HARDINGE, Sir Henry (1785-1856), of Ketton, co. Dur. and 16 Sackville Street, Mdx.

Hardinge, an affable and able tactician, negotiator and administrator who established himself as the duke of Wellington’s military and political aide-de-camp, was a direct descendant of the Civil War baronet, Sir Robert Hardinge of King’s Newton, Derbyshire, and a grandson of the clerk of the Commons (1731-48) and junior treasury secretary (1752-8) Nicholas Hardinge† (1699-1758). The latter’s marriage in 1738 to the 1st Earl Camden’s sister Jane presaged a close connection with the Pratt family and their kinsmen the Stewarts of Mount Stewart, county Down, which was strengthened by Hardinge’s marriage in 1821 to the 1st marquess of Londonderry’s next youngest daughter. She was also the widow of Camden’s grandson. He passed much of his early childhood at The Grove, near Sevenoaks, Kent, but was educated in Durham, where his father was rector of Stanhope, worth £5,000 a year, and had a small estate at Ketton. School annals record that he ‘used to be sent up the buttresses of the cathedral and on other dangerous expeditions in search of birds’ eggs’. Durham Sch. Reg. ed. C.S. Earle and L.A. Body, 63; Gent. Mag. (1856), ii. 646-9. Intended with his brothers George Nicholas, Richard and Frederick for a military career, he joined the Queen’s Rangers with a commission at the age of 13, and for the next six years served with them in Canada, where his exploits included rescuing Lord Grey’s future brother-in-law Edward Ellice* from a gang of robbers. Hardinge, 12. He attributed his subsequent success to the tuition of General Jarry at the Royal Military College, 1806-7, and Sir William Beresford’s† decision to make him a deputy quartermaster-general in 1809. A distinguished veteran of the Peninsular war, he fought in all the major battles: under Wellington at Rolica and Vineiro (1808); with Sir John Moore†, whom he tended when he was fatally wounded at Corunna (1809); at Albuera (1811), where the campaign historian Napier credited him personally with saving the day; and at Salamanca (1812), Vitoria (1813), the Pyrenees, Nivelle, Neve and Orthes (1814). Wellington seconded him to the staff of the Prussian Field Marshall Blücher for the Waterloo campaign, with the local rank of brigadier general, and his left hand was shattered by French fire at Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815, and amputated. Knighted and granted a £300 disability pension, he remained with the Prussian army of occupation until 1818. Hardinge Letters, 4-6; Hardinge, 13-29; Gent. Mag. (1856), ii. 646-9.

Hardinge returned to Durham in 1819 to test the political ground for his cousin Lord Charles William Stewart†, the foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh’s* half-brother, who was keen to revive the Vane Tempest (Wynyard) interest of his second wife and unseat her uncle by marriage, the Whig veteran Michael Taylor*. Though failing in the latter, Hardinge came in for Durham unopposed with government backing at the general election of 1820, after the sitting ministerialist Richard Wharton† was persuaded to vacate to contest the county. Cent. Kent. Stud. Camden mss UB40 C530/1; Dorset RO, Bond mss D/BoH C15, Jekyll to Bond, 8 Feb.; Add. 51959, Londonderry to Miss Fox [Feb.]; Tyne Mercury, 15 Feb.; Newcastle Courant, 19 Feb., 4 Mar. 1820; Add. 38458, f. 294; A.J. Heesom, ‘"Legitimate" versus "Illegitimate" Influences: Aristocratic Engineering in Mid-Victorian Britain’, PH, vii (1988), 289-90. He informed his aunt and future mother-in-law Lady Londonderry:

Though I do not intend to allow myself to be excited into any blindness of the difficulties I shall have to encounter in this new career, opposed to greater experience and more ready talkers than myself, yet I can unaffectedly say that I rather like the difficulties the better in proportion as I come in closer contact with them, and you may depend that as long as I can stir tongue or limb or any faculty I shall do my best endeavours to carry the point we have so earnestly at heart. Camden mss C530/1.

As one of Castlereagh’s family Members, 1820-2, Hardinge co-operated closely with David Ker, Thomas Wood and his lifelong confidant, and brother-in-law from 1821, Lord Ellenborough. He sent regular reports of debates to Lady Londonderry and shared in the allocation of Durham patronage during Stewart’s absences abroad. Add. 38289, f. 49; Camden mss C530/1-8. He thwarted schemes to illuminate the United Services Club and the Guards Club when Queen Caroline’s prosecution was abandoned in November 1820, secured the ‘expulsion’ of The Times (then a Whig paper) from the latter and divided against censuring ministers’ conduct of the affair, 6 Feb. 1821. He predicted, correctly, that the clamour it generated would be brief. Camden mss C530/5-8; Gronow Reminiscences, ii. 212. A lifelong advocate of religious toleration, he divided for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825, but privately expressed ‘unease’ at

any material interference with the Protestant establishment in church and state. The fears of Popery I despise, but the innovation may tend to encourage a sort of combined assault of all the Dissenters. Camden mss C530/8.

He voted against parliamentary reform, 9 May 1821, 2 June 1823, and in the ministerial majorities on economy and retrenchment, 4 July 1820, 27 July 1821, and against the malt duty repeal bill, 3 Apr. 1821.

By confining himself to military matters, on which he could demonstrate his professional expertise, Hardinge quickly acquired a reputation as a clear and businesslike speaker. Add. 39775, f. 77. Drawing on personal experience and the 1817 finance committee report, he made an erudite defence of the army estimates, including the decision to retain seven Guards battalions, in his maiden speech, 14 Mar., and criticized attempts to secure reductions, 15 Mar., 11, 30 Apr., 1, 2, 21 May 1821. The Times, 15 Mar., 2, 3, 22 May 1821. He voted against disqualifying civil ordnance officers from voting at parliamentary elections, 12 Apr., and to retain capital punishment for forgery, 23 May. He paid an electioneering visit to Durham with Stewart and the Staffordshire Member Littleton in October 1821, and when he married in December he took a house in Grosvenor Place and arranged to purchase South Park, near Penshurst, Kent. Hatherton diary, 10 Oct.-2 Nov. 1821; Hardinge Letters, 6. He divided steadily with government in 1822 and, clashing frequently with Hume, he doggedly defended the army estimates, including the cost of the Guards’ table at St. James’s, commissions, the promotion system and the grant to the Military College, 4, 6, 15, 22, 28 Mar. The Times, 16, 23 Mar. 1822. Drawn into the political manoeuvring which followed the suicide of the 2nd marquess of Londonderry (Castlereagh) in August 1822, he found his patronage requests blocked after Stewart, as 3rd marquess, resigned his Austrian embassy and threatened to head a breakaway family party. He made a parliamentary tribute to his half-brother, a peerage with reversion to the issue of his second marriage and the colonelcy of the Londonderry militia the price of his continued support for government. Add. 38291, f. 122; 40313, ff. 1-9; Wellington mss WP1/846/9; Arbuthnot Corresp. 31. Trusted by Londonderry to ‘feel and act as I do’, Hardinge countered newspaper criticism of Castlereagh, declined to second the 1823 address and, backed by Wellington and the 1st Marquess Camden, secured a promise of the ‘Derry regiment’ and the titles of Earl Vane and Viscount Seaham for Londonderry, who had yet to return from the continent. Blickling Hall mss, Londonderry to dowager Lady Londonderry, 14, 29 Dec. 1822, 20 Feb. 1823; Arbuthnot Corresp. 40; Wellington mss WP1/754/26, 30; 762/17, 23; 764/2; 766/12. Contemplating war and a return to active service following the French invasion of Spain, he wrote to him, 24 Jan. 1823: ‘Emily has spoilt me for the profession, but I detest politics, and would consent to be quiet for the rest of my life if the demands of my family did not point out exertion as a duty’. Blickling Hall mss. No reports survive of his parliamentary attendance until March 1823, after Londonderry had confirmed his support for ministers. Add. 38292, f. 381; Wellington mss WP1/766/12; The Times, 8 Mar.; Blickling Hall mss, Londonderry to dowager Lady Londonderry, 2 July 1823. He divided with them on taxation, 3, 18 Mar., and defended the grant to the Military College, 7 Mar. His appointment as clerk of the ordnance, reporting to Wellington as master-general, was gazetted on 5 Apr. 1823, a week after Londonderry’s peerage. The Times; 8 Mar.; Gent. Mag. (1823), i. 366. Wynyard and Brancepeth (Russell) agents co-operated to see off a challenge to his re-election that month, a two-day poll engineered by the Whig county Member Lambton. Tyne Mercury, 1, 8 Apr.; Lincs. AO, Tennyson d’Eyncourt mss T d’E H88/24, Russell to Tennyson [Apr.]; Blickling Hall mss, Londonderry to dowager Lady Londonderry, 23 Apr. 1823.

