Stuart Wortley, who as a small boy had the ‘great treat’ of becoming his mother’s ‘bedfellow’ when his father was away, passed much of his childhood in Yorkshire, under the supervision of his maternal grandmother Lady Erne. When he was six his mother admitted that ‘he is too like myself in many respects not to make me feel uncomfortable as to his future temper and feelings’.
Wortley has plain good sense, a correct taste, but a total want of imagination. His desire of knowledge and his industry in procuring it is very great: but when he has got it it produces nothing, for he is so straightforward that what is not matter of fact appears to him falsehood. He has an excellent heart and a clear understanding, but has a brusquerie and coldness of manner that will make him unpopular.
Add. 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 2 Oct. [1823]; Fox Jnl. 175, 182.
Like his father, he voted with Lord Liverpool’s ministry against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb., and the abolition of flogging, 5 Mar. 1824. Canning, the foreign secretary, to whom he was drawn politically, reckoned that his own speech in support of the aliens bill next day kept Stuart Wortley, who had ‘half a mind’ to ‘go astray’, in the government lobby.
He sits for ages quite silent with his head upon his shoulder, looking comfortable, but like a bird at roost ... He is a selfish person, and for a young man wonderfully so. Yet I cannot make him quite out, for he is more ready to do anything, go anywhere than anybody. I think him to begin with uncommonly pleasing. He is so refined, has such an accomplished mind. There is such manliness and good sense, such a freedom from all the vanities and littleness of his kind. On the other hand, I never saw anyone make so little effort to surmount any little cloud of humeur, chagrin or ennui for the benefit of the society he is in, and he never puts his best leg foremost to promote the satisfaction or amusement of those he is with ... If he is not in the vein there is no feeling of civility, good fellowship, or what is called helping a lame dog over a stile that will induce him to move a finger.
He was in the Commons, ‘fresh from the steam vessel’, on 6 May.
I have been doing nothing but sit at home excepting a few dinners since I returned, and feel no sort of inclination to squeeze into the beau monde again. The House of Commons will be up in a fortnight and I am come in so late for the session and am so behindhand in everything that is going on that I have hardly been there.
Add. 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 25 June 1825.
In August he assumed ‘the solid and sturdy character of a magistrate’ in Yorkshire. Two months later, in ‘ecstasy’, he informed Fox of his impending marriage to the Harrowbys’ daughter Lady Georgiana Ryder (whom Fox had once described as ‘sensible, hard-headed, severe, vain, and spoiled by the admiration of all the many that worship’) after a courtship ‘of three weeks’, although it was ‘an old attachment ... on his part’. While he was said to be ‘desperately in love’, it was generally believed that she was ‘not a bit in love with him’. The wedding took place shortly before Christmas 1825 and the honeymoon was spent at Trentham, the Staffordshire home of the marquess of Stafford, Lady Georgiana’s uncle.
Stuart Wortley was chosen to move the address, 2 Feb. 1826, in his parliamentary debut. Briefly straying from the traditional formula, he suggested that the current commercial distress was ‘temporary and ... the worst had passed over’. Denison thought he ‘spoke sensibly and without embarrassment, but too low in tone, and with too colloquial an expression’, while the Whig Lord Carlisle, Lady Georgiana’s kinsman, heard that he was ‘sensible, prudent and distinct’; the prime minister approved his performance.
On 29 Nov. 1826 Stuart Wortley, who was described at this time as being ‘very thin and amiable’, and who had apparently had his courage screwed up by his wife, earned praise in the House from the home secretary Peel for a speech on the ‘dry and tedious subject’ of controverted election precedents. Lord Holland told his wayward son Fox that his friend’s effort had been ‘very advantageous: a good speech, and what is better than a good speech much parliamentary knowledge, good parliamentary manner and a promise of taking a part and shining in debate’. The Whig lawyer James Abercromby* (who relished such topics) commented to Carlisle that ‘young Wortley seems to be very zealous and industrious, and with these properties ... he will make a better name for himself than men of higher talents’.
been gaining immense credit in a committee by the clearness and soundness of his arguments in a very difficult case ... All I hear of him encourages me to think that he is in the way to distinguish himself in no common way ... I am so delighted at his having taken so much to his parliamentary duties.
Grosvenor, ii. 12.
While he never scaled any great political heights, he did become a diligent and respected parliamentarian. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, and subsequently supported Canning’s administration.
appear to me to bear much resemblance to the ring of toadstools which often mark the spot where the great oak fell. I do not deny that they may be some of them very good fungi, but I am afraid they are as little united and as weak as worse ... I cannot help thinking that when a session comes, if they will stay in, it will be only because there is nobody to turn them out. Their condition in Parliament appears to me to be that in the Upper House they have leaders enough but lack votes, in the lower they have votes enough but lack leaders.
