VERNON, Leicester Viney Samwell (1798-1860), of Upton Hall, Northants. and Ardington Hall, Wantage, Berks.

Like his older and more prominent brother Sir Frederick Smith, Vernon was born to a military career and attended Woolwich prior to taking a commission in the royal engineers, after an initial spell in the West India Regiment. Too late to see action against France, he was stationed at Gibraltar until 1823 and subsequently in the West Indies under Sir Charles Felix Smith, where ‘he distinguished himself by saving the lives of several persons from a wreck at Barbadoes during a storm’ and ‘rendered many services to the town of Barbadoes’, including the rebuilding of its gaol, earning him an official vote of thanks from the House of Assembly. He also served on the Irish staff, first as aide-de-camp to his father, who commanded the third battalion of the royal artillery, and later as assistant deputy quartermaster general, 1842-49.1Morning Post, 24 Aug. 1815, 30 June 1823; Journal of the British Archaeological Association (1861), xvii. 184-5. On half-pay from 1840, Vernon acquired a number of substantial landed estates through inheritance, including those of his wife’s uncle Colonel Samwell at Upton Hall and his uncle Robert Vernon, donor of the famous ‘Vernon gallery’, at Ardington Hall. Both legacies required alterations to his name.2Adams’ Parliamentary Handbook (1854), 189.

In 1853 Vernon, as he was known from 1850, agreed to come forward in defence of the family’s honour at Chatham, where his brother had been unseated for bribery and accused of dishonesty by an election inquiry. Aided by his unrepentant brother’s cronies and standing as a ‘liberal Conservative’, evidently without intended irony, he narrowly defeated Sir Frederick’s former opponent in another highly venal campaign.3Nottinghamshire Guardian, 31 Mar.; Morning Post, 7 Apr. 1853. A petition against his return alleging bribery was presented, 8 July, following which Vernon announced that he would not ‘defend’ his election, only for the electors to successfully take up his cause and present a counter-petition.4The Standard, 27 July, 7 Sept. 1853.

A steady contributor to debates on military matters, but far less prominent in the lobbies, where he voted in just 11 out of a possible 119 divisions during his first session,5Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. at the end of 1853 Vernon was ridiculed by Punch for producing a translation of the French drama ‘The Lancers’ during his first stint in the House.6L. Vernon, The lancers: a drama in three acts adapted from the French (1853). ‘With every one of the great questions of the next parliament unstudied by you’, demanded a mock interrogator, ‘why do I find you wasting your time in translating French plays?’7Punch, xxv (1853), 214. When present Vernon generally supported the Conservatives, though he was not beyond pursuing his own line. Listed as an ‘independent Conservative’ in 1854, he supported the Aberdeen ministry over India in his first known vote, 30 June 1853, but thereafter became increasingly disaffected with the coalition’s handling of the Crimean war and helped vote them out of office on the issue, 29 Jan. 1855.8Adam’s Parliamentary Handbook (1854), 138. He steadily opposed the secret ballot, but had no qualms about voting with the radicals on issues such as administrative reform, 18 June 1855, and naval reform, 7 Feb. 1856, apparently winning ‘friends and admirers in all parts of the House’.9Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Apr. 1860. His Dod entries allude to his support for the abolition of church rates, but his only known votes on this issue were in the hostile minorities, 13 July 1859, 8 Feb. 1860.10Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1860), 301-2.

Most of Vernon’s lengthy speeches dealt with army issues, most notably those affecting his own corps of the royal engineers. Rarely passing up an opportunity to praise their efficacy and professionalism, he held that a larger peacetime establishment of sappers would have prevented substantial military losses in the Crimea, saving money and men, and took a keen interest in the effects of ordnance reforms on the ‘scientific corps’.11See Hansard, 24 April 1856, vol. 141, cc. 1444-50; 2 Aug. 1855, vol. 139, cc. 1675-77. A stickler for military protocol, he took exception to the appointment of Sir Hew Ross as lieutenant general of the ordnance over the head of Sir John Burgoyne, commander of the royal engineers, 2 Aug. 1854, asking why a junior officer had been placed in command of a senior officer, contrary to the custom of the service and at the commencement of a great war? His views on promotion, including his defence of commissions by purchase and abhorrence of that ‘slough of despond, a seniority corps’, appeared to put him at odds with contemporary wisdom. But citing his own career, 24 Apr. 1856, he explained how he ‘had served in every climate, wherever the drum beat he had followed; yet he was twenty-four years a lieutenant, and he was forty years of age before he was a captain’. ‘During that period’, he noted, ‘his pay was something less than that received by the driver of a Paddington omnibus. So much for the seniority system.’