Hardinge’s competent presentation of the ordnance estimates, 27 Feb. 1824, when he carried the divisions against a 10,000-man reduction (by 89-19) and cutting the barrack grant (by 95-57), and his reply to Hobhouse were cheered and earned him the praise of the foreign secretary Canning. Add. 56548, f. 56; Wellington mss WP1/785/16; 786/1; 939/1. A motion to reduce his salary failed, 9 Mar. The Times, 10 Mar. 1824. He brought in the mutiny bill and robustly defended military flogging, 5, 11, 15 Mar., as he was to do throughout his career, for he believed that the object of military punishment was ‘not only ... the repression of crime, but effecting that object in the shortest possible time’. He intervened to support the secretary at war, Lord Palmerston, when the conduct of the Guards was criticized, 17 Mar., and took charge of the barrack amendment bill on the 25th. Ibid. 18, 26 Mar. 1824; P. Burroughs, ‘Crime and Punishment in the British Army, 1815-70’, EHR, c (1985), 545-71, especially 565. Implicated by association in Londonderry’s five-month dispute with William Battier of the 10th Dragoons, he briefed Wellington on the matter and was Londonderry’s second when it culminated in a much caricatured bloodless duel at Battersea, 12 May. Battier’s subsequent insults and criticism were effectively silenced. Wellington mss WP1/790/10; 791/6; 792/7, 8, 10, 13; 793/19, 23; The Times, 10, 11, 17, 24, 27 May 1824; M.D. George, Cat. of Pol. and Personal Satires, x. 14661-4. Attending to Durham business, he presented a petition for repeal of the coastwise coal duties, 23 Feb., tried unsuccessfully (with Thomas Wood) to have the Tees and Weardale railway bill, to which Londonderry objected, thrown out, 3 May 1824, and opposed the 1825 measure. The Times, 24 Feb., 4 May 1824, 5 Mar. 1825. His vote against condemning the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith for encouraging slaves to riot, 11 June 1824, was the subject of a hostile editorial on the 19th in the Whig Durham Chronicle. He spent much of that summer and the next with his wife and children at Muddiford, near Chichester, where their guest Mrs. Arbuthnot noted that Wellington had a high opinion of him. Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 333. He made light of opposition to the ordnance estimates, which included a £650 increase in his salary (to £1,836), 4 Mar., justified the use of troops for the Irish survey (as a member of the select committee), 7 Mar., and reproved Hume for overburdening his department with requests for printed returns, 23 June 1825. The Times, 8 Mar., 24 June 1825. His defence of the conduct of the first commissioner of woods and forests Arbuthnot and Wellington as trustees of the Deccan prize money deflected blame on to the governor of Madras Sir Thomas Hislop and was not well received, causing Canning to intervene, 1 July 1825; but he fared better on the 5th, when he made the claimants’ lawyers the scapegoats. Ibid. 2, 6 July 1825; Wellington mss WP1/822/11; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 405. A radical reviewer of the session noted that he ‘spoke occasionally and with considerable force and animation’. Session of Parl. 1825, p. 467. He justified the cost of renewing ordnance stores and artillery, upgrading barracks and maintaining the Woolwich establishment, but refused to give details of the Canadian expenditure, 6 Mar. 1826. Wellington mss WP1/848/22. He voted against condemning the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar. 1826, and, heeding the comparisons made between them and courts martial, he submitted a memorial to Wellington recommending concessions on military flogging based on the Prussian two-tier punishment system that restricted it to the lower, non-commissioned ranks. The duke of York, as commander in chief, rejected the scheme. Ibid. WP1/872/3, 4; Wellington Despatches, iii. 198-201; J.R. Dinwiddy, ‘The Early 19th Cent. Campaign Against Flogging in the Army’, EHR, xcvii (1982), 308-31. Nothing came of an early flurry of opposition to his return for Durham, but his placeman status, want of patronage and failure to endorse the campaign against colonial slavery were all severely criticized at the general election in June. On the hustings he expressed his admiration for Pitt and support for Catholic relief. Durham Chron. 21, 28 Jan., 10, 17 June 1826. Afterwards, he mediated between Londonderry and his eldest son Lord Castlereagh, Member for county Down, on patronage and estate matters. Durham CRO, Londonderry mss D/Lo/C83/3(1).

Defending his department, Hardinge sidestepped Warburton’s allegation that they had been supplied with inferior timber by their contractors by promising an internal investigation, 8 Dec. 1826; and prompted by the opposition later that day, he criticized the conduct of Colonel Bradley in refusing to recognize Colonel Arthur as his commander-in-chief in Honduras. He spoke similarly, 14 Feb. 1827. The Times, 9 Dec. 1826, 15 Feb. 1827. On the estimates, 9, 16 Feb., he easily overcame criticism of the Irish survey and the barrack grant, but found Alexander Baring’s criticism of the Canadian expenditure difficult to counter. Ibid. 10, 17 Feb. 1827. He defended the practice of awarding the best Sandhurst students free commissions, 19 Feb. Endorsing military flogging ‘applied with leniency’, 12 Mar., he cited a report by the governors of Millbank penitentiary stating that ‘an error had been committed in abolishing corporal punishment’ there and said that the armies in the Peninsula had found it a useful alternative to capital punishment. Ibid. 13 Mar. 1827. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. His conduct following Liverpool’s stroke was dictated by Londonderry, and he resigned with him in April when Canning’s succession as premier was confirmed. Add. 40313, f. 13; Durham Chron. 21 Apr. 1827. He continued to meet the Canningite Littleton socially and privately hoped to see Wellington remain at the ordnance or become commander-in-chief. Even so, he handled the official transfer to Lord Anglesey for the duke and prepared to defend him in the Commons. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 88, 96; Wellington mss WP1/887/23, 28; 888/10; Canning’s Ministry, 116, 150, 166, 196, 283. On 7 May, as one of the few pro-Catholic Tories in opposition, he protested that Caning and his ministers had sacrificed Catholic relief to their desire for office, criticized the Lansdowne Whigs for abandoning the Catholics to support Canning despite his opposition to reform and challenged Henry Brougham to justify this ‘monstrous’ union of Whigs and Tories. He divided against their Coventry magistracy bill, 11 June 1827. In July Londonderry consulted him about a possible realignment in Durham politics when, as anticipated, Lambton became a peer. He suggested that if their city seat was also to be retained, a Wynyard-Lambton pact afforded the best prospect of securing Londonderry’s son Viscount Seaham’s future election for the county. He deliberately ruled himself out as a locum there, because he was a lackland without independent means. Londonderry mss C83/3(1).

