PARNELL, Sir Henry Brooke, 4th bt. (1776-1842), of Abbeyleix and Rathleague, Queen’s Co.

Parnell had joined Brooks’s, 23 June 1807, sponsored by Lord King, with whom he was considered by his Cambridge contemporary William Lamb* to be ‘half mad and only eager to overthrow the Church and put up the Dissenters’. Melbourne Pprs. 28. A staunch advocate of Catholic claims, who in 1820 was reported to be ‘on more friendly terms with Mr. [Henry] Brougham* than any other Irish Member’, his ‘connection with the Whig party’, as he explained to William Huskisson*, had originated in 1805 with the marquess of Buckingham, who required ‘as a condition of his giving me his interest in the Queen’s County that I should vote for what was then called the prince’s party’. However, ‘in consequence of disapproving generally of the management of the proceedings of the party’, in 1819 he had asked Lord Duncannon* not to send him ‘any more notes for attendance’, and since then had ‘not received any’. O’Connell Corresp. ii. 873; Add. 38751, f. 15. Thereafter he took an independent line in support of free trade, retrenchment and reduced taxation, voting with the Whig opposition to the Liverpool ministry on most major issues and serving on most of the financial and trade committees of the period. (A commentary of 1823 erroneously described him as ‘an absentee in 1821 and 1822’, adding that ‘formerly this Member was laudably active in questions of economy, but latterly he has abandoned the field to Mr. Hume’.) Black Bk. (1823), 182; Session of Parl. 1825, p. 479. His other chief interest was roads, particularly schemes in Ireland and the improvement of the Holyhead road, for which he drafted much of the legislation, assisted by Thomas Telford. M. Hughs, ‘Telford, Parnell and Great Irish Road’, Jnl. of Transport Hist. vi (1964), 199-209; Add. 40357, f. 202; 57418, f. 183; Inst. of Civil Engineers, Telford mss T/SW/63, Eaton to Telford, 21 Mar. 1824.

At the 1820 general election Parnell offered again for Queen’s County on the ‘popular interest’, citing his support for tax reductions and his part in the passage of the recent Irish Election Act, which he had privately urged Lord Liverpool to push through before the dissolution, 22 Feb 1820. Add. 38283, f. 102. Following criticism of the Act by an opponent, the Catholic press came to his defence as ‘one of the most efficient’ Irish Members. He was returned in second place. Dublin Evening Post, 11, 25, 28, 30 Mar., 1 Apr. 1820. He called for ‘fuller investigation’ of the civil list, 2, 3 May. On 17 May he advocated abolition of the Irish viceroyalty and the introduction of lord lieutenants of counties, ‘after the English system’. He spoke regularly in similar terms throughout this session. He contended that the ten per cent duties on Anglo-Irish trade were a ‘violation’ of the Union, 14 June, when he was a minority teller for his own motion for inquiry, which failed by 30-66. He campaigned steadily for repeal of the duties thereafter, acting as a minority teller against their renewal, 10 July 1820, and securing agreement from the chancellor of the exchequer for the appointment of a select committee, 19 Apr. 1821. He welcomed the report recommending their abolition, 21 Feb., and their eventual repeal, 24 June 1823. He was a majority teller for the Irish court of chancery bill, 3 July 1820. He condemned the Irish tithes system for its ‘oppression’ of poor tenants and obtained leave for a bill to relieve them and ‘secure the interests of the clergy’, 5 July. He criticized the conduct of the Bank of Ireland during ‘the late general distress’ and called for the cessation of its monopoly, 2 Feb., 11 Apr. 1821, when he berated ministers for their ‘departure from the sound principles of political economy’. He of course voted for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He divided for the transfer of Grampound’s seats to Leeds, 2 Mar., reform of the Scottish representation, 10 May 1821, parliamentary reform, 24 Apr. 1823, and reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr. 1826, but against the disfranchisement of non-resident Irish borough electors, 9 Mar. 1826. On 5 Apr. 1821 he was a minority teller for his own motion to equalize the timber duties, which was rejected by 54-15. He joined the Political Economy Club, 25 June 1821.

Parnell later claimed that early in 1822, following Buckingham’s junction with government, he was ‘offered a seat in the Irish cabinet’, but had ‘proposed a condition which was not agreed to, namely the granting to the Catholics what is called the minor concessions’. Add. 38751, f. 15. No details of the offer have been found, although on 19 Feb. Buckingham advised his confidant William Fremantle*, who had taken office at the board of control, to ‘be as civil as you can to Parnell, who is my recruit’. On 10 Mar. he asked Fremantle, ‘Have you had any communication with Parnell and what he is doing?’, but Fremantle replied that ‘he will not commit himself until he finds which party prevails’. Bucks. RO, Fremantle mss D/FR/46/10/15, 18; Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV, i. 297. On 7 Feb. Parnell acknowledged the necessity of the Irish insurrection bill but called for an investigation of the causes of ‘tumult and disorder’; he was in the minority to limit its duration, 8 July. He attended the meeting of the ‘friends of emancipation’ at Plunket’s, 16 Apr., when it was decided not to bring on the Catholic question that year. Fremantle mss 46/10/56; Buckingham, i. 314; Add. 51586, Tierney to Lady Holland, 16 Apr. 1822. On 22 Apr. he advocated a general commutation of Irish tithes and payment of the clergy, adding that no measure ‘for the improvement of Ireland would ever avail, unless the complete emancipation of the Catholics was made the foundation of them’. He welcomed the government’s Irish tithes leasing bill, 13 June, but wanted ‘a more general remedy’ for the ‘chief evil of the system’, namely ‘the manner in which tithes were too frequently collected’. He criticized the Irish constables bill, 7 June 1822. On 11 Mar. 1823, in a speech which won over Ricardo but which he complained ‘the papers very much misrepresented’, Parnell suggested that opposition objections to ‘a new sinking fund’ could be obviated by placing it ‘out of the reach of ministers’ and allowing the commissioners to grant long annuities. Add. 20032, f. 32. He voted against Hume’s amendments to the national debt reduction bill, 5, 13 Mar., but was in the minority to limit government borrowing, 17 Mar. He was a minority teller for his own motion for inquiry into Irish disturbances, which was defeated by 39-88, 24 June, when he argued that the Catholics, ‘being deprived of representation by persons of their own persuasion’, were also ‘deprived of the fundamental security of English liberty’ which ‘belongs to them as their birthright’. Next day he demanded that ministers give Ireland the ‘whole of the English constitution’ and ‘get rid of the separate executive government’ of the viceroy. He spoke and voted for referring the Catholic petition on the administration of Irish justice to a grand committee, 26 June. Brougham, who had brought forward the motion, explained to Daniel O’Connell* that he ‘was ably supported’ by Parnell. O’Connell Corresp. ii. 1035. In December 1823 he was reported to be in Paris. Brougham mss, Wakefield to Brougham, 17 Dec. 1823.

