CORRANCE, Frederick Snowden (1822-1906), of Broadwater, Framlingham, Suff.

Corrance took a keen interest in agricultural questions while serving as ‘a very active and not wholly undistinguished’ Conservative MP for East Suffolk.1Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk (1875), p. xiii. His great-great-great-grandfather Thomas White, of Pirton, Herts., had served as colonel of the Ironsides in the Parliamentary army during the Civil War, and was said to have been the officer who removed the mace from the table of the House at Oliver Cromwell’s command in April 1653.2Burke’s landed gentry (1906), 375. Corrance’s father, Frederick White, was the son of Snowden White (d. 1797), a Nottingham physician, who had married his cousin, Mary Corrance, in 1782. The Corrance family had purchased Parham Hall, Suffolk, in the 1680s, and Frederick White succeeded to these estates upon his mother’s death in 1837, when he took the name of Corrance, as did his son.3Burke’s landed gentry (1846), 265. Frederick Corrance senior had received £2,770 17s. 3d. from the Slave Compensation Commission for a claim in relation to St. Kitts, where his father-in-law had been governor: Information provided by Legacies of British Slave-ownership project [www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs]. Educated at Harrow – where he was a member of the cricket team4Harrow school register 1800-1911 (3rd edn., 1911), 160. He did not, however, play at Lords due to illness. – and Cambridge, Corrance had a brief army career.5Some sources, e.g. Venn, Al. Cant., ii. 141, state that Corrance had risen to the rank of captain, but the London Gazette, 30 Aug. 1844, records that he retired on that date as a lieutenant. He then ‘settled down to the life of a country gentleman’ in Suffolk, where he was ‘an enthusiastic supporter of societies promoted with the idea of benefiting agriculturists’, among them the Framlingham Farmers’ Club, of which he was the long-serving president.6The Times, 1 Nov. 1906. One of his particular concerns was the excessive tax burden upon the land, and he told the club in a lecture in 1866 that ‘if taxation itself is an evil, its undue preponderance upon any interest acts as a curse’.7F.S. Corrance, A lecture on the gross produce of our land, its liabilities and apportionments (1866), 38.

Corrance declined an approach to offer at a double by-election for East Suffolk in July 18668The Times, 16 Feb. 1867., but came forward for a single vacancy in February 1867 after the first Conservative candidate in the field, Lord Rendlesham, withdrew, having not received the support he anticipated.9The Times, 13 Feb. 1867. Comparing their merits, a later account recorded that

Mr. Corrance talked politics which the electors of East Suffolk could not make out very clearly; Lord Rendlesham could not talk politics at all. Mr. Corrance was a farmers’ friend; Lord Rendlesham hardly knew the difference between a farmer and a shopkeeper. Mr. Corrance understands something about sheep and turnips, the four-course system and the administration of poor relief; to Lord Rendlesham every one of these subjects was a puzzle and a bore.10Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk, 2.

On the hustings, Corrance noted that he had been asked to call himself a ‘Liberal Conservative, but this I declined to do’, as ‘when a man of broad and liberal views comes forward as a Conservative it is needless to qualify the name of Conservative, his character will be found hereafter in his votes’. Although ‘party men’ had to ‘make our will in many instances subordinate to others’, he added, this did not mean that their ‘liberal and generous views’ would be lost. He declared his support for the reforms proposed by Derby’s government, including extension of the Factory Acts, provision for the metropolitan sick and poor, legislation on relations between masters and men, and poor law reform. He also advocated an overhaul of the system of rating – a constant refrain during his parliamentary career – and believed a franchise based on payment of rates to be ‘the only broad, comprehensive, and intelligible basis’ for parliamentary reform. He wished to see the county franchise threshold lowered, and legislation to prevent bribery and corruption. An Anglican, he nonetheless professed support for the removal of church rates. He favoured repeal of the malt tax and legislation on tenant-right in Ireland, but avoided the issue of the game laws.11Ipswich Journal, 16 Feb. 1867. Support from East Suffolk’s farmers helped him to defeat his Liberal opponent by a comfortable margin,12Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk, 3. but he found it difficult to get a hearing at the declaration, where hecklers mocked his ‘flowery language’.13Ipswich Journal, 23 Feb. 1867. Among those he joined on the Conservative benches was his brother-in-law, Charles Du Cane, who had represented North Essex since 1857.

