ELLIS, Wynn (1790-1875), of 30 Cadogan Place, Midx. and Ponsbourne Park, Herts.

A wealthy London silk merchant, Ellis was a staunch advocate of political reform and free trade during his time in Parliament, which reflected his beliefs and those of his radical constituency. Born in Northamptonshire, Ellis was a hosier and merchant in London from 1812, and a wholesale silk merchant from 1830, only retiring from his business in 1871.1F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1892), i. 987. In 1831 he abandoned his attempt to be elected for the City of London’s Common Council in favour of standing at Leicester in the general election, and was returned without opposition with another Reformer.2HP Commons, 1820-1832.

At the 1832 general election he was re-elected in second place behind his colleague, whose opposition to electoral corruption meant that Ellis financed the Reformers’ bribery.3The Times, 14 Dec. 1832; PP 1835 (547), viii. 126. He gave general backing to the Whig government, but also cast votes in favour of political reforms such as the ballot.4Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 109; Morn. Chro., 27 Apr. 1833. Often, but not always, sympathetic to working class grievances, he hoped that the ‘great confidence’ the people placed in the ‘Reformed Parliament to relieve them of their distress’ would not prove to be ‘misplaced’.5Hansard, 7 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c.367. Relegated to the bottom of the poll at the 1835 general election, when the Conservatives unexpectedly captured both Leicester seats, Ellis was returned for the same constituency at a by-election, 22 Mar. 1839, comfortably ahead of his Conservative opponent.6Morn. Chro., 6, 12 Jan. 1835; Leicester poll book (1839), 82; A. Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester: a history of Leicester, 1780-1850 (1954), 307-08.

During his second spell in Parliament he acted on the radical platform he had been elected on, expressing the opposition of local dissenters to church rates, which he described as ‘a most obnoxious tax’.7Hansard, 11 Feb. 1840, vol. 52, c. 114; see also ibid., 25 Apr. 1839, vol. 47, cc.532-33. For his 1839 election programme, which included triennial parliaments, the ballot, household suffrage, repeal of the corn laws, and the abolition of church rates, see VCH Leics., iv. 210. He cast votes in favour of free trade, the diminution of the powers of the poor law commission, and the watering down of the 1839 factory bill.8House of Commons Division Lists, 1839 session, 1 July 1839; ibid., 1840 session, 26 May 1840; ibid., 1841 session, 19, 22, 26 Mar. 1841. He was also in the minority of MPs who supported a debate on the 1839 Chartist petition.9House of Commons Division Lists, 1839 session, 12 July 1839. Never much of a committee man, he sat on the 1840 inquiry on the Corporation of London’s petition for an embankment of the Thames, but the session expired before a report could be produced.10PP 1840 (554), xii. 272.

At the 1841 general election, he was returned without opposition after a disorganised Conservative-Chartist coalition came to nothing.11Northern Star, 3 July 1841; Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester, 321-22. An unwavering opponent of the corn laws, Ellis, drawing on his commercial experience, asserted in 1842 that there was ‘scarcely’ a town in the county where ‘trade was not in a state of extreme gloom and depression’.12Hansard, 6 May 1842, vol. 63, c. 236; House of Commons Division Lists, 1842 session, 16, 24 Feb. 1842, 7, 11 July 1842; ibid., 1843 session, 15 May 1843, 13 June 1843; ibid., 1844 session, 26 June 1844; ibid., 1845 session, 10 June 1845; ibid., 1846 session, 27 Mar. 1846. He blamed protection for such distress, as he made clear when presenting a petition signed by 7,000 Leicester inhabitants in 1846.13Hansard, 13 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, c.1039. His positive conception of free trade was expressed in a debate on the silk industry, when he contended that there was ‘little to fear from competition’ as commercial freedom would bring forth men of ‘enterprise, capital, and energy’ to produce goods to match those of any of Britain’s foreign rivals.14Hansard, 16 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 1078-79. However, the silk manufacturer, John Brocklehurst, MP for Macclesfield, was unconvinced by the argument, believing that the French would retain superiority: ibid., cc. 1079, 1080-81. His commercial expertise was not valued by Gladstone, however, who curtly dismissed Ellis’s objections to the government’s 1842 merchant and factor bill.15Hansard, 20 May 1842, vol. 63, cc. 595-97.

He divided in favour of a ten hour day in 1844 and supported the 1847 factories bill.16House of Commons Division Lists, 1844 session, 22 Mar. 1844, 13 May 1844; ibid., 1847 session, 17 Feb. 1847. He was, however, a vigorous opponent of attempts to regulate the East Midlands hosiery industry, arguing that an 1847 bill would prove ‘vexatious and expensive to the manufacturer, and injurious to the operative’.17Hansard, 5 May 1847, vol. 92, c. 414. Expressing an intense commitment to laissez-faire principles, he blamed the workers for their plight, insisting that framework knitters’ reluctance to seek other employment, especially in the parts of the sector which were expanding due to new machinery, and their habit of bringing up children in the trade, had glutted the labour market and depressed wages.18Ibid., cc. 412-18; ibid., 13 May 1847, vol. 92, cc. 791-92. For a historical summing up of the reasons for the framework knitters’ distress, see S. Chapman, Hosiery and knitwear: four centuries of small-scale industry in Britain, c.1589-2000 (2002), 111-17.

Ellis did not seek re-election in 1847, and is not known to have sought a return to politics.19Morn. Chro., 19, 24 July 1847. Resuming his business interests, Ellis spent the remainder of his years at Ponsbourne Park, Hertfordshire, which he purchased in 1836, and then Tankerton Tower, near Canterbury, amassing an impressive art collection, which on his death, in 1875, he bequeathed to the National Gallery. His personalty was sworn under £600,000.20Boase, Mod. Eng. Biog. i. 987; The Times, 25 Nov. 1875. He left no heirs.