KERRISON, Sir Edward, 1st bt. (1776-1853), of Oakley Park, Suffolk and 13 Great Stanhope Street, London

Described by the marquess of Chandos as a man who ‘might truly and emphatically receive the title of true old English gentleman’, Kerrison was a distinguished Waterloo veteran who sat unopposed for the borough of Eye for nearly three decades.1Standard, 27 Dec. 1838. The longevity of his parliamentary career, however, was not matched by any appreciable impact in the Commons, though his wealth ensured that he remained a prominent and influential figure in Suffolk’s political life.

First elected to the Commons as Member for Shaftesbury in 1813, Kerrison’s early political career had been disrupted by his service in the Peninsular campaigns, during which he received the gold medal for his gallantry at Orthes, where he was severely wounded, and the silver medal with two clasps for Sahagun, Benevente and Toulouse.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 33; T. Seccombe, ‘Kerrison, Sir Edward, first baronet (1776-1853)’, rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. It was during the Napoleonic wars that his father, Matthias, had made his fortune trading in coal, corn and timber from Bungay quay in Suffolk. His father invested the profits in mortgages and land, including the 2^nd Viscount Maynard’s estates at Hoxne, where Kerrison spent lavishly on improving Oakley Park.3HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 910-12. After a brief tenure as Member for Northampton, Kerrison, who was regarded by the premier Lord Liverpool as ‘a very good man’, was made a baronet at the coronation in 1821.4Ibid. Two years later he completed the purchase of the Brome Hall estate, along with the Hoxne estates, and a controlling interest in the borough of Eye from the 2^nd Marquess Cornwallis. Returned to the House in 1824, he cemented his reputation as a loyal anti-Catholic Tory and voted consistently against the Grey ministry’s reform bill, which, after initially proposing Eye’s disenfranchisement, removed one of the borough’s two seats.5Ibid.

Despite early reports that he would be opposed at the 1832 general election by John Henniker, son of the prominent local landowner John Major Henniker, 3^rd Baron Henniker, Kerrison, who issued a rather prosaic address highlighting his support for the agricultural interest and the ‘labouring classes’, was returned without opposition.6Essex Standard, 28 July 1832; Bury and Norwich Post, 28 Nov., 12 Dec. 1832. Later, in 1837, John Henniker, now the 4^th Baron, married Kerrison’s daughter, Anna, creating an important alliance between Eye’s two most prominent landowning families.

An occasional attender, Kerrison’s notable votes included support for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, Chandos’s resolution on agricultural distress, 26 Apr. 1833, and a repeal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834, and against shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834.7R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834), 14, 36; Parliamentary test book (1835), 92. He rarely spoke in debate, intervening only to defend the conduct of army officers in the controversial court martial of Captain Robert Robinson, 11 July 1833, and pour scorn on a petition to repeal the corn laws, 20 Mar. 1834. He sat on the 1833 select committee on the sale of beer, but is not known to have served on any other committees thereafter.8PP 1833 (416), xv. 2.

Kerrison’s quiet and unremarkable first post-Reform Parliament set the tone for the rest of his career in the Commons. Re-elected without opposition in 1835, he voted with the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835. He opposed Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the defeat of which brought down Peel’s short-lived ministry, and thereafter gave silent support to the Conservative opposition on all the main issues of the day. His assertion at the 1837 general election that ‘if I am not an independent Member of Parliament, there is not one in England’ was therefore belied by his consistent voting record. His declaration that there had never been ‘a more contemptible administration’ than Melbourne’s also made it clear where his loyalties lay.9Ipswich Journal, 29 July 1837. He was particularly scathing of what he perceived to be the Whig ministry’s truckling to Daniel O’Connell, a spectre that he felt proved the failure of Catholic emancipation.10Ibid. Following his unopposed return, he consistently opposed the Whig government’s Irish policy and backed Peel’s motion of no confidence in the ministry, 4 June 1841.

