URQUHART, David (1805-1877), of Mollands House, Perthshire; Bittern Manor, near Southampton, Hampshire

‘A remarkable man, possibly a man of genius’, Urquhart was a prolific and indefatigable Turkophile writer and campaigner.1Spectator, qu. in The Times, 28 May 1877. A Russophobic conspiracy theorist, who saw the tsar’s secret influence at every turn, after his dismissal as secretary to the British embassy in Constantinople by Lord Palmerston in 1837, Urquhart waged a lifelong war against the foreign secretary, who he alleged was a Russian agent.2D. Brown, Palmerston: a biography (2010), 210, 212-13. Elected in 1847, Urquhart’s parliamentary career has been described as a ‘complete failure’.3C. Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby, and Palmerston’, English Historical Review, 62 (1947), 327-51 (at 349). He had a low opinion of the reformed House and only sought a seat to provide a platform for his views and to attack Palmerston. Having made little impact in the 1848 session, he attended only 15 (6.8%) out of 219 divisions the following year, was abroad in 1850, and made a handful of speeches in 1851 before retiring at the 1852 general election.4Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. Urquhart’s idiosyncratic views and convoluted and tortuous arguments led many to dismiss him as ‘an unintelligible compound of political jugglery and specious charlatanism’ and a ‘political quack’.5Sheffield Iris, qu. in Morning Chronicle, 17 June 1841; Leeds Mercury, 12 June 1841. However, his Whig brother-in-law Chichester Fortescue, MP for County Louth 1847-74, despite their political disagreements, said of Urquhart: ‘I see nothing ungenerous, nothing unamiable, nothing cold-hearted, nothing selfish’.6O.W. Hewett ed., ‘…and Mr. Fortescue’: a selection from the diaries from 1851 to 1862 of Chichester Fortescue, Lord Carlingford (1958), 75 (4 Sept. 1854). In 1856 Benjamin Disraeli described Urquhart as ‘a gentleman of great acquirements, ingeniousness and energy’.7Benjamin Disraeli to W. Potter, 5 Mar. 1856, qu. in M. Wiebe et al, Benjamin Disraeli letters, vi. 477. Bemused by Urquhart’s interminable vendetta against him, Palmerston, ironically, thought that his adversary must have been a Russian agent, writing to a Liberal MP after becoming prime minister in 1855:

As to Urquhart, I have no doubt whatever that he is hired by the Russian government to abuse and calumniate me … He is more than half mad, and wholly bad.8Lord Palmerston to John MacGregor, 29 Oct. 1855, Add. 48579, qu. by J. Ridley, Lord Palmerston (1970), 571.

Although few other than Urquhart’s closest supporters believed that Palmerston was a traitor, Urquhart did occasionally secure a broader audience for his views, as many, particularly radicals, shared his hostility towards Russia and criticism of ‘secret diplomacy’.9O. Anderson, A liberal state at war (1967), 98-9, 139-40. It was however difficult to categorise Urquhart by conventional political labels. Although he often looked to radicals for support, he was implacably opposed to further political reforms. Urquhart was a staunch opponent of centralisation and venerated local institutions, whether a romanticised Anglo-Saxon past or Turkish local self-government.10M. Lamb, ‘The making of a Russophobe: David Urquhart, the formative years, 1825-1835’, International History Review, 3 (1981), 330-57 (at 347); R. Shannon, ‘David Urquhart and the Foreign Affairs Committees’, in P. Hollis (ed.), Pressure from without in early Victorian England (1974), 239-61 (at 242). He once described himself as ‘a Tory of Queen Anne’s reign’ and historians have often concluded that he was a Tory or protectionist, indeed on the basis of his votes in Parliament, he has been categorised as a Derbyite.11Anderson, Liberal state, 141; J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system (1972), 232. By contrast, Miles Taylor has argued that Urquhart was a ‘Whiggish radical whose Toryism arose out of necessity rather than conviction’, and whose popular constitutionalism and free trade liberalism were attractive to radicals, especially when they were dissatisfied with Whig governments.12M. Taylor, ‘The old radicalism to the new: David Urquhart and the politics of opposition, 1832-67’, in E. Biagini and A. Reid eds., Currents of radicalism: popular radicalism, organised labour and party politics, 1850-1914 (1991), 23-43 (at 26-7, 43). There is much to commend this view, but it is hard to see Urquhart as a proponent of ‘free trade liberalism’ as Taylor suggests.13See Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 33, 39, for his emphasis on Urquhart’s free trade views. Although he was always keen to promote Anglo-Turkish trade, Urquhart’s protestations of support for free trade in the abstract were undercut by his resistance to the repeal of the corn laws and other policies in practice. His position was not straightforward, but he sided with the protectionists on most economic issues in the 1840s.

