A member of the Armagh gentry, Close was a staunch defender of the ‘Protestant Constitution’ and committed himself ‘to repel any hostile aggressions from without, or insidious attempts within, to tamper’ with it. In his eighteen years in Parliament he was, at least according to his supporters, ‘constant in his attendance upon his duties’ at Westminster, and ‘devoted himself with rare energy’ to the interests of his constituency.Belfast News-letter, 9 Apr. 1857, 11 Mar. 1864.
Close was descended from a family that had originated in Yorkshire. Richard Close had held a commission in the English army sent to Ireland by Charles I, and the family subsequently established itself in the counties of Monaghan and Antrim. His immediate forebears were soldiers and clergymen, and his father was a highly respected Armagh landowner and a former high sheriff of the county (1818).Burke’s Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland (1838), iii. 247-50; Gent. Mag. (1868), i. 122. Close’s great-uncle, Sir Barry Close (1756-1813), had distinguished himself in the army of the East India Company, while his first cousin, Rev. Maxwell Close (1822-1903), was a renowned geologist: N. Chancellor, ‘Close, Sir Barry’, Oxf. DNB, xii. 184-5; R. Bohan & L. Lunney, ‘Close, Maxwell’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, ii. 600. Close’s maternal uncle, Charles Brownlow (1795-1847), 1st Baron Lurgan, was a former Orangeman. He represented County Armagh from 1818 until 1832, during which time he unexpectedly embraced Catholic emancipation, reform and the disestablishment of the Irish Church, principles very much at odds with those of his nephew.Dod’s parliamentary companion (1858), 168; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 286-7; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 387-91.
Whilst at Eton Close won the Prince Consort’s prize for modern languages in 1845, and he graduated from Oxford University in 1849.Dod’s parliamentary companion (1858), 168; The Times, 31 May 1849, 29 May 1856. He entered politics soon afterwards. His father had been a leader of the anti-Catholic movement in Armagh, and was a close political ally of the veteran Conservative member for the county, Sir William Verner, whom he had proposed at successive elections between 1835 and 1852.HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 673; Belfast News-letter, 20 Jan. 1835, 19 July 1852. Close first staked a claim to a Conservative seat at County Armagh prior to the 1852 general election, and, subsequently impressed the constituency in the discharge of his duties as high sheriff in 1854.Freeman’s Journal, 17 June 1852; Belfast News-letter, 7 Apr. 1857. In January 1856 the Conservative party began to campaign for both of the county seats at the next general election and Close was approached to stand.Belfast News-letter, 14 Jan. 1856. Considered to be ‘thoroughly qualified, from personal and hereditary principle’, he was brought forward at the 1857 general election.Belfast News-letter, 23 Jan. 1856. Pledged to defend the constitution, he called for the war with China to be vigorously prosecuted without yielding ‘to the spurious sentiments of humanitarian philosophy’, and advocated a revision of the national education system, so as to include those whose ‘conscientious scruples’ had prevented their participation. He wished to see the ultimate abolition of income tax, which he regarded as ‘essentially a war tax’ and therefore a ‘galling impost’ in peacetime.Belfast News-letter, 9 Apr. 1857. He claimed to have ‘cordial support’ from both the county’s agricultural and its commercial and manufacturing interests, arguing that whatever tended ‘to the advancement of one’ was ‘conducive to the prosperity of the other’, and promised to support the construction of a proposed railway line from Armagh to Newry.Belfast News-letter, 9, 17 Apr. 1857. Close subsequently chaired a meeting of the line’s chief promoters: Belfast News-letter, 15 Oct. 1859. Although it was suggested that his attachment to ‘sound Protestant principles’ was ‘without bigotry or sectarian narrowness of mind’, he declared that he could not ‘conscientiously support’ a continuance of the Maynooth grant.Belfast News-letter, 16 Mar., 9 Apr. 1857. He was returned at the top of the poll and, while he rejected ‘blind allegiance’ to party leaders, his backers expected him to reflect the ‘unchanged Conservative principle and unbending Protestant spirit’ of his constituency.Belfast News-letter, 14 Jan. 1856, 9, 17 Apr. 1857.
Close was regarded as ‘one of the most promising’ of the newly-elected Irish members, and his political principles were thought to be ‘in perfect accordance’ with his colleague, Verner, who was then considered to be ‘one of the most ultra-Tories’ in the House.Morning Post, 7 May 1857; The Times, 13 Apr. 1857. Close voted against the second reading of the property qualification bill, 10 June 1857, the third reading of the oaths bill, 25 June, and the ballot, 30 June. True to the word of one of his backers, who had informed the electors that Close would not ‘join those noisy and prating babblers who are always obstructing the public business’, he does not appear to have spoken in the House in this period.Belfast News-letter, 20 Apr. 1857. His sole contribution to debate in the later phase of his career appears to have been a speech in support of the second reading of Gladstone’s Irish land bill: Hansard, 19 May 1881, vol. 261, c. 877.