Hardinge was in London when Canning died in August 1827, and consulted John Calcraft*, John Croker*, Lord Falmouth, John Herries*, Littleton, Sir James Macdonald*, Robert Peel* and Sir Herbert Taylor* during the ensuing political negotiations, of which he sent Londonderry, Ellenborough, Peel and Wellington detailed reports. Ibid. C83/4-6; Wellington mss WP1/895/10, 13, 15, 16, 22, 25; Add. 40313, f. 15; TNA 30/12/7/6, Hardinge to Ellenborough, 13 Aug. 1827; N. Gash, Secretary Peel, 450. He advised Wellington against accepting the incoming premier Lord Goderich’s offer to appoint him the army’s commander-in-chief as it would make him the ‘cat’s paw and stalking horse’ of the ministry, and said that he hoped to see him head an alternative ministry supported by Ellenborough, Grey and Lansdowne, not ‘the Wilsons, Broughams and Burdetts’, preparatory to a Tory realignment. Londonderry mss C83/4; TNA 30/12/7/6, Hardinge to Ellenborough, 13 Aug. 1827. Croker recalled that Goderich was prepared to ‘make room’ for Hardinge at the ordnance, but no offer was made and Hardinge insisted that he would not have been ‘neutralized’ thus. Croker Pprs. i. 388 He regarded Goderich’s administration from the outset as miserable, short-lived and ‘trumped up ... from within their own interior’, as the ‘king cannot brook flying for refuge to any of his old friends’, Ellenborough or Grey. TNA 30/12/7/6. He accompanied Wellington on his October 1827 tour of the North-East and sent reports to London of his rapturous reception. Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Arbuthnot mss, Hardinge to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 28, 30 Sept., 6 Oct. 1827; Londonderry mss C83/7, 8. Preferring ‘a coalition with the High Whigs to the Low Tories’, he urged Londonderry to negotiate a formal pact with Lambton as a matter of urgency and plotted to bring down the ministry over the Navarino episode directly Parliament met. Londonderry mss C83/10 (1-4); Arbuthnot mss, Hardinge to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 7 Nov. [Dec.]; Derbys. RO, Gresley of Drakelow mss D77/36/5, Hardinge to Gresley, 6 Dec. 1827. Beforehand, he was a go-between for the chancellor of the exchequer Herries and Londonderry in the negotiations leading to the formation of Wellington’s administration in January 1828. Londonderry mss C83/11, 12; Wellington mss WP1/913/8. Informing Londonderry, before visiting Peel at Drayton, of its likely Whig element and his hopes of office, 8 Jan., he admitted that he ‘would rather see the Whigs a little more compromised and degraded and the Canning party and principles more completely shown up than to come into office now’. With a county by-election, through Lambton’s peerage, imminent, he suggested conciliating William Russell* there to ensure his ‘neutrality in case of a re-election for the city ... without compromising your right to oppose any Whig county Member hereafter’. Londonderry mss C83/12. By the 15th, heartened by the ‘fury’ of the ‘place-hunting Whigs’ and the ‘stiff Whigs’ delight at their misfortune’, he conceded the impolicy of including Grey (as an opponent of the Six Acts and the Foreign Enlistment Act) in the ministry ‘even if he could get over his Catholic difficulty’. He also saw the necessity of retaining ‘treacherous and cunning’ Huskisson to boost their debating strength in the Commons and to avoid a straight ‘peace and Tories, or war and Whigs’ division. Ibid. C83/13 (1), 182. When Londonderry, who was refused the Paris embassy and the Irish lord lieutenancy, publicly denounced the coalition and Hardinge’s ‘ungrateful, indirect and selfish’ support for it, he made a virtue of his return to the ‘drudgery of the ordnance’ to accommodate Wellington, after hoping for something better. He also praised the duke’s ‘politic and able game’ in declaring a ‘necessary’ amnesty, while working to restore the ‘great Tory party’. Camden mss C528/10; Arbuthnot mss, Hardinge to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 18 Jan., to Arbuthnot, 24 Jan. 1828; Arbuthnot Corresp. 103; Londonderry mss C83/16. To appease Londonderry, whom Lambton now encouraged to join opposition and deny him his Durham interest, he wrote:

I felt it would have been dishonourable in me, pending a difficult negotiation where secrecy was most important, to divulge to you as a political leader, information not derived from being your Member (and which from day to day I might have, either from the duke or his confidants) being bound down to secrecy in the little that I did know. If you conceive that I ought as your Member to have divulged what I heard under such conditions of secrecy, your sense of what my obligations are essentially differ from the ideas I entertain of my duties, and as the moment is approaching when you can exercise your political power, and I must receive or decline a new obligation, I am bound in honour to take care that there should be no misunderstanding between us as to the terms. Ellenborough Diary, i. 11; Londonderry mss C83/15-17.

Reviewing the political situation on the 25th, he argued against an ‘Ultra’ or anti-Catholic government and claimed that the Canningite rump had been ‘rendered innoxious’:

Huskisson is no longer at the head of trade, nor does he lead the House or represent the government. I consider him destroyed as a leader to do mischief. The Ultra Tories hate him, the Canningites loathe him, the Whigs are as bitter as gall against him, and as in a few weeks he will have been so vituperated that he cannot withdraw, he is scotched, and will not long survive as his reserves are weak. If he had joined the Whigs or held himself in balance at the head of the Canningites and a large independent class of economical disciples, he would have been an oracle on every discussion. He and [lord] Dudley are done, quite done, for mischief, whilst in matters of business Huskisson is very able and must follow in principle the will of the cabinet. Meanwhile, he is the bridge over which can pass a class of Whigs who are anxious to join our ranks ... I may be wrong, but the Tory anger will evaporate when they see the government strong. Londonderry mss C83/25.