The clan Urquhart hailed from a remote part of Scotland. After the death of his father in 1811, Urquhart was taken abroad by his mother and educated in France and Switzerland, an upbringing which perhaps contributed to his later ‘quirkiness’.14Shannon, ‘David Urquhart’, 240. Urquhart returned to England to attend Oxford but dropped out after a year due to his mother’s financial difficulties.15M. Taylor, ‘Urquhart, David (1805-1877)’, www.oxforddnb.com. An acquaintance of Jeremy Bentham and other Utilitarians, in 1827 Urquhart went to Greece to aid the struggle for independence.16Lamb, ‘Making of a Russophobe’, 331-9. He was unimpressed with Turkey on his first visit in 1829-30, but much more formative was his second visit, accompanying Stratford Canning’s special mission, 1831-2, from which Urquhart developed suspicions of Russia and her ambitions in the region and a lifelong confidence in Turkey’s ability to reform and renew itself. The latter theme was evident in his book Turkey and its resources, published in July 1833.17Ibid., 343-8. Shortly afterwards, and helped by the support of William IV and his private secretary Sir Herbert Taylor, an acquaintance of his mother, Urquhart was appointed to a special commercial mission to Turkey.18Ibid., 351; Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby, and Palmerston’, 329. After arriving in Constantinople he fell under the influence of the strongly anti-Russian ambassador Viscount Ponsonby, and a visit to the disputed territory of Circassia, which was struggling for independence, further reinforced his hostility towards Russia, in July 1834.19Lamb, ‘Making of a Russophobe’, 353-6. Urquhart returned to England in late 1834, and encouraged by Ponsonby, and in harness with other writers, began to work a Russophobic campaign through newspaper articles and pamphlets.20M. Lamb, ‘Writing up the Eastern question in 1835-1836’, International History Review, 15 (1993), 239-68. The highpoint of the propaganda campaign was the publication of confidential Russian diplomatic documents in the Portfolio (Nov. 1835-1836), edited and with anonymous commentary by Urquhart. Palmerston and others were certainly aware of Urquhart’s role in the Portfolio, and encouraged it, even providing comment on articles before publication.21Lamb, ‘Writing up the Eastern question’, 256-64. However, contrary to Urquhart’s later claims, Palmerston never gave official endorsement, always retaining deniability.

Palmerston appointed Urquhart as secretary to the embassy at Constantinople, which prompted Lord Melbourne to warn him, 27 Mar. 1836:

You cannot conceive of the alarm which exists in the Cabinet about Urquhart. This arises from his random way of talking and from his publications. They think Ponsonby sufficiently dangerous and adding Urquhart to him makes some great and fatal indiscretion … quite certain. … If he gets us into any scrape I do not know how we shall defend his appointment.22Lord Melbourne to Lord Palmerston, 5 Mar. 1836, Broadlands papers, qu. by Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby and Palmerston’, 337.

Palmerston’s motives were complex. It had suited Palmerston to publicise Russia’s private aims and fan Russophobia in Britain, to secure the backing of public opinion for his eastern policy, but he had no intention of going to war. In spring 1836, he called time on the propaganda campaign, which had served its purpose as far as he was concerned.23Lamb, ‘Writing up the Eastern question’, 264-5.

However, Urquhart’s appointment would come back to haunt him. Once in Constantinople, Urquhart ignored Palmerston’s instructions and sought to undermine his chief Ponsonby, negotiating with the Turks on the commercial treaty behind his back and feeding negative stories about the ambassador to the press back home.24Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby, and Palmerston’, 338-45. More troubling was Urquhart’s role in the Vixen affair, Oct. 1836, when he encouraged a British ship to sail to Circassia, which was then seized for contravening the Russian blockade. Palmerston refused to act, realising that it might end in war.25Taylor, ‘David Urquhart’; Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby, and Palmerston’, 341-2. Characteristically Urquhart insisted his superiors knew and approved of his scheme, but the truth was that he was too much of a loose cannon to be a diplomat. By now Melbourne and Ponsonby were agitating for Urquhart’s dismissal and Palmerston recalled him in March 1837.

