JAMES, William (1791-1861), of Barrock Lodge, Lower Heskett, Cumb.

James, a cradle radical, was baptized on 26 Apr. 1791 at Paradise Street Unitarian Chapel in Liverpool, where his paternal grandfather William James (1735-98) of Finch House, Knotty Ash (a younger son of John James of Culgarth, Cumberland and West Auckland, County Durham) had made his fortune as a West India merchant. C.R. Hudleston and R.S. Boumphrey, Cumb. Fams.; IGI (Lancs.) He was four when his father died leaving a widow enceinte and two young sons; and as residuary legatee under his grandfather’s will proved on 16 Feb. 1798, he became heir to a Jamaican estate and a mercantile fortune entrusted to his maternal grandfather and uncles Richard Walker and John James until he reached the age of 26. PROB 11/1302/108. In 1801 his mother, heiress, through her maternal grandfather John Philpot of Chester, to the Warburton estate of Hefferton Grange, married the Liverpool radical and veteran of the American wars Lieutenant-Colonel George Williams†, from whom James derived his early political bias. J. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool (1875), i. 351-8, 363-5, 368, 371-3, 376, 380, 390, 403, 414, 418, 429, 437, 443, 457, 461. He boarded at Sumner’s House at Eton with his mother’s half-brothers Ellis and Henry Ashton, and after graduating from Cambridge in 1813 he purchased Barrock Lodge, the 3rd duke of Portland’s former estate near Carlisle, from John Graham. He settled there on his marriage in 1816 to the only daughter of the cotton broker William Calton Rutson, sometime partner of William Ewart in Liverpool and Arthur Clegg in Manchester. He canvassed with his relations for the Whig lawyer Henry Brougham* in Liverpool in 1812, backed him and the anti-Lowther party in Cumberland and Westmorland in 1818, and made no secret of his own ambition to sit for Carlisle, where he could rely on radical support. Ibid. 302, 307; James (Ashton and Rutson peds.). Shortly before the general election of 1820 he informed the Broughams, who thought their Westmorland campaign would benefit from an electoral diversion in Carlisle, that he was not prepared to sacrifice his

many comforts and enjoyments to party views or the empty pleasures of ambition, which would be the case were I to become Member for Carlisle. Besides, at present I am labouring under the same disadvantages and losses common to those whose incomes materially depend upon the prices of foreign produce, so much so indeed that this year I have scarcely sufficient to meet my current expenses, so that if I had even the inclination to stand for Carlisle it would under these circumstances be impossible. Brougham mss, James to J. Brougham, 1 Feb. 1820.

His late decision to contest the borough, where he came a poor third behind the sitting Members (the Whig John Christian Curwen and the Lowther nominee Sir James Graham) was accordingly seen as a ploy to further Curwen’s return for Cumberland and secure Whig support as his replacement at Carlisle. Lonsdale mss, Hodgson to Lonsdale, 6 Feb., 1 Mar.; Carlisle Jnl. 12 Mar.; Brougham mss, James to J. Brougham, 18 Mar. 1820; Northumb. RO, Middleton mss ZM1/S76/35/5-6. He topped the poll there in a tumultuous contest at the by-election in May at a personal cost of £17,000, £4,000 more than he would ever acknowledge. Carlisle Jnl. 27 May, 3 June 1820; James, 7; J.T. Ward, Sir James Graham, 37-38. He repeated his success at Lancaster races on 26 Sept. 1820, when his mount, owner up, defeated his opponent Sir Philip Musgrave’s*, ridden by Sir Tatton Sykes. James, 8.

