CHETWYND, William Fawkener (1788-1873), of Brocton Hall, Staffordshire

A Whig soldier, Chetwynd’s otherwise unremarkable parliamentary career was distinguished by his isolated defence of the notoriously venal constituency of Stafford against repeated attempts to disenfranchise it in the 1830s. Having accomplished much to preserve the corrupt borough’s parliamentary representation, it was ironic that Chetwynd was forced to retire due to the electorate’s ever-escalating demands for bribes.

The Chetwynds had long been closely connected with Stafford. Chetwynd’s elder brother George, later 2nd baronet, had represented the borough in the unreformed Parliament, 1820-26.1HP, Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 638-40. Chetwynd offered for Stafford at the 1832 general election, despite earlier rumours that his brother was to stand again.2Staffordshire Advertiser, 10, 17 Nov. 1832. He declared on his entry to the town that ‘he was a Reformer, but no radical’, although he proceeded to advocate reform of the House of Lords and the Church of England.3Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1832. He also endorsed the revision of the poor laws, the abolition of slavery and retrenchment.4Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1832, 8, 15 Dec. 1832. After an election distinguished by ‘bare-faced bribery’, Chetwynd topped the poll ahead of two other Reformers.5Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1832, 15 Dec. 1832.

An abortive election petition against the result led to the introduction and passing of a bill to indemnify witnesses who gave evidence to the parliamentary investigation into the election. Chetwynd attacked the bill as unprecedented and full of sweeping and unproven allegations against Stafford.6Hansard, 20 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 894-5. A committee subsequently recommended the borough’s disenfranchisement, but on the introduction of the bill to effect this, 6 Aug. 1833, Chetwynd argued that the inquiry had been based upon flawed, unreliable and contradictory evidence. Disenfranchisement was an extreme remedy that would punish the innocent as well as the guilty, and, as an alternative, he proposed introducing a bill to prevent bribery and corruption in the borough.7Hansard, 6 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, cc. 365-6, 369. He provided no details of his measure, which he did not, in the end, propose. Chetwynd was otherwise silent in debate in this parliament, but supported the Grey ministry in opposing the Attwood brothers’ campaign for currency reform, 21 Mar. 1833, 24 Apr. 1833, and Sir William Ingilby’s proposal to halve the malt duty, 26 Apr. 1833. He did, however, support Sir Samuel Whalley’s attempt to repeal house and window duty, 21 May 1833.

The following session, Chetwynd opposed a low fixed duty on corn and backed Althorp’s proposed settlement of the church rates issue, 7 Mar. 1834, 21 Apr. 1834. He later claimed that he could ‘never [have] had supported’ the ‘tyrannical’ 1834 new poor law, which was unpopular in Stafford, but said as it ‘was certain to be carried by great majorities, he had not divided against the bill’.8Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. Chetwynd resumed his defence of Stafford when another disenfranchisement bill was introduced. He complained that the committee’s report was ‘full of inaccuracies’ and denied that the majority of electors had accepted bribes. As a concession to his opponents, he suggested expanding the constituency to include neighbouring towns, but his amendment was rejected by 167 votes to five, 5 Mar. 1834.9Hansard, 5 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, cc. 1173-4, 1177. Chetwynd’s proposal may have been a wise parliamentary tactic given the overwhelming odds stacked against him at Westminster, but it was poorly received in Stafford. At the 1835 general election, Chetwynd was accused of trying to sell out the freemen.10Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 Jan. 1835. The freemen constituted 83.5% of the electorate, but any new electors created from an extension of the constituency would only have been able to qualify as £10 householders not freemen. He was, however, returned in second place after mounting a robust defence of his conduct at the nomination. He had not only fought, with little assistance, against disenfranchisement in the Commons, but lobbied influential peers such as Lord Ellenborough to re-examine witnesses, a strategy that ultimately paid dividends.11Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. On the hustings, Chetwynd welcomed the abolition of slavery and alterations in the East India Company and Bank of England charters, and expressed support for a charter for London University and municipal reform.12Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 Jan. 1835.