After his recall, Urquhart wrote and published the two-volume The spirit of the East (1838) and embarked on a public speaking tour of Scotland and northern England, where he secured some support from working men and Chartists.26Taylor, ‘David Urquhart’. By this point he had come to the view that British Eastern policy had consistently resulted in increased Russian influence and the only way to explain this, and his dismissal, was that Palmerston was a Russian agent. Urquhart wrote a series of letters in the Glasgow Herald, Dec. 1839-Apr. 1840, detailing his case for impeaching Palmerston and his 1840 pamphlet on Anglo-American relations repeated the claims that the foreign secretary ‘has betrayed his country … to a power acting directly for its overthrow’.27Brown, Palmerston, 212; D. Urquhart, Exposition of the boundary differences between Great Britain and the United States (1840), p. x. The foreign secretary was so irritated by these allegations that he considered legal action against Urquhart in 1840.28Brown, Palmerston, 211-12.

At the 1841 general election Urquhart contested Sheffield to publicise his views. At the nomination he declared, to much laughter, ‘if you vote for me tomorrow, you vote for impeaching the ministry’.29Sheffield Independent, 3 July 1841. Party allegiance was a secondary issue for Urquhart, but he was no friend to the Whigs, who he described as ‘the most baneful ministry that has ever weighed upon the … land’.30The Standard, 11 June 1841. If he had any party connection at this time it was to the Conservatives, but only because they ‘had come to see that he was right’, although he conceded that Peel and Wellington had offered little protection to Turkey when in office.31Sheffield Independent, 3 July 1841. He was strongly critical of the new poor law, voiced support for currency reform and had an equivocal position on the corn laws, leaning towards protectionism rather than free trade.32The Standard, 11 June 1841; Sheffield Independent, 19 June 1841, 3 July 1841. He finished third behind two Liberals. Shortly afterwards he made a speech at Stafford, arguing that the alteration of the corn laws would be deflationary and injurious to other interests unless taxes were adjusted, though he did favour a general policy to expand trade.33D. Urquhart, Speech of David Urquhart, at Stafford, July 6th, 1841, on international law, and the general state of the country (1841), 13-16. Encouraged by his reception, Urquhart, sporting the green and white colours of the Circassians, returned to contest Stafford at the 1847 general election and topped the poll.34Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 July 1847. He declared support for free trade in the abstract, condemned the currency laws and new poor law, and proposed a ‘return to the old constitution’.35Staffordshire Advertiser, 26 June 1847, 3, 31 July 1847.

Urquhart’s parliamentary attendance and activity peaked in 1847-48, his first session, during which he repeatedly attacked Palmerston, and sought to rake over the events that had led to his recall in 1837. In his first major speech, 2 Dec. 1847, on commercial distress, he described the Bank Acts as ‘terrible’, and criticised Peel’s 1845 reform of the Scottish banking system.36Hansard, 2 Dec. 1847, vol. 95, cc. 531-46 (at 541). Urquhart probably picked up his views on the currency from Charles Attwood, a close friend and supporter from the late 1830s, and brother of Thomas Attwood, MP for Birmingham 1832-9, who was also a Russophobe. After some skirmishing, the motion of his ally Thomas Chisholm Anstey for the publication of papers regarding the Treaty of Adrianople, 23 Feb. 1847, gave Urquhart the opportunity to mount his first onslaught against Palmerston, who was again foreign secretary. Urquhart said he was motivated solely by public spirit rather than any ‘personal animosity’.37Hansard, 23 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, cc. 1230-7 (at 1232). Shortly afterwards Urquhart declared that ‘in whatever the noble lord has done, or left undone, one result has been invariable, and that is the augmentation of the power and influence of the Tsar’.38Ibid., c. 1233. Palmerston’s reply, which lasted five hours, effectively refuted the charges of Anstey and Urquhart.39Brown, Palmerston, 311-12; Hansard, 23 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, cc. 1237-41; 1 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 66-123. Although he had little sympathy with Russian autocracy, Palmerston argued that his critics were being naïve if they thought that diplomatic action could prevent a strong power from imposing her influence on a weaker one.40Hansard, 1 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, c. 84. Urquhart supported Baillie’s motion to withdraw the royal naval squadron deployed off West Africa to suppress the slave trade, 24 Mar. 1848, which gave him another opportunity to provoke Palmerston, who was the architect of the policy.41Hansard, 24 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 985-9. Urquhart moved without notice a motion on foreign policy, 16 May 1848, arguing that the public and Parliament’s neglect of foreign affairs had allowed Russia to gain ascendancy and influence, and also condemning Palmerston’s cavalier interference with other countries’ liberties.42Hansard, 16 May 1848, vol. 98, cc. 1109-27. However, the motion was counted out as the House was inquorate, prompting Urqhuart to declare ‘I am deeply humiliated’.43Ibid., c. 1139. He continued to bemoan Palmerston’s meddling in other countries’ affairs, a policy that led to increased naval and military spending and therefore increased taxes, 5 June 1848, 4 July 1848.44Hansard, 5 June 1848, vol. 99, cc. 419-22; 4 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 126-30 . When Urquhart defended the slave trade in Turkey as ‘a condition limited and defined by law’, 16 Aug. 1848, Palmerston carped that his Eastern travels had left him ‘quite enamoured with the institution of domestic slavery’.45Hansard, 16 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, cc. 175-81 (at 177, 178).

