Vivian belonged to the Trewen branch of a very old and extensive Cornish family. His great-grandfather was Thomas Vivian (1685-1759), of Kenwyn, Truro, whose only son and namesake was vicar of Cornwood, Devon, from 1747 until his death in 1793. His eldest son, John Vivian, this Member’s father, was born in 1750. He became an adventurer in Cornish copper mines in 1771 and acquired a personal stake in about eight. In 1785 he co-operated with Matthew Boulton of Birmingham and Thomas Williams† of Anglesey to form the Cornish Metal Company, which had offices in Truro and was intended to divide the national copper market between the producers of Cornwall and Anglesey. Five smelting companies agreed to process its ores at fixed prices. Various problems arose, and in 1790 Vivian and Williams engineered a new arrangement, which effectively put an end to the Metal Company. Vivian, who was an agent for Williams’s Parys Mine Company and a partner in the Truro Miners’ Bank of Willyams and Company, gave some controversial evidence before the Commons select committee on the copper mining industry in 1799. The following year he transferred his interest in the Hayle smelting works to that run by the Cheadle Copper Company at Penclawwd, near Swansea.
Richard Hussey Vivian, his eldest son, made an educational visit to France in 1791. He was initially destined for the law, in the footsteps of his great-uncle, Richard Hussey, Member for three Cornish boroughs, 1755-70, and attorney-general to the queen, 1761-70, after whom he had been named, and in 1793 he was articled to a Devonport solicitor as a preliminary to entering the Middle Temple. He preferred, however, a military career, on which he embarked in July that year. He saw much action in Flanders in 1794, was stationed at Gibraltar, 1796-8, and went on the Helder expedition in 1799. During a period at home, 1799-1808, he made a runaway marriage and cemented his friendship with Lord Paget† (later marquess of Anglesey), his colonel in the 7th Dragoons. In the autumn of 1808 Vivian commanded the regiment in Spain, where he performed with distinction in covering the retreat to Corunna. Back in England, he was Paget’s second in his duel with Captain Cadogan, 30 May 1809.
At the general election that year he stood for his native town of Truro, a corporation borough, where his father was the focus of local opposition to the controlling interest of Lord Falmouth, under the patronage and encouragement of the regent’s crony Lord Yarmouth*, warden of the Stannaries. Vivian and his colleague were beaten by one vote, and the petition lodged on their behalf was rejected.
A spectator at the trial of Queen Caroline in the Lords,
He voted against more extensive tax reductions, 21 Feb., and relaxation of the salt duties, 28 Feb. 1822. He said that army economies had been ‘carried as far as they possibly could’, 4 Mar., and thanked ministers for having adopted his suggestion that half-pay major-generals should receive their full regimental allowance. He ‘hoped that the advantages of a good and general system of equitation for the cavalry would never be given up’, 15 Mar.
The state of my finances make it absolutely necessary that I should take some steps in order to relieve myself from difficulties which will otherwise oppress and inconvenience me ... Unless a man makes known his wishes ... he is constantly passed over under the impression that he desires to remain unemployed.
Vivian mss A 1003, 1009; Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1175.
The College was spoken for, but Vivian was made inspector-general of cavalry towards the end of the following year.
He voted for the Irish unlawful societies bill, 25 Feb., and against Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., and the Irish franchise bill, 26 Apr., 9 May 1825. He presented a constituency petition against Catholic claims, 2 May.
When a dissolution was expected in the autumn Vivian, on military duty in Newcastle, and already assured of a return for Windsor on the Court interest, announced that he would not stand again for Truro, where his position had been undermined by Lord Falmouth. He asserted that ‘on all great questions’ he had supported ‘an administration under whose guidance the country had risen to a state of prosperity its most sanguine friends had not anticipated’ and reiterated his hostility to Catholic claims.
a very pretty woman, a great coquette ... [who] practises her art with great success on my eldest brother ... I don’t like her at all, for she is the most complete Mrs. Candour I have ever met with, and an amazing gossip. He is a good-natured, rough hussar.
