CHAPTER FIFTEEN

From RPeel to Repeal

‘Oh! Member for Oxford, you shuffle and wheel You have altered your name from RPeel to Repeal.’

Rhyme, February 1829

ON 12 JANUARY 1829, a week before Anglesey’s tragic, tearful and triumphant departure from Ireland, the Home Secretary, Robert Peel, wrote a long letter to Wellington. He told him that if his resignation would be an ‘insuperable obstacle’ to Emancipation, he would stay.1

The body of the letter was reluctant if not outright mournful, and stressed Peel’s personal desire to retire all over again – ‘the single step which I can take that is at all satisfactory to my own feelings’ – but the gist of it came at the end and was quite brief. As Prime Minister, ‘you shall command every service that I can render in any capacity’. This reversal of his long-held determination has been described by Peel’s biographer as ‘one of the crucial decisions of his life’.2 Peel attached a memo on the Catholic Question which could be laid before the King.

This came after the Archbishop of Canterbury and two of his fellow bishops had indicated to the Prime Minister that the attitude of the Church of England towards Catholic Emancipation, symbolized by their persistently hostile voting in the House of Lords, had not changed. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Howley, formerly Bishop of London, had succeeded Archbishop Charles Manners-Sutton the previous July. The latter (father of the Anti-Catholic Tory politician of the same name) had opposed all concessions to the Roman Catholics, although he was more liberal-minded towards Protestant Dissenters. Archbishop Howley continued the tradition.

In late December 1828, Wellington complained to Mrs Arbuthnot that he had been five hours ‘with the Bishops’ yesterday, and would be eight hours with them today on his excursion to Windsor: ‘really too much for any man’. Yet the gulf between them had not been bridged: basically, the leaders of the Church of England still believed that involving the Crown with the administration of the Catholic Church (for example by paying the clergy following Emancipation) ‘would revive the old Cry of Popery and Arbitrary Power’.3 Wellington, however, considered that was just where the danger lay: from Popery and Arbitrary Power – a danger which Emancipation on certain conditions would subvert.

With the King and the Church of England tacitly against him, Wellington faced a couple of formidable foes. As Lord Holland commented to Anglesey, the trouble was that the King was by now far from cordial with his Prime Minister. Holland emphasized the royal feeling of rivalry which was no doubt rooted in the original military triumphs of the Great Duke: the King disliked Wellington’s power, ‘and yet more his love of display of it’. In practical terms, therefore – those terms which always mattered so much to the Great Duke – Peel’s support was what he most needed at this moment, if any kind of peaceful settlement was to be achieved. As Wellington told Peel in reply to his letter, ‘I tell you fairly that I do not see the smallest chance of getting the better of those difficulties if you should not continue in office.’4 Above all it was essential that Peel should still be speaking for the government in the House of Commons where the Duke, as a peer, had no voice.

Wellington duly passed Peel’s memo on to the King on 14 January, and the next day the King interviewed all those members of the Cabinet hitherto pledged against Emancipation. In the end King George, with reluctance, agreed to consider the whole question of Ireland. That of course meant the Abominable Catholic Question, in the disgusted phrase of the Anglican clergyman the previous year (with which the King would have undoubtedly agreed). But, ominously, the sovereign still reserved his right to reject the advice of his Cabinet – even if it was unanimous.