On 27 Jan. 1824 the Catholic bishop of Kildare, Dr. James Doyle, informed O’Connell of Parnell’s request for assistance with the drafting of a bill to enable Catholics to endow their religious and charitable institutions in the same manner as Protestant Dissenters, and urged him to give his ‘zealous co-operation’ to ‘a man who in all times and vicissitudes has been our steady and uncompromising friend’. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1083, 1108. On the advice of the Irish attorney-general Plunket, however, Parnell withdrew his notice of the bill as the ‘interpretation of the law restricting money for the endowment of Catholic institutions had now changed’, 9 Mar. He called for a full investigation of the Bank of England’s charter, 19 Feb., and welcomed proposals to assimilate the currency of England and Ireland, 25 Feb. 1824, 13 May 1825. He advocated total repeal of the ‘300 regulations’ governing the Irish linen trade, 19 Mar. 1824. He endorsed a petition for repeal of the usury laws, 31 Mar., for which he voted, 8, 17 Feb., and spoke, 8 Apr. On 7 May he commended the budget for its ‘reform of fiscal and commercial regulations in preference to the repealing of direct taxation’, but warned that it was ‘absurd’ to suppose that a sinking fund of £5,000,000 a year could ever be effectual in reducing a debt of £800,000,000. In a speech which was later published, 11 May, he stressed the need to find a permanent solution to distress in Ireland, where the population was increasing, and seconded and was a minority teller for Lord Althorp’s motion for a select committee on Irish disturbances, to which he was appointed, 11 May. He called for repeal of the Act regulating the Irish butter trade, 28 May. On 20 Nov. 1824 Goulburn, the Irish secretary, reported to Peel, the home secretary, that Parnell viewed the Catholic Association with ‘considerable apprehension’ and had ascertained ‘(how he attained his knowledge was not stated) that the Association had determined in the event of any measures directed against them to carry on their proceedings by means of weekly meetings in the several Catholic chapels’. Add. 40330, f. 207. Four days later Parnell urged Buckingham to ‘use every exertion in persuading government, before it is too late, to conciliate the Catholics’, for if emancipation

is not granted next session, and such a system of executive government established in Ireland as shall give the Catholics the full benefit of it ... the present commotions of the public mind will end in another general rebellion. By connecting with emancipation a provision for the Catholic clergy, the giving of a large share of public situations to Catholics, the abolition of forty shilling freeholds, and a general plan of education on a principle satisfactory to Catholic feelings, I feel quite confident that the commotion would subside, and the whole country become perfectly tranquil and extremely flourishing.

Buckingham sent this letter to Charles Williams Wynn* and Fremantle and was ‘rather anxious that the king should see it, if it could be managed without a direct communication’. On 27 Jan. 1825 Parnell wrote again of the ‘expediency of attempting to get the Catholics of their accord to put down their Association’, since ‘a special Act of Parliament’ would be ‘evaded’ and ‘lead to great violence and to systematic rebellion’. He spoke in similar terms against suppression of the Association, 4, 10 Feb., when, as Fremantle informed Buckingham, he ‘went into the whole history of the Catholic question, and was not heard by the House; but his speech was probably meant for publication and will have its effect’. Buckingham, ii. 160-1, 198-200, 210; Fremantle mss 46/11/111/1, 2. It appeared later that year. On 25 Feb. O’Connell reported that Parnell had accompanied him on a visit to the bishop of Norwich and was ‘the principal person who examined’ him before the select committee on the state of Ireland, to which he had been appointed, 17 Feb. O’Connell Corresp. iii. 1175-6. Doyle told the committee that Parnell was one of the ‘most bountiful contributors’ to the construction of a local Catholic chapel. PP (1825), viii. 198. ‘The efficiency of the inquiry’, the Catholic press later observed, was ‘mainly owing to Sir Henry’s exertions’. Dublin Evening Post, 9 Apr. 1831. On 22 Feb. he obtained leave to introduce a bill to ‘put a stop to the practice of subletting farms’ without a landlord’s consent, which had caused ‘much poverty and misery’. It was postponed, 30 June 1825, but subsequently taken up by Goulburn, 10 Mar. 1826. (It received royal assent as 7 Geo. IV, c. 29, 5 May 1826). He moved for papers on the Irish butter trade, in which the ‘greatest corruption prevailed’, 15 Mar., and presented a petition for repeal of the regulations, 22 Apr. 1825. His Observations on the Irish Butter Acts appeared later that year. On 22 Mar. he warned that if poor laws were introduced to Ireland, ‘before a few years passed the whole rent of the landlords would be swallowed up’. He advocated gradual repeal of the Irish linen and wool duties, 25 Mar., but withdrew his motion for a committee on the linen trade on discovering that ministers intended to appoint their own, to which he was named, 14 Apr. He supported the Irish franchise bill ‘as it was connected with the measure so likely’ to bring ‘peace and prosperity’ to Ireland, 26 Apr., and insisted that the Catholic oath was ‘harmless’, 6 May. Pointing to the ‘numerous protecting duties’ that had been omitted from the customs consolidation bill, 17 June, he declared that it ‘time to reconsider the old system of sacrificing every one who was not a landlord to the interests of the landlords’. On 17 July 1825 he complained to Herries, secretary to the treasury, that the proposed letting of Dublin docks would ‘give a monopoly to the lessees’ and ‘create a restriction in the trade of Dublin that was never contemplated’, and that he would attempt to get it ‘reconsidered’ next session. Add. 57418, f. 116. He called for abolition of the Bank of England’s monopoly, enlarged partnerships for London banks and repeal of the usury laws, 14 Feb. 1826. He was appointed to the select committee on promissory notes, 16 Mar., and was one of the ‘dissentients’ who opposed Peel’s report against reform of the Scottish banking system. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Denison diary, 19 May 1826.