The feckless Fox, who had renounced Parliament, condescendingly noted that the letter was
much better expressed and fuller of clever thoughts than his letters used to be. Perhaps his marriage, which I have always hitherto lamented, has served to nerve and excite him, for that is all he wants. He has very fair abilities, but great indolence and constitutional indifference.
Add. 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 17 Nov. 1827; Fox Jnl. 249.
In January 1828 Edward Littleton* remarked to Peel, back in office under the duke of Wellington, that Stuart Wortley, his brother-in-law Lord Sandon and a few other ‘young men’ formed ‘the most important party at this time in the House of Commons’; they ‘hang much together and ... though having different party connections [are] all united against High Tory principles’.
On 8 Feb. 1829 Stuart Wortley, informing Fox of the ministry’s surprising decision to concede Catholic emancipation, commented:
It has been amusing enough to witness the many incredible convulsions wrought in so short a space of time, and it is no small satisfaction to us to see that obstinate and haughty [Whig] party entrapped and exposed, though at the same time one must confess, somewhat provoking to find those very men getting credit for this great measure and using the language of conciliation and wisdom, who not two years ago killed poor Canning, and so embarrassed the king as almost to stop the course of government, with no other excuse than their pertinacious resistance to the very same arguments ... We are looking with anxiety to the papers from Ireland and news of the [Catholic] Association ... All parties are agreed upon their interest and duty, but there is no reckoning on Irishmen, and still less on Irish demagogues.
Add. 52011, Stuart Wortley to Fox, 8 Feb. 1829.
In the House, 27 Feb., he argued that while ‘popular clamour’ was undoubtedly hostile to emancipation, ‘public opinion’, or ‘the sense and intelligence of the country’, was for it. He voted, 6, 30 Mar., and spoke again, 24 Mar., for the measure. He confessed his dislike for the accompanying bill to disfranchise Irish 40s. freeholders, 19 Mar., but with ‘considerable difficulty’ swallowed it as a matter of ‘absolute necessity’. He voted to allow Daniel O’Connell to take his seat unhindered, 18 May. He welcomed ministerial assurances that the grant to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels in the colonies would not be used to establish ‘an exclusive church’, 6 Apr., and denied Hume’s assertion that the Canadians were innately hostile to Britain. He secured information on the management and economy of Sierra Leone which, he argued, could not be ‘retained with advantage’, 19 May, and returns of military mortality in the West Indies, 2 June. He supported Labouchere’s call for information on communications between the colonial office and the Canadian governments and lamented the colonial secretary Murray’s evasive response, 5 June. He voted for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May. He supported Warburton’s anatomy bill, 15, 18 May, when he was a majority teller for its third reading. He spoke contemptuously and voted against the grant for the sculpture of the marble arch, 25 May 1829. Shortly afterwards, according to Mrs. Arbuthnot, who despised him as one of the ‘rank Canningites’, Peel considered recruiting him for a place at the admiralty board, but nothing came of it.
In January 1830, however, Wellington offered Stuart Wortley the vacant secretaryship to the board of control. In an interview with Peel, who found him ‘in a very good temper of mind and very much flattered’, he sought and received assurances that the government did not intend to renew the East India Company’s charter without prior inquiry or to depart from their liberal commercial policy, and that as a minister he would be free to vote as previously on the East Retford question. He said ‘not a word about Tories or junction with any party’, clarified matters with Wellington and, having hastily consulted his family and a few accessible friends, took the office.
His communications with the duke ... and Peel were so satisfactory that I am quite sure there were no principles at stake to give him the least excuse for [refusing] ... and therefore, if he has made up his mind to official life, he could not do otherwise in my opinion than accept this, which at this moment is likely to be an office of considerable work and importance, and to open a door to anything for which he may be fitted by his abilities.
Yet Huskisson, who asked Denison, ‘does this make the government less harlequin?’, took rather a dim view, reflecting that Wellington was ‘a very clever recruiting sergeant’.
I saw Wortley who ... was much distressed, and evidently regrets extremely that he tendered his resignation ... He was going to see Peel and afterwards the duke. He told me the government could not be conducted in the House of Commons unless some more ministers would speak - that there must be a change ... Spoke to the duke about Wortley. He said he had written a kind note to him, and told him he had been too hasty. He should have spoken to some of the ministers first. The duke evidently intends the thing to blow over. Spoke to Lord Wharncliffe ... He said he would neither have voted nor have spoken against government ... if he had had an idea of Wortley’s resigning, because it gave the appearance of concert, and there really was none ... He said he thought Wortley altogether wrong. That a young man, having joined a government, had no right, for a difference on a single point, to resign ... He afterwards talked to the duke, and I have no doubt Wortley will remain.