A fortnight later he was still asking Wellington questions which were a mixture of aggression and apparent bewilderment. On being told that Catholics were to be excluded from judicial offices connected with the Protestant Church, he was surprised that Catholics would be eligible for any judicial offices such as a Judge of the King’s Bench. Then, on the question of limiting the number of Catholic MPs, he exclaimed: ‘Damn it, do you really mean to let them into Parliament?’, as though the reality of it had yet to strike him.5

Peel’s record of opposing Emancipation was both long-held and publicly held. His own conservatism on the subject, coupled with an attachment to the Church of England, was a profound element in his character from early days. His voting record in the House of Commons conveyed a continued abhorrence of further Catholic Relief. Less than two years ago, he had been among the Cabinet ministers who resigned from the government when Canning took over from Liverpool: the issue was explicitly Emancipation. The previous August, Peel had first of all made it clear to Wellington that his own views on the subject were not ‘materially changed’, before admitting that some kind of settlement might be the lesser of two evils, given the ‘most unsatisfactory’ state of Ireland. But he had ended by stating his determination to resign from government in that case, at least while legislation went through; otherwise he would be seen to betray his own beliefs.

What had brought about the change? In one interview with Peel, the King had sulkily asked him why he, the King, was being asked to forgo his principles, while Peel was allowed to maintain his (by resigning so as not to be contaminated). It was not an unreasonable question; but in fact a sense of shame does not seem to have acted on Peel. Was it, then, the obvious political advantage of remaining with the Duke at this vital moment, when his support might well make the difference in bringing about Emancipation or not? If so, Peel would not be the first or last honourable politician to trim his sails to the prevailing wind – in order to stay with the fleet and possibly one day lead it.

Many years later, in his memoirs, published six years after his death, Peel rebutted the charge of political ambition. It was the welfare of the two nations which had concerned him and he swore, as he would swear in the presence of Almighty God, ‘I was swayed by no fear except of public calamity.’6 As for ambition, the immediate consequences to him were not exactly advantageous. It was notable, however, that this firm disavowal was followed by just a hint of something else: ‘It may be that I was unconsciously influenced by motives less perfectly pure and disinterested – by the secret satisfaction of being

...when the waves went high,

A daring pilot in extremity.’

Peel was quoting from Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel. Significantly, a British politician, making a study of Peel at the beginning of the twenty-first century, drew attention to the passage with the comment: ‘The motives of politicians are neither more nor less straightforward than those of other human beings... mixed up in a genuine conversion was Peel’s belief in Peel.’7

Certainly Peel’s claim was justified that the immediate consequences to him were not advantageous: he would need all his self-belief in the next few months. That Ultra-Tory the Duke of Newcastle spoke for many when he recorded in his diary on 4 February: ‘The whole affair seems to be of the blackest and most disgusting nature.’ As for Peel personally, aristocratic disdain wrinkled its nose yet again: ‘this cotton Spinner is a degraded wretch’.8 Two notorious criminals, Burke and Hare, were tried for sixteen killings and Burke was executed at the end of January, their crime being to provide corpses for dissection by an Edinburgh doctor. The well-publicized trial and execution gave the caricaturists ample opportunity to make the comparison between the convicted murderers and Wellington and Peel, killers of the constitution.

The trouble for Peel began at once. It was the matter of his highly ‘Anglican’ constituency. Having begun his political career in 1809 with an Irish seat sponsored by Wellington (then Sir Arthur Wellesley), Peel had represented Oxford University in Parliament since 1817. His constituents were by definition Oxford graduates, many of whom were Anglican clergymen. Peel now wrote to the Dean of Christ Church (his old college) to tell him that he intended to bring in a bill in favour of Emancipation and offering his resignation if it was required. This would mean a by-election.

Peel duly resigned his seat on 20 February and, with some reluctance, did agree to be renominated for the same seat, instead of taking what would have been the easier if less courageous course: he could have simply shifted to a safe seat elsewhere. The campaign was bitter. This was, after all, a university where Convocation had just voted to stand against Emancipation.

A young undergraduate called William Ewart Gladstone was at Christ Church at the time, having arrived from Eton the year before. Still a Tory (he would strongly oppose Parliamentary Reform a few years later), he reported on Convocation to his brother and found the text of the regular Anti-Catholic Petition against further Relief for this year ‘very gentle and moderate’.9 Gladstone suggested that because the Petition was all in Latin, it might have saved the Roman Catholics many a hard word. Peto! Peto! [I demand! I demand!], cried great numbers of the Convocation. The Anti-Catholic Petition needed to be presented. Ironically enough, it was Peel himself, the new convert to the other side, who was actually asked to do so, since he was still the MP for the University.