Shortly before the 1826 general election Lord Stanhope warned Parnell that in the event of a contest in Queen’s County he would only support him if he would ‘strenuously and steadfastly support the present corn laws’. Cent. Kent. Stud. Stanhope mss U1590 C199/2, Stanhope to Parnell, 29 May 1826. He offered again as ‘a friend of civil and religious liberty’ and was returned unopposed. Dublin Evening Post, 17, 27 June 1826. He denied that the tariff reforms of 1825 had established a system of free trade as the country still suffered from ‘high protecting duties’, 30 Nov. 1826, insisted the agricultural interest had ‘nothing to fear’ from free trade, 9 Mar., and condemned the cultivation of inferior land which resulted from import restrictions, 27 Mar. 1827. He voted for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828. He voted for information on the conduct of the Lisburn magistrates during the Orange procession, 29 Mar. 1827. Following the formation of Canning’s ministry, Parnell was reported to be one of the Irish Members ‘loud in their protestations’ against Lord Lansdowne for making his acceptance of office conditional on the appointment of a pro-Catholic Irish viceroy. Wentworth Woodhouse mun. Milton to Fitzwilliam, 20 Apr. 1827. On 23 Apr. he privately advised Lansdowne of his ‘great anxiety’ for a coalition with Canning, which

every circumstance serves to justify ... without stipulating for the Catholic question, or laying any stress on any minor difficulty that may exist. I feel quite confident that the Catholics will approve of any arrangement which will ... keep the old ministers from returning to power; and that the shortest way of carrying their question is to have these situations filled either by decided friends or more liberal opponents. I am extremely sorry to find so many of the opposition objecting to a divided cabinet, but I hope your lordship will persevere, and do all that you can to keep out the high Tory party. Lansdowne mss.

After the formation of Lord Goderich’s ministry, 18 Sept. 1827, Parnell asked Huskisson, the colonial secretary, when he ‘might expect to hear the result’ of Goderich’s communication with Lansdowne with respect to his being given office:

The extract I read to you ... from Lansdowne’s letter, shows that he leaves me at full liberty to continue to act as to the Whig party as I have hitherto done. His continued friendship since 1819, and his recommendation of me to Mr. Canning are proofs that he is not influenced by any strong party feelings. The other leading members of the opposition have acted towards me in a very different manner.

Two days later Huskisson replied:

You must in some way have misunderstood me. It was not my intention, at either of our interviews, to state that Lord Goderich would under any circumstances communicate with Lord Lansdowne on the subject of his wish that the public should have the benefit of your talents ... but that in ... filling future vacancies ... it must in reference to your claim be a matter of communication between Lord Lansdowne and Lord Goderich.

Huskisson also told him that Lansdowne had given Goderich ‘a memorandum to him from Canning, of his anxious desire to see you in the active service of government’. In response Parnell admitted that he had ‘not correctly’ understood ‘what you said to me at our second interview’. Add. 38751, ff. 15, 24, 66. His Observations on Paper Money, Banking and Overtrading, urging abolition of the Bank’s monopoly, was published that year.

He presented five petitions for Catholic claims, 4 Feb. 1828, and a steady stream thereafter. He was one of the ‘reformers’ considered for the finance committee by the Wellington ministry and was appointed, 15 Feb. Add. 40395, f. 221. That day Edward Littleton* noted that following the objections of Herries and Huskisson to each other’s choice for chairman (Sir Thomas Acland and Althorp respectively), Sir Matthew Ridley had been ‘applied to’ but declined, so that ‘I suppose Sir Henry Parnell will be chosen’. Hatherton diary. Expressing his unease with the committee’s composition the following day, Wellington warned Peel that the ‘friends of the late government’ and ‘even Parnell would vote for Althorp to be chairman’, which would be a ‘triumph over our friends and supporters’. On 17 Feb. Peel explained to Althorp that in requesting Sturges Bourne, Ridley and finally Parnell to take the chair, he had been ‘influenced not solely by a sense of their qualification’, but ‘by the impression that I was taking the course ... most free from embarrassments’. Add. 40307, f. 5; 40395, f. 244. Parnell was elected chairman next day. Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd mss SC17/37. Describing his subsequent examination ‘for near three hours before the finance committee’, John Croker* observed, ‘Parnell is a pedant, thinking of nothing but political economics, and of them very confusedly’. Croker Pprs. i. 407. In the House he defended the committee’s failure to report on the army and navy estimates, 17 Apr., 16 May, when he denied a ‘want of diligence’ and contended that they had been ‘obliged’ to postpone their report owing to great ‘difficulties’. The following day the whip Holmes privately complained:

The committee of finance have now sat nearly three months and have done nothing, and the longer they sit the more confused they get. Their chairman, Sir Henry Parnell, would be more usefully employed in trundling a barrow full of broken stones on the Holyhead road, than where he is. I really believe the government put him and Hume on the committee to retard all the proceedings. NLW, Powis mss 142, Holmes to Powis, 17 May 1828.

