Charles Tyssen Jenner Tyrell gets a second job in 1828 thanks to patronage

 The author of this letter was an unremarkable but loyal Tory First Baronet; his eldest son John Tyssen Tyrell who became Second Baronet had a long Parliamentary career as a Tory MP in Essex from 1830 to 1857. The History of Parliament online offers a detailed career and colourful life story. The younger son Charles, educated at Oriel College Oxford, pursued the standard younger son path into the Church. At the date of the letter, Charles Tyssen Jenner Tyrell was Stipendiary Curate of the Essex parish of South Hanningfield with West Hanningfield annexed, which suggests to me rural obscurity. The patronage exercised on is behalf by the Tory MP Quintin Dick has additionally secured him a “chaplaincy to a Nobleman” which will boost his income; who the Nobleman was I cannot trace. 

Quintin Dick re-appears elsewhere on this site thanks to a chance find of over fifty letters addressed to him.

Quintin Dick MP 

From a drawing by A D’Orsay printed by the lithographic company Graf & Soret at the period when Dick was Member of Parliament for Maldon, Essex. Collection of the present author.

Transcription

Addressed to: Quintin Dick Esq M.P.    Curzon Srreet    Mayfair

Datelined: Boreham House July 13^th 1828

Intact armorial seal; faded CHELMSFORD postmark; London FREE mark 15 JY 1828

My Dear Sir

I embrace the first opportunity of assuring you how much I feel obliged by your kindness to my son Chas. in obtaining for him a chaplaincy to a Nobleman of which, I trust he also is duly sensible. I am happy to find from John [that] Mr Hugh Dick [Quintin Dick’s brother] was satisfied with his reception at Maldon & I know of my own knowledge his consitutuents were equally so with him & that he made a great impression there. Am sorry my friend Beaminster is by no means well though I think him better.

With sentiments of friendship believe me most faithfully yr. John Tyrell

 

References

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/tyrell-john-1795-1877

Wikipedia: Quintin Dick

Wikipedia: Sir John Tyrell, 2nd Baronet

 

Coming Up For Sale in 1833: The Mourne Park Estate and the Parliamentary Seat of Newry

The Great Reform Act of 1832 abolished what were called the Rotten and Pocket Boroughs which had so few voters that they could easily be bought and also created new constituencies; but it did not abolish election corruption in Britan and Ireland, not least because the secret ballot was not introduced until 1872.

This brief letter of 1833 was sent to Quintin Dick, an Irish barrister possessed of great inherited East India wealth and currently one of two Members of Parliament for Maldon in Essex, a borough which had retained two seats in the Reform Act. The recent election had cost the Tory Quintin Dick a great deal of money. The online History of Parliament has this to say, "The Boundary Act [of 1832] added Heybridge to the old borough to create a constituency with a population of 4,895 and a vastly reduced electorate of 716. At the general election of 1832 Barrett Lennard [Whig] and Dick [Tory] were returned ahead of a second Liberal. Ironically, the effect of the Reform Act was to increase corruption by creating a manageable and venal resident electorate. Every election between 1832 and the second Reform Act [of 1867] was contested, with the Conservatives taking the lion’s share of the spoils"

The interest of the short letter transcribed below is the suggestion that the purchaser of the Kilmorey estate “could command” the parliamentary seat of Newry.  This was an entirely realistic assessment: members of the Kilmorey family provided the MPs for Newry intermittently in the nineteenth century though it was a member of the Downshire family who won in 1832 – that family appears in the footnote to the letter. The house and estate remained in Kilmorey hands until 2008.

 

 

Transcription

Addressed to: Quintin Dick Esqr MP       Curzon Street     London

Datelined: Newry 22d Feby 1833

Postmarked: Despatch mark NEWRY 22 FE 1833; regular FREE frank mark applied in London FE 25 1833.

 

My dear Dick

You used to speak of purchasing in this country but very likely you may have changed your views and particularly under the present circumstances, however that may be I think it right to mention to you that the present Lord Kilmorey has determined to sell this Estate as well as the Mourne [Mourne Park House] which appears to me amongst the most desirable in Ireland. The Newry estate is about 9,000 Irish acres and produces about 10,500 £ a year with this Boro’ [Parliamentary borough of Newry] which the Landlord could command. The sum asked I hear is £350,000 which is I suppose a good deal more than will be got for it. Mr Appleyard of Lincolns Inn is his man of business.