Londonderry belittled his achievements as a constituency Member but acquiesced in his re-election, and he easily outpolled the anti-Catholic protectionist Alexander Robertson*, put up against him by Durham’s London freemen. Ibid. C83/14, 19, 177; Durham Co. Advertiser, 1, 8, 15 Feb., 1 Mar. 1828. He had agreed to resign immediately should Londonderry go into opposition. Londonderry mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Hardinge to Londonderry, 24 Jan. 1824.

The ordnance estimates which Hardinge presented on 22 Feb. 1828 were subject to scrutiny by the finance committee and not seriously opposed. He testified before the committee on eleven occasions, 19 Mar.-23 May, always demonstrating his military expertise and credentials for promotion. PP (1828), v. 31-84, 95-119, 128-40; Ellenborough Diary, i. 86; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 174. In the House, 16 May, he attributed departmental delays to time spent before the committee, and the refusal of its Whig chairman Sir Matthew White Ridley to grant him a copy of his evidence. He divided with his colleagues in government against repealing the Test Acts, 26 Feb., and voted for Catholic relief, 12 May. He defended the northern coal owners’ ‘vend’ and the Clarence railway bill when Londonderry’s interests were invoked to expose divisions in the ministry, 9 May. The Huskissonite resignations that month facilitated his appointment as secretary at war in place of Palmerston but without cabinet rank. A proposal to make him Irish secretary, for which the Arbuthnots, Ellenborough and Wellington considered him well suited, was dropped lest his appointment during Anglesey’s viceroyalty should give the Irish administration ‘too military a tone’. Ellenborough Diary, i. 111-12, 118-19, 122-4, 126; Broughton, Recollections, iii. 270; Wellington mss WP1/980/30; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 189-91; Russell Letters, i. 89. He infuriated Londonderry, who received nothing, by offering to meet the estimated £8-10,000 cost of a Durham by-election. Wellington mss WP1/934/24; 979/13; Ellenborough Diary, i. 130-1; Arbuthnot Corresp. 106; Londonderry mss C83/179; C113/92. With his angry acquiescence and the co-operation of Lord Durham (Lambton), he canvassed assiduously, spent £4,000, and with Thomas Wood as intermediary, he persuaded his rival William Chaytor† to retire on the eve of the poll. Londonderry mss C83/22, 23, 180, 181; C86/5; Pprs. of Sir William Chaytor, 1771-1847 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. Co. RO Publications, l (1993 edn.)), 122-3; Add. 38757, f. 91. On the hustings he stated that he was ‘no Ultra but a Tory in the rational sense of the word: a supporter of Peel’s criminal law reforms, repeal of the Test Acts, now it was law, and Catholic relief’; and that Chaytor had been hoodwinked into standing by the London attorney Ralph Lindsay. Durham Chron. 14 June 1828. He afterwards sold the lease on his Grosvenor Place house, worth £650 a year, and rented 11 Whitehall Place. Macleod of Macleod mss, Macleod to wife, 10 Mar. 1828. With ministerial backing, the contentious Hardinge estate bill, which facilitated land sales (including his own purchase of Ketton) under the wills of his father and uncle Sir Richard Hardinge (d. 1826), to whose estates and baronetcy his elder brother Charles had succeeded, received royal assent, 15 July, and the Londonderry estate bill did so on the 25th.CJ, lxxxiii. 453, 470, 506, 535; LJ, lx. 123, 482, 539, 654. Presenting the army estimates, 13 June, he showed respect to their military critic Davies and poured scorn on the complaints of Hume, with whom he sparred again on the 20th, before carrying the division on the garrison grant (by 70-38). He carried the award to the Royal Cork Institution (by 66-26) that day and avoided a division on the disembodied militia through the timely interventions of Wood, as colonel of the Middlesex regiment. He was questioned closely on military pensions, in which the finance committee recommended reductions, 23 June, and performed well when harried over individual awards, 23 June, and Colonel Bradley’s case, 3 July. In several exchanges with Sir Henry Parnell, William Bankes, John Maberly and Ridley, he confirmed his testimony to the finance committee and defended government’s decision to overrule them by retaining the office of lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 4 July, when they carried the divisions by 204-95 and 163-43. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 196; Russell Letters, i. 89. Insisting that the ‘opinion of the finance committee was a qualified opinion’, he was instrumental in defeating further attempts to secure ordnance reductions, 7 July (by 120-9 and 125-51), and similar motions on the 8th, when pensions, the barrack grant and Canadian fortifications were in contention. He presented and endorsed the ordnance clerks’ petition against the salary reductions proposed in the superannuation bill, 14 July 1828. As he had proved to be one of the government’s best debaters in the Commons that session, the president of the India board Ellenborough and the chancellor of the exchequer Goulburn tried to persuade him to speak on ‘finance and subjects unconnected with his office’ with a view to leading the House should Peel fail, but he dismissed the idea as ‘visionary’. Ellenborough Diary, i. 158, 160, 177. During the recess he devised and circulated a military pension scheme calculated to reward long service, yield long-term savings and boost the colonial labour force by promoting early discharge and assisted passages. He also proposed further militia reductions, a restructuring of guards’ salaries and all half-pay and pressed again for a two-tier punishment system to reduce military flogging. Ibid. i. 241, 264, 291; Surr. Hist. Cent. Goulburn mss D/319/45, Hardinge to Goulburn, 3 Sept.-12 Nov. 1828; Wellington mss WP1/957/14; 1005/9/4.

He was anxious to see the Catholic question resolved following Anglesey’s recall, privately ridiculed the Bruswick clubs and considered

the O’Connells and the Sheils the most alarmed of the croakers, and that the really formidable question is the power of the priests, with the 40s. freeholders, to take the representation out of the hands of the gentry and aristocracy ... If 60 Irish agitators were seated in the House of Commons no government could be carried on. TNA 30/12/7/6, Hardinge to Ellenborough, 11 Sept.; Londonderry mss C83/2(a); Arbuthnot mss, Hardinge to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 30 Sept. 1828.

He welcomed Wellington and Peel’s decision to concede emancipation in 1829, dissented from the prayer of the hostile petition he presented, 16 Feb., and divided for the measure, 6, 30 Mar. Despite the high cost, he insisted on printing the army and ordnance estimates in detail to avoid misrepresentation. Goulburn mss D/319/45, Hardinge to Goulburn [1828]. He peppered his speech on presenting them with extracts from his testimony to and the reports of the finance committee, 20 Feb. As again, 23 Feb., 2 Mar., Maberly, Alexander Baring and Sir Hussey Vivian were his severest critics. The House was ‘nearly empty’ and Hume the challenger when he carried the mutiny bill, which Wellington had again refused to amend, 10 Mar. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 10 Mar. 1829; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 23. As Wellington’s seconder in his bloodless duel with the Ultra Lord Winchelsea, 21 Mar., Hardinge negotiated the terms with Lord Falmouth and directed proceedings in Battersea Fields, having ensured that the duchess of Wellington’s physician, Dr. John Hume, would be present. Wellington mss WP1/1003/30, 31; 1004/2-6, 8, 15, 16; 1007/28, 29; Howick jnl. 22 Mar. 1829; Ellenborough Diary, i. 403-6; George, xi. 1596, 1597. Greville Mems. i. 276-7, incorrectly gives the location as Wimbledon and Joseph Hume as the physician. He later dominated the 1830-2 select committees on the militia and, assisted by Wood, he defended their cost, a ‘real diminution’ of £32,080, 4 May 1829. The government’s weakness in the Commons troubled him and with Londonderry, to whom he had become reconciled during his daughter’s illness in November 1829, ‘nibbling at the Cumberland faction’, he warned Wellington that the 50 votes lost to the Tories since February 1827 amounted to a difference of 100 in a bad division and suggested trying to recruit Lord Chandos*, Sir James Graham* and Herries and decided that he would not stand for Durham again. Londonderry mss C83/2; Wellington mss WP1/988/26; Arbuthnot Corresp. 120; Arbuthnot Jnl. i. 279-80, ii. 290; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 55, 60, 63; Londonderry mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Londonderry to Hardinge, 6 July 1829. Ignoring the Ultras’ protests, he defended the dismissal for ‘positive disobedience’ of soldiers who had refused to fire a salute in honour of a Catholic saint in Malta, 12 July. The Ultra leader Sir Richard Vyvyan* listed him as ‘hostile’ to a putative political realignment in October 1829.