Corrance’s ‘complicated’ and ‘abstruse’ speaking style, filled with ‘long chapters of incomprehensible philosophy’ and ‘abstract speculation’ had its advantages, in that he ‘could never be pinned down to a dogma of which his critics were quite sure they disapproved’, but it did not translate well to the Commons.14Public men of Ipswich and Suffolk, 3-6. A later account recalled how

The reporters in the gallery could not make out what he meant; members who caught the Speaker’s eye next after him took care, as far as possible, to avoid all reference to his speeches, lest they should trip themselves up over his propositions, and assume him to have said nay when he thought he had said aye.15Ibid., 1.

However, it also conceded that ‘his genuine desire to assist in the improving of things which require amelioration goes some way to the correction of his theoretic mistakes’.16Ibid., 8.

Corrance was particularly keen to see improvements in the system of local rating. His maiden speech was in support of the valuation of property bill, 11 Mar. 1867, when he voiced his hopes that there would be further reform on the broader question of rating. He was an attentive member of the select committee which considered this bill.17PP 1867 (322), xiii. 577. He highlighted the failings of the existing rating system in contributions on the mines assessment bill, 6 May 1868, and the turnpike trusts bill, seconding an amendment which scuppered the latter measure, 17 June 1868.18For his comments to the East Suffolk Chamber of Agriculture on this measure, see The Times, 16 Apr. 1868. He was less successful when he seconded Sir Massey Lopes’s motion complaining of the burden of local charges on rural property, 12 May 1868, which was withdrawn, and in his own attempt to secure a select committee on local rating, 12 June 1868. Despite his plea that the law on rating had ‘become a mass of incoherent legislation, incapable of just application or legal interpretation’, and that it fell ‘with severity upon needy and dependent classes’, it was too late in the session for an inquiry.

Having backed the formation of the East Suffolk Chamber of Agriculture in March 1867, Corrance subsequently presided over its meetings, as well as attending gatherings of the Central Chamber of Agriculture,19Bury and Norwich Post, 19 Mar. 1867; The Times, 3 Apr. 1867; Ipswich Journal, 18 Apr. 1868. where fellow participants apparently ‘marvelled greatly at the profundity of the amiable member for East Suffolk, and went on after he had stopped very much as if he had not spoken’.20Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk, 1-2. He defended these agricultural interests in the House, endorsing calls for a select committee on the malt tax, a question which he described as one of ‘hereditary descent’ for Suffolk’s MPs, 14 May 1867. He recounted having joined numerous deputations to successive chancellors of the exchequer on this subject:

Some of such meetings took a gloomy and sinister turn; some were almost jocose. I remember one such eventful scene, when one of the deputation produced a bottle out of his pocket and a glass, and I think a corkscrew as well if I remember right, and the then Chancellor partook of the refreshment and absolutely laughed.

He also took a keen interest in the government’s response to the cattle plague, being unafraid to challenge his party leaders on this issue. He forced them to reconsider clause 45 of the contagious diseases (animals) bill, regarding the regulations on the landing of foreign animals, which was duly amended in line with Corrance’s views, 12, 14 Aug. 1867. He claimed that his lobbying was partly responsible for the government’s introduction of the metropolitan foreign cattle market bill,21Hansard, 19 Nov. 1867, vol. 190, c. 91; 3 July 1868, vol. 193, c. 611. For Corrance’s lobbying on this issue, see The Times, 18 Sept. 1867, 3 Dec. 1867. which he defended against criticism from Thomas Milner Gibson, 3 July 1868, and he sat on the related select committee.22PP 1867-68 (227), xii. 2; PP 1867-68 (261), xii. 354. Corrance also served on the select committee on the Coventry election petition that session: PP 1867-68 (165), viii. 151.

