MORDAUNT, Sir Charles, 10th bt. (1836-1897), of Walton House, Warwickshire

A young baronet who was more attentive to his sporting interests than to his parliamentary duties, Mordaunt was the last of six successive generations of his family to represent Warwickshire, all of whom, with the exception of his grandfather, were Tories.1‘Mordaunt, Sir John, 5th bt.’, HP Commons, 1690-1715, iv. 920-3; ‘Mordaunt, Sir Charles, 6th bt.’, ibid., 1715-54, ii. 272; ibid., 1754-1790, iii. 162-3; ‘Mordaunt, Sir John, 7th bt.’, ibid., 1790-1820, iv. 632; ‘Mordaunt, Charles’, ibid., 631-2; ibid., 1820-1832, vi. 433-4; The Assembled Commons (1837), 124; E. Hamilton, The Mordaunts (1965), 37-69. His father Sir John (1808-45) had sat for South Warwickshire from 1835 until his death due to a shooting accident in 1845, when the nine year old Charles succeeded to the titles and estate. His father, a devout Churchman, had been conscientious in his parliamentary and local duties, whereas Sir Charles, who came of age in 1857, was much more interested in hunting and riding, and commissioned George Gilbert Scott to extravagantly remodel the family seat, henceforth given the grander title of Walton Hall.2E. Hamilton, ‘Life on a country estate in the mid-nineteenth century’, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, no. 34 (1991), 39-41.

The constituency of South Warwickshire, for which Mordaunt was returned unopposed at the 1859 general election, had long been controlled by a handful of Conservative gentry and noble families, whose nominees were generally silent and lax attenders at Westminster. Mordaunt proved to be no exception to this pattern, but unfortunately for him, he was elected at a time when the long dormant local Liberal party and the Radical Birmingham press were starting to scrutinise and publicise this state of affairs. In 1865, the Birmingham Daily Post revealed that Mordaunt had voted in 6 out of 222 divisions in 1862, 14 out of 188 divisions in 1863, and 22 in 156 divisions in 1864.3Birmingham Daily Post, 31 May 1865. It concluded that Mordaunt was an MP who ‘regularly shirked his work’, and who took no part in private business or in furthering local interests.4Birmingham Daily Post, 20 July 1865. He was present, however, to divide against the abolition of church rates, 8 Feb. 1860, and the county and borough franchise bills of 1861 and 1864.

At the 1865 general election, when he and his Conservative colleague faced a Liberal challenge, Mordaunt invoked his family’s tradition of parliamentary service and responded to criticism of his own performance by claiming that ’more of my time during the last session has been spent looking after your interests in Warwickshire than in the House of Commons’. He had gone to Parliament as a Conservative supporter and had fulfilled that pledge, as the duty of that party was not to pass measures, but to maintain ’a bold front and a strong opposition, which have prevented measures from passing into law which, if passed, would long ago have undermined the time-honoured institutions of our country’.5Birmingham Daily Post, 19 July 1865. During the election an effigy was held up by the crowd inscribed ’Sir C.M., the member that wouldn’t work’, but the baronet was re-elected in second place.6Birmingham Daily Post, 22 July 1865.

Mordaunt voted against the Liberal government’s 1866 reform bill and during the debates on the representation of the people bill the following year, voted to retain small boroughs and against increasing the representation of larger towns. He opposed Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868, and retired at the general election in December that year.

In 1869 Mordaunt petitioned for divorce alleging adultery, which resulted in a sensational trial at which the Prince of Wales, widely thought to be perjuring himself, denied having ’any improper familiarity’ with Lady Mordaunt.7Annual Register (1870), pt. ii. 168-85 (at 168-9). The definitive account is E. Hamilton, The Warwickshire scandal (1999), esp. 101-24, 175-85, 311-66. An obituary noted that the ’pain and humiliation of that trial turned the late baronet in a few months from a gay, dashing young fellow into a prematurely aged man’.8Freeman’s Journal, 18 Oct. 1897. The judge accepted his wife’s plea of insanity and denied Mordaunt an immediate divorce, which was finally granted on 11 March 1876.9Annual Register (1870), pt. ii. 168-9; Burke’s peerage (1849), 1424-5. The cost of the divorce and of raising his famliy from his second wife, Mary Louisa, whom he married in 1878, together with the agricultural depression and aiding his brother’s failing shipbuilding works all took a heavy toll on Mordaunt’s finances.10Hamilton, ‘Life on a country estate’, 44-5. On his death in 1897, he was succeeded by his only son, the childless and mentally-handicapped Sir Osbert L’Estrange Mordaunt, 11th bt. (1884-1834).11Hamilton, Warwickshire scandal, 427. The only child from his first marriage, Violet, reportedly fathered by viscount Cole, was raised by her maternal aunt and later married Thomas Henry Thynne MP, 5th marquess of Bath.