Imbued with the principles and prejudices of a Tory country gentleman, of which he was a typical specimen, Knatchbull was eventually forced by his stubborn commitment to the Protestant constitution and the agricultural interest into direct opposition to the government of Robert Peel* and the duke of Wellington. He had a strong and pious, but normally quiescent, sense of moral duty. This was revealed in a letter to his second wife, Jane Austen’s favourite niece, ‘Dearest Fanny’, shortly after their engagement, when he was called away by the death of his aunt’s husband, the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks (having obtained leave from the House, 21 June 1820). He wrote:
In all that I have undergone I have been supported by that Power from above without whose aid I must long ago have sunk; but, seriously as I have always regarded every occurrence of life, and attributing as I always do everything that happens to a superintending Power, I have never suffered these considerations to interfere with the duties or even the amusements of life. I have never felt that it could become one to find fault with the conduct of others, and dogmatically prescribe what course it is best to pursue. To act upon a uniform and steady principle, to adhere to what is right and to abstain from what is wrong, to afford the best example in my power, never to obtrude my opinions, but never upon proper occasions to be ashamed or afraid of avowing them - these have been the rules upon which I have acted, and I believe that they will bring peace at the last ... Your own principles as expressed to me are right: grounded on humility, admitting how unequal we are to perform our duties, but resolutely and constantly persevering to the utmost of our ability to discharge them properly - thinking seriously of everything that happens, constantly mixing with the world, but enjoying it more or less according as we meet with similar feelings and kindred spirits, and always hoping that our example and principles will effect some good and receive the respect to which they are entitled.
Letters of Jane Austen ed. Lord Brabourne, ii. 273-4.
As Banks’s executor, he oversaw the distribution of his manuscripts to the British Museum and the Royal Society, though he was later criticized for holding back much of the material, some of which can now be found among his papers.
After succeeding to his father’s title, estates and parliamentary seat in 1819, he proved indefatigable in his application to county business, both inside and outside the House. He was a frequent attender at meetings all over Kent, as his wife’s diaries attest, and was especially sensitive to the grievances of farmers.
Despite the respect in which Knatchbull was usually held, he did have his detractors, like the headmaster of Winchester, William Stanley Goddard, who remarked on his ‘general incivility of manners and sullenness of temper’.
Sir Edward Knatchbull, who is a child of the System, does appear to see no more of the cause of these sufferings than if he were a baby. How should he? Not very bright by nature; never listening to but one side of the question; being a man who wants high rents to be paid him; not gifted with much light, and that little having to strive against prejudice, false shame and self-interest, what wonder is it that he should not see things in their true light?
Cobbett’s Rural Rides ed. G.D.H. and M. Cole, i. 42.
His rejection of Catholic emancipation drew a similar response from Richard Lalor Sheil*:
He seems a proud, obstinate, dogged sort of squire, with an infinite notion of his own importance as an English county Member and a corresponding contempt for seven millions of his fellow citizens. He has in his face and bearing many of the disagreeable qualities of John Bullism, without any of its frankness and plain-dealing. He is rude without being honest and offensive without being sincere.
New Monthly Mag. (1828), ii. 479.
Knatchbull did eventually acknowledge some support for moderate parliamentary reform, but he remained deeply suspicious of such incursions into the established constitution. In the Commons he was initially a diffident, sometimes inaudible, speaker, but later became a competent performer. He reported to his wife that his speech on 4 Feb. 1830 was
badly reported. The Mirror of Parliament people came to me. I rather complained. The reply was ‘you speak so fluently, without stopping or hesitating, that it is most difficult to take down your words. We hear you well, but you never give us time to pause’.
Knatchbull mss C127/43.
His local administrative experience was put to good use on a number of select committees, including those on poor returns in nearly every session from 1822 to 1828, and he served on very many others during this period. He made frequent minor interventions on a wide range of subjects and, during the period of disaffected Tory opposition around 1830, he often asked questions about the timetable of future business.
