An expert on admiralty, ecclesiastical and international law, Nicholl had been brought into Parliament as a government supporter in 1802, and had been returned for Great Bedwyn since 1807 on the interest of the Bruce family, Barons Ailesbury. Nothing had come of his aspirations to represent his native Glamorgan, where he had purchased and improved the Merthyr Mawr estate and was a generous benefactor to the new county town of Bridgend, but he exerted considerable influence in the county and Cardiff Boroughs. Like his friend and mentor, the admiralty judge Sir William Scott*, Nicholl’s high church principles and reputation as an astute parliamentarian and effective speaker carried weight beyond his college of St. John’s, and he was considered a likely candidate for one of the Oxford University seats. His speech on proposing Charles Abbot for the Speakership in 1812 was considered a masterpiece, and he had been the leader of the Commons Lord Castlereagh’s choice to nominate the government candidate Charles Manners Sutton as Abbot’s successor in 1817. An erstwhile Pittite, he tended to combine his ministerialist sympathies and scholarly expositions of orders in council with vociferous opposition to parliamentary reform and Catholic relief and promoting legislation against clandestine marriages.
Nicholl was at the privy council meeting, 30 Jan. 1820, which issued the proclamation of George IV, and he attended George III’s funeral and interment.
Nicholl’s attention now focused on the forthcoming by-election for Oxford University, where Scott’s elevation to the peerage as Baron Stowell had produced a vacancy. It soon emerged that should he stand and fail, Ailesbury, who refused to return his only son John Nicholl† in his place, might not bring him back in for Bedwyn.
the chancellor and Sir William Scott, doctors’ commons, his own college of St. John’s, All Souls College, Corpus, all the leading people connected with Christ Church, such as Lloyd, Goodenough, and Bull, etc. (the dean excepted, who belongs to Heber), Queen’s and Magdalen Colleges and the greater part of the residents.
Add. 51659.
His committee, chaired by the bursar designate of St. John’s, Thomas Wintle, was soon active and secured promises of some 740 votes, but Nicholl delayed applying for the Chiltern Hundreds until 18 Aug. He vacated at Great Bedwyn, 20 Aug., only two days before the Oxford poll. He predicted that it would end on the 23rd, when, if unsuccessful, he proposed canvassing Bedwyn to deter any rivals.
Nicholl attended Lord Londonderry’s eve of session briefing, 4 Feb. 1822. The Bedwyn writ was moved on the 5th, and, after a busy social round, which included engagements at the Travellers’ Club, and the Bedwyn by-election, he resumed his seat, 15 Feb.
my time (like yours) has been lately so much occupied by official business as not to have left me leisure to look into the matter with the care necessary to render any useful assistance. I must also frankly add, that a certain part of the House is so little disposed even to allow, much less to listen to ‘impartial discussion’ upon the subject, that I really have not nerves sufficient to encounter such an audience.
Ibid. 30 Apr., 10 May 1822; Merthyr Mawr mss L/205/36, 37.
Nicholl, who had also ceased to contribute to debates on parliamentary reform, delivered his judgment in the Sapha v. Atkinson case, 5 June, and sat through the debate on Irish tithes on the 13th, but was not listed in the majority against inquiry, 19 June 1822.
Nicholl was at the Speaker’s reception, 8 Feb., attended the debates on ordnance reductions, 19, 20 Feb., Lord John Russell’s parliamentary reform resolutions, 20 Feb., and the revenue, 21 Feb., and moved the third reading of the Marriage Act amendment bill, 4 Mar. 1823. Writing on the 11th to his son in Rome, he noted that he had
attended rather regularly since the term was over. We have had some interesting debates, which ended very triumphantly on the part of ministers ... Canning has hitherto been very prudent, judicious, and conciliatory in leading, and if he proceeds on the same course and is not hurried off his guard by temper, matters will go on well, and he will gain in the confidence of the House. He has an excellent second in Peel, and some circumstances which came out in the discussion on Wednesday on the subject of Orange lodges in Ireland strongly impressed the House with an opinion of Peel’s judgement and caution, whilst secretary in Ireland. The attack upon the Orange lodges was evidently intended to throw down the apple of discord among the administration on account of their differing opinions on the Catholic question, but it went off without producing of the expected embarrassment. It fully appeared that the object of the whole government here is to promote conciliation. I still doubt however whether some of the late measures of the Irish government have been calculated to produce that effect. They have tended to gratify the Catholics but to irritate the Protestants, and irritation in either party must lead to anything but conciliation ... The Protestant party in Ireland is too strong to be put down by the government.
