FEILDEN, Joseph (1792-1870), of Witton Park, Blackburn, Lancs. and 30 Wilton Crescent, London, Mdx.

Blackburn’s most influential landowner, Feilden was often rumoured as a candidate for his native borough, but did not offer until 1865, when he was elected as Conservative MP at the advanced age of 73. ‘Owd Joe’, as he was affectionately known locally, was said to have ‘been improved ten years by his return’.1G.C. Miller, Blackburn: the evolution of a cotton town (1951), 417; Blackburn Standard, 12 Sept. 1866.

The Feildens had settled in the Blackburn area in the sixteenth century, and Feilden’s great-grandfather Henry (d. 1742) had purchased half of the manor of Blackburn together with two others in 1721, subsequently acquiring full control of this share.2R.D.S. Wilson, The Feildens of Witton Park (1983?), 1; D. Beattie, A history of Blackburn (2007), 67; W.A. Abram, A history of Blackburn (1877), 758. Feilden, who was a militia captain between 1813 and 1816, during which time he served in Ireland, succeeded his father as lord of the manor in 1815, and inherited Witton Park, where his father had constructed a new house in 1800, and where Feilden accrued an extensive art collection.3Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 16, 70; B. Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns: bourgeois culture and politics in early industrial England (2001), 361. By his own estimate he held one-sixth of the township of Blackburn by the 1840s, excluding the cotton factories, and he possessed almost the entirety of the original manor after 1852, when he purchased the majority of the remaining rectorial estate for £20,000.4Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns, 525 n.18; Beattie, Blackburn, 67; Abram, Blackburn, 758. The ecclesiastical commissioners retained 467 acres of the rectorial estate. The death of his uncle John in 1859 gave him full control of these estates.5VCH Lancs., vi. 244-9. He was also lord of the manor of Balderstone.6Preston Guardian, 24 July 1852. Although he was a landed proprietor, he had connections with Blackburn’s textile industry, for his father and uncles had set up together as cotton manufacturers, although it was Feilden’s uncle William who took the principal role in the business, and Feilden himself was never directly involved.7Blackburn Standard, 22 May 1850.

Aside from the cotton manufacturers who generated the town’s wealth, Feilden’s landholdings meant that he, more than any other individual, was responsible for shaping the physical environment of nineteenth-century Blackburn. He was a generous benefactor to many local institutions, particularly those connected with the Anglican church, donating not only the land but also thousands of pounds for the building of churches, parsonages, and Sunday and day schools throughout this period.8Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 16-17; Beattie, Blackburn, 241; Preston Guardian, 29 July 1854, 14 Aug. 1858; Blackburn Standard, 30 Jan. 1867. Among the churches to which he contributed were St. Mark’s, Witton; Holy Trinity; All Saints, Nova Scotia; Christ Church; and St. Andrew’s, Livesey. He made a £1,000 donation for church extension in 1856: Liverpool Mercury, 6 June 1856. He also patronised other religious bodies, including the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the Church Pastoral Aid Society, the Blackburn Church Missionary Association and the local branch of the Additional Curates’ Aid Society.9Blackburn Standard, 10 May 1837, 9 Oct. 1839; Blackburn Standard, 22 Jan. 1845, 5 Feb. 1862. He was a governor of Blackburn grammar school, the long-serving, if not always active, president of the Blackburn Mechanics’ Institute from its foundation in 1844, and was among the major donors to Blackburn free library in 1860.10Blackburn Standard, 28 Nov. 1855; Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns, 259; Abram, History of Blackburn, 379. Among the other local causes he supported were the Blackburn Strangers’ Friend Society (which aided the poor), the Blackburn branch of the London Hibernian Society (which funded Irish education), the local Peel memorial fund, the Blackburn volunteer artillery corps and the East Lancashire Cricket Club. He also served as president of the Blackburn Philharmonic Society, and took a particular interest in (and won prizes from) the Blackburn Agricultural Society and the Blackburn Floral and Horticultural Society.11Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 20; Blackburn Standard, 29 Sept. 1852. He was a member of the board of guardians, and donated to local relief funds for the unemployed, notably during the ‘cotton famine’ of 1862, when he gave £1,000.12Blackburn Standard, 5 Apr. 1837; Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 20; Daily News, 24 Oct. 1862. For praise for his relief efforts during the cotton famine, see The Times, 5 Nov. 1864. Among his other local positions he was one of the first trustees of the Blackburn savings bank (1818), and a director of the Blackburn waterworks company and the Blackburn and Preston railway, although he took action in 1845 to ensure that the latter’s route did not adversely affect his property.13Blackburn Standard, 26 Feb. 1845, 4 June 1845, 26 Feb. 1851, 17 Feb. 1864, 28 June 1890. Feilden had £2,500 in railway shares in 1845, the year in which he became a railway director: PP 1845 (317), xl. 44.