Matters were not helped when, after a period of confusion during which Peel’s intentions were not quite clear, Sir Robert Inglis stood against him: another Christ Church man but of a very different political conviction on this subject (not only was he an Ultra-Tory but he was also believed to have Evangelical tendencies).10 The feelings of the Duke of Newcastle on the subject of Peel’s treachery were expressed in Oxford more succinctly by a sign hammered out in iron nails on a prominent Christ Church door, by a group of offended Christ Church men: NO PEEL.^*1

The Earl of Ellenborough, on the other hand, a minister in the government, spoke for many of Peel’s supporters when he exclaimed against the whole university world: ‘God forgive me if I am wrong, but from what I saw of them at Cambridge, the persons I least respect are Fellows of Colleges, and I believe the Oxonians are even less liberal than the people of Cambridge.’ At least Peel had shown himself ‘a great man by his equanimity in all that has taken place’.

In a sense Ellenborough was unfair to the university world: it was the clergymen who reacted angrily against Peel the traitor. Although many dons voted for him, the country clergymen who flocked in to register their indignation against him made sure that he was convincingly defeated: by 755 votes to 609. (The seventy-nine votes cast at Christ Church for Inglis could have won him the election.)

What happened next was that Sir Manasseh Lopes, a Sephardic Jew turned Christian, with a huge fortune based on Jamaican sugar, came to the rescue. Lopes, now in his seventies, had a back history of parliamentary involvement which included a spell in prison for electoral bribery. Despite this, he was currently both the Member for and patron of the Westbury pocket borough in Wiltshire, having bought it himself. Immediately he abandoned his seat. Peel was nominated hastily before another candidate could appear and the election took place. There were, however, defiant protests from the locals, which took the form of missiles, one of which hit Lopes himself, and broken windows in his own house. In the streets there were menacing demands, with threatening calls for silver coins in exchange for support.

Part of this honourable-dishonourable affair was the price to be paid for Lopes’s compliance, which was a peerage: his price, that is. It was said he had already chosen the title of Lord Roborough, although the wits naturally pretended he would be Lord Rottenborough. The eventual payment was not a peerage for Lopes, but a consulate at Pernambuco for his nephew for which Peel paid, backing away – ungratefully, it can be argued – from the peerage that Lopes so much desired. (Peel certainly did not show gratitude when he reflected privately, ‘what a torment this Jew is’.)

February in government was occupied by a process which a popular rhyme of the time, emphasizing Peel’s change of heart, crudely designated:

Oh! Member for Oxford, you shuffle and wheel

You have altered your name from RPeel to Repeal.11

According to John Hobhouse in his diary, the Whig MPs had a subtler if more irritating way of commenting on the conversion: they could not help smiling openly at hearing from his mouth those arguments which he had so often opposed. But George ‘Derry’ Dawson, Peel’s brother-in-law, whose Londonderry speech had aroused such a mixture of horror and anticipation in August, called it ‘the happiest event that could be found recorded in the pages of Irish history for a long period’ and prophesied the dawn of Irish prosperity after the long night of misery and wretchedness.12

The subject of the wheeling and shuffling was the detail of ‘Repeal’: the actual bill, and of course the vexed question of ‘securities’. The measure had been officially announced in the House of Lords in the King’s speech on 5 February. There was a reference to his Majesty’s ‘continued solicitude about the State of Ireland’, before the request that the Houses of Parliament should review the laws which impose ‘civil disabilities on his Majesty’s Roman Catholic subjects’.13

Reaction was instantaneous. Many Tories, especially the grandees, expressed indignation at having been kept in ignorance: the Duke of Rutland announced his intention of retreating to Belvoir Castle and not voting; the Duke of Beaufort ‘did not like what he heard’, according to Greville. In the House of Commons, Sir Robert Inglis – the Member for Ripon who would shortly displace Peel at Oxford – invoked ‘the protestation of Protestantism’ now at the feet of the Roman Catholics; he suggested offensively that his Majesty’s ministers had yielded to the double intimidation of ‘the Clare people’, who were some of the lowest of the low in the south of Ireland, and the Dublin lawyers.