(Vivian himself wrote that his wife was ‘violent, jealous and touchy, but she has a good heart at bottom and is open and honourable to an extreme’.)
I am very delicately circumstanced. It is a profitable concern and a safe one and I know not how money could be better laid out ... but still I have invariably said that I have no right to expect you to work for me and my family, whilst on the other hand I have no right to press giving up that which is of more importance to you than to me.
Vivian mss A 1036-44.
He said in the House that a story of the victimisation of a trooper in the 10th Hussars by his adjutant had been much exaggerated, 28 Feb., 6 Mar. 1826, when he also defended the grant for the Royal Military College. On 3 Mar. he acknowledged the general efficiency of yeoman cavalry but thought it desirable that they should be inspected by regular officers. He voted with ministers in defence of the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar., but presented a Truro petition for abolition, 20 Apr.
I could sell Beechwood and take a small house in town and live no doubt on £2,000 a year ... I could get a command and go either to the East or West [Indies] but this would be for ever separating myself from the man in the world I love best ... To accept it would be to bury my father as far as I am concerned whilst he yet lives. I could live at Beechwood on a somewhat reduced establishment, but it would be out of the question to live in the county and give up its amusements ... My present income is however more than equal to such an expenditure as I should require. The difficulty is to meet the incurred debt. I could give up Windsor [which would initially cost him about £1,000], but were I to do so I might offend the king, and moreover sacrifice that which may be of use to myself and my family, the interest and consequence that it necessarily gives me ... I hardly know what I had best do, and therefore beg of you to consider for me, and above all things do not lecture me for that would only add to my misery without convincing me of my folly one jot more than I am already convinced of it, or make me more sensible than I am of the necessity of retrenchment.
Vivian mss A 1050-4.
He was duly returned for Windsor at the general election two weeks later, when he promised on the hustings to ‘oppose Catholicism and to support the Protestant faith’.
He denied Hume’s allegation of chicanery in the placing of soldiers on the retired list, 19 Feb. 1827.
I am no Canningite myself and I should be very glad to see a government formed the principles of which should in many respects differ from the present, but my fear is that the day is not yet arrived when it can be brought about.
He regretted Peel’s resignation on personal grounds, and felt that he and the other anti-Catholic seceders would only drive Canning into the arms of the Whigs and thus ‘actually go to force on the country the very measure that they deprecate and also force it on the king’.
In January 1828 he wrongly predicted that Wellington would form a government
of Ultras ... He is a fool if he does not. The Whigs have cut such a poor miserable figure in many respects that they are very low in estimation, and a good regular Tory administration would have many supporters; besides which a thing of patchwork would never do. It must be one or other, Whig or Tory.
He told his brother that if the new ministry opted for a dissolution, he might well resign his seat, as ‘I do not much fancy the Ultra Tories’.
He spoke against further reductions in the cavalry, 20 Feb. 1829. The patronage secretary Planta predicted that he would side ‘with government’ for Catholic emancipation; and on the motion to consider it, 6 Mar., he rose after Anglesey’s son, Lord Uxbridge, who opposed it, to speak at some length in its support on pragmatic grounds. At the same time, he made it clear that he swallowed it with ‘great reluctance’ and expressed strong reservations, based largely on his suspicion of the Irish Catholic agitators. The backbencher Hudson Gurney thought this ‘proved it was against the grain at headquarters’. His vote for emancipation that day was the only one he cast. Three years later he bragged that in this speech, he had accurately ‘foretold [Daniel] O’Connell’s present course’.
it contained my honest sentiments. What I used to say was that I hoped to be [a] Member of Parliament, a lieutenant-general and a GCB. As to the future, God knows. The duke of Wellington will never bring me into office. Was Lord Anglesey [recently recalled from Ireland] to come into power I might no doubt have a high office. He asked me two days since if I would under such circumstances take office. To that I replied, with him but not else. Strange things, depend on it, will take place before 12 months pass over. I expect in the first instance a ministry of Ultra Tories, and then if the duke of Clarence comes to the throne I expect Lord Anglesey will come in as a liberal.
