Viscount Folkestone was returned for Downton on the family interest on the first vacancy after he came of age; had he or his father wished it, his uncle the Hon. Edward Bouverie II would have vacated in his favour several months before. His maiden speech, 22 Apr. 1801, was in favour of an opposition motion and enabled him to express resentment at the doubt thrown by the Duke of York on the fitness of the militia for enlistment in expeditionary forces. He had not himself been accepted for a militia commission, but his father was active in that sphere. Radnor could not disapprove the filial loyalty of this ‘first essay’, but urged Folkestone not to speak too frequently and ‘for, rather than against administration the next time’. His next venture was on more neutral ground, when he sought to prevent London corn factors from taking advantage of grain scarcity (2, 24, 26 June 1801), but he was induced to procrastinate. At the same time he impressed Addington privately with his arguments against the renewal of martial law in Ireland. He was still in unison with his father when he emerged in October 1801 as an opponent of Addington’s peace preliminaries with France. On 20 Oct. William Cobbett informed William Windham:
My Lord Folkestone has authorized me to say, that he reprobates the present peace, and that he shall be glad to have this made known to any other Members of the House of Commons, who may be desirous of collecting together those who may agree with him in sentiment, for the purpose of acting more in concert, or any other honourable and lawful purpose.
Wilts. RO, Radnor mss 490/1373, Bouverie to Radnor, 29 Nov. 1800; Berks. RO, Pleydell Bouverie mss 028/6, Radnor to Folkestone, 24 Apr. 1801; Rose Diaries, i. 356; Add. 37853, f. 16; Windham Pprs. ii. 177; Melville, Cobbett, i. 137.
At that time Edward Lee wrote: ‘The most violent man that I have met with against [the peace preliminaries], is Lord Folkestone, he and his father will oppose it, but all the rest of their family will support it’. He and his father agreed to support Cobbett’s Political Register to oppose the peace, and his next venture in debate, 12 Feb. 1802, was an expression of resentment at Addington’s seduction of the editor of the True Briton from opposition. He denied any ‘political connection’, but objected to the newspaper’s scurrilous abuse of Members of the House in opposition to the ministry; he was thwarted when he attempted to make it a breach of privilege, 15 Feb.
Folkestone, who resided at Coleshill, would have been in the running for a county seat for Berkshire if one of the sitting Members had retired in 1802. Failing that, his father had decided to return him for Salisbury, his own former seat, and he was chosen there. Radnor advised him to profess in his canvass ‘a perfect independence in your political conduct both of ministers, and opposition, and if you have any notice taken of your conduct respecting the peace, you will say that you followed your own opinion ... and acted as you thought for the best’. But Folkestone assured Windham through Cobbett on 9 July that he still wished to ‘fight under your banner’.
In the last session of Addington’s ministry Folkestone voted steadily with opposition and occasionally spoke against ministerial defence proposals, particularly on the officering of the militia. He also supported Lord Archibald Hamilton’s campaign and was named to the committee on the effects of the Irish currency exchange rate, 2 Mar., 12 Apr. 1804. He was listed ‘Windham’ in March and ‘Grenville’ in May 1804, after joining Brooks’s Club on 7 Apr. He as steadily opposed Pitt’s second ministry, being listed ‘Fox and Grenville’ in September 1804 and ‘Opposition’ in July 1805. In this he was inconspicuous, except in the proceedings against Melville. On 11 Apr. 1805 he was one of the Members who went to St. James’s undressed to present the censure of Melville to the King; on 25 Apr. he proffered his consituents’ petition in support of the censure and was proposed by Whitbread for a select committee of inquiry; on 26 June he was appointed one of the managers of the impeachment. He joined Windham in reprobating public funeral honours for Pitt and in objection to the public payment of his debts, 27 Jan., 3 Feb. 1806.
When Windham took office in the Grenville ministry he asked Lord Grenville to bestow office on Folkestone, who had been their steady adherent since 1802:
Lord Folkestone has great industry, and by no means inconsiderable talents for business, and seems to be so marked out for the situation, which I suggested, that I hardly know how I could be thought to satisfy the fair claims which he has upon me personally as well as upon all of us conjointly, if I were to be seen going into great office without obtaining for him the offer of that situation or of some one equivalent to it ...
The office Windham had in mind was a junior lordship of the Treasury and, when Grenville reported that that was no longer available, one at the Admiralty. Although Folkestone was hard up, he informed Windham that he ‘would rather that no offer was made to him’, thereby letting in Lord Kensington. Windham was anxious to placate Folkestone’s father and Folkestone himself made common cause with his friend Cobbett in requiring to be convinced of the measures of his friends in office. He made a virtue of his refusal to second Spencer Stanhope’s motion critical of Ellenborough’s seat in the cabinet.
