Since 1796, having previously been severely wounded serving in Flanders, Gascoyne had represented Liverpool, where his brother Bamber (whom he replaced) was lord of the manor. By 1820 he had acquired a reputation as an anti-Catholic Tory of moderate ability, who, placing constituency before party, spoke boldly on military, commercial and Irish issues with a view to retaining corporation and mercantile support. Assisted by the Liverpool True Blue Club formed in his interest after the 1818 contest, in 1820 he easily defeated his radical challengers, who accused him of soliciting payment for patronage, and polled second to George Canning as previously.
His support for Lord Liverpool’s administration in the 1820 Parliament was erratic. The presenter of at least 150 petitions and memorials forwarded to him through the Liverpool Parliament Office in Fludyer Street, London (particularly during Canning’s illnesses and absences abroad), he spoke frequently on a wide range of issues. He commanded ministers’ attention on account of Liverpool’s importance and by sheer perseverance, but he was rarely able to influence policy.
As a diehard opponent of the 1815 corn law on his constituents’ behalf, he protested at the ‘premature agitation’ of the question by the agriculturists, 9, 12, 18, 30 May 1820, and tried vainly that day and the next to prevent the concession to them of a select committee on agricultural distress. His motion for selecting it by ballot was not seconded, and he promised to oppose any measure based on its recommendations, 31 May.
As Gascoyne had expected for some time, the president of the board of trade Huskisson replaced Canning as Member for Liverpool in February 1823. Playing ‘second fiddle’, he presented only a handful of minor petitions that session, and basked in Huskisson’s inability to endorse the Liverpool tradesmen’s petition for concessions on the window tax, 7 Mar.
Dissatisfied with ministers’ policy on corn and heeding the artisans’ demands for a cheap loaf, he was a minority teller for Whitmore’s inquiry motion, 25 Apr., and proposed lowering the tariff on corn released from bond from 10s. to 8s., 2 May 1825, but the agriculturists scotched this for favouring importers. He exploited Huskisson’s discomfiture over the shipwrights’ dispute, stressed his own achievement in amending the 1799 Combination Acts and earned the gratitude of the artisans, who rewarded him with a gift of plate, by defending the right of the operatives to request wage increases to combat high corn prices and to strike, 3, 4 May, 29, 30 June 1825.
On 30 Nov. 1826 Gascoyne described the half-pay list as ‘not ... a matter of economy, so much as a matter of utility’, and defended recent changes governing the sale of commissions. He presented heavily signed Liverpool petitions for ‘free trade in corn’, 8, 12 Mar. 1827, when, complaining of the ‘vacillating conduct of ministers’, he voted against increasing protection for barley.
Mr. Huskisson’s reply, though not quite satisfactory, was conclusive. I was importuned by at least 20 Members not to divide and Mr. Liddell ... by my desire consulted the ship owners who had placed themselves under the gallery and their answer was that they left it to my discretion and thought a division must be unfavourable. Mr. Baring, Mr. Wodehouse, Mr. Ward, MP for the City, Alderman Thompson cum multis aliis, though they had previously promised support, recalled their promises and fairly told me they should vote against me. Mr. Curwen ... said he should redeem his promise and vote but he was satisfied a committee was not now necessary. Mr. Bernal and Mr. Bright, Hart Davis and others implored me not to divide and when Mr. Peel also spoke against the committee, his near connections found it but consistent that they should also vote against ... Thus deserted and bereft of the support I had really been encouraged to expect, I had no alternative but that of a very small minority, or withdrawing the motion.
Ibid. 123, Gascoyne to J. Gladstone, 9 May 1827.
He divided against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827 (and again 12 May 1828). On presenting Liverpool’s petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 7 June 1827 (some of the many he took charge of that session), he caused a furore by alluding to a ‘tit for tat arrangement’ by which both issues were postponed.
Following Canning’s death in August 1827, Gascoyne stood aloof from the controversy surrounding Huskisson’s successive appointments as colonial secretary in the Goderich and Wellington ministries, and his Liverpool supporters did not oppose Huskisson’s re-election in February 1828. Justifying his minority vote on East Retford, 21 Mar., he maintained that sluicing was no solution for electoral corruption and likely to extend it. He spoke and voted with government against ordnance reductions, 4 July. Overwhelmed by constituency business, especially petitions, he took charge of the abortive Liverpool elections bill sponsored by the corporation in the wake of the 1827 mayoral contest, 4, 11, 12 Feb., and, still insisting that that Liverpool elections were ‘purer than in most populous towns and freer than anywhere in the United Kingdom’, he opposed a rival Whig measure for extending Liverpool’s franchise, 9 June.