On his return to Parliament, Chetwynd backed Abercromby for the speakership, divided against the address, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, but opposed Russell’s motion on the Irish church, 2 Apr. 1835, which has led Josiah C. Wedgwood to classify him as one of the ‘cave’ of Staffordshire Reformers who gravitated towards Conservatism in 1834-5.13J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history (1934), iii. 89, 91. He later declared that he ‘never would advocate the separation of church and state – nor the appropriation of church property to the purposes of the state’. However, he regretted the ‘sudden removal’ of the late Whig ministry.14Staffordshire Advertiser, 7 Feb. 1835. After his colleague resigned in May 1835 to successfully contest the county, Chetwynd unsuccessfully resisted attempts to suspend the writ for Stafford, claiming a great ‘reformation’ in the behaviour of the electors.15Hansard, 18 May 1835, vol. 27, cc. 1178-81. As Stafford’s only sitting MP, Chetwynd led the small minority of MPs who opposed the 1835 and 1836 Stafford disenfranchisement bills.16Hansard, 1 June 1835, vol. 28, cc. 208-9; 20 July 1835, vol. 29, c. 784; 9 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, c. 234; 3 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 1200-2. Although his amendments and attempts to secure a new writ garnered little support, even opponents admired Chetwynd’s gallant and lonely defence of his constituents.17Hansard, 11 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, c. 1149; 3 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, c. 1201. Ultimately, Stafford’s parliamentary representation was preserved because the Lords reopened the inquiry in 1836, and no further attempts at disenfranchisement were attempted. In October 1836, Chetwynd was rewarded for his efforts by Stafford electors who presented him with a silver plate worth a 100 guineas.18Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 Oct. 1836. Chetwynd’s motion for a new writ was finally passed, 13 Feb. 1837.19Hansard, 13 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 445-53. Chetwynd had cut short his speech when he saw his opponents starting to arrive in force, and won a victory by a single vote that would almost certainly have been lost had he delayed.20The Standard, 25 Feb. 1837. Later in the session, Chetwynd made a brief contribution to a debate on the army estimates and, having served on a select committee on the issue, seconded a motion to admit women to the gallery of the House, arguing that ‘hon. members would be less likely to talk nonsense in the presence of ladies’ and would also tone down their personal attacks.21Hansard, 5 Apr. 1837, vol. 37, cc. 790-1; 15 June 1837, vol. 38, cc. 1482-3 (at 1482).PP 1835 (437), xviii. 2.

Despite Conservative attempts to deny him any credit for saving the borough, Chetwynd topped the poll at the 1837 general election.22Staffordshire Advertiser, 22 July 1837. At the nomination he noted that his campaign on behalf of the borough ‘had cost him many an anxious hour’, and declared that ‘he was pledged to no party. He had voted on both sides of the House, and had preserved that independence of conduct which nothing should ever induce him to compromise’.23Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837. In truth, however, Chetwynd was thereafter generally a Whig loyalist, supporting the government in key divisions such as Canadian policy, Irish church appropriation and Sir Robert Peel’s motion of no confidence, 7 Mar. 1838, 15 May 1838, 4 June 1841, and opposing radical political reforms and the alteration or repeal of the corn laws.

Chetwynd retired at the 1841 general election after telling the Whig grandee Lord Hatherton that ‘less than £4000 will not now win the seat so much more corrupt are the burgesses become, and so much more excessive are the agencies requisite to deal with them’.24Hatherton Journal, 28 May 1841, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/F/5/26/22. Having had his suit rejected by a number of different women - Hatherton remarked that his friend was ‘always in scrapes about his proposals to ladies’ - Chetwynd finally married a daughter of Sir Oswald Mosley, former MP for North Staffordshire, in 1843.25Hatherton Journal, 30 Jan. 1843, D260/M/F/5/26/26, see also ibid., 23 June 1841, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/22. In 1846 he declined to come forward as a protectionist candidate at a by-election in his old constituency, where he remained popular.26The Times, 10 Mar. 1846. On Chetwynd’s death in 1873, Brocton Hall and the surrounding 700 acre estate passed to his only surviving son Charles (1851-95).27VCH Staffs., v. 1-11; Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 398. Chetwynd’s personal effects were sworn under £4,000.28Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1873), 111.