So he did, withdrawing his resignation, and he reportedly had ‘tears in his eyes’ when talking to Ellenborough of Wellington’s ‘kindness of heart’.
Before the election Stuart Wortley had been authorized by his father to inform his ministerial colleague Charles Arbuthnot*, who passed it on to Wellington, that Lord Palmerston* and Charles Grant* were willing to join the cabinet and for their leader Huskisson to be excluded. Nothing came of this, but he made another approach in early September, when Peel and Arbuthnot agreed that he had been ‘fishing’ and seemed disposed ‘to leave us if we are supposed to be not strong’. A Whig observer suspected that Wharncliffe was trying to promote a coalition in order to ‘keep his son in place’.
Stuart Wortley presented a petition from the grain dealers of St. Andrews for better protection of buyers’ rights, 22 June 1831. He pressed ministers to make the renewed East India committee smaller than the last one, 28 June, as there had been ‘much more of desultory conversation than of regular examination’. He supported the case for St. Andrews to be united with five other Fife burghs to return a Member and called for separate representation for Perth, 30 June. He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, for use of the 1831 census for the purpose of scheduling boroughs, 19 July, and against the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July. He persuaded ministers to add Wednesday to the two weekly order days as an ‘experiment’ to expedite business, 13 July. Two days later he endorsed Agnew’s ludicrous amendment to have disfranchised schedule A boroughs combined into ‘convenient’ districts to return Members and insisted that the ‘dangerous’ bill, which could have ‘lamentable consequences’, was supported by ‘mere popular clamour’ rather than by ‘real public opinion’. He offered no resistance to the proposed disfranchisement of Bossiney, 20 July, but insisted that it was ‘an open corporation’ where the only influence was legitimate. He argued for the inclusion of Dunster parish to save Minehead, 22 July, and harried ministers over the inconsistency with which they had treated this and other cases, 2 Aug. He also proposed to have Salford included in the new Manchester constituency, but gave way after hearing an explanation of the reason for their separation. He criticized the enfranchisement of Wolverhampton, 4 Aug., Gateshead, 5 Aug., and Walsall, 6 Aug. He complained that giving the boundary commissioners the final word on constituency limits made ‘a perfect mockery of legislation’, 5 Aug., and suggested increasing the majority required to fix their decisions, 13 Sept. He approved the plan for Yorkshire to have six county Members, 10 Aug., but thought Buckinghamshire entitled to four and that giving two to Glamorgan strengthened the case for augmenting the Scottish county representation, 13 Aug. He failed in an attempt to have the amended county franchise clause set aside for further consideration, 19 Aug. He denied being ‘irritated’ when he attacked the £10 householder clause, 24 Aug., but asserted that through it ministers had ‘destroyed the old constituency’, 26 Aug. He lamented the ‘great injustice’ of the partial disfranchisement of the county towns of Dorchester, Guildford and Huntingdon, 15 Sept. He divided against the bill’s third reading, 19 Sept., and its passage, 21 Sept. Two days later he spoke and voted for the second reading of the Scottish bill, though he warned that he did not anticipate being able to support its details as they stood. He opposed an amendment to the game bill, 8 Aug. He voted to censure the Irish administration for interfering in the Dublin election, 23 Aug. He secured a minor change to the wine duties bill, 7 Sept., and denied that the northern coal owners were monopolists, 15 Sept. He questioned ministers about the contingency plan for the administration of justice in Prince of Wales Island, 19 Sept. On 29 Sept. 1831 he finally brought on a motion condemning the proposed reduction of the salary of the president of the board of control; it was negatived.
In the crisis following the rejection of the reform bill by the Lords, Stuart Wortley was approached by his former associate Palmerston, the foreign secretary, who ‘expressed a desire that some compromise should be effected between the government and the opposition leaders’. He contacted his father and Harrowby, and they and Sandon ‘discussed the matter and came to a sort of general resolution as to the basis on which they could treat’. This led to negotiations with ministers for a modified bill which Wharncliffe, Harrowby and the other ‘Waverer’ peers could support.
Nothing came of talk of Stuart Wortley’s standing for the West Riding at the general election of 1832, and the disfranchisement of Bossiney left him without a seat.