There was little expectation of a contest at the general election of 1820, when Knatchbull was returned with Honywood, after having defended his support for the recent repressive legislation as ‘only temporary laws for temporary evils’, condemned Catholic claims and endorsed some measures of economy to assist agriculture.
Knatchbull, who judged it inexpedient to attempt to get up a county meeting on this topic, was present at a meeting of agriculturists in Maidstone, 13 Dec. 1821, when he explained that he had not voted for the report in the committee on distress, because ‘it did not do that which he conceived was necessary to afford relief’.
his speech was listened to without favour, but with impartiality; and the orator was respected for having acquitted himself of the task in a frank and manly manner, a term which, in the English language and spirit, is one of the greatest testimonies of esteem.
A. de Staël-Holstein, Letters on England (1825), 191-2.
When the petition was entered, 14 June, he condemned the rider calling for a reduction in the rate of interest on the national debt, which had been hitched to it by Cobbett in the face of Whig uneasiness, as a ‘proposition for breaking faith with the public creditor’, and he presented a Kent counter-petition, 4 July 1822.
On bringing up three Kentish hop growers’ petitions for repeal of the hop duties, he warned that if no relief was offered he would move for an inquiry, 21 Feb.; when the chancellor refused such a step, he admitted that there was an overproduction of hops, but again asked for assistance, 27 Feb. 1823. He voted in the minority for a bill to amend the corn laws by reducing the import price to 60s., 26 Feb., and presented a petition from the landowners of west Kent for relief, 24 Apr.
He voted in the minority for a select committee on the silk trade petitions, 24 Feb. 1826. Sponsoring a bill for a new corn market in London, he was a teller for the majority against postponing consideration of its report, 17 Apr., and had a rider added, 25 Apr. He presented Kentish anti-slavery petitions, 14, 17 Mar., 13, 20 Apr.
He spoke in support of indemnifying ministers for opening the ports during the recess, 24 Nov. 1826, but again denied that there was a class basis to the corn laws and deplored attempts to stir up jealousy between landlords, manufacturers and the people. At a meeting of the East Kent Agricultural Association in Canterbury, 15 Dec., he justified government policy and advised toning down the proposed protectionist petitions in order not to alienate Members.
one only, a thorough malignant and furious Ultra in politics, as well as upon corn, attempted a feeble cry about free trade. It fell flat and before he is six days older, he shall rue the attempt, if he gives me (as I trust he will) the opportunity.
Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1292.
He brought up at least 45 anti-Catholic petitions, 2, 5, 19 Mar., and voted against relief, 6 Mar.
While thinking that the ‘list of the new ministry does not afford grounds for that unmixed satisfaction which I had anticipated’, Knatchbull privately assured Peel of his support on his return to office under Wellington, 22 Jan. 1828. He was one of the ministerial ‘supporters’ appointed to the finance committee, 15 Feb.
Knatchbull was, of course, listed by Planta, the patronage secretary, among those ‘opposed to the principle’ of Catholic emancipation in February 1829, and he was named as home secretary in one list of a putative Protestant ministry.
From the autumn of 1829 Knatchbull played a conspicuous part in the activities of the group of 20 to 30 disaffected Ultra Tories, who were led by Sir Richard Vyvyan*. In his later embittered memoirs, Vyvyan recalled that
when I first ascertained the full extent of my influence, it was my impression that my age and isolation in the dominant aristocracy of the country would interpose serious obstacles to my being the recognized head of the party. This induced me to put forward Sir Edward Knatchbull as its nominal chief. When I arranged all the combinations and acted oratorically as the mouthpiece of the section of the Tories, who opposed the duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, I used my best endeavours to let it be understood, that Knatchbull was the ostensible leader. I issued summons for party meetings at his house instead of my own and committed the great mistake of making him the important personage, by which I inflamed his small ambition and perhaps generated his personal hostility to myself.
