ATHERLEY, Arthur (1772-1844), of Tower House, Arundel, Suss.

Born into a wealthy Southampton banking dynasty, which he was content to let his younger brother George (1782-1856) manage, Atherley had sat intermittently for that borough prior to 1818 with the support of his father, the town’s mayor in 1783 and 1797, before making two unsuccessful bids to come in for Arundel, where he was resident.1HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 117-9. In 1831 he had been persuaded out of retirement by Southampton’s local reformers and resumed his seat as a loyal supporter of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, a measure that for him represented ‘not revolution, but restoration’.2Hants. Advertiser, 7, 14, 28 May 1831. At the 1832 general election he offered again and topped the poll as a veteran Whig and ‘friend’ of Charles James Fox, on the hustings rejecting suggestions that he ‘was too old to be an MP’ and insisting that ‘he had still a few years left for active exertion’ and had not ‘lagged in his duty’. He was, however, spared the chairing ceremony.3Hants. Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 87.

A fairly lax attender, evidently in frail health, when present Atherley gave steady support to the Whig ministry on most major issues, including their Irish coercion bill, 6 Mar. 1833, and Irish church bill, 21 June 1833, and was in their majorities against radical motions for inquiry into agricultural distress, 21 Mar. 1833, shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, and a lowering of corn duties, 7 Mar. 1834. He was absent, however, from divisions on the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, inquiry into the pension list, 22 Feb. 1834, and naval impressment, 4 Mar. 1834, and was ‘prevented by ill health’ from taking his place on the London and Southampton railway committee, 17 Mar. 1834.4Hants. Advertiser, 29 Mar. 1834. In his only known speech in this period, he backed a motion for an inquiry into electoral corruption in Liverpool, observing that ‘the freemen would always corrupt the representation’ and ‘till they were reformed the working of the reform bill would not be successful’, 6 Mar. 1833.5Hansard, 6 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 323. He also presented constituency petitions for the abolition of slavery, 3 May 1833, and the better observance of the Sabbath, 6 Mar. 1834.6Morning Chronicle, 7 Mar. 1834. That November it was rumoured that he would retire and at the dissolution he duly stepped down for health reasons, noting that he had only intended to serve until the people ‘were in enjoyment’ of the Reform Act’s provisions.7Hants. Advertiser, 22 Nov., 13 Dec. 1834; A. Temple Patterson, A history of Southampton, 1700-1914 (1966), i. 174. He was sufficiently recovered to re-enter public life as the first mayor of Arundel’s reformed town council at the end of that year, in which capacity he oversaw the completion of the new town hall, sponsored by the Whig duke of Norfolk.8Brighton Patriot, 1 Dec. 1835; The Examiner, 10 Jan. 1836. It was his brother George, Southampton’s mayor in 1816, however, who remained most active locally, as a leading light in the Hampshire Reform Association, established 10 June 1835, and as a town councillor elected for Southampton’s All Saint’s ward in 1835.9A selection from The Southampton Corporation Journals, 1815-35 (1965), ed. A. Temple Patterson, 12; Hants. Advertiser, 13 June 1835; Hants. Telegraph, 4 Jan. 1836.

Atherley died in October 1844 at Arundel, where he was a ‘liberal benefactor’ to the poor.10Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 650; Sussex Advertiser, 29 Oct. 1844. By his will, dated 24 Apr. 1841 and proved under £12,000, 19 Nov. 1844, his Hampshire estates and a portrait of him as a young boy at Eton by Thomas Lawrence passed to his eldest son the Rev. Arthur Atherley (1794-1857), vicar of Heavitree, Devon, who shared Atherley’s library of first editions with Colonel Samuel Long, Atherley’s son-in-law. Provision was also made for Atherley’s other surviving children Mark Kerr Atherley (1804-84), who fought in the Crimea and rose to the rank of general, Henry Fox Atherley (1807-74), who entered the church, and his unmarried daughters Louisa and Mary.11PROB 11/2006/799; IR26/1667/1083; Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 650; (1857), i. 857. The Atherley chamber in Arundel town hall is named after him.