References

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/constituencies/maldon

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/constituencies/newry

Wikipedia: Quintin Dick

Sir Charles Manners-Sutton seeks re-election as Speaker of the House of Commons 1833

 

Click on image to magnify

Sir Charles Manners-Sutton retained the office of Speaker of the House of Commons from 1817 to 1835, elected seven times as a Tory but eventually replaced by a Whig. Antonia Fraser in her book The Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Act 1832 describes him as “a fine, friendly, genial figure, if inclined to pomposity (but that was a forgivable offence in a Speaker)”. In 1832 he was briefly considered by the Tories as a more emollient candidate for Prime Minister than the Duke of Wellington.  Earl Grey’s Whig government had resigned after being defeated on the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, a defeat which occasioned nationwide disorder – the “Days of May”. The Tories fairly rapidly declined to accept the chalice offered them, Grey returned, and the Reform Bill passed in an empty House of Lords. Popular celebrations immediately followed.

After the excitements of 1832 and an end-of-year General Election in which Whigs and Radicals triumphed, the House of Commons re-assembled in January 1833 and on the 29^th re-elected Manners-Sutton as Speaker. A few days before he had written from his home in Manningtree, Essex to the Tory MP Quintin Dick who opened the letter carefully leaving intact the large scarlet seal. The neatly written note needs no interpretation except to say that Quintin Dick was at this time one of the two MPs for Maldon in Essex; the other was Thomas Lennard, referenced in the letter and a Whig.

No one has much good to say about Quintin Dick, a very rich Irish merchant, living in splendour in Curzon Street, opposing all Reforms, and notorious for bribing the owners and electors of the several constituencies he represented.

Disraeli satirised Quintin Dick in Coningsby, published in January 1844 and full of so many coded references that A New Key to the Characters in Coningsby shortly after appeared; with “Mr Ormsby” keyed to Quintin Dick.  Disraeli acknowledged the satire in an 1844 note to Dick which I found tucked in an unconnected envelope. He writes, My dear Dick, I confess to the personal attack which you have discovered. I certainly was thinking of my dear little wife when I wrote p. 207. Yours ever Disraeli. Gro[svenor] Gate Jan 27 44. The relevant words in Coningsby appear to be these where “Lord Monmouth” is the Marquess of Hertford:

All this time Mr Ormsby, as the friend of Lord and Lady Monmouth, remained shaking his head; but as a member of society, and therefore delighting in small scandal, appropriating the gossip with the greatest avidity.

Quintin Dick never married but was familiar to the courtesan Harriette Wilson and appears in her Memoirs “The next evening found us all dining with Mr Dick, who handed me down to dinner…” – which, if I understand Regency etiquette correctly, implies that she was then seated next to him.

Transcription

Addressed to:   Quintin Dick Esqre M.P.     Brighton

Datelined from:   Mistley Hall Jan’ 24 1833

My Dear Sir

Many thanks for your kind and friendly letter – I am most anxious to have the attendance in the House at the selection of Speaker, if any Member of the last Parliament, who has thought favourably of my conduct (I won’t say services) in the Chair – and the more that attendance is mixed up with Whig & Tory indiscriminately the more flattering and honourable to me – so pray put this note  into Mr Leonard’s hands with every acknowledgment on my part of his kindness to me on this & al occasions.

I hope my being here will account for the delay in my answer

I am My Dear Sir Yr. most faithful & sincere C MannersSutton

Quintin Dick Esqre.

References

Fraser, Antonia Perilous Question. The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832 (2014)

Wikipedia: Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury, (9 January 1780 - 21 July 1845)

Wikipedia: Quintin Dick (7 February 1777 – 26 March 1858) was an Irish Peelite, independent, Conservative, and Tory politician.

Nils Clausson discusses Disraeli’s literary references in Coningsby  in a 2016 article at researchgate.net/publication/301276257_Pedigree_and_Politics_or_the_Two_Marneys_in_Disraeli's_Sybil

The Reverend Charles Richard Fanshawe in the Debtors' Prison 1840

 

Pray keep my secret.