Nicholl diary, 8 Feb.-11 Mar. 1823; Merthyr Mawr mss F/51/4.
He was in the government’s minority against inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr., and was included on the select committee on trade legislation on account of his expertise. Speaking on the Irish tithes composition bill, 30 May, he said that he was not against its committal, but did object to the inference in the preamble ‘that a similar measure would be expedient for England’, and it was accordingly amended. So powerful was his defence of the rights of property and his criticism of those who assumed that the church’s holdings were public assets at the disposal of the state, that the chancellor of the exchequer Robinson had to intervene to try to allay his doubts over the bill, which received royal assent, 19 July.
The old distinctions of Whig and Tory so far as principles are concerned no longer exist. Divine right, passive obedience and non-resistance are doctrines quite extinct. We are all old Whigs. Political parties are now divided rather into men and measures than any great differences by principles, except perhaps a few ultras and radicals, and you may recollect my stating to you an opinion that you would do wisely to abstain very cautiously from committing yourself to any party or set of men, until you had a full opportunity by considerable experience of forming a deliberate judgement which set of measures generally pursued or recommended by contending parties were upon the whole most conducive to the real interests of the country. For if once you became a party man, you were no longer quite as independent, and perfect independence should in no degree be sacrificed but on most mature consideration guiding the judgement.
Ibid. L/205/7.
Nicholl was on the steering committee prior to the founding of King’s College, London early in 1824, and the master of the rolls Sir Thomas Plumer requested his opinion on the cases of Reynolds v. Richards, Alexander v. Allen and White v. Lequense, the last requiring expertise in Channel Island law which only he and Stowell could provide.
mainly candid ... doing justice to the course the lord chancellor [Eldon] had pursued, yet ... engaging not to stretch for full investigation in order to remedy the evil by ascertaining what the cause of it was on the constitution or the administration of the court ... Brougham violent in his attack against persons giving the chancellor credit for suavity of manners in order to abuse him in every other respect.
Ibid. 6-14 June 1825.
Before leaving on 7 July 1825 for Glamorgan, where his advice had been sought on the dispute generated by the appointment of a non-lawyer, William Bruce Knight, as chancellor of Llandaff, he excused himself from that day’s privy council meeting on the Douai College case, having submitted his ‘opinion that no compensation was necessary for British subjects’.
only upon the statement that on account of error in the former petition the time for presenting the petition would be lost and that it was neither to preclude me from opposing parts of the bill, nor make me responsible in any degree for the costs of soliciting the bill.
Cambrian, 29 Jan.; Nicholl diary, 16 Feb. 1825; E. Ball, ‘Glamorgan: A Study of the Co. and the Work of its Members, 1825-1835’ (Univ. of London Ph.D. thesis, 1965), 101.
Nicholl had retained a high profile at St. John’s College meetings;
Nicholl heard Canning’s speech at the pre-session dinner, 20 Nov. 1826.
A draft application among his papers indicates that Nicholl himself sought the post when the duke of Wellington, as the new premier, appointed his nephew Herbert Jenner at the duke of Clarence’s request in January 1828.
Nothing could have gone better than the debate of last night. The justification was so complete that even Harvey ... was bound to allow that there was not the slightest ground for imputing blame to you. In fine, the petition was not allowed to lie upon the table, and Hume was obliged to eat his words. If he had divided the House, he would not have had more than one, or at the most two, to support him. You did perfectly right to go into the country, first as showing no courtesy to ... [Hume], and lastly as giving your friends more liberty of speech than if you had been present.
Merthyr Mawr mss L/209, Hart Davis to Nicholl, 18 July 1828.
Lord Colchester and the new archbishop of Canterbury William Howley made similar remarks.
Van Mildert, now bishop of Durham, was among the churchmen who looked to Nicholl to oppose Catholic relief when it was conceded by Wellington in 1829.