At his return Close had promised the electors that he would ‘never join in a fractious combination of parties, for the purpose of ejecting Ministers from office, upon a question of foreign policy’. Yet, after backing Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder motion, 9 Feb. 1858, he promptly joined Lord Derby’s ‘charge’ against the ministry, and voted with the majority that defeated the bill, 19 Feb.Belfast News-letter, 9 Apr. 1857; A. Hawkins, Parliament, Party and the Art of Politics in Britain, 1855-59 (1987), 105-6. He also voted against the ministry’s government of India bill, 18 Feb. 1858. That April he sat on a committee on private bills concerning the establishment of water and gas works.PP 1857-8 (0.101) xlvi. 777. Having paired in favour of Thesiger’s amendment to prevent Jews entering from Parliament, 15 June 1857, he voted for Newdegate’s motion for their continued exclusion under the oaths bill, 22 Mar. 1858, and, having joined a deputation of MPs to Lord Derby to protest at the continued endowment of Maynooth College, he divided in favour of Spooner’s motion on the issue, 29 Apr., being one of 12 Irish MPs who did so again in February 1860.Dod’s parliamentary companion (1858), 168; Freeman’s Journal, 18 June 1857; Belfast News-letter, 28 Apr. 1858, 17 Feb. 1860. Close nevertheless claimed to be ‘the friend of salutary progress’ and ‘necessary reforms’, and had entered the Commons anxious to support any measure which might meet ‘the legitimate claims’ of Irish landlords and their tenants. However, he believed that anything resembling ‘penal legislation’ would be counter-productive, particularly in Ulster, where tenants generally enjoyed customary rights, and voted against the second reading of the Irish tenant compensation bill, 9 June 1858.Belfast News-letter, 9, 20 Apr. 1857. That December he was invested into the Apprentice Boys of Derry.Belfast News-letter, 10 Dec. 1858.
In March 1859 Close served on the select committee on the Irish lunatic poor bill, and a private bill committee concerning Welsh railway bills.PP 1859 sess. 1 (207) iii. 67; PP 1859 sess. 2 (0.36) xxvi. 127. He voted in favour of Lord Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. Having been, according to the somewhat fanciful claim of his backers, ‘scarcely absent from a single division’ at Westminster, Close promised to pursue the ‘same consistent and straightforward course’ as hitherto and was returned unopposed in his absence at the 1859 general election.Belfast News-letter, 9 May 1859. He was then suffering from a ‘very painful’ but ‘not serious’ illness.
Close backed the Derby ministry on the address, 10 June 1859, and voted for Conservative amendments criticising the commercial treaty between Britain and France in February 1860. That month he sat on a private bill committee on the London and North Western Railway.PP 1860 (0.122) lvi. 21. He voted against the repeal of paper duties, 12 Mar. 1860, and the borough franchise bill, 10 Apr. 1861, and continued his opposition to Maynooth, voting for Whalley’s motion against the grant, 4 June. He routinely divided against the abolition of church rates, including in the tied vote on the third reading of Sir John Trelawny’s bill, 19 June 1861. Although he had told electors that he was ‘anxious for safe and judicious retrenchment’, he did not divide on Stansfield’s resolution on the reduction of national expenditure, 3 June 1862.Belfast News-letter, 9 Apr. 1857. Unlike a substantial number of Conservatives, he voted against a motion for the state purchase of land for the exhibition scheme at Kensington, 15 June 1863, and divided in favour of the production of government correspondence concerning the ‘Birkenhead Rams’, 23 Feb. 1864. He cast his final vote of the session in favour of a supply amendment concerning the training of the yeomanry cavalry, 3 Mar. 1864. Shortly afterwards he took the Chiltern Hundreds, claiming that his ‘domestic affairs’ prevented him from paying sufficient attention to his parliamentary duties.CJ, cxix. 125; Belfast News-letter, 11 Mar. 1864. He did, however, appear at the hustings to propose the successful candidacy of his brother-in-law at the ensuing by-election, and assumed that duty again at the 1865 general election.Belfast News-letter, 24 Mar. 1864, 20 July 1865.
In 1867 Close inherited his father’s estate of almost 13,000 acres, three-quarters of which was situated near Newry in county Armagh, along with 3,600 acres in Queen’s county.Belfast News-letter, 18 Dec. 1867; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 97; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1871), 250. He was regarded as a generous resident landlord who ‘spent all his life among his tenants’, and had actively promoted a farmers’ society on the family estates from the mid-1850s.PP 1854 [1834] [1835] xxx Pt. i.1, xxx Pt. ii.1, at 792; The Times, 27 Jan. 1903.
With the backing of the county’s leading Orangemen, Close was returned in second place for County Armagh at the 1874 general election, and overcame a rift within the local Conservative party to narrowly secure re-election in 1880. He retired for the last time at the 1885 general election.B. Walker, Ulster Politics. The Formative Years, 1868-86 (1989), 100-1, 134-5. He died at Drumbanagher in January 1903 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Major Maxwell Archibald Close (1853-1935), an army officer who served as high sheriff of county Armagh in 1908.The Times, 8 Oct. 1853, 27 Jan. 1903, 2 Feb. 1935.