The day after this letter was written, postage stamps – Penny Black and Twopenny Blue – were placed on sale in Britain’s post offices becoming immediately popular. Though in use for less than a year, over sixty-eight million copies of the Penny Black were distributed. The cost of sending a pre-paid simple letter had already been drastically reduced to just a penny, indicated here by a dated tombstone PAID handstamp and a clerk’s single red stroke of the pen. Those would gradually be replaced by the postage stamp.

The new labels, as they were called, quickly gave rise to the hobby of stamp collecting which even now is popular enough to ensure that a letter franked with a Penny Black will cost over a hundred pounds and sometimes much more (I mean thousands). In contrast, the stampless letters I generally work with have mostly cost a few pounds. 

This letter is written from gaol, though not from a common criminal since as a group common criminals were overwhelmingly illiterate.  No, this one’s from a vicar in Gloucester Gaol for debt and asking for financial help. The signatory is Charles Richard Fanshawe (1780-1859), Vicar of Coaley in Gloucestershire, who appeals to Quintin Dick MP at his home address and clearly knows him. Earlier in his career Fanshawe held church livings in East Anglia where Dick held parliamentary seats; this is probably the origin of their acquaintance. In 1819 when Fanshawe was Rector of Dengey (now spelt Dengie) in Essex it was proposed that the Duke of Clarence’s youngest son by the actress Dorothea Jordan should go to live and study with him. The boy Augustus Fitzclarence saw little of his mother after his parents separated in 1811; Mrs Jordan resumed her theatrical career and died in 1816.  I have not been able to establish whether Augustus actually went to live in Dengey though in 1819 Fanshawe was appointed Chaplain to the Duke and that well-remunerated position suggests that the young Fitzclarence may have spent time with Fanshawe. In 1821 the boy is with a different vicar in Hampshire so perhaps things didn’t work out in Essex. 

This brief history marks out the Reverend Fanshawe as possessing some distinction; but now he has come down in the world with a bump. Of course, others had more brutal bumps in Gloucester Gaol: Mary Anne Barry was hanged there in 1874, the last woman to be executed in England by the short drop method. She did not die instantly and the executioner had to press down on her shoulders to finish the job.

It is a puzzle that no one in his very extensive family has acted to help the clergyman. At this period, his son and namesake the Reverend Charles Fanshawe was an energetic figure in Southampton where a street is named after him; he was an original trustee of the Royal South Hants Infirmary. The father’s parishioners in Coaley have not come to the rescue either; the letter states plainly that some have created his current predicament. Perhaps he confessed his plight to no one in his family; perhaps he was widely unpopular in his parish; perhaps ….

Hariette Wilson in her Memoirs estimated Quintin Dick’s annual income at fifteen or twenty thousand a year, at least.  I have an 1823 note sent by Dick to his lawyer, Baron Mclelland in Dublin; in it he explains that the money he has sent to the Baron’s account at the Bank of Ireland comprises the half-year interest on £50 000 of bank stock and likewise on £50 000 of three percent government Consols. In addition, he would have had income from property and business activity managed by his brother Hugh in Dublin. He was never reputed generous but he sent the Reverend Fanshawe five pounds. If the Reverend had used all that to send out more letters through the publicly-owned mail service, he could have sent out 1200 at the new one penny rate; as I write in 2026 the privately-owned Royal Mail would charge £1920. But with a more mixed basket of goods, five pounds in 1840 is usually reckoned equivalent to about £500 today.

I do not know what to feel about the Reverend’s plight; reading other letters I have reacted to the writers as one does to characters in a story: sometimes laughing, sometimes wishing that things could have turned out better for them, sometimes moved, sometimes just curious.  

                                                             No farther seek his merits to disclose,                                                                    Or draw his frailties from their dread abode.

                                           (Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)

 

*

 Transcription

Addressed to: Quintin Dick Esqre MP   Curzon Street   May   Fair   London Datelined: Gloucester jail   5^th May 1840

Dear Sir

I make no claim but throw myself on your Charity for a small assistance. The frivolous & vexatious delay of the persons named in March 1839 to apportion the rent charge of my Parish has justified the farmers in withholding two years arrears due last Lady day.  A spiteful Attorney who knows my politics has persuaded his clients to put a judgment in place against my person.