In addition to gifts of land for religious and educational purposes, Feilden sold land at favourable rates for the construction of civic institutions, including a market hall (1848), town hall (1852), extended marketplace (1853), cottage gardens (1854), public park (1855) and workhouse (1858).14Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 19; Preston Guardian, 15 Oct. 1853; Blackburn Standard, 27 Oct. 1852, 25 Oct. 1854, 28 Apr. 1858. In 1857 he sold land for the long-awaited Blackburn infirmary, for which he and others had subscribed funds as far back as 1826, but with ‘that liberality which forms his distinguishing characteristic’, returned half the purchase price as an additional subscription, and made a further £500 donation in 1862.15Abram, History of Blackburn, 382n.; Blackburn Standard, 1 July 1857, 12 Nov. 1862. However, his generosity was coupled with careful attention to his own interests. Having sold Blackburn corporation land which they had previously rented for sewage works in 1860, he was involved in a dispute with them over £12 unpaid rent.16Blackburn Standard, 11 July 1860. Yet a local alderman observed in 1864 that ‘in the occasional instances where, as lord of the manor, or as a landowner, his interests had clashed with those of the Corporation or the inhabitants, he had always shown a considerate and liberal spirit’.17Blackburn Standard, 16 Nov. 1864. For a less favourable assessment of Feilden as a landlord, and a defence of him, see Liverpool Mercury, 31 Jan. 1840; Blackburn Standard, 5 Feb. 1840. His significance was epitomised by the inclusion of part of his coat of arms on the borough’s shield when it was incorporated in 1851.18P.A. Whittle, Blackburn as it is (1852), 142-3.

Feilden was involved with Blackburn’s elections from its enfranchisement in 1832. A later account recorded that he issued an address that year in the Whig interest, but withdrew and nominated his uncle, William Feilden, who was returned as a Whig, but soon joined the Conservatives.19Preston Guardian, 29 Dec. 1877; Manchester Times and Gazette, 15 Dec. 1832. In 1835 Feilden chaired a dinner to celebrate his uncle’s re-election, when he voiced his support for Peel and for ‘judicious reforms’, but observed that while he had favoured parliamentary reform, he hoped that ‘the good sense of the people will not require reform so far as to border upon destruction’.20Blackburn Standard, 11 Feb. 1835. He patronised the newly-formed Blackburn Operative Conservative Association, donating £2 towards their flag and attending their annual dinner in 1836, and it was rumoured that he would be invited to stand as a second Conservative at the general election the following year, but this did not materialise.21Blackburn Standard, 12 Oct. 1836, 16 Nov. 1836; Manchester Times and Gazette, 8 July 1837. Instead, in a barely audible hustings speech, he proposed his uncle.22Blackburn Standard, 26 July 1837. He also attended the North Lancashire nomination, and was subsequently present at meetings of the North Lancashire Conservative Association.23Blackburn Standard, 2 Aug. 1837, 22 Jan. 1839. In 1840 a requisition soliciting him to offer alongside his uncle was said to be ‘going on prosperously’, but did not come to fruition.24Blackburn Standard, 5 Feb. 1840. He did, however, participate in the 1841 Blackburn election as one of three magistrates who read the Riot Act during a disorderly contest, and again attended the North Lancashire hustings.25Preston Chronicle, 3 July 1841, 10 July 1841. He proposed the lone Conservative candidate for Blackburn, John Hornby, at the 1847 election, when he endorsed Hornby’s ‘anti-popery’ views, observing that ‘I myself have always been very liberal on the subject of Roman Catholic claims; but... it is time to make a stand’.26Blackburn Standard, 29 July 1847. Three years later, he again demonstrated his staunch Anglicanism when he chaired a local Protestant meeting against papal aggression.27Blackburn Standard, 21 Dec. 1850.

When a vacancy occurred in March 1853, Feilden apparently ‘almost consented to [stand] but the doctor frightened him out of it by telling him that he could not live very many years’.28Blackburn Standard, 5 July 1865. Instead he proposed the Conservative candidate, whose Liberal opponent, Montague Joseph Feilden, was Feilden’s cousin, getting involved in order to refute his cousin’s claims to Feilden’s tenants that he was standing neutral.29Blackburn Standard, 23 Mar. 1853. He seconded the nomination of J. Wilson Patten for North Lancashire in 1857 and 1859, voicing his hopes on the latter occasion that Patten would support the introduction of bibles into Indian schools.30The Times, 1 Apr. 1857; Lancaster Gazette, 7 May 1859. When the Blackburn Conservative Club was established in 1864, Feilden was appointed president, but was not actively involved.31Blackburn Standard, 16 Mar. 1864.