As trustees of his marriage settlement, his brother Richard and Londonderry permitted Hardinge to raise £9,000 to purchase and extend his London house in December 1829. Londonderry mss C83/27, 184. Sounded by Ellenborough that month, he stressed his ineligibility to succeed Lord William Cavendish Bentinck* as governor-general of Bengal. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 142-3, 207. Pre-session talks with Peel and Chandos confirmed his doubts over the king’s loyalty to Wellington, but, according to Ellenborough, ministerial majorities on the address, 4 Feb., East Retford, 11 Feb., and the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., allayed his misgivings. Ibid. ii. 73, 173, 177-8, 191, 201 At Peel’s insistence, he postponed the army estimates to 19 Feb., to permit revision, but even so his figures differed embarrassingly from Goulburn’s and Davies made the ‘paltry £213,000’ overall saving a test case of the government’s commitment to act on distress. Arbuthnot Corresp. 131; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 344-5; Howick jnl. 19 Feb. 1830. The amendment restricting the vote to six months was easily defeated, but Hardinge faced continued pressure from the royal household over unpopular changes in the Guards’ pay scheme, and from opposition on supply. Harried increasingly by Hume, he explained details, defended policy and carried divisions (by 122-38, 118-42 and 83-23), 22 Feb., and fared better, 5, 8 Mar., but on the 9th his majority was reduced to 104-59. He carried the mutiny bill, 12 Mar., but refused to have it printed. Though hard pressed in debate, he defeated an attempt by the revived Whig opposition to combine the offices of master and lieutenant-general of the ordnance (by 200-124), 29 Mar., and carried the grants for the Enfield ordnance factory (by 80-40), 2 Apr., and the Woolwich academy (by 131-59), 30 Apr. Ellenborough’s divorce bill, which he steered through the Commons, proved time-consuming, and he prepared a major speech on the Terceira incident, which was ‘not wanted’, 30 Apr. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 224, 231. He moved for and was named to the select committee on superannuations, 26 Apr. Goulburn mss D/319/45, Hardinge to Goulburn, 16 Mar. 1830. He corrected several points in Graham’s case for disclosing information on privy councillors’ emoluments, 14 May. He divided against Jewish emancipation, 17 May, voted against making forgery a non-capital offence, 7 June, and helped to secure the grant for the Canadian waterways that day. He voted in the minority against the Galway franchise bill, 25 May. Mediating with ministers that month, when Castlereagh, a junior admiralty lord, threatened resignation over the Irish stamp duties and Londonderry vacillated between Grey and the Ultras, he made it clear that his first obligation was to Wellington, although he disliked his ‘harsh and ill tempered’ treatment of officials. Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 359-60; Wellington mss WP1/1113/18. To spare Londonderry a by-election, he made his acceptance of the Irish secretaryship he was offered on 23 May, in an exchange with Lord Francis Leveson Gower (with an extra £2-3,000 in salary and allowances), conditional on its deferral until the death of the ailing George IV. Wellington mss WP1/1117/58, 70; 1121/29; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 260; Londonderry mss C83/29; Gent. Mag. (1830), ii. 173. Intervening on 8 July 1830, he criticized attempts to draw the war office into the scandal surrounding Darling’s conduct as governor of New South Wales. Preoccupied with preparations for Ireland and the ministry’s weakness in the Commons, where the sugar duties, Irish estimates and the regency bill posed problems, he privately suggested transferring the premiership to Peel, promoting Thomas Frankland Lewis* and making offers to Edward Smith Stanley* and Palmerston, but not Huskisson. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 275, 289-90, 297-8, 305-6, 316. To assist Londonderry and acting with Thomas Wood, he promoted the candidatures of Sir Roger Gresley* for Durham and Castlereagh for county Down at the general election, and came in for St. Germans as a treasury nominee. Londonderry mss C83/30; Wellington mss WP1/1126/24; 1130/47; 1131/15.

Hardinge’s letters from Ireland in August 1830 were optimistic. He found the ‘routine’ at Dublin Castle ‘less dry than the war office’, was delighted with the secretary’s Lodge, and worked well with his principal the duke of Northumberland and the Protestants. Except for sporadic anti-Unionism and rioting in county Cavan, he thought the Irish elections had gone satisfactorily, with only two or three seats lost and no serious prospect of revolution. Add. 40313, ff. 17A-21; PRO NI, Fitzgerald mss MIC/639/13/78, 99; Arbuthnot Corresp. 136; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 348-9; Wellington mss WP1/1136/23. However, faced with removing Lord O’Neil as joint-postmaster general, mounting hostility to the Union, trouble at Newry, a hostile press and the heightened demands of Daniel O’Connell* and Richard Sheil*, whom ministers were anxious to prevent acting in concert, he found little time to develop or implement the poor law, education, land and legal reforms discussed in cabinet before his departure. He proposed a £57,000 reduction in the Irish civil list and prepared to mount a show of force, should the proclamation of 19 Oct. 1830 prohibiting Anti-Union Association meetings fail. Add. 40313, ff. 23-139; P. Jupp, British Politics on Eve of Reform, 101; Wellington mss WP1/1136/26; 1140/28; 1146/16; M. Staunton, Hints for Hardinge (Dublin, 1830); Ellenborough Diary, ii. 388-9, 391-2, 397, 399. He returned to London for pre-session discussions on the 24th, three days before his correspondence challenging O’Connell to a duel (which was declined) was printed in the London newspapers. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 399, 402; The Times, 27, 29 Oct. 1830. Wellington had notified him of the overture made to Palmerston, but deeming parliamentary reform ‘in one word revolution’ and any coalition with its Whig advocates unlikely to last the session, he saw little prospect of strengthening the ministry and wrote despondently to Ellenborough that ‘Peel, having gained as much reputation as he can hope to retain, is vigilantly looking out ... for an honourable pretence to withdraw, and will not boldly state what measures are practicable and necessary to strengthen the government in the Commons’. TNA 30/12/7/6, Hardinge to Ellenborough, 5 Sept. 1830; George, xi. 16299. On the address, 2 Nov., he ‘had to come to the rescue of the knight of Kerry and speak for the proclamations for putting down the Anti-Union Society and the Volunteers’, which he did by asserting that it was intended to prohibit the spread of Anti-Union Associations, not the right to hold public meetings, and promising to treat arguments against the Union ‘with candour and respect’. Howick jnl. 2 Nov. 1830. He claimed that accounts of distress were ‘overcharged’, but said that the action recommended by the previous session’s select committee on the poor was essential. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 2 Nov. 1830. As directed by the cabinet, he introduced seven of the 19 Irish bills planned that session, 4-12 Nov. 1830: on census taking, courts of conscience, constabulary, grand juries, sheriffs and subletting. He candidly told Wellington, for whose life he feared after he declared against reform, that a minority vote or a small majority against Brougham’s proposal on the 16th would be a resignation matter, and he considered the cancellation of the king’s visit to the City, 8 Nov., ‘the end of the government’. Ellenborough Diary, ii. 416-18, 423. He divided with his colleagues when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. After the change of ministry Greville observed: ‘Peel, Lyndhurst and Hardinge are three capital men for the foundation of a party - as men of business superior to any three in this cabinet’. Greville Mems. ii. 73.

