VINCENT, Sir Francis (1803-1880), of Debden Hall , Saffron Walden , Essex.

Vincent’s ancestors in the baronetcy included five MPs. His father had become a barrister, but in 1806 he had given up the law to serve the Whig leader Fox in the Grenville ministry, as an under-secretary in the foreign office. Vincent, who was orphaned at six and placed in the care of his grandmother, a wealthy heiress, had initially embarked on a career in the cavalry, where his bon vivant tendencies soon became apparent.1HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 572-3. Writing about post-war Paris, in a reference that has surely been misconstrued as referring to his father, the Whig socialite Captain Gronow recalled how he became ‘a victim of high play at the salon des étrangers’, a ‘rendevous for confirmed gamblers’, where he ‘contrived to get rid of his magnificent property, and then disappeared from society’.2R. H. Gronow, Reminiscences of Captain Gronow (1862), 168-9. The Complete Baronetage (1900), ed. G. E. Cokayne, links the reference to the 9th bt., who died in 1809, but Gronow is clearly referring to post-war Paris. Vincent had sold the ancestral home of Stoke d’Abernon by 1824, but two years later inherited his grandmother’s substantial Essex estates at Debden.3VCH Sussex, iii. 458; Prob. 11/1709/121; IR26/1107/118. In 1831, on the recommendation of Edward Bulwer MP, he had offered for the venal borough of St. Albans as a ‘young gentleman of property’ and firm supporter of reform. Aided by his ‘frank, affable and lively manners’, he managed to secure his return for a comparatively ‘modest’ outlay of £1,120.4Daily News, 23 Nov. 1848. A steady supporter of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, who lost little time in making his first speech, on most other issues he sided with the advanced radicals.5HP Commons 1820-32, vii. 572-3.

At the 1832 general election Vincent offered again for St. Albans as a ‘radical reformer’ and topped the poll after a ‘most lavish’ contest. ‘Unknown to the electors’, however, his private circumstances had ‘materially altered’. The costs of his first election had been ‘nothing to the expenses of his first year upon town’, and almost ‘everything had gone but the family plate’, which ‘supplied the means for this contest’, but went ‘only part of the way to meet his costs’. ‘Unable to raise more’, his ‘bills went unpaid’.6Daily News, 23 Nov. 1848. It was only at this return that Vincent’s conversion to Catholicism became evident, making him one of just five Catholic MPs to be returned for an English constituency in 1832.7Morning Post, 18 Jan. 1833.

A fairly assiduous attender, Vincent voted steadily in the minorities for most radical causes, including the secret ballot, shorter parliaments, lower taxation, and reductions to military and civil expenditure. However, he broke ranks with Joseph Hume over protection, voting with the majority against his proposed inquiry into the corn laws, 7 Mar. 1834, and followed Chandos into the lobbies over agricultural distress, 21 Feb., and repeal of the malt tax, 17, 27 Feb. 1834.8Morning Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1834. He had divided ‘with great repugnance’ for the government’s Irish coercion bill, 11 Mar. 1833, hoping that ministers would bring forward ‘without delay’ remedial measures, but thereafter sided with the Irish Catholics in agitating for more extensive Irish church reform and the appropriation of its surplus revenues for secular purposes.

On 28 Mar. 1833 Vincent introduced a bill to reform the libel laws, which aimed to protect publishers and booksellers from being prosecuted for ‘libellous matter, of which they happened not to be aware’, while compelling them ‘to give up the name of the author of any libel’. Its ‘most material alteration’ involved dropping prosecutions if the assertions were proved, and providing for the publication of retractions if they were not. ‘By adopting that course’, Vincent declared, ‘those who had read the libel in any paper would have an opportunity of seeing its refutation’.9Hansard, 28 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 1207-9. ‘We are glad to see that an independent member ... has taken upon himself the performance of this important duty’, remarked one newspaper, regretting that ministers ‘had not themselves acted’.10Sheffield Independent, 4 May 1833. After its second reading was repeatedly deferred, he welcomed the bill being taken ‘out of his hands’ by Daniel O’Connell, 18 Feb. 1834, and referred to a select committee, to which he was appointed, 18 Mar. 1834.11CJ, lxxxviii. 317, 399, 466, 544, 579. He brought up a petition in the bill’s support, 12 Mar. 1834, but it eventually lapsed.