When Peel got to his feet on 10 February to justify his ‘conversion’, he talked on the contrary of Emancipation as being in the ‘true interests of the British empire’. He was, he said, ‘looking back to the past, and forward to the future’. He emphasized that his great object was to maintain the Protestant interest as inviolable. Peel had not abandoned his opinions but he had changed his cause; and he contended that he had a right to do so when he considered the critical state of the country.14

In an earlier period, it has been seen that the notion of ‘securities’ had troubled the English Catholic Church itself, leading to internal divisions. Exactly what control, if any, should the Crown be allowed over the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom in return for Emancipation? The old English Catholic aristocracy believed in some kind of compromise (of the sort that had long allowed them to lead their lives in peace while discreetly practising their religion), while many of the Catholic clergy, prominent among them Bishop John Milner, had explicitly denounced any kind of Veto on Catholic appointments. In consequence Milner had been thrown off the Catholic Board, to which he responded that if he was unfit for their company on earth, he hoped that God could make him fit for their company in Heaven.15 But Milner was dead. There were of course many positions in between the two extremes, held by members of the Catholic community, rapidly increasing as it was with Irish immigration.

Quite early on in this new process, the Cabinet had abandoned the whole question of ‘securities’: this might be seen as a remarkable turnaround, given the long-drawn-out arguments on the subject, but it was in fact a testimony to the essentially pragmatic nature of the whole process. It was decided that the imposition of ‘securities’ would give the opposite message to the desired one of reconciliation. The same was felt about restricting by law the number of Catholic MPs. Catholics were explicitly barred from certain offices, that of the Lord Chancellor among them. The exclusion of Forty-shilling Freeholders from the Irish voting system, on the other hand, was a real concession to the indignant Irish landed gentry who were still attempting to cause trouble. The bar for voters was now lifted to ten pounds.

Would Daniel O’Connell be prepared to do the deal in return for Emancipation (which he of course saw as leading to the end of the hated Union)? It was ironic that at this point the more moderate people in Dublin were said to be furious with O’Connell for his publicly abusive language: ‘violence, bad taste and scurrility’ had made him lose the brilliance of his former promise. O’Connell might be lacking lustre these days by some fastidious standards, but Greville commented: ‘There is no getting over the fact that it is he who has brought matters to this conclusion.’ Part of this process was his canny ability to mix violent language – never violent conduct – with negotiation.16

On the same day, 10 February, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Longford, founder of the Irish Brunswick Club, specifically denounced Peel’s biased view of Irish tranquillity, or rather the lack of it. Ireland was fine. Any trouble was entirely due to the Catholic Association, aided by ‘deluded dupes and factious fools’ (the final meeting was in fact two days later).17 Brunswick Tom – referred to with dignity if not approval as ‘my noble relative’ by Wellington in his reply – grew increasingly heated. He admitted that he might have been betrayed into ‘no ordinary warmth of expression’, but there had been nothing equal to it since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. (In 1685 Louis XIV had removed that freedom granted to the Huguenots by Henry IV to practise their own religion; it led to persecution followed by widespread emigration.) It was an odd comparison since the Revocation removed a liberty and Catholic Emancipation granted it.^*2