B. T. Bradfield, ‘Sir Richard Vyvyan and Fall of Wellington’s Government’, Univ. of Birmingham Hist. Jnl. xi (1968), 142, 148, 154-6.
Gatherings certainly took place at 30 Great George Street, where Knatchbull lived from 1827 to 1838, but they must have been equally convenient for Vyvyan, who had a house a few doors away at number 26. Knatchbull’s disillusionment with Peel over the ‘great betrayal’ made him the prime target for his anger, and their relationship was further soured by his failure to advance his brother, Wyndham Knatchbull, to the regius chair of Hebrew at Oxford.
Sir Edward uses expressions like these: ‘If old England should go on’, ‘If we shall last for five years’, to which I answered, ‘I suppose you do not, Sir Edward, really think it will not’. ‘No I suppose it will go on after all,’ he replied. He has a most established hatred for the Whigs; and, on that score, does not like the appointments of Rosslyn and Sir James Scarlett*. I explained to him, in general terms, the grounds on which they were made. He answered that ‘that certainly palliated the matter very much, but then the world at large could not know these things and the impression was the other way’. Upon the whole I should say, quite unreservedly, that Sir Edward looks up wholly to your Grace, and that if anything can be done to propitiate the Ultras, he will hail it with great joy and cheerfully assist in the operation. On one occasion he said to me: ‘I believe you must shake us all up in a bag together again, and see who will come out first’. I took up the expression of ‘our being shaken up together again’, and said that was what we wished; that we never willingly looked to the Whigs, but were always glad, standing on our own strength, to keep them between us and the radicals, reformers, etc. I made always more progress by insisting that there must be either the present government or a Whig government. The latter, the worthy baronet seemed to consider little short of perdition.
Ibid. WP1/1044/4.
Knatchbull was a subscriber to the defence of the Ultra Morning Journal in its libel action,
I had enough to do, to talk without saying anything. It would not be difficult to create a stir in Kent, but there is no distinct and definite object that can justify me in taking such a course. It is more important to keep our body united, to prevent confusion and discord as long as possible, and also that when the proper moment does arise, we may all press together to gain the same object.
Maidstone Jnl. 17 Nov. 1829; Vyvyan mss.
Owing to a mixture of personal preference and adverse circumstances, Knatchbull thus spent the rest of the year in cautious but anxious inactivity, though he continued to inveigh against agricultural distress and signed the grand jury of Kent’s letter of complaint about it to Wellington, 16 Dec. 1829.
His decision to challenge the government, 4 Feb. 1830, was not the result of any prior preparations by the Ultras. He informed Lady Knatchbull a few days later that
as I travelled to town, I thought it possible that an amendment might be wise, but I did not resolve upon moving my amendment till after two o’clock on Thursday, when I heard the king’s speech. You know my opinion of the distress of the country and the assertion in the speech was by far too untrue and too insulting to pass without contradiction.
Knatchbull mss C127/43.
Although agreeing with much of the speech, notably its pledge on economies, he argued that distress was not confined to ‘some parts’ of the country, but was general and required extensive relief. He also advocated restoration of a paper currency, and, while ‘disposed to promote measures for a reform in Parliament’, he was careful to distance himself from those whose object was to destroy, rather than to amend, the constitution. According to Sir James Willoughby Gordon*, he began ‘with great apparent moderation, but as he proceeded and felt the House was with him, he became warm and hostile, and was cheered by a very large portion of the House’.
Knatchbull acknowledged the strategic necessity of maintaining the size of the army, but spoke and voted in favour of restricting its grant to six months, 19 Feb. 1830. In presenting and endorsing a Romney Marsh petition against the importation of foreign wool, 1 Mar., there was ‘some incivility’ between him and Sir Charles Burrell.
Long before the general election of 1830 there were rumours that a Tory candidate might emerge to challenge Knatchbull, but he offered again and was not opposed.
If it is for the purpose of disfranchising those boroughs where ... corruption ... has been carried on to so great an extent and conferring it upon large towns, when the facts are properly proved, I shall support such a measure. But let us take care that in endeavouring to repair the fabric of our constitution we do not pull it down altogether.
