VERNON, Granville Venables Harcourt (1792-1879), of Grove Park, Nottinghamshire and 5 Mansfield Street, London

Described by the fourth duke of Newcastle as ‘Venomous Vernon’, this member was initially a staunch supporter of Reform but his long-standing opposition to Irish church appropriation saw him move inexorably towards the Conservative party.1Unhappy reactionary: the diaries of the fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1822-1850 (2003), ed. R.A. Gaunt, 65-8. The seventh son of the archbishop of York, Vernon had been given the sinecure of official principal of the chancery court of York by his father in 1818. Appearing before the ecclesiastical commissioners in 1830, he had revealed that his income from this position averaged £1,200 per annum, and throughout his parliamentary career, he insisted that a reduction in church revenues was justified if it led to more efficient administration.2Black Bk. (1832), 126-7; PP 1831-2 (199), xxiv. 115-16.

Vernon had sat for Aldborough from 1815 until 1820, when his increasing loyalty to the Whigs cost him the support of the borough’s patron, the duke of Newcastle. His marriage to the daughter and co-heir of Anthony Hardolph Eyre, MP for Nottinghamshire 1803-12, had drawn him into East Retford politics, and after an abortive attempt in 1830, he was elected for the borough the following year as an uncompromising Reformer.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 496. Styling himself as one of the reform bill’s ‘cordial friends’, he consistently backed Grey’s ministry on all major issues.4Ibid., 497. In 1831, following his father’s succession to the Oxfordshire estates of the 3^rd Earl Harcourt, he took the additional name of Harcourt, though unlike the rest of his family, he adopted it only as a Christian name.5Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 Dec. 1879.

Re-elected at the top of the poll in 1832, Vernon, who was an occasional attender, maintained his loyalty to Grey’s ministry on most major issues.6R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834), 20-21, 42-3. He voted for Irish coercion, 11 Mar. 1833, and was against scrutiny of the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834. On ecclesiastical matters, however, he often took an independent line. He opposed the appropriation clause in the Irish church reform bill, 6 May 1833, and voted against Althorp’s motion to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834.

Reflecting his position as chancellor of the diocese of York, Vernon devoted the majority of his speeches in the Commons to ecclesiastical matters. His contributions to debate underlined his unwavering loyalty to the established church, but also revealed an equivocal attitude towards dissenters. He gave cautious support to the Whig government’s Irish church temporalities bill, explaining that the measure would stabilise the established church, but warned that it would be unwise to apply funds ‘to any other but ecclesiastical purposes’, 13 May 1833. Presenting a petition against the admission of dissenters to universities, he stated that although ‘he had long advocated the cause of dissenters’, he believed that universities should remain sanctuaries of the established church, 27 May 1834. He did, though, suggest that at Oxford and Cambridge, dissenters could matriculate, but only graduate if, in the interim, they had converted to the established church.7Hansard, 27 May 1834, vol. 23, cc. 1365-7.

At the 1835 general election Vernon stood nominally as a Reformer, but his address was noticeably ambiguous. He aimed his scorn not at Peel’s controversially installed ministry, but at the ‘clamorous agitators, whose rash propositions’ had obstructed Grey’s ministry. He insisted that he would watch the Conservative government with a ‘jealous eye’, but added that ‘I will give no factious opposition to any government when its measures shall conduce to the welfare of my constituents, and the improvement of the institutions of the empire’.8Parliamentary test book (1835), 162-3. He was re-elected at the top of the poll.

Although listed as a ‘Reformer’ in the 1835 Parliamentary test book, and not mentioned in the Examiner’s article of February 1835 on the Commons’ ‘doubtful men’, Vernon, probably to the surprise of his constituents, voted with Peel on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835.9Ibid.; Examiner, 8 Feb. 1835. He also opposed Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which caused the collapse of the short-lived Conservative government. Thereafter he followed Peel into the division lobby on most major issues.10In R. Stewart’s The foundation of the Conservative party 1830-1867 (1978), 374-78, Vernon is listed as a ‘Reformer who became Conservative by 1837’, but has been omitted from his list of ‘non-Conservatives who voted for Manners Sutton’. Stewart does not list him a member of the Derby Dilly.