Vivian mss A 1120.
He voted in the minority for the issue of a new writ for East Retford, 2 June 1829. When his brother sent him an alarming account of a ‘falling off in our trade’ that month, Vivian told him that
come what may there is one mischief which I earnestly entreat you not to incur and that is loss of health by worrying ... Times must be bad indeed if between us, what with soldiering and coppering, we cannot raise the wind to maintain ourselves and our children out of a joint purse.
He advised against joining forces with the Grenfells, if the difficulty proved to be anything more than a temporary reflection of commercial depression, and suggested that their own agents, James Palmer Budd and Octavius Williams, should be made partners (which they were in 1831). In December 1829 the Vivians withdrew from the Association of Copper Companies.
Vivian voted against the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb. 1830. He objected to opposition pressure for further army reductions, 19 Feb., when he said that ministers had done everything possible to economize and welcomed their new regulations for military pensions. Opposing inquiry into the state of the nation, 18 Mar., he insisted that distress was not as intense or widespread as was alleged and that there was ‘still an elasticity, a spring of health within the country’. He dismissed protection, retrenchment and currency reform as panaceas. He gave the House the benefit of his recent researches into distress in Hampshire and Cornwall, undertaken while suffering from an illness which had interfered with his attendance: overpopulation and high prices were largely to blame, but in Cornwall, where distress was negligible, intelligent enterprise and low prices had maintained high levels of employment. He later took credit to himself for having in this speech ‘clearly anticipated the outrage’ of the ‘Swing’ disturbances.
Just after the death of George IV Vivian, who was about to lose his inspectorship as a result of his promotion to lieutenant-general, sought to succeed Sir Herbert Taylor* as adjutant-general, though not, he stressed, over the head of Taylor’s deputy Macdonald, who was duly appointed.
it is not possible to look to the state of Europe without fear or exaltation: fear lest the dictation of the people may be carried too far; exaltation that those of France have had courage enough to put down the most outrageous attempt on their liberties ever conceived even in the most despotic times of Napoleon.
He remained intent on selling Beechwood, which was considered to be too damp for his wife’s good, but he now thought of wintering in Brighton and Leamington.
Ministers listed him among their ‘friends’, but, writing from Dover, 9 Nov. 1830, he thought that Wellington ‘must go out after his most uncalled for, imprudent and unwise speech about reform’. He later observed that the duke had ‘cut his own throat by his silly speech on reform’, for ‘had he met the wishes and the feelings of the people and come forward with some moderate measure of reform, he might have formed the strongest government possible’. He nevertheless went up to vote with ministers on the civil list, 15 Nov. Two days later he informed his brother:
If Lord Anglesey takes office - and it has been offered him - he wishes me to come in with him, and although I believe I should be happier and in Eliza’s state better perhaps out of office, still for the sake of my children and for other reasons I think I cannot decline. If Lord Anglesey does not take office then I shall resign my appointment as groom and place myself in a perfectly independent position in Parliament, for having paid every farthing of expense for my seat I shall not feel myself bound on all occasions to support Lord Grey.
Depending on which office Anglesey took, Vivian anticipated becoming military secretary at horse guards, lieutenant-general of the ordnance, Irish secretary, commander-in-chief in Ireland or secretary at war. As it was, Anglesey was made lord lieutenant of Ireland and Vivian agreed to take the command there when Byng retired in the spring of 1831.
I admit that distress has been in some places the cause of the disturbances; but I cannot allow it to have been the only cause, or even the principal ... The truth is, the lower orders have been tampered with ... They have been taught to read, but have not been taught to profit by education ... in every little pot-house ... you meet with some of those inflammatory publications that are so common ... The poison has been administered, but the antidote has nowhere been provided - the people have been taught that the distress has arisen from the taxes, and the government have been assailed as the cause, not only out of doors, but by Members of this House, but nowhere have they been taught to understand that if the government were overturned tomorrow their distress would be ten times greater than it has ever been.
