HUDSON, Thomas (1772-1852), of Cheswardine Hill Hall, Salop. and 6 Park Crescent, Portland Place, London, Mdx.

A Cumbrian of humble origins, Hudson was a London wine merchant ‘largely connected with the Portuguese trade’.1A statement in W.R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of the County of Worcester (1897), 158, that Hudson was first prothonotary of the common pleas from 1830 until the office was abolished in 1837 or 1838, is almost certainly a case of mistaken identity, see Hull Packet, 25 Mar. 1870. An owner of real estate in Madeira, he also invested in a 2,500 acre estate in Shropshire in 1825, and aspired to a seat in parliament. He found the cost of contesting the open and venal borough of Evesham to be prohibitive in 1830, but, upon being approached again in 1831, he was returned as a reformer, with substantial Whig support.2HP Commons 1820-32, v. 740-1; G. May, A Descriptive History of the Town of Evesham (1845), 299; Daily News, 17 Nov. 1849; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 231. At the 1832 general election Hudson, who was regarded by opponents as the ‘particular puppet’ of the Dissenters and radicals who made up the newly enfranchised voters of Evesham, was re-elected in a contest against a Conservative anti-abolitionist.3HP Commons 1820-32, iii. 233; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 Dec. 1832; Daily News, 17 Nov. 1849.

Hudson is only known to have spoken on two occasions in the Commons after 1832. On 7 March 1833 he moved unsuccessfully for the House to recognise the necessity of reducing the salaries, fees and pensions paid to public servants, in proportion to the reduction in incomes and costs experienced by ‘all other classes of the community’ since 1825, thus seeking to reduce the annual bill from £16 million to £13.5 million.4Hansard, 7 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 353-5. Having already supported Joseph Hume’s proposed inquiry into army and navy sinecures, 14 Feb. 1833, he voted for Daniel Harvey’s motion for an inquiry into the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834. In March 1834 he spoke in support of an observance of the Sabbath bill, but reserved to himself the privilege of voting against any of its provisions that he considered objectionable.5Hansard, 11 Mar. 1834, vol. 22, cc. 60-1. He served on the committee on the Montgomery election petition in May 1833.6CJ, lxxxviii. 422.

Hudson gave general support to the Whigs, dividing in favour of the Irish disturbances bill, and Lord Althorp’s Irish church reform bill, 11 Mar. 1833, but opposed the ministry by voting in the minority for retaining the appropriation clause of the Irish church temporalities bill, 21 June.7Morning Chronicle, 24 June 1833. He also opposed Matthias Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, and Tennyson’s motion for shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833. The following year he divided against Hume’s motion for a committee to consider the corn laws, 8 Mar. 1834, and again voted against the government on Althorp’s motion to replace church rates, 21 Apr. 1834.

By the time of the 1835 general election Hudson had ‘given some offence by inattention to his friends’ in his constituency and, having carried out an inconclusive canvass, surprised his supporters by insisting upon retiring on the eve of the nomination.8May, History of Evesham, 302; Daily News, 5 Dec. 1849. He played no further part in politics and died in London in April 1852, his wife having predeceased him that January. His will provided for the family of his sister, Elizabeth Donaldson,9Morning Post, 15 Jan. 1852; Standard, 16 Apr. 1852; HP Commons 1820-32, v. 741. his Shropshire property passing to his great nephew, Charles Donaldson, Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1880-5, who took the additional name of Hudson in 1862.10Daily News, 2 Apr. 1880.