As Paull was again defeated in the election of 1807, Folkestone resumed responsibility for the attack on Wellesley, 29 June 1807, but agreed to postpone the Oudh charge until the next session. Instead, he supported the campaign launched by Thomas Creevey against the East India Company. Creevey’s preference for a committee to review the Oudh charge disconcerted Folkestone (9, 22 Feb. 1808), but he produced 12 resolutions against Wellesley on 9 Mar., complaining of the misrepresentations of them put abroad by Wellesley’s publicists. His attack failed, 15 Mar., by 182 votes to 31. He continued to support Creevey’s attacks on the East India Company. In other respects he seldom contributed to debate on behalf of the orthodox opposition, while continuing to vote with them. He spoke up for Windham’s militia plans against the Portland ministry’s proposals, 5 Aug. 1807. He stated that he had approved the expedition against Denmark, but disliked the grounds given by ministers for it and moved reparation to Denmark, 29 Mar. 1808. This motion was defeated by 105 votes to 44. His political allegiance was now to (Sir) Francis Burdett, rather than to Windham, who made no secret of his contempt for Folkestone’s attacks on Wellesley.
Folkestone’s radical tendencies were confirmed when he supported the attack made by Gwyllym Lloyd Wardle on the Duke of York for allowing his mistress Mary Anne Clarke to meddle in army patronage, 27 Jan. 1809. He was entirely in Wardle’s confidence. His attempt to obtain a select committee of inquiry was frustrated, 15 Feb., but at times he took over from Wardle the questioning of witnesses at the bar of the House and on 28 Feb. secured a call of the House for the review of the evidence on 10 Mar., when in a much admired speech he stated the case against the duke. When the duke at length resigned, he called for the cause of the termination of the proceedings to be inserted in the Journals, 20 Mar. He was now in pursuit of other evidence of corruption. He also had in mind a bill to exclude the King’s sons from responsible office, which must include the regency.
It was at this point that several Whig grandees became anxious about Folkestone’s winning the support of other young Whig aristocrats whom he was urging to promote county meetings. Earl Spencer, whose son Althorp admired Folkestone, put it down to his ‘steering a straightforward course through the whole proceeding’ against the Duke of York, and felt that the admonishments of Thomas Grenville, who regarded Folkestone as the tool of Cobbett and through him of Burdett and Horne Tooke, were unduly alarmist. Earl Fitzwilliam’s son, Milton, was also impressed by Folkestone, who attempted to reassure his critics by expressing his disapproval of William Alexander Madocks’s intention to raise the subject of parliamentary reform in the House at this juncture. In this he was at one with Burdett, because, so the Whigs maintained, Madocks had let the cat out of the bag as to the intentions of the radicals. Althorp advised Folkestone to proceed with the campaign against corruption and eschew reform if he wished to be respectably supported.
In the session of 1810 Folkestone, listed ‘No Party’ by the Whigs, as were other Burdettites, was active in the House until May. He had denounced ministers at a Berkshire meeting, 17 Jan., and been applauded for it. He supported the amendment against the thanks to Wellington, 1 Feb.; opposed the exclusion of strangers on 6 Feb., alleging that it was too late to conceal debates from the press, particularly as public confidence in the House was at a low ebb, and on 19 Feb. raised the question of the unconstitutional nature of the Earl of Chatham’s report to the King, ‘without the intervention of any responsible minister’, on the Scheldt expedition. This turned out to be a good ploy and led to the resignation of Chatham, though not to the defeat of the ministry. He favoured the discharge of the radical Gale Jones, 12 Mar. and 16 Apr., and on 26, 28 Mar. and 5 Apr. championed Burdett on the question of his breach of privilege. He visited Burdett when he resisted arrest. Subsequently he advised the House to pay more attention to petitions, when London petitioned in Burdett’s favour, 7 May, and he appealed to the decision of the courts of law, in preference to that of the House, when Burdett proceeded against the House’s officials, 9, 11 May.