In another notable contribution, 10 July 1833, Vincent launched a scathing attack on the ‘monopoly’ and ‘privileges’ possessed by the benchers of the inns of court and their ‘monstrous’ treatment of attorneys, which was triggered by their refusal to admit Daniel Whittle Harvey MP to the bar.12Hansard, 10 July 1833, vol. 19, cc. 469-71. He joined in the protests over the matter and was added to the related inquiry, 15 May 1834. In his last known speech, 7 Aug. 1834, he took issue with the Lords’ rejection of the Warwick disfranchisement bill, declaring that ‘hereditary legislators’ would not ‘dictate to him what his opinions should be’ and voting with Russell to re-examine the evidence and suspend the writ.13Hansard, 7 Aug. 1834, vol. 25, c. 1043.

At the 1835 general election Vincent ‘did not appear’ at St. Albans, where he still owed large sums.14Daily News, 23 Nov. 1848. Following the formation of the Peel ministry he had been asked to stand for North Essex by a deputation of Dissenters, whose principles ‘in seeking a Roman Catholic to represent the opinions and feelings of Puritanism’ were ridiculed by local Tories. Nothing came of it, however, perhaps because all the voters around his North Essex estates at Debden, including himself, had been omitted from the electoral registers owing to the neglect of a local overseer.15Essex Standard, 19, 26 Dec. 1834. He is not known to have sought another seat.

In October 1835 Vincent and several other ‘evil disposed persons’ were charged with keeping a ‘common gaming house’ in the parish of St. James’s, Westminster, but as no evidence was forthcoming for the prosecution, the case was eventually dropped.16Standard, 15 Oct. 1835. At the end of that year he was declared an outlaw for debt at the Middlesex sessions.17Morning Chronicle, 31 Dec. 1835; Newcastle Courant, 28 May 1836. Dogged by a succession of chancery proceedings for its recovery, he took up residence in Florence, where he dabbled in an English newspaper venture and began writing three-decker society novels in the style of Bulwer Lytton.18Reports of cases in chancery (1852), 12-15. It has been suggested that these must have been written ‘out of vanity rather than for profit’, since ‘no critic seems to have thought well’ of them.19Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, ed. J. Sutherland (1989), 652. However, his first novel Arundel: a tale of the French revolution, which appeared in 1840, was considered ‘exceedingly good’ by the Examiner and recommended as ‘the best historical novel that has proceeded from the press since Sir Edward Bulwer withdrew ... from this class of composition’.20Examiner, 12 Apr. 1840. Assisted by the sale of his ‘effects at Debden Hall’ in 1847, including an important collection of sixteenth-century swords and halbards, Vincent was able to lead his creditors a merry dance until 1854, when the court of chancery ordered the sale of his life interest in the Debden estate.21Archaeological Journal, iv (1847), 256; London Gazette, 29 Aug. 1854.

More novels, all of them increasingly semi-autobiographical, followed in later years, including Sir Hubert Marston (1867) and On the brink (1868), which was ‘commended’ by the Morning Post ‘for its genial good sense’ and ‘uncommon good workmanship’.22Morning Post, 4 Dec. 1868. (The Examiner, however, dismissed it as ‘trash’, saying ‘the novel does not possess one redeeming quality, not even the merit of being well-written or well-contrived’.)23Examiner, 12 Dec. 1868. His last, The Fitfull Fever of a Life (1872), which the Spectator saw ‘no possible reason’ for having ‘ever been begun’, opened with a telling theme:24Spectator, 2 Sept. 1871.

It was the height of the season at Baden Baden, and the gaming tables were already surrounded by devotees, when two young men entered the Conversation Haus with the laudable intention of improving their fortune at the expense of M. Benazet.

Vincent died a widower and intestate in July 1880, when Debden Hall reverted to his only child Blanche (d. 1914), who in 1871 had married John Raymond Cely Trevilian (1841-84). ‘He had begun life with a fine fortune, which from time to time was plenteously replenished’, one obituarist euphemistically remarked, ‘but his income never kept pace with his expenditure’ and ‘his fame as a bon vivant was only equalled by his notoriety as a slow paymaster’.25Leeds Mercury, 17 July 1880.