Maidstone Jnl. 10 Aug.; Kentish Chron. 10 Aug. 1830.
With the ‘mild, gentlemanly and impressive manner with which he always speaks’, he addressed the Hawkhurst dinner to celebrate his and Hodges’s return, 8 Sept., stating, with typical modesty, that ‘a Member of Parliament could ill perform his duty without the advice and assistance of his constituents; he had always received those, and from no one more than his present colleague’.
Althorp wrote to Lord Milton*, 15 Nov. 1830, that Knatchbull and his friends might support Henry Brougham’s intended reform motion the following day.
will not support the new government. Having had their revenge they mean to put their knees in our backs and do all they can to get out the others. They are sorry for the work they have performed and regret their vote. They had intended to stay away on the question of reform - now they mean to vote against it.
Brougham, Life and Times, iii. 376; Ellenborough Diary, ii. 439.
Knatchbull presented petitions against distress, 7 Feb. 1831, when he accepted ministers’ explanation about the barilla duties, and stated that he would support them so long as they promoted the interests of the community at large. He informed his wife, 13 Feb., that he had held a party of Ultra friends the day before and had been summoned by Althorp, the chancellor, who ‘gives up his plan of finance’, ‘to tell him what I thought of the matter: so I went and told him little enough of what I thought’.
In another letter to Lady Knatchbull, 27 Feb. 1831, he revealed the worries that were on his mind:
I am sure you must have perceived from the papers, that I have been especially quiet and I do wish they would let me alone, for I wish I were out of all this turmoil and at home with you. On Tuesday [1 Mar.] we have reform and no one knows what I mean to do - but I am asked and asked and asked - all the world is anxiety and all sorts of changes are talked of - for me a peerage, disgraceful as it would be, might be the best thing; for then I could live at peace at home - but that will not do, it will be discreditable.
Knatchbull mss C3/14.
Lord Lansdowne suggested his name to Grey, 5 Mar., adding that ‘I do not know him personally, but hear him always represented as having considerable influence among the Tories, a good speaker and man of business and supposed to be not averse to office’.
I should not be at all surprised, and personally not sorry, if this reform question led to my quitting public life. If it is carried it may present a fair opportunity for me to retire. If it fails, it is likely to create an election in Kent, which might prevent my return, unless at much expense, which I will never incur - there now - of this I thought last night.
Three Diaries, 14; Knatchbull mss C3/13.
He condemned threats of mass action to compel Parliament to accept reform and argued that public opinion should be expressed in a regular manner, 7 Mar.; but Sir James Mackintosh* wrote to Lady Holland, 8 Mar., that the ‘temper of the Tories’, as declared by Knatchbull, ‘inclines them to yield passive obedience even to the present ministers’.
Prior to the dissolution there were rumours that Knatchbull would bow to the growing criticism of his opposition to reform and decline to stand at the general election.
the power of nominating representatives ought not to be exercised by any individual. This great object may be secured consistently with the rights of the electors. Large and populous towns ought to be directly represented; the amount of qualification is a matter of detail to be fixed on deliberate consideration. I think it would be injurious to divide counties and I am opposed to diminishing the number of English representatives.
In Canterbury, 30 Apr., he explained that he had initially supported the bill, but had opposed the second reading because ministers had declared against any modification in committee, and he argued that the real problem facing the country was the continued distress.
Except for his temporary rise to prominence in early 1830, Knatchbull was never happy to act as a leader unless he was certain that he had the support of his colleagues in Parliament and of his constituents. From 1831 he began to move back into the mainstream of the Tory party and he was a founder member of the Carlton Club, 10 Mar. 1832. He gradually recovered the good opinion of the Kentish voters, for instance when he spoke at a meeting in Canterbury, 2 June, though Whigs such as Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges† continued to think that his inveterate and unbending Toryism disqualified him from returning to the House.