Corrance routinely divided with his party on religious questions, objecting to the second reading of the oaths and offices bill, 27 Feb. 1867, and, despite his hustings statements, opposing the church rates abolition bill, 20 Mar. 1867. He voted against Gladstone’s Irish church proposals, 3 Apr. 1868. When the Conservative ministry’s reform bill was debated in 1867, he generally sided with his leaders, although he later claimed that once the measure was extended to encompass household suffrage, ‘from the point of departure, from what was, I thought a Conservative policy, I have never followed my party’.23Ipswich Journal, 24 Oct. 1868. He spoke and voted against Gladstone’s amendment to enfranchise compound ratepayers, 12 Apr. 1867, when he recalled having witnessed the events of 1848 in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and urged that ‘if we are to escape such evils here, it must be through the wisdom, the prudence, and the moderation of Parliament itself’. He divided for Colvile’s amendment for a £5 rather than a £10 copyhold franchise, 20 May 1867, but opposed a £12 occupation franchise, which he feared would result in county seats being subsumed by urban interests, 27 May 1867. His efforts to secure separate representation for Lowestoft (instead of Stockton) were defeated, 9 July 1867. When the election petitions and corrupt practices at elections bill was discussed the following year, Corrance expressed sympathy for Labouchere’s proposed clause making payment for conveyance of voters to the poll in counties illegal, but voted against it, fearing that it might disfranchise some voters, 22 July 1868.24For his support of Hibbert’s earlier successful efforts to make payments for conveyance to the poll in boroughs illegal, see Hansard, 4 July 1867, vol. 188, c. 1014. A similar desire to curb the expense of elections informed his support for Fawcett’s proposals to pay returning officers’ expenses from the rates, differing from the bulk of his party on this issue. While he initially opposed Fawcett’s clause because it would increase the burden of local taxation, 18 July 1868, he spoke and voted in the minority for it once Fawcett added the proviso of a deposit system to prevent ‘sham’ candidatures, 24 July 1868.

Away from the chamber, Corrance participated in the government versus opposition pigeon shooting match, winning the cup for the best individual shot in 1867, when he also triumphed in the Lords versus Commons contest.25The Times, 5 July 1867. He enjoyed less success when playing cricket for the Commons against the Lords.26The Times, 21 June 1867. In July 1868 he was appointed to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science’s committee on capital and labour, having told the Ipswich Mechanics’ Institute in a lecture earlier that year that ‘disputes... might be settled by a mixed commission of masters and men’.27The Times, 23 Jan. 1868; Labour and capital: resolutions adopted at meetings of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1868). His interest in social questions was also demonstrated by his paper on ‘The social condition of the labouring classes’ which he gave to the British Association for the Advancement of Science’s 1868 meeting at Norwich.28Daily News, 22 Aug. 1868.

Corrance’s parliamentary diligence helped to secure his re-election in 1868, when he polled second behind another Conservative, and he continued to pursue his interests in agricultural questions, local taxation and the poor law in the House thereafter.29Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk, 4. He inherited his father’s estates at Parham Hall in October 1873, and ‘the pressure of private affairs’ prompted him to stand down at the 1874 general election.30Bury and Norwich Post, 4 Nov. 1873; Ipswich Journal, 27 Jan. 1874. The death of his only son at the age of 13 in 1876 caused him to withdraw further from public life.31Essex Standard, 15 Sept. 1876; Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 6 Nov. 1880. He did, however, retain his interest in agricultural questions, writing occasional letters to The Times and attending meetings of the Central Chamber of Agriculture well into his seventies.32The Times, 30 Oct. 1894, 28 Nov. 1894; Proceedings of the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture (1897), 1. He also continued to serve as a magistrate,33The Times, 4 Apr. 1888. and, having been ‘one of the crack shots of his day’, carried on his sporting pursuits ‘with as great a zest as ever’, visiting Albania to shoot woodcock in 1880.34Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 6 Nov. 1880. Described as ‘tolerant, courteous, and considerate in manners of manly and gentlemanly feeling’, he died in October 1906, leaving effects valued at £4,943 7s. 2d. and was survived by his wife.35Public men of Ipswich and East Suffolk, 8; England & Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of Wills and Administrations, 1861-1941, 25 Jan. 1907.