HOY, James Barlow (?1794-1843), of Midanbury and Thornhill, Hants and Medina Hermitage, St. Catherine’s Down, Isle of Wight, Hants

Hoy, or Barlow Hoy as he was sometimes known, had been serving as an assistant surgeon in the army medical corps in 1828 when a chance inheritance from a cousin transformed his life, providing him with extensive property in Hampshire and a ‘great fortune’ of almost £88,000.2Commissioned officers in the medical services of the British Army, 1660-1960, ed. A. Peterkin (1968), i. 3719; Gent. Mag. (1843), i. 547; Prob 11/1743/417; IR26/1166/556. Within a year he had adopted the surname of his benefactor and ‘friend’, the Russia merchant Michael Hoy, and within two years had been returned at a by-election for the venal borough of Southampton, assisted by his cousin’s mercantile cronies.3HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 738-40. His opposition to the Grey ministry’s reform bill cost him his seat in 1831, and thereafter he enjoyed only interrupted spells in the House, where he nevertheless became a confident speaker. It is possible that he was seeking a return to public life when he accidentally killed himself with a gun in 1843, in an incident that his clergyman brother later suggested was a murder carried out by a ‘friend’, who soon after married Hoy’s widow.4A. Barrigan, ‘Remarkable, but still True’: the story of the Revd. R. J. Barlow and Hutton Rudby in the time of the cholera (2007), chs. 16 & 22. Accessed via http://jakesbarn.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=89&Itemid=37

At the 1832 general election Hoy stood for Southampton as a ‘Conservative’, promising to maintain the established church. Rebutting claims that he opposed all reform, he cited his votes for the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester in 1830, but denounced the secret ballot. After a stormy contest he was returned in second place amidst allegations of irregularities at the poll and talk of a petition.5Morning Post, 5 Dec. 1832; Hampshire Advertiser, 15, 22 Dec. 1832. Hoy spoke and voted against Lord Althorp’s Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, was in the minority for a radical motion for inquiry into distress, 21 Mar. 1833, but denounced another on taxation, arguing that employment was of much more importance to the labouring classes than a reduction of taxes, 26 Mar. 1833.6Hansard, 11, 26 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 485, 1104. On 2 April 1833 he was unseated on petition on account of fraudulent voting, though personally exonerated from any involvement.7Morning Post, 3 Apr. 1834.

Seeking to regain his seat at the 1835 general election, Hoy railed against the Whigs’ abortive church reforms and justified the dismissal of the ministry by the king. Most of his campaign, however, was spent denouncing the secret ballot: ‘Was public opinion not to have any influence ... was a voter to sneak privately to the poll and not let his neighbours know what he was doing?’, he demanded.8Hampshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. Returned at the head of poll, he became a regular and effective speaker on this and other anti-reform issues over the next two years, and steadily backed Peel in the lobbies, especially on church-related matters. On 2 June 1835 he derided those who supported the ballot and municipal corporation reform, another bête noire, noting that he was

surprised to see those who had been foremost in exclaiming against corporations, on account of the secrecy of their proceedings, and the irresponsibility of their members ... coming forward as the advocates of a measure, the whole object of which was to secure the most complete secrecy, and the most perfect irresponsibility. He considered the elective franchise as a trust for the exercise of which the electors were responsible, not only to their fellow-townsmen but to the country at large; and he could not conceive, if public opinion were thought a necessary restraint on Members of that House, and a useful control upon the actions of all men, as far as regards the public welfare, why it should be less necessary in voting for Members.9Hansard, 2 June 1835, vol. 28, cc. 406-9.

He spoke and was in Peel’s minority for a £500 property qualification for town councillors, 30 June 1835, and on 1 July 1835 moved unsuccessfully for the new town council elections to ‘be taken openly’, in the same manner as parliamentary polls.10Hansard, 30 June, 1 July 1835, vol. 29, cc. 113, 159, 161.