That month John Stuart Mill informed Parnell that he had considered the draft of his work On Financial Reform and could ‘not see that it is possible to lay down the principles of political economy more broadly’, adding that ‘a great service’ would be ‘rendered to the country, if you can induce the committee to concur with you in reporting in such decisive terms’. Southampton Univ. Lib. Congleton mss 13/21, Mill to Parnell, 1 May 1828. Parnell defended the Irish Subletting Act, admitting ‘the share he had had in its progress’, 19 Feb. He voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb. He criticized grants to Protestant establishments in Ireland as ‘acts of hostility committed against the religious feelings ... of the great mass of the people’, 28 Feb. On 6 Mar. he moved for a copy of the Treaty of Limerick, declaring that the enactment of the penal laws against Catholics was a ‘direct violation’ of the compact which had been entered into between the Irish nation and William III. He moved for information on importation to demonstrate the ‘benefits of reducing tariffs’, 1 Apr. Speaking as a ‘private Member’ against the navy estimates, 16 May, he unsuccessfully moved for the abolition of the coastal blockade. On 18 May Lord Ellenborough recorded that Parnell had suggested the appointment of a committee to consider how British Catholics were affected by the existing laws as ‘a proper preliminary to the discussion of the question’, which would ‘last long enough’ to make a decision ‘impracticable this year’. Ellenborough Diary, i. 108. He denounced the Scottish bank notes restriction bill as ‘one of the most uncalled for pieces of legislation ever brought before the House’, 5 June, and, contending that the security of a paper currency derived from the solvency of the issuing bank rather than the ‘quantity of metallic currency circulating with it’, advocated a complete review of the banking system, 16 June. He was in the minority of 24 against the Irish small notes bill that day. He called for reform of the Irish butter trade, 7 July, deplored increasing taxation to support a sinking fund of £3,000,000, 11 July, and was a minority teller against the customs bill, 14 July. On 21 Sept. Lord Anglesey, the Irish viceroy, wrote to upbraid Parnell for inaccurately stating that ‘I had expectations of the Catholic question being granted if the leaders could be prevailed upon to restrain the meetings’. Mq. of Anglesey, One-Leg, 373. In November 1828 Brougham informed Lord Holland that the ‘account Parnell gives of Ireland is alarming beyond measure. He believes the government must come into some terms’. Add. 51562.

On 20 Feb. 1829 Parnell expressed dismay at the ministry’s failure to reappoint the finance committee, declaring that if they had known this, ‘their reports would have been made on the army and navy’ and that ‘immense’ savings in colonial expenditure still remained to be considered. He pressed for naval reductions, 27 Feb. That month he privately told O’Connell that there was to be ‘no veto, nor any attack or interference with the discipline of the Catholic church’ in the ministry’s emancipation scheme, for which he voted, 6, 30 Mar., and spoke, 18 Mar., when he said that the influence of the Catholic clergy over the people had been ‘greatly exaggerated’. O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1517. He presented numerous favourable petitions. On 22 Mar. he forwarded a letter to Peel from Doyle, which he endorsed, suggesting that the terms of the bill prohibiting the wearing of habits should be modified to exclude clerical dress, and that the suppression of religious societies should be confined to the Jesuits. Add. 40399, ff. 68-70. He waived his objections to the measure to disfranchise 40s. freeholders rather than impede emancipation, 26 Mar. He voted for allowing O’Connell to take his seat unhindered, 18 May. He moved for accounts of the public works loan commissioners, 31 Mar. 1829, 5 Feb. 1830. On 1 May 1829 he commended the Liverpool ministry’s relaxation of trade restrictions, without which there would have been ‘a most injurious obstruction in the way of the employment of capital’, and argued that ‘all that is now wanting to secure the future prosperity of trade is the complete freedom of it’. He was later observed acting as chairman of a committee of the Society for the Propagation of Useful Knowledge, formed to publish a work illustrating the ‘propriety’ of Huskisson’s ‘alterations in the commercial policy of the country’ before the meeting of Parliament, 2 Dec. 1829. Add. 38758, f. 52. That month he wrote to Anglesey from Ireland of ‘several circumstances which prove beyond all doubt the benefits already derived from settling the Catholic question’. PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/32/A/3/1/269.

Parnell was one of ‘28 opposition Members who supported the address’, 4 Feb. 1830, but thereafter he generally spoke and voted with the revived opposition for reduced taxation and retrenchment. The Times, 6 Feb. 1830. That year he published and began distributing to leading figures his On Financial Reform, which contended that ‘the passage of merchandise from one state to another ... ought to be as free as air and water’ and denounced the supporters of protection as ‘among the greatest enemies of mankind’. Congleton mss 32/5; On Financial Reform (1830), 3, 13, 79. (A second edition appeared in 1832.) On 26 Feb. he defended his book’s attack on the navy board’s ‘trifling reductions’, but admitted the ‘impropriety’ of claiming that a revived finance committee would have censured their conduct. Explaining that the committee’s draft report on tax reductions formed part of the work, he pressed ministers to ‘revise and alter the system of taxation’ and remove ‘all obstructions ... in the way of industry’, 25 Mar. He divided for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., but not for the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., or Russell’s motion for parliamentary reform, 28 May. He welcomed amendments to his Subletting Act, but denied O’Connell’s allegation that its operation had driven ‘many paupers off their small tenements’, 16 Feb. On 18 Mar. Wellington was sent a copy of a letter from Thomas Joplin to Parnell explaining the difficulties faced by joint-stock banks, and two days later Parnell was one of nine Members who urged the necessity of inquiry into the banking system at a private interview with Wellington and Goulburn, the chancellor of the exchequer. Wellington mss WP1/1102/13; Add. 38758, f. 138. He voted for Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May (as a pair), when he presented a favourable petition. He was appointed to the select committee on superannuations, 4 May. On 11 May he resumed his campaign against the ‘positive evil’ of the Irish viceroyalty. He feared that the additional duties on newspapers would check ‘the habit of reading’, 17 May. He voted for the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 24 May, 7 June. He argued that the government’s repeal of the beer tax was not ‘of the greatest benefit to the public interest’ and wished that ‘some other taxes might have been selected’, 3 July. On 6 July 1830 Stanhope told him that his opinions on ‘several public questions’ were now ‘so different’ from his own that he could no longer support him in Queen’s County. Stanhope mss C199/2.