James, as a radical publication of 1825 observed, ‘attended with great regularity and voted with the opposition’. Session of Parl. 1825, p. 470. Making parliamentary reform his political priority, he divided almost daily with Hume and the Whig ‘Mountain’. His frequent interventions in debate were bold, irreverent and occasionally humorous, but he had no pretensions as an orator and he made no major speeches before 1833.J. Saunders, Portraits and Mems. of Reformers, 155. He acknowledged his obligations as a West India planter and professed support for the abolition of slavery, but he presented no petitions requesting it, preferring instead to challenge the abolitionists to join him in campaigning on behalf of the ‘white slaves’ of England. He supported the 1820 and 1821 parliamentary and extra-parliamentary campaigns on behalf of Queen Caroline, and endorsed the strongly worded petition he presented from Carlisle condemning the bill of pains and penalties and its instigators, 26 Jan. 1821. He trounced the Lowthers and enabled opposition to capitalize on the deployment of troops at his election by tactically postponing consideration of Carlisle’s petition for inquiry, ‘on account of the queen’s case’, 28 June, 3 July 1820. The Times, 29 June, 4 July 1820. After obtaining information on barrack provision in the vicinity of Carlisle, 6 Mar., he revived the issue, in what his backbench colleague Henry Grey Bennet termed a ‘a good, firm, popular, stout speech’, 15 Mar. 1821, and the Lowthers and their partisans failed to prevent the matter being referred to the committee of privileges. Ibid. 6, 20 Feb., 7, 16 Mar.; HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 37. James was added to it, 30 Mar., and approved their report’s finding that civil authority should have sufficed and their decision not to take further action against the summoning magistrates, 3 Apr. He had drawn an admission from the foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, 24 Jan., that there was little prospect of early repayment of the Austrian loan and, joining in the ensuing protests, he alluded to its damaging effect on the domestic tax burden and ‘tyrannical’ Austria’s ability to wage war against ‘independent’ Naples, 1 Feb. He presented a Liverpool distress petition urging its repayment, 14 Mar., and spoke for Robert Smith’s abortive motion for further papers, 22 June. The Times, 2 Feb., 15 Mar., 23 June. 1821. On reform, he sent a letter of support to the Cumberland meeting, 5 Apr., and presented and endorsed their petition before dividing for Lord John Russell’s resolutions, 9 May, having voted for Lambton’s scheme, 18 Apr. Carlisle Jnl. 7 Apr.; The Times, 10 May 1821. His connection with Williams and the reformers of the Liverpool Concentric Society made James a natural spokesman for the parliamentary campaign on behalf of radicals imprisoned after Peterloo. He confirmed on presenting a petition of complaint from Nathaniel Broadhurst, 7 Mar., that his Lancaster gaolers had opened letters addressed to him, but he failed (by 86-33) to have the matter declared a breach of privilege. The Times, 8 Mar. 1821. He presented further petitions from Broadhurst and his correspondents, including one from Williams, 15 May, 6 June 1821. Ibid. 7 June 1821.

To the acclaim of the Whig Carlisle Journal, whose editor Francis Jollie dedicated that year’s edition of his Political History of Carlisle to him, James voted indefatigably with Hume for economy and retrenchment throughout the 1822 session. Carlisle Jnl. 16 Feb., 2 Mar., 11, 18 May 1822. Backed by petitions from Broadhurst and Edward Clayton in Lancaster gaol, he renewed his attempt to have interference with Members’ mail declared a breach of privilege, 22 Feb. His case, based on legal opinions published by Sir Samuel Romilly† in 1812, had limited appeal outside radical circles and the motion was defeated (by 167-60), 25 Feb. Undeterred, he presented and endorsed similar petitions, 1, 7, 22 Mar. The Times 23, 26 Feb., 2, 8 Mar. 1822. He spoke in favour of receiving a petition of complaint against the Ilchester magistrates from the licensee William Priddle, 19 June. Ibid. 20 June 1822. Reflecting the influence of William Cobbett†, whom he first met at Liverpool in November 1819, he called for parliamentary reform and universal suffrage on presenting a distress petition from Carlisle, 1 May, and attributed the petitioners’ plight to ‘excessive taxation’, which could only be remedied by massive tax reductions. He disputed the political economist Ricardo’s theories on the currency and the correlation between corn prices, supply and demand, and caused great mirth by referring him to the writings of Cobbett and citing his tenet that cash flow restriction would ‘double the weight of taxation’. He was for receiving radical distress petitions from the Norfolk hundreds of Greenhoe, 3 June, and Grimshaw, 4 June. Ibid. 4, 5 June 1822. He condemned the small notes bill as a measure for sanctioning ‘a return to everlasting payments in paper’, 2 July 1822, and, ignoring Curwen’s admonitions to the contrary, he became a minority teller, with Lord Folkstone, against its passage. He voted for the amendment to the address censuring Lord Beresford’s appointment as lieutenant-general of the ordnance (as an ally of the new foreign secretary Canning), 19 Feb. 1823, and continued to divide unstintingly with the radicals. He was responsible for mustering opposition to the corporation-sponsored Carlisle police bill that session, and rejoiced in its defeat, 21 Mar. Carlisle Jnl. 22, 29 Feb., 29 Mar. 1823. He was ridiculed for supporting Cobbett’s Norfolk distress petition, which most Whigs, including its presenter Coke, denounced, 24 Apr., and made a great show of announcing, 18 June, and presenting a heavily signed radical reform petition from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 19 June. He fully endorsed the petitioners’ demands for the ballot and universal suffrage and blamed the repressive legislation carried by the Liverpool ministry after Peterloo in 1819 for making their plight worse than that of black slaves on his estates. The Times, 19, 20 June 1823. He urged the total repeal of the corn laws before voting to lower the pivot price to 60s., 26 Feb., and called again for their abolition together with that of the combination laws and restrictions on artisan emigration and machinery exports and other repressive measures when speaking against the silk bill, 11 June. He publicized Cobbett’s opinions before voting for inquiry into the currency, 12 June, and presented the St. Pancras petition for reform of borough representation, 30 June 1823. Ibid. 1 July 1823.