In fact, the Catholic Association dissolved itself on 12 February. Sheil, in moving the motion for dissolution which was carried, referred to it as ‘prompt and voluntary’. The Association, to which so much was owed, did not allow itself to be extinguished by others. It was a brilliant move, suggested by the Whigs but part of the pragmatic attitude now being taken by O’Connell and the leading Irish Catholics. Maybe there had to be sacrifices to secure success. After all, things were undoubtedly going their way. Lady Morgan was at a party in Dublin three days later, composed of what she called the débris of the Ascendancy faction: ‘the Orange ladies all looked blue and their husbands tried to look green’.18

This wheeling and shuffling was complicated by the need to consult the King, mainly at Windsor. That process again was bedevilled by the return of his brother the Duke of Cumberland on 14 February, to come to the aid of the ‘Great Cause’, as he had vowed to do in August. Wellington did his best to stop the Prince by appealing to his sense of duty: a royal duke should not be the leader of a violent party. The delicate question of the succession, which could never be totally absent from a hereditary system, featured once again. Wellington also hinted at what was certainly obvious to any student of the current Royal Family: two sixty-year-old men without legitimate children and a little girl were all that currently stood between Ernest and the throne; under certain tragic circumstances, if Providence so disposed, Cumberland might find himself in ‘a most elevated situation’ – in which case he would need to be ‘the impartial arbiter of destinies’ rather than allied to any particular party.

A letter to this effect was despatched via Sir William Knighton, travelling incognito. In a black comedy of errors, Ernest had already set out for England, sending his own letter to Knighton in London commanding ‘good fires’ to be lit in his rooms. Ernest’s letter also expressed anxiety about his brother’s prodigious use of laudanum – something which, incidentally, was already causing serious concern to Knighton on the spot: this might lead to palsy and eventually death.19 (And what use would a palsied King be in supporting the Great Cause?) The two men, Knighton and the Duke of Cumberland, crossed in their journeys and Cumberland duly arrived unhindered. Once at the side of his royal brother at Windsor, he fulminated.

In vain, Wellington invited him to dine and put the points encased in the letter that had missed him. A few days later, Cumberland took his fulmination to the House of Lords.20 The question he put to their lordships – and he emphasized that it was indeed the enormous question they now had to face – was whether ‘this country was to be a Protestant country with a Protestant government, or a Roman Catholic country with a Roman Catholic government’. Compared to such blanket extremism from a royal prince, Lord Plunket’s spirited suggestion from the other side seemed positively mild: he attempted to rechristen the Brunswick Clubs the ‘Titus Oates Clubs’ after the Anti-Popish villain, so that they should not be associated with the throne.

The next debate involving Cumberland followed in the House of Lords on 23 February and was subsequently known as ‘The Night of the Three Princes’;21 it followed rather a different course. The Duke of Cumberland found himself opposed by his more liberal brothers, William Duke of Clarence and Augustus Duke of Sussex. It was Clarence who spoke the most telling words: ‘He could not help suspecting that his illustrious relative had been so long abroad that he had almost forgotten what was due to the freedom of debate in this country.’

All the while Anti-Catholic Petitions came flooding into Parliament. There were lighter moments, seen from the perspective of history. Lord Eldon declared that he had a peculiar problem as he presented a Petition against any further concessions to the Catholics: it had been signed by a great many ladies. But let it be understood that there was no precedent for excluding ladies from their lordships’ House. This led to some badinage with Lord King, who favoured Emancipation. Eldon suggested that many women had more knowledge of the constitution and more common sense than descendants of Chancellors (like Lord King). To this the latter replied with heavy-handed humour that he was sure the sentiments presented in the Petition were those of ‘the old women of England’.22

The theme also emerged later in the Commons at the intervention of a London MP, Alderman Robert Waithman, a Welsh linen draper by origin, now in his sixties with a reputation for supporting Parliamentary Reform (he had also opposed the French wars and the horror of Peterloo). Despite these radical views, he complained that a new and extraordinary doctrine was being broached: an Hon. Member had suggested that even if a few children signed the Petition they had a right to do so, ‘and women also’. Now Mr Waithman was as ready as any man to admit that women were very well in their proper place (Hansard recorded ‘a laugh’), but he did not think they were in their proper place when they came forward to petition Parliament. If, however, they insisted, let them come forward in their proper ‘profession’; he added meaningfully that these were ‘ladies of a certain description’, indicating what was sometimes known as the world’s oldest profession.23