Another regular refrain was inadequate supervision of government contracts. Recalling his long experience in dealing with wily contractors, 19 June 1855, Vernon moved for papers on the construction of a shot manufactory at Woolwich by a private firm, dryly observing that the army had recently acquired ‘contract sheepskin coats, which the soldiers could not get on’, ‘contract ammunition boots, not worth wearing’ and ‘contract trenching tools, which would not break ground’. It may have been comments like this that explain his portrayal as ‘funny Captain Leicester Vernon’ in a recollection of the 1855 Commons.12The Ladies’ Companion, xvii. (1860), 184. The ‘playful humour’ and ‘happy and terse style of expression’ remarked on by later observers, however, probably emerged subsequently.13Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Apr. 1860. An article of 1860 recounted how:

He was not a bad speaker, but was chiefly remarkable for having latterly adopted a dramatic, humorous manner and style. This change in a man of the age of 62 was not a little curious. It, however, did not sit easy upon him, for it was evidently too artificial.14Illustrated Times, 21 Apr. 1860.

There was little obvious wit in his harangue against the creation of the army works corps, with its inflated salaries and inability to bear arms, 3 Mar. 1856, or his exposure of the ‘evil consequences’ that had arisen from ‘making the military departments of the ordnance subservient to the civil’, 8 Apr. 1856.15Hansard, 3 Mar. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 1726-68; 8 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, cc. 658-63. On 12 Feb. 1857, ‘with his usual zeal for military interests’, he launched a solemn attack on the board of control’s removal of General Sir George Pollock from the direction of the East India Company, protesting at the treatment of such ‘a distinguished soldier’, who had been responsible for the relief of Jellalabad.16United Service Magazine, lxxxiii (1857), 422; Hansard, 12 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, cc. 577-89 Vernon ‘deserves great credit for drawing attention to an interesting military question’, commented the United Services Magazine after some carping in the press about Pollock’s precise role. ‘The exploits of our Indian officers ... are too little thought of, and too soon forgotten’.17United Service Magazine, lxxxiii (1857), 422. By now firmly opposed to the Palmerston ministry, he voted to censure its policy over Canton , 3 Mar. 1857.

At the ensuing general election Vernon initially offered again for Chatham, but finding his opposition to Palmerston had made him hugely unpopular in the naval base, he made way for his brother, who took a different line.18Morning Post, 9 Mar.; Morning Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1857. Parachuted ‘at the eleventh hour’ into Berkshire, where he was ‘a large landed proprietor’, he stood as a ‘Liberal-Conservative’, denouncing Palmerston’s ‘most unjustifiable’ proceedings in Canton and declaring his support for ‘cheap tea, cheap sugar and a reduction of the malt tax’. He was narrowly defeated.19Morning Post, 1 Apr. 1857. At the general election two years later his ‘gallant conduct’ in trying to oust the Liberal candidate was rewarded with an uncontested return as a ‘warm supporter of Conservative principles’ and ‘progressive reformer’. Addressing this apparent ambiguity on the hustings, he promised to support parliamentary reform, but not household suffrage or the ballot, which he considered unmanly and un-English.20Standard, 24 Mar., Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 7 May; Derby Mercury, 11 May 1859.