At the 1830 general election Parnell stood again, stressing his part in ‘carrying a number of measures of the greatest importance to the welfare of Ireland’ and his ‘constant attention’ in ‘every session’. Attempts to organize an opposition came to nothing. Dublin Evening Post, 27 July, 14 Aug. 1830. He was listed by the Irish agent Pierce Mahony† as ‘neutral’ but by Planta, the ministry’s patronage secretary, as one of their ‘foes’. On 2 Nov. 1830 he denied that there was widespread support in Ireland for repeal of the Union, which would entail ‘general and universal ruin’. He condemned proposals for additional duties on raw materials entering the West Indies as an unwarranted abandonment of free trade, 12 Nov., and was a minority teller for his own amendment to reduce West Indian wheat import duties, which failed by 39-136. That day he disputed the ministry’s purported saving of £88,000 on the civil list and gave notice that he would propose an inquiry. On 15 Nov. he moved to refer the civil list to a select committee, declaring that Members ‘just returned ... with professions of economy fresh on their lips’ should not ‘consent to vote away so large a sum’ and sanction such ‘extravagant expenditure’, and that for the sake of ‘the national tranquillity and the security of the monarchy’, the household expenses should be made distinct from other charges. The motion (for which he and Althorp were tellers) was carried by 233-204, with the support of disaffected Ultra Tories. The Whig Lord Howick noted that ‘Brougham ... wanted Parnell to put off naming his committee, but we raised such a cry ... that we made him go on’, and he was named as chairman of the committee that day. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 16 Nov. 1830. The following day the ministry resigned and Lord Grey took office. In private Parnell conjectured:

In case an offer is made me of a situation in the new administration, on what grounds ought I to make up my opinion as to accepting it? I have proposed ... plans of reforms of the finances in my book, which have been approved of by the public. In order to put the finances in a sound state it is indispensable that these plans should be sooner or later adopted.

On 18 Nov. Parnell recorded that he

called on Althorp and told him that relying on his opinion that he and Grey would adopt fuller measures of retrenchment and economy ... I would accept the office of the secretary of the treasury. He replied that he feared he had yesterday made a mistake, that Grey had told him he meant only to offer me a seat at the treasury board. I immediately replied that I would not accept ... Althorp behaved very badly in not letting me know sooner. Congleton mss 29, ff. 65-76.

In a ‘note’ to Althorp that evening he wrote that having ‘taken so earnest a part in all matters of finance, I could not accept of any other office but that of chancellor of the exchequer, so pray do not give yourself any further trouble about me’, but in private he wondered ‘what to do if now offered the office’, 21 Nov. Ibid. 15/5; 29, f. 76. Althorp’s version of events, as recorded by John Hobhouse*, was that ‘he wanted Parnell to be chief lord commissioner of the treasury’, which he had declined, saying ‘there was only one place he could take, and that was chancellor of the exchequer. "Now", said Althorp, "to write this to the chancellor of the exchequer was a little too much"’. ‘An appointment was offered to him, but he refused it as beneath his pretensions’, Denis Le Marchant† later recorded, adding that ‘these seemed to many of the party rather extravagant’. Broughton, Recollections, iv. 196; Le Marchant, Althorp, 271. Subsequent rumours that ‘civic Harry’, as he was now called by the press, would become vice-treasurer of Ireland proved incorrect, whereupon The Times expressed surprise at his exclusion from office, which ‘is by many considered the most serious blot in the ministerial arrangements of Lord Grey’. The Times, 24 Nov. 1830, 7 Feb. 1831; The Age, 5 Dec. 1830. Lord Darnley informed Holland, 18 Jan. 1831, that he ‘fully concur[red] in Doyle’s opinion of Parnell, who, if not chancellor of the exchequer, ought ... to have been secretary in Ireland, a country which he knows ... better and with less prejudice, than any one’. Add. 51572. Another commentator noted that there had been ‘a loud cry against Grey’s rapacity and folly in thrusting ten members of his own family into high situations, and neglecting such men as Sir Henry’. Add. 34614, f. 119. On 12 Dec. 1830 John Bull observed that Parnell

still keeps his former seat on what is called the opposition bench ... forming no part of that administration which his motion has produced, not that he had not an offer, but as he tells everybody, they offered him a sinecure ... Ye Gods! only think of the Whigs, the retrenching Whigs, offering a sinecure ... to the chairman of the committee of finance!!

He pressed for further information on the civil list, 7 Dec., and was appointed to the select committee on salary reductions, 9 Dec. Next day he advocated a ‘strict examination’ of the English banking system. On 25 Jan. 1831 Lord Seaford reported a conversation with Parnell, in which he had insisted that the Whigs could have ‘gained completely’ the support of O’Connell ‘by some advance in his profession’, but that ‘being passed over’ had ‘exasperated him and drawn him to the cause which he has now adopted’. ‘If Parnell’s version is correct’, Seaford reflected, ‘it was a great blunder not [to] have bought off O’Connell ... But Parnell is not quite to be trusted, for he feels himself to have been, if not passed over, not sufficiently considered’. TNA 30/29/9/5/76. On 4 Feb. Parnell announced his ‘decided objections’ to the salaries of the household officials and berated the government for not abiding ‘by the opinions expressed by them before they became ministers’ and their ‘want of strict and severe’ economy. The Tories, Ellenborough commented, were ‘much delighted’, believing it had ‘damaged’ ministers ‘very much’, but Le Marchant thought that Parnell’s ‘motives were too open to suspicion’ for his speech ‘to have any injurious effect’. Three Diaries, 46; Le Marchant, 272. He was appointed to the select committee on the East India Company that day. He welcomed Althorp’s decision not to resist his motion for another committee on the public accounts, to which he was appointed, 17 Feb. On 25 Feb. he rejected as a ‘complete misapprehension’ Althorp’s claim in his budget speech of 11 Feb. 1831 that his book had provided the ‘authority for selecting the particular taxes’ which he proposed to reduce, declaring, ‘I never said anything which could justify any one of the taxes he proposes to lay on’, and was sad to see ‘the new government adopting the same scale of expenditure as the old one’. Even Mill, however, later accepted that ‘ministers were luckily guided in their remission of taxes by Sir Henry Parnell’s book’. Newspaper Writings by J. S. Mill ed. A. Robson and J. Robson, xxiii. 612.

On 4 Mar. 1831 Holland recommended Parnell for the office of secretary at war, made vacant by Williams Wynn’s resignation over parliamentary reform, as he ‘would be useful and above all is most hazardous and injurious to us out of office’. Grey agreed, but feared that ‘what is passing in the civil list committee would make it very disagreeable to the king’. The following day he told William IV’s secretary Sir Herbert Taylor* that Parnell’s ‘present activity is a good deal excited by discontent at having nothing’ and ‘we should put an end to all difficulties on his part, like those which have taken place respecting the civil list, by his appointment’. Grey mss. On 7 Mar. Parnell recorded that Althorp had offered him the post, at which he was ‘much flattered’, but having

formed so decided an opinion with respect to the scale of the public expenditure which he had proposed this session ... I had no hesitation in declining to accept it. Lord Althorp said that his determination was to reduce the expenditure in every possible way, and that in point of fact he did not believe there was any real difference of opinion between us ... to which I replied, that if he should make his future arrangements so as to be decidedly calculated to secure retrenchment, I would willingly take office and help him. I then mentioned my intention to oppose the regranting of the civil list pensions, and the colonial bill and the timber duties, and I strongly urged Lord Althorp to make some change about the civil list pensions, so as not to have any such obstacle in the way of the success about reform. Congleton mss 29, f. 87.