Though saddened by Peel’s initial refusal to lead a Tory opposition and by the tactics of the incoming ministers, Hardinge responded positively to a barrage of questions on Ireland from O’Connell and others over the next few days and expressed respect for his successor as Irish secretary Smith Stanley, to whom he wrote privately, after dining with the king, 22 Nov.:

So far from intending opposition, I consider Irish affairs relating to great questions of domestic policy to be no fair field for party politics. Our common object should be to ameliorate the condition [of Ireland] ... Without hesitation I place this record of my position in your hands, requesting you to be assured that I shall be more inclined to be one of your coadjutors, than to impede useful measures for the unworthy object of opposition. Ibid. ii. 441; Croker Pprs. ii. 76; Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 404; Derby mss 920 Der (14) box 116.

As one of the Tories’ leading spokesmen, he was brought in for Northumberland’s pocket borough of Newport after forfeiting his St. Germans seat. He was also a regular guest at dinners where policy and tactics were discussed and became Wellington’s most voluble defender in the Commons. Greville Mems. ii. 113; Three Diaries, 15, 27, 32, 45, 60, 63, 66. Drawing on correspondence with Henry Phillpotts, he upheld the duke’s contentious decision to appoint him to the see of Exeter while holding the living of Stanhope in commendam, 22 Nov. Wellington mss WP1/1151/19; 1153/9, 25; 1154/38. He defended the late ministry’s record on retrenchment, 23 Nov., and on 6 Dec. 1830 set out the strategic military case for spending on the Rideau canal and Canadian fortifications, without which ‘you will render the United States a powerful maritime state ... and your influence as a maritime state would decline’. Though initially critical of the ministry’s civil list, he welcomed the slight increases in the estimates in response to French military activity, Broughton, iv. 82-83. and generally confined his quibbling and comments to minutiae, 21, 28 Feb., 14, 23, 30 Mar., 13 Apr. 1831, when he naturally denounced the proposed abolition of the office of lieutenant-general of the ordnance. An ardent anti-reformer, Hardinge remained on good terms with William IV and fostered the belief in Tory circles early in 1831 that the cabinet moderates, Goderich, Charles Grant, Palmerston and Williams Wynn, would insist on a ‘minimum of reform’ or wreck the ministry, and that the king would not consent to a dissolution. TNA 30/12/7/6, Hardinge to Ellenborough [10 Jan. 1831]; Three Diaries, 40, 73. Confident also that the Ultras would be won over, he boasted to the first lord of the admiralty Graham, who held him in high esteem, that the Tories could turn out ministers ‘when they pleased, and were quite ready to take the administration on anti-reform principles’. PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/31D/24, Smith Stanley to Anglesey, 25 Feb.; Three Diaries, 61; Hatherton diary, 1 Dec. 1831. On 3 Mar., in a speech cribbed largely from Ellenborough, as was often the case on reform, Three Diaries, 67. he queried the proposed increase (four to ten) in the representation of county Durham under the ministerial bill and protested at its revolutionary nature. Called to order by Hobhouse, he repeated:

Its tendency [is] most revolutionary ... I say that it is calculated to pull the crown off the king’s head; and I do hope, that if leave should be given to introduce this bill ... [Lord John Russell] will, before we come to the second reading of it, introduce a clause by which the House of Lords may be passed by, in order that they may not irritate the country by the rejection of it.

He spoke similarly on endorsing Inglis’s complaint against The Times, 21 Mar., when his assertion that he sat as freely for Newport as he had for Durham prompted furious replies from ‘Cornubiensis’ and others. The Times, 21, 26 Mar. 1831. He voted against the reform bill at its second reading, 22 Mar., when his prediction that it would be carried by two votes was almost confirmed. Three Diaries, 68. He repeatedly harried ministers for details of the Irish measure, 21, 22, 23 Mar., and denounced it the next day for ‘standing the population-property argument on its head’ and ending Protestant representation by opening the 24 close boroughs retained at the Union. His several hostile interventions, 30 Mar.-20 Apr., demonstrated more temper than efficiency, and with his hopes of a regiment dashed, he now despaired over his party’s poor prospects of resuming office and his lack of income. Ibid. 59; Baring Jnls. i. 85; Broughton, iv. 98. ‘Mad with rage’ when the bill’s defeat, to which he contributed, 19 Apr., precipitated a dissolution, 22 Apr., denying the Tories a chance of office as ‘moderate reformers’, he crossed the House on hearing a gun salute and told ministers, ‘the next time you hear those guns they will be shotted, and take off some of your heads’. Three Diaries, 81-82; Broughton, iv. 106; Granville mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Holland to Granville, 22 Apr. [1831]. A leading Member of the opposition’s Charles Street committee at the ensuing election, he again declined Londonderry’s invitation to stand for county Durham and came in for Newport, which was designated for disfranchisement, and declared his intention of trying Northumberland’s neighbouring schedule B borough of Launceston ‘next time’. Three Diaries, 68, 85-9; Wellington mss WP1/1186/2; Londonderry mss C83/32, 33; Cornubian, 6 May; Western Times, 7 May 1831. He was Peel’s second when Hobhouse’s Westminster election speech, which they later agreed was misreported, almost provoked a duel, and tried to assuage Hobhouse’s annoyance at being prevented by Charles Ross* from proceeding with his vestry bill. Add. 40313, ff. 145-50; 56554, f. 94; Broughton, iv. 110-11; Taken aback by the size of the ministerial majority, which he had estimated at no more than 50, and convinced that ‘they will persevere in annihilating the Tory [party]’, he rallied support for Peel before Parliament met and was at the meeting of Tory leaders, 16 June 1831, that formally made Charles Street their party headquarters (the precursor of the Carlton Club). An important political go-between for the Conservatives, as they were now coming to be styled, he was active in election management and promoting a partisan press. Londonderry mss C83/33; Creevey mss, Creevey to Miss Ord, 6 May; Add. 57370, Arbuthnot to Herries, 25 May 1831; Three Diaries, 92-94, 125, 203-4; Wellington mss WP1/1199/15; Arbuthnot Corresp. 161. Sharing Peel’s disappointment at their election losses, he had written from Penshurst, 19 May 1831:

I hear the king passes his time in crying and drinking sherry. He told a friend of ours that he was aware his name had been used during the election most improperly, that the bill must be greatly modified and that he knew Lord Grey repented that the measure was so strong. Having borrowed a force to curry a party triumph, they now begin to find the day of reckoning very embarrassing ... [Sir Robert] Wilson* says that the more respectable part of the cabinet want to throw off the radicals and compromise matters with the Tories by great concessions in the new bill, that Brougham and Lord Grey have lately had violent altercations ... However, we really know very little of what is passing in the enemy’s camp. That they will persevere in annihilating the Tory [party], however, I have not the slightest doubt, and in the king’s drooping state [they will] risk anything to secure their power during the ministry. Add. 40313, ff. 151-2.