Seizing on the recent acceptance without parliamentary sanction of a brokered deal on the Austrian loan, he harassed Canning and amused Members by questioning the legality of the arrangement, 6 Feb. 1824. He also suggested ‘par ratione’, in a much-maligned quip he subsequently regretted, that the House was ‘entitled to levy taxes in the like manner’. Carlisle Jnl. 14 Feb. 1824. He protested afresh when it emerged that £500,000 had been ‘lost’ through the transaction, 26 Feb. Backing Sir Francis Burdett, he disputed the home secretary Peel’s statement that the employment of remand prisoners on treadmills had been considered by king’s bench, 12 Feb., and was among those who opposed public expenditure on the royal residences until taxation had been reduced to pre-war levels, 1 Mar. He presented a petition against legacy duties from the Liverpool journalist Francis Bott, 9 Mar. The Times, 10 Mar. 1824. Equipped with a hostile petition from Cobbett, he joined in the clamour against the game bill, 23 Mar. Speaking in jest, he complained that as the measure ‘made a species of property of a vast variety of wild fowl’, ‘wild geese’ must have been excluded from it in deference to Shakespeare’s words, ‘the wild goose soars aloft, unclaimed by any man’. He presented further hostile petitions, 31 Mar., and failed (by 41-33) with an amendment legalizing game sales, 1 Apr. Ibid. 1, 2 Apr. 1824. He brought up the boot and shoemakers of Penrith’s petition for repeal of the combination laws, 5 Apr., and called for an end to restrictions on the use of horse hides, 14 Apr. Ibid. 6 Apr. 1824. Although James professed commitment to the established church, in which he had been educated and now worshipped, he vehemently opposed the new churches bill, 6 Apr., 3 June, and presented unfavourable petitions from Carlisle, 12 Apr., and Manchester, 7, 12 May. Ibid. 13 Apr., 8, 13 May 1824. He criticized the severity of the prison sentence imposed for blasphemy on Joseph Swann, 11 May. Commenting on the superannuation fund, 13 May, he made it clear that he considered abolition of the assessed taxes a precondition of any increase in public salaries. His failure to vote in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June 1824, generated ill feeling in Carlisle, and the Journal rallied to him by printing several letters praising his diligence and advocacy of universal suffrage. It also welcomed him as a subscriber to the projected Newcastle-Carlisle railway. Carlisle Jnl. 15, 22 May, 10, 31 July, 9 Oct. 1824, 29 Apr. 1826.