If he [Peel] could justify the change of course and produce such a measure as the gracious speech from the throne recommended, ‘a measure consistent with the full and permanent security of our establishment in church and state’, the present petitioners asked no more. He despaired of seeing such a measure; but he trusted that those who entertained the same opinions would calmly, but firmly watch the progress of the measures, and endeavour, as far as lay in their power, to preserve (as the petition prayed) the Protestant constitution inviolate.
He was ‘by no means convinced of the propriety of removing Mr. Peel from the representation of the University’, and reluctant to declare for his opponent Sir Robert Inglis* at the ensuing by-election.
Nicholl did not vote on Lord Blandford’s reform schemes, 2 June 1829, 18 Feb. 1830, and apparently stayed away when the East Retford disfranchisement bill was considered, 11 Feb., 5, 15 Mar.; but he paired against the proposed enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb. 1830. Consulted on 8 Apr. by Peel, prior to the concerted opposition attack over the Terceira ‘blunder’, he ruled that in law
the duty of a neutral government to prevent ‘fitting and equipping’ in a neutral port, by either belligerent, is strongly insisted upon, together with the right of stopping vessels so fitted and equipped from sailing; and if, I recollect, it is maintained that if such a vessel should get to sea, make a capture and bring it back into the neutral state, it would be the duty of the neutral to seize the captured vessel, and restore it to the owner. The fallacy of the argument in the Lords seemed to be the attempt to consider the turning away the vessel from Terceira as a separate transaction instead of keeping it connected with, and as a continuation of, the circumstances that had previously taken place in this country. For perhaps it must be admitted that out of those previous circumstances alone arose the right of preventing the vessels proceeding to that island.
Merthyr Mawr mss L/205/24.
Nicholl did not speak, nor did he divide with opposition when their resolutions were defeated by 191-78, 28 Apr. He voted against introducing a two-year mandatory probation period before permitting licensing for on-consumption under the sale of beer bill, 1 July, and against a proposed reduction in judges’ salaries, 7 July 1830. Before the dissolution precipitated by the death of George IV, he was called on to discuss his political views afresh with Ailesbury, who had found it difficult to adjust to post-emancipation Toryism and anticipated opposition at Marlborough. He recalled that when first recommended to Bedwyn
the only stipulation required of me was that I should not go into a systematic opposition to the king’s government. This accorded with my own feelings and loyalty to the crown, founded on a strong conviction. In the times we were living our admirable constitution was exposed to more risk of being overbalanced by the increased weight of the democratic branch of it than by the influence of the crown. In this opinion I still remain and I believe your lordship does not differ. As a firm friend to the constitution both in church and state, I have always been decidedly opposed to Catholic emancipation and to parliamentary reform, but now Roman Catholic emancipation is carried it seems to me prudent to submit to the experiment with a good grace, and to make the best of things as they are, at least for the present.
Ibid. L/184/2.
Following separate discussions with Ailesbury and Sir Henry Halford, Nicholl waited ‘unofficially’ on Wellington at Apsley House, 15 July, when it was understood that ‘the treasury neither excited nor approved the interference in the Marlborough election’. Nicholl had let it be known that he, and by implication Ailesbury, hoped ‘that by conciliatory steps, the Tories who had opposed the bill might be brought back to the support of the government’.
Returned again for Bedwyn, Nicholl apparently declined to propose Manners Sutton as Speaker in the new Parliament.
Nicholl’s connections, experience and outstanding legal skills served him well. Despite his advancing years and increasing deafness, accusations of nepotism and the aspirations of younger men, he was made a judge of the admiralty court in 1833 and retained his influence in the church courts while the Liberals were in office.
He was the friend of nearly all the good and great; and I never heard of his having an enemy. If, as is probable, he was aware, even for a short time, of his approaching end, it must have been a consolation to him to reflect that the energies of his mind were employed in the service of his country and of the church up to the last.
Merthyr Mawr mss F/58/1-17.
His will, dated 13 Sept. 1830, was proved under £140,000 and executed by his son, who inherited the estate in fee simple, with all household effects and portraits. He made bequests to his daughters and 15 grandchildren, and a trust fund administered by the judge William Adam† and the king’s proctor Iltyd Nicholl provided for his unmarried daughter Mary Anne (d. 1844).