He urged ministers and country gentlemen to set aside party rancour and co-operate to restore tranquillity, and recommended a programme of waste cultivation to provide employment. On 23 Dec. 1830 he joined in calls for an adjournment of only two weeks.
Vivian envisaged retaining his seat until he went to Ireland, and perhaps even keeping it then; but in late December 1830 ministers, with the approval of the king, claimed it immediately for Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, who had been embarrassingly defeated when seeking re-election for Preston. Anglesey was too squeamish to press Byng to bring forward his retirement, even though Byng himself had offered to do so, and took it for granted that Vivian, guaranteed the succession in June, would make no difficulties about surrendering his seat.
the inconvenience of vacating his seat before he was appointed; his liking for the business of Parliament; the belief that he had at Windsor, in consequence of the declarations both of the late king and the present, a seat for life; a hope that he might have retained it, as was done by Sir George Murray; the difficulty that might occur at a new election if a fair and ostensible reason, such as his actual appointment might afford, were not apparent for his resigning it, etc., etc.
He left Grey under the impression that he was ‘finally quite satisfied’ with the proposal, put to him at Smith Stanley’s suggestion, to appoint him to the Irish staff until he took over from Byng, with an additional assurance that if the ministry fell, Smith Stanley would hand the Windsor seat back to him. Yet within hours he wrote to Ellice, the patronage secretary, to rehearse the ‘many and considerable’ objections which now occurred to him:
It would in the first place carry with it the appearance of a job ... and perhaps might even be noticed in the House of Commons. In Ireland it might be unpleasant to Byng having me as his successor under his command, and it might be unpleasant to me to be so situated. With a large family I should have no home to go to on getting there; or if I lived on I should have all the misery of changing in a few months.
He suggested that it would be much simpler if Byng could be persuaded to resign at once, perhaps with the sweetener of the promise of a governorship:
I assure you I grieve most truly at going out of Parliament. It has always been a great object to me to have a seat, and it is by no means incompatible with the command in Ireland ... and moreover I had flattered myself [I] possibly might have been occasionally of some use to you in the House.
At the same time, he acknowledged that, sitting as he did on the Court interest, he had little choice but to acquiesce in the king’s wishes; but he told Ellice that he ‘must in return, at some future day, if I require it, help me back again into the ... House’, possibly for a Cornish borough. Although Grey, in his reply to Ellice, expressed ‘some dissatisfaction’ at Vivian’s conduct, he declined to interfere, and told Anglesey that he was inclined to ‘look out for another seat for Smith Stanley and another commander-in-chief’.
saying that Lady Vivian is so ill that he cannot leave her and therefore declining the appointment at present; but stating that he holds himself ready, at the meeting of Parliament, to vacate his seat for Windsor. Nobody can be more ready than I am to admit the validity of such an excuse, but coupling it with all that had previously passed, I do not think that we can rely with certainty on his eventually taking over the appointment of commander-in-chief. I have found out, in the course of these proceedings, that he would have preferred a civil to a military office, and that his real wish was to be appointed secretary at war. At all events it is necessary that we should know what we have to count upon.
For his own part, Vivian told his brother, 12 Jan., that he was to go to Ireland in June and that ministers could have his seat now, as ‘in poor Eliza’s dreadful state I can think of but one thing’. The following day, contemplating her inevitable early death, which would leave him with ‘three motherless girls’, he confided to John Henry:
I sometimes think I shall give up Ireland altogether and go abroad with my whole family for two or three years. In short, I know not what to think or determine on. It is a grievous affliction to look forward to, but it must come ere long.
He duly vacated his seat when Parliament met, though he pleaded the desperate condition of his wife, who died five months later, for pulling out of an arrangement to hold Smith Stanley’s hand at the by-election.
Vivian took over the Irish command, which brought him £3,600 a year, in addition to £2,600 from his regimental colonelcy and wounds pension, on Byng’s retirement, and held it for five years. John Croker*, for one, was ‘glad to see a man of decision there’.