James moderated his opinions somewhat in the course of the 1825 session. He divided against the Irish unlawful societies bill, 21 Feb., for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and against the attendant Irish franchise bill, 26 Apr. However, in a statement (9 May) he later regretted, he announced that he would vote for it, as a means of securing Catholic relief and ‘because ... the freeholders were voters in name but not in reality’. He divided for the game bill, as the only means of making ‘game the property of those who had been at the expense of rearing it’, 7 Mar. Presenting Carlisle’s petition for repeal of the corn laws, 25 Apr., he said he could no longer advocate an ‘entirely free’ trade in corn and made his support for the admission of foreign corn conditional on adequate remuneration of domestic growers, including allowances for labour and taxation costs. He suggested a pivot price of 80s. for free imports and a graduated scale from 55s.The Times, 26 Apr. 1825. He voted to consider relaxing the laws, 28 Apr., and consistently with his opposition colleagues until 9 June, when he endorsed their call for ending flogging in the navy, 9 June 1825. He spent the recess at Barrock, where he engaged in country pursuits. Recs. and Letters of Long Fam. ed. R.M. Howard, ii. 505. Reports that he would stand down at the dissolution because of diminishing returns from his Jamaican estate circulated before the start of the 1826 session and were confirmed by his announcement on 24 Apr. that he ‘did not wish under any circumstances to sit in the next Parliament’. Brougham mss, Blamire to J. Brougham, 6 Feb.; Lonsdale mss, Porter to Lowther, 14, 26 Apr.; Carlisle Jnl. 29 Apr. 1826. He had resumed his parliamentary attendance earlier that month, voted as hitherto to reform Parliament, 13, 27 Apr., and the corn laws, 18 Apr., and presented a petition from Hampshire for the latter, 18 Apr. The Times, 19 Apr. 1826. He supported a petition of complaint against the Lancashire justices for refusing to renew the Manchester publican Martha Johnson’s license, 26 Apr., and was so infuriated to find his tales of woe from the distressed manufacturing districts ill received, that he vented his spleen against the ‘Saints’ for putting the needs of black slaves before those of the poor whites of Blackburn, 1 May. Ibid. 27 Apr. 1826. He divided for Hume’s state of the nation motion, 4 May, and for a reduction in salaries under the Irish prison laws bill, 5 May. He stayed away from Carlisle at the general election in June 1826, but he was nominated as previously and finished in third place. Carlisle Jnl. 6 May, 10, 17 June; Lonsdale mss, Musgrave to Lowther, 9 June, R. Porter to Lonsdale, 11 June; Manchester Guardian, 17 June 1826.

As sheriff of Cumberland, James was ineligible to stand for Carlisle at the 1827 by-election, and he declined nomination at the next vacancy in 1829. Cumbria RO (Carlisle) D/DX/92/16; Lonsdale mss, Wood to Lonsdale, 17 Jan. 1829. He was one of the main speakers at the Cumberland distress meeting at Wigton, 26 Jan. 1830, when he pre-empted but failed to prevent the adoption of a cross-party petition, whose prayer for currency reform he opposed, by proposing another for ‘an efficient reform’ of Parliament. Carlisle Jnl. 23, 30 Jan.; Cumb. Pacquet, 2 Feb. 1830. He resisted attempts to make him spend at Carlisle at the general election of 1830 and backed William Ewart*, for whom his brother-in-law Rutson campaigned, at the Liverpool by-election in December. Reading Univ. Archives Printing coll. (Folio 324.4285 SQU), Carlisle election handbills, ff. 158-60; Albion, 6 Dec. 1830. He confirmed his support for reform and the ballot at the first lord of the admiralty Sir James Graham’s re-election for Cumberland, 8 Dec. 1830, and declared wholeheartedly for the Grey ministry’s reform bill at the county meeting, 15 Mar. 1831. Carlisle Jnl. 11 Dec. 1830, 12, 19 Mar.; Carlisle Patriot, 19 Mar. 1831. Certain that the Whig gentry would not dare to oppose him, he contested Carlisle successfully at the invitation of the Reform Association with the sitting Whig Philip Henry Howard at the 1831 general election, when his statement that ‘[Henry] Hunt* has deserted the cause of the people and become the oracle of the boroughmongers, their last hope’, was loudly cheered. Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80),1, bdle. 5, Browne to Graham, 4 Apr.; ibid. 29, ‘bdle. re Cumb. election 1831’, Mounsey to same, 26 Apr.; Brougham mss, Blamire to Lord Brougham, 30 Apr.; Carlisle Jnl. 30 Apr., 7 May; Carlisle Patriot, 19 Mar., 7 May 1831.

