, against military flogging and to end West Indian slavery. A radical publication of 1825 noted correctly that he ‘attended frequently and voted with opposition; spoke often’.
Undeterred by the rejection of his annual schemes to reduce chancery delays, he resumed his campaign directly the queen’s case was resolved by proposing a resolution of intent, committing the House to address the issue early in 1822, which ministers narrowly defeated (by 56-52), 30 May 1821. He reviewed his attempts since 1808 to reform chancery, highlighted Sir Samuel Romilly’s† role in securing inquiry in 1811 and discussed the shortcomings of the court without criticizing its personnel or lord chancellor Eldon.
Taylor’s examination of the printer Weaver helped to confirm the involvement of Lord Londonderry (as Castlereagh had become) in John Bull’s libel on Henry Grey Bennet*, 9 May, and he contributed to the clamour for printing the evidence, 10, 11 May 1821.
Taylor’s 1821 bill to control the nuisance of steam engine smoke, which he claimed affected his London home, was hatched in the investigative committees he secured in 1819 and 1820 and shaped to promote the chimney system patented by the Warwick manufacturer Parkes, which he viewed on 11 Apr. 1820, and described in the House, 2 May 1820, 18 Apr. 1821. He overcame opposition from the mining and iron districts of Cornwall, Staffordshire and South Wales, Londonderry’s hostility and complaints by Fowell Buxton and other opponents of compulsion to carry the bill’s committal by 83-29, 7 May, and third reading, 10 May. It received royal assent, 28 May 1821, after he had added a rider exempting mine engines (1 and 2 Geo. IV, c. 41).
As recorder, Taylor retained a keen interest in matters affecting Poole, where his standing had plummeted following repeated failures to secure concessions for or inquiry into the Newfoundland trade. As his interventions of 5 June 1820 and 23 Feb. 1821 on the timber duties presaged, he opposed relaxation of the navigation laws because it would ‘transfer the trade of England to the opposite shores’, 7, 20 May 1822.
Taylor added his voice to Horton’s in defence of the Australian Mining Company, 5 Dec. 1826. Except on the chancery question, he kept a low profile in the House while the succession to Lord Liverpool as premier was determined. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and a 50s. pivot price for corn imports, 9 Mar., was a minority teller on the Dublin election petition, 20 Mar., and voted for information on the Barrackpoor mutiny, 22 Mar. 1827. He stressed that the protectionist petitions he presented from Sunderland’s ship owners, 21 Mar., and millers, 2 Apr., were motivated solely by distress.
Writing to Grey, 23 Jan. 1828, Taylor described the duke of Wellington’s new administration as a ‘liberal government founded upon the exclusion of the Ultra Tories’ and a reputed expedient until George IV could be persuaded to make the home secretary Peel prime minister.
The prosecution at Marlborough Street on 9 Jan. 1829 of his former footman for disrupting one of Taylor’s dinners and keeping his livery created a stir and was widely reported.
As one of the ‘28 opposition Members’ who voted against Knatchbull’s amendment to include reference to distress in the address, 4 Feb., Taylor explained (12 Feb., 2 Mar. 1830) that the Whig party with whom he had long acted had ‘dwindled away’, and that he would remain a lifelong Whig, unconnected with ministers, but prepared to support them on retrenchment and to oppose currency reform.
The Wellington ministry listed Taylor among their ‘foes’, and he divided against them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented and endorsed Durham petitions against debtors’ prisons, 3 Nov., and West Indian slavery, 5, 11, 17, 23 Nov., ordered chancery returns as hitherto, 10 Nov., and moved the adjournment by which Sugden’s inquiry motion, calculated to embarrass Brougham as the new Grey ministry’s lord chancellor, was postponed, 16 Dec. He rallied for administration when it came on on the 20th. Responding to opposition criticism that day, he maintained that he had voted in 1823 to try O’Grady solely with a view to enabling him to clear his name, and no longer thought there were grounds for prosecution. Creevey, to whom Taylor confided his disappointment that Grey had omitted to reward his loyalty with a peerage, membership of the privy council or a secure Commons seat, claimed the credit for securing his admission to the council in February 1831 and duly ridiculed the event.
Taylor applied in vain to Grey for a coronation peerage and church patronage for his nephew by marriage, the Rev. ‘Jack’ Vane, with whose assistance he brokered an introduction to the venal borough of Sudbury, which returned him as a Liberal at the general election of 1832.