On 11 Mar. he duly condemned the colonial trade bill as too protectionist and ‘similar to the one submitted last year’ and expressed his hope that ‘reform would introduce a greater proportion of men than at present who understand such questions’. He voted for the second reading of the reform bill, 22 Mar. Two weeks later he was appointed secretary at war, to the approval of the Irish secretary Smith Stanley, who informed the reappointed viceroy Anglesey, 31 Mar., ‘I am sure it has pacified the Irish Members, and hope it will the Irish people. He is well qualified for the place, which I always wished him to have taken at first’. Anglesey mss 31D/37. ‘With a view to Ireland, to the conciliation of many of our friends, and the removal of much formidable and industrious enmity, it is a good appointment’, remarked Holland, but ‘I am afraid it will not be very popular in the army’. TNA GD30/29, Holland to Granville, 14 Apr. 1831. Hobhouse commented that ‘he is a much better man there than I should have been, but I am a better man in the House, at least as far as speaking goes’. Broughton, iv. 98. Privately recording his ‘reasons for taking office’, Parnell cited ‘the certainty after the debate on the second reading of the reform bill that all prospect was removed of Peel’s coming to an arrangement with the moderate Whig reformers’ and ‘the necessity of taking a part’ in shaping the government’s financial policy, adding

if Peel had quitted the Ultra Tories and distinctly agreed to abolish the nomination boroughs ... a sufficient reform could have been secured, and a coalition [formed] with him in strong government for carrying on financial and legal reforms. Congleton mss 29, ff. 101-2.

On seeking re-election Parnell, anticipating that his support for the Union might provoke opposition, asked O’Connell to endorse him, explaining that he had ‘abstained from accepting office until the government’ had proved itself ‘on the reform question’ and he ‘could feel confidence in their good intentions’ towards Ireland, and warning that ‘if the friends of reform fall out with me on account of any other question, I may cease to represent the Queen’s County’. O’Connell declared in his favour and he was returned unopposed. O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1794; Dublin Evening Post, 19 Apr. 1831. He was not back in time for the division on Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. The Times, 21 Apr. 1831.

At the ensuing general election he stood as a ‘thorough-going’ reformer and was returned at the head of the poll. Dublin Evening Post, 5, 12, 17 May 1831. That month it was reported to Wellington that Parnell and Althorp favoured ‘a plan for the reduction of the army’, which Hume would shortly bring forward. Wellington mss WP1/1184/1. On 3 June 1831 Parnell notified Althorp that his ‘moderate schemes of retrenchment’ in the army were being ‘resisted’ by the commander-in-chief Lord Hill, and recommended the appointment of an army board. Althorp agreed to ‘talk to Grey about this as about stopping the recruitment of the army’, but suggested that ‘at present the only thing to do is to vote the army estimates exactly as they stand’. Congleton mss 31/1. In the House, 25 June, Parnell assured Hume that the reappointment of the public accounts committee was ‘under consideration’. He secured a select committee on the militia estimates, 30 June. He defended the work of the Holyhead road commissioners, 1 July. He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, against the adjournment, 12 July, and of course gave steady support to its detailed provisions, although on 26 July he was one of those who ‘voted against the government’ in a division on Saltash in which ‘no one knew what he was to do’, after which the patronage secretary Ellice ‘went home in a rage’. Hatherton diary, 26 July 1831. That month, when it was rumoured that Lord Spencer was dying, Ellenborough noted that ‘the persons talked of’ as Althorp’s replacement at the exchequer were ‘[Smith] Stanley, Rice and Parnell’, of whom ‘they all say Rice is the ablest, Parnell very dull, but Stanley of course will have it’. Three Diaries, 110. Contemplating whom to appoint Irish secretary in the ‘event of [Smith] Stanley going to the exchequer’, Anglesey later warned that Spring Rice ‘would not do’ and ‘neither would Parnell’. Anglesey mss 27/B, Anglesey to Holland, 3 Sept. 1831. He spoke against renewing the grant to the Kildare Place Society, 22 July, and presented hostile petitions, 12 Aug. He voted against disqualification of the Dublin election committee, 29 July, and with his colleagues on the issue, 23 Aug. He denied that his Subletting Act had failed but admitted that some of its provisions required ‘further consideration’, 5 Aug. On 24 Aug. 1831 Holmes reported that Parnell and Sir James Graham had ‘carried their point of preventing a burst [of artillery fire] at the coronation’, thereby making ‘all the naval and military furious’. Arbuthnot Corresp. 148. That month Parnell, whom Duncannon had requested should ‘occasionally’ talk to the Irish Members during his absence, began a campaign to ‘procure offices of trust’ for some of the leading Irish Catholic Members. Brougham mss, Duncannon to Brougham [Aug. 1831]; Holland House Diaries, 41. On 18 Aug. Althorp relayed and endorsed to Le Marchant Parnell’s conviction that ‘there is no chance or hope of governing Ireland [until] O’Connell, Sheil and the leaders of the discontented party are provided for’. Three Diaries, 117. The following month Parnell informed Lord Brougham that with ‘O’Connell ... Sheil, Wyse and O’Ferrall in office, and the priests paid, Ireland would at once be quiet, whereas if things go on as at present, every one of them will be in opposition’. On 11 Oct. he added that Anglesey was ‘most anxious to make an arrangement’ and willing to offer O’Connell the ‘attorney-generalship if nothing else would do’, and that ‘I can undertake to say that if O’Connell gets office, he will use his utmost exertions to assist government in every way ... The only difficulty Anglesey feels is with respect to Lord Grey. Cannot you assist in removing it?’ On 15 Oct. Parnell reported that he had urged on Grey ‘in the strongest manner, the necessity of giving office to O’Connell’, who was ‘willing to take the solicitor-generalship’. Congleton mss 34/3, Parnell to Brougham, 23 Sept., 15 Oct.; Brougham mss, same to same, 11 Oct. 1831. A few days later, at Parnell’s request, an offer was apparently conveyed to O’Connell through Doyle, but he rejected it on ‘finding how isolated the proposal of office was’. O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1837. Parnell, however, continued to insist that O’Connell could be gained. Lord Melbourne, the home secretary, observed to Anglesey, 18 Dec. 1831, that