As the Reform Association kept a close watch on his parliamentary conduct, James took an early opportunity to distance himself from the radical opponents of reform, 23 June 1831, when, with frequent allusions to Carlisle, he contradicted Hunt’s claim that Northern England demanded a ‘sweeping reform’. Waiving his previous demands for universal suffrage and the ballot, he announced:

As I think the reform now proposed will give the country good and cheap government, I shall be satisfied with it. If the measure should not prove as beneficial in its operation as I expected, I will then call for further improvement.

He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, and against adjournment, 12 July, stating that the frequent divisions that day afforded convincing proof of the ‘factious nature’ of the opposition to it. He divided fairly steadily for its details, but cast wayward votes for the total disfranchisement of Saltash, which ministers no longer pressed, 26 July, against the proposed division of counties, 11 Aug., and for giving city freeholders borough votes, 17 Aug., and the enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug. He observed that by partial disfranchisement Huntingdon would gain a Member, as Lord Sandwich would lose two, 29 July. When Hunt presented a massively signed petition for the ballot from the Westminster Union of the Working Classes, 30 Aug., James said the people of Carlisle had too much good sense to delay the bill in that way. He divided for its passage, 21 Sept., for the second reading of the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept., whose provisions he also defended, 4 Oct., and for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. He was cheered at the Cumberland reform meeting when he proposed a petition endorsing the bill and the Grey ministry’s conduct, 16 Nov. The Times, 18 Nov.; Carlisle Jnl. 19 Nov. 1831. He divided for the revised reform bill at its second reading, 17 Dec. 1831, and generally for its details. His return to Westminster after the Christmas recess was delayed by a fortnight and he cited a letter from the Carlisle Reform Association, complaining of his failure to vote against the amendment for a £10 poor rate franchise, 3 Feb. 1832, as proof that popular support for reform had not waned. He pressed for a large creation of peers to ensure the bill’s passage, 10 Feb. Carlisle Jnl. 11, 18, 25 Feb. 1832. His vote for Hunt’s amendment making the cost of booths and hustings chargeable to the rates or corporation funds, 15 Feb., was a wayward one. He divided for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar. When a ministry headed by the duke of Wellington was contemplated, he caused uproar by challenging Lord Althorp over ministerial resignations and stating that they should have advised the king to ‘create any number of peers that might be necessary’ to carry ‘the only measure that can be adopted to prevent the collision of the two House of Parliament’, 9 May. He voted for the address calling on the king to appoint only ministers who would carry the bill unamended, 10 May, and endorsed a Manchester petition against voting supplies until it was enacted, 11 May. Later that day, in what the Speaker, who chose to ignore it, interpreted as a breach of privilege provoked by ‘the borough-mongering faction’ around him, he ranted against military men who would resort to force to suppress the clamour for reform. He supported petitions for withholding supplies from Bolton, 17 May, and Carlisle, 1 June. He divided for the Irish reform bill at its second reading, 25 May, and against amending the Scottish measure, 1, 15 June. He referred to his intended vote on the 13th to restore the 40s. Irish freeholder franchise ‘as the best reparation’ he could make for voting to disfranchise them in 1825. Denouncing the ‘farce’ of abolishing one class of nomination boroughs in May and creating another through the boundary bill in June, he seconded and was a minority teller for altering the Whitehaven boundaries to neutralize Lonsdale’s influence there, 22 June, and voted to amend the boundaries proposed for Stamford the same day. He divided with government on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug., and opposed John Bennet’s ‘time-wasting’ Liverpool franchise bill, 5 Sept. 1831, 23 May 1832. He did not vote on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July, but he spoke in support of ministers when it was considered in committee of supply, 6 Feb. 1832.

