DOTTIN, Abel Rous (1769-1852), of 31 Argyle Street, London and Bugle Hall, Southampton, Hants.

Dottin, a wealthy West India proprietor and prominent benefactor of numerous charities in Southampton, had sat for that venal borough as a ‘church and throne’ Tory until 1831, when he quit the field in the face of pro-reform sentiment and upped sticks, putting his ‘substantial’ mansion of Bugle Hall on the market.1HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 940-2; Hampshire Advertiser, 21 May 1831. Persuaded by local Conservatives to come out of retirement at the 1835 general election, he stood alongside another Tory promising to uphold the ‘existence of the national church’ and ‘integrity of the constitution’.2Hampshire Advertiser, 29 Nov., 13 Dec. 1834; Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 49. Recuperation from a ‘late surgical case’ prevented him from canvassing or attending the proceedings, at which it was announced that if successful he intended to resume his residence at Bugle Hall, which had failed to find any takers. He was still too weak to attend a dinner held a few weeks later to celebrate his return in second place.3Hampshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835.

A fairly lax attender who was listed in a press report about ‘Conservative negligence’ later that year, Dottin voted with Peel’s short-lived ministry on the speakership, 19 Feb., address, 26 Feb., and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835.4Morning Post, 20 July 1835. He also divided with Peel against repeal of the malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835. Responding to Liberal protests about electoral bribery, in his only known speech of this period he reminded ‘gentlemen on the other side’ about ‘the many large dinners’ given to ‘promote’ the ‘election of reformers’, 6 Apr. 1835.5Hansard, 6 Apr. 1835, vol. 27, c. 835. He opposed the reappointed Melbourne ministry on most major issues, including English municipal reform, 23 June 1835, and its proposals for the Irish church, and was in the minorities against allowing Catholic marriage services, 11 May 1836, and the abolition of church rates, 15 Mar. 1837.

Re-elected at the 1837 general election for Southampton, where he had resumed his residence and largesse, on the hustings Dottin denounced the Whig ministry’s attempts to ‘aim a death blow at the established institutions of the country’, and promised to support the ‘glorious constitution’ to ‘the latest hour of my life’.6Hampshire Advertiser, 1, 29 July 1837. He continued to back the Conservative opposition in the lobbies, especially on matters relating to the Irish church, and was in the majority against an early end to slave apprenticeships, 30 Mar. 1838. A trustee of West Indian property, as well as a slave holder himself, he had received compensation of £3,885 16s. 3. in 1836 for 189 slaves on the Coverley plantation in Barbados, and a further unspecified share of £1,015 2s. 8d. for another 47 slaves in 1837.7N. Draper, The Price of Emancipation (2010), 196; PP 1837-8 (215) xlviii. 189, 327. He presented petitions against the sale of beer act, 10 Aug. 1838, and the ministry’s national plan of education, 20 June 1839, and voted in support of the corn laws, 19 Feb., 18 Mar. 1839. Rumours that he would resign on account of ill health had been dismissed by his supporters as ‘all fudge’ in 1838, but by now he was clearly unwell.8Hampshire Advertiser, 28 July 1838. At a Southampton Conservative registration dinner noted for the ‘intoxication’ of its attendees in 1840, he announced that he had reached ‘that time of life when he ought to retire’ and bemoaned the passage of the reform bill, before which ‘there was not a blessing under heaven that this happy country did not enjoy’.9Hampshire Telegraph, 19 Oct. 1840. After voting with Peel in the no confidence motion against the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841, he duly retired at the ensuing dissolution, regretting that he felt ‘totally unequal to encounter the fatigues, turmoil and bustle of a contested election’. His Conservative supporters paid tribute to him at a ‘grand banquet’ in the Victoria Rooms.10Hampshire Advertiser, 19 June 1841.

After finally disposing of Bugle Hall around 1844, Dottin spent his retirement at Argyle Street, ‘in that privacy ... suitable for the closing days of an extended life’.11Hampshire Advertiser, 16 Mar. 1844; Hampshire Independent, 26 June 1852. He died there in June 1852, aged 84, and was interred in the family vault at Nuffield, Oxfordshire.12Gent. Mag. (1852), ii. 201-2. By his will, dated 5 June 1840, and proved under £2,000, 13 July 1852, all his personal estate passed to his wife, who survived him by less than 18 months and distributed what remained of the estate among her own family. No mention was made of any remaining West India property, which presumably, like the shares in the London and Greenwich Railway earmarked for his wife, had been sold by the time of his death.13PROB 11/2156/556; IR26/1927/486; PROB 11/2180/790; IR26/1961/812.