He endorsed a petition for continued enfranchisement from Durham’s Gateshead, South Shields and Sunderland freemen and called for their children’s voting rights to be enshrined in law, 22 June 1831. He divided against the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, but for its committal, 12 July, and criticized its provisions for Tavistock, Newport, Launceston and Appleby in several obstructive interventions during the following week, and again, 11 Aug. He objected to the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July, and pressed for the incorporation of Newport in a two Member Launceston constituency, 22, 29 July, and the addition of Rye to Winchelsea, 30 July. Littleton attributed his fury at the introduction of Saturday sittings to expedite progress, 29 July, to the clash with Londonderry’s Saturday breakfast parties. Hatherton diary, 29 July 1831. Stressing his local knowledge, Hardinge welcomed the decision to award two Members to Sunderland and one to South Shields, objected to Gateshead’s separate enfranchisement as ‘a piece of extravagance’ and joined Thomas Wood in pressing Merthyr’s claims, 5, 9, 10 Aug. He predicted that the government’s defeat on Lord Chandos’s amendment for enfranchising £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug., would ‘do much good in putting forward the Tories as the successful advocates of the landed interest’ and hoped for further successes or narrow defeats, which, tactically, he preferred. Arbuthnot mss, Hardinge to Mrs. Arbuthnot, 19 Aug. 1831. On the Dublin election controversy, he intervened 8, 25 Aug., to defend the Irish administration and their local supporters, who had been backed by the Charles Street committee. Three Diaries, 125. Ellenborough noted on 2 Sept. that Hardinge looked forward to the prospect of war over Belgium and a chance to command an army division, but nothing materialized. Furthermore, his decision to join Peel’s shooting party at Drayton and his absence from the coronation that month annoyed the king, who denied him military preferment until the reform bill became law.Ibid. 110, 127, 191; N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel, 21-22; P. Ziegler, William IV, 194; Greville Mems. ii. 170; Wellington mss WP1/1202/31; 1203/19; Holland House Diaries, 151. Reporting on 12 Sept. to Peel (whom he urged to return to London) on a Charles Street meeting and arrangements to transfer the reform bill to the Lords, where they hoped to defeat it at the second reading, he said that no opposition to the Scottish reform bill was intended in the Commons and speculated over the cause of Calcraft’s suicide and possible peer creations. Hatherton diary, 8 Sept. 1831; Three Diaries, 125; Add. 40413, ff. 155-9. He protested at the inappropriate use of the House as a court of appeal in the Deacles v. Baring case, 19 Sept., and divided against the reform bill at its third reading that day, and its passage, 21 Sept. He voted against the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept. He had discussed the likely Lords defeat, the ministerial confidence motion agreed at Lord Ebrington’s and plans for a dissolution, peer creation and the bill’s reintroduction with Ellenborough and Hobhouse, who observed, 22 Sept., ‘Hardinge comes to get what he can out of me. Of course I tell him no lies, nor no truths, except such as I think he ought to propagate’. Three Diaries, 132-3; Wilts. RO, Hobhouse mss 145, Hobhouse to wife, 23 Sept. 1831; Broughton, iv. 133. He contributed to the speculation that a coalition or Conservative reform ministry would be appointed following the bill’s defeat in the Lords and canvassed for the anti-reformers at the October by-elections in Cambridgeshire and Dorset. He wrote to Lord Clive* and other likely supporters of the ‘Waverer’ Lord Wharncliffe’s cross-party initiative, which he monitored closely in November and December 1831, to promote the new Conservative party’s policies and its call for ‘general declarations throughout the country against the bill, but in favour of moderate reform’. Dorset RO, Bankes mss D/BKL, address to Henry Bankes, 15 Sept.; Hants RO, Carnarvon mss M91/L12/9; Arbuthnot Corresp. 151; NLW, Ormathwaite mss FG/1/6, pp. 7-9; Wellington mss WP1/1201/2; Powis mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Hardinge to R. Clive, 24 Oct. 1831; Three Diaries, 147-8, 157, 160-1.

In the House, 4 Oct. 1831, he made an unfavourable comparison between the preparations made in London to combat insurrection in November 1830 and those in the wake of the reform bill’s likely defeat. Following this, he carried a pistol in his pocket, took steps to protect Wellington and criticized the mob attacks on Londonderry and fellow anti-reformers in debate, 12 Oct. He also denounced the alleged dealings of Russell and the chancellor of the exchequer Lord Althorp with Thomas Attwood† and the political unionists, 15 Oct. Broughton, iv. 142; Greville Mems. ii. 209. He divided against the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and committal, 20 Jan. 1832. Three Diaries, 178. His bitter personal criticism of Ebrington and Russell, and accusations that ministers reintroduced Saturday sittings to carry the bill to the timetable dictated by the unions and the mob, 2 Feb., demonstrated what Littleton termed ‘one of those glaring faults of temper or rather excitement, which have so continually exposed him to censure in the House’. His remarks so damaged his reputation that he did not speak on the English reform bill again. Hatherton diary Feb.; Add. 51573, Spring Rice to Lady Holland [n.d.]; 51676, Lord G.W. Russell to Holland, 3 Feb.; 69364, Sneyd to Fortescue, 22 Feb. 1832; Russell Letters, iii. 8. He voted against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar. He was briefed on the former foreign secretary Lord Dudley’s conversations with the king in April 1832 and privately considered the bill redeemable by good management, with concessions possible to exclude borough voters from county constituencies, and on three Member counties and the metropolitan districts. When Grey briefly resigned and a ministry headed by Wellington was contemplated in May, he agreed to support a ‘hybrid’ bill and serve as Irish secretary under Lord Rosslyn. However, as he had realized from the outset, without Peel the scheme was unworkable. Wellington mss WP1/1224/2; NLW, Coedymaen mss 795; Londonderry mss C83/178; W. Suss. RO, Goodwood mss 1486, f. 100; Three Diaries, 248-51; Croker Pprs. i. 137; ii. 163. Provoked, as intended, by derogatory comments from Ebrington and Lord Milton into defending Wellington’s conduct, 14 May, he claimed that he had received no formal offer of office and denounced reform as a ‘dangerous and revolutionary measure’ in need of mitigation. His attempts to clarify his remarks were shouted down. Peel backed his protest at The Times’s hostile coverage of the ‘rout’ that day, but nothing came of it. Three Diaries, 254-5, 258; Croker Pprs. ii. 165; The Times, 15 May 1832. He voted against the second reading of the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and quibbled over its £20 voter clause, 25 June. He regretted Peel’s absence from the Pitt dinner, 30 May, at which he rallied with Londonderry for Wellington. He now wagered five guineas ‘that the king will not have created 20 peers before 1 July and that Grey and his government will be out by 1st September’. Arbuthnot mss, Arbuthnot to son, 30 May; John Bull, 3 June 1832; Three Diaries, 230-1; Londonderry mss C83/58. He denounced Russell’s ‘obnoxious’ bribery bill as unworkable and criticized him for making opposition the scapegoat for its loss, 30 July. He divided against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July 1832, and declared his intention of doing so again on the 20th.