James’s pragmatism rarely extended beyond reform, and he remained too bold, radical and self-opinionated to support the Grey ministry on most other issues. He called for repeal of the 1819 Select Vestry Act, which he complained deprived magistrates of the power of granting poor relief, 28 June, and praised the 1830 Beer Act, when petitions from his fellow county magistrates condemned it, 30 June, 27 Aug. 1831. He was unstinting in his support for Hunt’s campaign for repeal of the corn laws, on which his opinions had again hardened, 24 June, 12, 13 Aug., 15 Sept. As a minority teller that day, he blamed the 1815 law for depriving the labouring classes of a market for the sale of their produce, making them worse fed than negro slaves. He voted in the minorities for printing the Waterford petition for disbanding the Irish yeomanry, 11 Aug., and against compensating two coloureds, Escoffery and Lescene, for their removal from Jamaica, 22 Aug. He spoke wildly of the coronation of William IV as unnecessary, ‘except ... to make 50 or 100 new peers for the purpose of passing the reform bill’, 13 Aug. After failing that day to limit spending to £10,000, he exhausted the patience of the House with questions on the allocation of the £50,000 voted and the seating arrangements for Members, of whom he was proud to be one, 31 Aug., 1 Sept. He spoke against the proposed expenditure on royal residences, 28 Sept. He opposed renewal of the Sugar Refinery Act with Burge and the West India Members, 12 Sept., and pressed for the immediate consideration of the report, 22 Sept., when (as again, 28 Sept.) he criticized the measure as nothing less than a bill for giving a premium to white sugar and promoting the Brazilian slave trade, ‘a felony for any British subject in any way to connive at’. He presented and endorsed petitions from the Northern radicals for inquiry into the Deacles case and voted thus, 27 Sept. He did not apparently, as requested, endorse a Huddersfield Political Union petition for ending prosecutions for religious opinions (which named the Deist Robert Taylor) when it was presented, 22 Sept. Poor Man’s Guardian, 17 Sept. 1831. He called in vain on Graham to promote the use of chain cables manufactured by his Cumberland constituents by the navy, 13 Oct. 1831. He confirmed his radicalism in a series of votes and interventions on 16 Feb. 1832: for inquiry into Peterloo, printing the Woollen Grange petition for the abolition of Irish tithes, information on military punishments and omission of any reference to Providence in the preamble to the cholera bill, so providing ample fodder for Carlisle’s Conservative squib writers. Carlisle Pub. Lib. 3A 324.2 (unbound squibs and handbills); Carlisle Jnl. 25 Feb. 1832. His equivocal stance on the locally unpopular general register bill, 26 Feb., and the factories regulation bill, 1, 7 Mar., won him few friends, but this was partly remedied by his assertion that the factories bill would do less to assist poor children than tax reductions and his renewed plea for repeal of the corn laws, 16 Mar. Speaking ‘freely’ on the sugar duties, ‘because I have the misfortune to be a West Indian planter’, 7 Mar. 1832, he expressed a personal preference for an ad valorem duty, but professed himself ready to divide with government against reduction, so as to cause them embarrassment and ‘because I believe that they will, as soon as they possibly can, do everything in their power to relieve the distress’.

Standing as a Liberal, James topped the poll at Carlisle in a three-man contest at the general election in December 1832, and he seconded the address in the ensuing Parliament. He made way for another Liberal in 1835, but came in for Cumberland East on a vacancy in September 1836 and defeated the ‘turncoat’ Graham in 1837 and a Conservative in 1841 to retain his seat until 1847, when he felt unable to sustain the cost of a contest. Saunders, 153-5; Ward, 156, 160-1. He died at Barrock Lodge in May 1861, predeceased by his wife and seven of their 13 children, and remembered as an advocate of radical reform and free trade who in later life moderated his views. A Carlisle public house was named after him. Gent. Mag. (1861), i. 708; James, 8-9. His will was proved in London, 28 May 1861, and honoured his obligations to his eldest son William James (1816-79), who as heir to his estates had assisted him financially at the 1841 election. His remaining money and effects were distributed equally among his children.