Gascoyne’s hostility to Catholic relief in 1829 was, like Salisbury’s, undiminished.
He divided for the Ultra Sir Edward Knatchbull’s amendment criticizing the omission of distress from the address, 4 Feb., and, speaking on Edward Davenport’s state of the nation motion, 16 Mar. 1830, he criticized John Irving and others who denied its existence. On 23 Mar. he contrasted prosperous Liverpool with its depressed hinterland and maintained that, though localized, distress merited inquiry. However, he deliberately distanced himself from Gooch and the agriculturists who pleaded for protection, and dismissed Davenport’s comments on the currency as ‘humbug’. As a committed opponent of the (Whig) property tax, he was happy to vote with government against inquiry into tax revision, 25 Mar. He was disappointed to be omitted by Peel from the East India select committee, protested that it ought to have been balloted, deplored any restriction of its remit and mistrusted it to the last, 9 Feb., 8 July.
Gascoyne saw nothing unconstitutional in enfranchising the manufacturing towns, and voted to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May 1829, 11 Feb., and enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb. 1830. Commenting on the latter ‘in view of Manchester’s proximity to Liverpool’, he explained that he ‘could not agree’ to its immediate implementation, nor to universal suffrage or radical reform, and ‘I certainly am against increasing the number of Members in this House’. He quoted the 200 private and local bills he had presented over the past 30 years to substantiate his claim that county Members were ‘not sufficient’ and a seat for a populous town ‘no sinecure’. When challenged, he attributed his differences with Tory colleagues to the implementation by them of liberal policies on free trade, currency reform and Catholic emancipation. He voted with the revived Whig opposition for reductions in official salaries, 10, 11 May, and to repeal the Irish coal duties, 13 May. Undeterred by favourable Liverpool petitions, he opposed the Jewish emancipation bill, 4, 17 May, when, denouncing the ‘non-Christian exclusivity of Jewry’, he moved the adjournment by which it was defeated with government backing. He cast a wayward vote on the consular services grant, 1 June, and supported inquiry into the government of Sierra Leone, 15 June (having broached it himself, 23 Feb. 1828); but he wanted its remit restricted to expenditure ‘to avoid agitating the slavery question’. He was minority teller against the exchequer loan bill, 1 July. Later that day he protested at the high tariff and continuing differentiation in levies on East and West Indian sugars and claimed that their announcement had been deliberately delayed to deter petitioning. He refused to believe the charges against his ‘personal acquaintance’ General Darling as governor of New South Wales, 9 July 1830. Despite Whig and Tory manoeuvring, his ninth return for Liverpool at the general election in August passed uneventfully and he topped the token poll.
The Wellington ministry listed Gascoyne among the 25 ‘violent Ultras’ in the new Parliament, but he did not vote on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830. Both Peel and the new Grey ministry, whom he urged to reappoint the East India select committee, 12 Nov., 10 Dec., conceded a place to him as a Liverpool Member, and he was named to it, 6 Feb. 1831.
Concentrating on electoral reform, he spoke briefly on the Galway, 6 Dec., and Stamford, 14 Dec., election petitions, and complained that the rush to proceed with the Liverpool ones, lest Ewart vacate to evade scrutiny, was unjustified and prejudicial to their outcome, 20 Dec. 1830. He quizzed Russell closely over the government’s intended reform bill when the disfranchisement of Evesham was discussed, 17, 18 Feb. 1831. Debilitating pain from a wartime head injury that periodically recurred kept him away from the House for the next three weeks. On 14 Mar., bringing up his constituents’ petition for ‘opening close boroughs, and giving the right of representation to large and populous towns’, he approved the last tenet and said he hoped the House would ‘not separate this session without coming to some resolution in favour of reform’. Discussing the ministerial measure, he suggested that Liverpool, with more £10 houses than the counties of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgeshire combined, ‘probably’ merited additional representation. He saw no need to ‘throw overboard 62 Members’, as the bill proposed, and said he would oppose its details.
Despite speculation, Gascoyne, who was widely caricaturized in December 1831, when the revised reform bill left the number of Members unchanged, did not stand for Parliament again.