Folkestone suffered a setback at this point because of the disclosure of his appetite for fornication, which was reported to have had tragic consequences in his first marriage. Introduced to Mary Anne Clarke by Wardle the year before, he had been unable to resist sexual intercourse with her and, when she fell out with Wardle later that year, was pressurized by her to take her part against Wardle. When she threatened to publish her memoirs, however, Folkestone, unbeknown to Wardle, was party to a bargain with royal agents to buy her off. Wardle discovered this, accused Folkestone of surreptitious behaviour and asked for information about the bargain. Folkestone then withdrew from it. Mrs Clarke had attempted to prejudice him against Wardle by alleging that Wardle was an agent of the Duke of Kent, but Wardle satisfied Folkestone that he was not. In revenge, Mrs Clarke disclosed her relations with Folkestone in her publication The Rival Princes in June 1810, in which she published a letter of his contemptuous of Wardle and indicated that she was in possession of other letters from him. In a second edition, she published eight of them. His unpublished letters contained some ‘awkward expressions’, apparently of boundless contempt for the royal family, and Folkestone, in a panic, lay low. He failed to placate Wardle and subsequently deserted him.
Folkestone turned his attention to the jurisdiction of the inferior ecclesiastical courts, 9 Jan. 1812, when he introduced the House to the plight of Mary Ann Dix, in gaol at Bristol and excommunicated for refusing to perform a penance and pay the costs of a defamation case. When he moved for an inquiry, 23 Jan., Sir William Scott stole his thunder by promising a bill for the better regulation of these courts (introduced on 29 June). Nothing daunted, he introduced a bill to amend the legislation on insolvent debtors, with reference to the same case, 28 Jan., and on 5 Mar. presented a petition from debtors in the Fleet prison. On 10 Mar. he sought information on the number of Germans in the army, having previously expressed reservations about the enlistment of foreigners. He opposed the barracks estimates, 13 Apr. Next day he supported Williams Wynn’s motion against McMahon’s Regency appointment. In his final attack on the bank-note amendment bill, 20 Apr., he pointed out that paper money could be reduced to pap or eaten by rats, with no hope of compensation. He voted for a more efficient administration on 21 May, and on 11 June moved an amendment to Stuart Wortley’s motion, calling for the appointment of such a ministry as would ‘reform existing abuses, restore the commerce, economize the resources and support the honour and independence of the nation’, at the same time deploring the restoration to office of Liverpool’s administration. It was negatived without a division after he had been refused leave to withdraw it.
On 31 July 1812 Folkestone wrote to his father expressing a ‘very strong and decided wish not any more to return to the House of Commons’. He added:
This wish has not arisen from any momentary feeling of ill humour or disgust, but it is now of some years standing, originating in disapprobation of the proceedings there, and the consciousness of my inability either to do anything effectual for their correction, or to distinguish myself in opposition to their total disregard of all constitutional principle, of all attention to the rights and liberties of the people, and almost of all honour, honesty and truth, with which the proceedings there are carried on. If I could hope, that by any exertions of mine I could mend the matter, or even if I could flatter myself, that I had abilities to distinguish myself, and such as would enable me to raise a party in opposition to the present system, and as an enemy of that absolute and military despotism to which the government of this country is fast approaching, I should by no means be unwilling to do so, but I have no such hope, and no such flattering prospects, and that being so, I wish to decline being a tame looker-on and a supposed assenter to proceedings, of which I so much disapprove. The attendance in the House, too, I must confess, is extremely irksome and disagreeable, and though there are few persons in my situation, who are so diligent in their attendance as myself I daily feel more and more how very incompletely I perform the duties of the situation. Add to this, the discomfort of disagreeing from you on many points of essential importance.
He added that his place at Salisbury might be supplied by one of his two brothers. His father, in his reply on 18 Aug., ignored this last point, expressing ‘mortification and disappointment’: he had hoped to break records by the length of the family’s parliamentary association with Salisbury and had invested in two seats for the borough of Downton. In short, Folkestone’s resignation of his seat was ‘the resignation of the family interest’, but ‘after much struggle I have determined to say, that you shall do about it as you please’. In reply to this, 20 Aug., Folkestone, after questioning the freehold on Downton, conceded that his father had not directed his parliamentary course of action, even on questions on which he felt strongly, until lately, when they differed on the Regency, the Catholic question and parliamentary reform. In the success of the latter he admitted that he had little confidence and had not actually voted for it—he had missed Brand’s motion by accident and should have voted against it (he could not be rallied, either, to an extra-parliamentary meeting of reformers in 1811), but he would support a bid to shorten the duration of Parliaments. He then repeated his reasons for wishing to retire, admitted that on the footing on which his father placed the question he could no longer think of doing so, but made it clear that he was not to be further plagued by consideration of what he might be supposed to owe to his family. This elicited a conciliatory reply (24 Aug.): Radnor urged him to persevere in ‘an impartial and disinterested investigation of public measures’, which in a few years would prove both useful and satisfying; not to trust solely to his own judgment; not to be always on one side in politics (which was being ‘at least sometimes in the wrong’) and to realize that ‘a compliance with Treasury notes is full as salutary, and as honest too as with oppositional combinations’. He denied that his affection for his heir was limited by his ability ‘to add new honours, or acquire fresh power to the family’.