Although his campaign against Palmerston was Urquhart’s priority he contributed on a range of other issues in the 1848 session. He supported Jewish relief, but did not think that Jewish, Catholic or Dissenting MPs should be able to legislate for the Anglican church, 3 Apr. 1848.46Hansard, 3 Apr. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 1227-9. He moved an abortive amendment to Hume’s motion for the ‘little charter’ of political reforms, 6 July 1848, that experience had shown that reformed Parliaments produced ‘no fruits’. The reformed House, in his view, had failed to achieve peace or retrenchment, and so although he asserted that he was a supporter of popular rights, he did not think they would be promoted by further political reforms.47Hansard, 6 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 195-204. Privately sympathetic to the Irish demand for repeal of the union, in debate, Urquhart declared that as the 1801 Act of Union was an executive measure rather than a treaty or law, the Irish Parliament could be recalled, 26 July 1848.48Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 29; Hansard, 26 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 882-6.

Urquhart supported Disraeli’s amendment to the address, 2 Feb. 1849, again condemning Whig foreign policy.49Hansard, 2 Feb. 1849, vol. 102, cc. 201-4. Although Urquhart shared the alarm of parliamentary radicals at increased expenditure and taxation, he refused to support Cobden’s motion for retrenchment, 26 Feb. 1849, as the Manchester school based their policy on ‘Utopian’ theory.50Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 30; Hansard, 26 Feb. 1849, vol. 102, cc. 1288-90. He continued to harass Palmerston through requests for diplomatic papers and expressed an increasingly contemptuous view of MPs knowledge of foreign affairs.51Hansard, 22 Mar. 1849, vol. 103, cc. 1152-3. For this, he was rebuked by the veteran radical Joseph Hume, who complained that Urquhart exaggerated the Russian threat and ignored the many occasions on which the House and Palmerston had censured the tsar and his policies, 22 Mar. 1849.52Ibid., c. 1153. On 10 May 1849 Urquhart seconded Drummond’s unsuccessful proposal for the House to reduce expenditure and revise taxation, saying that he had opposed the ‘imperfect and one-sided’ free trade policy of the government and expressing pleasure that the motion had emanated from the Derbyite opposition as it ‘was in accordance with the old Tory principles of government’.53Hansard, 10 May 1849, vol. 105, c. 220. His vote against the repeal of the navigation laws put further distance between himself and free trade radicals, 23 Apr. 1849.

Urquhart was abroad in the Near and Middle East for all of the 1850 session, but returned the following year.54Taylor, ‘Urquhart’. His most important contribution was his amendment during the committee stage of Russell’s ecclesiastical titles bill, 9 May 1851. Urquhart argued that the Pope’s re-establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in England, which had aroused such strong Protestant feeling, had been encouraged by the past policy of the Whigs.55Hansard, 9 May 1851, vol. 116, cc. 780-7. His amendment was defeated 280-201, support mainly coming from Derbyite Conservatives eager to condemn the government while maintaining their Protestant credentials.56Ibid., cc. 834-7. Urquhart mocked Cobden’s motion for international arbitration and reduced armaments as another example of the abstract reasoning of the Manchester school, 17 June 1851. In any case, he added, Palmerston’s policy was the cause of increased military expenditure.57Hansard, 17 June 1851, vol. 117, cc. 928-9. This prompted the foreign secretary to secure a rare retraction from his chief antagonist, who had mistakenly held Palmerston responsible for actions undertaken by his Conservative predecessors.58Ibid., c. 945. On 17 July 1851 Urquhart had another tussle with Palmerston when he unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the expenditure on British consular establishments, and on 7 August 1851 he complained that he was the only opponent of the income tax left in the House.59Hansard, 17 July 1851, 7 Aug. 1851, vol. 118, cc. 960-1, 1955.