Feilden was finally persuaded to offer in 1865, after the appearance of a second Liberal candidate, John Potter, put paid to hopes that the incumbent MPs, the Conservative William Henry Hornby and the Liberal James Pilkington, would be re-elected unopposed. It had initially been rumoured that one of his sons would be approached, but instead they campaigned on their father’s behalf, assuring voters that ‘there is life in the old boy yet’.32Daily News, 15 June 1865; Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. Those concerned about Feilden’s age – he was 73 – were reminded by a Conservative alderman that he was younger than Palmerston, and that ‘he has not a great deal of superincumbent flesh to carry, and I have no doubt we shall find him far more active than some of our young members’.33Blackburn Standard, 5 July 1865. However, his all-encompassing local influence meant that the Conservatives were able to spare him as much electioneering as possible, and he did not canvass personally. Having told local Conservatives that ‘he was rather afraid he was too much of a Peelite’ for them, his address declared him to be ‘no party man; but I have always been an admirer of the policy of the late Sir Robert Peel’. He was willing to extend the franchise to ‘the intelligent and educated portion of the public’, but saw it ‘more as a privilege to be acquired by industry or application, than as a mere question of rating or birthright’. He supported freedom of religious worship, and wished to see the church rates question settled, but ‘without depriving the Church of those sources of revenue to which she is justly entitled’.34Blackburn Standard, 5 July 1865; Preston Guardian, 8 July 1865. Feilden emphasised his reluctance to disturb the peace of the borough with a contest, and made it clear at the nomination that he had come forward in the hopes that Potter would then withdraw, whereupon he would do likewise.35Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. In an ‘almost inaudible’ speech,36Preston Guardian, 15 July 1865. he promised general support for Derby, although he praised Palmerston’s foreign policy. He advocated removal of Indian import duties, an issue of concern for local manufacturers.37Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. He was returned in second place behind Hornby, comfortably ahead of their Liberal rivals.

Feilden’s age had prompted doubts about whether parliamentary life would prove too arduous, but Hornby subsequently testified to his colleague’s diligent attendance, observing that ‘I never went to the House… without finding him there, and he always sat me out every night, and he voted oftener than I did’. Feilden concurred with Hornby’s verdict that it had improved his health ‘very much and benefitted his constitution’.38Blackburn Standard, 12 Sept. 1866. Feilden divided consistently with the Conservative party, opposing abolition of church rates, 7 Mar. 1866, the ballot, 27 Apr. 1866, and the Liberal reform bill, 17 July 1866, and supporting Disraeli in the crucial votes on the Conservative reform bill the following session. He opposed Gladstone’s Irish church proposals, 3 Apr. 1868. He joined Hornby and other MPs to introduce a Lancashire and Yorkshire manufacturers’ deputation which lobbied the home office against the extension of the Factory Acts to engineering trades in 1867.39Morning Post, 3 May 1867. He is not known to have contributed to debate, but served on the select committee on the Queen Anne’s bounty board, which was responsible for augmenting the salaries of poorer clergy. He divided in the minority for proposals that the board should maintain its separate existence, despite concerns about overlap with the ecclesiastical commission.40PP 1867-68 (439), vii. 455. Feilden also served on a private bill committee on various road bills: PP 1866 (0.108), lvi. 595.

Feilden claimed that ‘if he had consulted his own feelings he would have retired’ at the 1868 election, but he was persuaded to offer again, and he and Hornby were re-elected with a decisive majority.41The Times, 24 Aug. 1868. However, they were unseated on petition in March 1869 on grounds of intimidation after it was proved that workers had been dismissed from Blackburn’s cotton mills because of their political allegiance.42Blackburn Times, 16 Mar. 1869. Feilden’s eldest son, Henry Master Feilden, was returned in his stead alongside one of Hornby’s sons at the ensuing by-election. Feilden died at Witton in August 1870, having been ill for some weeks before his death, and was buried at Witton church.43Lancaster Gazette, 3 Sept. 1870; Blackburn Standard, 11 May 1889. Henry Master Feilden succeeded to his estates, and continued to serve as Blackburn’s MP until his death in 1875, when he was succeeded by Feilden’s second son, Randle Joseph, a former army officer, who was Conservative MP for North Lancashire, 1880-5, and Chorley, 1885-95.44After Randle Joseph’s death in 1895 the family rarely lived at Witton. The estate was purchased by Blackburn corporation in 1947, and the house was demolished a few years later: Wilson, Feildens of Witton Park, 73. Another of his surviving sons (Oswald Barton) was also an army officer, while two (William Leyland and John Robert) entered the church.45R. Assheton, Pedigree of the family of Feilden, of the county of Lancaster (1879), 7. Feilden was father-in-law to Ralph Assheton, Conservative MP for Clitheroe, 1868-80. Family and estate papers relating to the Feildens are held by Lancashire Record Office.