Parnell, having pressed upon me in the most urgent manner the necessity of gratifying O’Connell, I desired my brother to communicate to him ... what had passed between O’Connell and you ... and your conviction that it was hopeless to entertain any further expectation of conciliating him. He said that, whatever had passed, he was of a different opinion ... that he was certain he would immediately accept any direct offer was made [including] the master of the rolls. Melbourne Pprs. 168-9.

He voted for the third reading, 19 Sept., and passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. 1831. On 2 Oct. he submitted to Althorp his recommendations for army reductions, against which he alleged there was ‘so powerful a coalition of military men in support of every useless and extravagant expense’. Informing Grey of his plans, 20 Oct., he declared that it would not be ‘consistent with what I felt to be my duty on this subject, to propose to the House ... in the estimate of next year a vote, which shall leave the management of the clothing of the household cavalry in the hands of the colonels of regiments’. Congleton mss 34/1. He dismissed calls for an inquiry into the previous administration’s proposed use of the Tower of London in the event of civil unrest, 4 Oct. He endorsed the policy of half-pay for officers in receipt of civil salaries, which had been recommended by the finance committee and saved £73,000 a year, 7 Oct. He voted for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. On 2 Dec. it was reported that the various points which Grey had conceded in his discussions with Lord Wharncliffe on the subject of reform were ‘disapproved by Althorp and Parnell, and the negotiations in consequence fell through’. Von Neumann Diary, i. 265. Writing later that month, however, Wellington noted that Parnell had ‘said to a friend "We must succumb"’. Wellington mss WP1/1205/18. He voted for the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, again gave steady support to its details, and divided for the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832.

On 9 Dec. 1831 Parnell reminded Althorp that he had ‘been constantly occupied during the last eight months in making the strictest investigation into every item of the army estimates’ and urged the cabinet to approve his reductions:

When I accepted office I distinctly gave you to understand it was my intention to act fully and strictly on the principles I had publicly avowed ... If it is postponed you must not hold me responsible for any inconvenience that may follow from my resigning my office while the reform bill is in progress. Congleton mss 34/1, 5.

Later that month Greville noted that Parnell had caused ‘something like a tracasserie of an official kind’ in Paris, at which Grey was ‘indignant’, by negotiating ‘about the mails’ without the sanction of the duke of Richmond, the postmaster-general, who was ‘very angry’ and ‘told me that if he had mentioned it to the king, he was sure he would have insisted upon Parnell’s being dismissed’. Describing Richmond’s ‘great aversion’ to Parnell, Greville recalled that

Hume had given notice of a motion against the post office just when Parnell took office, and as he went to Ireland to be re-elected he wrote to Hume to urge him to bring it on. Hume brought the letter to Richmond, who was indignant ... He contented himself at the time with speaking to Althorp, who spoke to Parnell. Greville Mems. ii. 231.

On 26 Jan. 1832 Parnell was absent from the majority in support of ministers on the Russian Dutch loan. ‘Our secretary at war would not vote on Thursday! Is this to be borne’?, noted Holland:

It is pretty clear that he is looking out for popular grounds to resign. His conduct in office has been far from friendly to the government or even meritorious in his department. Not Grey only, but Althorp, who has great personal regard for him and estimates his talents and principles of political economy very highly, agrees he should be dismissed. Holland House Diaries, 120-1.

On 30 Jan. Althorp, having asked Parnell to call on him and found him out of town, wrote ‘to say what is most disagreeable’:

If the division ... had been against us, there would have been no possibility of our remaining in office another day ... I understand Duncannon told you as much, but still you went away and did not vote ... Under these circumstances my colleagues are, and I am sorry to say with myself, unanimously of opinion that you ought to resign your office. I can assure you I never was more annoyed by any political event than I am by being obliged to write you this letter. For a great many years you and I have acted cordially together. We have much the same objects in view. We differ very little about the means of obtaining them ... When you accepted office I felt that your knowledge of business and your power of application would supply that in which I am most deficient, and I looked forward to being able together to affect great good. But it is quite impossible for any government to exist if the members of it are not prepared to resist a vote of censure on their colleagues. Every man ought to agree to a vote of censure if he thinks the ministry deserve it ... but then he certainly ought not to continue associated with such a ministry. This is the state of the case, and I need not tell you that I write to you with the deepest regret.

Parnell replied the following day that he had ‘no hesitation in taking the course you intimate’, and thanked Althorp for having ‘entertained the various suggestions’ he had made while in office. Add. 75941; Congleton mss 34/1. Privately he observed:

I repeatedly apprized between 7 June and this date, that I could not hold office if Lord Hill remained commander-in-chief. I gave him my plans of estimates in a letter (9 December 1831) saying I would resign unless ... reductions in the household guards were conducted. In January 1832, having received Lord Hill’s estimates, I wrote to Lord Grey to say I would not agree to them and that we could not go on together. Congleton mss 29, f. 102.

Calling him an ‘honest man’, 31 Jan., Ellenborough observed that

the Grey faction are much annoyed, as they think he goes out to avoid being smashed when the whole government is, and to have free scope for his attacks against the budget ... [He] had long been on cool terms with the government. He wished to deprive officers and soldiers on furlough of their pay, and to make reductions quite impossible. They found him impractical and they never liked him. He had often been absent and rarely sat with them. Three Diaries, 187.