Urquhart was absent throughout the 1852 session and retired at the general election that year. The outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854 against Russia was a mixed blessing for Urquhart. On the one hand, it seemed to vindicate his views and Russophobia now had much greater currency among the press, public and politicians. However, he opposed the war and had no sympathy with radicals who portrayed it as an ideological war against Russian tyranny.60Taylor, Decline of British radicalism, 239. His claim that Palmerston, who was widely and correctly regarded as one of the most bellicose members of Aberdeen’s coalition, had promoted the war to further Russian interests had little credibility.61Brown, Palmerston, 373; Anderson, Liberal state at war, 5. Even so, the war provided an opportunity for Urquhart to publicise his views and Olive Anderson has remarked that the year 1855 was ‘probably the most active and successful of Urquhart’s long life’, although Taylor has argued that the high watermark of Urquhartism came in 1857-8.62Anderson, Liberal state at war, 147. Cf. Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 24-5, 38-41. Ably assisted by his new bride Harriet (née Fortescue, 1824-89), Urquhart established a newspaper, the Free Press (1855-66), later renamed as the Diplomatic Review (1866-77), gave platform speeches and tapped working-class support through his Foreign Affairs Committees, which were particularly strong in northern England.63Anderson, Liberal state at war, 147-52; Shannon, ‘David Urquhart’, 250-61. It has been estimated that at its peak, there were 150 Urquhartite associations with 2-3,000 supporters.64Shannon, ‘David Urquhart’, 252. With some justice, the zealous and committed following he received for his charismatic leadership has been likened to a ‘revivalist sect’.65Anderson, Liberal state at war, 146. His popular support was sufficient to prompt Richard Cobden to write, 6 July 1855, ‘what a strange state of things we are brought to when that madman can have thousands to look upon him as a saviour!’66Richard Cobden to Joseph Sturge, 6 July 1855, Add. 43772, f. 72, qu. in Anderson, Liberal state at war, 149. As Taylor has shown, in 1857 the Indian mutiny and Palmerston’s bombardment of Canton gave an additional boost to the Urquhartite movement.67Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 24-5, 39-41.

Although Urquhart’s views and critique of secret diplomacy had some appeal for radicals in the mid-1850s, he was unable to gain sustained influence or support for a variety of reasons. Radicals who shared his Russophobia looked to Palmerston to promote a strong foreign policy which promoted liberal, constitutional values abroad, and were further alienated by Urquhart’s hostility to political reform and indifference to the nationalist movements in Poland and elsewhere.68Taylor, ‘Old radicalism’, 35; Taylor, Decline of British radicalism, 236. By the 1860s, the movement was in decline and after 1864 Urquhart lived abroad.69Taylor, ‘David Urquhart’. His periodicals continued to allege grave conspiracies and treason at the heart of the British government: in 1862 Chichester Fortescue was astonished to read an article that implied that Palmerston had poisoned Prince Albert.70Hewett, ‘… and Mr. Fortescue’, 191 (15 Jan. 1862).

Urquhart died in 1877, and as a number of historians have concluded, it was a pity that he wasted his talents, energies and expertise on a fruitless and wrong-headed campaign.71Taylor, ‘David Urquhart’; Webster, ‘Urquhart, Ponsonby and Palmerston’, 327. He was survived by Harriet and their children, one of whom, Francis Fortescue Urquhart (1868-1834), was an Oxford don.72M.C. Bishop, Memoir of Mrs Urquhart (1897); J. Jones, ‘Urquhart, Francis Fortescue (1868-1934)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Urquhart’s papers are held by Balliol College, Oxford, and his letters to Chichester Fortescue by Somerset Heritage Centre. Urquhart’s long career has been the subject of a 1964 doctoral thesis by Margaret Jenks.73M.H. Jenks, ‘The activities and influence of David Urquhart, 1833-56, with special reference to the affairs of the Near East’, Univ. of London Ph. D. thesis, 1964. Other important materials for any further study include Urquhart’s many books, pamphlets and articles.