Pray consider my case I am nearly blind & quite destitute. A few pounds will enable me to bless you as much as you are already esteemed by your grateful friend

Pray keep my secret 

Charles R. Fanshawe Address at Mr Lovegrove’s  Sol’r [Solicitor]  College Green   Gloucester

                                         Docketing note: Sent him 5£. 9^th May 1840.

*

Reference

sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:fanshawe-reverend-charles

1828 The Third Marquess of Hertford writes that Sir Henry Cooke MP is reported by the girls at Orford to be again fit for duty

 

Orford 1816. Click on Image to Enlarge

The Marquess of Hertford has only initialled this short letter and though he has claimed his Free Frank privilege at Woodbridge in Suffolk has not added the required information at the top and at bottom left of the wrapper which contains it. This may have something to do with the contents, though Hertford has included in the letter itself the name of his home, Sudbourne, and used a wax seal which would identify him. Perhaps he (or his servant) was just very well-known at the post office and laxness tolerated.

The short letter was written at a time when Parliament had been deadlocked over Catholic Relief and Parliamentary Reform occasioning a succession of short-lived governments until Wellington became Prime Minister on 22 January 1828, a few days before this letter was written. Wellington in the House of Lords and Robert Peel in the Commons then reversed previous Tory policy and pushed through the Catholic Relief Act with Whig support. The Marquess of Hertford did the required about-turn and instructed his client MPs to do likewise: Sir Henry Cooke in the rotten borough of Orford who appears in this letter and Quintin Dick (the addressee) at Maldon, both in East Anglia. George the Fourth held out on signing the Act into law until Wellington threatened to resign; reluctant Royal Assent was given in 1829.

The “Mr B.” of the letter is most likely Henry Brougham and a noted parliamentary orator; he was at the time MP for Winchelsea and like the Marquess a loyal friend of Harriette Wilson; Hertford comes out very well from her Memoirs. 

Lord Palmerston had held office since 1809 as Secretary at War, a job in which he handled financial matters. He only achieved a place in Cabinet in 1827 and was out again in spring 1828; this letter written shortly before that suggests that he had not impressed.

The human interest of this letter rests in the opaque account of a practical joke played and the less opaque paragraph relating to Cooks and Cocks. The latter story may be complicated and not what one might assume, that someone had a venereal infection. The complication is that the History of Parliament Online tells me that around this time Sir Henry Cooke “had recently fallen victim at Sudbourne to his colleague Quintin Dick’s faulty gun and been wounded in the leg”. Perhaps it is being coy. Sir Henry though born in 1785 did not marry until 1834 so in 1828 was a bachelor. He had a brother George Cook, also unmarried, hence the plural “your Cooks”. Both had significant military careers which explains Hertford’s choice of “fit for duty”. He knows how to turn a phrase.

*

Transcription

Addressed to: Q. Dick Esq   Curzon St    May Fair     London

No dateline but sent with a Free Frank datestamp of 28 January 1828.

Dear Mr Dick

Our good hearted but mischievous friend deserved a joke & I daresay you played him a very good one – we once did the same at Hull to Henry M…[?] – who returned after a chilling walk on the ramparts & gave so circumstantial an acct. of his bonne aventure nobody wd. durst tell him of his inventive faculties.

Mr B. [Brougham] always makes a fine speech & I shall like yourself be rather amused to see him struggling with Ld. Palm [Palmerston] who is not the first of Parliamentary gladiators tho’ how I never could find out why? in the Cabinet?

Is it true Peel has the Hooping Cough? It seems I have got my Box [Parliamentary Papers?] & so I must pay & get the best receipt I can of Mr Treherne I suppose.

You will have seen Your Cooks are in great force & the boys Cock is reported by the girls at Orford to be again fit for duty.

Yours very sincerely    H.

Sudbr [Sudbourne] Sunday

I can only thank you for your news, I can send none in return except of game & that is now gone to rest & to increase & multiply

 

References

Historyofparliamentonline.org: for Francis Seymour-Conway; Quintin Dick; Horace Seymour

Wikipedia: Francis Seymour-Conway, 3^rd Marquess of Hertford

Wikipedia: Quintin Dick (7 February 1777 – 26 March 1858) was an Irish Peelite, independent, Conservative, and Tory politician.

Orford 1816 engraved by T. Higham after a painting by G. Arnald