‘Good riddance’, commented Greville, 2 Feb., adding, ‘he wrote an excellent book on finance, but he was a very bad secretary at war, a rash economical innovator, and a bad man of business in its details’. Greville Mems. ii. 246. They ‘do wisely to turn out Parnell’, remarked the duke of Bedford, 7 Feb. 1832. Add. 51671, Bedford to Lady Holland, 7 Feb. 1832. Writing to Anglesey a few days later Richmond observed:

Parnell was quite unfit for his office. He seldom went near it, and was too much of a radical. Pamphlet writers do not in general make good executive officers. He was turned out for not having voted with the government, but entre nous I believe he would have resigned upon the army estimates unless we had agreed to reduce the army, which is impossible. All his plans for saving expenditure were theories and would have been serious grievances to the army. W. Sussex RO, Goodwood mss 1486, pp. 159-61.

Out of office, Parnell resumed his campaign against the army and navy estimates, demanding greater parliamentary control, 13 Feb., and accounting reforms, 17 Feb. 1832. On 28 Mar. he contrasted his successor Hobhouse’s ‘very small amount of reductions’ with his own refusal to ‘depart from the principles which I formerly professed’, explaining that he had submitted proposals for an annual saving of £600,000 to Hill, which had been ignored, and that he ‘could not continue to hold office unless I was supported, as I conceived I ought to be, by the government’. On 17 Feb., however, he privately offered Brougham another reason for his departure:

I discontinued writing to you in consequence of a communication I had with Althorp early in December, from which I came to the conclusion that there was not any chance of having O’Connell and other Catholics appointed to office as long as the cabinet existed in its present form. This circumstance chiefly led me to determine to take the first opportunity of getting rid of my office. Congleton mss 34/3.

He endorsed a petition for the abolition of Irish tithes, 16 Feb., presented numerous others, 13, 26 Feb., and spoke and divided against the Irish tithes bill, 8 Mar., when it was reported that Smith Stanley had ‘set up Parnell famously’, and 30 Mar., 2 Aug. UCNW, Mostyn mss 265, Mostyn to fa. 9 Mar. 1832. Commenting on his revived opposition, 10 Mar., the backbencher John Hawkins contended that ‘on Sir Henry’s part, it was most probably pique and wounded vanity. He is a pragmatical coxcomb, who did all sorts of mischief in his office, and the ministry were right glad to be rid of him’. Cornw. RO, Hawkins mss 10/2185. He presented and endorsed a petition for military assistance following the disturbances in Queen’s County, rejecting charges of ‘inconsistency’ with his campaign for reductions, 31 Mar. On the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry reform unimpaired, 10 May, he was one of twelve ‘who might have voted if they had thought proper, having been present during the debate, but left the House and did not vote’. The Times, 14 May 1832. He demanded inquiry into the banking system, 22 May, and was appointed to the select committee on the Bank’s charter, 23 May. That day he gave notice that he would move for inquiry into the disturbed state of his county, but following remarks by O’Connell, 31 May, Wyse carried an amendment broadening its aim to investigation of the causes of these events and the laws for the suppression of outrages in Ireland, to which Parnell was appointed (as chairman). Commenting on the episode, 25 June, Daniel Egan observed to O’Connell that ‘Sir Henry is a great fox and as all his measures have had the appearance when first broached of being for the good of Ireland and ultimately being rather curses than benefits, he must be well watched’. O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1899. He voted for the second reading of Irish reform bill, 25 May, but was in the minority of 21 for an amendment against the liability of Irish electors to pay municipal taxes before they could vote, 29 June. He paired with ministers against a Conservative amendment to increase the Scottish county representation, 1 June. On 29 June he charged the post office with incompetency, recounting that in Paris the previous November he had ‘found every disposition to facilitate the project of a daily communication between the two capitals’. On 4 July he refuted O’Connell’s claim that at a meeting of 28 Members in February he had agreed to a resolution advising ministers to adopt the English system of voter registration in Ireland. The following day he welcomed Althorp’s decision to postpone consideration of the Bank’s charter until the next session. He was credited with a vote against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July, but his name was absent from the lists in The Times and Mirror of Parliament. The Times, 14 July 1832. He voted for inquiry into admissions to the inns of court, 17 July. He welcomed the ministry’s new proposals for army reductions, which accorded ‘very much with those I suggested’, 26 July 1832. Urging the necessity of pushing retrenchment ‘to the greatest possible extent’ the following day, he warned of the ‘vast expense’ of maintaining the colonies and hoped that the ‘first practical benefit we shall receive from parliamentary reform will be an effective retrenchment’.

At the 1832 dissolution Parnell retired from Queen’s County after finding that ‘the repeal cry’ had lost him ‘the support of all the Catholic voters’. Congleton mss 34/3, Parnell to Brougham, 19 Dec. 1832. In 1833 he was elected unopposed as a Liberal for Dundee, where he sat until retiring in 1841. His Treatise on Roads, drawing on his experience at Holyhead, was published in 1833 and ran to a second edition in 1838. In the second Melbourne administration he served as treasurer of the navy and paymaster-general, in which office he continued to pursue ‘many severe and impracticable schemes of reduction’. Gent. Mag. (1842), ii. 203. Observing that he had ‘spoken very little of late’ and that ‘his reputation is suffering in consequence’, James Grant wrote in 1837:

Parnell is a respectable but by no means a superior speaker. He has a fine clear voice, but he never varies the key in which he commences ... He delivers his speeches in much the same way as if he were repeating some piece of writing committed to memory in his schoolboy years. His gesticulation is a great deal too tame for his speeches to produce any effect. He stands stock-still, except when he occasionally raises and lets fall his right hand. Even this he does in a very gentle manner. What he excels in is giving a plain, luminous statement of complex financial matters. In this respect he has no superior; I doubt if he has an equal in the House. [J. Grant], Random Recollections of Commons (1837), 239-40.

In August 1841 he was elevated to a United Kingdom barony, much to the consternation of Graham, the home secretary in the new Peel administration, who thought it a ‘high crime and misdemeanour’ on the part of the retiring ministry. The Times, 14 Aug. 1841; Arbuthnot Corresp. 227.

In June 1842 Parnell committed suicide by hanging himself in his dressing room at Cadogan Place, Chelsea, having ‘for two months been in a low, desponding state of mind’ and ‘under medical treatment’. By his will, proved under £7,000, the residue of his estate passed to his second son Henry William, his eldest son and successor in the barony John Vesey (1805-83), having ‘renounced’ it. Gent. Mag. (1842), ii. 204, 677.