Hoy’s other interventions included opposing the oyster fisheries bill, 11 May 1836, and demanding military action to prevent the United States invading Mexican Texas and re-establishing slavery there, 5 Aug. 1836.11Hansard, 11 May 1836, vol. 33, cc. 831-3; 5 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, cc. 928-31. He was less keen on intervention against Russia, however, citing the military defences he had witnessed on a recent trip to the Dardanelles, 19 Feb. 1836.12Hansard, 19 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 644-5. Unimpressed with the new system for recording MPs’ votes in two separate lobbies, on 4 Mar. 1836 he recommended a return to the ‘old practice’, having ‘calculated that the waste of time consequent upon taking divisions under the new plan would in a session of six months consume a whole week’.13Hansard, 4 Mar. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 1221-3. A steady advocate of the need to remove the regulations restricting friendly societies, whose expansion would ‘remove a heavy burden from the poor-rates’ and ‘ought to be encouraged’, he unsuccessfully moved for inquiry into the matter, 16 Feb. 1837.14Hansard, 16 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 599, 607-9. In his last known speech he criticised the wisdom and ‘contempt’ of returning royal gifts sent by the Indian King of Oude, 26 May 1837.15Hansard, 26 May 1837, vol. 38, c. 1094.

Towards the end of the 1837 session, Hoy ‘paired off’ with Pierce Butler, in order to take his wife to Spa in Belgium for her health.16Hampshire Advertiser, 1 July 1837. He was still abroad and ‘unable to return’ for the 1837 general election, when he stood down, and thereafter appears to have spent time in Naples, where his wife gave birth the following year.17Hampshire Advertiser, 15 July 1837; Morning Post, 31 July 1838. The appearance in 1839 of his pamphlet Manufacturers and corn growers, a defence of the corn laws highlighting the existence of protective duties on many other goods, suggests that he may have been contemplating a return to politics. At the 1841 general election, however, he again seems to have been abroad, and when Peel sought his support for a candidate later that year in a potential Southampton by-election, he was ‘under the impression’ that Hoy did not intend to offer himself.18Hampshire Advertiser, 27 Mar. 1841; Add. 40496, ff. 26-8.

Hoy’s accidental death in August 1843 attracted considerable publicity.19See, for instance, The Times, 26 Aug. 1843. Again abroad ‘for the benefit of his lady’s health’, he was on a ‘shooting excursion’ in the Pyrenees and crossing a ravine when he ‘slipped, and in grasping at a rock to recover himself, his gun unfortunately fell from his hand, struck a rock, went off, and the contents passed through his left arm close to the elbow, lacerating it very much and cutting the principal blood vessels’.20Hampshire Advertiser, 26 Aug. 1843; Hampshire Independent, 26 Aug. 1843.

A tourniquet was applied by an ‘old friend’, Captain Meredith, but Hoy died from ‘lock jaw’ at the Hospice de Vieille the following day.21Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 26 Aug. 1843. By his will, dated 18 May 1843 and initially proved under £18,000, ample provision was made for his wife Marian, their daughter Louisa and adopted daughter Elencho Maria Pera. However, with outstanding mortgages of £58,500 there were insufficient funds to carry out most of his bequests and his estate was declared insolvent.22PROB 11/1990/851; IR26/1647/791. The adopted daughter is incorrectly identified as Eleanor in HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 739.

It has been suggested that the cost of contesting Southampton on five occasions in as many years must have contributed heavily to Hoy’s indebtedness, and it may also account for the abandonment of his political career and sojourns abroad.23Barrigan, Barlow and Hutton Rudby, ch. 16. His younger brother the Rev. Robert Joseph Barlow was plagued for years by the claims of Hoy’s widow upon the insolvent estate, of which he was the principal executor, and in later years published a scathing portrait of her as a scheming harpy.24Ibid. chs. 16, 22. In the same autobiographical novel he also alleged that she and Captain Meredith had conspired to murder Hoy, and that Hoy had been pushed by Meredith into the ravine.25Walter Fitzallen, Remarkable but still true. A novel (1872), passim. Hoy’s widow married Meredith in September 1844, just over a year after the accident, and a few months after Meredith’s death in 1850 took a third husband, the Catholic author John Richard Digby Beste.26Barrigan, Barlow and Hutton Rudby, chs. 16-17.