The true drama came at the end of February and it centred on the King, the King and his oath. On 25 February Wellington saw the King at Windsor and heard that he was not intending to agree to Emancipation after all. The Duke therefore arranged to return two days later, at which point he would announce in Parliament either that the King approved, or that his Majesty intended to dismiss his government. It was a brutal choice. On 27 February therefore Wellington had another long interview with the King, at which point he faced him with the alternatives again. It was incidentally the moment at which Peel was being defeated at Oxford. On Sunday, 1 March Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst was at Windsor. He went on from Windsor to the Duke’s house at Stratfield Saye in Hampshire, where at 3 a.m. he had the Prime Minister woken to receive news of the continuing crisis.

On 4 March, on the eve of the presentation of the bill in the House of Commons, Wellington gave the King an ultimatum. Wildly, George IV talked of abdication with his Prime Minister, Peel and Lyndhurst in a session lasting nearly six hours. The King drank brandy and water throughout while he insisted that the Coronation Oath was sacred. The message was clear. He, the King, could not agree to this bill.

At which point all three ministers declared that they would resign. Peel (who had been returned as an MP on 3 March) would tell the House of Commons the next day that the King’s servants were prevented from carrying out a measure which had already been announced in Parliament.

It was a hideously painful scene. Here was a manifestly ill man, talking wildly of abdication – but not necessarily meaning it or indeed meaning anything that he said. On the one hand he deserved sympathy in his obvious suffering. On the other, this sick man had the theoretical ability to dismiss his government; while his most intimate adviser, his brother Ernest, was urging him on in exactly the opposite direction of his government.

There was to be no beating about the bush by the ministers. The consequences of the King’s decision were outlined to him. The King indicated that he understood. He said farewell, according to his usual custom, with a double kiss. George then assured his brother Ernest that he had not given way at any point.

What was to be done? The Duke of Wellington talked to the powerful Sir William Knighton, who murmured that the King was ill, and suggested tactfully that the Duke went to see Lady Conyngham. Fearing to find his Majesty already there, pouring out his troubles to his mistress, Wellington departed instead. By ten o’clock that night he was at a Cabinet dinner at the house of Lord Bathurst in London.

At Windsor, however, all was not lost. It was Knighton and both Conynghams who emerged as discreet heroes. They went to see the hysterical King, there was the added calming element of a good dinner, and finally they persuaded him that no other ministry was possible: the idea of summoning another government was a fantasy. Visibly distressed, the King wrote giving his agreement in a note to the Duke: ‘My dear Friend. As I find the country would be left without an administration, I have decided to yield my opinion to that which is considered by the Cabinet to be the immediate interests of the country. Under the circumstances you have my consent to proceed as you propose with the measure.’ The poignant phrase was in the last sentence: ‘God knows what pain it costs me to write these words. G.R.’24

Wellington received the letter on his return from the Cabinet dinner and immediately sent it on to Peel at his house in Whitehall Gardens. Peel’s reaction was wary. Let the King write Approved upon Wellington’s letter of 2 March. So Wellington got to work again at midnight. The result was another letter to the King, who for once was woken early to receive it. Still in bed, the King wrote to assure Wellington that he had put the right construction on his own reply. He had indeed agreed to the Bill for Roman Catholic Relief.

It was now 5 March, the day on which the bill was to be presented in the Commons. Robert Peel, whose conversion had sparked off the last stage of the struggle, would be able to address the House of Commons once more as its Leader. The wearer of the crown had not in the end gone against the will of his government: Emancipation was proposed in the King’s speech.