Kerrison was unwavering in his defence of agricultural protection at the 1841 general election, when, despite a concerted effort from local Liberals to get up a candidate, he was again re-elected unopposed.11Ibid., 26 June, 3 July 1841. He suffered a personal political setback, however, in September, when his request to Peel for a peerage was rejected.12BL Add. 40490, ff. 218-20. Nevertheless, on the rare occasions that he troubled the division lobbies thereafter, Kerrison remained loyal to the premier, until the latter came out in support of corn law repeal. In his one known speech during Peel’s second administration, he responded to Thomas Milner Gibson’s claim that the Saxmundham Agricultural Association was essentially a Conservative club by insisting that agricultural organisations in Suffolk were deliberately non-political, 27 Sept. 1841. This rather questionable assertion was to be his last known contribution to debate. After barely attending the House in 1844 and 1845, he resurfaced to rebel against Peel and vote for corn law repeal at the bill’s critical third reading, 15 May 1846.

Returned unopposed for Eye for the ninth and final time at the 1847 general election, when he maintained that protection to agriculture and industry was ‘indispensible to the prosperity of the Empire’, Kerrison was thereafter a seldom-seen figure at Westminster.13Ipswich Journal, 24, 31 July 1847. His record of only sixteen divisions in the 1849 session was a fair representation of his poor attendance during his final Parliament.14Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. His votes against the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, and for the reconsideration of the corn laws, 14 May 1850, relief for landowners, 13 Feb. 1851, and David Urquhart’s motion criticising the government’s handling of the ecclesiastical titles bill, 9 May 1851, reflected his continuing hostility to free trade and Catholicism. There was little surprise at the 1852 dissolution when he retired from Parliament, explaining that ‘I am no longer competent to discharge my trust in a manner satisfactory to myself’.15Ipswich Journal, 26 June 1852. He was replaced in the representation of Eye by his only son, Edward Clarence.16Ibid.

Although Kerrison made little impact within the walls of Westminster, he had been a major political player in the county of Suffolk. Significantly, he spent more time organising and funding the Conservative effort in the county division of Suffolk East than he did in Eye, where his return was never in doubt.17Ibid., 6 Dec. 1834, 10 Jan. 1835, 15 July 1837. The national Conservative party were also aware of his deep pockets, with Disraeli soliciting him in 1853 for a sizeable contribution to help establish a newspaper supportive of moderate Conservative opinions.18Disraeli, who had written the letter to Kerrison unaware that he had died that day, subsequently wrote to Kerrison’s son, explaining that the content of the letter was strictly private: Disraeli to Sir Edward Clarence Kerrison, 11 Mar. 1853, Benjamin Disraeli letters: 1852-1856 (1997), ed. M.G. Wiebe, M.S. Miller and A.P. Robson, 244. His philanthropy in Eye was regularly praised and in January 1840 his tenantry presented him with a piece of silver plate for his ‘unwearied exertion to promote the interest and welfare of all classes’.19Bury and Norwich Post, 3 Oct. 1832; Morning Post, 12 Oct. 1837; Farmer’s magazine (1840), 132. His wife, Lady Mary Kerrison, was especially celebrated for her work on behalf of the poorer neighbourhoods surrounding Eye, and on receiving the plate, Kerrison stated that ‘if there be any merit in such things, more merit is due to her Ladyship than to myself’.20J. Burke, The portrait gallery of distinguished females (1833), 130-2; Farmer’s magazine (1840), 132.

Kerrison died at his London residence at Great Stanhope Street in March 1853 after ‘only an hour’s illness’.21Bury and Norwich Post, 16 Mar. 1853; Ipswich Journal, 12 Mar. 1853; HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 911-2. He was remembered as a generous landlord with an ‘overflowing benevolence of character’.22Gent. Mag. (1853), i. 542-3. The baronetcy and estates passed to Edward, but his will also provided for his widow and daughters.23PROB 11/2170/288; IR26/1970/203-5. Kerrison’s papers are held by the Suffolk Record Office, Ipswich, while his brief correspondence with Peel is at the British Library, London.24Suff. RO, Kerrison mss HA68; BL Add. 40407, f. 202; 40490, ff. 218-20; 40577, ff. 304-6. He is commemorated by a stained glass window in the church at Eye and by the memorial he erected at Oakley Park to his ‘favourite charges’ – the horses he believed had saved his life during the Napoleonic wars.25J. Rushen, ‘Squires of Oakley Park’, Suffolk Fair, iv. (1974), 28-30.