Vernon continued to devote his energies to ecclesiastical issues. In May 1836 he successfully moved the Parlethorpe chapelry bill, which proposed to allow the 2^nd Earl Manvers (his brother-in-law) to endow the local chapelry and create a separate benefice.11Hansard, 6 May 1836, vol. 33, cc. 630-3. On the church rate question, he was zealously opposed to abolition and maintained his equivocal attitude towards dissenters. In a lengthy speech peppered with biblical language, he praised ‘those excellent Dissenters who have confined their differences from Establishment within the bounds of legitimate dissent’, but added that ‘an earnest solicitude about temporal matters has too frequently interposed to interrupt, on their part, that holy and auspicious rivalry’, 13 Mar. 1837. On the proposed reform of church leases, he gave his staunch backing to the ecclesiastical commissioners, attacked Lord John Russell for deluding dissenters into thinking that the ministry had a ‘good and safe plan’, and articulated his astonishment at ‘the ignorance which some hon. Members had displayed in the course of the debates on this subject’, 12 June 1837. This was not a charge that could have been levelled at Vernon, who between 1837 and 1839 served on successive select committees on church leases, where his assiduous questioning of witnesses reflected his mastery of the subject.12PP 1837 (538), vi. 626; PP 1837-38 (692), ix. 2; PP 1839 (247), viii. 238.

At the 1837 general election Vernon overcame considerable local opposition to his conversion to the Conservative party and was returned in second place, 78 votes ahead of his Liberal opponent.13Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 9 Dec. 1879. By now an irregular attender, he remained loyal to Peel on most major issues and consistently opposed the Liberal government’s reforms of the Irish church. He did, though, join Peel in supporting their ecclesiastical duties bill, believing that a reduction in the revenue of ‘cathedral establishments’ was justified because ‘one or two canons or prebendaries could just as well perform the not heavy duties incumbent upon those officers as four’, 6 Apr. 1840. He spoke in defence of the corn laws, arguing that repeal would not only destroy a ‘vast extent of capital’, but also throw ‘an enormous mass of population’ into ‘the greatest misery’, 3 Apr. 1840. He voted for Peel’s motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s ministry, 4 June 1841.

Returned unopposed at the 1841 general election, Vernon continued to follow Peel into the division lobbies. He backed the sliding scale on corn duties, 9 Mar. 1842, and opposed motions to redress Irish grievances, 12 July 1843, 23 Feb. 1844. He gave his vocal support to Peel’s decision to maintain income tax, arguing that the premier deserved the thanks of the country for taking ‘vigorous measures to meet the difficulty, instead of temporizing and producing greater evils hereafter’, 12 Apr. 1842. Intervening in the debate on the ecclesiastical courts bill, which proposed to transfer ‘inferior’ ecclesiastical jurisdictions to one larger tribunal, Vernon reiterated his belief that reductions in revenue for the administration of church duties were acceptable, even if, as was his own case in York, he would have less funds to ‘confer essential favours upon many of my clergy’, 28 Apr. 1843.

Hitherto a defender of the corn laws, in March 1846 Vernon backed Peel’s decision to repeal the legislation. Justifying his conversion, Vernon stated that:

He had always considered that a moderate fixed duty was the best for the agriculturists; but he had been compelled, like all public men, to act with a great body: it was no use to take up an "insulated" position when there was a vast number of important questions which attached a man to his party.14Hansard, 23 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 1465-6. Vernon duly voted for repeal 27 Mar. and 15 May 1846.

Vernon’s conversion to repeal caused outrage among a significant portion of his constituents. His local position was further undermined by his support for the permanent endowment of Maynooth college, for which he voted 18, 21 May 1845. Following the decision of the local party leadership to bring forward a Protectionist candidate, he retired at the dissolution in 1847. In a surprise move, he rose to speak at the ensuing East Retford nomination, claiming his ‘right as an elector to be heard’. In an unapologetic address, he insisted that as the permanency of the Maynooth grant was ‘as certain as the existence of the British parliament itself’, it was wise to give the additional sum to improve the education of the Irish poor. He repeated his justification for supporting corn law repeal, and in a final flourish, declared that he had always:

endeavoured to do his duty to his country, whether or not his former constituents felt that he had failed to do it to them.15Daily News, 29 July 1847.

Following his retirement, Vernon devoted his energies to the East Retford board of guardians, which he chaired until 1860, and his position of chancellor of the diocese of York, which he held until his death.

Vernon died at his seat at Grove Park, Nottinghamshire, in December 1879.16The Times, 10 Dec. 1879. His estate was valued at under £140,000.17England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administrations, 1858-1966, 12 Jan. 1888. He was succeeded by his only surviving son, Rev. Edward Hardolph Harcourt Vernon, prebend of Lincoln. His eldest son, Granville Edward Harcourt Vernon (1816-1861), had served as Liberal MP for Newark, 1852-57. Although there is no single collection of his papers, a number of letters in the Newcastle and Portland archives at the University of Nottingham relate to his political career.18Nottingham Univ. Lib., Special Collections, Ne C.