On military matters, he raised no objection to the estimates for the ordnance, if his guidelines had been adhered to, 27 June 1831, 29 Feb. 1832. However, he repeatedly criticized the army estimates proposed by the secretary at war Parnell, held Althorp personally responsible for failing to execute his reforms on half-pay, and defended his own policies, 27, 28 June, 25 July, 22 Aug., 7 Oct. 1831. He ‘refused to have anything to do with the military subcommittee’. Three Diaries, 189. He considered the increased army estimates proposed by Parnell’s successor Hobhouse, 17 Feb. 1832, entirely justified and said that the imminent expiry of the Mutiny Act would moderate his criticism of details to expedite progress. In several interventions that day, he defended the Conservative Lord Hill’s decisions as commander-in-chief, criticized Russell’s conduct as paymaster and argued that the army should be spared the cost of militia and yeomanry pensions. Backing Hobhouse, he would have no truck with the savings recommended by Parnell and the radicals, especially the abolition of free places at Sandhurst, 28 Mar., 4 Apr. 1832. Add. 56556, f. 108. His statement on 28 June 1831 that his army pay was ‘barely the interest of the money I gave for my commission’ silenced even Hunt and, as indicated (25 Aug., 15 Sept., 7 Oct. 1831), he revived his 1828-9 army half-pay and promotion schemes. He failed to have the half-pay concessions introduced by Graham for naval officers extended to the army, 7 Oct. 1831, 16 Mar. 1832. On 2 Apr. he embarrassed Hobhouse by interrupting proceedings on the mutiny bill to introduce a pension bill, which he justified in a detailed speech based on his official papers. However, heeding objections from Hobhouse, who pointed to anomalies in his statistics, he withdrew his proposals so that the mutiny bill could proceed and they agreed a compromise measure, 4 Apr. Broughton, iv. 208-9. On the cholera bill, he argued forcibly, on economic, humanitarian and military grounds, for the immediate barracking of troops and improvements to their accommodation to reduce the risk of infection, 13, 15 Feb. Requesting ordnance returns ‘to keep the system in check’, 2 July, he praised Beresford and Wellington’s management and stressed the advantages of retaining the factories. He joined its presenter Hume in endorsing the former sergeant armourer and Swan River settler Beasmore’s petition for compensation, 9 July, pointing out that his plight had unearthed the system of pension fraud, which he had acted to end. Despite the embarrassment caused, he opposed Peel’s brother-in-law George Dawson’s call for further spending on the Culmore forts and Londonderry bridge, in line with his previous policy, 18 July 1832. Deputizing for Peel, he forced Hume to make useful disclosures on the authorship of the Republican, 29 June, 1 July, and on 13 Oct. 1831 he thanked Wetherell for his valiant opposition to the reform bill and Brougham’s ‘jobbing’ chancery bill, which he also opposed effectively himself, 27 July 1832. Arbuthnot Corresp. 151. He defended the grant to the Hiberian Society’s Protestant schools, 22 Aug. 1831, joined in the criticism of the increasing deployment of troops to keep the peace in Ireland, 29 Feb., and sent Smith Stanley a copy of the military memorial he had drafted as Irish secretary, with a note authorizing him to forward it to Grey, 17 Mar. 1832. Derby mss 920 Der (14) box 116. He objected to the tone of several Irish anti-tithe petitions, 10 Apr., 14 June 1832.

Hardinge took charge of the Irish borough elections for the Conservatives at the general election in December 1832. On Wellington’s advice, he declined nomination for Durham South and stood by his decision to contest the single Member borough of Launceston (to which Newport had been added), narrowly defeating a Liberal there after a desperate seven-month campaign. Three Diaries, 266, 276; George, xi. 17290; Londonderry mss C83/201; Wellington mss WP1/1232/1; 1239/7; Add. 40313, ff. 162-6; Falmouth Packet, 15 Dec.; Cornubian, 18 Dec. 1832. The victor again in 1835, he was unchallenged in 1837 and 1841. Appointed an army colonel in 1833, he combined high military and political office and helped to heal the breach between Wellington and Peel, in whose 1834-5 administration he served (as he had feared, without distinction) as Irish secretary.Greville Mems. iii. 114; T.K. Hoppen, ‘Politics, the Law, and the Nature of the Irish Electorate, 1832-50’, EHR, xcii (1977), 747, 759, 766. His military expertise and outstanding success as secretary at war in Peel’s second ministry made him the natural choice in 1844 to replace the ‘incompetent’ Ellenborough as governor-general of Bengal during the Sikh Wars. Before he relinquished the government to Lord Dalhousie in 1848, his achievements in underpinning the British victories at Mukudi and Ferozesha (1845) with a raft of social and educational reforms, and in fostering a non-Muslim buffer state in the Punjab were rewarded with a viscountcy, sustained by a £3,000 annual pension for himself and his next two heirs, when the Treaty of Lahore was ratified in 1846. Hardinge Letters, 5-15, 172; The Times, 8, 22 Apr. 1846; A. Hawkins, ‘Parliamentary Government and Victorian Political Parties, 1830-1880’, EHR, civ (1989), 638-669. His appointment as master-general of the ordnance in March 1852 created a permanent breach with Londonderry, who had coveted it. Mq. of Anglesey, One-Leg, 387. That September he succeeded Wellington as commander-in-chief, becoming the last ‘political general’ to be put in charge of the army. He relinquished his command after suffering a stroke in July 1856, and died at Penshurst that September. Queen Victoria praised his ‘valuable and unremitting services’, and he was recalled as a popular ‘brave, good religious veteran ... spirited debater and a clearheaded man of business’. But he was implicated in some of the army’s shortcomings in the Crimean War. Add. 39775, ff. 77, 110; The Times, 16, 25, 27 Sept.; Durham Co. Advertiser, 3 Oct. 1856; Oxford DNB. He was buried with full military honours at Frodcomb, Kent. The Times, 2, 3 Oct. 1856. He was succeeded in the peerage and estates by his elder son Charles (1822-94), Conservative Member for Downpatrick, 1851-6, and himself an amputee following a boating accident in 1842, and left bequests to his widow (d. 1865) and other family members. PROB 11/2241/843; IR26/2069/1040.