Vernon made a number of substantial contributions to debate during his final session, marking himself out as an ‘active and able’ MP of ‘undoubted promise’.21Morning Post, 17 Apr.; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Apr. 1860. In a speech rich with irony, 10 June 1859, he ridiculed the motives of those supporting the no confidence motion against Derby’s ministry and scoffed at complaints that ministers had unduly influenced the elections, noting how John Bright’s brother-in-law, the Wakefield MP William Henry Leatham, ‘must be connected with the Humane Society, for he believed he had actually gone to the extent of paying £20 for a cat, a tolerably large sum for a four-legged mousetrap’, during his election campaign.22Hansard, 10 June 1859, vol. 154, cc. 343-51. In a more staid performance he attacked the irregularity and wisdom of an order relieving General Sir John Burgoyne of the royal engineers from his command as inspector general of fortifications, 22 July 1859, warning that there was ‘much dissatisfaction’ with the ‘growing disposition to set aside senior officers’.23Hansard, 22 July 1859, vol. 155, cc. 273-5. He defended the practice of military flogging, 16 Feb. 1860, stressing that those who belonged to the service were not ‘naturally cruel’ and would be ‘happy if some other description of punishment’ could be found to keep order among those ‘who were not the best part of the community’.24Hansard, 16 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 1161-91. ‘Vernon was not unskilful in defending an untenable clause’, noted the Liberal diarist Trelawny. ‘His points were the difficulty of devising a substitute and the frequent capital punishments’ employed abroad.25The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), ed. T. A. Jenkins, 100-1.

Revisiting the theme of promotion, 6 Mar. 1860, Vernon railed against a ‘popular’ motion to extend the seniority system to the rest of the army, noting that as ‘senior officers could not be persuaded to die for the purpose of promoting junior officers ... promotion must be very slow’ and denying that ‘the effect of purchase was to admit rich blockheads to promotion, and to keep back the poor but efficient officer’. ‘Look at the successes of our armies, where purchase was the rule’, he declared, ‘Napoleon, the so-called soldier of merit, sank for ever before the genius of Wellington, the so-called soldier of purchase’. Aided by his brother, he succeeded in having the motion withdrawn.26Hansard, 6 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 17-68. His last known speech, which ‘amused and somewhat puzzled the House’ with its ‘dramatic air and manner’, was ‘devoted to a chivalrous defence of the admiralty’ under the Derby ministry and its handling of the Dover-Packet contract, 27 Mar. 1860.27Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Apr. 1860. Citing his service on the related committee, to which he had been appointed, 12 July 1859, he derided the idea of penalising the contractor when the charges of corruption against the late administration had ‘entirely broken down’, but teased that:

Parliamentary Committees cannot be expected to sit from the 14th June to the 11th of August for nothing, in a room bounded on the one side by the ill-smelling Thames, and on the other by a lobby redolent of the compound of villainous smells proceeding from the crowd of witnesses in attendance for nothing. Victimized ourselves, we sought to make other victims.28Hansard, 27 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1331-43.

His motion for upholding the contract, however, was lost 117-162.29Ibid. c. 419. He voted in the minority against government orders taking precedence in the House on Thursdays, 2 Apr. 1860.

During the Easter recess Vernon, shortly after leaving the Carlton Club, died in ‘peculiarly distressing’ circumstances. Struggling to calm his carriage’s horses in St. James’s Street, ‘he fell but soon recovered himself’. Returning to his Cumberland Street residence by cab he complained of chest pains and on arrival ‘breathed his last’, having ruptured a blood vessel to his heart. He was widely eulogised by politicians, military colleagues and by the British Archaeological Association for his services as a local vice-president and a ‘scholar’.30Gent. Mag. (1860), i. 534; Journal of the British Archaeological Association (1861), xvii. 184-5. More irreverently, it was observed:

“Poor Vernon, we shall greatly miss him”, was the common exclamation; but alas this is a mistake, for in this busy scene, this rolling, whirling tide, nobody is missed. When a death like this happens we just utter an exclamation and a passing lament and then pass on to “the orders of the day” as if nothing had happened.31Illustrated Times, 21 Apr. 1860.

His will, which was left unadministered by his wife, was proved under £1,973, 23 June 1882, when probate passed to his only son Bryan Viney Douglas Vernon (1830-86), a lieutenant colonel in the Hertfordshire militia. On his son’s decease much of it still remained unadministered.