Although Folkestone retained his seat, he was for several sessions in the Parliament of 1812 noticeably slack in attendance. This gave him an opportunity for intellectual pursuits at Coleshill and for a second marriage. He was an outspoken opponent of the gold coin bill, 8 and 9 Dec. 1812, and on 10 Dec. brought in a motion against the embodiment in the army of the German legion, by now a bête noire of his. On 22 Feb. 1813 he took six weeks’ leave of absence for illness, thus avoiding a parade of his difference from his father on Catholic relief. He also avoided contact with reform associations.
I am trying to put Folkestone up to coming forward and co-operating cordially. His feelings and principles are almost all with you and now that Burdett is so much out of the field, he will be invaluable from his character and abilities if he can only muster up spirits enough to take a part.
On 2 Feb. Henry Grey Bennet informed Creevey:
You will be pleased to hear that Folkestone made his appearance well in health and most stout in politics. He told Brougham that his speech revived him and brought back all his zeal, so I think we shall have him still active.
On 20 Feb. he took a month’s leave but interrupted it to oppose the property tax, 26 and 27 Feb., and the army estimates, 28 Feb., and was thenceforward a more or less steady speaker and voter with opposition for retrenchment. The younger Whigs encouraged him in this line. He was soon as much in the front line of debate as formerly.
Folkestone remained cautious, or evasive, on the subjects likely to be bones of contention with his father. He avoided voting for Catholic relief until 9 May 1817. On parliamentary reform, he was a stickler ‘for annual parliaments, but objects to every other sort of reform’. This did not extend to the presentation of petitions, for, without any connexion with them, he presented one which included the topic of reform from Spafields, 11 Feb. 1817, and another from Horsham on 7 Mar.; but he did not support Burdett’s motions, only Heron’s against the Septennial Act, which he seconded, 19 May 1818. He ridiculed the soldiers seduction bill, 28 Feb. 1817. He went away without voting on the question of Canning’s Lisbon mission, 6 May 1817, nor would he vote for Williams Wynn as Speaker, 2 June. He vehemently opposed the suspension of habeas corpus the same day and likewise the seditious meetings bill, 28 Mar., 5 June. On the latter day he unsuccessfully moved two instructions to the secret committee to promote an inquiry into the causes of popular discontent, and on 11 June moved for a list of the detainees under the suspension of habeas corpus. He had been refused leave to visit those held in Reading gaol the day before. On 18 June he sought confirmation of the right of magistrates to visit such prisoners but failed by 85 votes to 56 (and again on 17 Mar. 1818). This issue revived all his former energies and he supported a public meeting at Reading against the curtailment of civil liberty, and himself, urged on in a public letter by Cobbett, prepared to play a leading role in the opposition campaign against the effects of it during the next session. This he did, 27, 29 Jan., 17 Feb. 1818, confiding in Lord Holland that perhaps ‘it will be better for posterity that this age should be recorded with all its baseness, folly and cowardice fully displayed. We are to be pointed at with scorn and reproach—an example to be shunned and avoided. ...’ He thought it necessary to deny, 27 Jan. 1818, that he was an enemy to the House of Brunswick. He rebuked the House for the scant regard paid to petitions to it, 4 Feb. Unfortunately he had a knack of selecting dubious petitioners to make his points and Francis Ward, on whose petition he based his motion of 17 Feb. (defeated by 167 to 58), was just such another bad egg. His zeal had again brought him to the point of indiscretion.
Folkestone expected opposition at Salisbury in 1818 both because of his politics and because of his neglect, but the other seat changed hands peacefully and he concluded that the family interest was ‘as strong as it ever was’. He himself had been returned on it for Downton as well, for his father’s purposes. Asked to sign the requisition to make George Tierney leader of the Whig opposition in July, he at first demurred, having ‘by no means implicit confidence in Tierney’, whose politics were not ‘sufficiently sublimated’. Informed by Duncannon that the choice of Tierney was popular and that his signature did not bind him as to political issues, he did so ‘without any scruple’, although there were some expressions he disliked in the requisition, in the hope that it would lead to the defeat of the ministry. Tierney was assured that Folkestone was one of those who had written flattering letters about him. His peculiar position in the party was underlined in November 1818 when his name was suggested as a suitable candidate to stand for Westminster in place of Romilly, with Whig and radical support.